in search of lost sessions

Events occurred during this session, events that cannot be recalled from memory, transient and unknowable, locked in the past. We peer down into the frozen lake of our collective memories and wonder whether truth can ever be extracted. Is the paltry record of this collective story (breathed into the ether by our imaginations, though with seven versions living in each of our heads, recalled over and over until each recollection of it is a photo of a photo, degrading with each remembrance) enough? For it too shall be lost to posterity, when the servers and backup servers this github repo lives on are buried by sands and swallowed by the sun.

Does it matter that Sora is out here, killing again? Is Sora even real? We all believe she is real of course, and that is what matters. Our memories of her are real, and she lives with every recollection, and she ventures into the white-out rain, a willing assassin that has gone this far, hasn’t she? Hasn’t she? All the dead, for what? There must be something after this, something to fight for, something to end up with. And when she ends up on a newly crafted throne in Argot’s Old Town, will it be enough? Will Calantha and her maid Shirley, and Nestor and his guard–will the Ambassador, whose shell of a body still lives and breathes, trapped in the Sunken Place of the Deathless One’s machinations–will these souls haunt her in her old old age?

Blood spills over her hands, mingling but never washed in the gutters of the street surrounding Nestor’s estate. The city attorney, believing he was doing what was right–because after all, are we not doomed and do we not want magic and is this not staving off the inevitable?–finds himself before the invisible assassin. The Ambassador watches on as Nestor and Calantha both, unlucky to be here, are cut down, and Sora flees into the rain.

The heroes escape the godseed giants trying to burst from their womb using extreme violence. They pass Abraham on the way, placing a flaming sphere in front of the troll cave so that they will not pursue them, and the heroes flee down the mountain, posting up. They formulate a game plan of how to kill the godseeds and how to extract their ichor.

The next morning they are pleased to find that they had not been pursued, but less pleased to find that the godseeds had fled. They manage to track one down, in a grove, with woodland creatures. Maybe it was cranky when it woke up and you just disturbed it, or maybe it’s one of six surviving killing machines not meant to be on this plane: interlopers, just like Hespero. No time for debate, the heroes enact Livius’s plan and place the creature in a forcecage, laying down AOE attacks until it slowly and inevitably dies.

Casimir was both here but not here. If the cat did not speak up, did not protest, could he have joined Abe and Nahk and maybe Hobbes, who can remember, as a voice of opposition, to not inflict needless suffering? Because, after all, they don’t know. They didn’t know and never will, that the Godsbody had a heart, a calcified heart, filled with ichor, solvable by a simple puzzle. They will never know that in the Godsbody’s arm, there was a little makeshift temple, long abandoned by a group of worshippers that perhaps another group of adventurers will find one day, and that somewhere there was a little vial of god ichor too. The heroes will never know that. Livius will wonder for the rest of his days whether there was a better way. Maybe if he found out he would try to justify it, for expediency’s sake after all, for the sake of science. Would he? I don’t know. Will he one day regret his decisions, like Natalya, or will he be like Mallory and Aramestes, forever justifying the decision? He won’t know, and neither will any of the other heroes.

But now you do.

Casimir will awake from a daze to wonder what happened, how could they let this happen, but that is not this episode.

Sora races to Leandro’s house, leaving him a note only he can read,

Your new suit is in the wardrobe

Sorry, I meant,

N and C have been dispatched. Ambassador witnessed and is on run. Look for skeletons in your closet.

and sends a note to Preconsul Ralos,

Ralos. Nestor and Calantha were treasonous conspirators with the Deathless One. They have been brought to justice, but I was seen.

and she wakes up to Leandro and the gang having enacted the plan: a second soft coup of the military. Odoacer is implicated in the Mineosi plots, arrested and put in prison, awaiting trial. But there is no attorney (he is dead of course, Sora, you killed him, in his home), and the city coffers, perhaps they are open to be exploited. Hespero and the Bakasura peer over at Sora over breakfast as the news is shared, and they pierce her mind, though Sora is able to fight them off–or so she thinks. As Armand, gregarious and pleasant as always, Armand whose son you saved from the Deathless One–the son who was kidnapped by Baltsaros to be sold to become a husk, a vessel, for the Ambassador–shit, are you the bad guys?–as Armand departs, Sora slips into a disguise and disobeying Leandro’s order to fucking chill for once (and obeying her handler’s order to kill Armand and Hespero now), pursues him–and is pursued herself.

Travel Quests

• Parley with Zulon ☑
• Free Mallory ☑
• The Liminal Arrow

Skill Challenge Per Day Quests

• Counterintelligence ☑
• Undermine Calantha ☑
• Disrupt Mineosi Operations
• Kill the Bargainer ☑
• Exorcise the Binder of the Dead ☑

Single Moment Quests

• Casino Heist
• Kill Hespero and Armand
• Kill the Duchess

It is day 52 (and 51) since the Battle of Aurochs Island, the first engagement of the Argoti-Mineosi War.

The Argotnauts are in a grove, having killed a godseed and harvested its ichor in the Godsbody Mountains. It is late into the day on the 52nd day since the Battle of Aurochs Island.

Sora Nemmonis is pursuing Armand from Leandro’s house on the 51st night since the Battle of Aurochs Island.

You have two solid cubes and a ring of seven keys:

• One of the pine wood cubes is on the floor of the ship
• Livius Anastasius Cratius has the cube made of bone found in Iskos Valley Village’s elders’ hut
• Natalya has one of the pine wood cubes and the ring of seven keys; she dropped the obsidian cube containing her heart into the ocean

Zulon has been on the material plane for 21 days.

The Deathless One’s invading military are expected to arrive in 8 days.

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