The City of Doors
Dragging themselves back into Odija, Dina and Kipilu collapsed back at the inn. The next morning, Topin and Imora returned - apparently there were shenanigans surrounding Imora's thefts from the solar temple earlier that day. Dina was sorry about the prior night and swore to "grow as a person", though she seemed to treat personal growth like some sacred, horrible burden and duty best measured in pain and effort.
The crew decided to ride out of town at the earliest possible point. Onwards, to Arzet!
The group rode through the Adira Mountains, struggling across the rocky slopes and snowdrifts. The horses kept getting hurt, and it was only by Dina's powers that they could continue. The symbols of the Chimera were everywhere, imperiously glaring down from mountaintops and castles. Finally, when they were near the border with Varasa, they found a village willing to sell mutated horse-goats as mounts that were perfect for covering snow and mountains. The mutant mounts were expensive, though - 100 gold a piece. Since they lacked the money, Dina decided to offer the villages her services as a healer and miracle-maker. She resurrected a dead member of the network in a new body in front of them, and then that resurrected person evangelized Dina's message to them. Drawn to an escape from all death and suffering, the village leaders joined the Network and then encouraged the rest of the village to join. Dina was busy healing and didn't see anything that wrong with this anyways; Imora and Kipilu were disturbed. The village gave them their expensive mounts, and they continued forward.
Entering into Empire of Eketen was a relief; no more rough terrain and imperial troops. But, as the group entered Eketen, they found signs of violence - burnt out villages, creeks carrying the debris of battle. After camping one night, a village raid occurred nearby. Dina and Kipilu went to investigate and found soldiers of one faction razing a village they had just pillaged; an imperial cavalry officer had rounded up the survivors in a cattle pen and were deciding what to do with them. Dina and Kipilu approached and were spared by the officer, who warned them to either go back to the road or surrender for safe-keeping. Both Dina and Kipilu were horrified by the carnage of the scene. Dina asked if it would be impulsive for her to intervene. Kipilu gave her the go-ahead. Dina used a cat to creep up to the officer's horse and add it to the network, hijacking the mount and sending the officer careening into a burning wheat field, where the horse kicked her repeatedly. The soldiers slew the horse, but were now scattered. Kipilu led the survivors out of the cattle pen and into the woods, while Dina stayed behind to distract the soldiers (with violence). The survivors gathered at the group's camp, and were healed by Dina. Amazed by her power and desperate for a savior after all that trauma, they joined the network and promised to spread the power of the apocalypse across the villages who needed protection.
Finally, the group arrived in Kiazerov, City of Doors. They settled into a nice merchant's inn, The Old Stone Lobster, and decided to plan their next moves. Kipilu felt that they were missing something, and decided to check Arzet's location - they were not in Adov anymore. Kipilu told Dina this, and asked for Dina to join him in the memory zone to look through possible locations. Kipilu wanted to only give one, but Dina insisted on all of their locations; Kipilu gave in. Dina, it turns out, knew all of their locations but Arzet's already (thanks to her connection to the other Nemeses) but wanted Kipilu to have a chance to demonstrate his "redemption". The two talked over what to do, and agreed to pursue Makar, The Masked One, instead of Arzet. They would jump through the arcane waygates in three days to Asalay. To prepare, Dina turned herself into a perfect copy of Kipilu and headed out in the city - she would return in two day's time, prepared.
After Dina left, Kipilu told Imora and Topin about all this. Imora felt that this was a terrible idea, and insisted that killing Dina was the only solution. Every step closer to capturing the Gods is another step closer to Dina destroying the world, and the point of this journey was to keep Dina safely distracted and not doing that. Since Kipilu refused to help Imora kill Dina, Imora decided that she needed to scout ahead and warn Makar that this would be happening. So, the group decided to look for a wizard that could take them through the gates without asking for a ridiculous sum of gold.
The group decided to search for another quirky wizard by checking local inns and taverns (like last time), and actually found one that way by a turn of immense fortune (a one-in-one-hundred chance, one might say). The group found Zyrtec, Archmage of Stars scamming people in a tavern that he owned. The sketchy wizard did actually seem powerful, even if he was running a pyramid scheme here. Kipilu talked with him, and offered him some lore about himself in exchange for help. Zyrtec seemed impressed and told Kipilu that he wanted political information from the Grand Duchess of the city in exchange for help. Kipilu broke into the Duchess' clan hall in order to steal those documents, leading to a series of bungled chases and chained failed ruses. After almost dying to the local cat guardians of the hall, Kipilu got the documents and escaped.
Zyrtec was impressed, and offered Kipilu something great: that evening, a carriage would drop by and take him and his friends to better lodging, for free! Kipilu agreed to this, gave an address next to the tavern he was staying at, and got in the carriage that showed up that night. The carriage already contained an interesting character: Dipetsa, an armored knight, who locked the carriage shut after they entered it. Dipetsa asked them about various Dina-related crimes in the Empire of Calazen, and Kipilu lied convincingly to throw her off their trail. Dipetsa decided that this was the wrong Kipilu, but that she had an obligation as a host to lodge and support this incorrect Kipilu anyways. She had apparently put a price out for information about Kipilu and Dina, and had been alerted when Zyrtec had tried to sell Kipilu's information to any willing buyers at the academy. The crew attended dinner with her, and she explained that this Kipilu was a powerful magical being she was looking to protect from a dangerous magical evil (Dina). She had been tasked by her Goddess, Jade, Lunar God of Order, to investigate Kipilu and potentially swoop in if something bad happened; she was supposed to avoid direct intervention, but she had decided to make contact anyways. So she had teleported in a few days ago and made plans to politely introduce herself.
