12/27/2023 -- Operation Rising Edge

Date: 23 Lionnir 715AR. Starring Varos (commander), Akl (marshal), Damon (spymaster), Bloom (lorekeeper).
We pick up with Varos assembling Akl, Damon, and Bloom. He thanks them for coming, and says he has a mission for them – it’s simple, they just have to get a weapon out of some ice. Varos didn’t really think things through, but when asked, decides we’ll leave during the day – at about 1pm, giving us time to go around and do some things.
Damon goes to find Claudia, and finds her sitting in her tent on top of her coffin. She’s bundled up in blankets, which is weird, since it’s a hot summer day. He asks if she can teach him how to control his bloodthirst – she says the beast requires blood, and that while animal blood can sustain for a time, eventually the blood of mortalkind is required. She advises him to eat who he can stomach, and mentions that she avoids children and newlyweds.
Claudia, at the end of this conversation, places a hand on his and tells him to be careful, because this is a beast she’s not too familiar with. He thanks her and places a hand over hers, and goes in for a kiss – she kisses back, and says he’s a bold one. She invites him to come back to her tent after her mission, because she’s much more energetic at night.
- Damon then joins Akl at the Rat Races. He sneaks some rats to eat.
Bloom goes to the blacksmith and gets Sharp I added to his flail (spent: 2 scrap). He then goes to the Bitter Swill to talk to Castellan. He apologizes for not being able to rescue Tern, and Castellan says that they can only save so many. He says he has something for Bloom, though, if he wants to redeem himself; some cleric of Brekendahl was captured by Amis and his alchemists. There’s an old temple by a nearby lake, and apparently they’re trying to make heretical water, as some kind of inverse of holy water. It’s probably nothing good. He tells Bloom to blow up the temple if possible, and it’d be even better if we can get the cleric back, too.
- They talk a little bit more about loss – Castellan says they lose many more than they save, and Bloom remarks that he thought it’d be easier after time. Castellan says easy and the Brigade don’t mix, and pours Bloom a shot of Kovorovian vodka on the house.
Varos goes to talk to Margaux, and finds her poring over books, and doing something with clumps of herbs. She greets him, but says she’s too busy for cards right now, and he says he’s actually here with good news; Talis had an oopsie-doopsie. Margaux was like “what do you mean, an oopsie-doopsie?” And Varos says Talis died – Margaux is very excited until Varos says he got revived, and then tells her she might want to make nice with Talis, because he might not be the bad kind of priest. She’s initially resistant, but says she’ll visit him and give him a once-over.
- He then tells her he’s gonna leave and poke some ice, and that that’s not a euphemism. He asks her to do a once-over on him, so that if he comes back weird, she can detect it. She agrees, and gives him a 1500 question questionnaire to fill out. He whines, but she won’t let him leave until he finishes it. He does so, and she does some exams, takes some blood samples, etc., with a promise to give him another questionnaire when he gets back. She gives him two lollipops, which he begrudgingly takes.
We spend 1 intel to ask what a useful item would be, and get the answer of “something that can produce fire” (we then spend 2 scrap to get a satchel of oil). The spymaster also asks how difficult the mission is, and are told scaling the mountain is only a 2 or a 3. We don’t know what lies beyond, but it’ll probably be a 6 or 7.
We get a 6 [6, 4] on engagement – we go north from Bayeux, and enter the mountains. From the base we can see a lone tree at the top, with vibrant pink leaves, and a part of him recognizes it as the target. The path is winding and twisting, but it’s nothing we can’t handle.
Proceeding up, we find three altars, each with a stone on it (1 blue, 1 grey, 1 red). Beyond the altar was a basin of water, and beyond that was an elevated stone cube on a platform, with vertical slots for placing the stones inside. Past that was a closed archway. Also in the area was a flat golden disc connected to a crank by a red wire. Another wire connected to the pool of water. The crank seems to be locked in place, with an empty interior chamber that appears to be waiting for power.
