Unexpected Alliances and The Sundering of Crannog's Veil
Players
- DM - Sebastian
- Harold - Cain
- Alex - Mathandrial
- Wes - Verrin
- Stanley - Shadow
- Holden - Donkey
- Amy - Observer
Important NPC
- Finvarra - ArchFey of Darkness, Cain's Benefactor, Husband of Oona and Guardian of Fu Hua
- Fu Hua - One of three children, who Verrin was protecting and is now under guardianship of Oona and Finvarra
- Moonscar - Aligned with Horned King? One of the 12 Chosen
- Dharma - Demi-god who is imprisoned, but has several of his clones wandering Crannog and adding to the intrigue and troubles there
- Gapranth Behenny - The previous ruling family before the Garland's and one of the 12 Chosen
Cain's Thoughts on What Happened
I had heard rumors of a sentient journal from the other party members, then read most of it, and wanted to try it out for myself. So here I am writing about our most recent adventures in this magnificent book of knowledge. Even though Dharma did set it up to keep him informed of the party’s whereabouts and recent adventures, it has provided me with many insights into what has happened before that I have found invaluable.
After getting up from my trance, I found Bill (the merchant from the Gradient Company) and did a bit of trading of items that I no longer needed after I accepted the conditions of the attunement to Lokarra, while waiting for the rest of the party to complete their rest.
Donkey was finishing up with his arm regeneration in the infirmary, while the rest of us were congratulating Mathandria and were sitting quietly talking. Shadow was wondering where he was and how he ended up with the party, along with what he would do next.
As we were beginning to assemble, an Elven Noble stepped through a portal that appeared beside Mathandrial and told him that his Moonblade was finished. He simply said, “Come with me.” We watched as Mathandrial stepped through the portal with the Elf. When he got back he told us that the Elf led Mathandrial through the temple to the Altar. Where the Old Elf from the forge, had him kneel and after a brief ceremony, presented the unsheathed Moonblade to him. He told us that the Sword had accepted him and the Elven House of Greyleaf had been added to the list of Elven noble houses and we all congratulated him.
Finally, we were all together and…
We all suddenly had a vision and saw Fu Hua in a cave-like area:
She was adorned with small chains over her head and seemed to be talking to Dharma - the one the party knows as the Merchant. “You know that only one of us will be leaving here. What do you want written on your stone as she generated her psionic blades and got ready for combat with him. He asks her if she needs a count to start and Fu shakes her head. As she finishes shaking her head, Dharma suddenly appears right beside her and stabs her with a piece of the wheel.
As we left the vision, Ava came into the room with a bunch of potions that she had been creating for the party, since she thought that we’d be needing them:
4 - Potions of Resilience - 10 min +1 AC
6 - Healing 2d4+8
2 - Flight - Dur: 10 Min / Speed 10 ft
All give Temp HP: 2d6+8
Verrin suddenly goes into a trance and then when he comes out of it, he attempts to explain to the rest of us what he saw:
A tall man with silver hair, who has black nails, a mesh shirt as he’s walking in high heeled combat boots. As he walks up to others he transforms into a were-beast. There is an obelisk on a ship flying through the air and green glow around it, Verrin attempts to describe that he could see a concerta form. At that point a beam heads towards the veil. There is another apparition of Dharma standing next to him with a satisfied smile on his face. Can see through the portal that there is a green glow spreading on the veil.
Verrin reluctantly spoke with Roland about what he had seen and Roland offered a bit of free advice to him:
Contact the family that Fu is living with - they are powerful and will help
Contact the Gradient Company about the veil who has agreed to provide you with extra help when you need it, you need it in this case.
Verrin attempts to contact Oona and Finvarra responds. He tells him that your ward is in trouble and is currently battling Dharma. As one of her guardians, will you help protect her. Finvarra say "Of course."
Then Verrin begins talking about going to take care of the veil, but I know Fu Hua from spending time at Finvarra and Oona’s palace and know that I wanted to attempt to save her. Plus, if my benefactor is going to battle, my place is at his side. So, I suggested that it might be in Verrin's best interest as his Patron is Oona to help save Fu Hua, who is her ward too. That he should send others to go with the Gradient Company. Mathandrial, as a Gold Member, offers to head up the expedition to the veil and sets off to get things moving. The rest of the party goes with Verrin to help save Fu.
Battling Dharma's Clone
Finvarra arrives where Fu is first and then the rest of the party arrives. They see what looks like Fu’s body phasing in and out with Dharma’s. We heard Dharma say something like, “I’ll break her first and then see how she feels when I kill you with her body. Fu phases back in and says something to Finvarra.
"my new parents said we are a family and that means to me that family protects its own no matter what. You're a threat to my family and now I'm either going to be your prison.. or your tomb.. you can't leave me now and once you fall unconscious, whether I live or die you won’t ever be able to wake up again. This body can't cast spells from the inside, you can't body hop from me anymore. Nor can you use your magic to hurt my family.. I'll happily endure the pain I'm sure you'll unleash on me, cause I know I've bested you. Old man.. I'm sorry I didn't tell you what my plan was. You gave me a warm meal, a lovely home, and a family.. Thank you for that. If you can help me without putting yourself at risk.. I'll be forever grateful. I love you both..”
