The Year of the Red Star

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The Great Making

Long ago, a creature known as the Blue Star crashed into Avlis. It lay at rest in the peninsula of Hel’byssia, and its tale is told elsewhere. However, when the Star fell, it caused great strife and chaos. A very far-sighted and inventive dwarf, Fegall – already a hero of the Great War, but yet to ascend to godhood – devised a plan, initially to deal with the Blue Star. But Fegall also foresaw that the Star was not alone. It had a twin, or partner, the Red Star. At some point in the future, Fegall predicted, the Red Star would come seeking its counterpart. So, he worked on a plan to defeat these world-ending threats. This was the origin of the Great Making.

It was never finished in Fegall’s time, and he moved on to greater things as the god of craftsmen and gnomes.

The Great Making was a complex device, spread across the world. It had several components: four towers, and four great mirrors. The mirrors were associated with elements. The wind mirror was in Deglos. The ice mirror was in Tyedu. The sun mirror was in Toran Shaarda. The Earth mirror was in Drotid.

There were also four inverted towers. The towers contained timewells that stored and used time as a resource.

Another tower, the Skytower, contained an orrery (a model of the stars) that tracked the position of the Red Star.

The final piece of the Great Making was its control room, the Tick Tock Tower. If completed, the Great Making was to produce a shield that would draw the Red Star’s own hateful power into the system of mirrors, and direct it back at the creature. All of this would be guided by the orrery to strike the Star with precision.

The components of the Great Making were tended and staffed by kobold-shaped constructs, each named Jeremy, or collectively known as the Jeremies.

The components of the Great Making had been built long ago, and by the present time, they had fallen into disrepair. Worse, the Great Making itself was never completed. Until, that is, the crisis of the Red Star became acute, and the mage Archibald Thel and his allies were able to finish what Fegall had started.

One by one, the heroes found and repaired the mirrors. Archibald and his wife, Thienna Skybreaker, set to work repairing the Orrery itself.

When the first signs of the Red Star’s approach became known, the heroes learned of another factor in the Great Making – the legendary chronomancer, Ashavari. Ashavari was an avariel of great magical power who was believed to have lived thousands of years before the present day. What the heroes eventually learned was that Ashavari’s control of time magic was such that she had journeyed back and forth through time on several occasions in Avlis’ history. She was born, in fact, in the present day. Archibald and Thienna found the young Ashavari and took her into their care, not yet knowing exactly what part she would play.

As the Red Star crisis continued to develop, one final piece of the Great Making remained for Archibald to find – the legendary Tick Tock Tower, control center of the Great Making. Without discovering and entering the tower, it is doubtful if the Making could have been made to work at all.

At length, Thel and other heroes unlocked the path to the Tower. The Tick Tock Tower was discovered to reside on the back of a great oceangoing beast, a World Turtle of immense size. Once within the Tower, Archibald set to repairing, refining, and working out how the Tower could be used in conjunction with the other components of the Great Making to fulfil the plan of reflecting the Star’s hatred back at it, and thus saving the world.

The Power of Faith

What of the Gods and their devotees? It was decided that the Great Making alone would not be sufficient to defeat the Red Star. Several heroes, devoted to their faiths, took it upon themselves to organize a great response of their own. They did this both to defend the people of the world and to meet the Star’s wrath with the power of the Gods.

Thienna Skybreaker, Elder Healer of Cha'reth, worked to devise and organize the efforts of the faithful. A plan developed in which representatives of the faithful would channel divine energy into giant ritual emeralds, capable of storing this power. These ritual emeralds had first been used as part of a great warding to enable heroes to confront and defeat a shard of the Red Star known as the Erratic at the town of Quithranos.

These devotees empowered the crystals using techniques unique to their faith. Few of those sworn to the wickedest Gods collaborated, but many others did what they could to marshal their strength in opposition to the Star. And this strength built into a great well of power.

