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Dunmari Frontier - Session 134

The Limbo Wound: in which the past and future of the Heartroot is revealed

Featuring: Delwath, Kenzo, Wellby, Seeker
In Taelgar: Aug 12, 1749 DR
On Earth: Monday Oct 06, 2025
Location: Aurbez Plateau

After securing the safety of the Heartroot, visions and communion revealed that a interplanar wound at Isingue allows Limbo to spill into the Material Plane.

Session Info

Summary

  • The Refounded Alliance of Aurbez is secured after victory in the Battle of Heartroot Vale, as hobgoblin lines break under the attacks of Kenzo as a silver dragon.
  • After resting and recovering in camp, the party communes with the Heartroot, learning of its past and confirming it can truly grow only at the center of the upper Istaros once the river’s Limbo-taint is cleansed.
  • Cateline Malras’s rite to the Fox and Hunter grants a vision revealing the blight springs from a planar wound at Isingue, not a portal, and it must be closed from Limbo, not the Material Plane.
  • The party resolves to seal the gash from within Limbo, then remediate the Istaros and bear the Heartroot back to its source.
  • Preparations are made to journey to Tollen in the morning, to seek information and resources before the task at hand.

Timeline

The Mirror of the Past

Narrative

Our session begins as the party is victorious in the Battle of Heartroot Vale. Kenzo, transformed into a silver dragon, leads the charge against the hobgoblin lines; the combined forces of the lizardfolk, rangers, and Aurbeze militias push the attack, breaking the lines of the hobgoblin army. Even the hobgoblin’s retreat is foiled, as the arriving stoneborn army crushed the few hobgoblins who escaped the dragon. While the Aurbeze defenders suffered real losses, they were less than feared, and with the remnants of the Iron Fang scattered and fleaing, the Refounded Alliance of Aurbez was safe. Around the evening fires, thanks and food circulated. Delwath checked on the wounded; Seeker tended the heroic ladder; Wellby gathered stories— of refugees from Isingue, ash storms and ash elementals in the War of the Ashen Horde, a ranger-forged alliance, and the Heartroot kept secret.

As night fell, Kenzo led the group to the Heartroot itself, drawn by its pull. The root-ball unfurled, blue-white filaments pulsing like a slow heartbeat, air smelling of yeast and rain; it strained against the wrong-shaped stream. They raised the Mirror of the Past and sought its home, seeing the Heartroot Vision. Kenzo settled with the Heartroot and listened. After the vision, the connection was unmistakable: the Heartroot was, in some deep way, part of the river Istaros. It could endure here, survive for a time, but not grow. Only at the center of the Istaros valley where it had first come into being could it thrive. It ached to rejoin the river, yet the Istaros ran foul, tainted by a titanic ooze and the chaos spilling from the wound to Limbo. Reconnection was simple in principle and impossible in practice until the breach was sealed and the waters cleansed.

The company took stock. They carried a wand that could slice between planes and another that could find portals, but closing the wound to Limbo was another craft. They chose to seek answers: consult the Philosopher’s Guild, search Vindristjarna’s libraries and the loremasters of Tollen, and speak to the Fox and Hunter.

Returning to camp, the party sought Cateline Malras to aid in speaking with the Fox and Hunter. They found her outside her tent, finishing a thanksgiving prayers to the stars, to the Fox and Hunter. The Ranger bowed and offered aid. She told them of a story, a legend from a generation ago, when a wizard in the form of a statue of jade came to speak with the stars in the Heartroot Vale, then departed on a quest and never returned. She knelt, lit incense, and tapped her ring against stones until the rhythm and smoke drew them into a trance beneath the rising constellation.

Flashes and visions came. The remembered parley, searching for a way to close what was believed to be a portal to Limbo, opened by Cha’mutte. A plan, aided by the Order of the Awakened Soul, to cleanse the chaos energy from the Istaros, to close the portal. Then, the stars watching and a a surge of grief and dread: failure, for this was no simple portal but a wound, a gash in the Multiverse through which Limbo spilled. Rai, on a dusty plain by the Istaros near Isingue; monks of the Order of the Awakened Soul chanting power into him. He reached for unseen threads, pulled, something snapped; Rai and the monks vanished, and his hand shattered into five pieces that flew apart. Then, a warning and a plea. The tidal surges of Limbo had been growing worse these past months, fed by the untying of the knots that Cha’mutte had used to bind Apollyon’s prison. To heal it, the vision said, would require not closing a portal, but going to Limbo and pulling it all back.

As the party returned to their camp to discuss, urgency met caution. They had the means to reach Limbo, for the Chaos Metal served as a planar connection point allowing spells to pull them across. But they wisely decided to prepare first, planning to travel to Tollen to learn what they could of Limbo before venturing there. Our session ends as the party takes a well-deserved rest, with plans to journey to Tollen in the morning.