RQ Meeting summary 15 - November, 2011 - part 1

Our group consisted of:

Arre - Thad’s Melnibonean alchemist archer
Aurelius - Rich O’s Graeco-Egyptian sorcerer charioteer, favorite of Ra, The Golden, The One, Pharoah to both Humans and Fairies, Lord of the Summer Lands, The Returned, He Who Rules in Strength….
Baclane - Mark’s master of horses
Felcia Shadowclaw - Dave’s hunter Sidhe from the Unseelie Court, who follows Fladais the Huntress, and has been guarding the camp.
Gupta - Dwayne’s virgin sorcerer
Lysteria - Bob’s Sidhe from the Unseelie courts, who follows Sholto, the Sidhe Lord of the High Hunt
Namon Pferd - Tony’s Sidhe from the Unseelie courts, who has betrayed his loyalty to Essus the Just, Prince of Flesh and Flame (brother to Andais, The Queen of Air and Darkness, ruler of the Unseelie Courts.) Namon now follows Ra, The Golden, The One, Pharoah to both Humans and Fairies…you get the picture.
Nick the Greek - Scott’s Byzantine catacphract (disciplined, well armored horse archer), current weilder of Durandal and wearer of Hector's Armor
Palanar - Leon’s Maat/Humakti arkati sorcerer
??? - Keith’s Argan Argar Troll, who has left Constantinople in order to enjoy the sunny shores of the Baltic
??? - Harry’s Frankish knight
??? - Rich F’s Sidhe from the Seelie Court, who follows Hugh Belenus, Seneschal of the Court of Light.

Please note that everyone from the Seelie and Unseelie Courts takes double damage from iron.

People of Note

Allies and Friends

Louis the Pious - Emperor, heir to Charlemagne
Reinald, Paladin - Commander of the imperial forces in Hispania
Duke Astolph - Mage, protégé of Merlin, the only English Paladin in Charlemagne’s court. Next to certain members of the party, he is the greatest personal enemy Malachi has, having just recently made his way into the Castle of Iron in stealth and stolen the cream of Malachi’s prize menagerie: a griffin, a hippogryf and one of the giant Eagles of the Atlas Mountains. Current whereabouts unknown.
Merlinus Ambrosius - you knew he had to be around here somewhere.

Members of the Hindu Lords, high-powered Seelie who are worshipped as gods in India.  They hold central and eastern India against the forces of Assurbanipal, and their capital is Calcutta.

Trimurti: Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, Shiva the Destroyer
Tridevi: Kali, Mistress of Death, Saraswati, Mistress of Knowledge, Lakshmi, Mistress of Abundance

Other Lords of Note:
Agni - Lord of Fire,
Yama - Lord of Death, Maker of Weapons
Surya - Lord of the Sun, Master of Cavalry, Warlord
Indra - Lord of Lightning, Thunder and Rain, Warlord
Varuna - Lord of the Ocean
Kubera - Lord of Wealth and Knowing
Hanuman - messenger and loyal follower
Krishna - The Black, Lord of Strength and Desire.  Prankster, Player of Flutes

Enemies, Threats to Western Civilization and All around Bad People

Asshurbanipal - Dread Lord of the Muslim world from the Sinai to western India, current Guardian of Mecca and Medina, known to be able to summon demons, believed to be thousands of years old. Eats kittens, but is said to be one heck of a dancer.


Now, where were we?  Oh, yes…

The party must decide now on the next leg of their journey.  Will you sail north up the east coast of Africa and force passage of the channel between Mozambique and Madagascar?  Or will you sail east into the Indian Ocean and try to circle around Assurbanipal's forces?

The decision is made to force a passage of the Straits of Madagascar in the teeth of Assurbanipal's power.  The Liafail III sails north.

