The Old Lands - Session 9 - 5/12/2025
The Hollow Shall Burn
Date: 5/12/25
Campaign Arc: Titan’s Reckoning
Location: Kartotem, Ferrous Mountains – Ceremonial Hall, Sacred Grove, Prison Complex
DM: Collin Ritzinger
Players: Emily (Stevia), Matt (Oberyn), Dillon (Grim), Pat (Morrigan), Tony (Tim Patty)
🔥 The Ceremonial Assault
Smoke curled across the chasms of Kartotem as the city thundered to life with rebellion. The false calm that had draped the Goliath homeland for decades tore open as the Black Church launched its assault on the Ceremonial Hall—the heart of Varrik’s dominion. Explosions tore through the industrial quarter as Stone Weaver saboteurs triggered charges at the city’s supply lines, and loyalist patrols scrambled to contain phantom resistance fighters in the mines. It was all a distraction.
At the true heart of the uprising, the party—operatives of the Black Church and chosen champions of fate—slipped through the smoke and blood, bound for one objective: liberate Samson, shatter Orinthal’s curse, and end the Hollow King’s reign.
🧱 Breaching the Gate
The Ceremonial Hall was protected by three major defenses:
The Voidforge Gate – a leyline-anchored threshold resistant to both force and teleportation
The Mind Binder Obelisk – a psychic lattice built to detect and repel intrusions
The Corrupted Ancestor Idol – a bound guardian animated by sacrificial blood
The Voidforge Gate pulsed with ancient energy. Morrigan led the charge, her Ainheria prayers shielding the team as Stevia deployed the Void Keystone. The artifact flared with crackling white light, disrupting the flow of power. The gate convulsed and collapsed inward—but the keystone was nearly destroyed in the process, and its future use is uncertain.
The group passed quickly before the feedback could alert the defenders. Yet as they descended deeper, a haunting wail echoed through the sanctum. The Mind Binder Obelisk, an obsidian spire etched with psychic circuitry and imbued with leyline-powered enchantments. Built during Orinthal’s slow descent into aberrancy, the structure constantly pulsed with invisible psychic waves—designed to suppress intruders’ thoughts, weaken magical focus, and expose hidden truths.
The party quickly realized that the Obelisk wasn’t merely a detection ward—it was an active mental disruptor, capable of causing madness, stunning confusion, and spell failure if left unchecked.
Stevia, drawing upon the forbidden techniques learned from Tarrow Quin and her own bond to the divine Cipher, began analyzing the sigils surrounding the obelisk’s base. With a well-placed Identify and improvised use of Dispel Magic, she learned that its ley-circuit could be reversed—but only with synchronized force and void interference.
Tim Patty used his bardic intuition and chaos magic to cloak the group from the obelisk’s passive scanning field. This bought the group enough time to approach without triggering an immediate psychic shockwave.
Grim marked the base of the Obelisk and fired at its upper node, disrupting its channeling rhythm and exposing the vulnerable understructure.
Morrigan stood fast against the mental backlash—her Ainheria oaths shielding the group’s collective mind while she struck at the base with her radiant maul.
Oberyn took the Void Keystone, placed it into a mirrored depression etched into the floor, and drove it in like a spear. The clash of ancient void magic and corrupted ley energy caused a chain disruption. The Obelisk let out a warping, dimensional shriek—its runes unraveled and the top spiral detonated in a psionic implosion.
With the obelisk shattered and the mental fog lifted, the rest of the defenses fell quickly. For the first time in decades, the sacred paths beneath Kartotem lay open.
Just beyond the shattered remains of the Mind Binder Obelisk, the party descended into a cavernous ritual chamber choked with incense and silence. At its heart stood the Ancestor Idol, once a sacred monument carved in reverence to Oberyn’s forebears. Now, twisted by ley-corruption and sacrificial rites, it had become a sentient warding construct, animated by spiritual unrest and rage.
Its obsidian form bore dozens of carved faces—elders, warriors, mothers—all weeping void-tar. It radiated pulses of ancestral magic turned sour. Any attempt to pass would trigger it to awaken and bind intruders in ethereal chains made of memory and guilt.
The fight to overcome the Idol was not merely physical—it was psychic, emotional, and spiritual.
Oberyn approached first. As the idol’s runes lit up and the faces began to cry, he was struck by haunting visions: his father’s death, the burning of Kartotem, and the mocking smile of Orinthal. Instead of recoiling, he stepped closer—invoking the truth of his own grief and rage. This steadied the group and partially disrupted the Idol’s spiritual matrix.
