Session 4: Faded Rohesia

The party was sent back to the ruins of Rohesia to try to learn more about the undead threat. After some sick aerial tricks and mountain views, the party began to investigate the ruins of the town only to be lured away by the headstrong warrior Jack’s pursuit of a mighty wolfpack.

Working together to take down the giant Alpha matriarch and patriarch of the pack, the party lost track of Samuel. Alone and single-mindedly following his obsession with the enchanted stone key from the caves beneath Luxor, he found himself opening the way to a strange mirrored world, nearly identical to the Rohesia he’d left but perfectly preserved and completely empty.

Zooming out as the first part of the episode drew to a close, we saw the tower of Devon’s visions some distance away from the town.

Part 2

Mordecai and Coal were trying to enjoy a shipboard breakfast on their day off, when a crackling sound drew their attention to ice crystallizing on Mordecai’s bag. After playing it off for as long as possible, Coal finally investigated the bag at Mordecai’s invitation. Brushing the freezing cold ring during the search, Coal began to hear a girl’s voice and chose to wear the ring. The girl warned him that the party was in danger in the ruins below and told Coal about the history and dangers of the Fade as they set off to help.

In the Fade, Sam met Willow and Honeybee of the Heaven’s Grasp, who first tried to get him to leave but then were keen to learn about the stone key and wanted Sam to come back with them to their town.

The rest of party, unable to locate Sam despite searching his last known location, were surprised to find a halfling among them named Berry, who asked them to return to their ship. Mordecai hid outside after running a private errand and tried to warn the crew that there were more interlopers lurking outside.

After a few tense moments with Berry, the party was glad to see Sam returned through the portal. He convinced those present to join him through the portal – but surprised the Heaven’s Grasp delegation by cutting the portal off before they could join.

Further complicating things, the voice from the ring made it clear to Coal that her friends were on the way to help eliminate the Heaven’s Grasp threat, and the voice in the key continues to guide Sam with inscrutable motives. With only Mordecai left in the mortal world to report back to the ship, and half the party finding themselves in the strange mirrored world, what will our heroes do next?

Part 3

Hiding alone outside the buried church, Mordecai did not follow when the others called to him and so was not sure what happened when they went silent and the 3 Hands patrolling outside the church hurried inside. Creeping closer, he could hear no signs of a struggle and only the voices of the strangers. Fearing the worst, he began to lay a wicked trap.

In the Fade, the party examined their new surroundings while Sam used the key to disrupt Willow’s attempt to follow. They discovered strange physical properties through experimentation and religious artwork reminiscent of the Lithics but in which different figures are centered. Having bought a headstart, the group set off down the east road toward the tower.

Mordecai set out caltrops poisoned with the toxins from the frog he found earlier in the pond, spread oil, tossed a Molotov cocktail down the hole into the excavated portal room and then ran up to the top floor. As a pursuer appeared from below, he cast Darkness, plunging the room into impenetrable blackness. The first pursuer, not understanding what was happening, attempted to follow and fell victim to the traps.

The adventurers in the Fade made their way through the eerily uniform forest to the large circular clearing around the tower. The tower rose to a sharp point high above them, made of a dark material that seemed featureless. As they approached it, arrows sailed toward them from the South road as Hands challenged them. Luckily Coal was disguised as Willow and was able to put them off-balance enough to at least stall an attack by accusing Berry of treason.

When another pursuer followed the first into the trap, Mordecai fired off the second part. First he set the oil alight with a thrown torch. Then he tossed a bag of flour down, triggering an explosion which caught everyone in the blast, even Mordecai himself. When his weakened pursuer finally escaped the zone of darkness, he closed in to finish her off. Unfortunately fate was unkind to Mordecai and his opponent, Berry, proved to be formidable despite being weakened by the traps and she finished Mordecai off in a flurry of deadly strikes. Luckily for Mordecai, his old friend the Ghost Girl is nearly arrived, and will surely be grateful for his assistance against the Heaven’s Grasp…

Part 4

Mordecai came to surrounded by skeletons with a black knight towering over him. Ghost girl, being pleased with his attack on the Heaven’s Grasp, had her minions revive him… and place a ring on his finger. Apparently the undead force arrived and Honeybee held them off while Willow and Berry fled through the portal into the Fade. After looting the fallen Grasp, Mordecai agreed to pursue the survivors into the Fade, learning that the undead can not survive there. He found the two hiding outside the church, believing themselves to be safe from the undead. Mordecai was able to suprise them and finish them off, tossing their corpses back through the portal for Ghost Girl before heading off to meet up with the others.

