Session 111

After traveling a long way to pass through Odracanath on their way to the Blasted Lands, the players enter the city, being hit by a wave of overlapping scents of aromatic foods of various cuisines. A strange merchant hocking something he cryptically referred to as "spice" attempted to entice Dain, but the group was put off by his strange mannerisms and continued. Seeing nothing in the market of interest, they decided to simply pass through the city without stopping for supplies, and continued west into the Blasted Lands. The desolate wasteland was identical to their last visit and was uniformly dead the entire 6-week journey to the mountain range where Samira said they could locate Seldain Ithael, the 'Temple of the One' where Sabine would be tested in order to Ascend. As they approached the mountain range, the valley was blanketed by an eerie fog, and as they walked along the lake along the path toward the temple, they saw an apparently nude woman bathing in the lake, splashing about, who began to beckon Dain toward her, as if she wanted him to come in, but didn't reply when Dain tried calling out to her. Despite the odd situation, Dain approached just enough that the woman suddenly lashed out, with her hair whipping toward Dain and grappling his arm. She rose out of the water, showing a strange completely smooth figure with subtle scales. As she grappled Dain, several Will-o-Wisps rushed out of the water toward the rest of the group. Dain began trying to break free and attempted to attack the woman, but Stormsmasher proved quite unwieldy while he couldn't use both hands to deliver the blow, and he couldn't quite shake her. After a few moments, a large patch of bubbles in the lake gave way to several large serpentine heads which rushed out and began to assault Dain, as a Hydra emerged from the water. Sabine then used her magic to transform Dain and Merrick into Giant Apes, which freed Dain from the Drowned Maiden's grasp, but Sabine unintentionally caused a Wellspring Surge, resulting in her being magically aged up two years. She began to panic while the rest of the group fought hard to fell the enormous creature and the vicious undead. After an onslaught of numerous Lightning Bolts from Dain, Sabine, and Samira, as well as a variety of devastating attacks from the rest of the group, they managed to fell the Hydra and the Drowned Maiden, though the speed of the Will-o-Wisps made it difficult to hit them, and they proved quite tricky to defeat. However, the group prevailed, and took a quick break before proceeding further down the path. At some point, Samira stopped the group and pointed at a rock facing, saying that they had arrived. The party, confused due to the lack of any sort of obvious entrance, watched as Samira incanted a spell of some sort which dispelled an illusion concealing the stairs leading up to a large stone doorway. As they ascended the steps, Merrick felt a scratching at the back of his mind and had a brief conversation with the Deep One, who commanded him and his companions to turn around and leave the temple at once. He seemed very angry and ignored Merrick's request for elaboration. Merrick warned Dain, but chose to proceed anyway. At the top, a spirit appeared and greeted Sabine, telling her that she would be presented with three trials which would judge her ability to wield the full power of the Wellspring-Touched to determine whether she was worthy -- though she cautioned that should Sabine fail, Ascending would forever be beyond her reach.

Accepting the challenge, Sabine placed her hand upon the seal on the doorway leading into Seldain Ithael and it briefly caused the runic circle on the door to glow before the door vanished entirely, revealing a large tunnel leading down a flight of stairs into the darkness. Some floating runes appeared in the air that only Sabine seemed to be able to read that she translated as "Competency".

