Session 141: To Bear One’s Soul

General Summary

14th-15th Sydenstar 836PD   14th Sydenstar   Raphael falls to the scorched earth with a small thud, steam pouring off his body, as his icy entombment is instantly evaporated by the Balor Lord’s explosive death throes. A singed but still standing Simeon urgently calls out to him to start getting the rest of the unconscious party up.   The Winter Knight rushes to the nearby Satyr Fluff, he pats the flames out on his fur and pours a healing potion in his mouth. As the fey bard awakens, he too is given the urgent plea to help the rest of the party. Fluff pats Zeni’s flaming coat out, whilst his soothing voice sings healing words to stir her from unconsciousness.   This game of healing tag continues through the party as Zeni dutifully responds to the passed command of help, wearily patting out the flaming Felictas. Simeon provides healing aid to the rest of the unconscious party.   With all now safely roused from their burning slumber, the party take a moment to process the trauma of the battle and survey the scorched sacred site.   As the party begins to clear away the damage, the pillars around the dome seem to glow more steadily, with the planar pressure released. The magical barriers are beginning to reset, as Fluff and Felictas start to feel the magic of the dome building up to banish them back to their originating planes.   As they slowly start to fade away, Fluff bequeaths his helm of teleportation and cloak of displacement to the party in the fights that are yet to come. Felictas gives them the blessing of his patron the Law-Bearer before he disappears in a blink of radiant light. In his last moment before returning to the feywild, Fluff winks and calls on the peak of his powers to fully restore the Unbroken back to their prime with a parting Wish to their good health.   With the Shrine magically still intact, and the surrounding earth beginning to be cleared, the party reunite with Thrasturn. The Storm Giant Guardian warmly greets a victorious Zeni, honouring her as a fellow Stormborn that has protected the island. With the immediate threats now passed, Thrasturn takes the time to share the secret past of Inys Lloeren as a surviving remnant of an ancient destroyed Storm Giant flying city, Tempesta.   As Zeni has proved herself in battle, Thrasturn invites her to be a new Guardian of the Island. She accepts and is granted the powerful Sceptre of Wodensdottr. An ancient staff of tempestuous power created by Tempesta’s first Seer, and used as a symbol of office to the long-gone rulers of the city.   The party proud of Zeni’s new status, take the time to explore and understand more of the island. As well as beginning to prepare and continually run through the planned ritual. Come the evening, the party take time to admire the night sky view and magics of the leylines that the island floats along. Simeon under the emerging new moon, adds to the rock’s magical protections by forming a ritual of Forbiddance.   15th Sydenstar   At Midnight, just before the peak of the new moon, Nirathram the Bronze Shackle flies down from a Celestia rift to join the ritual. The island’s planar protections seem to acquiesce to the Divine Great Wyrm’s presence.   Arthur and Zeni share their plans for the Soul Bearing ritual with Nirathram, and he shares that the catalyst for the spell would be the baring of each other’s souls. As to bond with another Soul, you must first know it.   When the sky goes completely dark with the invisible new moon, the Unbroken begin the ritual. Standing around the Tolmon Shrine, each of them places a drop of their individual blood and a respective drop of Nirathram’s into a silver vial that hangs around their necks. The Soul Splitter device, recovered from Karkematth’s abandoned laboratory, is placed in the centre of the Shrine as a conduit.   Before the ritual incantations can begin, the catalyst must be activated, and so with a moment’s pause to reflect, each of the Unbroken peer into their own Souls to bare the truth of them.   Simeon bares the more human side of his Aasimar nature, with a mood that reflects absence of Moonlight. He chides Arthur, as a fellow countryman of the Dwendalian Empire, for his noble privileges and self-centred response to a tragedy that they both share in losing their respective parents.   Arthur, momentarily taken aback, soon ripostes on Simeon’s own hypocrisy in judging him for how one responds to trauma. He acknowledges that while he has been hampered by his grief, it too like Simeon, has moulded him into the person the Unbroken has needed to be. And through his short time with the party, he is learning to let go of the past in order to protect the future.   Building on Arthur’s last point, Raphael, Zeni and Orlando all share their own personal truths and reflections on how they’ve changed since they first met as a party, 9 months ago in Drynna.   Raphael reflects on how he has grown, a body that woke up in the cold alone with nobody to trust, bar himself. First meeting the party masquerading as a ‘Paladin of the Moon-Weaver’, he’s now grown as the Winter Knight, into someone with the strength of his convictions that can trust others.   Zeni remembers one of the first arguments she caused with the group, when she stole some copper pieces out of a shrine to the Wild-Mother in Drynna. Now, she’s the one who’s a Guardian and protector of this shrine. She remarks on her similar painful past of being enslaved with no memory of her family, and has ended joining a group with familiar sorrow. It’s in the Unbroken where she has found her family.   Orlando acknowledges that his continual pursuit of power, has been for a search for worth. And it’s been the party that’s helped him prove his worth to them, and to himself. He recognises that in each of every member’s way they are all broken, but together they make each other whole, like links in a chain. The bonds they’ve formed will forever remain Unbroken.   With their souls bared, each of their silver vials starts to glow, catalysing the ritual. Nirathram hovers over the shrine, his body glowing as Zeni leads the party off in the ritual incantations. A bright radiant blue light erupts from Nirathram down into the Shrine, and is channelled through the Soul Splitter into each of the Unbroken.   The overwhelming circle of magic strains the protective pillars of the dome, causing it again to flicker out as several abyssal rifts open across the sky over Inys Lloeren. The air fills with filth and a nauseating cacophony of insectoid skittering, as a Large Cockroach Demon Lord and its roachling spawn crawl out of the rifts.    With Nirathram now acting as the source of the Soul magic, he cannot intervene with the demonic infestation. The Unbroken must now defend the island against the roaches of the rifts, while keeping hold of enough of their concentration to finish the Soul Bearing ritual, as they will perish if they fail in either endeavour.