2.2 Sal, I Am Your Father

It was with some mild
confusion that the party found its way to Amalgama using the Night
Pool. The map they had that hinted at the location of the next
Ascendant was a little unclear about where they should be looking,
but it seemed undoubted that it was in Amalgama somewhere. It was,
apparently, the worst map ever. More akin to a riddle than a map,
really. So the party chose as its destination a halfling trading
post, figuring that it would be a good place to gather information
from both The Collective and the traders.

 The party agreed to speak
with the leader of the trading post who they suspected would have the
most available information to work with out of the traders. Travize
took the time to greet some members of The Collective in person,
seeing as his mental block prevented him from dealing with them
mentally. The party attempted some awkward introductions as well.
Bagel tried to mimic Travize's introduction and earned himself a
kiss, the old dog! Sal was less lucky, and quite disappointed about
it.

 A spring in Bagel's stride,
the party found their way to the trading post's leader. He proved to
be a very informed halfling. Informed, that is, in all the arts of
irritation and self interested ass-hattery. He pronounced each word
with such irritating bellicosity and snobbishness that most of the
party wanted to punch him in less than thirty seconds. He declined to
provide any information about anything at all without being paid
healthily for his services. The party doubted highly that he even
knew anything worth finding out and was about to leave when he
claimed to know secrets about the Collective unknown to the
Collective itself. Something about the suggestion struck Travize as
believable enough to consider trading for the information. He wanted
something special, though. Either the Skein of Soul-sight or a chance
to sleep with Sajaina. The party looked at each other for a few
minutes, discussing, and Sajaina eventually agreed grudgingly to a
distasteful suggestion from Travize that the party go along with the
second proposition, then simply have Sajaina sneak out. It's not as
though he could hold her against her will, or even keep track of her
if she decided she didn't want to be found.

 The man laughed delightedly
and gave up the information he promised. Apparently, he claimed,
someone had figured out how to prevent members of the collective from
sending information to each other. They had used this trick to commit
some kind of massacre, he said, without any member of the Collective
knowing. This seemed pretty absurd, but worth investigating. Then the
little halfling jerk had Sajaina dragged off and put a collar around
her neck. This was not what the party had expected and threw everyone
for a bit of a loop. While they were stillprocessing their outrage
and figuring out if they needed to break in and free Sajaina from the
super-jerk halfling, Sajaina began talking to Sal through the
telepathic bond he had cast on her earlier in the day. Not only had
the halfling elected to *imprison* Sajaina, he was also keeping
a number of slaves, all chained and forced to work.

 Now there was no room for
debating subtleties or the use of force. The party would *not*
wait for Sajaina to sneak out. They geared up to break in, and
quite possibly *murder* the
halfling, while Travize mentioned the slaves to The Collective.
Suddenly, every member of The Collective within half a mile turned,
all at once, to face the trading post. Collective-bound birds began
circling overhead as they gathered before the central building's
doors. A small swarm of rats ran beneath the doors and through
windows to investigate the interior of the building. They
found the slaves, and the communal mind began to buzz with tactics
and strategy. Those present grabbed farmer's tools and spare beams of
wood to hand and, as one body, they marched upon the trading post as
inexorably as a tide.

 Coordinating perfectly, the
Collective apprehended the trading post master, disarmed the guards,
disabled those who decided to fight instead of surrender, freed the
slaves, and shuffled them all out of the trading post. It was over in
five minutes. No casualties. Preparations were made to care for the
former slaves. Food and other supplies were quickly brought and
lodgings established to house them for the time being. The halfling
boss was transported across the river for interrogation, as well as
to face accusations of crimes against mortal kind before a council of
the Communal Mind. The Collective, in case you couldn't tell, really
dislikes the idea of slavery.

 With that crisis over, the
Collective joined the party in investigating the rumors of massacre
to the south. They sent birds ahead to gauge the situation. Travize's
friend, Lyra, joined the party in walking towards the scene. This
quickly became a run when the birds began returning mental images of
blood and bodies. It seems that rumors of someone being able to
prevent the Collective from communicating were less exaggerated than
first thought. A small town full of corpses greeted them as they
approached. People lay dead, bodies brutalized by fists and tools.
Every single one was a member of The Collective.

 A cry of grief and horror
filled the communal mind as more and more people approached the grim
scene. The party quickly moved to investigate, a circle of Amalgamans
rapidly closing around the settlement. People rushed to and fro,
examining and searching. Thinking and analyzing. Weeping. It took
some time to put together facts, but soon members of The Collective
began joining themselves together to form a joint mind for the sake
of processing data and lines of reasoning. Facts were also assembled
by the party, particularly Baygrith who took the chance to
demonstrate his analytic skills.

