Friday, May 13, 2016

What You Missed - Feast of Chimeron: The Questening by Ethan "Jean-Baptiste" Goldman




The siege of Wendmore is going well, says Orion. We have not seen the enemy in days, says Orion. The Risen Kingdom is in RETREAT, says Orion.

People, let me begin this article the same way the event did, Orion was wrong. After a strong post-feast breakfast the Militia informed us that things have… developed over at the Wendmore portal to the Iron Road and that they have now seen a LOT of the Enemy. As such the Chimeronian forces decided to hold off the army as we dealt with stragglers.

And by stragglers I mean what appeared to be a subversive task force that created black pyramids that slowly counted down to ripping another portal to the Iron Road on fair Chimeron. Which is you know, ominous enough.

Fortunately we had not one but three Zaubermelds, which were blades of let fighters do stuff. These weapons could let you fiddle with the pyramids from the inside while we fed information from the outside, in addition to ruining all sorts of machinery and gimmickry. We had too make sure all three were done but fortunately we found communication crystals that let you talk to each other at a distance.
So after using these to organize, getting swamped by elite Risen task force members (It’s hard for two fighters to deal with a Clockwork enemy) we decided to gather up and power through the puzzles the last minute. And we won on 95% and it was awesome and it turns out it’s okay to use necromancy to taunt the Risen because alien void cultists aren’t people! Yay.

Using my mad necro seer skills we also found out some useful tidbits about said Risen Kingdom for instance they are led by not the void or a diet void-like-subsitute but are led by a “dark force” who calls himself the Fallen King. So apparently he tried to take over Gee once, failed, and tried again but succeeded the last time but never got over the first defeat given he calls himself “Guy who lost before”. 

The point is its better dead then red and people need to stop listening to their voidumist propaganda.

After this we got to have dinner break and who should join us but Lord Goldmist, who as you all remember is a friend of the View and agreed to an interview before. The fae found a mask that allowed you to… shenanigan the Iron Road. Essentially it would still be iron, it will still be a road, but perhaps it will be a Iron Road Deathtrap, or, as some fae suggested, a giant architectural Wayland blade. Yeah we didn’t go with that, sorry Garharz (by divine obligation Baptise must admit that the last sentence was hyperbole and he is in fact, not sorry at all).

Our plan, in true Realms fashion, is to ignore all the suggestions the Fae give us and do something that probably has horrific long term consequences. We decided, that the natural thing to do was to summon the Delta of Possibilities ON the Iron Road, soaking the Risen in pure concentrated What-If.
So the Adventurer’s split up and did what low fighter parties did best, which was cast rituals, we all did it in different ways. Ronnie used her water pixie heritage to coax the water over it; I found a fork in the Iron Road. Then I used candles to draw the delta over this Iron Delta, and Brute Forced the dreaming. Which is how the mask worked so it’s cool.

Now that the Iron Road was getting damp and rusty you needed to cement the change with a victory. Essentially we had to find the builder of the road Good Old Starblade, and we had to smack him up and then tell the Road we were in charge now.

What we didn’t expect was Starblade to have friends. Or three of himself. Or that he explodes.
This was the bridge battle to end all battles that weren’t really on bridges. Sir Cinnebar punched a portal so hard with his Force of Will that it caused a Cry of Life, and I arm wrestled a dark power with my immortal soul to bring a cry AND armor repair.  Eventually the Emissary was turned into a scalped pudding, however Starblade had one last trick.

The portal had a cryptography puzzle, and we only had five minutes left to close it… and we couldn’t do it.
So we stole the puzzle. Since it’s a fixed point no one can change the password to deactivate it. Plus maybe the delta will flood the Risen Kingdom as well, they aren’t able to navigate the dreaming with skill so it should be fun.

Finally after our victory, which took a lot out of poor Goldmist, what better way to celebrate with good old fashioned spelunking? The Chimeron militia reported some stuff was going down on the caves, which was made all the worse because Trystwater, Starblade’s replacement, was trying to exploit the underground for his own forces. We smoted some demons, we destroyed plants, and ultimately it looked like whatever was in the caverns was probbably more scary then Trystwater, since it was currently winning.
I also got explosives now.