Freaks & Facades: Sixteen - Old Friends

    Greetings, ghouls and goblins, to another exciting update of Freaks & Facades!  

    Tonight's tale is set to be another fun Primeur excursion through a notable Port-a-Lucine landmark.  Welcome,  Session Sixteen - Old Friends! 

    In our last update, our Friendly Freaks have a few days to spend in the gleaming capitol of Port-a-Lucine.  It is the glorious harvest festival of Primeur; and already the group has spent this festival week meeting new acquaintances, placing in a fencing tourney, surviving a house of waxwork horrors, met several people who claim their loved ones were replaced, and said goodbye to Vincente Quint and Claudine LaFitte, for now.  

    The group decides to spend the next to last day of Primeur procuring outfits for tomorrow's Descartes Primeur Ball, and then traveling up the northern coast of Pernault Bay to the University of Port-a-Lucine!  What wonders and terrors wait behind the gleaming walls of that esteemed institute?

    Let's find out!

Warning: this is a horror campaign setting, so please bear that in mind before reading on.  Possible triggers include: crowded streets, surprise grabbing, malevolent elementals/spirits, theological discussions, harmful gossip/rumors, self-isolation, self-destructive experimentation, hints of physical trauma...

*starts projector*

• Our group of Friendly Freaks is en route to the University of Dementlieu, lying on the northern peninsula above Port-a-Lucine.  The great institute is a famous beacon of higher learning across the Core, overlooking the decadent capitol!  
• The group's wagon slips into heavy traffic out through the northern Peasant's Quarter--everyone heading to see the university Primeur exhibitions!  Wagons climb the sloping peninsula road, eking out progress only a few paces in bursts without colliding.  All heading towards the great walls and surrounding moat of the University campus!  Through the front gate, our group is bombarded with colorful streamers, music and crowds of delighted Dementlieuvian fairgoers.  
• The party pays a fee to park their wagon and strolls across a small footbridge into the University campus!  Immediately they are overwhelmed with sights and sounds of Primeur celebration.  
• The entire campus has practically been turned into one giant street fair, with the various schools of art and science showcasing their students' works.  Before them lies a bridge leading to the central quadrant of the campus, where stalls of food and scientific exhibitions are offering savory and scientific delights for free! 
• In the campus' main square, there are all sorts of sights and sounds and smells to delight and tempt!  Stalls are giving away simple but delicious faire food, including a single slice of toast with raclette melted cheese!  Solange and Fenri immediately go off to snap up some food for everyone.  Everyone gets a chance to explore the outskirts of the Primeur festivities.
• In the southeast corner of the square, a marble building is hosting a small orchestra of talented students from the School of Music.  Pryrrish's keen ears pick up the intricacies of their composition.  Memories of learning elven poetry and songs back in Sildeyuir resurface at hearing the beautiful music.  Ballads from her childhood, hymns sung with fellow choir children of the Last Generation, the lyric poetry keened by her people's mourners funerals...  As well as naughty rhymes her brother once delighted her with while playing his lyre...  
• The music of living, breathing peoples has awoken these centuries-abandoned memories in the elf.  She wipes away a few tears before anyone notices.
• Our pair of scientific-minded Freaks, Schrödinger and Channa, are elsewhere.  They examine the more scientific exhibits on display between the food and literature-shilling stalls.  On the northeastern corner of the main square, nearly as tall as the buildings surrounding it, a complicated assortment of pipes and metal scaffolding stands.  The pipes run deep into the earth below the cobblestones.  The strange device emitting steam and the odd whistle has students running about, regaling passersby about a new technology: geothermal energy.  
• This group, as described by one of their pamphlets, is a chapter from the University's sister school in Chateafaux.  The College at Chateaufaux, closer to the nation's eastern border with Falkovnia, is a school of science and engineering compared to the theoretical and artistic pursuits here.  And supposedly, this enormous contraption taps into a force called geothermal energy--the boiling heart of the earth, turning water into steam without tremendous fuel expenditure.
