EM.2.1 Supreme Throne

Session Preface

  You feel the warmth of the crackling fire in the hearth radiate through the room. But there's a warmth of camaraderie, friendship, and a kindling of restored hope as well, giving the room a golden glow. A lavish banquet lies spread across the table in front of you, a proper feast of roasted pig, pastries savory and sweet, skewers of smoked vegetables and beef, loaves fresh from the oven, and a tankard of ale or glass of wine within reach of every one in attendance. Their conversations, laughter, and cheer wafts through the room with the scent of delicious food and the roaring fire.   You watch as Davan, or Thren, rather, serves at the bar. By most appearances, he remains the same bard who traveled with you in your earliest adventures. Yet his prismatic eyes and the look of knowingness behind them reveal him to be far more. And even as he smiles and pours a drink for a friend, you sense his uncertainty. A shiver runs down your spine, realizing an ancient, primordial being is anxious for their first time in eons. And you recognize in this moment you should take this moment to eat, drink, and celebrate with friends.   For next, you must journey through time unwound to Supreme Throne, the bastion of Cyric's power, and face the paracausal god of lies, the Salvation of Truh, directly, in a final conflict for the fate of this universe and any that, if you prove successful, may yet still come after.  

Session Summary

  In the Stoneway Inn, each of the party members take a moment. Parathrax jokes with Gil and enjoys the feast. Tristain reconnects with his companions from their adventures dealing with giants and dragons. Vorothruun keeps to himself at the doorway, watching the expedient decay unfold. He speaks with Thren about the power of time and how little of it remains.   Thren explains to the gathered heroes that the Chosen Three will go on a final mission through time to face Cyric, once and for all. The others, borrowing from the system of faith which supported Faerun's pantheon, as inscribed into law by Ao, will stay behind, but reinforce their allies with their hard-fought, battle-forged bonds of camaraderie. By instilling faith in their friends, the companions offer strength and aid them in turning the tide of the fight.   Parathrax, embracing his role as Durindale's General gives an impassioned speech, reminding everyone that of all the challenges they've faced across the continent, "it's always come down to one thing — relying on each other."   With that, the Chosen Three set off with Thren for his keep, Chronos.  

Chronos

  The world fades as a pearlescent shimmer brightens around you with a faint melody encircling you and you are transported in a flash of light. You stand upon a winding staircase, floating in the air, cracked and broken where it should join with other pieces floating around a central clocktower. The face of the clock radiates bright, shimmering lights of iridescent blues, greens, and purples, the energy warbling and pulsing in unpredictable bursts.   “Welcome to Chronos, my stronghold. It has, admittedly, see better days, but then again, so have we all, no? This place is saturated with enough latent energy, Cyric shouldn’t be able to find us while make the final preparations.” Thren pauses as a deafening thrum bellows from the clocktower, a volcanic eruption of light and the color-shifting energy wrapping around the tower. The radiant hues wash over you like a surging gust of wind, surrounding you, filling your ears, and then fading.   ”You saw what it took for Cyric to ascend to paracausality. There is not enough raw energy left in this world to recreate that process once over, yet alone thrice. So, we must choose another way.”   Thren tugs at a single dark curl of hair from his head and holds it up to the light. He straightens it, pressed between two fingers in each hand. Bringing his hands together, he places the hair in a fist and then pulls the other hand away, drawing a rapier from his fist as if it were a sheath. The thin blade shimmers with the same prismatic energy of this place. Thren holds the sword up with reverence, exchanging a look with each of you of tenderness and solemnity.   ”I offer you as much as I can, and as much as you can hold. To accept this shard of paracausality will render your entire lives distinct. You will not feel the age of time, though you will sense its passing all the more, keenly aware of its rising and ebbing tide. You will not know death by natural means, save the death of those you love and those you remember. You will be forever marked by this experience and you will be the only three who know of it. You will be forever changed and live among, but set apart from your universe until death or Ragnalla’s eventual, inevitable return. Do you accept this burden?”   ”This will not be pleasant.” Thren warns as he drives the needle-thin rapier into your chest. You reflectively take a sudden inhalation of air, your lungs burning, your mind swimming. You eyes feel as if they are melting from your skull like a runny egg in an oiled pan. Your mind trembles, aching with awareness, overwhelmed by understanding. You blink away the pain and feel beyond yourself in the moment, swimming among the cosmos as distant stars and untold worlds dance in the gradual sway between entropy and order. You hear distant melodies, filling your ears and bursting your ear drums, carried on a harmonic wind, whipping through trees and delving into oceans deep. You see the world in an urgent vibrancy of color and light and the sharp, cutting disparity of its current, faded reality, torn asunder by ambition and devastation. All of this passes through but a moment as Thren removes the blade and the pain of the pinprick wound seeps in, carving a whole into your heart, blurring your vision and muddying your thoughts. You recover, a hand gripping your chest as you adjust to the still expanding pain, and find yourself intact and forever changed.   The Chosen Three are imbued with a Sliver of Paracausality, each shifting their physical appearance. Parathraax shimmers with a prismatic barrier of energy that envelops him. Vorothruun's scales become grey, as if ink were removed from them and they now shone opalescent, where parts of him appears almost invisible when the light hits in just the right way. He also bears new horns, much like a crown. Tristain's veins shine with a light radiance, reflecting the courage and steadfastness coursing through his veins.  

