111: The Island Peak
General Summary
Though Vi^3's learnings had revealed a method of approach to the tip of the island, it was still guarded by the many cultists who had claimed it. Immediately upon noticiing their hated foes the cultists would self-prepare in order to fight against them, but the response of the adventurers who were now against them was to brilliantly exercise the violence in which they were so capable.
With Aiko poisoning them and Cletus intensifying the poison they experienced, and Roseabelle and Vi^3's fire support combined with Theodore's close range maneuvers in tripping and felling his foes, they group quickly and adeptly took the tpressure they were under and executed a brutal slaying on the guarding cultists.
Opening the front entrance however, the party would quickly learn that there was a reason why these cultists had not entered further. For more creatures were now apparent - creatures made out of metal and plate stood tall and resiliently against time and foe alike and guarded the heart of the shrine.
Yet, by their nature as guardians - with those who had no destructive or desecratory intent, they merely watched. Speaking using the tongue they had stolen of from the minds of those who had entered they warned them of the true purpose of the site.
For long ago, had the weather become alive, and long ago had it developed a hatred of outsiders, only by receiving a blessing could the sea be safely journeyed upon. Though the method of this blessing would be determinate based on the wills who had come to the island.
For the cultists, they had long ago chosen to rely on the comfortable shoulders of those who had come before, by scacrificing flesh and blood they adhered to their beliefs and earned their protection from storm and fire. Whilst the option these adventurers was the more complicated and perhaps dangerous approach of knowledge seeking to the matter.
in truth, had a historian come to examine it, they would suspect that cultists had inhabited the island for only a couple centuries, but for the island itself millenia had passed since it's true owners had inscribed their mark upon it.
Inside one of the rooms of the shrine was in a desk containing notes - surviving only due to having been copied and kept carefully over many times. The translations passing from one generation to another. Though assuredly their fatalistic thoughts would leave a dark mark on anyone who shouldered a culture entirely on faith.
if one were to believe that the forerunners who built the shrine were the original authors behind the note, then one would believe that they had once created a device or piece of technology so advanced it had obtained a state of magic permenance, and in having done so gained a magical charge to reach sentience.
By their words, it would seem believable that the storm itself was more than just storm but was infact a living sentience with hostility towards the living. Attempting to destroy all the lives it could find. This worship of the sun and it's grace being one of the few methods of avoiding a perilous end.
But this was far from the only method, as the party charged and awoke the ancient machinery beneath the shrine's heart, a certain knowledge would be imparted unto the most technological of the group - a device once used by these forerunners to lightly obsfuscate their presence. By charging it with magical energy it's discharge would render to the storm - that the vessel was no more magical than the seas themselves.
Having succeeded in this goal, the adventurers would take their leave from the site and now prepare to return to the vessels of their fleet. Now almost fully rebuilt and with an option of projection it was fully up to them to leave the island and it's mysteries behind.
Although, whilst exploring a mystery might be dangerous, the true danger might be leaving it unexplored, for whilst they had been on this island for but a time, where had that strange sun-priest gone?
For this, the adventurers would have no answer, and not even the gods knew if this was a mistake that would later come back to haunt them.
Report Date
27 Jul 2024
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