The Temple of the Sun

Written by Chrundle_the_Great

General Summary

Overview

With Kapital growing its resources over several weeks, Ravix feels comfortable recusing himself to pursue a personal quest. While hunting the suneater bear that plagued the monks of Spring Garden, the paladin stumbled across a ruined sunstone shrine and heard an otherworldly voice telling him to partake in their challenge.
Accompanied by fellow hunter Bruswick and the founders Chuma and Koheleth (both of whom see opportunities for riches in this "lost temple"), Ravix now ventures into the Fellgrim Forest to complete this mysterious trial and learn more about the entity who summoned him.
Will Kapital survive the Trial of the Sun? What treasures will they walk away with, if any?

Don't Move, You're Surrounded

Overgrown with vines, the sunstone shrine presented no obvious entrances to the party. Casting find steed, Ravix summoned Dougbrad, who happily devoured the debris piled up around the shrine. As the party investigated the surrounding, Ravix found what appeared to be an obvious doorway; to others, it merely looked like a sunstone wall intricately carved into mosaics of the sun's rise and fall. As the paladin returned to his friends to share his discovery, he found them stock-still, their hands upturned and weapons thrown to their feet.
Lady Jane and her Lightning Arrows surrounded the party. Having encountered Jane once before, Chuma began negotiating payment for the bandits, but their captain was very curious about finding the party in this particular spot in the woods. Exasperated, Ravix explained his mission; Jane, whose employer told her she would find valuables here, only asked to accompany the party.
Settling on a 55/45 split of treasure in Jane's favor, Koheleth drew up a contract with an aasimar priestess from the Lightning Arrows. Curiously, he noticed various shell companies, all feeding into a group called the Grand Najas Venture; the Lightning Arrows would keep very little of what they found, and Koheleth quietly wondered how Lady Jane got involved in such a suffocating arrangement.
Koheleth waited outside with the Lightning Arrows, while the party investigated the sunstone door. Unsure how he knew this, Ravix traced the raised lines in the mosaics and determined that replacing the missing central piece would activate a long-dormant teleportation circle. Koheleth carved the proper lines into a stone with a chisel, and Ravix placed the piece into the door.
Stones began sliding away horizontally; their absence revealed void. After tossing pebbles and torches inside, the party could not find solid ground; the void seemed to extend infinitely in all directions. Remembering his mind-breaking vision when praying to the First Moon, Ravix used glorious radiance and began glowing with true sunlight. Where sunlight touched the void, pale stones hovered in darkness, and the party cautiously followed the path that was revealed (or was it created?) by the sunlight shining from Ravix's form.

The Lunatic's Bridge

As the party walked the pale stone bridge, they felt madness tugging at them; this stone felt wrong, in some strange way. Feeling his sunlight dimming, Ravix guided the party to a set of doors, hewn from a strange metal, like platinum or white gold. Carved into the doors were not words, but music, although the party did not know how they knew that. Jane remarked that it reminded her of Elvish and picked out the word "ambition." As Ravix touched the carvings, the doors opened into a circular chamber with four orbs like tiny suns; although radiant with power, these orbs did not burn the party.
As all stepped into the room, Ravix's sunlight finally flickered out, and the doorway disappeared. Panicked, Jane searched for the doors' outline, while Ravix marvelled at the suns. Chuma noticed that the party's shadows all bore a pair of angelic wings. Watching carefully, Bruswick noticed the walls changing under different intensities of light; the ranger directed all where to stand, so that their shadows were cast in one location. Scanning the entire chamber in this way, Bruswick revealed two hallways of void, one marked with sunstone, and one leading to a lone shrine. Ravix led the party to the shrine, sensing something supremely holy there.

The Trial Begins

Again, the party found a mosaic, although this one was massive and hewn from resplendent light. It depicted a huge figure with fiery wings and bloodied hands, who Ravix seemed convinced was Val, the First Sun and divinity of the Sun Elves. The shrine itself held two necklaces and a longsword buried to its hilt.
Sensitive to treasure, both Chuma and Jane looted the spell-imbued necklaces, while Ravix pulled the sword from the shrine. Sensing something off about the holy avenger, Ravix relinquished the blade, which Bruswick happily accepted. Those who accepted treasure from the shrine began glowing and felt glorious. Excited to find more treasure, Jane urged everyone to be ambitious, as she had read from the carvings of song.

