March 23, 2024

Hook

TSB;EoA: Veins of Primordial Blight [Session 9] (Elemental Plane of Air; Halitus)

Plot Synopsis

The party lands in the ruins of the recently fought slaughter of Halitus. The streets are cluttered with corpses and glittering clouds of spores crowd the streets. The party debates for a while on how to proceed, though they eventually decide to go to an empty house and collapse it to gain some firewood to clear a path through the clouds. Ignis is able to grab a few sheets from the house to create makeshift masks for everyone before they continue on. Wisteria ducks away down an alley as the party goes off in search of a cart to put the burning wood on.

Wisteria goes through unexplored areas of the town looking for signs of any survivors. In the middle of this search she is interrupted by one of the clones, who despite dealing some damage to Wisteria- she is able to talk it down from doing any more damage. As Wisteria brings the Not-Wisteria to the rest of the party, she gives Wisteria a poorly-folded paper crane with the names of the missing people on it.

In the meantime, the party has been going through the town with the burning cart clearing the spores, rescuing any remaining civilians that have holed away in their houses before torching them. They are in the middle of this when Wisteria comes back with the Not-Wisteria. Discussion ensues, and the party decides to have Samson watch over the Not-Wisteria as they arrive in the center of town. The memory of the small child (Gale Nuvol) is brought up by the Inn in the center of town, and most of the party (Sans Ji and Samson) run into the building to search for her.

They arrive at her room on the second story at the end of the hall, the smell of blood and rot growing heavy as they crack the door open. By the blood smears on the ground Wisteria and Moryena figure out that a bloated body of a barely-alive Bubbles has pressed itself up against the door. A combination of frost and brute force, the duo is able to take the door down so as to not harm Bubbles any further. During this, Wisteria places a healing-jellyfish in the room to try to stabilize anyone inside. After the door is down they are able to move Bubbles to a separate room (worried that it might be filled with spores and cause further harm). Gale, who has been cowering under her blankets, is persuaded to come out- to which the party finally sees that the spores have infected her shoulder, back and right wing. It takes a long discussion, an adult, a quick visit to the apothecary and a few spells before they realize the best course of action is probably to amputate the wing and gain the materials to safely (as safe as you can be) do the procedure. It takes a while, but the three of them are able to perform the procedure.

During this time, Samson is just. staring at the Wisteria clone. mulling over the many poor choices they could do at this moment. Ji has split off and been wandering the city alone for a while before she is able to find one of the remaining ones and talk it back to where Samson is sitting. Samson continues to stare at the two Not-Wisterias. Ji goes out again in search of the other clones, but has the feeling that she is being watched. She doubles back through an alleyway to see if she can catch the person off guard, she does for a moment- and comes face to face with Squall standing on a nearby house. They talk, and Not-Squall drops their disguise to reveal Tsorren, who has been watching his “experiment” and the outcome of it. He threatens Ji with having to survive his creations alone and she books it as fast as she can back to the party (who has now begun searching for her).

She meets up with them, telling them of Tsorren and what he said before zooming off to where the party left Samson with the two clones they found. Ji arrives in the main square as the two clones finish shedding their Wisteria-skins, revealing the withering, oozing black mass beneath. A few tendrils whip out of its form, with multiple eyes staring down its prey, parts of the mutilated victim’s form can be seen through the bulging flesh, black ichor drips from its form.

The battle for the town of Halitus has begun. :)

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