Forgotten Suns: Log - Into the Wyld
Crucible
| 25th day of Ascending Fire to 10th day of Resplendent Fire, RY 769 | |
| Forgotten Manse | 5 July 2006 |
Since Jorias's stone is surgically implanted, he takes more damage than the others when the hearthstones explode. Inspecting the manse, the circle sees that the jungle has been cleared away from the base of the manse, revealing a platform on which the manse rests. They don't know what to make of this, so decide to test the shield. In order to avoid offending the Lady of the Vine (with whom a deal at been made to leave the shield off), they sacrifice to her to get her attention, then talk with her about the test. She agrees and the test is successful.
In the two weeks it takes for the hearthstones to regenerate, the group trains. While doing so, Stag has Fern comb through the remnants of the libraries within the manse for references to the Three Gated Cage or related topics. Most books are ruined, but she does find some information about Wyr'palja. A history text lists her as the founder of Q'in Sanizaj, a city she raised with sorcery in the far east as a home for refugees from the war with the Primordials. The city was considered a stunning achievement, not only of sorcery, but of the vegetative and crystal technologies used by the Dragon Kings. She is mentioned as a master artificer and architect, having designed key parts of the Pyramid of the Sun in Rathess. She is also called the "mother of alchemy", and a passing mention of made of her "creating and operating the first and third gates to save Baradine".
| 11th day of Resplendent Fire, RY 769 | |
| Sylvan Crucible | 5 July 2006 |
When the hearthstones regenerate, the group realizes that the stone owned by Cruxis has reformed as well, leaving him unconnected to the manse, wherever he might be. The circle decides to leave his stone in the hearthroom, with Gutts, Guen and Jorias reclaiming their original stones.
Adrios desires to joing the circle in their visit to the east, and recommends that Ranesk guard the manse. Jorias gives Ranesk his orichalcum spear and breastplate, to improve his chances of repelling an invader.
The group piles into the Cloudwalking Ingot, with Varden feigning death in the trunk, Stag possessing the vehicle and Guen and Pia transforming into small animals. After a fairly uneventful flight, they land outside the Sylvan Crucible.
Guen spends a few minutes to find the edge of the Sylvan Crucible, then announces his presence in the proscribed fashion. Several deer-men come out to greet them and, after introductions and announcing their intentions, the circle is invited in. They follow a series of marble walkways that wander through a mix of tropical and deciduous forest, passing numerous pools, several circles of columns and stairways that rise to nothing or descend to stone or water. The circle can tell they are in a powerful outdoor manse, so stick to their escort. Many animals wander freely, particularly deer.
Eventually, they reach a large central courtyard, surrounded by several buildings. One is a massive feasting hall, another is a shrine, and a stout defensible tower overlooks them both. The deer-men introduce them to an old and unkempt, but still fairly intimidating man named Korlysto. Obviously the head of the manse, he greets the circle and introduces another man. Attractive and young, Sulvad Tiaosa dresses in Imperial fashions, greeting the circle politely with a formal bow (one that Stag recognizes as a being used specifically in the Imperial court).
Guen introduces Pia, and formally requests she face the trials to have her caste fixed. Korlysto asks Pia what she wants and she stammers through much the same. To Pia, he says "then come, we will discuss it", and motions Pia to the tower nearby. To he others, he says, "we have much to discuss, friends, but it can wait until morning." Indicating the deer-men, he continues "my children will take you to where you will sleep."
Provided with rooms inside the large feasting hall, the circle settles in for the night. When Stag enters his room, however, Sulvad Tiaosa is waiting for him. He says "Hello, Flowing Pen" and changes form into a different, much older man. Stag is confused, but Tiaosa claims that he recognizes Stag's scent as that of an Immaculate monk known as Flowing Pen, who Tiaosa met while in the form of Mnemon Ashkimadan. Even against Stag's protestation of ignorance of all this, Tiaosa/Ashkimadan asks to hear about Flowing Pen's tell his side of the story of his "supposed death" and where the Empress might be. Stag provides no such thing, and Tiaosa, still in good spirits, departs by jumping out the window, then turning into a horse. Stag just goes to sleep.
| 12th day of Resplendent Fire, RY 769 | |
| Sylvan Crucible | 5 July 2006 |
Lunar Council
Setting: Sylvan Crucible
Purpose: Introduce the point of the wyld run, exposition for empress return.