Proceeding down the stairs, the group eventually arrived in a large carved out cavern with stairs leading down to a platform with walls concealing something and the edges of the platform falling off into a steep drop that the party could not see the bottom of. At the bottom, the spirit appeared again, introducing herself as the Adjudicator, and explaining the first trial to Sabine as one which would test her magical aptitude, as if she could not even wield the magic she had been given effectively, the rest of the trials were pointless. She explained that beyond the walls were a series of mirrors, and at the entrance was an emitter that would project a beam of light that could be reflected off of these mirrors. She explained that they simply had to redirect the beam of light to reach the red crystal at the other end of the room, which would lower the wall so they could proceed to the next trial. However, there were three white crystals within the room as well, which if they were hit by the light, would detonate, and if more than one were destroyed in this manner, Sabine would fail the trial. The Adjudicator warned the party to inspect the objects in the room closely and discern their purpose before allowing the beam to pass into the room, also explaining that there were several "gates" used for blocking or allowing the passage of the beam which only Sabine could manipulate, and which would test her magical ability. The Adjudicator then vanished, wishing Sabine luck. The party moved about the room inspecting each object, quickly discovering that not all of the mirrors present were real, as one of them Summer barely realized was an illusion. They moved around trying to make sense of the maze of mirrors and how to direct the beam of light, quickly becoming confused by the numerous paths it could take. However, through some suggestions from Sabine, they eventually worked out the correct orientation of the mirrors and managed to successfully direct the beam to the red crystal at the end without detonating a single white crystal. Feeling accomplished, they proceeded beyond the wall which lowered into the ground to the other side and proceeded down the steps to another door, which Sabine unsealed, and runes appeared in the air again that read "Judgment".

Proceeding down the second flight of stairs, the group arrived in a simple cube-shaped room with the Adjudicator standing in the center and two tables to her left and to her right with four people sitting at them. She explained that the second trial would require Sabine to determine the perpetrator of a heinous crime, in which 17 people were brutally murdered before having their souls devoured by one of the spirits that sat before them using the magic called Soulbinding. She explained that all four had been guilty of something, but only one was guilty of the crime for which they were accused, and that it was up to Sabine to make the final decision and name the guilty party. After wishing Sabine good luck and vanishing again, the group began to question the four spirits, who were an old Vesperkin man named Miren, a middle-aged Human man named Killian, a young Human woman named Eva, and a young Elven man named Tal'arin. Questioning the four, they managed to discover a little more about the circumstances, that all four had been arrested on suspicion of having perpetrated the crime, but that because the incompetent Enforcers were unable to determine the guilty one, and because it was such a small village without access to the Truthseekers, the Enforcers simply executed all four. They learned that Miren, the old Vesperkin, was a lapidary -- a gem cutter, and that he was probably not all there mentally, repeatedly making strange comments and revealing that the reason he was arrested was that he had been having a "senior moment" and was found waving his lapidary saw around manically in the vicinity of the crime. The middle-aged Human, Killian, was apparently a local blacksmith who was well-known and who was arrested for having forged the weapon the killer used, and because it was a high value weapon not many could afford, they believed he had done it. Killian appeared to be equipped with a fine quality sword. The woman, Eva, was found with blood all over her clothes holding a bloody knife, but claims that she had panicked during the chaos of the day and had slipped in a puddle of blood near the crime, getting her clothes dirty, and had taken a bloody knife from one of the dead to try to defend herself. Finally, Tal'arin, a young Elf who they discovered was barely an adult, only 57 years old, was a merchant who was new to town and who had only just begun his journey as a merchant, carrying a variety of goods and trying to get a feel for what was valuable and where, and he was arrested because he was unknown to the townsfolk and because he was found hiding during the day of the crime, and because he had a weapon -- though the weapon seemed like nothing special and looked unused. Through questioning a bit deeper, they discovered that Miren was the only one who claims to have actually seen the attacker, but his vision was poor, and the only thing he was certain of was that the attacker had blond/e hair, and he wasn't totally certain if it was a woman or a man. The group was a bit suspicious of this due to the fact that all of the other defendants had blond/e hair, and Miren was the only one with dark hair. They suspected he may be attempting to label himself as the only "innocent" party, but weren't sure due to his perceived mental fragility. Another interesting detail was that Tal'arin claimed that he believed Killian was the killer, as he knew that he didn't do it, and that Miren was a bit of a kook but seemed harmless, and finally, Eva was just a "silly girl who talked too much". He said that Killian made him uneasy. He also admitted that the day before the attack, he had gone to Killian's shop to get shoes fitted for his horse and witnessed him having some sort of argument with an Ettinor, which he noted as odd given how rare Ettinor were in those parts, and that the Ettinor had seemingly been arguing with Killian over payment for a weapon the Ettinor had commissioned, and the Ettinor had given Killian a gem as payment instead, which seemed to irritate him.