Astvanor Session 188 (7/17)

[cinaed]

Session 188: Month of Sila (7/17)

There is a ripple of shock through the group. Clearly this is unexpected. They all see confusion and a few people, like the person in the Hawk mask, draw weapons. The second that the Hawk draws a blade, though, someone with a mask of a Moon and Sun covering each eye moves forward and clashes blades with the Hawk and says to let her speak.

Hawk demands to know what she means, she’s an intruder. The room erupts into arguments as a warm hand touches Az on the small of his back.

Az looks up to see Genesis and Daveena begin to try and restrain the woman. Another woman calls out and demands to know why they aren’t just killing it.

Dailiir turns and orders them to stand down, no one’s killing anyone. Yolov instinctively moves to stand behind Dailiir and is struck by the sharp scent of ozone and oxygen. He looks down and sees there is lightning crackling between her fingers.

She warns Daveena one more time to release her, as the woman is now on her knees and unresisting. He has one knee pressed to her back. He snaps back that he’s not going to kill her but he can’t let her just walk around.

Someone says she’s clearly the Archmage’s daughter because she’s here. Yolov asks that he thought they needed masks to get to the Archive. The woman says she has one, and Az says that she has a point.

Solray finally rises to his feet and says that the Archmage had no children. There was no one she was that close to as far as they were aware, and she founded this place during the Recusal. He doesn’t know what this is.

Az suggests Zone of Truth, but someone else points out that the Daughter could believe she’s telling the truth.

The Archive is beginning to splinter into factions. The group that moved to attack the Daughter is Solray, a man with the Crow mask, Esrani, the Hawk, and the Jellyfish.

Another side circling around the supposed Daughter with the intention to arrest her is Daveena, Genesis, the Sun and Moon, the Bloody Thorn, and another person with a familiar mask, like a black mist over their face, the new Shade. The final person on Daveena’s side is wearing a mask on the bottom of their face but still acting like they have some authority here as the Inferno.

The final group standing off against Daveena is Daillir, the Moth, the Tender, the Grief, and the Sandcat. This last one is not very tall, obviously a gnome that pricks the attention of the Hooligans at the timber of her voice. They all feel a tightening dread at being scolded when they realize this is the Striogian Senator in charge of education.

There is a small conversation rippling between groups and through the rest of the mask bearers before the Bloody Thorn steps forward. He is as tall as Galowen, very clearly a firbolg behind the mask. He walks with heavy armored steps, hand on the hilt of their sword, facing them all and introducing himself as the Bloody Thorn and says that they can use Zone of Truth if necessary.

Az says to please do, it might help.

The Bloody Thorn inclines their head. Most of the group recognizes the emblem on his chest: a red-petaled flower like a lily of the valley from green stems. This is a symbol of the matyr-blossom, which grows exclusively in Springrest and is said to grow where Alaeymena bled. He is part of the Order of the Martyr, trained exclusively at Springrest.

He holds up a tree root carved into a totem of Alaeymena herself. The dome that is cast over the Daughter is a very light, shimmering red. It glimmers lightly gold in the shimmering light. Daveena and Genesis resist, but the Daughter chooses to fail.

Yolov looks towards Solray and then asks if she got here via a mask or an invitation. Sol’ray says that it must be done with a mask, but that is not a mask attuned to the Archive. The Daughter says that she knew she had to wear a mask.

Yolov asks who told her that and she says her father.

The Daughter says that her father gave the Archmage the idea, but then grows increasingly confused and pained the more they ask questions like her father’s name and her own. She presses her head against the floor and cries out that it hurts, all the voices are so loud.

Yolov looks towards Audacity, who sighs, not particularly wanting to hear all those voices as well. Despite this, Audacity sits down beside her and casts Detect Thoughts to try and hear what she’s hearing. There is a cacophony of voices that he manages to peel away until he can barely make sense of her racing thoughts. She’s recounting a story to herself over and over again. It sounds like it’s happening in ten directions at once.

Audacity flinches, his tail flicking. This close, he sees down the back of her neck is a tattoo done in metallic ink, as if someone has made ink out of finely ground metal. Then he sees something like a finger press against the tattoo before sinking back away from the tattoo’s surface. It’s hard to determine the origin of the sounds, but it’s not a self-soothing technique or of her own doing.

Audacity points at the tattoo to Daveena and then shakes his head.

