SS1

**SS1** is the first season of Soul Survivor.

## Players

### Challenge 1

Players were immediately thrust into their first challenge after coming to in Castle Reach, waking up in a room no doors, windows, or other forms of obvious egress, only their Host, Xaiden, who promptly explained to the group that the first challenge was a pure test of wits: an escape room. With each team in an identical but separate instance of the same room, everyone quickly scoured the starting room for clues. Some were more successful than others.

Buzz quickly cracked the password to a locked briefcase on his first try, and Lysanthir was able to use his prior knowledge to brute force the chess puzzle. Larkspur of the Yellow Team even managed to find the Hidden Immunity Idol, stowed away in an old album! But Fardokend repeatedly searched the bed, despite not finding anything the first time, and Barose insisted on establishing communications with an inanimate painting. Alney, who was already worn out after the first five minutes, kicked back on the couch, and was nearly swallowed whole by a mimic! Kairu "successfully" disarmed the mimic trap for their team by hurling a fire ball at a hostile animated sword, despite the close quarters the cramped study offered. Everyone took massive fire damage, including the mimic who was about to make a lunge at Larkspur.

Upon discovering the mirror was magical, Fardokend cast Misty Step to teleport to the other side of the mirror. He was happy to technically be the first player to escape, until Xaiden who was waiting for him on the other side reminded him that it wouldn't count unless he was joined by his entire team. And since not everyone on the Yellow Team was able to cast Misty Step, they'd have to find the appropriate solution to continue on. However, he did earn his team a hint for his troubles.

Red Team was not far behind them, but poor Blue Team only managed to find a single clue in all this time. In fact, Magnar still had yet to wake up. As it turns out, Magnar was dead on arrival. Since Magnar already dropped, and Blue Team was in last place, the challenge was called early in favor of Yellow Team, and no Cursed Council for Blue Team.

### Challenge 2

After a few days of rest and getting to know their teammates, a new challenge was once again sprung upon the new players. They exited their living quarters one morning to find themselves at the precipice of an ominous looking bridge leading towards a large series of towers, stretching forever upwards and forever downwards, the door to safety disappearing behind them. Aside from the bridge and the towers, only dark remained. Xaiden's disembodied voice instructed them to proceed with care through the towers in order to win Immunity for their team.

Blue Team was intimidated by the structure all together, and progressed rather slowly and carefully, despite the first floor being moderately safe. The Red and Yellow Teams immediately found a powerful wand locked away behind large heavy doors, a few traps, and encased in ice. They were successfully able to navigate the obstacles and retrieve the wand, but didn't fully understand the mechanics by which to select its powers. As a result, Rolen obtained the more powerful version of the wand containing several charges of Sunbeam, while Kairu took the wand for his team, wielding the lesser power of the Blight spell. Blue Team missed the wand entirely, and instead, thanks to Shieh, bypassed the magically locked door leading on to the next floor thanks to a racial cast of Dispel Magic, briefly putting them in the lead.

Yellow Team chose to fight their way through, covering every inch of the floor, killing the modicum of enemies that resided there, before continuing on to the next floor. The second floor seemed just as quiet, until Kairu and Oriben looked up at the Mirror of Life Trapping on the ceiling, sucking them out of the room and into a pocket dimension. Buzz and Larkspur quickly shattered the mirror, releasing their teammates, along with a flesh golem and two zombies. A tense battle ensued, but the Yellow Team eventually prevailed after many, many rounds of combat, though the fight did drain them of resources. At some point, they began calling themselves The Chanclas. Kairu found a few mysterious unlabeled flasks in the next room, which he immediately drank because of course he did. For the remainder of the challenge, Kairu believed himself to be a dog, disallowing himself to cast spells, and unbeknownst to anyone else, was also immune to Lightning.

Red Team found a window, and Raphi and Rolen worked together to use a makeshift grappling hook to latch onto a bridge overhead, with Rolen using his Mage Hand to guide the grapple somewhere it would catch. One by one, they hoisted each party member up to the bridge, but their actions alerted a large number of fire elementals to their presence who ambushed them on the bridge.

### Challenge 3

For the first time since the game officially began, all the teams convened together in the library to receive instructions on their next challenge. As a change of pace, the players were out-of-character tasked with creating their very own original D&D class in exchange for Immunity. Few rules and limitations were imposed encouraging players to come up with creative designs. Yellow Team secured the win with their well thought out Blinker class, granting access to teleportation, spells, and up close melee options. Their submission even had accompanying artwork and several subclasses to choose from, albeit a few of them were far from complete. They selected Buzz as their team member to forgo XP but gain one of the core features from their submission: the ability to teleport at will.

That left Red Team with their impractical yet intriguing Guardian, a pacifist class that dual wields shields, and Blue Team's conceptually interesting but unfinished Soul Warrior, which was essentially a reskinned Gunslinger due to several Blue Team members dropping the ball and their being only one finished subclass. The judges couldn't decide which they liked better, so for the first and perhaps only time ever, both teams attended the Red vs. Blue joint Council.