Assurbanipal's forces withdraw before you on both land and sea, to make a stand at the top of the Straits, between the African coast and the northwestern tip of Madagascar, both of which have enemy fortifications.  The number of opposing troops is unknown, although you know that they number in the thousands on both sides of the strait.  There are at least 40 enemy ships massed in the channel to oppose you (remember that the enemy has no way of knowing if your advance is an all out attack or if you are just heading north by the most direct route), maybe more.  You make your approach at night, and time your attack to begin at dawn.

Because you are between Madagascar and the african coast, there will be a brief period between the rising of the sun and the time the sun's rays penetrate the full width of the channel.  You take advantage of this to advance as far north as possible before being detected.  While you are still in darkness, the sun's rays begin to illuminate the air above the strait, and you spot figures circling over the channel, 8 winged shapes soaring thousands of feet above the waves: eight of Assurbanipal's demonic servants, and they each carry something in their arms.  Your sorcerers open fire and succeed in setting two of the demons on fire; they release their stones and the flaming demons plummet into the ocean, missing the ship due to the skill of your helmsman, Palanar.

However, sheer bad luck guides two stones, and the ship's steering wheel and the starboard arrow engine are badly damaged.  The two demons who fell into the ocean and another demon launch attacks on the ship from above and either end, and are cut down.  The party decides to head to the southwestern coast of  Madagascar to make repairs, and heads SE before the sun rises above the island.  You anchor in a secluded cove and send scouts ashore while your brownie ally uses his magic to make repairs.   A few days later, when your repairs are partially completed, members of the party ashore sense something unusual.  You feel magic pulsing through the earth; you bring the brownie ashore to see if he can make anything of this magic, and he is attacked by it and almost incapacitated by pain.  When this happens, members of the party see a wave moving through the earth, as if something was surging underneath it and coming closer.  You begin withdrawing to your ship just when this wave reaches your encampment and a 4 headed hydra erupts from below ground and goes for the brownie.  Someone or something sensed the brownie's magic, and sent both a spell and a monster to hunt him down.

The hydra is big, mean and nasty, but the party deals with it in short time; 1 head is taken out by Baclane with an arrow between the eyes and another has its skull jellied by Gupta and one of his plasma bolts.  You kill the hydra and get your ally the brownie back to the ship and nurse him back to health.  Along with the contents of the hydra's stomach, you loot a belt with strange symbol on its buckle from the beast.  Arre recognizes the symbol as that of Varuna, Lord of the Ocean in the Hindu Pantheon.  The belt detects as magical, and emits a pulse of magic on a regular basis; whoever commanded the hydra was apparently using the belt to keep track of it.

You then decide to force the straits again.  This time, there are only 5 demons, and they are circling just a little bit higher than before, still within range of the sorcerers.  You decide to light them up the same way.  The difference is, this time it’s a trap.

The demons are carrying something between them, something invisible to the eye, until it is struck by a spell aimed at one of the demons who carry it.  Then, it becomes visible: a many tentacled creature that resembles a sea anemone.  This thing is able to lash out at anyone who casts a spell at it, striking them with magical attack that sucks magic points from them.  Namon had succeeded in multispelling his Apollo's Touch spell, and so was struck by more than one attack from the creature.   This monster's attacks can literally reach for miles and if you managed to break the link between one attack and its target, the attack (which is visible as a golden tendril) simple switches from the first victim to whoever broke the link.  Nick tries this with Durandal, but finds that when the creature starts sucking magic from Durandal, Durandal starts sucking magic from Nick.

Someone (I forget who) tries to gather all of the tendrils to himself and jump overboard, but the beast continues to drain magic points, knocking them unconscious just as Gupta goes for broke and uses his Tap Chaos on the monster.  This results in a huge blast of magic from the creature (which is apparently knocked out), down the tendrils onto the Liafail's deck.  Seeing that the monster has been incapacitated,  the party take the opportunity to run for it.  The Liafail sails out from under the creature, which cannot be maneuvered well by its demon handlers, and heads east and south, around the southern end of Madagascar.  To distract your enemies, you take the belt looted from the hydra and tie it to a shark summoned by Palanar; he orders the shark off to create another trail for your enemies to follow.

