Session 118

As the wailing spirits the creature behind them began to emerge from the ground all around them, the group panicked, wondering how to deal with the hundreds of specters this creature was calling down upon them. As the spirits drew in, Archmage Kyran incanted a spell, causing a massive wall of flames to sweep in and surround the group, obliterating the approaching spirits. Kyran told the group to run on his signal and parted the flames, allowing the group to escape, leaving the shrieking creature behind. The group made their way out of Thalassarion and toward the Savage Frontier they passed through on their way here, contemplating just what they had just encountered. One thing was for sure, they needed to put as much distance between themselves and that creature as possible. The group made their way back to the Arak mainland and looped around the Great Divide to head north to the ruined tower of Mythward. As they entered Phenedulon, they began to feel the fatigue of their journey as Anna and Garvin in particular began to look as though they needed to sleep for a week straight. Kyran hired a driver to allow them to make the rest of the journey in a cart so that they could rest. The Lynoxi driver brought them along the road, stopping for supplies in Thenaphor, where they encountered a traveling Human doctor named Divarr who approached them, asking if they needed any medicine. Kyran asked for some stimulants to keep them going, as Anna and Garvin took the medicine, Anna had a violent coughing fit, spitting up blood on the doctor's shirt, who was horrified and recoiled, saying that whatever was afflicting Anna was not merely fatigue. Kyran said that they would have to seek a Cleric when they returned to his tower. They continued on their journey, with the driver depositing them at Mythward. Upon arrival, Garvin had a coughing fit similar to Anna, concerning Kyran. They proceeded through the gateway in the cellar, arriving at Kyran's tower in Myr moments later, where Anna and Garvin promptly vomited. Kyran proceeded upstairs and contacted the Temple of the Seven in Catarvoss to request a house call from a Cleric. Afterwards, he took some time to examine the crystal they had retrieved from the ruins in Thalassarion, identifying it as an artifact by the name of "Lod'exenter", which seemingly had the ability to gather tremendous amounts of Flow from the atmosphere over a period of centuries, and could be expelled all at once to elevate a single spell to the power of a deity. Kyran quickly realized that they had an answer to how they could destroy the amulet sustaining the gateway to Proxon, Hebor and Nala's home world...

Deciding to leave Anna and Garvin behind in the tower to recover and wait for the Cleric, Kyran proceeded with Hebor, Nala, and Vernon to Catarvoss seeking mercenaries to hire to make up for the loss of Anna and Garvin's help. Assailed by the pungent aroma of the Spicewind upon entry, Hebor and Nala could barely breathe in the city, making their way to a mercenary guild inside the city, where they had a short exchange with a guild leader that seemed familiar with Kyran, where he requested the aid of some mercenaries, and was introduced to Live Let Live and Axi, two Lynoxi. The Lynoxi marveled upon seeing the faces of Hebor and Nala, asking them a variety of questions, before they were briefed on the mission and the guild leader told Kyran of the exorbitant price of 1,000 gp, which greatly annoyed Kyran. After paying, the group made their way west to the shores along the ocean just north of Luxandra where they found the ruins of Kanotha, where the Sithi-nas forces had established themselves centuries before, and now again. Finding a lone guard standing along the cliff facing, Kyran conjured a blast of wind which sent the Sithi-nas flying into the ocean below, before making their way along the narrow path running down the cliff face to the cave containing the ruins. Axi snuck ahead and used her powerful sense of smell to figure out where the guards protecting the entrance to Kanotha were located, before she tossed an elixir brewed using the bushes that produce the Spicewind itself directly into the midst of a large group of the Sithi-nas to choke them -- a tactic which unfortunately wasn't effective due to the Sithi-nas' natural defenses against poisons. However, it gave them the element of surprise, and the group charged in to distract the Sithi-nas while Kyran moved in to dispel the barrier shutting them out of Kanotha. The party fought hard, with Vernon's Ruxor abilities allowing him to bond to Hebor to magically share the damage between them, making Hebor nearly unstoppable. Live Let Live admirably protected the party with his healing magic while Axi used her magic and even attempted to pounce on the Broodguard. After dispelling the barrier, Kyran managed to take out a couple of the Broodguard with a powerful Lightning Bolt, to Hebor's annoyance, before proceeding into the ruins.

