Emancipation

[Corwin]

She scowls. "It's never enough with you, is it? Always, you always have to--" Visibly stopping herself, she shakes her head. "The first step to letting go is forgiveness, so forgiveness is what you'll have. For my sake, not yours, because I'm going to start anew."

[Anastasia]

Interesting approach. Gimme another Bluff check, +5 circumstance bonus.

[Corwin]

Taking 10 for 128 (using the +10 1/week bonus here).

[Anastasia]

There's a soft snap, and another and another. Slowly malice snaps and crumbles from this world, the overarching curses giving way before this confession. They fade, the treasure chambers seeming somehow brighter now.

[Corwin]

Nodding to herself in satisfaction, Seira traverses the place while confirming that there are no remaining curses, either in this place or any part of the visible hoard. One day, Bethany will recover enough to wonder what they were doing here in the first place, and then she'll wonder if she received help for the sake of breaking the curse. Seira would be only too happy to assure her during such a time that their concern had nothing to do with it!

[Anastasia]

The six vault wide curses are gone. Some of the individual curses are gone, some linger. It varies wildly, but a good majority of it is gone, including almost all of the stronger ones. Most of the rest should be clean up, or items innately cursed to begin with.

[Corwin]

Seira goes around, decursing the remaining, weaker curses through divine brute force and collecting the spoils. As fresh riches are uncovered in the process, she examines them, and repeats the same sweep over them in turn. Tedious work, no doubt, but her avatar has control of the realm and should something urgent come up before she's done Seira is only a Sending away.

Let's pick everything up!

[Anastasia]

Sure. Obviously, tallying everything is a DM task after session. Assuming nothing goes wrong here, what are your plans for all of this?

[Corwin]

Once I make sure there's nothing left, no hidden magic or doorways and anything of the sort, I would like to see how leaving from this place works. Is it a demi-plane, except with entrances all over the Inner Planes? Does it have entrances similarly to the Infinite Stairway, or can I exit it into the City of Brass, say? Into the Sultan's palace?

Loot-wise, I'll split it with Elle and Kascha. If there's nice lore here, and there seemed to be, it should answer both of their Node goals! Which is nice.

This is all OOC stuff for the most part, so the next IC thing is having Donald bring Emily over for a family dinner, and hopefully having Xera and Zariel attend it as well, while Waukeen shows up as our guest.

[Anastasia]

It puts you out in a random place on an elemental plane. Study and testing suggests it doesn't hit anywhere important, but with infinite planes you certainly can't rule it out. Well, besides anywhere the leemental lord of that plane chooses to be unavailable, of course. Still, you think the odds of hitting such locations is low.

Sure, we can do the family dinner next. Go ahead and set up the scene for that and I'll roll with people arriving and all of that.

[Corwin]

The banquet hall represents the gingerbread palace faithfully. Located near the top, it provides a clear view outside through wide, translucent sugar glaze windows, plush and comfortable marshmallow seats placed around macarons serving as tables floating above the orange candy bread floor. The lack of decoration on the walls is more than compensated by the rich hard candy mosaics placed carefully on the ceiling to depict grand battles from the Abolition War, albeit the windows offer an intriguing view of the Cauldron as well; one that changes ever so slightly as the room slowly turns clockwise.

At present, only one table has been set, enlarged lollypops set by the double white chocolate doors serving as signs to show the way towards it. The banquet hall is reserved for family tonight, after all!

A shame, I thought I could control it. To confirm, I can't control the exit point? I can't even dictate the plane the demi-plane will connect to? If so, is this something I could check with time and investment?

[Anastasia]

Time and investment, yeah. It's set up to be random, though it's possible you could adjust it in time. It is one hell of a thing after all.

Emily is the first one in, Donald just behind her. Emily comes to you, "Mom," she calls, "How are you?"

[Corwin]

"Can't complain," Seira responds, waving her over. She gets up to close the distance and hug her daughter once she's approached, before showing her to a seat at her side. "Just wrapped up the last remnant of the Abolition War, so there's that extra meaning to the dinner. And yourself?"

[Anastasia]

It's a tight hug, "We're healing from a raid on a Sharran temple on Ash. We caught it before it established itself, but Ianvasah was tortured and Alyssa was maimed. Alyssa's recovered well, but Ianvasah..." Here Emily shakes her head, "She's still really upset."

Donald comes in and calls, "Hey, what are we having for dinner?"

[Corwin]

"You should've brought her over," Seira muses. "Maybe not the family dinner, but to take a couple days off to refocus herself. That sort of thing scars you, and there's no substitute for getting right back in the saddle. Hitting back at Shar's jailers, striking back at her."