The Waking Mind

A vicious battlefield on the Aachen-Synjalo Border.

The First Episode of Saeculum Obscurum, the first campaign set in Tillagr' Era 2.

## Summary:

Five strangers awaken on a battlefield with no knowledge of how they got there and no idea who is fighting who. They're wounded and desperate as they navigate the hazards of the bloodbath and uncover the secrets that brought them together in this strange dream-world.

## Cast:

### Player Characters:

* Saoirse Ó Loinsigh (Bunker)
* The Entity (Natalie)
* Doc (Brian)
* Gwendolyn Snow (Alana)
* Lucius (Hisham)
* Emelya (Mark)

### Non-Player Characters:

* Mordred
* King Arturias Merovech

## Recap:

War has come to Synjalo. Smoke fills the air. The smells of charred skin and rotting sinew fill the air. The mud on the ground mixes with the corpses of the freshly dead, but by some miracle, eight people wake up at the same time, recovering from a catapult blast that had narrowly missed them. Saoirse, Entity, Doc, Gwendolyn Snow, Lucius, Emelya, and two other complete strangers find themselves strewn about, weaker than they know themselves to be, their heads ringing with confusion as the sounds of hate and desperation fill the air.

Doc’s eyes open with a dull fire. “Wake me from this nightmare.” A simple statement, one far more apt than he could ever have guessed. Gwendolyn leaped awake, ever quick on her feet, and took cover before taking stock of the situation. She was a survivor and would continue to be as long as she could. Saoirse, more lost and afraid than she was when she fell asleep, looks around for her pack. She had abandoned her family, her home, had stolen from both and turned traitor. Where was she now? Would she die before finding out?

Lucius awoke in pain. His leg had been mangled from the blast, and he struggled to stand to his feet. Emelya came to his side and cast a spell upon him to fortify his body. The Entity was the slowest to react, staring at its hand. Her hand was mechanical, but none of the deeper functions or subroutines that The Entity required to process information and move were working. How, then, could it move her hand, let alone see it? What were these aches and feelings that reverberated through its body?

Emelya spoke up now. “Hey. We need to get out of here. Any ideas?”

Lucius shook his head as he leaned up against an overturned cart. “We’re surrounded on all sides. We need to find a path through.”

Doc piped up. “We’re surrounded by two different armies, and one of them’s got dragons.”

“Dragons without eyes,” Gwendolyn sneered. How were they supposed to appreciate beauty if their eyes had been sealed shut?

The Entity, tearing its eyes away from its hands for a brief moment, looked toward the dragons. She tried to zoom in on the hides, but finding that impossible, ‘focused’ its ‘eyes’ on them instead. There were strange runes adorning them, nearly indecipherable to the untrained magical eye.

Saoirse was not trained in the magical arts, but was educated enough to recognize the names of various Atlanti Houses. It was then that she noticed that her homeland’s army was here, fighting a war against Synjalo. This was the first she’d heard of it. All those soldiers mobilizing in Akrland, she’d thought they were for the Elves. But the devastation around her… Was this what they’d been planning all along?

“There’s a path to the north that cuts between the two armies.” Lucius scanned the battlefield, his eyes making up for what his legs were lacking in at the moment. “It’s shorter, but it doesn’t have a lot of cover. There’s another way to the right. It’s another hundred feet or so, but we can stay out of sight more if we go that way.”

The Entity helped two other survivors up. They were not fighters. In fact, they were even worse off than the rest of the group. They looked at the others, seeming to trust them immediately, as though familiar with the ragtag group of strangers.

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Doc said. “If you can make it on that leg, that is.” Lucius nodded in response. The group looked across at each other. There was a hesitation, a consideration of whether they could trust each other. But at the same time, there was a sense of immediate cohesion. Like they all knew they’d been pushed together for a reason, and that they were better off figuring out why than dying in the mud for nothing.

Just as they made their silent pact, a knight came from the north path. He was injured, bite marks adorning his body, three naked corpses clamped on to him, devouring him. The corpses were so keen on feeding that they never noticed the other slabs of fresh meat.

The group of eight took that as their cue that they were out of time. Taking cover in the ruts made by catapult missiles landing in the dirt, they made their way along slowly, doing everything they could to stay out of sight. It was tense, but the chaos around them made sneaking by far easier than expected. Saoirse stumbled over the corpse of a half-eaten knight, etching the stakes into her heart. This also prompted Emelya to use prestidigitation to make herself as unappetizing as possible.