Concept: High points:
- "Come only in your true face".
- "That is his true face, lord. Or one of them, at any rate."
- The existance of Empty Canvas, a potion that erases things, including lunar tattoos.
- Disposition of Pia.
- Suggestion of sweat lodge. Shows visions of the future. May show memories as well.
- Question as to why Guen as not called a tlak.
- Revelation of Sulvad that he was brought by vision, he thought to talk with Korlysto, but more likely to the circle. Mnemon knows of a wedding to held coincident with empresses funeral. Stopping funeral may interrupt wedding. Time of funeral is a political game, as if brings questions of succession to the fore.
Complications: Probably none.
Sweat Lodge
Setting: Sylvan Crucible
Purpose: Expose some character secrets and drop hints about the future.
Concept: Circle meditates in chamber. Sees shared Medicine Lodge Vision.
Complications: Probably none.
Planning
Setting: Sylvan Crucible
Purpose: Figure out where to go.
Concept: PC consideration:
- Poison Vault will recognize the Forest of Arms if it is described.
- Korlysto knows the name of Wyr'palja's city was Q'in Sanizaj.
- Korlysto will know that Cahlenna was a member of the Opal Court and the circle may be able to coerse raksha into revealing information about it.
Complications: Probably none.
Ends with Medicine Lodge Vision
Leaping Into the Wyld
| Sylvan Crucible | 25 July 2006 |
Leave. Randomly fly to the forest of arms. Wander around. Attacked by hatra.
| Forest of Arms | 15 August 2006 |
Fight Hatra. Find wood elementals harrassing ghosts near landing site. While planning, Gutts just attacks.
| Forest of Arms | 21 August 2006 |
Kill elementals talk with ghost. Stuff about deathlords, city, First Age.
| Misty swamp | 28 August 2006 |
Ghost tells of unshaped, leads to it. Can't go by air due to dragons. Go through swap, attacked by dogs.
The Living City
| Misty swamp | 7 September 2006 |
Kill final dog. Treck through swamp. Climb massive trunk after leaving vehicle and ghost hidden at base. Enter Kinaniz through the Glass Lamentation. Meet dragon. While Gutts introduces himself, dragon breathes acid on everyone. Jorias jumps onto head. Guts jumps into dragons mouth!
| Kinaniz | 19 September 2006 |
Killed dragon. Found site of Wyrpalja's turning the neighborhood into glass. Didn't know what to make of it.
Entered Perpetual Bustle. Noticed being followed. Eventually get surrounded.
| Kinaniz | 22 October 2006 |
Defeated all of the Mute Sentinels, mostly with bow fire from Adrios.
| Kinaniz | 24 October 2006 |
Break into house and sleep for night.
Follow path toward the tower. Reach tower, start to climb, for reasons that make sense only to them. Eventually find mutant bees. Stag possesses one, determines they are mindless and have taken over the top of the tower. They leave.
They walk, entering the Consummate Repose. The freezing rain didn't tempt them to go inside and they refused to accept any of the shaping. They started to notice a number of mortals in some of the inns they saw, clearly being fed on by those who ran the inn. Gutts took to setting buildings they passed on fire. They came to a crossroads and took neither path, going down the middle instead. They came to a largest, most opulent inn they'd seen, which turned out to also be a bath house and bordello. Peeking inside, they saw more mortals in an opium den-like room being tempted by half-naked fair folk. Ignoring the scantily clad woman trying to tempt them into the front door, Gutts smashed a hole in the wall to the opium den. The circle climbed in as the fair folk mostly scattered. The mortals, and a few fair folk, stared sleepily at the circle until Gutts fired up his anima. The ten foot fiery gerbil sent everyone running from any exit they could find. Entering the room calmly against this panic, Blooming Radiance and Purity Song asked the circle if they could be of assistance. Though they appeared as an attractive couple, the two made no secret of being noble fair folk and using the inn to feed. Guen, in beastman form, began a strangely cordial discussion, with the flaming gerbil still looking around the opulent room.
