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| Session 91 | |
|---|---|
| Session Number | 91 |
| Date | 2026-08-17 |
| Runtime (hrs) | 4 |
| Recording | File:Session-91-Recording.mp3 |
| Previous Session | Session 90 |
| Next Session | Create Session 92 |
Description
A Leap of Faith
We have arrived to Crowcairn Monastery!!
Straight ahead at the end of this path, a massive building
Old but strangely not too badly kept, the forest has started to take over the facade of the stone
Light green vines sprawling across the dirt with ivy leaves and dark green buds
Fuligo peeks his head out from behind the group and walks up to a bunch of flowers As they approach, the petals pulse and release a yellow musky cloud around it They resist its effects seemingly though
Eadith casts mage hand and pokes it, doesnt really do much though
Fuligo sees the flower has moved a bit towards them... They hear the sound of flowering growth and behind all of us and a puff of yellow spores encapsulates all of us, but nothing seems to happen for us... Its a very musky smell
Fuligo casts speak with plants - Hello friend flower, my name is Fuligo how are you today? Tired... bored.... Is there a game or something that you like to play over here? No....
Fuligo pulls some pocket dirt and seeds and the such and presents them
I find you being here interesting.... I like to think Im cool myself, you seem interesting! Interesting.... I havent had many plant friends before! Youre my friend? If you wanna be?
They continue back and forth, the flower they reaches out and caresses Fuligo's face, taking 14 points of psychic damage
Roll initiative!
We see that another couple flowers have cropped up matching the amount of people in our party
Jojo is slashing through these plants, they are dense and the plant continues to withstand his attacks
Aiylah hides behind Eofos to sneak attack
The flowers on their turn move 5 feet each lol one of them pulses and strengthens itself, regenerating some hit points
The flowers pulse another cloud of spores, charming Eofos and Aiylah Eadith runs over and chooses to slap Aiylah and shake her loose of the charm
Fuligo tries to pull the doors open, the budge a little but they feel locked to them
Jojo slashes down a flower bunch, it withering back into the dirt
Aiylah runs up to the door to try to get it unlocked, but is unable to get it fully picked
Eofos casts his Counter Charm to try to try to keep anyone from getting charmed
Aiylah takes another pass at the lock and gets it fully unlocked
We all rush into the doors and close them behind us
---
.....
Silence permeates this space now No bird sounds, no insects, no footsteps
Its completely silent
Some sunlight
We are in the foyer to the Crowcairn Monastery
Tall, high ceiling that rises into a point
A pointed archway in front that seems to lead to a interior vestibule space
Fuligo sneaks up to the arch and peers around
Aiylah walks up and pulls the main doors open The room has no windows, the furthest region is so dark we cant see the far side, the ceiling is 100 feet or so high It holds these huge carved wings that flank a hexagonal pool of something that is completely still in the center of this room There is the smell of old rot and something metallic
Aiylah gives Eofos a lantern thankfully so he can see in this space
As Eofos enters the room, he holds the lantern up to light the room The pool is a dark rich red
There is a large avian skeleton on the far side of the room Its hard to tell what led it to this point, whether it died naturally or in battle or was brought here
Outside of the decay of this creature, there is surprisingly no dust on the ground in this space
Eofos is very much on edge, looking around very nervously keeping an eye out
This pool of blood does have steps that lead down into it on the front side
We all walk out of this room and follow Fuligo to one of the other doors in the foyer.
Fuligo pushes open a door with a busted lock and looks inside
Its a hallway with doors on either side.
Aiylah looks through this space in Thrynn's eyes, mapping out this space, seeing many doors, a garden, a sitting room, and no other signs of life.
She leads us to the sitting room All the books in here are fiction One open on the ground, some on a table, some on a shelf
No dust in here, but on the chair and in front of it a pile of gritty ash
There are tea cups with liquid still in it
Eofos sees Fuligo split from the group and Eadith and Aiylah investigating the room He gets their attention and leads them into the garden
The garden is outside, and we can hear ourselves again
The windows next to the other door in this space has the following designs: A tree with a flock of birds in its branches The other has a pair of wings with drops coming off of them
We talk about Aiylah walking into the pool of blood
We decide to take a rest here for a bit. Short rest
The sun begins to set, and we see a faint light emanating from the designed windows with the door in this courtyard.
