The Dark Star

Dreamers and Viewers
Both Riff and Hilde have dreamed of the star-that-is-not-a-star, though Lark has discerned the location of it in the night sky.

Contents of the First Dream (Riff)
You wake with a start as a sudden lurch wrenches you from grasp of sleep. Your hammock sways madly as you struggle to not fall from the taught fabric. As the movement dies down, you hear the faint sound of groaning wood. You climb from your hammock to the floor of the bilge, expecting the cold seeping of water through your shoes. Instead comes a quiet squelch.

The bilge is filled with this algae and fungus. Not living fungus, but dead husks of what once was a fungal bloom of life over stagnant water. You carefully trod over the lifeless organic mush towards the ladder. You climb slowly, careful to avoid the patches of thick rust coating most of the rungs. As you lift your head into the storage deck, you see nothing but the wooden walls of the ship. Beyond rotten, they are now as hard as stone. All semblances of furniture and supplies that gave the deck its name are missing.

Your companions’ doors are ajar, and their rooms empty. You head upstairs, intent on finding them. Seeing the next floor bare, you ascend again, this time finding yourself looking upon the culprit who awoke you: one of the masts has collapsed, fallen over the port side of the ship, and smashed the railing to pieces. The sails are nowhere to be seen.

You peer over the side of the ship and are surprised to see land in all directions. Rocky crags make up most of the landscape. A slow incline stretches out in front of the ship. You can feel your companions’ presence from that direction. With nothing but petrified wood around, you begin your journey on foot and without supplies.

Time passes. You don’t know how long. Hours. Days. Months. The faint light from above has all but left you, and the quiet darkness gives no sign of anything but silent rock.

Your mindless wandering is eventually interrupted by the sound of feet on metal. Your feet. You feel below you and soon uncover a rusted humanoid shape you recognize as your warforged companion. Careful searching in the pitch black night beyond him reveals more bodies, now desiccated husks of bone and cloth. You have found your companions. You also find a flare in each of their hands. One is still unused. You light it, and the luminescence blinds you for a moment as the world around you is bathed in a soft red.

The bodies can now be seen clearly. They are all prostrating, facing towards something beyond your flare’s meager light. You take a tentative step closer in that direction. Another. Something slowly comes into view as you creep forward. It is indescribable beyond “large”. You mind struggles to make sense of it, and when it finally clicks into place, you fall to your knees, weeping, dying flare in hand.

You awaken.

Contents of the First Dream (Hilde)
She was on the ship, sailing, but the dream skipped through the arriving and disembarking at ports, only showing the ship leaving with towns burning behind them.

She wasn’t sure to interpret it; were they bringing ruin, or were they running from devastation?

Either way, the star-that-was-not-a-star loomed over each town as it was destroyed.

Contents of the Second Dream (Riff)
You walk through Anterrande. Despite the darkness, you can see shadows and shapes of people moving about. You walk aimlessly, knowing you should be somewhere, but not knowing where. As the shadows move from the tenebrous corners of the city to streets closer to your wandering path, you are able to see their faces more clearly. Some have no expression. They walk in straight lines with cold, glassy eyes. Other reveal twisted visages beneath their faces. Underlying features drenched in static and obscured by facades. They twitch when they come to near, and you keep your distance. You can practically smell the destructive nature of these folk as they walk by, their pungent violence wafting behind them.

You soon realize it isn’t only the people. Buildings you pass close by, especially in narrow alleys, drop their facade as well. Stacked bricks give way to crumbling masonry and burnt wood. The whole city soon becomes a memory of a broken city, or perhaps a foretelling of the current one.

You wander to a ship, unfamiliar to you. Uneasy of the shadowy city, you climb aboard. A glance behind you confirm the ship has long since left port, the city in the distance. The dead, dying, or perhaps doomed city.

You sail for days, or maybe mere hours, before you arrive at your destination. Anterrande lies before you, devoid of the people you saw before, and this times in absolute ruins. Shadows move as you depart, walking to its center. You feel danger from all around you, and frantically look around. You begin to breathe heavily, eyes darting here and there.

Something in the back of your mind senses a presence, and you look up. Cosmic horror fills you as shapes descend from above, blanketing the world and obscuring your sight.

Contents of the Second Dream (Hilde)
This dreamer has not had a second dream.

Contents of the Third Dream (Riff)
You collapse to the ground, exhausted. You’ve been fighting for years in this world. Decades. Feels like nearly a century by now you’d reckon. And yet you must have aged at a much slower rate, or rather, you have not been allowed to age. You sneak a glance up at the empty sky and smirk. No stars remain. Only the vast emptiness, empty even of nothingness itself, lies above.

You stand up and brush yourself off, wiping the blood from your tattered clothing. You alone have made it this far; your companions were weak. As the stars winked out, so too did they. But you remained, destined to finish what was started. And so three enormous bodies lay at your feet, slain by your hand.

Years of avoiding the horrific monstrosities, trying to follow ridiculous errands presented as singular truths by mad scientists and scholars in hopes of buying freedom. But it has now become apparent that freedom isn’t bought – it is earned. You all learned that eventually. Every time someone died on a fool’s errand, everyone stepped closer to the truth.

Times not unlike when your democratically elected captain was struck down by a beast composed of rage and unbridled fury as he tried to reach the stars. Or when your carpenter met a bloody end whilst asking too many questions to those damnable masked cultists. You recall, too, the time that your boatswain and lookout were killed by sailors of ill repute shouting and chanting “that” name as they poured forth onto your vessel, back before it was torn asunder as well. No names have any meaning anymore of course. Not now. Not at the end, when nobody is left to hear them spoken.

You mind drifts through the miasma of misfortune that has befallen the rest of the world. All of this death, the deaths of your crew, your friends, your cohorts, could have been avoided if you’d all focused on what had to be done, not what was asked of you. What you knew in your heart, in your mind, and in your very soul.

You climb over the corpses, safe at last from their reign of terror and madness. But there is nowhere to go. The doors are shut. They’ve been shut for years. Thick stone and folded space prevent any hope of exit. You sigh. In some way, if some deep recess of your mind, you knew it would end like this. You do not weep. You have no feelings left. After all the hardships you’d endured and witnessed, the blank gaze of defeat is familiar, almost calming.

You turn your head to the yawning sky and ask to be taken away, for the end to finally take you. You have done what was necessary. A wave of merciful lethargy washes over you as your years catch up. Your dust settles in a pile, the wind long since gone.

You awaken.

Gifts and Powers
Once per week, [you] can foresee danger and destruction as prophesied by the stars. For 1 hour [you] can assess up to three places or people [you] can see, determining how much of a danger they are to [you], not in terms of intent, but in terms of ability. You may attempt this a second time in a week