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Dawn of Magic
We skipped two weeks of gaming in March – what would have been our March 10 and March 17 sessions – thanks to fallout from my dental surgery. However, we gamed on March 24. Everybody was there: Bonnie ("Leif"), Marc ("Mushamee"), Martin ("Kaeso"), Mike ("Rufus"), and Stéphane ("Vinz").
Time: Wee hours, Dva 7, 1003 Imperial Reckoning.
Place: Smouldering ruins of Kaeso's workshop, Roma.
Last Event: Dealing with the fire.
Kaeso plants false evidence of his demise – the charred remains of his old suit of armor – in the still-burning workshop. Then he flees before his invisibility elixir expires. Mushamee, Rufus, and Vinz remain on the scene for a while longer, publicly bemoaning Kaeso's death, even letting slip a few lines about how the Empire no longer has anyone who can manipulate the portals in Tenosia. Rufus makes sure that there will be an investigation. Whatever that inquest turns up, of course, the public findings will be propaganda for the war effort.
Meanwhile, deep in the bowels of the Imperial Palace, Leif hears a sound in the corridor outside the cell holding the beaten, unconscious Starfish-Man spy. As it comes from beyond the thick door between the Emperor's "special" prison and the rest of the dungeons, he cannot make out details . . . but he has no doubt that it has something to do with the trouble that he was put on guard duty to prevent. He strips naked, clambers up into the dark recesses of the vaulted cellar ceiling, and invokes the spirit of the chameleon to blend in with the stone. Then he waits.
After a short time, Leif sees the heavy bar on the door rise into the air, no doubt by magic. A moment later, the door swings open slowly and silently. Although the Northerner cannot see anyone enter, his superhuman senses tell him that four invisible figures have entered the room. After the door shuts, four Starfish-Men become visible. Their garb and abilities identify them as wizards. Two guard the door, one goes to work on the lock on the prison cell, and the last starts searching the rest of the room.
Knowing that Starfish-Man wizards wear amulets of protection against blows, Leif decides to even the odds by quickly taking out the two near the door with some good old-fashioned wrestling. He drops down behind them – silent and unseen, despite his size – and smashes their skulls together. Both immediately collapse and vanish to their home dimension, as expected. When the others turn to respond to this new danger, Leif pulls Necros' Spirit Reaper from within his flesh. Magic and two-to-one odds aren't enough to save the Starfish-Men; Leif sends them to join their brothers by chopping them in half.
Leif then looks into the corridor, where he finds a wounded guard. He revives the man, tells him what happened, and sends him to fetch his superiors. It takes a while, but eventually Leif manages to convey the seriousness of the breach to a senior officer, who increases the guard over the dungeons. Shortly thereafter, Leif's allies return, and everybody fills in everybody else on the night's events.
Sunrise comes without further incident. After a brief discussion, the group decides that it would be best to keep Kaeso truly out of sight, to better fake his death. Leif then proceeds to ferry him to the Serpent Queen's home in the Dream Realm. Over the next few days, the heroes see to various matters that need resolving before the upcoming battles:
• Kaeso is characteristically rude to the Serpent Queen and to her other guest, Reema. Eventually, though, he decides to take advantage of his situation to learn the Ancient Imperial language. It is, after all, the tongue in which many important alchemical secrets are recorded.
• Leif spends a last few days with his wife, Diandra. Having procured a fertility potion from Kaeso before leaving him the in Dream Realm, he makes sure that should he die, he'll be survived by more children who share his remarkable blood.
• Mushamee meets with Nicolai and gets the Emperor's complicity on the matter of faking Kaeso's demise. He also secures the financial and organizational support he'll need to pose mobs of refugees as legions in Tenosia. Then he returns to Tenosia and earns the mobs' loyalty by rolling up his sleeves and leading their "training" personally.
• Rufus sets up a state funeral for Kaeso, the Imperial Inventor and Defender of Tenosia. He spends a fair bit of coin to make it convincing, even going so far as to hire professional mourners.
• Vinz returns to Tenosia, where he sees to some kind of personal business involving Loclá. Nobody is quite sure what that's all about. It sounds creepy.
By Dva 10, all the world's forces – real and decoy – are positioned in Tenosia. The place is an armed camp. In Tenosia's former location in the mortal world, Black Adolph's hordes are camped as if preparing to invade across the worlds . . . exactly as he and Queen Hippolyte agreed. The heroes meet with Hippolyte, Emperor Nicolai, and other leaders to discuss how to set off the hostilities. The captured Starfish-Man spy provides the perfect opportunity, and those at the meeting formulate a plan.
The captured spy will be brought to Tenosia under the pretext of trying him for espionage and then executing him in his own dimension – Tenosia's present location – where his death will be permanent, thereby depriving him of the chance to return home, be revived, and share what he has learned. The judges will be the assembled dignitaries. Once the spy is thoroughly in the know about where Tenosia is hidden and who's present there, he'll be escorted to a cell to await execution . . . whereupon Vinz, disguised as a Starfish-Man wizard and dressed in captured garb, will use his magic to break out the spy. Vinz will "die" helping the spy make his way undetected from the hidden city to the surface so that he can report to his superiors.
Mushamee then organizes a kangaroo court with the Asok, Emperor Nicolai, the Harb, Kerim Khan, Patriarch Recnam, Queen Hippolyte, and Spirit Anaconda sitting as judges. Rufus, meanwhile, gathers a multi-ethnic force of incompetent guards – ones from whom escape would be quite convincing – and heads to Roma to fetch the prisoner. Leif brings Kaeso back from the Dream Realm, as the alchemist is needed to cancel the portals and send Tenosia back to the mortal world. Kaeso remains hidden in Hippolyte's palace, brewing several potions for Vinz, notably a potion of awakening and a sizeable quantity of paut.
Rufus returns to Tenosia via the scenic route, making sure that the prisoner sees Kaeso's incinerated workshop and mourners, as well as the assembled forces in Tenosia. The trial begins immediately on his arrival in Tenosia. The assembled "judges," practiced politicians every one, do a convincing job and waste no time making sure that the prisoner knows who they are, where he is, and what his sentence will be. They charge him with being a spy and an assassin, and even with destroying the "Imperial Banner" (the tapestry Rufus shredded capturing him). Mushamee and Rufus toss in a few more trumped-up charges, including Kaeso's murder, for good measure.
The eventual sentence involves the spy being tortured, maimed, and killed by the temporal authorities – followed by the priests ritually despoiling his corpse and damning his soul. The judges deliver this sentence with great ceremony, and decree that by the laws of land, the sentence will be carried out in public at dawn. Then Rufus and the incompetent guards escort the Starfish-Man from the court to the dungeons. Vinz, watching from behind the tapestries, takes this as his cue and gets ready to spring the prisoner.
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Isn't being hit in the head with someone else's head still a blow?
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