Tome of the Pyromancer: Darkflame’s Grace Part 4
Hey, everyone! Let’s continue our journey. Aquilia and company continue through the Embered Catacombs in search of the Darkflame Spine.
Embered Catacombs
Area 4
The catacombs grew strangely warm. Aquilia felt the fire of something that should have remained cold.
Sparks drifted against the walls before fading, but some clung to the depths like blights.
The air before Aquilia rippled. She stopped. A fissure formed before her, and a figure stepped through.
A man stepped through, as if the world had forgotten to keep him out.
His robes were those of a cleric, though the lack of sanctity in the figure was obvious to Aquilia’s eyes.
He raised his head and smiled. “Hello, gorgeous. This was easy. No Sun fellas or gankers.”
A mace hung loosely from his right hand. Twisted tentacles climbed its handle, intertwining into unnatural shapes around the weighted head. Aquilia felt the cursed weapon’s hunger.
“Never mind my Forlorn Mace, witch. It is not simply to cave in a head. Well, it does that, too, of course. You will see soon enough.”
The cleric also carried a small holy chime. It rang with a delicate sound as he approached. “I’m Terence. Should I just call you prey? Hm, Aquilia it is then. Now, lass, this can be as painful as you wish, or not at all. Turn around and kneel.”
Aquilia knew exactly what he was, and she despised him.
A member of the Legion of the Deep. A servant of a Dark Covenant that harvested vestigial organs for its sinister patron. A man who crossed between realities to violate the dead and claim whatever pieces of them he found useful.
Death was a blessing, and a body was sacred. That foul cleric treated both as resources. He made a mockery of death, turned it into a grotesque exploitation.
As Terence raised the Forlorn Mace, Aquilia’s hand tightened around her sword and she ordered her companions to stay behind. This felt personal to her. She would deal with the Dark Covenant Invader by herself and send him back to whatever loathsome sanctuary he had come from.
Terence lunged, the mace crashing against Aquilia in a blur. But she had stepped aside. Her longsword flashed upward in a single strike.
The invader looked down, watching in disbelief the thin line of blood blossoming across his robes. He listened to her words. “Silent Witch, huh? You… the Deep shall remember…”
The chime slipped from his fingers.
Reality began to tear around him. Terence became translucent, and his body fractured into pale light, dragged through the invisible wound he had made between worlds.
The fissure sealed itself, and the catacombs fell silent again.
The Legion of the Deep would try again. They always did. Dark Covenant Invaders never stopped.
But then again, neither would she. Let them know that Silent Witch Aquilia stood at the ready.
UD6: 1, down to UD4
Exits: 2
Type: Encounter > Site encounter > Shunned Cleric Terence
Sparks: Blight, Glowing
Nice! Perfect opportunity to reread Kerova’s playthrough where Terence was created.
Unfortunately, Terence didn’t last long. I thought Aquilia should duel him alone, so no scaling. I rolled only 1 Vigor for the wretch.
Area 5
The deepest chamber of the Embered Catacombs opened before Aquilia.
Glowing sparks floated in vibrant swarms, illuminating the area with flickering light.
In the center of the chamber, something moved. Bones scraped against bones, and a mass of shifting form moved. Ribs twisted around vertebrae, skulls disappeared beneath layers of femurs, arms and legs formed new limbs.
Weapons protruded from the fused mass. Swords, axes, spears, and clubs shifted within the creature before being caught by a skeletal hand.
The Skeleton Mass lurched toward them. Looking at it, Aquilia felt a deep sadness for the creature. The fragments of people found in those bones screamed in her conscience, half alive. Remnants of conscience were buried in that awful amalgamation. Whatever humanity remained was trapped, forced to exist as something that should not.
An existence of suffering beyond saving. It fell to Aquilia to bring it peace.
She raised her Dark Taper to cast the only pyromancy she knew. The somber flame flickered. The spell twisted strangely around her sword before collapsing into a shower of black sparks.
As she miscast, Aquilia felt her Inner Fires touching the very essence of the Eternal Flame, stretching her soul and burning her conscience.
Before she could recover or try again, the Skeleton Mass attacked. Weapons tore through the shifting mass, only for another arm to strike back. The creature changed its shape with every attack, becoming a writhing storm of blades and skeletal limbs.
Aquilia, the Darkflame wisp, and the floating ashen bubblefish fought through the chaos, bringing the abomination down. It shuddered and its countless bones collapsed, the weapons falling away as the creature finally lost the will to move.
The bones crumbled into ash, but something remained buried beneath. It called to Aquilia with a holy urgency. She slowly approached it and knelt beside it.
Darkflame Spine
A spiked longsword forged in the likeness of a spine. Its blackened metal bears no reflection, and a somber flame coils faintly along its edge.
