Theodore’s portal was blue and black, new portal is green and orange
Edwin steps out of the portal holding a katana longer than any of us
Marches out with a pale woman with a gold crown and three aquamarine gemstones, this is Queen Primrose
She’s a lil short, somewhat young, exasperated face, out of breath, doesn’t know what’s going on
Sarah: “Wait are you the queen lol”
Edwin smirks like perry the platypus
Feel a massive burst of wind, the castle descends slowly and lands
The queen comes over, “please, accompany us for a banquet”
Notice a bunch of soldiers coming over with a metal cage plated with some weird wood
They take Theodore’s body and plop him in the cage
A foot soldier walks to Yul “can we have that please” holding a bucket
Yul: I’m keeping the head
We have this procedure that we devised under the behest of Astrid and Horace talking about a few things that might happen, we’re probably gonna cremate this body
Queen floats backwards and flips down a drawbridge
Bloo always smells like strawberry yogurt
Seliph and Horace is carrying Astrid, who has fainted after Bloo went to ask them about having Theodore’s corpse
Sarah informs Seliph that she has delivered the love letter
Some shiggles after, Seliph and Horace march off, Seliph: wtf
Dude: Yul please put the head in the bucket
Sarah: Bro we wanna keep this as a trophy you’re undermining what we did as heroes
Edwin approaches Bloo
Bloo hides behind Sarah and her horse
Edwin is supposed to be an elf
Edwin wants to apologize because didn’t realize Bloo was Sorean
The blade is 6ft long
Edwin recommended us for accolades
Edwin sighs and waddles away
Yul looks down and has only tufts of hair in her hand
Yul runs back to the castle to get her head
We all take the drawbridge back to the castle
We are being hailed as heroes, people cheer
We are escorted into the banquet hall
Big, lots and lots of people, big tables
One amused guy holding a chalice, looks over at us, “congrats you guys are the stars of tonight after all look what you have done we’re all very happy and grateful so please take these seats”
He gestures to center table
Please take those seats, Astrid will join you once she recovers
Sarah attempts to sit in the queen’s chair, the man stands up and goes “ma’am your seat is over there unless you’re here to approach me and chat”
Sarah attempts to BS that she is the queen’s daughter
The color of his eyes change, they’re darker brown and now lighter hazel, looks over at us and says “you are quite entertaining”
Sarah attempts to cast Zone of Truth on him, but it kind of fades away, it does not work
Sarah: “Are you a liar”
“No I just don’t think I need to answer to your inquiries”
“What’s your name”
“Ezra, but Duke Navil”
He’s the prime minister lmao
“Sarah you’re quite entertaining, how about this, the queen isn’t here”
He snaps his finger, and Sarah is sitting in the chair right next to him, the queen’s chair
“That’s a lot of fun, don’t worry the queen won’t be offended”
“This can be one of your rewards since I find you all entertaining”
“I didn’t make it back in time for the fight, I apologize as prime minister”
He warps us back to our original spot
“Especially Atlas, he’s kinda stuck up,” Navil does a hand chopping neck motion, that guy’s so old he’s been here for ages”
The duke is the youngest one here
No yogurt, however Bloo walks around
Horace comes back, “How are y’all”
See some other familiar people, Hugo, Seliph, but Astrid is absent
Nim gives Seliph a jar of milk
Seliph: “Look at y’all, y’all got the big center seats, center of attention”
A meek woman goes up next to them, and Tethis
Tethis: trust me duke navil is already drunk, everyone else in the guild is gonna be sitting over there, come say hi afterwards, I hear the court has some speeches for you prepared
Hear some clinking of the glass, the entire row of chairs at the front is filled but the queen
The queen enters wearing a flowing teal dress, kind of poofy, as if she went to change, she walks out, hear her heels, she takes a spoon and glass *tink tink tink*
Hello everyone, brave warriors and soldiers, all of you today congratulations on surviving, we had many perish due to the wicked calamity, and to honor all their lives, please, a quick toast, in celebration of those who perished fighting the resurrection of a god
We are fortunate to have many brave warriors, particularly the group of people sent to save Astrid, please you five, please rise
As the queen, I will formally acknowledge all five of you for your bravery, please come up to the stage, and I will present you with some medallions
She’s holding five shining gold medallions
She takes out a sword and knights Sarah formally
It’s a formality for receiving the medallion
I honor you as a honored hero of Fusilla
We all stand in line, everyone please, the heroes who stand in line, please
Everyone starts cheering and clapping
Please take a seat
Astrid is still nowhere to be found, but the queen says some nice things about her
And now I hand the stage to Ezra
Ezra: I should’ve done more and I wish I was here but how unsightly that these five heroes have nowhere to stay, so my present, your own properties in the Opal district
