Forgotten Suns: Log - The Source
The South Calls
| 9th day of Ascending Water, RY 770 | |
| The South | Approaching the Glass City ⋅ 27 May 2009 |
Rules change to include Exalted Aspects.
Notice the big beam. DB's and jades feel it. Long flight to beam. Sand storms.
Reach glass city, notice crashed ship. Stag and Silkily Descending Mountain get into aircar to circle beam. As they do, midnight hits.
| 10th day of Ascending Water, RY 770 | |
| City of Glass | Streets of Glass ⋅ 27 May 2009 |
The rest land. Find dbs, lots of large glass animals. Big fight. Massive beam attacks.
| City of Glass | Streets of Glass ⋅ 4 Jun 2009 |
Fight continues. While it goes on, Stag and Silkily Descending Mountain notice a strange pagoda in the city, and land to investigate. Walking through the pagoda, Stag gets teleported into a maze of mirrored hallways.
When the animals die, they explode. Some in the group notice that the resulting shards of glass all point in the same direction.
| City of Glass | Streets of Glass ⋅ 11 Jun 2009 |
Fight concludes.
| City of Glass | Interrogation of Mnemon Marbado ⋅ 27 Jun 2009 |
Using abyssal interrogation magic, patience, the damage redirection abilities of Guen's armor, and a bunch of intentionally failed Compassion rolls, Mnemon Marbado eventually revealed the following:
- He is working directly for Mnemon. He is her grandson.
- Mnemon quickly realized that the beam appeared at roughly the last known location of Bagrash Köl. She tasked Marbado with investigating, and bringing back the "his artifact" if he found it. The party understood he was talking about the Eye of Autochthon, though it was never mentioned by name (significant, because the alchemicals within earshot don't really know about the Eye, but would have reacted to the word "Autochthon").
- Mnemon was the one who sent Marbado to Chiaroscuro, in order to find the Broken-Winged Crane.
- He succeeded getting the book, by trading for with Grandmother Bright.
- Grandmother Bright exchanged the book after Marbado arranged to have a different Immaculate monk spend the night in utter servitude to her for twenty-five nights in a row. The monks had to be 13 women and 12 men, with exactly five of each aspect. Marbado has no idea what she did with them, but they seemed fine afterward.
- Why Mnemon wants the book is "a long story":
- About 100 years ago, Mnemon's son, Marbado's father, Mnemon Torbun had a theory that the Empress had been exposed to the Broken-Winged Crane.
- He became completely obsessed with the idea, getting more paranoid.
- One night, he claimed to have concrete proof, and took it to Mnemon.
- Mnemon was different after that, especially a week later, when Torbun was found ripped to pieces.
- Mnemon called Marbado in to investigate.
- Over the next few weeks, over sixty people vanished from the Imperial Palace, including the Empress' own consort.
- Rumor was that his place in the Empress bed had been taken by a high-ranking bureaucrat named Oliran Drell.
- Marbado didn't have much to go on, but found that Drell's name kept popping up when following the stories of Torbun and others who vanished, but it was all pretty thin.
- They watched Drell for decades. Something was always a little off about him. Once the Empress booted him out of her bed, he became less of an issue, but they still kept an eye on him.
- Through all this time Mnemon would secretly track down rumors of the Broken-Winged Crane, but never managed to find a copy. Got close a few times, but had to keep a low profile, as knowledge the Mnemon was looking for the book could be politically bad for her.
- Then the Empress disappeared. A lot happened then, but one thing was that Oliran Drell started doing some extremely suspicious things, even more so than usual.
- With the Empress gone, Mnemon decided it would be worth eliminating Drell, and sent Marbado and four others to do the job.
- Even with the element of surprise, only Marbado survived. 'He had magic I'd never seen before, with these weird sickly green glows in his eyes, and martial arts moves that defied description.'
- In searching his quarters, Marbado found a mostly destroyed copy of the Broken-Winged Crane.
- It was clear that Drell had read it a long time ago, and that it warped and corrupted him in some way.
- After that Mnemon went all out trying to find a copy of the book.
- He gave the book to Mnemon, but doesn't think she has read it.
- While much of House Mnemon thinks the Scarlet Empress is dead, Marbado doesn't think Mnemon does.
