Session 114

Hearts of Folly
The Hearts are spoken of as legends, tales stitched together from the ramblings of the broken few who somehow returned from the Folly. Most dismiss the creatures who were cursed with madness.

But we shouldn’t be so quick to look away. Craze has kept its records faithfully since the first fool crossed the pass, and in that time fifty-two have returned changed…crazed, yes, but consistent in their madness. Each spoke of things no one had ever seen.

Rarer still are the seven who claimed to have glimpsed the Eye. Their voices were quieter, steadier. Not wild ravings… more like warnings carried back from the edge of something vast.

… Bethenis Hartugan, Remembering the Fallen, page 41

The party slips into the Melantha trophy room and takes what they need - gold, crystal, and enchanted oddities, all left out in the open. With Garthos dead and Lilith turned monstrous, the Sol Blade’s light flickers and thins in Peach’s hand, fading as a cost of saving Lilith.

A corpse, a guard, a glyph and a bard

From the treasure room, the crew - Aydriann, Ember, Peach, Orianna, Mack, and Dax - set out to cross to the grandfather’s workshop, the Dua’Thirion Estate, to learn the truth behind Icarus and chase leads on Venoxyin. They move under Pass Without Trace. The workshop is a ruin guarded by two sentries and a garden patrol. Jakarin bluffs the guards - Garthos has been slain, he says, and they need to reposition. Demoralized that their boss is dead, the guards abandon their posts.

Fae stars and a lost friend

Inside, Aydriann casts Detect Magic and finds a glyph on the wall - a lock of Abjuration, Illusion, and Transmutation, set by Ozdos and Arinj Melantha. Peach reads the pattern (a trident/triad, its middle point replaced by an oval) and presses the points matching the “OS” symbol - Orianna and Sirius - plus his own. The wall dissolves into a chamber swallowed in darkness, lit only by a central pedestal and gem “constellations” in the ceiling.

The pedestal holds six dials, each tuned to a gemstone: Diamond, Emerald, Amethyst, Sapphire, Ruby, Topaz. An inscription reads:

The fae count numbers and words like stars:
Eight stands above, blazing eternal like a ruby,
While Three lights the way for you only.

The first attempt fails and lashes out with force damage. The trick is exclusion - count only the rubies. There are twenty-four. They set the Ruby dial to 24 and leave the rest at null; the floor slides open onto a ladder.

Venoxyin’s Research

The archive below has been stripped bare except for a letter from Venoxyin. She’d recovered Ozdos and Arin Melantha’s research on the barrier: “Lumen Resonant Cores,” four “Hearts of the Folly,” and one “Eye of the Folly” - a matter of harmonics that, aligned, could bend the barrier’s frequency. She took the data to Craze Pass to meet a contact, Ravynne.

Aydriann casts Mordenkainen’s Private Sanctum and the party rests. Ember checks on Dax, worried - he’s acting like he did during his troubles with Fungar. He says events have just changed his mood. They talk briefly about his shadow puppets before a spirit appears: a simple allegory of a girl from a dark city climbing a wall toward the light. As Aydriann sleeps, he has a vision of Jazouhr, the entity of Chaos, about the nature of their connection; Jazouhr offers him truth through memory crystals.

The Perpendicularity of Moonshire

Ember completes a Teleportation Circle, using a mask as the focus, and drops the group back in New Moonshire. A ragged Zaelira meets them and hurries them toward the ship’s deck. “Muvara is in the fields.”

The Fracture in the Sky

From the deck, the scale of it is clear: the sky has shattered, a massive fracture like a crack in celestial glass, with petal-like fragments drifting down from the Spirit Realm and dissolving before they reach the ground. Aydriann flies up on his winged boots to study it. It isn’t arcane weaving but Ædric magic, tied to the world’s Spiritweb - like the veiling the Spiritwalkers use. Though the sky looks like it’s bleeding, the intent is preservation: the barrier holds.

The Splintering of Duties

The group splits up:

Ember and Dax go to the fields to find Muvara.
Mack and Aydriann analyze the crack in the sky barrier.
Peach, Orianna, and Petra head to Lilith.

The Sun, The Moon, and The Broken Mother

Peach finds Lilith laid on a bed, blind, blood weeping from beneath her bandages. Two Edryms guard her: Lesoleil (the Sun and Light) and Lelune (the Moon and Darkness). Lesoleil says Tavina is gone - to stop Edmeera’s Death Threads from killing Lilith, Tavina splintered her own spirit, losing her mind so that only her will remained to hold the blade together. With Peach’s permission, Lesoleil releases Tavina and the Sol Blade into the sun.

The Twilight Blade

Lelune offers Peach a weapon instead of comfort: Twilight, a ring blade that drinks the light around it. “I do not possess kind weapons,” she warns. “Only powerful ones.” It’s heavily invested but carries a Curse of Intent bound by Blood Laws:

The Connection: Peach must bond it to an Anchor - someone he’s closely bound to. To unbind it, that Anchor must die.
The Tithe: It demands violence against a foe every 24 hours; if denied, it feeds on Peach’s own vitality (exhaustion).
The Backlash: If his focus wavers mid-strike (a natural 1), the necrotic energy recoils into him.

In return it grants reach, pierces magical darkness, and denies enemies healing. Peach accepts it for now but wants to discuss attunement with the group.

The Weight of Guilt

Lilith, broken, confesses she killed Garthos - she’d listened to a whisper that promised a fix. She tries to cast her children away, claiming her corruption is absolute. Peach won’t allow it: leaving was his own selfish choice, he says, but for her to push them away now, after friends died for her, would be surrender to Edmeera. Lilith relents.

The Damaged Spirit

In the fields, Ember and Dax find Muvara alive but unraveling - chunks of flesh gone, blackened bone shifting beneath. Dax can’t stabilize her; as an Edrym, her injury is beyond his healing. They carry her to Aydriann’s barn.

Regrouping

In the barn, Aydriann identifies the Twilight blade as a relic of ancient wars. Peach holds firm on wielding it. The plan: rest, then march on Craze Pass near Wizard’s Folly, where Ravynne awaits.

The Fourth Edrym

Ember checks on the guard Jakarin at Chlo and Kat’s house. The door opens - but it isn’t the guard who fills the room. Waiting is a stout figure crowned with antlers: Ozana, the Goddess, has arrived.