That night, while the party is recovering from their battle, a lookout spots an odd light coming towards the ship.  On closer examination, it is revealed to be a glowing pearlescent orb, indeed what appears to be a huge pearl set into the forehead of a giant snake.  Arre recognizes it as a Naga, a serpent guardian described by travelers who had visited India, a land at war with Assurbanipal for some time.  It delivers to the party 3 gifts: 3 magical black pearls and an invitation to follow it.  It leads the ship east for a week's sail to a small group of islands that hold a cache of food and water.  The naga leads you east and a little north for more than 3 weeks, each time leading you to a cache to keep the ship supplied.  Nearly a month after leaving Madagascar, you reach a larger island that appears to be uninhabited except for the one who has invited you to this meeting: a strange seelie lord who wears armor and weapons that are unfamiliar to you: he is Krishna, called the Black, and he wants you to sail with him north to the city of Calcutta, capital of the Seelie Court of India, and center of opposition to Assurbanipal's ambitions in the East.  You agree, and you learn more of these potential allies in your voyage north.

Assurbanipal's advance into India managed to reach as far as Alexander the Great did, until he was stopped by an alliance of all the fairie races on the subcontinent, at dreadful cost.  They have managed to hold him in check with a stalemate that neither seems to be able to break; although Assurbanipal initial invasion killed many Seelie, the ones who remain are immensely powerful and they have managed to gain the allegiance and worship of the millions of humans of the subcontinent.  This means that their powers are heightened and reinforced compared to the Seelie of Europe, and they work much more directly with their human followers, even to the point of leading them into combat.

The Hindu Lords have been focusing their powers for the purposes of combating the Invader from the West for years, and are capable of wreaking a terrible amount of damage, yet they can do no more than hold Assurbanipal in check.  Now they hear that the other two Muslim Lords, their enemy's rivals, are gone, and an old foe, Ra, is rising again.  They know that those rivals drew off a part of their foe's strength, which can now be turned against them.  And they know what Ra is capable of.

They are beginning to fear that Fate has turned against them, and you sense that they are growing more desperate.  Their spies were keeping an eye on Assurbanipal's forces in East Africa, and they detected the magic unleashed by your arrival.  Krishna was in charge on this front, and used his own initiative in contacting you and bringing you east and now north to the great city of Calcutta, Capital of the Hindu Lords.  Krishna's colors are blue and black; these are the colors of his clothing and armor, as well as his skin, his hair and his eyes.  He is very strong and very cheerful; he is a bit of a prankster and plays the flute often (he is VERY good at it).  Krishna is going to introduce you to the Hindu Lords and suggest that you and they can help one another.  He warns you (especially Aurelius and Namon) to be careful when Ra is mentioned; the Hindu Lords were among the Seelie alliance that defeated Ra long ago, and they have not forgotten.  Although the Seelie of India are different in many ways from the Seelie of Europe, they are still Fairies: very proud, very touchy and they seem to treasure a good grudge more than silver or gold.

The great city of Calcutta is almost overwhelming; it is a city of many new sights, sounds and scents, of great highways and soaring palaces, with a multitude of new wares, strange animals and exotic things to eat and drink.  But underneath it all, you can sense that it is a city at war.  Even though Calcutta is the  indian city farthest from the front line, Assurbanipal's shadow is still long enough to reach its walls.  Krishna takes you to the glittering extended palace that is the home of the Hindu Lords and the centre of their power and the city itself.  There he introduces you to those Hindu Lords who present in the city.  The Lords of Calcutta are lead by a pair of triumvirates, one male, one female.  The male triumvirate is the most powerful: Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer.  The female triumvirate consists of their spouses: Saraswati, Lady of Knowledge, Lakshmi, Lady of Wealth and Abundance, and Kali, Lady of Death.  Brahma is called the Ruler, but you get the impression that all six rule roughly as equals.  This would be unthinkable among the Fairies of Europe, but it works well enough here.

