Dramatis Personæ

Brother Mendel (Herodian)
Dane Sardock (Winston)
Gabriel Auditore (Rigil Kent)
Gestlin the Unpredictable (CommJunkee)
Magnifico the Clown (Feste)
Merasiël Alethmist (Melissa)
Rainald North-Hammer (Gigermann)

Of Portals and Closure

4 June 2014

Lord-Commander McDonald of the Templars explained to Dane that, although he was charged with the Heroes’ incarceration for their alleged treason, he was willing, for the sake of honor, to allow them to leave Cardiel and never return, after which they would not be pursued. Bishop Zabka joined the conversation, having barged past the other Heroes in the courtyard, ignorant of their sidelong glances; he was furious at the Lord-Commander for having not imprisoned the Heroes, and angrily demanded they be immediately seized, but the Lord-Commander would have none of it. Auqui stood silent. Dane responded, saying he would need to confer with his fellows, and left the hall to do so. Dane returned shortly thereafter to inform them that they had agreed to leave, and the Lord-Commander dismissed them to be on their way, in spite of Zabka’s continued complaints.

The Heroes now free, of course, had no intention of leaving without their Lord Wallace, and remained convinced he was being held here at the Templars’s fortress. They stopped a short distance down the road and hid themselves behind the rocks there, and began casting spells: they tried again, without success, to detect the presence of Lord Wallace, though they knew that the Templars employed spells to block magical scrying; Brother Mendel weaved a spell to remotely map the fortress, in and out, and then cast an illusion of it so the others could review it—they could still find no sign of Lord Wallace, though there were some dark spaces in Brother Mendel’s map where he could be held; and finally, suspecting their Lord might be in the Otherworld, Brother Mendel cast a weave to detect portals, and found that there was indeed some manner of portal in the fortress chapel—this would be their objective. The Heroes continued back to their ship, which they then sailed some distance, out of sight, where they could row ashore after nightfall and enter the fortress, hopefully unseen.

Gestlin cast a Walk on Air spell upon all of them, so they could scale the wall quickly, and teleported some randomly-encountered wildlife into various points within the keep to distract the guards. The Heroes crept unchallenged into the chapel, but there they encountered a Templar emerging from a hallway, accompanied by Auqui. To their shock, Auqui apologized to his fellow Templar before killing him, and swore at his former fellow Heroes that they had spoiled his plans. As Gabriel fought within himself to stay his blade, Auqui said they would find the portal key with Zabka, but they must hurry now, to find him in the north tower. Then Auqui left as quickly as he had arrived.

The courtyard was still a scene of chaos, which allowed the Heroes to slip amongst the shadows, unseen, to the north tower, and they entered, killing a couple of the Bishop’s guards as they climbed up the tower to Zabka’s chamber. As they burst into the room, Zabka threatened to drop the key—a golden crucifix on a chain—out of the tower window, but Dane loosed a well-placed arrow that nailed Zabka’s hand to the window-frame. Gabriel took the key and passed it back to the casters. Zabka would not reveal how to use the key, no matter the threat, so Gestlin cast a Sleep spell upon him, and Magnifico cast a Mind Search, against which the sleeping Zabka could not defend; Magnifico informed the otherswhat he had found out. The Heroes left the chamber, but looked back to find Gabriel had stabbed his long-time, much-hated enemy, to his death; Rainald hoisted the dead Bishop and unceremoniously flung him out of the window, to fall impaled on a pike far below.

The Heroes took advantage of the new distraction in the courtyard, the discovery of Zabka’s body, to slip back over to the chapel, again unnoticed. There they held the key aloft and said the words, and a portal appeared behind the altar. They all took a deep breath, and one by one, they passed over the threshold.

