#wrighthall
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So as of last session, my players have learned what’s really going on, and why it’s such a secret, and how little time there is to try to stop it.
It happened like this: They solved the TREATY puzzle. As the final ring ground into place and locked, the glyphs and magical inscriptions all snapped into place at once--triggering the complex network of interlinked Major Illusion, Magic Mouth, Prestidigitation, and Thaumaturgy spells contained in small semiprecious stones set every 12 inches around the entire underground chamber.
Small spells, weak ones. Ones that could be cast by a trusted hired mage of average skill--or with countless applications of low-level wands over the course of years.
The party is aware that this is an illusion--they ID’d the network as being dormant and containing only harmless illusion spells long before they tried to activate it. But it’s a VERY good illusion and it’s a bit of a shock regardless.
As soon as the spell activates, they’re snapped out of the safe sunlit underground chamber and flung directly into hell.
It’s easy to figure out, after some disorientation, that this is the Rending. It could hardly be anything else. The sky is black-purple and writhing, like it’s been turned to blood. The landscape is charred and glowing with blacklight, wrong, unnatural. Completely destroyed. In the sky above them are creatures so massive it’s impossible to comprehend if they even have a shape, and so shifting and horrific and formless that maybe it’s better not to know.
Everything smells of death and blood and salt and burned rubber, and the figures the party just grew familiar with through their statues are scattered around the piles of shattered, burning buildings--in full color now, shouting, alive. Most of them. A few are terrifyingly still.
As they watch, the one figure they don’t recognize--a young human man, late 20s, mage robes, and clearly the Bastion of Life as he was in his adventuring days--shouts and throws up a barrier of some kind. It holds--holds--then shatters, the backlash throwing him ten feet through the air. A deep magenta-skinned tiefling woman--Rochelle Willowfeather, as they know her--grabs him and hauls him to his feet in passing, dragging him out of the way of a blast of invisible power that explodes a chunk of masonry like it’s balsa wood.
He pants out a thank-you, she tells him to stay down, and then a tentacle the size of a redwood trunk hits her at about ninety miles an hour and throws her across the battlefield, into a stone pillar.
The young man cries out as if in pain; then, hyperventilating, ducks down behind the cover his leader may have just died getting him and says, out loud, a realization: “We can’t do this. We can’t do this on our own.”
Another, visible, realization: He’s just had an idea.
He stands, hands working frantically. The party wizard tries to track the spell but can’t recognize it--but its purpose becomes clear immediately.
Sebastian Wrighthall-Cooper burns his ninth-level spell slot at the end of the world to cast Time Stop.
Everything goes still. Eerily silent, except for his panting. He steadies himself. Casts another spell--Plane Shift. Opens a portal. A glowing, green portal--a passage to the Faewild.
Time moves differently in the Faewild.
The vision shifts--becomes more rapid-fire. They see Sebastian, questing through the fae realm. He’s not visibly aging, nothing that dramatic--but he’s growing a patchy beard, his clothes becoming visibly ragged. They see him bartering favors, trading power, making deals. Access. Resources. Audiences. He gets an oath from an archfey to return him at the time and place he chooses. Things like that.
They watch as he struggles, as he bleeds, as he kills some people and saves others. As he gets more and more stressed, more and more desperate. They watch as he lies. They watch as he tells the truth, as he bargains, as he begs.
They watch as he makes a deal he should not have made.
The memory is...off, somehow. As if whatever illusory magic powers the room couldn’t quite manage to represent this figure. The vison is bright, uncomfortably so, making it hard to visually focus on anything or make out details.
But the figure, in a voice they’ve never heard before and can’t describe, is clearly in the middle of a negotiation. It laughs, softly, not unpleasant. It asks Sebastian--the only thing clearly visible--if he truly has nothing better to offer than the promise of a future favor--from a mortal? In exchange for nothing but that--why, human, should I save this kingdom for you?
And the party watches as he asks the fatal question:
Your Majesty, would you save the Dominion for yourself?
It’s sealed with a handshake. Sebastian Wrighthall-Cooper has promised the Queen of the Fae that she can have the Spellbound Dominion to rule as she sees fit, if she kills the monsters that threaten it.
