Aerois - Chapter Seventeen: 'Till All Are One

Katie Morrison as Aila

 Kim Richards as Nova V'ger

 Rhiannon Frost as Sentry

 Tom Hazell as Qillek Ad Khollar

'**Till All Are One** is the seventeenth chapter of the Aerois campaign. It was broadcast live on both the Yogscast Twitch channel and highrollersdnd Twitch channel between 13th June and 1st August 2021, and consists of eight episodes.

*In chapter Seventeen, the party return to the City of Glass, now enemy territory. There they must face Valkyrian forces, Hadar-corrupted guardians, and a very old foe!*

## Summary

Battling these terrible and irrepressible foes, the party is hurt and weakened with Nova having to retreat to the ethereal plane to survive. Sentry manages to impale the commander through its matrix, and it calls out to its master, the “Overlord” when it falls. Aila finally dispatches the ninja-like enemy and they consider that Breeze, the Guardian they met in Kalie’s Rest may be responsible and is likely Hadar-touched. Sentry once again turns her attention to the fallen commander, seeing that his matrix is slowly being dissolved -she hears faint whispers and senses pain and fear, believing that his spirit is being consumed by Hadar. Hoping that there may still be some semblance of good in the commander, she picks up what is left of his matrix, feeling a mix of fear and power, but also the peerless warrior and tactical genius that this Guardian once was. She decides to take the remaining spirit into the matrix to heal when suddenly, she is confronted by a vision of Hadar. The rest of the party see her vines start to turn red as if she, herself, is being corrupted before she falls to the ground, convulsing and clutching at the fragment of matrix with unnatural strength. They all try to save her, but it is only Lucius who can also connect to a Guardian’s matrix, who manages to share in her vision. They both fight helplessly inside the vision of Hadar’s realm, slowly being overcome, and it is Nova, through the clever use of portal magic, who manages to sever the connection between the infected vines and Sentry. Aila reefs the matrix fragment from Sentry’s hands, and it dissipates before Lucius and Sentry come around, Sentry sobbing woefully. Her one comfort is that she managed to save the commander’s soul.

Quill scries on Breeze, now known as “Overlord Voracitor,” and sees a nine-foot twisted horror – he is a full servant of Hadar, and both powerful and confident of his ability and that of his Guardian army to wreak havoc and to take charge: he wants the Prime Matrix. Quill confirms that they need to get to the City of Glass as soon as possible in order to prevent Breeze from commandeering the freed Guardians as his own army.

The party is floundering: Sentry and Lucius clearly have PTSD from their encounter, and Max is struggling to come to grips with his decision to leave with Valla. Valla has been magically aged, both physically and mentally, and Quill is not sure how to deal with her. Dannica summons them prior to making a speech to the city to advise them that she stands with Aerois against Starbane. This will also be the first flight of Horizon, the sky city has now had special engines attached to it that only Dannica can operate, with the engines allowing Horizon to be flown (slowly) against its natural drifting course – she heads the city towards Gisella and the City of Glass. They know that there will be a large navy of sky ships around Gisella, and possibly a blockade around the City of Glass, but they have also heard that the Gisellan forces have been dispatched to attack the city itself. An attempt to communicate with Herald gives a garbled message back:Nova scries on her and sees her in the middle of battle. The party decides to leave Horizon to manage the navy while they head into the city to find and assist Herald.

They take a skiff and attempt to sail down to the city but come under attack. The skiff goes off course before crashing with the party abandoning ship and landing both inside the city and out to sea. As the Champions regroup on the shoreline, they are attacked by an air ship, both with its cannons and small weapons fire. Nova retaliates by casting Maddening Darkness over most of the ship’s forty crewmen, slaughtering them as the captain makes a kamikaze attack on Nova, Quill, and Sentry, but they all survive. One lone sailor runs away from the wreckage of the ship.

As they move back through the City of Glass, they manage to avoid feral Guardians. Sentry speaks to Root who tells her that she can give new life to a feral Guardian spirit by taking it into the Prime Matrix to recover and placing a new soul into the vacated body. She does so with one of the nearby ferals, which scares the rest away. As they travel through the city, Sentry repeats the feat of saving feral souls, but each one taxes her strength and they move to the Temple of Siaska near the centre of the city where they first encountered Herald, taking with them three new Guardian souls in old bodies: Archer, Pumpkin, and Barrier.

Instead of finding Herald, however, the Champions fight against Dominators and rescue Smasher and Sweep who have a message for them from Herald: Herald is gone to the north of the city, looking for an old Solwynn relic called the Conduit – this allows Guardians to connect over great distances and may prove useful to Sentry, allowing her to save multiple Guardians at once. On flying to the tower, however, before they can enter, the party confronts the Guardian they met as Breeze in Kalie’s Rest – he is now Overlord Voracitor, and fully under Hadar’s control. Voracitor attacks them from his aetherjet which Sentry destroys by grabbing one of its own fired missiles, using Misty Step to get back to the jet, and slamming the missile into it. When they check the cockpit, however, Voracitor is nowhere to be seen.

They find Herald, Chipper, and Scout inside the tower: Herald has hooked Rook’s body up to the Conduit but tells them that some devices that power it have been damaged and need to be repaired before they can use it. As they are repairing the damaged device, feral Guardians begin to swarm the tower and they are interrupted by a giant Dominator, half as tall as the tower they are in. It smashes through the walls with its hands and head and begins to attack the group while Sentry heads up to the upper level to use the Conduit and is attacked by Lord Voracitor. The party defeats the gigantic Dominator, Sentry defeats Voracitor, and aided by Herald, Sentry uses the Conduit to pull in hundreds of feral Guardian souls and replace them with hundreds more from inside the Prime Matrix. Herald’s power has been utterly drained – she thanks Sentry for her second chance before she, too, is pulled back into the Prime Matrix to recuperate. The newly recovered Guardians then turn to face the surprised Gisellan forces that are attacking the city.

Using this time to escape, the party heads to the south on the Stormchaser, following the treasure map that Quill had when he found Sentry. It leads them to a glade, south of the city, where they find an old tomb: inside, Sentry finds a powerful magical lance, Starbreaker, which she takes with her.

## Major NPCs

List of major NPCs encountered in this chapter.