Chapter 11

We had found this strange book hidden in the long-abandoned temple to some god none of us had ever heard of, but we couldn’t make any sense of the symbols contained in it. We surmised that the language in the book is a dead version of a supernal language and were hopeful that if we can find some high deva or a representative of one of the gods, he or she should be able to translate it.

We sat down to discuss the possible directions we could go from here:
• We could simply head in the direction of one of those pillars in the distance, assuming that when we got there we’d find something useful. They seem to be positioned such that each of them arises from one of the major cities of the republic, other than Allaron and Freeton. We pretty quickly decided against this course of action because it just seemed too risky.
• We could set out to find Council members who are still trustworthy. But where even to begin looking, now that we’d determined that the Council in Freeton was either corrupted or totally misguided?
• We could set out to find followers of the Raven Queen, since the dream seemed to indicate that she is especially important to the situation we find ourselves in. But, again, where would we start?

Once we’d ruled out those three, that left us with the two most plausible plans to decide between:
• We could go to the Isle of Freedom, off the southwest coast, which is evidently where the followers of Avandra have gone. Avandra is another god who the dream indicated would be important to us. Since his followers have left the Council, they might be the best avenue for finding out whether anyone remains in the Council who is still trustworthy. However, the Isle it would take us two months to make it to the Isle, and that’s assuming we have no trouble securing a ship once we reach the coast.
• We could go to Point Nicholas—the largest mountain in the area, to the northwest of our current position—which somewhere houses the key stronghold for Emperor Nicholas. Nicholas used this place as a base of operations when fighting to regain his empire, so it makes sense that it’d be where he would have fallen back to given how hard-pressed his forces would seem to be now. We know that the Emperor worked with the Council but was careful to maintain some clear boundaries between himself and them, so there is some hope that we could find trustworthy people with him. The mountain is only 4-5 days journey away. However, we were all reticent to walk right into another stronghold like we had at Freeton just a few days ago.

We debated for some time about which of these made the most the sense. Kelissa, Liam, and I were all in favor of going to Avandra’s isle, but we were not entirely convinced about the best course of action. Fergis wanted to go to Point Nicholas and he was increasingly adamant in pushing his opinion. Eventually, he just flipped out and went ballistic, threatening all of us and flailing about. It was really quite scary how worked up he suddenly got. None of us quite knew what to do with him as he was so agitated. Just as the situation really began to spiral completely out of hand, Yonah just unloaded and punched Fergis dead in the nose.

Fergis kind of settled down then and we decided we would go to the Isle of Freedom, but then realized that in order to do so, we’d have to go right past one of those pillars, which we had decided to avoid. So, we changed our minds and decided to go to Point Nicholas after all.

We spent a few unpleasant days traveling through severe thunderstorms before coming to the base of an absolutely gigantic mountain. I scouted about a bit and found humanoid tracks, which led to more heavily traveled tracks, including wagons and horses. We followed the trail until we came to Nicholas’ stronghold, carved into the very mountain itself.

We found two very ornate stone doors. Two massive earth elementals stepped out of the walls of the mountain beside them and watched us. Then the doors opened and a large numbers of guards marched out of the fortress and surrounded us, demanding that we surrender our weapons. Liam spoke with the leader of the troops, who recognized him, and then the rest of us, and gave the ok for us to keep all of our supplies. Some men led us into the keep and to a large conference room where they brought us Domino’s pizza—oh, wait, no that was for the players; guess the characters got mutton or some such—and then asked us to wait for General Jarek.

When Jarek arrived, Liam used his ability as a paladin to feel out his aura and reported to us that he was not only a good paladin, but a very powerful one. Jarek wore the symbol of Erathis around his neck and on his lapel was the symbol of the council of Divinity, but with a pair of angel wings superimposed atop it—in conversation with him, we eventually come to understand that the Council has split into two, and the ones who have superimposed the wings on the old symbol are the ones on our side, the Council that retains divine sanction.

Jarek told us that he knows who we are, and that they know we were present at “the fall,” but that they are relatively certain we’re not responsible for that fall. The highest devas among the Council say that this was the beginning of the Fall of Nine prophecy. We told him the story of our exploits thus far, but when we came to mentioning the book that we’d found, he asked to see it. When we showed it to him, he excitedly took it and said that he needed to go with it. He rushed away with the book. After a short time, someone came and led us through the bowels of the keep and eventually out to a sanctuary high up in the mountain.

At some point, we came onto a walkway that looked out over the valleys below with a stupendous view. We could see far into both Freenik and Gurisia. We could see that the huge pillars do indeed emanate directly from the ground in major cities. We could also see that what used to be Winterhaven is the center of a huge circle of death.

We were led into a circular cathedral with the Council symbol etched into the floor. Statues of all the gods were circled around the room, and at one end was a throne with an elderly deva sitting there, wearing around her neck an hourglass symbold like the one we saw on the book cover. Jarek was kneeling at her feet, and the book we had found floated in front of her as she read it quickly. Then she looked up at us and said, “This is the Prophecy of the Nine. It’s what we’ve been waiting for.” She called each of us by name: Liam the Defender, Kelissa the Stealthy, Gareth the Devout, Fergus the Unliving, Yonah the Protector.

