In The Eye of a God

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The top of the tower is terrible. We all feel sick as we emerge through the door. Turning back momentarily from the horrible sight, we see Dalish, trapped inside a newly reformed prismatic wall. He didn’t move fast enough. But we don’t have time for that. The eye of Balor is before us and one of the mages turns towards us moaning, with his own eyes gouged out.

Turning to face the eye, people start picking off the mages when Nat says that they are protecting it while they try to contain it. I hear His voice in my head.

Submit Daughter, and destroy these mages.

So, I pick off one of the mages, too, but then I realize it was His will, not my own. I close my eyes and cover my ears. I hate it up here. The beating is so horribly loud.

The mages are all gone, when I look up again, and hear His voice.

Rebellious child… and He tells me to kill my friends. I try to cast thunderwave, because we are all still gathered up around Hank, but Gerhardt counterspells me. Then I shrug off his will again. I Really Hate it up here.

Gerhardt gets put to sleep after that. I manage to get a call lightning spell going. Maribeth gets turned to stone. Francis gets paralyzed. Shelly gets turned to stone.

His voice returns, ordering me again to attack my friends. So I call lightning down on the largest group together. He disintigrates Wan Kei. And Klyce manages to crack through the eye. I call lightning down on Klyce and Remy before I manage to shake His will again.

Now what? It doesn’t feel so awful up here anymore, but it looks like everything is about to explode. Gerhardt and I want to banish it to explode somewhere else. But others want to circle up and stop the explosion.

I start to pray to the Dawnmother for guidance, but His power draws me in again. It feels so good, not horrible like the machine. I walk forward and put my hand to it. The power fills me! Fills me to overflowing. And I can see beyond everything. I can see an infinity of power.

I wake up in my tent. Remy is just coming in to check on me. He explains that they did try to circle up, but there was too much power to contain. They did manage to contain the damage to a five mile radius, but only because Maribeth made a deal with some dark patron to save all of us.

I go see her, but she only cries. I don’t ask her any questions. I check on everyone else. Gerhard is studying his potions. Klyce and Dalish are working on magic. Remy, when not checking on me, is checking on everyone else, including our old troop Sergeant. It takes me a while to find Nat.

She’s off to the edge of camp, blindfolded and practicing with her daggers. She tells me what happened, too. And I try to explain what happened to me. I ask if I could share her tea, to try to see what I saw again. She agrees, and I ask what would happen if we brewed it with mana. Since that place was so full of it, maybe it would help me go back there. She thinks that’s a great idea, so we plan to do that soon. She also tells me that she can maybe talk to the gods now. And maybe even force them to answer, like a more powerful version of prayer, backed by her magic. We’re not sure if that’s a good thing, or if it will get her smited, but she’s going to try it out sometime.

I also visit the crater that used to be New Calay. (I guess it’s spelled New Calais, actually, but now that it’s gone, I don’t think it really matters.) It is Silent. So silent. Everything in the crater is dead. I fly down into it, after passing all the dead soldiers that were turned to stone and dust in the explosion. I sit for a while, in the silence. It is peaceful after all the noise and the beating. Restful.

We get a summons from Durance and report to his tent on day four after the explosion. The army has started moving again, having buried what dead it could, they’ve been packing up camp. The Lt is glad to see we are all coping alright. We lost 3,000 men in the explosion, and a port city for decades to come. Our report of the events has been relayed up the chain, and we all have new orders. The machines all exploded, taking out hundreds of men, and so production will be halted and more regular means of mana production will be resumed.

Dalish is ordered to head back to New Gnosis to work with Rictus. Natty to the Carribean to work with the Navy. Gerhardt to the Black Hills in the Dakotas. Klyce to the Mexican Territories. Remy is headed to California, and Maribeth to the Northwest Territories. I am to head to a research facility outside New Gnosis to help with magical… research. We’ll be shipping out in two days time.

Nonononononononono! We can’t! We can’t split up! I won’t! Please, can we go to Argentina now? I don’t want to be an experiment! Guys! What are we going to do??