Be Nice to the Waitstaff

Heading down the sunstone tunnel from earlier, the party entered an opulent banquet hall, furnished with gaudy golden decorations. Six nobles feasted and drank from gleaming goblets, while four servants saw to their needs. The nobility introduced themselves and offered a key to the next room, if the party could impress five of them with stories of their choosing; one of the nobles, Favian, gleefully said one of them would be slighted.
As Chuma regaled Opulence with the value of information and Bruswick told Vinathur about his hunt of the fearsome King Crab, Jane impressed Reen with her rise to nobility by becoming an experienced archer and earning enough to buy herself a title.
Meanwhile, Ravix noticed one of the servants, Garcy, struggling to light a brazier as the nobles demanded light. Pulled away by Aniel who wanted to hear about the most important person Ravix ever met, the paladin subtly used thaumaturgy to spark the brazier; grateful Garcy silently said her thanks and motioned to another of the servants who needed help. Put off by their rudeness, Ravix excused himself from the nobles' table and offered his help to the other overworked servants. Astounded that he would debase himself, all six nobles ignored Ravix for the remainder of the challenge.
Seeing Aniel insulted, Chuma stepped in and told her of the time he met the pharaoh of Khaempe. Finally, he won Leandra's respect with an exaggerated, bloodier version of his last encounter with the one of the revenants hunting him. Satisfied, the five nobles gifted Chuma, Bruswick, and Jane with wealth, potions, and the key to the next room.
Shocked that he had been slighted, Favian stood in complete disbelief. Although Ravix tried to comfort him, prideful Jane talked down to him; the helpless noble cowered as Jane only glowed brighter.

The Sunlit Coliseum

As the party entered the next room, raucous applause sounded all around them. They stepped into a titanic coliseum, brimming with masses of joyous spectators. On a central dais, a gold dragon coiled and coiled around chests overflowing with glittering treasure. Noticing the party, she took the form of an "elven" woman with marble skin and spoke:

It appears we have new challengers.
Fight my first champion, and you shall gain entry to the final room.
However, fight my other champions, and glory and gold will be yours.

— Shyndyr Glorykeeper

The Brass Banker Chuma inspected the treasures; among vast riches, scrolls, and potions, he saw plate mail hewn from the sturdy scales of a gold dragon. Seeking treasure (and perhaps drunk on their glory), Chuma and Jane enthusiastically leapt into the ring, while Bruswick and Ravix more calmly took their places at their side.
The first champion, a unicorn with a fiery mane, charged the party with thrill for the battle. Its magic was strong, but all, except Ravix, used their glory to beseech the sun above the coliseum for greater strength; their weapons blazed with fire, and the crowd cheered as they felled the unicorn, who joined them and began cheering on its fellow champions.
While Ravix and Bruswick were content with the final room's key, Chuma and Jane both wanted more treasures, more glory. They outwitted the knights Nanri and Leva, who worried over their son Akril's injuries. They targeted the pegasus Adosi and caused her companion Asinder to forfeit for his mount's safety. They dispelled a couatl's holy winds and nearly killed the creature with an arrow to its eye. Victorious, the duo were the new favorites and basked in the crowd's thunderous applause as their final opponent drew near.
Shyndyr stepped from the dais to the battlegrounds. "You may go first," she said.
Never one to admit defeat, Chuma broke all the beads on his looted necklace and cast meteor swarm on the patient Mistress of the Coliseum. As fire and smoke cleared, the arena was decimated... save for where the Glorykeeper stood. She exhaled radiant flames, burning both combatants alive, before switching to the healing breath possessed by gold dragons. The party reunited, quite a bit richer in gold and pride, before entering the final room of the trial.

