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Recap / Reflets d'Acide

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Episode 1: The enrollment

Wrandrall, a half-demon hiding his chaotic origins, heads to Maender-Alkoor, a millennium old city built in the crater of a dormant volcano, to recruit adventurers for a quest. After numerous fruitless interviews at the Traveler's Tavern, he finally meets a group of four people: Zarakai, a brutish and literal-minded Dwarf warrior, Enoriel, an elegant and cynical Elven bard and swordsman, Zehirmann, a smart and collected Zorlim (which is a race of large humanoids elementals from the Fire Plan), and Guertrude, a moronic barbarian. They accept to help Wrandrall in his quest despite him being evasive about its goal and rewards.

As they are about to leave the city, the inexperienced Guertrude hunts a bear and fails miserably, dying on the spot. Her dumbfounded companions bury her body and begin their journey.

Episode 2: The Gutted's Forrest

Wrandrall goes into more details about the quest: following the instructions of a magic map, they need to pass through numerous dreadful-sounding places in order to arrive at the Turd Hole (more commonly known as the Chasm of AAAAAAaaaaaaaah) that they need to explore without further instructions. In the Gutted's Forrest, they save a small priest attacked by Orcs.

The cleric thanks them and presents himself as Trichelieu, apostle of Travia, Goddess of Household. Despite his laughable abilities and annoying attitude (most notably his constant double entendres), they still accept him in the party while trying their best to not break the fourth wall (as Trichelieu is Guertrude's "reincarnation" as in "new player character").

Episode 3: The River of Lukewarm Phlegm

Arriving at a large stream of disgusting water, their only way across is a bridge guarded by a gigantic Ogre called DDEnote  which forbids them to pass until they pay a toll. Follows a lengthy conversation amongst the group to decide the best course of action, so long in fact that the Ogre eventually falls asleep.

After carefully stepping over him, Trichlieu exults which wakes up DDE. Not realizing that they are now on the other side, he accepts to let them cross the bridge for free. As he aggressively encourages them to do so, Zehirmann casts a smoke bomb and they all flee towards their next destination.

Episode 4: The Cave of Flayed Herpes

As they are about to enter a dark cave, the adventurers start a nonsensical argument after noticing a curious sulfur smell. As they became more and more stupid and aggressive, Zehirmann realizes that this sulfur-like odor comes from hallucinogenic mushrooms to which he is immune, and promptly destroys them.

After defeating a troll in the cave, they find signs advertising the "Echo of Truth" where people are allowed to scream one and only one question in a chamber and be answered an absolute truth. After wasting his opportunity on a trivial question, Trichelieu asks a second one which immediately locks the Echo for 138 years due to a violation of the terms of services.

Episode 5: Bivouac…tion!

The exhausted group sets up a camp for the night. After the usual Enoriel vs. Zarakai argument and Trichelieu shenanigans, they decide to establish a rotating guard duty throughout the night.

As Zehirmann comes to replace Wrandrall's guard (despite him being deeply asleep) he notices some movement in the darkness and wakes up everyone. The creatures turns out to be a tiny fairy, but Enoriel immediately questions its true nature and accuses it of being a doppelganger. As it turns out to actually be one, the adventurers fight and defeat its true monstrous form and go back to sleep.

Episode 6: The Hill of a Thousand Gangrene

After waking up from a nightmare, Trichelieu blesses the party with a questionable orison and they continue their journey. As they climb the hill, a persistent fog goes thicker and thicker to the point that they can't see each other. Zarakai smells the putrid odor of ghouls and Trichelieu somehow makes the mist that blinded them disappear thanks to a literal foghorn, revealing that they actually were in a cemetery. Zarakai and Zehirman take care of the scavengers while the rest reads the humorous epitaphs on the various graves.

After the battle, Zarakai smells some mythril hiding in a tomb. Losing all common sense, he rushes to the source and starts desecrating the grave in front of his shocked companions. He eventually finds his treasure, a mythril ring, that he jealously keeps for himself and puts on despite the others' warnings. It summons a genie who accords him one wish in the form of an individual that he would be able to summon at will. After deciding, the genie vanishes and in his place appears the bartender of the Traveler's Tavern.