• Both Channa and Schrödinger are impressed.  Channa, as a mage studying the elements back in their and Pryrrish's world, knows of forces like magma beneath the earth.  But to tap into its potential as energy with pipes of steaming water; it is centuries beyond what meager energy capabilities any of Five Nations has interest in acquiring.
• Comparatively, Schrödinger is interested in its applications in mining.  His family oversee several mining compounds along the eastern Slumbering Beast mountains.  Historically the Schrödinger mining excursions have come across many obstacles below the earth, including veins of molten rock and intense heat.  
• Unluckily for Schrödinger until now, his parents oversaw the mines and let him dally about in his laboratory, working on his osteological science self-experimentation.  But thinking about how the Schrödingers would be interested in the applications of geothermal steam-heated pipes in the mountain homes of their village, Schrödinger actually becomes quite homesick.  
• Sure, Schwartzsteinburg is no cosmopolitan capitol on the sea with privileged temperate weather, but it is his legacy--and perhaps he has let that notion dangle in the breeze for too long.
• A halfling at a welcome table gives Fenri (arms full of food) some maps of the campus.  Looking at the maps, Fenri points out the location of the School of Divinities--a tiny footnote in the southern corner of the campus.  It is extremely obvious she really, really wants answers to her questions.  
• The cleric has been perplexed since her arrival: the divine powers of this land--or rather, the absence of divinity she has felt since arriving in Dementlieu--confuses the faithful halfling.  Pryrrish seconds this endeavor--their own theological questions in mind.  
• After a few minutes of snacking and positing other locations to visit on the campus, the group agrees to take a break from the dense crowd, moving south to the College of Divinities.  
• The group skirts the outer streets and discusses other points of interest while they're here.  Schrödinger wants to see the University's college of medicine on the west side, where a play is supposedly being performed live on that department's marble steps.  Solange also posits the Guignol Museum--the on-campus museum of curiosities curated by the Lord-Governor of Port-a-Lucine himself.
• There are also many booths showcasing new innovations in engineering and the arts in the campus main square. That's also where food is being given out for free, which Fenri eagerly wants to enjoy.  
• As they walk and talk, however, Channa suddenly almost falls to the ground.  Looking down in shock, their foot has suddenly sunken into the cobblestones.  No, not sunken...  Pulled into them unnaturally seamlessly--their familiar Igneous, usually hidden at all times, has unearthed itself and is grasping their leg in a very distressing manner!  
• The elemental creature's sudden actions, done without Channa's empathic awareness link, startles the mage.  The earth creature says nothing but raises a stony arm to point at the rooftops above.
• Following the elemental's pointed limb, the group sees something is watching them up there, hovering ominously.  A vortex of opaque, swirling mist--with a semi-humanoid arrangement of limbs and a set of dark eyes!  An elemental being, for sure, but born of air.  
• Or, rather, of the Mists that Channa recognizes from the elemental ritual nearly a month ago.  Those damp, cloying vapors; subtly slipping and snaking their way to freeze ones lungs from the inside out...  And an envoy of this force is watching them with silent, eerie interest...
• Iggy tugs at Channa, trying to pull their master in the direction of the floating creature.  Channa rejects this unnatural show of interest in a familiar, yanking themselves free and chastising the earth creature for manhandling them.
• Igneous sinks back into the earth ominously in response.  If it was not a faceless stone creature, it would have glowered in a truly upsetting manner at its supposedly master.  Their master looks to the others completely flabbergasted--this sudden burst of agency is not normal for elemental familiars in Eberron...  
• Likewise, the Mist Elemental vanished silently during this surprise manhandling...  The moment passes by awkwardly, with the fanfare of the campus wide festivities continuing for everyone but our band of Freaks.
