Blue Rose: Little Earthquakes

Here's last time. Below is this time. Behind us is prehistoric time. Ahead of us is wolf time. Ahem.

The party is still in a strange city, apparently 800 years in the past (theories include an illusion, a time slip, and a dream). They hear people lamenting the loss of the "frescoes," and Whirlpool asks a passerby what that means, hoping to come off like a tourist. The passerby tells him that the frescoes are pictures in the Oculon, the city's main temple (just head towards that huge building over there). Not having much of a better idea, they head thataway.

When they get there, they see that the interior of the temple has 78 spaces on the walls where the frescoes used to be. They look like they've been ripped off, perhaps by magic. Arlen looks back in time with Object Reading, and sees a man with red hair telling a group of others that everything is going to be all right, and then magically pulling the frescoes down and shrinking them somehow. They still exist, then, so that's good. These frescoes, according to the citizens, are the cornerstones of divination at the temple, and clearly very important to the Faenari.

The characters see the mists come up around them again, and they're back in the forest, but then the mists part revealing a grove with a building in it...that's odd. The building and the grove are clearly parts of separate times or realities, but that's not what captures the characters' immediate attention. There's a group of city guards standing around a fellow in robes, and he's holding a citizen against the wall with a knife.

Kisha steps forward and tries to play her "I'm a noble" card, and one of the guards, buying this, tells her in hushed tones that they're here on the orders of Queen Gretta. The man in robes grabs the other guy by the head and casts an arcanum. Dobbin, always much less subtle, tells him to stop, and the victim looks over at Dobbin and whispers "help me."

This is all a man of action like Whirlpool needs. He flings his dirk at the man in robes, which doesn't penetrate his armor, but it does get him to drop the guy he's victimizing. He tells the guards to get rid of him, and they draw swords and charge the characters. The fight is joined, and wounds are exchanged on both sides - Arlen conjures a psychic flail and lays about, felling a couple of the guards. Whirlpool attacks with trident and cold magic, and Dobbin hangs back and fires arrows (but gets a few arrows for her trouble). The man in robes summons a psychic weapon of his own and slashes at Kisha, but Kisha remains, as always, nimble and difficult to hit. As the guards flee from the characters as their health dwindles (note: if you're going to hold PCs to task for killing sentient opponents, then said opponents can't act like robots when they're fighting - at a certain point survival kicks in), the man in robes flings his hands skyward and casts another spell.

The earth begins to quake, and the building they're standing next to crumbles. Dobbin zips in and grabs the guy the man was threatening before he gets crushes, and Arlen rolls to his feet to avoid falling into a fissure in the earth, but the characters for the most part remain standing (the remaining guards run, though). Dobbin, having had about enough of this guy, shoots him in the knee with an arrow, dropping him to the ground and ending the spell.

The Faenarian citizen thanks them, and tells them that the man in robes - Delkem - is an enforcer and agent for the queen. He was trying to learn where Karshenel had taken the body of the Seer and the frescoes, but because of the characters' intervention, he wasn't able to. Karshenel, he whispers to them, has gone north up the river.

The mists rise again and the scene fades, and when they fall, the characters are in a different city, but still in the same time period. They can taste salt water in the air, which Whirlpool relishes, but Kisha is worried. They seem to be in the city of Falzanoth, and that city is fated to fall into the sea.