CELESTIAL  CAPER

December 31, 2010


Day 3  (cont.)  <date TBD; late spring>

3:30pm  

Rowan picks up the bow, and then an instantaneous moment later, for the rest of us, has acquired a golden aura.  She tells us that Ehlonna had appeared and spoken to her.  

Our group had performed an epic task by destroying Issaque: one of the three Artifacts which might be usable for bringing back an evil Deity who long ago was banished and constrained (Tharizdon, the Primary of Greater Elemental Evil).  [The other two Artifacts are considered indestructable -- one is in the hands of the Celestials; the other controlled by (?deliberately? unspecified) Allies.]  Darinthalus had a vision as to how to destroy Issaqua -- then he either followed through with that vision, or else went mad in the attempt.  In order to be destroyed the Dagger had to be hit by something belonging to two planar spaces at once, plus have direct access to planar energy. Heart's Reach's travels and growth provided the first part, Mordenkainen's Amulet the second.  Rowan, concerned about Tarva, asks about HR; Ehlonna knows that HR has changed, but doesn't know in what way.  "For better or for worse?"  "Different".

This Cathedral and the grounds around it were once a Temple of Elemental Evil, that's why Issaqua brought Darinthalus here.  It needs to be ritually cleansed, and Consecrated, and after that have Dimensional Anchors emplaced to prevent its ever being a locale for evil again.  She (Ehlonna) cautions Rowan that doing all this will completely and forever server any possibility of passage between Oerth and Tarva's Feyland -- Tarva will never be able to return to there, or to Albion (unless perhaps she journeys to other dimensions far enough removed from Oerth to provide a different path to Albion's space).  

[Since Rowan is looking at Tarva questionally while relating this, Tarva responds that this is ok, she had already made her decision to stay on Oerth, years ago.]

Issaqua kept opening Gates because it was trying to find the plane on which its Master, Tharizdon, was imprisoned.  Any plane it opened, while it was sensing whether its Master was there or not, it could also pull in a creature and establish control (or else kill it, and bring it back to "life" as a minion.  

Darinthalus is completely destroyed (Celestials are not resurrectable, even under more normal circumstances).  

Ninalyn's deity, Kord, would have also come here to congratulate Ninalyn (and possibly Axe and Surune), but the rules against Deity interference on the physical plane prevent Him from coming to this desecrated spot while another Deity is present -- and the window for any Deities to be here is too short to allow for more than one.

The Red Dragon, named Yeronllith, will not be coming back.  Rowan had come so close to killing it -- something that it (pridefully) would never have expected from a single elf -- that it is fleeing in fear for its life.  Which also means that it won't be coming back to contest any change of ownership of its treasure trove.  Yeronllith is quite old, and a long-time ally of Tharizdon; but not given to sacrificing itself for the Deity's cause.  And (from Ehlonna's eavesdropping on Yeronllith's thoughts) it was convinced that staying there another moment would have resulted in Rowan's killing it.

Zeln has cast Temporal Stasis on himself; it will require a powerful Dispel Magic to remove that.

The bow is Darinthalus's Celestial Bow of Slaying, and Ehlonna suggests that Rowan can select one of three things to do with it:
1) return it to the Celestials (via Tarva);
2) use it: a bow of Distance, Seeking, and Slaying -- used in the Demon Wars by Celestials: an arrow hitting in a 'focusing' round would report the Demon's name to the shooter; a second arrow would use that name to Banish the Demon [*] to its original plane.
3) Rowan could become an agent / avatar of Ehlonna, keeping the bow, called upon by Ehlonna from time to time to take on missions; any foe which Rowan, in Rowan's own best judgement, declared to be an Enemy of Ehlonna, would face immediate Disintigration when hit by an arrow from that bow (unless a Fortitude save was made).

[*] or any outsider: Tarva was struck by a Focusing arrow, and Heart's Reach felt the information being pulled out of her; then was struck by a Banishing arrow, which HR said would have worked if Mordenkainen's Amulet hadn't prevented that.

Rowan has decided to accept Ehlonna's offer to become an Avatar, hence her current golden aura glow.



4:00pm

The two Feyland Borisens have continued to break down, until now there is not the slightest trace of them left.

