Astvanor Session 110 (4/28)

[cinaed]

Session 110: Day 21 of Veksdan (4/28)

 

The flesh golem closest to Galowen takes two swings at him but misses when Galowen dodges, while the other attacks Audacity. One fist swings wide but the other one slams into Audacity’s ribs, cracking two of them.

Galowen stabs at the flesh golem, his sword hitting both times and flashing with searing light. Guts begin to spill from the golem’s stomach from the injury, making Galowen remember the room with the vivisected corpses.

Yolov looks at Margo Greenheart and says that he met her back in Radiscune, saw her healing people and helping them and asks if that was ever genuine or if it was all a ruse. She insists that she is helping people. He asks if Marion asked for her help with Movia, and she says yes, of course. He asks if they discovered anything, and she says they’re close to bottling it.

He stares at her for a moment and asks about a cure. She asks why she would want to find a cure, and he murmurs to himself that if they think they can bottle it, then someone might be able to find a cure. Then he casts Lightning Bolt.

Her bracelet flashes and absorbs some of the damage. Margo complains about her shield, saying that it’s supposed to protect her from all damage as Hava heals some of Yolov’s injuries and casts Toll the Dead at Greenheart.

Az continues to work on Adrin’s restraints and manages to get her tail free, Adrin thrashing her tail furiously and looking anxiously at a still stunned Diana while Audacity cracks his staff against his golem’s shoulder and unseams one of its arms. It looks very injured and furious.

Margo looks at the group, her irises now filled with a misty purple smoke. She shifts just slightly and vanishes for a second.

Everyone feels a shift and looks up to see Margo standing directly above Yolov on the sixty-foot ceiling. She looks at him and says it wasn’t her fault that they couldn’t see what she had to offer. She tells him he shouldn’t have said that.

She casts a spell. Yolov tries to Counterspell it but feels his attempt fail a second before everything goes dark. He drops dead to the ground, Es vanishing with a cut-off curse as Hava screams.

The flesh golems attack again while Galowen rushes over to Yolov, lifting him up into his arms. Pressing a diamond against Yolov’s chest, Galowen casts Revivfy.

Meanwhile Yolov finds himself in a library that feels slightly too warm. He glances up and around and sees towering bookcases that seem endless and vast. He can smell tea and the faintly burning embers from a fireplace. He looks and sees two comfortable-looking chairs by the fire, one empty and one conspicuously filled. Between the chairs is a gold and blue tea set.

He takes one step after another closer to the chairs. Now he can see the woman sitting there with a book that looks like it’s filled with blank pages even as she seems to read from it. Jewelry dangles off every inch of her, rings glittering on her fingers and multiple earrings shining in the firelight as Rova extends a hand towards the vacant chair and says for him to take a seat if he likes, he won’t be here long.

Yolov agrees, knowing his friends will bring him back quickly. He sits down gingerly at the edge of the chair, ramrod straight and nervous.

She asks him what he would want to know if he could learn anything at all, and Yolov hesitates, torn between asking about who the Sworn Edge serves and how to help Ilania. He finally says that he would want to know who is behind the Sworn Edge, who is threatening Rova and the other gods and the entire world.

When she asks him if he would be willing to learn that knowledge if it was the last thing he ever learned, he asks if he would be able to pass that knowledge along. When she says no, he shakes his head, not wanting knowledge that he couldn’t share with his friends.

Rova offers him some tea, telling him that it could be his time if he wished it to be. He tells her there’s too much to do and too many people to help, and too many things yet to learn. When he says that learning new things is one of the best parts of living, she looks fond and swings her feet over the armrest of her chair.

She tells him that everyone experiences death differently and that while it may seem some time passes here, only seconds will pass in the material plane. Asalor crafts weapons with his followers during these intervals, but she always offers tea and asks for a story and gives one in return.

Yolov tells her the story of how he met everyone at the temple back in Valnore and then Audacity in Port Vestan and Diana at the lake. Rova listens intently, asking questions about his friends.

In exchange she tells him the tale of a deer that gets lost in the woods trying to get home, making itself a trail of seeds and acorns. It keeps straying from the path and finding a mess from other animals when it tries to retrace its steps. She says that probably a squirrel stole the acorns, but she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know much about nature, though his friend coming for him will know. She gestures towards a vine beginning to creep down the bookshelves towards them.

Rova reaches out and touches Yolov’s chin and tells him that there is no going back, and that no ending is really the ending until they decide it is. Stories can have happy endings, otherwise they probably wouldn’t be very good stories.

As she finishes speaking, the vines reach Yolov and wrap around him. He instinctively closes his eyes. When he opens them again, he is back on the floor and Galowen is holding him in his arms and whispering quietly, “Hell yeah, brother.”

When Galowen cast Revivfy, Yolov weighing nothing in his arms, he felt a moment of dread that the spell wasn’t working because he didn’t feel a connection to the earth like he does with Lay on Hands. There are no living things and green earth to be found in the Shadowfell. Then he felt a warmth like a hand covering his hand upon the diamond.

