Aerois - Episode 16: Dark Rituals

Kim Richards as Nova V'ger

Mark Hulmes as Aila

Rhiannon Frost as Sentry

 Tom Hazell as Qillek Ad Khollar

**Dark Rituals** is the 16th episode of the Aerois Campaign. It was broadcast live on both the Yogscast Twitch channel and highrollersdnd channel on 18th November 2018 from 5PM to 8PM GMT.

*The gang uncover some spooky goings on in Iron Wick(sic) and figure out what's going on with that glowing lake!*

## **Summary**

### **Announcements**

* Mark welcomes everyone and introduces the players.
* Katie is away in Scotland this week for her birthday.
* D&D Beyond is the sponsor this week. They have just released Dungeons of the Mad Mage and Guild Master's Guide to Ravnica.
* Kim has a new haircut.
* New merch: tote bag, Aerois dice (sold out), new shirt, calendar. Use the code HIGHROLLERS for 10% off.
* Submit fan art to highrollersdnd@gmail.com.
* Podcast is released on Mondays and Thursdays, leave a rating.

### **Recap**

"*The party have made their way to a town called Ironwick, a small, used to be a trade town, has now become a bit of a tourist trap with not much else going on it, along the Golden Road, a long trade road that leads to the city of Goldthrone on the continent of Suvonna. Along the way, the party have encountered a number of trials and tribulations, one of which includes the attempted kidnapping of a young girl called Valla, who the party helped rescue from the crashing airship that they were all travelling on. Upon arrival in Ironwick the party discovered that a woman, a Beastwalker, a rabbit woman called Sanna and her human client Galen were being run out of town by the locals for fear that they'd been stealing from the town. Galen is looking for his missing daughter and hired Sanna as a bounty hunter to help him locate her. The party spoke with the couple and learnt a little bit about what was going on, that there were some things going on in the town, including a mysterious green glow emanating from the lake. After discussing things with the team, Nova was the one who remembered that the green glow reminded her of the crashed Court of Shadows shuttle where she'd found her sword, Tiangong. The party then did some further investigations, leaving Quill, Aila, and Valla in the local general store, where after using a Detect Magic spell, Quill had come to realize that there was more going on than meets the eye.*"
### **Part 1**

*In the town of Ironwick, Quill has discovered some ritualistic activity in the general store!*

Quill, Aila and Valla are in the general store, the Acorn and Bale; the dwarf owner, Bodwin, is passed out by a table near the door, while Aila and Valla talk to two of the staff girls about equipment as a distraction while Quill has cast Detect Magic. Quill has seen a strange arcane glow froma ritual circle in the back room (appears to be an abjuration effect), noticed that the necklaces that the girls were wearing (a 4-pointed star with crossed swords over the top) had a minor enchantment on them. and also seen that there was an enchantment on the tea that Bodwin had been drinking before he had fallen asleep. They agree to leave and check with the others to see what supplies they need - the tiefling girl, who has red skin, horns and black hair, tells Valla that she is very pretty. Quill tells them what he had seen as they head back to meet up with the others at Galen and Sanna's lodgings.

Nova tells them that it would be very expensive to rent a boat at night, and tells them about the ship on which she found Tiangong, thinking that the green glow from the lake is being made by an undiscovered Remnant ship, and that it will be very similar. It is probably made of black crystalline material with green power lines throughout; it looks very alien to Aerois. They think it odd that, if it is a Remnant ship, that it has not been found yet, but realise that the lake is both large and very deep, and it is possible that the ship is buried deep in the earth - Quill is not sure whether to believe Nova that it is, in fact, a Remnant ship causing the glow.

***(See trivia for comment about lore dump).***

Arval is talking to Galen, and Quill tells them what he saw with his Detect Magic, including the enchantment on the girls' necklaces, the crossed swords over a star. Immediately Quill mentions the design, Sentry remembers that clearly as the banner flown by Starbane's forces and the emblem that would be on his soldiers' armour. Lucius thinks it is unlikely to be a coincidence that the girls are wearing that necklace, and that there is likely a Remnant ship under the lake. Lucius thinks that the ritual circle could be any of a teleportation circle, an alarm, or a trap to protect something. sentry tells them that the Court of Shadows (now Remnant) army was a mix of different races, though mainly humanoids - humans, demons, creatures with tentacled faces, large eyes with multiple eyestalks, non-sentient constructs, evil dragons, and an odd humanoid race with yellow skin, skinny, with large eyes, hairless, with mind magic.

