Dawn of a New Day: Eve of Peace

Aowyn makes her way quickly back to the professor. "If we're to resolve this issue, we cannot do it here, and if whatever is causing this knows where we are, I'd prefer to meet it on our own terms." She nods sadly in the direction of the Solar. "We'll set this injustice to right," she says, almost under her breath, then continues "moving to another location is tactically sound before we attempt to right this situation."

"Yes, of course, you're right. I'm coming."

Arlensul is reluctant to say the least. After a period of silence from her and a nod from Helspeth, the two guards drag her away from the zombies at her command. She does not resist them, but is clearly determined to command her living impaired followers to a better use than redeath by river or Solar.

A few last commands are given in Orkish, but eventually Helspeth just tells Inquieto that they will be coming.

"Okay, that everyone? Let's..."

There is a blue flash, and, a little aways from the party, appears another mage, flanked by several members of the UNENS zombie control team. Although there is no appropriate way of telling this before you are swept away by magic, this is the Poison expert. As they were heading this way anyway, he offered a ride to some members of the Zombie control team. They immediately spring into action.

"...Super. Let's go!"

Ah, teleportation. It's a hell of a thing.

You emerge on the other side in a large clearing: It looks like a massive circle, centered on this portion of the river, has been clearcut from the nearby forest and shrub. The vegetation, however, was not cut: It is dead and wilted. Massive runes have been cut into the soft soil; just looking at them makes your eyes water. (Although, for clarification, not the Primarch's or the Undying's) Anyone currently capable of perceiving magic can feel a great terrible force writhing across the surface of the water, being carried downstream.

The most notable bit, however, is the active blue portal through which a number of robed figures are escaping. Currently, only three remain on this side.

(IMMEDIATE ACTIONS GO)

The Primarch pulled a scroll free from his backpack, and, after rumbling out a few arcane syllables, an emerald green ray shot out of his hand at the robed figure closest to the portal.

Dimensional Anchor (ranged touch, no saves, no SR)

Ranged Atk Bonus: +12
d20 roll follows

It works.

(Note: Go ahead and put whatever your character could reasonably do; I'll collate at the end. Don't worry about rolls and such)

Yla, without hesitating, charges forward and snarls. Being out of proverbial ammo, she leaps into the air, tackling the cultist full on. A few moments later, she's holding him in an arm lock driving his face into the dirt with her knee.

"You ain't goin' anywhere, ya unholy punk!"

As soon as they appear in the area, Aowyn looks as though she's been slapped in the face, quite hard, and she drops to one knee, a small trickle of blood running from her ears. "I've never seen so much evil in one place," she pants, and the moment she's able, she dashes after a cultist to smite him.

All three cultists appear incapacitated. Helspeth and Arlensul appear instead surprised, Arlensul perhaps a bit dizzy and disoriented from the teleport.

Dun begins running towards the guy who got Dimensional Anchored and leaps to tackle him. As he's running, he begins growing, until double his original size.

Yla manages to tackle one of the behooded baddies, while Dun tackles the one the Primarch tagged. Aowyn goes straight for the last one, who takes a mighty smiting.

Unfortunately, Aowyn is strongly repelled by the... person's... presence, and has some difficulty attacking effectively: She tags the blackguard, but, clutching its deep wound, it lunges for the portal, leaping through.

Meanwhile, Yla has got hers under fierce grips... but then it starts canting at her.

No, wait, not at her. In spite of her.

It disappears with a flash of blue, appearing just by the portal. Relieved of her grasp, it leaps through, closing it behind.

The last one, however, is well and truly boned. Dun lays atop it, the Primarch has barred all forms of interplanar transit on it, and for good measure, Inquitego drops a silence spell on it... No stilled spells are getting off there. It writhes against Young Dun with an unnatural strength, but is unable to break his grasp. Seeing no other option, it bites down hard... Which causes its head to explode in a distinctive fireball. Fortunately, the head takes most of the brunt, and so Young Dun is merely singed.

Unfortunately, there's no time to worry about that now... Inquitego reaches for a pocket and pulls out a long bandolier of oils.

"This whole area is CRAWLING with death magic! It looks like established runes for some kind of Dark Ritual! If you start magicsight, you can see it etched all over the place! We've got to dispel the arcane runes, quick!" He dumps his bag o magic tricks on the ground... inside may be found several dispel scrolls, of both the arcane and divine type.

He sets in at the clearing, dumping oils of dispel magic and casting his greater dispels where needed. As others pitch in, not only does the clear and present evil emanating from the clearing wear away, but the poison seeping into the river slowly ebbs, until the river is no longer becoming poisoned.

This process will take some time, so others may feel free to perform other things, or just wait until the others are done... In either case, to fast forward to the point where the clearing has been cleared...

Prince Dun, although apparently without serious injury, simply sits holding the now lifeless body. His jaw is slack, and his eyes are wide in horror and disbelief. His face shows quite clearly, this is Prince Duns first encounter with death.

"Why?"

Until forcefully removed, Dun sits clutching the body, still large sized.

After assisting with the removal process, the Primarch carefully approached young Dun and the corpse, looking, if anything, rather befuddled. Those observing him can't quite identify exactly how he can look befuddled, but the statement stands.

"Come on, young prince," the massive warforged rumbles, extending a hand to the oversized Dun. "It is not your fault; I predict he would have done similar no matter who grappled him. And you were immensely brave today. But enough of this; come on, release him now. We should return to the encampment. This... shenanigan appears to be over, and I, the Primarch, have little doubt that your parents would appreciate your swift return.

"Professor Inquitego," he said, turning back towards the professor. "If it is within your capabilities, I, the Primarch, request that you provide us transportation back to the encampment. With... evidence secured and in tow, if possible."

