Characters:
Ajax Karo - Gregarious Hunter and Aspiring Kostis, God of Death and PlaguesNeilos - Aspiring God of The Sun and Plants
Steidis - Aspiring God of Fire and Smiths
A Deliberate Error
Neilos was able to convince "Old Nephele" that they were willing to help (with a critical on Fast-Talk), and so she told them what she knew of Steidis' marriage prophecy. Whichever Nephele candidate he proposed to first would immediately lose her powers, and no, Phaedra was not a candidate. Her plan had been for Steidis to propose to the Urbosan woman (nicknamed "Shy Nephele") first, and then marry Old Nephele. Neilos asked what she would gain from this, but other than having a powerful god for an ally, she would only gain peace of mind that she could no longer be de-powered.
The gods asked after the visions they'd been seeing, and Old Nephele informed them that each vision corresponded to one god candidate, and that it was easier to see them for her due to here affinity for prophecy. The range at which they would receive one was fairly short, but variable. Neilos wanted to know what visions she saw from them, and learned that his was a bright light, Steidis' was a raging flame consuming a man, and Ajax' was a skull with flies pouring out of one eye socket.
Old Nephele theorized that as they gained more divinity, they would see the visions more reliably, but when Neilos stated that Steidis had been seeing the most of them, she didn't have a response. They moved to discussing the next course of action, and she wanted Steidis to go propose to Shy Nephele, but warned them that she had the same information on the prophecy, so she might try to stop him from doing so.
The gods broke off into a team huddle to figure out what to do next and how exactly they would screw Old Nephele over. Steidis was adamant that he would not marry her, preferring Shy Nephele, though he would also accept "Milf Nephele" (aka Susaean Nephele) if that was off the table. Ajax attempted to convince him that he could just see whoever he wanted on the side anyway, but Steidis would not budge. Before Steidis proposed to Old Nephele, as that would well and truly burn this bridge, Neilos asked her if there were any prophecies of theirs that could cause them to lose their powers.
She stared into space for a moment before replying that, no, there were none like that, but there were several they could fail. Steidis then reached into his pocket to grab the hastily-assembled bronze ring he'd given to Phaedra, and proposed marriage to Old Nephele. Golden light shot out of her eyes, mouth, and ears, as she screamed in agony; when it finally subsided, she fell to the ground a smouldering wreck, alive but burned out. Her family came in to investigate and accost them, so Neilos set off a blinding flash of light and the gods took this opportunity to leave.
Wife Reconnaissance
The gods went out to search the city for Shy Nephele, but didn't gain any leads. After much discussion, they decided to arrange a meeting with a different Merchant Prince (they figured they'd pissed off Petraeus, Prince of Lamps, in their past dealings) in hopes there was some way they could track down either of the remaining candidates. They settled on the Princess of Oil, and after a display of their powers at the gate (Steidis popped off his magical bronze prosthetic arm, while Neilos flashed a light), a meeting was scheduled for the next day.
The next morning, they returned to the Merchant Princess' estate, and were led to a richly-appointed lounge, hazy with incense. The Princess, Penelope, her hair done up extremely tall and elaborate, holding a glass of chilled wine. They quickly got down to business, asking if she knew of an Urbosan Nephele candidate (Shy Nephele) in Syrinth, but she did not. However, she'd be willing to look into it in exchange for a favor.
The return of the sun had damaged her finances, if not as badly as some of the other Princes. However, she still needed to cut costs, and asked the gods to go strongarm the dockworkers into accepting lower wages. Neilos convinced her to find Shy Nephele first, and they left the meeting with a vague promise to help later that they'd never end up following through on. To kill time, they decided to go find and fight the hydra in the deep swamps. They needed to cut off heads until there were nine, and then take its blood to either Doros.
The Hydra
Armed with the knowledge that the hydra was nocturnal, they set out into the swamp at night using Neilos' light to see, but Ajax failed to pick up any fresh tracks. Once the sun came up, they pushed through their exhaustion (except for Neilos, who no longer needs to sleep) and kept searching. Eventually, Ajax was confident that he'd found its lair. Unfortunately, it was underwater. Ajax went about setting up an ambush by using blinds and animal dung to throw off its smell, while Steidis failed to add a cutting edge to the inside of Neilos' shepherds' crook.
