Mechanus (TNC3-2)
- Part of Season: Shards of Eternity (TNC3)
- Part of Saga: The Nightmare Crisis
Episode presumably took place in September or October of 2002.
Story
So anyway, they figure the next shard is to be found in Mechanus. They determine that they’ll need to do much paperwork, so they go to the gate-town and meet with the Fraternity of Order. They purchase some identicubes, filled out in advance by a moigno. Then, they gate into Mechanus.
So mechanus is all wacked out and shit; a bunch of cubes, hundreds of feet along each side, arranged in three dimensions, all fitting within a titanic cube. Lots of green. Lots of wacky physics. They discern location on the shard, and find out it’s a few gears down, in the guvner’s territory.
Thus, they go to see the guvners. The grand hall of the Fraternity of Order is monstrously large, a great ring a mile in diameter encircling a building over a hundred stories tall. They walk a mile or so around to the museum, a many-story affair detailing every aspect of the planes. Several floors up, past the Blood War level, past the alien art floor, etc, they come to the private galleries. They are flatly refused by the guards; until Michael Vallas shows up. Kage mentions the shards, and gets an audience.
He takes them into his private showcase, which is, of course, chock full of swords and armor. They discuss things; the shard’s origin, Solace, Skyler, the end of the universe, etc. Hyacinth babbles about Earth stuff. Blah blah. Out of nowhere, someone disjoins the nightmare shard, wreaking unholy havoc. They all avoid death through another uncarefully-worded wish spell. Thus do they resolve to find the fucker.
They locate the bastard; millions of miles out. Michael takes them to his place to rest; then, they assault the formians.
Thus, they wake up and go. The formian asteroid is covered with hundreds of workers and soldiers, who they gleefully demolish. They haul ass downward, teleporting past the formian armies. They nearly get caught in a repeating wall of force trap, but they escape; right into the queen’s lair.
They fight the queen; she manifests eight spells a round through her servitors. Much death and dying. Kage gets banished. Kage sends two solars into the fight from Shadow; meanwhile, the queen mazes herself for safekeeping. The horde loses control; the servitors fall under the weight of the party’s onslaught. The queen returns and wails…killing a solar outright. Deafened by the screaming, Hyacinth grabs midnight and makes a massive aerial charge; gets a nat 20 and slices the bitch’s egg sack right down the middle, spilling her eggs everywhere. Sherry, in the meantime, is dead.
In her death throes, the bitch wails like a banshee again, slaying the other Solar and Hyacinth. The two dying solars call out to their deity, Lathander. He shows the hell up. He revives the solars and everyone in the party, then he leaves. Hyacinth rushes the nightmare shard, as it glows horribly hot. She attempts to smash it with midnight. Dorian, the smart one, uses a time stop and hits her with a feeblemind, feeblewill, and a hold monster. She fails all three…and, for some reason, dies. Or did she? Meanwhile, Den takes the shard and buries it in himself…thus cooling it. It disjoins him a bit, but he survives.
So they all go home. Khan is dead, so is Hyacinth, and the cleric’s missing. As it turns out, Hyacinth is in the sword; she wields great power, but she uses it for silliness. Floating about in a sword, she says she doesn’t want to leave. Her soul begins to fade, and Shar whispers defeat into her ear. Dorian lies to her to make her think he cares, so she comes back. What the fuck, Hyacinth. What the fuck.