Advent of the Haelborne#
Spoilers
Article contains spoilers: Full Series.
Chapter Alignments#
Chapter I: Everything Stops: 1
Chapter II: Vacation…?: 2
Chapter III: Crab Rider: 3-4
Chapter IV: You Can Call Me…: 5-6
Chapter V: It Wasn’t Funny: 7-10
Chapter VI: Background Street Crossers: 11-15
Chapter VII: Tactical Bullshittery: 16-18
Chapter VIII: We Need To Talk: 19-20
Chapter IX: Hubris: 21-24
Chapter X: So You Know That Lying Thing I Do?: 25-27
Chapter XI: Absolved: 28-30
Events#
Prologue: Grim, offering a cup of mystery liquid to ‘General Limril’. Have a short quip in conversation about the Firmament Glass.
1. The sisters have taken another contract and are out hunting. Ari gets isolated and Grim ambushes her. She barely manages to escape, losing an arm in the process. It takes an expensive healing ability and a potent potion to regenerate. The sisters return to Javenshard and try to get a report to the higher authorities in Troltano, the nearest established city with high-tier adventurers. Bia convinces her to go to Troltano in person and hire someone. It’ll be fun! Dan and Rosa also come along. Use prose to show that Bia rarely ever succeeds in making Ari do anything at all. Express her continued frustration with Ari throughout the book subtly.
2. The day before leaving, Ari visits Duskir to ask about the Glass and the Hastors’ reality manipulation powers. Duskir refuses to tell her anything (repressed trauma from the Dawne Kingdom), until Ari gets her drunk and forces the information out. It’s revealed that the Glass can manipulate time and that the Hastors are descended from some deific entity. Duskir, in her rather drunken state, isn’t explaining things very well. From here on, we see a lot of what seems to be Ari tuning out of conversations, or prose repeating, but is actually the Glass skipping time backwards and forwards. Also show off Ari throwing around her reality powers.
3. The company travel straight-line on horseback (find some weird eldritch creature to ride later) towards Troltano. After about three hours of travel (yes, I searched up the average speed of a horse and did calculations, no, I’m not a sweat), they arrive at Roriodo, a town not much larger than Javenshard. They buy some basic combat gear for Dan and Rosa there - thankfully, Ari knows someone who makes quality stuff there.
4. They find lodgings for the night in a small inn- and get ambushed by a Haelborne team. Rosa nearly dies (yet still maintains being a light-hearted smartass bastard). They grab some gear for Rosa and Dan after this. They stay the night and leave promptly the next morning. At the inn, Ari and Lloyd stay back at the dinner table after Dan, Bia, and Rosa went to their room. Ari’s just reading. Lloyd tries to flirt, is good at it, but Ari is just completely unaware and its fucking hilarious.
5. Halfway through a similar length journey as from Javenshard to Roriodo, they stop to clear out a nest of weird raptor things (Voracrests). This is Dan and Rosalie’s first actual battle. Dan turns out to be a natural. Rosa is predictably bad but ends up killing one by pure luck. The sisters and Lloyd have to intercede. Dan ranks up, allowing for some more LORE DROP, Rosa not far behind after some consolidation.
6. They arrive in the next town in their path, Evedast. This is another city, surrounded by gleaming fields of wine grapes (or some other crop- knowing me, probably a horrific flesh concoction). Here, the company meet a NEW CHARACTER momentarily. Gonna call him Arodorros for now. He’s an adventurer.
7. The company discover a Haelborne hideout underneath a shop, though they don’t know that yet. They explore on the sheer curiosity of discovering a secret passage and run into some cultists, at which point Ari and Bia recognize what they’re dealing with. The sisters take the lead in slaughtering the below-average cultists and Cloak members, while Lloyd defends the tier zeroes. They end the massacre by threatening a cultist for information. Unfortunately, the cultist is loyal to the Haelborne and gives up nothing. Ari gets mad and the conversation skips backwards a few seconds. In the end, Ari ties up the cultist and leaves him hung upside down from the hideout’s ceiling. Dan and Rosa both reach tier two.
8. They depart Evedast the next morning and travel for two days this time, stopping in a little grove to camp in between. Here comes some character development time: we see Ari’s friendship with Lloyd in a bit more detail as they discuss the conflict. Lloyd keeps trying to talk to her talk to her, but Ari keeps diplomatically discussing future plans.
9. After a few more days of travelling, they arrive in Troltano. After securing their lodgings, the company try to get to Ari’s father, Faelorn- it’s not like the Haelcrien government has a system to open support tickets. They end up meeting a man who looks suspiciously like Arodorros with a fake beard who guides them right to Faelorn.
