April 20, 2024

Hook

TSB;EoA: Veins of Primordial Blight [Session 13] (Planar Sea; Recordatio)

Plot Synopsis

The party enters the doom, it looks like the entrance to a hotel lobby. Except everything is denim. The tone shift from what just happens pisses everyone off. To make matters even worse, Samson walks out of one of the rooms. Everyone is done with this place.

All the doors appear to lead to a strange black desert, the sky overcast. Looking through enough doors the party realizes this is the way forward. They set out through it, a sense of loneliness eating away at their heart and hands of sand that cling to them and only make the feeling worse. Pthoran military buildings lay half buried beneath the sand, and a pillar of crystalline white light shoots off into the sky what appears to be miles away. They trek towards the light, reaching it in enough time to recognise the form kneeling in front of the light as an old Moryena before she is ripped away by the hands and turned to dust.

The party is able to find writing that tells them to carry as much sand as possible out of this place- signed with each of their names. After a few loops they figure out what is going on, and a few more of trying different solutions before they realize they need to do it over many, many iterations. Eventually, after nearly a century's worth of iterations, they clear enough of a path to continue on.

The next pathway leads to a small house in the middle of the Pthoran wilderness. Moryena recognises her home, entering to greet her mother and father- who offer the party a place to stay for the “night” and a good meal after all their troubles. They appear to be aware of the things going on within the Recordatio, though they don’t know much about how. The party is able to rest within the house before continuing on to the next room.

The following room is a large cave, filled to the brim with a multitude of mushrooms. They get high, which reveals the exit (truely a 4/20 moment). The next room is a winding set of corridors, the walls covered in mosaics portraying different angelic iconography. Samson is able to hear the distant scraping of stone on stone, along with the eerie clink of piano keys. He can see the ceiling lined with grand pianos, though the rest of the party see nothing. They wander around the maze before realizing they need to blindly follow the scraping sound following them to get to the exit. Though the experience is unnerving, they reach the exit without issue- though as soon as Samson is about to step out, a grand piano falls and crushes him to death. (L, skill issue)

The final room is what appears to be a failing research lab in the middle of a blizzard. Much to Ji’s furry- Noboru is there to give her a choice. Steal a pet from one of her companions- without them knowing and leave it outside to freeze to death. Or choose to freeze to death herself. Not giving him a chance to speak more- she slices the vision in half with her blade. (At some point he also gets punched in the gut by another specter of a person). She then tells the party of the deal proposed and chooses to freeze to death.

Her body is dragged to hell, where she meets an imp that seems to phase in and out of the darkness around her. Her body does feel normal, her hands are blue and she's almost double the size. Though her annoyance at everything that had happened in the past few moments kept her from questioning the differences.

Wandering long enough she's able to meet up with the rest of the party, though her form feels uncomfortably colder than she’s used to. The party finds themselves in a large cylindrical room with a center pillar filled with pins similar to the ones Tal made for them. A large being is slumped against the opposite wall, its form hard to discern as it phases in and out of reality, seemingly skewered by a piece of the collapsed room. The planar sea can be seen out of the crack in the room.

They are able to replace the pins, activate a control panel, and teleport back to Cahyali to collect their reward for their mission.

Noteworthy Postgame Events