Into the Mirror, Session 1

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Watch on YouTube: Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 · Part 4 · Part 5 · Part 6

Into the Mirror opens with a death. Flynry is struck down by a meteor at the end of the Battle for the Crown and wakes in a life too perfect to be real. Then that life falls apart into an endless desert of green sand. Back in The Void, his grieving friends Toddleheim and Locket, joined by the Grandmaster’s personal assistant Elianna, go after him, and they have to ask the one man none of them trust for help: a chained, unwashed and suspiciously cheerful Arbiter.

The Story

Flynry Dies

On the final battlefield of The Grand Coliseum, a literal meteor fell from the heavens toward Flynry. As it came, he saw his friends Toddleheim and Locket standing before him, smiling. He accepted his fate, let go of his beast form, returned to his human shape and reached out a hand to them. He felt two hands on his shoulders. It was his fallen comrade Orin, comforting him, and then the werebear’s giant hands braced him as his knees began to buckle.

Flynry thought back to the Hall of Mirrors, where Locket and Toddleheim had once “gave something of themselves” to pull him back from the brink. The mission was over, and he felt peace, even joy. The visions faded, the hands vanished, and he stood alone. The meteor struck, and a giant flash filled the arena as The Acolytes watched his body obliterated “by this celestial entity.”

Flynry Wakes

He seemed to close his eyes, then open them. The burning comet had become warm, pleasant sunshine. Flynry woke beneath an oak hundreds of feet tall, beside a small river in picturesque countryside, with a spring breeze carrying the smell of flowers, grass and warm bread. He was suddenly certain that this was the true reality. The arena, the Grandmaster, the Arbiter, his friends: all of it had been “a really complex and crazy dream.”

He followed the smell of bread down a path that felt like home. That meant a great deal to him, because Flynry had always been a wanderer who never felt he had one. In the village, tables were being carted into the market square for a feast. Faces came to him as if they had always been there: Gregor the Baker, and old lady Margaret beating dust out of a rug. Then a young man in fine robes ran up shouting “Father!” Flynry couldn’t recall his name until the young man told him: “It’s me, Orin!” Memories came flooding back of naming his son after his fallen comrade. This Orin was an accomplished politician who had come “all the way from” Prexmarin and still beaten his father to the party.

The feast was for Flynry. “It’s not every day that someone retires from the Grandmaster’s service,” Orin said. The word “Grandmaster” nagged at Flynry, but he chose not to break the spell. New memories settled in as if they had always been there. In them he had won the Battle for the Crown instead of dying, triumphant alongside Professor Stabbz, and the Grandmaster had given him some of the highest honors in the Void and a place in her court.

The Feast

Olaf the blacksmith arrived late, soot-covered and braid-bearded, a long-time friend who had forged much of Flynry’s arms and armor. He grumbled that not everyone could afford to retire and be “handed things by the Grandmaster,” and boasted, “Hands behind my back, I could have beat the Arbiter.” Flynry suggested that might be true if the contest involved ale. The drinking contest that followed went badly for the guest of honor, so Olaf lifted his apron and pulled a skin of “the good stuff” out of his pants. It could be smelled from across the table. “Olaf, if I wanted to drink oil, I think I could go find a deposit for that,” Flynry said. Olaf was unmoved: “Oh, well, the oil wouldn’t be as smooth.”

Orin gave a heartfelt toast, calling his father “one of the best leaders and men and examples that a son could ever have.” Olaf followed it with a speech of his own: “Good job.” Then he sat back down. Flynry, emboldened by drink, asked whether Orin’s mother had come. She had been sitting right there at the table, Orin said, but Flynry couldn’t find her anywhere. He covered by saying she’d probably stepped out for fresh air. Orin told him he was being very strange today, and warned him off Olaf’s brew: “It’s pretty much just straight fuel.”

Then a name rang in Flynry’s head: Lillian, his wife. As night fell and the town’s mages set magical lanterns floating overhead, he saw her on the dance floor in a green dress. It felt like seeing her “for the first time but also for the thousandth time.” She was petite and playful, an unlikely match for a hulking, bearded brawler. He crossed the dance floor “like a battlefield,” and she held out her hand. Flynry can’t dance, but here he was “not terrible.” Memories of their whole life together washed over him, and nothing had ever felt so easy or perfect.

Lillian leaned in and whispered in his ear. Then she crumbled in his arms with a crooked smile on her face, her body falling apart into sand. Buildings collapsed, people ran screaming, the sun went dark, and everything became a blowing desert of green sand. Flynry was alone.

Flynry Walks

The green-sand desert was faintly pale green, “like the color of a mirror, reflected too many times,” and surprisingly cold. Overhead was black space full of nebulas, suns and planets. Columns of sand rose like fingers reaching for the heavens, and their tips were pulled off into space to form new stars. Whatever point on the horizon he walked toward, he never got any closer.

In his panic Flynry shifted, and he shifted too far. His clothes ripped at the seams and he became more animal than man. He curled into a ball in the sand and screamed. He now understood that his death had been real and the village was some aberration, yet he still carried memories of a wife, a son and a whole life he had never lived. When a sandstorm rolled in he roared into the emptiness, “WHO’S THERE?!” The sand answered by pulling itself together into a giant minotaur with a giant axe.

Battle was the most comfortable Flynry had felt since waking. He latched onto the minotaur’s chest, tearing at it with claws that oozed necrotic venom. It gored him and flipped him onto his back, and its axe shattered into sand whenever it struck the ground, then reformed as it was lifted. One punch went straight through a hole he had already made, and the sand refilled the holes almost as fast as he could punch them. When the axe finally caught him, the wounds were “cold and lifeless, even colder than steel.” At the table, Flynry’s player admitted he was kind of rooting for the minotaur, and the narrator agreed.