After failing to get much information from the couple, the circle (well, Gutts and Adrios) decided to burn the place while the rest got the remaining mortals out. Stag ignored all this and explored the inn, locating and grabbing the Clean Pillow Wish. After several attempts to bind to it among the circle, Guen eventually succeeded, identifying the pillow for what it was.
Meanwhile, the rest of the circle decided what to do with the humans, who mostly whined about being dirty and tired. They eventually decided to take them along. Some abandoned the group and others had to be dragged by Gutts most of the way, but the group travelled until the green plants gradually switched to a deep purple-red. After a bit more traveling, they found themselves in something resembling a city park. The decided to camp for the night.
| Kinaniz | 19 November 2006 |
During the night, a horde of 12,000 six inch tall people rushed the camp from all sides, almost from out of nowhere. Stag, on watch, barely managed to yell out a warning before they swarmed over the circle. Stag woke up and immediately flared his anima. The 20 foot flaming gerbil sent about a quarter of the diminutive mob running into the night and revealed four units of bigger (about a foot tall) people with bows, one in each direction. While the smaller people seemed dressed as farmers, longshoremen and other laborers, these relatively larger troops appeared and acted more as soldiers. The light from the gerbil also revealed a mob of the tiny people attacking the mortals the circle rescued earlier. The group fended off attacks from swarms of the little people while they raised charms, all except Jorias who didn't wake up, even after being stabbed by one of the mobs.
As the circle got up to speed, Gutts sliced great swathes through the mobs, Stag dug holes in the ground to bury large groups, and Guen became a flurry of fur and claws. Adrios sent flaming arrows into their ranks and, once he got going, Varden knocked large chunks from their ranks. Stag, using a charm to make his skin like orichalcum, took to rolling around to crush large numbers. Within seconds, the ground was covered with a see of tiny body parts and high-picthed wails.
During the melee, a sudden wind picked up, sending purple leaves screaming through the night. This was part of a narrative shaping from a Fair Folk who could not be seen, attempting to tell the story: ""A mighty wind arose, blowing the purple leaves so quickly, they cut like razors. The exalts cowardly abandoned their human charges and pressed on, leaving the hapless mortals to be blown out of the forest." Stag, not particularly caring about the humans, choose to accept this narrative, as did a number of humans to weak to resist it. Those humans, about half, were shredded by the leaves and blown a huge distance back the way the party came. The others ignored the narrative, fighting through the leaves and mostly helping the mortals that remained. The trees also seemed to get involved, but indecisively. One attacked Jorias when, after finally waking up, he jumped into it, but another prevented Adrios from falling out of it.
At one point in the battle, both Stag and Guen heard an amused laugh off in the distance. As they spread that information to the rest of the circle, nearly everyone heard a voice say "Hmm. I thought this would be more fun. I guess you might as well retreat." Gutts continued to hack into the tiny assault as they turned to retreat, vocally denigrating exalts and praising "the revolution" as they withdrew. More concerned with the voice, Adrios fired a number of flaming arrows various distances into the darkness, trying to illuminate the source of the voice. Stag managed to catch sight of something as an arrow passed it, but it was gone by the time Guen checked it out.
Gutts and Jorias promptly went back to sleep and the others stayed watch.
In the morning, they continued deeper into the forest, which eventually turned into more of a park, then a garden. They saw statues of Wyr'palja in various guises, sometimes with a birdman who was always vandalized, missing a head or a face. Continuing on, they came to a huge palace, about two miles across and suspended a hundred yards above the ground on glass spires. Passing through a door into one of the spires, the circle found it to be a hollow tube, leading two hundred yards up. Something was attempting to convince them of the following reality: "The visitor relaxed and the palace welcomed them, bringing them safely to the top of the tube." Gutts and Varden accepted this hospitality and easily floated to the top. The others didn't trust it and had Guen fly them up.
