UNKNOWN PILGRIM

FIRST PART OF THE QUEST
All was not well in the heart of the Second Dungeon Master, the Conqueror of Zork. He was still troubled by the murder of the thief Lucien, which had been committed in self-defense, and devoted the entirety of his strength and resources to undoing his deed. Using his most powerful magical spells, he summoned an outsider to his assistance. This lone female pilgrim, having had Bivotar’s recovered journal delivered to her, had already set foot in the Forbidden Lands to ascertain the fate of Syovar’s missing servant. Some have theorized that this unknown female was Juranda herself, in search of her long lost Bivotar. These claims are unfortunately nothing but conjecture and all attempts to discover the identity of this pilgrim apart from sex have returned void.

Having been chosen by the Dungeon Master, she found herself wandering deeper and deeper into a tangled web of confusion and altered reality, at the center of which lurked the truth behind the Forbidden Lands and the inexplicable disappearance of the alchemists. Hurtling through a jagged gash in the earth and traversing the length of a subterranean tunnel, she eventually found herself within the interior of the mountain where the Temple of Agrippa lay, of whose ceiling had broken away to reveal the sky above.

The spirits of the four alchemists, Alexandria, and Lucien were still trapped within the temple environment, but their interactions were limited. They were able to react to the pilgrim’s stimulation, but went off on their own dialogue course. The trapped spirits worked in this fashion because they were imprisoned in another dimension. Certain enchanted objects were able to invoke them, but they were not completely free.

The first resonation that she had with the spirits was during her trek to the temple courtyard. Alexandria’s voice drifted into her senses, “No one remembers exactly when it began, but I’ll never forget. It began on the day of the Great Eclipse, the day of my murder. I’ve lost my only love, and I’ve lost my life. Now we all lie under the curse. Sometimes a single act can be so evil that it can curse the world, unraveling the future. Only the four lost elements can bring the world back into balance, and I will live again. I have but one hope left, and it is you. No one else dares come here.”

The imploring of this same apparition was resumed when the pilgrim entered the mausoleum. Floating before her, the phantom of Alexandria mouthed, “Finally someone has come. You’ve got to help us. They’re in the temple,” before dissolving in smoke.

Once inside the temple, she discovered that the strange building was haunted by an evil creature called the Nemesis, who warned her to keep away. With horror, she learned that the souls of the four alchemists were entrapped in grotesque stone crypts in the temple dome room. When she first encountered the alchemists, they had almost no powers. They were trapped and tortured souls whose very spirits were being drained and sapped by Lucien. They claimed to have been entombed by a vengeful half-human creature they called the Nemesis. The four said that without her help, they would perish. She was their only chance of salvation. The pilgrim also learned that if she did not assist these trapped souls, she would suffer the same miserable fate. Each made enigmatic request in turn to search the temple for their alchemical element that would restore their strength so they could be freed from their suffering. Fire belonged to Malveaux, air to Sartorius, earth to Thaddeus Kaine, and water to Sophia. Afterward, the souls could only speak in gasps unless their life elements were brought to them.

To retrieve these elements, the pilgrim solved a series of puzzles within the Temple of Agrippa, enabling her to retrieve each of the four elements. As the each of the four elements was unearthed from their hiding places deep inside the dark recesses of the temple, each one was placed upon the temple alter where they became fused to it and could not be removed. In turn, the souls of the alchemists were temporarily revived. Each related a corrupted version of their story, donning the role of an innocent and staging the Nemesis to have been evil from the start. They also wore facades of regret and shed false tears of repentance for their acts of involving Lucien and Alexandria, which resulted in their murders at the hands of the Nemesis. Once all four were helped, the Nemesis awakened.

Dressed in a hooded robe that obscured, but did not hide his face, the Nemesis strangled Sartorius’ soul with a botl of lighting before preparing to murder the pilgrim with a ball of fire from his fingertips. The alchemists marshaled their meager elemental powers and drove him away at the last minute, but he promised that he would return. The four captives told more of their distorted tale and implored her to travel to each of their homelands to forge the four powerful alchemical metals which would bring each of their souls to life and allow her to escape from the Nemesis’ clutches.

