by Stephen "Laika" Sanford
To the Realms at whole; The sword has been removed, and the god of balance, Garm, has been freed.
It began with a sword, freshly plucked from the heart of the god of death. Asmodeus plotted his machinations to usurp the god of balance and take with him the powers but not the responsibilities. Asmodeus took this sword and pinned the Garm to his throne.
On March 23, 1019, a coalition of Eagle’s Rook, Voraniss, the Church of Aurora, and other individual groups, sought to undo what had been done in order to save this world as it was unravelling under Asmodeus’ rule. After many months of planning, strategizing, and preparing, we decided the best course of action was to remove the sword from Garm and leave; no other condition was necessary. And so on this day we met with Minerva, the avatar and daughter of Antioch, to start the invasion of the Crossroads to free Garm.
Our adventure started with opening a portal into a Church of Justari that was overrun with Aspis. The church was heavily fortified, they had been readied for our attack. We fought and pushed all the way to the courtyard outside of the church. The courtyard was littered with graves that needed to be unearthed by locating Justari's cross to open up the doors to the church. Once inside, we met with the Red Knight, Justari’s Avatar. He explained that inside were several rooms to the gods and in each room we would find holy relics of the gods to aid us in our quest. Once the relics were unearthed, one of Rexan’s avatars sieged the church. Guilliam, with the help of one of the relics, defeated the avatar and took its head as a trophy.
Upon leaving the church we found several jars to the gods in which to put faith into (blue beads which were scattered throughout the day). If you put your faith into a jar and filled it then that god’s regional path would be unlocked. There was a jar for Aurora, Justari, Vandor, Luna, Gaia, Antioch, Chronos, Garm, Rexan, Dionin, Asmodeus, and the Dark One. Asmodeus’ regionals were already unlocked and any faith put into Garm’s jar would be relocated to Asmodeus and any put into the Dark One would be spread evenly to the other jars. As far as I know, by the end of the day, the only jar that ended up being filled was Aurora and Vandor’s.
The second set of trials had our group venturing into hell. In this area were two portions of land separated by the River Styx. If you died while being in the water you would lose all your memories. Vawn used much of his last magics and asked for Vandor’s blessing that gave several people the ability to not lose their memory if they were felled in the water. Inside this room, we were swarmed by imps who had ropes of varying colors attached to them. If we removed the ropes we could tie the same colors together to form a rope bridge to the other side. This was no easy task as the imps were much stronger than any imp I have ever seen and fighting them over the water made it even more of a challenge.
At one point those with Vandor’s protection pushed into the water to fight the imps but all were eventually fallen. At this point, the Herald of Dionin showed his face and began trying to make deals with people to return those who were lost. I do not recall anyone making a deal with them. After some time we were able to recover those who were lost, and a bridge was formed allowing the group to push onto the other side. Those whose memories were gone had them restored through a chalice relic that Phoenix had picked up from the Justari church.
Our third challenge had us venturing into Gaol, where Asmodeus’ influence started to be plainly visible. Asmodeus had changed the rules of the gods and the rules of this world. Normally when one ventures into Gaol, a group receives a ticket for each person that enters except for the last person (N-1 tickets) and to leave you must present a ticket to the gatekeeper to leave. Not a single ticket was given out to the group and we were trapped. Luckily there was soul essence scattered around that could be gained through challenges or could be bought through a shady merchant. This soul essence, when placed in an array that represented oneself, could be forged with heat to create a soul token to leave Gaol.
Before leaving Gaol, I was requested to seance my goddess, Aurora, by Rel Zhirah. Upon casting this spell, Rel spoke to her and believed that the best course of action to save Garm was instead to kill Garm and replace him with Nighthawk who is the knight commander of the Knights of Garm. This caused a large debate upon what we should do after leaving Gaol. One group wished to remove the sword, the other group wished to power up Nighthawk and kill Garm.
After much fighting amongst ourselves about what to do, we all agreed that we needed Dalindana freed. Dalindana is Aurora’s Avatar and the daughter of Light and Balance. She had been imprisoned by Asmodeus five years ago into a soul prison that he himself gave to me to free her. The soul prison was given to Minerva to try to unravel the magics upon it, but Asmodeus’ influence was too strong; she could not do so through the rules of the gods and Asmodeus’ power. Freesia, using an item she had kept with her for decades, gave Minerva the ability to defy Asmodeus’ power and in a moment of clarity let us know that Asmodeus had been skewing all our information and that the Soul Prison needed to be destroyed to free her; and so Rel lifted it above his head and cast it to the ground where it shattered, thus killing Dalindana. However, she would coalesce and reform to her old self and be free in some time.
Knowing that Asmodeus had been influencing everyone, the group was in full agreement that Garm needed to be freed once again and we pressed on to his throne room. Upon entering, Asmodeus had assembled an army of death knights, many of whom could only be killed by swords of light and others who shattered the Main Gauche of Saint Daniel multiple times (I even learned reforge just to bring it back). The death knights laid waste to our group and took Sir Vawn as a sacrifice. Upon completion, Vandor intervened and Vawn rose again as his Avatar with Dalindana at his side. With sword and shield, Vawn could channel the swords of light to fuel his own sword and enacted Vengeance upon the death knights and broke into the throne room.
Inside the throne room was Garm, with the Sword of Kings still impaled into him. Our group, with the limited amount of swords of light and Vawn, fought up to the throne and tried to remove the Sword. Asmodeus had put a curse on the sword to teleport the one who tried to remove it to fight his strongest death knight yet. In order to give a direct supply of light, Rel Zhirah forced all his energies into Vawn with Dalindana to give Vawn what he needed to fight this death knight himself. I did not bear witness to this but I heard it was a long and arduous fight. Vawn returned as the victor and removed the sword, thus freeing Garm. Garm, who had been trapped for over five years, let his overwhelming rage take over and attempted to kill and disintegrate everything its claws could dig into. Hygar Athame, used his Boon of the Greater Pantheon, to open a gate and bent reality to move everyone through the gate to safety. The traitor, Asmodeus, was put in shackles and his fate is yet to be determined.
With the sword removed and Garm free, Vawn was granted his wish to make his way to the Summerlands. After saying his goodbyes to all those who had fought and died with him on this day, there was not a dry eye in sight. With his final quest over he made one last goodbye and left to go get a stiff drink.
I want to thank all who helped make this daunting quest a reality. It was a coalition of many groups, with hundreds of hours of work, to see this end become a reality. Our journey is not over, because while Garm is back and our world is more safer than it was before, the threat of the Strangers is ever near. I look forward to working with as many of those who will help me try to stop them from destroying our world.
Forever in the light and in duty to protect the gods may we all celebrate the life of Vawn, Avatar of Vandor, and look to the future to defend the realms.
-Laika en’Naur
Priest of Aurora and Squire to the Knights of the Crown