Temple Arbiter Battle (Mission)

"The group consisting of myself, Khyrim, Wilavor, Throk, Avos, and Kay left early in the morning on our mission to remove the temple arbiter from this world. Our journey there was fairly uneventful. Hearing the whispering in the woods in person was intriguing, but otherwise we arrived at the temple without issue. Upon arrival, Khyrim snuck away to scout the temple on his own and noted that it was infested with abhorred undead.

We rushed into the temple to eliminate the undead, most of which seemed to be ghouls. Combat with them was simple enough, though the arbiter was missing from its courtyard. Instead, it was on the roof of the temple overlooking the courtyard. We searched through the temple for any lingering undead, killing them along the way, and ultimately entered the courtyard to lure the arbiter down.

Without the arbiter guarding it, the tree in the courtyard seemed to be housing some strange metal inside of it. Avos attempted to burn the tree down to lure the arbiter to us, but the fire would go out after a few seconds, and the arbiter seemed mostly uninterested. It walked over to the other side of the roof away from our view. Khyrim ran around the outside of the temple to find it while Kay ran through the temple attempting to detect its thoughts while underneath it to pinpoint its location.

After a short while, we heard a noise outside, and we all rushed to see what had happened. The arbiter had leapt from the roof, summoned these spiritual guardians, and hid behind the wall. I rode Belharoth up to the arbiter to begin combat. The close range fighters among the group huddled around the arbiter while the others stood back and hit from afar. As we wore down the arbiter, it grew angry, and tried knocking us away with a blast of thunderous and necrotic energy. I only remember seeing the blast hurtling towards me before I passed out.

I woke up suddenly and found myself on the ground at the foot of the arbiter, Avos and Khyrim both on the ground nearby. After Kay’s firebolt dealt the final blow, the arbiter began to compress in on itself while light and ash began to escape from its body. In that moment, we all realized that the arbiter was going to explode. I managed to heal Avos before stepping back from the arbiter to avoid the explosion. All of us but Throk managed to avoid the blast, though it didn’t seem to hurt Throk all that much.

After the combat was finished, we all realized that Khyrim had lost his life in the battle. His end was untimely, but he fought valiantly for our cause and died an honorable death.

We returned to the courtyard to rest before heading underneath the temple and found that the tree there was now broken open, and inside was a brilliant looking greatsword. There was an inscription in it that Kay said read “clip their wings.” Kay also said that part of the sword had thoughts, which is intriguing. He also noted thoughts coming from a strange piece of metal imbedded in Avos’s chest. Avos said it was given to him on his way here by a strange creature that he can’t really remember.

After resting for a short while, we traveled to the lower floor of the temple to investigate the voice. Upon entering a room filled with a small layer of mist, three creatures attacked us, one of which had an interesting set of robes and caused this unsettling feeling. We killed them and entered the room on the right that the voice was coming from. Inside were three undead creatures with their eyes clawed out. We eliminated them, and searched the room.

We found a woman trapped inside the pillar in the center of the room. She seemed undead, with most of her skin being gone and her skeleton showing through. Her name is Lady Annovetra, or Granny Annie, as she told us to call her. She mentioned that she was trapped inside of there for 311 years and is from the Golden Kingdom. She knows a lot. She identified the large iron door in the misty room as belonging to the Iron Kingdom, and mentioned that whatever was behind that door might be much worse than what we’d found already. We looted the storage room on the left, but decided not to enter the room behind the iron doors. We then took her to the statue room of the temple to have her tell us more of the gods displayed in statue form.

Granny Annie didn’t have much to say about each god. She claimed many of them are dead, two are gone (including the lantern…), and some she just didn’t like. She refused to tell us their names, as she says speaking a god’s name carries a lot of weight, and should only be used when it’s for a purpose. When I asked about the lantern god, she mentioned that it was a gravekeeper. Since the god is gone but not dead, I asked if it was possible for it to still be around, and mentioned the island I heard about. She seemed intent that I had a vision about it, despite my explaining that I simply heard tale of it while on my trip to the Isles. Regardless, she said that it was possible that the figure could be that god, but that she doesn’t know for sure.

After everyone asked their questions about the gods, we set up camp for the night and set out to return home in the morning. We didn’t encounter any significant issue during our travel home. I got slightly slipped up when attempting to cross the river, but it was only a moment of getting pushed out to sea until I got myself oriented and swam back. Not long after, we returned to the Last Chance with Granny Annie."

―Namira Runen's adventure log