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Chapter 3 - Session 13

The Diad, the Dimbi, and the Shattering of the Sea

Events and Actions

The session opened on the water, with the party sailing in the two recovered longboats and debating the nature of the Diad recovered from the dead cleric at the river encampment. Riu recalled a childhood memory of a Divinity of Two ceremony in his inland town, in which a representative from the capital had arrived specifically to bless a newly dug well — producing a Diad and carrying it in procession to do so. The practice appeared to be standard: the Diad was not merely decorative but an active tool in religious ceremony, never carried casually. Cosimo attempted to attune to the relic; his roll was high and the attunement succeeded. He learned that the Diad functions as a channelling focus — in game terms, it doubles the power available when drawing on the Mother and Father. Riu, recalling that the Diad was always carried in pairs by senior clergy on a ceremonial staff, observed that wandering around with one would draw immediate scrutiny in any civilised Northern port — someone would notice there was only one where there should be two, and the questions would only grow from there. The decision was made to keep it securely aboard.

The talk drifted from strategy into something more personal — an unresolved debate about where the party's own strange abilities actually came from. Pressed on whether he consciously called on the Mother and Father when he worked his healing, or Cosimo his illusions, Riu affirmed his faith but conceded that nothing about the act felt like prayer; it was more an instinct he couldn't name or explain. Someone recalled that both Cosimo and Noddy had been quietly trained by the peculiar figure they'd met at an inn — A'Wood — who had taught them the shape of their power without ever explaining where it came from, "like being shown push-ups without being told what a muscle is." Cosimo raised the strange old woman connected to the party's medallions, and the medallions themselves, neither of which fit any mythology of the Two he had ever encountered, and wondered aloud whether his own gift — plainly the strongest in the party — was somehow shared with the others through whatever bound them together. Riu pointed out that his own abilities, including the levitation he'd used to descend a chasm in Old Port, had shown themselves before the party ever passed through the storm, undercutting any theory that pinned everything on that one event. Nobody had an answer, and the question was set aside once again.

The conversation then ranged more widely across the party's situation. They reviewed what they knew: a Divinity of Two expedition had reached Spider Island some months before them, blown a breach in the great outer wall, suffered heavy losses to the mangani, and apparently withdrawn by sea. A large vessel flying church colours had been spotted some days earlier on a heading for the island. The party reasoned that the ship was likely returning to investigate the fate of its earlier expedition. They agreed that if any such ship appeared, they would hide rather than engage, using Cosimo's illusion capabilities to mask the Amada if necessary.

Turning to the Wazari and to Leela, the party spent a substantial part of the morning conducting an interview through Riu's Islander language and Batu Batu's assistance. Leela's dialect diverged enough from the Islander the two of them knew that real communication meant gesture, sketch, and slow phrasing rather than straightforward translation, and working through even a short list of questions took patience. Leela confirmed that her people's gods took the form of giant animals — beeta, the great creatures of the island. The two magic-users the party had observed atop the black cylinder in the Wazari village, directing earth into the wall, she referred to as hempti and hempto — apparently a male-female pairing; individual magic-workers she called hempa. When Noddy demonstrated his ability to evaporate a bucket of water, Leela named him hempa but showed no great surprise, suggesting that such abilities were not alien to her world. She seemed more astonished by ink and the act of writing than by the conjuring of steam. Asked whether she herself possessed such power, Leela answered with a word new to the party's vocabulary — anto, meaning later or not yet — suggesting she aspired to become hempa herself rather than already being one.

The black cylinder in the Wazari village Leela called Ea Mondo — mondo being her word for black, a term the party already had some confidence in. When Riu drew a second island and suggested a second such cylinder might exist elsewhere, Leela reacted with apparent surprise or disbelief: she indicated that the one in her village was simply the Ea, not one of many she was aware of.

Asked how many times people like the party — dimbi, her word for pale-skinned outsiders — had come to the island, Leela indicated three visits, not counting the current group. Shown the two-coloured sash recovered from the bodies at the south wall, she confirmed that those particular outsiders were not among the three she knew of. This was consistent with the party's estimate that the Divinity of Two expedition had arrived roughly six months ago, while the first outsiders Leela might have encountered were at least two years earlier — around the time of Captain Maynard's voyage. The trail on Maynard, then, was not necessarily cold.

To the east (or perhaps northeast, based on Leela's gestures on Riu's crude sketch), she indicated a second island. The single word she used for it was chba, repeated with evident wariness, and she made clear it was not to be visited — that the people there were dangerous, and that dimbi did not go there. The party added cannibal island to their mental chart.

Riu spent the remainder of the afternoon methodically naming common objects with Leela, building vocabulary. Water, she said, was fto; land was ilant. Through it all, Knick Nab kept the two-boat convoy moving toward the rendezvous, his orders sharp and his handling of the unfamiliar longboats surprisingly assured.