There is some concern that the girls may not be what they seem, and Valla is concerned that they now know her name and that she is in Ironwick. Aila is happy to stay with Valla and Arval, Lucius wants to disguise them and run away. Sentry thinks they should fight them while they are here and they know who the enemy is; Sanna agrees. Nova tells them that she acquired Tiangong from inside one of the Remnant shuttles, and that Tiangong wants to get away from the Remnant. Sanna tells them that she was commissioned to find Galen's daughter, and that she will go into the ship if that is her only lead; Quill says that he will not let Sanna go alone, which she appreciates. They decide to investigate the back of the general store first, and go once it is dark and the town is quiet.

Nova goes invisible, no one is around, but Sanna can smell the girls somewhere, and Sentry can hear chanting or singing from somewhere. Nova checks the doors and windows of the general store, but everything is locked - she uses Mage Hand to unlock one of the windows from the inside, and enters quietly. She searches and finds a trapdoor under a rug with runes scratched in a circle around the edges - Nova casts Identify and finds that there is an Alarm spell on the trapdoor that will trigger if it is opened; she hears ritual chanting from 3 feminine voices below the floorboards. She calls quietly to the others outside and tells them what she has found. They debate whether to trip the alarm, set fire to the shop, or try to remove the alarm and sneak down. Nova (still invisible), hides behind barrels, then uses her mage hand to open the trapdoor - the chanting suddenly stops, and soon after, one of the girls, Trisha, appears from below the trapdoor with a small knife out. Nova knocks some glassware off a shelf on the other side of the room, but the barrel she is hiding behind squeaks as well - Trisha moves towards the noise on the other side of the room. Quill messages to see if Nova is ok; because it is still quite dark, Trisha grabs her necklace of Starbane, mutters some prayers and starts looking around the room, her eyes now glowing a bright purple, and she looks towards the barrels where Nova is hiding. Sanna tries to stealth back to the front of the shop to knock on the door but inadvertently makes some noise that Trisha hears - she moves to the window and sees that the latch has been removed, pulls her knife out and calls to the other two girls, Xanni and Ven, that someone is here.

Trisha starts to make her way back down the ladder under the trapdoor. Nova casts suggestion, telling Trisha to "Take off your necklace and give it to me!" Nova's invisibility breaks, Trisha sees her and smiles and says, "Oh darlin', Xarkilla don't go for none of that," and successfully casts Hold Person on Nova: as she is just about to start tying Nova up, Nova manages to break free, and there is a loud pounding on the front door. Trisha tries to Command Nova to grovel, but fails. Nova tries to escape the room as the rest of the party tries to get into the shop. A dwarf girl comes up from below the trapdoor with a nasty-looking battleaxe in her hand, and heads for Nova. Sanna breaks down the door as the tiefling girl emerges from the trapdoor, rushes to Nova and attacks her with a knife. Quill casts Calm Emotions on the three girls and Sanna, and they stop attacking, telling the party that they should not be here and that they have something to do, heading back towards the trapdoor.

Sentry makes her way down the ladder, and finds Bodwin, tied up and unconscious, in the middle of a ritual circle: the symbols on the ground are those of a snake coiled around a spear, a symbol that Sentry has seen before - it is the symbol of Starbane's second in command, Xarkilla, known to the Aerois forces as "The Snake of Murder" - a brutal, totalitarian, woman of conquest. The girls are chanting, and are about to plunge their knives into Bodwin ("to appease Xarkilla and the Daughter of Law"); the rest of the party follows Sentry down into the cellar.

The party suddenly attacks the girls, and Sanna knocks them all out ("because she is not a murderer"), and Sentry saves Bodwin. They tie the girls up, and notice that there is a presence in the cellar that whispers, "You hurt my girls..."

