SE03 : EP05 - Over the Horizon

A lazy start to a meeting of the Meridians is upset when Stratos shoves Daphix through the door, booming about him putting himself together. He is stinking drunk and after getting picked-up, Orwyn casts less restoration to sober him up.   Stratos bruskly pushes through a mission that has the simple task of collecting recruits on a training mission on a world cut off during the crystal crisis. It's a nice, neat butter run. He ends by informing that job need five, and the Daphix will be signaling, so he can start pulling his weight again. They open the The Oculus and head through.   Five people awake in stone cells with no memory of who they are. Surprisingly the doors are unlocked. They open as they come into the prison hallways. The group tries and get their bearings and find out who each other are. Eventually, the investigate the area, finding a staircase and a way out.   The party stumbles into the daylight in an open clearing. The door the group exits from is set into a hill. As they look around, there are a number of these small hills with embedded doorways around them. A chest next to the door is picked open contains a gear to equip themselves after sorting out what kit they should have.   Once they gear up, they give each other names. An agile bow weilding female they call Lightfoot. A purple robed lady elf with lavander hair they call Violet. Equiped with a short sword and cross-bow the lockpicking male halfling they name Jack. Under a tangle of ginger braids the stout battle axe weilding lady dwarf they called Red.   Last of the party was a human bearing a holy symbol on his chest, causing the group to ask him to pray to his god. Sheepishly he takes to his knees and begins to reach out. Like a bolt of lightning in his head, his deity answers.   They discover a god called The Timekeeper answers and give insight to him. His name is Hideo Mura, and he tells the group that they must seek a great hall to escape from this place. He emphasizes they are not from here.   They start finding their way by a faint trail to Lightfoot uncovers. And as the day wears on, they begin to forage and try to find food. Violet discovers her spellbook and within it her name, Jassin. Lightfoot finds she can create good berries. After eating, they set up a camp and assign shifts for the night watch.   In the night, things are unnaturally quiet. It’s as if the world had been muted. After gathering water and food and keep on the trail they had been following. A buzzing, flapping sounds announce the presence of creatures — three reptilian flying monsters fighting with four smaller ground instincts. The clang of armor alerts them, and a fight breaks out. They brawl with the pateradon and strigs. Lightfoot is stuck by one of the insects proboscis who begins to suck her blood. Jassin dispatches three of them with a magic missile. In the end, they kill all the foes.   Continuing along the trail, they hear several pairs of footfalls. The party hides a five humanoids approach. A skinny human shouts out in a thick Irish accent, “Oh look! There they all. Hullo!”   The Meridians try in vain to convince the party that they are here to take them back to Horizon. Jack has a ring fished out his pockets by Ryder. Once the ring is on his had Jack, now Norwick’s, head his eyes widen. His mind is filled with the voice of his signal. After convincing the party to follow, the Meridians lead them back to the portal   Once they arrive, the seam opens and one by one pass through the portal. As the final adventurer exits, the endless plains appear to fade into nothingness as the training plane resets for its next program.   Epilogue The party was sent in by their signal to this proving ground to pass a simulated mission. But when the crystals go green, they were caught, and this caused the memory loss and the strange behavior of the plane. Now that trainees come home, they are not welcomed back to the guild, not due to failing the mission, but due to their amnesia. They end up at Meridian’s gate earning the dubious nickname the Butter Runners.   Off-Screen Daphix finds the link of the signal rings causes the multi-faceted mind of Yith’Airézen’Eñahkais to play the therapist. Yith innocently tries to engage him to talk about his frustrations over Satrgazer. Eñahkais engages his anger. She tries to make him burn out his hate, by coaxing him through what he would do to Stargazer in every grizzly detail. And then the level headed Airézen intimidates him into pulling himself together and act as a lord. It ends with Yith pleading with him to let his friends help him and share what he is going through as they want to help. Daphix started turning his mind back to the moment and getting himself back together. He thinks about how the other meridians are just as frustrated and angry as he is, but they are getting back to work. But in one last flash of spite, he "shares" the pain of projecting visceral highlights from his long year into the little changeling's mind. Causing Yith to strain during the mission to keep Eñahkais defensive nature from overwhelmed her body.