M.I.S.T. Campaign: Session 22

The events that took place at Avalon, now truly Avalon once more, were…incredible.  I could try to explain what happened in detail, I’m sorely tempted to, but it’s not something I think I could ever hope to portray sufficiently in words.  In short, we freed Thoth from his bindings.  And the five of us that were there were all at our absolute best to do it.  And meanwhile Cindy killed the Avatar of Tishtrya that was in the temple.  Truly efforts worthy of songs and sagas.

The first thing Thoth did upon being released was to fly up and…well; I’m not sure what he did, exactly.  But it seemed to shatter whatever change the Yazata had placed over the island, and his moon outshone the Yazatan sun in the sky.  Then Thoth descended to speak to us, and Arthur was laid to rest in his tomb.

I was only half paying attention to all of that, though.  Once everything at the temple was sorted out I tried calling Hel to make sure she’d gotten my earlier warning.  There was no answer…which is worrying.  Thankfully the number she gave me to get a hold of Njord worked, and it was a direct line.  All my other family members were in Asgard.  And with the pantheon preparing in case Fimbulwinter comes Njord gave Vayu a snowball’s chance in hell of getting in there to snatch them.  So that’s comforting, at least.  And he said he’d send someone down to Helheim to see if they can find anything out.  Hopefully she just left her phone behind, or saw Vayu coming and pulled some trick to evade him…but I can’t help but feel as though things aren’t that simple.  Nothing has been, since my visitation.

After Arthur was laid to rest Thoth returned us to Manannan Mac Lir’s manor.  Which is a place I’m…not exactly thrilled to be. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no faulting his hospitality.  And I’m not ungrateful for it.  But my memories of this place are not pleasant ones.  Thankfully, I won’t be staying long.  Odin invited us to the ritual that will forestall Ragnarok.  And I’m leaving for where it will be held early, Asgard.

...a place I can call home.

M.I.S.T. Campaign: Session 21

Apparently during her temptation an image of Brynhildur told Cindy that she’d die if she passed through the gate, due to the corruption from Utgard-Loki.  Then Andrew mentioned that what she’d been told during her vision was true.  That caught my attention, to say the least.  And not just because I was worried that Vayu actually was my Father…there was the claim that he was hunting my family members as well.

Lexi and Andrew both consulted Fate.  Crossing the gate wouldn’t kill Cindy, as it turns out.  But it sure looked like it hurt.  One of the garden’s apples seemed to fix that, though.  Vayu’s claim about my parentage was also confirmed.  Which is…something I’ll have to think about later.  Because I just can’t deal with it now.

There were two things of immediate concern.  The part about Vayu hunting my family was also true, which meant he was after Hel right now.  I sent a text out to warn her, which I hope she got.  Given the apparent stakes, though, I can’t help but worry.  I’ll have to call her later, when I have the chance.  Until then, even as formidable as she is, knowing that Vayu’s after her is worrying…to say the very least.  But aside from warning her there’s not much I can do.  But having that weigh on my mind along with everything else is just wonderful.

Because the task at hand was still to free Thoth and forestall Fimbulwinter.  The temple he was held in was made of stone, so I was able to figure out its layout.  And a few others were able to pinpoint where the guards were by sound, so we were able to sneak all the way to the room where Thoth was being held…and that’s where our luck ran out.  Thoth was in the room…and Tishtrya as in there talking with him.

In short, times had just gotten desperate. So my plan was suitably desperate.  In short, use my power over earth and stone to hide them in the wall of the temple, then I could get Tishtrya’s attention to draw him away, and they could sneak in behind him.  The hope was he’d want to take me alive.  Not exactly something I wanted to stake my life on…but the stakes were bigger than any of us.

Then Andrew said it should be Cindy instead.  Something about her Titan taint and the role the Titanspawn had played in the decline of Tishtrya’s worship.  I wasn’t exactly thrilled with that.  I mean…loathe as I am to risk my life in such a manner I want to make someone else do it even less.  But it did seem to be a better solution than hoping Tishtrya wouldn’t decide to kill me.  And Gods know once Cindy gets that kind of idea put in her head you’ll have better luck moving heaven and earth than you will talking her out of it.   Which is why she acquired that Titan corruption in the first place.

But miraculously enough the plan seemed to work.  Cindy drew Tishtrya away into the temple; I blocked the hallway off with close to three-hundred cubic feet of stone.  Even if any of the other guards come back to check on Thoth I doubt they’ll be able to get through that easily.  And damn…I may have just orchestrated a trick that pulled the wool over the eyes of a god.

Now we just need to break the bindings placed on Thoth...

M.I.S.T. Campaign: Session 20

So to reach the Temple of the Sun we had to follow the Road of Initiates to the golden gate.  The road itself, a mist-enshrouded marble walkway arcing through the heavens with the world sprawled out below, might have been beautiful given better circumstances.  But that beauty was tempered by knowledge of what we would be facing upon it, temptation that would attempt to lead us from the path and from our mission.

It wasn’t hard to anticipate what form mine would take.  There’s still one issue that can rouse my temper more than anything else.  Temptation came to me before the stars of the Hydra wearing Vayu’s face.  Temptation accompanied by three figures, pale as death, whose faces I could not see.  And he said he would be collecting more of my family.

But I was forewarned against it.  I’d steeled myself against the torrent of emotions I knew would be coming.  And even if it truly was Vayu before me, I am hardly foolish enough to take anything a trickster god who bears me a grudge would say at face value.  I walked on.