I don’t say any of this until we leave his tent. Remy doesn’t want to split up either. As usual, Klyce is the voice of reason. We have to. We have to do this, serve our term, honorably. Or they will torture and kill our loved ones. Send them to the mines, execute them, draft them. Whatever. We have to do as we are told, until we can do something else.

We also have to stay in touch. We work better together. Everyone needs Sending in their spellbooks. We’ll have to get materials before we leave or that. Nat has to work on her mindpalace to strengthen the range. We each give her something of our own, or of our person, to take with her. Hoping that like scrying, it will strengthen our connection.

Klyce agrees, my assignment sounds the most dangerous for my person. He encourages me to reach out to Xin Yue and her brother’s group if I need immediate rescue. Dalish will be nearby, as well. I am still terrified, but I know that any one of them will come if I call.

Maribeth goes off to get scribing supplies. Remy and Klyce go talk to Triplehorn one last time. And Nat and I go off to drink some mana tea.

It is an interesting experience. Not as crazy as last time she pulled us all into that crazy mindpalace against our will. But it seems like a portion of that power is still inside me. Some untapped potential, just laying in wait. I know some spells I didn’t know before, that I didn’t want to know. But I also can feel some of that power already.

The last night before we go our separate ways. We all sit together. We eat one last meal. Drink one last toast. And promise to keep in touch, and to come if we are needed. I do not sleep well that night, and in the morning, it is time to go.

Evil God Body, Innocent Civilians, and a Prismatic Wall

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The fight with the eye monsters and the tentacle monsters went way better than the last eye monster. The boys were fast on their banishments, so we only had to fight two at a time. But Francis did manage to fall through the membrane in the center of the room, and I had to go fly down after him. We sat for a few minutes after, to heal up those who go hurt, and Locke told us how he has a mana fountain at home, that he can utilize even at a distance. Interesting. They get so much better training here

As we continue on, Remy talks to Turner about all her contraptions. She says they came from her parents. Then the conversation rambles off into the hardships of life, priveledge, slavery, politics, and religion. But all I can hear is this body’s heartbeat.

We find the shoulders and an abscess leading upwards. Into some sort of swampy section. I don’t even want to think about what part of the body this is. A bunch of weird lizard and frog monsters jump us here, and we put them down rather quickly. Only Klyce got swallowed, and only once. We’re getting the hang of working with our new allies.

We find the spine, and after a lengthy debate about simply severing the spinal cord, we head upwards instead, finally entering the regular building. The first room is packed tight with people. We freeze in mild panic as a mage flies towards us in dingy clothes.

Remy, Nat, and Dalish quickly convince him that we mean no harm to these civilians, and he is incredibly relieved. He has been working for weeks to get people out of the city. We tell him, we’re just here for the eye. He informs us that they used to rotate the mages working with it, until two days ago. Then they locked themselves in, and everyone else out. Now there are strange things between here and there, in the tower.

We watch as they sent the room full of people through a teleportation circle to Argentina, and then make our way across to the stairway up. The central staircase if full of flesh and bone, pulsing with power heading down towards the growing body. We take the outer stairs, but that pulsing beats in my head unbearably loud!

We catch creatures out of the corners of our eyes, but they don’t attack. Reaching the top, we find a shimmering wall blocking the door to the roof where the eye is. Dalish says it’s called a Prismatic Wall, and there are different layers of different colors that each take different magic to get through.

The first wall falls to a barrage of frost bolts. I control wind at the second wall. The third one requires force damage, and no one has any. Dalish says the fourth wall can be dispelled with our passwall scroll. So, Remy and Klyce dimension door through the third wall to cast it. Oh, the wall also blinds you when you get to close. They manage it, but the third wall still hurts them for their trouble. Hank and Gerhard walk through wall three, and I try to dimension door now that there is space, with Turner because they need a bunch of fire for the next one. It still hurts us, space apparently doesn’t matter. Turner fire-blasts the next wall down.

Next is wall that will turn us to stone unless we can cast daylight on it. I ask Wan Kei to come try their magic, but it’s not strong enough. Nat tries casting light on the mana in her phail and then willing it to be bright enough, but it doesn’t work either. I ask Locke to come in and help, and grudgingly, he does. None of us can cast daylight, but Hank has it available, but didn’t memorize it. Locke grabs his head and forcibly memorizes it for him. Then he is able to cast it and drop that wal. That was kinda creepy.

