Sallah says, "Yes, the Nexus is not currently perturbed by intrusions, and I have convinced it that you are no threat. Stride into the hallway with purpose and it will lead you to the portal to Ditko street. I worry for you facing Gwynn now...Gracie, is it? I recognize your armor and sword from the books kept here, but even Arthur had difficulty with Gwyn at times. And now...Gwyn is a creature of Winter. His power will have begun to wax now that the year fades away. Even in this night his power will have grown."
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Gwyn strokes his mustache, thumb down one side, fingers down the other, subconciously straightening it while he contemplates. "I accept your deal, Good Knight, with the caveats that you must return to the mortal realm with the spear by an hour before dawn. Otherwise I would forfeit the boons that this night grants. If you have not returned to this spot by an hour before dawn, I shall enter the Nexus myself. And take care, for I am not the worst thing that seeks the spear. You will find that its head is a bronze kite, flat, with no crossbar. A staff of ash inscribed with runes."
Sandstone, on the other hand, takes no time to consider her response, "I'm not here to fight you nor no one else. I am here to find what is in there. If you want to come to some sort of understanding, put terms on the table."
"Gracie...," Oswald pauses to find the words. "...good luck. I'll be rooting for you."
"If I don't go out to meet him, he'll come in here," Grace tells Sallah. "The whole point was to keep him out of the Nexus. We've done that. Now I've got to go keep my word." She shrugs at Eldritch. "I said he'll have to take it from me. We didn't agree specifically to a one on one match, but that'll be what he wants. I'd welcome folks to come keep an eye on things at least so he doesn't cheat. But I won't ask any of you to walk into danger either. This was my deal and I'll take care of it either wya."
When all is resolved, Gracie will will herself to the exit.
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Eldritch marks his place in the tome. He was reading the fourth witness account from the Order of Light of when Lady Violet Pennyworth held ownership of the Nerian Nexus. This one was very pertinent, because the Master Mage used a ritual to key two additional Order members to the Nexus.
He stands up, adjusts his Amulet of the Seraphim, and follows Gracie outside. He wondered when or if Gracie would accept the mantra of all for one, and one for all. Maybe after a 100 demonstrations she won't 'not ask' to accompany her into danger.
Oswald watches as Eldritch wordlessly walks behind Gracie. He pats the dust and dirt off of himself and runs after the two. Shirtlessly, green paint nearly faded off his body, he places a reassuring hand on the Knight's shoulder. "There's no way we're gonna let our teammate go it alone. We've got your back, Gracie."
Gracie finds herself at the same front door through which you all entered the Nexus. The door opens onto a crisp early morning. The streets have cleared of Halloween revelers. A few people move about blocks away, but no one nearby. A massive fey god warrior pacing about on a silvery white horse, surrounded by a pack of beautiful red hounds who stir fitfully in the pre-dawn light will do that to a neighborhood.
Gwyn sits astride his horse, looking somewhat different from earlier in the evening. He is shirtless, and his muscles gleam, his flesh pale in the glow of streetlights. His chest is marred only by the strap of a quiver worn on his back. He wears a helm, and it isn't clear if the antlers are part of the helmet or attached to his head. He wields a fairly short sword with a wide blade, a blade for stabbing, not slashing, not a horseman's blade. A great bow is strapped to the saddle in easy reach.
The hounds stir at your arrival, but a quick look from Gwyn silences them.
He bows his head in a gesture from another time. "Good Knight, you honor your commitment, as I knew you would. You said that I should take the spear from you if I could."
Before leaving, Grace nods silent thanks to her teammates and steps through.
As she goes through, Calesvol shimmers into life in her hand as she grips Slake with the other. She crosses the blade over the spear, as though to protect it.
She nods at Gwyn. "I plan to keep holding onto it though."
She does not know whether to expect a physical assault or a magical attack--if either--from Gwyn, but has the edge of the Sword's magic nullifying ability at top of mind in case he tries something more magically treacherous first.
Eldritch follows Gracie out the front door of the brownstone front of the Nerian Nexus. He air walks to the porch of the next door neighbor. He folds his arms across his chest hiding his hands, so he could potentially start casting spells before someone notices.
Oswald falls in line behind Eldritch. As he crosses the threshold out onto Ditko Street, tiny tendrils of inky blackness arise from each footstep. Fibers of nightmare swarm his body and enshroud him in his blurred form. Oz perches on the stoop banister with his elongated arms dangling over the shrubs below.
"You've got this, Knight. We believe in you."
Before Gracie steps out, Cesarina places a plam on her forehead, and says a short prayer, adapted from ancient prayers for soldiers on the eve of battle.
That done, she adds on something a bit more personal.
"Just...be careful, Gracie. If it comes to it, the Spear is far less important than your life. You can do far more good in your life than that Fey could do harm, I'm sure of it."
Gwyn subtly flexes muscles, and his horse steps toward Gracie.
A wave of primal panic pushes against Gracie's mind.
Grace nods in thanks to her friends as they show their support for her. Buoyed by their presence, she shrugs off Gwyn's posturing.
"Come, you want a hunt? Let's go."
She takes a step back, and then springs, her armor joints propelling her upward to the top of the brownstone. Allowing her sword to surge into a glow, she says,
"You might think this is your night, Hunter, but my light shines even in the darkest hours."
His thighs flex almost imperceptibly and his horse snorts as it launches itself into the air. Gwyn hefts a spear of his own, this one with an ash haft and bronze blade.
Grace firms her footing on the roof, taking time as though she is concerned about her positioning, and focuses on keeping up her guard.
While she considers attacking, she doesn't want to be the the one to make the first blow in this encounter. She'd rather tire him out or bore him before engaging.
"Are you actually gonna try to take this thing from me or is this all just a dance?"
"You say that as though there is something wrong with a dance? But if you insist on thwarting my delight."
The magnificent steed rears up on his hind legs and the faint light of dawn runs its fingers over the blade of the spear in Gwyn's strong hand. Gwyn's arm moves faster than thought and the spear flies.
You might read in school about Apollo's deadly arrows or the lightning bolts of Zeus, but it is something else to be in the presence of such ancient power.
Gracie is experienced in the use of her armor to deflect attacks, and the spear glances off of her breastplate and clatters to the rooftop.
Gracie hefts Calesvol while keeping Slake close, the thrum of the surrounding heartbeats in her mind pounding out a battle rhythm. Leaping onto a higher roof ridge, she points her blade at Gwyn's horse. He's doubtless a smart fey animal, but nonetheless possibly blinding it might make him harder to control.
"Can't even hold onto your own spear, better not even try for this one, lest Dracula comes back for it. He'd have it from you in a trice."
I mean, he doesn't know they defeated Vlad.
"Ah, the hind has Teeth! She fights."
His nose lifts skyward and he howls. The air around the rooftop cracks like the first crash of thunder, but instead of the the rolling rumble, the answer is the baying of hounds. One might expect a ring around Gracie, but instead the hounds form a U around her, with Gwyn at the base of the U, leaving plenty of room for the Good Knight to escape.
One of the hounds grabs Gwyn's spear and returns it to him.
"Gracie, ignore the hounds. If they touch you, then we get to help. The challenge is between you and Gwyn." Eldritch calls out as a warning to the fey.
"Yeah, if you get your pack, I get mine. And hinds don't have teeth. They have antlers." She references Gwyn's own headdress, perhaps suggesting he is her quarry.
"See Spot" the blurred shadow monster mumbles as he watches the hound leap to the rooftop. The hound leaps off the roof, spear in tow. "See Spot run." Oz drops his deceptively massive form off of the banister and sinks into the ground. At Gracie's mention of teeth, Oz does his best Jaws impersonation as shadowed claws explode out of the asphalt and clamp down on the spear-retriever. "SEE SPOT GET TORN APART!"
Oz moves from hound to hound, slashing and gouging at them in violently indescribable ways.
Gwyn laugh a deep rattle, "Says a girl who has never been bitten by a deer..."
Oz's shadows tear through the hounds, who yelp and squeal like any dog would as they are shredded.
Gracie can see that Gwyn really wants a chase. What she wonders is, is he prioritizing the chase of her even over the spear? Risk losing it if he gets caught up in catching her? She's not exactly sneaky or tricky, but she remembers one of her earliest encounters with the tricksy Artful Codger. She begins to wonder if she can get him to get so wrapped up in following her that she can "lose" the spear on the way and have him not immediately realize it? On the other hand, she knows Gwyn is a hunter. If she begins to move, she may only put him into a more powerful position.
She wishes she could share the idea with the others but she hadn't thought of it prior, and sadly telepathy is not in the knight's bailiwick.
"Aw, if you're so scared of my 'teeth' Gwyn, I'll happily keep this and you can go home."
She leaps over to the next roof, using the pulsations Slake is sending her to ensure she is not getting too close to other living people as she moves.
Her intent is, over the next few moments, to leap down Ditko toward Riverside Park and give him the chase he wants. He may even get overconfident, seeing her lead him to an area that has more trees and wilderness. She is only hoping that she can take advantages of that distract him once she gets there to cache the spear (perhaps either in the Rose Garden, which as a botanist she has visited to get samples for the Botanical Garden in Liberty Park, or the river). She is hoping that, it nearly being dawn, most parties in the park have dispersed by now.
Gwyn allows the hound to hold the spear in it's mouth, and Oz shadow-sharks that hound, dropping the spear to the roof top.
Gwyn draws his bow and nocks an arrow, releasing it at Gracie.
"Arrows don't work so well on knights, do they?" Grace moves a little but further and then focuses her blade outward. The air faintly ripples in a cone as she projects her sword's anti-magic capabilities (60 ft cone, concentration, nullify magic descriptor, selective to exclude her allies). She hopes to block any magical effects coming at her from Gwyn's direction.
"Ha! Arrows worked so well on knights that the followers of the Nazarene banned them in battle! Ppt, cowards! But of course your companion would know all about that. Grace...grace...your name means that you have the favor of the gods whether you have earned it or not. And certainly you are not earning my favor now. Where is the fun you promised me? where is the chase?...I have waited all night here while you had your games inside. And now you just want fight. I am deflated. And now you turn the power of the sword in my direction. The power of your Faith. Faith. You are a child in Faith. I am as old as your Faith, as old as the things you place your Faith in. The sword is powered by your own virtues, Good Knight, and so you show yourself to be virtuous indeed. But there are powers older than this Faith, this Virtue. You drive me to call upon those powers."
He turns his head slowly from side to side, the cool roving gaze of a bird of prey, hawk, or owl, perhaps. As his gaze lights upon various houses in the row, an otherworldly keening rises from them.
Then his gaze comes back to meet that of Grace as she focuses the power of the sword in his direction.
"That sound you hear is the sound of the dead, Gracie. While I am loathe to turn your hand with such maneuvers, I truly must have that spear. You cannot understand, perhaps, because, like your name, you were given that sword unearned. Since then, you have truly proven worthy of it, but at first, you must admit, it was given to you on...Faith. But I am distracting myself. The dead, Gracie. You have a choice to make. Surely you know that I am a guide to the dead. That I lead them, not so many these days, but still some who follow the old ways, I lead them to their reward. But tonight, tonight they are allowed to roam free, to return to the places they have known. And this land is old. There are those who visit it who followed whale and seal across the ice, who chased elk and sloth and mammoth, who hunted deer and hare, who hunted the indigenous peoples and traitors and nazi collaborators. And all of them come to me to lead them back for a night, this night, when the borders between worlds are narrow. And they are here, Gracie. And they are hungry. Give me the spear now, and I will call them. They will leave alone Tara, who wants to tell her friends about her trick or treating when she returns to school. They will not trouble Pankaj, who only moved in a week ago and was confused by the appearance of a new house this night he did not recognize. And so many others..."
where is the chase?...I have waited all night here while you had your games inside. And now you just want fight
Grace shouts from her position. "You asking me to break my word, Gwyn? You know I can't do that! Our agreement was that you got the spear only if you could take it from me! If I give to you, that makes us both oathbreakers! So give up or shut up and keep moving! Grace's own words settle into her mind as she prepares to jump. If I throw it to someone else and he tries to take it from them... then would he then still be in violation of our agreement? Would he care? Would that endanger my friends?
She leaps another 60 feet, still making her way toward Riverside Park, then turns to maintains concentration on her cone of anti-magic, aimed in Gwyn's direction to deflect any magical effects he sends in her direction.
The horse prances a bit before lurching forward. Gracie is four houses down now, and the horse scrabbles over the rooftops with ease. Gwyn nocks another arrow and lets it fly, but it misses widely, breaking some expensive solar shingles on a nearby house.
In the houses around them, Oz, Max, and Cesarina hear a crash, a scream, a wailing.
Eldritch attempts to identify which house and floor are the source of the wailing scream.
Max focuses his senses away from the confrontation to the closer disturbances. In one of the townhouses, on the second floor, he senses something with his mage sight. A frosty presence, wailing a call of death, and beneath it, the scream of a child.
Through a dormer window on the third floor, likely an attic converted to a bedroom, the magic within glows faintly green.
Eldritch says to Cesarina and Oz, "people are in trouble. Let me open a Powerful Portal of Portheus to where we need to go." He opens a glowing portal in front of him and floats through and into the second floor of that townhouse.
Eldritch finds himself in the unicorn themed bedroom of a youngling who is probably 6 or 7. They have short brown black hair and violet pajamas that match a streak dyed in their hair. The room contains the sorts of things you would expect. A lifted bed with a play area underneath. A unicorn lamp with glowing horn acting as a nightlight, casting the room into a strange dreamglow. Little Ponies are frozen in some sort of tableau where they were left behind at bedtime. A small desk/art table is littered with Halloween candy, a good score despite the trouble earlier.
All of that is normal enough, but the kid is standing in their tall bed screaming, and also screaming is a semi-transparent figure dressed like a character from Hamilton. He wears a blue wool regimental coat. His lower jaw is missing as though it caught a bullet. Nonetheless, he is screaming a gurgling scream with undertones of moan. He holds a musket and at his waist are two cross braced pistols, so he must have been an officer or a skilled looter in his day.
Eldritch steps into the child's bedroon backlit by the portal behind him, which collaspes. As he thought, spirits on All Hallow's Eve. "Be bound by the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak" he commands while red ribbons snake out from his red-rune-surrounded, gesticulating hands toward the ghost.
With the spirit secure, he pushes out the bedroom door toward the stairs toward the 3rd floor where that other magical glow was. "Let's go. You don't belong in here." He winks at the child when he leaves the bedroom.
The Crimson Bands wrap around the colonial spirit, bringing him in tow.
Oz skitters his way behind Eldritch, keeping low and to the ground very much like his shadow. As the wizard makes quick work of the spirit and secures the child, the horrid shape continues its insectile dash through the walls, searching for signs of trouble.
Eldritch heads upstairs to the third floor to determine where the second source of magic which glows faintly green.
Seeing movement from where her team waited, she presumes they are addressing whatever was the result of the strange wailing Gwyn evoked. Grace continues her movement, this time jumping back down into the street as she heads southward, maintaining her sword-ward as she goes.
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Gwyn grows impatient. He may be immortal, but he doesn't seem to be able to cope with this prey who is so willing to fight back.
His horse charges toward Gracie, easily closing the gap between them, but rather than remain horsed, he dismounts. The horse disappears in a gust of wind and a blood colored whirlwind, leaving only Gwyn with a long hunting knife, single edged, ancient looking.
"I am sorry to waste the chase, Good Knight. Usually I would treasure the chase as much as the prize. But tonight I must have the prize."
The power of Calesvol tears at Gwyn's form. It pushes magic away, and he is a creature of magic and flesh. The dispelling field pushes away some of the mist and darkness that surrounds the Master of the Hunt, leaving only the lean magnificence of the man he must have been before the Fey drew him in.
His knife meets the blade of Calesvol with a ring of meteor steel and ancient iron. Gwyn smiles, "Your technique has improved! I am impressed. Let us engage more directly. Come on, Grace, fight back..."
"Go and run, stay and fight... Make up your ruddy mind!"
She brandishes Calesvol aloft, as though to swing... But its light maintains its antimagical field as she instead attempts to stab at him with Slake, hoping the throb of his heartbeat helps guide her aim.
Gywn turns Slake aside easily, as if he somehow knows where the tip of the spear will be.
As Gracie limps away, he moves behind her, not with supernatural speed, but only with the speed of a man accustomed to running down prey. The dispelling field from Calesvol continues to push away the shadows that usually enshroud him. He sheathes his hunting knife, using only his hands. He grasps at Slake.
Cesarina runs after Eldritch and Oz, feeling vulnerable. She hasn't felt so very...normal, in a while. The comforting Light within her being all but gone was disconcerting.
Nevertheless, she follows along. If nothing else, she can act as any good samaritan would, helping people.
At the sight of the ghost, she quirks an eyebrow.
"I suppose an exorcism would be in need right about now?"
Characters with the Ritualist advantage can perform magical rituals. They are similar to inventions: one-time powers requiring some time and effort to set up.
For rituals, substitute the Expertise: Magic skill for both the design and construction checks. The design portion of the ritual takes 4 hours per Character point of the ritual’s cost (pouring over ancient scrolls and grimoires, drawing diagrams, casting horoscopes, meditating, consulting spirit-guides, and so forth). The performance of the actual ritual takes 10 minutes per point of the ritual’s cost. So a ritual costing 10 Character points takes 40 hours to research and 100 minutes to perform. As with inventing, the ritual is good for one scene. Failing the research check means the ritual isn’t usable and three or more degrees of failure results in a mishap (at the GM’s discretion).
“Jury-rigging” a ritual has the same effects as for an invention. Spending a Victory point allows the ritualist to skip the design check and perform the ritual in a number of rounds equal to its cost. An Expertise: Magic check against a DC equal of (15 + the ritual’s cost) is needed to successfully perform the ritual. Failure means the ritual does not work and the time and effort is wasted.