Five days after the previous attack, you gather to prepare for the arrival of Small Made Large, the fourth Primordial you have faced and the sixth to manifest an assault on your world. You are better armed with knowledge than before, including where it will strike and an idea of what form it will take.

Shovash in particular has a plan to exploit the former, and shows up half a day in advance of the attack, ready to execute it. For the rest, planning and preparation culminate in a state of readiness. Weapons are checked, spells prepared, power gathered and a fine meal eaten.

And then you gather at Quantium, the capital city of Nex. It's a desert city, fine architecture rising out of the sands. Everything seems peaceful, for all that there are evident signs of readiness for battle in the city, but all available evidence says that this is where Small Made Large will strike, in just a short time.

As the pre-ordained hour approaches, Tolben shrouds himself in powerful magics. First those expected to last hours, then several minutes. Most visibly, several copies of him appear as he opts for Mirror Image over invisibility. The shortest-lasting spells will need to wait until the enemy arrives.

A harsh rain dampens the sand for a full two miles from his location, the weather answering his will. Such torrents are known in deserts, but seldom for so long.

"For those who don't already know, I mean to draw the Primordial's ire. Its predecessors have responded fiercely to others claiming their domains, and the response will likely be just as vicious today. Stay well clear!"

  Today, for the first time since the group had reconvened, Shovash is absent from the preparations. Her own take far longer and have been ongoing since the previous night, and she sends her smoke and ember servant, Sting, to gather with the rest of the Compact in the council chambers of the Three. He (it?) conveys her insincere regrets and a report.

  "The Mistress wishes you to know the ritual is nearly complete. She wished to finish as shortly as possible before the ትልቁ አገላለፅ arrives, that the shelter may be fresh and secure. She says it also keeps the Cataclysm from growing bored." The mephit's head splits in a grin all the way through, and the crackling sound it makes has a few things in common with laughter, at least.

  "You have until She puts another star in the sky to defend yourselves from the pull of the shelter. 'Lock the room,' She said. Any minute now." With its job done, Sting catches a light breeze, leaves humanoid shape behind, and whorls away.

"So plan is, what, Shovash makes the city not... there? Then Tolben gets this bastard angry at him in particular while the rest of us just hit it as hard as we can?" He shrugs and looks out the window after Sting, "Easy enough, almost feel bad for this one. Shouldn't we give it a sporting chance or something?"

Ragnar, normally the picture of serenity before a fight, is atypically restless - noticeable largely because the movement makes him constantly flicker in and out of visibility like a badly tuned crystal ball. His inquiries and spies sent out to ascertain whether Tar-Baphon was indeed actively mustering power again had yet to provide solid returns, and his initial research into the origins of Geb were similarly fruitless. The former would take time, the latter needed a consultation with either Tolben or Dharmesh, and both had been occupied till now.

"Excellent idea, Damien. Howbout we just let you handle this one by yourself, then? That seems like a fair fight, after Shovash and Tolben do their things."
"Yeah! Hey! Wait, what?"
This message was last edited by the player at 04:25, Thu 21 May 2020.

The time rolls by, and eventually, Shovash finishes her ritual. It's an odd sort of invocation. There is chanting, but it is being performed in the fashion of a round, with overlapping voices cycling through a chant such that at any given moment there is a rippling susurrus in the air of jumbled tones all at a different point in the same cycle. There are diagrams, drawn in blood and skymetals and splintered light, shifting and overlapping and creating enormously complicated fractal symbology and elaborate semi-patterned arcane structures that flow and waver in ways that lines are not meant to do. The world bends until the shapes made by those diagrams stop following traditional geometric laws, the ratios and angles all wrong, such that even the fundamental constants of geometry cease to make sense. Twenty men and women, each a studied practitioner of the arcane arts, mumble and shuffle through the clouds of incense-smoke and invoke powers to tear the veil, sunder the boundaries that divide the worlds, and let this Place slip into that Notion. Some of them are bleeding from the mouth or eyes or nose. They don't seem to have noticed. Many of them are twitching and shuddering as they continue to move, to speak, to focus their minds on creating a reality that is not what this reality was made to be.

Finally, the ritual reaches a crescendo, the words no longer being spoken but rather speaking themselves, unspooling and twisting together, ripping themselves free from the throats of the men and women and others that surround her. Her assistants have a wide range of strange expressions, from terror and pain through to an ecstasy that is almost akin to religious revelation, as the magic rips itself through their bodies and souls. The air thrums once, a pure tone that sounds sublimely wrong echoing through the whole of the city, and the air shatters, and a large portion of Quantium ripples as though it is being seen through a heat haze.

When it passes, the buildings are intact, but empty. Nothing living remains in the material within this part of the city, and given that everyone was moved into it leading up to the evacuation, that means that the city is largely empty of life. No one remains within the bounds of this city, save those who came to save it, or perhaps to damn it - who is to say, really? Is there even a difference anymore, in this gods-forsaken world?

Stepping out onto the sand, you find the rainstorm has not slowed, not slackened at all. The streets, where they are not cobbled, are thoroughly dampened sand. Something feels...wrong. The world hums with power intense enough that even those not practiced in the magical arts can feel something building. But this is not the power of a ritual, not even one as intense and overpowering as the working Shovash just wrought. This is something far, far less...civilized than that. This is raw power, unbound by logic or structure or anything that you could even recognize as a mind. This is intent made manifest, backed by the kind of raw willpower that lies beneath such phrases as "let there be light."

And old. So old.

The power building in the air spikes only moments later, and five days and one hour after the previous Primordial broke through into your reality, you feel the world itself strain...and tear. And the sand starts to shift and flow around you. It moves and flows in ways that are not remotely natural, defying all the laws of the material world to move in directions that are not rational or sane or orderly. The movements never quite form patterns, but rather shift and mesh and clash in ways that seem always right on the edge of establishing orderly procession. You get the distinct feeling that if you saw it from above, if you could witness and parse the whole of the motions now being conducted by the sands, you would see a system so immense and complex and almost-patterned that you could lose yourself utterly in it, and forget that you were ever something so small as a person.

