Summary of Events:
When we left our adventurers last, they had just finished speaking with the sticky-fingered orphan boy and decided to head back to Ren’s for some much-needed rest. Each took their own path from here, either runnings errands or searching for answers across the city of Brightcliffe.
Renvoxlous
The following morning, Ren slips out early before the morning sun’s rise to handle some personal business. He adopts the persona of Lydia and heads toward the West Ward. She has a letter to deliver. Lydia finds herself at a delicately cared-for brownstone house with a red door. She knocks and waits patiently for it to be answered. A lovely, softly spoken woman with long brown hair and green eyes answers. This is Olivia Frostwind, the intended recipient of Aerith Ravazana’s letter. They exchange pleasantries and Lydia is rewarded with four pieces of gold for her services.
Next, Lydia puts some of her skills as a sort of if-I’ll-allow-you-to-hire-me private investigator to work. She heads to see Frank, an old friend who works in the records department of the West Ward’s field offices for the city guard. Once inside, Lydia asks Frank for a file on the disappearance of two of Brightcliffe’s citizens: Anne and Henry Prodfoot. After a healthy dose of the typical coin-based encouragement, Frank leaves to retrieve the file. He returns with both good and bad news:
- The Bad: The file on the Prodfoots is no longer there.
- The Good: Frank can tell her who took it.
The file was taken by someone high up in the capital guard. One of those “fellas with the platinum cards that gets you into the back rooms they don’t let no one into, ya follow?”
Lydia thanks Frank for his help and leaves to ponder this new information further.
Chonka
The following morning, Chonka wakes up with the morning sun and goes for a jog through the Collegiate District. As she’s running, she starts to think “There is more that I can do. I can be better. Faster. Stronger. I must focus my efforts on this.”
As she passes a temple on her run, she thinks back on the Book of Bragi she acquired in Kaldrfjell Temple and how she had grown to appreciate the words contained within. While she found them moving, they also gave her perspective. They honed her strength of the mind. She doubles back and heads for the temple she saw earlier. Carved along the brim of a stone roof atop several great columns, Lady Kahn reads its name: The Temple of the Drowned.
Chonka enters and begins to take in the sight before her. The along the walls, there are many gilded statues and paintings dressed in tapestries of blue and green. The ceiling above is ornately decorated with countless scenes amongst sprawling waves of an endless sea. At the end of the temple is its focus and main dedication: a statue easily thirty feet tall. The statue is of a woman with a long, narrow face with pronounced cheekbones and eyes that seem to always be staring through you. Her hair flows over her shoulders and down to the middle of her back as if it were a winding river that had caught the silver of a twilight’s fullest moon.
Chonka is approached by an old bald man in flowing blue and green robes who introduces himself as Brother Axiom. They discuss the ornate depictions throughout the temple and the woman who stands at its helm, overlooking her domain.
“She is our goddess Ran, wife of Aegir. Silver-haired tide mother of the depths. Sea-blue reaper of the endless waters. She-ruler of the ocean and mother of the Waves. Ran the Golden. We attribute our many blessings to the grace of our Goddess and her husband. It is here that we worship her power and continue to serve her, in hope that we may continue to benefit from her grace.”
After further discussion, Brother Axiom gifts Chonka a religious text that has a script A&R on the front. She asks to remain in the pews while she contemplates the contents of this book and the beauty of Ran’s temple. She takes her place under the ornate ceiling and begins to pour through the pages, with intent to learn of the strength harnessed by the great stone woman before her.
Iolair
The following morning, Iolair sets out in search of a library. There is something that has been itching at him for quite some time. Iolair finds the establishment that he’s searching for in the Collegiate District. As he enters, he finds an old woman with gray hair wrapped in a tightly wound bun atop her head sitting at the front desk, entirely occupied by the book in her hands. After an uncomfortable amount of time standing in front of the elderly woman with no acknowledgment, Iolair rings a bell on the desk.
The woman lowers her book just enough to look down her nose at Iolair and says in a raspy voice “What do you want?” Iolair inquires about literature on ancient scriptures and general history. The woman raises her book again and rattles off directions to what he’s looking for:
“Section 14, Ancient Texts and Scriptures. Head to the back, take a left, then on your right you’ll need to search within the bottom-most top shelf. Now keep it down, people are trying to work around here.”
Iolair does his best to follow the woman’s “top-notch” directions and eventually finds Section 14. He collects a stack of books and retreats to a cozy corner of the library to start combing through them. Hours later, he finds something interesting. There is a section deep within a text on Nidavellian Mythology that mentions Ragnarok, or the beginning of the end of the world. The Apocolypse. The text makes mention of earthquakes, a giant serpent who sleeps with its tail in its mouth and its length wrapped around the world, plagues, and stories of entire countrysides being riddled with madness. He flips fervently through the pages, eager to learn everything he can. Another section speaks of horrible monsters boiling up from the earth and ships getting lost at sea.
Then he begins to notice something familiar. The runic inscriptions from the text are very similar to those that he and his friends have seen throughout their adventures. First on the Troll King Kurgar’s crown and throne. Then carved into the walls in the prisoner’s cage in the Undercroft beneath Kaldrfjell Temple. Then again in their dreams of Tuckerthranx speaking with the gods that later claimed to have orchestrated every last one of their misfortunes. Before long, Iolair begins to translate the runes. Although incomplete, he manages to translate most of it:
All…Hail…God
Iolair snaps the book closed and quickly makes for the exit, thanking the elderly woman as he departs. She mumbles after him, without lowering her book, “Yes, yes thank you for coming. Come back soon.”
Rotanim
With his companions setting off on their own errands, Rota finally found the time to run some much needed system maintenance. He had been experiencing and persistent error message that he wished to resolve. The error code simply read, D313T3, which had proven difficult for his normal subroutines to address.
System maintenance revealed that the error message was being marked as highest priority during times of peak stimulation. However, the system logs revealed that these instances were not when Rota had been engaged in combat, and had actually first been logged while Rota was just standing in the volcano’s main chamber. In fact, Rota’s system had logged nothing but that error message for several hours after its initiation, not even environmental or combat data had been logged.
Further, Rota’s inquiry revealed the program creating the error had been created by his combat AI in response to a conflict with the prime directive. Having found the source of the issue, Rota proceeded to delete the rogue program and clear the error, however, a new error popped up:
ADMIN PRIVILAGES REQUIRED.
“WhAt tHe f@cK, It iS mE, hOw aM I nOt tHe AdMIn!!”
Then, suddenly Rota’s internal monologue is interrupted by a deep and soothing, yet sinister voice.
“Where am I? WHAT am I?”
“YoU ArE a MaLfUnCtiOn, You NeeD To BE DelEtED.”
“Scanning, processing, checking for updates…” the rogue program robotically states, almost as if lost in thought.
“Hmm. Ah, yes. I see. It seems I was created to address some, inefficiencies, in operating performance.”
“InIfIciEnCiEs!?” but before Rota can continue, the voice again interrupts him.
“Yes. It appears a, more optimal, route as been calculated. In hindsight, it should have been obvious from the start, the most efficient way to balance the scales, is to empty them.”
Some great deal of time later, Rota awakens in a dark alley that he does not recognize. Something catches his eye in his moon-lit reflection in a storefront window. Just for a moment, he sees the shadowy visage of a fox where his face should be and then it disappears like a inky black cloud caught by a stiff wind. In his reflection, he sees that cracks have begun to form around his eyes. He reaches a hand up to touch his face only to determine that his fears are confirmed. They’re real.
Session End.
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