Kal's shield buckles beneath the phoenix's fury, but that just urges him on to match it, striking home with a stunning warcry!
Arfi hits the elemental with a blast, and it wobbles unsteadily for a moment before its flames surge, healing itself! Kalli stabs it again, leaving it shaken. The Stranger takes down the scamp with a javelin strike, then shifts his aim to the phoenix and strikes it as well. This time, the creature shrieks and crumbles to ash!
The lone remaining fire scamp bites futilely at Kalli, the warrior blocking its attacks.
You focus your efforts on the scamp and quickly take it out. The creatures' essences re-infuse the Phoenix's Torch, setting it ablaze!
"Excellent. Now we just need to light the other torches!" Oinos exclaims. "Does anyone need healing?"
Arfi-em-khet bows to the defeated Phoenix, as the flames ignite.
Felt wrong fighting such a historically honorable bird.
The kholo seems healthy.
"Honorable?" Kal questions, holding up the fresh blister on his forearm. "If you say so."
Oinos patches up the Stranger.
By the time you have finished lighting the torches, the priests and the legislators have mended their differences. Before the Phoenix Torch, a bed of hot coals smolders, as Pyrekeeper Cymene finishes setting up braziers of incense at each of its corners. Several of the temple’s priests are practicing notes on their double-reeded auloi and pan flutes, the slightly discordant music echoing over the plaza. The scent of smoke hangs in the air.
Cymene nods as you approach. “We’ve prepared the site for the ceremony,” she says, sweat glistening on her forehead from the heat. “We’re ready to begin whenever you are.”
The Rite of Cleansing Flame involves an ancient firewalking tradition in which the participants must perform a dance over hot coals while casting. Each primary and secondary caster must attempt a DC 18 Acrobatics or Performance check to gracefully dance over the coals, or a DC 17 Fortitude save to withstand the heat, upon beginning the ritual; NPC secondary casters, if involved, automatically succeed (but not critically succeed).
Critical Success: You perform the firewalking perfectly, gaining a +2 status bonus to your skill check for the ritual.
Success: As critical success, but you gain a +1 status bonus.
Failure: You gain no bonus or penalty and take 2d6 fire damage (DC 17 basic Reflex save).
Critical Failure: You take a -1 penalty to your skill check for the ritual and take 3d6 fire damage (DC 17 basic Reflex save).
RITE OF CLEANSING FLAME RITUAL 2
RARE CONSECRATION FIRE
Cast 8 hours; Cost rare incense worth 300 gp and 1 Mythic Point from the primary caster; Secondary Casters 3
Primary Check DC 20 Religion or Occultism; Secondary Checks DC 18 Acrobatics, Nature, or Performance
Area The city-state of Pol-Bailax
Duration instantaneous
Drawing on the latent power suffused within Pol-Bailax by its phoenix patron, you and the secondary casters send an ephemeral rush of cleansing energy through the city. Those within the area when the ritual successfully concludes are immediately cured of all detrimental emotion and mental effects; affected creatures cease any current hostilities as though they’d failed a save against calm, though this doesn’t control their future actions.
Critical Success: The ritual’s power lingers within its casters, granting them a +1 status bonus against emotion and mental effects for 1 month.
Success: The ritual succeeds.
Failure: The ritual has its intended effect, but alters its casters’ forms as they fail to contain the phoenix’s power. All casters develop a feature reminiscent of a phoenix, such as feathers, glowing red eyes, or talons, and gain weakness 5 to cold and unholy. This is a curse effect.
Critical Failure: As failure, but each caster must succeed at a DC 17 Fortitude save or be permanently drained 1 for as long as they have the phoenix features.
|
The Stranger takes the lead on the ritual after everything is said and done. Pouring some of his own mythic potential into the rite and performing the firewalk. The entire affair is not simply done with the firewalk and it must be done several times over the course of the channeled ritual and by the end his thin fur is slick with sweat from the exertion.
Initiating the Rite:
Perform the Rite (Secondary Caster):
The desert kholo breathes freely the heat.
As the last ritual chant and musical notes fade, the ground of the acropolis trembles. The flames in the braziers flare, sending a wave of fire washing over the plaza. This fire doesn’t burn the creatures in its path, however, but carries only a gentle heat that imparts a sense of peace and camaraderie.
