What did the GM have for dinner? §

Other. Nobody guessed correctly!

Summary §

Last time, our motley crew found themselves entering a library near the center of the ruined city of Isin, questing to find information from the restricted section of the library on how to stop the angels from activating the Dynamo and cycling the world.

This library, an ornate marble building 2 stories high, 200 feet long and 150 feet wide was seemingly completely abandoned. Dust had settled on all of the tables, chairs, and the floor itself.

They also learned that the restricted section is in a demiplane on the upper-level of the library.

Yet, as the party climbed the stairs to the second floor, they found human skeletons contorted into necromantic abominations approximating big cats, with flesh sewn on and bone fused to allow for quadrupedal movement.

Engaging in combat, our heroes find that the abominations can spew their innards and throw themselves at their enemies.

With four hours and twenty minutes remaining before the angels begin moving towards the city center, combat continues.

One of the two abominations charges at Kit, and attempts to slam into them! It succeeds and gashes Kit, who begins to bleed. Quickly turning, the fleshy quadruped spits ichor at Fen, who manages to dodge only some of the acidic ichor. Lux then winds up their crossbow and fires through the bannister, piercing some of the flesh of one of the abominations, then runs behind a wall to stay covered. Shade dismounts Clover and attempts to trip the abomination to their east. However, Shade slips and falls onto the ground, immediately standing up sheepishly, remaining dangerously close to the abomination. Tariasaka conjures a spiritual dagger and hits one of the abominations with it! She then speaks a few quick word, and Kit begins to glow softly with magical guidance. The second abomination assaults Kit in a frenzy, and manages to slash Kit’s legs twice! Kit, bleeding and somewhat wounded, draws their sword. Slightly woozy from the injuries they’ve sustained, they completely miss the abomination twice before successfully landing a glancing blow. Fen draws lightning from the storm surrounding him and blasts both of the abominations, searing flesh from bone, and then rapidly constructs a force shield around himself. Dusk winds up her sword and gracefully slashes straight through the first abomination. She then jumps over a book cart, rolls, and stabs the second abomination to death.

The party then decides that they should practice tripping each other. The most athletic characters participate - but when Kit flirts with Dusk, she rebuffs them once again, and Fen makes a joke about her relationship with Martine and Vivian.

After taking a few moments to mess around, the group moves to the ampitheater at the north of the second floor. There is a portal in the middle of the ampitheater which Dusk confirms leads to the restricted section.

While Shade is coordinating the group to assemble marching order, Fen sticks his head in and sees a lush, orange grassland. In the middle of the demiplane a white tree sits, having died aeons ago. Ghostly blade-like white leaves grow near the top of the tree, while runic etchings are carved into its roots. The roots come out from the ground and expose a small reading area, with multiple bookshelves filled to the brim with books, scrolls, and papers (bound and unbound).

Fen walks in, and after Shade realizes, the party follows.

The orange grassland stretches on beyond the horizon, but the rustling of the wind conceals the lack of creatures in this demiplane. Tariasaka’s familiar and Shade pick up on this quickly, but nothing else sticks out.

The party moves towards the tree in order to inspect it. Shade and Kit determine the tree is completely natural, but they are unsure if it is from Maegnolia or from somewhere else. Tariasaka notices that the glyphs scratched into the trees roots bind together the demiplane, and that disrupting them could destroy the demiplane completely. She also determines that the blade-like leaves are part of the demiplane binding spell.

Fen notices that his magic is slowly being replenished while standing in the demiplane, and his curse slowly fades away.

Fen and Tariasaka begin looking through the sections of the bookshelves. Two of them stick out: one of them is labelled “Magical Inventions: Dynamo” and the other section has an indecipherable label: the words seem to squiggle and shift just enough to prevent anyone from reading it.

It is also notable that all of the sections and books seem to be translated from the languages of eld to languages the party can read.

While Tariasaka begins to try and decode the indecipherable label, Shade begins sorting through the books in the Dynamo section to find any relevant books. Tariasaka realizes that the label the party can’t read is intentionally masked by a spell, and she manages to dispel the magic spell, revealing the section “Words of the World: Prophecy and More”.

The section contains four books, a few scrolls, and some binders of papers:

• What We Know of the Words of the World
• Prophecies we Know
• Prophecies we Don’t Know
• Unknowable Truths

Simultaneously, Shade discovers some of the original plans of the Dynamo in a book, and Dusk begins to pour over the book to determine if there’s a way to prevent Vivian from activating the Dynamo.

Tariasaka begins to read the four books in order.

“What We Know of the Words of the World” details the “Words of the World”, a phenomenon wherein prophecies are spoken by either individuals or by the “world” itself. The words turn into prophecy that may be realized.

“Prophecies we Know” details many prophecies that have come to pass or that are well understood by the Isin diviners. Two prophecies jump out at Tariasaka: “The Girl in Red Will Topple the Kingdom”, and “Angels will Fall, Nations are Next”.

Dusk confirms that “The Girl in Red” probably refers to Vivian, but is unsure about “Angels will Fall, Nations are Next”.

In “Prophecies we Don’t Know”, it seems the majority of pages are blank. But at the very end, on the last page, a single line remains: “Northward bound, cyclic end, heroes weep, shadowmarks to keep”. As Tariasaka inspects the book, a new line fills in: “Martin Raclor will eat a ham sandwich tomorrow”.

While Tariasaka inspects “Prophecies we Don’t Know”, Lux is inspecting the scrolls in the section. They successfully pick the lock on the scroll case, and feels a forboding sense of doom seeps out of the case. The pain becomes unbearable, and Lux feels a compulsion to open and read the scroll, and begin to speak Words: “Three pieces of the world to reap, one cycle on endless repeat”. These Words fill into the “Prophecies we Don’t Know”.

The scroll disintegrates, and everything returns to relative calm. Tariasaka looks over the scroll case, which is only labelled “Scroll of Unknown Origin”. All of the scrolls are all labelled the same way.

While Shade is re-centering Lux in the here and now, Fen brings “Unknowable Truths” to Kit, who can’t recognize much of the math in the book. Tariasaka checks the remaining papers on the shelf, which just detail “hearings” of the Words of the World, including where, when, weather patterns, the speaker, and plenty of other details, making it seem like the Isinians were trying to puzzle out what caused the Words to happen.

Dusk quickly tells the party that although Vivian has the key to the Dynamo, there’s no other way to activate it. The party tries to figure out a plan of attack; do they attempt to kill Vivian? Do they try and steal the key straight off of her necklace?

As the party finishes continues debating what to do next, the shadows of the tree and our heroes grow longer and deeper… And shadowy figures jump out, glaring at the party and preparing to attack!