Aerois - Chapter Twenty Two: No Way Home

Katie Morrison as Aila

 Kim Richards as Nova V'ger

Rhiannon Frost as Sentry

 Tom Hazell as Qillek Ad Khollar

**No Way Home** is the twenty-second chapter of the Aerois campaign. It was broadcast live on both the Yogscast Twitch channel and highrollersdnd Twitch channel between 25th September and 18th December 2022, and consists of nine episodes.

*The party must try to stop the teleportation of the city of Vortinssar... before it's too late!*

## Summary

The party is taken by an unmarked transport to be dropped outside the city of Vortinssar which they are preparing to infiltrate. On the way, they work on disguises with a specialist, Kay Avelin, knowing that they will need to pass a checkpoint in order to enter the city. They each take on the persona of some type of Genasi and Kay helps them with both physical and magical disguises. They manage to make it past the checkpoint without significant incident and are sent to two different taverns inside the city. Meeting up later, they eventually find the safe house being used by the Seekers and meet up with Norfir, who has been acting as a go-between with Horizon and the Seekers.

They discuss the problem that they face with Shansara and Harmony having convinced the population to support the teleportation of the entire city of Vortinssar back to Genas, an endeavour that the party believes is doomed (due to what Quill has seen with the Eye of the Storm). They also meet Tornado, leader of the Seekers, and Nova’s big (moronic) brother - their reunion is brief but heartfelt. The Seekers reveal that the city will be teleported within seven days, and that they must convince the people of Vortinssar not to support Shansara and Harmony. A number of tasks are assigned to the party - rescue students being held prisoner at Atlas Academy, disrupt Valkyrian supply lines that come from warehouses and transport ships, and to find missing council members that it is assumed are being held prisoner somewhere in the city.

The party manages to rescue the students without bringing too much attention to themselves, but when they try to infiltrate the Valkyrian warehouses, they are surprised by a random inspection and end up in a firefight with the soldiers stationed there. They manage to steal one of the transport ships as well as a giant mech, but their battle has caused them to be recognised and raised the city’s alert level, making any further missions impossible and accelerating the plans to teleport the city.

Having discovered roughly where the devices that power the teleport machinery are housed, and learning that Shansara controls both of the detonation devices, the party decides to crash her ‘celebration’ concert so that they can stop her by whatever means necessary. While some of them manage to get backstage without detection, others are stuck with the crowd and they decided to surprise Shansara onstage. With Shansara and Harmony’s permission, Nova delivers and impassioned speech to the people of Vortinssar, desperately trying to convince them not to go ahead with the plan. A small number are convinced and leave the concert but it otherwise goes ahead as planned. While Quill manages to disable one of the activation triggers, Shansara uses the other - until Lucius rewinds time with a Wish spell. There is a fight and Shansara activates the trigger once more, activating the machine… all seems well until there is an explosion, and it is apparent that the Seekers have found and destroyed one of the power sources.

Rushing to the scene of the explosion, the party realises that the teleportation is highly unstable. They ally with Shansara and Harmony to try to control the powerful magic that has been unleashed but the magic is too strong. It is decided that there is only one way to control it - from within a wild maelstrom of magic - but it is also recognised that any who try will die. Nova, Tiangong, Shansara, and Harmony all enter the maelstrom and perish, however they manage to save Vortinssar.

The devastated party returns to Horizon and immediately make plans to bring Nova back from the death to which she so willingly went.

## Major NPCs

List of major NPCs encountered in this chapter.