Realizing that this place didn’t follow ordinary rules, Flynry plunged his arm into the sand up to the elbow and imagined a weapon. He drew out a greatsword wreathed in searing blue flame. When he buried it in the minotaur’s leg, the sand melted into mirror on both sides of the cut and couldn’t reform past the reflection. The blade’s fire turned the sand to glass under his boots as he sprinted. He leapt and brought the sword down between the minotaur’s eyes, cleaving it in half. Its cut faces became mirrors: one showed his human form, the other his bestial one, and both looked back at him with grit he hadn’t seen in a long time.

The sword cooled to a mirror finish. In it he glimpsed Toddleheim and Locket living a life after his death. Then the sand in the blade shifted, the sand at his feet shifted with it, and together they pointed him toward a spot on the horizon. Where the crossguard met the blade, a small gold word inscribed itself in a language he didn’t know but could read: “truth.” He walked for “days, weeks, months, maybe years.” He was still lost, but now he had a heading.

The Survivors

Toddleheim and Locket had each survived their own fights in the Battle for the Crown, and they watched from the stands as Flynry died. Locket herself had come close to death in her match. Toddleheim raised an arm toward his friend and could only say his name. The Grandmaster stood victorious and the Arbiter’s coup was defeated, but the victory was hollow. Flynry was gone, along with others lost along the way: “Orin. Gon. Kenny. Dissolved into acid.”

The Grandmaster took them both into her court. Toddleheim searched every book, scroll and library he could find for a way to bring Flynry back. Locket kept busy with jobs for the Grandmaster and wrote letters every night to her twin sister. Some nights a rock would hit her window, and below stood Baptiste, an elven gentleman in flowing cloaks with daggers strapped all over him. “Hello, my lady. Would you have any interest in practicing your stabbing?” he asked. She thought it “would be worth giving it a stab.” Baptiste assured her, “My knives are sharp. And I have many a honing stone,” and the narration faded out “before we get way too involved there.”

The Grandmaster had known about Toddleheim’s search. Flynry had been her champion too, and it didn’t sit right with her that he had died this way after so much sacrifice. After many months, Toddleheim received a vague letter saying his friend “may not be completely gone,” and summoning him to The Dread Fortress. Locket received one as well. When the teasing turned to Baptiste, she insisted, “Oh no, Baptiste and I are just, we’re just friends, you know. Just friends.” The narrator observed that there were “a lot of dagger strikes in your headboard.”

Reflections

The two travelled through Prexmarin and beyond, and the Dread Fortress stayed on the horizon whichever way they turned. They entered through the orc skull’s mouth and passed portraits of the Grandmaster and of Faucius Golden Shield. In the throne room, the Grandmaster’s seat was occupied by the Arbiter. He was chained hand and foot, dressed in sackcloth, sitting sideways and picking his teeth with a knife. “Welcome back. It’s good to see you again.”

The Grandmaster, he explained, was “on a tour of the Void,” and had left him in charge. He admitted he was a prisoner (“She beat me fair and square. I’m honoring our deal”), but she still had her uses for him. The tiefling beside him introduced herself as Elianna, the Grandmaster’s personal assistant, armed with bright red reading glasses and a book. She confirmed the Grandmaster’s schedule (“She does have a spa treatment at three”) and apologized for the stench: “We haven’t washed him in a few days because no one wants to go near him.” Unfortunately, they needed the Arbiter, because he had the information on such a retrieval. Elianna fortified herself with a very potent shot of brandy from a tiny vial.

“Leaving the void, not an easy task,” the Arbiter said, before announcing that he was “an accomplished mage.” He led them down stone steps they had never taken, and with a flick of his wrist he opened a door of intricate locks, revealing a line of mirrors floating over an abyss: the Hall of Fates, where they had lost Orin. “I thought you might be nostalgic for it.” When Flynry had once looked into the mirrors and couldn’t look away, he explained, a piece of his soul was taken, “and upon his death, that debt was collected.”

To pass, each of them had to look into a mirror and resist the urge to step in. Toddleheim, who had refused to look at all on their first visit, saw his heart’s desire, “just a warm bosom to rest my head”: his ideal woman, pressed against the glass and squeaking back and forth. Memories of his late wife steadied him. “Well, it is a good bosom. Bless, I must take my leave,” he muttered, and Elianna scribbled furiously. Locket saw her estranged twin sister and longed to hug her, but told herself, “This is fake,” and stepped away. Then the Arbiter revealed that the Grandmaster had wanted the pair to have a chaperone. Elianna’s mirror showed a snowy cabin and the Grandmaster snuggled beside her under a blanket, a memory of their time together. “Oh, my sweet lady,” she whispered. She pulled her hand back: “She wanted me to come back safely and I will do that.” The Grandmaster, the narration revealed, saw something of herself in Elianna, from when she had first arrived at Cor’thun lost after her father’s death.

Decay

The Arbiter offered to carry messages back. Toddleheim’s was “Tell her I said, thank you for trying.” Elianna’s was “Tell her I will keep our promise.” Then the Arbiter, in “such a good fucking mood,” said he only knew of one way to get them there. He raised a hand and disintegrated all three. Like Orin before them, their bodies grayed, chipped and flew into oblivion while he cackled, “That’s one way to solve my problems.”

They woke together in the cold green desert. “It would appear that we are in the in-between,” Toddleheim said. Elianna had heard of this place but had never known anyone to return from it. Toddleheim meditated and let the sand swirl around him, and he understood its secret: it was made of souls of the dead, destroyed so completely that nothing was left but sand. Its magic was evil in nature, though not malicious in itself. Overcome, he plunged his fists into the sand, wept, and screamed Flynry’s name. A wave rolled across the desert, and the sand split into a crack pointing the way.

