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Runtime Break start
3h 54m 2h 5m

Episode 98: The Nox Engine

In the long wake of the Solstice, Bell’s Hells find Exandria and their world turned topsy-turvy as Ludinus Da’leth and his cadre of followers (known as the Ruby Vanguard) plan to unleash the god-eating entity Predathos that was long sealed in the red moon Ruidus. After travelling to this very moon, interacting with its people and returning with intel on hopes to stop what they’re doing, they discover that they’ve been sourcing ancient, long-buried Aeorian magical technology as part of their plan. And not just that. Ludinus Da’leth is there right now dealing with a strange wrinkle in his plot with the name Dominox.
Bell’s Hells, escorted by a figure with some experience in the ruins of Aeor, one Essek Thelyss (crowd shouts ‘Hot Boi’) on loan from his ‘partner’, brought them to the strange, northern, frozen realm of Eiselcross where the very fabric of magic is strange and prone to unexpected apparation subforces. They went to these ruins, delved beneath, discovered that the Ruby Vanguard that had been delving within, scattered, killed (not by the terrifying denizens of these ancient dark ruins, but by eachother in strange fits of almost religious madness, carving glyphs into their flesh).
Going towards the darkest depths of the basements of the ruins in the center of the Genesis Ward at Essek’s guidance, they come upon a strange chamber where upon the ancient bodies mingling with the new freshly dead (now dangling by blackened hooks from long chains that seem to have apparated from nowhere, almost grown from the surrounding stone of the crumbled rock and ruin). They heard some of these long forgotten corpses asking them questions through magic: hearing things of a Nox Engine, hearing that Dominox was once (or may still be) a grand demon of ancient times sealed away and harnessed for nefarious magical purpose within this Nox Engine by the mage lords of Aeor long ago now recently running rampant upon the Ruby Vanguard.
Right as they discovered this, strange visions began to come to them. First Chetney Pock O’Pea being overcome with a mystical vision of a familiar darkened wood of the past and the bloodied faces of the children, seemingly called from dark, maybe buried, memories asking why he hurt them, why he killed them. Uncertain if this was real or not, he had to pull himself from the vision before attacking his friends. Right as they began to collect themselves, searching for the source of this strange dark magic, hoping to either find Ludinus or perhaps this Dominox and figure out what or who is the right villain in this instance, poor Dorian Storm fell to his own vision. As they pass between these hanging chains looking upon one of these hung corpses, he sees the face of his recently deceased brother Cyrus, who looks up at him with dead sunken eyes saying,
“Why have you done this to me brother?”
It’s here in these shadows. Dorian Storm, the blood pouring from his blackened sockets here in the shattered expanse, the rest of it just a shadowy dark blur around you, Cyrus looks towards you from that shadow.
“Why? Why, brother?”
As you glance up towards his face to try and make eye contact, his now-somewhat-shriveled corpse arms reach out and grab your lapel and pull you close (where you can smell the early decay on him) his lips curl back with the gums in the early stage of decomposition.
“Not all is lost, brother. I’m not beyond saving. My spirit lingers, haunts this realm now without peace, and I am not alone.”
You see these little sparks glow on the horizon around him, these other souls lost in the limbo, now in the post-Solstice era. The hands no longer grasping you; now just touching your cheek with a sadness and a hopeful longing.
“Within this engine, a curse keeps us, brother. Free us. Let us rest, brother.”
As the body begins to fade, the last thing you see in his shadow are a sparkin flash of a spinning purple crystal before you blink, and the body hanging before you is a long-dead skeleton, withered and armored in that of the ancient Aeorian guard.

Previous Episode: “Ancient Sins”

  • Ultragramps@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPMEnglish
    1·
    7 days ago

    Across the interior of this chamber, the slowly rotating gem there spins tiny mag-lev figurine
    INITIATIVE!
    Teven at the top of the order, blade drawn and burning with rage says,
    “I knew it from the moment we stepped in here, it HAD TO DIE!”