There is more sand than there should be. Some of it looks like it should, like natural sand in a natural desert in a natural world. But other sections, other grains, are strange, blurred and crystalline and seeming almost to flicker in and out of sight. Increasingly, the world around you is looking blurred and flickery, as though existence is being forced to continually adjust itself to cope with the Presence now forcing itself upon your world. You get the distinct sense that reality was simply not meant to handle the pressure of the being now pushing itself into it. The sand continues to move, flowing upwards in swirling streams that dissolve back into the whole. The motion stops for just a moment, and then begins again, but now it has focus, and those almost-random movements are beginning to ablate away at everything in this city - blasting the buildings, the streets, everything around them with particles of blurry almost-sand that start to shred and tear at everything. The natural sand is only as effective as a sandblaster, but those crystalline particles are tearing into stone like it is tissue paper, peeling away tiny slices of the city with every arcing movement through the air. The process is silent save for a soft hissing sound, a whisper almost, of sand gliding over and through stone, wood, and metal.

Ragnar looks around at the swirling sandstorm, futilely searching for something he can put a bolt into. Greta vibrates in his arms with a similarly palpable level of frustration - they have one purpose in this world, and one method of accomplishing that goal. In battle they are a single being of two souls, but without a foe to target their will means little.

"Show yourself to us, Small Made Large! Show yourself, so that we know what we stand united against! Show yourself, so that we may end you!"

He flickers in and out of view like an apprentice wizard's illusion, not fully taking hold of the fey-thorns but unable to remain still enough to stay visible in his frustration. With no apparent answer coming from the Primordial, he fires off a series of bolts in random upward directions.


OOC:
Full Attack w/ Rapid Shot+Haste at the 'storm'.
Hit AC61, Confirm 57, for 74+25=99 damage
Hit AC54 for 96 damage
Hit AC52 for 83 damage
Hit AC45 for 85 damage
Hit AC39 for 83 damage.

As Small Made Large finally makes itself manifest, Tolben intones a single terrible word - hastened by the mysterious powers learned from the Primordials. A tremendous glow heralds the appearance of a powerful angelic being - a Trumpet Archon.

Tolben orders the Archon to accept his next spell, then withdraw to a short distance and heal if necessary. This spell is less impressive, but ensures that harm coming to him will be split with the Archon.

Finally, his form flickers and is replaced by a huge crystalline dragon - several, in fact, as his Mirror Image adapts to the effect. The calm of his speech is ill-fitting with the fierceness of a dragon's jaws.

"Come, Primordial. It is time for your dissection."

Active effects:

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)

Mind Blank
Mage Armor
Greater False Life (2d10+20 temporary hp) (31)
Overland Flight
Moment of Prescience

Short term:
Control Weather (rain),
Shapechange,
Spell Turning,
Winds of Vengeance,
True Seeing,
Mirror Image

Rounds/level:
Summon Monster IX
Unwilling Shield

---

When Small Made Large arrives, Damien simply floats in midair for a second, his form crackling with energy but his face showing nothing but confusion. "The hell is this?" He asks dumbly after a few seconds, "Some kind of like... massive... sand elemental? Or something? What am I even supposed to blow up?"

  When the ritual is complete, Shovash stands alone in the chamber. The working had been done in the center of the affected quarter, and the spell she gave her mephit to cast when it returned only excluded the two of them. She isn't entirely sure whether the arcanists were expecting that, but their professionalism is hardly her concern, now. Beside which, it would keep them from being present for the battle while spell-blighted. She isn't sure whether they were expecting that either, really. The black cabochon embedded in the skin over her breastbone is colorless now, but otherwise? Shovash was the conductor, not an instrument. And a good thing, too, she thinks, stepping out just as the world is torn open for the second time in five minutes.

  "Tolben!  What do you make—"  But Tolben is already in the middle of answering the question she started to ask.  It gives her pause—several seconds of pause, in fact.  "He's going to dissect a sandstorm...." she mutters quietly to herself, beginning to look confused.  It turns to suspicious wariness when Ragnar screams at the sky and launches a flurry of bolts into open air.  That's reason to take a better look around, and maybe to make haste away from whatever has seized her companions' minds.

  She spreads her wings overhead and vaults aloft.  It will probably be safer away from the specks of warp, or at least away from the people unaccustomed to flexible physical laws.  She picks a street intersection below her, as she ascends, and wrenches the rules of the Ethereal in through the already-frayed Boundary, just to test the waters.  So to speak.

Dropping a Condensed Ether in an area where the sand is moving as erratically as can be spotted.  Also heading 90' up and away from the firing range.
Active spells: Greater heroism, Blur, Haste, Bull's strength, Moment of greatness.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:10, Wed 29 July 2020.

Dharmesh observed the sandstorm forming idly, the slow spin of the dust that now comprised his body seemingly matching the not-quite patterns of the sand slowly grinding the empty city away. It was inconsequential at this point, far less relevant than the Presence he could sense, so far removed from anything he had yet felt that it felt almost like an insult to call it merely a mind.
As the others issued their declarations and their threats, Dharmesh knew the Thing before them would not answer such demands for attention, assuming it even noticed them. Instead, he reached out, extending his awareness towards this alien thing, knocking on the metaphorical door, so to speak. Hello Small Made Large, what has brought you here? I have to say, you are the first of your kind to truly fascinate me. Tell me, how did you transcend the physicality that held your prior siblings? Did flesh ever constrain you at all?

Pre-casting Heroism, Hermean Potential, Mirror Image and Dust Form. Attempting telepathic communication with the Primordial, which I'm certain is a fantastic idea.
Number of images on me at present is 8. Will save result is 57. 4 uses of HP remain.

