S21/JT - Temple of Giants Report
General Summary
The party have a harrowing fight with the T-rex, with Yamami being nearly eaten alive, but they emerge victorious. Akira suddenly appears with a staff, and uses it to destroy the orb. The T-rex corpse disintegrates, and Akira slumps down to the ground exhausted. The party then try to invite him on another adventure but with Ser Aurin this time. He recognizes the name and he agrees, so they go back into his library. This Akira then transformed into his katana and a ball of light leads the party to a new door.
Through the door, they find themselves in a normal-looking library, with Akira reading behind a desk. Upon seeing the group, he is glad that his escorts have arrived and that they can now embark on his research expedition. He guides the party to a teleportation circle and transports them to a colossal ruined temple. They explore the temple for a while and see several friezes pertaining to the history of the race of giants, with Akira taking notes along the way. They encounter an angry giant ghost but manage to defeat him and his fire elementals. At the end, they stumble upon what looked to be living quarters and are confronted by another giant ghost. He initially tells them that they don’t belong here, but the party say that they’re only here for research. He then introduces himself as Ilsen Sthad and gives the party a tour of the temple. Satisfied, Akira then decides to leave. Once out of the main temple however, the statue there starts to move and is mad at the party for trodding on hallowed ground. The giant golem attacks while Akira tries his best to activate the teleportation circle. This golem manipulated the elements and brought down Mizuki and Jugen. Yukio and Yamami save them and they manage to defeat the golem the moment Akira re-activates the circle.
Back at his desk, he pays the party and dismisses them, but they try to get him to go with them to another library. He is skeptical and doesn’t want to leave due to orders from his master. In the end, the party convince him that it won’t take much time at all and it will likely have books about the runes he was researching. Once in Akira’s library, this aspect transformed into a book. Ser Aurin sees the haggard party and tells them to sleep awhile.
While resting, Kyo talks to Mizuki about how to make amends with Akira and about their families. Kyo apologizes on behalf of her mother for sending Mizuki to the wall. Mizuki didn’t see anything wrong with the sentence as she was indeed caught, but Kyo invites her to become the head imperial onmyoji in the future anyway. Mizuki replies that she’ll think about it and Kyo goes off to talk to Jiko and Yukio.
Yukio asks Kyo about her time as an urban vigilante and she recounts one notable event wherein she thought she was just going to fight regular bandits. In a back room, a dark figure flew towards her but she was able to stave it off with light from the Tetsaiga. It revealed the cowering figure of a rotting corpse whose limbs were abnormally long. Horrified, she fled to the palace. A few days later, as she was passing her parents’ quarters, she noticed her father in front of a mirror, but what was reflected in it was the monster. She closely watched her father for a few days but couldn’t find anything amiss. Her mother noticed her distress and asked the court onmyoji, Tsuchiya, to divine if something was affecting her father. He found nothing and Kyo threw a tantrum, ultimately deciding to run away 2 weeks later on the eve of the Hatsuyuki festival.
She sheltered with a farmer that first night, but when she woke up, she saw the imperial capitol in flames. She rushed back to the palace, only to find the imperial clan dead and the palace overrun by oni ninjas. She finds a gigantic summoning circle, with her father dead in the middle of it, surrounded by rising undead. She is then grabbed by her mother, who tells her to escape and hands her over to Tsuchiya and Airi, her retainer. They pull her into a secret passageway and Tsuchiya opens a portal where a large dragon came out. Kyo is unsure but thinks she rode that dragon and it dropped her to a temple in Otohama, right beside Sana.
Report provided by souly
