#tabletop campaign
The season finale of our campaign’s season 2, in which the Circle learns the cause of all the ominous disturbances in Marita and the real danger that awaits them in the dark!
Have you missed a recap? Want to catch up on the story so far and meet the cast of characters? Check out the Campaign Archive!
The next morning after the ‘day of rest’ for Marita’s famed meeting of nations, the Circle awakens, divinely hungover and full of regrets. Or at least one of them is. Kalara can barely look Demiato in the eye, Demiato pretending nothing at all happened, while the rest of the Circle emerges to the smell of coffee (or coffee and shot of whiskey).
Still not sated by last night’s entertainment, Chaos Divide issues a challenge to all Valor-based courtesans to have more fun with him! Xesa fails a Temperance role and decides to take on the challenge and the two disappear into the privacy of a pocket dimension where they spend hours wearing each other out, considering the crazy amount of stamina the two of them have.
Meanwhile, Demiato discreetly makes her way to the location of the First Pulse’s invitation, an old temple converted into a gladiatorial ring, now a shrine of violence for their merciless art form. Unbeknownst to Demiato, Night and a disguised Kalara as Koh also find their way to the temple after having heard from the barkeep, Kowari, that there’s money to be made and entertainment to be had at a secret tournament. Kalara couldn’t resist a chance at gambling and Night the chance to study the martial arts of others.
Upon spying Demiato in the lineup, Koh cheers loudly for her, placing all bets on her to be the winner. The cheering draws a groan from the general, who’d rather not receive any more attention from the overly interested Eclipse. Much to Koh and Night’s chagrin, the front row seats next to them are also occupied by the delegates from Thorns, Abyssals like the ones who had invaded Dinas Ryhdd none too long ago. Koh and the delegate share verbal quips during the first fights, the Eclipse praising Demiato’s merciful efficiency, while the Abyssal lauds the brutality of the fights, taking much pleasure in the front row blood splatter zone (and a little taste when the opportunity provided itself with an errant shower of blood, much to Koh’s disgust).
Demiato tears her way through the competition until she meets one inauspicious opponent who can stand up to her, a man with the seeming of a monk. Instead of falling instantly to her skills, she finds herself under attack by moves she can barely follow with her eyes. Koh and Night strain to see how he could be landing hits, noticing with their quick eyes that her opponent is manifesting chitinous claws that strike like lightning! When Demiato finally has him on the verge of defeat, a rush of infernal green energy shoots from him, filling the arena with sands from the Underworld until he disappears into a portal of essence.
Demiato is announced the winner after verbally denouncing the abbot about his lack of security, Koh and Night joining her in the ring to help keep people away from the dangerous sands and to de-escalate the situation. Koh investigates the monk who had no previous infernal ties and discovers that he had been murdered and his form taken by another entity. Yet another suspicious incident in a string of suspicious incidents happening in Marita during their stay!
Koh happily accepts a huge winning prize pot, offering it to Demiato to cheer up the foul mood of the whole affair, but the stoic general refuses, stating she doesn’t want her ‘silence’ money and that betting on a clearly superior opponent like her was akin to cheating, hinting that maybe the Eclipse’s advances were a little more disturbing to her than she had previously let on. Flustered and more than a little confused that someone wouldn’t be overjoyed with that much money, Koh keeps the winnings and makes a mental note that this ship has sailed.
After the Circle regroups in town, they stumble upon a strange sight in the marketplace, a magnificent green mechanical woman leaving a trail of bewildered citizens in her wake – their old Alchemical friend Peridot who had since disappeared to explore the city after dropping Chaos off! They catch her up on all the strange events and she provides a simple solution. She can track the energy of the dark magic that they are seeking!
Together with Peridot, several of the local dragonblooded guardsmen, and the rest of the Circle, they venture into the seedy back alleys once again to track the scent of this dark energy. With so many citizens startled by Peridot’s appearance, Kalara, now back in her female persona with Night posing as a decoy Koh, convinces the Alchemical to cover up with a cloak. Flattery works wonders as Kalara compliments that it must be done, despite the coverings hiding ‘such fine craftsmanship’ (it’s at this point we discover she also has the highest Appearance rating out of anyone in the group, which we never knew until now. Imagine our surprise!).
The trail of dark magic leads the Circle to a row of shady market carts filled with illegal magical accouterments and abandoned buildings. The guardsmen stay behind to manage the crowd and guard the entrance while the Circle breaks into the wall of one of the buildings, Kalara pretending to be just a mere Guild leader and taking one of her darling Koh’s guns for protection so the guardsmen won’t get suspicious of her capabilities.
