Participants: Paul Darthe, Reiko Amiri, Dolen Harven, Bethany Claie
Locations: Elemental Portal Shrine, Temple of the Two Suns, Unexplored Continent
Loose ends: Elemental Temple, finding more Orbs to open more portals, exploring the endpoint of this portal, the conflict between Lord Attys and Lady Vesper, figuring out who created this Temple of the Two Suns and why, exploring what actually happened to the Fey trapped inside the temple.
Original report can be found here.
Short summary: Dolen
We received an orb from King Aseron, which upon examination, opens a portal in the Elemental Portal Shrine. Other orbs also open portals there. Our orb opened a portal to a shadowy temple called the Temple of the Two Suns, but the group smashed through some stuff and found it leads to an island between two Fey Baronies in the New World.
Full report: Dolen
The Elemental Temple
Spring blossomed anew, and with it a new opportunity for exploration! The Guild tasked us with exploring the purpose of the orb gifted to First Landing from the Fey Wedding. It was a beautiful orb, shimmering with moving patterns of blues and whites. It read as strong Conjuration, and speculation seemed to link its purpose to the Elemental Shrine. Could there be a link between the Shrine’s portals and the conjuration of the sphere? And was it related to the similar orb found in the Vault of Zalael? The Shrine has been tied to both Elemental life, as well as the creation of portals, so it wasn’t such a far-fetched idea. Our intrepid party set out and traveled the day’s walk there with a spring in their step and music in the air.
We arrived at the temple and found a menagerie of Mephits all in a dusting of disarray. None of us spoke the language of the Elementals, but their intentions seemed clear when they all gathered around Beth and the Orb she carried. They became even more animated when she brought it out; the little zephyrs zoomed off to an inner chamber holding a large stone dais, twelve spherical slots, and a myriad of aged artwork. It pains my heart that most of the artwork here succumbed to the ages, but there was one piece that seemed to preserve at least a little better than all the others. It showed people running! Certainly they weren’t running from something as much as they were running to something. Something happy? Certainly, that must be the case.
Ahem. At any acceleration, Beth put the orb in the slot and the Mephits loved it. The orb itself started to change first, the brilliant blues turning into deep blacks; the bright whites sliding into shimmering verdants. And then there was an explosion. Magic filled the room, beaming up high over the Shrine itself and then formed into a portal! What luck! We declared daring decisions and jumped right in, only to discover a similar dais for the portal we’d come through surrounded by a small pool of ancient water. Darkness and gray dominated the decrepit and dark world, with odd designs that gave the impression of everything being unfinished by reality. The room had some curious features: an archway, a doorway, a mirror, and a lantern in the middle of all three. Features were faulty until the lamp was lit, though the mirror itself disappeared when light laid upon it. Everything else became fairly focused.
The Mirror Temple
The mirror was a curiosity. We found words written in Aklo above it: “There is no shadow without light to cast it. Show us your true selves; show us what lingers in your inner darkness when you let it outside.” It was a clue that we had to let our own shadows open the way. We pointed the lantern towards the mirror and stood in front. Beth and Dolen lost shadows that way, but it opened the way into a twisted mirror-world of the hallway. The mirror-temple version had veered into such disarray, floating chunks of floor spread everywhere. Below was a vast stretch of gray, dull sand as far as the eye could see. It was a twisted vision of what a temple should be. It also was not unoccupied.
Scattered around the room were mirrors, and with them came the mirror-men. This sentience, as it was, seemed to be a selection of several souls seamed together. Their claim was that the mirror-temple was their jail and that if we were not careful it would be ours too. It appeared there were two personalities in the mirror-men: Xamak, who seemed to be tormented and scared, and Kamax, who was violent and sadistic. Kamax was able to redirect virtually any kind of magic or ranged attack to a nearby mirror to destroy it, as it seemed like destroying the mirrors would free them from whatever mechanism kept these individuals manacled.
Ultimately, we fought Kamax until he was suppressed by Xamak, and we managed to make it out without further fighting. We found a statue with most of its body missing. The missing parts of the statue revealed a shadowy outline, so we brought it with us! Surely we could find the other half? At the other end of the room was a door, chained and locked. We shone a light on it and managed to break the chains, and boom - the temple started restoring itself quite violently. All of us were thrown out of the mirror temple, including the door and the broken statue. The half of the hallway with the shadow mirror filled in, showing details and color, and the whole wall was filled with mirrors. We could occasionally see glimpses of Xamak through them, though we failed to be able to communicate with him. The door ended up on the far side of the hallway but refused to open all the same.
The Verdant Temple
Shining a light on the archway solidified the structure for us, allowing us to communicate more with the two rather chatty Fey on the other side. Text in ancient Sylvan above the archway read: “There is no light without shadow to shine against. Knock, and we will open. Ask, and we will ask. Answer, and we will answer.” So we knocked! The Fey failed to find that funny. They gave us a few riddles at first, three in total.