But how could such power be used? A mighty receptacle was needed to store it, and a focus to direct it against the Red Star. Skybreaker volunteered a powerful artefact in her possession to serve as the store for the Deific power – the vessel with which Andrinor held the Vortex of Chaos Magic in years long passed. Once in the possession of Andrinor’s immortal, Damar Ogdem, the vessel had been granted to Thienna.

For the focus, Olisa, Sword Saint of Gorethar, offered a solution. The blade Heavendor was a weapon of legendary status, forged in the image of Gorethar's light aeons ago. It had appeared and disappeared many times throughout history, always aiding the forces of purest good and order in their endeavours, opposing its foul but inseparable opposite, the vile Tanar’sheev of Maleki. Heavendor and Tanar'sheev were no mere weapons, for they existed both in the material and the outer planes. It was determined that Heavendor possessed the strength to direct the gathered divine power against the Star.

As well as attack, the devotees saw to the defense of places dear to them. Thorfinn of Dru'El, bearer of Wildfire, worked with keepers of the world’s Lifestones to generate vast shields to protect the world against the hatred unleashed by the Star.

The preparations were successful. The power of a million prayers was transferred successfully to Heavendor. Olisa unleashed this power against the Star, smiting it in two. Heavendor’s twin, Tanar’sheev, was likewise utilized in this attack – whether willing or not, the weapons’ opposite essences were ultimately inseparable.

The Monolith

The Mages of the Trust, seeing the threat of the Red Star, launched their own plan of action. The first step was the formation of a group of mages who would dedicate their time and energies to the creation of a countermeasure. This grouping was called the Vanguard Task Force, or VTF.

At the heart of the Vanguard Task Force, driving its efforts along, was the Violet mage Dameon Nepirtas. Dameon saw the VTF as necessary to cut through any discussion and delay, allowing the member mages to concentrate on creating a potent weapon to defeat the Red Star. After a little discussion, he was confirmed as the group’s Director.

The Vanguard Task Force worked to create a weapon, known as the Monolith. In essence, the Monolith had a design and function similar to an artificed wand – on a vast scale. Like any wand, the Monolith was designed to hold and cast spells. The spells in question were researched and developed by groups of mages – and they were spells of terrible power. Dameon had worked upon harnessing the power of what he called the Void. Other mages contributed a destructive force they called Boom Juice. These spells were empowered by a device called a Blood Capacitor.

The research and construction of the components occurred within what might seem to an outsider an impossibly short span of time. In truth, it was constructed within a temporal anomaly, allowing the mages working upon it sufficient time to theorize, research, and create its components.

The Monolith was developed alongside the work on the Great Making. Dameon and his collaborators envisioned the Monolith as a backup weapon – a failsafe in case the Great Making failed to destroy the Red Star. Some collaboration occurred between the mages Dameon and Archibald to ensure that the activation of the Monolith, if needed, would not interfere with the work of the Great Making.

When the Monolith was successfully unleashed, some observers noticed strange phenomena. There are rumours that the Monolith possessed undocumented components, known only to the Director. What these were, and what effect they have had on the world, is not known.

A Song of Hope and Defiance

Hatred, fear, panic, and other negative emotions resonated from the Red Star. To combat this and to uplift the souls of Avlis’ people, several notable performers put their own plans into motion. Frannie Mouze, Nawen Beign, and the Academy of Bardic Arts gave a series of performances they called the Concert of Hope, to spread hope through song and merriment in that dark hour.

Frannie had another realization – the crystalline nature of the Star and its shards offered an avenue to counter the Star’s energies with those of the bards’ own design. Working with other performers and Psions, the group procured an emerald golem’s heart. This giant crystal heart was etched by Glorandrea in such a way that it could store ritual energy.

The creation of the necessary energies was a joint production by the psions of the Luminous Order and the bards of the Bardic Academy. The psions, Alexis, Lily, and Sarith, joined with the performers Glora, Jones, Kurn, Nawen and Frannie. The performers worked to produce a resonant vibration contrary to the Star’s own – suffused with hope, joy, and love. The psions used their mastery of the psionic arts to weave the power of these emotions, and positive energy, into the ritually prepared emerald heart.