That evening the boats beached on a long stretch of open sand — a clearing chosen for its distance from the treeline, leaving a broad killing ground between the boats and the jungle. No fire was lit. Noddy used his Evaporate Liquid spell to steam clams, mussels, and crab legs gathered at the tideline, producing a decent cold-side meal with no light or noise. The night passed without attack, though the jungle sounded its usual chorus of unsettling noises, and sleep came fitfully.

Come morning, Cosimo levelled his illusionary abilities and demonstrated them by conjuring Handsome Gulliver Gold as a sparring partner for Riu — using the Fantasm 2 spell together with Feel Mirage, which gave his illusions physical substance for the first time. Handsome Gulliver Gold could now be felt as well as seen, appearing dressed as a musketeer and brandishing a rapier. Riu fenced against him for nine minutes, eventually drawing a second weapon to fight two-handed, and still could not land a clean hit; Gulliver Gold taunted him throughout, at one point declining to call him a varlet on the grounds that it "would show you too much respect." The experience was, by Riu's own assessment, deeply instructive and deeply irritating.

Sailing on toward the rendezvous, the party turned to weighing their options. A second raid back over the wall for the small stock of gold statuettes they'd seen in the abandoned huts was considered and set aside — a two-day round trip for a haul smaller than what they already carried didn't seem worth the risk, especially with an unfriendly ship possibly inbound. Someone floated the idea of turning an old tactic back on the newcomers — sending a small boat loaded with explosives at the ship the way a fire ship had once been used against their own vessel — but it went no further than talk, since the party had no evidence the ship meant them harm and no wish to invite a fight they didn't need. Riu put the question of trade to Leela directly: shown a selection of possible goods, she indicated, pointing at a musket, that her people wanted weapons to defend themselves rather than cloth, drink, or trinkets. Asked where the island's gold came from, she gestured vaguely further inland, offering no specific location the party could act on. With no obvious next move on the gold and the ship still a possible threat, the party settled on spending their remaining time harvesting spider silk before departing, reasoning they could always return once the Divinity of Two's business on the island had played out.

Rounding a point of land, they recognised their own ship's masts: the Amada was still anchored where they'd left her. The two longboats signalled and were hailed aboard by Lieutenant Blaque — the Amada's short, bald, moustached second officer — while Captain De Guzman remained below. Before climbing aboard, the party agreed on their story: they would tell the crew everything that had happened to them except for the Diad and Noddy's trick of boiling water. Blaque organised the unloading of the salvaged cargo using the ship's tackle — a barrel of wet gunpowder needing to be dried out, a chest of rifles, and spare sail cloth among it — and on being introduced to Leela, asked bluntly whether she was a slave; told she was a free woman and a friend, he apologised and said she would be treated as such. The party went below to brief De Guzman properly.

Before returning to shore, Riu asked Leela whether she wished to go back to her own people. Her answer centred on wanting to learn magic first; the party understood this to mean she intended to return home eventually, once she had, and resolved to bring her along for now. Riu privately floated the idea of sending powder and shot back with her as a goodwill gift for the Wazari whenever that day came, mindful that the village had not parted from the party on the friendliest terms. The group then went ashore in force to gather resources before departing, using the Amada's own longboat to shuttle silk and supplies back to the ship. Crewmen collected spider silk from the abundant webs throughout the coastal treeline while others watched the perimeter with muskets. As the gathering disturbed the webs, spiders emerged; two beeta hintu specimens — mid-sized by the island's standards — were captured alive in crates the ship's carpenter built for the purpose. The second longboat was dragged up into the jungle edge and hidden, its gear buried in sand beneath it, left as a cached resource in case the party needed to return on foot. Cosimo presented Leela with a carbine — a shorter musket from the Divinity of Two stores, cleaned and polished — and showed her how to fire it. She fired it once, the crack echoing across the beach.

At almost the same moment, the Amada's captain discharged the swivel gun — his signal for urgency. The party looked to the horizon and saw a sail: a large, three-masted vessel bearing down toward the island. The shore party scrambled into the remaining longboat and rowed hard for the ship, taking the boat under tow as the Amada got underway rather than trying to bring it aboard.

