Power Incalculable

Week 11 (date): The binding of Oleg Strom
GM: Ciaran

Players: Remy's notes for the Keeper archives.
 * Remy (Ian)
 * Selene (Christie)
 * Gregarious (Jesse)
 * Two others but I have poor notes... Emma and one other player

Our assembled forces had arranged a strike against Oleg Strom while our comrades took the fight to Keerla'n. As other have recounted, we were highly successful in our objectives- and yet my mind is troubled. We have defeated Oleg Strom, reclaimed the Citadel, and even now my rituals rebuilds the Citadel as once it was, using the power of Oleg Ket and the Crown of Earth. And there you have the crux of it- my rituals are guiding the workings of an Oleg.

I get ahead of myself. Having tipped our hands in scrying Oleg Strom, she had laid cunning traps for our arrival by Portal magic. I do this so frequently now, when my all early schooling and existing lore was that two Portal gateways are required for reliable transit. Since that scattered, untethered flight from the Citadel, it seems the very stuff of Wyrmsfell has been... more porous? Permeable to magic? Or perhaps it is simply that my understanding of reality and portal magic has grown through necessity and practise. Perhaps if we win our fight I will be able to unpick this knot further.

Back to the Citadel- with a few words and gestures, in the middle of the battle I was able to bind Oleg Strom immobile, unable to move so much as one of her divinely perfect muscles. Then, a contingency spell I had wrought trapped the Olegs very essence as she fell, until Oleg Dak came to contain it within a suitable vessel. My very mortal magics. But what do we really know of the source of magic? I know of some of the darker theories...

Having won this famous victory, we went to retake the Keeper tower- which has long been an unsettling biological amalgalm, with the very nature of the slain Oleg Mok bound to it leaving it covered in tendrils and folds of flesh. At the behest of my colleagues, I was asked to not just remove the biological... taint, but to craft Oleg Mok anew and restore his form. A somewhat... hubristic ambition? My colleagues further demanded haste, thus necessitating Gregarious to shore the tower with the Crown of Earth- a presumptuousness I fear may have further consequences for him.

I warned my colleagues crafting an Oleg was beyond the mortal power, and that though I knew Polymorphic magics that could be shaped into a mutable form suitable for Oleg Moks extracted essence, it would be small and weak, a pale reflection of his former divinely crafted form. Drawing upon decades of study, I thought I knew my limits well. Imagine, then, my surprise when a fully-formed and restored Oleg Mok was the result of the ritual. While pleasing to the worshippers of Mok present, am I wrong to be somewhat disturbed by my abilities? Restoring an Oleg had previously not been the work of mortals but of other Olegs, or of... of greater powers. What does this mean? Nothing? Everything?

In either case, the ungrateful Oleg sprang away immediately without a word, apparently leaving behind some ability to communicate with several creatures without language, which so far appears to include the bats roosting in the ruined tower, the moths within the store cupboards, and the starlings nesting within the eaves. One would hypothesise this extends to more animal species, but I have not had time to test this.

I am as are we all preoccupied with devising means to stop Oleg Pon. I have theorised a hypothetical means to summon Oleg Pon to us and bind him within a ritual circle where he could be cleansed, but Selene feels such a precipitous and unilateral action is not the wisest, pointing out all the Citadel has accomplished as a group. Perhaps some protection against Undead would serve us then, if we are to assault his forces?

(Remy is working on protections from Undead, the assembled Crown, and some means to deal with Yojg. Also a slight sense of hubris.)