The last wall is strange, it will make one disappear and be gone forever if we don’t get rid of it. This is the only one that can simply be dispelled, but it takes a lot of tries to get it right. When it’s done, the force wall behind us drops, and everyone else comes through to join us. Gerhardt has to overcharge to manage it.

Overcharged and confident, we run through the door onto an open balcony. We’re on top of the tower, a fifty foot circle. In the center is the giant eye, fifteen feet thick. The nine wizards are held tight around it on their knees.

Allies, Explosions, and Intestines

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We don’t get far in the city before some guards are shouting at us, asking for our papers. Remy tries to talk them around, but it’s clear he is failing, when they suddenly fall unconscious. A teenager dressed in green, with a pointy hat, bids us follow him, and quickly. Having no better plan, we do. He leads us through the streets of the city, avoiding patrols and people , to an old abandoned inn.

Heading inside, we pass through the illusion, to a decently appointed inn, with a gathering of teenagers of all sorts. In short order, we exchange introductions. Hank, a young man in full plate armor with a tree of golden fruit is their leader. He is the chosen of the Green Witch. His companions are: Francis, a burly guy with tight clothes and swords; Wan Kei, an Asian guy with body wraps; Shelly, a hooded girl with daggers; Turner, a black girl working on some small tinkering project, and Locke, the wizard who saved us.

Hank tells us that his patron tasked them to come here and wait for us. They are to accompany us into the tower to destroy the eye of her father-in-law. Hang on, what?

The Royalist mages apparently have the eye of a god or fairy king or something, named Balor (of the evil eye). He was king of the fae realms. The Green Witch married his son, and then killed him. His evil eye popped out and was sent through the planes to ours. We have to stop them from using it or the whole city will be destroyed, maybe even more than that.

Hank wants to either send the eye back to the Green Witch or destroy it. We’re all on board with that, wondering if banishing it will do the trick. They’ve been here, hiding, for weeks waiting or us. There’s a quick discussion about the evils of our various armies, interrupted only when the whole in explodes around us.

Eighteen guards pour in through holes in three of the walls and the fight is on. Locke apparently has non-violent leanings like Klyce, because he dispells the first big spell Gerhardt tries to cast shouting at us not to kill people. But the battle rages on, the eye turns its gaze upon us, and bullets fly. We sleep and knock out as many as we can, but eventually, even Turner agrees with us, and some of the soldiers die. Maribeth ends up chasing their Captain for a bit, but eventually lets him go to avoid a bigger fight.

We run. Hank leads us away from the gaze of the eye and to another safe, empty building. Then he lays hands on us, popping the bullets out and healing us with much more effectiveness than my magic can ever manage. We talk a bit about his abilities, and some of the others, marvelling at his magic. Remy casts non-detection on the room we are in, and Nat uses her arcane eye to look over the nearby sewers. Shelly has to guide her to an entrance, but it goes smoothly from there.

Nat maps out the sewers. Noting that around the central building their are strange fleshy blockages. Pulsing, brown-red flesh surrounds all ways through the sewer to the tower. The flesh shifts and the entire town shakes. While this is happening, the majors fall over unconscious, pulled into a mind-palace with our commanders to report in after sending a short message.

We discuss possible ways through, and where best to go. Deciding to get as close as we can, then reasses the flesh. We’ll probably have to cut through because the army will be on high alert now above ground. When everyone is ready, we head out and down.

It takes half an hour or so to get to the point closest to the tower. Nat uses her clairvoyance to look beyond the wall. The sewers turn into fleshy tunnels beyond five feet of flesh wall. The tunnel is full of liquid – bile, puss, ichor – she’s not sure. Coming back to herself, she casts an augury about going into the tube. It comes up both weal and woe, so we decide that’s the best we’ve got.

Back down the tunnel away from it, into side tunnels as much as possible to avoid the flow. Then start hurling tiny spells at it to burn and freeze away the flesh. It takes a little while to get all the way through, but then the disgusting liquid pours free. Splashing all over several of the group. It takes a short while to finally subside as I levitate above the disgusting mess.