The vision snaps back to the ruins of Canticle and the apocalypse unfolding there. Everything is still. Silent. Sebastian blinks back into existence in a rush of emerald. He breathes. He has a beard now. He hasn’t cut his hair.
As suddenly as it ended, hell opens up again. The unearthly screaming returns, somehow more deafening than before because it’s coming from dead silence. The reek of death slams back into place, the roiling sky--
Come on, Sebastian breathes. Come on, any second, if she doesn’t--it has to be now, it has to be now--
Over the horrific wet shriek of the Plane of Madness, a sound: The clear, piercing, silver note of hunting horns in the distance.
We don’t see the battle. The battle isn’t what’s important here.
The next vision, we see the party back on their feet. Rochelle has a broken arm, but none of the devastating injuries that we last saw her take. She’s breathing again, doesn’t seem in pain. They’re all standing in the aftermath of a battlefield, catching their breath, starting to come down from an adrenaline high.
The party, the modern-day party, the real people watching this unfold--realizes suddenly that they recognize the way thee heroes are standing. That they’re starting to recognize the specific positions. Ylla Telaryn, their soft-voice healer, shakes her head with a weary laugh. “I don’t know what you did or how you did it,” she says, doesn’t notice that Sebastian nearly winces and starts to interrupt, “But I’m glad it--”
In the background, Rochelle Willowfeather just barely starts to glance up, as if something in the distance has caught her eye--
Two things happen within seconds of each other. The first is a blinding flash of light--we don’t see Sebastian’s party turned to stone, but we see the positions they’re in. Down to the specific fall of fabric, the shift of hair--this is the moment.
The second, simultaneous--impossible to even tell who moved first--is Sebastian casting one last spell. This time, Audie the party wizard doesn’t need to roll to recognize it. She became an adventurer to prove herself--a former lover, an adventurer herself, decided that with the renown she’d gotten she could do better than just a low-level archive mage, that Audie wasn’t interesting enough anymore, and Audie spitefully wants to prove that she was always good enough to be whatever she wanted and being an archivist was a choice.
Audie, who became an adventurer to prove she had as much power as anyone ele, knows this spell, would know this spell.
In the same moment the Faerie Queen strikes, or perhaps just before, or just after, two powerful figures who always intended to double-cross each other--an arrogant human wizard who signed a contract that wasn’t his to sign, who believed his party do anything together, who thought they could fight the fae and win and didn’t realize others were smart enough to realize the same thing, who thought he could con the Queen of the Summer Court and is about to pay dearly for it--
Sebastian Wrighthall-Cooper, who was the son of a barrel-maker once, casts Wish.
It works.
The party sees it work, watches as it takes hold, and watches as it goes terribly, terribly right. The vision fades, and the contraption that had once been a riddle now glows with faint arcane calculations, very clear to anyone with the background for it--and Audie has that.
Wish is not a spell, not really. There’s no incantation, no material components to gather, no ritual to perform. It is the hardest thing in the world because it is not a spell. To cast Wish is nothing more or less than acting as a direct, open, unimpeded conduit for all the raw energy of the universe at once--and surviving the experience. Divine, arcane, every element at once, all of it.
For a single, brief instant, you become a god. And if you try to grasp at more than that single heartbeat, it will destroy you. Sometimes it does anyway.
The only way to use that kind of energy is to give it a direction. You can’t control it, not really--just channel it. That’s why the safest method is to use Wish to replicate the effects of another spell--something you already fully comprehend, already know how to do, just using your open tap on all the power of creation to substitute for paltry material concerns. If you want to do anything beyond that, you have to know exactly what you want. You have to know exactly what you’re asking for.
This is not a carefully-crafted gift from a benevolent force. You are, in this moment, your own god, and the power you are allowing to flow through you does not think like a human being. You have to point it in exactly the right direction, and if you don’t have a crystal-clear focus, a laser-guided idea of exactly what you want, there will be unexpected side effects. There...are almost always unexpected side effects. It’s impossible, in a stressful moment, with so much power searing through your veins, to keep a clear mental image of ONLY the EXACT effect you want.
