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Singing Sugar
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I just remembered, I said I would write a recap to tie some things up and explain the narrative (which gets a little out of hand) so here it is.
The story so far (spoilered):
Following the events of the first, short Blue Star thread, the two heroes leave their assailant in the sand, nearly hacked to bits and pieces. Ignore the 4th wall breaking April Fools segment where they kill him by shooting him with silver coins, it is not canon.
The assailant is left to his own devices; and being totally unable to follow his orders his mind starts to wander as he reflects on his past life. As he reflects, he alludes often to his memories being of a past life, and himself belonging to the afterlife.
His reflections start off in a sort of character creation prompt, but properly they start with him leaving his home town to wander the world in search of religious truth. At this point, everything is taking place in the past, in his memories.
His name is revealed to be Gokmar, of Relsh, when he introduces himself to a wounded man of the cloth. This mention of his name from his past life triggers a memory of his afterling, a memory of mystic training in Gehenna. We'll call this future-tense version of Gokmar the Gehennite from now on, and Gokmar will refer only to this young twenty-something self from when he was alive.
The mystic training is completed when the Gehennite abandons his true name, giving him a certain invulnerability to the magic used in his training. He then resumes his recollection of past events in Gokmar's life. Gokmar and the priest, Albunis, make it to town where they part ways.
Gokmar heads to a tavern, where he has a conversation and realises that there are heathen Orcs in town who do not follow the nearby Human religion that is becoming more and more influential as time goes on. The keep is occupied, and the church is then occupied by a second group of heathens.
He makes tracks to get to the church, where after a little quibbling he manages to get in. When he walks through the front door, however, he is magically stopped from entering the vestibule because of a thaumaturgical miracle that makes him not care about what's inside the church proper. This causes the Gehennite to have another flash-forward to his future occupation as a killer, with a snapshot of the battle which we saw the aftermath of in the first Blue Star.
The sanctuary is switched off, and he enters. He assesses the situation, meets a few people, and sits down to talk with a large, dark green orc by the name of Banabjorn. Somehow, all of the sudden, when he sits down to remember the past with this orc, the narrative experiences a sudden jarring shift to that of Haradsson (who is, in actuality, the past self of Banabjorn.)
Haradsson is caught in an illusionary forest of cold, when he decides to make himself a fire. It is not explained how exactly he makes it, it just comes to, and he starts to hear voices influencing him to come closer to the fire and keep his stomach empty.
After drinking a magic potion that expands his consciousness (and is tied to the magical element of Water, but we'll get into that later) he starts to become more aware that something is trying to influence him to enter the fire. Finally, after some red herrings, his consciousness is so expanded that he breaks through the illusion and comes face to face with the Skadi, a monster that feeds off of fools it tricks into walking into it so it can drain their lifeforce.
In a snap decision, Haradsson throws his other magic potion, which enrages the subject and uses up their Fire element, into the monster. The monster ends up becoming furious, but loses his mind control abilities. He isn't a mobile monster, so he just wastes all his energy trying to swipe at Haradsson from afar, and when he comes down from his high he is easily dispatched. For a moment, Haradsson feels a temptation to violently and savagely slaughter the monster (an influence of the Deepest Hunger, a metaphysical element related to fire, water, earth, air, etc.) but overcomes his urges.
Haradsson loots some belongings, and explains more about his quest to find some lost warriors from his tribe, who went on an expedition to clear these evil woods of their monsters and evil and so on.
The magic potion that expands his consciousness begins to do more and more work on him beyond just helping him break out of a magic illusion. He starts to question the suggestors directly as to why they are talking to him and what they intend. Gokmar, in italic type and the Gehennite, in bold type also begin to commentate on events with struckthrough text representing that while the suggestors can hear their thoughts, Haradsson can't hear either of the two Gokmars himself. The early Gokmar cannot hear what the Gehennite says or thinks, which is important. Otherwise, it would cause a time paradox, and alter the events which cause the Gehennite to even exist, which is Gokmar's poor life decisions leading to a hellish afterlife in Gehenna.