Then we head into the tunnel. It feels like it is breathing. I can feel its heart pounding. The others can hear the heart, too. We get up to another barrier after a while, and having met no resistance so far, burn through this one, as well. This room’s walls are pulsing with the heart beat, and we are not alone.

Murder, Slavery, and Seaturtles

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Dalish returned to camp. But not our Dalish, our Dalish was still a mummy. This Dalish was alive. And ‘Rictus was prepared,’ is his only explanation. What are we going to do? Living Dalish has to stay, Rictus sent him here. Mummy Dalish could maybe go back with Stephen to learn his necromantic magics? We have to talk to Durance.

The Lt is a bit distressed, but decides to let Mummy Dalish stay, if we continue to take responsability for him. Normally, he’d have just killed him, but we’re a strange group anyway. Mummy Dalish, however, isn’t a citizen, nor a soldier anymore. Just don’t eat people, and we’ll be alright.

We load up camp and march south to meet up with everyone else at New Calay. Along the way, Living Dalish tells us he has a new plan. That Rictus felt his self-harm was bad, and gave him a bunch of books to read to get better. He’s decided that now he plans to kill other people so he can make himself powerful and immortal, and undead. What the heck, Dalish??? Killing people for power??? Don’t we have enough genocide on our hands? He won’t be reasoned with, so we discuss our questions about New Calay.

Once we arrive, we get an understanding of the situation. We have twenty thousand troops surrounding the city, stopping any traffic in or out. They, however, still have naval control of the port, and our ships are out there fighting for it. The walls have some sorching and crumbling, but nothing serious. Everyone on land is currently holding until the naval battle is over.

Durance sends for someone who can un-stone Remy and Stephen. While waiting, we see a few old classmates, but Marybeth can’t find her brother. It takes a few days to find someone, but eventually, Triplehorn shows up in our camp. He’s impressed with our travel, the change in us, and the mystery that is Stephen. We ask him to fix Remy first, and he does, returning him to flesh.

True to form, Remy wakes up swearing, and then starts drinking. Then we talk about Stephen. Nat says he doesn’t like the sun, so we take him into a tent, but that might not be enough, so we ask Triplehorn to come back after dark, if he could. We talk with him a bit about what we’ve been up to, and our suspicions about the worm-tree in the city. He laments that we are too young to have all this on our shoulders. We agree, but we have little choice.

The others spend the day working out what spells they might need to memorize or scribe for city infiltration, but at I have no part in this, I head off to talk to the other mages. They hold regular gatherings to eat and chat. When I ask what’s been going on, they speak of unease among the diviners. Visions of woe in New Caley, firey explosions, a melting city, decaying into dust. I ask if they’ve been up to anything, but they say not until the bay is taken. Nothing? Not even infiltration? They’ve sent some teams in, but they’ve either not come back, or came back before really getting into the city. The diviners can’t pierce into the city, even when linked. Those that tried teleporting in were the ones that never came back. The team that went into the bay was repulsed instantly.

I return to the group and report all of this. We have to have a better plan. Triplehorn also returns, and turns Stephen back to flesh. We explain to him why he’s suddenly outside New Calay and take him to Durance to figure things out and finalize his negotiations.

They hammer out the deal, information for citizenship, and other such things. We help out with all the information we gathered in his house. Then it comes down to the mages who were sent to kill him, that he killed in return, and did necromatic experiments on. Durance wants their bodies returned to their families. Stephen says they are his intellectual property now. Things go downhill pretty quickly, which Remy going off about slavery of the undead being evil and morally corrupt, despiter half of mage society being based on it. I actually get pissed off and shout him down about it not being his choice what other people do, and several of our friends’ livelihoods are based on the same exact thing. Remy says we should destroy them and send their bodies home for burial, but Stephen is very much against this. Dalish offers a compromise, suggesting we give these free-willed, if controlled, undead, like himself, the choice. Stephen agrees to give them this choice, serve or be destroyed so they can be buried at home. Durance agrees to this, and they finish up negotiations. Natty walks Stephen out, giving him the glyph to send him home.

