Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- legend_of_the_ark [2026/05/20 17:25] – [Session 16: Where The Sign Will Be Shown] spiffgent
+++ legend_of_the_ark [2026/05/20 18:23] (current) – [End of Chapter: Heaven And Earth, And The King On His Throne] spiffgent
@@ Line 247: / Line 247: @@
 In the morning, Keith and Callie, under invisibility, snuck to Mary-Ann Sow's tower, and enlisted her help in striking against Fitzroy now. While everyone took positions hidden in a bush, Sow summoned a huge illusion of Gyre Carline. The plan was for them to use the distraction to sneak the witch to her tower to produce a greater illusion to scare him outside while the rest of the party took positions. However, Fitzroy was more cowardly than expected, and instantly ran from his boarded-up keep to enlist help from the guards. Once he saw through the illusion, Otto immediately sprung to almost disembowel him while Keith swung wildly with his hammers. Callie and Cairo ran above the keep, speeding to the tower just in case it was required anyway, and through Fitzroy's wild flaming attacks. Rioux ducked in and out of cover to make strikes on Fitzroy, while Cairo kept the innocent away with a wall of fire. Fitzroy wasn't felled in time, but Finrick's intercession and horror kept him from annihilating the party at once. Keith struck the last hit on the Peasant King, and did so non-lethally, hoping to interrogate him as to his power later.
-===== Session 16: Where The Sign Will Be Shown =====
+===== Session 16: Look To The Sky, Where The Sign Will Be Shown =====
 **26th – 28th Dariksay**
@@ Line 265: / Line 265: @@
 **28th – 29th Dariksay**
-Fitzroy was bound and gagged, and was interrogated as soon as he was roused by a fly-shrouded Keith. He told (under Cairo's zone of truth) how he had been approached by an angel and given Ahm's mastery over demons to stand against Akselmarch (although enslaving his town and occupying the Turtle was his own idea). Keith's blood ran
+Otto sent his raven to warn the Main-roche manor about the incoming attackers, while Keith and Rioux attempted to inspect the angel statue while being frustrated by Maria and the other townsfolk. She refused to let up her attacks and had to be subdued by Rioux, but the angel door was inert, and so the party rushed to Moira's home, breaking through the floor to follow her through her tunnel and stopping her sealing sigils. Otto sent his raven ahead to see if Moira was rushing to the Poteus Ark, but all this served to do was alert the Dwarf to their presence. She sealed the tunnel briefly, and while Rioux and Cairo tore it open, Keith was given one more chance by Aristotle to redeem himself by following his orders later.
+The party pursued through Poteyenheim, Gilvalur's Workshop, and Elfori, encountering Moira's angel door shortcuts at each turn, until they found the passage through stone allowing her access to the laboratory beneath. With no way through, Keith attempted to dig through the stone (aided by Cairo's golden lions) as others tried to deduce everything they could about the angel doors, with Cairo and Rioux and Callie failing to make any traction. At Keith's suggestion, they sought the mausoleum full of Angel doors, and realised that they were arranged in a perfect grid, and that Moira could reveal one at any point whenever she liked to cover her tracks and bore passages. As they dug, Cairo resigned themselves to reading Ahmic scripture, inadvertently opening the door with the name of //Bahamut//. They followed into the Elven chamber beyond, where the Coarctation beat quietly.
+Keith attempted to destroy it at Aristotle's command, but failed to dent it. Moira stepped out of the shadows and revealed that she had already tried, and that the Angel Doors seemed to be some kind of Elven containment mechanism around the Poteus Ark, a backup for the chronomancy. Keith listened but only had eyes for destroying the heart: he struck it and struck it as Rioux failed to stop him and Callie frustrated Cairo's own intercession. Neither Keith nor Otto were able to leave a single scratch on it: at Aristotle's command and after his failed persusaion of the others, Keith gave over his hammer to Moira, who was able to damage the Coarctation with righteous rage. This triggered the sanctuary's defences, a shadowy titan that instantly evaporated those struck by its weapon. Keith and Moira were struck first, and while Callie and Rioux were able to keep away and inflict genuine harm on it, they too quickly fell.