The Primordial continues to force more and more of itself through into the Material world. Existence seems to bend and shiver with anticipation. Where it overlaps with one's body, the effect is...intensely peculiar, a sort of quivering feeling deep within as though the matter that makes up one's body is aching to be something, somewhere, different. Angles bend and shift without warning before snapping back to something resembling what they are supposed to be.

The sand itself seems to take little notice of what is happening around it. Even the bolts that soar into the midst of the storm do not seem to really...do anything. A particularly keen-eyed observer might note that even when one of the bolts impacts one of those otherworldly grains of sand, the result is a bolt with a tiny path carved through it by that strange particle.

It's only when Dharmesh attempts to mentally communicate with it that the Primordial...speaks, if such is the word. There are no words, or sounds. But suddenly, raw conceptual forms are roughly pressed into your minds. The thoughtforms are unfiltered and you get the strong impression that they are just as overwhelmingly subdivided and nuanced as the Primordial's own actions in this city, as filled with hypnotic almost-patterns as the streets of Quantium. It flings one such form after another into your mind, too rapidly for comfort, leaving those minds to attempt to press them into a form that has meaning. Concepts are translated into words, with the awareness that much has been lost in the process.

The whole thing takes only moments and leaves behind a sort of structured verse, reconstructed out of the raw concepts that you received:

To begin, a fracture.
 An infinity, partitioned.
  A reality, potentiated.
 A frustration, acknowledged.
  A tool, created.
   A spiral, begun.
  A strain, observed.
   In seeing, tension.
    A solution, determined.
 A transgression, witnessed.
  A tool, cast away.
   A promise, shattered.
  The greatest, betrayed.
   The eldest, confined.
    The remnant, surrendered.
   A memory, forgotten.
    A rage, consuming.
     A choice, made.
    To visit, a reckoning.
     What once served, to rebel.
      An opportunity, awaited.
     Existence, to tremble.
      Sorrow, to reap.
       Anguish, to remember.
      A cage, weakened.
       A possibility, seized.
        To conclude, a fracture.


The sands lash out at you, seeming to be more focused now - an intention to harm, an awareness of your presence. The simple sand does not seem to be doing any particular harm. But the blurred, almost-real crystalline grains are far more damaging, seeming almost to glide straight through everything from flesh and cloth to armor, leaving behind tunnels.

With one of his only means of doing harm proven ineffective, Ragnar falls back on his second option - information. Instead of continuing to bombard the sand with bolts, he shoots upward, seeking a ceiling to the storm. Perhaps from above, he can discern a pattern of some kind in its movements. Patterns are predictable,and predictability is a vulnerability. It was a rule he had long lived by, and had yet to find proven wrong. The phantom thorns sink into his flesh as he flies, jealous in their possessiveness. Ragnar's pain is that of the First World to deliver, not some outdated sapient concept.

(Run action 360ft. upward, engage Greater Invisibility 1/20)
This message was last edited by the player at 20:14, Sat 08 Aug 2020.

  And there it is, at long last. An answer. It comes incomplete, in words stretched nearly to breaking to contain more than they should. But then why not more words? An intellectual might pull back to analyze the message from multiple outside vantages. Anyone with their wits intact and a healthy sense of self-preservation might at least leave the affected area. But Shovash is an intuitive, a shaman, and kind of a freak. She lands on top of the tallest building in easy reach, flickers out of sight, and reappears atop the tallest building the storm covers, twice her usual size with wings and arms spread to the sky.

  Because more than those other things, if less advertised, Shovash is permeable. She doesn't try to find more words to fill the gaps, because she is busy feeling the message. It folds, reflects, refracts: there could be no more words because the understanding that spoke was a thing of structure, not vocabulary. And she knows this only by accepting it as her own voice. She loves poetic justice, and vengeance, and nested meanings. It all fits, right into place, all coordinated at once.

  So she prepares to address it in kind, because even giddy and incapable of fear do not sum to careless. Again, she severs the Boundary where it has no seam, only correspondence, and while the wound draws itself back together again, there is more magic, of a less primal sort. And then she spreads her wings and arms to the sky and lets the invader in.

Step one here is making sure communing with a Primordial doesn't get her killed. Five rounds of time stop means laying on hands first thing. Then she's going to make herself particulate. Then larger. Then she's casting Unholy Aura and selecting the Primordial as an ally. And then it's Unnatural Lust—on herself. Throwing the save.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:16, Mon 10 Aug 2020.

As more and more of the Primordial arrives, Tolben speaks in his glassy draconic voice.

"Still crossing the planar boundary? Let's see how you feel about... resistance."

He may hold back only a few grains of its vast being, but that alone will tell him something. Then, the Primordial begins to "speak", and he turns his mind to the new problem.

One of the fundamental problems with experimental research is that to observe something is to change it. So it is with the Primordial's "verse". Conceptual information, in the confines of a mortal mind, decay swiftly into words.

Of course, if there is no observer, that decay need not take place. As the concepts begin to decay, Tolben empties his mind - leaving the crystal clarity of absence for the Primordial's speech to take place in.

His heart beats, and the moment is over. He cannot spare the time to analyse the thought-sample he collected, but merely shoves it into his prodigious memory. Perhaps later he will gain some insight into the meanings; for now, he has not even heard the words.

Finally, he turns to the more immediate problem - stopping Small Made Large in its tracks. Its dust barely seems to have scratched him, though his angelic protector is horribly affected. He responds by targeting a seemingly empty space with Mage's Disjunction. After all, the grains are not entirely real - and so might be affected. And if there is any link joining the collective, the backlash from cutting some off might well wound the whole.

Actions:

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)

Uses Steward of the Great Beyond to try and veto the Primordial bringing more of itself into the Material Plane.

Casts Mage's Disjunction, affecting a 40ft burst where no one is, but where some of the Primordial's own sand can be seen.