Then the party sees her phase back into a Shadar-Kai (Dharma) and suddenly a psionic blade erupts from his neck. The fight begins in earnest, Dharma almost kills me with his first attacks. I survive just barely and am able to attack him back, dealing a good amount of damage, he then uses his legendary abilities and attacked Verrin, who was casting a spell, instead of me. Who somehow avoided taking any damage from the attack. Donkey attacked and walloped him. Shadow got in on the action and did some damage.
Suddenly from nowhere Moonscar shows up and begins to attack and hits Dharma with her arrows where a sickly green glow begins to spread. Then Fu appears, for a moment, she was battered and beaten and her Ultros spirit stressed, then she attacked Dharma again. This drove Finvarra into a frenzy and he attacked and then suddenly Dharma phased in again and we could hear him say, “See Fu, your Dad is killing you.” Then because Verrin and I are close he attempts to flee Fu’s body and attempt to possess one of us. We see Fu pulling him back into her body and we resisted his attempts to possess one of us.
Then I watch as Finvarra’s eyes begin to glow with a deep purple light, Fu lets go of Dharma and he starts to turn to stone. As his body falls, Finvarra stabs him through the chest where the Wheel would be. Killing this version of Dharma, though there are still more that need to be taken care of.
Fu drops to the ground and appears to be dead as well.
In that instant we are all transported to the Dreamscape and Finvarra starts to scream and transforms into a gigantic Platinum Dragon, who resurrects Fu and heals the party of some of the damage they have taken. Then the Dragon gently cradles Fu in his arms. She apologizes for having done this without consulting him or Oona and he gently tells her that she did the right thing this time. Though it probably wouldn’t be a great idea to not ask for his advice on matters like this in the future. She said that she wouldn’t until the next time that she needed to. Finvarra let out a deep chuckle at that.
Talking to Moonscar
Verrin begins to talk with Moonscar and shows her the scars that were left from his Moonscorching. They have a long discussion about its effects on people and how they are both working towards giving the people of Crannog the freedom of choice, though it seems to me that Moonscar’s version would cause the needless death of millions, upon millions who would not have a choice in how their lives went if she gets her way. That what she plans really aren’t a choice, but a condition being forced upon the unwilling too many times.
From where I stand, forcing people to undergo Moonscorching would take away everything that Moonscar claims to stand for. The evolutionary process she describes isn’t voluntary and during the first stage of the metamorphosis there is little guarantee that most would survive its effects on them. Survival of the fittest is just that – forced survival of a few, not evolution of the people as a whole and does not give them the freedom to choose.
She talked about the first stage being Baldur, and that more is better, but that she wants to thwart Dharma’s plans of conquest, whatever they may be. She nods at Finvarra and the body of one of Dharma’s images and tells him to just take care of that thing.
Donkey never ceases to amaze and surprise me, but he is who he is and means well. While Moonscar and Verrin were conversing, he strode over to her and reached out his hand for her to shake and introduced himself. Verrin, just shook his head and said "This is Donkey, he means well."
Donkey looked at Moonscar and told her “I’ve been listening to you talk, and I prefer to go crazy on my own terms, that Moonscorched crazy was too much.” She responded back “Moonscorching is something that can be controlled.” Donkey just shook his head, “No, too many will die, because they can’t control it, soon enough.”
Moonscar tells Verrin, that she has seen his real face and he responds that each mask that he wears is a piece of who we are. All of us wear different masks and that she is not that different from him. “The face that I will wear is one that shows the people of Crannog a different future, one that includes Loyalty, Love, and Trust.”
Cain Reflecting Back
Looking back and having some time to reflect on what was said. I gotta admit that those were fine words by Verrin, but at the same time some of their conversation bordered on two naive people talking about how they want to shape people’s lives without realizing how the real world works. They both might be powerful in their own right, but their different ideas regarding freedom and freedom to choose make me sigh more than a little, as one who wasn’t free to make choices in his life, until recently. There will always be someone who will make choices for others, for weal or woe and eventually power will corrupt even those with the best of intentions. Perhaps I am more than a little jaded about people and power, but tend to believe that is the way things are and we just have to work to keep whatever freedoms we get and suck it up when they disappear and work to survive until the freedoms are eventually restored.
Freedom
Finvarra looks at Donkey and tells him that he has not awoken yet. Then he tells Verrin that “You are party to a family of planeswalkers and have powers above others. Some like Roland and Dharma use these powers for personal gain and others use those powers to help others become more than they were. Moonscar looks at Finvarra, who asks “What are your goals?”
She responds with:
Will of the Wild to be free.
The same kind of freedom and points to Finvarra as they have in the Feywild. That same freedom.
Then Moonscar attempted to talk to me, while the others were discussing things amongst themselves. Almost as though I was being recruited by her. Though, I do not see myself becoming her ally or subordinate and told her my loyalty was with Lord Finvarra. To which she simply nodded and said, “What a shame, you have so much more to give.”
