12/21/2023 -- Innfiltration

• Inn-filtration – Lionnir 17, 715AR (12/21/2023)
  • STARRING: Angel/Bloom (A), Charon (C), Damon (DA), The Deer (DE), Koilos (K), Margeaux (M), Marie (MA), Varuz (V)... and others :)

• We pick up with Angel, on the Roost staircase. The sphere sits about 30 feet above the camp. It is three days after the last mission, and Varuz has returned.
• He appears to be eating a shepherd's pie of some sort, filled with tentacles (likely octopus or squid). He eats it greedily, and greets Angel.
• His trip to the mountain lab was enlightening. His research on the Xeroxixia is going well, and he thinks he will find useful information within.
• He says the two of them have business! He asks if Angel is ready.
  • Angel supposes so.
• Varuz insists he sit, to which Angel does.
• “Tampering with a Meropian seal is no easy feat. We will go slow, and we will go carefully.” – V
  • He is going to try and unveil the thing which keeps his mind shut.
  • He offers a tonic of alchemical ingredients that should help break down the seal.
    • It is sparkling and green.
• Does he seem honest? (SPIRIT)
  • (1 SUCCESS) Angel isn’t sure. He doesn’t get a read on Varuz’s body language.
  • Angel decides he didn’t try to kill him the other day and drinks it.
    • It doesn’t feel like anything has happened to him.
• Varuz pulls out a tuning fork and places it to the side of Angels head.
  • Are you ready?
• He gently hits the side of Angels head with the tuning fork.
• Angels world begins to swirl. A myriad of beautiful and fantastic colors.
• Spinning faster and faster… Angel finds himself stepping into the temple. Nestled within the towering trees of an ancient forest. Sunlight dances through the stained glass window and dapples the marble floors. Angel finds solace here.
  • The Temple of the Creative.
  • Angel finds comfort in cleaning the temple, sweeping the temple of leaves. He hums a tune.
    • A realm of creativity for Angel, it seems.
  • Swirls of incense fill the air. Intricate carvings decorate the altar dedicated to the Creative.
  • This place, this temple, Angels haven and muse. They are an architect of beauty that fuels the flame of spirit.
  • Angel offers guidance on creative projects, paintings, and individual livelihoods. Help people get in touch with their creative sides.
  • A soft whisper comes through a breeze. Whispers of forgotten tales. Angels passion is overwhelming. He basks in the ethereal wind, and thinks he is doing well.
  • Angel feels a sense of accomplishment in the cleanliness of the sanctuary, and he offers a prayer to the Creative before leaving.
  • The rising city of Gravisburg stands tall around him. Angel smiles. It is time to go home.
  • The public teleportation circle takes Angel home.
    • As he feels himself teleport away… he is sucked back.

• Angel sees Varuz in the center of the room, face covered in sweat.
  • He chuckles, weakly, and begins to throw up blood. The floor is covered in it.
• Angel asks if he is alright.
  • He proclaims he is better than alright– what a kick!
  • “We will have to do this… very carefully. Did we hit anything important?” – V
    • Angel describes the vision.
• Angel cannot find Gravisburg on maps, and inquires about the town. Varuz does not know.
  • (SPIRIT CHECK) (3 HP REROLL) (1 SUCCESS)
    • Angel gets the sense that he… hesitated. He might be telling the truth, he might not be, but he is holding something back.
• Varuz holds out a mirror. There is a tattoo that begins at the middle of Angels forehead, white lines spreading out across his face like a mask.
  • “I don’t think Bloom will be happy about that… it looks cool though.” – A
  • The marks are slowly fading at least.
• Angel feels a well of power within their body. It stretches through their skin and muscles– it is certainly strange.
• Varuz puts a hand on his shoulder, and bids him to be careful. The power is great and he does not know what it does. It stretches far beyond his body. Angel is connected to something greater than himself.
  • +1 Power for Angel! (Eon Lattice: Millennium Zero) This does not count against his power total.
• Varuz says they can continue trying, another time, but they must be careful.
  • At least the vision was more pleasant than the other ones.
• Angel heads out.
• Angel goes out to find The Deer, Damon, Charon, and Koilos.
• He says this won’t be like last night. It’ll be more pleasant.
• Castellan told Angel about a child that was taken by Lady Lisette. He is likely being held in an inn. We are to break in and bring the child back.
  • Charon is in.
  • Koilos is happy to help :) Damon is in as well.
  • The Deer is off scratching itself with its leg. It agrees as well, after further asking.