They followed it over enormous dunes until they heard a blade ringing out. Below them, Flynry stood surrounded by giant sand scorpions, his greatsword now burning with rich aqua flame. For him, years, decades really, had passed. Past a scorpion he glimpsed Toddleheim’s face, then Locket’s, then a stranger’s. His exhaustion turned to confidence. He twirled the sword, slammed it into the sand, and sent a jet of aqua flame at the nearest scorpion. It dodged, but the trail of fire hardened into a sheet of mirror glass reflecting the heavens.

Notable Moments

• Flynry let go of his beast form to reach for visions of his friends as a meteor fell on him.
• Olaf kept rocket-fuel booze in a skin down his pants, and his entire speech was “Good job.”
• Lillian whispered in Flynry’s ear and crumbled into sand mid-dance, taking the whole village with her.
• Flynry pulled a flaming greatsword out of the sand and glassed a sand minotaur in half.
• The Arbiter, chained and unwashed on the Grandmaster’s throne, “helped” by disintegrating everyone.
• Toddleheim discovered the desert’s sand was made of destroyed souls, then wept the way to Flynry open.

Memorable Quotes

• Olaf: “Hands behind my back, I could have beat the Arbiter.”
• Flynry: “Olaf, if I wanted to drink oil, I think I could go find a deposit for that.”
• Baptiste: “Hello, my lady. Would you have any interest in practicing your stabbing?”
• Locket: “Oh no, Baptiste and I are just, we’re just friends, you know. Just friends.”
• Elianna: “We haven’t washed him in a few days because no one wants to go near him.”
• The Arbiter: “It does give me a certain amount of pleasure to mess with you. But the Grandmaster has given her orders, and for now, I am obliged to obey them.”
• Toddleheim: “Well, it is a good bosom. Bless, I must take my leave.”

The Arbiter: “That’s one way to solve my problems.”

Who and What Appears

Characters

Flynry (BdTeej).

• Died in the Battle for the Crown, hit by a meteor while fighting for the Grandmaster.
• Has a beast form; in the desert he over-shifts into something more animal. Uses claws, unarmed strikes, flurry and Inflict Wounds.
• Hulking and bearded. Nomadic, never had a home, and home is his theme. Not a center-of-attention guy. Can’t dance.
• Carries memories of a dream life he never lived: retired from the Grandmaster’s service after winning the Battle for the Crown with Prof. Stabbz, honored and given a place in her court, wife Lillian, son Orin, a village home.
• Pulled a blue-flame greatsword from the sand. It cooled to a mirror finish, has “truth” inscribed in gold, guides his travel, and now burns with aqua flame.
• Wandered the desert for years or decades (by his reckoning) before his friends arrived.
• Inferred: he is in the plane where the mirror-taken piece of his soul went (from the Arbiter’s 1:33:11 line and the shared desert).

Toddleheim (Ahnubyss).

• Survived his Battle for the Crown fight and took the Grandmaster’s service.
• Spent months searching tomes and libraries to revive Flynry.
• Has a “past wife,” and lives a “long life.” Uses arcane magic (Fire Bolt).
• Desire in the mirror: a warm bosom to rest his head on. He refused to look at the mirrors on his first visit.
• Sensed the sand is made of destroyed souls and opened the crack that led to Flynry.

Locket (Miss_Magitek).

• A Tabaxi. She was at 6 HP at the end of her Battle for the Crown fight.
• Writes nightly letters to her twin sister, who appears in the mirror as estranged and sought.
• Has a flirtation with Baptiste (“just friends”; dagger strikes in her headboard). She saw Baptiste in the mirror on her first visit.

Elianna (ParallaxStella).

• A tiefling and the Grandmaster’s personal assistant; carries a book and takes notes constantly.
• About 5’2”, curly black hair, light violet horns, light purple tail, red glasses on a teal-and-black reading chain.
• Carries a vial of potent brandy and can cast Guidance.
• Loathes the Arbiter. Devoted to the Grandmaster (“oh, my sweet lady”); her mirror showed them snuggled together in a snowy cabin.
• Sent as chaperone. Made the Grandmaster a promise to come back safely. The Grandmaster sees herself in her.

The Arbiter (Mudcat).

• Defeated in his attempt to overthrow the Grandmaster. Now her chained prisoner in sackcloth, sleeping in a cage, unwashed, “honoring our deal.” She still finds uses for him.
• Sat on her throne picking his teeth with a knife. Opens the Hall of Fates locks with a flick of the wrist, still shackled.
• Claims never to have visited the desert plane himself.
• Cast Disintegrate on the three to send them there: “That’s one way to solve my problems.”

Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer (mentioned only).

• Away “on a tour of the Void,” with a spa treatment at three.
• Took Toddleheim and Locket into her court. Wrote the letters, ordered the Arbiter to help, and sent Elianna as chaperone.
• “Very old.” She arrived at Cor’thun lost after the death of her father.

Orin (Mudcat).

• (a) A fallen comrade, a werebear, whose hands bracing Flynry are a vision. Lost in the Hall of Fates.
• (b) Flynry’s dream son, named after him: mid-twenties, an accomplished politician in Prexmarin, robed.

Lillian. Flynry’s dream wife: petite, playful, in a green dress. She crumbled into sand after whispering to him.

Olaf. The dream village blacksmith, with a braided beard. A drinking champion who keeps rocket-fuel booze in a skin in his pants and boasts he could beat the Arbiter.

Gregor the Baker; old lady Margaret. Dream villagers.

Baptiste (Mudcat). An elven gentleman with flowing cloaks and many daggers. He throws rocks at Locket’s window at night to invite her to “practice stabbing.”

