Cold Dreams

Historian: Caleb. Date: 04/14/2025

TLDR – The party panics in response to Alphie passing out. Alphie has a vision in which they are stalked by a vaguely humanoid creature that seems to pause everything in its presence. They flee from it, and see a wound open in the sky. The creature calls them a thief, and tells them they must offer what they hold most dear. They awaken, and finally explain their condition to the party. Trying to recall details of it, they fail a spirit save and are plunged into a very deep grief. The party has some downtime before moving on, eventually running into a merchant who offers them a choice of a magic item if they complete 3 trials. After some debate, they decline, and continue on their way. The session ends as Alphie attempts to use the dream sand in combination with their prophetic dreams.

• Date: 11 Lionnir 777 AR.
• Dalton gives the recap!
• Inora darts for Alphie, but bursts into a swarm of bubbles. She’s gone!
• Jericho and Astranna take Alphie over to the fire, but have to be very careful handling her – they get frostbite if they touch her for more than a minute at a time. Jericho tries to speak to them, with no success, before asking Anja and Newton to go get more sticks and stuff, so that we can try to create a perimeter of fire around Alphie.
• Astranna tries to relight the fires (which keep being put out by Alphie), drawing on her fear. A few of the fires begin to catch, burning timidly and fighting to stay alive. Jericho tries to sprinkle salt on Alphie, and immediately ice begins to form around the flesh, though the salt helps keep the ice back just a bit. Jericho progresses to dusting Alphie with all the salt he’s got, though he avoids major orifices.
• Alphie’s world changes and shifts – as they look around, the world tilts. One moment they stand by a campfire, and the next they’re falling into a river, cold water lapping at their boots, tumbling through the dark. There’s just silence, silence that swallows everything. They feel nothing, hear nothing, no birdsong, no wind. They can’t even feel their own breath.
• They look up, and the sky above turns the color of bruised iron. The trees along the river twist, the branches clawing at a sun that no longer burns, and in this moment, they feel like something’s watching them. They look around, and their limbs feel slow, but as their eyes adjust to this strange light, they see that around the trees the ground is seemingly exhaling from these hollow sockets full of skulls, maggots that writhe upward. They hear words in a tongue older than time, wrapping around their ears. They don’t understand the words completely, but they settle behind her eyes like a rot or infection.
  • They are marked.
• A shape begins to emerge from the treeline, vaguely humanoid, with long, deformed limbs, multiple joints in its arms, legs that give a high-pitched whine. Black liquid pours from the silhouette, and various lights come from the chest. Where it walks, color dies, grass withers, time forgets to follow. All freezes, from the tiniest bird to great oak trees by the riverbed. The whole world seems to momentarily pause.
• Alphie scrambles back, trying to escape without taking their eyes off of the creature. They feel cold, as sensation returns to their body, and exit out of the churning water, finding cold mud beneath their feet and hands. As they scrabble and grip, trying to find purchase, the creature starts to walk across the river. Where it walks, stone follows, the water turning to solid stone. Each step a thumping, a hit, the sound of coins hitting the ground.
• The sky starts to let loose rain and hail, and lightning strikes the path ahead of Alphie, sending them tumbling through the underbrush. They keep running, and stumble into a clearing, hearing the sound of crunching trees and branches behind them. They back up against one of the largest trees, trying to prepare for a fight.
• They see the creature exiting out of the trees. Lightning illuminates a twisted, darkened form of ripped flesh and red eyes. It stares at Alphie, long talons flickering. The rain stops, and the cloud starts to part. They both look up, and above them the stars begin to blink out one by one. There’s another crack of thunder that’s not thunder, making them fall to their knees. The sky opens up, like a wound splitting wide, a scalpel opening up flesh.
• From that gash Alphie sees them watching – countless eyes like moons, ulcers, blinking in tandem. The creature speaks.
  • “When the last light fails, the hunt begins. Offer what you hold most dear, give what clutches to you, thief, thief, THIEF!”
• The creature starts to make its way toward Alphie, the wound in the sky only continuing to grow, getting wider and wider. All the sky is dark now, and in all the darkness eyes.
  • “In this moment, Alphie, as the end comes, what do you do?” – GM
• Alphie tries to commit their surroundings to memory, so that when the lights die, they can still navigate. All at once, there’s a burning across their body, and as it grows, they open their eyes. They see their allies all around them, and see many cold fireplaces seemingly surrounding them. Astranna hugs them, and they stare up at the sky.
  • “I probably should have mentioned something earlier.”
• Looking up, the stars are still here, and there are no signs of the creature. Alphie relaxes just a little bit.
  • “I have a little bit of a condition.”
  • “You don’t say.” – Jericho
• Alphie says they normally have something to help with it, but it was damaged in the most recent fight against Quasit – they show us their necklace, a very simple grey chain with a small bead in the chain itself. Their friend, a novice artificer, made it for her. It heated itself up, helping them stay less cold, but it got corroded during the fight.
• Gwyn asks if the necklace would keep working if she fixed it. Alphie unclasps it and passes it over to her, so that she can take a look. On a check to inspect it (5 successes) – it seems like if she got to a forge or had some heated tools, some higher quality steel, it’d actually be pretty simple to fix it. It’s structurally damaged, but it’s a simple patch job.
  • Additionally, with the high amount of successes… the amount of heat it generates isn’t a lot, it produces in a day maybe what 30-40 minutes of a campfire burning would get you. You could pull maybe 2-3 hours of campfire burn time from it. Alphie at this point is cold enough that, while it would make a difference, it wouldn’t completely put them back at homeostasis.
• Gwyn hands it back.
  • “I don’t think I can fix it very well here, but at this point I don’t know what difference it would make. I don’t think it would do very much to set you back to normal if I did fix it, unfortunately.”
