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Runtime Break start 4h 26m 1h 34m
Episode 92: Broken Roads
Bell’s Hells, after making contact with The Volition, agreed to aid them in a number of their current simultaneous goals against the dark leaders of Kreviris, in hopes of gaining information and aiding the revolution against the Ruidian tyrants. Upon these missions, much information was gained, some
dangerous circumstances occurred,
and yet you survived and endured
and began to flee the city as chaos began to erupt from within.
During this time, after calling towards your mother and sending her into a personal crisis about what’s right and who to align with, she scattered off into the dark shadows of the caverns. As you fled towards the surface through some of these winding rock tunnels, you were hunted by Otohan Thul, the Legend of the Peaks.
During this fight (in which your terrifying foe unleashed her true capabilities) many of you fell and barely scraped back from the edge, but one of you did not, Fresh Cut Grass. A friend and ally who had recently come to truly realize his worth sacrificed himself to save the rest of you and to fell for good the foe that had long hunted you. In that fugue numbness of realization, you grabbed what you could, what remained of him (and what you could from what remained of Otohan Thull) continued to flee to the surface where you emerged.
There amongst the red Ruidian landscape, the distant storms roiling, Liliana descended from above, and seeing the hurt on your face (on all of your faces), realized what had likely transpired. It was here, still not truly grasping or processing what has happened and what is next, you stare upon the alien landscape and partially obscured horizon.
Glancing around as best you can, and it’s fairly clear in the area you are now, the dust storms currently sit at least a number of miles off, though you’re uncertain how fast they’re moving at a quick glance, you do not see any other figures immediately present. Where you’ve pushed out from here, one of these side caverns, you took a look behind you and you can see the base of the mountain range that encircles Kreviris and continues past it. So you are just outside the city itself. You do not see any immediate outposts, but you figure if you were to leave a little further out, you would be essentially out in the open, visible from many of the outposts that encircle the crown-like mountainscape that surrounds the valley at the top of the city. You can very easily see the Bloody Bridge, the single red beam of energy that sits in a direction which helps you orient yourself and your location right now from where you came. If you get really close to the base of the mountain, there’s probably some little alcoves that you can pull in to stay out of any immediate sight. Any larger dips or cracks in the ground where you could hide from sight are a good 500 or more feet out and would probably put you out in the open before you reach them.
Ashton says, “I’m gonna see what’s below us.” and inhales deeply.
You grind through the ground and vanish below. While you’re currently looking, Liliana is still gliding about a foot off the ground, her hair drifting. You can feel, almost taste the energy that sparks in the air around her. She’s still just locked in on you (Imogen), her face still sad. You can see the streaks of (not sure if they’re of sadness or anger) tears that have since dried and smeared what dirt was along her face and as she looks towards you for guidance before she looks away.
“I don’t know what’s going on Imogen. I don’t know what to do.”
“I don’t either.”
“Well, y’all can’t stay here. Going to have to…you cant stay here.”
“Are you staying?”
“If I go, they’ll know. What’s more useful? If I leave they’ll…I mean the rest of them already have been tough enough to get them to trust me. Am I more useful here to what you’re doing, or am I more useful leaving it behind?”
♪Episode Song References♪
ᕕ( ᐛ)ᕗ
Highlights
“We’re supposed to be what can break the final boundary. We have somethin’ within us, somethin’ that the gods can’t stop. Only we can truly reach it. From what he (Ludinus) said, in order to get it beyond and back into our realm, it needs a vessel, somethin’ to carry it past that threshold.”
Orym:“Cold comfort for my family in the ground.”
Imogen:“What do we do when we get to the other side?”
Liliana:“Find those who you can trust and find me when you need my guidance. I’ll see you in your dreams.”
Travis:“That’s so fitting. I just said it.”
All right, as you all emerge and begin to descend the staircase that leads down from the top of the Malleus Key, you coasted down amongst the various ruins and the large military tents and gathered bits of materials. You can also see other war beasts from Ruidus have begun to make their transition to Exandria. The military defense of the Malleus Key is growing larger. You can see the edges of the actual Tishtan site. There are signs of massive battle. While you were gone, it looks like either a major scuffle happened and a section of one of the inner walls of it is blown open and there’s a massive cave-in landslide that happened there. So it looks like the escalation of might and assaults on this space (or at least defense as well) shows violence is increasing.
As you’re taking these in and you begin to maneuver, you, Orym, notice that two Reilorans are gliding by. Not walking, gliding. What you see are two mystics that take attention as you come down the steps and begin to pursue.