We head back to camp to discuss our infiltration plan. We have to get into the city to see what is going on. The new walls could be enchanted with alarm spels. We’re a small group, and with non-detection, maybe polymorph. Or maybe as diplomatic envoys?

The next morning, we’re called to meet with the Command Staff: The Colonel, the Lt, and a General Waverly. We explain the worm problem to him, and that we think there might be a tree inside. We have dealt with one before, so we ought to go in and see. He put the mage corps’ magic at our disposal, and we ask about previous attempts. The ones that got the closest were the mages who went to the docks, but their soldiers didn’t have protective spells, so they were spotted. Now, with The Machine, limiting spells won’t be a problem. We again, point out that our smaller group might just be able to slip in unnoticed.

We discuss the bulk of us being polymorphed, using Nat’s telepathic bond spell, and having her just be made small to hide with us. Sea turtles seems to be the consensus. General Waverly calls for a mage named Crow. When he arrives and is informed of our needs, he looks Nat up and down. He can do it, but it won’t be pleasant, and it will be permanent until he can undo it himself. He clamps metal bands onto Nat’s wrists and ankles, then uses a torch to melt them closed It takes half an hour of Nat cursing in pain, but when Crow is done, Nat is only two feet tall.

Dalish also has a strange bag that Rictus gave him, that we want to test the limits of. Nat casts her telepathic bond on us, then climbs inside the bag. The bond doesn’t work in there, but sending still does. The air, however, is a bit stale, so we can’t leave her in there a long time. We’ll just have to make her invisible when we all swim in as sea turtles, with non-detection on us all. Mummy Dalish will stay with the mages who polymorph us, so he can tell them when to drop the spell.

We take the day and night to rest and prepare new spells for the attempt in the morning. We head over to an area near the bay, but still outside the city, on a very nice beach. Nat telepathic bonds us, the mages cast non-detection on us, then polymorph all but Nat into sea turtles. One then casts invisibility on Nat, and we head for the water.

The swim in is rather pleasant and calm, nothing bothers us, no explosions from fighting ships. We head into the bay and towards a beach. Nat, invisible still, looks around, and finds us a clear space to land. We ping MD, and he has the mages drop polymorph. We’re just a family out for an early morning stroll on the beach now. Marybeth and Remy change their faces a bit to look more like they’re old enough to be our parents and we head in. There’s a great big square building in the center, with a tower and a magical spotlight swinging around the city. That is probably where we need to go.

Gods and Beholders

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Stephen takes us down into his basement, which looks more lived in than the upstairs, and then jumps down an eerily familiar hole. We all follow suit, finding ourselves floating down to an island in a dry lakebed beneath the mansion. It looks nearly identical to the one we visited below Bangoria. Only, this one is a bit busier in the section between the standing stones and the inner circle. It’s all still crumbling, and the statues to the gods are a bit different. When we step through the circle here, nothing happens, to our great relief.

The thrones here are empty, and Stephen tells us they were that way when he found them. We fill him in that there’s one under his old house, too. Moving towards the throne, we find a pit dug in front of the thrones. Ten feet in diameter, and about five feet deep. It’s about the size of the worm tree holes, when they dug them up! Oh Dawnmother!!! What if they have one, what if New Calay is infected? What if they plan to unleash it on our army or New Gnosis?

Stephen hands over a message he found here. It speaks of our army’s approach, and asks the mages here to relocate the “occulus.” Which doesn’t sound like a tree, but what could it refer to? I can feel the pounding of the earth here, and I jump into the hole as Remy takes a look at the magic around this pit. The beating gets louder and stronger as I sit in the pit, trying to reach for it, understand it.

They chatter above me, about the six god statues here. A tall black marble column covered in script of prayers to the Stoneman. An empty ring with faded, delicate tile work of a dancer with a skull for a head, with swords in one hand and scales in the other. A massive stone-carved brazier with stylized sun which says “drive away the night.” A squared off empty plot of tilled, dry, cracked earth. Benches around a massive cylinder carved with shelves, topped with an onyx brain. A broken shrine, with only feet remaining.

They’re nameing the gods and arguing, but I can only hear the pounding heartbeat get louder and louder. The ground starts trembling, rumbling and a monstrous mass of eyeballs bursts out of the pit beside me!

