Kylin shook her little, gooey head "There have always, only ever been dragon queens.  Male dragons simply aren't strong enough to have the same power as those rare females who can become queens.  I've likewise not heard anything about something called Conflict's End, though I do admit that may just be something that's common knowledge amongst my kind anymore.  Though if you help us I think we can find an archivist who might know." she said.

  She looked at Phelan and Krath "And the world appears to have changed a fair bit while we've been frozen in time.  So I guess we might just be ignorant.  The Old Queens hoards contained secrets known only to them."

  With what Kylin had said this had Phelan thinking that perhaps his people had not done such a good job at investigating the city as he had once been led to believe.
This message was last edited by the GM at 11:54, Thu 02 Sept 2021.

So much information. So much go consider. Krath tried to follow it in his mind, but it was hardly simple to take in.

"It sounds," he began, "like we might be able to learn a lot from one another. I am terribly curious as to the times before my kind were as numerous as now, or even simply our old history. I am no scholar, so I will probably understand little, but I am curious nonetheless." He ended his statement with a respectful bow.

    Moonchild looked over at Jubei "Shall we pursue this Dragon King of yours then?" he asked?

Jubei nodded in response to the question, "I would say so. Unless I misunderstood things, his prison would be on the way to our destination regardless. And I admit I have become even more curious about him, as his title of King apparently is exceptional to say the least."

    A circle of red light flickered into existence around Jubei and from that ring rose a ring of strange runes.  They swam across the floor and gathered around Willa. 

  Once Willa had studied them they moved back to form a ring around Jubei and a line of red light drew itself from the floor to beneath the doorway leading from the chamber.

Gyr sympathized with Krath and clapped his bicep in solidarity; he was plenty lost, too, but being a Traveller and a druid, 'lost' is exactly where he needed to be.  "Perhaps our divine champion could, indeed, be Jubei," the Ulh considered, perhaps even suggested to Phelan, "If this Dragon King fellow directly ties to-" he cleared his mental throat, "his divine power, then there is no one more suited to aid us in challenging the Old Moon than someone who is already here.  Besides, raw power just might be what's needed in the fight to come."

Willa, who had been watching the floor quite intently, looked up and with an innocent smile asked:

"Is time to go?  Willa think Pretty lights getting bored."
This message was last edited by the player at 23:02, Sat 04 Sept 2021.

    Moonchild quirked his armoured head.  "I'm not so sure Willa." he said.

  Phelan, Drex, Jubei and Gyr all see tiny pinpricks of light breaking through the red glow.  Phelan and Willa both sense it, a moment where magic snaps and frays in the face of another spell so subtle it was barely perceptible.  Like tiny droplets of a cutting mist it passed through the room only touching the specific magic of the first, fraying spell.

  The red glow melted away to reveal what was really underneath.  The constellations of Empyrean script.  The language of the stars.

  The circle which had surrounded Jubei and made a line towards the doorway was in truth a pool, and trail of slowly shifting stars.

  Drex and Jubei, both sensed a terrible malice had been exposed.  Something not only mischievous but sickeningly evil was in the air.  Spirits.

Phelan stared at Gyr in disbelief. "I... No. No divine champion. The dragon could be a useful ally in the sense that he'll have a lot of information - if we can find him - but no divine champion. Remember what I just said about drawing attention?"

He shook his head, turning his attention to the magic playing about in the air. "I see... Alright." He muttered. "I think we need to follow that trail of stars. If I'm right, I think it may lead us to the dragon king. The Stars tend to react to mortal wishes and they also tend to like mortals, so it should be safe. Hopefully the Dragon King can provide some information."

Jubei blinked a few times when the strange magic appeared around him and he braced himself for a potential backlash that never came.

"I am... not having a good feeling about this. There is something evil involved here, but I cannot tell what it is exactly," he murmured with a grimace upon his muzzle. "We should exert caution, both while following this trail and wherever it leads us."

Gyr repaid Phelan's incredulity with some of his own.  "We're about to intercept a giant chunk of an ancient god who can control people by proximity alone.  Attention should not be drawn only up to the point we engage with the blasted thing," he reasoned, "by all accounts, this is an affair that the gods should be made fully aware of."  He huffed and also shook his head.

