157: Feast of the Bloodyth

Synopsis:

• Narra overcame her immediate despair in order to keep her Abyssal portal in check, vanishing for a time to collect herself (and maybe something else, too).
• Meanwhile, the rest of the party fled the wider destruction of the ship, following Mercy's lodestone to the far south wall. With concerted effort, they broke through the wall, circuitry, a force barrier, and the very hull itself thanks largely to the archdruid's quickened ritual 'earth elemental form' and a massive spike of damage (I think we got near 1000 dmg in a round, didn't we?).
• The ruined ship plummeted into the boiling blood pit seen previously through the glass floor of the seminary. Those who could magically fly caught those who could not, all still in their earthen form. Rocky skin provided protection from the intense heat and allowed a grisly view of thousands upon thousands of skewered souls slipping slowly, inexorably, into the churning soup. Eilessa sensed without doubt that below the bubbling cauldron lied a powerful Yth, perhaps even a Ythlord.
• Guided on instinct, Mercy tried to pry two souls loose from their spikes and watched helplessly as the spirits disintegrated into nothing. She quickly shrugged off the maddened souls reaching for her and entered one of the portals. The others followed, adamant the party not be split again.
• The party materialized on a rose-colored gem-asteroid floating in STARRY space, emblazoned with three seals marked Hate, Terror, and Destruction. Beneath, three terribly potent souls powered a funnel of other souls across this universe (Narra discovered this was, in fact, a parallel universe!) back to the Siege proper.
• The bloodyth of the Siege was being fed potentially trillions of souls from multiple afterlives across several universes. The likelihood this is a Ythlord has greatly increased...

• Isabella decided to recreate her own sort of explosive runes set on a timer and destroy this place, but not before an Eilessa/Mercy tandem could fish out the genuine orb from two false ones embedded in the crystal core. Upon retrieving the real sphere, two stairwells on the edges of the asteroid extended upward into infinity. As something slowly descended the one, the party took their cue to leave..
• Isabella, last to escape as she finished setting the timer for her impromptu explosive runes, recognized those clicking heels growing steadily louder on their way down. She met with the lich-wraith Queen Victoria. Yet the young Shade Queen was no longer daunted by the shadow of her mother, having come too far and suffered too much. She detonated her runes and fled through the portal. 
• Without a power source (orb) or a crystal isle, it's very likely the Siege is no longer able to draw souls from that universe. The portal connecting them ceased and the fate of the lich-wraith Victoria is unknown.
• Those materializing back in the Siege found a similar fate and the tortured souls, impaled on hooks and spears, but Narra's speedy intervention prevented prolonged agony and potential soul drain (though the ordeal inflicted 2 necropotence on everyone). 
• Faced with trying another portal or flying up into the ruined remnants of the seminary, the party took shelter on a shattered outcropping of thick glass near the ceiling.

Planetary Orbs Tally: 2 (need 4 to pass through the archway, need 5 or 6 for secret boons)

Objectives:

• Use the ritual books in Isabella's possession to summon forth two planetary spheres upon the Altar of Seven World Trees within the Mothers' Cloister (somewhere in the unexplored halls adjacent the seminary).
• Retrieve Orcus's prized skull from the white baths of the Shrine to Kishar (a great boon being you actually have Kishar as an ally) in return for two planetary spheres and his aid in the fight against Gabriel. 
• Brave the other three portals along the blood pit into parallel universes to retrieve orbs.
• Kill Gabriel and claim the Gate (whoever lands the killing blow).
• Perform the ritual to attune the Gate to Mercy.

Experience: With the conclusion of the Siege efforts, the party levels 26.

