Okay I don’t think I can do a proper narrative-style recap for this one; too much went down. Why don’t we record these?!
The whole point of the trial was to determine if the Leviathan had a rightful claim to the shards of Aurifar’s power, or if it would be made to cease and desist, as it were. Of course, ‘cease and desist’ in this case is a euphemism for having its champion ‘discarded’. ‘Discarded’ is also a euphemism.
Also, to keep things fair, if the Defence won, then Aurifar’s champion would be the one to be discarded. Perfectly balanced, blah blah Thanos meme
Vi was given the ability to compel truth from those on trial. It was pretty useful. After a quick 30 minutes to prep – during which Uzi hurled some abuse at Aurifar, and Cranzalar learned that Eadro really did want to drown the city, because its position above the water was unnatural – the trial got properly underway.
First on the stand was Aurifar himself. The main gist of questioning was ‘Why are you such a bellend?’
Aurifar explained his coming into the world causing cracks, his accidental creation of life, and his desire to save that life from the rising water – this led him to build Floodwall, with the help of several trusted advisors.
He also told the court about Diafani’s role – how she was the first to receive a spark of his power, and the only one not to take more than was offered. Her job would be to travel between the planes and maintain the massive arcane spikes pinning down the Leviathan.
Since he’d given away the spark that granted him immortality, Aurifar would have to pass on his other sparks to keep the tide from swallowing the city. Unfortunately, everyone else took way more power than Aurifar had intended, and rather than pissing off back to skyworld or whatever, Aurifar fell dormant for millennia.
Diafani was next. She told the court of her initial role as a sort of errand person for Aurifar and his actual generals. About the fact that the maintenance of the other towers was much more combat heavy than expected, and there was no way for her to defend all of them at once – the reason any had fallen was simply because she hadn’t been there at the time.
Cranzalar posited that this seemed like she’d been given an impossible task – that she’d been doomed to fail from the start.
Afterwards, the party called Lilla to the stand. She was pretty obstinate at first, but she was gently reminded that she didn’t have much better to be doing, being dead and all. She was a bit more compliant after that, though still not particularly helpful. Though she did let slip that the immortality was first suggested by Mavi and Ban, and it was something they all had to work pretty hard on – Rosso’s ‘potions’ took the longest, she thought.
Next, Mavi was the one to be questioned. His initial reaction was ‘Fuck this, I’m busy in Floodwall controlling the populace from my broadcast tower’, but the Judge’s Compulsion got him talking.
‘Was seizing immortality entirely your own idea?’ asked Vi.
‘It was not.’
‘Did you conspire with another entity?’
‘I did.’
At this point, Uzi was shooting Aurifar death glares, assuming he’d been the one to suggest all this – to keep himself entertained as an immortal being.
‘What was the nature of the entity that you conspired with?’
‘It was powerful, and older than any of us, and-‘
Vi’s tone was stern. ‘Its name, Mavi.’
‘…The Weaver.’
Mavi then explained his finding the mask, how he never put it on, but how he’d linked his life to the Spider’s – neither can die while the other lives – and how one day he’d lost the thing. He assumed it had grown tired of his refusals.
They called the Weaver itself to the stand. It seemed delighted to be there, and explained that there was more than one mask, and in multiple worlds. That its whole motivation was to stave off boredom. That Mavi hadn’t put on the mask, but Ban had – until he’d died, anyway.
The Ban that the city dealt with was simply a series of pre-recorded messages, expertly interacting with the world through Ban’s divination. When he’d received the spark from Aurifar, his visions were too much – so he’d made a deal with the Mind Spider to understand them. In return, he’d given the Weaver the divination spark upon his death.
So, earlier, the party had discussed how to get out of this whole business without anyone being euphemised to death. They decided their best bet was to get it declared a mistrial – and for believability, since they still had to play their roles or risk being chucked into a labyrinth by the Lady of Pain -Cranzalar should be the one to declare that, as defence and everything.
Anyway, Uzi got all fired up and yelled that the influence of the Weaver meant that this whole thing had started in bad circumstances, and the question of anyone’s claims’ validity isn’t relevant; the Weaver is the real issue here, this is clearly a mistrial.
After this was an hour’s recess to regroup and figure out if the mistrial thing was correct. Of course, rather than working on the case, Cranzalar, Vi, Uzi, and Diafani capitalised on the fact that Eadro was contained in the trial – Cranzalar’s soul was outside its reach right now. It was True Resurrection time, beech.
Shallows got himself a sandwich; salami and ham on a nice seeded ciabatta.
Upon their return, Eadro was all ‘Cranzalar. You’re looking well.’
The next logical witness was Ban himself, his shade manifesting just like Lilla’s had. He told the court that the Weaver had indeed influenced their actions, and that its overall goal was entertainment, yes, but also survival; the Weaver, in essence, is a memetic creature, only existing as an idea. Since Ban’s memory went forward as well, and since the weaver had his shard and thus his soul, then there’d always be someone to remember it, and so it’d always exist.
The party began thinking up ways to split Ban from the Mind Spider. Uzi sneakily got the Archive to copy down one of the witness containment circles. It’s a surprise tool that’ll help us later.
Also, yes, since he’d seen the future, and got his power from Aurifar, then Aurifar should have been able to as well. So why did he send Diafani out, knowing full well that she’d fail?
Anyway, after this, the party got Aurifar back on the stand. ‘Why are you such a bellend?’ Uzi asked. But also, they asked whether Ban’s comments at the end were correct. Why had he sent Diafani on a quest she couldn’t possibly fulfil?
‘Because,’ said Aurifar, struggling against the Judge’s Compulsion, ‘That was the only way I could be sure she’d still be here when I got back.’
Everyone’s jaw dropped. Well, except Cranzalar, who’d sort of seen this coming. And Uzi, who proceeded to call Aurifar an incel.
Last on the stand was the leviathan, currently bound up in the form of Eadro by Cranzalar’s thoughts. He spoke of his goal to destroy any aberrations, regardless of cost- to return to the natural order of things. In the short term, this meant drowning the city of Floodwall; depriving Aurifar of his shards was the way to do that.
In the long term, it meant returning the planes to their original form; one seething mass of chaos. Yes, all current life in the Floodwall cosmology would cease to exist, so would the leviathan. But, it meant that things could begin properly, without everything broken by Aurifar’s landing.
Throughout the trial, before the dismissal of each witness, Cranzalar had been asking each who they thought Aurifar’s sparks belonged to. And each of them insisted that it was finders keepers, so to speak.
So the party argued that no, the Leviathan didn’t have any claim to the parks. But neither did Aurifar himself, not anymore. Nobody had broken the letter of their original deal. It was in essence a no-man’s-land sort of situation.
And the Lady of Pain agreed. She severed any ties the gods had with the party – Aurifar lost his ability to make Uzi spontaneously combust, and Eadro’s power left Cranzalar – he’d have reverted to a corpse there had they not True Resurrected him in the recess.
The gods remerged, and were sent back to Floodwall to begin their battle from scratch.
Cranzalar realised he needed to find a new god. And then the party bought a house in Sigil????
Roll History 