We all get our own personal flats
“Whenever you are in town, just know you are always welcome”
Duke Corven von Aquarion, the grand treasurer, a halfling, he waddles down
Even greater than the gift of our peace and prosperity, especially one member of you five, has brought me great joy
My gift to you is to sponsor your yogurt brand as Fusilla’s official dessert
My gift to you, in addition to some money, is to have government backed dealings with your yogurt brand, I will handle this, I will see that the ingredients are sourced properly
He swears it will be funded well and taste well and not taste like metal
And of course, here’s five jars of strawberry yogurt
Once we make it back to Parli, please come see us, I will hand you some additional paperwork for licensing, and your pay
Everyone gives Bloo the strawberry yogurt, and Bloo finishes them and gives the jars to Yul
See a tall pale man, a human, white hair, an interesting jaw line, who stands up and says
Thank you without a doubt that given the magical prowess that it was the magical education
Talks about how amazing magical schools in Fusilla are
Someone goes up, tall woman, red hair, slightly muscular, it’s cheryl dvalir, as the royal ambassador, i would like to present with one last gift, present formal passports with additional perks, you are very much welcome, to ease your transportation costs, I would like to present some passports with great political power in Hyritia, this should make transportation cheaper, especially to Fusilla, your fares for domestic sea travel is completely free
Going to Hyritia will be significantly cheaper
One chair missing, the queen is looking around like “is she coming”
See in the corner, two woman walk in, one is Astrid, one is Iris Galfraun, plops Astrid at our table, asks for a round of applause for Astrid
Hello I am a powerful mage, Iris Galfraun, studied with Lady Novis in her early days, I was making sure she had a speedy recovery, she was insistent on coming to this banquet, pardon my tardiness
As the luminary, I would like to formally recognize the prowess of these individuals
I wish you all speedy recoveries
I have additional rewards afterwards
Smell garlic bread, see smores
Wide variety of stuff
Lyra goes for the hot chocolate and smores
Astrid: Yul if you participate in my experiment I will give you the head as reward
I have some questions about the nature of things
Astrid agrees to pull some strings to get the head
Astrid: I have some ink, lemme study his head first and then we can desecrate his head
Some reports indicate that his thoughts weren’t allowed to be read so I need to study his brain
Astrid: you know you don’t have a brain right
Knocks on yul’s head, hollow empty sound
The creator of the doll ultimately put her life, she was blessed by the god of life and was blessed with sentience
The OG Yul may have put something in Yul’s head
As we finish dinner, we land in parli, safe and sound
More Rewards!!
We go to Iris’s office
With the promise of magical stuff, my present to you is information, because if anyone can find it it’s you guys
I heard there were some ruins found, some of the gods, I noticed on the way here, I felt the presence of a couple of fans, I believe those were treasurers, you might also know that Seliph himself, he went and found the sun god’s blade, but it’s very hard to find these days because of how much civilizations have kept these secrets, as one of the member of The Council of Archmages, so keep this on the down low, I heard there were some ruins for various gods some are on paths to cities but others are deep in mountains, but if you stay within this province, you can find some fun treasurers in a few areas, I’ll mark it on this map, so it may not be completely accurate, but we found residuals of magic across these lands
I know that Hugo was in Everholden when he encountered Theodore
She was researching with the council of archmages, for reasons we do not fully know, they are also very interested because they want to collect or know locations of ancient magical artifacts
These are the ones Iris has clearance to know
I do know that it is quite common to, in the areas of Ridgepeak, probably because of influence from Hyritia and strong beliefs about economics, near Ridgepeak and Havenridge, there may be worship of the god of fortune, if I was to be more speculative, given the nature of Order and the more rigid nature of Ice, it’s possible that Lucht’s shrine is in Frostwind (God of Order)
It’s hard to get out without teleportation
Sarah used to live somewhere around Frostwind, Sarah is from Celestial Peak, it’s very cheap, but the quality of life is pretty low
The cold is bearable it’s harsh, the people there are very accustomed
There’s no guarantee these shrines will contain things similar to the fans or blade
But I can say with certainty they won’t have mirror shards
Astrid whispers in Yul’s ear
Yul: uh oh
Yul gets a pat on the back from Iris as Astrid takes her away
We follow
We walk to Astrid’s office, she’s writing furiously with a half-drunken mana potion
Astrid