This room has a variety of trinkets in it, some just slightly moving from being precariously balanced pieces
There is a bust of a woman on the shelf, a human woman
There is a spilled inkpot on the desk with a couple pieces of parchment and another pile of ash in the chair behind the desk However many years its been here, the parchment is still flexible and not brittle
Jojo is in the garden ritually casting detect magic
The parchment on the desk has some very interesting writing on it NEED TO MAKE SOME LINKS TO THIS INFO HERE
Jojo looks around with his detect magic and sees that the bust is magical. There is a small blue magical flame in here that the glow was coming from.
We decide that Aiylah should walk into the pool of blood
As we get to the vestibule area the floor has opened to large staircase going down
Thrynn flies down the stairs and sees a pillar lined corridor, unlit torches and sconces, an iron chandelier, and a door at the other end
Aiylah takes her shoes off and walks into the pool of blood, walking down as far as she can, dipping her head under it The blood is room temp
Eyes shut, feeling it soak into her around her
Shes down there for an amount of time in which she has to breath, so she does, breathing in blood Eyes shooting open, the fear of drowning grasps her As the eyes open she finds herself hanging, suspended in mid air in a black as night room The blood dripping from her body
Suspended, cant move, but just hanging
Its quiet, but no the magical silence, a droning room tone in her ears
A light bursts in the distance, but also feeling so close. A deep reddish orange. In front of it fully in shadow, a woman, thin, long hair, but like 75 feet tall Aiylah is so high in the air, seeing the full scale of her size, dwarfed but on her level, unable to see her features Through the droning tone, whispers of the dead emerge through the room
A voice says "You have come to commune with me Aiylah"
She quaintly nods
"What of me do you wish?" "I dont...I dont think I want anything from you. I, I am a fan, I have felt drawn to you in a way." "I have felt you. But if you are here with me now, there must be something that you want." "We came here because there are earthquakes-"
lights pop up in her peripheral, not covered in blood, images of her fellow travelers, like faint illusions
"Is this the 'we' you speak of?" "Yeah those are my friends"
The images fade
"But only you came here" "We didnt mean to disturb or trespass" "Where ever you were, you are not there anymore. I do not exist within the walls of those who follow me have made for me. I dont own that place. I am not offended by your arrival there or here" "Where are we?" "An inbetween, neither here nor there, someplace we can talk. So youve just come to say hello?" "We came to search for answers, to know where the earthquakes are coming from because they are hurting our world" "I have siblings who have more control of the weather than I. I dont know what earthquakes you speak." "Someone ascended here? I know very little, but this place intrigues me" "You are not ready for that" "I know, I have always been interested by you and death and I -" "Why?" "Uh well, my mom was killed and she was, I dont know, touched by the gods in some way. So I hear her speak to me and I hear voices and whispers sometimes." "She is dead, your mother. Is it her who speaks to you really?" "I thought so, I heard my brother speak to me as well" "Your mother is dead and your brother has died" "What do you mean by that..." "Both of them have experienced the moment in my embrace, and only 1 has stayed" "Okay, okay...so my mother stayed, so she is here?" "No, she is gone" "I dont know what I want or what I seek or what I could give you. This place is cool" "It is customary to offer a god something upon visitation, so maybe think harder on what you have to give." "I have given you faith and time and reverence and my energy, I would like to keep my life if possible"
A heat warms in Aiylahs chest, a long thin strand of gold extends to a gloved finger of this woman
"Ive taken lives before they are meant to be taken." "Is that my soul?" "It is the thread of you, yes, but I hold many"
She shakes and multiple hands emerge, with thousands upon thousands of threads connecting
They disappear...
