The Return of an Old Foe

Now that we were back down to one Carlagnios, we followed the damp passage to a circular stone chamber of tremendous size. There were eight alcoves, and the chamber looked like a mold for a giant gear. This was the heart of the Centenarch.

The floor was covered with writing. In the center of the room was a painted, magical swirl. There were symbols everywhere -- religious symbology, arcane symbology, old war numerals.

Kale examined the arcane writing on the walls, and Tiny examined the religious symbols. They concluded that these were part of the ritual that the 100 used to escape from this world. Some of the writing was the same as we found in the journal. Apparently, many of the notes in the journal was written as the authors attempted to determine how to get out of this world. (The authors were the mathematicians living under the north pole, where they had learned how to travel between dimensions.)

Then, we all heard the voice of The Keeper. "Finally! You made it. It feels like it has been weeks! Now go straight across the chamber. You'll find the passage to get you there."

As we started across, Carlagnios suddenly cried out, "The coin!" The coin in his hand began to shimmer and glow with an aura. Out of the coin rose Baird, the Lich who had been following us for weeks. He summoned a spider demon and ran across the chamber to one of the alcoves.

"He's chanting!" exclaimed Ryn. "He's unleashing more evil into the world!"

"No, wait," corrected Kale, "he's not casting a spell. He's speaking to someone -- or some thing."

Tiny quickly called upon the Gods to prevent the spider demon from making any violent attacks against us. But although it could not hurt us, it managed to put Firinne, Ryn, and Kale to sleep. Tiny also blinded the Lich, preventing him from seeing us.

Kale, Ryn, and Firinne managed to wake out of the magical sleep, and Kale summoned a cloud of stench to block the spider demon from our path.

Carlagnios managed to strike a critical blow to destroy the spider demon, and Firinne (with her blessed weapon and a majestic halo) delivered a fatal blow to stop the Lich.

As the Lich lay dying, he uttered his final words: "Do you think that the Seed of Contradiction is something that you stumble upon?" He paused. "A guest who comes too early is as troublesome as a guest who comes too late." He crumbled into dust and died.

The Keeper called us to the side of the chamber to a passageway. Tiny entered the passage and brought back a chest and a jar.

"Should I smash the jar," asked Tiny.

Kale inspected the jar. "This seems to be the focus of The Keeper's existence. It's like a magical battery."

"You are welcome to the contents of the chest," announced The Keeper. We looked inside and found a large amount of gold.

"Great!" exclaimed Carlagnios. "I can buy a Hippogriff now!"

The Keeper continue, "Will you pull the stopper from the jar if I tell you what you want to know?"

"Did the coin serve as the Phylactery of the Lich?" asked Kale. "Where is the coin?" he asked Carlagnios, but the coin had vanished and Carlagnios shrugged. "Hmm," muttered Kale, "that must have been it."

Kale turned back toward The Keeper. "How do you take away the immortality of the 100?"

"I saw them try to do this once," replied The Keeper. "They tried to take away the immortality of the 101, but they failed."

"Each of the 100 is kept alive by an aspect of Gamerat," he continued. "The aspect does not do so willingly. It is compelled to -- it is bound by a demon.

"The Blindness -- this demon -- struck a bargain with the 100. The 100 now have both the angelic and demonic aspects of Gamerat. The 100 tried to release The Blindness of the 101."

As The Keeper spoke, we saw flashes of the ritual in our minds. We saw them trying to dispel the demon. They pulled out ashes and smeared the ashes on the face of the 101.

"They need to use the ashes of Gezu, for it was Gezu who bound the demon.

"But even with the demon released, the aspect of Gamerat chose to keep the 101 alive -- perhaps as an ally.

"So... to kill the 100, you need the ashes of Gezu, and you need to cast the ritual to release the Blindness. You must do this individually for each of them.

"After Gezu and his followers were cremated, their ashes were buried in the crypt beneath you."

The Keeper paused. At last, we knew how to defeat the 100.

"Now," The Keeper said, "you must honor your part of the bargain and release my essence. End my existence."

For some reason, we all turned to Garg with expectant eyes. He shrugged, lifted up the jar, and pulled out the stopper. Magical energy began to leak out of the jar.

"Oh, and by the way," The Keeper mentioned, "I've been keeping the Centenarch together. The void will begin creeping in now that I am dying."