Thankfully, the guardsmen seem amicable towards letting the Circle do as they please, most of them not really wanting to deal with any more heinous magic like the demon from the previous day and knowing, if anything, that the Circle was better equipped (or at least more willing) to deal with this than they were.
The Circle descends deeper and deeper into a dark corridor hidden behind a secret wall, finding the remnants of blood sacrifices and remains as they move deeper into the old complex. Inscriptions hint at the presence of an old shrine and Yozi worship, their suspicions confirmed when the shadows open up on a ceremony of prostrate priests chanting in unison, the single figure of a girl sitting on a large hammer at the front of their tortured assembly. She reveals herself as Avleua, the keeper of the forge of night, a demon of the Second Circle.
The Circle cautiously questions her about her motives, which amuses her greatly, for they had made the mistake of thinking the Yozi sacrifices were meant to threaten their lives, when a much larger game was at play. The sacrifice of innocents and negligence of the people in the crossfire of the Yozi’s machinations, as well as the demon’s condescending attitude towards them, incenses Kalara, who threatens the demon with the fact that there are a growing number of Solars out there who will never let the Yozi return to harm the innocent, despite Xesa’s warnings that they should tread carefully threatening such a being.
Xesa and Chaos question Alvuea even further trying to understand the nature of the Yozi and why they simply cannot re-negotiate the terms of their imprisonment, but this only perturbs Alvuea further. Negotiation is not her function and if they truly want to talk, they should speak to Berengiere, the weaver of voices, who would delight in talking to them forever and ever. Not understanding her cruel joke, the Circle incapacitates her priests, causing her summoning to release and the demon to disappear back to whence she came.
When they relate this disturbing encounter to Bara later, the Sidereal goes pale at the implications. A Yozi invasion had not been foreseen! What started as a strange encounter ballooned into a cascade of disastrous revelations. If the Yozi were invading, then who would guard the Sword of Creation at the Imperial Manse in the Blessed Isle? With the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress in recent years, only the remnants of her fail-safes were in place.
The Circle try to understand this turn of events, discussing and strategizing into the night with a shaken Bara. With the meeting of New Deliberative about to take place in Dinas Rhydd, it seemed their city would not only become a haven for those seeking freedom, but the jumping off point for the assembly of a shining new force, should they want to survive the coming storm!
Bara plans to take his concerns to the celestial courts, the Sidereal still convinced that they were all going to end up ash in a box somewhere, and yet, he could not deny the fact he had seen this Circle do things he had thought impossible! Before he leaves, he gifts Kalara with a talisman she can use to contact him, should she need to, and the two come up with a secret code phrase he can tell them, should he be unable to speak the truth when they are together, for she was suspicious of what Bara’s colleagues were hiding and what danger he might be in even from his own home office.
With so many dark revelations, the Circle prepares for the worst that was yet to come, the final days of their time in Marita, and the formation of a new, shining Deliberative with them at the fore!
In which the Circle celebrates a momentary victory that was never meant to last…in style! Sidereals really know how to party!
Have you missed a recap? Want to catch up on the story so far and meet the cast of characters? Check out the Campaign Archive!
After the mad dash that left a Third Circle demon defeated in one blow, the Circle sets about helping the townsfolk clean up the destruction and chaos left in the demon’s path.
Chaos soothes the townsfolk, using his undeniable presence and a bit of visual illusion laced with essence to calm the people and convince them to go home where it’s safe, for the death of the creature had left a dangerous crater of bubbling corrupted essence that consumed anything that got close to it, even curious birds.
Using his knowledge of spiritual cleansing, Night Locust works with a Water Aspect to cleanse and calm the essence into a stable form. His act of heroism, alongside the helpful presence of the rest of the Circle, has convinced the local law enforcement, even the Dragonblooded among them, that these ‘Anathema’ might truly be there to help.
Somehow, during the purification process, the earth from within the crater combines with the remains of a bird into the essence of ‘sharp’, a bird that behaves and acts just like a bird, despite being made of diamond! The diamond bird takes refuge with Chaos Divide, who is the only one hardy enough to hold a being that cuts anything that tries to contain it, much to Kalara’s chagrin. A diamond bird would have been worth a lot of money to many or made a very impressive pet for her office! She requests to keep any feathers it might shed.
