[contentblock id=advleader1]
You grasp that hand that is proffered. It raises you up, pulling you from the mists of dream that obscure all round you. Above it now, supported by your patron, you see stages, stages wherein agents like yourself and agents of your patron’s foes act out play after play, a violent drama in many cases. The one below you is sabotaged, the agent before you having never had a chance to act, and the curtain comes down and the patrons of the play cannot escape. Choking on the poisonous fumes of dream, they die slowly and horribly. But from above, you see what happens and find a point in the drama which you could insert yourself, and possibly change the outcome. As the hymns begin all around you, you are surrounded by doors, and door after door you choose to go through, getting closer and closer to the stage below you. Finally, the last door leads to the clouded stage – you have proven your intent and as an agent of your faith prepare to do battle with the machinations of your patron’s enemy.
The vibrations of the pattern are broken. You hear the woven strands of lives that are cut short, like a thousand guitar strings sliced in two thousands of times. A great disruption has taken place here, and the weave re-written in a way that poisons a million other lives down its course. This toxin will seeth and grow in ways terrible and inimical to your own life strand and those around you. Yet here you float, colors rippling around you, endless strands tangled and broken, tieing and un tieing and a chance to reach out and secure the source, which will in turn vitalize yourself. You close your eyes and plunge into the tangled web above you, reaching out to grab hold of the dark ends of the weave that threaten your pattern.
The deep bindings in you twist. Your patron’s enemy is near, and the wind carries the sound of their breathing. Louder and louder, you hear it behind you, and feel it hot on the back of your neck. Your patron has lost a challenge, but beneath you, as you commune swirls the clouds of a vast dreamscape. You are lowered gently into this, and the world changes around you. What was written may be unwritten – your patron has found a way to possibly change a defeat into a victory through you, their agent. You submit yourself to their power and are swallowed by the cyclone of dreams.
The balance has been greatly disturbed. Something that should never have been allowed to happen, has happened. There is a greater hand in this, one you cannot see, but the very ground moans in anguish, and the wind brings voices crying in the thousands for justice. You can smell the rich earth, soaked with their blood. The tears you shed for the innocent become a river, a river that roars above their cries, and that carries you over a cliff and down a falls into a misty world of dreams, where you float and drift, carried by the currents of nature to the place you know you need to be.
Characters cannot die…
Suddenly your heart stops. Everything around you shrinks to nothing, you are left trying to gasp for air and yet your lungs do not inflate. You also realize the pain has gone and all is silent… and a shadow from behind you casts you in cold darkness. Death has finally found you. You turn as a skeletal hand rest on your shoulder. You swoon and have a distinct feeling of falling and sinking under water.
3 “deaths” and the character must make a DC 5 check each morning when they return to real life or -1 physical attacks or 1 level of Exhaustion that day from weakness (countered by Lesser Restoration each day) forever.
In the abbreviated version of the adventure, this boat will take the PC’s home through a storm. Arriving in a fog bank, the PC will be directed off the ship, be lost in the fog, and wake up in their bed in full gear, ripping the sheets and covering them in sea water and mud – with a few new scars. Explain to the PC’s that now wounds are real, damage is real, and dreams are the broken toys of a childhood long forgotten. Attacked by younger versions of themselves – half the levels they are now. They wear masks. PCs get no Dexterity adjustment – their younger selves know their moves.
loves lost – barmaids, rescued victims, bards admiring them from afar political prisoners – clawing holding on, ice cold, foggy, wolves of winter
Things forgotten; relatives dying without aid, innocent bystanders lives ruined, when the PC’s protection left the area – oppression reigned
Most powerful foes each PC has faced or have a fear of facing. Avatars of gods (minor)
You have seen the wreckage of what is left in your wake. Most of it forgotten even by you. This journey has been hard – you have seen what becomes of the adventurer’s life. I can take some of this unhappiness from you. I can trade some of these unhappy thoughts and burdensome memories.
If no deal, DC 10 Sanity check or PC loses -1 Sanity permanently.
I can make a deal. i can give you something in exchange for for you reliving your experience on your way here. I can open the deck of fates and show you the way out. You rebuilt the dream of Barony of Beltam, city of Kwalando-Lai; Sir Bartrem, the Moon-Runner. His multi-aspect is grateful and wishes you to know that your dreams will rebuild you as you rebuilt his. But it is just dreams to you, whereas it is currency to me.
For each scenario successfully completed, the PC will gain 1 Reward Point. Each encounter in the mirror adventure counts as a scenario. Characters may acquire a use of a common Fortune for 1 reward point, and uncommon Fortune for 2 reward points, and rare Fortune for 3.