Glory Exultation

Separation and Planning

In consultation with Tollerath and the Amber Dragon, the Companions determined they must separate in order to achieve the next set of tasks. To bring the Holy Temple back into phase with the rest of Crescent, the spell must be taken apart in the crater of Mt. Daneasus, powered by divine energy, and guided by arcane channeling. Thus, someone must be in each of the 3 major locations: Mt. D, the Grand Concert Hall in Luminaux, and the Spellpool in the Jade Tower.

Jericho traveled to Luminaux, accompanied by Phantos, where he auditioned for, and secured, the lead vocal role for the Gloria. While "practicing", he studied the powerful protective runes in the Hall and systematically disabled several of them. Baelwren was visibly disturbed by the necessary separation from Jericho but acknowledged its importance.

Tollerath traveled to Mt. Daneasus in secret, preparing to coordinate the spell from there.

The rest of the party made its way to the Jade Tower, needing to enter and secure it so that Baelwren (presumably) could access and utilize the Spellpool to channel the dismantling of the phase spell.

Approaching the Jade Tower

Little was known about the current status of the Jade Tower and its defenses. Legend held that the archangel Yanseldra stood guarding the entrance, but no recent confirmation or reports were available. Regina was worried about the lack of information and voiced concern that significant opposition, possibly led by Simone Delcius, might control the tower.

When the party entered the forest surrounding the tower, they were immediately surrounded by a glittering faerie fire. Most of the party handled the situation calmly, but Regina was noticeably agitated and far more paranoid than usual. (Which is saying something...) Unfriendly rangers began to be visible as the party penetrated deeper into the forest, signaling the Companions to depart. Baelwren responded by boosting her aura to "irradiate" and making direct eye contact with the rangers. When one approached and verbally threatened the party if they did not withdraw, she attempted to parlay, but the ranger ignored her and rode away. Shortly thereafter, a group of rangers attacked, ignoring all attempts at discussion. The party prevailed, discovering the rangers were the undead remnants of the last wardens left by the army of Pelor after the tower's fall.

Yanseldra

The rest of the approach to the tower was uneventful. When the party came within sight, they could see that the tower had no visible gates, doors, or windows. However, standing stoically in front of the tower was the archangel Yanseldra. She bore a look of resigned sadness and her visibly wounded left wing steadily dripped blood onto the ground below.

The party approached cautiously and found Yanseldra to be resolute but non-threatening. She denied the party access to the tower, as her duty was to guard it. She said, "(quote about the terms of her compulsion--thank you Josh for posting here)". The Companions attempted to question her about how to fulfill those terms, but she was unable or unwilling to clarify. She declined to let the party spill their own blood in an attempt to free her, saying "I have seen enough pain." When Nigel cut himself anyway, she merely winced. Turning to him, she prompted, "Consider why you are here..."

The Companions withdrew a respectful distance to discuss their options. When that debate began to solidify around the unpleasant possibility that the Companions must attack and slay Yanseldra, it was surprisingly Regina who casts an augury using a gold coin. The near-instant response was woe, indicating that such a course would be a very, VERY bad idea. {Mechanics note: Josh later revealed that Yanseldra's Challenge Rating was a minimum of 30...} Upon further consideration, Nigel concluded that when the paladin order fought and slew the heavenly host, it represented a betrayal that binds Yanseldra, the sole survivor, to this place.

Knowing his family's long history of paladinhood, Nigel approached Yanseldra and learned that it was in fact his own grandfather who wounded her. Bending to a knee, he humbly apologized for his grandfather's actions and, by extension, the betrayal by the entire order. He requested her forgiveness. Yanseldra silently extended her wounded wing towards him, and Nigel lay hands upon her, healing the wound. Eyes closed, she let out a supernatural sigh of relief, then sprang straight up into the air, her wings snapping open loudly, and flew upwards until lost in the sun. A single feather drifted down through the still air until caught by a misty-eyed Nigel.

At the time, no one stopped to reflect on the fact that Nigel's grandfather wounded an archangel with a +1 sword. Nigel's grandfather, it can apparently be safely said, was a bad-ass.

The Jade Tower

Approaching the tower, which Regina had been diligently searching for traps, Baelwren noticed a depression in the wall consisting of alternating circles and triangles. At its nadir lay a slot sized and shaped exactly like the holy symbol of Mehana, Goddess of Magic. When Baelwren pressed her pendant into the slot, a door appeared and opened into the main hall of the tower.

The tower turned out to be deserted, although there was a distinct lack of dust or other signs of age. The main hall contained portraits of prominent figures among the history and hierarchy of arcana. Most rooms had self-evident purposes, with a separate training room apparently devoted to each school of magic, except necromancy. There was a teleportation chamber with permanent circles devoted to major locations throughout Crescent; of note, a circle devoted to Windy Point had been destroyed.

In the uppermost room sat the Spellpool, roughly half-full of liquefied mana. A slender green beam of light stretched up out the ceiling from the pool. The beam was conscious and spoke in the persona of Segilus the Blind; it was a manifestation of the phasing spell that held the Holy Temple in extradimensional space. Shortly after greeting the Companions, the beam emanated a green pulse that passed through the party, seemingly harmlessly, though Regina dodged the pulse reflexively. For most of the early conversation, "Segilus" did not acknowledge or respond to Nigel. However, when his presence was mentioned, the beam briefly turned blue and Segilus greeted the paladin.

