Expedition 143: Fear the Sun, Praise the Sun

### **“Transcript of a Hastily Improvised Prayer to Pelor Delivered in Crossroads During the Purging of the Noonwraiths”**

**Manuscript submitted to the Chronicler of the Church of Pelor in Windhome by Val’sabir Vayer, 468 AoP.**

We have come to free Your faithful, Lord Pelor of the Sun

We have come to pray for succor, for the many and the one

We pray in Ancient Crossroads, in the Far Hills, in the East

Where once Gnominion praised you, from the greatest to the least.

We are Ironwood, the Compact

That rebuilds from ancient strife

The gardener whose blossoms

Protect his peoples’ life

The champion whose fire

Warms all others’ hearts

Two slaves whose love for others

The march of freedom starts

One bard who always worries

Another who always dares

We six have come to wake You

In this place where evil lairs

On this night of the 7th of Monova 467 AoP we came through the Far Hills from the nation of Your honored servant Marzipan to the ruins of the City of Crossroads, there to quell the great masses of Noonwraiths that slaughter all who travel near that once-blessed city.

The jewel of the Gnominion was once a prosperous and mighty town of two thousand souls, defended not by walls or wards but by Your Blessing, Pelor, which raised each gnome who perished there as a Noonwraith to serve and protect the town.

With this Blessing no foe dared sack or savage Crossroads for all its life, but when Nerulla the Pale Queen ascended to the Solar Power at the turning of the last Age her rise covered the East with a choking cloud that laid all low without mercy.

The people of Crossroads arose in the same instant as Noonwraiths and a quirk of Your Blessing bound them to this plane for all the time since, for a Noonwraith persists longer if others die alongside them, and so many died at once on that black day that Crossroads’ folk were sentenced to a purgatory measured in millenia.

Please, Pelor, look down and free Your people.

Three great magicians

Blessed with Clarity and Might

Joined all their wisdom

To end Gnominion’s plight

Marzipan Your servant

Reached out to You in prayer

But Your sight here was covered

By another’s wards and care

Might, deadspeaker, conjurer,

Sought to protect her kin

Binding three wraiths

To understand their sin

But Clarity the Archmage

Mightiest of all, she’d tell

Gathered power and allies

The ancient curse to fell

Pelor, look down and free your people.

After months of study and effort the three magicians at last determined the function of Your Blessing on Crossroads and determined how and why the Noonwraiths were bound.

They determined that the heart of Crossroads, Your Church, where we now pray to You for aid, was the source of Your Blessing and the anchor of the Noonwraiths in Crossroads.

While Your Church stood each Noonwraith slain by magic or steel would return with the dawn of a new day, issuing forth from the catacombs of the city where the wraiths slumber in the night to hunt again.

Only by cutting off the source of the Wraiths would the Far Hills be made safe for the living.

Understanding the task at hand, Might at once prepared to summon devils of the vilest nature, to visit Your Church and desecrate it.

But Clarity, though not Your servant, is herself a religious woman, and for love of her Goddess Public Relations stayed Might’s hand and proposed another plan.

We six were summoned and hired by her to visit Crossroads, seek out the church, and destroy all symbols of You there, shattering its great windows and silencing Your power in the land, so that Your Blessing would end.

Pelor, look down and free your people.

In the dead of night we traveled

The Blessing to be unraveled

We saw Your gifts turned to cruel stain

The Far Hills overgrown with grain,

Burning, returning at a furious pace

Without living souls to harvest Your grace

Under Lu’un’s soft light

We faced the fearful sight

Crossroads with shadows overrun

Noonwraiths deprived of the sun

No mind left, tortured, bent

Your symbols, Pelor, they rent

When hollow images we made rise

Hoping to enter the city in friendly guise

Instead, we Passed Without Trace

Carefully against the sun, we race

Around Crossroads’ corners, we snuck

Jumping at dark, praying for luck

At last, with Falcon’s Dancing Lights

We cleared a path without any fights.

But we blinked to find Your hall

Had a cleaned, Mended, tended wall

Metal polished, windows cleared

By only two hands, but as we neared

Their dedication we could see

Obsessed, in death, with their legacy

Soon we learned who had twisted Your power

Your disgraced servant, Pontiff Andros Sunflower

When we arrived at Your Church in Crossroads we found it inhabited by a cleric of the Gnominion who lived out of a makeshift camp in Your Church.

Andros Sunflower was not, however, a miraculous survivor of the Pale Queen’s Ascension but a pretender warped by the turning of the Age into a monster.

Almost as soon as he clapped eyes on Andros, clever Kel’soveen could tell that he was not alive but a possessing ghost, inhabiting the body of poor Angua Trickhand, who Andros had lured to Your Church years ago.

In his isolation Andros had become utterly deranged, and no sooner had he invited us in to pray to You did he turn on us and command the Noonwraiths hiding throughout Your Church to rip our souls from our bodies.

Pelor, look down and free your people.

Bitter, bitter was the battle fought!

Between the living and the dead!

Steel slashed at roiling dark!

As living strength into shadows bled!