Episode 7: Mount Mucus

The party explains the situation to the confused bartender, who is named Roger. However, they quickly realize that Roger is summoned completely naked, ruining Zarakai's hopes of instant beers at will. They manage to find a way to revoke Roger by making him ask Zarakai to pay his bill which unconsciously scares him.

Continuing their journey, they arrive at a maze of thorns. Thankfully, Wrandrall's magic map acts as a GPS and they can easily find their way across. They however have to fight numerous Minotaurs, each party member defeating them in their own way. Wrandrall is especially noteworthy as he clean cuts his opponents in half in a single slice of his sword.

Finally in front of the chasm, they hear a terrifying sound. In hiding, they can observe a black dragon flying out of the dungeon.

Episode 8: Deep in the Hole…

Wondering if the chasm is the dragon's lair, the group decides to keep going anyway. In the chasm, they eventually arrive at a long spiral staircase. Fearing that it would be booby trapped, they stop at each individual step to inspect with Zehirmann and Zarakai checking for magical and mechanical traps respectively.

After a while, Zarakai's thirst inadvertently summons Roger who appears at the center of the spiral and starts falling. He is fortunately unsummoned before he reaches the bottom. This apparition distracted Zarakai who forgets to check one step which happened to be trapped, sending Zehirmann roll down the entire staircase and activate all the traps. At the bottom, Zehirmann is in terrible shape and decides to set himself on fire to heal his wounds. This traumatizing event makes the entire party pass out except for Zarakai who takes care of them.

Back at the Traveler's Tavern in Maender-Alkoor, Roger's wife Moumoune is terribly annoyed by his husband's disappearances. Roger wanted to see the city's Seer that evening for help, but Moumoune decides to immediately seek a priest to "exorcise" him.

Meanwhile, the black dragon flies towards Maender-Alkoor. Here lives the seer that predicted that its master's army of darkness would be defeated by the Chasm, despite the dragon finding nothing of interest in there. It takes human form before entering the city and reveals to actually be a gorgeous woman with jet black hair.

Episode 9: Riddle in the Abyss!

After waking up, a scarred Zehirmann and the rest of the team go explore the chasm without more success than the dragon before them. Checking the magic map for clues, they realize that they can now interact with it. It helps them with a riddle to solve but they struggle to find the solution.

At the tavern, Moumoune comes back with Sacher-Masoch, apostle of Shamrodia, Goddess of Pain, who thought that he was asked to "excise" Roger instead of "exorcise". He is promptly thrown off the tavern and Moumoune tells her husband that all the other priests of the city are mysteriously missing. Not long after, Roger is once again summoned by the adventurers, told the riddle and sent back, hoping that at least one patron of the bar has the answer.

The dragon, after easily defeating a group of bandits with a Mass Death spell, arrives at the Traveler's Tavern hoping to find information about the Seer's whereabouts. Roger accepts to lead her to the Seer since he was about to see him, but quickly realizes that without the answer the adventurers will keep bothering him. After being explained the strange situation, she easily solves the riddle which was "horizon".

After answering the map with the word that they learned from Roger, it tells them that they now have to "look for it". Deducing that the "horizon" of the room if the junction between the ground and the wall, Enoriel and Zehirmann find four hidden switches. Once all activated, a giant X appears in the pavement that soon starts to sink in to the inferior level where a giant mirror resides.

Asking the map for more clues, it tells the party that its creator's indications stop at the entrance of this cursed place. Shocked from this revelation, they finally ask who this creator is: the father of Wrandrall, the Great Demon Belial.

Episode 10: The Crossroad

Accusing Wrandrall to be an evil traitor, Enorial and Zarakai attack him but he dodges the assault thanks to his until then hidden teleportation power. The fight is suddenly interrupted by their reflections in the mirror coming to life as their opposites: a duergar, a drow, an ice elemental, a half-angel, and a young maiden. After defeating them (including the maiden who died of a heart attack before Trichelieu even did anything) the mirror disappears and is replaced by a door that Enoriel recognizes as Elzopean, a lost civilization of powerful wizards.

