Abso-fucking-lutely not! Buckle up, cause this shit is almost 2500 words. We yap too much.
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So the gang has taken to the skies and fled the remaining remorhaz's. We find the remaining resistance fighters close by - they lost their eagle forms when Cade lost concentration on Animal Shapes. These folks are suffering from multiple layers of exhaustion and need immediate intervention - the previous fight and blizzard conditions very nearly did them in. We all huddle up while Cade casts Tiny Hut. Lotty starts pumping out Cure Wounds. Once Cade is finished with the hut, he drops his owlbear form and we all trundle inside for a short rest. Berrik is sad to see his enormous dragon form go, silently vowing to find a scroll so he can learn the True Polymorph spell. Time to make a plan for the last leg of the journey back to the hideout.
Once the short rest finishes, we get moving. Flynn enters his unshackled form and casts Animal Shapes on everyone but Null and Lotty. The group will fly to the hideout as a parliament of snowy owls, while Null and Lotty follow in their usual forms (airborne, but invisible). The trip is an uneventful 30 minutes.
The group lands on a shadowy outcropping just outside the door they left through. They drop their illusions and animal forms as Null knocks on the door. Latharial, who immediately recalls the passphrase without issue, asks "Where do we roam?'
"Wherever the wind blows, baby" replies Null.
The door creaks open and the group stares down a dozen resistance fighters with crossbows at the ready. As before, everyone coming from outside must get stabbed with a syringe of anti-shapechanger compound. L tries to be chivalrous and whisks Null away from the unnecessary jab, while Null voluntarily drops back into her base form as a show of good faith. For everyone else, the jabs hurt, but they've been through worse. We're in.
As the wounded resistance fighters are shuffled off to recover from their ordeal, L invites the Ashen Company to follow her. After a few meandering minutes walking through the dark complex, they arrive in a chamber with a large map on a central table. Time for a debrief.
Latharial asks the group how it went. Well, we encountered 3 cultists who summoned three dragons and then turned into 3 ghosts, causing enough of a ruckus to draw the attention of 3 remorhazs. Dragons, huh? L's not sure why so many dragons would be involved. Null blurts out that the resistance fighters were ill-prepared for their task - they would have died without Ashen Company. L retorts that she has to go war with the army she has - the last 7 years have been hard but the resistance fighters she has are passionate enough about their cause to give them an edge sometimes. Null is in disbelief that her love would so easily send her people to their deaths. The resistance agents only had 1 sneak attack die, how could they have withstood 3 ancient dragons? L was not ready for this level of criticism - The Lady of Uud leaves the room, clearly upset.
Null isn't sure what to do - normally she would follow L and apologize, but this conflict feels a little deeper. The drama has heightened Lotty's impatience. She wants to see her family as soon as possible and so leaves to talk to the lady. Flynn, as usual, follows Lotty. Lotty finds L on a bench overlooking the pit, clearly distressed. As Lotty hops up to sit next to her, Latharial unloads about 7 years of stress.
"We are so close to losing it all every single day". For 7 years, L has been doing her best to keep the resistance above water under impossible circumstances. She alone has carried the load of keeping as many people alive as she can with increasingly limited personnel and resources. She knows that people have died and will die in service of the resistance and she struggles every day to convince herself that it's not her fault.
Lotty comforts her patron. She is compassionate, noting that the Ashen Company has no idea what L and the resistance have been through in the past 7 years. It's clear they've suffered immensely, but it's also equally clear that the resistance would have long since since lost the war if not for L's leadership. Lotty also notes that while the Ashen Company may not be caught up on what's happened on Ios, they have gone through other things themselves. At the end of it all, we are here to help each other, even if we may stumble as we get our bearings. Latharial seems calmer now, and hopefully comforted. She likens Lotty to Remmi, which takes Lotty by surprise. The only thing Lotty knows them to have in common is investment in the security of Sierrona.
Lotty asks the lady for two favours: An update on her family, and the boon of any spare pen and paper the resistance may have lying around. L relays that Ella will arrive tomorrow, and that Lotty is welcome to raid the stationary stores in a nearby closet. As Lotty directs Flynn to load up on paper, Latharial takes her leave.
Lotty and Flynn return to the rest of the Ashen Company, who are still hanging around the large table. Null, who has decided that she was too harsh, is gonna attempt to apologize to her girl. She requests that someone with a spare 9th level cast Greater Restoration on her - she's been feeling strangely weak and achey since the End of All Things and predicts she'll have to get on her knees to beg Latharial's forgiveness. Berrik acquiesces, on the condition that he never has to hear about why Null needs to kneel ever again. Fine with her! Null feels 23 years old again. Now that we're on the topic of restoring people to their former selves, the gang wonder if we should deal with our other afflictions? We've all been trying to ignore our gleaming Daylight teeth, but it would be nice to not have to deal with them should we need to keep a low profile in the coming battles. Cade offers Greater Restorations, but Lotty has a different idea. She tinkers with her tools until she makes a pair of specialized pliers - the gnome intends to rip out her own tooth and keep it as permanent light source. Hardcore! After the deed is done (one medicine check later - from Cade?), Lotty triumphantly pockets her ruined tooth and breaks out in a bloody grin. Her friends heal her up. The rest of the party's shiny teeth are dealt with in short order, but for some reason everyone else chooses Greater Restoration instead of back alley dental surgery.
A resistance agent enters the space, having been directed to show the Ashen Company to their room. We'd kind of been resigned to sleep here, but okay! We follow through the winding complex until we reach a large chamber. All things considered, these lodgings are generous - three whole beds, a pile of blankets and various amenities. Flynn, however, is too good for this and will instead spend the night in a place more befitting his station - the throne. As things seem to be winding down for the night, Null decides to go find Latharial. She doesn't want her to go to bed angry. Lotty tries to reassure a nervous Null, telling her to just give L that look she does and remember to brush her hair before she comes back. As Null trundles off, she is confused - what look?!?
Silas takes a few minutes to roam the halls, filling them with song. His lyrics weave an inspiring narrative of resilience and strength in the face of adversity - he hopes to boost the morale of the resistance. Unfortunately, he neglected to check the time before doing this so his performance gets mixed reviews from a bunch of sleepyheads. He eventually returns to AC Central and falls asleep in the pile of blankets.
Lotty and Cade have a bit of a heart to heart. Lotty asks her friend for goodberries in various colours, which he happily obliges. The towering warforged then reaches out to cast Regenerate on his friend, bringing back her missing tooth (plus some others she had lost along her travels). Cade then moves to the centre of the room and shuts down for the night. Lotty confides to Berrik her intentions for the night. He is too sleepy to join her, but helps her get set up before he too passes out in the pile of blankets. Lotty gets to work mashing up the goodberries into colour-coded inks. She will need these distinctions as she gets ready to pull an all-nighter transcribing the secrets of resurrection she learned from Eyeball.
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Meanwhile, Null finds herself at what she thinks is L's door. She asks for privacy from the nearby guard, who mockingly obliges. A knock reveals that L is inside, so Null proceeds to begin a somewhat rambling apology through the door.
She's sincere, as she always is, but definitely not succinct. She apologizes for being thoughtless. She needs to remember that 7 years have passed. They are different people now, and it will take some work to get to know each other again. And not that a reason is a valid excuse, but Null has never known a Latharial without options, without an army at her back, without the resources necessary to avoid hard choices. Null was stupid to even consider doubting her efforts - L is the compassionate and thoughtful and brilliant. She's the best leader and patron Null could have ever asked for, and not just because she lets Null see her naked sometimes. Null hopes L can find a way to forgive her...
Suddenly, Latharial's door creaks open - Null must have leaned too hard on it. She peers inside and sees an exhausted Latharial passed out in a chair at her desk, various important papers scattered beneath her fiery hair. Null skulks in, not wanting to wake her. Not knowing what part L feel asleep at, Null writes down her apology in the form of a letter and leaves it on the desk near her face. Null then sneakily makes her love as comfortable as possible in her current position without waking her - a pillow beneath her head and behind the small of her back, a warm blanket wrapped around her shoulders, drool gently dabbed away from her slightly open mouth. With that, Null shuffles out the room and back to AC Central.
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Lotty clocks Null coming in a little while later. The changeling is discouraged she couldn't communicate with L the way she wanted to, but still feels that apologizing was the right call. She bids goodnight to Lotty before passing out in one of the nearby beds.
Lotty spends hours transcribing the forbidden knowledge in her head, the penultimate gift from the cosmically wayward subject of The Police's 1983 hit "Every Breath You Take". After some time, she blearily blinks and sees the illusory form of Remmi sitting across from her. Lotty wonders "Why would I think of you?"
Remmi is here to comfort her, to remind her not to feel guilty for a moment. They chat and trade the usual barbs, but inevitably settle on a quiet goodbye and a wish for Sierrona's future. As Remmi disappears with her next exhausted blink, Lotty decides to finish up her work and get some rest. She packs up her notes and sits down at Cade's feet, leaning back against his sturdy legs. Sleep comes quickly.
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After some time, Cade's recovery cycle ends and he wakes, though silently and not moving so as to let Lotty rest. He notices that Null is sleeping restlessly, clearly struggling with some kind of nightmare. She has unconsciously taken the form of a handsome elf wizard he's never seen before. He is puzzled, but ultimately lets her ride it out. By the time everyone wakes around 7 am, she is back in her changeling form.
Cade goes over to ask about her dreams and the rest of the gang congregates. (Lotty notices a pool of oily sludge left behind where Cade spent the night). Null is initially reluctant to tell her friends about her nightmare where every necromantic thing she's ever done played like a creepy looping fancam that was narrated by Azher's praise, but she ultimately spills once Cade tells her about the handsome elf wizard. After reassuring Silas that he is, of course, more handsome than young Azher, Null tell her friends that she feel cursed to carry Azher's presence with her forever. The creepy powers she has came from him, but every time she uses them (even if it's to save a life) she feels pulled towards a familiar darkness. However if she doesn't use these powers, she risks letting down the cause and becoming a liability to her friends. She worries that she's haunted or possessed, despite Azher being long since dead. Silas casts Divine Sense and picks up nothing from Null. He assures his friend that she is only herself, but Null is still rattled and wonder if herself is just inherently evil. The rest of the Ashen Company and honestly any accredited therapists hiding nearby can see that Null's mind is burdened by trauma, but our girl simply doesn't have the capacity right now to cope with a problem that can't be dispelled or killed. Eventually the gang settles Null down and we all get ready to go for breakfast in the main hall.
Silas, Berrik, Flynn and Null go ahead, while Lotty and Cade stay behind to talk. The warforged druid comes clean to his closest friend in the world, showing her what's been afflicting him. He cracks open his chest plate, moving vines out of the way to give Lotty a clearer view. His core is barely intact and malfunctioning - his innards are suffering from a blight of sorts. The only thing keeping him together internally are the living plants inside of him. He reveals that his mysterious white vials, the ones he's been surreptitiously drinking, are actually refined liquid exaltium. This is what's been keeping him going. He makes it clear to Lotty that he's on borrowed time, hopefully enough time for him to help the rest of the Ashen Company finish the mission at hand. Lotty takes it all in for a moment, considering, before stubbornly telling Cade that they will actually find a way around this. He's not dying, because we won't let him. We'll figure it out.
Cade and Lotty eventually join the rest of the Ashen Company at a breakfast table in the main hall. Everyone in sight is sipping ale and eating porridge. We barely exchange greetings before an all-too-familiar face appears across the table - Aunt Ella is here, alive.