Led by Gutts's magic map, they tracked down what turned out to be a mortal, nearly starved to death, staring at a waterfall within the palace. She didn't remember much about how she got there, or how long she was there. As the circle looked for others, they found an obviously non-mortal woman, who introduced herself as Embouchurean. She indicated she served one of the masters of this place.
| Kinaniz | 22 November 2006 |
Conversation with Embouchurean. Eventually convinced her master to talk to them, which he did by inhabiting a poppet from the floor below. Introduces himself as Misplaced Promise. When the circle mentions they are looking for the tomb, a long discussion follows, during which Promise makes a deal with them: he tells them how to get to the tomb, in exchange for a promise that, should the circle gain entrance, they allow him inside as well. They eventually agree, but not with much enthusiasm. He gives them a decent idea of what they will face as well.
The party moves through the next waypoint, largely a memorial to dragon kings, and they decide to take the time to learn some of the language. It takes three weeks, but Stag and Jorias learn quite a bit about the Dragon Kings, while the others train, and the mortals get very bored.
| Kinaniz | 29 November 2006 |
The circle moves on to the next waypoint, which they know will contain opposition in the form of something called the Regency. They move through some tunnels to get to a large stronghold made of trees. They elect to leave the mortals behind, and scale the walls to get in. A large cadre of poppets seems to get out of their way as the move deeper into the castle. Eventually, all paths seem to reach a central courtyard, where the Regency and Revolting Proletariat wait.
The circle engage them both, in spite of reality turing against them. After a few attacks against the Regency fail, they figure out that only magically backed attacks can hit him. The Regency, however, isn't prepared for Stag attacking at range and cutting through his armor, so falls fairly quickly. Meanwhile, Gutts uses magic to fly into a killing rage.
| Kinaniz | 19 December 2006 |
It doesn't take long for the circle to take on Proletariat and stag lands a flurry of blows backed by his newfound knowledge of the Earth Dragon, turning the behemoth to stone. Unphased, Gutts keeps hacking at the rock, then starts tracking down other enemies to kill. The circle attempts to intervene, without letting Gutts know. After he shrugs off one sleep spell (with some help from Guen, who thought the Fair Folk were trying to poison him), Gutts gets possessed by Stag, who tries to knock him out by jumping off a balcony, face first into the ground below. Gutts armor protects him from the worst of this. Gutts pushes out Stag and continues his rampage, with Guen uses charms to pump up Gutts' virtues. Varden finds the whole scene childish and offensive (gaining limit) while Gutts manages to overcome yet another sleep spell and attacks from the flowing cobblestone floor (now animated by Stag). Stag engages Gutts attention for quite a while, but he eventually overcomes the stone and Stag is tossed out of it as well.
When Gutts finds some enemies asleep from the first spell, his newfound Temperance makes him consider ending the charm and, therefore, the killing spree, but he blows the test needed to end the charm, so is forced to suppress his Temperance and gain limit. A later check also causes him to override his newfound Compassion as well. Eventually, running deeper into the castle (and out of the zone of protection from the Wyld generated by Stag's artifact), he runs out of enemies and comes to his senses.
By this time, the party had elected to ignore him, searching the body of the Regency instead, finding a number of gossamer weapons and armor, but not much else. While pointedly ignoring Gutts, the party rested for a night.
| Kinaniz | 5 Jan 2007 |
| Kinaniz | 2 Feb 2007 |
| Kinaniz | 2 March 2007 |
Finally defeated Cahlenna.
Grave of the Founder
| Kinaniz | 9 March 2007 |
Into the tomb. First Age map mosaic. Art hints of the Ebon Dragon. No ref to lunar lover. Figure out mixtures needed to get deeper.
| Kinaniz | 14 March 2007 |
Fight and defeat of warden demons. Discover room with crystal forest inside. Entering causes a rain of very strong acid. Varden's force field protects (with lots of essence backing it).
| Kinaniz | 10 May 2007 |
Room with mandala and slowly spinning sphere. Add a level 4 air hearthstone to sphere: spins faster, strange bangs from outside. False floor discovered. Unlock door, triggering phantom swords. Rooms filled with grave goods of food. See paintings.
| Kinaniz | 16 May 2007 |
Enter the moonsilver tomb, find the warstriders and the body of Iron Monsoon, as well as the needles in his body. Get into the solar tomb, duplicate of Wyr'palia poisons Stag to incapacitated. Original body found, some duplicates remain.