As they are about to confront Wrandrall again, they are stopped by Zehirmann who often suffers a similar prejudice by most people. Trichelieu casts a spell on Wrandrall to reveal his alignment, turning his tanned face into a pearl white meaning that he is a "true neutral". Entering the Elzopean temple, the first room is a blue square with three more openings. They are however interrupted by a loud clamor from outside the chasm. Wrendrall teleports to the entrance to find the source and discovers horrified that it is a massive undead army passing by and marching towards Maender-Alkoor.

In Maender-Alkoor, Roger and the dragon go to see the Seer. Jealous, Moumoune accompanies them leaving the tavern's surveillance to two regulars that she nicknames "Truc" and "Machin"note . They are welcomed at the Seer's house by Kyo Shin Zamurato, the Seer's bodyguard, as the latter is busy with a secret meeting with all the city's priests in the basement.

A late priest also comes in who is none other than Sacher-Masoch. Still angry from earlier, Moumoune follows him to the basement while roughing him up, interrupting the meeting, a fact that the Seer (who would be later revealed to be named Haroun) predicted to the second. He forgives everyone for the interruption and the meeting resumes, although Haroun recognized the dragon. He also notes that the only missing person is now the Travia priest who changed his destiny and his now part of the group whose actions can't be predicted.

Episode 11: The Elf and the Broken Prison

Wrandrall tells his companions the terrifying sight he witnessed and they decide to summon Roger to warn Maender-Alkoor. A frightened and naked Roger rushes then to the priests who were discussing that exact matter thanks to Haroun's foresight. The Seer offers Roger magical clothing that would stay on him during the summoning, and Roger reluctantly puts on a hot pink dress.

In the chasm, Trichelieu blesses the place with smelly incense before the group takes the western path and arrives in another blue square room. One of its wall is covered with blue crystals that zap Zarakai after he tries to touch them, turning him entirely blue and filled to the brim with mana energy. Next they go back to take the eastern path and arrive in a beautiful cathedral-looking room. Its walls are engraved with an entire bestiary (they also discover that each creature is an individual button) and a world map covers the ground with numerous circles converging towards the location of the chasm.

In Maender-Alkoor, Haroun tells his horrified audience that this army of darkness is sent by Mortys, necromancer king of Mortyr. He also reveals that Alia-Aenor, his literal dragon, is present in this room without having triggered the alarms supposed to warn the city. Now free of her charade, Alia-Aenor presses Haroun for more details. Confused by her knowledge of the prophecy, he suspects some traitor to have read his notes to Mortis. Moumoune immediately accuses Sacher-Masoch who happily confesses with the hope of being punished. The Seer sends Kyo deliver Sacher-Masoch to the authorities and warn them of the imminent danger.

Roger accidentally reveals that the party summoning him is in the exact chasm that the dragon was asking about. Continuing his tale, Haroun explains that his visions about the chasm are vague and contradictory, and that the party of adventurers will either use it to destroy or reinforce the undead army. As Alia-Aenor is about to leave for the chasm, she is stopped by all the priests led by Yanosh, apostle of Ilo, God of Life, as the city's protection should have siphoned her powers. She however easily kills them all with Mass Death. As she's about to do the same to Moumoune and Roger, Zarakai somehow hears Roger's screams and summons him as well as Moumoune who was hugging her husband.

Roger gives his pink dress to his naked wife and Zehirmann lends him his cape. The couple then describes the situation in Maender-Alkoor to the party and Enoriel seems especially surprised to learn that the dragon is named Alia-Aenor. But without anyone noticing, the sword of Wrandrall suddenly takes possession of its user whose face goes from white to scarlet. He knocks out Trichelieu and leaves guided by a voice in his head which leads him to a secret room. The voice orders Wrandrall to throw the sword at a mirror which frees him from his hypnotized state, and from the destroyed mirror appears Wrandrall's father Belial.

Episode 12: The Dreadful Alliance of Banes

Ashamed by his weak and cowardly offspring, Belial still explains to Wrandrall that a thousand years ago, the two heroes Maender and Alkoor trapped him in a magic mirror, then split it in two halves: one was the one Wrandrall destroyed in the chasm, and the other is in the city of Maender-Alkoor. During that process, three shards of glass were accidentally created: one was claimed by Mortys who wears it on his forehead and gives him his powers, another was forged into a cursed sword able to possess a man and force him to copulate with a woman to birth a spawn of Belial such as Wrandrall, and the third was lost to time. Mortys chased Wrandrall all of his life for his sword and magic map, hoping to gain more of Belial's power. As Belial tries to leave the chasm to find and destroy the second half of the mirror, he is physically stopped by the holy incense that Trichelieu used earlier, once again trapped in the chasm.

