Welcome to our Campaign Coffee. This series of posts, which will be interspersed with regular Monday Coffee posts, aims to look back at roleplaying game campaigns that have shaped the Cosmoneiron into its current state. We will discuss the plots and characters, but also how they influenced the development of the Twin Worlds. I hope you enjoy these. Happy Monday!
Last week, the wyldervay entered Tresis, the Library of Knowledge, built by the Ledhrorn and inviolate since then, only to find out that the Worm That Walks had preceded them and had claimed the Horn of Awakening, fleeing into the place where the Trienorn slumbered.
Chasing him through the Seventh Archway, the wyldervay finally reached the same place: Dorwyn, soon to be named the Plains of Battle. Nestled in the depths of Seminell, the Kingdom of Dreams, at the edge of Oblivion, Dorwyn was a self-contained realm, a vast and featureless plain upon which floated the massive, monolithic bodies of the sleeping Trienorn.
But, to the horror of the wyldervay when they arrived, the plain was not empty. As Faelar and the Lady of Souls had mentioned, the Ledhrorn had raised an army to prevent the awakening of their makers, while Danthyrameliath, the Prismatic Dragon, had raised an army to do the opposite. The two armies had been brought to Dorwyn, where they clashed as the Prismatic Dragon believed the wyldervay would sound the Horn, and the Ledhrorn sought instead to retrieve the Horn so no one could use it. Seeing the danger inherent in the battle, Gabrief and Anthony volunteered to stay back and hold off any pursuit, while Lilaire, Mephiston and Val'Sham chased after Koradrane Quinom until they reached a floating hunk of rock. This was the only floating object that was not part of a god, and would lately be known as the Stone of Than, the pedestal from which the Horn of Awakening must be sounded.
As the wyldervay prepared their final battle, Faelar and the Lady of Souls kept their word and led an army of souls of the dead upon the field of battle, to keep both other factions from stopping the wyldervay. The three-way clash was perhaps the most horrifying battle ever fought in the Twin Worlds for Ages, as demigods strode the field of battle, engaging a massive Dragon as mortals were crushed and crumpled around them, flattened by the simple force of their presence.
In this chaos, Gabrief and Anthony plunged after the Ledhrorn, and engaged them in battle, focusing in particular upon Ihycyxak, the Iranorn of cold and winter, a massive lumbering behemoth who could nonetheless reach the others, perhaps, if not stopped.
Meanwhile, Val'Sham, Mephiston and Lilaire engaged the Worm That Walks in a battle before he could use the Horn of Awakening alongside the tablets he had stolen from the sorcerous refuge in Tiogair - the only known remaining instance of the spell used by the then-mortal Trienorn to steal power from the Cosmos itself and remake themselves into gods. Koradrane Quinom planned to use the Scepter of Shattered Dreams - an artifact capable of fueling the spell even though he had no other ritual casters - to drain the power of all Trienorn, acquire it and, with it, open the cosmos itself to insanity.
The battle was joined and the three clashed with the Worm That Walks, far more powerful than he had ever been before. The three were tested to their utmost, surpassing their own perceived limits again and again as the Worm That Walks seemed unrelenting and implacable, secure in his power. And as that battle ebbed and flowed, so too did the battle on the ground.
But when all seemed lost, Mephiston succeded in summoning within himself the last few vestiges of strength and focused all his power on the Worm, forcing his loathsome body to implode, weakened as it was from the battle. And though some of the Worm's crawlers survived, ensuring he would return to plague the cosmos, this would not happen for many centuries. Right then and there, Val'Sham, Mephiston and Lilaire stood, nearly stunned, as they realized they had won.
But the conflict underneath them continued to rage, and Gabrief and Anthony warned them that whatever they needed to do, they would need to do so quickly, for even the two wyldervay would not be enough to keep everyone else at bay. So Mephiston, Val'Sham and Lilaire looked at each other and knew they had already decided what to do. There was only one option, and thankfully, Koradrane Quinom had collected all the required materials for them.
They would shatter the Reflection. Created when the Trienorn had taken away divine power from the cosmos, forcing friction where there wasn't before, it could be shattered if that power were returned to the cosmos. And so, they realized the only thing they could do was to allow one of them to ascend by draining the Trienorn, and then sacrifice themselves to release the power, returning it to the universe.
Mephiston wished to offer himself, but he couldn't, as he was the only one who could summon the power of the spell. Val'Sham offered himself, believing that, due to his curse, he was the most expendable of the three. But Lilaire, surprisingly, knocked him out and volunteered, asking to make amends for failing to stop the Worm That Walks when he had come to her, and for serving the Ledhrorn as a guardian in an unfair bargain.
Thus, Mephiston stood on the Stone of Than and cast the spell, though its power - even diverted by the Scepter, which crumbled into dust - almost ripped him apart. But as the spell's tendrils reached out, they touched the slumbering Trienorn and instantly drained all their power, petrifying their forms which then plunged to the ground, killing tens of thousands of combatants and embedding themselves deeply in the earth. The power reached the Ledhrorn too, save for a few who saw what was going to happen and escaped before it was too late. Those Ledhrorn who were caught in the spell's grasp were made mortal again, losing their great powers. And all this power, the power of so many gods, was funneled into Lilaire who, for one instant, became one of the most powerful deities in the universe before she willingly sacrificed herself. She discorporated, and all the power within her was released into the universe, shattering the Reflection near-instantly (and leading to Redemption in the material world, though the wyldervay didn't know at the time).
With the Ledhrorn incapacitated, the Trienorn dead, hundreds of thousands dead, the Prismatic Dragon on the run, and the Reflection shattered, the wyldervay reunited and looked upon their handiwork, grieving for the dead but grateful that they had been able to break the cycle that had gripped the world for an Age.
When the wyldervay left Dorwyn, the Fourth Age ended as the War of Saints ended, and the Fifth Age began...
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