Fantasy Terrorchild: Awakening

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[K0mori]

1. East Overland - The most direct path to Thandan will take you through large grasslands and rolling hills, much of which will be soggy with mud due to the autumn climate. You'll pass through several of Diala's more loyal holdings before entering the contested lands between, and then into Kulka's territory. Since word has already spread by crow that you're on your way to make peace, it shouldn't be dangerous, you think. "Let's just take the straight shot," you say.

"Yeah?" Embryx replies, seeming a bit less than excited. "...I think we can be there in about week if we head through Purrosh and Enthaan," she thinks aloud, mentioning two medium-sized towns on the road to the east. "We'd better have a plan in case they don't trust us, though," she adds.

You shrug. "We already sent the crows out. If they want to get in our way and cause us trouble, then it's on them if they wind up dead."

"I can't imagine they'd try it," Jannava says. "I'm more worried about hunters."

Embryx snickers at the idea. "Oh yeah, I'm sure they'll do a better job than the last few times we've run into 'em," she says sarcastically. "We've got the Pandemonium Door with us, if they couldn't stop us before, they definitely can't, now."

"You brought it with you!?" Jannava replies, her reserved nature overcome by curiosity. "...Can I see it?"

You reach into your pocket and pull out the pyramid-shaped object holding it out so that the tiefling can get a good look at its polished black sides with golden, engraved runes. "Go ahead and touch it," you say, teasingly. "This is your chance."

She reaches out, sheepishly, and touches the artifact gently before gasping and drawing her hand back. "Shit, it really works...!" she says, fascinated. "I feel like I haven't cast anything today. So- So if you're holding that," she says, cocking her head and giving a mischievous smile, "you can just cast magic forever? And you won't get tired..."

You smile and put it away. "That's the idea," you say.

"You having that really makes it easy to believe in the Eldest's design, you know that?" Jannava says as she walks back over to her horse. "You really might end up changing the world, Agranne. H- have you ever thought about what you might do once the whole coven falls under your control? I mean, it's not like you're going to sit there and take orders from Kulka," she says.

You grimace a bit and hesitate to answer. "Leading the coven hasn't ever really been my intention," you admit as the three of you ride out of the trees and rejoin the trail back to the road. "I mean, hells, taking over the Mardenaal circle was an accident, at least from my point of view."

"What do you mean?" Jannava asks.

Embryx pats the locked chest in her horse's saddle bag. "Syrith led Agranne to a book in the sanitarium study that made her lose her mind a bit. We're taking it along with us so we can find someone who can explain how it works."

The three of you ride in silence for a few minutes before Jannava speaks up again. "So... What are your goals, then? What's it all for?"

You start to answer, but then realize how strange it would seem to someone who hasn't known you. You tell her so and then start at the beginning, recounting how you were raised in poverty and how Rigatte joined the coven before you. You explain how you accidentally caused her death, and then awakened to dark magic yourself only a year later. You tell her all about your time in Tashlaan, and how it turned disastrous, leading to your arrival in Mardenaal with the Pandemonium Door. "...It's all been tiresome, really," you explain, glumly. "Someone once told me that this coven exists to free us from the constraints of ordinary society. That's obviously not the whole story, though - the coven puts a lot of new constraints on us, doesn't it?"

Embryx and Jannava both agree, nodding and chuckling bitterly. With your story having been told, Embryx tells her own:

"I was born in Aelesh-Yna and spent the first dozen or so years of my life, there. My father was a taxman and my mother was a seamstress, and I was their only child. We were living really comfortably, and I had just started school when there was a bit of a shake-up with the royal family. See, the kings and queens of Aelesh all used to be of the Valghemora line, but they were cast out by the rest of the noble class for being generally corrupt and stabbing everyone in the back every chance they could."

She laughs suddenly. "Honestly, they were a lot like us. Well, anyway, it turned out that my father had been helping the old royals' regime stuff some money away for a rainy day, and he got found out. So, uh, my dad was thrown in prison and beheaded, I suppose. I don't know, my mother took me and we left for Turadal on a boat. I guess we bounced around a bit for about twenty years until we wound up in Tashlaan."

You know that Embryx has told you this story before, but it never fails to surprise you how much older she is than you typically picture. Elves and drow live about three times longer than humans, tabaxi, and tieflings, but they age and mature at a third of the pace as well. By the time Embryx was reaching Tashlaan in her early thirties, she was still both physically and mentally a child.

"My mother set up shop there for a number of years, and I apprenticed under her for a bit, but eventually I had my awakening and she got scared. Next thing I know, she left. I was all on my own, trying to figure out how to survive and keep myself safe," she says, laying on faux pity for herself. She then smiles and shrugs it off. "...I guess I was pretty close to adulthood by that point, but I still didn't really know what I was doing. Thankfully, there was this tavern owner named Iona, yada, yada, yada... So that's how I got in."

Jannava nods, appreciating the introductions you've each given her. Her body language suggests that the explanations have done a great deal to reduce the amount of intimidation you inspire. Perhaps your manipulative hex is also wearing off after a full day, and a more natural introduction is finally possible. However, when you ask her, "so where did you come from?"

You're given an unsatisfying answer:

"Estfang."

You glance back, expecting her to begin telling her story, but she seems very hesitant. "Well? How does a necromancer get her start?" you prod, but this only seems to irritate her.

"...I don't really want to talk about what happened, alright? It's a gross story."

Embryx laughs. "It has to have been a good one if it got Diala's attention."

1. Drop It - "Well, if I ever change my mind and decide to take over the coven or the whole world," you say, flippantly, "I probably won't remember you. But that's okay, if that's what you really want."