• Continuing towards the offices on the University's southern side, our group spots a small square while crossing a canal bridge.  There is a smaller gathering here, compared to horde occupying the main square.  This is a welcoming, cozy circle around a Primeur ribboned pole.  A lively group of student musicians plays a jaunty dance compared to the poised performances by the exhibition orchestra.  A crowd of onlookers cheer and clap along, encouraging the dancers swinging about to the music. 
• Fenri immediately rushes off to enjoy the dancing, linking arms with a drink-giddy old woman with incredibly frizzy gray hair.  The circle of dancers keeps step with the wine-added accompaniment of some hired street musicians.  
• Channa, still shaken by the grappling assault of their own familiar, stays off to the side with the remainder of the group.
• When the circle inevitably collapses in laughter and exhaustion, the weakest link flung into the surrounding crowd, Fenri assists the old woman to her feet.  She introduces herself as Professor Frederica Demaret, the Dean of the University's School of Divinities!  
• Exactly the person Fenri and Pryrrish are searching for!
• Professor Demaret is brought over to the group.  Her disheveled appearance does little to impress anyone.  However, she is friendly with the group of strangers.  She welcomes Fenri's interest in the divine and invites them to her office just across the little square for coffee.
• The invitation is graciously accepted by the halfling and elf; the rest of the group is happy to follow and learn.  But their forced smiles fade even more when they see where Professor Demaret is leading them--a small house, not even an official building, that has indeed severely gone untended to for some time.  She unlocks the door and welcomes them in.  
• Inside is even more sparse than the group imagined; walls were half-constructed, just bare wood frame construction.  The main "room" is a great expanse of uncarpeted floor and wooden frames that goes straight to the dusty rafters and rooftop.  A few chairs near an expensive-looking desk are piled with books, all near an iron stove desperately trying to heat the empty air.
• Professor Demaret apologizes for the uncomfortable sparce furnishings.  She is literally the only member of the faculty in the Divinities college...  With no students or aides, and apparently no budget for a fully furnished or even complete office.  Everything is out of pocket for the old woman...
• Professor Demaret pulls out a burlap bag of imported coffee (quite a generous gift to offer!), a hand grinder and coffeepot from beneath the desk.  Fenri's offers to assist are waved off, so the group waits in silence while the professor lights the stove, grinds the imported coffee and places a kettle on to boil. 
• While the Dean prepares the coffee, she asks about the group's attitudes towards the Divine.  As a scholar of divine forces in the world, not a follower or practitioner of any singular power herself, she is interested in evidentially  proving their existence.  
• Apparently in this land, as Solange knows well as natives, there is no proof that any gods exist.  The divine powers clerics can conjure up in the name of their deities are intangible proof...  They could be tapping into other forces of energy, not a godly being in truth...
• Nevertheless, Dean Demaret talks about how objects wielded by such devout practitioners often exhibit relic-like gifts after their owners' deaths.  
• With so little concrete evidence, of so-called "self-enchanting objects", the scientific community cannot fathom how divine magic functions in reason.  Faith and ritual alone are not enough--it is a very austere viewpoint on the subject.  
• Practitioners of faiths from beyond the Mists--beyond the known world of the Core--claim they have spoken with gods themselves...  But such proclamations are seen as romantic visions of overly receptive minds...  
• It is becomes apparent, by the Dean's speech, that magic to travel the planes is not well-known or studied in these lands.  Conjuration as a whole appears to have been neglected, for no reason they can imagine.  
• Fenri reveals her history as a stranger to Dementlieu and the lands surrounding it.  She felt the sacred bond of her god Pelor sever upon coming here.  
• The people of Dementlieu have no interest in faith, which the professor surely knows, but her memories and feelings of being able to truly feel her god's presence within her make her mad in their eyes.  
• Solange and other natives to this land are aware of cleric's powers and such, but the gods have always been distant--to a point that terrifies the halfling.  If they did not shape the world and set it in motion...  What did?
