Ten Days to the end of the world

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Day - Thursday


Diary

Session One

We were approached by the Secretary of the Subcommittee liaising with the main committee dealing with the end of the calender in ten days. It looks like another potential Nightfall scenario, or maybe just that the calender is passing from one epoch to another. Evidently the committee isn’t taking any chances, just in case there is some cataclysmic event coming up.

When we got to the meeting room, Guild Security brought in, in this order: our employer, a cloth covered cage, and a tray with ice on it with half buried potion bottles. Inside the cage was a parrot who Guild Security said used to be a Greater Summoner, We were told, by our employer, that he had the Astrorophium Codex and that the vials contained a potion that would protect us from the necrogony effects caused by even discussing the contents of the Codex, that would turn us into undead, So, after some convincing, we drank the chilled potions.

The Codex was written by the Black One – Astaroth, and was written in a form of ancient elvish. Even with my knowledge of Eladrin and Elvish, I was having difficulty puzzling it out, especially as it was written in a series of spirals. It did seem to be counting down to something though. According to our employer, it was some sort of harvesting ritual which would take souls from everyone within the radius of the ritual. The ritual was being performed in a temple somewhere on the isthmus between the two Terra Novan continents. The ritual had something to do with the Battle Tiger Dynasty, an ancient drow family, and had been going on for thousands of years. The temple is known as the Blazing Pyramids lit with the Flames of a Hundred Souls and, as far as we could tell, the range of the ritual was limited to a few thousand miles. Part of the ritual involved the Summoning of Heroes for a sacrifice to bring the ritual to a climax, and the heroes were us. The ‘parrot’ was really interested in joining our mission to witness what was going to happen. It also had something to do with the Second Ascension Crisis or the Great Blooming, which occurred 15 years ago and since then, the elves had considered the situation more urgent.

After taking the antidote to the potion, which had caused some sort of ‘time stasis’, we discussed what we should do. Sister Clench reassured us that Michael didn’t intend Nightfall to occur for a while yet, but other observations led us to the conclusion that Michael was actually a committee of Michaels with differing opinions on the subject. Sometime in the past, this ritual had caused the disappearance of an ancient reptilian civilisation in the area which had spanned the entire continent south of the isthmus. We could evacuate the entire area so that not enough souls could be gathered causing the ritual to fizzle out, or redirect the area of effect to somewhere uninhabited – like the moon.

That was when Kilroy mentioned that the Beltan Elves had a time travelling ship. He then reached under the table and found a note addressed to him which said “Don’t do it – Kilroy”. Still, given that time travel was a possibility, we could use that to beat the deadline. It also caused me to ponder things such as ‘fixed points in time’, ‘cause and effect’ and ‘temporal paradoxes’.

I also had a visitor at the Guild Gates. This turned out to be a sister from the Reformed Spiteful Sisters of Perpetual Dissonance, who had a gift for me. I thought that was rather odd, especially when I discovered it was a small cloth bag containing something rather heavy. I had a quick peek inside and all I saw was darkness. I immediately suspected Liessa’s involvement but I thanked the sister and headed back inside to consult with the rest of the party. Several DAs and a divination later, we discovered that the bag had containment magic on it, it was made from all four elements and contained anything put in it. What it contained was a rather small nascent Dark-sphere which had been in there for the last six months.

That was when Kilroy smacked himself in the face and realised we hadn’t discussed what we were going to be paid, especially since we’re saving the world again. Kilroy said we had to remember to leave a note later – it’s a causality thing.

That evening, a ship that looked like a butterfly arrived. This was the Beltan’s time-ship and I was really interested in how it worked, especially the science behind it. There was a crystal rod that slowly rotated that ran the length of the keel that provided lift, something that would be useful for the star-faring vessel and telescope platform I wanted to build, especially since there were a lot of objects in this solar system I wanted to visit – Merlyn for example. There was also a rather complicated clockwork timepiece which I presumed was the time controller. Definitely would like to discuss the science, maths, and engineering behind that too. They also were sure that time paradoxes were resolved by the timeline being rewritten, not by the alternate planar theory. I also figured I’d have to do a lot of astronomical calculations to work out planetary and stellar positions for time jumps. I’d even have to allow for precession. The room containing the clockwork was also warded to prevent entry by short entities. It seems that, earlier, a hobbit sized person had tried to steal the time controller.

While I was doing that, Kilroy suggested we visit the Oracle. He could be found on top of a mountain and was usually reached by climbing up an extremely long staircase that wound several times around the mountain. However, since we weren’t actually seeking enlightenment, we flew straight to the mountain and landed. We were actually here to see the other ‘person’ there, a man shaped entity, named Xelnor, that was the embodiment of a Dark-sphere. ‘He’ had also swallowed Seir’s All Seeing Eye. He turned out to be a six ft tall black cloak and hooded entity that ‘floated’ across the ground.