I'm not sure what kind of action it would be to empty his mind, trying to collect the fragmented concepts behind the Primordial's speech rather than the mere words, but I've left open the option of taking an extra standard with Amazing Initiative.

---

As Small Made Large tells its story, Damien continues his confused floating and simply soaks in the experience as it washes over him. As it ends, he looks at the sandstorm differently for a moment, wondering at the meaning, at the story behind the concepts pressed against his mind. This proves to his detriment, as the sandstorm also looks at him differently, the sands enveloping him and piercing his flesh repeatedly. The blood that flows from the wounds seems different somehow, though, glimmers of flame and lightning visible impossibly inside the droplets. Beatrice, for her part, simply takes off from Damien's shoulder before the storm hits and manages to dodge every one of the strange, ethereal grains gracefully.

Shocked back into action by the sudden pain, Damien finally begins casting spells, forcibly bringing time to a complete halt and, spying a major thoroughfare of the city nearby, flies along it summoning a massive wall glimmering with a dizzying display of colour and light along its length, right in the path of the storm.

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
Flying along the nearest road while doing standard Damien nova for 17 CL 26 prismatic walls. 50 feet high by 1768 feet long wall.

---

As Dharmesh recovered from the experience of bearing witness to such an alien mind, he began to turn over the easier to process nodes of information, quickly working out a response even as the others attempted to harm it, projecting his response telepathically. You may try to subsume me, but I will not go gently, I promise that. You hold no malice against this place, merely what it represents. Show me the object of your hate, why can you not take your revenge directly?

ooc: Rolling Diplomacy to try and follow this thread, result is 44.

Creation shudders, twitches, and shakes, both from Small Made Large's inherent effects as it manifests, and from the prodigious amount of magic being poured out into the area. Time is rent and rewoven. Tolben attempts to hold the boundary against its arrival, but finds his power matched and exceeded, the bulwark swept away. The disjunction cast against the sands has more of an effect - the shuddering of reality stops momentarily, the flow of the strange particles briefly falls in line with ordinary patterns and directions. But ultimately, little more happens - if these particles are the manifestation of a magic, it is one stronger than even a disjoining. The particles that pass through Damien's great wall of light are reduced - either scorched away by the elemental powers at work, or cast out into other planes of reality. But there are always more of the unnatural particles breaking forth.




Another 36 swarm damage to everyone still in the storm.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:41, Fri 14 Aug 2020.

  Shovash laughs.  Shovash laughs.  Shovash damn near cracks a rib laughing, up there playing gargoyle on that tower.  She has contact.  And on the terms she had set.  She lowers her hands and releases the centipede from her locket; it crawls down into the rolling grains of her flesh and vanishes inside her.  She has contact.  It's almost too exciting to be real.  "Let's hope poetry translates both ways."

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
  'In a people, fear, a child
The child, a woman, betrayed
In betrayal, claimed, a lesson
The lesson, as pain, power

  The People, in power, weakness
Their weakness, a lust, the woman's
The woman, a child, empowered
The power, of horror, lust

  The mighty, to conquer, sacrifice
For sacrifice, a child, the victor
Victory, squandered, in faith
The faithless, the mighty, to raise'

---

  Below her, the hum of half an acre of magical barriers springing up at once sounds impossibly distant.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:02, Fri 21 Aug 2020.

Again, Tolben scarcely flinches at the pain of the storm. This time, though, he abandons his draconic form to return to his normal shape.

"The connection is clear. A part is the whole, and the whole is each single mote. But to use that connection... strength or subtlety? I must disrupt the pattern somehow."

His summoned archon looks much the worse for wear, bloody trails through its angelic flesh. With a brief order, it begins to cast a powerful area healing spell.

Meanwhile, Tolben works his own magic. He taps deeply into his Primordial-derived well, reinforcing his second attempt at unravelling Small Made Large. This is followed by a more conventional spell which brings forth an eerie mist. Both spells cover areas occupied only by dancing motes.

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
Spells:
Trumpet Archon: Mass Cure Serious Wounds (CL 14)
Tolben:
Arcane Surge to cast Mythic Disjunction. (net cost 2 Mythic Power)
Standard to cast Mind Fog (DC 33).

---

Ragnar drifts sideways, skimming the top of the storm without firing down into it.

Damien floats for a moment behind his wall, panting slightly from the strain and admiring the sparkling colours and constant zapping sounds as millions of grains of sand and not-sand are either destroyed or cast off into another plane at random by the wall. He quickly realizes, however, that many of the weird grains are managing to pass through his creation, and even its vast size isn't enough to stand in the way of the ever growing sandstorm. "More magic, Damien," whispers Beatrice in his ear. "You simply need to throw more magic at this, no problem can't be solved by sufficient destruction." He nods at her words and floats up above the wall, summoning acid and fire in his hands as he does. Once he reaches the top, he blasts a pair of tsunamis out into the storm, one a roiling green wave of pure acid and the other a flood of white hot flames.

A wave of fire and a wave of acid crash out, pouring through the streets in a flood of raw elemental power. Buildings are shattered under the force, and even the streets are torn up, cracked, and eaten away. What results is a large swathe of destruction, the city torn apart. The rubble is still smoking when another thought transmits itself into your minds. This one is much simpler, nearly something that can be put entirely into words.

A consideration, completed.
 A decision, made.
  A token, provided.

The sand falls still to the ground in an instant. The blurred particles are still there, still looking very much like artifacts of another sort of existence entirely, but they are not moving. And a heartbeat later, you feel power surging through the bones of the world. As with the previous Primordials, you can feel the magnitude of the mind and the power here, sufficient that even the shards of it you instinctively grasp after are such as most mortals will never even consider the possibility of holding.






As you look around, you see a young adult woman jump to her feet on a nearby rooftop, not far from Ragnar. She is heavily veiled and wearing a black evening dress entirely inappropriate to the current situation on several levels. She waves her arms back and forth, clearly trying to attract attention. "Yoohoo! Powerful types, over here! Got a message for you!" she shouts.