As they rounded a corner, they saw what seemed to be a freshly reanimated corpse, drifting along, moaning out loud. Emelya and Gwendolyn, not wasting a single moment, cast spells to make the corpse appear to be a fresh pile of meat to consume. It wasn’t until several other of the reanimated monsters began devouring the screaming man that they realized he was just another scared survivor.

The group could not stop to consider their options, opting instead to take refuge between a cart and some boxes. Two knights on opposing sides were waging a life or death battle just a dozen feet away from them as the group came to a stop. Just as the Atlanti Knight went to strike the final blow, Gwendolyn used Silvery Barbs to turn the tables. The Synjalo soldier didn’t waste his chance, evading the swing at the last second. Just as he was about to counterattack, however, a miracle appeared before the party.

King Arturias Merovech of Synjalo, from seemingly out of nowhere, drove his sword through the chest of the Atlanti knight. Looking down at the scared collection of souls, his eyes shown with a kindness that cut through the smoke of the battle. “Don’t worry. I’m just as scared as you are. Now go. There’s a temple north of here that you can take refuge in.” He turned around, looking at the battlefield before him. “Go. Now. You can make it if you run.” Arturias ran towards his men in arms, and the survivors before him didn’t waste the chance that he gave them.

The eight ran as quickly as they could, but Lucius’s leg held him back for one fateful extra second. As he stumbled away from the cover they had been hiding in, one final catapult missile landed in the boxes behind them, destroying what little functionality his leg still held. As he fell to the ground, he attracted the attention of the two nearby corpses that they had sicced on the knight, as well as a third, larger ghoul that towered over him. They began shambling over, seeking the promise of fresh meat.

The others were in the clear, already well on their way to the temple. Doc was the first to notice that Lucius had fallen. Maybe on another day, he wouldn’t have gone back. Perhaps even just a minute before or after, he would have made a different call. Instead, he leaped to action, sprinting as quickly as he could to reach his comrade. Saoirse, however, didn’t make a choice. Her body moved on its own towards the fallen man.

Lucius slowly climbed to his feet as the monsters approached. He refused to die without a fight, being feasted upon by creatures beyond his understanding. They descended on him, swarming him and blocking his vision. In a moment of immediate silent understanding, Emelya passed a vial of oil to Doc, who launched the vial with perfect precision, shattering the glass against the largest corpse. Gwendolyn, capitalizing on this, ignited the oil with a fire bolt, though in the confusion she didn’t quite register that she wasn’t casting her regular eldritch blast.

The creature raged. The fire burned into its mind just as powerfully as its hunger did. Using that rage, it brought it’s claws down on Lucius, striking him down. As his body slumped on the ground, Saoirse slid to a halt in front of him. She dragged him away from the creatures as she uncorked one of the health potions that she’d prepared last night -

And then she noticed that it was shimmering. Shifting. As though it was two different bottles entirely. The glass, the color, even the viscousness, it all twisted in her vision. But she didn’t have a choice. She shoved the contents of the glass down Lucius’s throat, waking him up instantly.

All the while, the rest of the group were defeating the monsters that attacked them. The two unknown survivors had long since fled, as was their right. But it meant that even as the two smaller enemies fell, the final one was still raging, ready to sink its fiery teeth into Saoirse’s skull. And as it stepped forward to do so, the fires finally consumed it, leaving Saoirse and Lucius covered in its ashes, terrified, but alive all the same. Lucius stood up as Saoirse recovered from her fight, and half-dragged her back to the rest of the group, taking charge just as she had done seconds earlier in order to save his life.

Before anything else could attack, the party retreated into the temple. From the top of a nearby hill, as though a spotlight was being shown down from heaven, they could all make out a battle between King Arturius and a knight clad in pitch black armor. Arturius was no slouch in combat, and he delivered a clean final blow to the Knight, driving his sword through the heart. The group felt some small comfort knowing that their ‘side’ had won.

Until they blinked, all at once, and saw the Black Knight standing over Arturius’s dead body. There had been nothing, no indication that the Knight had won. Anyone watching had watched Arturius kill him. But then…

As the group rounded a corner into the temple, Saoirse collapsed on the ground, doing her best to process what was happening around her. The others stood around her, trying to figure out what was going on. Bickering about where to go next. Trying to figure out if anybody held any allegiances, trying to determine who was on which side.

