4.0 The Battle of Lexandaria

After finally getting out of Laputa
and nursing “Mercury” back to consciousness, the party
interrogates him. He reveals to them that he is Baygrith's half
brother. He was contacting Baygrith to protect him from his mother,
Dr. Blackrock, but he doesn't really know her plans in any detail.
While there is precious little he can tell the party, he does say
that he has something to talk to Baygrith about, but wishes to speak
to him privately. Though the party leaves him an Baygrith alone,
they do not trust. Sal casts a sound manipulating spell to allow the
party to hear the conversation from outside the room.

 Demonstrating his skill as an actor
and con artist, Mercury quickly casts off his pretended weakness and frees
himself easily from the restraints he had been placed in. According
to Mercury, Dr. Blackrock is the head of a criminal empire. It is her
desire to shape Baygrith and Mercury (revealing his true name as Marcus) into people capable of
taking her place in the “family business.” To this end, she has
been manipulating both of them throughout their entire lives in order
to direct the development of their personalities and interests into
those proper for leading her criminal empire. She selected Baygrith
and Marcus's fathers for particular traits, and even arranged for
them to die to help shape their early development. She is a
mastermind, at the height of her power when she has time to plan- and
she plans for everything. At this point, Marcus' rebelliousness has
caused her to label him as a “failed” experiment, and she is
willing to sacrifice him to help Baygrith's development. But Marcus
wants Baygrith to work with him to overthrow her, rather than play by
her games. Baygrith tentatively agrees. Marcus tells him to think it
over, and that he would be in touch soon. That said, he used magic to
teleport out of the airship. He then demonstrates that he can easily
contact the Emitter Torch, and possibly even listen in on a whim.

 Trying to pretend they did not listen
in, the party re-enters the room and begins to discuss what to do
about the upcoming Void Spawn attack on Lexandaria. Central to the
discussion is the Tooth to which Thain is bound, now in the hands of
the Council of Nations. While there is some debate about the issue-
Travize (and Timmeron through Travize's telepathy) objecting to
theft, the majority of the group decides that it is for the best if
they steal the tooth back. Sajaina says that she will take care of
retrieving the tooth once they land.

 On the ground, Timmeron, now free from
the Council of Nations, decides to visit home. Tragically, his new
body prevents him from being properly recognized and the servants
refuse to let him in. Despite trying to demonstrate his identity, the
guards are eventually called to escort him to prison until his real
identity can be established. The group sends Elizabel to get him out
once they land and he soon joins the party in the war room to discuss
tactics.

 The group discusses detailed
strategies for the battle, in particular that the main goal will be
to defend the city center, which will serve as the main shelter for
civilians as well as the command center for the operation. They also
make it their goal to track down the red stones used to summon Void
Spawn and prevent as many summonings as possible. Additionally, the
army could use help preparing mechanical defenses and convincing the
nobility to lend some of their personal defense forces to defend the
civilians.

 With the party split to help deal with
preparations, there are a few roles of note. Baygrith, for his pat,
prepares mechanical traps to scatter around the northern end of the
city where Void Spawn may enter. He also develops a potent bomb in
case of emergency. Timmeron and Wrynn help with the development of
the void-stone tracking device and a magical elixir that will allow
for instant, though temporary, training of civilians into soldiers.
Travize and Sajaina go to convince Lady “Goldglimmer” Roneyella
to contribute her personal forces, but Sajaina and Finnean end up
stealing the “codes” to her fleet of automatons instead and
ordering them to defend the civilians.

