Wherein the Warband Fails, a City is Destroyed, and Two of Their Number Are Lost…

• Standing before the gates of the temple, the warband advance with Finn in the lead. Standing over a bound Sheikh Al’Dafar ibn Al’Hadir, the yuan-ti mistress finishes her ritual and opens her eyes to look at Finn … before plunging the knife into the sheikh’s chest. There is a brilliant, blinding flash.
• Blinking the spots out of their vision, the warband realize to their shock that Arn and Finn have transported into crystalline prisons. Thorn takes lead immediately and jumps over the remains of the shattered drawbridge, intent on rescuing his friend, Finn; Zyanra and Lan-Fan follow him. A moment later, yuan-ti warriors boil out of concealment and charge Brum and Zistral.
• Arn and Finn find themselves in an area overflowing with mana. Impossibly, Lashiel is also here. The yuan-ti mistress is there as well, but more importantly is a female djinn who orders her servant to deal with Finn while she handles the other two. Magical duels ensue.
• As Thorn and company scramble into the temple, they note that the two appear to be suspended within their crystal prisons; Arn especially seems to be withering away. The three split up to get Arn, Finn and the yuan-ti female out of the crystals, but must deal with flying serpents that swarm toward them. Behind them, Brum and Zistral ferociously hold the line; the dwarf is grievously injured during the fight but clings to consciousness and fights on. To Lan-Fan, Thorn and Zyanra, the two seem to be moving in slow motion which implies wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey shenanigans.
• Inside their Dreamscape, Arn and Finn fight on, though the latter is able to piece together that this is an illusion, with the djinn leeching energy from them. He shouts this out, which enrages the djinn who hurls a spell that causes Finn to collapse in utter agony. The djinn closes in on Arn but Lash grabs him and takes him over the side of the platform hanging over the abyss; she apologizes to him. She did not know what was happening until too late; the only way for him to survive is to join her in the Ring. He agrees and his soul becomes one with her.
• Outside, Thorn has extracted Finn from his crystalline prison – Master Sardock emerges screaming before he passes out – but when Lan-Fan pulls Arn free, he is dead. Zyanra pulls the yuan-ti female free and the sinister creature snaps awake, bellowing that they’ve ‘killed us all.’ At this, Zyanra retorts with “No. Only you.” before plunging her spear into the yuan-ti’s back. Around them, the temple begins tremble and shake. Carrying his unconscious friend, Thorn springs down from Finn’s prison, allowing his new magical wings to slow his descent.
• Using a flying carpet, Rashid joins Brum and Zistral just as the others emerge from the temple. Finn slowly regains consciousness and is about to re-enter the temple to find Arn’s body … but abruptly freezes when he realizes what he’s looking at. Turning to the others, he shouts out that this is a localized Banestorm. And they need to run!
• A desperate attempt to get clear ensues, with most of the warband easily outdistancing the maelstrom. Only Brum and Finn lag behind, being the slowest of the company, and to the dwarf’s horror, Lord Finn is swallowed by the Banestorm.
• The city itself is destroyed as the warband and the surviving Fa’iel narrowly escape, leaving behind only shattered debris and broken buildings, and in shock, the warband stare at the destruction. Brum limps out of the ash and smoke with the grim news to his comrades and the desperate Lady Ammerah: their lord has been lost.

Player Notes:

• CommJunkee finalized his insanely long run as GM for this adventure arc and holy cow, we ran really, really long. As I told CJ later, I think we should have ended the session before the final chase and then picked up the next week with it because, due to the lateness of the hour, I think too many of us were starting to vapor-lock during the chase.
• Andricus wanted to retire his character, Arn, so he could play a different one down the road, so the GM arranged that with him. We were not expecting Finn to get sucked into the maelstrom during the chase though and since Banestorm III is (frustratingly to me sometimes) “The Finn Sardock Show,” that complicates matters somewhat. Even more irritating to me is that this sets up a perfect storm for me to run an adventure arc with this characters (e.g. “The Search for Spock … er … Sardock”) which my Muse has already sort of started toying with. In the event that happens (which … dammit … it probably will down the road), I do not think we’re quite done with the djinn lands yet…
• After the fact, Gigermann realized he’d screwed up during the chase as Thorondil has a Sense of Duty to Finn and would not have left him behind. We discussed afterward and sort of decided that Finn’s shout to run was unconsciously utilizing magic to make it more of a compulsion. This works with the magical maelstrom happening right there and the mana level fluctuating wildly.
• This coming Saturday, 16 March, we’re finishing the GURPS: Shadowrun game we played on 2 March and, presumably, I pick up with our Action! game the week after. Unless, of course, the Shadowrun game goes long again.
• Since we’re livestreaming our games every Saturdays (6:00PM Eastern) at our Olympus Twitch channel and then later uploading the stream on the YouTube channel, we’ve decided to dial back on the extensiveness of the recap to just the overall outline.
• We’ve also spun up a Twitter account to report our various statuses. Feel free to follow us @OlympusRPGGroup for news and updates.