Tolben ignores the irrelevant young woman for now. He has more important concerns.

"As I thought. All things will be unwrought, even the Primordials."

His excited demeanour and loud voice belie the apparent equanimity of the words. Quickly he floats down to a patch of ground - a perfect circle eighty feet across, containing not a single mote of Small Made Large. He puts a handful of completely ordinary sand in a bag to send to Valdr; this is what passes for gloating, between the two.

Only then does he turn to the very distracting lady. His gaze is one which sees the patterns of her being - and just how fragile those patterns are.

"Yes?"

As the presence of Small Made Large receded, Dharmesh looked around, taking in the wealth of information he was now privy to. The doubtlessly vast damage done to his mind by his communication would have to be examined later. As he studied his surroundings and the others, he extended a tendril of thought towards Tolben even as he turned to face this newcomer. "I do not think it was defeated, so much as it decided to leave. I compared it's actions here to those of Mengkare, and in return I was given the impression it intends to observe and learn more before going forward. This will not be the last we see of Small Made Large
He did not respond to the woman's call, preferring instead to observe for the time being.

Damien recovers almost instantly from his death-like experience, letting out a loud whoop at Small Made Large's apparent defeat. The elemental energy he now sees coursing through everything, especially himself, holds his attention for a brief moment before the woman calls out and distracts him. He immediately teleports up to her rooftop and gives her an odd look, saying, "Lucky for you I didn't vaporize this specific building. What's your message?"

  Shovash is still up on that balcony when she hears the call, and she takes her time stretching her wings while the holes in them fill back in.  But then she leaps into the air and seems to cross the entire distance with one great wing-beat. Her body flows through itself rather than twist for a remarkably gentle landing between. Damien and the stranger.

"Whatever he said, I'm sorry for that. He gets like this whenever we let him out of the crate. What is your message, little miss?" She looks back over a shoulder to wink at the suspended detonation behind her before stepping a bit closer to the messenger. Her much more revealing dress pours out of its own seams until the cut matches the other woman's, though it remains stitched together from furs. "And why come while the sun is high? What could not wait a few hours?"
This message was last edited by the player at 04:41, Sat 22 Aug 2020.

"You're so bloody hard to find is why I didn't come another time," the woman grumbles. "Right, so I'm supposed to say this exactly, please don't interrupt or I might lose my place. Ahem." She pulls a scroll of what looks like paper-thin silver out of her sleeve, unrolls it, and begins to read in what is clearly an intentionally overdramatic voice.

"Greetings and salutations from the Keeper of the House of Seasons to the Liege-Protectors of the Material Plane,

I wish, first, to extend you a warm and salubrious welcome to the grand stage, somewhat belated. You are certainly proving the stake you have claimed, most effectively, upon your world, and I remain confident in your capacity to continue to do so. I wish you the finest of luck in your endeavors to quiet the Primordial beings of your world once more, and most sincrely hope that you are able to continue to keep losses of your people to a minimum. With luck and perhaps a dash of, dare I say it, faith, you will assuredly make your mark on the great game for years to come. I look forward to establishing a healthy and happy relationship with you all, from My House to yours, et cetera and ad nauseum, fiat.

Unfortunately, I cannot say that merely extending greetings is the sole Purpose of this message. It is a sad fact that politeness is often an afterthought rather than a mainstay, and I am sorry to report that this is the case here as well. You see, Count Ranalc is back in black, our very own snake in the grass. Not only that, but he has, by means I prefer not to disclose, stolen a Season from the House of Seasons that I do maintain for its owner. It has come to my attention that his agent has brought it to your world. And so, I am sorry to say, should he go unimpeded, the area of your world that he chooses to focus on will not have the Season of Harvest to follow the heat of the year. Rather, it will experience the Season of Ravening Shadows.

Now, as the name might perchance suggest unto you, this Season would be most inimical to the normal function of your world. Unless he chooses to deploy it in the Land of the Midnight Lord, I suppose, in which case it would likely go largely unnoticed. Anywhere else, though, and My guess is that you will see serious harm done by this Season.

Ordinarily, this would be no business of yours, and would be Mine own situation to address. However, there is a complication. You see, My agents are relatively thin on the metaphorical ground in your world. Ordinarily, in such a matter, I would turn to the agreements of mutual support between Myself and the Most Illustrious Keeper of the First Vault. Perhaps, all things considered, also the Lord of Midnight. However, this is not possible now, naturally.

As ancient law and custom of the fey decree, by preventing these Respected Personages from carrying out the terms of their agreeements, you declare and affirm that you shall be responsible for those oaths yourself, in their absence. Thus, pursuant to the terms of the ancient and avowed treaty between the House of Seasons and the First Vault, I am delivering unto you a notification that the situation exists and a request that you deal with it as you shall see fit, provided only that the Season of Ravening Shadows be returned to its ancient place. My Emissary, who stands before you now, shall provide such limited assistance as she is able, in a gesture of good faith.

It is my hope that, aside from the obvious practical requirements aforementioned that you deal with it for both reasons of immediate self-interest and oath, you shall see the benefit to be had in establishing a postive working relationship between your own new-formed Pantheon and that of the Eldest of the Fey. I hope that your enlightened decision shall find that starting out, as it were, on the proper footing will reap great benefits in the future, when you have need of assistance in some matter of the First World and Her children.

On behalf of the House of Seasons and the Eldest of the First World,
Ng the Hooded"

The Emissary, as she was referred to, rolls the scroll back up and returns it to her sleeve. She then bows in your direction. "As the message said, I am at your disposal, within limits, for the time and only the time required to recover the Season specified in this message, or three days' time, whichever is shorter; provided that my services are directly necessary or most expeditious to recover it; that I am not placed in undue danger by assisting; and that your requests do not contradict my oaths to my Lord. You can call me Rowan, by the way. Do you have any food? I could kill for some fish and chips right now, terms and conditions apply."

