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Episode 2: The Shadow Will Flood

Last time, you began on the slopes of Mt Atria. A day short of the mountain’s peak on a mission accompanying the Antiqua (the greatest clerics of Reliquiae) as they make pilgrimage to the Virtuous. Huddled around two small campfires, the party, along with Morgan (a Web agent sent to work alongside you) began to rouse themselves as the sun rose.
Raidion had woken up profoundly miffed and suspicious of the unknown person filling his pack with Kelnys’ hand-whittled spoons…it was Dolly.
As the Antiqua stirred, Raidion told Gronoth (dwarven cleric of Ullin) to hurry along his fellows. When Gronoth urged a little patience, Raidion left the group again in a huff and gazed down toward the base of the mountain where the Festival of Benediction was being prepared.
You watched as the Antiqua completed a religious ceremony in which Runa (a cleric of the Orc goddess Nor’Va) reluctantly read from The Remnants (the sacred text of Reliquiae). Sensing her nerves, Dolly and I applauded as the orc finished her reading to the displeasure of Barabasque (the elven cleric of the goddess Theolon). Raidion attempted to smooth things over and ended up claiming to be the leader of the group, a statement Morgan took issue with.
You began the climb. Barabasque breaking into terrible, insistent song as Gronoth struggled to maintain his composure ruminating with Dolly on the nature of truth and lies. I watched as the Kobold cleric attempted to ingratiate themselves with their fellows, even going so far as to be given a name. Something unheard of in kobold culture.
Up at the head of the party, Endellion, Kelnys and Morgan bonded over a shared love of trees during which Morgan was persuaded to attempt to climb a nearby oak before face-planting into the trunk.
As the climb continued, you encountered a quizzical bear before approaching and entering a thick cloud line. Vision obscured, dampness on your skin, you became disoriented and began to surround the Antiqua should things take a turn for the worse.
They did.
Emerging from the cloud line, you found yourselves on a darkened plateau. The ground dead around your feet; plant life decayed. And six wolves emerged stricken with some kind of necrotic blight, and attacked. Shielding the Antiqua, you fought against these creatures. Morgan falling as Gronoth argued for his fellow clerics to intercede, he was shouted down. Eventually ignoring his contemporaries, Gronoth cast Mass Healing Word, but the spell fizzled in his hand. All of the Antiqua followed suit. All of their spells failing. Their magic somehow not working here on this darkened plateau above the cloud line.
Then, eventually, Gronoth, Carvilious (the dragonborn cleric of Aurum), and Roona leapt into combat and with their limited help, you destroyed the last of the beasts.
As the battle ended, it dawned on the clerics what this failure of divine magic might mean: that the divine themselves were in danger, or perhaps even worse.
You rushed up a great staircase towards a blackened palace, colors streaking the sky above it, and found the lifeless body of Aurum, dragonborn god of Justice.
And that’s where we are now, Carvilius, still cradling the body of his god. You see her centering power again in her hand. This looks to be a more powerful spell, in fact she’s trying to cast Revivify (a spell that can bring people back from the dead). She pushes it into the body of the god and you see her fingers, clawed hands, her scales glowing briefly with divine light and then it retracts into the hand. All of the clerics, all of the Antiqua are moving in, trying to put magic into this lifeless body.
You look up and you see these familiar colors that are streaking across the sky and you take in the fact that you are on a raised plaza and that there are great structures all around you, but crumbled, decaying. Rather than the decay that you saw at Alvelion (the divine city where the gods once lived and now abandoned), that feels as if the city is crumbling, this feels as if exploded. As if there was a sudden rush of something which destroyed the stones. From your vantage point, you can see nine towers that surround three larger buildings, all of them crumbling, all of them decaying.
There’s a stillness on the plaza. Gronoth says,
“The others…”
You watch as it dawns on each of these clerics that they need to find their gods and they start running.
You see next to the plaza, there is a single tower to your left. Then there’s a raised walkway above the peak, which goes away to your right, and that feeds off to two separate towers. They go to the left and right as you go along this walkway. Gronoth runs up towards the one on the left and Runa pushes past everybody and you see her shoulder-charge the fractured wooden door that sits at the base of this tower.

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