Ionessa and Neo examine the ember, they find that it has a powerful magical aura of evocation, necromancy, and transmutation. It’s not evil and it’s not alive! Neo tries to commune with Fytanke about it but she ain’t responding to his calls… Maybe some other time. Kestor arranges an hour long poetry reading to unlock his new spirit powers! In doing so he learns that absolutely nobody in the party has a good education on the arts, so he starts making a class rubric.
Kestor thinks about what Ektikori might ask of us in exchange for hiding the ember, but he’s never heard of any stories because they’re a secret. The party talks a lot about Kestor while he’s not in the room.
There is little good news when it comes to that book. It came to Bion’s attention some years ago. He has heard stories similar to mine but with grimmer conclusions. He sought out the play and was able to recover it and had it in his possession, but it was stolen from his library by Isadora on Heroes’ Day. He was trying to determine the origins of the play, who wrote it and why, but he made an error. He permitted guests into his home. Isadora went missing in the middle of the night on her ship (her whole ship and crew disappeared), he last saw her reading the play. He believes something came over her, some bidding that he knows not the source of and it overcame her.
He had heard tales of traveling performers turned bandits on the road West of Cherianto. He set out to deal with it and when he arrived there was naught but destruction, a burned caravan, and a mad person clutching the play. THE VISION I SAW OF ME GOING FOR THE PLAY WAS ISADORA’S MEMORY! KING BION WAS THE FIGURE THAT TOLD ME TO LEAVE THE BOOK ALONE! Isadora is one of the spirits…?
King Bion has a list of names he wants to tell about the ember. Not the greatest minds in Koss but certainly people who would want to keep it out of the wrong hands:
- Learchos the Learned Shield - abjuration specialist? Could help keep it cut off. Philosopher from Rheo who didn't go to war, was left behind to defend the city. Contemporary of Eustathius, she believes in defending what’s yours, don’t be overly ambitious.
- Singing Doriskos- From Rheo. Party girl, bit of a drunk, kind of a higher-functioning Kestor. Eloquent but kind of a disaster.
- Astyanax the Tripecaller - Conjuration - From the country of Rheo but not the city. Master conjurer, nickname derived from experiments summoning less favorable things (alleged devil/demon summoning). He’s an eccentric not a devil worshiper, according to Bion.
- Paerse the Ledger Keeper. Traveling scholar. She keeps a great amount of knowledge.
- Drosis the Unseen - Illusions. An illusionist and trickster that Phaedra does not like. He/Him
- Epeius the Portentious - Diviner. Unknown
- Shapewise Ianthe. Scholar from the Merchant Republics. She is from the city of Spor. Expert in transmutation experiments but not actively creating monsters, more interested in theory than application.
- Atë the Fell - Bad type of magic? Unknown
- Eustathius!!! Xanthos hears this name and thinks of someone sitting there not doing anything and letting things happen. Kestor’s master, he’s biased against him.
- Gylippus the Lord of War????
We come up with a codeword to refer to the ember in public: The focusing potion we left in Limpani. We debate the expert list. Kestor doesn’t want Eustathius, Xanthos has concerns about Astyanax. Ionessa brings up that there’s nobody from the ocean there, nor anyone who knows more about the divine. Bion is a little offended that we’re criticizing his list, and he acts pretty condescending about it.
King Bion wants to return to Limpani to gather magical components to teleport back to Cherianto. We’re worried that if we take the ship back through the strait, the kraken will come for the ember (the strait is where Ionessa found the ember in the first place). So we decide to try to sneak back into the city and teleport out, the Evlogimenos can take the ship back around south to avoid the kraken. We try to reach Iros via sending to see how his hunting expedition went, but he’s not responding, so he’s either dead or unconscious from partying too hard after a victory.
Neo touches the ember to his special Fytanke staff made of ancient petrified wood. Life slowly begins to return to the staff from the touch of the ember! He wakes everyone up to consult but everyone’s pretty cool with him bringing the staff back to life.
Neo has an unusual dream. He’s standing in a plain filled with burned ground and dead trees. It feels more and less real than a dream, he can smell the ash and feel it under his feet but he is immediately aware that he is dreaming and this is not real. Yet he does not have control. He steps into the center of the field and produces the ember and begins to dig. He digs down beneath the ash and the dead earth and beneath it he reaches living, healing earth. He sets the ember down into the hole and buries it, feeling an immense sense of satisfaction. He smells something that jolts him out of his dream
He smells smoke! There is a fire in front of him. The ember has been uncovered and it is being clutched in the currently engulfed arm of Ophia, the ember is burning away the plants that are coiling around her arm. Ionessa gets burned trying to grab it, and Xanthos slings Ophia over his shoulder and carried her above deck to dive into the water. Her arm starts boiling the ocean water! Xanthos manages to separate her from the ember. She says she was just doing what the Oracle told her to do.
We heal her up and chastise her. She didn’t think we’d let her use the ember because we’re always talking about how it shouldn’t be used for anything but reviving Bion, plus Xanthos wants her to be a tree. But it looks like it worked! She doesn’t have the dryad curse anymore as far as she can tell and she doesn’t have to stay within 60ft of the seed. Neo believes that his dream is correlated with the use of the ember, that its proximity and power made its way into his dream.
Ophia doesn’t know what she wants to do now that she’s free, but she seems willing to travel with us into the city to get our hands on the magical chalk for Bion. We decide to head into the city at night and try to break into a magical shop to get what we need. At the last minute Ionessa thinks we can just ask the guards if we can make an out-of-hours purchase. It works, the guard is a Cas character and is so infatuated that she sells us the chalk!
Next we look for Gylippus! Ionessa asks some rats for his location and they find out for us. Xanthos throws a huge fit about not eating bread on the side of the street that the rats were eating. We must pay them bread, eggs, and cheese. We speak with Gylippus and give him the full details as to our mission. He says he wants to think on it, he’ll decide when Bion gets in touch with him but he’s inclined to leave the life of “altering world events” behind. We bid him goodbye.
Xanthos looks for rat food. His views on rats are called into question.
We make it back to the ship, everything’s fine! We make preparations to return to Cherianto. Leos will come with us, and so will Adelpha! Kestor and Thales share a moment… Ionessa hugs everyone on the ship. The portal opens, we run through!
The end!
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