She said she knows we are devout followers of the true Council & welcomes us, and asked us to make this place our home. She waves her hand and Fergus’ clothes fall away from him and he raises in the air and starts to spin around. Every inch of his body was covered in tattoos, which disappeared from his body and became a cloud that swirled about him and then zoomed into her forehead.

She said, “Know that you, Fergus, are a messenger and indeed touched directly by the Raven Queen. You are written into the Prophecy by name, as are the others in your party and still others, whose names I cannot reveal to you now.” The deva told us that the Raven Queen is still technically part of the Council but she’s gone missing. Her religion is in upheaval.

She placed Jarek in charge of one of the armies, making him a general. Kelissa was gifted with some sort of really cool sentient boots that know of her ancestry. She named me High Arbiter of Melora’s Grove, and Yonah as the High Warden. However, the Grove lacks a tree, so there’s little real benefit until we replant that yew tree, which she believes is currently in the Abyssal plane—that Council member we gave it to was a demon deva.

The deva told us that the 4 pillars are places we should avoid because if we go there
“death will be upon us.”


Then she translated the Prophecy for us. It tells of the 6 children of Avir. The high deva explained to us that Avir, who is represented by the symbol on her neck, was the progenitor of all the gods. Long ago, he was trapped by 5 of his original children, who are no longer known. The song “Darkness Falls” comes from this story. When Avir gave birth to his children, each one was given a choice between good and evil, but each of the first 5 chose evil. The last one was not given a choice, because Avir believed in balance and so required that he be good and balance the others, and then gifted him with greater power. Avir created the planes to herd the primordials who had come into being into their proper places

There was a battle between the 1 & the 5 over these planes of existence, and the greatest battle took place directly beneath Point Nicholas, which is what created such a huge mountain. When the battle dragged on, it drew down Avir’s power & eventually all 6 of them were destroyed along with him. Or they seemed to be. Avir gave the last of his power to the one, who became a seed, to come back only if the 5 returned. The yew sapling came from that seed, which she had sent to be hidden in that tomb during the attacks around the country. But it was found out and targeted in the attacks.


5 years pass.

[Yonah & I each spend time traveling through the wilds in the area. We gain a +5 to Nature checks in Praetoria or Grubnub.]

The deva called us in to talk. She told us that time is running out and we need to find the yew tree before the Five do. She said that our people have determined that the pillars are some sort of necrotic energy that function as corrupted gates to the Abyssal plane. One of them has already opened, the one that we came through.

The second place we needed to go to find more information is the Isle of Freedom. The first place to go was the giant pillar on the way.

The Abyssal Plane is in Elemental Chaos, where primordials and titans were sent & where elementals are created. The Abyssal Plane is just an infinite hole with huge floating land masses. The entre plane is highly mutable, so the stronger your will, the more powerfully you can control how the plane manifests. The deva warns us that when we go there, Kelissa must be especially careful because her ancestry might manifest itself powerfully.

Our mission was to go to the pillar in Dreston, find out how the pillar had been corrupted, if we can shut it down, and then get out. Then we should go to the Isle of Freedom and speak with Avandra’s avatar.

The deva teleported us to the middle of a field; 500 yards in front of us was a field of rubble where Destin used to be. The pillar was about 500 yards beyond the field. It’s actually a huge pillar of smoke.

In the field we found a pair of runes on the ground, obviously some sort of warding magic. Fergus approached them to investigate and it turned out they were rune spiral demons with lightning runes. They opened their eyes and emitted a high-pitched scream. We killed the runespiral demons pretty quickly but the rest of the demons had been warned.

We were attacked by barlgura, neldrazzus, & evistra demons. After we’d fought them for a while, a huge demon with copper stripes joined the fray. The copper demon grabbed two of the evistra and ate them, then went on a rampage—it grabbed Kelissa and threw her across the battlefield. It can eat its own allies in order to gain extra action points that it can spend immediately in attacks. Then the demon attacked her again, doing some serious damage but luckily Liam was able to absorb the damage for her, then dealt the killing blow to the demon, which sucked into a cloud of smoke & became the pillar again—the demon itself was the pillar.
We ran to the portal and there was the demon again. We fought him again, and again Liam landed a critical blow that turned the demon back into the pillar. Beneath the pillar was a demon gate covered in a dozen runes.

We used out skills in religion, arcane, nature, perception, and thievery to variously disarm the twelve runes. There were some missteps, though, which resulted in Kelissa becoming hysterical, Liam and Fergis both becoming jittery, while Liam also became demented and Fergis also became melancholic and megalomaniacal. The demon ccame back and I was able to kill him a final time, and then the stone gate crumbled into dust. I spend an hour or two healing the rest of the party.

We gathered up the demon dust, which can be used as a reagent for rituals.

XP: 2,000 each.