156: Ascension

Synopsis

• Eilessa's argument that all the gods would be needed, even the ugly and evil ones, in the campaign against the Yth won out in regards to the foreboding war goddess frozen mid-swing of her axe. The Erdune goddess felt a deep-seated connection to all lost and wayward divinities, of course being one herself. 
• Her containment crystal broken, Kishar made a defensive flourish and prepared herself to fight the group. Eilessa appealed to her while the party recoiled, and Kishar's axe stopped within a hair's breadth of splitting her head open like a melon. Kishar then grabbed Eilessa by the throat and lifted her off her feet. Narra might have foiled the attack, but Eilessa chose to be grabbed, allowing the conqueror-queen to process the immensity of her situation in her own way. Suddenly, she planted a deep, voracious kiss on Eilessa's lip, biting her tongue with jagged teeth and drawing knowledge from the blood. When Kishar pulled away again, she understood, and tossed Eilessa aside. 
• Isabella and Kishar shared a brief moment, involving the licking of an ear and a promise. After that, Kishar agreed to join the party in their defeat of the Exgod, and the Yth afterward. 
• Kishar seemed somehow challenged by Karana and Mercy, though neither let it bother them.
• The party continued their exploration of the isochron chambers, coming upon several unusual god-beings, including a cobrasaur (Vertigo), a giant white ape (Blizzard), and a fel with a startling likeness to the late Thamior.
• They released the god, only to discover he was no god at all, rather Christopher Serenor from an alternate reality, one in which the Yth succeeded in destroying Creation in the time of his adulthood (in this reality, he's still an infant). In his system's final moments, alternate Kaylan enacted the "Gloriandel Contingency" or the ritual of combining select har'venoth into forming a new reality. In her ritual, she omitted the Strangeheart, hoping to create a sanctuary without threat of the Far Realm (as Highking Gloriandel intended to do thousands of years prior). Instead, the ritual proved only to jaunt Christopher into a reality where the Yth had not yet won, perhaps the only reality where they had not yet won. Zerthimon had been correct in calling the contingency a fool's hope. Christopher's reality was devoured.
• Christopher had been transported millions of years into the past, frozen until this very moment. However, he radiated power enough to lure the Ibha Varana into snaring him alongside divine vestiges. Why? He explained this was because the soul of the ancient gold dragoness Celinduil fused with his own soul during a failed resurrection ritual.
• Thanking all the gods to be found by "Auntie Izzy" and other dear alternative family, the hopeful, young "Dragon Prince" joined the rest of the party. Eilessa and Narra in particular were interested in learning more about his past and their future, hoping to garner some advantage in the days to come.

• The next isochron chamber contained a faceless beauty with small horns, flowing purple locks, and a black, tattered dress. The crystal read "Terris-Thule". Isabella and Kishar both took an interest in the goddess, which many guessed was a deity of secrets, spies, and subterfuge. Mercy disapproved of her release, but then again she disapproved of every release...
• Kishar and Eilessa simultaneously broke the crystal, and the former grabbed the goddess by the waist and claimed her for her own. Such was the goddess of slaughter and conquest's nature. However, claiming Terris-Thule was not such a wise move.
• Terris-Thule proved to be the goddess of nightmares and fear, bringing even bloody Kishar to her knees in a sudden, black-lit moment. Though Isabella used her power to delay her, Terris-Thule ultimately fled against the might of the poising party. 
• Narra's empathic probing revealed that Terris was, in fact, just as terrified as trembling Kishar. Her system had been destroyed. She herself had just been released after potentially millions of years in stasis. And her first interaction was one of potential slavery. Narra tracked her flight to the ethereal realm of thought, dreams, and emotions, close and yet impossible far at the same time. She appealed to the goddess, but received no response.
• Kishar, humbled for the first time perhaps ever, was quiet for a long while afterward, brooding after being overwhelmed by fear.
• Tyvis, from his experience interfacing with the Varana vessel as an illumine, had learned where the crystals and their ropey cables and veined circuitry led: a crystal seat in a removed chamber called the Throne of H'sinn, where the aliens would sit and assume the energies of their captives. However, he was quite unwilling to share the information with the party upfront, as the potential was there to simultaneously slay all the prisoners and catapult one of their number to godhood, or perhaps something much more abominable (a new Ythlord?). The process was all too similar to the Emperor's distillation, and he hadn't the stomach for such deviancy.
• Faced with a new series of explosive runes, Isabella enlisted Narra's aid in diffusing a potentially lethal, ship-wide conflagration. However, initial difficulties only partially deactivated the enchantment before a massive necromantic spell was cast over the entire Varana vessel. Gabriel, knowing the party was somewhere in the ship but (because of Isabella's amulet) unable to pinpoint their exact location, rose whatever alien corpses resided in the ship into active service [what Josh accurately coined a carpet-bombing maneuver]. Likely, Gabriel knew the isochron chambers had been unlocked (the amulet's blanket scry-block was only fifty feet). More importantly, the Throne of H'sinn had been unlocked, and there was the potential for Gabriel to resume his godhood. 
• Liquid-metal corpses (bodak) rose from stasis freezers to combat the party. They had the startling ability to reflect energy attacks, and possessed mutable limbs that could be fashioned into stabbing weapons. Eilessa warned they could pierce psionics and magic with ease, but that intense cold with return them to hibernation. Tyvis managed to re-entomb many of them with a Karana-bolstered wall of flourishing nature, but others across the ship raced to secure the throne.
• Though Mercy's lodestone sensed the nearest portal lied to the south, exiting the Varana ship entirely, Tyvis was forced to divulge the location of the much more strategic throne north. The race was on, bodak and party members alike making north with all haste, Renato and Mercy in the forefront. 
• A massing force of bodak met them at the entrance, and while Tyvis, Narra, Eilessa, Curck, Chris, Isabella, Karana and Kishar made quick work of them, Renato cast his darkest shadow magic and slipped ahead unseen. Finding his way into a formidable array of bodak, one false move would prove his certain demise. 
• Mercy, sensing mischief, flew in just after, casting a powerful scroll which repelled the futuristic undead despite their most ardent wish to slay her.  
• Renato found the giant-sized Throne of H'sinn, thrumming deeply and swimming with strange lights. Three isochron crystals overshadowed it, containing deities from some forgotten realm: Tempus, Ilmater, and Auril.Vaguely familiar with Varana technology from his meddling during the unlocking of the isochron chambers, and sensing, at long last, an escape from his eternal debt to the Grave, he leaped upon the chair and activated it.
• The entire ship trembled and quaked as the chair was hacked. Thirteen captured divinities were extinguished in moments, their power feeding into the chair and the one who sat upon it. Thus began an epic struggle of wills between the Darklord and the remnants of a baker's dozen of the universe's vanquished deities. Renato won...
• With anger, fear, and great trepidation, all the party knew what had happened as the Varana's cables began to burst and the circuitry overloaded. Renato had reached apotheosis. Gabriel, too, knew of the crippling turn of events, and one of any number of sources began to dismantle the ship in thunderous tremors. The party's only avenue then was south, to the portal, to the Siege.
• Outrage, betrayal, regret, and in some cases quiet acceptance of the inevitability ricocheted throughout the party, though of all those hit by the turn of events, Narra was struck the hardest. The Abyssal portal in her chest roiled, burning away the paltry gauze. 