Orym:(to Imogen)“We got a tail.”
Travis and Marisha celebrate successfully avoiding a Reiloran army.
Travis:“Just as a hat rack.”
Liam:“A potted plant. Just decor outside a tent.”
Matt:“While this is where she was turned to stone, you get the immediate sense that she’s been relocated.”
Matt:“Orym rolls high enough to see into the real dimension. Why do thy have dice? What does that mean?”
Laura references The Neverending Story
Laura:“Hey, fuck off…It doesn’t matter and Marisha saved the day and it’s fiyeen.”
Liam:“That’s just right!” (callback to C2E102)
updated cast lore
Now as you all quietly walk under the stars of the Exandrian sky in silence, looking across the distant rocky barren horizons of the Hellcatch, really the first moment hits in where you get to begin to process what you’ve lost.
Evoroa:“Yeah. I don’t know where it is, but he’s referred to it a few times. It’s called Aeor. It’s where he’s getting all these things and where…I don’t know where else he’d be.”
Travis:“Motherfucking Matt Mercer. MFMM”
Marisha:“The Cerberus Assembly has been obsessed with that Aeor shit.”
(continued)
Evoroa:“Well, so a lot of this tech was being brought in there. We were able to combine it with some of our initial designs of shifting and changing up our developments for various war implements here on Ruidus. They had developed a lot of things based around this thing, this Malleus Key he was talking about.
So part of my thing was to help originally to design tools that were used to burrow through the outer layers of the glass pillar where Kreviris was. It’s an impossiblly thick layer of glass, but the Exaltants, when they came in here and began to consult with us alongside Ludinus, they began to speak as they communed with the being of the planet, moon, I guess, to you. There are multiple layers to this glass.
The outer layers were simple enough to get through with some of this tech we designed, but the secondary layer that we got through was like adamantine. It seemed like it had some sort of divine magical origin in its construction. You know our standard designs were too slow in trying to get through there, given the rapid timeline of what was going on and mounting opposition from Exandria.
As you said, across the bridge was starting to grow tension, so Ludinus was going to go back to seek out what tech was available. There’s supposed ot be a continued source of it being excavated from his troop, his Vanguard, his allies, but there was a problem there. Something called, he called it the Dominox. It had begun to take up root there, was causing struggles with their excavation, and so he was going to take care of it himself. That was just a few days ago.
From what we were understanding, there were certain implementations of magical synergies and the technology that was being presented as part of our study group, that the tech had a unique understanding of the weave of godly magics, divine-type magics, and how to unravel them on a very base core point. So this was the basis of our project, a means to penetrate the secondary glass shell that contains Predathos within. So, taking inspiration from the, what’s it called the Malleus Factorum and the other trickles of nearby tech and essentially develop it in a smaller scale that we’d be able to go through these additional layers of the divine glass. So, apparently the glass veins that run through the planet are the remnants of Predathos’ last form when it was locked within its prison, so that’s the theory.
So, we’ve been unable to map deeply without the help of the Exaltants, and when they’re able to connect with the aid of the Weave Mind to deeply bind with the essence of Predathos, they were able to feel out the extent of the vein network. We were uncertain of the source. Just knew they were resonant with The One Who Sleeps, but from what we’re gathering, that was likely a reflection of its form when it was sealed away, so the glass is what its body once was then turned to be its own prison. Whatever is sleeping within is within its own glass prison and the layers between, and that’s where the tech and the Exaltants, that’s where all of this is supposed to come together is to break past these boundaries and then free it from its prison shell of what it once was. Yeah!”
INTERMISSION
So, my lovely Crown Keepers. Kymal. After the events of our interlude those long long weeks ago, you all moved north past the Silvercut Crossroads to lay low in the Wildwood Valley. The settlements you dares stay at for more than a few days are more village than town, but the narrow edge of your escape from Poska and the Nameless Ones has you cagey. What’s the true distance of her reach? How far would your sister go to find you? And what do you think, Fy’ra Rai, she would do if she found you again?
It’s been almost a month of low living. The six of you, Cyrus included, have a small cache of brumestone that you all harvested from your slow moving getaway platform. Yeah, honestly, like the first three weeks was you just slowly drifting. Yeah, you guys were able to harvest the brumestone from your platform. You have it secreted across the six of you, so in the event that you have to scatter, you all have access to an incredible amount of money, were you able to find a place to fence it.