A bit earlier, while Belial was still explaining in the secret mirror room, Enoriel, Zarakai, and Zehirmann were looking for Wrandrall in the yet unexplored northern path, finding a room with three additional openings. Taking the eastern path, they arrive at a dead end that Zarakai inadvertently opens with the blue mana he received earlier. Before climbing the huge set of stairs that it revealed, they are joined by Roger, Moumoune, and Trichelieu changed into a goose by a flask that was in his bag and that the couple of bartenders mistook for a healing potion. He explains that living as a goose until one is pure enough is part of Travia's order communion, as he only joined it recently leaving behind a decade of worshiping Raia, Goddess of Pleasures. At the top of the stairs, they find a set of buttons that they randomly press. The characters "N2O" appears on the wall and the stairs turn into a slide that takes the party to the bottom where they meet a furious Belial.

In Maender-Alkoor, Haroun resurrects Yanosh thanks to a magic scroll of life. He orders him to do the same to all his colleagues while he does some research to find the reason behind Alia-Aenor's ability to override the city's protection. In the meantime, Kyo is slowed down by the night market. Sacher-Masoch suggests a shortcut which happens to be a trap leading them near the Temple of Shamrodia. Its followers attack Kyo under Sacher-Masoch's command, giving him time to contact Mortys through the Orb of Curses, a crystal ball, to let him know of his failures. Their discussion is interrupted by Kyo who easily massacred all the disciples. He destroys the Orb with a shuriken and arrests Sacher-Masoch to escort him once again in front of the city's magistrates.

Meanwhile, the undead army led by Pancrace the Lich continues its inexorable walk towards Maender-Alkoor. Their last recruits are Gilles Huminé, Wassily Griesniewsky, and Sourdinguenote  the Dwarf, the three funny epitaphs from the Hill of a Thousand Gangrene who come back as ghosts.

Episode 13: Dies irae, dies illa solvet saeclum in favilla

After a one-sided fight in Belial's favor, Wrandrall begs his father mercy for his companions in exchange for a solution to the blocking incense. Outraged by this blackmail, Belial reverses the situation by finishing Roger and Moumoune. Thanks to his teleportation, Wrandrall bypasses the incense and puts Belial near the exit but immediately returns behind the incense, openly rejecting his father's legacy. In response, Belial seals the chasm.

It is shown that Goose!Trichelieu actually survived the massacre: when the stairs turned into a slide, he instinctively started to hover with his wings. Panting and laughing, he knocked himself out trying to land in an alcove that just opened in the wall. Eventually waking up, he collects a key that was in the alcove in his beak and goes back down the stairs to find the gruesome corpses of his friends. Praying for a desperate godly intervention, Travia unexpectedly answers his plea and appears in front of him. She reveals that she and her twin sister Raia were originally a single cult that suffered a schism, and that Trichelieu was chosen to be the apostle of their reunited religion. She turns him back into a human then cleans the bloody room with her Household benediction, which includes the corpses of the deceased party who vanishes without a trace.

Crying to this bittersweet ending, Trichelieu is joined by a confused Wrandrall then by their happily resurrected companions coming back from the other side. Travia cleaned their body and equipment from top to bottom, which even includes Zarakai's previously missing leg. The group is however suspicious of Wrandrall's allegiance, a doubt quickly brushed off by Trichelieu who notices that his face now sports a light blue hue. Wrandrall then tells that he learned from his father that he was imprisoned in this Elzopean temple for its "total silence" which here mostly meant that it was impossible for seers to find Belial, condemning him to oblivion.