 Finally, as the rest of the party
starts sweeping the civilians storehouses for signs of void-stones,
Sajaina sneaks off to steal the Tooth. She quickly discovers that the
tooth is being held by the High Justicar of Bartos, which presents a
problem for her personally, given her meeting with Steave. Instead of
calling over the rest of the group (which might require her to
explain why she can't steal the tooth) she decides on an alternate
plan. She convinces the High Justicar to let her see her father,
Mui'Thel, currently under arrest for impersonating Kebrio at the
Council of Nations. It takes some doing, but she eventually convinces
the Justicar to let her speak to her father alone, and then devises a
plan with him to get the tooth back. In exchange for Mui'Thel's help,
Sajaina is to help him escape his imprisonment. So she calls Thain to
her, who is immediately taken over by Mui'Thel using a code-phrase he
had ordered Thain to respond to. He has Thain steal the tooth from
the High Justicar and paralyze him so he can't prevent their escape.
But on the way out, Mui'thel unexpectedly stabs the High Justicar in
the throat, killing him. Sajaina- who is pretty freaked out at the
moment- takes Thain and Mui'Thel back to the Elfatina and decides to
hide out there rather than explain events to the rest of the group at
the moment. She also Orders Wrynn not to say anything about it until
after the battle, since the woman found out when she saw Mui'Thel
controlling Thain on the ship. Currently, Mui'Thel still holds
Thain's tooth.

 Wrynn, using a loophole in Sajaina's
order, tells Timmeron the basics of the story just so someone knows,
resulting in an even deeper falling out between Wrynn and Sajaina.
But there is little chance to debate the matter as the party begins
finding Void Stones in the civilian shelters. They rush to disable as
many of them as possible, preventing four of five stones from being
used. But while they are able to close the portal quickly, the Void
Spawn have begun attacking the magical shield around the city from
without. Bringing more force than expected, the Void Spawn apparently
have huge airships the size of sky-scrapers, made all of hewn rock
and alien crystals.

 While the party returns to the command
center to discuss what to do about the Void Spawn outside the city,
Timmeron goes to talk to Sajaina. They have an unresolved argument
rather than a productive conversation- part of the reason Sajaina
would rather have mentioned Mui'thel AFTER the battle- before
Timmeron return to the command enter. Sajaina elects to continue air
support with the Elfatina rather than socialize.

 Back on the ground, the group decides
to drop the shields early so they can engage the enemy on their own
terms. They set up their forces and ready themselves to receive the
attack. The strategy meeting mentioned that, however the void-spawn
ships arrived, the same mechanism may be able to banish them. Sajaina
takes the opportunity to drop onto one of the alien, Void-spawn ships
in search of whatever mechanism the ship-captains use. Mui'thel, Dal,
Karhanza and Thain accompany her. While sneaking through the ship, it
is discovered that they use the life-energy of living people for fuel
of some kind- including 'civilians' from the Void-Spawn world.
Informing the rest of the group, and vowing to at least attempt to
free them before destroying the ship, they find their way to the
commander's room and, with some difficulty, steal the stone that
strengthens the Void-Spawn connection to our world. With some quick
help from Wrynn they reverse the enchantment and use it to banish the
Void Spawn. What actually happens is the entire ship- Sajaina
included- teleports back to the Void-Spawn's home world.

 On the ground, the fight is going
reasonably well, but the other two void-ships are raining down
additional portals from which Void-Spawn are entering the city behind
the defensive line. The group- alongside the rest of the city's
defenders, struggle to hold them back, eventually resorting to
Baygrith's bomb to disable an area thick with the horrid, alien
creatures. The bomb also destroys several city blocks as well. Other
heroic feats include Sal's use of telekinesis to “catch” a bomb
dropped by a Void Spawn ship, which he propelled into one of the
portals, instantly collapsing it. He needed a little (epic) help from
Baygrith and his Explosive Fish to get it at the proper angle,
however. Timmeron stole flight from a Void Spawn using his blue magic
and confronted one of the Void Ships himself using the Void-Staff to
force the ships occupants to kill each other and the Guardian Force
(remember that thing? From the old Lich's fallen kingdom?) to protect
himself from those he could not control. He claimed another of the
teleportation orbs. Travize was able to disable another ship, using
None's peculiar property of needing to see the sky to annihilate a
small section of the ship, which forced it to land and allowed the
defenders to deal with it from the ground. Baygrith also used his new
Portal Gun to create escape portals for civilians that found
themselves in danger zones, preventing many casualties.

