Session 25: Fury Road

General Summary

The party spent an uneasy night aboard the Peacock in preparation for their (second) trip to the Underworld. In the middle of the night, Amara approached Meredythe and asked:

“What happened earlier… with Aphrodite… her offer. Did you think about it? At all?”
“You know, I can’t even tell, I mean…” Meredythe sighed. “Everything has just been changing so quickly, and I don’t know who to trust. I’ve made these huge decisions, and I… I don’t know if I’m prepared to lose the people that I care about right now.”
“I just keep thinking about it. Where you’re from… you didn’t know Aphrodite. Which means that… she’s… maybe she’s not as powerful as she thinks she is, maybe she’s not in control…?”
“But this is my home now.”
“But it’s not!” Amara burst out. “It’s not. I know what you said when you threw World-Render away. But after, when she came back… this isn’t your home. I don’t want you to force yourself into it, if that’s not really what you want. And… I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”
“All I’ve ever known back there is hatred and pain and violence and death. And sure, there’s a whole lot of that here. But there’s also family, and joy, and comfort, and love-”
“But you had it there before! Without some capricious god trying to force it! Or did she?” Amara paused, finally admitting, “I thought about it. Accepting her offer.”
Meredythe went cold. “That seems like a reasonable choice. Did you want anything else?”
“You should know. I did talk to my father. World-Render is missing. I don’t know where it is. Neither does he. Something powerful took it—I don’t know what. Knowing our luck, we’ll probably run into it.”
“Knowing our luck, it will probably try to kill us. We’ll have to kill it before it can.” Another long pause. “Did you want something else? Because I have a hell of a hangover.”
Amara left, and silently, Meredythe began to cry.

Amara went to the upper deck to jump overboard into the ocean. As she did so, she saw the unmistakable form of Kallos leaving the ship, walking back to shore. Amara said nothing.
The next morning, Callidora awoke to find a written note by her bed. It read:

Hey guys so the underworld sounds very scary : (
I am not afraid of the dark, but I am not supposed to go to the underworld until I die? And I do not want to be dead yet. I will stay here in case Aegis comes back. And also please do not die.
-Kallos

Once everyone else had gathered on deck, Hermes appeared, still disguised as Ea-Nasir, to take them to The Underworld. He spoke a word (“assemble”) in Proto-Indo-European and the copper ingots he had shown them joined together to form his caduceus. Callidora was surprised to find that she understood the word. Hermes winked at her. “A little gift from the god of language.”
The party joined hands with the god, and suddenly, the world around them dropped, as if they were rising into the air without moving. Their surroundings began to swirl, faster and faster, until everything went gray and the party saw the familiar, barren shore of the River Styx.
Amara visited Kerberos and succeeded in petting one of his three heads. The party heard someone singing, the sound coming from a small copse of pomegranate trees along the shore of the Styx. Callidora immediately recognized the voice as Orpheus, but as the party approached, another voice began to harmonize with his. They came across Orpheus and Eurydice having a picnic, confused as to why the party was back in the underworld.

“We’re on a glorious quest,” Callidora said nervously.
“Something about tartar sauce,” Meredythe added.

Eurydice pieced together that the party needed to go to Tartarus. Orpheus offered his help:

“When Eurydice and I go walking by the banks of the Phlegethon—”
“Side by side, obviously.” She playfully elbowed Orpheus in the ribs.
“—if I play my Song of Rest, it’s like all of Tartarus stops to listen. The torments cease, and—just for a moment—those souls see how the world could be, and they can hope again. Even the river’s flames go out, and the magma cools and hardens into a pathway. You could try to cross it.”