Professor Stabbz. In Flynry’s dream history, he won the Battle for the Crown alongside Flynry.

Gon, Kenny. Named among friends lost along the way (“Dissolved into acid”).

The goblin. Opens the Dread Fortress throne-room doors.

Sand creatures. A sand minotaur with a re-forming greataxe; it can’t re-form past glass mirror. Large sand scorpions.

Places

• The dream village: a countryside village with an ancient oak, a river and a market square. It turned to sand.
• The green-sand desert / “the in-between”:
  • Mirror-green, cold sand under a black sky of nebulas, with sand-fingers that rise to form stars.
  • You can’t reach the horizon, and time is indiscernible (years or decades for Flynry).
  • The sand is made of completely destroyed souls; its magic is “evil in nature.” It has a name not yet given; few return from it.
• Prexmarin: a city where Orin works in the dream, and a place the party travels through in reality.
• The Dread Fortress:
  • Visible from everywhere, it follows you; an orc skull across a lava field, entered through the orc’s mouth.
  • Portraits of the Grandmaster and of a man with a golden shield.
  • The throne room has a stone face of the Grandmaster above the throne, and iron-and-wood doors.
  • Deep stairs lead down to the locked Hall of Fates.
• The Hall of Fates: floating mirrors over an abyss. The mirrors are portals and “living creature,” connections between planes. They show your deepest desire or what would most tempt your soul in, and they take a piece of the soul of anyone who can’t look away. Called “the Hall of Mirrors” by BdTeej at 0:02:13.

Items

• Flynry’s mirror greatsword (“truth”).
• Olaf’s skin of “the good stuff.”
• Elianna’s book and her vial of brandy.
• The Grandmaster’s letters.
• The Arbiter’s chains.

Lore statements

• Leaving the Void and finding the dead are both “not easy.”
• A soul bargain with the Hall of Fates mirrors is collected on death.
• In this plane you can shape the sand into weapons (with effort).
• Glassing the sand into mirror stops it re-forming.

Full Round-by-Round

Every beat of the episode, with timestamps (click to expand)

Intro narration

1. 0:00:02 Show intro: “Welcome, Acolytes, to D20 Deathmatch Into the Mirror.” The campaign continues the story that began with Fate of the Arbiter in Season 2.

Part 1: Flynry dies

2. 0:00:20 A literal meteor falls from the heavens onto the battlefield. Flynry sees visions of his friends Toddleheim and Locket standing before him, smiling. He accepts his fate, returns from his beast form to his human form, and reaches out a hand to them.
3. 0:00:57 He feels two hands on his shoulders: his fallen comrade Orin, comforting him. Then Orin’s giant werebear hands brace him for impact as his knees begin to buckle.
4. 0:02:13 Flynry thinks back to the Hall of Mirrors, where Locket and Toddleheim “gave something of themselves” to pull him back from the brink once. He realizes the mission is over and feels peace, even joy: “we did it… his role was played.”
5. 0:03:46 The visions fade and the hands vanish. He stands alone. The meteor strikes; a giant flash fills the arena while the Acolytes watch his body obliterated “by this celestial entity.”

Part 2: Flynry wakes (the dream village)