10. Faelorn is predictably unenthusiastic about meeting her daughters in the middle of business. He does hear them out but doesn’t buy it and kicks them out, muttering about conspiracy theories and “she’s gone mad too.” Ari, used to this kind of behaviour from her father, decides to wait a few days to go meet him again.
11. They barge into Faelorn’s office once more a few days later- but something’s off. He’s not distant anymore, completely content to have a nice chat, which he then interrupts by revealing the whole building is an illusion and Faelorn’s body parts are strewn all across the office. Fake Faelorn transfigures into Grim, who promptly tries to kill the company and massacres the background street crossers in the process (that was a Murder Drones reference AND a Cliffside reference. I’m so happy).
12. Ari and Bia are able to pull off some crazy chaos gene-bloodline reality manipulation trick and blow Grim’s head off- though it begins regenerating a few seconds later. At this point, a background street crosser reveals that the entirety of Troltano is an illusion and that most of the pedestrians walking around are actually Haelborne. Widespread panic amongst the actual citizens and the whole city becomes a bloodbath as the Haelborne reveal themselves.
13. The company flee from the scene. In a panic, Ari begins using the Glass to slow the time streams of Haelborne chasing after them.
14. Arodorros appears out of nowhere disguised as a sailor in the transport tunnels, offering them a quick ride out, acting calm as random people are turned into flesh kebabs in the background. Ensuing is an epic chase scene.
15. On the extensive and uncannily calm boat ride out of the city, Ari recognizes Arodorros after a little bit and starts questioning. He reveals that he’s working for a relative of hers but refuses to say anything else.
16. Frustrated with Arodorros’ secrecy, Ari goes around to the back deck of Arodorros’ expansive yacht to ponder their situation. Lloyd joins her. They talk but end up sitting silently and looking down the transport tunnel’s opening, about fifty kilometres ahead.
17. Arodorros shows the company into his hideout just on the Evedast outskirts and leaves them to get comfy. He explains the situation: after centuries of hiding, the Haelborne are ready to reveal their colours and take control of Haelcrien’s government- most of the government are Haelborne cultists. They will use Haelcrien as a base of operations to harvest concentrated reality fabric out of special locations across Kaaldenvale, which will destabilize the reality enough that it will become uninhabitable within a decade. Their best bet is to go to Avertine and intervene personally, capturing the Haelborne’s base of operations there to hinder their plans, at least for a little while. Due to the urgency of the situation, he insists that the tier ones (Rosa and Dan) stay back while Arodorros takes the Hastors and Lloyd on a trip to Avertine. Arodorros also shows an escape portal hidden in his hideout but doesn’t elaborate where it goes, and nobody bothers to ask.
18. Arodorros requests a private talk with Aryon and tells her about the true nature of the Glass, as a fragment of divinity, as well as its bond to her and how it can be repossessed. Ari somewhat disregards this and insists that Arodorros tell her about Faelorn. Arodorros concedes that he and Duskir were a pair of gallivanting adventure-seeking bigheaded fools who wanted out of ‘the kingdom.’ He doesn’t know anything about Faelorn’s affliction, and Ari is disappointed. Steering the conversation to a more practical direction, Arodorros asks Ari whether she actually wants to help. The Glass has bonded to her, but she can easily give it her sister, or another Hastor. They need to get going quickly, as Arodorros believes the Haelborne are about to make their next move. Ari doesn’t have the will in her twisted little heart to force her sister to do it, so she has an emotional conversation with Bia and decides to come along. The same night, Lloyd becomes upset (receives news that the Haelborne killed his brother) and Ari comforts him with shit like ‘whatever the fuck is wrong with you, get good’.
19. Since the transport tunnels surrounding Troltano are no longer safe, the company have to ride overland. They travel before stopping to camp out around a meadow riddled with streams. Ari and Bia go on a local hunting trip and end up coming across a pack of nilfor. Their fight is interrupted by the splitting flesh in the distance- they look around, and IIIIIIIIIIIT’S GRIM, now accompanied by Jalgar and slaughtering little forest critters.
20. The Hastors race back to camp and tell Arodorros and Lloyd the dysphorium are coming- but it’s too late. Not very easy to hide a campsite in a flat meadow, you see. The dysphorium have arrived, and the company barely survive.
21. They manage to get some sleep after a lot of running and continue on the next day. They’ve travelled to within walking distance of Troltano. Arodorros pressures Ari to take a trip to Faelorn’s office. He knows that the man had seer powers and believes there’s something to find there. Ari, already fed up with all this risk taking, decides she won’t bother. Lloyd and Bia volunteer, and they miraculously sneak past the Haelborne and into the office. Lloyd doesn’t make it out.