Beyond the portal, they found an immense hall like nothing they had ever before witnessed, and cautiously, they moved forward. They saw a handful of beings—some human, some indescribable creatures—held motionless, almost lifeless, behind some sort of magical field. At the far end of the hall, they found Lord Wallace in such a field, and moved toward him to see how he might be freed. Just then, three being entered the hall: they appeared to each of them as their gods; Rainald saw them as Odin, Thor, and Loki, and he fell to his knees to worship them; many of the others saw the Christ, flanked by the archangels, Gabriel and Michael. However, not all were convinced these “gods” were truly divine, and challenged their identity. When Rainald asked “Odin” where the warriors’ feast was, the god motioned back to the hall, and Rainald beheld a great feast, and went to join it, and to find his long-dead brother and father. But the unconvinced Gestlin cast a Dispel upon the being before him, and for some, the illusion failed. The Heroes attacked, Gabriel stabbing “Christ” through the heart with his family blade, which drew forth no blood, nor seemed to affect the creature in any way—Dane, intent upon Lord Wallace at the time, saw the stab wound appear upon their Lord, and called out what he had witnessed to the others. The strange, tentacle-faced creatures fell upon the Heroes then, with unimaginable speed, and they could scarcely defend themselves. Then Brother Mendel dispelled the magic that held Lord Wallace, and seeing that he no longer suffered the wounds of the creatures, the Heroes loosed themselves upon them, not caring about the other captives, and after much effort, slew them. The gods defeated, and Lord Wallace freed, some searched the area and found hundreds more captives, similarly frozen with magic. Brother Mendel called back the spirit of one of the slain creatures and demanded to know how many of their kind were here—it responded, “We are legion.” Fearing revenge, the Heroes quickly gathered up Lord Wallace, and the heads of the slain creatures, and fled back through the portal.

Upon their return to the Templar chapel, the Heroes summoned the Templars, and their Lord-Commander, to show them what they had found. The Lord-Commander was astonished, and vowed that the Templars would fight a crusade to cleanse this other world of these creatures, when they had studied it sufficiently. In the meantime, the Lord-Commander “requested” the Heroes stay under guard for the night while he sorted out the matter here, and the Heroes agreed. During the night, Auqui visited them (though he avoided Gabriel) and explained that he had been on a long mission to find and rescue Lord Wallace himself, though he had found his place with the Templars in the process, and planned to stay with them regardless. In the morning, the Heroes were summoned to the Lord-Commander’s hall, where he pronounced them innocent of any crime, and sent them on their way in peace, to return Lord Wallace home to Caithness, their quest now complete.

The End

Notes

• Due to a number of factors, I ended up combining three sessions into one report, once again, and very late indeed; play was delayed several times due to scheduling issues, so these sessions were spread over a month or so. My writing of this report occurred some weeks after the fact due to…reasons?…and as such, I didn’t go into as much detail as it probably deserved, but it needed to get done, one way or another
• Though the GM originally described the god-creatures as something more “indescribable,” post-session discussion morphed them into the Ood (from Doctor Who), and it stuck. Out of character, the GM told us what was really going on: the creatures had come to create a new “Christ” on Yrth, complete with a virgin birth, the result of which had been introduced in the very first session of this campaign (which predated its current GM, along with any regular record of the happenings); through the sacrifice of this being, they would be able to enter the Yrth dimension and conquer it (whatever that actually meant). It was also suggested they had visited Earth before that, roughly 2000 years ago…
• There were Vasa amongst the stasis-held creatures in the alien hall
• Gestlin, Gabriel and Merasiël remained behind; Gestlin to join the anti-slavery faction in Tredroy and fight with them, while Gabriel and Merasiël traveled together to who-knows-where, likely to cross some more names off Merasiël’s kill-list. The rest returned to Caithness with Lord Wallace, all having lands and/or families there
• It was decided to retire this campaign and the characters, but after much discussion, we decided to continue it instead with the “next generation,” the children of the Heroes of Book II, in Book III. Keep an eye out here for details on what happened in the years between, and the beginning of the next campaign