• We ask more about Alphie’s condition, and they say they don’t know how it happened – it started gradually, and their family tried to find ways to deal with it, eventually settling on warmer clothes and constant monitoring, along with the help of the necklace. When Jericho asks, they affirm that this is why they ask for cigs so often; it makes them feel less cold.
• They tell the party it started after a very vivid dream that they don’t remember the exact nature of. Their condition started gradually, but got worse over the course of a few weeks, and no one could figure out what was going on. They can’t remember it ever being this bad. They think it was a few years ago, but they don’t usually have a good sense of time, anyway… it wasn’t there when they were a child. Maybe their mid or late teens?
• At this point, they make a spirit save (1 success). The crushing weight of grief only gives D2, as all of a sudden, it’s like this vast emptiness starts radiating through them. Gwyn and Jericho would see the transition happen almost instantly, as they’re talking and it’s almost like their enter being goes hollow. Like someone sleepwalking through life, all life exiting them, the snuffing of the smallest candle. They ask if she’s okay, and she says yes. Jericho doesn’t believe her.
  • “It feels like I lost something.”
  • “What?”
  • “I don’t know. It hurts. [...] Sometimes when I think about that dream I mentioned, it just… something… I don’t know what I lost, but it had to have been something. I don’t think this amount of grief is normal for most people.”
• Gwyn sits next to Alphie and puts a hand over theirs. Alphie goes in for a hug, at first hesitant but then crawling straight into Gwyn, and Gwyn holds them so tightly.
  • “I don’t know what’s making this happen to you, but we’ll fix it.”
• Jericho suggests that it sounds like what happened was traumatic, so maybe it’s good that they don’t remember. They still don’t like not being able to remember. They tell the party the only thing they can remember – there was a body of water, some kind of lake or river, and some sort of soap-like sheen over it, like a spilled potion.
  • “I remember turning as though something was trying to hit me, but I don’t know what, I just remember turning, I remember… cooking something, maybe? There was something in my hands. I don’t… And I think I remember someone screaming. But I don’t know who. [...] And I felt so off for a few weeks after that dream. The curse beginning to unfold didn’t make it better.”
• They remembered the dream in the following weeks, but not anymore – it faded with time. But they’ve always had vivid dreams; it wasn’t the first, and certainly not the last. Jericho says this is something we’ll have to work together to figure out.
• Later, Alphie approaches Astranna – they still feel weird, but are trying to shake it off and focus on anything else. They pull out the friendship bracelets, and tell Astranna they’ve been collecting things from other people to put into the bracelets. They ask if she has anything she’d like to add, and then suggest maybe Henrietta’s feathers; Astranna agrees and gives them a few to weave in.
• Jericho checks on Newton, who’s collecting more firewood.
  • “Man… you guys aren’t normal at all.”
• Astranna asks Gwyn to teach her some more artificing. Gwyn agrees to show her more, after she gets some sleep, and suggests that maybe they can use Astranna’s magic for forges and stuff. They agree to practice on the campfire tomorrow night.
• Jericho checks on Kirval, who’s not saying anything, but definitely judging. He wants to keep moving, but Jericho tells him we’re going to rest first and continue later in the day. He’s not very happy about this. The party takes a 4-hour rest to avoid the tired condition.
• We begin traveling. Gwyn wants to hop in the wagon to work on some artificing, but Alphie doesn’t want to be apart from the group, so Gwyn stays on Fishing Pole and continues working with him to teach him his name.
• As it approaches something like 4:30, we start to make our way through a forest at the base of the mountain, the path getting more tangled and overgrown, a bit tougher to push through. Astranna spots a series of tents off to the right side of the trail, and sees a rat man with some dope jewelry puffing on a pipe.
  • “Hello, who goes there, travelers?”
• Jericho introduces us as the Tattercoat Knights, and the rat introduces himself as Marlowe.
  • “You wouldn’t be in the business of acquiring magic items, would ya?”
• He offers for us to engage in three challenges of wit, for only those of the smartest minds – he could offer us one of three items, but if we should fail, perhaps he takes an item from us. He tells us he just wants to test his challenges, nothing more and nothing less. Jericho uses Inquisitor and finds that this is true.
• The first item is a hammer of infusion – with it, you can place the magic of any material inside an item and give it mystical powers. The second is a redirection shield, helpful for making sure your friends and allies never have an attack go their way. The last is a quick-zip rope, which we can use to designate a landmark, and return there with a tug of the rope. He offers for us to do one challenge, and if we stop there, we can leave without losing an item, though we won’t gain an item or compensation.
• The party debates on it, but eventually votes not to do the challenges. They continue on, and eventually make camp for the night. Astranna is able to light the fire on her own, and just kinda sits and stares into it. Gwyn joins her.
• Alphie tells the party about their vision. We decide to keep watch, and make extra certain the lights in the camp don’t go out at night (and to keep Alphie warm). Alphie asks what happened to Inora, and after being caught up, they ask to touch Piero’s sword again. Nothing happens this time.
• Alphie asks to try the dream sand, and Jericho says he couldn’t do it, but thinks he figured something out – he thinks there’s a barrier preventing it from reaching outside the Skybound Lands, but he did a reading about it, and it seems like there’s a type of stone or gem we could use to punch through it. For the time being, though, the sand’s effects are limited to the Skybound Lands.
• We set up watch – the order goes Jericho → Gwyn → Astranna. Gwyn gives Alphie her blanket before going to bed, and Jericho gives Alphie a cigarette (in addition to smoking one himself). They try to specifically absorb the heat from it. It helps, but not enough to decrease their cold.
• Jericho begins his watch with Piero. Alphie uses their dream sand, trying to combine it with prophetic dreams. As they slip into their enhanced dreams, the session ends here.