Orhan 3 Day 58 TE 6065

Imre's wife has a dream before dawn.

• What was done to us? The five of us are hiking along the edge of a cliff and a billy goat knocks us off where we spiral down into the darkness. The billy goat smiles. Beneath us, way way down, is another cliff we fall onto. We sprout wings and land gently.
• How do we get home? She sees Imre reading a big thick book at home.
• Who's behind it all? The party is surrounded by a bunch of people scowling at them. They're passing notes to each other and cackling. They also pass money to each other and take secret votes. One of them gets elected and comes out to the front to deal with us.

We go home at dawn when the zombies turn off and meet ourselves at home. They are skeptical, but we are all reasonable, so we convince ourselves of our plight.

We fuss around some and decide to try and solve the world.

We make arrangements to meet up later and hide in a suite in the villa, and then split up to the four winds to investigate the problem.

Arisia goes to the temple of Rianne. It's been abandoned for years. She finds a diary in the high priest's quarters. Things go along about as you would expect, until around 25 years ago when the Nameless One came and pronounced a doom upon us all, though his exact words were not recorded therein. About a year later, plagues of rats and storms and frogs and canal monsters and the like started happening. Then, suddenly, on New Years Day, 24 years ago, dawn never comes, it's dark the entire day and people think it was just really cloudy. That night is when the zombies started. It started here, but spread out into Haestra and Jaiman from here. Deciding this was no good, the high priest declared a plan to sequester themselves and sleep until the gods have come back to save us.

Shoved underneath a big stack of things is a blank piece of paper that detects as magic. Arisia takes it.

Good Brother goes to the Bard's College to look for tales of zombies. He finds that when this all started there was a rumor that on the day that was night, the Heart of Darkness fell from the sky here in Selkai.

Luna and Nusmoi go to the library. There were a bunch of doomsday cults that sprouted up around when this all started, but as the world didn't really end, people became complacent. The church of Eissa tried to remove the curse and failed. Luna finds that there used to be a bunch of books about the curse but they are currently all missing from the library shelves. There are a bunch of prophesies left about the curse though. They range from "The world is ending" to "We deserved this." to things like "Curse curse go away, come again some other day" But one is interesting. "Only those who come from another world can dispel the curse." In the prophesy section, they find "The light will be restored when the heart is shattered." Luna uses Commune to insure that those are true propehsies.

Tatiana looks through Kyrik's collection looking for clues and finds a drawing Kyrik made of a coluseum/aphitheatre that she doesn't recognize. No one recognizes it. The locals think it the coluseum outside of town, built about 23.5 years ago. No one uses it anymore. Locals don't want to be there.

We lock ourselves in a villa suite for the night. Luna has dreams for the night.

• 1) Heart of Darkness: Luna is floating around inside a giant red chamber. It's beating like a heart. Suddenly a needle comes in through the wall and spurts out a black gunk. The black gunk gets spread through all the arteries, etc. until the darkness is covering all the land. Then her point of view moves up to the person's eyes and she sees floating in front of the person is a black crystaline sea urchin with a spine sticking in the bodies heart.
• 2) The Mysterious Stadium: There's a giant crowd at the coluseum. Then a black finger comes down out of the sky and points at the middle of the coluluseum. When it touches the ground, all goes black.

Good Brother finds the first ability of the magic blank paper Arisia found. It's first ability is invisibility. Huh.

Orhan 3 Day 59 TE 6065

Arisia and folks head up to the palace and find that there's no access to the archives allowed. Coran Maas ordered it be forever sealed of course. Arisia goes to confront Coran Maas, and he stonewalls and takes the group before the prince.

Daddy! These impostors are here to infiltrate us. The prince thinks we're loonies. We gather up our other selves and explain the situation. He says the stadium was constructed 24 years ago, and on it's dedication day the curse struck. The stadium was designed by Vis Mundaro, so it's probably not evil. BTW: Books in the library about the curse have been stolen, which is why the archives here are locked up.

