Xellous: the main character, a fifteen year old human played by Ryan. He's a genius enchanter and a celestial knight. He was a knight of the realm of Broadnough, but with the death of King Varlur and the traitorous Komas there's really no one to hold him to that vow anymore. He and his amnesiac wife Kora had decided they were going to go back to see Threen, Kora's mother.
Telos: a hero from another planet, another time. He had contacted some elves to help them get to another planet with a nuclear reactor, which they were going to use to give the star Ikuinen Lampo practically unlimited power. The elves had left to do some scouting of the planet in question, promising to return shortly.
Ikuinen Lampo: the star of Khouria. She had sacrificed her life decades ago to sanctify the ground, so that way people who died upon it didn't return as undead. She currently has possessed the body of Genevieve, Xellous's dead sister, so she could travel with him. Oh, apparently she's in love with him?
Khen-Zai: a race of genetically altered aliens, who had left the solar system thousands of years ago to fight the Nameless, eldritch horrors that wanted the death of everything. Now they've come back, and want their planets back from their former slaves.
I would just like to take a minute to acknowledge that this campaign has gotten really weird.
The elves did not show up when promised. Telos was concerned by that. But, try as he might, nobody responded to his beacons. The soldiers who had been sent out to get Threen had come back, in the wake of King Varlur's and Komas's deaths. In the absence of a clear successor to the throne fighting had broken out in Broadnough. This made Kora want to leave even more! Broadnough was falling apart and she wanted to get Gerard out of the city. Xellous didn't necessarily want to leave. Broadnough was locked in conflict and he wanted to help. But Kora was adamant; Ernzen was here, he was already working at stopping the conflict, and it was unsafe for Gerard, which Kora was not going to bend on. Reluctantly, Xellous agreed.
Telos grabbed a gigantic cart right off the street, in the middle of a battle. They brought along the khen-zai cadaver that Xellous had brought from Khouria in the first place. Xellous set up a rolling lab of sorts, in the back of the cart, so he could modify his bracers. But first, he made a potion that enhanced bow accuracy and gave it to Kora, for a rainy day; she had begun to retrain herself with the bow so that way she could effectively wield Pyra.
It took one month to travel from Broadnough to Khouria. During that time, Xellous further worked his bracers, making the bearer immune to fire and also set targets touched on fire, if the bearer so wished. Ikuinen Lampo lent what little energy she had left, and Kora ran some menial tasks so Xellous could concentrate better on his work. Immensely proud of his twenty-two days of labor, he called the braces Vulcan.
With eight days left in the trip Xellous took his mind to enchanting some armor for Telos... and then Telos shouted that they needed to come out, and quickly. There was a man walking around, aimlessly. As Xellous approached him the man looked up and smiled "Hi, I'm Charles" he said. Xellous tried to question him, but the man reiterated that he, indeed, was Charles. Telos went pale; only the Nameless could have done that to someone. Humans were particularly vulnerable to the Nameless, getting "hulled" of themselves in a matter of weeks from hearing their "Music". Even humans that had blocked up their ears experienced the problem. Ikuinen Lampo said that the Nameless didn't have auras and stars could not see them because of it. In fact, no creature could withstand the Nameless on a constant basis.
Kora began to have a panic attack, looking at Charles. She threw up. Charles screamed. Kora asked if that's what had happened to her. Xellous guessed that might have been so? But he knew nothing about about what had happened to Kora after she ahd been kidnapped, nothing at all! But they were going to find out.
Kora asked how the khen-zai managed to fight a constant war with the Nameless and hadn't been wiped out as a race. Xellous went and looked the cadaver they had, to see how the khen-zai managed it. The khen-zai had engineered a special organ... or was it three?? This seemed to allow them to pull their aura into an insulated area in their brain. Doing this and then putting the immobile body into one of their mechs would allow the khen-zai to survive for months at a time before needing to get away. But however they did it? How they engineered this? Xellous would need more time to figure that out.
Charles had wandered off by this point.
The next day they met five more people claiming to be Charles. Two of them were little girls.
They saw three more the next day.
The day after that they found the crashed elven ship. It was smashed to bits and there was a lot of blood, but no bodies.... or supplies, for that matter. There were tracks (and blood) leading away from the crash. Xellous and Kora found a shallow grave a bit further on. As they headed back Kora asked why they bothered going. The Nameless were clearly around and one sound from them would wipe Kora, Xellous, and Telos clean. How on earth could they contend with that? Xellous said they needed to know what had happened to Threen. And clearly the Nameless weren't everywhere, not yet, and didn't Threen deserve they take that chance?
Xellous all of a sudden felt a malevolence behind them. Kora turned and screamed, but was quickly calmed by Xellous. Before them stood a black khen-zai, who introduced himself as Thought 7-of-10. He wanted to talk with Xellous.
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