Personal Log,
Something had been nagging at me for a while, and after returning to the haven area of Nexopolis from the hell-blasted ruins of a once thriving world I decided to broach the subject with the others.
Twice now we had run into parties opposed to the idea of us completing the Grand Walk whose preferred method of ending it was to take Lady Tsian’s casket from us. Morholt was hired to either retrieve it, preferentially, or destroy it otherwise.
Mother Girl expressed no interest in destroying it, but apparently did consider relieving us of it’s burden. My thought was that the casket might have properties connected with the Last Walk rites of which we were unaware. I was also marginally concerned, especially worrisome since Vala was implicated as a potential traitor and she’s the one who conducted the ritual through which the Last Walk was begun, that the Last Walk rites themselves may have been tampered with.
Meaning no disrespect to Lady Tsian, we took pause in our journey and gave the casket itself a thorough examination. The magic it contained was quite powerful, and quite in tune with that of the Grand Stair itself. There was nothing to hint at anything awry. There was nothing about the casket which would be leading us astray.
While this laid that particular worry to rest I continued to have this nagging thought that we were missing something.
We rested that evening, preparatory to what we expected to be some rigorous travel the next day. The curse I had acquired in New Arbanes continued to plague me in minor ways. While I had paid lip service to the concept of ‘the Universe being Out To Get Me’ before, I had never really in it. Now it felt that I was, somehow on the bad side of the universe, and it really was out to get me, if only in a very minor way. I am increasingly looking forward to the day when this curse is finally lifted.
We began the new day with one of Cyra’s trademark teleport spells. The thought was that we would simply use this as a means of throwing off any pursuit as we continued to make our way along the Grand Stair to our destination. We were all surprised when our destination, a haven Cyra had created for herself in a world called Verse Arcanum, turned out to contain one of Lady Tsian’s loose ends.
We were sufficiently caught off guard that none of us considered the fact that by using Cyra’s teleport to come here we were not availing ourselves of the language translation property offered by the Doors on the Grand Stair. In the end it proved only a minor inconvenience having to backtrack to the Door to the Grand Stair, exit, and re-enter the world properly through the Door, then teleport back to where we had been.
Barrowborn’s Academy of Enchantment and the Necromantic Arts was our destination; sited atop a tall mountain range and surrounded by the Forbidden Forest. It was billed as the most well attended school of the mystic arts, run by Eternal Headmaster Juniper Barrowborn, the kindliest old lich you’ll ever meet.
I’d like to know what PR firm came up with that one.
One thing the advertising brochure failed to mention was the fact that the whole mountain range was actually a single large dragon. Very large dragon. Very Very Large. Also not terribly pleased with people who erected buildings on it, but seemingly tolerant of the practice nonetheless. It queried us as to our places of origin, then allowed us to continue unmolested.
Alas, the advertising was out of date. The place was largely blackened and burned. None of the students or faculty seemed to have been left alive, or, considering the school advertised the necromantic arts, undead. A large number of the corpses were blackened with burned out eyes. An arcane apocalypse seemed to have descended on the place, although Cyra said there was no magic residue.
Magically, the place was as dry as a stone. Small ‘m’ magic I should say. Those in the know said the place was naturally steeped in Eidolon.
As Lady Tsian’s Last Walk would take us further into the devastation, we had little choice but to further explore this academy of the dead.
Taking the time to feel for psychic presences I found them in two locations, one a group and the other a single entity high in a tower. They seemed to correspond to the two local destinations Lady Tsian’s casket indicated we needed to visit. We opted to tackle the tower first.
As we started up into the tower the psychic presence disappeared. The thread from the casket still indicated we need to go up so we guessed the entity we were seeking had either masked or cloaked itself.
We eventually reached a level with a number of open-air balconies and summoning circles dotted about it, the whole ensemble proving somewhat disorienting. Equally disorienting was the appearance of our own party, duplicates by their appearance, hostile by their demeanor.
We were getting ready for a major showdown with ourselves when someone, Jane I think, managed to dispel the lot o them. Then the real battle started.
Suffice it to say that my strengths do not run to dueling with powerful spellcasting liches protected by impenetrable shields and barriers. Fortunately, others in the party proved more adept at such a task and Juniper Barrowborn reverted from his role as unholy avenger to that of kindly headmaster.