While this interrogation went on, Marbado asked several times about the circle's intentions for the Eye. The circle, not really knowing for sure that the Eye might be here, hadn't really considered it. Most of the circle (with the silent exception of Jorias) eventually claimed that they weren't really interested in wielding it, but wanted to keep it out of the hands of their enemies.
After a lot of arguing, eventually the circle decided to let Marbado go if he agreed to an oath, which was sanctified by Juuken. The gist of the oath was that Marbado would…
- …never attack the circle again
- …agree that Guttstopia belonged to the circle
- …be nice to kittens
- …seek out ways for both himself and Mnemon to cooperate with the circle, particularly against forces of the Underworld.
- …be freed from the oath if any of the circle wielded the Eye.
After this, he walked away from the circle, bursting into a flock of birds with sorcery and vanishing into the night.
The circle was left wondering exactly who was covered by the oath. Was Stag included, since he was in the maze of mirrors? Are the alchemicals included, since they were not really part of the interrogation, nor the circle? Only heaven, which enforces the oath, knows the answer.
| City of Glass | Rats in a Glass Maze ⋅ 27 Jun 2009 |
The other characters walk in the direction the shards of glass point, and find their way at the same pagoda Stag walked through earlier. Gutts goes through quickly, followed by Gloriously Still Alloy. The others ponder. Meanwhile, Stag has started smashing the mirrors, eventually discovering a chasm of sorts with huge magical material tubes running through it. Gutts eventually tries the same, and arrives at a similar, but different chasm.
Varden suggests the rest all go through holding hands. They do, and the rest arrive together in a single mirrored corridor, except the alchemicals, who are know where to be seen.
The group eventually makes their way to a central chamber, guarded by an Autochthonian Hydra sitting on an obviously important hatchway, and spend quite a while probing it's reactions.
| City of Glass | Interview with a Glass Sorcerer ⋅ 14 Aug 2009 |
While the plan started as "distract the hyrdra while Varden goes for the hatch", it quickly degenerated into just pounding on the thing. The room, basically a large sphere, had no floor, the bottom half instead filled with a complex network of piping. Guen originally skirted the outside edge, but fell and wound up just slugging it out. Juuken climbed on to Gutts, who leaped onto the back of the hydra. It quickly became clear that cutting into the soft glass skin of the beast sent shards of glass flying into the room, where they joined a swirling mass of shards that started to accelerate. Stag, therefore, stayed back, not wanting to make the glass storm worse. Adrios and Jorias attacked at range though, and Cruxis just ran in and started swinging.
Varden made it to the door, disappearing to the other side using Ebon Shadow mojo. Though the hydra got some bites in on the rest of the circle, Guen shredded it before too long, and the plates of magical materials from which it was made collapsed into a heap, scattering all over the hatch and the piping. The shattered glass continued to spin, however, as the rest of the circle found various means to reach the center, where Varden had opened the hatch.
The hatch led to a large spiral stairway leading down to a cylindrical room, carved out of jasper. In the center, all the veins of magical materials converge into a roughly humanoid form, with flesh and clothing made of glass, through which superimposed networks of the five magical materials can be seen, pulsing as if alive. The pattern of the veins will seem vaguely familiar reminds the circle of how the conduits within Autochthonia are organized.
As soon as they enter, some of the circle can barely make out an argument, coming from somewhere under the floor. They can hear the alchemical exalted who came with them yelling at each other:
- Heavenly Bitter Metal: This course of action is heresy. Heresy is not to be tolerated.
- Unrepentantly Battleworn Servant: How can it be heresy when the instructions come from the Great Maker himself?
- Gloriously Still Alloy: It is our clear duty to complete this mission, for the greater glory of the Great Maker!
- Unrepentantly Battleworn Servant: Not to mention the salvation of our people!
- Heavenly Bitter Metal: Illogical. The clear duty is to stamp out heresy, even here. Especially here.
- Unrepentantly Battleworn Servant: Think of the bigger picture here, Heaven.
- Gloriously Still Alloy: I warn you, standing in the way of our destiny will bring consequences!
- Heavenly Bitter Metal: You? Warn me? Heretic!
- sounds of scuffling
- Silkily Descending Mountain: Don't touch the Eye!
Screams echo from the floor, briefly, and it glows with an ugly red light. After this is silence.
