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The Hall of Champions

Last week, the party ran through the portal opened by the three Keys in search of the Book of Creation. On the other side, they found a massive hall populated by hundreds of slightly translucent orcs enjoying a massive feast. The orcs cheerfully welcomed them in Orc, which the party totally failed to understand. After some initial confusion, one of the orcs tried speaking to them them in Common. He explained that they were in the Hall of Champions - an afterlife populated by those elite few who completed the Trials to retrieve the Book of Creation1. Since the party had completed the trials2, they would receive the Book from Visika, the Mother of the Hall, once she returned from her "shamanly duties"3.

At this point, a rock flew out of the open portal the party had left behind. Around it was wrapped a note, telling the party not to attack the people who would be coming through the portal. The note was signed by Jed4, who stepped through the portal, along with a small squad of warriors. Jed wielded a strange bow made of a dark oak and covered in sinister thorns - even the grip. Antimony recognized it as Eyeblight, a powerful artifact, and sensed a malevolent intelligence from the bow. The orcs seemed to recognize the bow, and some also recognized Jed and greeted him with respect.

The party expressed some confusion as to how Jed spontaneously materialized behind them, given that they had had no contact with him since before the destruction of Orsus. Jed explained that Winston5 had been using the teleportation stones the party retrieved to magically observe the party, allowing him to follow their progress as they tried to retrieve the Book of Creation. When he saw that the party was about to get the Book, he sent Jed to make sure the Book would be retrieved safely and would not fall into Torvid's hands. Now that he was with them, he would simply protect the party until they returned to the capital.

This explanation did not fully convince the party that Jed's intentions were good, but they tolerated his presence as they waited for Visika's return. To pass the time, they joined the feast with the orcs and learned about their history. Before long, the orcs turned over the tables in the hall and set up the hall for a brutal melee. They invited the party to join in, which only Amanita and Jed took full advantage of. Amanita caused mass chaos with well-placed hallucinogenic mushroom powder, though he also narrowly avoided dying in the process. As the melee reached its conclusion, Visika returned through the portal, clad in viciously spiked full plate and wielding a massive greatsword in one hand and a hefty tome in the other. She leapt over the fray to duel with Jed, and they fought to a standstill to conclude the brawl.

When the battle finished, Visika and Jed conversed in Orc for a time as the party gathered around. She congratulated the party on completing the Trials, and gave them the Book of Creation. Before they read it, she told them her story.

Centuries ago, Visika was a powerful orc shaman. She discovered evidence of an ancient ritual that took place in the area now called Foobar. When sought to discover its purpose, it led her to seek the Book of Creation. All who read it were granted a vision into the truth of the creation of the world, but when she read it, she felt a sense that something was wrong - that there was a curse on the Book that concealed some deeper truth. She spent decades trying to unravel the secrets of the Book, gathering together shamans from many tribes to perform great purification rituals on the Book. Near the end of her life, they finally succeeded at peeling away part of the curse, and discovered that the orcs were the first creatures created. They also discovered evidence in the Book of the ancient ritual that had originally cursed it, just as Visika had suspected. The orcs originally created the Trials to protect the book, and over time it became a testing ground for elite orcs.

Visika laid the blame for the curse on the Moravian Empire. She believes that the Book originally told a different story about the Exiles and the Chosen of Kahl, but has been unable to restore its original text. She also told the party of an ancient curse on Kilvas that drives all Moravians who stay on the island insane, which she interpreted as the land rebelling against the evil the Moravians have done. Jed added that he and Winston think that Torvid is working for the Moravian Empire, and that Winston could explain that more.

At the end of her story, Visika gave the party a choice. If they left the Book in the Hall of Champions, it would be guaranteed to be safe from Torvid's influence. However, if they took the Book with them, they might be able to finally lift the curse. The party decided that they would take the Book to try to finish what Visika started, and prepared to travel back to the capital.

Show up this week to have a big book-shaped target painted on your back!

  1. Notably, all of the orcs in the hall completed the Trials alone, not in a party consisting of about four to nine people (plus a cat).
  2. Or rather, they completed one of the trials, and then mugged some hard-working hobgoblins who had actually completed the other two trials to take their Keys.
  3. Her "duties" involved fighting against angels, demons, and even stranger creatures on Acheron, the Infinite Battlefield. Acheron is a plane filled massive, country-sized cubes floating in a misty void. Each cube contains many interplanar gates - most of the planes in existence have portals linked to Acheron, and the wars for control over these gates are endless. The Material Plane is one of the few planes with no direct links to Acheron, which insulates it from the battles there.
  4. Jed is a human ranger the party met briefly in Orsus. He is a grizzled veteran, and has tried to tell the party to go on missions, with very mixed success.
  5. Winston was the mayor of Orsus, the town nearly destroyed in a storm and then captured by Torvid. He sent the note that told the party to retrieve the teleportation stones, capture Foobar, light the signal fire, and kill Torvid's shaman. The party actually did half of those things, which arguably makes him the only person so far to have given the party a quest that they actually completed.

Stupid Awards

"Steve" Amanita Lord Khallus Pabst Everyone:
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