 Only members of
The Collective were among the bodies. The people appeared to have been
attacking each other with whatever happened to be on hand. As far as
can be noted, the town was 'oddly quiet' for a few days leading up to
the massacre. The bodies were not marked by anything resembling a
trained military strike. No footprints marred the earth that could
not be accounted for by the standard comings and goings of the town,
save one set that appeared to lead away from town and somewhat more
recently than any other set of prints. The bodies were about a day
old. There was an air of magic around the town, though too vague to
determine much. Several people in the town defended themselves with
magic, though it was determined that the magic employed was
consistent with quick, undisciplined strikes that cannot ordinarily
be used except in absolute desperation, thus ruling out mind control.
The last person to die, it was determined, committed suicide. One
person who ought to have been in the town was not among the bodies
discovered. Kal was his name, and he seems to have survived. Kal is
unaccounted for and not responding to the call of The Collective. A
great deal of effort is currently being poured into uncovering what
could cause so many people who regarded each other as brothers and
sisters to turn so readily against one another, and how such pain
could not have reached the rest of The Collective.

 As investigations continued
and bodies were prepared for burial, a nation grieved its loss. Sal
was asked for a song and was joined by many voices, including
Travize, all crying out their pain. Some joked. Some simply held
themselves together in tight, shaking balls of pain. A community
shared its solace and reassurances, acting together to ease pains and
say goodbye to the departed. But there is seldom rest for our party,
which had come with a dire and time-sensitive mission to find the
next Ascendant quickly enough to surprise Murag and rescue Elizabel.

 The Collective put together
riddle of the map quickly, declaring the likely location of the next
Ascendant to be atop Daneel's Peak. This was somewhat vexing, since
people visit Daneel's Peak nearly every day, and none have reported
anything particularly out of the ordinary. The party elected to try
its hand at this new puzzle, riding out over the lush and life-filled
landscape, across the River of Souls, and to the base of Daneel's
Peak. They were joined by more of Travize's close friends, including
Dal'evrin, Pelorat, and Malen. Together they climbed to the summit of
Daneel's Peak and looked around for signs or secrets.

 The barely visible shadow
of something was found, more of a small distortion in the light than
any actual interference. A tower, virtually invisible and completely
intangible, rested upon the summit of the mountain. A message in the
language of the ancient humans was written in the shadows cast at
midday. The Circle of Historians gladly supplied the translation,
which read “To be in my tower you must have entered it yesterday.”
Timmeron tried quite a bit of time-magic while the rest of the party
snooped about looking for clues. To no avail, unfortunately.

 But then Dal'evrin spoke up
about a rumor some people remembered. A poem, it was said, could make
the mountain dance. Gods and spirits knew which one, of course. But
before they could devolve into trying every poem remembered by the
various Circles, they elected to try a somewhat famous poem written
by the founder of Amalgama, Daneel. It was his mountain, after all.
So Dal'evrin read aloud Daneel's *Seduction Through Outrage*
which reacted with the Key, causing the top of the mountain to twist
and rotate. Apparently this moved the hidden structure out of
whatever effect kept it intangible, causing a great, marble tower to
manifest. A hundred members of The Collective wanted to follow the
party in, but some trick of time magic kept away any not already
bound to an Ascendant.

 The tower itself was an
incredibly posh affair, decorated with fine furniture and old
paintings. The rooms were huge, sweeping things with balconies and
artistic leanings of the far gone centuries. The tower of an
Ascendant to be sure, given the old world taste. But a single set of
muddy footprints marred the pale carpet. Fuck.

 The party raced to follow
the footprints down hallways, through doors and up stairs, passing
along the way a picture of a young man bearing an astonishing
resemblance to Sal. Eventually coming to a door, odd things began
happening. Candles would flicker out and then light themselves again.
Books would topple over and then re-right themselves. An image of
Murag was trying to force the door, but quickly vanished.

 Sajaina rushed to open the
door with her magical key. A war of magics waged itself within the
lock, but eventually the door disintegrated, revealing an exact copy
of the same room on the other side. The party watched as another
image of Murag tried to force its way through the door they had just
opened. Albert appeared behind him, conjuring up the same instrument
he had used to force open the door to the Ascendant the party had
watched him acquire. The beam he fired set off the security system
instead of opening the door and Murag fled, but not before damage was
done to the walls, setting loose a flickering stream of magic into
the room.

 The party continued on,
hoping that Murag had simply given up and no vision they later saw
would show him ahead of them. But they soon found themselves in a
bizarre room entirely full of a grassy field, with no doors or
windows. But it reacted to their presence, taking a new shape to
mirror a memory from the past of each person present. But each was
missing a key element, which the party had to fill in with their own
memories and cleverness before the room would shift to the next
memory.