Their powers were still weak, and the souls of the alchemists dematerialized, leaving behind a sphere of pure gold. She placed it into the position of the sun in the temple orrery. Whenever the pilgrim aligned its gaze with any of the four planets that corresponded to the alchemists, she would transport herself to their worlds through the magic portal resting at the center of the gilded planetarium. These were Steppinthrax Monastery, Gray Mountains Asylum, Castle Irondune, and the Frigid River Branch Conservatory. Until the pilgrim arrived, the Nemesis had been unable to leave the temple or even enter the portal worlds. When she entered those regions, the door was left open for the Nemesis to follow. In this way, the Nemesis was able to attempt to thwart her progress.

Each of the alchemists hid their practice of alchemical magic, Lucien and Alexandria’s forbidden love affair, and their larger conspiracy in a quest for eternal life. The metals were hidden from the Nemesis, and thus it took much effort for the pilgrim to discover and forge each character’s metal (a purified object that represented each of their contributions to the alchemical table).

In the process, she learned of the narrative that occurred in each of the abandoned environments through flashbacks and hallucinations. The spaces were surreal and strange, haunted by the still smoldering souls of the dead inhabitants and vibrant with memories of past events. When she touched certain powerful objects in each of the buildings, she released the energy and memories they contained. Sometimes these memories were forthright, but most were strange and disjointed, providing snippets of events she had to put together. She also heard audio hallucinations or fragments of conversations and events that took place long ago. Through these mechanisms, she was able to put together the past relationship of Alexandria and Lucien and the evil cabal.

At the Steppinthrax Monastery, the pilgrim saw hallucinations that revealed that Malveaux was involved in a strange plot with Sophia, Kaine and Sartorius. The plot involved his adopted daughter, Alexandria, who was brought into the Monastery as a baby, baptized by the cabal of the four, and then raised by Malveaux and his monks. She saw the affectionate relationship between Malveaux and Alexandria that ultimately complicated their association.

In the Gray Mountains Asylum, she learned about Sartorius’ questionable medical career and of Sartorius' involvement in the conspiracy, how he chose Zoe Wolfe and used medical techniques to impregnate her with what would become Alexandria, and his special technique to ensure that she would be the perfect specimen for their alchemical ritual. The pilgrim further learned details about Sartorius’ unconventional and suspect medical practices, how he was kicked out of medical school and forbidden to practice.

In Kaine’s castle, she learned about Kaine’s and Lucien’s relationship. She also discovered some of Kaine’s background and the reason for his success as a soldier.

In the watery Conservatory, the pilgrim learned about Alexandria’s musical genius and how she and Lucien fell in love during Alexandria’s musical debut. She also learned how Sophia was charged with raising Alexandria and Sophia’s romantic involvement with General Kaine.


BREAKING THE SIEGE ON IRONDUNE
Although the visits to most of these virtually empty structures had little effect on the outside world, the pilgrim’s visit to Irondune was marked by the chronic siege. Although Kaine’s army had been routed and pushed into the southern edge of Famathria, the armies of Ellron had not yet broken through the thick plates of shell-pocked corroded iron. Some of the upper levels of the structure had crumpled from beneath the ferocious military assault. Gunfire and shouting soldiers could be heard from within the bowels of the castle. Ellron’s cannons, lining the eastern ridge of the Copper Hills to the north of Irondune, continuously bombarded the castle while his infantry were pitched along the southeastern banks of the Frigid River Branch. The only forces loyal to Kaine that remained (apart from a single retired soldier within the castle itself who refused to desert the General) were reinforcement troops from neighboring lands, namely Port of Tumper. This force, a unison of cavalry and infantry, was dissected from the castle by both the Frigid River Branch and Ellron’s infantry, who kept them at bay from time to time with heavy cannon fire from atop the hills.

The pilgrim successfully deciphered the radio system which Kaine used to deliver messages to his troops. After consulting Kaine’s war journal and carefully planning a strategy to defeat Ellron, she relayed the proper instructions to the small Irondune unit and those gathered at Tumper:

1.    Decoy with Power
2.    Build Bridge
3.    Split the Troops
4.    Infiltrate & Destroy
5.    Verify Message

The strategy was verified by the retired solider and the army followed orders. The forces of Tumper, consisting of cavalry and infantry, were on the northwestern side of the river cut off from the castle. A bridge could not be built for their passage across unless Ellron’s forces on the southeastern banks were lured away. To accomplish this, a unit of Kaine’s men near the castle itself went out to set decoy barrels of gunpowder on the outskirts of Irondune. The soldiers abandoned the gunpowder and retreated back to the castle. This decoy was a startling enough disruption to draw the entirety of Ellron’s infantry away from the river to investigate.

