Session 9: Heavy Metal

On the night a comet blazed across the skies above the island of Lemnos, a gray-skinned, white-eyed young woman dreamed of the three spinners of destiny, hunched over their web of threads. Their plotting was interrupted by a slam of the door opening, and Eris—the goddess of chaos, wild and disheveled, with gray skin and alarmingly sharp teeth—entered the Fates’ domain.

“Sisters,” she snarled, voice dripping with amused contempt. “Hundreds of thousands of years you’ve detested me and the chaos I wreak in your world, and now you ask for a favor? I ought to shred you through my teeth. Maybe I will.”
“You have a daughter,” one of the Fates said.
“I have many children—all of them free from your little spider web. What good would they be otherwise? Chaos cannot be controlled, even by you, my sisters.”
“That is exactly why we approached you,” said the second spinster. “Your child is perfectly positioned to wreak havoc. Sow discord among a group of mortals who have… strayed from our divine designs. Destroy them before they get out of control.”
“And why would I do that, when these mortals are so clearly causing chaos and strife for my least favorite elder sisters?” Eris rolled her eyes. “Still, could be fun. I’ll send your offer along to her and she can do with it what she wills.”
Then she turned aside and locked eyes with the dreamer—her daughter, Aegis (a new player character). “What do you think, sweetie?” she asked. “Want to fuck shit up?”

The next day, the Argo set out for Lemnos and docked outside the city of Hephaistia, sacred to Hephaestus. The party members (Amara, Meredythe, Melantha, and Kallos) noted that everyone they met there was female, and in conversation with some dock workers, found out that it might be unsafe for men to set foot on the island and that they should talk to Queen Hypsipyle about their presence here. The dock workers also mentioned a mysterious, gray-skinned barbarian stranger who had recently come to town, which peaked Kallos’ interest—it seemed that this description matched the friend that she had previously been travelling with.
On their way to the queen’s palace, the party came across a rowdy scene in a tavern—including a crowd of angry women with broken arms, a chair being thrown through a window, and pieces of shattered glass everywhere. Kallos thought that this might be her friend and rushed inside to mitigate some of the disaster.
Inside, Aegis was arm-wrestling various women, breaking their arms, and eating glass shards from the window she had smashed. Kallos healed one of the arm-breaking victims, then hugged Aegis, calmed her down, and introduced her to the bewildered party, who promptly assumed the two were a romantic couple.
They presented themselves before the queen, who explained that misfortune had befallen their island—the women of Lemnos had been cursed. First their husbands tried to abandon them for some women from Thrace, then in a fit of jealous madness the women slaughtered all the men on the island. When asked why they had been cursed, the queen replied that she did not know, only that because Lemnos was sacred to Hephaestus, Hephaestus’ wife Aphrodite might have cursed the Lemnians to spite her husband.
Meredythe expressed her frustration at the increasingly complicated familial relations of the Greek gods:

“Where I’m from, we only have the one.”
“One god?” Amara asked incredulously. “How would that even work?”

When the party asked the queen where they might find Hephaestus, the queen told them that Hephaestus’ forge was inside a nearby volcano, Mount Aethaleia. She gestured to a mural on the walls of the palace depicting a large set of brass doors, fastened by all sorts of cogs and gears, in the side of the mountain. The party thanked the queen and left, but not before Aegis tried to steal a gold plate to eat. Kallos got Aegis to put the plate back by promising her that she would forge her a fancy golden plate, and the forge cleric promptly did so.
On their way to the volcano, Meredythe off-handedly referred to Aegis as Kallos’ wife, to which Kallos replied that they were just good friends, though from Aegis’ reaction it became clear that the situation was more complicated than that. Meredythe also called Kallos “Talos” again, which promptly became hilarious when they approached the doors to Hephaestus’ forge, which were guarded by automatons, the main one introducing themselves as Talos.
Talos demanded that each party member undergo a lie detector test, stating their names and where they are from. Meredythe ran into a spot of trouble when Talos could not recognize “the kingdom of Albion” as a it was not in their knowledge database, and the warlock promptly got into even more trouble trying to lie her way out of it. However, the rest of the party vouched for her and Talos moved on to question the others.
When asked for her name as part of the lie detector test, Melantha replied, “Callidora,” surprising her traveling companions.
Talos accepted this as truth and cleared all five party members to enter the forge, through a tunnel illuminated by lines of red-hot magma running through the tunnel walls. As they walked through the tunnels, the huntress formerly known as Melantha asked the rest of the party to call her Callidora from now on. “No matter what your name is, you’re one of us,” they reassured her.
They emerged from the tunnel into Hephaestus’ workshop, which appeared to be inactive. There was a large, smoking crater in the center of the room, with Hephaestus within it. When Kallos rushed over to help, she saw that his mechanical prosthetic legs were burnt, bent out of shape, and sparking. She used the Mending cantrip on them, stabilizing them, and Hephaestus thanked her before addressing the others:

“The first time I was thrown off Olympus, it was my mother who did it. The second time, it was my father, for defending my mother. This time… Zeus has been getting paranoid—about you mortals, about the Fates, about some prophecy of Apollo’s—and I was at home, arguing with Aphrodite. I yelled that I knew how to chain an Olympian up forever, that I had done it before and would do it again… and that bitch went and told Zeus. He threw me off Olympus. And you know the worst thing? I still love her.
“But she needs to be stopped, and Zeus needs to be stopped to. You’re right to be suspicious of the Fates. But if you do this for me, I will do everything in my power to protect you from the fallout of what they’re planning.”
He handed Kallos a set of fancy bracelets, with an invisible chain between them revealing their true nature as adamantine shackles.
“These are for my wife,” he told her. “And they’re not just one-use-only. They can chain any being, no matter how divine… even a Fate.”

Meredythe asked the god for some scrap metal to feed to Aegis, believing that she consumed metallic ore based on her previous dieting choices. Hephaestus gave her some copper ingots that “were bad anyway.” He also complimented Amara’s prosthetic whalebone leg.
“Thanks, I made it myself,” Amara said.
He smiled. “All the best ones are.” He waved his hand and put a spell on Amara’s leg, to help her more easily navigate difficult terrain.
Heartened by her encounter with her patron god but confused about some of the things he said, Kallos asked Amara, Callidora, and Meredythe to explain what exactly was going on. As they made their way back to the ship, the three original party members prepared to explain what little they knew to Kallos… and to Aegis, who secretly knew far more than she let on.

Relations

Protagonists

Amara, Aegis, Callidora (previously Melantha), Kallos, Meredythe Maegwund

Allies

Hephaestus, Queen Hypsipyle

Neutrals/Bystanders

Talos, Eris (unclear)

Adversaries

The Fates, Aphrodite, Eris (unclear)

Plot type

Session