Session 9

Heroes (lvl 5): Bastion, Thrum, Aibell, Percival, Yvaine, Emile

Brought before the authority of the arena, the heroes stand in the presence of Templar Maerigal, a figure of cold control and measured cruelty. She listens as they speak, their tale strange and improbable—too strange, perhaps, for even Athas. With a gesture, she summons two mindbenders to strip away deception and peer into truth itself.

When their power settles upon Emile, resistance falters.

His thoughts unravel, and the truth spills forth—Sigil, portals, the dying world, the mission to find The Wanderer. Yet the truth, laid bare, proves too vast, too impossible. Maerigal does not see revelation. She sees madness.

The heroes are dismissed.

Not executed, not believed—simply returned to the slave pits, their words cast aside as the ramblings of broken minds.

Back among the condemned, they find something far more valuable than belief: knowledge.

An old slave, bent with age and hardship, speaks of a figure long whispered of in the depths below the arena. A man who was not broken. A man who escaped.

He speaks of the Wanderer.

According to the old slave, this figure wielded the power of earth and stone itself, perhaps a priest of the elemental forces that still answer on Athas. He did not flee blindly. He walked with purpose—toward what the old man calls “the end of the world” and “the city of the dead.”

The path is clear. But the chains remain. The heroes act.

What begins as quiet whispers in the dark becomes a rising tide. Slaves rally. Guards are isolated. Violence erupts in the tunnels beneath the arena. In the chaos, the heroes reclaim their weapons—their steel once more in hand—and break free from the pits that were meant to hold them.

City of Tyr

They emerge into the streets of Tyr, no longer gladiators, but fugitives. The city does not let them go easily.

Guards sweep through the streets. Templars tighten their grip. The heroes move through dust-choked alleys and crowded thoroughfares, evading pursuit by speed, cunning, and no small measure of fortune. The tension does not break until they reach the city gates.

There, waiting for them, stands the arena’s champion.

A towering figure of muscle and fury—the Crimson Half-Giant—mounted upon a savage Crodlu. There is no negotiation, no warning. Only violence.

The battle is brutal and immediate. The mount snaps and claws, the giant strikes with overwhelming force, but the heroes endure. Steel meets bone, tactics overcome brute strength, and in time, the champion falls.

And then the world itself breaks.

A section of Tyr’s great wall—ancient, immovable, eternal—simply ceases to exist.

No explosion. No collapse.

Stone vanishes into nothingness, leaving only empty air where solid structure once stood.

For a moment, even the guards freeze.

The impossible has arrived. The heroes do not hesitate.

They pass through the breach and leave the city behind, stepping out into the endless desert of Athas.