• The professor listens as she serves coffee.  This kind of talk excites the old woman.  She attempts to calm Fenri, telling the halfling that she's not alone in these thoughts.  Records of other religious outlanders--those from realms unknown beyond the Mists that blanket the lands of the Core and beyond--emphasize these feelings of sudden emptiness.  
• Writings on divinity theory, from interviews with outlander faith practitioners, suggest that a third party force upon these lands actively prohibits the direct influence of such interested gods.  A force called the Unspoken Pact.  
• The Ezrite faith, those who worship an enigmatic goddess known as Ezra the Guardian, believe that these lands were cursed with the absence of divinity, both good or ill.  No gods intervened due to this Unspoken Pact being enforced between them--or perhaps prohibiting their direct influence.   Depending on which sect of worship, however, the Hollow lands beyond the Pact's protection each did something different to Ezra, keeping even her miraculous appearances limited... 
• It seems the peoples of this world struggle with faith because it is tested constantly, and rewarded if it remains true.  The lands Fenri comes from, the Professor says, must truly be blessed to have "proof" of a god's existence.  But from her tone, it is clear that Dean Demaret doesn't believe the words of such a fervent acolyte as proof.
• Channa and Pryrrish are fascinated.  Their realm (Eberron) also is touched by the gods, much like Fenri's homeland (Greyhawk).  
• Solange is fascinated, considering how they channel divine magic as a gravekeeper without feeling anything Fenri does--Ezra and the powers that be have never touched her.  
• Schrödinger drinks coffee and keeps his eye rolls to himself.  Everything boils down to science, there's no sentience, animus or amity behind the building blocks of the world.  Reason shall eradicate ignorance to all questions in time...
• Additionally, the Professor recalls that the name "Pelor" is of Barovian origin--an epithet used to describe the god of the eastern cult of the Morninglord.  
• A beautiful god of sunlight and protection like Pelor for sure, but with his divine face smeared with blood.  The pagans of the eastern lands pray to him against a constant onslaught of superstition-born "creatures of the night".  
• Fenri is intrigued but cannot reconcile the two deities in this manner; but perhaps in this world a concept as purely good as Pelor Dawnfather must be stained in order to exist...
• As the group ponders these theological questions, suddenly, mist begins to seep into the bare house through closed windows and under the front door!  
• Everyone leaps in their seats when the door bursts open and a young man with slicked-back brown hair and pince-nez spectacles enters!  
• And he calls out Channa by name, demanding anxiously to know how they got here!  The mist gathers about him, forming the Mist Elemental the group saw earlier.
• Channa Devir, withered elemental scholar and outland, has spent a decade wondering when they would see their best friend again.  Destir Smith, looking as young as he was five years ago, is now before them.  And he doesn't appear happy in the slightest that Channa has finally found him.
• The rest of the group protectively looks to Channa, upset that this stranger both knows them and is upset.  But Channa stands up and lashes back in kind, demanding to know where the hell Destir has been!
• Professor Demaret is extremely confused but the sudden tense atmosphere.  She recognizes Destir, however, as a student of the College of Arcane Sciences by his lapel ribbon.  All the students wear one to signify which course they are majoring in.  She grumbles that she's yet to give away any...
• Channa asks that they speak outside and Destir agrees to a private parlay.  Schrödinger asks to join in, feeling protective of his friend, and Solange nods her interest as well.  The scholars both agree and start to exit. 
• Pryrrish, however, still has more to learn from the Professor, and she asks Fenri to stay in.  Fenri is torn with the desire to see Channa's reunion and help the reconciliation, but this is the first time Pryrrish has really asked something of her.  The halfling, of course, agrees.
• We now Split the Party, and follow Channa's little reunion before we learn of Pryrrish's theological quandary...
• Outside the College of Divinities' squalid little building, Destir and his Mist elemental lead the group to a more private side alley away from the dancers in the nearby square.  He is absolutely freaking out about Channa being here, and he has a good idea how it came to be.  