 Baygrith found himself as an infant in
his old house, filling in a missing void with his memory of his
parents. Travize completed the memory of his first shape-shift, into a
turtle, of course. But then things got weird. Sal found his
childhood, and *very halfling,*self standing in a room, about to
be crushed under the weight of a falling log torn loose from his
home. It was Bagel who completed this memory with the image of a
mass-murderer he'd heard reports of. The man stood at the center of
the town, destructive magic radiating out from him. The party watched
as the town was annihilated. There was no way baby Sal could have
survived. It was Travize who had to complete Timmeron's memory of the
time he lost his arm attempting a dark magic ritual. There was a man
standing behind Timmeron as his ritual backfired and the memory was
receptive to an image of Steave who stood behind Timmeron and gripped
his shoulders as the spell went awry. Then there was Sajaina, who saw
the night of her conception. This was made somewhat odd by the fact
that, as it turns out, the Maharaja was NOT the one having sex with
her mother. It was his chief adviser and rumored brother (making sense of the Astor prophet's earlier description of Sajaina as the Maharaja's niece), acting as the Maharaja himself stood
by, looking worried and utterly, um, uninterested in women. The
lights were off, apparently to hide the fact that Mura'kesz's ruler
was not, in fact, the one doing his job.

 The final memory was the
battle that preceded the ascension of the Tower of Apotheosis into
the sky, and this vision proved to be quite real, as far as danger
goes. The party had to dash its way through a slew of complicated
situations, virtually all of which with deleterious consequences for
failure. Baygrith was hit by a cannonball and immediately reduced to
a red stain on the floor. Sajaina and Travize were burned to death my
mages wielding fire spells. Bagel was swallowed up by a tidal wave of
racing lava. Sal was stabbed by a rushing battalion of soldiers. It
just so happens that each party member also died a number of other
unsightly ways as well. But there was a thread of time that any could
pull to reset the memory, which they used with desperate intensity
until they were able to find their way through the battle, all in
more or less one piece. But the conclusion of the memory held its own
surprise. It was not Bagel's memory they saw, but Wryn's. She sat
atop the tower beside another mage, and together they cast a spell
that slaughtered all of the attacking forces at once, casting a river
of blood into the sky as part of some grand ritual to attack the gods
themselves. And even as the bodies feel to the floor, Wryn seemed to
be excited about it. Spirit Wryn- our Wryn- was horrified and
retreated into herself for a time. She did not want to be whoever
this memory of her was. The party was, needless to say, horrified as
well.

 The completion of the
memory allowed them to leave the room, and they continued on to
explore the vast premises of the tower. Time behaved oddly
throughout, with events replaying themselves every few seconds or
windows leading out into landscapes from long ago. But eventually the
party met Dal McLauren, the next Ascendant. Sajaina could not get
into the room as she had not accepted the Night Maiden's ritual of
blood and so remained unbound to this Ascendant. She herself is
pretty sure she doesn't want to be bound to another Ascendant
anyway.

 His name is Dal. He is a
kind, worried pacifist who hates violence. His brother, adopted, is
Finean McLauren, the mind control expert whom the party banished to
some horrid place of nightmare. He is also the one who wrote the
equations and magical theories upon which The Collective was based
when Daneel stumbled upon them so long ago. Dal was delighted to
learn that his work had been used to produce such a positive thing
and is desperate to join if he can. We're still working on that and
it is unclear if it will be possible. After a long discussion, half
of which involved breaking the bad news to Dal that he had been
imprisoned against his will for over a thousand years, the party
bound him in Travize's necklace of river stone, allowing him to take
physical form. They reentered the tower to do this, hidden away
within the folds of time so as to hide the binding from Albert. But
one more surprise awaited the party. Dal is Sal's father.

 A thousand years ago, or
so, Dal had fallen in love with a halfling girl. Humans and halflings
can't have children, but she wanted one so badly. So she approached
Thain, the Ascendant master of biology, and through his tinkering,
became pregnant anyway. She carried the child to full term and gave
birth to a healthy, halfling child. Dal loved the child dearly and
wove about the baby Sal and his lady love a spell to protect them
should anything terrible happen. But then tragedy struck. The tower
mages came for the Ascendants, locking them away. Dal was convinced
that they might hurt his wife and child to get to him, so he used his
magic to cast them forward in time. It was only supposed to be a few
days- long enough for the danger to pass. But this was not meant to
be. Between the time magic and the protection spell Dal had cast, and
the destruction posed by the mass murderer that blew up infant Sal's
home, the spell cast them forward quite a bit more than that. We do
not know if Sal's mother still lives, or where she would be if she
does.

 Dal is a dabbler in many
arts, most notably Golemancy and social magics that predict the
actions and hearts of people. He also claims to only dabble in
time-magic, but as a natural-born genius his 'dabbling' is more like
expertise.