We go explore the hole & tunnel in the left-hand wing: finding but not exploring past the Red Dragon's treasure trove we find there. See Treasure List.  Tarva casts Detect Evil over everything before it is handled; anything that is Evil is left behind.  She also casts Detect Magic, so we'll know what is and isn't, before throwing most of it into a Bag of Holding or a Portable Hole.  Zeln's Temporal Stasis body is placed in one, also.

5:00pm

This being late spring, daylight should linger well into the evening.  Tarva believes that we can return to Granthis's watchpost before dark, and wants us to do just that.  There is no telling what other gated-in and Issaqua-controlled monsters might be roaming around, so we don't travel carelessly.

9:00pm

The sun is down but the skyglow is still bright when we come through the pass and hail Granthis.  

We tell Granthis the important news: first the short form -- Dagger destroyed; Darinthalus dead, but joyously released and successful in his mission; Granthis thus released from his vow -- and then with all the details.  

Tarva has two special requests she'd like to make of Granthis.  The first concerns Zeln.  We've told him what we know about how he ended up this way; now we pull him out of the Bag of Holding so Granthis can see him.  Tarva explains that what she had intended to do was: kill Zeln's undead-ish Issaqua-controlled body; have herself or Ninalyn use a Holy Sword to destroy the heartstone; then ask Ninalyn to cast Resurrection to bring back Zeln with his own soul.  Granthis expresses extreme doubt that such an approach would have worked: he is very worried that Issaqua's means of putting life back into a body does so in a way that twists the original soul out -- thus that original soul might not be be first or foremost 'reclaimant' of a then-resurrected body.  He concurs that a powerful Dispel Magic would remove the Temporal Stasis, and also that his, Granthis's, is almost certainly thusly powerful enough; however he is very hesitant about letting this Zeln out, without first doing a lot of checks, and perhaps preparing some constraints on what the released mage can do.  He advises that we take Zeln's body with us, to the Temple of Pelor in Greyhawk, and explain the situation to His Most Holy Halbot Channellite, and that he, Granthis, will come to the Temple to work with Halbot on restoring Zeln's soul to his body, just as soon as he finishes making this region safe again.  Tarva agrees that this is probably the best thing to do.

Tarva's second request is for Granthis to get in touch with the Temple of Pelor at Greyhawk, and request that they arrange for our return to there.  Granthis says that sure, he could do that, but it would be just as easy for him to Teleport us there himself.  We all express gratitude for that, and accept.  He wants to do this immediately, so as to be able to start after the Terrasque, the Spirax, (and maybe some other monsters released here over the past couple of days) as soon as we're on our way.


Day 4  <date TBD; late spring>

Midnight

Greyhawk is quite a bit East of the Crystal Spire Mountains.  It is thus much later there, when we arrive.  Fortunately, a large city like Greyhawk never really sleeps.  The first order of business is to bring Zeln's body into the Temple of Pelor, a few steps away.  Luckily, some of the clerics on duty at this hour know Tarva, and allow her and the group to talk to a higher level cleric who has the authority to grant the requests that Tarva is making.  Accordingly, Zeln's body is placed in a secure section of the infirmary, with a large note to the effect that nobody is to bother it without explicit permission from His Most Holy Halbot Channellite (and that Tarva will come back tomorrow during the daytime to explain it to him.  The second is to open an empty, and highly secure, vault, and deposit all of the accumulated treasure in it.  Also tomorrow, Tarva will begin the processses of getting the treasure appraised and identified.

Out front of the temple, we find carriages and take them to one of Greyhawk's finer inns.  Tarva arranges for rooms for everyone for the next week (she invites Rowan to come back to her and Taizu's music conservatory, named "Taliessin's" after a famous Bard in Tarva's home world, and stay with them -- but maybe Rowan could just kinda forget about the part where Tarva got her head chopped off?  Please? ).  Tarva is paying for everyone's room and board for the week, which is her guess at how long it will take before the appraisals and identifications will permit a treasure split.  Arriving home, she finds that Taizu has not yet returned.  This bothers Tarva, until she realizes that it's been less than four days since Mordenkainen had woken her up with the warning.

8:00am


In the Pelor Temple, Tarva moves into the administrative offices section (she is well enough known here, and easily enough recognized, that nobody tries to block her movement), finds a page, and sends her off to ask the secretary to His Most Holy Halbot Channellite for an appointment.  