Under the effects of a truth potion, Kyo and Sacher-Masoch tell everything that happened to the magistrates of Mandear-Alkoor. Giving themselves the night to deliberate, they throw the both of them in jail as Kyo confessed the murder of the Shamrodia followers. Citizens of the city are then forcibly enrolled to defend the city against the upcoming menace reported by Kyo, which includes Truc and Machin. In the meantime, Haroun and Yanosh follow a freshly resurrected Bernie, apostle of Hessindee, Goddess of Knowledge, to his temple to consult the ancient Grimoire of Secrets which appears to be their last hope of deciphering all the ongoing mysteries.

Back in the chasm, the adventurers are trying to find an exit after rejecting the idea of coming back naked with Roger. They are suddenly interrupted by a ray of light coming from Trichelieu's key which leads them to the cathedral room with the bestiary. Inserting the key in its designated hole with the hope that it would open the chasm, it activates a loud and rumbly mechanism and they soon hear the chasm open. They however ignore that it was Alia-Aenor who actually opened it. Their action had instead a much different and deadlier result: they carelessly reactivated an ancient Elzopean experiment that sent a wave of death towards the dormant volcano, killing everyone in Mandear-Alkoor.

Episode 14: A people that forgets its past dooms itself to relive it

A millennium ago, the world devolved into a constant state of war and blind hatred. Weakened and corrupted, this plan of existence was invaded by Belial who managed to break through with his hellish legions, creating a dreadful volcano. His terror was eventually put to a stop by the magician king Maender and the monstrous tyrant Alkoor. The former enemies made peace and created the city of Meander-Alkoor in the now closed volcano, with the (now forgotten) sacred mission of guarding it.

In the present, Belial invades Mortys' castle. The king initially thinks that Belial is here to support him in his conquest but is quickly betrayed by the demon who reveals to him that he actually is a descendant of his old archenemy Maender that he corrupted with the glass shard. After killing him and claiming back the shard, Mortys' memories are revealed to Belial which somehow upset him and force him to go back to the chasm. The undead army is also in disarray: it just lost all of its zombie troops who got carried away in the tumultuous River of Lukewarm Phlegm after Pancrace refused to pay DDE's toll and decided to cross the stream. Only the specters are still remaining.

Earlier in the chasm, the group's exit was blocked by Alia-Aenor. Enoriel tries to sing an escape song with his harp to return to his home forest but is interrupted by the dragon who reveals that the two of them used to be in love before Enoriel left her when he discovered her true nature. By some magic trick, she confiscates the heroes' weapons as well as Zarakai's ring and Enoriel's harp to prevent any escape routes. After telling the party that she sealed the chasm again, she toys with them by letting them hide in the chasm before beginning the hunt. A bit later, as she is inspecting the cathedral room and discovering that the adventurers switched it on, she feels her master Mortys' demise when Belial strikes him down.

In Maender-Alkoor, a few places actually resisted the necromantic wave. The Temple of Hessindee is one of them, although it still drained all of Yanosh and Bernie's mana and knocked out Haroun before he could reveal what he just learned in the Grimoire, unfortunately being the only one able to read its Elzopean writings. Carrying the Seer, they heads out to the Temple of Ilo to heal him. Kyo and Sacher-Masoch's jail also resisted, being designed to lock any kind of warlock. They meet in there Remi Chelin, another seer that was locked here because of his annoying oracles that he constantly delivers in song form. He asks Kyo to lead him to his friend Haroun in the Temple of Hessindee, and Sacher-Masoch uses this distraction to escape.

Back in the chasm, the fleeing party goes to the last unexplored path and discovers a large door with height handles. They open it and are all literally sucked into its black void. Lighting the new place with his fire magic, Zehirmann reveals countless webs but more importantly a giant enemy spider that traps most of the adventurers in cocoons. Trichelieu, who still didn't notice the spider, casts Travia's benediction to clean the room, inadvertently freeing his companions but also destabilizing the spider who falls on its back. The unarmed party flees again to a nearby door while Zehirmann finishes the spider and they burst into the Temple of Hessindee. They meet there a shocked Bernie and Yanosh who were just traversing the Room of the 13 Abyssal Doors which are various gates to other plans.

Still looking for the party, Alia-Aenor is interrupted by Belial. Thanks to Mortys' memories, he now knows that Alia-Aenor is secretly the daughter of dragon king Alkoor, a fact that even she herself didn't know.