Scrambling back, I try to thunderstep away, but it doesn’t work, the magic doesn’t work! So, I climb up and out and circle away from the thing while it shoots rays from various eyes. Klyce tries to grapple it, but it’s floating, so it doesn’t do much except allow him to keep punching it. Gerhardt is the first to get a spell off, from outside the circle and to the side. Nat falls under a black ray, and Stephen beside her turns to stone. Rays, spells, bullets, and punches fly. Gerhardt finally manages to banish it, but not before Remy, too, turns to stone.

Stunned in the aftermath of the battle, I rush to Nat, but she’s gone, there’s nothing. I pray to the Dawnmother for help, but she does not hear me. Marybeth sobs beside me. Dalish comes over, puts his hands on Nat’s head, to try and bring her back like he brought Remy just a few days ago. It works, but this time, it was too much, and Dalish falls over dead himself. Marybeth’s sobs increase and I pray all the harder.

Beside me, Nat climbs out from under Dalish to find her brother a statue, and her eyes healed! She can see again, and is terribly disoriented by this fact. She starts praying to the Dancer for help, but he can’t save Dalish either. Nat decides she wants to have some tea and visions, to find out what we can do to fix this. We’re too far from the swamp witch, and Durance isn’t likely to give us leave to go back to her anyway. We insist on binding her hands so she can’t mindpalace us when high again, and she has her tea.

Her trance lasts for four hours. Klyce and I get Stephen and Remy back up through the hole in basement floor. Then we wait. But Nat awakes with no more info, except the usual horrible visions of death and destruction. We have a discussion about what to do and who to talk to. Perhaps Durance or one of the other mages can turn Remy back if we take him outside. Nat wonders if Stephen’s books can help fix Dalish and convinces Cerissa to take her to look through them. There is nothing to help the statues, and only spells to create undead creatures, not return life. I send a message to Durance that we’re staying the night here, and we all take rest.

In the morning, leaving Nat and Gerhardt behind with Stephen, because they won’t let us take him out, we head back to camp. Klyce carries Dalish, and I levitate Remy out. Marybeth explains the trip to the basement and below and the eye monstrosity. She explains that Nat and Gerhardt stayed behind to try and find more research into solutions. Klyce explains that we think they might have had a worm tree in the basement, and so the whole world is at threat again.

Lt Durance summarizes our crazy story back to us, to make sure it got it all. Then he tells us to go round up Nat, Gerhardt, and Stephen so we can head to meet up with the rest of the army and get the statues returned to flesh. We argue a little, but cannot disagree that it’s the only way to fix Stephen. So, leaving Remy behind, but taking Dalish with us, we head back to the house.

Nat pulls us all into a mind palace to talk. First item – Dalish. Do we bring him with us in a deep pocket spell, or do we raise him as a powerful undead thing? Arguement ensues, but due to his necromatic leanings, we all agree to let Nat do it. And most of us agree we do not want that should we fall. Second, Klyce asks Cerissa to let us take Stephen, as it’s the only way to fix him. We all swear to protect him with our own lives. She will give us a glyph we can use to get him to safety in an emergency. Third, what about New Calay, the burning, explosions, and the worm tree? Well, if the worm tree is there, it will be us, firebombing the city and rightly so. Everything settled, we pop back out to do some magic.

Nat wants to bring Dalish back as a mummy and asks Cerissa for help. She suggests linked overcharging, and when we all stare dumbly at her, she explains. After disparaging our education. Gerhardt, Cerissa, and Nat join together, sharing their mana and the burden of the overcharge. They wrap Dalish up in strips of cloth and cast their spell. He awakes, though undead, and says he feels better than he has in a long while. He agrees it was the right decision. We give him some mana, but he can’t use it. Marybeth gives him some of the mana from her weird wineskin, and that he Can use. Interesting.

Levitating Stephen, we head back to camp to explain to Durance what we’ve done this time. He is not terribly excited about it and tells Nat that she is now responsible for him and his behavior. Camp packs up and we march for the rest of the day before setting camp.

In the morning, a perfectly living Dalish walks right up into camp, where we are having breakfast with our mummy Dalish.