Actually, the page returns almost immediately, to tell Tarva that His Most Holy can see her now.  Doubtless this has something to do with the urgency under which Tarva and her group were dispatched by the Temple, a mere four days ago.  His Most Holy Halbot Channellite has apparently set aside all other appointments and activities until he can receive Tarva's report in full.  He tells Tarva that the Temple will arrange for the treatment of the Cathedral and lands -- cleansing, and Consecration, and Dimensional Anchors -- as recommended by Ehlonna: that after Tarva's group has done all the hard work, they will happily take charge of this relatively minor piece of cleanup.  They'll work with the Temple of Maccab to make sure all of the rituals and magics are performed precisely.  (Also, if there were any evil items in the Dragon's Treasure Trove, which the group left behind, these two Temples will deal with those as well.)

Tarva also explains about Zeln's Temporal Status entrapped body, and that Granthis wishes to have His Most Holy's help in bringing Zeln's soul back.  To which His Most Holy expresses delight at seeing Granthis again, and tells a couple of anecdotes of previous times they'd worked together.


A Week Later

With everything in The Treasure List appraised and identified -- with the one exception of the intelligent, talking Fullblade Demonbane -- Tava calls everyone together for a treasure split.  [Please also read the Notes About the Treasure List.]

Later


Tarva has called Mandarla on the Celestial Plane, and repeated her story once again.  She has also found out that, at the moment when Issaqua was destroyed, the no-enter zone around the Archives began to weaken, and shortly the Celestials were able to enter it again.  They found that the Archivist had managed to sequester his 'soul' into some kind of escape capsule [Tarva is very unclear on the details of all this], and therefore the other Celestials were able to restore him to a new body - even though normally Celestials cannot be resurrected -- apparently a Resurrection wasn't exactly what was done for him.  With him back, a complete inventory of the Archives was conducted, and a few other items were discovered to also be missing.  Best guess is that Darinthalus - or the Dagger - grabbed some at-hand items in hopes that they'd be of use.  The Celestials are not particularly concerned about those other items.  They aren't telling Tarva what these are - and they're letting her know that they're keeping her ignorant - let alone what the items do.  It's quite possible that some of them ended up in the Dragon Trove, in which case they might be spread among the group members now.  Again, the Celestials are not concerned: their feelings seem to be that the items will come back under Celestial control sooner or later; and in the meantime the mortals won't be hurt too badly by them.



Tarva has been taking Heart's Reach out of his sheath for long periods each day, just holding him and talking to him.  Plus getting in as much practice with the city guard as she can find time for - to exercise him in as much of a sword-wise fashion as she can (short of adventuring again and real fighting).  After several days HR starts to have a hint of a luster again, and about as much presence as when they first arrived in Oerth a decade or so ago -- sort of a sub-empathic feeling that "I exist"; but nothing more complex than that.



About Three Months Later


Tarva had left a note for Mordenkainen, telling him that she is back from the Balancing he alerted her to, and asks for a conference with him.  She asks to be brought to his Retreat: there are things she wants to discuss with him that she wants to make sure are not overheard.  

It takes almost three months before she gets a response back, on Tarva's time scale, but then Elakiel shows up, courteously makes sure she's ready to travel -- which she is, after a quick moment telling Taizu where she's going -- and suddenly they're at the Retreat.  Once more she recites the events that happened after Mordenkainen's call woke her up.  Upon being presented with the melted and deformed remains of his Amulet, along with Trava's apology for letting it be destroyed, he expresses what Tarva can only interpret as delighted surprise that Heart's Reach was able to make use of it in that unintended but fortuitous manner.  He thanks Tarva for relating these events to him directly -- so much more reliable than hearing them all third-hand -- and invites her to spend the night while he looks into some related matters.  Especially if she'll once again allow him to work with Heart's Reach alone in his lab.  Tarva does her best to project this idea to HR, and receives a positive, warm, feeling in return.  So she accepts.

The next day she meets again with Mordenkainen, and a couple of the other members of the Circle who have a personal interest (which Tarva reads as 'curiosity') in the interplay of the different magics during the adventure.  

He has explanations for some of the events that she didn't understand.  

