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Episode 2: The Shadow Will Flood

Last time, you began on the slopes of Mt Atria. A day short of the mountain’s peak on a mission accompanying the Antiqua (the greatest clerics of Reliquiae) as they make pilgrimage to the Virtuous. Huddled around two small campfires, the party, along with Morgan (a Web agent sent to work alongside you) began to rouse themselves as the sun rose.
Raidion had woken up profoundly miffed and suspicious of the unknown person filling his pack with Kelnys’ hand-whittled spoons…it was Dolly.
As the Antiqua stirred, Raidion told Grawnoth (dwarven cleric of Ullin) to hurry along his fellows. When Grawnoth urged a little patience, Raidion left the group again in a huff and gazed down toward the base of the mountain where the Festival of Benediction was being prepared.
You watched as the Antiqua completed a religious ceremony in which Runa (a cleric of the Orc goddess Nor’Va) reluctantly read from The Remnants (the sacred text of Reliquiae). Sensing her nerves, Dolly and I applauded as the orc finished her reading to the displeasure of Barabasque (the elven cleric of the goddess Theolon). Raidion attempted to smooth things over and ended up claiming to be the leader of the group, a statement Morgan took issue with.
You began the climb. Barabasque breaking into terrible, insistent song as Grawnoth struggled to maintain his composure ruminating with Dolly on the nature of truth and lies. I watched as the Kobold cleric attempted to ingratiate themselves with their fellows, even going so far as to be given a name. Something unheard of in kobold culture.
Up at the head of the party, Endellion, Kelnys and Morgan bonded over a shared love of trees during which Morgan was persuaded to attempt to climb a nearby oak before face-planting into the trunk.
As the climb continued, you encountered a quizzical bear before approaching and entering a thick cloud line. Vision obscured, dampness on your skin, you became disoriented and began to surround the Antiqua should things take a turn for the worse.
They did.
Emerging from the cloud line, you found yourselves on a darkened plateau. The ground dead around your feet; plant life decayed. And six wolves emerged stricken with some kind of necrotic blight, and attacked. Shielding the Antiqua, you fought against these creatures. Morgan falling as Grawnoth argued for his fellow clerics to intercede, he was shouted down. Eventually ignoring his contemporaries, Grawnoth cast Mass Healing Word, but the spell fizzled in his hand. All of the Antiqua followed suit. All of their spells failing. Their magic somehow not working here on this darkened plateau above the cloud line.
Then, eventually, Grawnoth, Carvilious (the dragonborn cleric of Aurum), and Roona leapt into combat and with their limited help, you destroyed the last of the beasts.
As the battle ended, it dawned on the clerics what this failure of divine magic might mean: that the divine themselves were in danger, or perhaps even worse.
You rushed up a great staircase towards a blackened palace, colors streaking the sky above it, and found the lifeless body of Aurum, dragonborn god of Justice.
And that’s where we are now, Carvilius, still cradling the body of his god. You see her centering power again in her hand. This looks to be a more powerful spell, in fact she’s trying to cast Revivify (a spell that can bring people back from the dead). She pushes it into the body of the god and you see her fingers, clawed hands, her scales glowing briefly with divine light and then it retracts into the hand. All of the clerics, all of the Antiqua are moving in, trying to put magic into this lifeless body.
You look up and you see these familiar colors that are streaking across the sky and you take in the fact that you are on a raised plaza and that there are great structures all around you, but crumbled, decaying. Rather than the decay that you saw at Alvelion (the divine city where the gods once lived and now abandoned), that feels as if the city is crumbling, this feels as if exploded. As if there was a sudden rush of something which destroyed the stones. From your vantage point, you can see nine towers that surround three larger buildings, all of them crumbling, all of them decaying.
There’s a stillness on the plaza. Grawnoth says,
“The others…”
You watch as it dawns on each of these clerics that they need to find their gods and they start running.
You see next to the plaza, there is a single tower to your left. Then there’s a raised walkway above the peak, which goes away to your right, and that feeds off to two separate towers. They go to the left and right as you go along this walkway. Grawnoth runs up towards the one on the left and Runa pushes past everybody and you see her shoulder-charge the fractured wooden door that sits at the base of this tower.