Chronos Interior

“Well, now that you can enter Chronos without being immediately eviscerated by the raw power of time unwound, welcome! Come on in, the extra-dimensional infinite waters are fine.”   Thren bows with a theatrical flourish and proceeds through the arched doorway before you. Following the primordial being still familiar to you as Davan, you ascend into a grand entryway of marble floor and arched ceilings, awash in the vibrant colors spilling through the stained glass clock-face. Chandeliers hang overhead, illuminated by shimmering amethysts, sapphires, and emeralds rather than candles. Thren leads you down a long, gently descending corridor. The air around you grows colder and somehow thicker, a hazy dense mass of particles of raw time and untangled, shredded threads of the Weave hanging in the air like spider web fragments.   Thren stops at a opening in the walkway’s handrail and gestures further below. You see a galaxy of stars and cosmic energy swirling into a violent vortex, a violent storm of light and energy, some hundreds of meters beneath you. You watch as time itself spirals in and out, warping and stretching and thinning as the individual gears of time spin independent of one another. Squinting, you see the light and shadows along the edges of the arcane whirlpool coalesce into vague images and moments of your past between cracks of blue and purple lightning and flashes of green light.   In the roils of time below, moments and memories paint themselves in shadows and shimmers. Parathrax recalls the harrowing battle against a monstrosity, trapped within the mirror of a cloud giant. Vorothruun sees bursts of his mission to restore the Crown of Ragnalla and the moments of near-death in the journey. Tristain sees his father, their reunions, their years together before his departure, and their moments in the afterlife together.   ”This is your one-way ticket to Supreme Throne. I can’t teleport you there without Cyric interfering, but if you free-fall through time, you’ll end up there, one way or another. He is drawing power to himself — Magic, Reality, Time, all of it — like a siphon on all Existence. So moving through time, the flow of it will eventually take you to him, where he waits for Ragnalla’s arrival. Be forewarned, because you now carry the shards of paracausality, time will … warp around you, your memories, your experiences. And Cyric’s presence, his deceptions and machinations will have spread, corrupting everything around it. Press on through whenever you find yourselves and bring this vainglorious prick’s grand schemes to an end. Vanquish Cyric, and together, we can set the world back to right.”   Thren gives you a solemn nod and gestures you towards the edge of the stairs.  

Arishnoch's Lair

  The sensation of falling overtakes you. The solar winds of the galaxy swirl around you, a searing heat against your skin, pushes taut against your skull. You lose any sense of how long you descend through the malestrom of time. Lights and colors dance around you in dizzying swirls, flashes of memories and moments of your life, visions of the realm’s history blinking by in an instant.   Eventually, the darkness through which you descend brightens to a molten red, a pressing heat and suffocating smoke coats your lungs, watering your eyes.   You stand in the heart of a volcano, the lair of Arishnoch the Red. The dragon’s eyes glow molten, burning with hatred and the long-stoked flames of vengeance and rage. Arishnoch releases a vicious roar, bursts of flame from his mouth as smoke rises from his nostrils. Surrounded by the bones of his father and the treasures of a covetous life of dominance, you know there is no bargaining this time. No shared sympathies, no conversation to be had. Nothing but the wrath of a dragon, bent towards your destruction.   Returning to the events of Tristain's Ascension, the Chosen Three must now face an Arishnoch blinded and corrupted by grief and rage, stoked by the evil forces of Cyric's presence throughout the timescape. As the battle unfolds, they find themselves facing another threat.  