+Keith, Callie and Otto awoke in a drizzling field, next to a huge manor. Within was Otto's Akselian teacher, Friedrich Durchdenwalf, seemingly awaiting him for the first time. They duelled, and Otto showed his surprising prowess, before the Demon of Bahamut burst in, quickly fighting them again and killing Friedrich. Cairo and Rioux appeared in a Light-blessed cave on the eve of Cairo's baptism into the Light, but tried to put this aside them as they explored their new Hollowsmerian surroundings. An Elven missionary led Cairo to the cave (with the guards convinced by Rioux's new vestments), but all convivialities were interrupted by the Demon's arrival, alongside an avalanche. It was being weakened, however, by Keith's armour, Otto's gunshots, Callie's blasts, Rioux's strikes, and Cairo's necrotics spells, the latest of which caused a permanent mark on its voided figure.
+Next, Callie and Rioux were sent to the Craftsman, Callie's patron, who quickly displayed with a gruesome execution of Callie that the party were being sent to doomed timelines created by the Ark's openings, and that the Demon of Bahamut was persuing them across these consequenceless realms. He //did// tell them that the Chronophage could be controlled as it was weakened, and that he was happy to help them to help his own "real" equivalent out. He sent Rioux and Callie to weaken the Demon as it attempted to breach his sanctum. Keith, Cairo, and Otto were sent to La Pira, the capital of Iyator, the day of the revolution. Keith realised this quickly and tried to skip, but ran into his brother, the policeman René, who believed that his pursuit was at an end. He accused Jean-Luc of fratricide: and he admitted it was true, and that he had killed his brother to get the hammer capable of destroying the Coarctation for Aristotle, before feeling great shame at how easily he surrendered it. However, the Founding Sin soon happened, and the Demon arrived as the Grenadiers turned on René and civilians alike. Quickly it was able to travel the party once more.
+Rioux and Otto appeared outside the outskirts of Taronsawk, and Rioux tried to explain how they had managed to choose their destination. Moira had also appeared alongside them, covered in blood and grime, and tried to attack before the Demon appeared once again. Callie had chosen to travel to the moment of their meeting with the rest of the party, and Cairo and Keith were drawn into it as well, quickly earning the attacks of the paranoid past adventurers before the Demon burst out once more. Cairo convinced his past self to attack it, but was attacked himself once he ran out of luck: the Chronophage tore past Keith in half under similar encouragement, allowing the prime Jean-Luc to recover a copy of the warhammer he had given to Moira. They all accepted their next hits, and all decided to arrive at the same place: the Coarctation, in the present.
+Keith drew the warhammer, and finally found his spine, demanding concessions of Aristotle for the shit he had gone through. Aristotle showed genuine outrage and fear as, one by one, the party backed up Keith against his cruel patron — only for his first and final hammer swing to prove only that they had ignored Moira's presence. She swung her own warhammer at the Coarctation, and the world blazed white as it shattered.
+----
+//Out steps the figure that had been appearing before them multiple times already, that of Rex Anfang Akselmarch, the Emperor. He thanks them for their efforts, and wonders, given how much he has already achieved trapped in stasis, how much he can now achieve unleashed.//
+----
+The sanctuary began to rumble, and Keith forced Moira to lead them out. The earthquakes buried the Demon of Bahamut and, when they emerged in Poteyenheim to stop Rex Anfang from reaching the Ark, another tremor knocked it off its plinth, proving the time trap around it had ended. Rioux naturally scooped it up, and the party elected to return to Taronsawk, lacking anywhere else to go. Rioux locked the Ark in the Storeroom on the way: but when the party arrived they arrived to an aftermath, with all of the townsfolk either dead or escaped in a petty battle that they had missed. An Akselian Feldjaeger sat by a banner, confused that there was no one to surrender to: the Fourth Lehtion was badly running out of supplies, and needed to ally itself with powers beyond the wall to survive. Otto sent him on his way and then translated the encounter: the realisation that Akselmarch was never going to attack broke Moira, and Rioux had to lead her away, sobbing to her house, before glumly returning.
+The only matter left was that of the Ark. Rioux and Cairo both wanted to physically take it away, while Keith had been taken advantage of to release the Akselian Rex. Otto and Keith did, however, think it was best for them to open it, secluded, instead of allow it to be opened by anyone else: a plan that Rioux assented to after a prayer to Ahm. Cairo resisted, but the monk snapped the box open in the church before anyone could react, revealing it to be absolutely plain, bare, and empty. As Aristotle helpfully informed Keith, whatever treasures and curses it contained within had already been taken by Andren Bazat decades ago — and nothing could have ever come of their quest.
+Cairo wrote of these events to their Light clade, while Rioux through mad laughs remained in the church, praying. Keith, Otto, and Callie left, to continue burying the dead, utterly unsure of where to go next.