6. 0:04:03 He seems to close his eyes, then open them. The burning comet is now warm, pleasant sunshine. He wakes beneath an oak hundreds of feet tall, possibly hundreds of years old, beside a small river in a picturesque countryside. There is a cool spring breeze and the smell of flowers, grass and warm bread.
7. 0:06:24 He rolls a nat 1 on Wisdom. He becomes certain this is the true reality and that the arena, the Grandmaster, the Arbiter, Toddleheim and Locket were “a really complex and crazy dream.” He remembers it all, but as a dream.
8. 0:07:49 Flynry stretches after “the longest afternoon… a nice nap by the tree.” He follows the smell of bread east down a marked path. To him this direction feels like home, which has been the theme of his journey: he has been nomadic and never felt he had one.
9. 0:09:59 He reaches a small village. Stoves are lit, children play, and tables are being carted into the town square, normally the market, for a feast or festival.
10. 0:11:53 Faces “come back” to him, not as remembered but as if they had always been there: Gregor the Baker, and old lady Margaret beating dust out of a rug. Villagers nod and tip their hats to him.
11. 0:12:36 — “Father!” A man in his mid-twenties, in fine robes that suggest station or learning, rushes in to hug him. Flynry: “My boy!” He can’t recall the name. The son: “It’s me, Orin!” Memories flash back of naming his son after his fallen comrade.
12. 0:14:51 Flynry’s eyes well: “I’ll never forget you, my son. You look as handsome as ever.” Orin says he came “all the way from Prexmarin” (heard “Prexmarn”) and still beat his father there. Flynry admits he dozed at the tree.
13. 0:16:00 — The retirement. Everyone is there to celebrate Flynry tonight: “It’s not every day that someone retires from the Grandmaster’s service.” Flynry isn’t a center-of-attention guy. The word “Grandmaster” buzzes him, but he chooses not to break the illusion: “when you’re in service to the Grandmaster… that work never really ends, does it?”
14. 0:17:40 — The other history. New memories appear “as if they were always there.” In them he won the Battle for the Crown instead of dying, coming out triumphant with Professor Stabbz. The Grandmaster awarded him some of the highest honors in the Void and a place in her court, and called on him to serve from time to time.
15. 0:19:49 He fills a tall wooden flagon from the nearest tap. Olaf, the village blacksmith, arrives in his apron, with a burly braided beard and soot-covered clothes: “Hey, you can’t start without me.” He is a long-time friend who has forged many of Flynry’s arms and armor, competitive, with a fighter’s nature, but “pretty good dude.”
16. 0:21:35 — Olaf vs Flynry.
    • Flynry teases him: if he napped more he wouldn’t always be late.
    • Olaf: “Not all of us can afford to retire… We can’t just be handed things by the Grandmaster.” He boasts he could have won “that fight” and “Hands behind my back, I could have beat the Arbiter.”
    • Flynry: “You know very little of the Arbiter, I think.” Olaf: “He knows very little of me.”
    • Olaf pours a giant tankard over his face, drinking whatever lands in his mouth.
17. 0:22:42 — The drinking contest. Flynry loses the first round badly. He belches and says he hasn’t “quite woken up from my nap.”
    • Olaf: “You don’t have the good stuff.” He lifts his apron and pulls a skin from his pants, filling Flynry’s cup with booze so strong it can be smelled from across the table.
    • Flynry: “Olaf, if I wanted to drink oil, I think I could go find a deposit for that.” Olaf: “Oh, well, the oil wouldn’t be as smooth.”
    • Olaf leaves chugging the skin, gurgling as he tries to laugh mid-drink.
18. 0:24:25 — The feast. It is a huge potluck with every kind of food, desserts and drinks, and a small band plays in a corner.
19. 0:25:20 — Orin’s toast. Orin clinks his glass with a dagger. He is dressed like a politician, and Flynry half-remembers that Orin is an accomplished politician in Prexmarin even in his mid-twenties. Orin shows off a little for the friends who never left home, then speaks seriously: “you are one of the best leaders and men and examples that a son could ever have. And I am honored that you’re my father.” Olaf stands: “I would like to say something. Good job.” He sits back down.
20. 0:28:12 — “Did your mother not come?” Emboldened by drink, Flynry thanks Orin and asks about his mother. Orin says she was “just sitting right here at the table.” Flynry rolls a nat 1 on Perception and can’t find her. Afraid of being wrong, he covers: “She’s probably stepped out for a breath of fresh air.” Orin: “Are you sure that you’re all right? You’re being very strange today.” Flynry blames Olaf’s mixtures; Orin: “don’t let him give you the good stuff. It’s pretty much just straight fuel.”
21. 0:31:14 — Lillian. As Orin goes looking, the name Lillian rings in Flynry’s head: his wife.
    • BdTeej describes her (OOC framing): a “Beauty and the Beast” pairing. Flynry is a hulking, bearded, long-haired, linebacker-like man; Lillian is petite and Belle-like, a couple nobody would have expected.
22. 0:33:07 Night falls and floating magical lanterns, hovered by the town’s mages, light up. A woman in a green dress on the dance floor is Lillian, seen “for the first time but also for the thousandth time.” Flynry is very drunk (“the good stuff is getting to you”). From the head table he watches her dance: playful, lighthearted, linking arms and laughing with everyone.
23. 0:36:56 He crosses the dance floor “like a battlefield,” dodging drunk dancers, invigorated. She makes eye contact, smiles without a word, and holds out a hand. Flynry can’t dance, but here he’s “not terrible”; maybe she leads. More memories flood in: being young, the time after the Battle for the Crown, the Grandmaster’s service, moving to the countryside, having Orin. He feels complete; nothing has ever felt this easy or perfect.
24. 0:39:19 — The whisper and the crumbling. Lillian leans in and whispers in his ear. No words are heard in the transcript. She crumbles in his arms with a crooked smile on her face, her body falling apart into sand. Buildings collapse and people run screaming. The sky goes black, the sun darkens, and everything becomes a blowing desert of green sand. Flynry is alone.

Part 3: Flynry walks (the green desert and the minotaur)