After dinner, a servant of Dipetsa informed her that the real Kipilu had been spotted using the teleportation pads in the Academy. Apparently, he looked just like this Kipilu, too! Dipetsa decided that this was a strange turn of fate, and that the two needed to be introduced right away! Kipilu realized that this was Dina, impersonating him to avoid being apprehended. He was not amused.
That night, Imora was sent to Asalay by Zyrtec (whose real name was apparently Baldrich). Later that night, Kipilu was summoned by Dipetsa to meet the other Kipilu, who was clearly moving between arcane gates. The meeting was quick and awkward. The next day, Kipilu decided to steal more information for Zyrtec to help ensure that the wizard would actually help Imora get back to Kiazerov before Dina got back. This involved infiltrating the Dunahos - the large semi-underground castle of Kiazerov. While Kipilu had struggled before, this time he did extremely well and stole several diaries and boxes of letters with little hassle and no detection.
After getting Zyrtec to go to Asalay, Kipilu spend the rest of the day panhandling. That night, Imora would be returning; then Dina. It was time for everything to start happening.
Networking
The Gang Loses Arzet
Wizard Moments
Mistaken Identities
Components
Goals
QUEST GOALS
- Find your squad
- Get Dina to not apocalypse?
- Save the world
Relations
Protagonists
Kipilu: A little meow-meow. Bard, cat, friend. The Hidden One
Arzet: A distant kobold and the Chimera reborn.
Makar: A traveling changeling and the Masked One Reborn
Potha: A distant adventurer and Halcyon reborn.
Allies
Dina: Dina is Kipilu's oldest childhood friend. They've grown up in the same barracks, hell, Dina is the first person Kipilu ever met. Dina was exiled from her birth-home, the village-estate of Zeheno, as a politically inconvenient bastard child of the local estate manager. Dina's always been an outspoken and moralistic child, driven to befriend and defend and generally play the hero and the martyr. She clashed often with her teacher Suya over perceived hypocrisy in the Sunekan system, which see seeks an ideal version of. Dina is a skilled wizard, but has a far greater power now: that of the Fourth Apocalypse, which inhabits her body and allows her to destroy and create on a whim. Dina is wracked by guilt and overwhelming pressure - she wants to fix everything with her power and cheat the system to save as much of the world as she can, but she also doesn't want to kill Kipilu.
Imora: Imora is a Kobold-born Chorical born of a Calazan merchant, taken as an orphan by the state after her parents abandoned her in Suneka at a young age. Imora has always been suspicious and cynical, preferring the safety of herself and those she cares about to the ideals of some broken system. Imora is a very lonely girl, distant from her fellow priests outside of Kipilu and (to a lesser extent) Dina. Imora is skilled in the areas of stealth, precision marksmanship, and general subterfuge. She is a proud and self-destructive person.
Topin: Topin is a Vesper, born to wanderers and orphaned in infancy. An excited and idealistic soldier, Topin loves the Suneka and everyone in it. A fellow member of Kipilu's original barracks, Topin is excited and cheery- a fan of making others laugh. He chose to be a Guardian of Hokzin - a warrior, rather than a Fox-priest. Topin is an excellent shot and has earned the right to use a specially-modified rifled musket: an unwieldy but unusually accurate sharpshooter's weapon
Neutrals/Bystanders
Baldrich the Wizard, aka Archmage Zenthurias Zyrtec: Powerful wizard of the Founding Academy and owner of the Blue Unicorn tavern. A swindler who surrounds himself with other swindler-spellcasters. His tavern, which appears rather nice, is geared towards his crew's many multi-level marketing schemes, cons, and other ways to extract money from passers-by. Baldrich's power and usefulness shields him for consequences, though he is generally rejected by his fellow academy wizards for being a weird conman. His favorite alias is Archmage Zyrtec, which Kipilu knows him as. Zyrtec is extremely performative, and seems to have a pretending to be a mysterious adventurer with a convoluted backstory and a difficulty "remaining corporeal".
Dipetsa the Knight Errant of Calazen: An idealistic paladin of Jade, Goddess of Order, who has been tracking the devastation caused by Dina and Kipilu and used the teleportation gates to jump ahead and check them out in person. She has sworn against attacking Dina directly, but wanted to monitor the situation from nearby in case something went wrong. She is confrontational but also very reverent; her demeanor turns on a dime, but is always formal.
Adversaries
Autumnstar of Udrelet Hall: A mutated starspawn that is a mixture between prism and cat, who leads a clan of semi-prism cats in defense of Clan Udrelet. Considers this city their hunting grounds. Deeply Ketarun.
Plot type
QUEST
Parent Plot
Related Organizations
Related Locations
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