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Episode 1: The Gods Are Real

Before this. Before all of this. Before breath and thought. Before color and light. Before the air and the earth, the mountain and the seabed. Before Life and Death. There was Sentiasa.
There was only Sentiasa. An endless plane where the gods of ‘good’, ‘evil’, and ‘chaos’ (‘the virtuous’, ‘the vile’, and ‘the wild’ (respectively)) were locked in war. It would be wrong to say that the war lasted for centuries or millennia, for they fought before and outside of time. They fought for existence. For the essence of all things that are, were, and could yet come to be.
When the war ceased, it was The Virtuous who claimed victory, claimed Sentiasa, and vanquished The Vile and The Wild forever.
The end of that war gave way to a beginning. For as The Virtuous beheld Sentiasa, scarred and empty and endless, they were driven to create something new, something good. So The Virtuous weaved their divine power into the fabric a new world.
Reliquiae. Lush, green, created the flourishing of mortal life. A crater ringed by a range of mountains called the Allanites, with the great peak of Mt Atria at its center. At the heart of this new world, they founded the city of Alvellion, where they called into existence the peoples that populate this land. Each of the nine virtuous gods brought forth a race in their image. So the land grew full of halflings, elves, dwarves, gnomes, tieflings, kobolds, orcs, humans, and dragonborn.
A perfect world filled with imperfect beings. In these peoples’ flourishing, for all their achievements, there were those that festered. For as dew drops cling to blades of grass, so do avarice and cruelty cling to mortality.
Whilst the Spring flowers bloomed and the great cities of the world were founded, grievances opened like fresh wounds. And as the wheat was scythed at the time of harvest, and the feasting and song lasted long into the star-filled nights, so fell mortality to murder and to infighting.
The capricious, the rageful, the grieving, the desperate, the lost, sought those who could comfort and advance them. They sought a home. Many of them found it in The Web. The last refuge of the hopeless. A shadowy organization that will undertake any task no matter how great or terrible. Those who require its services pay with gold or with time. Binding themselves and successive generations to servitude until their debt is paid. Such oaths are not taken lightly. The web is ruled with an iron fist. From its leader, a figure known only as The Spider Prince, to those souls that have spun its silken threads throughout the land of Reliquiae.
The Web is Wide.
It is five souls such as these that we will journey with. Having proven themselves of use to The Web, by assassinating Elven Scion Aleah Da’car, the party have been selected to act as bodyguards for The Antiqua, the greatest clerics of The Virtuous as they begin a yearly pilgrimage known as The Deferrence.
A hundred years ago with no warning, The Virtuous abandoned the divine city of Alvelion and ascended to the peak of Mt Atria. Alvelion, since the birth of the world, a city where all could commune in person with The Virtuous soon fell into disrepair. So now, after the first winter moon, the Antiqua ascend Mt Atria and bring back teachings for all mortality.
Dawn breaks golden on the slopes of the mountain. On the edge of a pass, the flames of two small campfires flicker in the mild breeze on either side of a collection of tents. Far below, at the foot of the mountain, crumbled buildings of the city of Alvelion are just visible. Pale against the snow that has sat thick on the ground since the first moon of winter.
In the years since The Virtuous abandoned that city, a city they’d called home since the birth of the world, Alvelion has crumbled. Not from war, nor from the slow decline of all things, but with a natural speed. As if it was the presence of the divine alone that held together the stones from which the city is built.
Yet the snow and the cold and the dissolving marble of Alvelion are far beneath you. Here on Mt Atria, the mountain of perpetual spring, the air is warm, the grass lush. Patches of wildflowers blooming, even in the fissures of the rock face. We begin in the left hand of these two campfires. With I, Kelnys, and Endellion. At this point, you guys have been together climbing the mountain for two full days. This is the third day. You’ve been in this habit of making camp, you sit on watch, etc. It’s been relatively dull. This is a magical mountain. This is a divine mountain. Whilst it might be hailing or blowing a storm away from the mountain, the mountain is always in spring. The flowers are always blooming. You haven’t found any aggressive creatures. You haven’t been waylaid. You don’t have highwaymen. You’re here almost as a nominal bodyguard.
During the Deference, the Antiqua (the clerics that you’re guarding) forgo all their divine magic while they’re on the mountain as a sort of symbol of humility. As a symbol that they recognize that the gods they are about to commune with are greater and more powerful than them and all their magic comes from these gods, so it’s a sign of respect that they don’t use their magic. So they have a bodyguard to support them if anything should happen, but Endellion, I would fancy it’s been quite a dull few days for you. There’s been remarkably little of anything.
We visit the right hand fire and there are three figures around that fire. The third figure is a heavyset, pale-skinned man. Great big barrel chest, big arms, a dark beard almost black and long slicked-back black hair. This is Morgan. You first met when you met The Spinner after the basilisk. He was one of the Spinner’s attendants almost, a heavy. He met you in Alvelion. The Web wanted someone a little more senior to lead the effort. Whether or not you’ve proven yourselves competent, you haven’t necessarily proved yourselves “perfectly sociable”. So they needed someone who could act as a bit of a figurehead. He’s a man of few words, gruff.