    • 02:25:20 Dominox’s Lair Action yoinks the team (Except Orym, Dorian, and Braius)
    • 02:28:32 Essek sounds a little like Bronson Pinchot saying, “I will not be having this.”
    • 02:28:39 Travis:“Scuse!” (Daggerheart reference)
    • 02:28:43 Travis:“Grab your butt and run.” Sinbad reference
    • 02:31:33 Dominox is thrown and unfortunately lands on Fearne.
    • 02:34:48 More bromance between Dorian and Braius.
    • 02:35:33 Marisha is quick to cast Counterspell to save Teven.
    • 02:36:08 Travis brings out the counter-jinx trash talk for Marisha’s dice and it works.
    • 02:36:51 Braius drops the act and declares himself the Herald of Asmodeus.
    • 02:39:44 When Matt says “bow low” it sounds like Bolo. Coincidence?
    • 02:42:21 You see a lithe figure in long blue robes. Platinum long hair, and a withered black hand that has gold caps along the fingers, who looks like they’re rushing in your direction. As soon as you come through, they stop and go,
      “What have you done, what are you doing? We have to stop it now.”
    • 02:44:10 Marisha:“…shit! Tits! Bonus action, Form of Dread!”
    • 02:44:45 Fearne goes marsupial and Wildshapes into a mint green wombat and pouches the crysta. When Chetney arrives wombat makes the gesture for “uppies” when Chetney arrives
    • 02:55:03 Imogen telekinetically chucks Chetney (Fastball Special reference?)
    • 02:58:30 Teven swinging for the fences
    • 03:01:10 Liam:“I leapt up and stabbed him right in the crotch.” The Gooch Garrote.
    • 03:02:28 Orym on the effects of the speed potion feels like a hummingbird
    • 03:09:10 Dorian’s clutch dance magic, Otto’s Irresistible Dance.
    • 03:10:04 Bromantic embrace
    • 03:10:25 In the focus of concentration on the missing stone that it’s bound to, the appearance of Ludinus, and the chaos all around it, it forgets to use Legendary Resistance and (is currently the massive, terrifying, nearly 20-foot-tall, long-sealed great demon, used as an implement of arcane power by the ancient mageocracy of Aeor, recently unleashed to tear through and destroy the Ruby Vanguard and Ludinus’ plot here in Aeor) begins to cut a rug.
    • 03:15:08 Fan Art Moment Riverdancing Dominox bleeding cursed rusted chains from its wounds.
    • 03:16:25 Part of the set next to Sam falls over.
    • 03:24:10 Essek:(to Ludinus)“Hello…It’s been a while.”
    • 03:24:36 Laura nudges Liam to have Orym look up Essek’s robes as he floats past
    • 03:26:45 Ashton recreates the Office Space scene where a printer is destroyed
    • 03:31:07 Matt gets a killing blow as an NPC and gets to ask himself “How Do I Want To Do This?”
    • 03:31:39 Teven there, holding up his blade in front of the gate, the swirling chaos of the Abyss beyond with Dominox crushed to it’s knees from the Gravity Fissure. Now trying to reach up to claw back out of the gate as it’s swirling around. Blade in the air, he says,
      “Ah, my Lord. I smite thee, ancient evil. Fair play in your name. See you never again.”
      Brings the blade up and drives it into Dominox’ chest. As it hits, he’s going to leap in the air carving it in half. As it does, it lands and the body splits and begins to burn to ash on the form of the Abyss where it dissipates forever on its plane. Dominox sundered.
    • 03:31:16 Braius asks Teven for his autograph.
      Teven:“Those are rare. (I better not see this on eBay!)”
    • 03:41:48 You step down this extended, wide, echoing hallway until eventually it opens into this massive dome chamber. The ceiling itself cracked heavily and you can see it’s still held firm, but along the dome there are patterned globes of a quarts-like crystal, a lattice, like an umbrella that spreads out around it. You can see numerous gold beams that connect between them with extremely intricate, scattered runes that seem to interconnect all of these like a web network.
      Within the dead center of this wide, circular chamber, lies two massive statues of robed mages holding lanterns. One of them fallen and broken, the other still holding against time, holding against the memory of the historical fall of Aeor. You can see them both flanking a central, damaged, metallic dome construction with massive rivets and textured arcane technology around it. It’s next to that Ludinus stands, arms crossed, looking out at you with a soft smile.