He immediately told us that the answer was ‘Galthous’, before we even asked the first question. It turned out that Galthous was an entity we had to slay to stop the ritual, being him who set it off in the past in the first place. However, we had already done that in the past. So we were either dealing with a fixed point in time that had to happen or an event that had yet to be properly determined. I tried to describe Galthous as a chronotomic state that was either ‘alive’ or ‘dead’ at the same time until the actual event is observed by us. Galthous was a drow who had obtained the knowledge of doing the ritual and had started it 20,000 years ago, a bit after the War of Tears itself. Obviously we couldn’t kill him before that as it was possible someone else would have taken his place in history. We then showed him the bag containing the Darksphere and he said ‘Yes’ He then explained we had to ‘take the child out and feed it to Galthous’. That Darksphere was revealed to be a relation to Xelnor, and once eating Galthous, it would grow and then go home.

We also had to obtain a shield that Raphael had dropped in the Black Desert near the Whistling Mesa and, on the way there, we would be attacked by the prophets.

Session Two

I decided to check my pockets to see if I had left myself a note about when the prophets would attack. Yes, I did find a note but it said "Bad idea. Don't mess with causality" I guess I'll have to go back at some point and put the note in my pocket - which leads to the question, if the note keeps going around inside a closed loop in time, who wrote it? That thought kept me occupied as we traveled to the University of All Knowledge in Alfheim.

The plan was to get a map that would show us where the Mesa was in the Black Desert. Seemed straight forward enough although the first elf we met seemed to have not seen a female elf before and didn't believe that humans existed. While Rowan arranged for a copy of the required maps, I went looking for old star charts. The astronomy room was having the roof redone to reflect the current state of the heavens, heavens I had been busy remapping because the stars had been rearranged since the sun went out. One of these days, I'm going to find a way to fly to the stars and find out exactly what they are. I was also interested in information about Merlyn and any expeditions to that planet.

I have to admit, I could happily get lost in that library, researching stuff, but Rowan soon turned up to retrieve 'her human'. The others had discovered that the Black Desert was part of the Obsidian Consortium whose patron was the Marquis of Corruption

Once back aboard the ship, the co-ordinates were set, and we found ourselves flying through a featureless grey void. I was keeping watch to see if anything else was in the Void when the ship shuddered. One end of what looked like a long, sticky ribbon had stuck itself to the side of the ship and pulling us off course. We made several attempts to get it off but it soon became apparent we were being drawn into a massive grey blob with a cave, from which the ribbon was protruding. Wait a moment, that's no cave ... it's a mouth and the ribbon is a tongue. We discovered that the grey blob was long lived sentient with the GTN of Garthak.

We did manage to detach the tongue, but not before it had drawn us into the mouth and started chewing. Our efforts turned into getting the creature to spit us back out as being not good to eat. Sister Clench hacked into the tissue surrounding us while Dr Jericho tried to create Toothache with Hellfire. Flamis and I was trying to irritate the back of the throat. Didn't help much as the ship was breaking up, the crew were being killed by acid and we were swallowed. Our magical protections were protecting us so far but we were taking a beating. Rowan managed to put Install Flight on the pieces of the wreckage we were clinging to as we suddenly dropped through a dimensional portal.

The ship and bodies crashed on a surface packed full of globby balls. For a while I thought this creature's last meal was tapioca pudding but, when they started hatching, we realised they were thousands and thousands of eggs. The creatures that came out were easy to kill but there were quite a lot of them. Fortunately they didn't like the Light I dropped around us and the Cyroflames that Flamis dropped put them into hibernation.

Just then we noticed six humanoid creatures with wings flying in. My first thought was succubi but it turned out to be other survivors of other crashes most of which had come from places that none of us had heard of. They were initially friendly, telling us that there was a town nearby, and that the 'Spawn of Garthak' was edible. One of them even said he knew 17 different recipes to make them really delicious. However, they got rather suspicious when they realized we knew a lot about demons. I claimed it was part of the job but they left claiming we were Greater Summoners.

Anyway we resurrected those of the crew we could then searched to see what of the ship we could recover. However, we couldn't find the clockwork, not even a piece of it. One of the crew was rather concerned by this, saying that the clock was now 'unattenuated'. Did that mean it was now 'unstuck in time'? This was rather disturbing as it may mean we were stuck here. Plus the keel cylinder was cracked and bent, most likely rendering it inoperative, just like the spiral crystal booster I had encountered before. The only other way out, apart from the portal we had fallen though, was the Pit that we were told about. They also told us that no one who went down there had come back out, and there was another dimensional portal. Maybe it was one way, but we didn't want to risk it until we knew more.