Riddle 1: You answer me, but I never ask you a question. What am I?
The answer, as it was, was a door! Answering made vines move over, no longer masking a stone wall that materialized a door.
Riddle 2: First tell me a man who is always in disguise
Tells naught truth but only tells lies.
Then tell me what's the last thing to mend
The middle of the middle, the end of the end.
And finally tell me what's the sound often heard
During the search for a hard to find word.
String them together and answer me this:
Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?
This one was a thinker, though thinking did throw us in the right tracks: a spider! This riddle raised hackles when real spiders rallied against us. The Fey sent their own pet spiders against us, the poor things.
Riddle 3: I am sable, I am bone,
Music made with taps alone.
Oh, and when I twist, I wind
A lullaby to soothe your mind.
When I enter, you encroach,
Without me, you can't approach.
When I exit, you may leave,
And a whole new world perceive.
Another thinker, though knowledge brought the key. Literally, the answer was a key. Vines formed into one and launched into the door, unlocking access to the Verdant Temple. That’s when the Fey started getting ready for guests.
We entered and...it was beautiful. The greenery, the colors, even the smell of pollen in the air was refreshing. We looked around, unsure of what to do with this new-found area. Searching around, we found what looked like the second half of the statue from the shadow temple, the missing portions shimmering with ghostly verdant vinery. There was also a huge tree full of trinkets and oddities; our curiosity with it would be a cautionary tale. We came to explore it and found out that this is actually the home of two fey: the hot-headed Beety and the mellow flying Elgie. Beety didn’t like that we touched Elgie’s stuff (and didn’t like the tongue of Aklo) so he decided to be a Problem.
Beety came for us and frankly almost managed his goals. In the end, we managed to get into a bit of a flight of flyting:
Reiko, having collected herself, hears Dolen's voice and wheels around to the other fey, nearly shouting, her normally melodic voice frazzled and cracking.
"What the actual fuck are you thinking? You invited us into this room! Then you vanish rather than greeting guests and turn hostile when we poke around trying to figure out where the hell we are? I tell you what, for all Aseron's faults, I know where I would rather spend a weekend. You are the worst hosts I've ever met, you're not funny, and, quite frankly, your interior decoration choices are hideous."
"Children... I believe you killed my husband," the winged Fey stares at the group blankly. "Oh no," he adds emotionlessly and monotonously, and just hangs there for a few silent moments. "Anyway," sip sip. "Okay, Karen, dial it down. We didn't want you here in the first place, but rules's the rules. We didn't vanish, y'all were just... looking past us? While we were in our tree? I don't know how you didn't see us. Good hosts or not, you folk are the worst visitors we've ever had, and QuItE fRaNkLy, your fashion choices are even more laughable."
Elgie gave us a key and a gift for entertaining him and bid us leave. Which we did, immediately. (Un)fortunately for Elgie, that meant the collapse of this Verdant Temple back into the shattered shrine, much like the merging that happened after the Shadow Temple. Elgie ended up with us, there, in the hallway and quite unhappy about an assortment of jostled hammocks.
The Shattered Temple - Made Whole
Now that the Shadow and Verdant temples were mostly merged, the two statues stood in the hallway just inches from each other. Xamak and Elgie helped us push them together, and suddenly the darkness of the Shattered Temple began to lift. And, indeed, it was no longer shattered. Green vines and mirrors spread everywhere, and the final door at the end of the hallway appeared to open to us. The temple at last seemed to be at peace.
Where Are We?
The door at the far end of the hallway finally opened up to us. On the other side was a foyer-like room, but it opened up into a whole world of its own. There were altars to the sunrise and the sunset in this foyer room, bringing all levels of questions to bare. Walking outside found us on a small island in the middle of a large lake, other islands scattered around in visible range. A mountain range loomed on the northern shore of the island, taller than the clouds, and the Temple itself oriented so the altars aligned with the rising and setting sun. We soon met a Satyr rowing up on a boat and landing on an old pier; he named himself Marsyas, saying he’d been tasked with the upkeep of this shrine.
“Whatever its original purpose and meaning were, now it is significant for us local Fey, because of our own little reasons and beliefs.”
- Marsyas
He called it the Temple of the Two Suns.
He told us where we were: about three weeks west of the Millennium Forest by boat. He told us of the land itself being in a sort of neutral zone, stuck in conflict between two siblings: his Lord Attys from the east in the Eleutherian territory, and Lady Vesper to the west in the Avilion territory. Certainly, no one here knew what this Temple contained. There was yet another threat from the mountains: Orcs in conflict with the Fey. We learned all this, trading stories for stories so we could learn about this side of the portal and Marsyas could learn of ours. And apparently a mysterious hidden “she” listened in as well, much to Marsyas’ amusement. Whatever the purpose of this temple, there is much more to learn.
- Dolen