Session XI: King at the Crossroads

Chapter 1: the Shadow Ascendant

General Summary

17-18 Resting, 1304 AM

As Caerlin, Imaros, and Jacqualine were preoccupied with the doppelganger scenario, Del'Gado had returned to the Builder's Arms and gone to sleep. He dreamt of chasing mice and being a milk-drinker, but was interrupted by a now-familiar figure clad in golden-runed red robes and a sombre full helm. The housecat scenery was replaced with that of a war camp in a forest, and behind the red-robed renegade a multitude of statues emerged, depicting various figures from the continent's history, including Akkon the Builder; Izdubar the Diplomat; Telessandia the Liberator; and Hjoldir the Defiant, in an apparent background effort to flex his knowledge of history. The true purpose was seemingly to engage in a dialogue with Del'Gado about the time he used the term 'elusive fart' in direct reference to him. During the course of this banal discussion, the robed king did also express a certain enjoyment for ceremony and theatrics after Del'Gado asked him why he didn't just outright kill them with his magic. In the end, Del'Gado's nocturnal invader departed and he returned to his milk-drinking rat-catching. In the early hours of the next day, the full party (now including maralictor Baldur) made their way to the First College to fulfil Junior Enchanter Asaramanitra's request for the family cookbook. After being teleported up to the grand central courtyard, where they saw a statue of a non-descript mage in front of a crowd of oddly positioned statues, they made their way to the Joint Faculties of Illusion and Enchantment. Asaramanitra directed the party to her brother's study, and a plan was concocted. Jacqualine was to use her aesthetic elven heritage to lure the Senior Enchanter out of his office in order to facilitate the removal of the cookbook from his study. The cleric's decision to play the part of a dimwitted and aloof eccentric in search of some handsome lad from Divination (being unable to properly pronounce divination) did not play well with the Senior Enchanter, who utilised increasingly stronger enchantment magic to extract answers from her. Meanwhile, Del'Gado stirred up a minor scene outside, 'tripping' and dropping a flask of oil and hundreds of ball-bearings, which drew the attention and ire of the nearby Magisters. Baldur decided to knock on the Senior Enchanter's door, and after being allowed in (and Jacqualine shown the way out), proceeded to behave in a reasonable manner and simply talk to the man truthfully. From this exchange he learned that there was something else to the family spat over the cookbook, but wishing not to become embroiled in details, resolved the situation in a different manner. As Manahirana needed one more recipe to a rewritten version of the cookbook, Baldur gave him a crac recipe of venison common in the finer parts of deep-hold society. He was then given this new cookbook, which was promptly delivered to Asaramanitra. As she promised an enchantment as reward, Jacqualine entrusted to the Junior Enchanter her holy symbol, which could be retrieved in a day or so. Before departing, Baldur also purchased a Scroll of Misty Step in preparation for their duel with the robed king. Taking the teleportation circle at Gahal Sun-Temple to the circle at Vared (in close proximity to the Mausoleum of Saint Hyron) the party was guided by Del'Gado to the crossroads, a location he had passed some times before. Maintaining stern discussion between themselves in anticipation of 'their deaths,' they eventually reached the crossroads where they could see a man dressed mostly in green sitting on a chair; near him was a piece of cloth with a neatly folded set of red robes, alongside a fine arming sword and a closed helm. Everyone except Baldur faintly recognised the man as Bari, the scholar they had encountered on the winding path in the Gloomlight Forest. He offered them tea before they engaged in battle, and informed them that a scroll on his person would contain answers in the event that the Advocates proved victorious. Bari began donning his gear, and suddenly, the clear and warm weather transformed into a dark and cloudy downpour. In turn, Baldur called on his ancestors and was enclosed in a black suit of plate armour, as befits a sworn hellknight of the Order of the Vice, and the fight was at hand. Bari commenced the fight by drawing his golden-hilted sword and declaring a sentence in Hyxian:

Ex malo bonum!

Initially, the battle was simply a trade of damage, whereby the party completely surrounded Bari; but after Del'Gado inflicted a particularly hard-hitting wound he again invoked a Hyxian sentence and the dead-magic zone around them was dissolved. The whole group was teleported several feet away from him in a line, and now, the image of this singular combatant dressed in archaic robes standing stoically in front of them generated a surge of inspiration, pushing our heroes above and beyond. However, he did reverse gravity in the surrounding area, and they all quickly fell 100 feet upwards. For this duration, the party cleverly used the laws of physics and magic to navigate around. Still, Bari was able to teleport with some ease, and eventually reverted his spell whilst casting featherfall on everyone involved. They descended not into the crossroads, but into the outskirts of a war camp. Del'Gado could recognise the scenery from his dream. Continuing the fight, Bari soon makes a major blunder which Del'Gado capitalises on, disarming him. His sword goes flying, seemingly driven by an external force, straight into a tree (which was, at the time, fashioned to look like a tent). The disarmed king proved to be quite the brawler, and the last moments of the battle saw strong magic being discharged, with Imaros being sent to a labyrinthine demiplane. Several times during the fight, the party members in melee felt their weapons being jerked away from them, a phenomenon that Jacqualine could resemble as latent psionic power.

In the end, Baldur delivered an ancestor-fueled three-folded attack which brought Bari down. His last words were: