Apostles of Doom

Hilda’s eyes suddenly widened. “We have, though!” She nodded at Beragamos. “This is very similar to the wards that Lenamare used to expel demons, albeit a much stronger version. Those wards, while not blocking access to illumination streams or the god pool, did interfere with our communications and blocked archons from entering. They also gave me a headache,” she added.

Dashgar looked at her, considering her words silently.

“Yes, but it is different,” Beragamos said. “The archons are all still here, trapped — with no headaches, I assume — and all illumination streams off-plane seem to be cut.”

“Agreed,” Inethya said. “I can reach illuminaries on Nysegard that have direct connections to me, but I am unable to reach any of my saints. I am trying to determine if any of my illuminaries elsewhere on Nysegard are able to reach saints that are in Tierhallon. If so, we can perhaps get word back to them.”

“Excellent idea,” Beragamos said. “That is quick thinking. We will have to work indirectly if all off-plane links are cut for the Citadel. I can’t believe they could cut the entire world off.”

Teragdor spoke up. “Uhm… question?”

“Yes?” Beragamos asked.

“I’m very new to this high-level stuff, but if all links to the Outer Planes are cut off, what happens when people are slain in battle? How are their souls, their wraiths, going to get to Tierhallon? Would they not be trapped here, susceptible to the Unlife?” Teragdor asked.

Beragamos closed his eyes. The apostle was right. He hadn’t even considered that. If others, mortals, made this connection, there would be widespread panic.

“We’ve got some more planning to do. Let’s get everyone back to the main table,” Beragamos instructed. “We are in battle. A good number of priests are completely offline, without the resources they need for battle and healing, and of those that are connected to us, the only available mana is that which we avatars ourselves have to give out. We need to get priests reconsecrated to avatars that are here.”

Citadel of Light, Cathedral of Tiernon: An Hour Later

Battle Priestess Karis awaited Grob’s arrival in the vestry after the emergency meeting of all priests. She had known something was very wrong. Early this morning, she had awoken to a sense of heart-stopping loss. She had suddenly felt the absence of Tiernon, of his saints. She could still feel her prayer channels to the Prophetess Inethya, but that had been all.

Very shortly thereafter, the assault had begun. Fortunately, the Holy Water systems were still working, and they could still consecrate more water. At the moment, that was their primary defense — that and wizards. The Vicar General had been forced to reverse order their playbook, falling back on the wizards and animages for ranged combat. The Wardens were grounded for the moment until priests could heal again.

A short time ago, in the sanctuary, they had learned more; they were swapping priests in and out of positions to brief them on the situation. Apparently the Citadel had been cut off from the Outer Planes; from all other planes of existence, in fact. All links, all illumination streams, all possibility of travel off-world had somehow been cut off by the Storm Lords.

Priests were sobbing and confused. The Unlife was using the chaos to maximum effect. Their main army was quickly moving in, building and fortifying siege emplacements. Their advance units were starting to put pressure on the wall defenders. The defenses of the Citadel had always been heavily reliant on heavenly resources, and were thus now woefully underpowered. The irony of today’s situation was not lost on Karis. On the day they had thought to go into battle with the most heavenly resources ever, they went in with the absolute least.

The thirteen avatars were also disconnected, their own streams cut. The long and short of it was that the only divine assistance of any sort they could expect was from the avatars that were here. The priests had all been instructed to perform consecration ceremonies to bind themselves to the saints and avatars that were here. Those avatars would supply priests with mana for rituals, as well as manually process the mana from worship services. They were going to need to be doing a lot of worship services.

The first of the main problems was that the local avatars could not easily store great amounts of mana, so they would have to work to carefully time the worship services and mana expenditures. They would be on a very tight budget in terms of mana usage. Every drop would count; there would be nothing to spare. The next problem was that the manual processing and distribution of mana would be fully occupying the avatars. They would be effectively incapacitated and thus completely unable to aid in the direct defense of the Citadel.