There are other Lords here as well.  You meet Agni, Lord of Fire; he does not carry weapons, and it is said that he is a weapon himself.  You meet Indra, Lord of Lightning, Thunder and Rain, Warlord of the Indian armies.  You meet Yama, Lord of Death, who makes weapons (not armor or buildings, just weapons).  He is able to craft weapons that magnify the magical power of the wielder; even his normal efforts are masterpieces of weaponcraft.  You meet Varuna, admiral of India's navy, and you meet Surya.

Surya, Lord of the Sun, is the Master of Horse, who leads India's cavalry and who is coequal in power with Indra.  Where most of the other Lords are reserved and polite to the party, Surya is openly hostile.  His anger is directed at Aurelius and Namon, and it is because of Ra.  He hates Ra, and he doesn't like or trust his followers; from the words he uses, it sounds like Surya was not only present when Ra was defeated, Surya was literally involved in executing Ra himself.  After venting his feelings towards Ra, Surya storms off; he and Indra are heading for the front.   Assurbanipal is being held along a river line in a valley in western India and it looks like he is up to something.

Lord Vishnu is the master of intelligence for the Hindu Lords and his spies have reported that your enemy is massing his forces behind a section of line in preparation for an attack.  What is strange that there is no obvious goal of such an advance, no city or road junction or place of magical power that would be an logical target.  And the spies have reported something else: Assurbanipal has 3 great siege towers in a strong point along that line, and there are no defenses to use the towers against; and the towers detect as magical.

This rings a bell with the older party members; years ago, when you first fought in eastern Anatolia (Turkey) for Prince Michael, you foiled an attempt by the Lunars (who were then Assurbanipal's allies) to use magic to teleport Muslim troops hundreds of miles to the top of the walls of Constantinople itself.  These towers sound very much like the towers constructed by the Lunar magicians, and if they are, your common enemy will be able to literally launch an attack onto the walls of Calcutta, bypassing all of the defenses between.  Vishnu is not happy to hear your tale; aside from the threat to the city, it implies that Assurbanipal has managed to penetrate the magical defenses of Calcutta or has enough spies actually in the city to calibrate the sighting of the towers, or both.

The party sees this as an opportunity, because if you could get to those towers, you could use Aurelius's magical bond with Ra to orient one of those towers to point at Ra's Refuge, and teleport across vast distance between to reach Ra and possibly defuse the war about to break out in the west.  If the party could destroy the siege towers in doing this, they would at the very least disrupt Assurbanipal's plans for a year, maybe more.  The Hindu Lords confer in private and then speak to you:  They agree, and will conduct operations along that front to distract Assurbanipal and support you.

If you succeed, they will supply the Liafail with enough provisions to enable Keith to reach the southern tip of Africa, and they will do everything they can to speed his journey.  It seems like a long shot, but you have had more success against the forces of the Muslim world than anyone else.

Besides, what do they have to lose?

After giving you time to finish up your preparations in Calcutta (and take advantage of Lord Yama's skills) Lords Krishna and Agni will escort you to the Western Front and support your endeavor.  The ruling council of the Hindu Lords wishes you well, and confusion to your common enemy.

End of part 1

The Assault on the Persian Line

Lords Krishna and Agni escort you to the front; Surya and Indra are here as well, but they are in direct command of the troops and will lead the attack.  They don't really have the time to talk to you, and in Surya's case, any desire to do so.  The current front in this area is a river valley that runs roughly North/South.  The Persians control the west bank, and have fortified it in this sector.  The actual attack by Indian forces will be to the south of you, where the terrain is more open.  It is mainly to provide a diversion from your target, but it is being conducted in enough force to be a real threat.  If they do manage to break through, Surya has enough cavalry in reserve to exploit any initial success.

Your group moves into position; you are just east of a ford in the river, behind the Indian lines.  Across the river, you can see a line of fortifications manned by Kurdish hillmen, backed by Arab cavalry.  West of the ford, there is a strongpoint on the ridge overlooking the valley, with at least two walls protecting a relatively level area, which is backed by cliffs that soar hundreds of feet above the river.  The level area or plateau behind the walls is where your targets are believed to be.  Indian intelligence reports that the walled strongpoint is defended by non-humans; type: unknown.