I kindly ask that the four of you that are not Yul please step out for a moment
This’ll be fast
She closes the door
Astrid approaches Yul, is slightly taller, she puts her hand out towards your chest, and Yul starts to glow, it’s the shard
And as she glows, you see another shard, the one that you took from theodore, she takes it out of its casing and she just says “I promise- no you cannot lick it, yul stand still”
Astrid puts on some goggles, “I’m sorry this isn’t my specialty but things should go well”
She takes the shard, careful not to touch it, she puts on a glove-like thing, it’s like a leather glove that glows a weird color
She grabs the shard and she says “hold still, this is only gonna hurt a lil, weellll, maybe”
She punches you in the chest while holding the shard
Yul doesn’t feel like it’s tearing through your flesh, but it goes through her and there are now two shards inside of Yul, the two shards snap and fuse together into one
As she takes out her hand and glove, there’s no blood, Yul falls down onto her knees, and Astrid opens the door
“The shards need to be handled carefully, I had an inkling ”
Her powers are linked to the shards, but she has an interesting property, her body is able to suppress the effects of the shards when they’re inside of the core inside of her chest
However from the report that Sarah had an interesting encounter when she licked it,
Astrid: “she should not be allowed to make physical contact with it but if it’s in her core it’s okay”
Astrid attempts to punch Nim, who dodges it
Astrid punches Sarah, everything wearing the glove phases through Sarah
This glove is something I specially requested for a few reasons, it’s quite nice, it’s nice to be able to reach through someone to cast a spell
The glove only phases through living creatures, if it has soul
Yul has an artificial soul
We might’ve defeated the order for now, but Grimnir is still alive, not to mention how there have been portals popping up everywhere, unfortunately I think more extraplanars have been entering
People have been disappearing but weird creatures have been appearing
There have been some more aberrations spawning
Haven’t seen beholders or mindflayers yet, we haven’t seen anything too bad, saw some slaads
Seliph was here a mo ago, he’s headed back to Vasara, he offered to me to come with, but I had to decline for the time being
May need to go to Hyritia, guilds summoning their strongest member
Have we heard of “Cloakers”
There have been outbreaks, Seliph hasn’t left for Vasara yet, said something about needing to get revenge on something
Asks Astrid about the teleport glyph that was found in Violet’s vault
Astrid: Sorean I know you aren’t the same fighter and your memories aren’t as good, I still have your sword, I know we just left there, if you want it, I think you should have it, you’re gonna need this, hands me a small silver key, that should unlock the case it’s in
I’m not sure when they’ll let you in the castle, it will always be there
Sarah do you happen to know of any creatures that can, y’know how beholders have a weird ability where their gaze is antimagic happens, have you heard of a creature that can do that that doesn’t necessarily have eyes
Creatures with innate antimagic ability?
Astrid: I know a bit about your oath
Seliph asked me about a creature I’ve never heard of before, but it’s been terrorizing Celestial Peak, there are weird depictions of it, it looks like a thin bony chimera almost
Rumors of creature that screams magic roar, nullifies magic where it screams
I’m sure Seliph knows more but he didn’t run into it, he’s careful to avoid it
Seliph wants to slay it but doesn’t want to do it alone
Seliph wants to take it on with Sarah as a test of revenge of some sort
We should talk to Seliph, be quick, he might leave in the morning
He’s staying at the same hotel Hugo is staying at
Astrid: I want to give some help, gives a gold pocket watch, plz don’t sell it, when the time comes you might need this, I bestowed some of my magic into this
It channels some of my time manipulation abilities, I tried to make it powerful, I broke a few, not the best at creating magic items
If nothing else it appears to be able to tell time pretty accurately
It’s better than our wall clocks lol, doesn’t need to be recalibrated or retuned
I do have a little bit of surprise in there if the need arises
You can always come visit
Aberration not a beholder, didn’t look like it had a face
Idk it’s affiliation
Seliph, Hotel de Aqua
We go look for Seliph, we go towards the Hotel de Aqua, run into Hugo
Glad to see you survived
Seliph is in the room two floors above, I’m in a rush, guess what they didn’t cancel classes
I have to grade papers, but Nim, there’s some things I want to discuss about new discoveries in the archaeological world, I was peer reviewing a paper and wanted to run it by you
Nim: can’t take undergrad children with me, too stupid to protect
Hugo scurries off
We try to open Seliph’s door
Seliph: AH NOT THE FANBOYS
Sarah asks Seliph about the aberration with the antimagic scream
Sara remember that convo we had about the thing that killed Allie, I think it’s the same thing