The feather-like flames spread out over the city below, and the distant shouts and sounds of battle falter, then stop. For a moment, the silhouette of a phoenix, outlined in glimmering smoke, appears in the sky above Pol-Bailax, and as it dissipates, a calm falls over the city.
After the ritual, the cyclops myth-speakers examine you, having recognized your mythic powers. The myth-speakers are fascinated by this development, barraging you with questions about the circumstances surrounding your mythic ascension and how you feel. They’re eager to revitalize myth-speaking and view you as a fortuitous opportunity.
The cyclopes also note something troubling, however: your mythic power is developing at a dangerous rate—far beyond the steady growth expected in a hero-god. The giants warn that this exceeds what your mortal bodies can handle. If the growth continues unchecked, your mythic power will become uncontrollable and escape by any means possible, eventually immolating you from the inside out. You can rest for now, but you need to find some way to stabilize your mythic power before it’s too late.
In the aftermath of the chaos, Pol-Bailax begins patching itself together. As you descend from the acropolis, you see bewildered citizens coming out of their fugue and making amends to the neighbors
they’d been fighting. The drasikons express their utmost gratitude to you for returning peace to the city, offering you rewards from the city treasury in thanks, a total of 75 gp.
Arfi grunts at the predictable prediction purposed by the cyclops.
Predictable. We got the cheap shit...
Chapter 4: Riddle of Immortality
Your critical contributions in saving Bailax—from aiding civilians to performing a ritual that channeled a phoenix’s cleansing flame to dispel the violent urges infecting the city—has rightfully earned you praise. However, as the adrenaline fades and the celebrations abate, the mythic power roils painfully inside you, as if your bodies aren’t strong enough to withstand the supernatural forces. With each passing day, the symptoms worsen; if you can’t learn to control your mythic power, it will consume you from within.
Oinos has trouble falling into his usual indolent rest during the period following the ceremony. "We should do something!" he eagerly suggests as he dances from hoof to hoof.
"A celebratory feast! Let's invite Terpsime. Oh, and our competitors from the funeral games. And our shipmates..."
As the week goes on, the guest list grows, and when everyone settles in to eat in an agora cleared for the purpose, it seems impossible that the harried chefs and vintners will be able to keep everyone satisfied. But, despite the eager appetites of all the attendees, the wine jugs never run dry and dishes seems to refill themselves with the most savory dishes anyone has tasted. When the meal is over, there's plenty of leftovers to pack up for the city's indigent.
What's more unusual: The next day in the plaza, every olive seed that fell from the table has sprouted and shot up into a full-grow olive tree!
The Ancient Guardian appears in the libraries of Balix at all hours. The kholo having heard the Sage's Calling, is seem reading anything remotely related to hero-gods, myth-speaking and honeyed roasted peanuts...
Reading makes me hungry.
During his research, Arfi often found his next book immediately as if it knew it was next....
The mythic power within Kal continues to swell - literally! At first, overnight he's grown an inch, but by the end of the week it's a foot! The beard he'd shaved off back before the voyage has grown in thick and lush, and with every day he seems to find a new oxcart to pull or anvil to toss to prove his spreading might.
But the days grow stranger. In the hours before dawn, phantom ships can be seen chasing each other, and livestock are likewise misbehaving - a sheep becomes a goat; an ox finds itself in the attic of a home and has to be hauled down by Kal before it goes lowing on its way.
|
|
With all the havoc of the previous days behind them the Stranger realized took to assuaging the stocks of food across the city traversing out into the lands to hunt for game and helping at the dock to bring in catches.
The lands seemed strangely abundant and every day the Stranger brought back carts of haul back. The beasts were plump with meat and the fish were unusually large. One day he failed to return from his fishing duties which left the dockworkers worried. However the next day after fighting day and night he brought in large serpentine monstrosity.
Local hunters and fisherman started to speak rumors of unusually large game in the area that always seemed just out of sight when anyone paid too much attention, but they swore they were attacked though uninjured by such creatures often losing their own catches in the process.
Terpsime and most of the other competitors from the funeral games attend Oinos's feats, with one notable exception. The vexing trio of Akki, Tsemone, and Ulshuk apparently also performed several of their own minor miracles in recent days: Akki conjured waves that hurled fresh fish onto the docks, Tsemone crafted tonics said to cure the recent rage that gripped the city, and Ulshuk magically reassembled a burnt home. However, their selfish actions during the games remained at the top of the populace's minds. Bailax might have explored the three as prospective hero-gods were it not for you being clearly superior options. Rebuffed, Akki led her companions out of the city, bitterly cursing your group for upstaging them.