The diversion is launched several miles to the south of you, in the shallow bend of the river, and Lord Indra leads the assault.  He suppresses the persian archers opposite his force with a series of pin-point cloudbursts, and then rakes the enemy line with more than a dozen lightning strikes.  His bowmen launch thousands of arrows to rain down on the persians while Indra himself leads the advance across the river; even from this distance, you can see the light of his sword, which is said to have been fashioned by Lord Yama from powdered diamonds, the heart of a fallen star and a living thunderbolt.     Time to go.

You head for the river, and the wind, pulled by Indra's power, shifts.  Something on the west bank catches your scent and a roar that sounds familiar greets you as a massive shape lifts into the air on black wings: it is an assyrian sphinx, male rather than female like the Egyptian sphinx.  You have fought a monster like this before, and it appears that Assurbanipal learned a new trick since then.  This monster, larger than an elephant, wears iron armor that glows with magic.  As it rises into the air over the west bank of the river, its shadow blots out the light around you and then Agni strikes.  He is the Lord of Fire, and his power manifests as a beam of fire that shears through the sphinx to score the mountainside behind it.  He then draws this lash of fire from the northern side of the enemy river defenses to a point past the southern end of the ford, leaving a swath of destruction 800 yards wide in the enemy fortifications.  Agni then collapses, exhausted, but he has done his part: any horses within sight or scent of his attack are uncontrollable and flee in a panic.  The surviving human defenders break and run, allowing your group to cross the ford unopposed.  But the non-human defenders have been awakened, and there are two sets of walls, an outer one of stone and an inner wall of timber.

The first group of defenders to oppose the party were the inhumans tasked with moving the siege engines: a band of giants, who Assurbanipal has altered in order to resist Seelie magic.   The down side of this alteration is that while they are extremely resistant to fairie magic, they are more vulnerable to physical combat (their natural armor and strength have been reduced).  They unleash a hail of rocks at the party and one manages to kill Nick's faithful mount with a lucky shot to the head.  (Scott, with the exception of Keith's warhorse Buster, your horse survived longer than any other player character mount in the past 20 years).

The party closed with the giants and a nasty melee ensued.  The giants were holding their own until Durandal took control and made Nick go berzerk.

NICK THE GREEK & DURANDAL

When your party made the jump into the world gate beneath Malachi's castle last meeting, you did something that was unprecedented, and which had huge potential benefits but also a real risk of destruction.  Each of you had to roll multiple times, but one die roll was crucial, and Scott's roll for that was 00.  If we had been face to face, I would have destroyed Nick and everything he possessed, with the possible exceptions of Durandal and Hector's Armor.  As it was, something possibly worse happened: Nick was magically bound to Durandal, joined in such a way that he was the perfect Feet, the wielder Durandal had been waiting for because the sword could (under certain circumstances) wield Nick.  One sign of this was that when Nick succeeded with a power gain roll, Durandal always got the first point of POW.

There were certain points at which Nick would have a chance to break free of Durandal or to bend or persuade the Black Blade towards a particular goal, but it was always going to be hard to do, and had the potential for being irreversible if Durandal rolled well.  That is what happened during the fight in Ra's Sanctuary: Scott rolled an 11, but Durandal rolled an 05, and given Durandal's advantage on the resistance table, 05 was a critical and 11 was just a normal success.  That die roll finished it: from that point on, Nick the Greek is Durandal's Slave.

The inner wall has a gate with 4 stone statues flanking it, two on either side.  You decide to avoid the possibility of the statues coming to life and give the inner gate a pass.  The party was able to penetrate the second wall by climbing over it(for the most part; at one point several party members were involved in what appeared to be an attempt to throw Aurelius THROUGH that wall).