### **Part 2**

*Mysterious voices call out to the team beckoning them deeper into the cave...*

They hear a menacing whisper, "This is not a place for you, why did you hurt my girls?". Lucius says that they were going to stab a man. "Yes," the voice retorts, "a weak and foolish man. They would have killed him in the name of my Lady, Xarkilla." Lucius asks who the disembodied voice belongs to - it is an old echo of a spirit, and is going to watch as the dark truth is revealed to them. The far end of the cellar is boarded up, but there is clearly a cavernous tunnel behind the boards. Nova takes one of the necklaces and casts Identify - she feels a horrid presence clinging to her as she studies the necklace: the necklaces are a worshipper tool, similar to a holy symbol, but they also offer minor benefits to charm and fear effects to anyone who is devoted and dedicated worshippers of Kalus or Xarkira ("who is a deity or some sort of being that you don't know much about"). Lucius destroys the ritual circle, they take the unconscious and bound girls with them, leaving Bodwin behind in case anyone comes to investigate the noise.

Some of the planks had clearly been removed previously, so they make their way down the tunnel and hide their passage by replacing them once they have passed through. They notice that the tunnel has strange metal struts keeping the structure of the tunnel, and they occasionally step on very old human bones and rusted weapons that look like they have been used to tunnel through dirt and stone. The tunnel takes a strange path, almost as if the persons responsible did not know where they were going. They hear the same voice calling to them, "People died here. You're going to die here. Release my girls!"

They travel for about 40 minutes, and eventually the cavern opens up into a room with a green glow - the walls that they pass through from the tunnel are thick, black crystal, and the room is freezing cold, pulsing with green light. Quill notices a campsite ahead, but rather than a fire is a crystal set into a brazier (a heatstone) around which there are chairs, bedrolls, cloaks and rations, and he thinks that he can hear something in the room. Nova steps through into the room, and Tiangong gives her a sense of both familiarity and fear. They see strange crystal plates set into the metal walls with strange crystal buttons, and this is very familiar to Nova - she reads the writing near the buttons: power levels, warning systems, damage reports, but nothing happens when she presses them. Two figures suddenly leap out of the darkness near them: both are wearing long, flowing black robes, and the same masks that the attackers from the Sparrowblade wore (Remnant masks with a single slit across the eyes, glowing purple) - they have spinning purple staves that hum with power.

They attack the party and one tells the other to take them to Demos before Lucius melts one with an acid Chromatic Orb and does some damage to the other with Dichromancy. The surviving soldier runs off down the corridor and the party pursues him; he rounds the corner and uses a communication device to alert someone else to the intruders. Nova hears some mechanical whirring and footsteps coming from down the corridor ahead of them - as she warns them that something is coming, a floating mechanical sphere (a "mechabeholder") with chains hanging off it comes into the room. It rotates, and a glowing purple eye blasts her with energy twice. Quill finishes off the second guard while Nova uses Heat Metal against the mech, and Sentry destroys it with her flame lance. The Remnant soldier that had come in with the mech turns and runs, quickly followed by the party. They have almost taken him down when he uses his palm print to open the door to a small dormitory that has two more soldiers inside - he backs up, but is killed by Sanna.

The two new soldiers take damage from Guiding Bolt, Ice Knife, Sanna's kicks, Toll the Dead, Firebolt and Sentry's battleaxe - they are defeated. At the far end of the corridor is a double set of crystalline doors, and a power hum is radiating from behind it. Tiangong knows that there is something there, and it is terrified of whatever is in that room - there is a sense of imprisonment and fear. There are other doors to small rooms elsewhere in the corridor, and Sentry chops a hand off one of the dead bodies so that she can access those later. As they are searching the rest of the bodies, the double doors at the end of the corridor open with a soft hiss. Lucius calls for them all to hide, but they all fail to do so. Beyond the doors is a large room: inside are two guards (similar to the ones they have been fighting) and another man who does not wear a mask - he has longer black hair streaked with grey, and he looks up at a clear crystal canister. The canister hums with purple energy, and floating in the canister is a short bow made of ice, and a trail of mist forms its bow string. The soldier at the door announces to him that there are intruders as he sees the party.