• Angel wants to leave at nightfall. The inn must be about six or seven hours away… so perhaps leaving a little before nightfall. Maybe around four.
• The Deer has whistlers he is willing to bring along.
• Damon heads to the Blacksmith.
  • Marie stops, a bit in disbelief, “are you… alive?”
    • “No I’m dead. Of course I’m alive.” – DA
  • She is caught off guard by his appearance here.
  • He requests armor that will help him be stealthier, she offers quick fit leather armor. But inquires about his situation.
    • He doesn’t have enough time right now, but will explain later.
  • She looks through her stuff–she could probably get him some armor. The more materials she has, the more she can rush the job to make it more streamlined.
    • Base amount of spare weapons needed are two. Four scrap can be used to add +5 stamina points to basic light armor (for a total of +15 stamina)
    • Damon uses the spare materials (-4 SCRAP / -2 SPARE WEAPONS)
  • Damon goes to leave, and she stops him hastily.
    • “Can you… bring more like you… back? I… I saw your body– I– I fucked up. And. You came back.” – MA
    • “I came back at a cost.” – DA
    • She is willing to pay… She groans a bit–a blacksmith hammer is chucked at his back as he walks away.
  • Damon heads off to see Claudia.
    • He can’t find her though. She must be on patrol.
• The Deer and Damon head to the Rat Races.
• Angel goes to see Margeaux.
  • Running out of time to leave– she is working.
  • Angel talks about Varuz. He studied under Caerwyn.
    • Angel seems nonchalant about this.
    • Margeaux echoes his name. One of the most important spellcasters that has ever lived. “And you met his apprentice?”
  • Angel describes his vision, the tattoo, and the latent power.
  • She looks over Angels face and lights a candle next to him. As it is moved across his face it begins to turn different colors.
  • Margeaux takes a bundle of plants and herbs and sticks it in his front pocket. It should help with things. Give Angels soul some amount of stasis. Like glue– relatively thin glue. But it might help.
• Koilos heads to the Stage.
• Charon heads to Lucky Eights.
• There is no need for an intel check.
• Spy Master activities…?
  • One spy is put on Scrap. (3d6 – Nothing is found, unfortunately)
• Quartermaster..?
  • Nothin’ going on.
• Engagement Roll! We only get 1d6 unfortunately…
  • It’s… a one.
  • The DM says “Oh… lovely,” in a very concerning tone
    • He turns on suspicious music.
• The Party gets lost… once– or twice. The roving bands of Crows are making it difficult.
• Eventually, the party comes to an overrun town. Buildings are ransacked and looted. Making their way forward, there, toward the center of town, is a two story inn. Blossomed zombies rove around. 70 feet away from the inn is a set of stables, the whinnying of horses can be heard within. In the street, 15-20 feet outside is the half eaten corpse of a woman. Something is wrong with this woman. She smells like them– the impure. Soft black wisps of shadow emanate from her– a Gloom Weaver half-devoured.
• 200-300 feet from the inn we hear clicking, a Crow is scampering across the rooftops. We retreat into an alleyway.
  • The Crow is behind us, seemingly sniffing the air.
• Koilos wraps her wings around herself to blend in with the darkness. Damon throws his cloak on as well.
• The ground does appear to be a bit muddy… but it hasn’t rained recently. Something else must have wet the dirt in this area.
• The Deer sends his swarm of bunnies backwards, the party aims to sneak upwind.
• As the rabbits bolt in the other direction– the Crow and a few Blossomed are distracted. The party is within 30 feet of the inn. However, all of the Blossomed and the Crow are now agitated. They are on high alert, but the party has gotten closer.
• Angel wonders if the Impure are intelligent enough to recognize another distraction.
  • Maybe. The Crows are a bit smarter than the Blossomed, so may be less responsive to more distractions.
• The party discusses their next move for a while. Charon takes a Whistler from The Deer, and decides they will run out as far as they can to use it.
  • The whistler is set to go off in 60 seconds.
  • The Crow has 100 feet sprinting, but Charon has 200 feet. She is just a bit faster.
  • The Blossomed begin to fire spores at Charon as it flies.
    • -10 Stamina / +3 Corruption
• More Crows erupt from the building from the calls of the original.
• Koilos quickly pops up (3 SUCCESSES), trying her best to not be seen. She looks for accessible windows and finds one leading to what seems like a storage room. She offers to fly those up that cannot reach by themselves.
• Charon disappears, and the whistler begins to go off. All creatures are alerted. All creatures inside the building are alerted as well.
• Damon–regular Damon– climbs up the building.