22. While fuming, Ari lets slip a keyword: Lloyd’s full name. If the audience remember Limril from the beginning, they now know that Lloyd is involved with the Haelborne.
23. Bia put together and deciphered some of the notes. It details the arrival of the Haelborne centuries ago, taking control of Haelcrien’s primitive government- but they knew about that already. What’s more important is information about the origin of the Fundament Governance- in which the name Hastor surfaces frequently, without context. It hints that there is something to be done about the Governance, in some manner of hub off in the wilderness. Disregarding this completely as risky and mysterious, Ari vetoes that they continue to Avertine anyway - with the support of Arodorros, who, of course, knows all of this already and is disappointed that they got nothing better. Besides, they need Lloyd back- and surely they’d take such an important hostage to their main base.
24. After another half-day of travelling, the company arrives on the outskirts of Avertine, which is still a bustling capital city (for now). They sneak into the Parliament Citadel, and, after a little searching, find a conveniently lightly-guarded basement entrance with the Haelborne sigil. They open the doors into the atrium and find it… empty. Weird.
25. They continue through the halls, and, after searching the entire base, realize that there are only a few guards inside. Taking the opportunity, the company return to the entrance to leave the fishy situation- only to find it locked from the outside. Uneasily, they wander back into the dimensional vessel docking room- and find Grim waiting for them with Lloyd unconscious in a cage hanging from the ceiling. Grim presents the terms like a television host, sweetly describing how it will commit horrors upon Lloyd’s soul if Ari doesn’t give up the Glass. Ari, stricken with fear, gives in- but Grim leaves with Lloyd anyway. The remaining cultists go absolutely ham on Ari and co., nearly capturing her and killing the company. They do manage to escape Avertine as it pulls a Troltano around them.
26. Great Haelborne towers skewer the capital from below. Within a matter of seconds, the city is in ruins. As Ari sits on the cliffs around Avertine, she realizes she has failed. She wants to go right back to Arodorros’ hideout, grab Dan and Rosa, and leave Haelcrien for somewhere safe. Bia tries to talk her out of this and fails. Bia, angry after putting up with and supporting Ari for so long, grabs Arodorros and leaves to fight Grim.
27. Ari tries to go back to the hideout. On the way, she comes across a ruined temple. She enters to pray to the Equilibrium but ends up having a mental breakdown. The Chaos uses the temple’s long derelict altar to rejuvenate Ari, who finally gets her revelation moment. If she had been more decisive and ruthless, willing to take great risks, this could have been avoided. If she had tried to fight the Haelborne in Troltano, Lloyd might have had a chance. If she hadn’t refused to go into Troltano, Lloyd would never have been captured. If she hadn’t been drenched in fear of risk and forced into Grim's deal, Lloyd would still be there. She's got to stop avoiding the risks and take the gambles. She would give up- but the stakes are too high. There's a world to save and a friend to rescue.
28. Ari tries to track down Arodorros and Bia. Arodorros gets slaughtered. Keeping him alive is not Grim’s priority. Bia gets to the brink of death- and that’s when Ari arrives. Ari pushes on ruthlessly and nearly kills the dysphorium- but Lloyd steps in and shocks the daylights out of Ari. Lloyd has last regrets, and profusely apologizes to Ari, and they hug. At this point, Ari flashbacks to that preface scene I adapted, and ruthlessness shines in her mind once more. She stabs him in the back. Ari loots Grim and reclaims the stolen Hourglass. In the aftermath of the battle, she ascends a tier and gains a title.
29. Ari psychotically burns Lloyd’s body, taking his Haelborne pin. She and Bia travel back to Evedast, find Rosa, Dan, and Mael, and step through the escape portal for lands unknown.
Epilogue: Raelia Hastor, watching the journey of the Firmament-Keeper.
Character Arcs#
Ari#
Ari at the beginning of the book is hard edged and devoted to her calling. She puts almost all of herself into adventuring and getting stronger, because she doesn’t want to be in a situation where she is too weak to do what she has to. She doesn’t want to experience what Duskir did. She is ultimately driven by a need to protect her interests – which more often than not, includes her people.
Grim’s arrival stresses her. No one in Javenshard is up to the task of killing Grim, so Ari eventually decides to follow Bia’s suggestion as it is the more immediate way of getting help.
When the Haelborne attack in Roriodo, Ari realizes that there’s an organized operation here. Someone wants that hourglass, and wants it bad.