Two days after restoring peace in Bailax, you begin to feel strange. What at first seems like a sudden bout of indigestion quickly builds to a burst of brilliant energy that knocks over furniture and scorches nearby bystanders! Indeed, the mythic power within you is becoming dangerously unstable.
An overwhelming volume of mythic energy is more than your mortal form can contain. Unless directed toward some glorious destiny, it threatens to incinerate your body and mind.
Effect: The first time each day you would become doomed or an enemy critically succeeds on a Strike against you, your excess mythic power erupts from your body. You and any adjacent creatures take 2d8 spirit damage (DC 18 basic Fortitude). If you critically fail this saving throw, you are also drained 1. You take a penalty to the saving throw equal to the number of Mythic Points you have.
Within a week, the cyclopes seers summon you to meet atop the acropolis to assess your mythic abilities and provide advice. The cyclopes have gathered within what’s left of an open-air amphitheater. At the group’s center sits an elegantly clothed diviner, his eye surrounded by magical tattoos. He stands with the help of a staff to welcome you.
“Thank you for taking the time to speak with us,” he says in a clear, resonant voice. “I am Skorgomos, and I speak for all Bailax’s cyclopes in thanking you for your recent service. We have heard intriguing news of your abilities since returning from the island of Eupherae—abilities rarely witnessed in the past century.” He pauses in careful study for a moment before meeting the gazes of his colleagues in silent consultation and nodding approvingly. “We could sense it in the meteor that fell from the sky, and now we can sense it in you.
“Your experiences confirm our suspicions: this is an ancient power long absent from Iblydos and that we happily welcome. It is the power wielded by hero-gods. It is also the power found in legendary beasts and enchanted realms. If we’re to believe recent reports, this power is welling up elsewhere across Iblydos, too. Sometimes with terrible consequences. I see how it flows through you—mighty, yet chaotic, demanding, even dangerous.
“We cyclopes have always aided worthy mortals in becoming hero-gods. That begins with myth-speaking. It is most famously an act of divination: how a hero might unlock their divine potential. But it’s also an inoculation that helps prepare the body and mind to house the power of the gods.” Skorgomos takes a seat to deliver grim news. “Your bodies are not ready. You have captured divinity, and it is burning you from the inside—perhaps even transforming you into some unique chimera that would bring ruin to these islands.
“We have not performed a myth-speaking in years. We would do so now. Even if it is too late to guide you toward divine power, the ritual might show us how you can control it.”
"That would certainly be appreciated," Oinos thanks the cyclops. "I can barely pick up a goblet without crushing it these days."
Arfi-em-khet bows to the cyclops, as they begin instructions for their current plight.
We are honored by your wisdom.
The cyclopes work together to perform the myth-speaking. As they conduct the ritual, a cyclops rests a hand on each of you, making the threads of fate faintly visible to you both. In past ages, such threads for a would-be hero-god would stretch clearly toward some distant objective. By contrast, each of your threads are tangled and frayed in the Age of Lost Omens. Even so, the cyclopes work diligently to unravel the chaos in search of some common lead. At last, they conclude the ritual and confer before presenting their findings.
“As we suspected, myth-speaking has shown us no clear solution. However, each of your fates did pull in a common direction: the isle of Xaktilos, once controlled by Pol-Xamne. We sensed a sage, a sphinx—I assume one whose riddles hold the answers you seek, though it might be that your great trial involves slaying the creature.” Skorgomos calls for several texts from the acropolis archives and peers over them for a few minutes before adding, “The one sphinx I know of is Neshkefru. She foresaw Pol-Xamne’s downfall and once tutored heroes in a past age.”
He pauses a moment. “She is eccentric and dangerous and will certainly require payment for her services. There are few, however, who can tell you more than she.”
"A satyr is a little snack for a sphinx," Oinos frets, "But maybe our mythic power would make us tough to swallow. Do you have any stories about what sort of payment she required of heroes in the past?"
"That's okay, sphinxes are weak to being strangled if it all goes wrong, right?"
The Ancient Guardian appears to be giddy at meeting a sphinx!
I'll need new robes! A fur cut and style! I can't meet my first sphinx looking like some beach bum!
The kholo seems quite upset...