Durandal's lethality in the hands of a berzerker enabled the party to hack the last of the giants down before one of Assurbanipal's favorite pets was able to free itself and join the fight.  Party members sensed Chaos and the party was attacked by a huge boar (SIZ 60+) with chaotic abilities; it caught your scent and broke its bonds.  You managed to hack the boar down, but were then faced with the dilemma of dealing with a berzerk party member, while also having to align one siege engine, sabotage the other two and steal an enchanted metal plate that is associated with the teleportation magic of the towers.  In the midst of this, the party senses chaos when a series of flickering lights appear to the north; members of the party remember that those kinds of lights are visible indications that Assurbanipal is opening a teleportation gate of his own, and shortly afterwards, the party is attacked by a flock of Assurbanipal's pet demons.

You manage to incapacitate Nick, destroy two of the siege towers, align the 3rd siege tower (and set it on fire), steal the enchanted metal plate, open the portal to Ra's Sanctuary, and get most of the party through, all the while keeping Nick from killing anyone and slaughtering a whole bunch of Assurbanipal's demons.  All of this attracts the wrong kind of attention: the flickering lights appear at the northern end of the plateau again and this time, Aurelius (the last one through the portal) can literally SEE the cloud of demons come pouring through.

There are hundreds of them, and everyone near the portal on either side can feel the pull of a powerful magic that violates all the laws of nature, and you suspect that Assurbanipal himself has come through that gate. Aurelius runs for the portal and is jumped by half a dozen demons, who attempt to force him off of the tower.  They fail, but Aurelius is forced to drop one of the swords he is carrying, an enchanted weapon made for him in Calcutta.  The other sword is Durandal (who got stuck in something while Nick was berzerk); the demons fail and Aurelius makes it to the end of the siege tower's platform just as the Lords of India spring their trap.

Shiva is here; he made his way to the front in secret, hoping that the Persians would commit significant resources in an attempt to wipe your party out.   He could then crush them with nothing more than the possible loss of the bait (You).  The plan worked better than the Seelie could hope, because it looks like their hated foe has made a personal appearance, and Shiva unleashes his full power.  Shiva is the Lord of Destruction and his power is the ability to break the bonds that bind one molecule to another.  He draws his power down the west side of the valley from north to south, to cut Assurbanipal off from the gate that brought him (or whoever that is with the demons), and the devastation left in the wake of his  magic is terrifying.   Rock is turned to fine sand, wood to drifting ash and flesh and blood into an oily red mist.

Then Aurelius plunges through the portal and it closes behind him.  The party has escaped into the sanctuary of Ra's Refuge.  Aurelius returns Durandal to Nick and you look at the small but magical land  around you.

The quiet valley you found several years ago has changed.  It looks…bigger.  Brighter too.  The sparkling stream that runs through the center of it is wider and deeper, and the mallorn sapling that Arre planted has grown to a height of 100 feet with golden foliage that seems to glow with a light of its own.  There is a constant breeze blowing through the Refuge, and it comes from the double doors standing wide open on the northern side of the valley, the doors through which the party came when you first opened the sanctuary to the outside world.  This wind is actually visible at the point where it passes through the doors, and you realize that it is not a normal wind, but visible magic; the power that Ra gains from his followers' adoration as it pours into the Refuge, and into Ra's grasp.

All of your wounds are healed, and you are enveloped by a feeling of good will as Ra welcomes you back to his home.

Ra summons Aurelius, his loyal follower, and the party sets off towards a marble shrine set atop a low hill at the southern end of the valley.  The stone of the shrine has a golden sheen of its own, and  you realize that this is the spot where Aurelius turned to gold when you first found the valley.  The shrine was visible only to Aurelius at that time, but it is visible to everyone now.  You open the doors to the shrine and sunlight pours out, but it does not blind you; you are welcome here.

The shrine is very simple, but beautiful.  It is designed to focus everyone's attention on the golden sarcophagus standing upright at the northern of the shrine, which glows of its own light.  Your party files into the shrine and Aurelius opens the sarcophagus; it is mostly empty, except for the severed and still living head of Ra. (If you know the story of Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, you have heard of the legend that the most powerful figures of Fairy legend could survive decapitation.)