All of them hear a voice in their heads, *"No, no. Made me kill them, wasn't our fault. Hungry, so alone, it's... Wait, presence... familiar. Familiar presence! Must be... Tiangong?"*

## **YouTube Timestamps**

05:35 - Episode Start
10:30 - Intro
11:58 - Part 1
18:17 - Mark accidentally says Sky Titties
35:04 - "I've never really been one for violence" Nova V'ger
46:05 - Trott opening his mouth to tell Mark that Invisibility drops when you cast any spell and then deciding not to hehe.
47:15 - Be careful Nova, your Cam Buckland is showing
1:05:27 - Sanna tries to kick the door down, fails, so does karate moves
1:27:21 - Break time
1:34:05 - Part 2
1:41:11 - Lucius is RIPPED
1:57:02 - Sanna's fighting style
1:50:28 - when Mark rolled two natural 20s on stealth
2:48:34 - Outro/Donations

## **Featured Characters**

#### **The Stormchasers (Player Characters)**

* Aila (played by Mark)
* Lucius Virion-Elluin Elenasto
* Nova V'ger
* Qillek Ad Khollar
* Sentry

#### **Returning NPCs**

* Arval Dagos
* Bodwin, owner of general store, the Acorn and Bale
* Galen Sans
* Sanna Longears
* Trisha
* Valla
* Ven
* Xanni

#### **Mentioned NPCs**

* Demos
* Kalus Starbane
* Xarkilla / Xarkira

## **Featured Locations**

* Ironwick
	+ The Acorn and Bale (general store)
* Valkyrian ship under the lake

## **Trivia**

* Mark's recap this week was off-the-cuff because he had not prepared anything.
* Tom had a tough week this week, according to Mark. People were directed to see his Twitter to understand why.
* **Lore dump:** Tom asks how much they would know about the events around the time of the Sundering. Mark equates it to what we would know about 500 years ago today - historians would have done research, but much knowledge and many people were lost. The Skycities survived OK, and would have some records. Everyone knows about Kalus Starbane and the Court of Shadows and this force that came from the sky (the "Dark Beyond") in dark crystalline spaceships. They had monsters, alien beings and fiends. It has been exaggerated and has become a legend (Trott opines that if only there were a parchment with this animated on it... DUN DUN). Records from that time are incomplete, although they are most intact in the Skycities, but until they discovered aetherium, they went through a hard time, so recording history wasn't their priority. Quill, as a messenger, knows better than most about the activated Remnant ships: just before Starbane invaded, the dragonborn came down from the sky in very similar ships, but theirs were gold crystal. Their ships still have somewhat active power, although not enough power to allow them to fly around in them, and the dragonborn work out of these ships. Quill knows that the Remnant ships are either derelict and have been ransacked, or they have been completely destroyed. Sentry served during the war - Starbane would have sent one or two larger battle cruisers, but most were vanguards or scout ships that had the ability to shoot energy weapons out of the sky or to transport winged beasts like demons and fiends that were then sent down to attack ground forces. Remnant tech is very advanced (much more so than that of Aerois).
* **Continuity error:** Mark refers earlier in the episode to the necklaces that the girls wear having two crossed swords over a 4-pointed star, then later as a 4-pointed star with two crossed swords behind it.
* Sanna is about 7 ft tall, accounting for her ears and the fact that she stands on her toes. Her actual height is closer to 6 ft 4 in.
* **Continuity error:** There are numerous references by NPCs to "Xarkilla" rather than Xarkira, which she will later be called. By the same NPC, she is later called what almost sounds like Xarkira.
* "Xarkilla's" symbol is a snake coiled around a spear (similar to the caduceus).
* Sanna is confirmed to be a martial artist (she does not have a class).
* Mark refers to "Xarkira" as 'a deity or a being that they do not know much about'.
* Lucius is quite strong because of his training to be a sky jouster.
* It is in this episode that Lucius first hits with Chromatic Orb.
* Lucius casts Healing Spirit, which is normally only available to Druids or Rangers, but was available on Lucius' Sorcerer spell list. It was decided to allow the spell here, but that after this episode, this spell would not be available to Lucius.
* Despite Kim's earlier protest that Nova has "never really been one for violence", she kills a Remnant soldier with Toll the Dead, and "likes to think it makes him bleed, and you see blood pouring out through his visor as his brain liquefies... she's a sweet girl..."

## **References**

1. ↑ YouTube VOD at 13:10
2. ↑ YouTube VOD at 22:53
3. ↑ YouTube VOD at 58:45
4. ↑ YouTube VOD at 1:12:37
5. ↑ YouTube VOD at 1:15:40
6. ↑ YouTube VOD at 1:35:22
7. ↑ YouTube VOD at 1:35:25
8. ↑ YouTube VOD at 1:20:44
9. ↑ YouTube VOD at 1:37:39
10. ↑ YouTube VOD at 1:41:04