Stevia invoked a fragment of Ceslida’s source through her lantern. The radiant cipher light cast from her Moonlight Butterfly Lantern clashed against the void-runes like sunlight through rot, revealing the leyline arteries that pulsed beneath the idol's feet. She redirected the flow, severing the connection to the ceremonial blood basin.
Grim provided covering fire against the construct’s animated defense spirits, including a pair of wraithlike ancestral warriors formed from stone-dust and memory. His arrows found their weak points—each bolt turning an echo to dust.
Morrigan used her divine smite not against the idol, but to cleanse the binding circle around it, muting its ability to summon reinforcements. Her action disrupted the spectral tether connecting the idol to Orinthal’s corrupted Beherit-rituals.
Tim Patty added just enough chaos into the matrix—his Wand of Wonder triggered a burst of radiant butterflies that distracted the idol’s false spirits long enough for Stevia to finish her dispelling incantation.
With its connection to the blood rituals severed and its spiritual bindings reversed, the Idol let out a low, earthen groan—then shattered from within. The stone faces collapsed into ash. For the first time in decades, the ancestors rested.
The path to the Sacred Grove was clear.
🪓 Chamber of Chains
In the first chamber, they found a spectral cursed paladin—a revenant bound in silvery cords of divine magic and necrotic scripture. This was no ordinary guard; it was a once-holy warrior twisted by Orinthal’s pact, kept as both sentinel and symbol.
Grim acted first, loosing a storm of bolts that pinned the figure to the stone
Morrigan invoked the Ainheria, her oath scorching away the ghost-wrought armor
Tim Patty channeled his Wand of Wonder and magic to slow and confuse the wraith
Stevia, shaken by earlier readings from the Book of Vile Darkness, found resolve to heal and cast through the distortions
Oberyn, silent and focused, disarmed the revenant and drove it to the ground
The knight dissipated in a scream of memory—his sword rusting to dust, his chains slackening like broken psalms.
🌲 Beneath the Grove – Duel of Fate
They emerged into the Sacred Grove, once a place of vision quests and ancestral rites. Now it was drenched in wrongness.
Standing at its center was Orinthal, or what remained of him. His body had mutated into a Star Spawn Mangler—flesh splitting with wet cracks, bones overgrown and twitching with eyes and tendrils. A half-swallowed Beherit pulsed in his chest, whispering profanities in no tongue known.
“You think words built a clan?” he growled.
“They buried it.”
The battle was cataclysmic:
Stevia’s magic opened with Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, staggering the aberration with irony
Grim coordinated from cover, marking his quarry and striking true
Morrigan invoked radiant retribution, smiting the warped disciple with unflinching fury
Tim Patty, ever the chaos spark, used Slow to halt Orinthal mid-charge and fire to thin the swarm
Oberyn stepped into the ancestral fire, challenging his former kin to a duel under divine judgment
🌌 Duel at the Grove: The Fall of Orinthal
The party emerged into the Sacred Grove, once a place of vision quests and bloodless rites. What they found was an altar soaked in corruption—roots slick with bile, ancestral stones cracked open and used as conduits for leyline rituals, and a roaring fire suspended in air that burned with blacklight.
At the center, Orinthal the Dreadbound waited—not as a man, but as a malformed horror birthed by his pact. His body was twisted and hunched, ribs forced outward like cage bars. Multiple arms, too long and jointed in the wrong places, jittered with barely contained violence. A Beherit, half-swallowed into his chest cavity, pulsed like a third heart—its laughter echoing inside the minds of all present.
“You think words built a clan?” Orinthal snarled, voice layered in both thunder and whisper.
“They buried it. Let me show you how.”
⚔ The Battle Begins
The fight opened fast and brutal. Orinthal moved with Mangler-like speed, warping into and out of spaces as if ignoring geometry. His first attack was a rending blur of claws and psychic shrieks that targeted Stevia and Tim—intended to silence the arcane casters.
Stevia responded with Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, exploiting a lingering flaw in Orinthal’s psyche. The warped disciple faltered—laughing through cracked teeth—but quickly shook it off with a surge of rage from the Beherit.
Tim Patty invoked his Wand of Wonder, unleashing a clutch of blinding light motes that dazed the creature. His spells of Slow and Firebolt kept Orinthal staggering, forcing him to divide his attention.
Grim never missed a beat—he ducked into cover, marked Orinthal with Hunter’s Mark, and unleashed a barrage of piercing arrows that thudded into exposed muscle and tumor-like growths. One shot struck the Beherit itself, causing it to recoil violently in Orinthal’s chest.