25. 0:41:22 — The desert.
    • The sand is “like the color of a mirror, reflected too many times,” a faint pale green.
    • The sky is black space full of nebulas, black holes, suns and planets.
    • Columns of sand rise like fingers reaching to touch the heavens; their tips are pulled off into space, forming more nebulas and celestial events.
    • The sand blast is surprisingly cold, and everything wavers like a mirage.
    • No matter what point on the horizon he walks toward, he never gets closer.
26. 0:43:14 — The over-shift. In panic, Flynry shifts to feel safer and “shifts too far.” The seams of his clothes rip and he becomes more the animal than a man with a beast form. He screams in confusion, sorrow, loss and fear, and curls into a rock-like beast ball in the sand.
27. 0:44:46 — Two lives. He now holds both lives. He understands that his true reality was his death and that the village was some aberration, yet he keeps memories of a wife, a son and a whole life he never lived, though those people don’t exist.
28. 0:46:00 A sandstorm rolls in with small tornado spouts, and he feels he is not alone. He screams into the void: “WHO’S THERE?!”
29. 0:47:01 — The sand minotaur. Only the wind answers. Then the storm’s sand pulls down and swirls together into a giant minotaur of green sand with a giant axe, backlit by nebulas. It charges. Battle is the most comfortable Flynry has felt since waking, and he charges back.
30. 0:49:23 — Fight log.
    • Flynry goes first with Inflict Wounds. His claws are bigger than usual, “less an enhancement and more a transformation,” and his vertical leap has improved. He latches onto the minotaur’s broad chest going for the heart, tearing fiber away while necrotic venom oozes from the cuticles of his claws into the wounds. He follows with an unarmed strike.
    • The minotaur gores him with a horn, flipping him 10 ft onto his back (prone). It swings its greataxe recklessly and misses. The axe blade shatters into sand on the ground and reforms as it’s lifted.
    • BdTeej (OOC): “I’m kind of rooting for the Minotaur now.” Mudcat: “Yeah, me too.”
    • Flynry flurries and lands more unarmed strikes. One punch misses because it goes through a hole he’d already made in the chest; the sand refills the holes almost as fast as he punches them. He looks for a structural weak point but finds none: “He’s made of sand.”
    • The minotaur lands two reckless greataxe hits across his chest, then his back. The wounds are “cold and lifeless, even colder than steel… like ice,” jagged and torn like sand ripping flesh. The minotaur’s sand now struggles to hold together in places.
31. 0:59:07 — The sword from the sand.
    • Flynry, realizing this land doesn’t follow conventional physics, asks whether he can manifest power here. Survival 27.
    • Spending a hero point, he understands the sand. He plunges his arm up to the elbow into it and imagines a weapon.
    • He pulls out the hilt of a greatsword wreathed in a blue searing flame, “one that would almost be required for… glass blowing.” Mudcat rules it is now on his sheet and he is proficient with it.
32. 1:01:55 — Glassing the leg. Spending a ki point, Flynry buries the blade in a leg to hinder it. The sand turns molten and cauterizes into mirror on both sides of the cut, and the sand can’t reform past the reflection.
33. 1:03:54 — The kill.
    • Flynry takes a power stance and holds the sword low behind him. Its flame touches the sand and travels to the soles of his boots, so he creates glass under his feet as he sprints and the sand can’t hinder him.
    • He leaps with immense bestial power and brings the greatsword down between the minotaur’s eyes, slicing its whole body in half.
    • The cut faces become mirrors: in one he sees his human form, in the other his bestial form, both looking back with a determination and grit he hasn’t seen in a long time. “The first of many foes in a new world.”
    • The loose sand blows away. Two chunks of mirror in the minotaur’s silhouette remain on the ground.
34. 1:05:44 — The mirror sword.
    • The sword cools into a mirror finish. It is still a sword and still his.
    • In it he sees both his halves, then things that aren’t there: reflections of Toddleheim and Locket in a life after his death, and other people and places he knew.
    • Then the sand in the blade shifts, the sand at his feet shifts the same way, and it points him toward a spot on the horizon. He is now somehow connected to the sand and the mirror, and the sword gives him “the ability to travel.”
35. 1:08:54 — “Truth.” Exhausted, confused and afraid, but comforted, he looks the blade over. Where the crossguard meets the blade a small gold flicker appears: in a language he doesn’t know but can read, the word “truth” inscribes itself. He slings the sword onto his back with a feeling that it will be okay somehow.
36. 1:10:16 He walks “for days, weeks, months, maybe years. Indiscernible.” He is lost, but he has a heading.

Part 4: Survivors (Toddleheim and Locket)

37. 1:10:55 — The Battle for the Crown, from the stands.
    • Toddleheim and Locket each fought their own deathmatch for the Grandmaster’s honor and survived. They had spent months trying to make the Arbiter’s betrayal known to the people and to the Grandmaster.
    • They watch as Acolyte spectators while Flynry fights for the Grandmaster and dies under the meteor.
    • Toddleheim feels “just absolute pain.” He raises an arm toward Flynry and says only “Flynry.” Unknown to him, Flynry was reaching back toward the visions of them and Orin.
    • Locket feels “Sadness, loss, confusion. Why? It had to be Flynry.” She was at 6 HP at the end of her own battle, close to death herself.
38. 1:13:37 — A hollow victory.
    • The Grandmaster stands victorious and raises the hands of the remaining champions. The Arbiter’s attempt to overthrow her is defeated.
    • The mission succeeded, but Flynry is dead. So are other friends lost along the way: “Orin. Gon. Kenny. Dissolved into acid.” Who dissolved into acid is unclear.
39. 1:14:40 — In the Grandmaster’s service. The Grandmaster takes them into her service and offers them a place in her court, with missions, jobs, adventures or time off: “the freedom to do whatever it is you want… as a reward.”
    • Toddleheim searches his books, scrolls, tomes and every library he can find for a way to bring Flynry back.
    • Locket keeps busy on jobs for the Grandmaster. Every night she writes letters to her twin sister (a Tabaxi); all of this has taught her the importance of family.
40. 1:16:13 — Baptiste.
    • Some nights a rock hits Locket’s window. Below stands Baptiste, an elven gentleman in flowing cloaks with daggers across his body, who “often has come to call, whether it’s warranted or not.”
    • Baptiste: “Hello, my lady. Would you have any interest in practicing your stabbing?” Locket: “it would be worth giving it a stab.” Baptiste: “My knives are sharp. And I have many a honing stone.” Locket: “My suave elven.”
    • Mudcat fades the scene out “before we get way too involved there.” They have “made some sort of connection.”
41. 1:17:38 — The Grandmaster’s letters.
    • The Grandmaster has known of Toddleheim’s search. Flynry was also her champion, and it doesn’t sit right with her that he died this way after so much sacrifice, so she has considered a way as a reward.
    • After many months Toddleheim gets a vague letter: his friend “may not be completely gone… might still be reached.” It summons him to the Dread Fortress whenever he is ready, with whomever he wants. Locket gets a similar letter.
42. 1:20:13 Toddleheim: “Well, I can’t believe this, finally… I’ve missed him so, so very dearly.” Locket: “Me too.”
    • Someone, probably Toddleheim, teases her: “I did hear a man named Baptiste in the area.” Locket: “Oh no, Baptiste and I are just… just friends.” Her player admits no roll is needed to see she’s lying.
    • Mudcat: “There’s a lot of dagger strikes in your headboard.”
    • They meet in the town square and set off at once.
43. 1:21:38 — The road to the Dread Fortress. They travel through Prexmarin and many other cities and regions. The Dread Fortress stays on the horizon whichever way they turn, always following them. The orc skull across the lava field glows with the same heat they felt leaving it on their first adventure “to save the Arbiter at that time.”