The Entity, through all of this, had never once ceased their fascination with her hand.  And suddenly, it saw a flicker. Its hand was at once human and mechanical. She remembered something, remembered the only thing that had ever happened to her, as far as she knew. When the Entity remembers how it died, it sees this same shimmer. In that moment, she spoke. “None of this is real.”

It went unnoticed at first. The group, though immediately cooperative, was devolving into petty feuds. Stupid arguments. Saoirse was the one to speak up above the others. “What do you mean, none of this is real? What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that this is a simulation. Though of what, I do not know.”

Emelya cocked her head. “Simulation? Is that like an illusion? Illusion magic can’t make anything like this.”

“You’re wrong,” Saoirse cut in. “Illusion magic is the strongest one by far.”

“This entity has had much experience with simulations. I run through them again. And again. And again. And again. And again…”

Saoirse’s eyes widened. “Are you… A warforged?.”

The Entity tilted their head in confusion. “Negative, this entity is a Series 14 Prime Combat Unit.”

Saoirse took the Entity’s hand, the same one it had been staring at the whole time. It was unmistakably human, organic. Saorise looked around the room at everyone else. “What were you all doing before we woke up?”

Emelya shrugged. “I was with my people, just outside of Akrland. I figured someone kidnapped me or something.”

Some small bit of recognition crept into Saorise’s mind. “Are you… The Healer of the Woods?”

“Um… I guess you could say that. I was hoping for a better title, but if that’s what they call me-”

“My name is Saoirse Ó Loinsigh. We studied at the library a few times.”

“Um… No? You aren’t her, you don’t look anything like her.”

“And you’ve somehow become a Human.”

Lucius closed his eyes for a moment, before blinking them back open, trying to take in what was just said. “Are you telling me that none of us are who we’re supposed to be?”

Gwendolyn, realizing she was not in her own body, allowed herself to scowl. “Then who are we? Where are we?”

The Entity looked at her, deliberately moving its full body to face Ms. Snow. “We are in a simulation, as I said.”

Lucius shook his head. “You must mean it’s a dream. So, how do we wake up? Can we wake up?

Doc, meanwhile, had been surveying his surroundings. Taking stock. “Everyone, stay quiet for a moment.”

Gwendolyn reared her head at the man. “What now?”

“Just… Follow me.”

The six dreamers looked around at each other. What else was there to do but move forward?

Doc and Lucius went first. The group spied into a large chapel room. The walls had begun crumbling long before the countryside became a warzone. A fountain in the center of the hall was filled with still water, untouched for who knows how long. Though cracked and uncared for, there was just enough water to see a faint reflection off of it, highlighting what little ceiling remained ever more. The smell of nature reclaiming the building was just barely overshadowed by the wafting stench of rot and blood from the battle outside. Standing just off to the side of the fountain, resting from the heat of battle, was a bloody and exhausted Knight of Aachen.

The Knight was limping softly towards the fountain when he spied the six scared survivors. His helmet hung loosely in his hands, and there was a brief moment that all seven in the room shared. One of confusion, of hasty decisions, of assessing how best to eliminate the threat before it even became a threat. After the longest second any of them had experienced yet, the knight groaned dully, and advanced. No light shone in his eyes as he put his helmet back on, and the routine of a man who has spent his entire life killing kicked in as he drew his longsword.

The Entity, running on instinct rather than programming, lunged ahead of the group, shoving the Knight to the ground just as his sword cleared his sheath. They reached down to grab his throat, but the knight blocked the fleshy hand with his wrist. The Entity’s new body was not calibrated properly, it seemed, for this level of physical stress. Leaping to his feet, the Knight slashed out at The Entity, carving into the flesh. The Entity felt pain, true pain, for the first time. It was… Not entirely unpleasant, the feeling of physicality. But it was nowhere near joyous, either. It was the bad kind of new. And as this new sensation rippled throughout her body, she found consciousness slipping from her, yet another new phenomenon that it could never have imagined.