Downstairs, Kyran quickly dispatched a guard with blue flames which set the guard alight, sending it screaming down the hallway attempting to put them out, before flinging the doors to the gate room wide open. Inside, they saw a Sithi-nas priestess and two royal guard at the altar next to the gate. Kyran told the group to hold them off while he used Lod'exenter to prepare the spell to destroy the amulet. The group rushed in, but Hebor was nearly incapacitated by the priestess' magic as she conjured an illusion in his mind to make him believe he was back in a cell in Laresos, the capital city of the Ouroboros Conclave on Proxon, being tortured by the Sithi-nas. He flailed around angrily in a blind rage, and was nearly taken out, if not for the efforts of Live Let Live, who ensured the party did not fall. As Kyran came near to finishing the spell, gathering a tremendous amount of light in his hand which blinded any that looked at it, he urged the party to flee the room, to avoid the destruction he was about to unleash. However, Hebor stubbornly refused, lost to his rage at the priestess, and after a failed attempt by Nala to use her fledgling magic to teleport Hebor out of the way, Kyran's spell completed as wisps and strands of Flow visible collected from around him to a single glowing green point on his fingertips, which exploded in a burst of light so powerful everyone in the immediate area was deafened and blinded for half a minute. When the smoke cleared, there were glowing green spiral burn marks running along all of the walls in his path and Archmage Kyran lie unconscious on the floor. The Sithi-nas that had come through the portal to aid the priestess, as well as the priestess and her guard, had been obliterated -- along with Hebor. However, they had accomplished their goal, with the gateway shrinking and vanishing, and the shards of the destroyed amulet clambering to the ground before being reduced to dust. When Kyran came to, he seemed shell shocked, and horrified at Hebor's stubborn refusal to save himself. However, ever the pragmatist, Kyran said that they needed to quickly return the crystal to his tower and contain it so that the creature would not find them. A rumbling began, causing Kyran to worry that the ruins were collapsing. However, when he realized that nothing was falling from the ceiling, he dashed out of the room and up the stairs to the cave above, where the group saw a column of light in the distance -- Umos' Wellspring, which Kyran explained likely erupted due to the enormous release of charged Flow from Lod'exenter. They saw a dark haze forming above the landscape far off in the distance, and Kyran said he would need to investigate that later. As the Wellspring eruption subsided, the group set out on the road to return to his tower.

Arriving at Kyran's tower weeks later, they opened the front door and were met by a powerful rotten stench, alarming them. Inside, they found several undead which lurched toward Kyran. However, he unleashed powerful Magic Missiles which felled the creatures quickly. He realized that they appeared to be his apprentices. Worrying that the creature had already reached his tower, he ran up the stairs to where Anna and Garvin had been, and upon opening their room door was met with a heart wrenching sight... the decaying, animated remains of Anna, Garvin, and the Human Cleric that had been dispatched to help them, feasting upon the corpse of the apprentice Kyran had left in charge of caring for them. Kyran was distraught, but quickly cut them down with a spell and wept. He ran upstairs to check his study and found his communication mirror pulsing. Activating it, he had a brief exchange with an unknown sorcerer who informed him that some manner of plague had broken out in Vardanorr which was ravaging the population, apparently unleashed by a Human doctor who had come into town to sell medicine, and that the victims were animating as undead upon death. Confused, Kyran made the connection to Anna and Garvin and collapsed in his chair, saying "What have I done?" The sorcerer on the other end identified himself as the head of the school of illusion at the Ars Aurum Academy, a Letheni named Adamar. Kyran gave him instructions to help prevent the spread from reaching Mythwell before disconnecting and collapsing, facing the agony of what he had let happen through negligence.

The disease that broke out in Vardanorr would come to be known as the Grave Rot Plague, a terrible curse inflicted upon Garvin by the creature within Thalassarion, which was then spread to every Human they encountered on their journey back to Myr. In the five years afterwards, it would ravage the Human population, leaving no more than 15,000 to 20,000 Humans remaining on the planet. Kyran would carry the guilt of exposing Anna and Garvin, and subsequently nearly dooming the Human race for the rest of his life. It took far too long to realize the plague only affected Humans, and by that point, the Letheni of Arak had already quarantined them, leading to riots that would result in many more needless deaths. Unfortunately, centuries later, a flaw in the wards shielding Lod'exenter from detection by the creature from Thalassarion would cost Kyran his life. He didn't write much about the adventurers from the other world after that, giving them land to live on, but who knows... maybe their adventures didn't end there.