September 19
Continued immediately on from July's game:
The enemy stands before us, it is am avatar of Mephistopheles. He is easily 8 foot tall, and is brandishing a couple of Japanese long swords.
Ruben sneaks away and puts his journal down in the light spilling out of the doorway. Nothing seems to happen.
Ophion is lying on the ground, exhausted.
Mephistopheles attacks Nandi, shooting rays of ice at her.
The party attacks Mephistopheles. We try to banish him, but it fails. We hurt him a little. He casts ice spells, eventually creating an ice wall splitting the group in half.
Ophion gathers his strength and stands. He takes Nandi's hand and makes to leave. Mephistopheles tries to win Ophion over (telepathically) but Ophion stands firm.
The avatar of Mephistopheles disappears into blue light, which bounces around everywhere, as huge glowing orbs.
The kids and the dholes all reappear. The kids concentrate the energy into a single ball which Nandi blinks away.
Nandi thanks us for saving us. She explains he is trying to circumvent his own demise. The places are drifting further apart and he doesn't want to go the way of the others, he thought he would 'hitch a ride' on the new divine spark.
Nandi explains she and the other children are the guardians of the gate. The gods can't come here. Mephistopheles was only able to because he was linked to Ophion. It becomes clear to us at this point that we have all been manipulated into thinking the Leopard Orchids were the bad guys in order to get Mephistopheles to this place of power.
We learn that the gods have divine spark - radial energy that moves through The Spaces, and accumulates at the edge of the Great Beyond. This Lifelight has awareness and cannot be controlled, only coerced and with difficulty. It produces new divine sparks, each round different to before. It is anathema to the outer plains beings (such as the modern day gods).
We learn that the gods and the planes are not eternal. Gods rise and fall with and as the planes do. The more they ascend, the lighter they get, so it becomes harder for them to descend.
The power behind the Elder Gods makes them last longer than the new modern gods who come and go sooner.
We learn more about the Spaces - Chaos, Great Beyond, Lifelight, Otherwhere, Quanti, Threshold, Timevoid, Void
Nandi gives us a blessing each, specific to our needs.
--
We leave, and we arrive back at Coro's Court. It has been about a week. Everything has returned to how it was before we left the town the first time - the tear in the sky, the riots (although they are calming down).
Ruben is sad to discover that he did not bring back any of the Lifelight in his journal (the trick with the book in the doorway).
We receive a message "The Semseers request your permission to attend". We give them permission. We hear them start to arrive instantly. We meet them at the teleportation circle. One steps forward, introduces themselves as Semseer Audell from House Gaoro, and asks a favour of us.
Semseer Audell tells us that the Semseers are unaligned so they need our help in putting off the White Wasps mega swarms which are expected any day. They explain the White Wasps are leftover energy from the Elder Gods being destroyed. Whenever a rift is created between The Spaces, they are attracted to it, to destroy. During major discontinuances, they can congregate into mega swarms, massive balls measuring up to 40km diameter.
The Semseers are desperate and they have come to us because we're unaligned, like them, and they fear others would use the megaswarm as a weapon against their enemies.
Then they tell us there's more.
Out of the teleportation circle, a female cleric is brought out, surrounded by blue light. They explain they've frozen time around her, and please not to touch her or the light. They tell us the human's name is Dawn Eventide, and she has a symbiant called Drana, which we can see superimposed over her.
They explain Dawn travelled to the past, Carkade era, and after returning, her father, Patriarch Divine Alaclif Eventide of the Radiant Coast, sent her off to the High Temple of Lithander because she was starting to lose herself.
The symbiant Drana had attached itself to Dawn to escape the Alin and the Carkade. The Drana were a hive mind race, very clever, so clever they forgot to be conscious and aware, so when the Alin and Carkade attacked, they were easily overpowered, and enslaved to control the power of the Spaces.
Some of the clerics at the High Temple, where Dawn was being kept, changed their minds about helping after the attack by the Revelations, and they were going to instead use her as a weapon. They had been trying to wake Drana with Dawn to be used as a conduit only.
They managed to try 3 times, and each time a magical disaster has occured. If Drana is awakened, and if Dawn is killed, it will create a runaway vortex ripping through The Spaces because the Drana is out of time and will have lost it's link.
So, the Semseers beg us that we need to help keep Dawn safe. 2 of the Semseers will stay to continue the non-detection spell they have on her. We especially must be cautious of the Drana's Hammer, members of whom we met at the Convocation, as they want to rule and will no doubt try to use Drana to take advantage of that - they have the name because they have a weapon that was possessed by the Drana, a 15 foot green obelisk.
They tell us we need to go to one of the wormholes to access the Timevoid. There are only 2 wormholes in total, and only one is close enough - Pokio Pyramid. They say "a dead mind revitalises Drana's gift" - Tavarus Stone maybe?? (see notes from March)
--
Kunoh knows that the Carkade and the Alin were trapped on the Alin 12 Worlds within the Void due to his ancestors and their allies successful attempts to fend the Carkade-Alin alliance off.
Kunoh asks the Semseer to find out what is happening at the wormhole because it should be sealed ("above the stronghold of the last Warrior King").
Have the Carkade escaped the Timevoid, and if so, how? Is their re-emergence what has caused the latest major discontinuance?