"I appreciate that, I am nervous to come down here, this is very new for me. But, I wanted to, a friend called it a leap of faith and I wanted to see for myself I guess. Is there something you want from me? Something I could give or do" "I will not take your life, but you could find your soul to me such that I dont hold it in my hand, but that I hold it as mine" "What would that mean to me?" "Nothing of great import, besides your faith, a deeper connection to me, and messages from your mother will become less confusing than they have been" "Yeah... okay"
Aiylahs thread illuminates again, but connects to her chest, a silver beam extends now and envelops around her gold strand, suffocating it until they are one, the strand becoming a blue color.
"You have made an offer and I have accepted so there is no return, so go forth" "Thank you... how do I see you again" "On the brinks of places, things, is where Im most easily communicated with, but I can feel your life force now, and may haps, Ill send for you. Your mother was devout, I expect the same. It was a pleasure-"
Aiylah is pulled back to the real world and bursts from the blood gasping for air
She gains a level in Cleric! In this moment she has also received the Blessing of the Raven Queen
From our perspective she was down there for like 10 minutes
Thrynn has been sitting at the highest point watching the blood below and stirs now as Aiylah coming up
We all make our way to the garden so we can talk.
We hear it before we feel it, the shaking the rumbling of the earth, very loud, very close, pressure in our ears from a force we cannot see, then it dissipates
---
We step back into the monastery to where the floor opened to the stairs
The hall is empty, the ceiling isnt too high here, about 20 feet, and its dark
As we come off the stairs into this space the wall sconces all light with black flames that dont actually give off any light, but the people with dark vision can see ghostly apparitions
As our feet hit the ground, we can hear our steps again!
Roll initiative!
When these guys attack us, they sap our strength from us Eofos gets hit so a -2 to strength Jojo gets hit the same 2 times for a -4 strength Eadith gets hit and gets a -1
We cut through all the apparitions in no time
As we are walking up, a net drops from the chandelier tangling Fuligo lol they immediately get themselves tangled up worse
Aiylah touches the door and immediately triggers a trap lol spurting fire at her
She pushes the door open, seeing some scorch marks on the ground from the trap before
There is a hallway, the floor is stone with purples and blues and silvers mixed into it. Foot steps have smoothed it over the years.
We walk down to a T section of the hallway, with a door on our right.
The door is open on the right, we walk in
The interior is covered in rugs and pillows - reds and purples and grays and blacks No furniture in here A bowl stained brown in the middle of the room
We continue down the right hallway to a seemingly dead end, but as Aiylah inspects it her hands go right through it
The rest of the hallway continues, there are more doors at the end
We go through the door to the right Its the same kind of room we saw earlier, set up the same with a stained bowl in the center
The room on the left is the same about, but the bowl was knocked over and the brown stain spilling on the ground.
Theres another door from this room, that leads to more hallway
Aiylah sends Thrynn down the hallway and is caught by a trap, hitting something and moving very slowly, the feathers starting to disintegrate until there are just bones floating in the jelly
Aiylah rushes forward to try to save them, she makes the save from this gelatinous wall
She reaches through the jelly to try to grab the remains of her bird
Roll initiative!
We start bashing this cube
Eadith casts Friarball and a construct of a friar flies towards it and blows it up lol
Eadith casts Resurrection on Thrynn from the magic staff she is attuned to
He comes back to life! Thrynn says "Thank you, she did give me back to you I think"
Moving past the cube now, there is an iron door at the end of the hall
There is an arcane trap on this door, Arcane Lock Eadith casts dispel magic and poofs it away
We push through the door.....
On the other side.....
We walk into a room, a large room, hexagonal chamber that matches in dimension the pool Aiylah had entered above
There are 2 hunched bird like creatures covered in tattered rags. A huge arcane machine glowing, force waves pulsing out around us. Light is coalescing up and through the arms of this machine and we see within it, held by some sort of magic in a state of silent distressing pain, a young woman. In the back of this room a cell with a man inside of it.
One of the creatures turns towards us and paralyzes the majority of us
We hear a screeched voice from this bird, "Hurry up hurry up they're here!"
WE END
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Ep Title - A leap of faith