Part 5: Reflections (the Arbiter and the mirrors)

44. 1:22:25 — Inside the Dread Fortress.
    • They walk through the orc’s mouth into cooling tunnels and caves that become a more ordinary castle.
    • Portraits of the Grandmaster hang on the walls, and so do portraits of “a man with a golden shield.”
    • With their status they have free rein. A goblin heaves open the large iron-and-wood doors of the throne room, where they were just before the final battle “where things went kind of sideways with the Arbiter.”
45. 1:23:21 — The Arbiter on the throne.
    • The Grandmaster’s throne, with a large stone face in her likeness above it, is occupied by the Arbiter. He sits sideways with his feet dangling off, chained hand and foot, in plain sackcloth, looking like he’s been sleeping in a cage (“because he has been”). He is picking his teeth with a knife.
    • A tiefling woman they don’t know stands beside him.
    • Arbiter: “Welcome back. It’s good to see you again.”
46. 1:24:51 Toddleheim: “Where is the Grandmaster?”
    • Arbiter: “I just missed her. She’s on a tour of the Void, taking in the sights, serving her people… she’s left me in charge of the affairs of the Dread Fortress.”
    • Toddleheim calls it a lie, given his attire. The Arbiter admits “It’s true that I’m a prisoner in this place… She beat me fair and square. I’m honoring our deal.” But he has “a certain set of expertise… the Grandmaster has found her uses for me still.”
    • “I know why you’re here.” He tells them to ask “the Grandmaster’s servant herself. One closer than I.”
47. 1:26:36 — Elianna.
    • “I am her personal assistant. Thank you very much… My name is Elianna.”
    • She is about 5’2”, with curly black hair, light violet horns, and a light purple tail swishing under her skirt. She wears bright red glasses on a reading chain woven with teal and black strands, and carries a book at her waist.
    • Reading from the book: the Grandmaster is visiting, and “She does have a spa treatment at three.” “I heard great things about you. Now, maybe we should talk without him here.”
48. 1:28:04 Elianna glares at the Arbiter and holds her nose as she passes. He is unbothered, smiling. Locket, without saying goodbye: “See you soon.” No response.
    • Elianna: “so sorry about the stench. We haven’t washed him in a few days because no one wants to go near him.”
49. 1:28:56 Locket explains they were sent to retrieve a lost friend. Elianna, scribbling notes, says they do need the Arbiter, “because he does have the information on such retrieval.” They had just left the room. Locket: “Now we gotta go back.”
    • Elianna: “I hate talking with him. You have no idea what it’s been like with him around.” Locket: “We’ve had to deal with him… many, many times.”
    • Elianna offers brandy “to take the edge off because he’s unpleasant.” She takes a very potent shot from a tiny vial in her pouch: “I’m ready to go now.”
50. 1:30:38 — The Arbiter’s offer. He is smugly aware that the Grandmaster did give him this task and that he stands between them and what they want: “So, good discussion.”
    • “Leaving the void, not an easy task. Finding the dead, even if you can make it to the plane. Not easy. But, fortunately for you, I am an accomplished mage.” Elianna: “Pardon me.”
51. 1:32:10 — Down to the Hall of Fates. He leads them down stone steps they’ve never taken. With a flick of his wrist he opens a large door with intricate locks and mechanisms. Inside is a line of mirrors floating above an abyss: the Hall of Fates.
    • Arbiter: “I thought you might be nostalgic for it.” He jabs at them, “knowing this is the place you lost Orin.”
52. 1:33:11 — What happened to Flynry’s soul.
    • The mirrors are “portals, in some ways, living creature in another way. A connection between planes.”
    • When Flynry looked into the mirrors and couldn’t pull his gaze away, a piece of his soul was taken. “And upon his death, that debt was collected. I know where he’s at. I can get you there.”
53. 1:34:34 — The test.
    • They must each look into a mirror and resist the urge to enter. Toddleheim: “This sounds awfully suspect to me.” Arbiter: “Believe me, don’t believe me. I don’t care… I’m doing this because I have to. It does give me a certain amount of pleasure to mess with you. But the Grandmaster has given her orders, and for now, I am obliged to obey them.” He raises his shackles.
    • Locket asks whether a lost soul-piece can be recovered. The Arbiter: “Not many people have taken the journey… Even fewer have returned… I’ve never been myself… I’ve heard tale of those exiting and finding their way out, but I’ve never seen it.”
    • Locket: “This seems risky… But we have done that before.” Toddleheim: “part of my soul died that day anyway. So we’ll see how much is left.”
54. 1:37:39 — Toddleheim’s mirror.
    • The Arbiter grabs his shoulder: “Remember, you must not walk into it.” Elianna gently taps Toddleheim and casts Guidance with a thumbs up: “you’ve got this.”
    • The first time here, Toddleheim was the only one who refused to look at all, though he heard squeaking, like something streaking across glass.
    • His desire hasn’t changed: “just a warm bosom to rest my head.” In the mirror is his ideal woman, pressed against the glass and squeaking back and forth.
    • He resists, sweating and leaning forward. Images of his past wife calm him. He mutters: “Well, it is a good bosom. Bless, I must take my leave.” (Speaker uncertain for the rest of that line: “Don’t keep rambling like that. You’re going to chafe.”)
    • Elianna overhears it, clears her throat to cover, and scribbles furiously. Locket doesn’t hear.
55. 1:42:40 — Locket’s mirror.
    • Last time she saw “an elven gentleman” (Baptiste). Toddleheim: “All the best, darling.”
    • This time she sees what she first takes for her reflection: it is her twin sister, where she is now. “You’ve been estranged. You’ve been looking for her.”
    • Locket: “I just want to reach out and give her a hug… This is fake. This is fake. I’ve done this before.” She resists and steps away.
56. 1:45:47 — Elianna is the chaperone. The Arbiter: “the Grandmaster did say that she thought they needed a chaperone.” Elianna shakily puts away her book and glasses and trips on the stairs going up.
57. 1:46:37 — Elianna’s mirror.
    • Mudcat: the mirror shows “your deepest desires… what would call on your soul to walk in.”
    • Her player: “God damn it, making me show my hand right away.”
    • Elianna sees a cozy fire in an isolated cabin, snow outside, and on a small couch, the Grandmaster snuggled up with her under a blanket.
    • She whispers “oh, my sweet lady” and clutches her chest, staring without blinking. Mudcat calls it “a memory of yourself with Elusia Skypiercer.”
    • She barely succeeds. She hovers her hand over where the Grandmaster’s face would be and pulls it back: “No. She wanted me to come back safely and I will do that. I’m not going to let her down.”
58. 1:48:58 — Why Elianna came. She came willingly; she’d do anything for the Grandmaster, though she is sad to leave her side.
    • Narration: the Grandmaster cared deeply for her champions, Flynry included, and trusts Elianna to help them. She sees something special in her. “Even though she is very old, she sees some of herself in you. Back when she had just arrived at Cor’thun and was lost in the world after the death of her father.”
59. 1:49:38 — Messages for the Grandmaster. Arbiter: “I guess the hard part’s over… is there anything that I should relay to the Grandmaster on your behalf before you go?”
    • Locket: they plan to be back and are very grateful.
    • Toddleheim: “Tell her I said, thank you for trying.”
    • Elianna: “Tell her I will keep our promise.” She glares at the Arbiter. Arbiter: “Very well. I will relay the message.”