Session Three

Kilroy managed to locate a piece of the clock about 20 miles away. Meanwhile I fired up my planetarium and discovered that all it projected was grey. We then heard a small faint voice repeating "Help! I can't reach my staff." Kilroy went to investigate and tentacles shot out from inside the egg mass and grabbed him. The creature they were connected to, then tried to eat him but he teleported free. Flamis wanted to go digging for the staff but we decided that might not be such a good idea. Instead, we flew off in the direction of the clock piece.

A short while later we could see a huge pyramid ahead that had a pentagonal base. Scattered around was the wreckage of other ships, including a Calamar nautiloid. There was also a black spiked tower beyond. Our course took us to the pyramid where we landed, and spoke to the guards at the front entrance. They told us that we should speak to Tagrin, who lived in the third level, near the top of the pyramid, who knows stuff. The black spiky tower was the residence of Kong the Sorcerer. Grif Marka was the Calimar who came in the nautiloid. Issual is another sorcerer who lived somewhere out there and had fire giants for minions. He's also a vampire. And yes, this was the city that the others had come from.

We went into the pyramid. The walls detected as illusionary and, for some reason, Flamis decided to disbelieve everything and literally dropped through the floor. Fortunately she came to her 'senses' and managed to return to us from where ever she went. We came out into a large market type area and there was a rather frantic auction going on for an Alusian cupcake. I guess a lot of people here were getting tired of eating those egg things outside. One of the bidders was a succubis with a soul jar.

Trying to make a discrete passage through this lot, we noticed we were being followed by two entities being a naked male elf and some sort of shadow creature. Fortunately we made our way to Tagrin's residence without incident, discovering it was a rather fleshy house with a living aura - GTN Troll. The goblin butler/servant let us in and we discovered it was rather humid inside. Tagrin turned out to be an elf with drowish features and, he told us that the clock piece he had, had arrived long before we did. So it was either a duplicate, or this piece had travelled back in time before crashing - which could mean that the entire clock has been smeared across the timeline. Tagrin had come from Alusia just before the War of Tears, during the Ascension, and he remembered Belial and Asmodeus. He also warned up not to bother the Contemplator who built this place. Grif Marka keeps raving about leaving but those who could banish themselves don't stay long. He also thinks we were deliberately targetted by Galthous. Another person that could be useful to talk to was Illimar, a succubis with s discrete establishment who was good at tempting with ideas.

Maybe we were now outside Fate, maybe we were no longer a prisoner of Destiny, and that we now had the freedom of Free Will where, before, it was just an illusion. Also my bag containing the Dark Sphere was twitching.

So we went to see the Calimar. He had been sent here to study this unusual place. He also concluded that, to get out of here, we needed the Eye of a Fire Giant. Fortunately for us, the vampire had three of them. I ended up discussing higher mathematics with the Calimar in order to get better techniques for calculating stellar positions in space/time.

Our next stop was an attempt to see Eric, otherwise known as the Eternal Champion. At his door, we were stopped by a Naga who told us that Eric did not wish to see us. Flamis reckoned that he was hiding from her, as she was the Eternal Consort, and something catastrophic would happen if the two should meet. She told us that the best way out of here was to use the back passage but we would need to exert a lot of will to reach our destination. Had Nyx caused us to be here? Apparently we're dripping with Fate - and I'm soaked to the core with it because of predestination. We actually had a choice now of going back to our predestined lives or staying here to be our own entities. It was sort of tempting. Apparently I'm being pushed along a certain path, at least according to her. I should be my own person, rebel against that.

While I was mulling over that, it was suggested that since Galthous is a servant of Astaroth, maybe we can stop the ritual by converting him to something else.

Session Four

Maybe Asteroth was trying to steal our Fate. Some of us were under the influence of younger gods.

It was suggested to us that we should go and observe two events in elvish history. The first was the Third Elven Expedition to the Old Lands which occurred roughly around 7000 BP. Ishural the Sorcerer was in Terranova at that time and the expedition was led by Queen Glorianna. The second was the Great Battle of Battle Bay (now Confederation Bay) which marked the start of the rise of Humanity. There, we could ask dwarves to help and the Naga mentioned she had a sister there as well.

So it was down the hole and, with an expression of Will, we ended up flying over a jungle area near the ocean. There was a city located nearby where we landed and discovered it was full of elves. The city was called Amber and was the jewel of Terranova. The main religion here was Shantaya, otherwise known and the Goddess, and seemed to be very similar to Chantris. They told us about the Lost Ones to the East and it was 51 Great Years since the Great Calamity (1 GY = 1000 years). I was able to confirm the date by studying the stars and was able to verify we were where we wanted to be.

Just then sails were spotted and, using my spyglass, we were able to ascertain they had Queen Glorianna's heraldry on them as well as that of Alfheim. The ships were giant catamarans with castles on it and I was sure I recognised one as being the one that would be the Sea Goddess Haven in their future. We managed to convince the inhabitants of the city to evacuate the city, even though they were convinced this armada came in friendship and they were planning to send a delegation to the beach to meet them.

