The Maw of Oblivion

Jackdaw, your rambling is indeed handy in times such as these. Perhaps I could learn that brevity is not always the solution. Yet I meant the miracles we could conjure once differed. The spells an Andorran would cast could be compassionate in nature while an Agauran's would deal more in suffering and what, if any, learning came from it. After all that's happened, we clergy are able to perform the same regardless of our theological leanings.

~Nalick DeMarche

Well said, Jackdaw.
For this fight we will need both the Light and the Dark, together.

Annora is quite correct. We will need both to face what is coming for us.
For those who do not know me. I am Tirsen Crestingstar, former First Knight of Kaladonia as Knighted by Lord Birnum Pyre and Paladin of the White Fox.

Long have I been away in solitude and in my meditations I have touched the mind of what you call the maw, it knows only hunger and know no distinction between Light and dark.
In my minds eyes I have seen that soon it will be upon us, far sooner than many suspect. My visions have told me that by Yule Tide it will be forced from the Ascendant Realm and into our own. The time for debates and arguments are over, all must come together or we will not succeed.

The following is a copy of a letter sent to the Archons by Professor Algrave regarding the coming fight.

Good morning students. This letter is from Professor Algrave and I am writing to you to tell you that I do not believe that we will see each other again before the Maw enters our world. Already I can feel it shifting the planes and no matter where we are at the time of its full arrival, we must be ready. Thalia appears to have some awareness of this beast and I believe that she will sense its presence as soon as it fully crosses over.

I do not believe that all of you are destined to play the same role in this battle and some of you may contribute better to the fight in a more traditional sense. Only you will be able to listen to your own soul and determine the part you will play. For those who are destined to forgo their physical weapons and engage this battle from an alternative perspective, I will share with you the way in which I believe this perspective would play out.

This creature is currently too powerful to be defeated from without. I believe the only way to change that for those who will be fighting it is to do so from within. The creature has consumed countless souls and these souls have been subjugated and tethered to it to make it larger and stronger. Those who fought it before described black tendrils of power lashing out; I believe these tendrils are actually dark souls and I believe that they must be separated from the maw in order to be defeated.

I believe that you will need to find a way to separate these souls making them vulnerable to those fighting it. How you will exactly do this is difficult to say, however I do believe that you will need to be closer to those souls in order to do this, and the only way to be close enough in my belief is to become one of them. I think that you will need to become part of the monster in order to infect it with your power and exert your special form of influence over it. The window of your self control will likely be very small after you become a part of it. You will likely have less than an hour before you loose all sense of yourself and simply becomes its tool. But if you can make a difference before that happens, I believe that this is your greatest chance.

What I am suggesting may seem hard to process but this is our one chance and we won’t have the luxury of experimenting safer options... Your guess at how you become one with it is as good as mine, but if it were me I would find its mouth as quickly as possible and hurl myself into it. I stand ready here to receive your questions and give you further advice. Please think about your role in this upcoming battle and let me know where your soul is leading you.

- Professor Algrave

Here is additional information from our contact, Rojier:

Greetings, You may share this information with the rest of town. I suspect that other groups have information as well and if you could all coordinate this information it would be for the best.

The price of failure will mean the end of the forces of good and evil, which will result additionally in the death of the gods. This beast seems to feed off of consuming good and evil, so it is possible that with our destruction it might move onto another world, possibly leaving this one with minimal physical destruction.

Both physical and metaphysical objects are pulled towards the mouth. Stasis magic such as imprisonments would have little effect. Metaphysical walls sometimes pause the pull in for a few seconds, and sometimes does not impede the pull at all.

The tendrils are not likely to be able to get physically tangled. They can however be drawn a good distance away from the mouth, though it is unlikely that it would break line of sight from it.

The Master Souls need only cast its spell once to end the fight by pulling everyone into the mouth. Reports of the length of uninterrupted time needed to cast the spell are different but range between fifteen seconds and thirty seconds. The hardest thing about interrupting this spell is that the Master Soul teleports occasionally and there is no way to predetermine the location it will teleport to, it is however always on the visible battlefield.

~Dame Amalthea Laurent-Belmont

Jenn Cutter (Jenn) wrote: The following is a copy of a letter sent to the Archons by Professor Algrave regarding the coming fight.

Good morning students. This letter is from Professor Algrave and I am writing to you to tell you that I do not believe that we will see each other again before the Maw enters our world. Already I can feel it shifting the planes and no matter where we are at the time of its full arrival, we must be ready. Thalia appears to have some awareness of this beast and I believe that she will sense its presence as soon as it fully crosses over.

I do not believe that all of you are destined to play the same role in this battle and some of you may contribute better to the fight in a more traditional sense. Only you will be able to listen to your own soul and determine the part you will play. For those who are destined to forgo their physical weapons and engage this battle from an alternative perspective, I will share with you the way in which I believe this perspective would play out.

This creature is currently too powerful to be defeated from without. I believe the only way to change that for those who will be fighting it is to do so from within. The creature has consumed countless souls and these souls have been subjugated and tethered to it to make it larger and stronger. Those who fought it before described black tendrils of power lashing out; I believe these tendrils are actually dark souls and I believe that they must be separated from the maw in order to be defeated.

I believe that you will need to find a way to separate these souls making them vulnerable to those fighting it. How you will exactly do this is difficult to say, however I do believe that you will need to be closer to those souls in order to do this, and the only way to be close enough in my belief is to become one of them. I think that you will need to become part of the monster in order to infect it with your power and exert your special form of influence over it. The window of your self control will likely be very small after you become a part of it. You will likely have less than an hour before you loose all sense of yourself and simply becomes its tool. But if you can make a difference before that happens, I believe that this is your greatest chance.

What I am suggesting may seem hard to process but this is our one chance and we won’t have the luxury of experimenting safer options... Your guess at how you become one with it is as good as mine, but if it were me I would find its mouth as quickly as possible and hurl myself into it. I stand ready here to receive your questions and give you further advice. Please think about your role in this upcoming battle and let me know where your soul is leading you.

- Professor Algrave

If need be I will offer myself if it means a chance to defeat this creature. I only hope my draconic spirit will aide in this endeavor. Though I know not its name perhaps now will be a good time as ever for its presence to be made known.

Here is additional information from our contact, Rojier:

Greetings, You may share this information with the rest of town. I suspect that other groups have information as well and if you could all coordinate this information it would be for the best.

The price of failure will mean the end of the forces of good and evil, which will result additionally in the death of the gods. This beast seems to feed off of consuming good and evil, so it is possible that with our destruction it might move onto another world, possibly leaving this one with minimal physical destruction.

Both physical and metaphysical objects are pulled towards the mouth. Stasis magic such as imprisonments would have little effect. Metaphysical walls sometimes pause the pull in for a few seconds, and sometimes does not impede the pull at all.

The tendrils are not likely to be able to get physically tangled. They can however be drawn a good distance away from the mouth, though it is unlikely that it would break line of sight from it.

The Master Souls need only cast its spell once to end the fight by pulling everyone into the mouth. Reports of the length of uninterrupted time needed to cast the spell are different but range between fifteen seconds and thirty seconds. The hardest thing about interrupting this spell is that the Master Soul teleports occasionally and there is no way to predetermine the location it will teleport to, it is however always on the visible battlefield.

Dare I say find our local trap master and have them create traps on the field that are only activated on command or via or best marksman?