 Unfortunately, over the course of the
battle, there were a few horrible events. For starters, the battle
naturally produced huge amounts of collateral damage resulting from
Void Spawn attacks, Baygrith's bomb, and several fires that started as
a consequence of the methods used to seal some of the other hole. One
was closed by detonating a cask of gunpowder in it, for example.
Fortunately, despite these events, there were very few civilian
casualties. Due to this staggeringly successful preservation of life,
it can possibly be said that the worst news is that Timmeron's curse
returned to him. Over the remainder of the battle, his entire arm
decayed and became a mobile skeleton.

 In the Other World, Sajaina and
Mui'Thel fought desperately for survival. Despite having claimed the
teleportation crystal, they found themselves unable to use it to get
back. They scrambled to escape the hunting creatures that closed in
on them from every corner of the ship, eventually using Sajaina's
teleportation Bracelet to walk along the outside of the ship in order
to find a place to hide. While Karhanza tried to use the portal orb
to create a way home, her chaotic magic was too unpredictable for
such delicate work. Fortunately, Travize and Veller were able to get
Wrynn to engineer an additional teleportation crystal from one of the
downed ships and used it to teleport themselves and one of the
Elfatina's scouting vessels into the Void Spawn world to try to find
Sajaina. While Travize's telepathy wasn't very useful between the
world, once they were on the same world they were able to talk
freely. But just as they began to talk, they saw a huge shape rising
over the horizon. The colossal Void Spawn queen was coming for them.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the Void Spawn “King” let loose a
challenging litany of his own, audible from miles away.

 Ironically, Travize and Veller were
able to more easily find Sajaina with the Void Spawn queen as a
reference landmark. They traded descriptions of her and used the
angles to approximate eachother's location. Sajaina and Mui'Thel
teleported from the ship they were on, landing on the ground. They
began running in the direction of Veller's skiff. Travize and Veller
began flying to rescue Sajaina and company when they noticed the Void
Spawn King behind them, flying fast and gaining on the little skiff.
Knowing they could not stop him, they aimed for a distraction
instead. Travize blew loudly into the Horn of Plenty, summoning
enough food to feed all who could hear. As the sound echoed quite
far, quite a lot of food was summoned. Tirisean food. Calling on the
Tirisean spirits of water that dwelled within the food, Travize
whipped the avalanche of food into a wave directed at the King of
Void Spawn. It didn't really hurt him, but it did slow him down
enough for them to find Sajaina and Mui'Thel. With those two aboard,
Veller flew the ship as fast as he could while the Ascendant, Wrynn
now included, tried to re-engineer a way home. They finally managed
it, but it was a very near thing. For starters, had they been a second
later the Void-Spawn King and Queen would have jointly torn the
little ship to dust.

 Back in reality, the four (plus the
Ascendant) have a momentary cheerful reunion where Veller
accidentally mentions that Sajaina is pregnant. Deciding to discuss
that- and what the hell Mui'Thel was doing with Sajaina- later,
Travize flew off to help mop up the last of the Void Spawn while
Sajaina and company returned to the Elfatina. But things would not be
that simple. Wrynn and the rest of the Ascendant rushed to redesign
the modified Teleportation Crystal into a banishing weapon so they
could finish the fight. But as they were finishing, the sky opened
up, a huge portal eclipsing the moon and stars. New horrors joined
the battle as the King of Void Spawn descended into the fray.
Apparently he id not enjoy his prey escaping, as he was quite angry.
Sajaina managed to blast him with the Banishing Ray before he could
do much harm, but he slipped through the sky-portal again before
Karhanza and Timmeron could fully close it. While he was ready to
evade this time, Dal re-wound time for Sajaina so she could aim for
where the King would appear rather than trying to hit a moving
target. She blasted him again, freeing the remaining defenders to
clean up the last of the Void Spawn.

 The battle was won, with startlingly
low civilian casualties. But the group was exhausted. They tiredly
moved to help the cleanup and reconnaissance effort, but there was
much to discuss. The rescued civilians from the two downed Void Spawn
ships (including the Void Spawn civilians) had to be looked after.
There was much to talk about, and some discussion to be had about
what the Chosen of Astor would do next. How would they deal with
Mui'thel? How quickly would Timmeron's curse progress? What stories
might the rescues civilians tell? All excellent questions.