The Symmetry War/Synopsis

The following synopsis summarizes the events of the episodes of "The Symmetry War":

## Campaign One

### Season One

#### "Here the Whole Time"

Glib arrives at the town of Lauterton in search of an artefact that can reverse his transmutation; he is nearly murdered, but is rescued by a Tabaxi Rogue who kills the assassin instead, and the two head to the Fortress of the deposed necromancer Eovard the Malignant. Entering the Fortress, they realize that they have been accompanied along their entire journey by a Changeling Sorcerer, and the three of them defeat a group of goblin archers before encountering King Spiggo of the Goblin Lands. Soon after, they battle a mutated monstrosity, recovering a shard of changeglass from its corpse, then depose Spiggo and replace him with Herald before recovering a magical crystal, a talking skull, and a wizard's staff from the Fortress; before leaving, they learn that Spiggo scavenged the shard from a shattered portal beneath the city of Riftreach.

#### "Towards the Danger"

Glib, Canyon, and Essgee return to Lauterton, where they avoid a regiment of Symmetris Brotherhood agents before confronting the powerful wizard Mister Eeemann; they reveal that they recovered a shard of changeglass from Eovard's fortress, and the wizard explains that the shard was part of a barrier that was designed to prevent an incursion of monsters from alternate dimensions. The wizard grudgingly recruits the three to travel to Riftreach on his behalf, giving them a Calling Rock and a spectral scrollmap and explaining that Essgee's crystal contains a Djinni; the party then faces and defeats a group of Symmetris agents and hijacks a Giant Eagle to fly to Riftreach, but they crash when Essgee accidentally teleports to the Chaos Realm and encounters Polnaros. The party makes camp outside the city, and Essgee hears a small laugh emanate from within the shard.

#### "Gettin' Jiggy With It"

After an unconventional arrival in Riftreach, the party determines that a curious mark on their map identifies the location of a laboratory belonging to the city's Commission of Light. Making their way to the building, the party splits up, with Canyon sneaking in through a side entrance while Essgee and Glib bluff their way through the front door; Essgee and Glib tour the facility before meeting with the Chairman of the Commission, while Canyon is guided into the lower levels by the talking skull he carries, discovering Spiggo's tunnel. Essgee and Glib overplay their hand and Canyon rushes to their aid, incapacitating the Chairman, who commits suicide rather than revealing his secrets, and the party returns to the tunnel to discover the Temple of the Chaos Faction and the shattered portal inside. They inform their employer of their arrival, but the portal shatters further, allowing chaotic aberrations to spill across the barrier; agents of the Order Faction arrive and teleport them away, but an operative of the Chaos Faction extricates them from custody, and the party learns that their employer is, in fact, the founder of the Symmetris Brotherhood itself.

#### "Are You There, God?"

Reylias recruits the party to help him with a mission, after which Glib suffers the effects of a Mindflayer cocktail, which incapacitates him for the evening, and Reylias directs the party to a safehouse, where they recover during a long rest. The next day, they return to the Temple of the Chaos Faction and successfully dismiss a squad of Order Faction agents before stepping through the portal into the Chaos Realm, where they discover a village of poorly-constructed approximations of living creatures before encountering Polnaros once again. Essgee convinces the Eldritch God to reduce its dimensions, and probes its memories to discover that it was locked inside the Chaos Realm by Callisto, who arrives not long after and commences a devastating attack on the village. The terrain splinters as the party flees, and Polnaros, Essgee, and Glib manage to escape through the portal, while Canyon falls into a chasm before being rescued by Reylias; Polnaros closes the portal, sealing Canyon, Reylias, and Callisto inside. On the Material Plane, Glib, Essgee, and Polnaros make their way toward Reylias's safehouse, and Polnaros uses his Chaos energy to mutate a rat; Glib and Essgee insist that he cannot alter reality on a whim, but realize that he has no concern for the morality of his actions before Polnaros converts into Chaos energy and flees.

