Session XXI — The Lost Fane
What Was Lost
Scouts found an active temple of Baphomet thirty miles west of Drezen, and the company rode out to empty it. On the way, a demon off the top of a rock nearly killed the monk, and the thing it had been fighting up there turned out to be an axe that cursed in Dwarven and wanted demon blood. The temple was exactly what the scouts said. Templars, a tattooed woman with a crossbow, a winged beast, and a great goat-headed idol sitting cross-legged over all of it. And when the last of them fell, the stone began to shake, and the company watched the place remember what it had been before anyone carved a demon over it — a lost house of Irori, mended by hands that had been waiting a very long time. One of them bowed to the monk as an equal and called him by a name that none of the four has said aloud since. They came home a week later to a broken tower, a chaotic garrison, and a wizard's staff snapped in two on the command table.
Fallen Guardian
Terendelev
Silver Dragon · Protector of Kenabres
“There is no shrine to her. No temple is going to put itself back together in her name. Where she fell there is a patch of swept stone in a Kenabres square, and people cross it on their way to market, and most of them do not know why that stretch is cleaner than the rest. She spent a hundred years being walked past in that city. It is possible she would have wanted it that way. It is certain she was owed more. What she left behind was four silver scales, given in the last breath she had, to strangers she had no reason to trust — and those four have carried her gift a year into the Wound.”
The One Who Went Still
Caleth
Paladin / Wizard
When a demon turned the sky upside down and threw three of them a hundred and forty feet into the air, he caught both dwarves on the way up and folded them to the ground behind it. Then he walked in under its arm and ended it with his bare hand and a great deal of lightning. Inside the temple his spells met something in the stone that would not let them work, and he swore about it, properly. At the end of the road home there was a broken staff on a table, and he did not say anything at all.
The One They Waited For
Nageru
Monk / Paladin
He walked into a temple of Baphomet and felt it grieving at him, and did not understand why. A demon chose him first on the road and he stood through it bleeding. The woman with the tattoo chose him first in the temple, and he answered with five blows. Then the stone shook, and an old monk walked out of the light, bowed to him the way equals bow, and said welcome home. He knelt, and found the robes of his order waiting at the feet of his god. He has not spoken of it since.
The One the Axe Knew
Thane
Inquisitor / Rogue
Something on top of a rock was cursing a demon in Dwarven, and he floated up to see what, and came back down carrying an axe that talks in many voices and wants blood. He knew its name before anyone told him. He read the map. He opened a lock that let a four-armed mist out of a cabinet, lost the color from his face, and slid out of its grip anyway. He found the door under the idol. Reading a bounty on a runaway succubus, he said good luck to her, and did not seem to notice he had.
The One Who Saw It First
Korroc
Paladin / Oracle
On the night road home from the tomb he told them something big had crossed the moon, and nobody else saw it. This time all four of them did, and he stood up and pointed and said see, that is what I saw. In the temple three blades found the seams in his armor and two of them stopped at the stone in his blood. He healed the room, dropped the last cultist across it with fire, and read that their enemy was an elven woman, and snorted.
Current Status
A Temple Found, a Wizard Taken
The fane restored · A tower fallen · A bounty on a runaway
The company went west to clear one enemy temple and came back with more than it went for. A lost house of Irori is standing clean again in the Marchlands. A cabinet of Templar papers names the Ivory Sanctum and puts it somewhere in the Marchlands, which narrows nothing. The woman who signs the orders is called elven, which nobody in the company believes, and she has posted a thousand platinum for a succubus who escaped from under Drezen — which tells them exactly how badly she is wanted. And while they were gone, the fortress they had just won was hit from the sky, and Aravashnial went up a tower so other people could get out of the courtyard. Nobody has found him. Nobody has stopped looking.
Book 3 of 6|Mythic Tier 3–4|Level 10