As the kindly old headmaster, Barrowborn proceeded to critique our performances during the recent encounter, addressing us by the names of, presumably, former students of his. I had the honor of being recognized as Lady Tsian, probably because I had touched her casket to him during the recent conflict. I have my doubts that this was the proper way to take care of the matter, but the old lich did seem to recognize and respond to the touch.
We learned from Barrowborn that someone had released Spell Eaters into the academy; malevolent spirits having ho discernible psychic presence who go after the strongest magical beings and items, infesting them, and using them to go after more magic. Left in someone long enough they will burn out their victim’s eyes. Barrowborn seems to have been strong enough to resist them but the shock of seeming them kill all his students and destroy his academy seems to have driven over the brink mentally. Barrowborn also proved to be strong enough to resist our own attempts to restore his mental state.
Before descending to the magic vault where, presumably, the psychic presences we had detected indicated survivors holed up behind some strong magical wards, I insisted we (meaning Cyra as she was the only one who knew what to look for) make sure the spell eaters were, in fact, gone, rather than simply assuming that their failure to attack us indicated they were no longer on the premises. Cyra obliged, detecting a whole horde of them surrounding us, who promptly attacked us.
The good news is that my new plasma shotgun shell works very nicely. The bad news is that I discovered this by using it on William and Mindel while I was possessed by a Spell Eater. After a brief struggle those of us who had not been possessed managed to destroy the Spell Eaters, including those who had been possessing the rest of us. I count myself lucky that one of the properties of this Domain requires time for the specific activation of each shell I fire from my shotgun, otherwise I might well have done significantly more damage to those I consider my friends.
Having now satisfied ourselves that there were no more Spell Eaters loose in the academy we proceeded to the vault, where we found a lone surviving professor shepherding several frightened students.
Lady Tsian brought us to an Icon next to where a child had been sleeping. The Icon was of Lady Kitabu. The child was her son, James. With a bit of work we managed to piece together the story. James had used the Icon to try to contact his mother, but was instead possessed. While possessed, he had removed the wards around the academy and let the waiting Spell Eaters in. James had been sponsored by Calais.
Recognizing that there was little more good we could do here we decided to pass the buck. Lucien was the one finally whose lap we chose to dump this while mess into, since he had a connection to both the academy and Barrowborn as he was once a student here. Lucien inquired about Lady Tsian’s daughter. We had not known that Lady Tsian even had a daughter, but soon discovered she was not ne of the survivors. In fact it looked like she may have been one of he first victims, struck down by an arcane blast cast by someone infested.
Mena took on the unenviable task of informing Baudemagus his daughter was dead. This was doubly hard on him as he had no inkling of her existence.
We went back to Barrowborn and asked him what he could tell us about the Gossamer Lords, most of whom had been students of his at one time or another. None of what he told us helped shed any light on who might be the traitor Lady Tsian had mentioned.
There was one Gossamer Lord Barrowborn was reluctant to discuss. As in his madness he saw me as Lady Tsian he, quite rightly, did not want to talk about her. I left the room, granting him leave to talk about me behind my back in my absence. I wanted some time to think anyway.
Lady Tsian’s daughter was dead. Specifically targeted. Why? Because someone believed Lady Tsian had learned something and passed it on to her daughter? That makes no sense. Why endanger her daughter in this way? Because the daughter had learned something and passed it on to the mother to pursue? Possibly. But where would the information have come from? James Kitabu? Which brings us back to the Calais connection. Calais may be the youngest of the Gossamer Lords, but I can’t believe he’d be this obvious.
No. My nagging doubts are making me question the basic assumptions we are working under. Could Lady Tsian have been set up? Could she have been allowed to ‘discover’ evidence that one of the other Gossamer Lords was a traitor, caught in a trap as she was attempting to validate it, and allowed to escape only after she was mortally wounded so she might pass on a vague warning and sew distention between the other Gossamer Lords. If someone is being controlled via their True Name, will they recognize who is controlling them? Is Calais being set up to take a fall?
All this leads me to some further questions. If not one of the Gossamer Lords, then who is behind it all. Have we been overlooking other clues? Who is Jaeger Zane for instance. We’ve seen his name crop up more than once now. Was he an informant? Manipulator? Business acquaintance? Friend? Why was he in prison in the first place? These are the sorts of questions we need to start asking.
Am I over thinking the problem?
Written by Dave Nebiker