• He accuses his friend of using his flawed elemental circle.  Something that broke his body and mind apart and reformed it in a strange inn!  And then, after a night of strange dreams among strange peoples, he awoke to find himself and said strangers deep in the Falkovnian wilderness.  Six months ago.  He only broke captivity from the fascist experiments of that land's military threee months ago!
• Channa is shaken: not only because he is upset, but because it has five years since Destir vanished (and only six months for him).  And he thinks Channa threw themselves into his unintended portal, unmaking oneself, without thinking.
• Channa snaps back that they didn't simply throw away their life to the disastrous science he left behind!  Everything fell apart for them after he vanished.  
• Already mocked and ostracized for their past in the slums, Channa felt everyone turn against them without charming Destir making peace and helping their peers find common ground...  
• And all of Channa's friends at the University were his alone, they just tolerated Channa's presence as his tag along.  (Or at least, that's how Channa felt without her only "real" friend)...
• Insults and rumors began to fly--including rumors that Channa had murdered her patron's son to take their place...  Only Professor Aubron Fenthana, the pair's favorite teacher in conjuration and elementalist theories, saw the tragic mystery before them and attempted to shield Channa from harm provoked by gossip and paranoia.  They studied restlessly for five years trying to break through Destir's flawed, half-baked ritual circle design...
• And then, grimly, Channa explains that their mentor vanished one night.  After supposedly performing the ritual alone, just like with Destir...  The accusations immediately bubbled back to the surface, and people were panicked at upset...  
• People whispered that everyone close to Channa vanished suspiciously...  With no one left in that whole world to refute those thoughts, Channa began to believe that as well...  
• Rather than remain a hated outcast, to be inevitably punished and exiled for merely existing in a world they didn't belong to; Channa decided to follow in the footsteps of Destir and their mentor...
• Sadly, Channa truthfully could have established an entire life beyond their tragedy.  And they had more people eager to help them than they realized.  But obsession can cloud the perspective of those broken by unspeakable tragedy and unsolvable mystery...  
• Destir is confused about the timeline.  He explains more that he and a group of random people found themselves at a strange Inn run by three women of the Vistana.  They slept in separate rooms, but in the morning found themselves in the wilderness of western Falkovnia.  
• They were captured by the Talons, the elite soldiers of the nation's leader Vlad Drakov...  After weeks of strange experiments and torture, they escaped together and crossed the border into Dementlieu...  Not everyone made it out unscathed.
• Channa and many of our group have only been in the Demiplane of Dread for less than a month.  He had half a year to grieve never seeing Channa again, nor ever returning to the world he loved...  
• Channa confirms their own arrival story.  The two realize that they have a lot to say but not the courage to unpack it.  Awkwardly standing about, Destir's eyes pull for any distraction...
• He notices Igneous emerge to comfort their master; Channa shrugs the creature off, however.  He points out that his own familiar, Breathtaker, also underwent a shift in its elemental form.  Over the course of several weeks, it lost the purity of Air and has absorbed enough traces of the corrupt element of Mist to fully become a Mist elemental.  
• And with the fragments of buried animals, peat moss and stained soil embedded into its rocky bouncy, it is clear that Igneous will become a being of the Grave element, corrupted Earth, as well.  
• It must have recognized Breathtaker in its' current form and attempted to alert Channa, hence why the familiar grabbed them.  Destir also explains that familiars are more willful in this land, according to his mentors here.  Channa has only begun to experience that, but Destir has theories that these more "dread companions" are responding to unconscious or base desires rather than direct orders.  Perhaps it links to the corruption of elements in Dementlieu...  
• Hence the elementals called to one another and interrupted their masters to try and bridge the gap.  He followed Breathdrinker after it nearly assaulted him in his mentor's office...