Then he revealed the identity of the first of the figures to me.  My mother, but not as most would see her.  Gone was the rot that consumes half her form.  It left her beautiful, despite the pale pallor.  His first target, he said.  Whom he hunted even now while I moved to rescue Thoth.

But the deception was no more convincing simply because a face was still tacked onto it.  I checked the surge of anger, hate, again and walked on.

He must have realized that tactic wouldn’t work on me.  So next he tried to goad me by calling me a simple brute.  One who could solve problems only with his fists.

It was a tactic even easier to brush off than the first.  Were it true I’d have succumbed to the circumstances of my childhood instead of rising above it.  Still, I walked on.

His next tactic actually did halt my inexorable march forward; when he claimed to be my father, my biological father.

He claimed he’d posed as a man just like Baldur in order to catch her attention.  He claimed that she was so desperate for affection that she latched onto the first scrap he through at her, that he faked the death so she’d be left clinging to shreds of hope instead of being reduced to shattered pieces.  Why else was his ghost not at her side, he asked?  Why else would he try to adopt me?  I was born of a heritage I hated, he told me, growing closer to it even as I struggled against it.

Temptation or not, I was done listening to him talk.  Even if what he said was true, it changed nothing.  He’d still be the one who put me through close to two decades of torment, the one who by his own admission had attempted to sever ties between myself and my Mother.  His people would still destroy mine because that’s their blind self-righteousness had them convinced that it was the way things must be.

Even if he was a parent, he was no family of mine.

Even if he did sire me, there is no lack of myths where a father is overthrown by a son he’s wronged.

I was done listening to him talk, letting him try to rile me.  Thankfully, I didn’t have to leave the bridge to shut him up.  I struck a match, gazing into the purity of the flame.  Fire, and the sky around me, connections to the one I do call Father.  The solid presence of the stone walkway below me, a connection to my Mother.  I flicked the match towards him, and as it reached the phantom image I let the fire flare.  The image of Vayu, that source of torment and temptation, burned away into golden light as the sun appeared.

And I walked on.

M.I.S.T. Campaign: Session 19

The fight didn’t turn out to be that bad.  Sea serpents focused on me while Cindy froze the water around the grindlylows attacking the hull.  They tried to use me as a chew toy…but I was tough enough to get through the short exchange of blows unscathed.  Practically hailing bullets from above…but only one seemed to actually do any damage.  Caught one of them pretty good with Grimmur Klærnar though, put blood in the water.  Just in time for Cindy to finish the thing with a whirlpool of ice shards.  The other serpents, and the grindlylows, didn’t stick around after that.  And, thankfully, the efforts Andrew led in the hold were enough to offset the damage the grindlylows did.

Then the new defense tower the Yazata apparently threw up decided to play the magnifying glass to our ants.  I’m fireproof and that one still scorched me pretty bad, and I hadn’t even felt hot ever since Njord gave me the Regginaglar.  Though it looked like Lexi took it worse, even though she was down in the hold.  I was almost ready to turn the ship around to head back out, try again at night.  But then Claire came out with some shield and shouted that we were bringing Arthur to his final resting place.  And then it…shielded us, apparently.  Smooth sailing into a boathouse from there.

Then as soon as the rest of us all got off the boat it was…absorbed into the shield, or something.  Which dumped her right into the sea, of course.

And that’s where we are now…smack dab in the middle of bloody Yazata territory without nearly enough intelligence to put down solid plans.  Lexi’s asking her music stuff…hopefully that gives us something to work with.

But…damn.  The battle simplified things, pushed stuff to the back of my mind, gave me something to concentrate on.  It was the closest I’ve come to being at peace since Altair showed his godsforsaken…

Enough writing for now.

M.I.S.T. Campaign: Session 18

I helped out a bit to fix the boat, when asked, learned a few things.  But…for the most part just avoided the ranch.  No real inclination to be there, at this point, plenty of reason to avoid it.  I spent most of the time underwater, actually.  Solitude, there are a lot fewer people who could get down there to try to engage me in a conversation I’d have really not wanted to participate in.

Eventually, blessedly, the time came to leave.  Manannan gave us some short, motivational, speech.  I didn’t really listen all that closely, wasn’t in the mood for it.  And as soon as we were underway I went up to the crow’s nest and stayed there.  All the better to keep watch.  Lexi said a little something to try to cheer me up, which helped.  Didn’t override whatever Altair did…but I was thankful for it. 

Though the vigil proved unnecessary, wasn’t long before we entered the mists.  Thick mists, not at all natural, slowed the ship to a crawl.  It seemed to be fairly apparent that we were nearing Avalon.  Whatever the case, they interrupted the conversation Cindy and Claire were having about pirate captains.  We were about to start planning.  Andrew mentioned that Thoth was being held by Tishtrya.  Fucking wonderful…that means we have to get in and out under the nose of a major Yazata God.

Then the ship stopped dead, we could feel something bumping against the side, Lexi could catch glimpses of it.  But the blasted mist kept us from seeing much.  So I went over the side and slipped underwater, mist couldn’t impede my vision there.  And…it was about as bad as we could’ve expected.  There were a ton of little monsters tearing at the boat, and a bigger serpent that hit me almost as soon as I entered the water.  Thankfully I was tough enough to weather it.

And I called Cindy down into the water right away.  Couldn’t help but feel that this one was going to fall even more squarely than usual on our shoulders, too.  I mean, we’ve always been the front-line fighters.  But we’re also the only ones that can handle ourselves in water as well as we can on land.  For our sake, the world’s, the Æsir’s…just had to hope we were up to it.