A Relic that serves both as a weapon and catalyst of the Somber Darkflame discipline.
The pyromancy lords of Lithuria discovered that every soul left behind an ember. They claimed that the Darkflame was kindled from embers that never faded. Their discovery was eventually deemed blasphemy, and the discipline forbidden.
She carefully lifted it from the ashes to admire it. Master Monza the Wise had held the Dark Taper in her final moments, and now Aquilia had recovered her first relic of the Darkflame.
A quiet warmth filled her chest as she felt that Monza’s legacy was being carried forward. That was Aquilia’s first step toward preserving the beauty of the Somber Darkflame. She had walked into the darkness and emerged with something precious on the other side of it.
The burden of her quest was heavy, but her shoulders held strong.
Especially because she wasn’t alone.
UD4: 1, final area!
Sparks: Glowing, Vibrant
Skeleton Mass
Vigour: 11
The battle was quick. I got lucky with rolls, even though I failed the cast at the beginning.
Aquilia noticed the faint flicker of Darkflame behind her. The wisp hovered in the chamber, trembling with an energy different than usual.
The anguish that twisted its form and bound it in place was fading. All the suffering that gave birth to it was finally coming to an end.
The wisp drifted closer to Aquilia. For a moment, the two simply regarded one another, taking in the meaning of that moment. The end of their journey together.
A tendril of somber flame touched Aquilia’s chest. Images flooded her mind. First of fire, but not the fire that consumed Lithuria. It was sacred and pure. Ancient pyromancers knelt before it, passing knowledge from one generation to another, managing the delicate balance between flame and soul.
Then the brief entirety of a life flashed before her eyes, ending in violence, tethering its existence to reality as suffering given form.
The wisp had overcome its pain and let go of its resentment and hatred. It showed its gratitude by giving Aquilia a glimpse of the Eternal Flame.
She understood why some flames burned brightly while others smoldered. Why the Darkflame could kindle what remained within a dying soul. Why it could comfort as easily as it could destroy.
As the wisp finally remembered what freedom felt like, the connection broke, and Aquilia staggered back.
The wisp hovered before her one last time, then it began to fade. It rose toward the glowing sparks above, becoming one with them. For a brief moment, its flame burned grossly incandescent.
Then it was gone.
Aquilia closed her eyes and bowed her head in a silent farewell.
May your peace in darkness be longlasting, friend.
Can this accomplishment set the Darkflame wisp free (likely)? Yes, and… the wisp even passes some of its understanding to Aquilia (+1 XP).
And that concludes our little wisp’s quest.
The ashen bubblefish floated beside Aquilia, its multitude of eyes looking at her intently, trying to say something. It wanted something more. A way forward, a concrete step toward its curse.
Aquilia nodded, feeling a pang of guilt. These creatures were not novelties to carry along on her journey. They were companions with their own lives, needs, and reasons to carry on.
She had her own goals, but that did not mean that theirs should be forgotten.
Aquilia raised a suggestion to the bubblefish: Under the Four Kingdoms.
An old sage was said to reside there, a keeper of forgotten knowledge who might know how to help them. The place was also said to crawl with minions of the Thousand-Eye.
The bubblefish blinked a hundred times, then twirled, satisfied.
And with that, they left the Embered Catacombs behind.
Does the ashen bubblefish want to go its own way (unlikely)? No, but… it wants some concrete steps toward helping it.
Which is fair. Aquilia says she wants to help and asks these creatures to join her. Even if she has her own goals, they shouldn’t be just props in her journey, she should also act in their best interests.
Notes
The Darkflame Spine is awesome! A +1 catalyst and a weapon in one item. Now I’m casting Darkflame spells at +1 and others at 0 (if I ever learn one). My current Darkflame casting modifiers are:
Scoured Chainmail: -1
Spirit attribute: +1
Darkflame Spine: +1
Total: +1
This is my incredible map for the Embered Catacombs:
Watch out, Castle Grief, I’m coming.
I think that Under the Four Kingdoms might be a good place to complete a quest related to the Thousand Eye. To get there, I’ll hexcrawl again, I believe starting from UD8.
When traveling through the same area and searching for an unknown destination, lower the UD starting size by 1.
UD does not need to be used when traveling through known areas to a known location.
I don’t quite get when to reduce the UD. If I understand it correctly, if I get to Under the Four Kingdoms and want to return to Lithuria, I don’t need to roll UD? My brain isn’t braining for some reason.
Anyway, I went with UD8, and I’ll figure out the rest later.
I also added a couple of supplements into the mix: Plot Unfolding Machine and a concept from the Runequest GME, Runequest Without a Gamemaster.
I’ll go over those next time.
Tome of the Pyromancer is available on Itch.