  • The windows are boarded. How are you getting inside?
    • Damon wants to use his dagger.
      • (PHYS D2 – 0 SUCCESSES) there is not enough leverage
• There are 10-15 seconds left on the whistler.
• Koilos heads up to use the spear to try and pry the boards off. (4 SUCCESSES)
  • A few of the boards are pried off, there is now a slit within the window that everyone can climb through.
• Koilos carries the Deer.
• Angel heads up the building (-2 HP / 2 SUCCESSES)
  • He grabs onto a board, and it breaks. He is hanging by a thread, but he is able to grab onto another board– and pull himself inside.
• The party finds themselves in some sort of storage area on the second floor. What was once a bedroom has been filled with random assortments of knick-knacks and items.
• Charons book is opened and it crawls out, panting.
  • Koilos asks if Charon even has lungs. Charon touches it’s chest– it’s not sure?
• Koilos begins going through the boxes.
  • Most is junk, but there are a few rare ceremonial coins. Relics and items of value could be scrounged up.
  • Rummage Check! (Headed by Koilos)
    • A check made to collect items on a mission. Roll 1d6– on a 1-3 you are successful with no noise, 4-5 there is a small amount of noise, but not too bad. On a 6 the place will be alerted.
    • 2! We are fine.
      • +2 Relics.
  • Another Rummage! (Headed by Damon)
    • 1! We are STILL fine!
      • Scrap iron and bronze is found, a small statue of a local fey being is also discovered.
      • +1 Relic / +3 Scrap
  • Another Rummage! (Headed by Deer)
    • 5.
      • The Deer finds a box filled with beautiful glass sculptures. As he begins to pry them out…
        • +3 Relics
      • One is dropped, and shatters. The party waits… There are footfalls up the stairs.
  • The party all make stealth checks at Benefit I. (Benefit II for Damon, as he is in an adjacent room)
  • The Deer summons a swarm of rats, hides most of them, and sends two out next to the box.
  • The door opens… looking down is a Crow. Its long talons scrape against the door, it peers down and sees two rats fighting in the room. There is a flickering of claws– and the rats perish. The Crow begins to consume them.
    • Success!
  • Another Rummage (Headed by Damon)
    • 2! We are… somehow, fine.
    • In another room Damon finds–
      • +2 Relic / +2 Scrap / +1 Note
        • A reminder made by a person to bring down meat to the Crow in the basement– it is guarding the Sacrifice. It makes mention of a dumbwaiter in the kitchen.
• Koilos wants to head to the stairs to see what is going on. (-3 HP / -2 Angel HP / 2 SUCCESS)
  • At the foot of the steps… Ki can hear something crunching. Ripping. Curiosity gets the best of Ki. Her foot goes down one step… then another… and another. Looking down, towards the center of the dining room, there is a woman. She is dressed in long black robes, with long white hair. She is eating another woman.
  • Her mouth is red with blood. She is consuming intestines, breaking bones and sucking out the marrow. Lady Lisette. One of Dionysias Gloom Weavers.
    • Legend says she became addicted to the shard of Dionysia's power that is within every Gloom Weaver. She eats her kind to become closer to her creator.
  • There is a potential opening. One step lower… the step creaks. Koilos’ heart skips a beat– she drops on the staircase as Lady Lisette focuses on the staircase. Ki does not move. Slowly… peeking over… Lady Lisette squints her eyes and flicks her hand. 8 Blossomed move toward the stairs, and Ki backs up.
  • We hide. Deer sends the rats, and some go after them. But they have been ordered to clear the top floor.
• Charon flies up into the rafters.
• Damon transforms into his Wolf form.
  • As he transforms… It is much more violent than the party remembers. His face begins to break and contort– the eyes retain the blue color. His teeth grow into jagged fangs. There is a palpable blood lust as he transforms– (SPIRIT SAVE)
  • Zero. Who… is… tastiest?
    • The Deer. (PHYS SAVE)
      • 0 SUCCESSES (notably, three ones!)
  • As everyone else begins to silently head into the corners… Deer. You turn, and this massive vampiric werewolf rushes you down. It bites into your neck and drinks. Damon has been so… so hungry…
  • Koilos tells him to get ahold of himself– and tries prying his jaws off. (PHYS CHECK – 1 SUCCESS)
    • CONTESTED PHYS B1 – 1
    • Because the Deer is struggling, Koilos is (barely) able to rip the Deers jaws away.
• The door bursts open and a Blossomed Zombie rushes in.