A second before the diamond shatters into dust and Yolov opens his eyes, the voice of the woman during Galowen’s dream with the stag in Tessvar whispers in Galowen’s ear, “Don’t let them win.” Galowen says he doesn’t plan to.

Still holding Yolov as Yolov opens his eyes, he can see that Yolov has a glittering gold spot under his chin where Rova touched him, a golden fingerprint.

Yolov looks up and sees Margo still on the ceiling, who glares at him and says he’s supposed to be dead. Galowen, voice slightly thick with his own tears, asks her if she’s going to cry about it.

Yolov starts to reach for his staff to cast Fireball and then remembers Dailiir’s gift to him. He reaches for one of the beads and dizzily tells Galowen that they’ll see why Dailiir told him not to eat it.

Then he throws it up towards Margo, watching the bead ignite into a perfectly formed flame right before it reaches and engulfs her. He gets the impression that Dailiir has managed to effectively sculpt the spell to protect him and his friends from the fire as all of the corpses in the room and elsewhere all the other bodies in the fortress scream out at once.

A rain of ash falls over the party before there is the click and clatter of a metal bracelet hitting the floor.

Diana shakes herself free of the stun and says that’s what she gets as the flesh golems fall inert to the floor and Audacity whispers something reverent in Infernal at the sight of the fire. Diana heals Yolov before she unlocks one of Adrin’s shackles.

The ground quakes underneath them all.

Audacity is caught off guard and tumbles to the ground as the voice from before snarls, “How dare you! I’m going to flay every single one of you alive. I’m going to make you regret your parents ever meeting.”

Diana tells him that the joke’s on him, she doesn’t know her parents.

He hisses that he will make them pay for taking the person he loves the most from him. He’ll take away all the people they love and make them regret what they’ve done. Silence falls for a moment as Diana gets Adrin free of the last shackle.

Adrin immediately presses against her and says she didn’t like that at all.

Az suggests that they go after Marion, then hesitates and looks at Yolov and asks if he is up for it. Yolov says they should stop Marion from leaving if he hasn’t already, before he looks around for Margo’s notebook, not finding it.

Az remembers the room that Galowen kept them from entering. He heads towards the door of the workshop and Galowen tries to stop him, asking Az what’s so important there. Az says they need Margo’s notes about the illness. If they were trying to replicate it then they might have a cure or be close to one.

Yolov adds that even if they didn’t, the notes might help Juniper.

Az briefly tussles with Galowen before he Misty Steps inside and is presented with the same horrible sight of the vivisected corpses. He swallows against nausea and grabs a bunch of notebooks and stuffs them into his bag, as many as he can carry. He walks out, ashen faced, and slams the door shut behind him.

There aren’t very many places the party has gone yet, and so the party goes down and around the twisty, rotting building until they reach the throne room. Perhaps it was once beautiful, gilded and elegant, or perhaps it was always filled with broken chandeliers and rotten furniture.

As the party steps into the throne room, everyone, with the exception of Audacity and Yolov, sees something different.

Hava watches a wave slam over her and wash her friends away, seeing in the distance what looks like a pile of useless junk and a person who looks similar to her shoving coins and treasure into a bag. She realizes it’s Maeve, muttering to herself that she has to hurry before “she” gets back. Hava sees Taion as well, holding a pile of what looks like gemstones and cups and golden goblets and putting it into Maeve’s bag as well. When he tells Maeve not to worry, Maeve tells him not to be stupid and kisses him.

Logically Hava knows this can’t be real, but it looks real and feels real, and she’s filled with a white hot anger. She can’t have anything, can she? Not when Maeve is around.

Az feels for a moment like he’s pulled away from everyone. He looks around this gorgeously appointed throne room, which is almost as impressive as the Striogian senate hall. In fact, he looks closer and realizes that he is in the senate hall, where everyone except for the late Lady Axemight is gathered. Casually sitting on the throne is Az’s father. His cheek is pillowed on his fist.

When Az glances over his shoulder, he sees all of his siblings. They’re chatting and bickering with each other. Mahura, the sister who is closest in age to Az, sees him and rolls her eyes. The moment she does, a crossbow bolt goes through her throat and sprays him with her blood. Crossbow bolts quickly kill all of his siblings. His father looks at him from across the senate hall and asks, horrified, “Donnie, what did you do?”

Galowen smells smoke and burned wood and bodies. He hears a voice in his head that says, “It’s funny. You already killed everyone you already loved. What can I take from you? Your parents are already dead. You know that.” When he looks up at the throne, there are two firbolg skeletons embracing each other in front of it.

Diana stares at the throne, where a familiar man with black hair and a casual smile sits. She knows that usually he doesn’t look humanoid, usually he’s long and green and covered in scales, but she recognizes him as he gestures and freezes her in place. Adrin takes one step towards him and another and then looks back at Diana and says, “I wish I could say I was sorry, but it was always a trick.” Then Adrin curls up next to the throne.