• He has been attending courses at the University of Dementlieu ever since the fall term started.  He had introductions made and has been a student of Arcane Sciences.  The Dementlieuse elemental sciences are decades ahead of Wynarn-Arcanix's brightest theories.  
• His theories about a corrupt elemental matrix--Mist for Air, Grave for Earth, Blood for Water and Pyre for Flame--are in line with decades of arcane theories here.  Pure, uncorrupted elemental forces are rare in this realm, according to his research.
• Hearing Destir thoroughly speak about his arcane studies again, as if no time had passed at all, helps soften Channa's broken heart a touch.  Both lost time with one another; but Destir he has only grown more enthused to study magic.  
• Inversely, Channa feels the bilious taste of grave dirt in their teeth, remembers the harm magic can do to caster and victim...  Magic took him and their mentor away...  Obsession with magic, the pursuit of its power, nearly destroyed three lives.  Channa had no life outside of it.  But with this new group of friends, barely a month of struggle and joy spent among them, perhaps the path of wizardry isn't for Channa after all?
• Solange and Schrödinger do their best not to eavesdrop.  They share a spiced ale placed into their hands by one of the merrymakers in the square.  But like a bad penny, Solange feels Maman turn up once more to ruin this peaceful moment. 
• The spectral creature buzzes in the gravedigger's ear, until her eyes land on the gesticulating hands of Destir Smith.  He is a young, handsome man of noble bearing.  Despite the years having passed for Channa, Solange can imagine the mage at that same awkward scholar stage: quiet and enthusiastic, with this animated Destir going gaga about their shared passion for magic.
• But there is something off about the young man...  Despite his return to a carefree attitude--anger long forgotten--Destir has suffered some trauma.  There are bandages all over his hands and upper arms, and he unconsciously scrapes the ground with his feet as a nervous tic...  Channa does not appear to have noticed these signs, distracted by volatile feelings of nostalgia, anger and release...
• Channa brings over their friends to introduce Destir.  His social graces returned now that his panic is ended, Destir of House Smith welcomes the scientist and gravedigger.  He gives a brief overview of his time in Falkovnian captivity and his daring escape with others from the Raven's Loft Inn.  
• Channa's theory that the ritual coincides with (or causes) people from across realities has more evidence.  Professor Aubron, their elven mentor at school, was the only person between the two scholars to perform the ritual.  Perhaps he was also brought here, through that strange Vistana tavern, and found himself in this demiplane?
• Though the difference in time between Destir and Channa, half a decade for the latter now, suggests that the Professor and any cohorts could have manifested here anywhere between six months until now...  Or perhaps decades prior?  Or decades long after this very meeting?  
• When Schrödinger asks about his experience among the Falkovnians, Destir is hesitant to go into it.  He rubs his arms and says only that they tortured him with strange experiments and that he escaped.  Several of those he escaped with fled or were lost in the flight across the border...  But one is here at the University with him, in his mentor's offices.  
• He actually realizes he should introduce Channa and their friends to their mentor--Professor Altir LaRue, Dean of College of Arcane Sciences.  They will definitely want to hear this group's tale!
• As Channa and Destir turn to bring in Fenri and Pryrrish to this group trip to meet Professor LaRue, Solange cannot help but recognize that the Falkovnians did something permanent to the young man.  There is just something off about him... 
• Wounded...  Like a pigeon with a severed wing, flailing in panic and throwing droplets of blood...  
• Hungry...  Like a Falkovnian hawk, circling prey, waiting to strike...  
• Of course Maman would make sure Solange noticed such a sight... 

    Our trip to the University of Port-a-Lucine is not over yet, friends!  There is far more to uncover before our group leaves its hallowed halls.  And then, of course, there's the Primeur Ball tomorrow night our group is eager to attend!

    But what secrets does this colorful campus hide?  

    What did Pryrrish want to speak to the frazzled Dean of Divinities about?  Why was only Fenri asked to stay behind?

    Find out next time, in Session Seventeen  [WIP]!