Morrigan moved in with radiant fury. Her Divine Smites flared with Ainheria vengeance, burning through the corrupted flesh. She held the line as Orinthal summoned spectral limbs from the walls and trees—summoning illusions of ancestral warriors warped by void magic.
🩸 Transformation and Phase Shift
When the party bloodied him, Orinthal screamed—and the Beherit fed on that pain. He exploded outward, becoming fully monstrous. His arms split into ten clawed limbs, his face became a maw, and eldritch eyes opened along his back. His movement became erratic, and the battlefield shimmered with dreamlogic terrain shifts.
He summoned “The Hollow Echo”, a spectral clone of himself that mimicked his attacks but fed on different memories. Suddenly the team was fighting not one, but two Orinthals—one physical, one phantom. The phantom whispered truths only the characters feared to hear, forcing WIS saves against psychic fatigue and hallucination.
Oberyn, seeing this horror mock the legacy of the Veilborn, stepped through the spiritual fire ringing the grove. As the others dealt with the Echo, he called out Orinthal by name.
“You’re not a chieftain,” he said. “You’re a lesson. One I intend to survive.”
The flames reacted—perhaps the ancestors listening. The battlefield transformed into a dueling ring, the others cut off by ancestral will.
🔥 The Final Duel
The duel between Oberyn and Orinthal became legend.
Each strike Oberyn made was echoed by a memory—his father teaching him to grip a weapon, his clan elders calling him soft, his own guilt over leaving. Orinthal lashed with fury, speaking through mouths not his own, and swinging weapons made of tethered fate.
But Oberyn found his footing. He cracked Orinthal’s war-axe. He disarmed his illusions. And finally, with the Tooth of the Laughing Prophet glowing and screaming in his hand, he plunged the blade into the Beherit lodged in Orinthal’s chest.
Orinthal’s final scream was one of laughter. And then silence. On some gore and a Beherit remained.
⚖ Varrik’s Reckoning & the Fate of Kartotem
The Sacred Grove fell silent, scorched and stained with fire and ichor. Orinthal was dead. The Beherit had been taken. The magical defenses were shattered. All that remained of Kartotem’s corrupt rule stood on the steps of the Ceremonial Hall: Varrik the Hollow King, once a chieftain, now a ruined man.
He did not fight. He did not run. He simply stood with his arms open, blood from the grove still staining his ceremonial cloak.
“It wasn’t me,” he said. “I had no choice if I wanted to stay alive. THEY were the threat, not me.”
The party interrogated Varrik beneath the burning stone sky. He did not plead, but he warned them—about the Magician, a foreign wanderer who had introduced Orinthal to sacrificial leyline magic, aberrant binding rituals, and Beherit-seeding pacts. The Magician, Varrik said, came from beyond the Empire Wall, arriving in silk and shadow by sea. He carried the smell of cinnamon and sandalwood, and he spoke as if reality bent around his words.
The Black Church marked the name and left the rest unsaid. The world would need to deal with this figure. Eventually.
✂ The Judgment
Oberyn, standing with blood on his arms and flame in his eyes, passed judgment.
He did not kill Varrik.
Instead, he declared that a chieftain who traded vision for silence must lose the hand that held the torch. With one precise strike, Oberyn severed Varrik’s left hand, and declared the Hollow unfit to lead or to command.
Varrik was turned over to the Black Church for further judgment—left alive to witness the consequences of his inaction.
“Let the Hollow walk the hollows he made,” said Oberyn.
“He’ll find no echoes waiting for him.”
🛕 The Rebirth of Kartotem
With Orinthal slain and Varrik removed, the people of Kartotem—miners, shamans, broken warriors, and children of the mountain—emerged from hiding. Some had fought with the Black Church. Others had waited in fear. Now they stood beneath a sky no longer choked by ritual smoke.
Samson—once imprisoned and shackled beneath the ceremonial courts—was brought forth. Clad in cracked chains and fresh cloth, he was raised before the people. Oberyn and the party, on behalf of the Black Church, named him interim chieftain, a leader not bound by clan bloodlines but by earned trust. Oberyn called the people to listen. Stevia and Patty made sure they laughed again. Grim and Morrigan lit the sacred fire anew.
The drums of the Hollow King stopped. The drums of the future began.
