2025-06-13 Metagalapa Rescued
General Summary
Continuing Combat
A shape in the orange smoke coalesces into a Blightfog Elemental (and rolls Join Battle).
Hidden-by-radiance is badly wounded, but focuses past the pain to score an impressive hit on Varakleion.
Fortifier fails to pin Varakleion, the tri-sided while pleading with him that fighting for the Blight won’t win Autocthon’s approval.
(Fortifier is attempting to lean on Varakleion’s Minor Intimacy of wanting to proving himself worthy, but comes up against an opposing Major Intimacy about the Blight.)
Varakleion’s eyes flash with the sickened orange of the Blight. He laughs in Fortifier’s face and states that the Blight is not a corruption but the very opposite.
The Ar-Duke attacks strike against Varakleion’s armor.
Varakleion slithers out of Fortifier’s grip.
Stelsor stops trying to tunnel to Mana-Tui and resurfaces to help finish off the fight.
Dreamflower calls in her own elemental of air/steam to clean the air.
Blightfog elemental spins into an orange tornado.
Fortifier swings at Varakleion with his giant gauntlets while also interposing his body to protect Hidden.
Ar-Duke continues to pepper Varakleion with attacks.
Dreamflower gathers glowing energy to fire a Glorious Exalted Bolt
Fortifier clasps his fists together and swings low to knock Varakleion down.
From the ground, Varakleion mutters a curse and then activates something that teleports him away (Hurry on Home).
The fight shifts to attacking the Blightfog elemental which is still here.
Upon defeating the Blightfog elemental, Dreamflower uses Ghost-eating Technique. It’s unhealthy, as it was a being of techno-magical cancer, but Dreamflower consumes the elemental.
Post-combat
Stelsor and Fortifier begin digging to reach Mana-Tui.
Dreamflower examines the tower and studies the Blight present.
The tower is a manse of some sort, but doesn’t seem to have created a
Dreamflower questions Hidden about if this corruption is common in Autochthonia.
Alas, as long as any mortals have known, this creeping wrongness has plagued the god-body. Autochthonian tradition names it the Blight.
Dreamflower asks about how they can cleanse the area.
Hidden says the Blight has been cleansed before but it can take a lot of effort. For Dreamflower to reverse this single-handedly would be a mighty feat, though Solars are known for this.
Scene: Dig-dug
Stelsor and Fortifier reach a tunnel/cavern and see Metagalapa inside it.
Hawkriders spot them and seem excited.
Fortifier spots some of the Blight coloration on walls of this cavern, but it hasn’t exactly reached Metagalapa yet.
There’s also a gigantic tree here. Fortifier recognizes the tree as a great tree from the far East of Creation.
Celestial Overseer Condordat shows an Elemental Air connection to Metagalapa and the great tree is drawing upon the crystalline surface of the Orbulin.
Hawkriders come speak to us
They mention that it feels to them like they’ve been here a month, even though we left Creation
Stelsor suggests Metagalapa use its essence cannons to blast its way out of the cavern. Some are in favor until a Metagalapan points out this could cause the cavern to collapse on them.
A Metagalapan wishes the Ar-Duke was here because he’s been able to shrink the mountain to move it through small spaces before.
We tell them that the Ar-Duke came with us and a hawkrider goes back up through our tunnel to get him.
Fortifier asks them about the great tree.
They say it was here when they arrived and there’s a geyser of lava that is erupting like fireworks next to the tree, putting out an oppressive heat.
We infer that Varakleion was trying to capture powerful sources of elemental power for some sort of working.
Kidnapping the Metagalapan inhabitants was mostly an accident. However, once done, Varakleion felt he couldn’t release them because it would reveal him ahead of his plans.
The Ar-Duke reaches the cavern.
His artifact armor has an audible reaction to being here, but he does something and it stops.
He is confident he can get Metagalapa out of here.
He expresses surprise at seeing the tree, mentions he hasn’t seen one like that in a long time.
Stelsor and the Ar-Duke go to see Mana-Tui. Fortifier investigates the tree.
Scene: Top-side in the tower
Dreamflower and Hidden discern that the tower is acting as a focus point for all the Blight inside of the Orbulin.
The brass tower has concentrated the Blight but it isn’t really spreading on the surface where the holy symbols are.
Down below the plane, below the symbols, the Blight is spreading more.
Scene: Cavern
The Ar-Duke removes his armor and begins meditating to shrink the mountain. Meanwhile, Mana-Tui moves to the center of the mountain and seems to start dancing.
The process begins to shrink the island and 15 minutes later they have moved it back to the surface by the tower.
Fortifier examines the tree and finds a large colony of aphids drinking the sap of the gigantic tree.
The aphids are the size of a house with jaws the size of a horse’s.
The aphids don’t seem mechanical or Blighted, so they likely came along with the tree from Creation.
Fortifier walks up and lifts one of the aphids up, disrupting its feeding. (Ten-Ox Meditation)
The aphid begins kicking wildly to get free and then goes right back to its spot on the tree.
Fortifier recalls having seen things like this long ago in the far East. It’s said that Sextes Jylis once charmed a horde of giant aphids to attack a bunch of Raksha.
Even though there’s more Blight here than on the surface, it hasn’t really reached the tree yet.
Scene: Tower room
Dreamflower is examining the tower room.
The tower is seeming less like a constructed building and more like an artifact or flying vehicle.
At the center, is a platform where it looks like something like a throne may have sat.
She spots, off to a side, a large leather chair with a control yoke.
Hidden-by-Radiance and Dreamflower move the chair to the center platform and seem to reconnect it to the essence lines of the tower.
Dreamflower sits in the chair and notices the symbol we’ve seen in the Nexus manses, the one that seems to indicate spending a mote.
With a pull on the yoke, the entire Orbulin moves upward.
She immediately stops and sends an Infallible Messenger to call for Stelsor and Fortifier to meet her here.
Comments