1241, Winter
Our Ars Magica saga continues into the end of the year 1240, as we prepare to disrupt the ritual being held at the winter solstice. There is at least one Archmage, and several other powerful magi involved in the ritual which will possibly awaken Damhan-Allaidh. They’ve been casting the ritual at the Winter Solstice every year, and the earthquakes and other upsets it has been causing have been getting worse.
They believe that what they are doing is strengthening the connection to the faerie realm. What we believe, is that Damhan-Allaidh has infiltrated their dreams and is tricking them into releasing him.
So we’ve spent a couple of sessions planning what we are going to do. Disrupt the ritual when the magic is unleashed, and hopefully that will take out the magi so that we don’t have to.
What we didn’t expect was that this was going to turn out to be the final session of the campaign. We’ve been playing it since May 2022, so almost four years and over a hundred sessions.
Pisciculus ex Criamon – Autumn, 1240
We are still debating how we are gong to take on an Archmagus. We need them to lose control of their magic, and we’re not sure how best to do that. Maedbh uses her magic mirror to try and scry their previous rituals. Normally there are about half a dozen of them involved. One performs the sacrifice, one or two are on guard duty, and the others aid in the casting.
The issue comes down to not just wanting them to fail casting the spell, but they need to take themselves out by losing control of their magic. If they simply fail to cast, then we have a group of very annoyed and very powerful magi looking for those responsible.
If they go unconscious, or fall into Twilight, then Jack and others can walk up to them and stab them before they recover. Though being in Twilight does provide some measure of protection against magical and physical harm, so we may need to do something that harms them when they awake from Twilight.
Scouting out the rough area, there are a lot of stone circles where they could possibly be performing the ritual. Unfortunately we don’t know exactly which circle it is going to be.
Allistor however does some astrology, and narrows it down to the circle at Stonehead. We bury some iron spikes under the ground, and reach out to Jack to ‘source’ us some holy relics from local churches.
Jack has a contact that knows where some good relics are, and gets some finger bones of some saint that were left after undead attacked a church. We place these in locations which we hope will cause a bit of a divine aura, making the casting of their ritual difficult.
Jack – Autumn, 1240
A strange person with an odd feel to them turns up at the Library, asking to speak with “Scholars”. We call in the magi, who have a secret meeting in the back room.
About a week later, another messenger turns up with a box, for the attention of the “Scholars”. Apparently it contains quite a large number of crystals, which the magi call vis.
Pisciculus ex Criamon – Winter, 1241
The ‘Diedne’ magi come to meet with us, and are able to provide large amounts of vis as they promised. They seem to think our plan might work.
A day before the ritual is due to happen, we head out to the stone and prepare the ground. We get the grogs to dig us some holes to hide in, and settle down to wait for the main event. Our archers are set up encircling the stones, with us magi ready to fly in and paralyse any magi left standing after Allistor pulls the ground out from under their feet.
Five of them turn up in a cart, along with their sacrificial victim. Several hours later, they start preparing their ritual. The ones who are performing the ritual change into red and white cult robes, whilst Finlay acts as lookout for the group.
They start to create their circle, whilst Finlay does a circuit of the area. Fortunately he doesn’t notice us. After a while, the ritual begins.
Towards the end, as the Archmage Alois prepares to plunge his dagger into the sacrificial victim, Allistor starts casting Crest of the Earth Wave. It smashes into the stone circle, wrecking the stones, disrupting the circle drawn into the earth, and crashes into the magi within the circle.
Rather than the spell ending, the ground continues to buck and heave, great cracks opening in it.
Two of the magi are outside the circle. Our grogs shoot with their bows, killing both of them instantly with arrows to the head. The Archmage, who is in the middle, seems to be sprouting a wing from his back as he vanishes into a hole in the ground.
I fly in, trying to find anyone still alive who might be a threat.
The centre of the area is sinking down into a hole. The bodies are dragged down into the hole as it rapidly expands. There is smoke and bubbling fire at the centre of the hole, which is rapidly growing in size.
We rapidly clear the area, and eventually the hope stops growing and the ground subsides. There is no signs of anyone left alive – just a pool of lava at the bottom of the hole which everyone seems to have fallen into.
After confirming that things seem safe, we head over to the other stone circle where the Diedne have been performing their ritual to strengthen the binds that hold Damhan-Allaidh. They noticed the ground shaking, and congratulate us on a job well done.
We head back to the covenant, to figure out what to do next.
And that was the end of the campaign. It was a bit of a surprise ending, since we didn’t expect things to end just then. Maybe we’ll come back to it later, but for now our Ars Magica saga is over.
We’ll have a bit of a break, then look at what we’re going to be playing next.
