Session 15

Sessions

Session 14

Session 15 – Don’t put that in your mouth!!!

* The party clears out the remaining two branches of the caves and collects an additional 18 gold but not a lot more, but do comment on the strangeness of finding so many mining carts that are meant to run on tracks in a cave system with no tracks.
* The party returns to the trap door. It is unlocked but has been filled-in with rubble, rock and dirt. Prim moves it out of the way with mold earth spell and the party descends into a cave full of old torture racks with skeletons scattered all over the place. To the side of the room there is another passage filled in with rubble. There is a large concentration of skeletons in front of that area and the floor is covered in old scorch marks.
* Prim, after determining the walls/roof won’t cave in, clears the path and they find another cavern. It is mostly barren, but there is a small pile of bottles, some broken on the floor to the left. Prim searches the pile and finds 2 regular healing potions, a greater healing potion, and two bottles containing a swirling blue and orange potion. The two separate colours do not mix but move around each other in the bottles.
* Thiana at the far end of the cavern finds some books. Most are ruined beyond repair but one, though the cover is in bad shape, is in OK condition. When she opens it up though, it is full of runes and glyphs that are in no way familiar to Thiana.
* In an alcove south of where Thiana found the book, Rei and Bael find a teleportation circle. It is not active. Thiana, Rei, and Bael go back to where Prim is sorting through glass and checking out the potions. She gives the healing potions to Bael and Rei to split up between them as they have taken a bunch of damage.
* Thiana gives the book to Prim and asks if she can read it. Prim uses mend on the cover and opens the book to look at the writing. Suddenly her vision turns red and hazy and she is blinded as she is assailed by the most exquisitely painful headache she has ever had. As Prim writhes on the ground, the pain passes, and her eyes clear slowly. She reluctantly picks up the book again. She can’t “read” it, but as her eyes pass over the pages some words come to her: “Guardian”, “Warding Module”, and “Artifacts”.
* Meanwhile, Bael has turned his attention to the blue/orange potions. He unstoppers one of the bottles and gently wafts the mist toward his nose. He is assailed by the scent of ozone followed by the scents of rain and cut grass. Suddenly he is young and standing in a training yard with his class. They are hitting training dummies with wooden swords and he is bored. The captain ushers in some new class-mates. Bael is back in the cave.
* Thiana sees he is OK and does the same with the other potion. She too is assailed by the scents of ozone, rain, and then cut grass. Suddenly, she is running in the desert. Looking back, she can see two of Amsdrell’s men chasing her. Behind them she can see the lights of the Obelisk and the burial pits/complex. She turns back and keeps running, tears flowing down her face. In her mind she screams “Somebody Help Me!” and suddenly her vision is filled with fire and she is back in the cave.
* Rei wants to try and grabs the vial from Thiana, but he licks the rim, ingesting a drop. Thiana manages to catch the vial as Rei drops to the ground. He is enveloped by the scent of ozone before rain and cut grass. He is back in the forest of Tackron, he is seven and the head elder is painting ceremonial patterns on his face, arms, and chest. Behind him he hears one of the lesser elders whispering to someone else, “Will the other blood interfere?” Everything goes black, light is streaming through the deck of a ship. Rei is in a hammock below and can hear a commotion above. Someone is yelling, “He’s dead… Quick come alongside!… What will this mean?”

Session 15 – That could have gone better

* Rei wakes up on the ground. Thiana and Bael re-stopper their bottles of blue/orange potion. Bael mentions the teleportation circle. Bael and Thiana help Prim and Rei over to the circle. Prim finds a keyhole in the wall at her level and pulls out the ring of keys she found. She tries the purple key and the circle activates. Bael suggests trying a different key. She takes out the purple key. The circle stays active. She uses the green key and the circle changes colour. The party discusses the situation and decides they need to talk to Emily Detmore again. Prim removes the key and, seemingly detecting her thoughts, the circle deactivates.
* The party crawls out of the lower cave and backtracks through the caves to the Ambrinny farm. They crawl out of the hole in the garden and farmer Ambrinny has returned and is talking to his wife. The garden is destroyed. There are several workmen coming into the farm yard with a wagon full of stone. The party discusses the situation and ask if it is possible to leave part of the tunnel open for them. As they are fox team members, he will see what he can do.
* The party heads back to Destrin and makes it back just as the gates are being closed. The party heads to the local tavern and has a supper of huge slabs of beef and lamb. Prim heads to the bunk house to study.
* Thiana decides to get up and dance with the bard who is playing. Rei joins in with his pan flute and fails miserably. Bael throws a boot at Rei. The bard gives Thiana 5 gold, and Rei 1 gold for trying. As the tavern is clearing out at the end of the night, Rei notices Emily Detmore leaving with the crowd.
* Rei runs to catch up with Emily. Thiana sees Emily and stays a bit to the side. Bael continues on. Rei stops Emily and, after exchanging awkward pleasantries, asks if she would be willing to participate in an experiment. She looks at him skeptically but agrees.
* Rei calls after Bael, but Bael doesn’t hear him. Rei asks her to stay there, please. She agrees. Rei runs after Bael. Thiana then approaches Emily and they say hi. Thiana then proceeds to tell Emily that the party is pretty sure she is the royal heir, that they need her blood, and that the LHD will be in touch about the amount of blood and its delivery (Face Palm). Emily is understandably alarmed. Rei gets back with Bael and Thiana leaves.
* Rei asks Bael to take out the two sigils he is carrying. Bael complies. Rei explains that the sigils react strangely to his blood. He cuts himself and drips some blood on the Sigil of Destruction. The blood soaks into the runes before blood begins to pours out of the runes and over Bael’s hand. Bael sighs deeply ("Gee, thanks. Now I need to get tested for Hexatitis C"). Rei explains to Emily that he thinks they have the same curse and he would like to see what happens when her blood touches a sigil. Emily looks at him suspiciously and pulls out her hat pin. Her hair falls down, increasing Rei’s identification with her and his immediate family, and she stabs her finger and lets it drip over the Sigil of Creation in Bael’s other hand. The blood soaks into the runes and then blood pours out of the runes and over Bael’s other hand ("Damn it, Rei"). Bael asks if he can go now and clean up.
* Rei offers to take Emily home. Emily says she is perfectly safe in a town run by her family and surrounded by walls, and that Rei and his friends are the most threatening thing she’s encountered... ever. Rei walks Emily home. As she gets enters the doorway, Rei gives her a bone-and-feather good luck charm (Face Palm). Emily closes the door and Rei hears a very loud click as the lock is flipped.
* Rei gets back to the bunk house. Thiana is sitting up on her bed. Prim is fast asleep with her face in a book, drooling on the pages. Bael is at the wash basin scrubbing blood off his hands.
* Thiana reports into Drum at 1 AM in the morning. Drum appears in the room. Thiana tells him they found the Sigil of Creation and they think the Detmore family has some of the descendants of the Greymore family. Drum instructs them to head to Kelum and find the local LHD ambassador, Sendreal, to send one of the sigils they have back to Amadar in the next diplomatic packet.
* The next morning, the party heads out (after a nice breakfast) to Kelum. After a quiet day, the party gets to Kelum, which is nearly identical to Destrin except the fields are full of herd animals, and ranch hands are rounding them up into stone paddocks.