Cyric's Arrival

A bright flash of dark light shimmers in the northeastern portion of the chamber. A black streak of lightning flashes, followed by rolling thunder and crimson streaks of arcane energy. A pair of massive black wings unfurl, revealing the distorted, magnificent and terrible visage of Cyric, a paradoxical iridescent void of shimmering darkness. Clad in resplendent armor of midnight and blood, he grips a long, jagged blade in one hand, and a vicious dagger in the other. A wicked smirk, one reminiscent of his Chosen Draxhar, spreads across his sharp, angular face.   ”Did you really think I would just wait for you to come to me? The pitiful master of time’s last desperate attempt at maintaining balance, and the best he can muster is the Chosen Three. You may have defeated my Chosen, but only by my hand, for you brought me to precisely my destination. This time shall not be different. Defy me and fall forever into oblivion.”   Contending with Cyric's Avatar, the party manage to defeat the dragon and are pulled back into the vortex.  

Avraathe

The stifling heat and suffocating ash of the Peak of Flames dissipates around you and the feeling of weightless free fall over takes you. You travel into darkness, a shroud of sorrow gripping around you, a murky melancholy of deep waters, tossing and turning like waves crashing against a hapless sailboat lost in a torrential storm. When the jarring sensation subsides, you stand in the council chambers of Avraathe. Where the room once shone with platinum radiance and bright blue tapestries, the auditorium is desaturated, grey, and flat, darkened by shadow and deception. In the center of the room, a white dragonborn stands in fine regalia, a purple jacket trimmed in gold, a look of anguish across his face as he tenses and grimaces in pain, nearly doubled over from the intensity. He is surrounded by a ritual circle of dark magic, radiating with crimson lightning and onyx energy.   From the five points of the pentagram trapping Dradke, massive chains of iridescent shadow extend, anchored to pillars and corners of the chamber.   Behind Dradke and his restraints, a pair of staircases circle towards a central throne, a foreign addition to this usually egalitarian chamber. Skulls and black suns adorn the balcony and create a crown effect around Cyric, seated with a nonchalant demeanor.   ”You, Parathrax, son of Parathraaj, are the cause of Dradke’s grief, but also his freedom. In murdering his son, you set him on the path towards my truth and his key role in completing my Ascension. These chains are forged by your own selfishness, your own heresy, forsaking your oath for the equally treasonous brother of yours. Can you free the councilmen from the torture in which you have trapped him, damning him to inconsolable sorrow and grief?”   While battling Cyric and Draxhar, the companions release the former Councilor from his bonds of grief, destroying them one at a time in order as revealed to them through memories of his anguish and fall under Cyric's influence.  

Halfreach Caves

  Again, the threads of time enwrap you and you fall further into the stream of power flowing towards Cyric’s stronghold, Supreme Throne. The darkness of grief and loss reside, and you instead feel yourself surrounded by dank, stale air. The sound of water dripping, dripping, dripping fills your ears, reverberated through time and space. There is a dim light, and the cold sensation of stone around you, roughly hewn by time and the slow grip of erosion. You hear Cyric’s voice before your other senses return to you.   ”Before you knew this cave, before you drew forth its power and claimed the Rod of the Pactkeeper for yourself, before you followed in my footsteps as Ragnalla’s Chosen, this place belonged to me. In another lifetime it was not merely a cave of pooling water and worn stone, but a study, a secret study of the universe’s truths, waiting to be revealed and then unmade.”   You stand in Halfreach Cave, where Greycastle and Vorothruun first met and where Vorothruun began his descent into madness which led to the mirror dimension and the seeking of the Devotions of Ragnalla. Where the central pool of water once stood is now a set of spiral stairs, a purple glow and flicker of candle light drawing you forward. You descend into the chamber. You are surrounded by three statues, tributes to Ao, Thren, and Ragnalla. Dusty tomes covered in cobwebs line stone shelves of bookcases.   In the center of the room, a pedestal with nine symbols. This script, never in your studies have you ever seen such characters. They are entirely unfamiliar, not of this time nor this world. And yet, as you open your mind to the shard of paracausality even now piercing your heart, you can read these symbols and discern the complexities of their meaning.   ”If you are so worthy of the power and paracausality you now claim, reveal these secrets for yourself. Show me, Chosen Three, why your dead gods thought you worthwhile, even though it cost them their domains and their lives. Prove you can see the truth through the lies the paracausal three wove into our reality all those eons ago.”   Beneath Halfreach Caves, the party find a secret study full of archaic symbols. Though unfamiliar with the language, they are able to translate the sigils and recognize them as concepts of paracausality and the creation of the universe. By activating the sigils in the correct patterns, they are able to unlock the secrets necessary to proceed.  