Part 6: Decay

60. 1:51:31 — The betrayal. The Arbiter is in “such a good fucking mood” today: helpful, uncomplaining, twiddling his thumbs. “It’s your friend you seek… I only know of one way to get there.” He raises a hand and casts Disintegrate on all three.
61. 1:52:40 “Like Orin,” their bodies petrify: they gray, chip off and fly into oblivion while the Arbiter cackles: “That’s one way to solve my problems.” They panic, not knowing whether this was his plan, the Grandmaster’s plan, or whether any of it was true. Their eyes go black.
62. 1:53:46 — The green desert. They open their eyes together in the green-sand desert: cold, stinging wind, a black sky of nebulas and planets, sand-fingers rising into the sky to make new stars, nothing for hundreds of miles, everything tinted mirror green.
63. 1:55:22 Locket grabs for Toddleheim and Elianna to make sure they’re real. Elianna huddles them close: “What just happened?” Toddleheim: “It would appear that we are in the in-between.” Elianna: “Only heard of this place.”
    • Toddleheim kneels a short distance off, runs his hands through the sand, looks up: “Flynry, we are coming.”
64. 1:56:15 Elianna has heard of the mirror and this plane through the Grandmaster and the Arbiter. The plane has a name, but it doesn’t come to her. She confirms people rarely come back from here, only whispers, and she has never known anyone who has.
65. 1:57:09 Locket, with her Tabaxi eyes, can find no direction: no structures, just wasteland.
66. 1:58:13 — Toddleheim reads the sand.
    • “Be calm.” He meditates, reciting tomes he’s learned, and sand swirls up around him. Arcana 25.
    • The sand itself is magical; everything here is imbued with magic. He may have come across this place in some random book “sometime in your long life.”
    • Insight 25: he has felt this kind of magic before. It is “evil in nature. Not necessarily malicious in itself.”
    • In the sand’s movement he hears screams of people suffering. The sand is made of broken souls: “Souls of the dead who have been destroyed. Completely. Nothing left but this sand. And whatever imprint the magic leaves.”
67. 2:01:17 Toddleheim lowers the sand: “It’s the sand. We have to use the sand to get out of here… See how it creates new things.”
    • Elianna: “Is your friend here?” Toddleheim: “It’s too hard to tell.” Locket: “This is still part of him somewhere at least. I don’t think he’s completely gone.”
68. 2:02:18 — The scream.
    • Burning with frustration, Toddleheim falls to his hands and knees, plunges his fists into the sand and weeps. The sand vibrates wildly and he screams “Flynry!” as a wave rolls across the desert.
    • Attuned to the souls, the sand parts in a line “like the bottom has dropped out,” a crack pointing in a direction.
    • Locket: “You did it, Toddleheim. This is, this might be the way.” Toddleheim, on his back, breathing hard and wiping his tears: “Flynry, we’re coming.”
69. 2:04:32 They follow the crack and line it up with the celestial events, over and around huge dunes (someone rolls a nat 20 on Perception). They hear grunts, shouts, snaps and a blade ringing out, echoing. Elianna is taking notes the whole time, “very scared.”
70. 2:06:29 — Flynry found. From a dune crest they see Flynry surrounded by large scorpions made of sand. (Table talk: “That’s Flynry? You’ve changed.” / “Baptiste is out, baby!”)
    • His sword is now engulfed in a flame the color of the sand, “a rich flickering aqua flame that is both blade and hilts alike”, which does not burn him.
71. 2:08:11 For Flynry, years, decades really, have passed in the desert, with many creatures forming from the sand since that first minotaur. Past a scorpion he sees Toddleheim’s face, then Locket’s, then a stranger’s.
72. 2:09:18 His exhaustion turns to confidence. He twirls the greatsword stylishly and slams it into the sand, sending a jet of aqua flame at the nearest scorpion. It dodges, but the line of fire becomes a sheet of mirror glass reflecting the heavens. “Roll me initiative.” The transcript ends here.