Haradsson pals around a bit, studies some items he has found, meets a mimic and gets stabbed in the arm, and discovers a bit more about the elements. He basically comes to find out that:
"Water" lets him sense magic, especially when it's affecting him,
"Fire" has something to do with willpower, and having none of it is basically just depression,
"Air" is a literal magic sense of the atmosphere in a place, whether things are creepy or calm, good or bad, etc.
and "Earth" is tied to your physical health, and that poison would hurt it.
He travels some more, and comes to a fork in the road with a skinny orc in a cage and a blair-witch looking totem on the left, and a path to a clearing on the right. He ends up going to the clearing first, where the Prince of the sacred grove starts manipulating the four elements to keep him from approaching. It uses "Air" to discern his motives, and sends his Dryad, a servant made from the remains of three of Haradsson's missing warriors, to talk to him.
Now that Haradsson has entered this grove, and his "Water" has been jostled around even more by the nature magics, his consciousness is expanded to the point where he can directly hear Gokmar and the Gehennite speaking to him... and Gokmar can hear the Gehennite, his future self, directly as well. Very dubious. Haradsson and the Dryad have a conversation and Haradsson gets an offer: he'll get even more information if he can off the witch that lives down the other side of the fork in the road.
Haradsson heads over to the witch's place, where he figures out that the bone totem is some kind of air purifying, spirit warding thing that keeps the local dark ghosts and spirits from entering the part of the woods around the witch's place. He talks to the figure in the cage some, but gets no response. The Gehennite explains the wretch has a paralysis spell on it so it cant move. The Gehennite starts hearing his conscience speaking to him, which nobody else but the suggestors can hear.
Things take a turn for the worse when Haradsson crosses an invisible line while inspecting a nearby totem, and the wretch in the cage's magic tattoos start activating. The first is a scrying spell that targets Haradsson, followed by a spell that first homes in on him, then makes him susceptible to magic, then tries to instantly kill him by ripping his soul out of his body.
Haradsson charges hard towards the witch's cottage to take them out, but things don't go very well, and Haradsson is just about on his last leg. When the death magic starts to sink in, and he feels his soul getting separated from his body, it expands his consciousness so far that he can have a conversation with the Red Star, the most powerful overspirit involved in magic, and an important part of the "BRIDGE", a magic spell that is an "Orb of Infinite Psyche" for the quest, and has been the basis for basically all suggestions in this thread.
The Red Star is not very helpful. At all. It is bound by rules upon rules and isn't even there to help Haradsson. He uses his newfound awareness to try and ask the BRIDGE directly for help, but the thing is nigh useless. He manages to get it to print out its conditions for how the spell functions, though, which reveals something along these lines:
The spell scans its first target to see if it's Gokmar, and if it is then it waits for him to try and remember the past. When he does that, it takes the perspective that Gokmar is remembering and sends it to the "Blue Star" which apparently does not work according to the BRIDGE spirit itself. None the less, Haradsson is tired of the bullshit noises and sounds and decides to finish things.
He goes with a plan to pump his elements up so much that the magic can't kill him. He finds out that combining his fire, air, and water together all at once makes him especially strong willed and spirited, but before he can combine with earth the death magic successfully removes his soul instantly.
This causes the BRIDGE to fuck up, because now there's no more Haradsson in the world. So, it has an exception, and rolls back to the last person it was following, Gokmar...
Gokmar, last we saw him in person, was talking to Banabjorn. Banabjorn is the future that Haradsson turns into. They have the same soul
Haradsson's soul is fucking gone. He is as dead as a doornail. This means that Banabjorn never was, and nothing that Banabjorn was ever involved in goes the same way.
Gokmar, thus, comes back from this trip down memory lane to see that the church is empty, and before he knows it he is basically nearly wiped from existence by some kind of Angel. The Angel turns right on the <BRIDGE> as well, and orders it to cancel itself out, which it apparently has to do, so it immediately gets dispelled, which also kicks the Gehennite out of these memories too.
Gokmar wakes up in his bed at night, having had an absolutely insane dream, and the timeline is fixed and safe again.
Haradsson is dead. He's not coming back out of the afterlife like it's not a thing.
Now, just because the driver got shot doesn't mean the car is dead too. Haradsson's Air, Fire, and Water are still mixed together, and trying to reach his Earth. To be continued in another thread.
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