We began the session with the party leaving Enochia, followed by three days of uneventful travel on their way to Dawnperch, the apparent location of the next shard, but also the location of Monk’s order. So, this was very exciting. Monk was heading home.
The night before arriving, Monk had a dream. He was on the branch of a massive tree of obsidian, and there was a woman with flames for hair. She asked him if he had yet found what he sought, to which he answered he had not, and then she told him a story about two dragons, Ruby and Obsidian, and how they were lovers that ended up on the opposite sides of a war, which resulted in Ruby accidentally slaying Obsidian and her grief and unsuccessful search for a way to resurrect him eventually creating the legend of the phoenix.
When he awoke, Monk was holding a leaf made of obsidian. Spooky.
Arriving at Dawnperch, the party decided to land their airship a short distance away and embark on their way up the Thousand (but really, more than a thousand) Steps. When they reached the top and entered the monastery, it was oddly silent. After a brief search, they discovered why.
The monks had been massacred. As the party made their way up the monastery, they found more and more of Monk’s slaughtered brothers. Eventually, at the entrance to the innermost sanctum of the monastery, they found a great pile of bodies, including most of the senior monks, that had fallen protecting the doors; this, evidently, was where the order had made their last stand.
Inside the room, there was a great statue of a phoenix standing watch over the Everburning Flame, a bonfire of great significance to the order which, as the name suggests, never burns out. There was also a door to the final room, the artifact room, which, as the party later discovered, had already been ransacked. They also determined that this was where the shard would have been, but it was also long gone.
Upon entering the room with the Everburning Flame, Monk saw the woman with flame hair standing on the opposite side of the fire. He went around to speak to her, but she was no longer there. Instead, she was standing on the opposite side of the fire. Near Brakken and Mortimer, in fact, though they clearly could not see her.
Monk tried speaking to her, but she gave no response, just watched him intently. He dropped the obsidian leaf in the flames, and she seemed approving, but nothing else happened. And so, he entered the flames himself.
As he began to burn, she seemed to approve. He made to leave the flames, but she gestured for him to stop before returning to her intense stare. So instead, he tried to find the obsidian leaf.
After several failed attempts, he found it just in time for the fire to burn away the last of his hit points. As Brakken and Mortimer watched on in confusion and horror, Monk’s body burned away into ash, and the Everburning Flame died.
Monk found himself back at the Obsidian Tree. The woman took the leaf from him, and handed him a stick of obsidian. And suddenly he found himself climbing out from beneath the rocks the Everburning Flame had been burning over.
Brakken and Mortimer watched as Monk dragged himself out from under the rocks, sooty and still hand-less, but now holding an obsidian staff with one end carved like a dragon’s head and the other end carved like the head of a phoenix, both emitting gentle flames from their mouths. But before anyone had any time to comprehend what was going on, the party heard voices. From the sound of it, they were approaching, one voice giving instructions to burn down the monastery before a group of eight ruffians entered the room and froze upon seeing the party.
The fight began with Mortimer casting Web, trapping half of the ruffians in the doorway. The party then gave them a sound thrashing. Between Mortimer giving off temporary hit points every round and Brakken rolling four or five critical hits, the party tore through the ruffians while barely taking a scratch. In the end, three were unconscious (intentionally, thanks to Monk, with the goal of later interrogation), four were cloven in pieces by Brakken and his axe, and one had successfully fled. By the time the party got outside, they saw this last one flying away in a motorbike/balloon contraption similar to Mortimer’s original vehicle – and clearly, much to his chagrin, a stolen design.
Indeed, on the leader’s bisected body the party found a note with instructions to kill the monks, recover ‘the artifact’ (later confirmed to be the next shard) and raze the monastery, by order of one of Mortimer’s most hated and powerful rival guilds. This was confirmed when Brakken later interrogated their prisoners, two of whom gave what little information they knew which confirmed the same facts. The third refused to speak, so Brakken executed them on the spot to get one of their compatriots to talk.
And then, despite being a notionally ‘good-aligned’ party, Brakken and Mortimer executed the other two by throwing them off a really high cliff. Monk, at least, took no part in it.
While Monk took care of the bodies of his fallen brothers, Mortimer stripped the motorbike/balloons of the dead ruffians for parts and Brakken retrieved the airship. Then the party set off in pursuit of the fleeing ruffian. After a day or so of flight, they spotted something moving across the ground in the distance. Something that looked suspiciously like a train…
And that’s where we ended the session. So, a bit of tragedy for Monk, but a bit of a step forward as well, so interesting times for him. As for next week, great train robbery? Mission Impossible-esque heist? The party are pretty confident that the shard is on the train, so we’ll see how they decide to go about trying to get it. Tune in next week to find out what they do and whether it succeeds.