Ok I understand it’s a crack pairing at this point but the dynamic of Opal x Cyrus is just very amusing to me. Unhinged maybe-evil princess and her himbo prince. The potential
Quay has at least 3 warlock levels, and at least 2 eldritch invocations. They took the Pact of the Talisman pact.
Laerryn is an abjuration wizard. In order for her to have a DC 20 spell save at this level, her all-purpose tool (usually reserved for artificers) has to be +2.
Zerxus has the Inspiring Leader feat.
Nydas has at least 9 bard levels.
Patia is an Order of Scribes wizard.
Laerryn wasn’t trying to move Avalir to another plane permanently, she was trying to allow its arcane engines to transport it to another plane (and back) at will. This is fucking crazy, because leylines — which Avalir uses as roads, essentially — are the lifeblood of the universe, the veins of Exandria itself, the tides and streams of magic as it moves across the world. To take those paths and extend them into other planes is an astronomical feat that could only be achieved during an apogee solstice, which is fast approaching. She’s essentially attempting to upgrade Avalir’s hyperdrive.
There’s a series of batteries in the city that stores 25% of its total arcane power. This is the energy used for the replenishment, as part of a deal made between the druidic founders of the unified city and the mages who wanted to split it in half and raise Avalir into the sky — they could raise the city, as long as they reserved 25% of their power and used it to replenish the land every 7 years. It’s essentially their lighting bill. But the engine absorbed 8% of the city’s totalenergy when Laerryn planeshited a small object to another plane. And when she did that, a surge of power cascaded across the city that felt like what happens when Avalir crosses over a convergence of leylines.
Apparently,planeshiftwasn’t really a thing at this time, I guess? Maybe the Calamity weakened the barriers between planes so much that it allowed that spell to be created, or maybe Laerryn’s device is the reasonthat the barriers are weak enough to cast planeshift.
Today, one engine — the arboreal calyx — is taking over 50% of the city’s reserves (about 13% of the city’s total energy) and syphoning it somewhere. It was built almost immediately after the Raven Queen’s ascension, when the druidic founders of the city amended the original agreement.
Avalir holds the “tree of names.” This is a “central artifact of Avalir, something that the Eyes of Avalir must eternally guard… the tree of names doesn’t get talked about as much anymore, because it was protected 120 years ago by the arboreal calyx.” The engine surrounds and protects the tree, drawing power for something — and in Zerxus’ dream, Evandrin walked towards a tree in Asmodeus’ palm, so Zerxus believes that Evandrin was killed by the calyx in some way (he got sick, began to cough up incorporeal matter, and slowly faded away into nothingness over time). Evandrin had a file inside this box of records dealing with Chloras and the tree, and the file was empty.
(I think that the Tree of Names bears the true name of the Raven Queen, the previous god of death, and possibly the Luxon as well. There’s gotto be a reason why Luis’ name was underneath the Luxon pendant in the intro, and Evandrin’s death sounds very much like the cases of mages who attempted to move through time using the beacons.)
Whatever Vespin Chloras’ ritual was 2 weeks ago, it succeeded at something.When the Betrayers were banished in the Founding, they were so far removed from the Prime Material Plane that they couldn’t even grant spells to their followers — but whatever Chloras did, it allowed Asmodeus to create a puppetof a cleric with spellcasting capabilities. The Infernal word for puppethad not been spoken in Exandria since the founding, because it denoted someone who was driven to eldritch madness by a Betrayer, because when you have no need for your worshipers to survive, what limit is there to the amount of power you imbue within them?
“It against the greatest virtue of this age to believe that which is achievable by one is not achievable by all.” It was Elaina Tuveras’ belief that a future ritual would not dethrone a Prime Deity as the Raven Queen’s did, but would instead dethrone a Betrayer God in order to remove a malevolent presence in the world. So maybe, just maybe, Vespin Chloras didn’t have bad intentions, just hubris. Maybe he wasn’t trying to release or become one, but to replaceone with something “better.” What better way would there be to drive home the theme of EXU:C, that hubris and complacency have devastating consequences?
“What’s the biggest, dumbest statue in here? It’s mine now. I cast Summon Construct.” I fuckin’ loveLaerryn. Also, first initiative of the series!
They found a bunch of historical documents pertaining to the druidic founders of the city, who established the Tree of Names in Avalir. After the ascension of the Raven Queen, the druids came aboard the city and built the arboreal calyx around the tree to protect it; a letter sent by the druids to the magister essentially said that they could not trust the wizards of Avalir with the secrets of the tree’s true nature, because they would see all that they could do with it, and not what they could do forit.
The head of the Hall of Prophecy broke her arcane focus, ended her ability to use arcane magic, and “renounced magic altogether” because she experienced visions of the Calamity. On the day that Vespin Chloras completed his ritual, oracles started going mad.
The devil that Zerxus saw in his dream was, in fact, Asmodeus. There is a lothere, and it’s something that I can only call a confession. But if anythingis to be trusted, if there is any shard of truth, I think it lies in this idea: the Betrayers gave gifts of lies, deceit, betrayal, and hunger, but when they did, they did believe that they were gifts. They are objectively evil creatures who have done objectively evil things, but their subjective intentionsmay have always been in line with those of the Prime Deities: to better their creations, in any way they knew how. That’s another recurring theme in EXU:C that I’m seeing: the disconnect between intentions, consequences, and actions, and how they are obscured by confidence to the point of hubris.
The oracles’ first prophecy of the Calamity, deemed false: The stars are leaving us. Our hands cannot reach the limbs of the tree, can no longer scribe the name of our deliverance. We will soon be as broken as our promises. Soon, Avalir shall fall, all shall fall, and from our folly the hands that forged the world will banish themselves from the broken things that they have made.
