Session 7: Speak Of The Devil

General Summary

Summary: The heroes finally come face to face with the puppetmaster responsible for the chaos unfolding in the Rhynn Valley.
Far from the din of battle, Manzana enjoys a refreshing evening of self care in a nearby hot spring, surrounded by aromatic plants and sensual candles.
As she moisturizes the crimson locks of her beard, the party makes for the center of the Garden of Stones, creating diversions and silently slitting the throats of sentries.
Victimized by a single instance of bad luck and foul footing, the group is eventually discovered by the undead servants of the Necromancer, alerting their master and his acolyte to their meddling.
Time appears to grind to a halt before them as the party is frozen in place, paralyzed by the will of their enemy's dark magic.
Introducing himself, Gnolean Vext addresses each member of the party, regarding their efforts as little more than stepping stones as he produces a crystal not unlike thier own, glowing with strange necrotic energy.
"Amazing, in all of my centuries I've never afforded a servant the opportunity to fail me thrice over. Suffice to say, I will not be wasting any more resurrection magic on the likes of Siegurt of Scabberdale. His afterlife will be... Unpleasant..."
The Necromancer takes a moment to look around and size up the group responsible for the various thorns in his side over the past several days, regarding the pulsing purple gem in his hands.
"Where are my manners? I know everything there is to know about you, yet you know absolutely nothing of me-- not even a name. I am Gnolean Vext, Roland Angelon the Greater, and I was not always the wretched, miserable warlock that stands before you, drowning in the drab company of dullards. No, I was once royalty. My every need attended, my every whim satisfied. I basked in the atmosphere of erudite conversation and noble aspirations... Up until the Covenant took it all away..."
His eyes flash white-hot silver as the name of the arcane governing body of Dielynor falls from his tongue.
"You see, I was deposed and thrown down from my station for nothing more than supporting the wrong side in a war of little consequence in the grand scheme. The Covenant... So unyielding in their altruism, selflessly guiding, controlling-- no, manipulating the world in pursuance of their lofty ideals, whatever they really are. See, the Covenant operates on a need-to-know basis with its allies. Not me, no I stand for nothing if not the free exchange of information. In keeping with that spirit, what do you know of The Weave?"
As the necromancer weaves his verbal tapestry, he snaps his fingers, partially releasing the party from the grip of paralysis, their vocal cords slowly relaxing.
One by one, they explain the Weave as it was explained to them by the Phoenix, elaborating on the structure of the cosmos held in place by the magic of the Covenant of Seers following the sundering of the The Primordial Twins by The Great Dragon in the First Age; they reiterate the importance of fate and the natural order as established so long ago at the behest of the heroes of old-- the avatars of The Broken Pantheon.
Vext laughs, "An admirable effort, but no. The Weave is a construct, a fabrication. It is inherently unatural. At best, it's a temporary illusion, maintaining a semblance of order in a world of madness and dread chaos. At worst, it is a malignant tumor begging to be culled. You see, the Weave and the Covenant are but two facets of the same festering wound, and I want nothing more than to clean it-- that it may one day heal. To that end, I will need something. You took something from me, and I'd very much like to have it back. In exchange for the return of my personal effects, I will tell you what the covenant won't. What do you say? Hand over the crystal, Keerla."

Keerla looks around, laboring against the stiffness in her neck to meet the gaze of her companions. In this moment, it occurs to her that there may truly be no other option. Their bodies bound, defiance of the Necromancer's request would mean certain death for not only herself, but her new friends as well. Besides, she muses, what is the worst that could happen? He's already won, hasn't he? Nothing short of an act of divine intervention could free them from the iron grip of the enemy...
After a short discussion with Vext, who by all accounts appeared to be coming from a place of honesty and justified vengeance, Keerla once again gazes into the eyes of her companions, who might have nodded in understanding had they not been petrified outright, and hands the small glowing rock over to the Necromancer.
Just as it leaves her hand, a mighty bolt of light splits the heavens, meandering slowly across the sky as time again seems to crawl to a halt.
Just as it had before, when Siegurt was raised from the dead, the flow of time finds itself reversed as the stone returns to Keerla's grasp and the Necromancer's spell undone.
In the moment's confusion, Ian, Enrique, Lilith, and their various underlings break free from the arcane grasp of the spellcaster's might as Manzana leaps from the forest, joining the fray.
Overpowering Gnolean's minions, the group begins to close in on the Necromancer to deal the final strike as he finishes his dread ritual at the circle's center.
Both the Necromancer and his acolyte, Severus Deathrattle, are able to activate their ritual pendants using their own Sulphire Crystal.
Gnolean uses the aetheric blade to cleave a rift in the Weave, opening a portal to the strange roiling energies of The Aether.
Breaking through the enemy's ranks just as the ritual is finished, each of the heroes notice a strange look of frustrated surprise on Vext's face as he reaches through the rift for something that was unexpectedly absent.
"Wait, no! It's supposed to be here, it's... Very well, Severus, do you fully understand the significance of the task you are about to undertake?"
The party continues to slash through undead and Orcish combatants alike, swiftly closing in on the duo.
"Of course, m'lord. Of darkness and thunder."
"Of darkness and thunder."
Vext disappears once again into a mist of darkness, leaving is acolyte to deal with the quickly souring situation.
As the party finally takes to the center of the circle, the acolyte turns the aetheric blade of the ritual amulet inward, impaling himself with the baleful energies rippling from the pommel.
As he his knocked to the ground by the fiery wrath of the Phoenix, the heroes watch as his eyes turn inky black and his body twitches.
As the din of battle dies out and silence retakes the Garden, just before the party is able to take a moment's breath, a strange foul energy bursts from within the fallen acolyte, showering the heroes with a burst of gore and bits of bone.
Standing fully fifteen feet tall where the acolyte once lay, an infernal horror roars, splitting the very skies with its piercing howl before descending on the party with lashes of pure demonic shadow.
During the battle, the creature's form seems to shift and simmer into strange visions, showing Lilith a world burned black, completely devoid of life except for her own, anguishing in eternal pain, and showing Keerla visions of her mother, tortured with magical and mundane instruments alike, screaming in pain and horror as figures in black cackle with fiendish glee.
Dark lashing tendrils of black aether clash with steel, fire, and thunder as spells are furiously thrown into the wee hours of the night.
As the sun slowly rises in the peripherals of each of the heroes, the beast is dealt a number of bone-shattering blows in succession, wrapping a tendril around Ian as it prepares to crush the life out of the ranger.
With a shriek of equal parts passion and horror, arcane fire erupts from the ground, enveloping the weakened demon and reducing the black ichor of its infernal body into a bubbling paste of brimstone and congealed hatred.
The party, exasperated, makes camp for the evening and contemplates the scale of the evil that they must now face.
Sharing a loving embrace for the first time since their haphazard meeting at the ruins of Bristlebeard, Ian and Keerla dream off into the night together, as each of the heroes take watch to ensure that the things that they had killed stayed good and dead.
As morning breaks over the still-smoldering remains of Scabberdale and the rest of the Rhynn Valley, the victorious heroes shamble into the village to assess the damage wrought by the Orcish assault, and plan their next attempts at unraveling the mystery they have found themselves tangled together within.