Audacity and Yolov watch their friends freeze up before Diana begins crying and calling out for Adrin, who is standing next to her and nudging her in alarm. Audacity looks around and says there’s nothing there as Yolov realizes they are all under some sort of spell.

Adrin grabs Diana and drags her back through the entry and Diana immediately snaps back to normal. Diana hyperventilates, crying as Adrin twines around her. Yolov tells Audacity to get Hava out of the room, he’ll get Az, and then they’ll all need to get Galowen out.

Audacity gets Hava out with a firm tug. As soon as she’s free of the spell, she throws up, heaving as Audacity turns back towards the others.

Yolov tries to grab Az, but Az shoves him back into the wall, knocking the breath out of him. Yolov tries to cast Telekinesis on him and Az fights it again, in his hallucination whispering in Gnomish and cradling Mahura as her final breath bubbles out of her.

Audacity goes up to Galowen, trying to knock some sense back into him. His first punch misses, but the next one slams into Galowen’s head. The image of Galowen’s parents’ corpses vanishes and he realizes, head aching from the punch, that this was all magical bullshit.

Yolov asks Galowen to get Az out of the room. Galowen, still dizzy, wrestles Az out into the hall.

Az snaps out of it, looking down and realizing he’s been clutching a bag instead of his dying sister and that the blood is gone from his hands. Az also realizes this was also magic bullshit, and scrubs at his tears.

Audacity scans the throne room and doesn’t see any signs of people or anything to indicate Marion being here recently. There are faint sigils that have been around for a while on the walls. What he gets is less that Marion is here and more there’s a slow sort of movement to the floors and the walls that he hadn’t noticed before. He remembers how the entire castle shook with rage earlier and realizes that no matter where they go in the building Marion’s essence will be there even with Marion long gone. If Marion had been here, he obviously would’ve come to aid Margo in person instead of assisting through the bracelet.

Audacity tells the party that they should go and Marion is no longer there.

They quickly head towards the hoard, with Yolov dispeling the magical darkness. They all begin to look through the treasure.

Galowen finds a shield with a silver dragon emblazoned on it. Hava pockets 537 gold. There is a collection of beautiful weapons that aren’t magical in nature. There is also a necklace and a handful of potions.

Yolov methodically looks through everything and searches for boxes or something that would hold a hand. Az helps him search until he gets a splitting headache for a second, cursing out loud. He and Yolov spy a wrinkled, severed arm with a mark on the sun on the back of the hand.

Az feels compelled to touch it as soon as he sees it. When Az starts towards it, Yolov casts Mage Hand to grab the hand. Az feels certain that it is his until Yolov moves it out of twenty feet range and then he shakes himself and wonders at his own thoughts as Yolov hoists the hand out of his reach and begins to get it wrapped up and concealed from everyone’s view.

To distract himself, Az looks around and finds a ring that feels magical.

Other than Yolov sweeping gold into the handy haversack, the party doesn’t want to delay any longer or stay another minute in the Shadowfell and steps outside.

Dailiir, who has been glaring at the Shadar-Kai, breathes a sigh of relief at the sight of the party. She asks if anyone is hurt. Hava says physically yes, and also emotionally.

The shade asks about home, and Yolov confirms they want to go home before darkness engulfs them all, cold and sickeningly sweet. They all reappear in front of the Shadowfell portal.

The Shadar Kai immediately saunter through the portal and the rest quickly follow.

Only Yolov lingers. He looks for the shade who rematerializes and takes Yolov’s offered hand. He shakes its hand and assures it that they will close the portal. The shade says no one should come back here. Yolov squeezes its hand, his fingers passing through the mist, and agrees before he thanks it one last time and steps through the portal.

Yolov has tucked the magical hand in his bag and asks Hava if they should investigate the hand before giving it to Maeve, since it has some magical influence on Az and seems dangerous. She says that they have to give it to Maeve so she can get Aria back. She won’t lie to Maeve just because Maeve lies to her.

At this point, the Shadar Kai have vanished.

The party all turn back towards the portal. As Diana and Dailiir watch, the rest of the party seals the portal, stretching out their hands and using their tattoos from Evie to close it. Several of the party shudders as piercing cold pulses through their hands and arms, exhaustion creeping into their bones.

Hava looks around and at first thinks her fears have come true. There is no sign of Maeve.

Then Maeve whips around a corner, her bow at the ready, and immediately sighs in relief at the sight of Hava. She drops her bow as Hava throws herself into her arms and sobs, saying it’s been terrible and that Yolov died.

Daillir says that he didn’t die, he’s right here.

Yolov winces a little and says he did but Galowen brought him back.

Dailiir puts her hand on his cheek and a hand on Galowen’s chest and thanks him. Dailiir says that she didn’t think she would find anyone worthy of protecting Yolov, not when the people she hired or blackmailed seemed inadequate to the task.

Then she scolds Yolov, pulling him into a hug and telling him never to do that again as Hava says it wasn’t his fault and Yolov leans into the embrace.