RPG Campaigns

Giraine Summaries

Hi,

From last night's short session:

Miguel and Maugis sprinted downhill to the docks and used a Phantom Sound spell to call for Kogag, who helped them into his aeropod just in time to use the dark magics in there (channeling troll goddess Xiola Umbar's healing power) to stabilize Ahappi. The Fiend's venom was terrible: rather than just paralyze you, it left you convulsing and twitching, your bodies out of control-Ahappi was hyperventilating, heart stopping and starting, coughing blood and vomiting bile, Boamund's leg was moving in unpredictable ways or just frozen stiff, and Fraud had voided himself while his legs and bowels spasmed. Ahappi nearly died there; seconds longer and his organs would have failed entirely. But he was still unconscious and Kogag insisted that he must remain in the aeropod until the energies there would let him recover.

Back on the ruined hilltop, Fraud was fashioning a sled out of a kite shield, strapping it to his legs. Boamund stood watch and quickly spotted a spirit manifesting on one side of the keep's ruins. It was an old figure of a Jrusteli man in robes, holding a book or scroll. Boamund tried invoking his shield's anti-undead power but this did nothing. The man soon pronounced a poem: “The night battle, a fermented death. Hark! The island shines like the delight of fluttering rapture. The crusade calls gold for blood.

Serpent lingers in the shadow of luscious abandonment. Oh, no! The sunrise ponders wild ecstasy. The sunset bleeds well-deserved sorrow.”

Which meant little to you but did not sound good. He watched you as you slid or hobbled quickly downhill and through the shadows-and-lights region of the fort area. No enemies had been stirring so soon you were all united within the aeropod.

Kogag asked for your tale of what you'd uncovered and pondered it. He thought, as you'd guessed, that the spirit's poem was not a Purple Prophets' one but something else; he'd consider it more. And when Miguel showed him the sack with the odd black device in it, he was visibly shocked or disturbed and, calming himself, explained that this was a device to manipulate magics, minds and men-a “doubly-cursed” Mostali device corrupted by Chaos. And his Arkati powers gave him the key insight that this device was corrupted by the power of the true enemy that hid behind the false face of the Purple Prophets/Poets Against Twilight/ogres/etc: it was Arkat's enemy, Nysalor, or Gbaji the Deceiver!

More: <a href=“http://glorantha.tumblr.com/post/96432382773/gbaji-the-deceiver” target=“_blank”>Gbaji the Deceiver</a> (great pic!!!)

Now things begin to make sense about these Prophets-they are not simply mad poets, but behind them lurks a terribly evil force, with the ogres and their Cacodemon cult as part of its growing army(?). Their master(s), whomever they may be, calling on Nysalor's power, is akin to the Devil himself. And Nysalor's tie with light explains the Prophet's obsession with light/twilight-but the darkness (or purple) link remains unclear, although not incompatible. Nysalor was god of Illumination; the philosophy that Chaos and other powers were neither good nor bad but a matter of perspective, and all natural parts of the universe that could exist together. This Illumination has its similarities with crazed poetry of the Prophets-and, disturbingly, with Fraud's own struggles with madness infected by them long ago in Handra's port. Anyway, there is great reason now to hate and fear them and to seek them out and destroy them!

There was little time to talk though. Kogag knew you were in no shape to fight even though he had seen a dark, chuckling monster in the black depths of the harbour. Perhaps, he said, Ahappi could slay it later. Kogag had been watching it and could not reach it with his magics. And Miguel espied the walls now swarming with pale blue Myrmidons: ant-warriors of the Timinint insect race; surely the Blue Points tribe you'd heard of. Kogag then saw them and knew you must leave; let the Myrmidons deal with what enemies lurked on land. And in the waters, well, there was no time left to deal with the ship-as you departed, the ship's crew emerged from hiding. Miguel could see that there were only a few of them; just enough to get the ship sailing awkwardly (but speedily; perhaps under magic power); and their galley had a strange hacked-off prow region. Something to watch for- you'd recognize this strange vessel if you ever saw it again.

Kogag began flying you back to The Shadow in Gothalos. For once, that was a relief. You'd only barely survived- the upper eschelons of the Purple Prophets were nothing like their babbling minions, but were a force to be reckoned with. And their reckoning would come, you all pledged!

© Copyright - 2000-2024 - John Hutchinson, Tim Evans, Pete Nash, Colin Driver and Gordon Alford