The head's eyes open, and Ra speaks to the party, thanking them for their aid and support, and promising them suitable rewards when "our struggle is over".  But first, Ra must regain his full strength, and that requires that he take possession of the body which he has been preparing for this event for the past few years.  Aurelius's body.

Ra orders Namon to cut Aurelius's head from his body, and place the head in the sarcophagus.  Namon is to then place Ra's head on Aurelius's body, so that Ra can complete the process of joining the two together and lead you and his armies in the looming war with the Seelie Courts of Europe.  One of the first acts of Ra will be to find a suitable body for Aurelius, of course.  Aurelius stands and waits for Namon to sever his head.  Namon draws his sword and approaches Aurelius, and is going to strike when Baclane invokes Divine Intervention from Ma'at.  Baclane wants to know if he should allow this to happen, and when Ma'at answers, her voice is heard by all of her followers in the shrine.

"This is wrong!!!" is her response, and the rest of the party acts to stop Namon from cutting Aurelius's head off, and both of Ra's followers turn their weapons on those who would oppose Ra's will.  And so begins the first full-scale player on player combat in any of my campaigns in a very long time.  I honestly cannot remember any time in the last 25 years that I allowed this to happen.  This went far beyond dealing with the occasional berzerker.

Ra takes part in the combat by slamming multiple Sunspears onto party members every round of combat.  The two seelie played by Bob and Rich Frantz drew a lot of this away from the rest of the party by diving out of the shrine and bolting for the doors in the north end of the valley.  If they could close those doors, they could cut Ra off from a great deal of his power.  In doing so, both characters set records for surviving multiple Sunspears over consecutive rounds of combat.

The melee that followed was a nasty one, complicated by Durandal and Ra's defenses.  Nick tried to turn Durandal on Ra, but Durandal succeeded in imposing his will on Nick; with a critical success, that control is complete and permanent.  When Nick told Durandal that he wanted to kill Ra, the sword replied in a way that everyone in the shrine could hear:  "We're going to kill them ALL!!!"  Apparently, Durandal has gone round the bend.

Ra's defenses were imposing; basically any attack with a non-magical weapon was going to fail, as was any normal spell.  Anyone who actually swung or fired a weapon at Ra's head would be struck by a magical counterattack.  Any attack with any of the five elements (earth, air, fire, water, darkness) or chaos would have been absorbed by the sarcophagus and either used to fuel Ra's magic or turn against the party if it was an elemental creature.  The only things that could kill Ra were a successful Sever Spirit delivered by touch, a killing blow with Durandal, Forodnaur, Mark's bow, Thad's bow or Aurelius's sling, or a lethal dose of magic that Ra had never seen before.

Enter Gupta the God Slayer.

Gupta gained access to the elemental magic of plasma after living through the deluge of magic that poured out of the world gate beneath Malachi's Castle of Iron.  Ra has never seen plasma magic before, and his defenses are weakest against it.  Gupta had been working on this new type of magic (these things take time) and he unleashed it to devastating effect in the shrine.  He used the ball spell, which is area effect and which did not have the huge penalties to hit that the bolt spell would have had, and granted, his first spell went a bit off (he blasted Arre and Baclane and knocked them both out of the fight temporarily).  But his second spell managed to do critical damage to Ra (not easy) and then Dwayne (for the 2nd time that weekend) managed to open-end his critical roll TWICE.  This meant 3 die rolls for a total number in the mid 200s on the Role Master super large creature crit table, resulting in a blast of magic that entered Ra's eye sockets and blasted his brains to cinders.

Ra died, finally.  Aurelius and Namon lost any type of magic that they gained from Ra, and the valley of Ra's Refuge, Ra's very own pocket universe, started to come apart at the seams.  Leaving Durandal behind (I believe he got stuck in Aurelius's shield) as the shrine collapsed, the party ran like heck for the northern gates.  Only Arre tarried slightly to gather a seed from the Mallorn tree before high-tailing it out the gate.  The party then began the long journey north up the tunnel that led back to the normal world and to the island in the harbor of Alexandria.