Saoirse, in a panic, reached into her bag. She remembered the shimmer. Could she manipulate reality in this dream? She had no bottles left. She had seen broken glass, and could only find the first potion. But that wasn’t really *her* potion she had administered. She had willed it to be so. And so, testing the limits of what she could do, she reached into her empty pack, grabbed the air, and pulled out a vial of acid. It had been months since she’d made any acid, yet here it was, as real as anything else happening around her. And so, she threw the acid at the knight with all the force she could muster, and soundly missed. But the sound of the acid eating through the ground distracted the Knight just enough for Emelya to cast Burning Hands on the knight, roasting his skin. The Knight wasted no time in leaping to the spellcaster’s position and striking her down with a single swing.

Gwendolyn, in a dignified rage, blasted the knight with Burning Hands, igniting him instantly. Lucius struck true with his sword. Doc laid into the beast with his dagger. Not once did the Knight budge. Saoirse, tears in her eyes, asked a question as the battle raged. “Are you part of the dream, or are you stuck in it with us? Do you also have the wrong body?”

The Knight eyed her cautiously as he blocked one of Lucius’s attacks. He sidestepped Doc’s next dagger strike, and took a cursory look into the fountain. He was disappointed to see himself reflected back, more or less. He grabbed his crossbow, and aimed for Saoirse’s chest. “What the hell are you talking about?” His shot ripped through Saoirse’s ribcage, punctured her right lung, and silenced her as the shock of the pain knocked her out.

Emelya, seeing her study buddy be so thoroughly damaged, cast a spell on the Knight, blocking his vision. What should have been an obvious illusion of a bucket was made real in the twisting landscape of the dream that they were stuck in. Gwendolyn blasted again with burning hands, setting the knight ablaze even further.

Doc and Lucius renewed their physical assault as the Entity was shocked back awake by the sounds of clashing metal. Her body was not physically sound, but the mission was clear. Under no circumstances would she allow herself to fail in the only mission she had been given in years. Her fleshy limbs were not sturdy, not in the slightest, but it would have to be enough, even if just to distract the foe for a moment.

The Knight was shocked out of his blindness by Lucius tackling him to the ground. The bucket dissipated from reality as the hold of the dream slipped from it. The Knight snarled, feeling the pain of the day’s battle weighing him down. With a scream, not a flourish, he rose to his feet and slashed with all the force his dying body could muster at Lucius, striking him down from force alone. Not taking any chances, the Knight plunged his blade into Lucius once again, piercing the dying man, all but securing his fate. And lastly, he brought the pommel down on The Entity, bringing her down one last time.

Gwendolyn, seeing that four of the six of them had fallen, felt the heat of her anger welling up, unable to be contained. As the Knight turned to look at Doc, Gwendolyn fired a single bolt of fire at the Knight. Just as he was about to bring his sword down on the other man, the bolt of fire lit the cloth on the inside of the Knight’s armor on fire. The Knight uttered a guttural cry of pain, dropping his sword to the ground as he felt his organs liquify and his skin blacken. He had to run. Now. Finally beaten, he turned, and fled, running as fast as his charred feet could run.

Gwendolyn went to Saoirse’s body, and began tending to it. She whispered a word of power into Saoirse’s ear as she pressed down on her chest, and the dying woman awoke instantly. Doc had no such arcane secrets to rely on, and so simply went about keeping the others from bleeding out. It was touch and go with Lucius, but at last, he was stable. Emelya was woken up as well, and as they were working on keeping their wounded alive, another stranger walked into the room.

There was a faint shriek of pain from the far wall, whence the knight had fled. From around the corner, a fair-faced man entered the rumble covered room, not unlike a man strolling through a garden. The fleeing Knight was dead, impaled on his sword. So nonchalant was he that the four awake heroes hardly registered his existence before he was upon them, even as they saw the knight die upon his sword.

“Excuse me, you four, but… Are you well? Are you okay?”

Doc pulled his dagger immediately. “None of your fucking business. Who are you? Which side are you on? Aachen or Synjalo?”

The man put his hands up, amused at Doc’s audacity. “Relax, relax. I’m on the side of the victims. Of the people who’ve gotten caught up in this mess.”

Gwendolyn’s ears perked up, and she finally took notice of the man. “Meddi? Is that you, my dear boy?”

The man - Mordred - squinted his eyes at the woman, who had forgotten that he would not recognize her. “I don’t like that you said that name. I don’t like that at all. Who are you? How do you know that name?”