"Gah, what, HEY GET BACK HERE I HAVEN'T BROKEN YOU ENOUGH!"

Yla snarls as the cultist disappears. As the situation unfolds, she merely watches. she glances at the corpse.

"Suicide doctrine... What kind of psychopaths are these guys? He doesn't have a head left either, so no speak with dead. Gah..."

She looks at the surrounding woods.

"This is... Horrible."

Yla puts herself fully into cleansing the death magic from the area. Quite intensely, actually.

Aowyn is still standing where the portal was, unmoving and staring at where the cultists vanished, until finally when the death magic is cleared from the area, she slams her sword into its sheath and turns away from where the portal was. "Is there any way we can trace where that portal lead? I cannot accept that this evil will be allowed the chance to cause such a disturbance again."

"Chances are slim to none, I'm afraid. I've seen some magic in my time, and that was, without a doubt, an interplanal Gate. They could be anywhere by now; its one of the few, solid ways to get past the Fertzman Oceanic Null Zone. Even if we could figure out where that gate was going, they could have skipped through another one by now. Our best bet would have been Corpsey McDeaderton over there, but..."

He makes a gesture around his head that mimes it exploding, along with accompanying sound effect.

"Yanno?"

Angrily Arlensul stalks over to the corpse. With a few quick gestures and a bit of muttered chanting she preserves the body.

"We will find a way to get what he knew." She then animates each leg, and commands the corpse to stand. It shuffles clumsily to its feet and slowly slouches around where she directs. "Helspeth. Divino?"

Helspeth sighs, rubbing her eyes, "It is possible, Sister. We will ask when the council reconvenes. I certainly hope you're not right."

With that done, Arlensul gets to work cleaning up the mess of dark magics in her own odd way.

Within short order, the place is cleaned... although poison still flows down the river, it is now up to the Solar to stop it.

Afterwards, if there are no further issues, he teleports everyone back to the Solar's Clearing... The Containment Crew is already making good progress corralling the Zombies, so that's good news. However, the Poison Expert is stumped; this stuff is clearly beyond his experience or ability to cope with. That's bad. The Solar is hanging on, though... Although the lower half of her body has turned to stone, she is resisting the effect with all her being. She will last long enough to purify the river. After that... well, it's not fun to dwell on it.

The truly sad part is that there's nothing that anyone can do, really... This is so far beyond the scope of anyone present that it really comes down to divine intervention.

Sadly, the divine has already intervened, and paid the price for it.



Time will pass. The Solar will purify the river. Then, it will die a statue, a testament to its Martyrdom. This is what will be.

"Freed from pressures caused by potential threats from Ork assault, the nations of Nova Island were free to enter a period of expansion and development that is unimaginatively known as the "Decade of Peace". This period of time saw not only the development of each of the Nations agendas, but also the creation of an inter-continental roadway by the Sultanate allowed previously un-attainable levels of intermingling; This created a 'boiling pot' effect, as the cultures of each began to blend until they reached the more easily recognizable forms we see today."

-Abernathy Tilde, The Growth of a New Land.

"...while some may say that we cannot blame these Islanders for their actions, as they were unaware of events on the mainland, the fact remains that they, too, are implicit in this heinous crime; the genocide of the Ork peoples, and the destruction of their culture, could not have been carried out to completion without this one final straw. Although many are quick to point out the aggression of the Ork tribe upon the island, in order to exonerate these criminals of their deeds or somehow frame it as self-defense, they have to go out of their way to ignore the sheer scale of this unproportional response; although it would be uncouth to marginalize the thousands of mages and craftsmen who lost their lives in the supposedly unprovoked attack on the university, these thousands must be weighed against the millions of orks, most of them civilians, who were slain in response. The few that fled, their homes destroyed by the ham-handed aggression of the Islanders, were hunted down, or died of illness as some previously unheard of disease, likely created by the Islanders, ravaged their population.
Many will say that the Islanders could not have possibly been aware of the Great Ork Purge that was happening on the mainland, as if somehow ignorance of the fact that they were assisting in the extinction of an entire race exonerates them of their actions. But I say that we shall never forget, and never forgive, these dark deeds, nor the men and women who perpetrated them."

-Lilla Thicktooth, half-ork and author of Orks: A History of Oppression and Extermination.

"Many uncertainties abound concerning the occurrences before and after the Battle of the Southern Swamps; The Srabthine Empire makes claims of a Divine Intervention to triumph over the forces of Evil, which is fully detailed in the Book of Aowyn. Practitioners of Skaplyndi will tell tales of Nature Spirits coming to their aid. Thaumaturgist accounts provide several complex but ultimately plausible natural occurances that explain the events. Followers of Primarchism, however, have numerous highly detailed accounts, complete with precise times, locations, and dates, attesting that The Primarch himself intervened to aid them in their plight.
However, what can be agreed upon is that, in the end, a phenomenal number of coincidences and lucky occurrances aided the fledgling nations in their war against the Ork aggressors, turning what many would conclude would be a Phyrric victory at best into an incredible success."

-Ermil Clayton, Notable Military Occurrances of the Last Ceuntury.

And LO/ The Primarch Thus Spake/ O PigShit, / Lieutennant Thunderstorm, Will You Kindly/ Rid Us Of These Meddlesome Pterodactyls?/ And LO/ The very stuff of the air turned/ and heard his will/ and it obeyed without question/ And LO/ the Primarch Smote the Pterodactyls/ with the unfettered force of air and storm/ and rent them asunder, and rendered them/ Into pieces no larger than a Forged palm/ And LO/ The Primarch Thus Spake/ Good Grief/ Tone It Down A Notch/ I Said Rid Us Of/ Not Shower Us In./ And LO/ The air heard, and obeyed.

-Codex Primarchum, Book of Engagements, Chapter 3.