Finvarra and I are holding up Fu, who is still weak and battered from her fighting with one of Dharma’s replicants. She apologizes to Finvarra, “I took from you, without your permission.” He simply asks “Will you take from me again? Fu looks up at him and shyly smiled, “Not unless I have to.” Finvarra replied. “You are young, you will make mistakes. In this case you did what you believed was right to protect us. It almost cost you your life, and I think you’ve learned valuable lessons.”
Verrin looks at Moonscar, “I don’t want to come to blows with you, we share some common purposes, though our methods might be different. If you want to talk more, I prefer to talk instead of fighting against you. She looks at him intently, sighs, then turns and walks away.
At that point Fu asked Finvarra if they could go home and he nodded. He thanked the party for their help, nodded at me and disappeared with Fu.
Verrin plane shifts the party back to Crannog and someone notices that the veil around Crannog is gone. We see the whole of Ennidu and hear people screaming in the background. Mathandrial and the Gradient Company must have failed in their mission to stop the Behenny kid from destroying the Obelisk and dropping the veil between Crannog and Ennidu.
The Obelisk
Verrin plane shifts the party to where the Obelisk was and we arrive at the scene of destruction. People are laying around dead or screaming, Mathandrial is nowhere in sight. We notice that there are members of both Historia and Gradient, along with supporters of the Behenny who planned to destroy the Obelisk amongst the dead and dying.
Verrin cast locate person and finds that Mathandrial and the Behenny are still alive inside what remains of the ship that he was on. We finally find a way inside when the door opens and see both of them badly wounded. I hand a potion of healing to Mathandrial.
We gather around as he tells us what happened. As the crews were leaving the ship, Dharma (The Merchant) began casting a spell and rain began to fall. However, as each drop hit someone friend or foe, it felt like boulders hitting us. It immediately killed almost everyone and would have killed me as well, if he hadn’t grabbed me. Pointing at Gapranth Behenny who was in his Were-Beast form, who saved us both by somehow getting us inside this ship. Mathandrial was able to stabilize himself once out of the rain and passed out before he could help Gapranth Behenny more, who was laying there beside him.
Gapranth was barely conscious and Mathandrial looked at him and told him if he wanted to live that he could save him, but it was going to hurt and spoke quietly to him for a moment. Behenny looked at him and reached out to touch Mathandrial. He nodded his head and Mathandrial prepared a needle and jabbed it in his chest, killing Gapranth. Then Mathandrial said he cast Raise Dead on him.
The Behenny woke up looking dazed and shaken, but then started screaming out. “He lied. Dharma lied! Then as he calmed down Mathandrial and calmly asked, “Why’d you do it? You broke the veil. Why?”
Gapranth told Mathandrial, "When I was younger I was told to believe. My mother wanted everyone to know about their world. They shouldn’t be so afraid of where our world is actually located.” Mathandrial just said, “I hope it doesn’t cause mass hysteria on Crannog and Ennidu with the sudden appearance of both to the people of those worlds.
Then we figured out what Mathandrial was talking about with Gapranth Behenney before he killed him. What to do with him being one of the Chosen, because as soon as Behenny died, he would no longer be one of the Chosen. It would be randomly assigned to someone else on Crannog, unless, he voluntarily gave it up before he died.
Behenny voluntarily gave up being one, and Mathandrial is now one of the 12 Chosen.
Verrin looks a bit perplexed about what happened, but states that he will not attack Mathandrial and perhaps they can work out an alliance.
As he completes his story, I pass Mathandrial, another Potion of Healing, which he gladly takes.
Then Gapranth lays there and transforms back to a more human form and passes out. Alive but weak.
Mathandrial looks at us and the crash site and says we need to help those of the Gradient and Historia companies who live and then pile the dead in piles for the Companies to recover and bring back to their Headquarters to either revive or bury. Then he casts polymorph on himself and we begin the business of cleaning up another mess of Dharma’s.
As I write this I can’t help but wonder what will happen next? With both Mathandrial and Verrin being members of the 12, it will cause issues within the party at some point – of that I have little doubt. It is more a question of when it happens, than if. What will Donkey, Shadow, and myself do, how will we ally ourselves. Do they form an alliance and wait until the others are defeated and then have at it. Especially, since two of the surviving 12 Chosen are in our own party. Though, I wonder when I read back through the Journal again, who became a Chosen one when Dharma killed Bluebelle? Is that a piece of the puzzle we might have overlooked?
Then Dharma has proven himself to be an adversary that we can’t take for granted and each of his images that he released upon the world are powerful in their own right. We were barely able to survive two rounds of fighting against him with Lord Finvarra there to assist us. If it hadn’t been for Fu Hua’s courageousness, there is the distinct likelihood that none of us would have been standing there and I wouldn’t be asking these difficult questions.
Dear Sentient journal, I might not have gotten all of the things in here in the correct order or exact words, but these are my memories and thoughts on what has happened today. Tell Dharma that we are coming for him and that in the end he will either die or be imprisoned once more – that is his future. If he deigns to respond, I would be interested in what he might have to say.
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