We dick around with the rocks, and Akl and Damon fail mental checks with them. The grey stone hums a bit in Akl’s hand, seeming active for the moment. Bloom picks up the red stone, and though the surface is smooth, it feels prickly – when he sets it down, his hand is bloody, and it’s drained 5sp from him. We set the stones together in the cube, and they react violently to each other. Akl is electrocuted, and loses 10sp.
We examine the gemstones again, and we see the blue stone is blue jade. It has little lightning bolts carved into its side. The grey stone has drops of water carved into the side, and the red one has little scratches on it. We realize the gold platform conducts electricity, and trigger the reaction again on it, powering up the crank. Turning the crank, the pool became electrified, and the grey stone was reactivated when placed in it. We stop electrifying the pool and drop the grey stone in it to deactivate it, before stacking the stones together with the inactive one sandwiched in between.
The archway opens into what initially looks like a regular mountain path, but is different, hazy and off-color, with bits of blues and reds coming off of everything. Damon goes through first, and feels this weird buzzing. He feels fine, but he looks weird and distorted to the rest of us. Akl says it could be a trap and walks in without waiting for an answer. Bloom says he guesses he’s done worse, and follows them. Varos goes in last. Inside, the sun moves in reverse across the sky, and while the snow falls, some of it falls back up into the sky. We see a staircase leading up to a tree with beautiful pink flowers, one of the only things not distorted in any way. 100ft away from it is a pillar of ice.
There’s a weird seal on the ground, where someone has built a small firepit, with a kettle of tea boiling above it. There’s a woman there, with darker skin, and grey hair, though she looks young. Her eyes are two different colors – one is violet, the other is cyan blue. She has two white wings tucked behind her back. We recognize her as an angel.
She introduces herself as Hester, and offers us some tea. She thinks Bloom’s name is very pretty. Bloom and Akl accept the tea, and Damon(?) accepts some leftover rabbit jerky. The tea is Gravintine Fruit, from the Sunlands, and has a savory flavor, like if steak was a plant. It restores 5 SP. We ask about the Sunlands, and she says they’re just a bit past Heaven, and are where a bunch of her brothers and sisters are from, though she hasn’t been back in a while. She’s here on guard duty to guard the weapon over there, but hopes to eventually be relieved so she can take a vacation back home.
Damon asks her to help with corruption, and she says she’ll try. She starts healing him, and mentions some of the training she’s had – basic training in medical aid and histories, fluency in 83 different languages, cartography, alchemy, swordsmanship, stonemasonry, etc.
She references a “cosmic infection”, and says she has to guard the weapon until that’s dealt with, because it’s dangerous. Damon volunteers us to guard it for her, but fails his spirit check, and she declines, unless we can find someone with more experience.
Bloom asks about Gravisburg, and she hesitates, but says it was a very lovely place that got lost in “the war”, specifically the Titanic War. When he asks, she explains the Titanic War was the gods and the Titans fighting for supremacy. Her and her siblings fought in that war. Gravisburg was on the Ring of Quelling, and was not rebuilt after the Ring was destroyed by the first Aether Eater. This happened a few thousand years ago.
- Bloom wasn’t very happy about this.
She’s stripped 1 corruption off of Damon by the time Varos asks for a group huddle. We argue about what to do – Varos wants to just stab her in the back and grab the weapon, with some support from Damon, and Bloom thinks she’s naive enough they can manipulate her into giving them the weapon. Varos steps aside from us to call his mommy, and she says the angel’s skills have been dulled by being down here, and that the angel will bring about the doom of the Brigade. Varos’s mom, in a creepy and deepening voice, asks what else all the deaths were for. “Remember how they were slaughtered?”
- Varos is upset by the voice, and says she doesn’t have to do that.