This strength was added to the efforts against the Star, as were the voices of several of these masters of the Bardic Arts, when the final confrontation came.

The Death of Avlis

As preparations were made and plans hatched, the Star moved inexorably towards Avlis. There were many battles fought against shards of the great destroyer, which are recounted elsewhere. Over days and months, the Star hoved into view, appearing faint at first, then growing until it hung in the sky above Avlis, red and angry, a crimson devourer of unfathomable size. Some among the people of Avlis turned traitor and devoted themselves to the Star, forming a cult and carving the sign of a four-pointed star into their own foreheads. Those people who ventured out of doors in the final days were able to do so only with mind-protecting magic to ward themselves.

The plans went into motion. Wards were placed on several locations of import across the lands, to provide a haven for people and to safeguard vital assets. Among these havens were Castle Lumiere in Ferrell, the Champion’s Keep at the centre of Elysia, and Drakehall Keep in M'Chek.

But the heroes of Avlis did not devise these wards to hide from the Star. As the thing made its final approach, they struck at it, with all their gathered might and cunning.

And they failed.

The light of Heavendor and its dark counterpart Tanar’Sheev were aimed at the Star, joined by the assembled power of millions of hopeful prayers. Thorfinn’s Wildfire, too, joined this assault, as did the songs of the performers. The coordinated attack carved the Red Star into two pieces. But this was a problem. The Great Making could not be focused, and the power of the Star was divided – not merely into half, but into thousands of shards, as one of the bisected pieces shattered into fragments that plunged themselves towards Avlis.

Dameon activated the Monolith. In a surge of unearthly power, half of the Star was consumed by oblivion – by the void itself. The Star, though, was not conquered. Dameon fed more power into the Monolith, causing it to lash out at the fragments that hurtled towards Avlis’ surface. The Monolith destroyed an army of Celestials, brought to the battle by Gorethar’s herald, Llissa.

The Star was not defeated. The world began to end.

Remaking

At the last, the heroes escaped through a portal. They found themselves in one last refuge, a pocket dimension known as Sorrow's End. This hidden place had been prepared as a ritual site in the event that the Star prevailed, and the world was lost. The time, it seemed, had come. Archibald, Dameon, and the keeper of the dimensional graveyard, Ronan, conferred with three sisters, the daughters of Andrinor: Andria, Valeria, and Ashavari.

The sisters realized something. A gem in Archibald’s possession, enchanted by all three sisters and given to him by Valeria, was the key to defeating the Star. The gem was a thing that could only have been created now, in the present. And yet, it was the missing piece, the final, crucial component of the Great Making, that had not been inserted into its construction from the beginning. Without it, the great device did not work. It was only at this moment, at the end of all things, that the realization was made. But what use was this? To most, nothing at all. Even to great heroes, an impossible hope. But to the combined power of those gathered here and the triune scions of magic – it was salvation for the world.

The sisters enacted their own plan. Andria and the heroes supplied magical power. Valeria used this power to open a portal to the past. And Ashavari journeyed back in time, to place the gem within the Great Making, and then to leave it somewhere it could be found, to close the loop.

Time was relooped. Events unraveled in parallel. The Sisters’ plan worked. All proceeded as it had done before. The power of prayer and the divine artefacts lashed out. Songs of hope lifted to the heavens. The Monolith fired. But this time, the Great Making also aligned. It fired perfectly, shattering the remaining half of the Star. The Celestial army prevented the splinters and shards from destroying the world.

Coda

Many who now live thanks to the efforts of the heroes nevertheless remember both sets of events. Although the death of the world was undone, many still remember living through the timeline in which all was lost and the world brought to ruin. To those with clear memories, the end of the world both did and did not happen. Such are the curiosities of time magic.