Sundabar

The stream of time unbound pulls you further into the void. Leaving behind the cave of Halfreach, you float through the endless falling. The shrill screams of terror reach your ears first, piercing the clashing of crossing swords and splintering of shields. Ash clings to your sweat-soaked skin, smoke claws at your burning throat. he tastes of blood and dirt linger on your tongue. The stench of death drapes heavy overhead, stifling like a coarse blanket in summer's heat. Engulfed in flames and overrun with enemies, Sundabar crumbles before you. You come to in a courtyard aflame before a wall collapsed, buildings utterly ruined on either side. All around you, the undead stir, dragging themselves from beneath rubble, out of smoldering flames, their jaws slack, their skin bleached and flayed from their bone. They watch you will hollow, sunken eyes, dark coals of malice and malevolence. Hovering above the conflict, Cyric looks down upon you.   ”Everyone you thought you saved in Sundabar died.” Cyric says, his tone one of casual indifference, though you sense the enjoyment he gleans from twisting the knife. “The few who survived as your defenses failed? They wound up beyond the walls of Avraathe or refugees in Silverymoon. Did you know that? Choking on smoke. Crushed beneath columns of stone. Slaughtered without thought beneath the blade of orcs and drow or the clubs of giants or claws of dragons. It matters not. Whether in the fall of Sundabar or your paltry War of the Chosen, they all died. Every. last. one of them. You saved no one. You defended nothing. Your efforts, an utter waste. Your defeat here was but another step towards my final victory. And if you wish to press on to see my victory firsthand, you’ll need lay all those whose blood lays on your hands low once more, murderer.”   Standing in a ruined courtyard of Sundabar as it falls in the War of the Silver March, the Chosen Three are nearly overrun with the raised undead. Only by laying low dozens of those they sought to save in another life can they press on to the final challenge on their way to Supreme Throne.  

The Execution of Vorothruun

The fall of Sundabar falls away and you are dragged into the flow of time. The sensation is familiar now, but you feel the air wafting pass you tighten around you, constricting. The light of the vortex itself seems to shrink around you, closing in.   Your senses return in full and you see a pair of blue dragonborn stand atop the gallows of Avraathe. Their hands are bound, their mouths gagged. You can feel the scratch of each thread of rope, trapping your hands and legs and choking around your neck, a noose holding the dragonborn up with their toes just touching the crate beneath their boots. Empty fields before you, for no one has come to witness your death. A distant crow caws, a vulture circles overhead. Before you, standing between the two dragonborn set to hang, an armored figure of death waits. Whisps of smoke rise from an acid-green blade of necrotic energy. His eyes glow with unnatural, eerie light. In the corroded, faded to greyscale armor of Avraathe, Lautrec prepares to render judgment and justice. Above the rampart, Cyric watches with feigned interest.   ”I’ve wondered about this day many times over the years.” Cyric says where he hovers above the rampart. His tone is softer, thoughtful. Reminescent, even. “Had Ragnalla not answered your call. Had your brother not interfered, murdering his own, the High Templar Lautrec. Had you not escaped and made your way westward… How many small steps on this journey might have led us all to different destinations. Maybe you would have stayed in Avraathe, preventing all of the death and destruction that would follow, the darkness allowed to fester and spread in your absence. Maybe I wouldn’t have ascended, and millions would still be sacrificial lambs to the slaughter of the bitch queen’s insatiable hunger. Well, fortunate for all of them, we will never know. What was it they all shouted to you that day, all those years ago? Ah, that’s right. "Traitor. Heathen. Oathbreaker." All still ring true, do they not? Though, there are no gods left to hear their cries. Go and do likewise, faithful followers. Die now or prove yourselves against death itself once more.”   The Chosen Three contend with a Death Knight set to execute past versions of the dragonborn brothers. Only in slaying the executioner while preserving the captives do they find their way through the timescape.  

Supreme Throne

Leaving behind the gallows of Avraathe, you feel yourself pulled into the maelstrom of time once more. You fall through swirling bursts of color and light and waves of universal energy, weightless. Gradually, the light fades, the shadows extending, desaturated, until you are falling through only darkness. And then, you aren’t falling at all.   As you open your eyes, you find yourself in a foreign landscape of greyscale wastes. It is quiet, the nearest sound your heart beating against your rib cage and the blood pumping in your ears. You taste death on the wind. It is as if the world itself is decaying to dust, like morning dew evaporating in a blistering heat. You stand on the balcony of multi-spired cathedral, the entire structure a pale, bleached bone, the peaks still towering overhead, silhouetted by a black sun.   Before you, the self-proclaimed Salvation of Truth, Cyric sits atop his Supreme Throne, where he awaits Ragnalla’s challenge for the fate of the universe. But in the meantime, he is more than willing to contend with you, a warm-up for the real contest.