Objectives:

• Defeat Gabriel by passing through the archway in the Watchtower, a task which requires 4-6 planetary spheres in the Standing Stone. Narra possesses one. Orcus possesses 2. Others scatter the ship, including 2 Isabella can summon upon the Altar of the Seven World Trees (located in the Mothers' Cloister).
• Reconcile Renato's ascension to godhood.
• Prevent Narra's chest from exploding and gating in potentially infinite hordes of demons...

155: Mortuary of the Gods

Synopsis

• Isabella reanimated one of pilot aliens, which communicated with a mixture of psionics  and "whale songs". She was able to ask it three questions, confirming the alien race were hunters of vestiges, which powered their technology and sustained their immense lives (in the millions of years). She also discovered how to properly operate the device, and that "isochron crystals" in the chambers beyond held whatever might be left of the stolen gods.
• Eilessa discovered a compass embedded in the chest of the alien corpse which leads to planetary spheres.
• Narra risked delving into the forbidden recesses of her Void-born knowledge to learn much and more about the alien race, known as the Ibha Varana. In the process, Yog-Sothoth was able to enter the ship as a floating, ochre orb. Renato quickly distracted Narra and led her from the room, knowing the very sight could risk tearing down whatever skaffolding Endymion might have placed to support his daughter's sanity.
• Sensing truly infinite knowledge, as Narra had once before, Thamior ignored the warnings and reached for the floating sphere (and failed two saves, the last a natural 1) resulting in his immediate destruction. The party was considerably shaken,
• In the hall, Mercy kept a close eye on a dormant black pudding posing as a door, ultimately tracking and trapping a massive nest of them with Curck's aid.
• Isabella continued on to a northern room, discovering a failed ritual circle and explosive runes designed to trigger and destroy the entire level. After disarming the local runes, she realized Gabriel has not been able to access the isochron crystals the alien mentioned.
• Powerful divine and primal power emanated from the walls of the ritual chamber, and Eilessa and Narra summoned the control panels through a mixture psionics and song, not unlike the Ibha Varana might have done.
• Tyvis harnessed his wildshape to transform into a specific alien species, an psionic-singing illumine like the archdruid Arent. In such a form, he was able to interface with the consoles.
• Between the intense concentration of the party psionists, Tyvis' biological permutations, and Renato's manipulation of the underlying machinery, the isochron chambers were opened throughout the level.
• The party found two stunning speciments of divinity, one a nature goddess labeled in the foreign tongue 'Karana' on the exterior of her crystal, the other an axe-wielding war goddess labeled 'Kishar'.
• Tyvis, with a rudimentary understanding of her ethos and much hope for a new goddess of nature, freed Karana, who at least approaches his expectations. Though initially confused, she caught on quick, though lamented her diminished limitations. She was small within the Siege, which prevented her full divine power from flourishing.
• The goddess agreed to help defeat Gabriel and the Yth, and the party is left to decide what, if anything, to do with the apparent war goddess and whatever other divinities they might find.

Objectives

• Use the ritual books in Isabella's possession to summon forth two planetary spheres upon the Altar of Seven World Trees within the Mothers' Cloister (wherever that is).
• Retrieve Orcus's prized skull from the white baths of the Shrine to Kishar in return for two planetary spheres and his aid in the fight against Gabriel. 
• Use the Ibha Varana compass to locate other planetary spheres and insert them into the Standing Stone in the watchtower in order to cross the archway and reach the Gate.
• Tailor a new pantheon from the isochron crystals to bolster Yg-Raya's defenses and aid in the trials ahead.
• Kill Gabriel and claim the Gate (whoever lands the killing blow).
• Perform the ritual to attune the Gate to Mercy.