Living Current

In May of 2381, toward the end of season 6, a newly discovered deep sea current traveling between the continent and Kanara was found to be alive and intent on consuming raw arcane power—power such as that which maintained the Palisade, Kanara's only defense against being crushed by the sea. The elemental creature was destroyed by adventurers before any permanent harm could be done, and the addition of slime shielding to the Palisade hid its arcane signature as well as its light, greatly reducing the likelihood of a repeat incident.

## Siren of Kanara

In early 2381, attempts to create a secondary shielding for the Palisade out of metallic slimes were making consistent headway. In order to determine how the shielding would respond to the particulars of the deep sea environment, a small crew of researchers and adventurers was contracted to set up a testing site on the far side of the mountains from the city. This crew was led by Sai'a Markin, a researcher assisting with the project, and consisted of Jian Kestris, Sunniope Osterfeld, and Mourn Thelostone.

### Setup

The site, chosen to avoid interference from Kanara's light pollution while otherwise maintaining a similar environment, was bordered on one side by a cliff that was the former coastline and on the other by the drowned remains of a forest. The testing crew set up two miniature arcane domes, each with its own slime shielding, and settled in to wait, taking regular readings.

### Sea Life Interference

Midway through the experiment, Markin noticed the generator in the first dome had kicked into overdrive and the slime shielding was beginning to fail. Outside, a massive, silvery serpent was feasting on the slime and even consuming the arcane energy sustaining the dome. When attempts to communicate failed, Markin forced it away through arcane means and it gave up on the meal.

### Ethereal Interference

Some time later, the crew began to hear singing. While most were concerned at this turn of events, stopping their ears up with wax, Kestris found the somber music enchanting, and soon escaped the dome to investigate, despite her companions' best attempts to keep her from doing so.

The others followed and noticed a faint green light within the drowned forest. The light drew closer, and quickly proved antagonistic, drawing them into a tense battle, during which it manifested further spirits, their song never ceasing. Though the mournful tune was mostly wordless, it was woven with a distorted Aquan dialect, with themes of loss, separation, and anguishing love. As the battle reached its height, the song turned to a clutching anger, full of fear, despair, and burning hatred.

At last, the spirits were vanquished, vanishing except for the original light, itself greatly dimmed from before. Kestris, who had been the only one to make out much of the song, reached out to it then, compassionate for its plight. At her touch, it slipped forward, vanishing into her and coming to rest in some corner of her own soul, its true nature revealed: it was a great love for Kanara that it harbored, for its home, and a fear of the rising waters, of the cold that followed, and a deep and abiding anger at its broken dreams, at those still living, who had what it had lost. This was the remnants of many of those who died during the city's descent and its aftermath, not fully sentient individually but an amalgamation of their strongest emotions, manifested through the combination of their strength and conflicting nature.

### Results

K. Evers, the project's lead researcher, tweaked the final formula to further decrease the slime's toxicity and amplify its arcane reflective properties to prevent that energy from being lost to external forces, and the project was approved for installation.

## Living Current

### Discovery

Some time before the environmental testing took place, a new deep sea current was discovered traveling from the continent directly towards Kanara. This was a great boon to the shipping industry, and no one questioned it much at first—the continent's wild magic was always doing strange things, after all. However, it began increasing in speed, until the last ship to come off it, the *Heaven's Arrow,* was all but destroyed.

The *Arrow's* wizard, Hela Seasilk Orsaer, reported that there had been something *living* within the current that had consumed the ship's wards to the point she was forced to pour a constant stream of energy into maintaining a single shield around the surviving crew even as the sea continued draining every bit of arcane power it could manage. Seasilk sustained second degree casting drain from the ordeal.

### Preparation

With such an entity speeding towards Kanara, surely intent upon devouring the Palisade, there was no time to spare. Countless crews were mobilized to install the slime shielding across the Palisade before it arrived, but to say they were cutting it close was an understatement. In a desperate bid for help, Evers sent to the Adventurers' Guild for backup.

A fair few answered the call, aiding Kanara's casters in protecting as much of the populace as they could manage from the dangers of the deeps, should the Palisade fall, and the Guild offered free use of their teleportation circles to those wishing to escape the city, though surprisingly few took up the offer. In fact, within a matter of hours, the people had returned to the streets, checking on the lanterns and adding more, hanging pennants and streamers, tidying shopfronts... When questioned, a woman stringing colorful lanterns between buildings said, "Surviving such a threat will certainly be something to celebrate, don't you think?"

A small party of adventurers, consisting of Markin, Kestris, Ruszara Isodurin, and Chance Wildcard, took it upon themselves to do something more. Gathering some spare equipment from Evers' lab, they set their defenses in the middle of the former bay, halfway between the edge of the Palisade and the lighthouse, and waited.

### Arrival

It was hours before anything changed, the Palisade's lights remaining on long past the time they usually were shut off. No one was resting that day. At last, movement was spotted out past the lighthouse, an undulating ripple in the ocean, as the lighthouse flickered, and fell, a great force rushing onwards.

The adventurers leapt from their shelter, calling on forces of water and earth to interrupt its charge, Isodurin pulling the stone floor of the bay into a great wall and Markin sending out a wave of her own to counter the approaching threat, and a massive serpent of water coiled before them, barely more than a translucent outline in the surrounding sea.

Though they did all they could to prevent the leviathan elemental from reaching the Palisade, it still did, and began to feed on its power, growing from the size of the largest airship to a fleet of them as the light of the Palisade dimmed, growing large enough to encircle the city as the lights flickered, large enough to threaten the Palisade itself as the lights...went out.

In a moment of panic, Markin surged forward, placing her hand on the Palisade and pouring every drop she could spare of her remaining power into it in a desperate attempt to keep it from failing further. Kestris, in the back of her mind, felt a presence growing—the sirens. She called to Kiaransalee, goddess of undeath, and to the sirens, to protect their city—and they listened.

With Markin's power, a dim light returned to the Palisade, barely visible, but *there*. At the same time, an unearthly singing grew in the water around them as ghostly, indistinct figures came forth from Kestris, linking hands all along the Palisade as they sang, voices echoing through the water as though from a great distance, their song of hope, and love, and strength.

Rebuffed by the spirits and unable to feed further on the weakened Palisade, the serpent turned on the adventurers. With her great control of water, Markin again reached deep, finding the power in herself to pour now into the serpent, destroying half its mass at once, and Wildcard dealt the final blow, at last breaking whatever core held it together.

The living current burst asunder, the wild magic animating it spilling forth in great waves through the Weave, crashing over the adventurers—and the spirits took it willingly, vanishing upward in a pale green wave that washed over the Palisade, funneling the immense power into that structure.

### Aftermath

The adventurers returned to Moonblossom Academy, pushing through crowds of people to get there, and quickly were seen to by the best healers the city had to offer (or at least the first that could be found) before, with a few moments to rest, they were ushered out again, leading a triumphant parade through the streets to Market Square, where the city council presented them each with a medal of honor. Food was eaten, songs were played, dances were danced, and merriment was made—for surviving such a threat was certainly something to celebrate, don't you think?

## Lasting Impact

### Effects on the Palisade

Some element of the living current escaped destruction, living on in the Palisade itself. From that point on, the arcane portion of the Palisade operated primarily on its own, inherent power, the generators that formerly powered it needed only as supplementary and backup sources. Markin went on to make a study of this, basing her operations in the newly built SUN, which replaced the lighthouse destroyed in the attack.

### Cultural Impact

The anniversary of the living current's defeat came to be celebrated in Kanara as the Day of Spirits.