The Borisens -- like Tarva -- were from a plane so now-incompatible with Oerth's, that when Issaqua tried to control them, they instead lost their coherence.  Think of it, he tells Tarva (obviously trying to bring a highly technical matter down to the level a neophyte could understand), as if each of them had a kind of body-wrapping sheath around them, which let their Feyland-selves interact with the Oerth-plane in a controlled way -- like using a hotpad to hold a kettle of boiling water, without burning your hand.  But when Issaqua struck them, the Dagger tore that sheath.  And the deep structure fundamental to the intrinsic nature and laws of reality of Oerth's plane (despite his best efforts to dumb down the explanation, Mordenkainen is beginning to leave Tarva behind) reacted to this 'intrusion' of Feyland-plane objects by tearing them apart.  Into smaller and smaller pieces, until what was left was not even as distinguishable as the aftermath of a Disintegrate spell.  

If the Dagger had touched Tarva, for even the most minor of damage, the Oerth-plane would have treated her the same way.  Which was what HR had been trying to warn her could be a consequence of their going after the Dagger.  If that had happened to her, she would definately not have been resurrectable.

He, Mordenkainen, and some of his likewise curious friends, are going to have long periods of experimentation and study ahead of them, to determine exactly why the Oerth - Celestial - etc. multiverses are becomming so incompatible with the Albion - Feyland - etc. multiverses.  It will turn out, he's sure, to be based on some very basic and fundamental rules of the multiverse -- esoteric details which he's sure Tarva wouldn't be interested in (which Tarva interprets to mean: she wouldn't have a hope of understanding).  But he is going to start with the assumption that it has a lot to do with how much more frequently Deities interact with mortals in Albion, as compared to Oerth, coupled with the unprecedented number of Deities and avatars who took direct actions during the Flanaess Wars of C.Y. 582-584.  As a sage told Tarva years ago, the reverberations from the expenditure of all that Deity-level power disrupted what had been until then possible, if hardly normal or regular, inter-multiverse travel.  Something in there, Mordenkainen thinks, will be a clue towards this more recent antagonism between these multiverses.

He cocks an eyebrow at Tarva and says, "If you do find a way to go back to your home multiverses, I suggest that you not take your young bard friend with you: the results for him might be very bad, indeed."

Darinthalus's hand, that had been holding his Celestial Bow, and the Bow itself, were blackened and burnt, respectively, because Issaque had changed Darinthalus so much that he was no longer Good-aligned; just holding the Bow was both giving him negative energy levels and inflicting physical damage: enough so that some of the flame damage was transmitted through his hand and back onto the bow (and this even though Darinthalus was resistant to fire).  Despite which he - at Issaqua's command - used it to try and take out what the Dagger must have thought was a full Celestial advancing upon the Cathedral.  

Being under the combined care of Granthis and the Greyhawk Pelor Temple, is probably the best and most hopeful rescue attempt that could have happened to Zeln.  Granthis is much more likely than the Pelor Temple by itself, to be able to first untangle any complexities to all the abuses visited upon Zeln's body, and his soul -- and then work out what remedies, in what order or combination, would be needed in order to bring Zeln back, and bring back someone who is really Zeln.  

Heart's Reach must have expended a termendous portion of himself in defeating Issaqua.  It really should come as no surprise to Tarva, after such an encounter, that he isn't bouncing back to full strength immediately.  Mordenkainen has no idea how long that recovery will take, but likely over a year; and he's sure Tarva is doing the right thing by keeping him out and in use as much as possible.  He says that Tarva should be heartened by the little bit HR has already come back; that she should take that as ample evidence that he will recover completely.  

He says that HR had -- after the Gatespace adventure and HR's previous time here -- switched from using Gate energy to using the very powerful, and relatively easy for him to tap into, energy of the differentials between multiverses (Tarva is getting lost again).  That resource is no longer available to HR, so he is instead having to learn to tap into the differentials between planes within this multiverse -- and those are both harder to tap into; and, being mostly aligned with each other, yielding of less energy than what HR had become used to.

Mordenkainen is looking forward to the time when Heart's Reach has regained enough of himself to be able to speak, as he (Mordenkainen) very much wants to hear about the battles from HR's viewpoint.  He makes Tarva promise to return when that's possible.  He also, somewhat frighteningly, says that at that time he'll also instruct Heart's Reach on the dangers inherent in some taps.  That the differentials between pairs of planes which would yield the most power, because they are least alike, would also place HR in a 'place' where he would be prone to also absorb some highly unfortunate (Mordenkainen's exact word choice) attributes of those planes.  

And then he sends her back to Greyhawk.

[End of Adventure]