"Great," muttered Kale. "He could have told us before we pulled the stopper out."

Dragonborn, Dragonborn (Measuring the Marigolds)

We went to the North door and walked down the stairs to the circular chamber with the 100 doors. Kale paused to examine the Mantle of Ores again. He explained to us that it protects the wearer -- like (as he put it) "an Amulet of Resolution". Once a day, the wearer could choose his fate.

Kale then turned to Carlagnios. "OK, you can start flipping the coin again. If you need help focusing, I can help."

Carlagnios flipped the coin and said, "Heads!" Nothing happened.

Kale looked painfully annoyed. "You want to visualize both futures."

"Oh," said Carlagnios, "I should think about seeing both heads and tails?"

Kale gave him a sour look and nodded.

Carlagnios flipped the coin again, this time visualizing two of him -- one that saw heads, and one that saw tails. As Carlagnios moved, he became two Carlagnios' that walked apart from each other. Each one held a coin.

"OK," said Kale, "now flip the coin 5 more times."

Both Carlagnios' started to poke at each other and point.

"Will you stop that and flip the coin again?" barked Kale.

Carlagnios continued to flip the coin and divide into more and more Carlagnios'. As he continued, he began to feel like his hold on life was more tenuous. And the copies of Carlagnios began to argue about who should flip the coin.

"Mage!" shouted Carlagnios over the din of growling and muttering Dragonborn. "Make sure that they all flip the coin!"

Irritated, Kale kicked one of the copies of Carlagnios, which promptly fell unconscious. "All right. Flip!" ordered Kale. "Flip again!" He continued until we had enough copies of Carlagnios.

"Now," Kale ordered,"one of you ask the Animata to open the door."

One of the copies of Carlagnios asked the Animata, and the Animata replied, "You can proceed." The doors opened, and we all ran through one of the entrances.

We found ourselves in a damp passage, lined with rusted cells. The construction work was old. We began to follow the passage but were interrupted by a number of growling noises.

"I want meat!" declared one of the copies of Carlagnios.

"Great," muttered Kale. "How do we get back to one Carlagnios?"

"Maybe have him flip the coin and choose heads?" suggested Tiny.

The copies of Carlagnios gathered and began to push their copies of the coins together. As the coins began to combine, so did the copies of Carlagnios. Eventually, they all merged back together, although one copy refused to join the others initially. It took some time to convince the copy to merge with the others.

"How do you feel?" asked Tiny.

"I have strange memories from each of the copies," replied Carlagnios. "But I am glad to be the one true Carlagnios again."

A Vision Too Horrifying For Words

After a long, awkward pause, Ryn asked The Keeper, "Every minute that you stay in this world is torture, isn't it?"

"I've learned to be patient," replied The Keeper.

"You know, sometimes a good puzzle can help to pass the time," remarked Carlagnios.

The Keeper ignored him and continued, "But what you see here is just a window to my soul. If you make it to the chamber beneath the old prison, you will find my essence. You must destroy it there."

"But we'd need a quorum of the 100 to enter the old prison," Kale pointed out. "And --" He stopped and gave an odd look toward the Seed of Contradiction. "Does the quorum need to be comprised of the different members of the 100? Or can the quorum consist of the same member?"

"It sounds like you have an idea," said The Keeper.

Ryn laughed. "Right. What's the worst that could happen?"

In our minds, we must have all imagined a quorum of copies of Carlagnios, running around, picking fights, gobbling down all the food, burning down buildings with his fiery breath, and being generally very grumpy. At least, that's what it seemed like everyone was thinking, since all of our jaws had dropped and we all had looks of absolute terror on our faces.

Kale shook his head to clear his mind of the horrifying images. "Wait. So what is the Mantle for?"

"The Mantle keeps the Stone Men from seeing you," The Keeper explained.

"So do we need 50 of him? 75?" asked Kale.

"Ohhhh!" interjected Carlagnios. "You're going to make copies of me? What if you make hundreds of copies of me? Will the 100 be referred to as the 100s of 100s?"

The Keeper sighed. "There are only ever 100."

"What do the Stone Men do?" asked Ryn. "Why do we need to hide from them?"

"The Stone Men maintain the barrier between worlds," Kale explained. "The question is -- what holds the worlds together?"

"Love?" suggested Carlagnios.