Sebastian Wrighthall-Cooper casts Wish, and asks for magic that will protect his kingdom completely--ensure that no fae can set foot beyond the border, ever.
He gets exactly what he wanted.
It’s a concentration spell.
Oh, not in the traditional sense. He can sleep, he can eat, he can perform other tasks without focusing constantly on the spell. If you slap him, it won’t end the world. But if he ever uses magic again, the barrier falls.
The curse on his friends, the magic Audie detected instantly upon touching them, the faerie spite that sealed their petrification far beyond a simple restoration spell, is clear. Nothing short of a Wish can restore them.
There is only one person on the planet powerful enough to cast Wish.
And he’s getting old. He was nearly thirty during the Rending...and that was fifty years ago. And he has not led a stress-free life. The barrier is beginning to waver. Little by little, a few feet every year, the protective bubble defending the Spellbound Dominion from fae incursion has been shrinking, a defensive cordon slowly pulling inward. And every decade or so, the barrier trembles hard--instead of drawing in by a few feet, it stabilizes, wavers dramatically, then snaps hard inward, by anywhere from one to ten miles.
The contraption that triggered the illusions now serves two purposes--it contains the calculations for the barrier spell, explaining how it works. It’s also etched with a functional map of the Spellbound Dominion, including a glowing band showing the current perimeter of the bubble....
And a countdown timer.
The edge of the “bubble” isn’t a paper-thin force field. It’s a wide band, a stretch at least a mile wide. This is the “siphoning” that Arlette has been picking up. Ambient magic isn’t being sucked away to fuel some big spell--it’s MOVING, being drawn slowly inward, because they’re currently inside the edge of a powerful enchantment.
In three to six weeks, the barrier is going to waver again. Judging by the calculations on the puzzle board, it’s going to snap inward by about ten miles.
Suncrest will be left on the outside.
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View outside Wright Hall dorm room, Illinois State University, April 2019.
#illinoisstateuniversity#illinoisstate#isu#tritowers#wright#wrighthall#campus#isucampus#illinoisstatecampus#spring
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Sunspot’s Shield
Audie, specifically, had a Moment with Eleaea the sphinx queen.
See, way back in the Requiem minidungeon--in the chamber that combined an antimagic field with a sudden, silent gargoyle attack, to thematically demonstrate to any seekers why suddenly being unable to fight with magic drove Sebastian Wrighthall-Cooper to such desperation--she found a floating shield.
It was a nice magic item, to be clear, very well-suited for a wizard, a little extra AC boost! Not super flavorful compared to the rest of the party’s story-rich and lovingly personalized endgame items, though, once people started finding those. And she was wearing the shield as a brooch when they had their audience with the Queen of the Wilds.
...Who suddenly stopped, went still, and stepped slowly down from her perch to examine it. Audie activated the shield to let her see, and Eleaea had a visible emotional reaction. She explained that she knew the shield’s previous owner....because she’d been the one to give it to her. A young warlock.
(A young warlock--who died in an antimagic chamber. Who fought her way there, apparently alone, through traps and puzzles and an abomination from the plane of madness...but, suddenly and without warning stripped of magic, flanked, and attacked with claws and teeth, died there. Only one door away from learning the truth twenty years early, and having the chance to stop it.)
Eleaea casts an illusion spell to reveal a young tabaxi, an Iberian lynx, in a Violet Guard uniform maybe twenty years out of date; Max, a Requiem native, recognizes it as a scout’s uniform. Eleaea slips into half-trance, the way she does when speaking prophecy, but there’s no surge of magic; this is just how she talks when something is important. The story the party gets is this:
Her name was Sunspot of the Clan of the Threetrick Step…and she was a true believer. Curiosity without recklessness; faith without naivete; loyalty, but never loyalty unthinking. She loved her city, and her king; she did not fear magic or knowledge, or the rifts between worlds, as so many did who reached adulthood in the crater’s biggest grave. She did not fear me, when she found her way to my court. She feared nothing except ignorance—except secrets.
She was a true huntress. Talent and cleverness must be nurtured…I nurtured them. Guided her in dreams; showed her the path to gifts, such as I knew those with the power to give, and such as she could earn through charm or bargains. ...Not by choice would I have sent her to die alone.