  • Angel attempts to slam the door and smashes it in with the flail (1 SUCCESS)
  • Charon casts Blighting Hex (2 SUCCESSES)
    • This is taken on a health block.
• Damon makes another spirit check at B1 (0 SUCCESSES)
  • Koilos hears the vampwolf howl. It lunges for the Deer again.
• The Deer rushes away, the vampwolf continues to chase.
• Koilos wants to leave. She attempts to grapple Damon. (1 SUCCESS)
  • As she goes to grab on, she is able to hold her down. An absolute clusterfuck.
• Charon casts Curse of the Shadow Chains on Damon.
• Angel attacks the Blossomed again.
  • (3 SUCCESSES) HDYWTDT!
    • Angel whips the flail into it over and over.
• The Deer wants to get out. He wants to leap out the window. He is abandoning the mission.
  • Damon follows. He breaks through the boards.
• Angel wants to trigger its new power. Fuck it we ball.
  • The DM says “You are activating the Eon Lattice. Nice.”
  • As you begin to focus, Angel, you allow that small shred of power within you to shift… change… expand. The tattoo begins to appear across Angels face. From Angel, white tendrils of energy emerge and spin out like razor wire. All Ki and Charon can do… is scream.
• If Bloom could see the street… Deer is running. Damon is chasing on all fours. Howling. Twenty Blossomed Zombies follow. Crows are rushing across the roofs. In this moment… everyone feels the quaking as something is exploding out of the inn behind them– it is sweeping toward them– buildings are overcome with the tendrils– they go over Damon, they go over Deer–
• And then.
• It’s nothing.
• It’s all…
• Just. Gone.
• Angel, you open your eyes. About five feet from you, arm reaching out, is a Blossomed Zombie. It has turned to stone. All behind have turned to stone. Koilos, to stone. Charon is missing. The flesh of the book is stone. If you were to look outside… Damon would be frozen mid run. The Deer. The Crows. Even the trees are stone.
• It is all stone.
• It’s just you.
• Angel… What did you do?
• Angel reaches out to Koilos and Charon. The stone is cold. He holds the touch. It… doesn’t change.
• Angel heads downstairs. He can see Lady Lisette, hands outstretched, like she tried to cast a spell but was completely overwhelmed. He goes to find the staircase downstairs… walking down… He finds the staircase in the storage room. You make your way down. Below this place is a hollowed out basement. There was a ritual set up down here. A Crow appears to have been standing guard… in a tub of blood there is a terrified looking, young, human boy. They are both stone. There are bits of stone floating in the blood. There is no way to determine what they came from. Perhaps bone… or meat… hard to say.
• Angel wants to drain the blood. He takes the statue of the boy out first, being careful of any ritual symbols, and tips it over.
• Fuck.
• Mere hours after he was warned to be careful.
• The boy and Charon would be lightest. He goes to collect those two. The boy is heavy… but he can try to drag it back to camp.
• Angel wants to know if this looks like a timed thing.
  • SPIRIT CHECK – 2 SUCCESSES
  • As Angel gathers up the boy… and Charon… he turns. The back end of Koilos’ hair has turned from stone… to hair.
• Angel tries to drag his friends away… but he is tired, exhausted.
  • +3 Points of Exhaustion.
• The tattoo on his head pulses again, it wants to reactivate. There is intent. Intent to escape. To get out of here.
  • Angel does not want to give in. It is too risky.
    • But we are surrounded by enemies.
  • Angel focuses, bringing in the power of the Eon Lattice– it explodes out of him once more. It is all encompassing.
• And then you wake up.
• In your tent.
• It is noon.
• Angel peaks out of the tent– just the normal camp of the Venerable Hounds.
  • There are people milling about.
• After asking about… 3 days have passed since the party went out. It is now the 21st of Lionnir. You all stumbled back into camp this morning with the rest of your compatriots in a stupified haze. They went to bed. So did you. The child was not with you.
• Angels head feels slightly… warm.
  • He would like to check his head. The faint outline of the tattoo is disappearing. The sounds of the people that went on the adventure can be heard in tents alongside Angel.
  • Charon's book is open.
  • Damon wakes up, breathing heavily but no longer in his wolf form.
• Angel tells us he turned the entire town to stone. He tried to get us out. He woke up here.
  • He thinks the town is no longer stone. They have likely recovered partially.
• Charon doesn’t think it can throw up. But it wishes desperately that it could.
• +1 LEVEL UP
• +5 POINTS OF CORRUPTION TO EVERYONE
• +8 RELICS
• +5 SCRAP
• -1 MORALE