#### "Welcome to the Party"

Glib and Essgee attempt to contact agents of the Chaos Faction, but are confronted by the powerful spellcaster Mr. Goodbid before the three of them are captured by the bounty hunter Elias and teleported to a detention facility elsewhere in the city. Glib successfully appeals to his patron for intervention, and the three escape after creating a tenuous alliance with Goodbid, from whom they learn that Reylias kept several bounty hunters under contract to hunt down and eliminate anyone responsible in the event of his death. The party crosses the city toward Reylias's safehouse, using Glib's familiar to locate the Tower of the Order Faction as they plan to confront Minerva in an attempt to access the portal to the Order Realm under the assumption that the realms of Order and Chaos are connected, thereby allowing them to rescue Canyon, Reylias, and Callisto so that they can help capture Polnaros. They soon reach the safehouse, only to discover that Polnaros has learned how to perfectly mimic both live and inanimate objects, including the safehouse itself, which promptly collapses in on itself and vanishes. The three then encounter a member of a nameless order of psychics with connections to Essgee's past, who explains that Reylias's contracts became active when the magical signal from his armor stopped transmitting; she also reveals that the Symmetris Brotherhood was not founded by Callisto alone, but by a group of three wizards, including Aldor and Polnaros, who also founded the Order of the Eye and with whom Callisto was romantically involved.

#### "I Am an Influencer"

Glib, Essgee, Goodbid, and Kylan realize that Polnaros is aware of Minerva faction of Symmetris agents and head for the spire of the Order Faction in the wealthy district of Riftreach, but they promptly become distracted by a shopping trip that briefly turns into a violent robbery and criminal impersonation. They then ascend into what they discover is the headquarters of the Commission of Movement and turn themselves in, demanding to be taken to Minerva, who they manage to convince to grant them access to the Temple of the Order Faction; after struggling to open the portal to the Order Realm, the party manages to use scavenged shards changeglass to shatter the seal over the portal and cross into the dimension of Order. There they are quickly confronted by a legion of technologically-advanced soldiers under the command of Aldor, who reveals that Polnaros was once named Prophis, and that he lost most of his grip on reality when his sister, Kylan, died almost 700 years ago. The party rushes back to the spire of the Order Faction believing Kylan to be Polnaros in disguise, but Essgee learns through Kylan's fragmented memories that she has in fact been resurrected by Polnaros's Chaos power centuries after her death. Polnaros arrives moments later in his gargantuan Chaotic form, but he is confronted by Aldor, who teleports the party back out into the city; they witness Aldor grow to gargantuan size himself in order to battle Polnaros, at which point Callisto arrives, his right arm glowing with iridescent Chaos energy and his left arm glowing with blinding white Order energy. Glib suggests luring Polnaros into the Order Realm to heal him, and uses Kylan as bait while Goodbid conjures a massive warhorse from the Hat of Useful Items, and the party makes a desperate charge for the portal with Polnaros in pursuit.

#### "I Am the Douchebag"

Callisto remains on the Material Plane to confront Aldor as the party passes through the portal into the Order Realm, where Polnaros reunites with Kylan before a squadron of Order Drones surround the party; Polnaros frees the mind of the squadron's commander, Zalkas, and he sides with the party as they battle against the Order Drones. Prevailing, the party heads into a technologically-advanced replica of Riftreach within the Order Realm, arriving at the equivalent of a bar where they encounter one of Aldor's senior datakeepers, who recognizes the Chaos Energy radiating from Polnaros, and explains that Aldor's memories of Prophis are stored in a supercomputer housed at the Central Terminal Tower. The party proceeds toward the Tower, detouring briefly to visit another jewelry store where they are confronted by another squadron of Order Drones; the party then flees to the Tower, entering and ascending to the upper chamber where they find a supercomputer and access the datafiles on Prophis. While Polnaros absorbs the information on his true identify, the party is attacked by a mechanized Marut, which they battle effectively against until Goodbid blasts it from the platform, by which point they discover that Prophis's memories have repaired his mind and restored his true Elven form; the Marut makes one last attack against the party, and Prophis obliterates it with a wave of his hand. Prophis then opens a portal back to the Material Plane, but before the party returns to confront Aldor, Essgee communicates telepathically with Canyon to ask if he is alive and receives a response from him.