Segilus explained that to utilize the Spellpool required joining with it, which required permanently sacrificing a known spell. The main power the Companions needed to utilize was channeling the dismantling of the phase spell. One of the other powers the Companions would need to utilize was the ability to scry on nearly any location. Segilus indicated that with significant study and training, a mage could tap the Spellpool from any location and cast any spell that had been sacrificed into it. While it was theoretically possible for one user to channel the spell while scrying on Jericho and Tollerath (to precisely coordinate timing), doing so would likely be prohibitively taxing. Segilus indicated that his prescience had indicated 2 users during the actual dismantling of the spell.

Paranoid as ever, Regina worried that the tower would be attacked during the ritual. After "trapping the hell out of" the main entry hall and the teleportation chamber, she offered to serve as the second Spellpool user in order to allow the more able fighters to remain free for defense. Baelwren quietly indicated distrust and aversion to relying on Regina in that role, and Kimo agreed to be the secondary user. Regina remained as a back-up user. The trio spent the next 4 days practicing with the Spellpool, both collectively and individually.

Sudden (Dis)Appearances

On the day of the Gloria, Baelwren, Kimo, and Regina tapped the Spellpool and prepared for the moment of truth. As Jericho's singing moved through the preliminary movements, the rest of the party prepared themselves for the unknown results of dismantling such a massive spell. Suddenly, Perrin winked out of existence in the Jade Tower. As the party stood stunned, both Nigel and Kimo similarly disappeared. Regina picked up the scrying that Kimo had been doing and also immediately added a third "view" to observe Perrin, et al.

Perrin, Nigel, and Kimo had been summoned to the side of Rachel, who was in active labor. She had activated the teleport bracelet because, in the midst of her labor, the Village of Deepwood was being attacked by a pack of vampires (or possibly vampire-kin). The werewolves of the town were valiantly defending the small house she was in, but appeared to be slightly overmatched. The appearance of 3 fresh, potent warriors shifted the odds significantly. Perrin machine-gunned several vampires, saving the werewolf matriarch and pinning a vampire to the ceiling of the birthing room with a bristling of several enchanted arrows. After disarming a vampire, Nigel was temporarily enthralled and stopped fighting, but a renewed assault by Kimo allowed him to break free. With the vampires routed, Kimo urgently dragged Perrin into the room and performed the world's fastest wedding between Perrin and Rachel seconds before their child was born. (Do you? Yes. Do YOU? Yes. Good, you're married. Waaaaaah!) Reports are unclear about whether the cry came from Perrin, Rachel, or the baby, who was named Landor in honor of his pseudo-grandfather. Reports do not include any reference to Lelani making an appearance during the fight or during and after the birth; it is assumed that the birth fulfilled her condition and freed her to pass on to the land of the dead.

Back in the Jade Tower, things were getting interesting. As Jericho started providing rapidly growing levels of power, Baelwren felt the strain of setting up the channels for its use. Regina, too, was struggling to maintain 3 separate scrying feeds, prioritized as 1) Jericho, 2) Tollerath, and 3) Perrin, et al. Both women's features were tense and perspiration beaded on their foreheads. As they struggled, and occasionally faltered, in controlling the Spellpool, they could feel support coming from Jericho and the choir of bards, bolstering their abilities. Jericho had anticipated the difficulties they all would be facing and, in consultation with some of his friends, incorporated some of the bardic inspire greatness musical themes into his composition.

As the ceremony approached its climax, the laws of space and time flexed and became permeable. All 4 locations (Jade Tower, Grand Concert Hall, Mt. Daneasus, and the village) seemed to merge. With a pulse unprecedented since the Scarlet War, enormous divine power surged from the concert hall and combined with the guidance from the Jade Tower. In the hollow of Mt. Daneasus, Tollerath dismantled the powerful spell that held the temple in extradimensional space. The temple suddenly sprang back into existence with a resounding thunderclap, filling the space it had long-ago vacated. In that moment, everyone in the vicinity of the scried locations knew they had a brief moment before the merging collapsed to decide where they wanted to be when it did. Baelwren, Regina, Jericho, Nigel, and Kimo all elected to appear in Mt. Daneasus. Perrin remained with Rachel. (The location of Phantos is unclear.)

Aftermath

Moments after the temple appeared, a crowd of Daneaseans began approaching it, and Regina stepped forward to calm them and keep them back. She was quickly able to establish a perimeter that held for the critical time needed for most of the magi to teleport back to the Jade Tower.

The only person to step forth from the temple was Aurora the Insightful, a female mage of obvious seniority. Stepping out onto the grand staircase, she delivered a prophecy, which also burned itself into the outer buttress of the temple in letters of fire.

Baelwren, on hearing Aurora's voice, made as if to kneel to her, but was dissuaded.

Following that, Aurora approached Tollerath, with whom it was quickly apparent she was romantically linked. After greeting him, it became clear that dismantling the spell had effectively Stilled Tollerath and broken him physically. In a sad, emotional moment, he said goodbye to Aurora and attempted to teleport to the Valley of the Magi for eternal rest. When he couldn't cast even a cantrip, (she) sympathetically cast the teleportation spell for him and he disappeared.

When the Companions arrived, Jericho immediately collapsed. Nigel and Baelwren rushed to his side and quickly determined that channeling so much divine power had blinded him permanently, not to mention exhausting him physically, mentally, and emotionally, although his aura still burned like the sun. Since it would not subdue his aura, Jericho declined Regina's offer of her invisibility ring when the Companions escorted him away from the temple area and into a quieter, private part of the city.