Captain De Guzman did not wait. He had the anchor up and the sails filling before the longboat had cleared the surf, then hugged the coast as the party came aboard, using the island's own treeline as visual cover against the approaching vessel. Noddy climbed to the crow's nest with the spyglass and confirmed what they feared: a large three-master, heading toward the island. He could not make out any flag at that distance. Someone raised the idea of cutting the towed longboat loose to gain speed; the party held onto it for now but kept a hand on a hatchet, ready to sever the line at a moment's notice. Cosimo cast Illusion 3 with doubled radius and doubled duration, wrapping the entire hull of the Amada in a static image of jungle shore — enough to blur their outline against the coast for the twelve minutes it held, and cheap enough in power that he judged he could sustain it, recast after recast, for an hour or more if needed. He tried to draw on the Diad to ease the casting, as he had with his other workings, but felt nothing from it this time; whatever the relic's power required, it did not seem to answer him here. The Amada moved west, out along the island's southern coast and then away to sea.

Watching from the crow's nest as the illusion cycled through recasts, Noddy reported that the approaching ship appeared to round the island to the east — toward the river mouth, where the Divinity of Two's earlier camp had been. It did not follow. Once the island itself had dropped away and the illusion no longer needed to match a coastline, Cosimo shifted its image from jungle shore to open ocean, keeping the Amada's outline blurred until they were sure of a clean escape. The Amada sailed clear.

Clear of the coast, Mani noticed something new: alongside the familiar pull he'd carried since they'd reached Spider Island — strong, constant, almost like a voice talking somewhere behind them — he could now make out a second sensation, fainter, more like a whisper, coming from somewhere ahead of them to the west. He had never felt two such pulls at once before.

Two days later, in open water well west of Spider Island, Mani was on deck in the early evening when the sensation he had been carrying since reaching the island — a directional pull, a low hum from somewhere behind them — cut off instantly. No fade. Gone. He described the moment as feeling like a thousand voices screaming out and then silence. He told the others what he had felt. Once again the party turned over the source of these growing, unexplained gifts — Cosimo's illusions, Noddy's command of water and air, Mani's own sense for the buried Totems — without arriving at any answer beyond noting that the feeling had, so far, always led them somewhere important.

Moments later, far on the eastern horizon, there was a flash. Recalling what they already knew of the Great Change — that it began when a Censure of the Divinity of Two consumed a Diad to destroy a Totem of Air — the party immediately suspected the same ritual had just been repeated on the Earth Totem behind them. Cosimo, still holding the party's own recovered Diad, grimly observed that in the right hands it was itself a kind of holy grenade.

Debris began pattering down on the deck: mud, grit, small fragments of rock. Then, all around the ship, the sea began to move wrong. Not waves — something from beneath. Noddy, from high in the rigging, called down that there was land coming. He was right. Spurs of rock and compressed earth erupted from the ocean, bursting upward in lines and fingers that radiated outward from the direction of Spider Island, crossing and re-crossing the ship's wake. Captain De Guzman fought the rudder; crew scrambled to the sails. One mass of rock broke the surface close enough to shudder the hull. The chaos lasted roughly three minutes. When it settled, new islands stood where there had been open water — long, low formations of bare rock, pointing like compass needles back toward Spider Island.

The session closed with every medallion in the party growing hot against the skin.

NPCs & Creatures

  • Leela — the Wazari Islander woman travelling with the party; active participant in the language exchange; received a carbine from Cosimo
  • Batu Batu — the Islander cook aboard the Amada; assisted with translation throughout
  • Captain De Guzman — captain of the Amada; spotted the approaching ship and got the vessel underway without being asked
  • Lieutenant Blaque — a short, bald, moustached officer aboard the Amada; hailed and welcomed the party back aboard, organised the unloading of salvaged cargo, and confirmed Leela's status as a free woman rather than a captive
  • Handsome Gulliver Gold — Cosimo's illusory creation; appeared as a musketeer with a blunted rapier; for the first time possessed physical substance, capable of being touched and of striking back; taunted Riu throughout their nine-minute bout
  • Beeta hintu (giant spiders) — two mid-sized specimens captured alive in crates for transport
  • Mangani — referenced in discussion but not encountered this session; their role in destroying the Divinity of Two expedition was established

Locations

  • Spider Island (formerly the Isle of Beasts) — primary context for the session's opening discussions; the party departed by sea partway through
  • The open coast (southern beach) — the night camp; a long sandy beach chosen for the clearing between jungle and sea
  • The Amada — the party's ship; primary setting for the second half of the session
  • Open sea, west of Spider Island — two days' sail from the island; location of the Shatters event
  • Chba (cannibal island) — mentioned by Leela as a dangerous island visible to the east/northeast; she advised strongly against going there

