The Awakening

Session 2

The group started split up in different districts of the city, seeking their own personal goals. No one knew any of the other characters who they'd eventually get to know by the end of this ill-fated day.

In the commercial district, fishing ships returned with their morning catch. Strange little four-winged birds had been caught in special nets by a pair of fishing trawlers. Sailors freed the birds at port, collecting them into cages for transport into the city.

A small air craft somehow caught fire nearby, but emergency crews were quick to respond. They used magic pitchers and water cannons to douse the blaze before it spread.

Everyone is accepted in Nexa. All races, genders, religions are welcome, even slightly militant-looking acolytes of a new star named Ratta. Their patron Ratua must have had them out in Nexa to attract new citizens for their new island, because the Rattuan acolytes were preaching how passers-by would be saved by the light of Ratta if only they'd join on a trip back to their home star, leaving the next day.

Star Jumpers, a place where tourists could jump of the island attached by a tether, was seeing a lot of business this day. There was a long line of jumpers enjoying the leap and subsequent air surfing before being reeled back in for the next patron to go.

The crowd was astir when Nexa herself made a pass through the streets, escorting a traveling dignitary from another star.

In the industrial part of town, Jymi Two-Fingers had his crew out keeping busy with extortion racketeering and other petty crimes.

Cages headed for the zoo, or kitchens, or maybe both, were being unloaded from a larger craft loaded with tarp-covered cages. Things inside were growling and snarling trying to get out.

It was all-in-all a pleasant day before Liberty Star exploded.

High overhead, only the golden statue that once sat in the middle of the star was still visible. The rest of the island was either gone or disintegrating. The initial shock-wave of the explosion shattered windows, broke small bits of masonry, and in some cases knocked people off their feet. There was concern and confusion, and for the rest of the day the explosion was the primary gossip.

A few hours later, Clock Star exploded. It was the main means of telling time, and it was the second lost star in the same day. No one had ever directly seen a god die or a star disintegrate before, and now there had been two on the same day orbiting the core trading center of the inner planets. The streets were a cacophonous mess of terrified citizens, many of whom were now looking to evacuate Nexa.

It was soon after this that the unthinkable happened. Surely Nexis  herself must have been assassinated, because there was a deafening and terribly damaging shock-wave as the government tower exploded. A large chuck was missing. A crack started to form on the tower's side. It cracked its way all the way around and gave way only seconds later. The tower came crashing down into the center of the city, clipping the side of the city's water basin that hovered in the air beside the government tower. Millions of gallons of water began to cascade down into the broken dome of the city zoo's aviary, meanwhile dozens of strange flying creatures escaped their confinement.

The ground shook and buildings started to collapse. The edges of the city were disintegrating. As a 700 year old continent, Nexa would take about 12 hours to completely disappear, leaving only debris strewn across hundreds of miles of sky in the core.

Angry and hungry, escaped blink dogs from the zoo began roaming the streets. The party came together in the same place at the same time from all over the city to face such a roaming band of dogs. They did their best to protect innocent bystanders and defeat the beasts.

The group struggled to make their way to the center of the city in the hope of procuring one of the two docked prototype air ships. Their way was blocked by a reign of terror from above as various escaped creatures from the zoo's aviary swooped through the streets trying to feed on easy prey. As air creatures, they had no concerns about the city collapsing under the non-flying creatures below them.

The group met a guard named Bahn who showed them the way to the prototypes and unlocked the appropriate doors along the way, figuratively and literally. However, Jymi had already ransacked the prototype during the commotion, and stolen its fuel, it's operations manual, and its pilot, a woman named Zotin.

Jymi was spotted across on the other prototype, presumably stealing its fuel as well. The group tried to make their way across but all the water that had been pouring into the zoo suddenly came crashing down the streets as the walls of the zoo gave way. They had been acting like a dam, but now the group had to flee the coming torrent!