#### "Episode Titled Nat 1"

Returning to the Material Plane, Zalkas departs while Glib, Essgee, Goodbid, Prophis, and Kylan visit with Goodbid's criminal contact in Riftreach; the party recovers with a long rest before sorting through the various items and artefacts they recently acquired, and Glib discovers that the Staff he recovered from the Fortress of Eovard is both indestructible and capable of following commands. The party departs from Malevolent's Manor and follows Prophis to a safehouse where they find a battalion of mages from the Order of the Eye, including Doc, who explains to Essgee that the lineage of the psychics is actually from the future, and that the party fractured the timeline when they introduced sentience into the Order Realm, resulting in the origin of psychic energy itself. The party leaves the safehouse, confronting a platoon of Order Drones that they quickly defeat before ascending through Riftreach and discover that the city is encased in a massive magical dome as a ferocious firefight breaks out across the city between Aldor's forces and the agents of the Symmetris Brotherhood. Glib uses the Staff to transport the party to Minerva's office in the Central Spire, where Prophis reasserts command over Symmetris, and Glib learns from his patron that a vast ocean exists at the bottom of the caverns beneath the city, and that the magic maintaining the dome seems to be originating there.

#### "I Know More Than You"

Glib, Essgee, and Goodbid travel by Giant Eagle into the depths below the caverns of Riftreach while Prophis and Kylan remain topside to command the Symmetris Brotherhood in its war against the agents of Aldor. Traversing the caves deep beneath the city, the part encounters the spectral remains of an undead knight that was killed centuries before in the battle against the creatures that emerged from the rift, and Glib destroys it with a series of Eldritch Blasts; they then reach a chamber guarded by mossy creature which they fight before realizing that it is demonic in nature, at which point Essgee uses an ability conferred by her Demon Armor to communicate with the creature in Abyssal, eventually compelling it to open the gateway into the next chamber and let the party pass. The party proceeds to discover a room containing a large crystal imprisoning an unconscious Callisto above an opening that looks down on an ocean of stars, revealing that the entire continent of Vontral is a falt landmass suspended in space. Essgee summons Prophis, who releases Callisto and promptly escapes with him through a portal, leaving the party behind to face four Failsafe Golems, but just as the creatures begin to attack, another portal opens and an enhanced Canyon emerges, hurls a playing card charged with Chaos Energy at one of the Golems with "a flurry of colorful magic."

#### "The Canyon Chronicles"

Canyon recalls the moments after he survived his fall in the Chaos Realm, during which he and Raylius headed back toward the Uncanny Valley before encountering Bello, a massive butterfly with changeglass wings, from whom they learn of a portal in the ground at some distant location. The three set out across the Chaos Realm, traveling for an indeterminable amount of time before encountering a Mushroom Grove where Canyon decapitates a Campestri, instigating a swamp attack. The party survives the attack and continues on, eventually reaching an ancient fortress in a pocket of uncharacteristic stability, and Canyon requests assistance from the talking skull, who demands to be taken to a small temple in the courtyard and placed on a changeglass throne inside; instead, Canyon sits on the throne himself, absorbing a degree of Chaos energy that enhances his physical form, inciting Raylius to retaliate by attacking him and fleeing with the skull. Canyon and Bello experiment with the Compass in the courtyard, which transports them first to the Order Realm and then to the Verdant Realm before they travel through it to the Dark Realm, where Canyon encounters a spectral avatar of Death, who gifts him a powerful deck of cards; Canyon receives a psychic message from Essgee asking if he is alive and answers that he is not, then proceeds to travel with Bello travel through the Compass to the Realm of Water, the Realm of Flame, the Realm of Air, and the Realm of Stone, before activating all eight of the Compass's directional keys simultaneously. Doing so transports them back to the Convergence at the nexus of the realms, where they discover Glib, Essgee, and Goodbid under attack by four earthwork Failsafe Golems. Canyon hurls a playing card charged with Chaos Energy at one of the Golems with "a flurry of colorful magic," and Bello flees through the window in the bottom of the chamber out into the Wildspace beyond.