The Cave of Worlds Campaign Blog, Session #17

[Again, this is a fill-in writeup, written from memory more than a year after the session was run. Details are definitely missing, and errors are not unlikely. I am dividing the "sessions" up into convenient lengths for these writeups; I don't remember what happened on specific dates, nor the specific dates themselves. So some of the events from the previous or following writeup might have taken place in this session, or vice-versa. And we might have played a day or week before or after the listed date.]

When they arrived in Apple Lane, the place was in chaos (with a small "c", fortunately). All of the inhabitants seemed to be frantically preparing to leave, packing in a frenzy. The party managed to get themselves escorted to the High Commissioner.

He thanked them for recovering Sed and Amadea, but seemed somewhat upset. It turned out that by trumpeting their Lunar Agent status at the second prison camp, and by citing him by name as the source of their authority, they had not been as discrete as he'd asked them to be. His sources at the court had just informed him that Lord Henshar had complained to the Emperor, and that a large military force had been dispatched to arrest him and as many of his officers as possible. Given the state of Lunar justice, and the overwhelming power of Lord Henshar at court, Gar-El had chosen flight rather than being turned into some sort of monstrous freak or having his soul destroyed.

[Incidentally, Henshar's startlingly rapid rise to power and influence at court was the result of those very prison camps. He controlled the production of unprecedented amounts of magic items, and was therefore fabulously wealthy.]

The High Commissioner would still provide the information he'd promised, and some other small rewards if doing so didn't imperil his escape, but he would simply not be able to give them all of the rewards he'd offered for a fully successful mission. There was, however, one last thing: under the circumstances, he was leaving Glorantha and heading for the Cave of Worlds. Would the party escort him and his party to the Valley? He wanted to see his mother again.

Amadea, it seemed, was his granddaughter. Sed was his great-grandson. And he...he had been Gib, the sullen teen-aged boy the party had gone searching for when they first left their world.

The party had known that time moved much faster in Glorantha than in the Valley or the Cave. But they hadn't realized how extreme the difference was. Gar-El/Gib was seventy years old. He had been fifteen when he'd left the Valley.

Amadea kicked up a bit of a fuss at this point. She wanted her husband, and wasn't going anywhere without him. Gar-El told her not to be a fool – by now, he was dead if he was lucky. And they'd all be considerably less lucky if they didn't leave the world within the hour; Lord Henshar was not known for his kindly or forgiving nature. The camps, after all, had been his idea.

[Just to clear up a few points: Over the past seventy years, the young Gib had worked his way up the ranks of the Empire, in large part working as an extremely effective spy in his younger years. His unique ability to not be detected by magic had been invaluable in his career. That ability was, of course, shared by the party, for reasons that may or may not become clear later.

He'd taken the Lunar name Gar-El when the Emperor had commissioned him. “Gib” was not a respectable-sounding name in Lunar society. His wife and son had died years before, so he had nothing holding him to Glorantha any more – now that his power and position were lost.

His granddaughter Amadea had fallen in love with an Orlanthi Rune Lord, and had run off with him; she'd always been rebellious and somewhat flighty. Sed was the product of that union. All three had been captured when the Empire had conquered the city of Wind's End.]

Most of Gar-El's people were fleeing west and south, escaping the Empire. The situation was one of orderly but rapid action. Gar-El had several wagons loaded, and several hand-picked men to accompany him to the Cave. He wasn't sure that anyone not originally from the Valley would be able to pass through to the Cave – Zero the Sage certainly couldn't, many years before, nor had some other Gloranthans he'd had test it as recently as last year – but it was worth trying.

As Apple Lane was set on fire (Gar-El had no interest in leaving gifts for his victorious rival), the newly-expanded party headed toward the hills, and the path to the Cave of Worlds.