The two who needed it got what little sleep they could; Neilos woke them just before nightfall. They heard the hydra emerge from the water, but in the starlight, they couldn't tell how many heads it had; it looked like around 5? Steidis flung flaming discs from his hands and Neilos shot out some beams of concentrated light, allowing them to get a better view. Ajax enhanced his knife with rot to make it easier to cut through the heads, then, as the only one with a severing weapon, climbed up to start cutting.
Before he could, he realized that actually the hydra already had 9 heads, apparently grown during the failed attempt by the hydra hunters. He warned the others not to cut off any more heads, and cut into its flesh to get the required blood before being thrown free and trampled. Neilos was only expecting 5 heads, and got bitten by the other 4, while Steidis got whipped by the beast's tail and thrown back. Their goal completed, the gods retreated back to Syrinth. Steidis passed out along the way, but the other two were able to carry him.
Waiting
Ajax and Steidis rested, and, after a quick confirmation with Agathi that she hadn't seen any Doros candidates in the city, Neilos teleported to Metros to track down Noble Doros. The scholars of the Great Library said that he had gone out into the city to heal the sick, and Neilos was able to find him between patients, resting with a drink in hand. Neilos informed him of their success with the hydra, then spun a (semi-fictional) tale of how Ajax had been rendered immobile due to his wounds. Incidentally, they wouldn't hand over the blood until he had been healed.
Whether he bought it or not, Doros was willing to make the 14-day round-trip voyage to Syrinth, so, after Neilos declared that the sunlight they were enjoying was his doing, he teleported back to the rest of the group. Ajax was upset that it would take so long for Doros to get there, but relented when Neilos threatened to hand over the hydra blood without getting him the healing he needed. While they waited for Doros to arrive, the gods tried to search after Shy Nephele but couldn't turn up any sign of her, neither with the dockworkers nor up at the ruined fishing village where she needed to perform a ritual.
To further kill time, Ajax and Steidis went around trying to earn the favour of the people by letting them speak to their dead loved ones and repairing household goods, respectively. Steidis even managed to rack up a sizable pile of coin from "donations". Neilos, meanwhile, relaxed. On the same day Doros was scheduled to arrive, they received a message from Penelope, Princess of Oil: Shy Nephele had been difficult to find, because she wasn't going around the city at all. She had also confirmed that she hadn't left Syrinth by boat. Most likely, it seemed she was in Old Nephele's family home, possibly held prisoner.
Ajax insisted at being cured before going off on a potential rescue mission, and, after Doros had arrived and confirmed that the "Blood of the Nine-Headed Tyrant" was genuine to the best of his ability, he fulfilled his end of the bargain and ended the creeping death that had been weighing over Ajax. Before leaving he noted that Ajax hadn't seemed quite as injured as Neilos had implied, but he just shrugged and didn't offer an excuse.
Wife Rescue
The gods headed to Old Nephele's home, and knocked on the door. As usual, Ursula, the little girl, responded asking who it was. Neilos revealed her secrets and asked where they were keeping Shy Nephele, but she didn't know; they pretty much immediately concluded that this likely just meant the 5 year old hadn't been involved in the kidnapping. He then asked her how many people were in the home, and she said there were 17. Having all the intel he needed, Neilos then said he had candy and tricked her into opening the door.
The gods pushed their way past her as Ursula finally realized, shockingly that the candy wasn't real. Once she recovered, she shouted that "Phaedra's ex-husband was back again", and the gods charged into the next room. When they found a breast-feeding woman in the first room they barged into, Steidis threatened her for information until she broke down in tears (Steidis: "Okay, next room"). They shortly ran into seven adult men armed with clubs, but Steidis was easily able to shout them down, and they sheepishly told him that Shy Nephele was in the shed in the garden out back.