Daveena’s finger hooks the collar and pulls it up a little so that they can see that the tattoo stretches down her back and then spirals out reflecting light from the movement of the tattoo. It looks very similar to soul steel. Daveena recognizes it as well and says it’s all the more reason to keep her restrained. They have secure facilities on the site.

Audacity asks if it will stop people able to reach her, then that makes sense to him. Someone or something is affecting her now.

Daveena says that they’re taking her downstairs.

Solray’s faction immediately moves to block, protesting that it’s not safe to keep her on the premises. The Crow says that if she’s covered in this stuff then who’s to say someone else isn’t listening in? When he advocates killing her, all three factions begin to argue.

It’s quickly established that Solray’s faction wants to kill her outright, Daveena’s wants to imprison her and question her, and the last wants to simply let her go. The peaceful faction includes Dailiir as Yolov kneels beside the Daughter to examine the tattoo and try to figure out if there’s a way that they can stop her from hearing these voices.

He knows a lot of facts, but it’s rare when they align. It’s less that there is a spell that is being cast on her so much as he’s witnessing the effects of a failed spell that was attempted to be cast using her. He looks at the tattoo etched into her skin made of an ink from partial soul steel as well as another type of metal. It’s not a metal he recognizes or knows, but it’s some kind of metal that is similar to soul steel but instead has been used to create a pocket dimension. Both have been mixed together to create a sizeable and metallic enough tattoo to embed it into her body long enough that someone could effectively use her as the forked metal rod for the Plane Shift spell.

For a moment he cannot fathom why, because it would be easier to simply do Plane Shift. What’s the point of torturing her like this? He understands that they weren’t trying to Plane Shift her, but they were trying to force the Sunken One out of the Sword and into her.

It’s hard to see why it failed. They used metals to two different Planes. It was an act of desperation, an experiment.

As Yolov explains, Az asks if that makes her a bomb.

Solray’s group who wants to kill the Daughter immediately begins to react.

Audacity casts Protection from Evil and Good, which shocks both Genesis and Daveena even as he says she’s not possessed. Yolov asks if her father sent her and she says no, he can’t speak to anyone. Her father was called Blade, and sometimes My Dear. When he asks what her name is, she says she can’t remember, and mutters it means victory to herself, over and over again.

Audacity can hear in Yolov’s head the realization that she might be the daughter of the Archmage and the Sunken One within the sword. He tells the group that she isn’t a threat, but as much a victim to the Sworn Edge as any. Solray asks how they can be sure, and someone says letting her potentially talk to her father is a start.

When Solray protests, Yolov says they could bring someone in that has experience with the Sunken Ones. Solray flatly says if he’s suggesting Kaspian, Solray will throw him off the Archive.

A warm hand lays on Yolov’s shoulder as Dailiir says, “Little wolf, I dread the possibility but if what you need is a body, what’s easier than creating one? What means Victory?”

When Diana says Victoria, the Daughter seems to recognize it, saying it is but it isn’t her name, she doesn’t remember, before she’s overwhelmed by the voices once more. They all realize that Victoria was an experiment by the Sworn Edge, one meant to free the Sunken One and allow her to possess this young woman’s body.

Daillir adds that she does think it would help to put the Daughter in contact with the Sunken One in the basement. If what she’s saying is true, then part of what she is experiencing seems to be his memories. Wouldn’t it be easier to go straight to the source?

Daveena says he hates that he agrees with the Wolf. He snaps at Yolov and says he’s on thin ice.

Solray gives a reluctant hand wave, but agrees as well.

They are led down into the depths, down this spiraling walkway as it gets colder. None of them have ever been here before, stonework growing older and older, kept up by time and the grace of magic restoration more than anything. This is beyond ancient.

Then there is an open archway.

None of them notice the little minutiae of this area from the fight that occurred here once. They don’t notice Daveena’s shoulders tensing as they walk through the doorway or the discoloration of the floor where something had been cleaned up that had warped the floor. None of them know that this is where Solray’s father died, or that his blood damaged the floor. It’s a little piece of history outside of their context.

But what they do see is a tomb. It’s tall, essentially a coffin, a closed lid and a very simple engraving on the side that reads: Here lies our Archmage. Founder of our Archive. The one who gave us the chance to grow.