#d&d#apparently my MO in this campaign is to just slowly shatter my players' hearts#through connections to the heroes who died before them#and whose sacrifices allowed them to get this far
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The Fall of Canticle
This week the party arrives in Requiem, the capital city of the Spellbound Dominion, leaving the familiar safety of Suncrest for the first time and continuing their journey as they try to understand the strange arcane patterns surrounding them and head off what may or may not be the impending apocalypse.
Some backstory on the city of Requiem: About 50 years ago, it was a completely normal city called Canticle. At the time, a ragtag party of misfits (TM) operated largely out of that city--occasionally clashing with the ruling Council of Fifteen, exposing corruption, slaying monsters and fighting necromancers, battling demons, interceding with gods, having homoerotic sidequests, all that good stuff, for years.
One day, this adventuring party requests an audience with the Council. This is fairly normal. They are, by now, an established presence, and are powerful and respected in their own right. The audience is granted for next week.
No, they say. Now. Right now.
Three days, the Council concedes out of respect for their track record. That’s the soonest we can make time.
The party says: Now.
Eventually they resort to stunning or Charming the guards and literally kick down the door to interrupt a Council session. They march to the center of the room and say: Evacuate the city. Now. Tonight. We don’t have three days. A rift is opening in less than 72 hours and when it does, abominations will pour through from the Elemental Plane of Madness and seek to consume this world, none of which will matter because we’ll all be dead the moment it opens.
The Council hems and haws but the party has no proof and has pushed one too many buttons with one too many rulers in the recent past. They say they’ll make preparations to defend the city but will not do anything that will cause a panic. They say Canticle is stronger than they give it credit for. They do not evacuate. They will shelter in place.
In what would become known as the last miracle of the City of Song, the party goes door to door for almost two days, dodging the city guard, recruiting every seedy smuggler in Canticle, deputizing every criminal organization in the city with sewer-tunnel access or speakeasy boltholes or a guard rotation in their pocket to get civilians out--everyone willing to listen, anyone willing to leave.
They get about 50,000 people at least 15 miles away in less than two days.
On the 71st hour, the rift opens.
It will become known as the Rending. The sheer release of energy from the portal itself makes defenses and armies meaningless; they don’t even have time to feel pain. All that survives today of Canticle is the rubble.
The city of Requiem was built on its bones--to this day, Requiem is effectively irradiated with arcane energy still emanating from what remains of the rift. The ambient magic is, for the most part, harmless. It exponentially increased the number of sorcerers born in the area--which is a problem, because the entire ten-mile radius is a wild magic zone now--but there don’t seem to be any long-term health effects.
It’s not a bad place to live, as long as you don’t set off a wild magic surge and turn your grandmother blue. Quality of life is high. It’s surrounded by fertile farmland. The city is rich in magic items--ANYTHING crafted in Requiem is more likely than not to have some kind of magical property.
The city is very poor in true faith. The gods didn’t save Canticle. A five-man band of adventurers did.
All but one of those adventurers died fighting back eldritch horrors, giving their lives to seal the rift. The sole survivor was the party wizard. The abominations were immune to arcane damage; he survived solely because he was completely incapable of contributing to the battle in any way, and was ignored until it was too late.
His name is Sebastian Wrighthall-Cooper. He was the son of a barrel-maker. He was made king by the traumatized survivors and remained so exactly long enough to pass a rapid-fire series of anti-discrimination laws, found a national public school system in the name of one of his dead companions, establish a Council, and legislate his role away into nothing but a figurehead and tie-breaker.
Today they call him the Bastion of Life. Ten years ago he stopped granting audiences entirely.
The party has just arrived in his city, investigating new instances of interplanar incursion, to find that nobody in the city seems particularly concerned or even aware that they’re happening, out on the fringes of the Dominion.
And you’d really think that Requiem, of all places, would care...
#d&d#love having background lore that's just like#someone else's level 20 campaign#to establish the kind of things that CAN happen in this universe#it both provides a point of reference and inherently raises the stakes on your players#the Rending happened once in living memory#and that means it could happen again
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