"Stars do tend to do that," he quietly concurred and then thought aloud, "Form up and march in, lads, blades at the ready.  Whether an army of dark ooze or a waking dragon, expect the worst... and hope for the best."  His staff psychokinetically spun to his outstretched paw to set it against the ground decisively.  The Ulh looked to the warriors of the group.  "At your lead."

"We have records of past incidents wherein the gods finding out led to the local area being destroyed." Phelan's voice sharpened into a warning tone. "They would go to war over these because these are fragments of their very beings. The two were originally one and this was a part of them. "

"But now they are two. And they do not share. They go to war. And everything else in the area ends up destroyed.  I ask you one last time, do you still mean to go ahead with this?"
This message was last edited by the player at 18:59, Wed 08 Sept 2021.

Gyr sighed and canted his head, smiling sadly as he relaxed from his dramatic posture.  "Fret not, my friend, I have heard the stories and saw the devastation of their... 'sibling rivalry', to uncouthly put it," and then addressed Phelan directly, "I have no intention of calling their conflict here.  Perhaps I spoke too generally, so let me specify: they-who-shall-remain-unnamed-lest-their-attention-be-garnered have tracked the Old Moon since their inception, so a chunk of the size that we are about to assault cannot have escaped their notice; why the Lunar Citadel is not yet besieged is anyone's guess, maybe it is beyond their grasp," he conversed, "After all, the druids built a redoubt up here should their 'rivalry' destroy more than a continent but I digress.  To deny the assistance of other gods because two of them are dangerous is no reason to traverse a trail of stars without backup, especially when we are already tits-deep in god-stuff.  Like you said," he then assured with a mental chuckle, "it would take either of them some time to affect anything, even if we were to say their names aloud now."

Phelan's stance loosened slightly, his fur puffing out less as some of the hostility drained away from him. "It's actually not as likely they've really even looked at the moon. Why would they? As far as all parties knew, all the fragments landed planetside. By all rights they should have."

As Gyr continued he shook his head. "You misunderstand. I didn't mean those two would take some time, I meant the ones Drex is beholden to. The two I'm concerned will likely not be delayed if anything becomes notable." He did frown thoughtfully. "The use of Empyrean language combined with the stars themselves implies the aid of a Celestial - and I can confirm from the magic used that it's definitely Celestial in origin. There was another spell concealing this that was forcibly dispelled. The only other magic I could note was a spell on Willa to allow her to read any language." He tapped his chin, though his crossbow was still at the ready.

"I did mention Willa's patron before. I suspect we're already receiving some help."

    Gathering their things, the adventurers followed the path of stars out the door and into a darkness beyond.  The space they found themselves withing was not the corridors of the underground city.  It was a blackened, flat horizon.  With stars slowly moving overhead.  Not wheeling about as they usual did over the course of an evening but traveling in straight lines slowly across the sky.  The signs along the trail gave Willa early warning that the party should not stray from the path.  For to do so would not only see them lost but they would end up in places that they would not like to be.

  The only other light in this place was those they had brought with them and with Amare's aid a small, hooded lantern provided some illumination across the hard landscape.

  After what felt like almost an hour of walking the party spotted a glowing rectangle in the distance, at the end of the star-lit path.  This revealed itself to be a doorway into underground hall built for creatures who dwarfed even Jubei and Krath in size.  The entire space was well lit by crystalline chandeliers assembled into great constellations across the cavernous chamber.

  The walls and ceilings were plastered and painted in deep, brilliant colours.  Or inlaid with brilliant blue crystal only a fair shade darker than those of the weyr you had been in days before.  The artwork was of a landscape caught at dusk.  The greatest door was built into an archway resembling the sun and a lesser doorway to that was on the opposite side built into an archway resembling to coppery moon.
  A winding road of enameled glass over golden dust lay between these two great doors.  Other doorways were scattered across the cavernous hall.  They were smaller than the the sun and moon doors by about half but these were none-the-less large enough that they would have been the gates into great castles or fortresses through which armies could have marched with ease.
  The doorway through which you entered was a small one, a passageway clearly intended for servants as it was almost hidden amongst the scenery of the plastered walls.
  Only more a little more then a dozen pillars were scattered across the hall.  In odd places for them to serve any architectural purpose.  They seemed to play a roll in the aesthetics of the chamber.  These pillars were towering, swirling, nimbuses of storm clouds.  Flashes of dim, thunder-less lightning illuminating their depths.  Each stood atop of pentagonal base of gold and inlaid with one draconic rune upon each face.  Jubei could see, even from the great distance that these symbols were numbers.  Though they didn't count up from one.  Instead their numbers were scattered, like two, eleven, three, seventeen, five, and so on.

