Callie’s Journal
Vondal spaces out and considers whether combining the Flux and the Feywild could make something fictional into something real.
We’re just walking in the tunnel and suddenly find ourselves in Mallory’s office. He says, “What do you mean it bends downwards?”
Vondal comprehends the tower and the Flux bending down from above it to create the mirror image below. He’s thinking about whether this magic could create infinite cookies. I mean, I’d rather have a plague of cookies spread o’er the land than Flux, if it were up to me.
Freki is surprised to find out that the Flux only came into being 50 years ago. I thought everybody knew that! But I guess word hasn’t spread far enough to find Freki.
Audreth asks about the dual Oz and Cal. Vondal explains that we all have alternate versions of ourselves flapping through us. Cassandra can see Pony Vondal. I’m intrigued to find out that wasn’t just a dream or hallucination.
Oz sees that Freki doesn’t just have one alternate version, he’s got two! And the second one keeps sprouting heads! And suddenly we can all see it!!!
Mallory isn’t sure this is really Freki, but more urgently, we’re all just standing around inside Audreth’s aura like well-armed chicken tenders. Freki has turned into a triple-headed monster, like that horrible thing we saw painted on the side of the tavern in the Afterworld, and he seems to be slavering in Vondal’s direction!
Freki bites Vondal and basically eats him in two bites, before any of the rest of us can do anything. Now he’s looking at meeeeeeeeeeee
I take 27 damage from a bite, then 22 damage from a claw, then 21 from the other claw. I have 1 HP!!!!
Oz attacks and manages to do some damage, but Freki isn’t stopping for anything.
Through my fading eyes, I can tell that Cassandra is casting the same spell that Sartus cast on the Necronomicon before he fell over dead. The divine energy washes over Freki and he’s back in his normal form again and no longer snacking on my ulna. Cassandra is…not?…dead. Not dead! Whew!
I heal everybody who’s injured (including Freki) for 11 with Mass Healing Word at level 5. Then I use Cure Wounds on myself at level 4 for 15.
We’re back at the campsite again, staring down these weird footprints that Freki thinks look demon-y. Mallory is gone. Vondal heals himself and me with a wand.
Now we’re all looking around the campsite, but I’m also thinking longingly of my nice soft feather bed at home, and my big claw-foot bathtub, and the bottles of scented bubble soap I keep in there.
Freki confers with his bird friends to see if he should use his super-sniffer. They’re also investigating, however they do it.
Hugin says: “The veil has been tampered with.”
Munin says: “It should be thicker here, but something happened.”
Freki goes ahead and sniffs around. The tracks we’ve been following led here, but don’t end here.
Vondal wonders aloud how we got here. He’s thinking about the constellation on the floor of the mirror tower and also wondering how anything could stay protected against the ocean of Flux here for very long. Spotting the constellation at the periphery of his vision, Vondal sends Murky to look at it, but it can’t really be seen head-on. Vondal isn’t sure what these constellations might be related to. Nothing we’ve seen so far.
To all of our surprise, Bec and Oz discover a person in one of the bedrolls! Whoa! One of us needs to look in there to see who it is.
“Lorelei???” says Bec and peels back the blanket to find…Lorelei. She’s asleep, somehow. Maybe magically. On second look, there’s a Flux tentacle attached to her! And she’s looking kind of like a grape left out in the sun for a few days. I notice that Lorelei is clutching a book in one hand. There are some tracks that stopped here, which might be related to the whole general situation.
Bec casts Detect Magic to find out what’s going on here. It feels like the tentacle is reaching into her brain, so she recoils and looks away. Cassandra dispels magic and the tentacle shrivels up. Lorelei wakes up!
“I had the strangest dream,” says Lorelei.
“Raven Queen?” says Bec.
Lorelei nods and says, “It worked. It really worked!”
What did? The dream. Okay, then. Vondal gives her a cookie for refreshment and asks her to explain.
“I finally feel good enough. Where’s my scythe?” She nibbles the cookie and starts looking for her scythe.
She introduces herself as Lorelei Nocturne and asks who the hell we are. Audreth says he’s glad she’s okay, but he sounds a little skeptical.
Lorelei wants to know where her sister is, meaning Rubinia. Bec tells her that Rubinia is fine, back at SPI headquarters, which is true as far as we know.
Mallory asks us what happened to the coins we found at the campsite. We’re back in the office again. But now we realize he looks more like Eeoram, the one who went on the quest with Lorelei, Rubinia, and Audreth. Freki answers instinctively that Oz has the coins. Of course he does, where else would coins be? Freki senses a slight tinge of satisfaction from Eeoram.
“You did keep them, right? They’re important to the SPI. It’s the only way I have to contact some of our agents,” says Mallory(?).
