Session 19: Are you there, God? It's me, a fungal owl.

General Summary

Boy, oh boy, oh boy, here we go. The culmination of nearly 2 years of planning and scheming. The introduction of The Big Plot Hook.
We start in media res with the group falling through a mysterious red portal in the Mill of the Gods. Battered and gore-splattered, they reach through the rift and find themselves suddenly...somewhere else.
Jump cut between two different parties here:
The majority of the group: Kitanya Evermoon, L0L4 , Khashayar Entezami, Num Erik Al, ALEK51 , and Wynnie Bishop. They take a portal unlike any they've used before and find themselves in a ruby-tinted desertscape of eroding bones and a carpet of plants engaging in a perpetual and nearly instantaneous cycle of life and death: seed, sprout, flower, wither, die, dust. Seed, sprout, flower...
The party looks around and notices they are short one character: Amanita Guttata.
Said owlin finds themself tumbling through the inky blackness of an in between where there is no sensation of direction, temperature, light, sound...All proprioception is negated as Amanita falls through nothingness. They become aware of a presence in front of them, as unfathomable as an 18-wheeler to a tiny ant, a presence that feels inescapable like a firm hand steering your face to look but as loving as a mother's gentle touch. The Owlin's keen eyes see nothing but they know something is there, like a figure looming over your bed when you close your eyes.
The party outside this void quickly determines that the very air is drenched in necromantic energy, the taste of mulchy decay and fresh bright citrus life. They also reason that they are on no plane known to Ostelliach - either something new, or something specially created. They seek their wayward party member with both magic and investigation but find nothing. There is nothing around them, no temperature, no wind. Overhead, no celestial bodies oversee their transgressions. They are utterly alone.
Amanita reaches out with a tentative mind and is met with a voice. This voice, ringing with the sounds of many in polytoned harmony beyond gender or perception, says it has been waiting for someone like Amanita. Someone walking the edge of life and death, ravenously curious, willing to heed an adventurer's call to leave some cave or lab and venture forth when called. The voice intones that it is the breath in and out, the beginning of life and the close of its chapter. Amanita dares to ask who is speaking and is met with the many omens and images associated with the long-lost god of necromancy, Divaia - the scent of citrus, the last slip of a sunset below the horizon, the spreading of deep red wine on yellow silk, a fragile glass dagger honed to deadly point.
This voice, Divaia's voice, tells the Owlin that they have been imprisoned, spending long long years railing against the bars of this crystalline cage - the rift the party is in - to send an envoy, a signal, a plea for help. Amanita received this calling, and though it is not asked if they were the first, they were the first to heed it fully. They say that the other gods of Ostelliach are similarly trapped, and task Amanita to help them break from their cage and then assist the other selected champions (be they other party members or random people Amanita hears about on the road) to free the other gods. Divaia shows Amanita, briefly, a world where The Web were not strained, a world where their innovations and curiosities would be lauded, not distrusted and left to struggle in obscurity.
When asked who did this to Divaia, the god replies with careful deliberateness: "Someone who...did not understand the impact they were having on the larger whole. Done not out of malice but out of recklessness none-the-less. It was not impulsiveness, but that is the closest a mortal mind can come to understanding the use of this level of power."
Amanita's Insight tells them that this voice is being sincere, if not very exact in their wording of answers - one wonders if to obscure or to sidestep magical compulsion - and that the fondness, palpable relief, strangled frustration, and naked desperation to the plea are true. This is a god, brought to heel and made to beg.
Divaia tells the owlkin that they must seek a crystal of some sort at the center of this Rift (and apologizes in the godlike equivalent of sheepishness that they regret hurting Amanita so far and regret dragging the party here insofar as they cannot grant escape from the Rift without that crystal).
Amanita solemnly vows to help this power and is brought in a blink back to their friends, staggering out of a shimmering rip in spacetime to fall into the sand with quite a story to tell.
After giving a much-abridged version that will certainly be dissected in detail later, the party sets off to recover this precious godblood artifact. They traipse through the wilderness for a truly immeasurable amount of time, having no sun or moons to track their way. They take turns being exhausted and dragging the others along, their bodies fighting off the innate necromantic powers of this sphere as best as they can. Khashayar Entezami and Num Erik Al succumb to this power, with Zami's existing wounds constantly sealing then reopening in painful cycles while Al, previously uninjured, watches his flesh begin to necrotize then rejuvenate in a similarly excruciating cycle. This ailment blessedly goes away with a good rest among the sands, the party choosing an arbitary place under the ambivalent sky to camp, but the feeling of it lurks in both of their minds as a haunting crawl on their flesh afterward.
Eventually, mercifully, the party sees the crystal in question shimmering over the dunes like a beautiful mirage. An army of anomalous bone constructs pull themselves from the nearby sand to silently oversee the proceedings, seemingly either drawn to or created by the power of this item but making no move to protect it. Amanita takes the ruby-like crystal, a jagged-edged stone of mysterious origin, the world's most magical paperweight-sized item cupped in both hands. Their chest blazes with a familiar heartburn but after flaring fades to a comfortable warmth that stays there, not painful but soothing.
Having acquired the keystone keeping this rift open, the world folds in on itself and in another blink the party finds themselves ejected back out into the Mill with no sense of how much time, if any, has passed. Amanita holds the stone, the moons are back where they belong, and the ordeal is seemingly over.
Uncertain of where to even start with the enormity of all they've learned, the party begins to pick itself up. Kitanya Evermoon, despondent and horrified by a time of abandonment by the celestial bodies that have always guided her, lays on the forest floor and stares up at the dusky sky. The moons are in the same phases as when she left. All seems well. She feels sick all the same. Khashayar Entezami stays with her while the rest of the party dares one last foray into the Mill to retrieve any artifacts or treasures they can. They acquire a few pieces and exit posthaste, exhausted if not physically then mentally and emotionally, needing to regroup and figure out where the fuck to go from here.

Rewards Granted

• Several samples of the sand in the Rift (to whomever would have taken one)

• An inert arcane focus crystal from one of the long dead golems of the Mill, for L0L4 to trade back at the AHARRG Guild Hall of The Endeavour

• Rubbings of the ancient runes on said golems for ALEK51 to research

• Ossified dragon turtle scute for ALEK51

Of plot criticality:

• Godblood Crystal, Ruby. Emanates faint necromantic energy. Was warned firmly to only be handled by Amanita Guttata.

• Mark of Divaia: An invisible seal on Amanita's breast. Exudes faint warm glow. Detectable by Detect Magic as a form of Necromancy. Add 1d4 to any Necrotic damage or healing magic dealt. Grants Advantage to Perception or Investigation checks to locate/notice Undead. If already Advantage, grants Expertise (2x Proficiency bonus). Gain one use of Command Undead per long rest, using your Druid spellcaster DC.

Notes

Out of character visual references:

• Death Stranding's Timefall from Death Stranding

• Elden Ring's Wailing Dunes, the battlefield of Starscourge Radahn

Report Date

14 Aug 2024

Primary Location

Mill of the Gods

Related Characters

• ALEK51
• Amanita Guttata
• Divaia
• Kitanya Evermoon
• L0L4
• Num Erik Al
• OLD, to Remove
• Wynnie Bishop