Session 12

After finishing off the remaining imperial convoy, the party looted the remains. A few pistols, spears and a musket were recovered from the bodies, and Thane Boykos was able to salvage the Aetherium power core. xgBoost Protocol v28.7.2 also discovered an imperial data log inside of the convoy vehicle.   Returning to Mammon on Mastodon Ridge, he says a prayer to grant them safe passage on there journey to Methuselah Grove, a place where the party may enter into the Feywild. Arriving at the grove, they waited until sunset as Mammon instructed them and ate from the fruit that blossomed from the desert cacti. The fruit of the tree tested the inner mettle of the party, but ultimately they had each passed and were allowed through the veil and into the Feywild.

Upon entering the Fey Wild, they were greeted by a procession of Fey singing ancient songs of magic and heading to a grove in the North. There they met Laurel, the Lilac Queen, the Archfey who rules of this region of the Feywild, known as the Lilac Court. She entreats the party to share with her their stories, taking exceptional interested in Frostwarden, referring to him as the "arbiter of the first songs". She also felt empathetic for Kell Saleur, whom she had recognized as a peaceful Druid, and from her fey magic she granted him a hand made of vines to replace the one he had lost long ago.

Laurel, the Lilac Queen, revealed to the party the true origins of magic and the hidden history of Avalon. Long before kingdoms or spelljammers, all life and magic flowed from the Anima Mundi, a cosmic World Soul whose energy traveled through the Ley Lines. At the center of this network stood the Living Gate inside the sun Kagoma, regulating the cycle of souls and magic.   Avalon’s ancient druids eventually discovered these Ley Lines—led by Merlin the first Sage, whose research ignited the Arcane Revolution, birthing modern magic and Magitech. Under King Arthur, this was a golden age. But after Arthur’s death, his son Mordred seized power, turning magic into a weapon and forcing Merlin to forge terrible arcane constructs. Mordred’s greatest atrocity was the destruction of the Titan world Oberon: a catastrophic solar blast powered through the Living Gate. The attack shattered the Gate, destabilizing the Ley Lines and tearing open rifts between Avalon and the Feywild.   Caught in the rupture, Laurel’s father—Gawain, the Green Knight—was twisted into the corrupted King of Thorns, driving Laurel to flee and establish her court on Orpheus. From the Gate’s fragments arose the crystalline Shardminds, but Mordred hunted them to extinction. Merlin attempted to save the last of them by creating the Wardens, magitech bodies built to house surviving Shardmind cores.   Laurel revealed that Frostwarden is one of these beings—a living fragment of the Gate itself, once known as Sereval Threnn, and possibly crucial to restoring what was lost.   After Mordred’s tyranny, Merlin fled the inner system, raising the barrier known as Merlin's Belt to escape the Empire. Without the Gate, the cycle of souls decayed. In the centuries that followed, the Empire learned to bind souls through Shackles: when shackled people die, their souls are stolen instead of returning to the Anima Mundi. This ongoing theft is slowly poisoning the Ley Lines and unraveling reality.   Laurel warned that the balance of the system is failing—and that the party, bound to both fate and the paths between worlds, may play a decisive role in healing the Anima Mundi, confronting the Empire’s corruption, and perhaps even redeeming the lost King of Thorns.