Burn, Icarus, Burn

A long hallway extended out before them. The walls were decorated with frescoes of the valiant acts of dozens of heroes. Sitting on an opulent throne was a golden-armored figure, vaguely elvish, with flaming wings. Rising, he gestured to the walls and said:

You've proven yourselves thus far.
One more trial, and perhaps you too will be honored on these walls.

— Sun Elf

His form shifted. Still towering at fifteen feet tall, his skin turned to white gold, while his eyes swirled with fire. Expressionless, he glided through the air and began chanting, "Icarus. Icarus." The walls filled with the carvings of music, and those who collected glory during the trial began to glow and burn. They writhed in pain, and the being whispered, "Pride cometh before the fall." Chuma and Jane plummetted towards the ceiling, where they burned as the being struck them with blade and fire.
In the carvings on the walls, Ravix understood the full phrase Jane translated: "Shed your ambition." The figure paid him no mind as he tried to defend his allies and heal their wounds. Wielding their hubris as a weapon, this judge branded them with fire; the party was no match for him alone, so Ravix did all that was left in a hopeless situation—pray.
As his allies' treasures and weapons crumbled to ash, the paladin prayed to the Sun for the strength to defend those who needed him. The guardian descended towards him and whispered, "The sun also rises." At his touch, Ravix condensed into a mote of light and shot through the ceiling.
Their bodies and pride injured, Chuma and Jane searched for weapons near the throne, while Bruswick shot arrows that sparked off the guardian's gilded skin. As Chuma attempted to defile the throne with spilled blood, he burned and fell unconscious. The being bore down on the party and melted Jane's plate mail before leaving the room. In its wake, all were healed, but their weapons and treasures lie in molten ruin.

A Humble Student of Religion

Ravix awoke in the cold embrace of the void. Far, far, below, he saw a sun burning at the center of a moonstone walkway. Strange creatures, none of which the paladin recognized, strained to approach the sun, but their shadows bound them like chains.
He watched as the guardian glided into the sun easily. Still glowing from his touch, Ravix descended a moonstone stairway for hours before, closing his eyes, and walking into the sun too. The guardian and other Sun Elves gathered inside. Ravix's vision warped as he saw these beings in eight dimensions; still like statues, they had hundreds of fiery wings circling them like a planet's rings. All of them mourned one — Val, who lie dead, pierced through with a blade of void.
Seeing the First Sun dead, Ravix fell to his knees. He asked the guardian what he could do to help. Speaking with the Sun Elves was disorienting, as they remembered events that had not happened yet. Still, the guardian reassured him:

One who does not truly live cannot truly die.
The Words of Creation were locked away long ago.
When you are blessed by Val, Voi, and Lunari... I suppose, you would have the power to do anything, including help, if that is what you wish.

— Sun Elf

The being encouraged Ravix to seek out the other trials, one for the Moon, one for the Stars. Ravix returned to the party, entrusted with a new ring. He tended to their wounds and thanked them for helping him complete his quest.
Jane sobbed, terrified of her employer's wrath for failing to bringing back dust instead of treasure. Gentle Ravix reassured her that she and the Lightning Arrows would have his help dealing with their master. Surprised, Jane thanked him and followed the party on their way back.
Using his new ring, Ravix cast daylight to create the moonstone bridge, and the party left the void for the Fellgrim Forest, where Jane reunited with her company, while Koheleth frowned at the lack of treasure.
Jane promptly tore up the contract, letting Ravix keep the one and only treasure brought back from the dungeon. She also said the Lightning Arrows would be telling her employer that she had died, and she asked for a temporary place to stay with Kapital. Motivated by the Grand Najas Venture's vast riches, both Chuma and Koheleth acquiesced. Finally, as the party walked through the Fellgrim Forest, she asked what beasts the guild was hunting, much to Bruswick's excitement.

Rewards Granted

Ring of the Burning Sun

Report Date

25 Feb 2023

Primary Location

Temple of the Sun

Related Characters

• Bruswick
• Chuma
• Koheleth
• Lady Jane
• Ravix