There was a lock on the shed, but Steidis just tore it asunder with his powers. Throwing open the door, they found a blindfolded Shy Nephele shackled to the wall, in the middle of an assortment of dried fish. Steidis removed the blindfold, and she thanked them for rescuing her, but he was forced to clarify. He'd be more than happy to rescue her, but she had to agree to marry him first. She was taken aback, and refused, demanding to be freed first. Steidis agreed and broke her chains, then asked how she was, and referred to her as "my beloved".
Nephele replied that he had a weird way of looking at relationships, and as he pulled out the ring, she grew indignant, asking if he seriously meant to offer her the ring that he'd already used to propose to two different women. Thinking on his feet, Steidis quickly forged a ring out of her chains instead. Though she started to insist that this wasn't better she fell silent when she saw that he'd created a work of art: a ring of interlocking spinning gears, which caused a miniature dolphin to frolic on the back.
For whatever reason, Nephele consented to wed Steidis, and Ajax carried out another ad-hoc ceremony on the spot (Neilos figured he'd better not take charge, as the one marriage he'd overseen had ended poorly). As Steidis slid the ring onto Nephele's finger, he began to glow with the familiar light which came with fulfilling a prophecy, and remembered how to throw fire from his hands, and how to bind objects together. On the other hand, he no longer remembered his childhood.
While Steidis recovered from the surge of power, Ajax and Neilos asked Nephele if she was interested in joining them on their travels; she wasn't, as all of her prophecies were around Syrinth, except for the sea serpent. Ajax informed her of Old Nephele's burning out, and she figured that explained the sudden imprisonment. She explained that when she'd arrived in town, she had fallen into the debt of Old Nephele, and had essentially been working for her. While it was nice to be free of that, being chained up wasn't better.
They asked after the fishing village, and Nephele told them that she needed to carry out a ritual there to fulfill a prophecy. If they'd arrived around the time of the typhoon, that had happened because they'd tried the ritual in what had turned out to be the wrong location. When Ajax requested a way to stay in contact, she said that she'd be in the abandoned fishing village going forward, as staying in Syrinth might leave her vulnerable to more kidnapping.
The Mountains
They purchased an ox and cart ox with Steidis' "donations", and ventured across the swamps for seven days and seven nights. On the journey, Steidis found that he no longer required sleep. On the last days before reaching the foothills of the highest mountain, they saw strange man-sized shapes moving at the edge of their light at night, but did not investigate. As they moved into the forested hills, clouds of biting insects harried them, but gradually fell away as they climbed ever higher, where they were drenched by a chilling downpour.
Neilos figured they should go to the highest possible point and then look from there, hoping they could see the "flying" boat. After a while, they came across a cleared path, possibly an ancient road that had decayed, and followed it up. The next day, they reached an area where the forest had been logged; at most it had been only several months since the trees were cut down. The mountain narrowed, and the path began to wind around it. Just shy of the peak, they rounded a corner and found an enormous log cabin, ten-stories tall.
A similarly-gigantic door loomed beside a window, and Ajax wondered aloud about the myths of giants he'd heard as a child. Neilos asked if giants were friendly in these myths, but that differed from story to story. He then tried to open the door with his ability to control plants, only to find that it resisted him due to its size. Rather than call out to any residents, Neilos teleported up onto the window sill to peer inside.
In the hearth was a weak fire, certainly not large enough to heat the massive interior, and an enormous wolf, slightly smaller than the scale of the building would suggest, lounged beside it. Sitting with his back to the window was a giant, with grey skin and a long, flowing beard of white hair, sharpening an enormous wood-handled axe. Not seeing any giant pile of skulls or similar sign of hostility, Neilos called out a greeting.
The giant turned and returned the greeting in a slow, bellowing voice, then asked how he had gotten up to the sill. Neilos replied that he had used his godly powers, and the giant pondered for a moment before asking to confirm that he was Neilos, god of the sun. To reinforce his power, he mentioned that perhaps the giant had seen the sun flying through the sky? The giant understood that to have been his doing, and asked why he had come. Neilos explained that he was looking for a sailing ship that had flown to the mountains.