Gwendolyn chuckled just the right amount of laughter. “My dear, dear sweet boy, it’s me. It’s Aunt Gwendolyn. I’m stuck in this dream body at the moment, but-”

The man stepped back, pangs of recognition in his eyes. Doc’s shiny metal was nothing to be afraid of, but this… “This is a joke. Right? Who else is here? Is the one with a knife Aunty Ivese? Is that lump on the ground Zed?”

“Ah, no… No, I don’t think anyone else you know is here. These people are from... All over, it seems.”

“Then why… Are you here?” He was getting angry now. Angry at her? No, Gwendolyn could tell at a glance that he wasn’t mad at her.

“Well, Meddi, we’re not too sure ourselves. If you have any light to shed on the situation, that would be greatly appreciated.”

“No, aunty, you don’t understand. You being here should be impossible, it’s not…” He paused for a moment, then pointed up at the sky. “That might be able to tell you something.”

The mortals around him looked up, and saw nothing for a second. Then, directing their attention to the moon, they saw a serpent drift across the sky. It coiled itself around the moon, once, twice, a dozen times, before turning its gaze peacefully down to the land below. Mordred looked around at the others. “This is all a dream. I think you’ve figured that out by now.”

Saoirse finally worked up the courage to ask a question. “Is this… The future?”

“Not… Quite. Not the past, either, but it will be when you wake up.”

Emelya blinked in confusion. “Okay, fine, it’s a dream, whatever. I can work with that. But why are we here, then? Is this real?”

“I’m not sure why. But yes, this is real.”

“Then how did the Black Knight kill the King? We watched Arturius strike him down. But then he just… Wasn’t. He switched places with the King after he died.”

“One thing at a time, please? … The Knight is… Was… a member of my order. He’s… Why I’m here. But why you’re here is much more confusing. You’re in living vessels, just waiting to wake up.”

Doc finally lowered his blade. “Then… How do we wake up?”

“I’ll just have to kill you. You can’t die in a dream, after all.” He smiled then, a soft smile, meant to comfort those watching. They could feel him telling the truth, but there was a hint of something else in there.

Gwendolyn composed herself. “And what of these vessels?”

“I’ll take care of them.”

Emelya took a half step back. “Take care of them like you’ll dispose of them, or-”

“Ha! Ahaha! No no, like, I kill you, you wake up, and then I make them not dead anymore.”

The sounds of swords clashing approached again. Stragglers getting picked off. Survivors no longer surviving. The battle would take over the church soon enough. Doc nodded solemnly at Mordred. “All right, then. Make it quick. I wanted out of this before I even knew what was happening.”

Saoirse cleared her throat. “Wait. Wait. We need to be able to meet up again. We need to figure this out, when we’re awake.”

Emelya piped up. “There’s a tavern in Huldr’ called The Crooked Cap. It’s on the Outskirts of Akrland, safe zone.” Emelya got to work waking the two others up, as Mordred pierced Doc’s heart with the precision of a master seamstress. Doc fell softly, as though his borrowed body was falling asleep instead of dying of blood loss.

Emelya woke The Entity up. They blinked a couple times. Emelya gave the coordinates for where to meet, and Mordred ended the simulation for good. Saoirse turned her back to them all, covered her ears, and whimpered until it was finally over and she could wake up. Lucius came to, and saw the death around him. Mordred told him plainly where to go, and sent him to meet the others in the waking world.

Emelya stood off to the side, unflinching as the casual death piled up around her. Mordred looked at her, and let out a heavy sigh. “You as well? You’re still conscious.”

Emelya smiled at him. “I’ll be waking up, yes, but… I’m going to insist that it be on my own terms.” She held her hands underneath her chin, in an all-too familiar spell form. Burning Hands had damaged the knight, and now, she burned her head to a crisp, ending her life on her own terms. Mordred was impressed, but extremely concerned that someone would willing do that to themselves.

Mordred turned to look at Gwendolyn. “Aunty, you know that… The thought of hurting you, even when it isn’t your body, is terrible. I… I hate it.”

Gwendolyn stood tall, regal even, in her squat human form. “Now listen here, Meddi. You aren’t hurting me. You’re just waking me up. Now be a good boy and finish what you started.”

The words were no sooner out her mouth than Mordred did as he was told. But for the first time that day, he had to close his eyes as he ended a life. Even through the veil of the dream, she had kept those eyes, that intensity, that helped define who she was. Mordred stood alone now in the empty chapel, as the drums of war rang out all around him.