A few of the circle approach the glass figure, and it animates slightly, its eyes glowing blue. In a slow monotone, it says: "Visitors expected. Identify and confirm righteous entry." The circle naturally starts asking a bunch of questions, which are all answered with "Question not expected. Identify and confirm righteous entry." Once they eventually introduce themselves (though some cower further back than others), the statue's eyes flash white and it says "Initiate soul observance method." Suddenly enveloped in multicolored light, all of the circle feel as if their caste marks are showing briefly. It then says "Celestial exaltations acknowledged. One exalt will present key of passage for deconstructive analysis." The circle eventually figures out that he wants an artifact attuned to one of them. They provide a spare hearthstone amulet, which disintegrates in the statues hand.
The statue then moves to each of the exalted one at a time, identifying their caste and making a particular demand of them. The solars must
| City of Glass | Looking Into the Eye ⋅ 21 Aug 2009 |
Talking to the Eye. Explosions.
Asked about Sword of Creation.
| 11th day of Ascending Water, RY 770 | |
| Yane | Locating the Starmetal Manse ⋅ 28 Aug 2009 |
Recover from explosions. Look for sign of Eye and Cloudwalking Ingot. Find neither. Take to the air to discuss next move.
Decide to check out the nearest manse, the starmetal one outside Yane. Juuken (acting as an obnoxious dragon-blooded), Stag (showing his real face and caste tatoo, acting as a guide to the terrestrial), Guen (as a monkey), Cruxis (using charms to transform into a Dalja) and Varden (using stealth charms), fly using capes and wings around to the coast, and enter on foot. Using the device from the Eye, they wind up walking totally through the city, into some cliffs on the outside of own. After several hours wandering the canyons, they find something that looks like a Yu-Shan Gate, along with evidence of a recent crowd gathered at the manse. Graffiti on the cliffs suggest some kind of worship of the Five Maidens.
Stag knows that this gate isn't one of the standard 63 gates, but sure looks like one. The Horn of Ways manages to open the gate, waking three Celestial Lions who guard the entrance, but have been dormant for what they say is over a thousand years. Varden sees some signs that the gate has been tampered with on the top of it, but the lions insist it is working correctly. They also claim that no one is allowed to use this particular gate, and direct them to the gate in Chiaroscuro if they need to get to heaven. The lions eventually close the gate, refusing entrance to all.
Analyzing the alteration to the gate suggests that there is an astrological trigger on it. It's purpose is unclear, but it looks like it will react to a star configuration that occurs in two weeks.
| 12th-13th day of Ascending Water, RY 770 | |
| Forgotten Manse | 7 Oct 2009 |
Return to manse to train. Make use of the Mark of Autochthon to accelerate training. While all with the mark gain at least one point of Precision, Gutts gains four, turning him nearly robotic.
| 14th day of Ascending Water, RY 770 | |
| Tiraktou, Harborhead | Audience With the White Queen ⋅ 27 Oct 2009 |
After sneaking into Tiraktou, the circle calls attention to itself when Stag buys four nubile slaves and a tiger for no discernible reason. Gutts logically objects, saying it doesn't help meet their objectives, and is inefficient use of funds besides. When the tiger starts to get out of the slave's control, Gutts wrestles it, getting it in a choke hold to force it unconscious. Stag, put out by this, starts kicking and punching Gutts. All of this really irritates Jorias, who yells at the pair, while casting a showing fire spell that incinerates the tiger and panics the crowd.
Meanwhile, Juuken and Guen go to a particular bar to make contact with the White Queen. The contact awaiting him there recognizes him, and refers him to a club dancer, a woman with four arms. Juuken gives word that he has solars to introduce to the White Queen, and arrangements are made for the whole group to gain audience with the Queen. So, Juuken goes to find the rest of the group.
On the streets, authority generally takes over, investigating the tiger and the other disturbances. Stag wanders the streets, searching for his AWOL slaves. Eventually, all but Stag arrive to the bar, dodging involvement with the law. The dancer uses a device to turn the back door into a portal that opens into a cave.
The circle is taken by a bull-headed spirit of some kind a room that turns out to be a massive geode. Within, sitting on a crystal crown, the White Queen, smiling. Gutts, Guen, Jorias, Cruxis and Adrios immediately recognize the White Queen as Yrminas.