2. Push - You bring your horse to a stop in the middle of the road, causing the other two to stop as well. "Hold on, you didn't just get both of us to tell our whole life's stories just to leave us hanging like that, did you?"

3. Remind - You turn and give her a shark-like smile that causes her to sit up straight in her saddle and reminds her that you don't like to be brushed off. "I insist," you say.

 

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[K0mori]

2. Push - You bring your horse to a stop in the middle of the road, causing the other two to stop as well. "Hold on, you didn't just get both of us to tell our whole life's stories just to leave us hanging like that, did you?"

Jannava looks at you sternly. "That was your decision to tell me. I'm making a different one," she says. But no sooner is she done setting her boundaries before Embryx gives a smirk and starts to draw her wand. Simultaneously, Jannava pulls out her own to meet her, and you suddenly find yourself overseeing a standoff at the edge of a duel. Rapt with anticipation, you decide not to do anything, since this is a good opportunity to see how strong the tiefling's magic actually is. "...Why do you have to know!?" Jannava argues. "I walk in the shadow of the Eldest - isn't that enough to earn your trust?"

"Does the Eldest not instruct us to do and take as we please?" Embryx counters, viciously amused. "Come on and tell the story."

Amused at Embryx's well-founded retort, you nonetheless decide to defuse the situation. "Embryx," you say, "if she winds up killing you, it's your own fault."

The grin disappears from the drow's face as she realizes you won't intervene on her behalf this time. Deflated a bit, she puts her wand away. "...I followed your lead yesterday, Agranne. Sometimes you oughta follow mine," she says, glumly.

Jannava puts her wand away as well when you look at her. "...I'm sorry, elder sister. I let my emotions get the better of me."

You sigh, rolling your eyes at the display from both your companions as you consider how to solve the issue of Jannava's secrecy more gracefully than simply compelling her, when you get a decent idea: "We'll reach Glaskan Creek by nightfall. Tell us your story before we set off tomorrow, or you aren't coming with us," you say before giving your horse a gentle kick and turning back up the road.

An hour passes wherein very little is discussed. Embryx, annoyed that you've decided to treat this journey like it's business as usual despite your new circumstances, that you've invited along a third rider who's offering little in the way of fun, and that you didn't help her abuse said company when she expected you to, stays unusually quiet. Jannava, meanwhile, hangs back, mainly afraid of you two and your unstable behavior. Finally, however, she gets up her nerve and pulls up beside you both.

"I'm thirty one years old," she says, loudly and with audible frustration, so that you know that she's finally complying with your request. "I was born in Vilkast, in Estfang, like I said. It's... not a good place to come from. All of Estfang is blighted by a chaotic and evil fae presence, but Vilkast is a city that's diseased in a way I can't rightfully describe. There's more than one coven down there - Lythrefang is present, but there are other dark gods to pray to... I don't know how many brothers and sisters I have; I don't remember being with my parents for long, so I spent a good portion of my youth on the streets, running with urchins. Some of them died young and others were abducted and sold... But I managed to stay healthy and pocket enough coin that I grew up."

You and Embryx now understand how it must have felt for Jannava to live in the orphanage in recent weeks, to see firsthand how the coven, of all possible benefactors, cares for children in Mardenaal when no others do. Perhaps her perception of the coven wasn't quite as dire as your own when you were abducted from Zuklanar.

"...I had my awakening around your age, Agranne," she continues. "I had fallen in love with a young man who cared for me deeply. He had somehow found work in Bruxia with a band of human miners in the desert, and had skills, money, and a trade that I thought was going to pave the way to a better life for both of us there, but one night, a mob from the city of Traftax decided that my love and I, along with a few other laborers from across the border, were intruding on their lives - taking what ought to belong to Bruxish humans and not to what they called the demonkin, and they chased us out of town and into the desert. My love and I walked for three days, and he refused to drink what little water we brought along so that I could have it instead. At last, we arrived at a spring town in Estfang where we could rest and recuperate, but my love..."

Jannava seems badly upset by the memory of her lover's death. It's easy to tell what happened next: the stress of the desert heat and lack of water was too much for his body to bear, and he collapsed and died just as he arrived at what should have been a refuge. You glance back to Embryx, who dips her face into her tall collar and allows the brim of her hat to cover the rest. She's embarrassed and more than a little ashamed for prying.

"Is that when you felt the presence of dark magic for the first time?" you ask, more gently than you had spoken before.

Jannava nods. "...I- I couldn't let him go. I had this... this urge to dig into his grave, and when I saw him move, I thought... Well, I don't know what I thought. I just felt this overwhelming desire to be held, and my magic almost made it possible. I couldn't accept that it wasn't him. I ignored the coldness of his hands, his lips, and I took him with me, back into Bruxia. His soul was long gone, but I kept holding on until my magic couldn't sustain his body any longer - until the rot began to take hold. By that time, however, I had taken my revenge on as many of the humans who wronged us as I could find. The coven followed the carnage back to me, and I took no convincing."

The two of you are silent for a moment at the conclusion of Jannava's story.

"...Wait," Embryx says, a bit sickly. "You didn't... You know..."

Jannava interrupts ferociously: "Speak another word and I'll cut your fucking tongue out, drow! I just told you- his lips were cold; if kissing him brought me no solace, then what would I have achieved by enacting any other sort of intimate pantomime?"

1. Intervene - "That's enough!" you shout at both of them before constricting them with compulsion. You were joking, before, when you said that Embryx might get herself killed - but now she's really testing things. You decide to put both sisters under your spell for a bit to ensure that they cool off, although there's no real time to consider how they'll interpret your response.

2. Say Nothing - This is some good drama.

3. Intervene (Inverse) - "I don't know, orgasm?"

 

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