Episode 15: Way more than roots, one needs wings… to ascend…

The episode starts with a flashback: Tormys, young descendant of Maender, braves the interdict and finds the secret tomb of his illustrious ancestor. Touching the mirror shard in his coffin, he enters into contact with Belial who starts corrupting him. Caught red-handed in the tomb, Tormys' trespassing is punished by exile. Confused and angry, the empowered young man conquers a neighboring kingdom, changing its name to Mortyr and his own to Mortys. A part of his old self survived however and managed to hide some of his acts to Belial such as finding Alia-Aenor's egg and raising her, making her promise to never look into her lineage.

In present time in the chasm, Belial and Alia-Aenor are dueling to the death. Despite her best efforts, Belial is impervious to all attacks, the latter boasting that he could merely be imprisoned at most and that he killed her mother long ago. Secretly marking a pentacle during the fight, he eventually activates it to drag Alia-Aenor with him to his original plan: Hell.

In the Temple of Hessindee, the large group comprised of the adventurers, the bartenders, and the clerics meets Kyo and Chelin. The latter convince them in a sung oracle to split into three teams:

  • The first one (Moumoune, Roger, Trichelieu, and Bernie) stays in their current location which is the temple's dressing room. Bernie persuades Roger to wear a set of fine magic clothes as he is still technically naked under Zehirmann's cloak ever since his summoning. Soon after, he suddenly vanishes. As the three left realize with horror who currently possesses the summoning ring, Roger reappears with a wounded Alia-Aenor.
  • The second one (Zehirmann, Zarakai, Enoriel, and Yanosh) carries Haroun to the Temple of Ilo to heal him. Passing through the literally dead streets of Maender-Alkoor, they attribute the massacre to Mortys and Alia-Aenor's Mass Death spell. When they arrive in the temple, they notice its similarities with the design of the cathedral room in the chasm. Yanosh magically heals the Sear who wakes up and asks the adventurers to tell him everything.
  • The third one (Kyo, Wrandrall, and Chelin) goes back into the Temple of Hessindee. The oracle leads the two men to a wall and asks them to destroy it. Thanks to his kept secret demonic strength, Wrandrall brings it down in a single punch, revealing Meander's tomb. In his coffin, an ecstatic Chelin grabs an ancient ciborium, a powerful artifact that once sealed a blood pact between Maender and Alkoor.

They eventually all rejoin in the Temple of Ilo. The good guys are initially scared to see Alia-Aenor alongside the first team but she alleviates their doubts by stating that they now have a common enemy and give them back their weapons and items as a show of good faith. Haroun finally reveals to everyone what he learned in the Grimoire of Secrets: he confirms that Alia is the daughter of black dragon Alkoor and silver dragon Okaenia, and that the former performed a magic blood pact with Maender to avenge his beloved's murder. The mirror in which they trapped Belial was split, one half hidden amongst the wall of a thousand mirrors monument in Maender-Alkoor (a tribute the the late silver dragon) and the other in the Elzopean temple, the birthplace and tomb of Okaenia. As Meander and Alkoor were associated to Hessindee and Shamrodia respectively, Alkoor built a wormhole that linked the temple of Hessindee to the chasm to easily access Okaenia's tomb. The shortcut was guarded by a giant spider, totem animal of Shamrodia.

Now in possession of the Maender's ciborium, they need to find the other piece of the blood pact: Alkoor's ritualistic dagger named Mercy that Haroun feels is located at the bottom of the city's well. Alia also informs the party that the city's genocide is of their own doing and not Mortys' fault, but that they could potentially repair their deadly gaffe by reversing the initial Elzopean mechanism. Two new teams are then formed: one comprised of the adventurers and Haroun to find the dagger, and the other of the rest of the civilians to go back in the chasm through the shortcut and activate the resurrection mechanism. The latter would have to wait for the adventurers' instructions (thanks to Zarakai's ability to summon and send back Roger) as doing so would deprive them of the undead army's help which is now under Alia's command. She flies away to inform Pancrace at the gates of the city, his ranks now joined by Guertrude and Konkonnote  (one of the dimwitted bandits who attacked her earlier).

...

Episode 16: Beyond Death, Hell, and Time, There is no worst fate than the Void.

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