Session Zero
Welcome to Natural 6. This is session zero of the world of Reliquiae. We’ve rolled our characters, we know who our heroes are, and now it’s time to see how they met.
Before time.
Before sound and song, color and light.
Before mortal memory, a battle raged.
The gods of Good, Evil, and Chaos, known as ‘TheVirtuous’, ‘The Vile’, and ‘The Wild’ (respectively), fought for control of existence. When this war finally ended, it was ‘The Virtuous’ who triumphed.
And, being driven by a desire to create, having destroyed for so long, they called into being a world, Reliquiae. A vast and verdant crater, surrounded on all sides by a towering mountain range called the Allanites. A world in which mortality could multiply and flourish. Each of The Virtuous bringing forth a race in their image and imbued with a spark of their divine being.
So mortality came to be.
So began a time known as The Immortal Peace. Yet ‘Peace’ has never meant ‘Perfection’. Mortals still lie, cheat, murder, extort and expose one another to terrible cruelty. There are still the hopeless, the desperate, the lost…
And it’s souls such as these who turn to The Web. A nefarious, shadowy organization that offers protection, procurement, and power at a price. Those who find themselves caught within it’s silken threads may extracate themselves by two methods: By Gold or By Servitude. There are some who bind their families to The Web for generations. So strong is their desire to achieve their ends. Yet, despite the disperate paths that led them there, all agents of The Web are united in the knowledge of one thing: that they are not free until their debt is paid. There is no escape from The Web. For their eyes are as to the stars in the sky, and
The Web Is Wide.
Five agents of The Web are moving now in the northeast of the continent. Two days journey from the city of Brack on the edge of the northern swamps.
Note: This did NOT happen in the episode, rather in the Twitch livestream on 1/27.
Suddenly a wild Sam Lake appears!
rolling happens
So, Dolly. It is night and it is cold. The first moon of the new winter hangs snow, bright and full, and throws long shadows across the ground. Mist is curling slow around your ankles, hovering above a dew, chilled almost to frost. You can hear your footsteps cracking in the fast-freezing grass. There’s a smell of wet earth, hardening of mulch, and dank dead leaves that fell before the grip of winter.
You’ve been instructed to journey here alone and in secret. In this, as in all things, The Web insists on discretion.Aoife:“…out of the darkness there’s someone shaking a hood off of two black horns, that curve backwards, with a lot of intricate gold inlaid in the horns. They sit atop long white hair, and as the hood comes off, you see a very pink-tinged Tiefling woman who has a lot of intricate articles of clothing. She’s got a little jacket with lots of coins and embroidered different colors and stitching all over and lots of jingling on her hips as well.
As she’s looking around, and coming to this spot, her eyes are looking up and around, and you can see they’re bright yellow irises. She’s kinda like (exhaling and showing breath in the cold) and she smiles slightly and puts her arms up and does a little dance like nobody’s watching. You would think she doesn’t have a care in the world. Just standing quietly, having a little moment to herself.”Alex/I:“I am very low to the ground. Crouched very low with a black hood up. Red trimmings on my black and red leather armor, but poking out from underneath it we’ve got some horns sticking through the hood. You see the claws digging into the ground and a red-orange, flowing into yellow on some of the tips of the scales.
Sniffing the ground, very very low, nostrils wide, you can see the breath coming through as he takes and sniffs the ground following a scent, looking up and just stopping, and freezing, and just taking it in. And then very confusedly looking up at the moon and trying to figure out what she (Dolly) is looking at.”Hollie:“Endelian stood tall. Stood proud. Stood noble. Their clothes simple, but they’re practical for someone who is carrying a rather large sword with one hand and in the other hand grips another smaller dagger. The sword’s basic, it’s beaten, it’s definitely seen battle, but that dagger different. It’s special. It’s ornate in some kind of way. It must mean something important to them with the way they grip it.
They’re obviously wearing half armor, it’s practical, they can still move quickly, but they’re ready to take the blow if they need to.
The hair, red, tied back, but tied up. It’s ornate. It carries itself in that special way. It’s not messy.
They’re in the cold, their body doesn’t do particularly well in the cold, and stiff, as they are trying to look around to see if they can find what they’re here for.”The Web is Wide. Their eyes are as to the stars in the sky.
- 00:16:42 Dolly:“Puppy? What the… is it? Come 'ere! (claps) Come on!”
Alex:“I actually respond really well to that.” - 00:23:15 Doug/Kelnys:“So I’m sitting beneath the trees, marveling at the beauty of the shape of the leaves and the nights sky above and beyond. And what you see is a dragonborn of a golden color, with red freckles across his eyes and on his arms. You can see the hilt of a bladed weapon just sticking up behind him. At his feet, he’s sitting in a cross-legged stance. In front of him is a staff. He’s wearing a worn, but serviceable, brown woolen cloak. The head is down and you can just see that he has these little whiskers. Little golden-brown whiskers, and you can see that one of them has been cut off, and there’s a scar across his lip where that whisker was cut off.”
- 00:29:28 Ben:“What you see is a character who is entirely shrouded in a very simple hood. Black. The darkness of his clothes contrast quite remarkably with the hue of his skin. It is bronze, it almost glistens in the night. Through his hood you can see white hair. And the skin, you can see these long, beautiful hands are throwing these stones metronomically into the water and on the hands you can see scars. Hideous scars. The most beautiful skin you’ve ever seen, destroyed. Savaged.
You look up to his face, and his face is the most beautiful face you have ever seen, savaged, scarred. Hair white, one eye completely white. The other eye seems to change color as the moon passes. You will come to know that that eye will change color with every passing second. It will never be the same.
He just sits there, quietly, throwing stones into the water.
His name is Radian Thornbear.
Radian doesn’t seem to care about this much, so he wasn’t really paying attention because one thing you will learn about radian is he has things on his mind. He has things to pursue. People aren’t that important to him, so he only listens precisely when he means to. Everything that has just happened is of no value to him whatsoever.” - 00:32:49 Fan Art Moment Radian sitting against a tree near a lake, throwing stones, looking bored. “I” offering a gold coin and an acorn saying, “I is I.”
- 00:40:20 Historic Moment First Natural Six roll. Ben’s hand gets the credit.
- 00:50:35 Aoife with the second Natural Six on initiative.
LEARNING COMBAT (drink every time Harry says ‘proficiency’ to Alex) - 01:34:30 The Spinner:“We live in a time of peace, they say. Yet, just as the moon rises, as the sun sets, darkness follows light, and there is a darkness coming. The Great Darkness that will pour over the Alinites(sp?) like a flood. The Web needs to know who it can trust. Seems it can trust the five of you.”
- 01:36:57 In the city of Escalon is a man called Aleir Dacar. He must be snuffed out.
- 00:16:42 Dolly:“Puppy? What the… is it? Come 'ere! (claps) Come on!”