When last we left our heroes...
In the aftermath of the battle in Onerama's hall, Onerama declared that he had been wrong about the companions, begged their forgiveness, and asked their counsel about what he should do next. It seemed to him that there were three paths he could take: to remain here in the north and do nothing; to march on Ralakarr and seize -- as the landgrave desired -- the governorship of the North, or to march to Sencankarr and raise its siege. The companions convinced him to undertake a combination of the latter two: liberating Sencankarr would put him in a prime place to bargain with Onwae to be recognized as the North's legitimate ruler. This done, Onerama offered them anything they might need to speed them along their way, and they asked for and were given a ship and crew to bear them to the Red Isle.
They managed to make it safely to the Red Isle some ten days later, but arrived too late in the evening to enter the mountain that night. They decided to split up and see some of the local sights, and then try to find Rinsos the next morning. Tengelbur, Anaris, and Thoranrai headed to the Great Bazaar, where they lost money on some lizard raced before Tengelbur found himself drawn into a duel in the defense of the honor of Ioninei, a young noblewoman who had fallen into bad company with a brash sailor.
In the meantime, Tanurendal and Vanera had gone to visit the local Shrine of the Sons of Orufal. While there, Tanurendal sees a beautiful, matronly woman -- but when he looks upon her, his mind is momentarily taken up in a strange vision of a queen in childbirth, and he is left speechless...
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When last we left our heroes...
Following his vision, Tanurendal followed and attempted talk to this woman, who turned out to be the Lady Talivara, the wife of Sir Ralerak, one of the great men of the Isle. She was confused and a little put off when he approached her, and soon her bodyguards stepped between them and escorted her away.
In the meantime, Tengelbur defeated the sailor after a few exchanges of blows, but let the young man live (who limped away swearing vengeance). The young lady he saved turned out to be Ioninei, the daughter of Sir Ralerak and the Lady Talivara. She offered to take the companions back to her home and put them up for the night, in exchange for their not telling her parents where she had been or what she had been up to. Returning to her home (and collecting Tanurendal and Vanera along the way), they met Ioninei's older sister -- Reiana, who in this version of the timeline had never left the Red Isle, as she had felt responsible for looking after her younger sister.
They also met Sir Ralerak. He asked some probing questions, and one of the companions let a little too much slip -- but this turned out to be all right since Sir Ralerak was both a loyalist and a friend of Norkur, and was therefore an ally. He arranged for the companions to meet with Rinsos the next day.
The next morning the companions were taken by Sir Ralerak and Reiana into the Red Mountain, where they were shown its wonders and taken up to what was very nearly its upmost chamber -- the Red Scriptorium. Here they met Rinsos, and spent the day doing some research on Tanurendal's vision (which turns out to have been about Thoranrai of Feihoth, and her prophecy of doom) before being led by Rinsos to a secret catacomb chamber deep beneath the roots of the mountain. This was necessary because, as Sir Ralerak had explained, the current commander of the Isle was the illegally appointed Baron Cleithal, a man loyal to Onwae, and so the servants of the true prince had to exercise a certain amount of care when they met to discuss such matters. Now, safely ensconced in catacombs deep beneath the Mountain, Rinsos prepared to explain to the companions what he knew concerning the Well of Silence...
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When last we left our heroes...
The companions had made it to the Red Isle, to the Chamber of the Eight, a secret chamber in the catacombs far beneath the mountain. They were brought there by Rinsos to a meeting of loyalists (people faithful to the missing prince, Onwae) in order to discuss the lore surrounding the location that the companions had been told they need to make their way to -- The Well of Silence. From what they had been told by Norkur, if they can manage to take the pieces of the Anvil of Lanenomen (which Anaris, Arthur's character, had accidentally shattered, altering the current version of history) to the Well of Silence, they should be able to rebuild the Anvil, strike it, and reset history back to the way it was before.
There was a long lore session in the Chamber of the Eight, as Rinsos the Scribe produced (to the consternation of the less well-educated people in the room) a scroll case full of obscure texts. Chief among these were some of the festal hymns for The Feast of Weixranbo, the Ascent of Orusena, and a fragmentary text known as the House of the Half-Ruin.
All of it seemed to indicate a connection between the Well of Silence and the seven offspring of a Stone-king and a mortal woman. One of these offspring -- a Swan-maiden like the one the companions had already met -- had lived in the "House of the Half Ruin," a house built by her Stone-king father, which was half-built of stones from "before the stars were changed," and half-built of stones from the mortal world. In the House of the Half-Ruin, there were various doors which led to a myriad of times and places. The Players (though not the PC's) had been to the House of the Half-Ruin before. They remembered that it had been guarded by a warrior who, if you kill them in combat, you'd be immediately forced to take their place as the new Guardian of the house. They also remembered that one of the rooms they stepped into landed them on a beach outside a city under siege, and assumed (incorrectly) that it must have allowed them to foresee the Siege of Sencankarr.
Rinsos' final trick was producing their "guide," someone who could take them to the House of the Half-Ruin. This turned out to be none other than a future version of Tengelbur, heavily scarred and with a hand of stone instead of silver. He no longer had his shard of the Anvil, and he explained to the companions that they had tried to rebuild the Anvil and had gotten it wrong. He had then used the House of the Half-ruin to find his way back in time so he could make sure his prior self (Tengelbur, Ben's character) got it right this time. As he explained it, as soon as someone removes their shard, they begin to die, leaving only a few brief moments in which they could assemble the anvil. Tengelbur was still at this point effectively immortal, and so he managed to survive when the rest of his companions died, but he lacked the skills to properly assemble the Anvil.