Orpheus also used his knowledge of the Song of Creation to manifest a red carnation flower that could be used to give the party some much-needed inspiration. He placed it in Meredythe’s hair, and together, they approached the river of fire.
Sure enough, Orpheus’ song created a temporary bridge of solid earth that would last for just under six minutes. The three heroines rushed across, Callidora almost falling into the river before Amara saved her, then falling again onto the ground, costing them some time. The party made it to the other side just before the bridge melted again. They had entered Tartarus.
There was a large guard tower up ahead. Three bat-winged, snake-haired Furies approached and interrogated the party, who claimed they were emissaries of Hades sent to parley with Prometheus. Unsatisfied, the Furies decided to escort them through Tartarus for their protection—and to ensure that they didn’t interfere with any of the punishments.
First, they came across a multitude of young women, all dark-haired and -skinned, drenched from the water leaking out of the sieves they’re carrying toward a giant basin. “These are the Danaids,” one of the Furies said and called forth one of the women to tell the story:

“We are daughters of Danaus, who was forced to marry us off to the sons of the man besieging his kingdom. We sought refuge in Argos, but the city gave us up at the first threat of violence. So we responded with violence of our own. All of us except our sister Hypermnestra stabbed our bridegrooms to death. For this we are condemned to Tartarus, but Hades took pity on us. We can be cleansed of our sins and released from punishment once we have filled that basin to the brim.”
“Walk on,” said the Fury to Meredythe. “This is none of your concern.”

Uncomfortable but unable to do anything without provoking the Furies, the party walked on. Next, they saw a terrified young man tied to a burning wheel. “This is Ixion,” another Fury said, and Ixion screamed:

“I didn’t do anything—all I did was fall in love! I fell in love with Hera and tried to convince her to leave Zeus and marry me, but Zeus found out and bound me to this wheel! Please! My only crime was love!”
“Walk on,” said the Fury to Amara. “This is none of your concern.”

Meredythe, deeply disturbed, adjusted the flower in her hair to signal to Callidora that they should do something. Ultimately, however, they had no choice but to move on.
The next punishment they saw was that of Tantalus, hungry for all eternity with food and water always just out of reach. He begged the party to relieve his pain:

“Even just a mouthful of water! Please! All I did was offer up my son for the gods to consume! It was a sacrifice! A show of devotion! Devotion that I now know was misplaced!”
“Walk on,” said the third Fury to Callidora, who was more than happy to do so.

They reached the steep slope of a mountain and saw a rather spry old man straining to push a giant boulder up the mountain. Unlike the other damned souls, he seemed rather at peace with himself and greeted the party with hope in his eyes:

“It’s you! Whenever that poet comes to the shore and sings to us, he sings about you and all you did for him. You, the breakers of fate, the heroes who defy the gods and break doomed mortals out of tragic cycles. And even though life is ultimately pointless and absurd, it gives me hope. Hope that someday you would come and push this boulder and make it stay. For you, it seems, nothing is impossible. You could accomplish anything!”

  Meredythe and Callidora were tempted to intervene, but Amara saw right through this man—King Sisyphus, the infamous trickster, who was clearly trying to get them to take his place while he made a run for it. They walked on.   Finally, they made it to a large plateau where a man with heavy scarring under the left side of his rib cage was bound in chains. They had found Prometheus, who apparently was expecting their arrival. He warned the party that the eagle sent to torment him contained a fraction of Zeus’ power and would report whatever it saw back to Zeus.
The eagle swooped down. Callidora readied herself to fight but waited while Meredythe cast Speak With Animals to try and persuade the eagle to stand down.

“I am a servant of Zeus!” the bird said. “Make Zeus Great Again! Make Olympus Great Again!”

Slyly, Meredythe appealed to its conservative politics and fearmongering about the end of the world. She convinced the eagle to spare Prometheus just this once, but when it made clear that it would be reporting to Zeus straight away, Callidora let her arrow fly.
Enraged, the eagle tried to attack Meredythe but failed, then went after Amara, who was severely wounded. Then the Furies descended on the party, attacking Callidora for attacking the eagle, but Amara managed to convince them that it was a mistake, that they were just trying to scare the eagle off. The Furies seemed satisfied, and so one of them chased off the bird with her whip while the other two urged them forward.

“You wish to speak to Prometheus? Then speak.”

Rewards Granted

Red Carnation (Note of Potential)

Report Date

10 Nov 2021

Primary Location

The Underworld

Related Characters

• Hermes
• Orpheus
• Prometheus