You are not too far from Kraghammer. Westruun is a little farther away, but those are big hubs. Poska’s reach might get there. The Myriad, the Clasp, the people that were pushed out in Kymal. You are some of the few survivors of whatever went down there, and a big city isn’t safe.
But two weeks ago, something new began. Whispers reached even your remote ears.
A solstice, the Moon of Ill omen, the Blightstar lost from the skies of TalDorei, trapped over Marquet. Disenchantment of old and powerful magic. No sending, no teleportation, no resurrection. Those of you with connections to the gods of this world, the Wildmother, the Spider Queen, the Matron of Ravens, and even the Observer. You have felt a pressingg on the threads of your connections with them, from the Prime and Betrayer Gods, your first inkling of fear, and even from the Observer, a new bit of interest, curiosity about the goings on in this world.
And then a message from Orym. Desperate. So sad. Halfway around the world, he bade you find the Tempest in a tone that pushed your group from hiding to haste.
So you find yourselves on the road once more headed south, then east towards the Summit Peaks and Zephrah.
This time has been dark and difficult for you all not just because you have had to settle for living and hiding; no longer around the glitz and glamour of Kymal. The standard of living that you were all adjusted to. Even Cyrus has been showing signs of getting a little antsy, a curiosity, a need to move in a new direction. Then, again, Opal’s been getting pretty dark lately.
Aimee gives the camera a stareAnd that’s the important thing. You know there is a fight happening and you have no recollection of it.
Two weeks, and now you’re on the road again, traveling long days down the road, exhausted. It is at some point, just a few days into your journey towards Zephrah, towards purpose or adventure or whatever comes next after your last big quest, you feel it. Something inside you breaks. Too tired. Too much holding it together. Your mind is yours and Ted’s and hers, and she has been whispering to you. You feel that fear, that concern oppressing, a hastening, and it all becomes too much.
You all walk down the road, and Opal stops. Frozen, she’s looking a thousand yards away in a direction as if she’s listening, trying to hear, trying to understand, but she is stock still.
Robbie seems to be the only one terrified by that statement and looks around incredulously.
You turn towards that feeling of gravity and you look at Opal, trying so hard to shake off whatever this is. You see it in a flash, in a caw, a birdsong, before it hits,
and Opal, it’s not that she raises or levitates off the ground, but she seems to grow massive and then she explodes out in every direction.
Opal:“Wait. Where’s Ted?”
Aabria:"If Opal did CrossFit for three years and was pure raw red meat diet. This is meat beat bandersnatch Opal. (Meat Beat Manifesto?)
(continued)
Aabria:“You get a giant hot dog that looks like a pussy. We haven’t forgotten that.”
Matt:“I’ll never forget it…”
Erica:“Wow, it’s so big.” (callback to Kymal)
Anjali:“There it is! Everybody drink!”
Aimee:“There’s an ash hole right next to it.”
Aabria:“No!”
Aabria:“It really popped off.”
casts Bardic Inspirationon Fy’raOpal/SQ:“She doesn’t know.”
Dorian:“Who’s she? You’re she.”
Opal/SQ:“Am I?”
Dorian:“Are you?”
Opal/SQ:"Are you?
Matt:“If I had a nickel…”
There’s a word, Aevilux, a splinter group. She tells a story, looking at you with shining eyes, mismatched color. A long time ago, a group of people found something called a beacon. They learned from it some great entity or god, a concept that sought to know itself, to understand via experience in the world of Exandria, it split itself apart. This one found far away. These people that worshiped the Luxon, found, created magics within themselves to split their own souls apart so that they could learn who they were via observation. As a child, town in two, you observe yourself, you learn who you are, what you like, what you want, what you need, your purpose, and then rejoin, find unity once more.
Your mother was one of these people. So, Ted, Opal, Georgina, are you. You and Ted found each other again, reunited to something stronger than your wholes. (hehe) You understand yourself because you understand Ted. Ted wants to protect you because she is protecting herself. She’s not lost to you, she is you. You are something rare and magical in the world of Exandria, and the memory of that is gone forever, in the moment of knowing it.
rolls a 7on a performance check for the “handie”. Aimee then does a happy rodeo dance.Erica:“The candles were so wet!” (giggety)
Fy’ra:“That’s what I said!..Bossy Genasi is apparently my name now.”
Matt:“She tends to rub off on ya.”
Ted:“You’re literally talking about me.”
Opal:“(okay) shut up”
Matt:“…I know because I’ve had people Dimension Door into dragons before.”