At first strident, Andros thought,

His victory assured, our fates wrought.

But the battle turned, his forces burned.

“Smash the windows!” one of us cried,

As shadows swarmed from churchdoors tall.

But in dedication to You, we held our ground,

A dozen foes would come and fall.

Against Andros, our swords stood back to back

Darting Ellie, Fiery Ranag, Falcon dancing through the horde

As Parsnip and Kel conjured spells to blast, plants to hack.

And I with dissonant whispers reminded them of their Lord

With a knockout blow, Ellie forced Andros from his host

Angua Trickhand was free and with a quiet boast,

Ellie forced away the possessing hands of her foe

And slammed Andros back with a booming blow.

Mage Ender swung, daggers danced,

Shadows fell to erupting earth enhanced

By Parsnip’s careful, deadly eye.

With Hadar’s Hunger Kel blocked the door

As he flew above the scrum on the floor

Calling encouragement to Ranag and Fi.

Soon the shadows slinked back to their tomb

As Death Ward briefly delayed Andros’ doom.

He cast his final, strongest spell,

The last hope he had to avoid Hell,

But as I had done for every spell prior,

I raised a gauntleted hand lit with arcane fire,

And with a gesture I snuffed out Andros’ last hope

As I whispered the abjurer’s favorite word: “Nope.”

Andros departed back to the catacombs

Leaving only his mace, symbol and tomes,

As a moment of quiet fell on Your church,

We turned to the altar, for Your presence we now search.

Pelor, look down and free your people.

Now in the heart of Your Church we pray, Lord Pelor.

Look down on what has been done here and undo your Blessing turned to bitter Curse.

Rip away the charms laid by Andros on this land to lure gnomes here for him to possess.

Free the souls of Gnominion and take them into Your Light

Leave these lands to new hands to rebuild this city bright.

Pelor, look down and free your people.

Pelor, look down and free your people.

Pelor, look down and free your people.

*And then, in case it wasn’t clear, Pelor did in fact undo the curse and we all left as quick as we could. There were a fair amount of valuables in the city but we couldn’t find any of them in the dark, not that we minded, given what Clarity was paying. Angua Trickhand was all right, though heavily aged from possession, and had actually gained clerical casting up to the second circle from her ordeal. Clarity cleared every other major threat in the Far Hills out with some well-placed Disintegrates in the weeks after we cleared the city.*

*I’m glad for your interest in this prayer, Chronicler, and I hope it helps you understand more about Gnominion Pelor worship. Personally, though, I don’t think it has much artistic merit. I wrote it after I tried to directly channel Pelor’s presence in the church and nearly fried my own eyeballs, and it’s a sign of how desperate we were that I tried writing* poetry *at all.*

*--Valorie Vayer.*

### **Draft Included By Nathaniel Because It’s Funny**

*The following manuscript describes the Cleansing of Crossroads, a significant event in the history of the Nations of the East, for all that it was quickly overshadowed at a time when it often seemed that the Ironwood Compact slew a dragon every week.*

*The manuscript takes the form of a dialogue held between the bard Val’sabir “Valorie” Vayer and our Most Radiant Lord Pelor. Valorie maintains that this conversation is an accurate recollection of the actual communion she held in the Gnominion Church of Pelor where she beseeched our Lord to cleanse the city of Crossroads. However, given the length of the dialogue, the unusual directness and confusion our All-Seeing Lord shows during it, and the well-known fact that Ironwood Compact bards love tall tales, I must advise that it be read as a figurative record of historical events.*

Radiant Pelor: My faithful student, how fares your countr--wait, you aren’t Marzipan..

Valorie: No, Your Sunniness. Valorie Vayer. Charmed. We need your help.

Radiant Pelor: Ah, forgive me. What boon do you seek of me, faithful--wait, Valorie Vayer of the East?

Valorie: Yes?

Radiant Pelor: The one who had Candles beat a genie’s ribcage open with his mace to get its heart?

Valorie: … who?

Radiant Pelor: My Celestial Defender, Igniter-of-Hope’s-Candles. He responded to a general summoning request back in Monraal, to fight a Shadow Dragon? Only he was taken to the Elemental Plane of Water and ordered to beat a Marid’s chest open to take out its heart?

Valorie: Uhhhhhhh-

Radiant Pelor: This same Valorie also summoned one of Heironia’s Defenders to protect her friends from two Nothics, and then ordered her to hunt the Nothic down in the tunnels of Nexus after it fled and begged for mercy? Dionysus also said that she summoned one of his Avengers to impersonate a deity called the “Overcat” to a bunch of savannah lions a while ago, but I’m sure he was just drunk and hallucinated it. No one would actually be *that* disrespectful.

Valorie: … different Valorie.

Radiant Pelor: Oh, really? Huh. Must be a more common name in this Age. Well forgive me, my faithful supplicant, and speak your purpose...

**Expedition Result:** Success

**Expedition Level:** 10, reduced to 9.

**Expedition Loot:** 5000gp and a large plot of land for all participants on the expedition. Pelor’s Eye and the Mace of Smiting. The Far Hills are pacified.