With a 4-4 split of Reds and Blues, this Council could come to a stalemate if a consensus could be reached. The Reds were together on the vote and cast their votes for Alekinia in unison, but the Blues didn't bother to confer with their team, meaning they voted at random, giving the Reds a majority. Shieh even cast her vote for Alekinia despite being on the same team. It is unclear if she coordinated her votes with the Red Team, or if she intended to vote off who she perceived as Blue Team's weakest link. [Needs citation]

### Challenge 4

At the start of the fourth challenge, the three teams were dissolved into two new teams, the Green Team and the Orange Team. A monolithic chess set filled the previously empty foyer, and Xaiden informs the combatants that they will be picking two of their players to face off in a battle of wits over the board controlling the movement of the pieces, while the remainder of the players duke it out on the playing field, attempting to dodge pieces and knock out their opponents. Buzz controlled the pieces for the Green Team, while Fardokend did the same for the Orange Team. At the beginning of the match, Larkspur took off, dipping behind the friendly white pieces for cover. Spellcasters from both sides hurled Fireballs back and forth, ravaging players rushing towards the midline. In an attempt to dodge one of the Fireballs, Barose put herself in striking distance of one of Buzz's knights. The 20 foot piece of solid marble crushes Barose, killing her instantly. Meanwhile Raphi casts Suggestion on Lysanthir, telling him to "screw off", and he does just that, running off in the opposite direction to climb the black rook in the corner, leaving Cornan in the backline wide open for Larkspur to emerge behind him and assassinate him.

### Challenge 6

For the next challenge, Xaiden led the players outside the castle to the gardens, for perhaps the first time since their arrival. The first thing the players noticed, was the eerie black "sky" that stretched out in all directions, including beyond the horizon and beneath the castle. Reach was in fact a castle floating in the void. That's not why they were brought to the gardens, of course. Xaiden led the players deeper and deeper into the hedge maze labyrinth, but one by one, players became separated from each other as they rounded corner after corner. Once the players were all alone, Xaiden finally informed them of the their challenge objectives: not to find their exit, but to reunite their entire team within the hedge maze. In normal Raphi fashion, the first thing he did was to start a massive fire. His own work of arson pushed him towards Lysanthir, who was charmed by a harpy, but the fire also attracted invisible air elementals, tasked with hunting the players down. The twosome were able to escape their attackers, but not without taking a beating and becoming separated in the process. Kairu suffered a similar fate, also being charmed by a driad, who convinced him they were playing hide and seek, and to go stand in the corner and count to one million. It was there that doppelganger Larkspur found him, and after gaining his trust, stabbed him in the back, leaving him for dead. There was another doppelganger in the maze, one of Kairu who eventually ran into the real Cornan. Like the other doppelganger, Cornan was convinced of his identity, and when the twosome ran into a phase spider ambush, doppel-Kairu pretending to help cast a 5th level Fireball at point blank range, killing Cornan and everything else caught in the blast. Buzz also fell to the hedge maze unable to quickly dispatch of a driad and invisible air elemental before a more powerful foe heard the ruckus and came to investigate. A bipedal beast with bark skin, thorny tendril whips, and a cherry blossom growth on top of its head. When Buzz came to, he heard voices over the hedge, familiar ones. He encountered Larkspur who had eyes of Rolen and Aelar who found each other early on and had fought off wave after wave of phase spiders. The only hiccup was that Aelar was also talking to another Larkspur behind him. After a few minutes of trying to figure out which Larkspur was real, the monster Buzz had encountered earlier ambushed the group of them, and doppel Larkspur revealed themself, toppling Aelar in the process. Buzz, Rolen, and the real Larkspur managed to slay their attackers, putting Orange Team in a definitive lead. The challenge was soon called after that because a few players were hopelessly lost and bored out of their minds, like Kairu who counted to infinity in a corner and was ganked by doppel-Lark.

At CC, Cornan and Kairu were quickly able to piece together that they encountered doppelgangers rather than players, but Buzz and Kairu were still upset with Larkspur after seeing Fardokend voted out last CC. The Yellows had agreed to stick together even after the team swap, but it would seem Fardokend was not included in that deal, and Buzz had already been planting seeds of doubt in Kairu that Larkspur would inevitably betray them later on down the line. Fearing Oriben would side with Larkspur over the remaining Yellows, Buzz established an alliance with Cornan and Lysanthir, Chanclas Two: Electric Boogaloo (a stab at Buzz and Larkspur's old alliance), and rallied a unanimous vote against Oriben.