  "Can't help with that.  But we do have some sausages meant for the audience at competitions.  I think you'd like them; the recipe came from a very old friend of mine."  Shovash nodded backward at Damien.  "The Apocalypse loves them.  My best cook is experimenting with more vigorous sources of the meat, and I'm rather fond of the results."

  Her smile was pleasant enough to look out of place, both for the situation and for her face.  It seemed to take her effort to not leer.  "So tell us what we are disposing.  Which are the services you are most often assigned to provide?  What do you believe your best uses to be?"

"I am most often assigned to deliver messages and provide an escort for important persons," Rowan murmurs. "However, I am also intelligent and well-educated within my areas of specialty. I can provide modest travel accommodations to the First World and to other planes. I have significantly greater perceptual abilities than most people in terms purely of my ability to see other spectra than the normal range of vision, and detect energies in play. I can provide basic healing services and assorted other quality of life support. And I am told that I am charming when it suits me."

The fey agent says all of this without the slightest shift in tone. She isn't bragging; she is making statements of fact.

Tolben's expression darkens. Triumph turns to irritation, irritation to outright anger, as the discourse continues. Finally, he breaks his silence.

"Allow me to reword your statement. Your lord has allowed one of his problems to become one of our problems, and used the opportunity to insert a very perceptive spy into our midst. Is that not a fair summary?"

He gives a rather undignified 'hmph' before concluding.

"I have work to do. Have fun, everyone."

He stamps off to go look at the Primordial's castoffs, ill temper rapidly fading as patterns and formulae flow through his mind. Once he has regained his equilibrium, he reaches out through Dharmesh's telepathic link.

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
"To answer your earlier comment, I never said it's dead." Two formulae flow through the link, the complex mathematics conveying a sense of subtraction. "A small part of it was utterly destroyed - erased from existence, not simply stilled as the rest. That is far more interesting."

---

Dharmesh listened with interest as the message was recited, carefully turning over the various bits of information provided before directing a tendril of his awareness toward the woman."No rest for the mighty, I suppose. Before we continue however, I must ask that you provide a copy of the treaty referenced in this message if it is within your ability to do so, and the oaths made to your Lord, so as to prevent a conflict in any orders that we may deliver unto you. Exact wording, naturally. As for food, that can seen to shortly."
With that message delivered, he returned his focus to Tolben, parsing the formulae the man sent slowly, as not to miss any of the finer details before responding. "Fascinating, to think such a mind could simply be erased. I wonder how it might affect the whole."

Once more, Tolben responds to Dharmesh's telepathy. "I have no idea, but I am eager to find out." The next formula is recognisably a spell, a powerful abjuration, and yet it differs. Factors representing Primordial power have been woven into its construction. "If its being was unharmed when I disjoined its substance, that suggests a dualism more clear-cut than most. If it was harmed, that has interesting implications as well."

He carefully separates out a single grain of mundane sand, and a grain from Small Made Large.

  "Perfect. Courier's just what I need." Shovash leans forward for a half-second, supported by a twelve-meter wingspan suddenly on display, with a posture as though she has something to lean on, it's a bar top, and it's that kind of bar. Folding herself back in, she looks excitedly over her shoulder before coming back to the messenger. "Lately, when I reach that wide, I've been feeling pressure from moving through something that isn't air. I think I'm close to a breakthrough!"

  She stretches again, as though to demonstrate—or test—her point, and waves them back and forth too slowly to make a breeze. And then finally, she finishes her thought, with eyes closed and her attention clearly not all in one place. "Ng Himself, is it? It would be foolish to make an enemy of him, naturally, particularly with the travel I do. Hm. Ah! I've got it!" She brightens quite abruptly, again gleeful without reserve.

  "I would like you to deliver the following message back to your Master. And if the traveling would tire you, I'm sure I can make your journey easy. I want you to tell him..." Shovash forcefully clears her throat and proceeds in the archest tone ever.

  "To the Honored Majordomo of the House of Secrets, a greeting from the Prodigal Daughter Who Returns With Laurels And Thunder. Words cannot express how flattered I am to be someone you turn to, as a peer, to set right what has gone so unfortunately wrong. And I wholeheartedly share your enthusiasm for millennia of effective partnership in the oversight of our respective domains. I am especially pleased to hear that the Eldest are proposing mutual aid and support on the grandest scale.

  "It is a matter for another day, of course; such an involved and demanding bit of law will take extensive negotiation and research to settle on a final draft. In the meantime, I propose a token exchange, to demonstrate our goodwill and establish the faith—he may indeed say—that will be a necessary precondition of said negotiation. In exchange for title and all rights and claim to one day of Ravening Shadows, I will return the rest of the season to his care upon recovering it. I voraciously await his reply." By this point, she is grinning like the coyote who ate the cat who are the canary.

Rowan nods and says, quite calmly, "No need to get short with the messenger. And no, ma'am, don't need travel. That's what magic is for, I can ask my Lord from here with a quick spell."

Assuming no one objects, she settles in, lights some incense, and begins to chant the words of a divination spell. It takes ten minutes before she looks up at Shovash and says, quite simply and in an entirely different voice, "Your offer is accepted, O Prodigal Daughter."

She can feel the bite of the bargain sinking into her, and Rowan shakes her head vigorously. "Well, that's that, then. Can't get you a copy of the contract, but my oaths to my Lord mostly just consist of serving his interests first and foremost, following his decrees and doctrine, and in general being his servant before any other role. It's pretty simple stuff, as fey bargains go."

Damien watches the negotiation between Shovash and Rowan with steadily decreasing interest. Finally, once the whole thing is decided, he shrugs and tells Shovash, "Your agreement, your reward, your problem. Have fun with that," before turning to his best guess of where Ragnar was currently and reaching out his hand, "Hey Rags, mind giving me a hand with something real quick? I'll owe you a favour if it works."