While Ellron’s men were at a distance from the riverbanks, the armies of Tumper on the northwestern side quickly built bridges over the water. Once across, the troops were ordered to split. The cavalry went north along the banks of the river and through the Copper Hills, while the infantry remained at the shores of the river.

Realizing that it was no more than a distraction, Ellron’s infantry returned to the river, shocked to find that the Tumper infantry had crossed in their absence. Simultaneously, command was given for the Tumper infantry to engage with Ellron’s while the Tumper cavalry infiltrated through the Copper Hills, breeched Ellron’s lines along the eastern ridge and destroyed his cannons. The forces of Tumper returned to their homeland, victorious. Thus the siege of Irondune was broken and Ellron’s army scattered.


THE FINAL PART OF THE QUEST
After returning each metal, the alchemists felt as though they had been freed from debilitating torture of their earlier state. It was only after the pilgrim had found and transmuted each of the four purified metals and correctly arranged them on the temple altar, that the alchemists became enfleshed creatures will full alchemical powers. When she placed the fourth and final metal object upon the altar, she was flung backward as if she had been blown into the closest behind the altar. The doors slammed shut. When she opened the doors, she saw the four alchemists standing by the altar with their sarcophagi splintered and cracked apart.

Before her, hovering in space was a strangely luminescent liquid in a crystal vial. The four urged the pilgrim to quickly drink the so-called Elixir of Life, else they would all perish. Having experienced enough of the hallucinations within their homelands, and having unraveled the mysteries of the alchemical schemes, she already did not trust the four. When she refused to swallow the poison, they realized that she was not as stupid as they thought.

Hoping to repay Lucien with an even greater extreme of torture than he had permitted them to suffer, they summoned the Nemesis. He appeared, trapped in a glowing, alchemical force field. Lucien was enraged at what the pilgrim had done by resurrecting the four alchemists. Hoping that she may in fact be able to redeem herself, Lucien tossed a golden ring from his finger to her. As he did so, the pilgrim was thrown backward out of the temple dome room and into the cloister.

When she touched the ring, she received a hallucination of the death of Alexandria. All suspicions were thoroughly confirmed. The four souls that she thought were allies were really her enemies. Lucien, the Nemesis, was truly anguished. Dead was only a physical state, and like all metal in alchemy, may be transformed. The Circle had used this pilgrim in a last ditch effort to complete the ceremony Lucien interrupted so many years ago and made another try at eternal life. The eclipse that would be perfect for the sun and moon to join and their eternity to open drew near.

In the final confrontation between the evil alchemists, the pilgrim had to use everything she had learned about alchemy. Descending into an enormous subterranean world beneath the temple, she searched for Lucien’s and Alexandria’s metals of gold and silver. Using the proper techniques in unison with the mystical and archaic devices in the inner sanctum below, she forged the two metals into one—into the quintessence.

When she returned to the temple dome room, the alchemists were standing around the altar, chanting. The translucent, shimmering soul of Alexandria levitated above the altar’s center. As the eclipse drew towards its completion, the ceiling rent asunder and its shadowy form appeared in the sky above the altar space. At the moment that the eclipse formed, she tossed the quintessence towards the altar. In midair, a blast of light from above struck the infinity symbol and reflected into the four sarcophagi. The alchemists, realizing too late what she had done, screamed as they and their sarcophagi exploded in a blast of wind, fire, water, and earth.

The process, with its permanent destruction of the four alchemists, in turn fully restored both Lucien and Alexandria to the flesh. Holding hands, they directed the pilgrim out of the temple. Once the three emerged, the entire Temple of Agrippa exploded behind them, leaving nothing but scattered ruins. Lucien and Alexandria invited the pilgrim to come with them and they departed through a gate towards the waning eclipse.