      “Welcome to the Occultus Thalamus. The high mages of the Age of Arcanum were the greatest minds of Exandrian history. The call to innovation created great societies of ingenuity, ambition and endless potential. Using the gifts of the gods bestowed upon them, they began to unravel the great secrets of the universe. Prideful, perhaps, but beautiful.
      And they feared it.
      Once the child becomes the parent, often those in power can grow resentful, and they did. When more came crawling around, a war of omnipotent children bickering, these brilliant minds had to adapt, focus to implements of war beyond just implements of progress. When the divine threatens your families, your children, the very future of life as you know it, they reveal themselves as the enemy.
      I saw it. I was there in the final days of The Calamity. I watched mountains brought to dust, whole countries set aflame, the tantrums of the gods wantonly murdering and massacring the majority of all civilizations on Exandria. When the dust had settled and their rivalry paused, the few of us that survived wallowed in the dust and ash and spent centuries trying to rebuild from what scraps we could find, while they vanished beyond their gate to protect us, or perhaps to hide from us once they saw what was capable. I survived, watched as a child, acknowledged what they wrought as they fled to the mystical hideaways.
      This world has been manipulated, duped in its opinion, it’s understanding of divinity. For those that write the history books are those in power and there is no power higher than them. There’s a reason they fear me. Some of it’s Predathos, yes, but I found something equally important here. Sometimes the most important weapon in information. These mageocracies, in many places, had ways of recording things, knowledge, history, some lost to time. But Aeor created the Thalamus, a device that recorded the spiritual memory of all in the city, including those that brought it low. I’ve spent a day or so studying this and I found something, something I think you want to see.”
      He reaches over to the cracked central dome and places his hands near it, and as he does crackling noise it begins to open up. Mist billows out and you watch as this light green orb emerges. An endlessly fractal network or threads of arcane power, layered upon themselves over and over again, and it drifts beyond them.
      “Within here lies the memories of Aeor. Fractured, but enough. And what I will show you, I will show the rest of Exandria.”
      As he changes the hold on the sides of his hands, the orb begins to spin rapidly, whirs loudly. It begins to brighten. This light begins to burst and pulse. All of you feel instinctively like you have to recoil as the very space around you is entirely filled with light. Your spirit is filled with light. Your mind is filled with light. All there is is light.
      BLeeM arrives and Matt gives him the GM chair
      Light.
      In a space beyond the real, there was (made of light) a palace. Which is to say a garden, or a fountain, or a mirror, or a heart, or more than any of these, an idea. A swirling nebula of glimmering potential, cresting eternally upon the threshold of being. But if it aids you, Exandrian, to imagine what the mortal eye can never see, envision then, as I have said, a palace. It’s floors the dancing stars in unmapped orbit. It’s ramparts light and ice and fire. Its hallways memory and time. Our story begins at the ending of the infinite, at the doom that pierced eternity. Fractured images of a lost world and of the ones who lost it. Remember now a place which was not less, but rather more than real. Remember tragedy, betrayal, calamity, downfall. In the recording of this memory, may the answers to many questions lie. But one question yet and shall forevermore remain:

    “Is It Thursday Yet?”

    • Ultragramps@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPMEnglish
      1·
      8 days ago
      Cooldown
      • 03:20 Sam’s character is a horny himbo attracted to red flags
      • 07:07 Matt:“[it’s] not too dissimilar to Patia’s Orb. It’s a thing that collects masses of information. This one was tuned to things of divine threads. Specifically it was (for lack of a better term) a surveillance device for all beings in Aeor where it just recorded their presence. It’s like super-invasive memory keeping. The Thalamus was a secret project in Aeor.”
        Brennan:"I love the idea that Matt’s gonna have to be in the wings for the run and if it gets too far in one narrative direction, Ludinus just starts shaking the VHS. “Actually fuck what I said. Nevermind. This thing fuckin’ sucks!”