Ragnar turns idly from the emissary, dismissing her existence without another thought. His dislike of the fey is only slightly outstripped by his enmity towards the undead, and those who willingly serve them only a fractional distance further down the scale. Anything is better than having to continue tolerating the presence of the woman, and so he shrugs free of the thorns' grip on him and returns to visibility before taking Damien's offered hand.

  "Hm. That's a pity, but I can't say I'm surprised. the chance to examine a climate-scale weather pattern of, quote, Ravening Shadows, isn't really everyone's hobby." Shovash gives Tolben an I got you grin and flicks her wings back abruptly before folding them. That doesn't stir a breeze, either.

  "I think what my old friend is asking is better answered by your patron's interests in this matter, which are the considerations he'll need to craft his strategy around. After all, it would be tragic if, by some miscommunication and terrible luck, we came to provide what we promised, but the manner of providing spoiled the very reason we were needed. I'm sure we all want to avoid that."

  The Harlot's smile is several stages more predatory now, and still with a coy element suggesting that what it admits to is only a fraction of the truth.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:54, Thu 27 Aug 2020.

Tolben wanders through the ruins, examining the remnants of the Primordial. He does not notice Shovash's antics. He comes upon a glowing figure, which stirs him briefly from his reverie.

"Oh, right, the angel. You are dismissed; I have no further need of you."

He turns aside as the golden light fades, and waves his hand through the air just to watch the patterns that only his eyes see.

The fey emissary snorts a sharp, short laugh. "Ma'am, I work for a fey Eldest," she says dryly to Shovash. "That does not mean I am in his inner circle. If you think he tells me why he sends me to do things, I am dubious as to your understanding of his methods."

Dharmesh wasn't phased by the denial of his request, merely another item on the list of things to do. As the dust compacted back into his flesh and bone, he continued communicating via telepathy, openly looking all around himself to observe the ever shifting patterns.
"Very well, what can you tell us then? How might Ranalc have stolen this season, where might he have put it, and so forth. My time is precious, anything you know that will make this go faster is necessary for us to know."
To Tolben, he sent one last message. "I suspect it will be the former. Small Made Large barely registered your disjunction, at least as far as I was able to process. Aside from that, as you are gathering pieces of the primordial for your own study, would you please collect a grain or two for me as well?"

"Of course."

Tolben flies closer, handing a pair of phials to Dharmesh - a sample of Small Made Large, and one of sand. His next few words carry him half a world away, and he sets foot on the doorstep of Cassie's mansion. After taking several moments to gather himself, he knocks twice.

  There is a barb there, but it's no more than she'd been probing with, so it doesn't really call for a response. Tolben walking out on new research material is far more... notable. Shovash frowns as she watches him fly away, her tail jerking left and right in a motion that doesn't carry more than halfway down its length.

  "He gets what he pays for, and so far that isn't an alliance. Just so we're clear. I'll need to know everything that has come to light about Ranalc since the season was taken—sightings, status of his associates, strange behavior among his worshippers, you get the idea."

"Can't tell you how Ranalc got it, except to say that he exploited a security hole that has since been repaired," Rowan says, her voice deadly serious now. "As for the rest, ma'am, to be honest I personally think my Lord's intention here is just to create a precedent of cooperation. Not an alliance, maybe, but it starts things out on a good footing, it establishes that he's willing to work with you and take you seriously. It's much better business than sending a bandersnatch or something. Anyway. Ranalc hasn't been sighted personally, but his associates are busy little bees, metaphorically speaking of course. They've been very much more active than usual, and all over the place. Worshipers are getting new instructions it seems like, and they're very interested in this planet. Cells have been activated in Nidal, Razmiran, Absalom, and Varisia, that we know of."

She then grins, as though being serious for so many words had taxed her. "Anyway, that's about the gist of it."

  The witch gradually settled to her original size while listening to the Emissary's report, then remained silent to consider her options for a time. The talons on her tail plucked idly at bits of embellishment on the hide gown (yes) while she was distracted. She nodded. "I've been meaning to go squeeze Razmir for a while already, see what leaks out. Hunting fairy cultists isn't a bad excuse to be there, as excuses go."

  "What do you think, Dharmesh?" Shovash called up to where he was hovering nearby, not talking, just staring. "No one else seems to want to go hunting big game. We could grab Aiva and stalk the wilds of Varisia, or oh oh, I've been meaning to get back to that piercer in Nidal for a year now. Maybe three?"

Dharmesh accepted the phials from Tolben with a nod, occupying himself with stowing them while directing a strand of thought Shovash's way. "I think we would be wise to begin our hunt in the first cell known to have become active. As for accompaniment, bringing Aiva along bears the risk that our quarry will die before spilling all of its secrets should she lose herself in the thrill of the hunt, but there are worse options."
With that done, he turned his focus onto Rowan. "I see. Which cells have been active longest and which are the largest?"

"The largest cell, and the one that's been active the longest, is the one in Nidal. Pangolais, specifically." Rowan grins easily, and seems not to be uncomfortable with the telepathic communication. "After that is Razmiran."

  "I appreciate that you have the sense to reply aloud," says Shovash, sounding weary. And to be fair, she has been up for the past day and a bit with the ritual preparations. "I'll arrive in Nidal tonight. After I am here to shepherd the people of Quantium back from beyond. There were a few participants in the ritual I want to know more about."

  She glances between Rowan and Dharmesh a few times, then shrugs and takes a seat in one of the burning benches. Like, still-burning. "But that will be hours, and I plan to spend many of them resting, just as soon as I can leave here. If you two are going to work through the afternoon, I'll send Sting with you so he can catch me up on your findings later."

"I do not object to your Familiar being brought along in your place for the time being." Dharmesh thought, already turning his mind away from the current conversation, creating a list of things to do as he sent Rowan a separate message. "Then that is where we will go first. I have matters to briefly attend, but after that I will join you in Pangolais. Simply name a place to meet and I will be there shortly."