🪄 The Magician from the Southeast
Little is known of the Magician, and even less of their origin—but their presence lingers in the wreckage of Orinthal’s soul and the rituals that scarred Kartotem. According to Varrik, it was this stranger who appeared months before the rebellion’s rise, walking through the southeastern gates of the Ferrous Mountains like smoke drifting uphill.
The Magician is not a title of prestige, but of mockery on how the eccentric being dressed. They wore a black coat and a high-collared shirt, with a top hat that never cast the same shadow twice. They spoke with a foreign cadence that was impossible to place, smooth and measured, like a sermon hidden inside a joke. Wherever they went, people claimed to smell cinnamon and sandalwood, even days after they’d vanished.
🧠 Teachings and Influence
The Magician brought with him forbidden leyline knowledge—the kind scraped from fractured Ciphers and reverse-engineered Beherits. They offered Orinthal:
A warlock pact, sharing some of their power and Source to empower Orthinal.
The rituals of memory-binding and sacrificial transmutation
The schematics of a Mind Binder Obelisk, the Voidforge Gate, and the Corruption of the Ancestral Idol.
Methods to warp spiritual spaces and create Echoes of the Self
The concept of embedding a Beherit within a living host
They asked for nothing in return—except that Orinthal “cast off the yoke of his story” and embrace a new one. A story written backward.
“All a story needs,” they said, “is a magician and a disappearing act.”
Orinthal believed them. And it led to his death.
🕯 Presence and Threat
No one has seen the Magician since. But the rituals they seeded, the technology they left behind, and the moral corrosion he unlocked remain. Varrik insists he came by sea, and that they are not alone.
Whether the Magician is mortal, archfey, fiend, or something stranger—no one yet knows. But their movements appear deliberate, and there is connection to the Beherits suggests they are part of something larger.
The Black Church now considers them a threat, categorizing the Magician as Class VI - Apostata Obscura, and warns all operatives to report any top-hatted figures or cinnamon-scented anomalies immediately.
🔥 The Pact Beneath the Grove – Awakening the Tooth
After the fall of Orinthal and the silence of the Sacred Grove, Oberyn Stoneveil felt the call—not from duty or vengeance, but from something deeper. A hum, familiar and ancient, beckoned him into the blood-warmed hollow beneath the Ceremonial Hall. Few could follow. None did.
The walls of the passage were not carved—they were grown, ossified by ancestral tears and volcanic grief. Roots twined through obsidian. Old symbols of the Veilborn tribe were etched into the stone, but many had been scraped away, replaced by laughter marks. Scratches. Jokes in bladeform. Renji’s mark.
At the heart of the chamber, Oberyn found a veil of black flame, licking the edges of a basalt altar that pulsed like a second heart. Resting on it was the Tooth of the Laughing Prophet—his weapon, yes, but now unfinished. Waiting.
Renji’s voice poured through the smoke like a storm rolling downhill.
“They want a chieftain. You want to be their fire. Well, boy—flames don’t lead. They burn.”
Through five vision-challenges—each representing a trauma, a legacy, a choice—Oberyn bound his Blank soul to the blade gifted by Renji along with the beherit they just found. The Tooth of the Laughing Prophet accepted the Beherit and awakened.
“The clan doesn’t need a chieftain,” Renji said.
“They need a sword.”
Oberyn answered and the sword was awakened. The Tooth of the Laughing Prophet burst alight, not with fire, but with laughter made steel. Oberyn emerged from the the grove changed. Not only in power, but in presence. His eyes glowed faintly—mirth and fury bound together. The sword at his back wasn’t just steel—it was a pact, a prophecy, and a dare to the gods themselves.
🌙 Ceslida’s Lantern
Stevia, inspired by what she learned today realized there was more knowledge to glean about the Divine Stones. She wisely recalled what Tarrow Quin had shared in their battle and found more insights hidden in the mage’s mad ramblings. Stevia whispered Ceslida’s name in reverse while holding her cipher infused lantern. Her Moonlight Butterfly Lantern responded, igniting in silver light. It now holds a sliver of Ceslida’s divine source, and whispers of prophecy ride its flame.
🗣 Quotes from the Session
Orinthal: “You think words built a clan? They buried it.”
Oberyn: “You’re not a chieftain. You’re a lesson. One I intend to survive.”
Tim Patty: “Looks like you’ve peaked, sweetheart.”
Stevia: “Say her name backward. Say it in her tongue.”
Renji (to Oberyn): “They don’t need a king. They need fire. Be that fire.”
Grim: “Whatever this is… it’s not just watching. It remembers.”
Morrigan (to the cursed knight): “Chains break. Souls don’t.”
