In the Cold, Under the Dark

Life, Supernatural

To save Indigo from eclipse corruption, the party must bring him to an expert in the elf prefecture.

Indigo’s condition has deteriorated greatly over the trip to Seorsandor. He can no longer tell if he is awake and keeps seeing visions of nature and his friends attacking him. They agree on a safe word to use to pull him from his dream fugues. Seorsandor should be a haven right now. A place of nature unbound where the world can always meet the needs of the Elves who live there. However the eclipse has taken its toll here as well, and the home of Clerics of the Nature Domain is dying just like everywhere else.   Since the locals don’t speak any common, Mirian takes on the heavy lifting of speaking for the party. He asks a Fey Knight where they might find someone to help Indigo. The Knight points them toward a woman named Wreath, but Indigo asks to see The Druid’s Grove, the final resting place of all druids, first.   In the Druid’s Grove, Indigo finds the tree grown from Sapphire Sage’s remains. He expected this, but another tree takes him by surprise. Kava, from the Circle of the Moon, has been slain by somebody with Eldritch energy. Her druidic focus has been stolen and Indigo immediately pieces together who murdered her.   “I’m going to kill Lawrence Aarden” Indigo swears.   On their way to Wreath’s, the party mercifully comes across somebody yelling in common. A man looking for a way to revert a doppelganger to its original form. When the party approaches him, they realize he's Leonis Justus. He tells them a tale of how the doppelganger played all of Hearthstone. It played the refuges and paladins against each other to take charge as Whitney and Captain Balto. When Leonis was put in charge, it took his form and tricked him into losing his divinity. Now Leonis has ditched his oath of justice and merely seeks vengeance on the creature.   The party tells Leonis about the doppelganger they met and set free. It seems that the two are actually one and the same, and Leonis points a lot of his anger directly at the group. They call him a jabroney and walk away from his bullshit.   Finally the party meets Wreath. She studies the moon and its effects on the world. To understand Indigo’s condition she needs to see it in its active state. This means putting Indigo into a deep trance. Although they have misgivings at first, the party agrees to put Indigo under so long as he is chained to the ground. Wreath puts Indigo into a trance and begins studying him.   Then Indigo wild shapes into a Young Brass Dragon.   In his mind, Indigo finds himself in a sunlit field of flowers. He smells ash in the air and follows it to Morko, just after the fire. When a couple Paladins walk through the wreckage he takes them as the perpetrators of this violence. Indigo prepares for battle.   The Dragon bears its teeth and attacks. The party fights back.   Indigo feels the attacks of the paladins. He uses all of his strength to take them down.   The Dragon breathes fire onto Danger and Daryl, nearly killing them.   Indigo sees Merielle in the distance. She waves him to follow her. He does so.   The Dragon flies off into Seorsandor, spreading destruction. The rest of the party regroups, slapping Wreath from a state of shock. She realizes there’s a potential solution beneath the Druid’s Grove.   Indigo follows Meriele to a small cave he once saw elves from his village moving her from. She continues to grow younger and waves for him to follow her inside. He does so, finding a tunnel that goes deep into the earth, into pure darkness.   Beneath Druid’s Grove the elves have stored relics from ancient times. One such relic is a moon rock. Wreath believes they have it because in ancient times people traveled to the moon. Daryl points out that it could just have fallen to Earth as an asteroid. He’s not wrong. Nevertheless, Wreath says keeping in contact with moon rock could fulfill Indigo’s druidic circle needs without letting the magic on the real moon infect him. Now they just need to get him in contact with it.   Indigo finds a massive Dark Elf civilization… empty. He walks through it, only finding Meriele as a child. He lets her know his resolve has only grown. The whole party is coming to kill her.   The party finds the dragon. Danger hurls the moon stone at Indigo but it goes high. Daryl leaps into the air and alley-oops the stone into the Dragon’s mouth.   Indigo returns to the surface, the small cracks he passed through having been excavated into full tunnels. He emerges to find an army of dark elves in the outlands around his hometown. In the center, in Morko, a giant green and gold tree powers the eclipse. A dark elf by the name of Palantir announces to the others that Meriele is declaring war.   The Dragon calms. The wild shape dissipates and the beast transforms back into Indigo Fury, moon stone in his arms, his skin turned one hundred percent brass. He could never do this again safely.   The fey lights of Seorsandor turn red. A recall of the elves to Eldamar. The latest issue of Headlines comes in. Meriele and Sable attacked Citadel and declared war. Virescent is free and has sacked Eldamar. Queen Athena sends a letter calling for the party’s aid. They agree to head for Camp Midway to join the fight against the Dark Elves.   Meanwhile, the Brass Dragons goes through Indigo’s recent experience. His theory. It is possible.