Varos reconvenes with us, and we decide to try talking first. We walk back to her, and she says she’s not as naive as we think – despite her smile and pleasant exterior, we see a look of recognition from her. She got 5 successes eavesdropping on us LOL
She asks what magic Varos did, because she didn’t recognize it. We don’t know, but she moves on, saying she’d rather this all be very peaceful. She’s beaming widely as she tells us she doesn’t want us to stab her in the back, but we can stab her in the front. Hester continues trying to talk us down, but we’re insistent that having the weapon is very important for the Brigade winning, which is important for everyone. She says the war with the Impure is basically a skirmish, and that if we focus too hard on trying to win the battle, we’ll lose the wider war. She gives us one more chance to put our weapons down and talk it out, but we’re obviously unwell, and something must be done to stop us.
She pulls her angelic blade from the scabbard, and says she’ll ask for her souls to be brought to Paradise. We enter combat, and she’s complimentary of Bloom and Damon on their fighting. She tries to make small talk with Varos, but he tells her to just shut up and stop talking, and she gets pissed, bringing down the celestial hammer on Varos – failed spirit saves give 15 spirit damage, move the target 20 feet away, and the target can’t use armor blocks until the end of her next turn. Not a single one of us ever makes those spirit saves LOL.
Akl loses a health block (his second, since he came in injured) right off the bat, and he sustains a major injury that gives all creatures benefit i on damage rolls against him, as she shatters his sternum. She uses an ability called piercing holy light on him, that makes him need to spend 2sp for every 1 dmg he tries to negate, and reduces his movement by 20. She attacks Bloom, and he uses an armor block to avoid being beheaded. She snaps her fingers and uses her background action to trap us (or just Bloom?) in a dome, and flies 30 feet up in the air.
Varos tries to talk to her, and asks her to spare his friends – she’s apologetic, but refuses to. The fight continues, and she knocks Bloom away with the hammer, before taking Akl’s last health block. She rips off his head, and chucks his body over the cliff. She says he died a warrior’s death, like we all will. Bloom asks again if they can surrender, and she refuses.
Varos starts attacking into the ice block, and gets a minor injury (detriment i) when she goes after him. He finally grabs Mendax Morte from the ice block, and she yells to put that down, and hacks into him some more; he loses another health block, and then she asks if he has any last words. He cries out to his mom, and she promises to reunite them, before stabbing him through the brain. Bloom threatens to turn the mountaintop to stone if she doesn’t let them go, but she’s not too worried about it.
Damon tries to drink her blood, and feels terrible pain, like drinking radiant sunlight.
On Varos’s turn, we see his body twitching, bits of his brain matter folding back into his body. He hears his mother’s voice, telling him “you’re not done, get up. You have to save them, remember?” He gets back up with one health block, and Hester’s eyes go wide. She says that’s impossible, and he just goes “Oops” and starts fucking stabbing her.
Bloom loses a health block, and falls prone.
Hester says she’s not sure what Varos is, but knows she has to stop him. She twists to fight him, and Bloom’s hex activates – he has the choice of doing nothing (which would let Varos die), incapacitating her (Varos would still probably die), or killing her. He chooses to allow the hex to kill her, and her wings begin to burn away, her sword dropping and combusting into light. She says, “I’m sorry, I failed…” before Varos stabs her in the head for the final time, snuffing her out. The blood coats the area around us, and everything grows darker. Varos and Bloom now have the blood of an angel on their hands.
Damon drinks her blood. He also loots her, and gets +3 divine relics. We can’t retrieve Akl’s body, so we hit the bricks, dropping to 0 stamina by the time we get back to camp (after Varos has a bit of a breakdown). We see a strange iridescent light take the mountain, and it rumbles. We hear the screams of angered celestials, and they rain hell on the mountain, turning it to a crater. Damon stumbles over to Claudia, where she set her tent up, and is wearing a nice dress. Her smile drops when she sees him, and she rushes to him, asking what happened.
He tells her about what happened, and she’s very distraught that we killed an angel – even her old master wouldn’t do that. We committed one of the most heinous acts, according to the high gods. All 3 survivors take 2 level-ups.