The SPI was on the trail of a suspected doppelganger, the spitting image of one of their former colleagues. But then her trail suddenly disappeared midstep! And Freki is being shadowed by a mysterious and malicious-seeming third raven…
Freki asks Hugin and Munin if they saw where they prey went. They tell Freki:
She vanished – one moment there, the next, gone. She walked through the veil. We cannot follow without knowing what she knows.
They track her trail to a place where it ends in midstep. Oz’s hand feels weird as he waves his sword through the space where the step ends.
Callie’s Journal
We find a spot that is described as a “veil” or “portal,” although it’s invisible. Cal and Oz decide to go through. From my outside perspective, they don’t seem to have gone anywhere, but it’s pretty funny to watch them get a running start at nothing.
Vondal tells us that it’s a kind of protective or misdirection field, intended to keep people away. But because it’s large enough for a small village, it isn’t very powerful.
I know a little about the shapeshifters because they’re “trickery-adjacent”
Trickery Gods (I know them all, or mostly):
- Avandra, the best one, of course
- Brandobaris
- Ioun
- Some lesser dragon deity
- Sehanine, Elven goddess of the moon
- One whose name I forgot
- See also eternals
I channel divinity (one week cooldown) and realize that the way to get through this veil is to know the name of the place, which I heard from the doppleganger when I used Speak With Dead. Speaking with Erathis’s voice, I say, “Alye’adu” as Oz attempts to stab the veil.
The veil is ripped, because of the sword. :\
I can sense that Erathis knew about this place already. Both my goddesses seem pleased that I’m investigating it.
Our party goes in there and some sentries immediately find us.
Their leader (probably) comes out to talk to us. She looks like one of Sehanine’s priestesses, powerful.
One of the villagers says Isis was her “imprint” and she was Isis’s “anchor.” They are changelings. (The changelings are the “imprints” and the originals are the “anchors.” There is one and only one anchor per imprint. If they lose their anchor, they need to find another one or they die.
50 years ago, The Vanishing happened. During the War of Countless Dead, one day all the soldiers fighting disappeared into thin air, and the Flux appeared. Since then, the Flux had been growing. The changelings believe something happened at the Tower of Orsis that caused the Vanishing, but they don’t know what because they didn’t have an agent there at that time. That’s why they planted all these agents around in various nations.
I want to know what they know about the white crane tattoo/cult. Several of them react positively. They feel like it’s been helpful, which is exactly what Isis said. She said it was super helpful until it started controlling her and forcing her to do evil.
Cal, Freki, and Oz are not part of the mind link. So they’re watching when a centaur named Talos comes riding in with Cal’s sword at his hip.