They came in with one ship in the lead and the other two trailing to the right and left respectively. Both of those trailing ships launched fireballs at the city. Flamis was able to put one out in midair but the other impacted and she was kept busy for a while putting out the resulting fires before they did significant damage. Meanwhile the lead ship ran up the beach and some elves disembarked. A large argument evolved with the incoming elves believing all the local elves were 'demon worshippers' while Kilroy and the others argued that they were peaceful people and this lot had landed in the wrong place. Finally we were allowed on board and spoke to the Queen who agreed to hold off the attack here pending further investigation.

Now that had been sorted out - and I was wondering if we were causing ripples in the space/time continuum - we went inland to find the Sorcerer who no one dared to approach. We found the tower inland and dared to approach and enter.

We met the Sorcerer and DAs told us that his Theme of Magic was Contracts and his GTN is Drow. According to the Doctor, his Journey of the Soul upon Death was to be fought over by at least fifty demons. He thinks Garioth is a looney and he wants his left eyeball. An interesting conversation was had including mention of the Beast of the Mesa, a meany headed monster that arose to guard an artifact. It's only weakness was that the soles of it's feet were unarmoured. He also knew a lot about chronomancy which I was interested in, especially in its applications for deep space travel. He also wanted to find a way to transform blood into molten lead which I was quite sure was not possible according to several laws of magic and energy.

When we finally left, we pondered whether or not to divert the incoming elves to disrupt the ongoing ritual.

Session Five

Mil Sci

Daily Pattern

  • Sleep/Camp 10 Hours
  • Travel 10 Hours
  • Meals 2 Hours / 2 Hot meals + 1 tea
  • Rituals 2 Hours

Sleep gives 3/hr 6 hours sleep = 18ft

Travel Magics

Instilling Flight {modified} 48mph for 7.5 hrs (<360 miles)
Up to 5 objects each with its own pilot can lift up to 850lbs each.
Flys only for that pilot, No concentration, landed contact can be broken without ending the spell.
Cast by Rowan.

Star Wings Rank 12
42 mph for 390 min
Cast by Phaeton.

Wildfires Rank 12
44 mph for 260 min
Cast by Flamis.

Watch Order

Marching Order

Main body front:
Main body rear:
Tail Guard:

Formations
Single file:
Open area:

Buffs

Buffs listed in the table don't need to be detailed, other buffs not on the table must be mentioned at the time they are cast.
Y means always on, N/- means never on, 'Sit.' means when the party has time for buffs before a fight.
Weapon Spells which weapon/s it is going on normally should be noted also.

General notes.
The Circle Magic Ritual to put buffs on all at once.


Long Duration Buffs

Magic Rk Effects Dur Ft / cast Dr J Row Ph Fl Ki SC Golems
Runeshield 20 +25 Defence/+5 AP/Absorb 2 Spec Grevs 20 hrs 2 Ft Y
Smite 20 On Strike - D+21dmg/Stunned/Prone, resist for none 21 hrs 1 Ft Y Y Y (4) Y (4) Y
Greater Heart Rune 8 Cures 7 EN when EN damage is taken 9 days 5 Ft
Willow Healing 12 Cures 3 EN / Pulse for 14 Pulses when triggered 24 hrs 2 Ft Y
Armour of Ithan 11 120 pts Damage ablative, before MR or Amour 12 hrs 2 Ft
Fire Armour 16 64 pts Damage ablative versus Fire 16 hrs Touch
Coruscade 12 26 range/melee defense - 13 in close 390 mins 27 Ft Y Y Y Y Y Y
Name ## Does stuff ?? hrs ?? Ft Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

Short Duration Buffs

Magic Rk Effects Dur Ft / Cast Dr J Row Ph Fl Ki SC Golems
Mind Speech ? Comunication for ?ft ? 2 Ft Sit Sit Sit Sit Sit Sit Sit
Blessing 10 +10 Strike Chance, +10 vs Fear 1 hr 50 mins 2 Ft Sit Sit Sit Sit Sit Sit Sit
Resistance to light 7 +16 MR vs light attacks 80 mins 1 Ft Sit Sit Sit Sit Sit Sit Sit
Resistance to Light 20 +42 MR vs light attacks - see in R20 Light 210 mins 1 Ft Sit Sit Sit Sit Sit Sit Sit
Strength of Light 6 +7 Physical Strength 70 mins 1 Ft Sit Sit Sit Sit Sit Sit Sit

Calendar

Autumn: Fruit (4)

 MoondayDuesdayW'ansdayTh'rsdayFrysdayReapsdaySunday
  1 Guild Meeting 2  3  4  5  6 
7  8  9  10  11  12  13 
14  15  16  17  18  19  20 
21  22  23  24  25  26  27 
28  29  30