13A:Play/28 As spoken by the revelations of the dark gods…
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Starring: 📜Elistheren, 📚 Annalana, 🌲 Qistis
Guest Starring: Charlize, Selima
Challenge: Annalana's past (preventing Selima from hurting herself too much); Mind-melding with a terror from the deep
Location: Drakkenhall
Date Played: 2018 Mar 14
Soul-seeking
📚 Annalana: Charlize has made arrangements to help Annalana find her soul. A human woman named Selima Hart of upper middle ages, who is an investor/tollkeeper (money launderer). Her house is a mud dome on a much larger than needed land, which could hold a mansion. It also has two apple trees.
Annalana and the crew arrive and she knocks on the door. Selima screams and faints at the sight of Annalana. Annalana catches her and Qistis wakes her with smelling salts. Selima wakes and believes that she is in a dream, and unconvinced by us, begins to make poor and hurtful decisions, like grabbing a hot kettle.
Qistis pulls Annalana aside to stop her from “interrogating her” and Elis talks to Selima. There is a knock at the door and there are 3 dragonkin, red, blue, black. They were looking for us to find Inigo. They pay Elis a steel coin of Drakkenhall.
Selima knits without telling us anything. Annalana starts to look around and discovers a lock box, promptly smashing it open. Inside is a horror that overwhelms Annalana, a memory of the tentacle that stole her memory.
Selima calls Annalana “Tabitha”. Selima says that she cut the tentacle off of Annalana and dragged her to safety. “We were near Anvil, and I begged you to follow to Axis and Annalana insisted on going to Anvil. That is where we split.” “We met during the terrors. You were the only one who agreed with me that we should escape from the terror.”
“Did you every find your husband, Mr Demarq? You had just married.”
📜Elistheren: Annalana's life is itself akin to an archaeological dig. History, you see, isn't truly written down. The records of history are themselves a kind of lie, a version of history we wish were true, but not the actual truth. And thus we find that Annalana's own records are their own kind of lie.
Annalana overcomes the obstacle Selima presents using Annalana's usual approach. We calm Annalana down, and well, there's a horrific tentacle creature, a source of ancient power which has stolen Annalana's soul. I'm so excited to learn more about it!
🌲 Qistis: Our oh-so wonderful stalker Charlize manages gives us a lead for finding Annalana's soul. Some woman named Selima Hart has residence in Drakenhall. We find the house and it's....quaint I suppose. A few moments later and Annalana didn't even have to pull out her sword to put a person into an unconscious state.
Some smelling salts to the trick but the woman believes she is still dreaming. Maybe some kind of shock coping mechanism seeing as the first sight of Annalana caused her to pass out. This woman seems to know a lot of Annalana actually, more than I would have ever thought. Her story relating to our companion is strange and hardly believable, but it's the most information we're gotten so far so at the very least we should do some sort of cursory research.
Ritual to Locate “the Horror”
📚 Annalana: We take the jerky tentacle to do a ritual so that Elis can find it. The ritual has to happen in deep water with origami spirits who are seeking out the monster, which has to be played by someone with a medium connection.
That person is Qistis. Reluctantly she enters the water in front of the gathering crowd.
Elis’ skin turns gray, his clothes turn to ash. Touching him is like touching a cold rigid muscle. Elis says that Annalana’s soul is stuck between pages and reaches for her. He tries to grab her and Qistis moves to intercept. We back our way to the beach as the ground starts to rhythmically shaking. A Koru appears on the cliff. Qistis notices smoke rising from the back of the Koru, and determines that there is a village on its back.
📜Elistheren: I design and execute the ritual, despite Qistis's protests, it goes better than I could have imagined. The Ancient Horror embodies itself within me! I've been touched by the divine in a way I didn't know was possible.
🌲 Qistis: Elistherin devises some insane ritual to contact the dark power Selima says stole Annalana's soul. Seeing as Kaelon is once again wonderfully absent from this farce of ritual I will have to go into the water to perform the necessary movements. Elistherin is the one who came up with this so I fully believe he devised this portion simply to humiliate me.
His ritual proves..."successful", though I'm not sure how successful one would consider the so called communing with a so called eldritch ancient power. The information we get is entirely too cryptic for even my tastes so we're actually dealing with a real eldritch ancient power....or more likely it's some wizard with far too large of an ego fucking with us. Either way, they're basically the same thing.
“I am like this for seven questions!”
- Who are you? I am the Fangs
- Where are you? The Iron Sea
- What is your purpose with Annalana? Annalana is my bride
- What are three ways that I can get my soul back? Surrender everything that makes you yourself. Give in to perpetual day/night? Or stop trying?
- What happened to my soul? I moved it?
- Where is my soul? Rests among our children waiting to be released as they swarm over this horrid world.
- How do we kill you? Step 1 release me.
We Return to the Inn
📚 Annalana: Charlize is there with our breakfast that has been kept hot. Elis tells her about communing with an ancient thing that is beyond time and space. She tells Elis to take fewer drugs.
Charlize reminds Annalana that she brought her a box of journals. Some of them date back a century or more. As we spend the next couple of days, we piece together that these journals cover at least 4 decades. In these journals Annalana went by Lanna. “I don’t remember time, I constantly think about killing myself but I can’t”, said Selima.
Charlize brings us a paper, “Elf Queen’s Wedding CANCELLED” due to too many external threats. It will be a quiet ceremony of friends and family.
Elis’ decoding from Qistis’ father includes a “Lanna” and the time stamp syncs up. With a D grade next to it.
📜Elistheren: And thus, the wedding is cancelled. It's probably for the best. Especially since Annalana may have been intimate with the groom, and all.
🌲 Qistis: We've already come all this way and NOW they cancel the wedding?! Completely insane! As much as I loathe both my father and the elf queen this obvious show of disinterest has only gone to fuel me more. This wedding may be closed off to non-immediate family, but I'm immediate as he's going to get. The rest of my party shall be retainers. If they throw them out so be it...I will go to this wedding.
Archmage Complication
📚 Annalana: Elis is approached by a member of the archmage to help rescue a blue dragon envoy.
Before we leave Qistis blows off steam with a bunch of Dragonkin but wakes up with a Gold Dragonkin, with a tattoo of a tree with leaves on it on this thigh.