With calm returning to the town, the Circle finally takes a breath and heads to their appointment with the strange Sidereal they had met after the demon’s defeat. He had left them a magically imbued business card to negate the forgetfulness that would no doubt wipe him from their minds again in due time.
Along the way to the seedy part of town where the Sidereal had bade them to meet, Kalara notices that Demiato’s shoulder seems stiff as if she had been injured earlier during the commotion. Concerned, and more than a little surprised, Kalara asks what happened. Demiato, however, only admits to someone attempting to mug her earlier. Kalara doesn’t accept that as the full truth, but decides not to prod, leaving it at the thought of how brazen the muggers of Marita must be to try to assault THE General Demiato.
In truth, Demiato had been attacked by a member of the First Pulse while she had been out and about the town the day before. A skillful surprise attack that managed to surpass even the defense of her power armor had left her shoulder mildly injured. Her ‘welcome’ to the First Pulse ended with a sore shoulder and an invitation to their school as long as she came alone to their tournament and kept such things secret.
Finally, their journey through the seedy streets leads them to a rundown tavern. Right at home in the slums, Kalara slips into her Koh persona, playing on his fearsome and charismatic reputation as a Robin Hood figure to convince the owner of the establishment, a short, cranky Amabosar named Kowari, to welcome them in. Upon seeing Bara’s business card, Kowari immediately remembers the Sidereal as a regular customer and waves them inside.
Once inside, the doors shut behind them and the tavern opens up into another dimension filled with a wondrous bathhouse with every kind of room they could imagine! Kowari welcomes the Circle with drinks and keeps offering them ‘pleasant company’ to sate Koh’s rumored appetite for women, much to Kalara’s mild embarrassment in front of the rest of the Circle.
Finally, they find Bara in a private room in the bathhouse patiently awaiting their arrival. Despite not remembering much of him, the account of their alliance kept by Xesa convinces the Circle to take a chance at drinking the concoction Bara offers that might help them remember what they’ve forgotten about him…or possibly poison them.
Thankfully, the concoction works, letting the Circle remember all the trials and tribulations they’ve had alongside Bara, the invasion of Walker in Darkness, Bara coming to their defense by illegally leading an army through folding time and space, and their final meeting with him where Chejop Kejak dragged him away for disciplinary action.
Bara proudly displays a gold pin, announcing that he has changed factions from Bronze to Gold, which leaves the party to question what that actually means. He skirts around the detail that the Bronze faction destroys Solars who don’t tow the line, but proudly announces his opinion that the Circle has proven they can do a lot of good in this world and are not like their predecessors.
With their happy reunion settled, the Circle spends the rest of the night unwinding with Bara, who is more than happy to encourage a celebratory mood by summoning his friend White Feather, the Goddess of Intoxication, to help the Circle find an alcoholic beverage strong enough to get the Zenith, Chaos Divide, drunk, as he was just too damned hardy to ever feel the effects of alcohol like everyone else. The goddess is happy to oblige by providing Chaos with a drink that knocks even the towering Zenith for a loop, while also providing Kalara with an illegal drink and smoking herbs only available in Yu-shan that the Eclipse is more than happy to partake in, for she could never resist forbidden things and fine wines!
By the end of the night, Xesa is singing songs, Kalara is reading erotic books written by her former Soul Shard’s owner out loud to the Circle, and the rest of the Circle is pleasantly sloshed! Thankfully, nobody notes that in order for Kalara to have taken this erotic fiction from the secret library under their manse complex, she would have had to read it aloud to transcribe, as it was forbidden for anyone to physically remove books from the sanctum. Eventually, Night Locust disappears after a flirtatious Sylph courtesan, the drunk ninja encouraged by a grinning Kalara who always thought he needed to learn more ways to relax than meditation.
When the night finally winds down, Kalara finds herself alone with Demiato and decides that there’s no time like the present to find out why the Dawn Caste is always staring and blushing around her. She makes an embarrassingly strong and inebriated pass at the surprised commander, mincing no words that there’s no shame in acting on an attraction, whether there’s a serious relationship there or not.
Tongue-tied at first, Demiato politely withdraws, telling Kalara that she has no interest in one night stands and that she should come to her again when she’s sober. For once, the Eclipse Caste has nothing to say in response.
The members of the Circle either spend their night surprisingly alone, passed out in their rooms, or in the arms of a Sylph courtesan.
Meanwhile, Bara foots the bill on heaven’s dime. All in the name of a Sidereal day’s work!
