- Where has Barney been this whole time??
- its very nice, white walls
- A garden??
- Most of the planter boxes have been dead for a long time with wilted plants
- Large dead tree
- Barney is laying on the ground
- Stone table with rusted wares
- Barney is surrounded by ephemeral beings lounging around and speaking Elvish
- Weird dialect of Elvish
- Theyre making small talk
- Barney cant remember the past few days, hours, weeks
- Remembers being in The Colosseum
- Kidnapped by light (white people?)
- A man in soiled cloth draped over armor walks into the garden
- He has a perfect smile
- “greetings guests, honored guests, and our new guest” (point at Barney)
- “I am who you have been seeking this whole time” he says placing a warm hand on Barney’s shoulder
- This is Barney’s patron
- the man is very warm due to a ‘side effect’ of being a “Child of Divine Light”
- He points at the stone table with rusted wares and offers Barney a grape
- He plucks what seems to be a withered rasin and hands it to Barney
- Barney wants to leave but says that Barney’s friends have been trespassing in the city
- Said friends slew the “foul” crimrose hydra
- The man managed to get the party to retreat through violence
- Barney claims that the party is their subordinates
- The man tries to get Barney to convert us
- he calls Altaeum ugly
- Barney’s friends are “marked” apparently?
- The marks are hard to see?
- We eminate something?
- One that can twist their flesh, they have a constant sickly glow
- The bloodblade (Altaeum) was marked a long time ago??
- The rest emit something? “void to look at”
- Pierce says I have bad memory, hes wrong and sucks
- he wonders whats happened to Galenia since he was last there
- Renault ascended the throne
- He doesnt seem to know about The Reaping??
- He wants The Book??
- Nobody knows of The Book but “Him”
- “Its hard for beings with one life to grasp the…”
- The man asks about the “Rose Demon” and his lineage?
- None of his “Crimson Kin” are left
- He responds to the title of The Emperor
- The Emperor tried to control The Crimson Kin but failed
- The Crimson Kin pray to The Emperor’s brother
- “Divine Authority Personified, I am the dawn, the eternal creation”, in some ways is the Lightbringer??
- The most important thing is to get everyone out of Beleolanum
- He wants Barney to get him The Book and The Key
- The Eclipse Key
- With both of them, he can return The Empire to its glory
- He had a predecessor?
- His power is limited to where his predecessors placed marks
- He does not know tools, the rituals or the rites
- He wants The Key to get power
- Barney asks about the The Reaping
- “It has occurred because of an imbalance in things, an imbalance in divine authority, an imbalance which I aim to correct in due time”
- The Emperor wants dominion over everything under the sun
- This would vanquish the being under the night
- The Emperor wants Barney to find a man
- He conjures an illusion of a distinctive haggard old man
- The man may or may not be alive in the current year
- Bring his body or his head
- He conjures and hands Barney a coin of pure light (The Emperor’s Coin)
- Hot, almost burning, to the touch
- Toss it in a bowl of pure water to bring Barney back to the
- The Red Sun
- “I bet he came up with it”
- “It is divine hypocrisy to refer to a red sun. That which is birthed in crimson is anything but”
- Barney mentions the Red Sun Note
- Threatens Barney that if his service wavers, he will be killed
- Barney awakens in a large temple of some kind
- He walks down through The Colosseum and into the plaza with The Small Chapel
- He meets up with the rest of the party
- He tells the party he met The Emperor
- We leave and pass by the plaza with the crimrose hydra
- We get outside and find that we gained a horse??
- Jørgen knows what the key is (he asks the voices in his head)
- The voices want to find it?
- Jørgen smells roses, theres a dank smell
- He hears a voice croak
- “A visitor”
- The voices get handsy
- They want Jørgen to bring the key to The Lord over the Night
- We head off to The Ost Lands
- We begin to head to Garenbridge
- We pass by Goodsinn and consider stealing the barrel again
- We arrive at Garenbridge
- A man armed with a falchion guards the gates of Garenbridge and tries to extract a toll from us (3GP each)
- We get a room in “The Troll”
- Some men are brawling about some man named Jerry?
- A woman behind the bar (Lanth)
- Some lost travelers who are looking around
- The Troll seems to be built into the birdges around Garenbridge
- Altaeum gets taken to a “Real Magic Shop”
- The walls are covered in messages (it seems to be blood)
- There are men inside that stare at Altaeum when he walks in
- They dont buy magic things, they teach
- There are some cages with people in them
- They are not there consentually and they seem to be starved?