Conflicts

  • Evasion of the approaching vessel (Spider Island's coast) — not a combat encounter: a large three-masted ship, presumed Divinity of Two, was sighted bearing toward the island as the shore party finished harvesting silk; Captain De Guzman got the Amada underway immediately and hugged the coastline for visual cover while Cosimo sustained an extended, doubled-radius Illusion 3 disguising the ship's hull as jungle shoreline; the party briefly considered cutting the towed longboat free to gain speed but kept it in tow, ready to cut the line if it became a liability; the vessel was last seen rounding the island toward the eastern river mouth rather than pursuing, and the Amada slipped away without being caught
  • Shatters event (open sea, two days west) — not a combat encounter but a survival scenario: eruptions of rock and earth burst from the ocean around the Amada following the destruction of the Spider Island Earth Totem; Captain De Guzman manoeuvred to avoid the worst of the upwellings; the hull was shaken but took no critical damage; no casualties among crew or party; Knick Nab was braced at the bow and Mani held the mast

Learnings and Discussions

  • The Diad functions as a channelling focus, doubling the power available when calling on the Mother and Father; Cosimo successfully attuned to it; carrying one openly in the North would attract serious scrutiny from the Divinity of Two
  • When Cosimo tried to draw on the Diad while casting the illusion that hid the Amada, it gave him no boost at all, unlike his attunement working — raising the question of whether the relic answers only ordained clergy, or the Two simply object to being invoked by someone outside the church
  • The Wazari are what Leela's people call themselves; their gods take the form of giant animals — beeta, the great creatures
  • Magic-users among Leela's people are called hempa; the two who operated the black cylinder in the Wazari village were referred to as hempti and hempto, a male-female pairing; Leela recognised Noddy as a hempa without hesitation
  • The source of the party's individual gifts remains an open question: several of these abilities are not consciously invoked as prayer to the Two, they were merely shaped (not created) by A'Wood's earlier training, and Riu's own abilities predate the party's storm crossing, ruling out the storm as a sole explanation
  • The party speculated, without confirmation, that Wazari children show no deformities because this island's water has never been blessed by the Two with a Diad — raising an uncomfortable question about what such blessings are actually for back home
  • A separate, unconfirmed theory was raised of a third power distinct from the Mother and Father, based on a symbol of three lines the party has seen elsewhere
  • The black cylinder is called Ea Mondo (mondo = black); Leela appeared unaware of any other such object elsewhere, treating it as singular rather than one of many
  • Pale-skinned outsiders (dimbi) have visited Spider Island at least three times before the current party; the Divinity of Two expedition, whose dead were found at the south wall, does not account for all three of those visits; one or more prior groups predate the church expedition — consistent with Captain Maynard's voyage
  • The two-striped Divinity of Two sash was not recognised by Leela as belonging to any of the three visits she knew of, suggesting the church came a separate, additional time
  • An island to the east/northeast (Chba) is inhabited by people who are dangerous; Leela used the word for cannibal and warned emphatically against going there
  • Leela indicated that the Wazari would want weapons above all else in any trade with the party, rather than cloth, drink, or trinkets; asked where the island's gold came from, she only gestured vaguely further inland
  • Fto = water; ilant = land; mondo = black; hempa = magic-user; anto = later, future, or not yet — used by Leela both when asked if she had magic herself and when asked whether she wished to return home; font, heard when Leela was asked what the Wazari would trade for, remains unclear but seems to mean something like weapons, war, or fight (Islander vocabulary additions)
  • The approaching three-masted vessel appeared to round the island toward the east; it did not follow the Amada west; whether it is the same ship the party had previously observed tracking toward Spider Island remains unconfirmed
  • Once clear of Spider Island's coast, Mani felt a second, fainter pull for the first time — distinct from and much weaker than the familiar sensation behind them, and coming from somewhere ahead of the Amada to the west; he described the two side by side as a whisper against a voice talking
  • Mani's ability to sense the Earth Totem through his Medallion was confirmed again: the sensation was directional (behind them, back toward Spider Island) and cut off instantaneously at the moment of the Shatters — implying the Totem was destroyed in that event
  • Recalling what they had already pieced together about the Great Change — that it began when a Censure consumed a Diad to destroy a Totem of Air — the party suspected the flash on the horizon was the same ritual repeated on the Earth Totem, this time by whoever the Divinity of Two had sent to Spider Island
  • The Shatters produced new land formations radiating in linear patterns outward from Spider Island's direction; some of these rock spurs remain above the waterline; the pattern suggests a violent upwelling of material from deep beneath the seabed
  • All party members' Medallions grew noticeably hot immediately following the Shatters event; what this signifies was not established before the session ended

Items Gained

  • Two beeta hintu (mid-sized giant spiders), captured alive in sealed crates
  • Raw spider silk gathered from coastal webs (volume: approximately three hours' work by a shore party; to be processed into rope aboard the Amada)
  • Coconuts and fresh provisions gathered at the coast
  • Water supplies replenished at the river before departure

Items Lost

  • One carbine, given to Leela as a gift
  • One longboat, cached on the island's south coast (hidden in the jungle edge, gear buried beneath it; left as a resource if the party returns)