Previous Episode: The Gods Are Real

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  • Ultragramps@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPMEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    ♪Episode Song References♪

    ᕕ( ᐛ)ᕗ

    Highlights

    • 00:02:35 Aoife:“Two for two.”
      Harry:“It was a bad start, as a morning.”
    • 00:08:40 The group chooses clerics to pursue: Dolly after (Malakine) the Tiefling cleric, Endellion after the Human cleric, I after (Parvus) the Kobold cleric, Kelnys after (Barabask) the Elven cleric, Raidion with the (Grawnoth) Dwarven cleric and Morgan pursues Genevie, the Human cleric…
    • 00:12:12 “Heh, what would/wood.”
    • 00:15:37 Parvus showing a bit of the old kobold. “It is…I am here, it is I, I am here.”
    • 00:17:34 I:“What is a Parvus?”
      “Parvus is my name.”
      “What does a Parvus know?”
      “Parvus knows enough. Parvus knows little of what Parvus sees here.”
      “Why is a Parvus?”
      “Dignity.”
    • 00:23:35 Fan Art Moment I and Parvus perform the Kobold “palm touch and sniff” greeting
    • 00:24:56 Kelnys speaks “friend” in Elvish (LotR reference?) and then helps Barabask enter the tower.
    • 00:29:22 Kelnys obtains Elven Chainmail +1
    • 00:32:58 The Kobold diety (referred to as Themself) was a spy during the Divine War.
    • 00:33:25 Item: The Cloak of Many Fashions
    • 00:34:11 Ben:“Endellion finds this beautiful sword, she chooses not to take it and go back.”
      Hollie:“I didn’t say that.”
    • 00:37:45 Dolly discovers the lifeless purple form of Alakash, the tiefling diety.
    • 00:42:42 The Ring of the Orator
    • 00:43:50 Alakash has a fable like the third challenge from The Princess Bride.
    • 00:53:14 Ben:“Raidion thinks to himself, ‘i wonder if there are goodies in this room…’”
      Harry:“Radion thinks, ‘Magic shit is fun.’”
      Ben:“Dwarves are so cool.”
    • 00:58:58 Morgan weeps
    • 01:00:41 Ben:“Some goodies…”
    • 01:01:13 Morgan is too distraught for investigation
    • 01:05:55 Endellion spots something on the horizon beyond the Allanite mountain range.
    • 01:09:22 Raidion casts Detect Magic and the effect indicates that a significant amount of time has passed since the magic was present.
    • 01:15:45 I decides to withhold information about the kobold god
    • 01:16:08 Endellion relays the suspicious behavior of Genevie to the group after they meet up
    • 01:18:38 The group come across three orbs (Palantirs / LotR reference?) in the central temple. Also the body of Theolon, the elven diety.
      One orb is pure white, another black, and the third is a shimmering constantly-changing light
    • 01:22:10 Theolon was known as “The Once Wild”. It’s in fact a phrase that you heard at a party all that time ago. Theolon used to be a god of Chaos and she was turned. Alakash always said it was him, but Alakash would. Theolon tipped the balance in favor of The Virtuous when she changed sides. There are some who think she kept some of that Wild-ness.
      When you look at elven culture (high elf or wood elf), high elves like Barabask revere the civility and the decorousness and the new goddess she became. Generally speaking, wood elves tend to revere her free-ness and how in-tune she was with the natural world.
    • 01:23:46 Harry:“So, so magic. The greatest presence of magic you’ve ever felt in your life is coming off these three orbs.” (likely Transmutation magic)
    • 01:27:51 TALKING ORBS! Sound FX by Paul Bondy aka InsideInfo
    • 01:29:39 The orbs have gone dark, but there’s still light. You can see how the walls of this chamber that cracked, and just put your eye to a crack in this wall, and you’re looking out towards the West. There’s a view of the Allanites and there’s a view beyond the Allanites.
      There is a tree.
      There is a great tree, as tall as you are now. At the top of that tree, color and light. At the peaks of the mountains, you can see it’s almost in lock-step with the Topography of the Allanites, occaisionally peeking above it. It’s what looks like a great thorn bush.
      I:“What was The Briars?” (to Endellion) “What did you see?”
    • 01:32:40 Raidion:“When I was alone with Grawnoth, he told me to meet him somewhere. Baruun; there he would reveal the truth. It is not now to ask. This is as you (to Dolly) said, Way Above Our Pay Grade. We’re not just going to go trudging across Reliquiae, across the Allanites, to some tree that we see. We can’t do that, we can barely fight wolves. I say we deal with our business here and then we make our way back. We’re not fighters, we’re mercenaries.”