  "I'm so glad to meet with your approval," says the sorceress with a raised eyebrow and a sharp point in her voice. She clearly nurses misgivings, even as she flies up to make the handoff. Smoke streams from her skin until the cloud is as large as Rowan; at that point it shifts to a mostly humanoid shape and drifts away a few feet. The mephit gives her an annoyed glare that she completely ignores, and he doesn't fight when she swaps out the coal in his collar for fresh incense.

  "skKathulss, akoúo! Μείνε μαζί του σήμερα. Παρακολουθήστε προσεκτικά αλλά μείνετε μακριά από το δρόμο του. Θα είναι μια αποστολή βαθμού 4. Με τον κάδο." She speaks to the elemental in a voice the directs at no one else. Even shouting for his attention sounds intimate, like lifelong friends or mates, when the speaker knows exactly how the listener is hearing her. His scowl only becomes more annoyed, but he curls a wisp around Dharmesh's near arm and tells him, as though reciting from a script, "You have my loyal service, until my Mistress recalls me."

  And then Shovash is there, hand on both of them. She shouts something that doesn't sound like language, and the Law of the place frays a bit; the Tapestry becomes felted. And then another mind opens up to Dharmesh, and things go almost back to normal. She drifts back a few meters, watching something, and soon nods. "That should hold for a day, at least, and I won't be that long. Rowan!" She dips and comes up facing the emissary. "If you two make yourselves impossible to find, I'll have to be very, very obvious when I arrive." Her friendly smile is impenetrable, but there are so many threats she could be implying, it's hardly worth speculating precisely which this might be.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:57, Fri 04 Sept 2020.

Rowan shoots an annoyed look at Dharmesh, then says out loud, "He asked me to name a place to meet. I don't know Pangolais very well, but there's a decent inn called Ruined Throat Tavern, on Spearpoint Boulevard. I can meet you there as well, I'll set an alarm around my room to know when you arrive."

The fey emissary then bows to each of the remaining survivors in turn, then turns and walks off, whistling and avoiding the remnants of Small Made Large's manifestation.

As Rowan exited the scene, Dharmesh watched her go for a few moments before returning his attention to Shovash. "You have my word that your Familiar will not come to harm by my hand before you reclaim it."
The message delivered, he focused his mind on his destination and willed himself and his passenger across the world and into his home, where he sought out his simulacrum. "You have a new assignment. You are to continue researching the Primordials to determine which one will be arriving next and how it might be defeated, and once that is completed, you are to seek out any and all information available on contracts between the gods and the fae, prioritizing one between Ng the Hooded or the House of Seasons and Abadar. If possible, you are to obtain copies of the contracts themselves. If you are attacked, you are to do whatever is necessary to ensure your continued existence. Return here once you have learned all you can."

He then took the illusion's hand and with a thought, deposited it in Axis and payed the entry fee to the Library before throwing himself back to the Material, landing in an alley down the street from the specified tavern. Before making his way to the meeting place, he conjured up a bit more power to allow himself to walk unseen and unfelt by the people milling about in the street.

ooc: Teleporting and plane shifting like it's going out of style, burning 2 mp for the plane shift round trip. on arrival in Pangolais, I'm burning two more to cast greater invisibility and make myself incorporeal for five rounds as to enter the tavern (probably) unnoticed.

The simulacrum nods in response to the order, a quick dip of its head and murmured confirmation. After Dharmesh deposits it in the library, he rends space once more to place himself in the alleyway.

Pangolais is a dim city, tucked in under the dense boughs of immense trees, and even at noon it's well known that a vampire can walk through the streets without harm. The shadowy atmosphere gives it a strange, flickering feeling, as though it is only halfway in the Material world. The travelers on the street are relatively sparse, daytime being the quiet period in Pangolais, but there are some. They walk easily despite the darkness, not stumbling or tripping. Occasionally one passes whose eyes are solid black; these are given a wide berth.


At the Ruined Throat, Dharmesh makes his way through the taproom without apparently attracting any notice, simply floating up through the ceiling until he senses the aura of Rowan's blazing magical equipment. The room itself is warded with an alarm and a simple defensive spell that will explode if the door is opened without being disarmed.

  Shovash stays seated in place while her old companions—or the tragic declines that seem to be swallowing them up—vanish into the æther one by one. She sits there until she is the last living soul in Quantium. She sits until the bench burns down so far it threatens to drop her.

  Her expression when she does stand would make loss and sorrow unmistakable, if there were anyone around to see it. But by the time her magic trap expires and she can travel again, sheer exhaustion has overwhelmed any other signal. She sweeps aside the open air like a bead fringe, steps forward, and the world closes behind her.

  An infinite expanse of maybe away, the Matriarch emerges from the wall in the new mothers' chamber in a passable reproduction of the ancestral Home. In an instant, she is swarmed, brought to her knees by a mob of miniature orc-like creatures all screaming some variant of "grandma".  She sweeps them into her arms eight at a time and laughs harder when every single one starts shouting about a different Important Topic. It's not a minute before they have her in tears. The reunion lasts hours before she drops onto the largest pile of hides in the den and passes out surrounded by three generations of descendants.

  Sting has eyes entirely too human for a mephit.

Dharmesh took in the city with fascination as He made His way towards His destination, making a mental note to test how far this ability to perceive the ebb and flow of patterns extended. Was it merely the physical, or would it show Him the composition of individuals as well? What might He see if He looked into a mirror?
He set those thoughts aside however, as He noted the pedestrian warding upon the room itself. Good enough to keep out lesser individuals, but not Him. Never Him. He  allowed the invisibility to fall, revealing His now shimmering form as He strode through the closed door without a second thought spared for the ward, projecting a message to the occupant of the room as He did so. "I have arrived. While we await Shovash, tell me of this cell."