We head out to the stadium. There are two main entrances on each side for the spectators and a service entrance which leads underground. Luna magically unlocks the service entrance from the inside and we head in and start search the underground complex. The main thing we notice is that there are various prep and storage areas, complete with animal cages, dressing rooms, etc. But no evil altars. Along one wall at the end of the complex, there are sevearl cracks running along the wall, with quartz veins running through them. Dark dark quartz. Arisia thinks the crystal vein is huge. Around then, everyone not Arisia starts getting creeped out.

Hoping for reassurance, Luna taps the crystal with her wand of doom. There's a giant explosion. Luna is flung back against the wall. There's an acrid smell in the air, and some crystal shards are around, but the crystal vein is intact. Arisia finds the place up above that is over the crystal. Aaron finds that the ground in this area has crystal under it, not very deep.

Arisia asks the grass why it doesn't grow in that spot, and finds that the grass isn't interested in growing in the evil part.

Luna Communes with the Stars again:

• Is the crystal more dangerous at night?
• Can the curse only be broken at night?
• Is the area of the stadium more dangerous at night?

We retreat for today. We hurry back to the villa and those who were creeped out feel much better. We lock ourselves in a suite once more.

Orhan 3 Day 60 TE 6065

The party splits and half of it goes to talk to Veriak at mid-morning. People explain things to Veriak and he tells them to sit down. He makes a tarot reading. The Emporer and the Fool and the Tower and the Five of Swords. Veriak finds this every intersting:

"To bring down the heart of darkness, all five of us must strike at the same time. You each have one thing that can effect it."

"Each night the crystal blooms. Only when it emerges from it's shell and blooms is it vulnerable."

Well, that's a plan.

We wait until an hour before sunset and head into the stadium. It's pretty creepy, as usual.

Night falls and then we start to hear the beating of the dark heart. Sadly, before the crystal blooms, we start hearing zombies approaching the stadium.

We hide (shrub facade, invisibility, and Acting etc.), and notice the stands start filling with zombies. The pulsing gets higher pitched and faster, and the crater starts glowing. As the stadium fills zombies start filling the field area. Aaron mingles with the zombies. Then there's a high pitched screetching sound. Then from the ground, a crystaline tendril comes up from the ground. It goes back and forth, grows leaves etc. Finally, at the top, a big bulge forms. It gets bigger and bigger, and turns and starts opening.

It blooms and the bushes start heading for the evil crystal bush. The flower like thing in the middle looks like a face. It's gaze is terrifying, but we attack. Well, Arisia bush runs around distracting zombies while Luna and Nusmoi bushes sneak in towards the center plant. Tatiana tries to horse across some zombies to make a hole. It doesn't go so well though, and Tatiana is swamped by zombies. Nusmoi breaks out with a Repel Undead XV and everyone rushes in.

We attack and all strike the bloom simultaneously! We stand back as the bloom explodes and all of the energy is sucked in and people are cured.

We sing a song of victory!

We head back to town, change and head up to the palace.

It's party time in Eidolon! And Selkai!

Orhan 3 Day 61 TE 6065

We discuss it for a while and then check out the invisipaper. It's a map leading outside of the city to Resenda. We head out there and check out the X marked spot.

There's a pavillion of marble out there dedicated to Rianne. There's an altar and columns and a little dome. "The sleepers will awaken." There is a secret switch under the altar and a stairway leading down. We head down there...

Down there is a giant room filled with biers covered with priests and paladins and the like. As we enter the room, they start stirring. Yay! The curse is lifted. The main core of the temple is there along with their wealth and the like. They head back to the temple. They consult Rianne who gives us advice. There is a book. Put the book through the portal.

We put the book on the portal and we go through. We emerge in the basement with no book. The portal deactivates. We head upstairs and find our universe right where we left it!

Huzzah!