    • 01:33:58 Dolly:“Interesting time to find fasion.”
      Endellion:“I don’t know, Kelnys has changed, mate.”
    • 01:36:17 Endellion agrees that meeting Grawnoth is the next move.
    • 01:41:18 Raidion:“The Web is Wide. Let’s use it.”
      Endellion:“The Web is also sticky and dangerous.”
    • 01:42:43 Arguments in the temple
    • 01:45:51 Fan Art Moment Kelnys arrives, carrying the body of Theolon and the arguments stop.
      Kelnys:“Here is the body of the great and beautiful Theolon.”
    • 01:47:57 Fan Art Moment I comes to Parvus’ rescue staring down a massive orc cleric (second largest after Morgan)
    • 01:49:25 Carvilius explains that Aurum (dragonborn diety) held suspicion of Themself (kobold diety) and that they had questions.
    • 01:52:35 Morgan, Kelnys, Endellion and Dolly begin to fade to gray as part of the corruption. They gain resistance to necrotic damage. They also gain additional damage (1d4 necrotic) to their successful attacks and lose 1, 2, 3 and 4 maximum HP, respectively.
    • 01:54:45 Grawnoth succeeds in identifying the corruption.
    • 01:55:36 Barabask:“(to Kelnys) You brought the body. You are deserving.”
      He goes into his pack and he gets some parchment and scrolls out a letter and hands it to Morgan.
      "Take this to Jasmee at the festival. She’s a high cleric of mine, she will see. But this must be remedied. He looks at you Raidion, self-appointed leader.*
      “They may not have long.”
    • 01:58:36 Morgan names his Captain of the Guard, Brynhilde, as the team’s contact in Baruun.
    • 02:00:39 Theolon’s wounds indicate that they were killed quickly, while the rest show signs of drawn out struggle. Everyone gets a Greater Healing potion.
    • 02:04:56 Wounded blighted wolf execution and a blighted vine combat session.
    • 02:15:08 Endellion new appearance after being sprayed with the corruption “Death becomes her!”
    • 02:16:05 I:“Nice!”
    • 02:17:00 Snow begins to fall on the Mountain of Eternal Spring, bad omen.
    • 02:18:06 Initiative! Nobody rolls above a 15, another bad sign.
    • 02:20:37 The team looks up and sees a landslide of blighted earth coming towards them.
      The landslide is going to move a set amount every round. It’s going to move on initiative 20. You have to make it 400 feet.
    • 02:26:05 Morgan rolls a 1 on the die determining whether he starts prone.
    • 02:27:37 Doug:“Ouch.”
      Harry:“God, he’s good! The immersion!”
    • 02:28:33 Harry:“…and you all rolled like stink.” (adorable censorship)
    • 02:29:22 Aoife rolls a Natural 6!
    • 02:32:49 Harry gets self conscious about saying avalanche rather than landslide, but it was snowing on the magic peak, so he’s not far off.
    • 02:34:58 Hollie:“Fine…Fine. Fine! Yeah! Whatever” (The dice have been unforgiving)
      Harry:“I love how much you hate D&D”
    • 02:37:01 Hollie:“But he doesn’t have the Umbilical Cord of the Great Dragon.”
    • 03:07:56 Morgan falls unconscious.
    • 03:09:51 Kelnys:“Let’s go back later.”
      Endellion:“Find the body, yeah.”
    • 03:17:59 Alex:“This would just be a phenomenal run past. Just bink and carry on running.”
      Ben:“Be well!”
    • 03:18:46 Harry:“You don’t see the bear. Just gonna cross that column off…”
      Doug:“Just the odd flash of a red jumper.”
    • 03:23:38 Doug inspires Hollie and Ben to join his imitation of a meerkat leaving the chasm
    • 03:24:40 Morgan survives and dives out at the last second with a 20 roll. The bear’s corpse is seen in the landslide as it passes the team.
  • Ultragramps@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPMEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago
    Orb Talk (click to reveal)

    Orb 1: “My son is here”
    Orb 2: “Where are the others?”
    Orb 1: “They fell…he was too strong”
    Evil orb: “We warned you, the boy should never have been allowed to live.”
    Orb 1: “What did you know of this?”
    Orb 2: “What have you done?”
    Evil orb: “Reliquiae will fall.”
    Orb 1: “You betrayed us!”
    Evil orb: “You die at the hand of he you should never have spared”
    Orb 1: “You promised peace, you swore it!”
    Evil orb: “You ended the peace when you weakened our blood”
    Orb 1: “You cannot hide! If they come for us they come for the Feywild next”
    Orb 2: “Blood is thick”
    Orb 2: “The Briar will hold”
    noises
    Evil orb: “It is done.”
    Orb 2: “You broke the oath. Should you brave our lands, we will be prepared”
    Evil orb: “the Shadow will flood.”


    by Nellufy