Kale glared at him. "No."

"Well, how would you know?" demanded Carlagnios.

"Because I'm a mage, OK?" Kale replied, grinding his teeth. "Contradiction keeps the worlds apart. Keeper, why have the Stone Men demanded tribute from us in the past?"

The Keeper replied, "They favor you."

"Favor?" shouted Carlagnios angrily. "I lost my --"

Kale waved his hand to silence the Dragonborn. "How did Ores use the Seed of Contradiction? This ... coin?"

"In times past," The Keeper replied, "Ores would flip the coin. It's pretty obvious how you would use this."

"Well," Kale explained, "the last time that I guessed about how old war technology worked, I ended up locked in a magicless state."

"Ah," said The Keeper. "Would this have been an iron snake?"

Kale shot The Keeper an irritated look. "So," Kale said, quickly changing the subject, "who flips the coin?"

"It all depends," replied The Keeper. "If you want more than one Dwarf, have the Dwarf flip the coin. If you want more than one of the 100, have the Dragonborn flip the coin."

He continued, "The Dragonborn will see a premonition. There are two possible futures: one where the coin lands heads up, and one where the coin lands tails up. With great effort, he can envision both possible futures."

Carlagnios snatched the Seed of Contradiction from Kale and flipped it. Nothing happened.

Carlagnios struck his hand against his forehead. "I felt compelled to choose tails!" he explained.

"Would you stop that?" ordered Kale. "Let's go down to the circular chamber with the 100 doors first."

Crocodiles! And the Intentions of the 100

We now had the Mantle of Ores and the Seed of Contradiction. But as we stood in the Ores' chamber, we heard a loud crashing noise from the front of the cottage. A number of large crocodiles broke down the door and smashed their way through the house.

Kale quickly used the Exodus Knife to cut a hole in what he called "extradimensional space". We quickly hopped in and watched as the crocodiles destroyed the cottage. Apparently, the creatures could not see us or reach us, but we could see them. Kale explained that this was expected.

Carlagnios glared at Ryn. "Why did you have to complain that we would get attacked by crocodiles?"

"I didn't know!" Ryn replied. "It just seemed as improbable as having a Kraken attack us in a room."

Carlagnios huffed. "At least we didn't get attacked by a squid --"

"Don't," interrupted Kale, "just don't."

After half an hour, the crocodiles departed. At that point, Ryn noticed that the Mantle of Ores kept fading out and fading back in. "Let me take a look at that," requested Kale.

Kale spent some time examining the mantle but could not determine what was happening. Ryn and Tiny also looked at it, but neither could explain the odd behavior.

We decided to leave the extradimensional space. The area surrounding the cottage was covered with crocodile tracks. "I could tell you where they came from, if we wanted to follow them," offered Tiny.

"No," replied Kale, "we should go back to The Keeper to get the instructions on how to use the Mantle and the Seed."

We returned to the portal, which transported us back to the room with the sunken circle. From there, we made our way back to the East door and met The Keeper.

"Are you ready to agree to my offer?" The Keeper asked.

"How exactly will this work?" Kale asked. "Some of the members of our party are ... hesitant ... to take your life."

"When you release my magical essence under the prison, I won't die right away. It just starts the process."

"OK," relied Ryn, "It's no skin off our nose." He turned to Tiny and whispered, "Is it possible that The Keeper is lying?"

Tiny frowned. "It would be very hard to tell."

Kale turned to The Keeper and asked, "What exactly happened between the 100 and the Lover of the Raven Queen?"

The Keeper let out a long sigh. "The Lover promised the 100 that they would live forever -- that they would be Gods upon this earth. And they were ... for a while."

"The Lover had tricked them," continued The Keeper, "and set about destroying life in this world. He blotted out the skies. He killed living things."

"Wait, so what do the 100 hope to do?" interrupted Kale.

"Escape, of course."

"Well, they certainly achieved that," quipped Ryn. "They escaped to our world."

"This world is a lost cause," The Keeper explained. "The 100 needed to find a place to hide from the Lover."

"Um, they're not exactly being inconspicuous," Ryn pointed out. "They're conquering territories back home, starting wars, ..."

"Being inconspicuous doesn't matter," noted The Keeper. "If the Lover is in your world, he will see the 100 no matter what they do."

"So you say," replied Ryn, "but we have no reason to trust you."