At the tower, Sivv climbed onto Jack’s back and charged at the bowmen, taking them out with one thunderous blast. Sam investigated where the road approached the tower and found a circular carving set into a stone slab there, which turned out to be one of four set around the tower. He was able to convince Sivv, Jack, and Drifter to help him complete rituals at 3 of the 4 sites, in which they each made a small sacrifice and found themselves in discussion with a strange creature who requested their help escaping from his long imprisonment in the Fade.

Mordecai showed up shortly thereafter, but was less keen on performing the ritual. The party heard more Hands approaching through the woods and, though Sam insisted that breaking the 4th seal would allow the entity to help them, Mordecai’s resistance meant they had to fight off the attackers the old fashioned way first.

One Hand surrendered once the rest of his companions were slain. Will Sam find another willing participant for his ritual? And if so, will they be pleased with the results? Find out next time IN PART 5 😭

Part 5

Coal, disguised as Willow, interrogated and intimidated the surviving Hand, convincing them to take part in the ritual of binding. Their will or understanding of the ritual perhaps was lacking however, and didn’t seem to work. Fortunately, Samuel was able to convince Drop to take part in exchange for helping her to fly to the top of the tower. Finding no entrances or marking anywhere along the flight to an impossibly sharp point at the top of the tower, Drop leapt down into position to perform the ritual.

The entity in the darkness cut their interaction short when they realized the ritual at that tower had been completed, dropping Drop back into the Fade just as the tower disappeared. Air rushed to fill the vacated volume, and an entity of vaguely humanoid shape took form in the air above the huge new hole in the ground.

For D&D reasons, everyone referred to the entity as “Johnny”, and they were seemed content with that. Johnny explained that they would need to recruit more willing participants to perform the ritual at 9 more towers elsewhere in the Fade, so that he would be completely freed and able to help restore the proper balance to the world.

Johnny then began to reshape the surroundings, adding color and growth, and sent a wave of earth of destroy the Heaven’s Grasp town. The party left the Fade planning to form a cult and recruit more followers for Johnny.

Rumors

• The ruins of Rohesia are home to a portal to the Fade, currently reburied at the request of the Eternals.
• The city of Quelimane in the periphery is suffering from a terrible famine. Some say terrorists of the Defiant are responsible.
• The party has rescued or identified all of the Unseen researchers that had been lost beneath Luxor, and recovered a large stone key that had been entombed there.
• Babis in the Periphery has not been heard from in months, and interested parties are concerned that it may have fallen to the Darkness.
• There are reports of the failure of magic in the town of High Nest in the Periphery.

General options:

• Expedition into The Dark.
  • What rumours have you heard about your destination?
• City mission in Aynuk.
  • Intrigue/diplomacy, stealth, or intimidation?
• Trade mission to The Periphery.
  • What kind of goods are you transporting? What’s the place you’re trying to get to, and what makes you think you know where it is?
• Discovery: A new discovery session is always an option, for example to define a new region.
  • What are we most excited to learn about?
• Downtime: If people want to allow the passage of time and have their characters pursuing some downtime activities (like researching something, training, building things, etc). This combines well with Discovery or Bottle eps to fill up a shorter session.
  • What are you trying to accomplish? How long do you think it wil take?
• Bottle episode: Roleplay-focused episodes are welcome for nights when the group is in the mood for it. Shipboard hijinks, hometown visits, whatever.
  • Where are you? Who is with you? What’s everyone excited/concerned about?
• Hero smash: If the group is having a night (…or week) where they want less thinking and more heroic smashing, we can always create a combat-focused mission.
  • No question, just smash.