Session 15 – What the hell?

* The party finds a bite to eat and then goes directly to the bunk house. Rei is restless and discusses what they have found out about Emily, how uneasy he is, and how he can’t shake the unnerving impression that Emily is related to him.
* After some discussion, Bael suggests that Rei drinks one of the blue/orange potions. With nothing else to do, Rei takes a potion from Bael and tosses it down his throat.
* Rei immediately collapses and Prim spends several panicked minutes trying to finding his barely detectable breath and 1-2 beats-per-minute heart rate. He is very unresponsive.
* Rei is in a rowboat that a servant is rowing, and they are almost to Pike Dock. He looks down and he is a child. His stomach is in knots and tears run down his face.
* Rei is on the deck of a ship. There is an armada of more than 20 ships around. Everyone is watching as above a gold and a copper dragon are fighting. A silver dragon to the side seems to be trying to break it up. The copper dragon lunges toward the gold dragon and the silver dragon interposes itself between them. The copper dragon is enraged and whips its tail at the silver dragon who is trying to move the gold dragon away. The silver dragon’s heart is pierced and he plummets from the sky, crashing into the deck of one of the nearby ships. The ship, weighed down both by the force of the impact and the mass of the dragon, comes to rest with the majority of its deck floating just above the waterline. The ship's mast is utterly destroyed. The dragon lays motionless across the deck, it’s head is in the water on one side, and its tail and legs are in the water on the other side. A wave fans outward from the ship in all directions. The gold and copper dragons can be seen heading for two other separate ships, polymorphing into humans as they land. Rei feels the wave hit and rock the deck of his boat.
* The rowboat rocks as it come alongside the dock at Pike Dock. The servant gets out and pulls Rei out of the boat and stands him on the dock while he gets things out of the boat. Across the lake, Greydon Manor is on fire, but it is not the old wreck of a house Rei has always known. The walls are complete, the roof has no holes, and panes of glass are exploding out of window frames that have never in his lifetime had glass. Pike Dock is where he is, but he doesn’t know these people and the clothes are wrong. Everyone is pointedly ignoring them. The servant hands him a pack, turns him away from Greydon Manor, and heads toward the path Rei knows leads up Mt Kess. Home, but not home. Rei tries to look back to Greydon Manor, but the servant gently turns his face away. “Don’t look that way.”
* His head turns and he is on a ship again. Rope in his hands, they are moving to regroup the ships. The ship where the silver dragon crashed is trying to repair its sail. The mages must have polymorphed the body back into its humanoid form. Suddenly he looks up and the golden dragon is there, looking at him, it is Ithreal. She says, “This is where it began.” Everything goes black.
* Rei is at the peak of Mt Kess. It’s the final ritual. He will live or die here. Blood is pouring from the ritual cuts. As the blood pours off the stone slab and hits the ground, black tendrils flow up the stream of blood toward him. He must master them. Rei bites back on the terror in his throat and braces for the onslaught as the black tendrils approach. Silver tendrils emerge from his own blood, catch the black ones, intertwine with them, and absorb them. The now-simmering black-and-silver tendrils return whence the silver tendrils came. "This isn’t how it’s supposed to be!" Rei thinks to himself as he is sucked into a brutal vortex of pain, the likes of which he’d never known.
* Rei’s eyes fly open and he is awake. Prim tells him it’s been about seven-plus hours. It is 3 AM. Everyone else is beat. She asks if he learned anything. He is descended from house Greydon. Emily doesn’t share his blood curse; she is his distant cousin.
* Prim asks Thiana if she can look at the orange/blue potion. Thiana gives it to her reluctantly. Prim looks at the potion in the bottle and opens the book they found in the cave. She flips through the pages and as she turns them, an image of the crates full of aflexia on the docks comes to her, then a bundle of herbs tied over Mama Nava's hearth, and then a bowl full of reddish brown spice on Lecka's counter.
* The party heads to bed. Rei has watch.

- END SESSION 15 -

Session 16