When the Daughter touches the tomb, everything blinks out of existence into a blank expanse, until it’s just the Hooligans and the Daughter and a man with red hair, who apologizes and says he can change his manifestation if they don’t like it.

They assure him he looks fine.

He says that it’s been a while since he had to manifest. He explains that Mel always called him Blade. He never had a name before. Before he was a tool. Then he explains that it would be easier to show them. The experience is similar to how Kaspian showed them his sisters. They see one of Kaspian’s sisters wielding a sword that gets lost in the sands during her destruction before eventually being found by arcane scarred hands.

The scarred woman uncovers the sword and then there is a lifetime together. She uses the blade as an arcane focus, teaching people how to channel magic and wield it in a way that it wouldn’t backlash and kill them during the Recusal. She builds the Archive while communicating with this simple, unadorned sword. They see the first time he brings her into his demiplane and the first time he sees the form he’s manifested for himself reflected in her eyes. They see her smile and reach out tentatively to touch him, and when he nods she touches his face. They see a life of building schools and trying to teach people as Melizra, an elf, grows older and older. She gets weakened by the magic that she had tried to cast so long ago during the Recusal. They see her die, her fingers wrapped around the sword, her two sisters standing beside her, one with a husband, one alone. The Archive laid her in the tomb, her fingers still wrapped around the sword that she loved most of all.

It seems like that will be the end of the story, but Blade pulls them back and then forward, to the animated bones and skeletons that the Hooligans uncovered at the archaeological dig site. They see people come and then nothing for a while, and then a young tiefling, wide-eyed and scared in a tattered dress with bloody hands.

 

Then Blade mercifully brings them all back to this space. He’s picking at his nails and says that’s who he is, more or less. He didn’t think they needed to see eons of nothing before this.

Audacity says that they’ve been told that Blade’s kind are concepts when they’re not trapped in things. He asks what Blade is

Blade says it’s always been difficult to put into words that mortals understand. Everything in the material world is a type of energy and all types of energy are recycled essentially, but they had to be created somewhere, that first burst of it. When one narrows down a focus or a skill, when one is casting or breathing or forcing something to take a shape outside of its natural boundaries, something has to be shaping it. He is the concept of the shaping and narrowing of it and the force that focuses it. It’s why Melizra was able to focus the magic she could channel through him. She used to say Blade was what kept the rain from being one sheet, as reliable as gravity.

Audacity says that made complete sense and then asks what they can do for him.

Yolov asks if they can help them both, gesturing between Victoria and Blade.

Victoria says that it’s finally quiet now. She tells them her story: she is Victoria Lorelei, the daughter of farmers struggling with the economy. She was promised a great opportunity and taken to a room within the palace to a doorway to a place without anything. Now it’s like she lived a whole life watching two people.

She clutches at Yolov and says she doesn’t know why they did this to her. She didn’t do anything. Yolov says she didn’t, and she says it hurt so badly. Why did they do this?

Audacity says because they’re monsters and Yolov adds cowards, they wanted to experiment but wouldn’t risk themselves. She asks them to tell her parents she’s sorry, and gives their names and says that they live an hour away from Staghart.

Audacity asks if she can stay here. Blade explains that while her mind can be protected here, her body is unconscious in the tomb.

Yolov asks if she’ll be all right if they tend to her body then, and when Blade asks if they will and if they won’t harm her. Yolov promises that he will ensure it, and then asks him how much he knows about the soul steel. Blade explains that he knows the concept of it. When Yolov tells him that they’re trying to free the trapped souls and asks if he can assist, Blade says that he might be able to help with time.

They discuss the experiment on Victoria, Blade saying that it’s easier to break someone out than to figure out a key to the lock.

Yolov knows this will not be the last experiment the Sworn Edge attempts. He asks about the other Sworn Edge and Blade calls her the Endless Momentum. When Audacity studies Blade, he realizes that Blade is disgusted by her desire for destruction and to be wielded. He has been a tool for destruction and for rebuilding and knows which he prefers.

Yolov takes Victoria’s hands in his own and says that they’ll get a message to her parents, but she’ll have to wait here a while. They’ll try to figure out how to return her home without the voices in her head. She says thank you.

They return to the Archive, inciting a tremendous argument over what to do with Victoria. Finally Dailiir’s faction wins the argument, letting Victoria’s unconscious body remain within the tomb until a solution to freeing all the trapped souls within the soul steel is found.