Session 67: The Lost Empire
General Summary
The gate to Atlantis is unguarded. Probably unnecessary considering it’s hidden away on a plane that’s a well-guarded secret of a primordial fucking being. We step inside and are treated to the sight of an underwater garden. There’s people strolling about and it appears that Atlantis is quite busy as a city, despite several of us assuming that we’d be stepping into the ruins of an ancient civilization. Elathera tries to take some pictures with her camera, not realizing she’s breaking it by submerging it with us. We admire the scenery while she tries to pinpoint where her grandfather’s soul is at directly, eventually getting the information that it’s in Cedreca. What’s Cedreca? None of us know, so we’re still stepping into the city blind and with no clue where to go.
Atlantis is lit up like a modern city with magic lights, tall buildings all about, and even vehicles zipping by. These look useful for travel, so we manage to stop a passerby and ask where we can get one. They point us to a sub-cycle shop and then a bank so we can exchange some of our currency. We find ourselves in a magic shop afterwards though, spending most of our Atlantis fun money on new weapons and trinkets. With a guard’s help, we’re told that Cedreca is a power plant at the far end of the city and we’re warned that outsiders aren’t welcome there. It’s understandable that they’d be wary of people poking around the place that keeps their city running, but we all feel personally attacked by this statement and are instantly suspicious.
So we march our way to Cedreca as Industria explains how she can get whatever she wants by talking to people. In a prime example of hubris, her attempts to simply talk her way into a heavily guarded power plant fail. They can’t let us in without proper security clearance, which we don’t have, so Industria panics and throws her holy medicine ball at them. Before any of this can devolve into utter chaos, Elathera stops time and erases the guard’s memories so we can retry this. We fail. Memory wipe two and our third attempt at bullying our way into the complex. We pretend to be couriers and ask to speak with their supervisor, who they gladly bring out. When she arrives, rather than say something rational like, "Hey, somebody important topside asked us to bring this to you.“ or "Got any work for us?”; Industria says we’re here to solve their ghost problem.
W h a t? We’re starting to think that she’s stroking out at this point, so as the guards are obviously angered and tired of us loitering around; Elathera goes to wipe their memories again and fails. All the memory wiping is making Rikius uncomfortable, so we put an end to that fiasco and somehow, Elathera manages to talk the guards down. They agree to let us get a tour of the place tomorrow so long as we behave ourselves. We scurry off to find an inn, visiting a museum first and learning what we can of Atlantis’ history. The curator tells us how Atlantis existed on a material plane that came before our own. They have their own take on magic that advanced their civilization beyond many others. This magic made them a target though and several factions tried attacking them to claim it for themselves. Once someone threatened to destroy the city completely, that was it.
They cut themselves off from the material plane and with the help of Iolond (Nanati to their people), they were hidden away on the plane of water. We prod on the nature of aforementioned magic, but he says that knowledge is reserved for their governing powers. With some bribing and poking around his mind, we get what we need and leave. Their technology is powered by the energy within souls. Back in ancient times, a few powerful individuals would volunteer themselves to be sacrificed to keep powering Atlantis, but they haven’t used this practice in decades. They found a suitable soul that could power everything on its own…that soul belonging to Elathera’s grandfather. With that revelation brought to light, I pull Rikius aside to urge him to talk with Industria about his brain damage and memory issues. He’s still too embarrassed to bring it up, so I do it for him. While me and Elathera have an awkward friend date to settle differences that were never there, Industria tends to my husband and gets him all fixed up.
In the night, we’re all gifted sweet dreams thanks to Pandemonius. One his servants urges us to pay him a visit before we make our trip to the Far Lands. She won’t say much else and any attempts to question her are pointless as she teleports back to his plane. We have our plan for the day to take the tour of Cedreca, but after listening to a religious man screaming in the streets, things change. We talk with some of the gods and Tacitus, trying to figure out the best course so we don’t fuck this city over completely. It turns out that Lochoria, the goddess we rescued from the brink of non-existence way back; is set to take over as Atlantis’ power source. But no one was prepared for that so soon as her arrival means that the city is to rejoin the material plane. After talking with her, she reluctantly agrees to take over and keep the city hidden. We’ll be sure to spread tales of her and Atlantis so that they’re not immediately obliterated the minute they reappear.
With that, Elathera gets the next piece of her grandpa stuffed in her magic vacuum and we make the mistake of visiting Pandemonius early. He’s surprisingly nervous and awkward for a change, saying he desperately needs our help with something. Basically, this boy is tired of the way society operates. If you’re evil, you’re evil forever and there’s no changing that. Forget redemption quests, kids, those don’t matter so long as certain people are in charge and pushing a certain agenda. He doesn’t appreciate that there’s a handful of deities who get to sit around and choose what’s right and what’s wrong, so he wants to restart the universe. He’s got several other gods on his side, including Iolond. We’re all shocked by this news and upset because restarting the universe means everything as we know it is lost. Our families, our accomplishments, every word we’ve ever said will no longer matter.
But Pandemonius assures us that with our help, we can all find a way to avoid resetting everything completely. Instead, we can simply tweak the laws of reality and the afterlife to ensure that the issue of karma isn’t so black and white. Of course he wants to keep his power, but it sounds like he wants the gods to be on an equal playing field to avoid any of them getting to decide what’s best for everyone. It’s a lot to process, so we head to Elathera’s plane to rest and think it all over.
Character(s) interacted with
Report Date
05 May 2021
Secondary Location
Comments