- This place takes people
- Altaeum threatens the people surrounding him (intimidating the traffickers)
- He gets to know them really well, like really really well. Like he knows their insides too (sexually maybe)
- We sleep
- Jørgen heads to go find leather workers
- Everyone joins him bc they are very curious
- We find Goldskins’ Goods
- Jørgen hands them a wolf pelt we got from Session 4 that had attacked with the power of the moon
- They charge Jørgen 150GP for making armor
- He also hands them a piece of paper to write on it
- Jørgen wants to get a live person to feed to the voices in his head so he can cast Divination
- Altaeum tries to become a grieving widow (buying a black veil)
- He buys a leather mask to hide his face because hes into weird fetish shit
- We find a Hedge Wizard named Vertan (a folk wizard)
- His store smells burnt (ozone burnt)
- He doesn’t have eyebrows
- We ask about Kerlan
- Apparently the Ostmen have been preoccupied with something for some time
- He knows about Eudes
- Bit of an off fish
- Met Eudes a while back and mentioned celestial dooms 3-4 times
- Eudes is a star seer (which makes him special)
- He can read the magic of the stars
- He can predict exact dates
- The Astra Lyceum is a school for reading the stars
- Its a bit of a legend that may or may not exist
- Where star seers learn their magic (they have to be special)
- Somewhere in the White Gate Mountains
- Almost Two Decades Ago there was a falling star?
- There’s a witch in Greenmont
- He knows about Bug General
- They abandoned their humanity in service of some dark power
- They wear their armor like clothes
- We ask about The Red Sun
- Two Decades Ago Eudes ran by mentioning it and about the birth of some great power
- We ask about The Eclipse Key
- He tries to sell us some stuff
- We talk to Lanth who seems to know something about The Eclipse Key
- She’s kinda mad that Vertan told us anything about it
- She has clients of some kind
- If she told us about The Key she would die (she seems to imply)
- We push her about it, she pushes back
- She unleashes the city guard on us
- We Calm Emotions on them
- We continue questioning Lanth about it
- She keeps a point of communication between The Order and Tribes of Ostmen
- There was an odd fellow who needed to keep in contact with Ostmen
- Might’ve been Duke Ganelon
- This was Two Decades Ago
- Some man told her to deliver a letter to the Steward of Greenmont in 5 years time
- This date was a bit before last month
- She was rewarded with a hefty amount of gold
- We ask about The Order
- They have packages
- Some strange man dropped off a long package that clattered strangely
- Handed to some Old Shaman
- He spoke perfect Common
- This is the man The Emperor was looking for
- He went East
- Had a very big book
- She is still holding onto a sealed package with Duke Ganelon’s seal
- It’ll be delivered very soon?
- Was delivered by a man wearing a covered tabard with a logo she couldn’t see
- She hands us the letter
- We ask about counterfeiters
- Gimson (lives by the docks)
- She keeps a point of communication between The Order and Tribes of Ostmen
- We split the party and agree to meet a mile past the end of the bridge
- Jørgen heads to the docks to the counterfeiter and find a replacement for the letter
- Jørgen gets cornered by some guards, wildshapes into a rat to escape
- He finds “Gimson’s Fine Goods” (a large warehouse)
- He are able to pay him to open the letter, let us read the contents, and then close it again
- He is able to carefully slowly open the letter
- Guards knock on the door, Gimson rats Jørgen out but he escapes as an owl
- The rest of us grab the horses and rush out of the city
- We manage to get out of the city just as the alarm sounds and we manage to escape the city
- Jørgen heads to the docks to the counterfeiter and find a replacement for the letter
- The party regroups and we read the letter
Lanth's Note
All is well. Our arising will be successful. He lies in the palm of my hand. I will bring him toward Halfhausen in 4 days time.
- A note held by Lanth
- Sealed with Duke Ganelon’s seal
- There is a date on the letter, it was written 6 days ago (the 4th of this current season), shortly after the actual day of reaping.
- it vaguely lines up with the early day of The Red Sun event
- We see a sign
- Saints Grave is closer
- Harts Home
- We decide to head toward Kerlam’s Crossing