The party spent a day resting on the northern shore of Pharos island, and were rescued by Barinthus, the powerful old Seelie lord of the sea; he had been scouting the northern frontier of Ra's domain when he spotted you.  He's delighted (and impressed) to hear that you have put paid to Ra's attempted comeback.  He says that  Taranis, Lord of Light and Illusion, and Anandais, Queen of Air and Darkness and the rest of the Seelie of Europe will want to thank the party.  He summons several braces of whales and dolphins to help, and after the party builds a raft from the fishing boats that Barinthus brings you, uses his minions to pull the party north and west by easy stages, past Rhodes and Greece, south around the island of Sicily and then north past Corsica and Sardinia to Marsallia, the port that is now Marseille, on the southern coast of France.  There the party rested and refitted, while waiting for the royal summons to the joint Seelie Courts; apparently, they've got something significant planned for the heroes who prevented another cataclysmic war with Ra.  (you have of course left out the part where Aurelius and Namon sided with Ra in your little argument).  While you're getting some well-earned R&R, you receive word from the harbormaster that a ship flying the flag of Assurbanipal has approached the harbor flying the flag of truce and towing a heavily laden barge.  They want to talk to you, and the Frankish military governor of this area has the barge and the Persian emissary brought in to the docks.

The barge is loaded with something fairly heavy that is well and tightly covered by waterproof materials; members of the party can tell that it contains something intensely magical.  But what draws you attention at first is what (or who) is sitting on top of the barge.  It is a nightgaunt, a member of the seelie High Hunt, and not just anyone, but the friend and companion of Lysteria who was captured by Assurbanipal's scouts in eastern europe nearly two years ago.  It has some unusual scars on its torso and limbs but…no, no, it's fine.  And overjoyed to see you all again.  The Persian emissary clears his throat theatrically and proceeds to read from an embossed parchment the following:



In an ivory box on the barge, you find the Orb of Worlds, and you are able to test its authenticity with the Sword of Macedon.  You now have all three artifacts that you need to open the world gates: the Horn of Nearchos, the Sword of Macedon and the Orb of Worlds.  It would be easier to wait for the Liafail III to return (which will take some months), but you now have the basic tools you need to leave this world.

A few nights later, you meet the assembled Lords of the Seelie Courts in the hills above Marsala.  The Seelie are extending their influence now that Malachi is gone, and they are returning to areas they have not seen since the time of Julius Caesar.  The Courts reward all of the party handsomely for their defeat of Ra.  You have literally prevented a war of potentially catastrophic scope, and they appreciate it.

Indeed, the followers of the King of Light and the Queen of Darkness strive to outdo each other in trying to reward you, which leads to some confusion when you finally return to your homebase in Kael.  Overlapping enchantments cast by different Seelie Lords cause your home to disappear until you stumble onto the problem and set things right.  On your way north, you stop in at Aachen to report to King Louis; while paying your respects, and receiving his thanks again for taking down Malachi, you hear news of the world.

Africa is a mess, with rival warlords fighting over different provinces, and the Berbers resurgent in response to some prophecy from a woman said to be a ghost.  No coherent news is available from Egypt, although there are rumors of war.  The Byzantine Empire is quiet; Prince Michael's Turks are settling in on the Danube frontier and are already serving the Empire as a buffer: a new nomadic tribe, the Magyars have come riding out of the east, and they prefer not to fight their Turkish relatives.  They have instead moved into the area north of the Danube and are making life miserable for the Bulgar and Slav tribes in that area.

The Northlands are quiet, although there are rumors that the King of the Swedes is building ships.

There is no news of India; you may not get any that is reliable until the Liafail III makes it back, and that will take some months yet.

As you settle into your home at Kael, life seems to be going rather well.

It is now January 1, 815 A.D.