### Challenge 7

Nothing important to note here, this challenge occurred out of character as players responded to a series of questions about each other, attempting to guess the most popular answer for points. Kairu was declared the winner, but since Aelar hadn't posted in over two weeks and didn't submit anything, he was modkilled, with Kairu's Immunity carrying over to the next Council. Later that night, Aelar posted that the library was closed for two days and that was why he wasn't able to post. Big sad, but since Aelar would be the first jury member, at least he still gets to vote. Aelar being modkilled may have actually been a tipping point in the final outcome of the game since if Aelar was still in play, a hypothetical Council vote here would have the former Orange Team with a 5-4 majority over the Green Team, but with Aelar modkilled, Orange Team no longer has the player advantage.

### Challenge 8

The players were summoned to play a board game, but this board game was life-sized, with the players themselves being used as the tokens. They were placed on a 10x10 grid of square tiles 20 feet on a side that would activate whenever a player walks on top of them, triggering all sorts of arcane traps. In addition, players have to move to at least one new tile on their turn. If they can't do so, they lose the game and are out of the challenge.

Right out of the gate, Raphi picks a fight with Cornan, who spawned on the board not too far from him. He calls out Cornan for having abandoning the former Red Team, rehashing the drama that went down in the scavenger hunt challenge. Cornan relaliates and is out for blood, and so is the game board. One tile that Cornan steps on grants him an extra turn, and many many eldritch blasts later, he leaves Raphi in a heap on the ground and out of tiles, having used the extra movement to cut him off completely from the game board. Larkspur has a nail-biting moment as one of the tiles they step on just completely disappears beneath them, revealing a bed of spikes at the bottom of a 50 foot drop. Thankfully, Larkspur is able to think quickly and use a grappling hook to latch on to an adjacent tile and stay alive. Lysanthir triggers one tile that causes him to lose control, go all out, and attack Cornan with everything he's got. After regaining control, Lysanthir apologizes profusely, but the damage is done. At 1 HP, the next tile Cornan flips over poisons him, killing him instantly. The straw that broke the camels back. In the end, Rolen clutched a win with his use of Misty Step to move to unadjacent tiles, granting him an endless pool of tiles. Lyranthir having no other forms of motion ran out of tiles and lost.

This Council meeting had the potential to be very interesting. The two former teams were facing off with Orange writing Cornan's name down, and Green writing Larkspur, but both players had Hidden Immunity Idols in their possession. With Kairu and Rolen having individual Immunity from challenges, Cornan and Larkspur potentially playing their idols successfully, and a possible grid-locked 4-4 vote granting Immunity to those players, six out of the eight remaining players could have had Immunity in a single Cursed Council, leaving two unlucky players (likely Barose and Lysanthir) vulnerable and subject to drawing rocks. Sadly, none of that happened; instead, Buzz informed Raphi of his plans to vote out Larkspur, and rather than tell Larkspur so they can play their idol, he tells Larkspur that he will be receiving all of the votes and needs Larkspur to play the idol on him. Larkspur trusts Raphi, and with the idol burned, Raphi flips over to help Buzz vote out Larkspur 5-3.

### Challenge 11

This was another out of character challenge. The jury members were privately asked many questions about their time in the game. The five remaining players were given their responses and asked to guess which jury member gave the response. Buzz and Raphi were neck and neck until the final question, with Buzz just barely snagging the individual Immunity challenge from Raphi, which was very important for the Chanclas 2, since they were all still committed to each other and to voting Raphi out immediately. The vote was unanimous and Raphi became the fifth member of the jury.

### Challenge 12

Xaiden returned the four Finalists to the ominous towers in the void that they previously encountered in the second challenge. Since no one got as far as he intended during that challenge, he scattered them on the floor that Red Team just barely made it to during that challenge. Unbeknownst to them, the jury also spawned into the tower, and they all chose to stay together and camp the magically locked door leading further up the tower. Buzz blazed through the dungeon, encountering Lysanthir and Cornan at the locked door very quickly. The three of them met amicably with the other jurors, before splitting up to look for a key to get through, but Buzz stayed behind and when they were all gone, blinked to the other side of the door. The jurors were nervous of Buzz taking the lead, so Raphi dispelled the arcane lock and the jurors followed after him up the tower. They take a wrong turn however, and run straight into a Mind Flayer, meanwhile Buzz in an adjacent room is fighting off two helmed horrors. When Buzz retreats out of the room with the helmed horrors, he runs right into the rest of the jurors also engaged in combat, and the jurors fight alongside Buzz. Afterwards, the jurors particularly Larkspur begins asking Buzz what would happen if he were to win the game outright. Buzz says he has no interest in winning, and only continues to play to protect Kairu and to prevent certain players from winning. Should he happen to win, he would happily pass on the mantle to someone he thinks more qualified. With his response allaying the worst of Larkspur's fears they decide to help him pick the lock to the heavy door leading on, but not without triggering the trap inside the decorative mouth on the keyhole, which bites Larkspur's hand clean off as it slams shut!