  There was so much magic in the hall that the air was almost thick with it.  Phelan's hair wanted to stand on end, and Willa got 'the prickles.' Moonchild looked ill.  But explained he was alright, he simple was not used to being exposed to so much magical power in one place.
  "There is magic everywhere but its, cold, rigid and dead.  This is magic used like a finely crafted machine with no room anything but perfection and precision.  Its beautiful, but its terrible.  I can only guess at the toll this place must have taken to make." Moonchild explained.

  Text gathered before Willa and red "To these vaults are as far as we can take you.  You will need the aid of others, and your wits about you to find your way into and through the Labyrith's of Unrealized Realities which protect your prize."

Jubei's gaze drifted above, while his maw hung open as if he tried to catch flies with it, and his plumage lay flattened against his head. Then his mouth snapped shut and he gulped. A small nod followed.

"Kylin, do you happen to know anything about this place?" he asked as he looked to the umbrean that had tagged along with them now.

To see the stars roll and turn filled the druid with serenity, especially since they were as accurate as he remembered them.

Amongst the room of storming pillars, Gyr stroked his mane in thought and then asked Phelan directly.  "How d'you suppose those numbers that Jubei identified relate to the positioning of the columns?" he idly wondered, gesturing to one with his staff.

    Kylin shook her remarkably draconic head. "I've heard the queens had secrets but I believed they'd all had been found or had been lost to time." she looked at the scores of large doors around the chamber.  She squinted "The numbers on the doors and the markings on the pillars look the same so I think they are related."
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:17, Sun 19 Sept 2021.

Willa looked between the pillars and doors a number of times, her brow furrowed.  Despite all indications to the contrary she wasn't actually unintelligent, just poorly educated.  And right now, that lack of education was showing.  She'd never been taught her numbers and so any sequence or significance between the ones here eluded her.   She understood what they were, but not why they were here.

OOC
20:51, Mon 20 Sept: Willa rolled 10 using 1d20+6.  thievery by the prime (?) numbers.

Gyr would need both his paws for such a puzzle (and good chance he'll even need his psychokinetic tendril) so his staff was holstered to pull out a notebook and pencil, important tools for any worldly traveler.  He jotted each number down (noting if any of the pillars decided to move or change... none so far) and generally walked about to sketch out a small diagram.  The modest sketch was then held at eye-level with his tendril as he cradled an elbow in one paw and his chin in the other, pacing about as he studied the numbers...

26 for Perception
24 for Dungeoneering

    Gyr noticed there were other markings beside the draconic numberals, they were not as obvious as the numbers themselves. These markings appeared faint, almost ghostly.  Like flickers of a mirage.

  The pillars were not placed around the room in anyway to bear the load of the great chambers roof, no, instead they must serve either some mechanical or aesthetic function but Gyr would need to explore the room fully to even begin to guess.

Gyr inspected one pillar in particular: the nearest.  "These aren't load-bearing," he pointed out, "and might even be moveable.  Hold up..." the Ulh looked a little closer, testing the mirage symbols by flicking his eyes to see them off-center, "there are other symbols here... further draconic, I wouldn't wonder."

    The flicker was barely noticeable and as he approached Gyr would have dismissed it as his imagination or a trick of the light but once he touched the panel the additional markings became clear as day.  There were symbols that he didn't recognize but they were certainly draconic.  They had that quality of being made by creatures who had ready access to very sharp claws and precious little manual dexterity.

"Jubei, what do these symbols say?" Gyr asked over his shoulder, pointing at the flickering symbols that appeared, "They're definitely draconic and might aid us in what's to come."

Jubei gave a nod as he came over to investigate those carvings. He had been marveling at the stupendous size and the absolute lack of idea what to do about any of this. But reading draconic was something he could do.
"Alright, let me see."