“Of course, but they’re safest with me,” says Oz, ratcheting up the panache.
Mallory(?) is persuaded(?). “Keep them safe.”
Oz asks him to explain the coins.
I don’t know why, but it occurs to me that although we didn’t grab the book from Lorelei, I did notice that some pages were torn out. I also saw on the cover, “Lorelei’s Dream Jo…” with some cute little doodles. Hm.
Mallory(?) says the coins are for contacting agents, like he said before. “What happened after the Cassandra shadow flew away?” he asks next.
“That didn’t happen!” Vondal and Bec say in unison. But they also think: maybe it did? One shadow was left, and it copied the monkey before it flew away. It’s hard to recall what really happened. When Cassandra’s shadow flew away, we went after it. That’s…what happened…? Yes, that’s what happened.
Vondal thinks the Flux has fragmented time itself, and Mallory’s questions are making it worse.
Freki is pretty sure whatever happened after we followed Cassandra’s shadow was HORRIBLE. Like, a catastrophe of some kind. Oz, Freki, and I all remember that. Vondal and Bec think there was a fork in the road sometime in the past, and how we answer right now will determine which one really happened—or even worse, both.
Vondal insists on his own versions of events. Freki senses that Mallory has an opinion about what he wants to have happened, not what Vondal is saying. I’m just unsure of what happened and I hope the others can sort this out soon because it’s literally making my head ache.
Vondal says we chased the monkey’s shadow and then we ran across the campsite where Lorelei was asleep.
“Is that what happened?” Cassandra murmured. It’s unclear what she’s talking about.
Audreth agrees: “That’s right, it wasn’t Cassandra. It was the monkey. But I don’t remember the campsite.”
There’s a torrent of memories for some reason. It hurts! [I take 6 psychic damage. I have 58 HP now.]
“When you proceeded from the campsite to the source of the Flux, did you take Lorelei with you?” Mallory asks.
Vondal agrees that we did, because it was too dangerous to leave her alone. We proceeded down the tunnel, as it gets creepier and grosser.
Mallory asks whether we’re quite sure none of us drank from the Flux stream. I am 100% sure I would never do that. Who would?! The pools of Flux looked neat. I thought that they looked like pure everything, and if I drank it, I’d also be pure everything! But luckily, I’m not insane, so I didn’t actually do it. Sheesh.
Oz is fidgeting with his dagger when he suddenly throws it with majestic accuracy at Mallory’s chest. Center mass! “He’s fucking us in the brains!” Oz yells.
“The monkey statue? You said it shattered? How exactly did that happen?” are Mallory’s last words before the scene fades and we find ourselves in the Chamber of Horrors. There’s a pillar with dozens of arms sprouting out of it and a waterfall of blood pouring out of it. It has an enormous maw filled with teeth and Cassandra’s head is involved somehow. This isn’t better!
The monster with Cassandra’s face has the monkey statue. One of the hands crushes the statue and the monster laps up some kind of energy from it.
Wait, no: the shadow monkey, along with several of its shadow friends, and the three Furies, all come bursting through one of the two giant root-covered openings before us. Two of the Furies merge with the shadow monkey and transform into a huge two-headed Demogorgon monster. The third Fury merges with more shadows and becomes another horrible-looking thing, while the remaining shadows turn into more ape-like things.
We’re all pretty tired right now, but we have monsters to fight. But my bathtub….
Which things are we fighting? What’s real? For a moment, I feel everything hanging in the balance, as we all strain to figure it out. Then there’s a feeling kind of like a fan snapping shut. I don’t know how or why, but that’s what it felt like. Look, I’m the one telling this story!
[GM’s note: all contingent reality waveforms collapsed into a single Truth! Influenced by the ]
I now have the maximum HP that I ever possibly could have. I AM BRIMMING WITH VITALITY!!!
Become proficient in one additional skill. I chose Perception.
I have a copy of any non-artifact item that I own. I have an Amulet of Health that I definitely traded with Vondal for a Luck Stone.
I got some of my spell slots back, like I didn’t cast those spells at all! I have now used:
- Level 2 - 2
- Level 4 - 1
OK, it’s definitely the Demogorgon we are fighting. The arm-covered Cassandra monster never happened, thank the goddesses!
Oz proceeds to stabbinate the Demogorgon.
Lorelei says, “Check this out” and enchants her scythe with some kind of necro-magic. Oz is impressed in ways that I will not go into.
Freki lets loose a Hail of Thorns that would obliterate any normal creature, but these are not normal creatures. He also Hunter’s Marks the monkey shadow for death.
The Demogorgon draws in Flux energy and duplicates itself twice. Now there are three!
Are…are we dead? Did we die? I hope not, but I also kind of hope so because this looks real bad.