He stated that he hadn't, but he wasn't one to go exploring much. Since seeing the signs, he'd been busy tending the city, though it was still in ill-repair. Neilos asked after this city, but the giant only quirked an eyebrow and reiterated that it was not yet ready anyway. The giant turned down an offer of assistance with the city, claiming that such duties were not fit for gods, and offered to assist in looking for the ship instead. When asked if he had any clues as to its location, Neilos first asked which peak was closest to the sea, but when the giant explained he hadn't ever worked that out, he instead explained that it was to be in an "icy grave".
The giant declared that several mountains had glaciers, and began walking out to point them out. The gods felt his footfalls in their bones, and Neilos teleported back down to the others to follow the giant as he walked around the cabin to an overlook facing north. On seeing the other two gods, the giant was momentarily puzzled, but then muttered that "of course there would be the three of you", and gave a polite nod. As they took in the wondrous view of snow-capped mountains glittering in the sunlight, the giant pointed out the ones with glaciers.
Neilos asked the giant's name, and after a chuckle, he told them that he was Colossus, and his wolf, who had now come to join them, was Howler. Colossus remarked that it was a pleasure to meet again and the gods all agreed, though they couldn't remember meeting him before yet. As they turned away from the cliffside, the gods noticed that the road they had been following ended at a cliff face, with a clean dividing line down the middle.
Colossus saw them looking and remarked that the city was not yet ready, but they would know when it was. Ajax asked if he was lonely, and he replied that he had Howler to keep him company. It would be nice to have others around, though, and that time was coming soon enough. After a brief discussion of what to do next, Neilos looked back over towards the glacier-bearing mountain he figured was closest to the sea and teleported.
The Fish That Had Flown
Immediately, he saw a wooden boat half-submerged in ice, bearing the name "Palmida". He cut it free with beams of concentrated light, but apparently that wasn't enough to satisfy his prophecy. So, he climbed aboard and did the most rational thing: he rode it down the mountainside. Really, piloting a boat down a mountain was pretty much the same as driving a wagon, and his waning expertise pulled through, as he navigated into a slim creek and rode it the rest of the way down to the swamps, where the Palmida sank, its hull barely intact.
The familiar golden light encircled Neilos, and new memories pushed out the old. He remembered how to Speak with Plants, but his days as a wagon driver grew ever fainter. He even entirely forgot about his horse, Daisy. After a moment to collect himself, he teleported back to Colossus' cabin and rejoined with the others, then they began the long trek back to Syrinth. Again, the biting insects harried them, and again, they ignored the man-shapes that wandered on the edge of their light.
There work in Syrinth finished, the gods discussed where to go next. They'd done nothing in Eniad, obviously, and they knew they had unfinished work in Urbos and Metros. Neilos knew that he had to kill a variety of beasts and take their organs for haruspicy, though not what or where. In the end, Mantea won out: Steidis could complete Operation Trouser Pants now that the other Steidis was dead, and Ajax still had to do something at The Pit. Hopefully the scholar Atlas could help them puzzle out their remaining clues.
Notes:
Prophecy Scoreboard:
Neilos 5
Steidis 3Ajax 2
Missing Memories:
Neilos Family, Mortal Name, The Last 5 Years, Childhood, Most Precious Memory (His Horse, Daisy)
Steidis Mortal Name, Family, Childhood
Ajax Mortal Appearance, Most Precious Memory (His First Hunt)
Ajax is finally no longer slowly dying! No more time pressure.
The reason the gods had to screw over Old Nephele (other than Steidis' refusal to marry her) was that Neilos used Fast-Talk, which I have ruled requires ill-intent when negotiating.
When demonstrating powers for the guards of the Princess of Oil, Ajax tried to shoot a death ray at a squirrel, but crit-failed his roll and lost one day of life.
Neilos could have just gone to Feral Doros, who was still in the same spot in the Great Library, but they preferred someone who could speak more than one syllable at a time.
Steidis crit his ring-making roll, and got something a bit nicer.
Neilos realized that Steidis has, effectively, married his own mother, as Nephele is the mother of all, including the gods.
Two prophecies in one session, again. Good progress.
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