Episode 59
Echoes of the Past
Gemma trains with Gris Keenglide. After a visit to the Cracked Anvil and Hidden Spring, Zypheros leads the Soul Survivors to investigate the mysterious Broken Tower.
Recap
Gemma rose early to meet with Gris Keenglide, who flew her to a secluded cliffside above Skyhaven. There, Gris trained her in harnessing her wild magic, helping her refine control through her emotions and meditative focus. Despite occasional surges – including a brief trip to the Astral Plane and a moment where she burst into flames mid-flight – Gemma emerged more in tune with her sorcery, even learning the Fly spell.
She rejoined Anton and Willa for lunch at the Silver Spirit Inn, breathlessly recounting her magical breakthroughs. After confirming their equipment was ready, the group stopped by the Cracked Anvil, where Garrik Varun returned Gemma’s mother’s cloak, now enchanted, and presented Anton with a reforged, rune-inscribed Ria-Touched Longsword +2.
By Willa’s invitation, Garrik joined the party at the Hidden Spring, a sacred pool with restorative powers. Drinking from it granted the Soul Survivors a temporary magical boon and heightened senses, but they were warned not to drink twice lest they incur a curse of greed. Garrik reiterated his hope to meet the white-haired goliath he’d seen heading to the Broken Tower – possibly his own kin – and gave the party a phrase in Giant to greet him in peace.
As the blacksmith departed back to his shop, the Soul Survivors made their way to the Mead Hall to meet Zypheros and begin their trek to the Broken Tower. Night settled over the mountain, as the goatfolk explained the tower was once called the Espial Beacon, a relic of the Domaarian Empire’s reign. Gemma asked why her parents and the mages of Skyhaven never used the tower for themselves, but Zypheros claimed they never mentioned the Ashenlytes’ wisdom, surmising it was perhaps too powerful and dangerous.
The journey was steep and treacherous, the air thinner with each step, until the twisted structure emerged on the ridge line. Pulsing pink crystals rose from the tower’s roof like an otherworldly lighthouse. Gemma used her Empathic Sense and could feel the presence of several individuals below the tower, filled with anger and paranoia. Anton reached out with his Divine Sense, and he could smell the presence of foul undead within.
Inside the cold, echoing tower, the air thrummed with psionic energy, and glowing pink lights pulsed along the walls and a large statue before them – Gaelin Vanan, the Grand Magus of the Domaarian Court. Zypheros, visibly shaken, explained Gaelin’s duty to hunt down arcanists, commanding a force known as the Dark Agents. The tower’s beacon, now reignited, was already scanning for magic-users.
As the group scanned the room, Anton stepped on an arcane glyph that exploded with necrotic energy, alarming two suits of armor that animated with pink light into arcane sentinels and attacked. Willa rushed forward in melee, Gemma lobbed fire bolts, and Anton’s newly enchanted longsword clashed against the sentinels’ magic steel. Zypheros joined the fray with his staff, casting fire to great effect. When the final sentinel fell in a jumble of broken metal, the tower grew eerily quiet once more.
Climbing to the second floor, they found a circular library chamber lit by cold magical lanterns and a chained pink crystal. A ruined tome sat atop a podium, its pages torn and scattered upon the floor. Gemma looked through the pages and discovered her name, her family name, and a list of other arcanists that were being tracked by the empire’s beacon.
Willa asked to hold the papers, and using her Grim Psychometry ability, tapped into the magic that flowed through her blood. She was struck by a vision of a Domaarian tending to the tower and the book she held, followed by the appearance of Gideon and Kara Ashenlyte infiltrating the tower and fighting the imperials inside. After tearing out the pages from the tome, they entered the door that led further up the tower. Anton confirmed Sulaine’s name within the book as well, which was crossed out – a bittersweet closure for the warrior.