So they traveled back North to Cheikor and picked up the blind Reiana along the way (Sophie's previous character who had been blinded in battle), since she still had one of the anvil shards embedded in her chest, and set out across the Cheith River and into the Serth Hatama. This was the first time the companions had been back to the Withered Wood in a long time, and they quickly ran afoul of its strange magics, meeting a strange half-giant who demanded a toll of "your strength or your joy" to guide them through a particularly thick and loathsome mist.
They refused this, so the half-giant vanished into fog and basically took his toll out of them anyway, which was pretty grueling.
Finally, they arrived at the House of the Half-Ruin. When they get there, they find old versions of themselves heaped in a mound of corpses around the entrance. Future Tengelbur breaks down and explains that in fact, his companions had all been killed when he had come to the House because they had fought the Guardian, and each one of them in turn had become the Guardian. They had continued to fight until they were all slain, leaving him to take the fragments and find his way through the House to the Well of Silence.
He leads the companions through the perils of the House now -- which are things both familiar and unfamiliar to the Players but which the PC's have never seen. Things like a banquet hall, a room full of dancing people who turn into statues the moment anyone enters the hall, a door which leads to a strange beach, a meadow full of children running and eating the flesh of a great giant, a place where it is raining boiling blood, a library of whispers, and so on.
The companions make it through the gauntlet and come to the door which (according to Future Tengelbur) leads to the Well of Silence.
He then begins acting a little erratically and insists on a highly specific order in which the PC's should enter the room. Reiana grows suspicious of this, and finally current Tengelbur (Ben) decides to make an insight check on his future self, and comes to the (correct) conclusion that Future Tengelbur is star, raving mad.
This is maybe a little late to be figuring this out, but when they start not going along with his plan, he grows increasingly erratic and finally reveals that, in fact, he is the House's new Guardian, having killed all of his companions before. He had led the companions here to lure them in, hoping that way to get another shot at the anvil. He had been driven mad by the House, and by the Well of Silence (which had showed him all of his prior lives, as Tengelbur has been stuck in a constant loop of reincarnation due to some crime he committed), and had come to the conclusion that the thing he was about to do (kill the PC's and take the Anvil for himself) was the crime for which every version of himself had been condemned. He attacked Tengelbur, and managed to badly injure both Tengelbur and Tanurendal as the rest of the party tried to get through the door and to the Well.
As they entered one by one (Tengelbur and Tanurendal coming last), they found themselves entering a place of peace. Rinsos' theory had been that the Well of Silence contained the Final Moment, the place beyond the Song of Creation, before the new Song began. His theory was that if the Anvil (which usually only affects local time and events) were to be rung there correctly, it could undo all of the damage that the companions had done to the "drama of creation."
The companions were without weapons, or armor now, but their wounds seemed to be healed. Tengelbur had his missing hand and even Reiana could see. Tengelbur did nearly go mad looking into the Well again, but this time he manages to make his Willpower save.
And they promptly figure out that almost everything else Future Tengelbur told them is a lie; in this place, it is easy to remove the shards of the Anvil, without pain or death. They do so and Vanera assembles the Anvil and Tengelbur chooses a side and strikes it. As the silence overwhelms them, they are bathed in light.
Now, it is important to note that at this point, the companions are missing almost a third of the full Anvil, because of fragments that they lost or which they never recovered (one of the fragments was embedded in the Blind Seer whom they had met back when Anaris shattered the Anvil, and they had no idea how to find him if he was even still alive).
So although the Drama of Creation was more or less rewritten (i.e. the timeline was restored), the restoration was incomplete, and the new Drama was really a melding of the two.
This brings us to the epilogues:
Vanera awakes to find himself once again married to Talarja. They have two twin sons once again -- but they are not in Cheikor, but rather Sencankarr, and Vanera is a court scribe. In his conversation with his wife, it is revealed that in the wake of the events of the Siege of Sencankarr (which the companions had taken a brief part in, and then convinced Onerama the Bald to help lift), many people believe that King Onwae is going mad.
Tanurendal awakes to find himself hunting on the moors near Cheikor, and near the ruins of his village. His life is much the same, but better in one respect: his father, Tanurendal senior, also survived the destruction of their village, and he is no longer alone in the world. His father suggests he marry the red-headed fletcher (who PJ/PJ's character has had a crush on for a long time, but who has been missing) and settle down.
Tengelbur awakes to find himself standing on the prow of his new ship, the Venture Capitalism III. He is with Thoranrai, who has been restored to her Spear-maiden version of herself, and the two of them are apparently on their way back to the Leopard Isles to win Tengelbur's ancestral lands back and also deal with Thoranrai's old lover, the Prince of Midnight. Thoranrai makes a joke that whoever kills the Prince of Midnight would of course win her hand, and Tengelbur accepts this completely seriously (which is kind of a big deal, for him). Thoranrai laughs, then blushes, then takes his hand.
Reiana, meanwhile, finds herself one-eyed, standing with blood on her sword, before the entrance to one of the tombs of the Stone-king, the objective for which she had been searching since she first set out from the Red Isle. Rinsos the Scribe is with her, and the two of them set about opening the tomb, hoping to find in it the path which will lead them to the location of the missing Prince Galal.
