Previously On
Day 1, Month 6, Year 920, 9th Era
Endergaln
The gang spends the year in various ways, within and without Endergaln.
- Sal goes home to Kendall’s Forge to see his wife and child, bringing Peach along.
- Peach also busies herself writing smut for the Pink Feather Gazette.
- Gwin works in the Beryl lab and researches the Shard, with Sav’s aid.
- Yev helps local farmers fight monsters.
- Ashen brings mercy to the undead.
- Bax gets to know a city, hunts monsters and gets to know himself, and tries to get to know dragonchess.
- Ethan investigates things for hire.
It is the first night of the Festival of the Trickster Comet, when children dress up in costumes and accost people for sweets.
Everyone receives a fancy invite, usually given by the hand of a somewhat shady-looking kid, to a fancy dinner in fancy attire at a fancy restaurant, at the behest of “Thorne.” Peach takes Bax shopping for clothes. Ashen shops for armor.
At the restaurant, everyone is treated to a sumptuous, if delicate 5-course meal in a private room, but Ethan is nowhere to be seen. Bax and Sav have no idea what to do, while Ashen is surprisingly comfortable. They find tickets in their napkins to a play at the Orfanage Theater: “Winged Truth: Untold Tales,” for one night only, written by Xander Quillwick (a famous, but thought retired playwright), directed by and starring Dorian Vale (thought to be retired after alcoholism troubles), with all other roles played by 11 various children.
As they finish dinner and move toward the theater, they spy various children who look rather like they’re dressed up like some members of the party, particularly Sal and Talith; the child dressed like Talith compliments Bax’s Dirt Boy costume.
They get a private box at the theater, guarded by two loutish looking goons, Jack and Marco; Gwin and Yev arrive late.
The play starts with the King of Angels facing off against the King of Monsters, who corrupts him. It moves on to two angelic sisters of the moon who disagree on the way to protect the world they’re charged to watch over, and thus fight, shattering the moons and removing the light of the sun. The sun returns, but brings the undead with it, and says no one can defeat him save for a magic stone that no one knows. Three heroes travel to a far land named Xerastul’n to take the magic stone from the Monsters, but in slaying the terrible sun they return the starless night of the world.
Lil’lith appears, Queen of the domed city of Lux, and gathers and sends out heroes to stop the angel of the Dark Moon that brought the starless night. They defeat her, though the stars maintain their blankness still. The narrator ends the first act by saying the stars would shine again at the Crossing of Aelorean.
(All characters thus far, save for the narrator, have been played by the children of the orphanage.)
Most of the party break up and go wandering during intermission. Sal tells Sav that all of the material so far was in the stuff he gave Ethan, albeit streamlined and retold. Bax sees more children arguing about who would win (Golden Dancer or Hammer Man) and one running through the crowd as fast as he can, dressed in ragged oversized clothes like Hark’ul. Peach spies Ethan helping a kid backstage and harasses Ashen about his reaction during the undead solar section of the play.
Sal chats with a large middle-aged human man sitting alone in the lounge with a massive cracked-glass hammer. The man says the story is interesting and too on the nose, and he’d like to meet the man who wrote it, to see where they got it from. He says “they” came to his world, in their black tower and their army of green warrior slaves. He also says he’s been here for some years, and this world is backward and strange, but someone here clearly knows the truth and that’s what he’s here to find. He calls himself Rhun Enkerig, and says he’s come to destroy the illithid.
Episode navigation
Back to:
Related Stories
A Greater Expertise | Earlier in the day
Sav receives an invite to a fancy dinner and runs to Karal in a panic. (Sav)