Death Meddle

Thumbnail for Season 2 Chapter 46 featuring Anthony

## Synopsis

In Season 2, Chapter 46: Death Meddle, our celebration over the demise of the chimera would have to be put on hold, for we still had to contend with the two unknowns of an unchecked rugga'bugga'tugga'tin and a cleric whose drive and purpose had just been stripped away.

As we bought time for the fiend to find his way back to where he came from, a pair of disembodied voices entered into the minds of Orba and Graven – one with words of insidious warning and the other with puzzling advice.

Q'usñi showed us neither grace nor gratitude, but he did begin the process of freeing Graven from his divine affiliation – an arduous transformation that had us worried he might not survive given the decades he'd spent relying on that power.  Piece by piece, his skills and spells were stripped away along with his health – and it seemed we needed to change the game to avoid a disastrous result.

Luckily, our other call came from Josco Tibbets, who was using the sending spell to guide Orba to a hidden ripcord in an empty prison cell.  Other than "you'll know what to do after that," there wasn't much in the way of clarification – but our options were limited, so we put our faith in the eccentric wizard who'd helped us once before.

Pulling the cord triggered waves of metallic clanging that seemed to be coming from inside the walls, and just a few moments later a strange silence washed over us that felt awfully familiar.  It seemed the Shade Assembly had rigged up a mechanism for turning the holding pens into a soul shelter, which not only halted the sapping of Graven's strength – it afforded us an opportunity to speak candidly to the last remaining cleric of light.

As we carefully approached the half-orc, Rumik and Sascha's attention was drawn elsewhere – for popping up all around the chamber were chained-up goliaths… a glimpse into Q'usñi's collection of banished souls, far more accessible now than when we saw them in the shelter outside the Ruins of Joiruk.

An impassioned plea by Graven to point out that whatever the meddling gods could give would come at far too great a cost seemed to resonate with the man who called himself Aswan, but just as the conflicted duo moved to destroy their holy relics together, the cleric gave in to a lust for power and wounded his predecessor with a wave of necrotic force.

The fight that ensued had complications aplenty, most notably that Graven was in such a weakened state – and that Aswan's death might prevent us from freeing the banished goliaths, who could then be lost forever.

The former problem was mitigated by Rumik fetching the totem once belonging to Booraj il-Kravo, which – after foregoing his own safety to acquire it – used some baton-passing antics with Sascha to get it into their brother's hands.  The totem infused Graven with barbarian fortitude, though it also forced him to relive several heartbreaking memories of the decades-long hunt the il-Vigos had put in motion to set him free.

Even that might not have been enough to keep the cleric from striking us down, but Orba picked the perfect moment to counterspell what could have been a killing blow – and after a bolt of lighting from Sascha softened him up, Graven landed one thunderous thump to fell his foe.

There was no time to savor the moment, however, for the goliaths were flickering out of existence – so we split up and sprinted to all corners of the room to save as many as we could.  Tragically, Orba was unable to reclaim Erland from the void… but Sascha's physical prowess gave him the speed to locate their sister Ayana Sengri-la… and with a smile on her face she returned to the temple where she'd been taken.

It wasn't a perfect outcome, but rarely does such a thing exist and we waited to see if the Shade Assembly was on their way to apprehend us.

## Trivia

* Natural one count: five natural ones were rolled in this Chapter. 1 by Talon, and 2 each by Anthony and Jordan.