A SUMMARY OF ZAHILYAQUEST 2 FOR THE AUDIENCE

[sticksandbonesmods]

Hello friends! (Both new and old alike, and I am so sorry to the new people this MIGHT not make that much sense but i will TRY MY HARDEST to make it coherent ok i love you) This is Wolfie! Obviously! Hi! I think you guys know which mod writes like what by now, anyway.

Last month some players (Luca, Kiera, Joshua, Mamika, Dipper, Loop, Siffrin, & Wolfwood who is our only non-magic human dude in this group, please clap for him) and Zahliya, our resident Gargoyle, went into the woods for what was approximately a single day and came back with a woman, two swords (Daybreak and Nightfall), a sun/star/moon shard, and lore! The full quest log lives here, do mind trigger warnings and the log length.

Bullet point summary for people who don't want to read almost 400 comments (valid):

• The group headed into the woods, went to the Temple to look for Zahliya's missing swords, aaaand immediately stepped into a timeloop that separated them into two groups of four. The first group was inside of the Temple itself, back in time before it was broken into and the Black Sun (our game antagonist) escaped it, in a timeloop so bad that if they died they'd simply respawn. Obviously, Loop used this for crimes. Here they were able to see the ritual that held the Black Sun inside the Temple for eons, speak to the caravan crew that let him out, and witness/experience horrifying ways to die. While this happened, Beiwe was contacted, and though she isn't a time magic expert, she did manage to yank them from the timeline after several horrific deaths. Yay. :) Some people only died once, Loop had like three, please get Loop some therapy.
• Group 2, meanwhile, was outside of the Temple and met Zahliya when he first came to life shortly after the Temple was broken into; he was aggressive and hostile and made many threats, confused about human emotions and why people with empathy do things they do, that whole thing. The group entered the Temple briefly, saw corpses, and backed out; soon after fighting the garg, Beiwe reached her hands down into this timeloop and yoinked everyone away from there.
• With everyone reunited, the group got a brief glance into Zahliya's memories when they were accidentally set down into the blast radius of my evil woman: Zonari, who rules over the dominion of memory. Zonari is a construct of the Black Sun made in Zahliya's image to be his antithesis, so she refers to him as "brother" despite the fact they're technically cousins. She was, at the time, sitting on the back of the Warden, another Black Sun construct made entirely of smoke wearing a suit of centaur-shaped armour who was dealt with swiftly. Zonari was out here yoinking memories, including Zahliya's memory of how to use his magic, with the goal here being to strip him of identity and sway him to her side. The memories were given back after a beatdown/threat from Luca/vague "you can't have nice things" from Kiera, and she was brought back to the Grove. She has been here for like a month. Hi, surprise.
  • She can Corrupt people with her flames and she is being babysat by Kiera right now. She is not technically a prisoner; she's agreed to be passive to people here and is Passively Observing people from her perch on the barn. While she is not at all domesticated, she will be on top of the barn most of the time, and Zahliya's hackles are raised at her at any one moment. Her loyalties lie with the Black Sun, she wants to destroy the world with him, blah blah blah villain monologue - but she was swayed because she knows that the Black Sun still deeply loves his sister Beiwe, and so she's been incentivised into peace on the stipulation that you guys can make the siblings get along again. She will be on NPC contact as permanently-contactable for the time being, but (zookeeper voice) use caution, this one is feisty, and you will have a very hard time domesticating her.
• Perhaps the biggest takeaway: Zahliya can fully cure Corruption now. Your Corruption plotlines can still be played out; this will probably involve hiding from him, which is easy to play off as "the Black Sun in your brain is making you do this". He is NOT set on my ominous aggression path I mentioned so he won't chase you down, however he will loudly criticize you if he catches you lol.
  • Players are also free to try making their own Corruption cure too, if they want. I think this lore may have gotten lost with Irene last year when she dropped but: The cure must involve something holy, which is why Zahliya can do it, because his (neon fucking green) fire is considered holy. There are other things that can cure, such as the rains from the Cosmic Serpent. If you want to figure out these mysteries, you are of course welcome to.
• Zahliya is also armed with his two swords now, which was part of the original goal; Daybreak is his magic-channelling ass-whooping sword, and Nightfall allows him to briefly blink back in time to avoid attacks and heal injuries. He's still learning how to fully utilize their magic, there is more to discover here, so he will frequently be seen in the middle of the Grove practising.
• Sun/Moon/Star shards were discovered; for the newer folks, these are important items that the Black Sun/False God/Forest (proper noun) wants to destroy. Dipper has the sun shard, Loop has the star shard, and Zahliya ate the moon shard. "What do you mean ate" a long time ago Mizuki convinced him to eat a different sun shard and it worked and made his magic much stronger, so on the way back he just ate the moon. You can blame Mizuki putting thoughts in his head. There are more shards to discover elsewhere. :)
• Personality-wise, I alluded somewhat ominously on the original plotting post that Zahliya's personality would shift majorly and it would affect endgame, and while this is still true... SOMEHOW my darling 8 players I brought with me managed to keep this man completely balanced up until the last parts of the questline. It also managed to be split in such a way that, instead of being aggressive+confident or passive+undecisive/unsure, Zahliya is now confident+passive. You managed to make a normal human out of him. He's domesticated. I don't know how this happened but good job, the status quo is maintained and the gargoyle will continue to engage in sillymode during peaceful times (and murder of Black Sun creatures/mooks during unsilly time, which you're obviously free to assume he's doing with September's event). Next time I say "this will definitely happen" please continue to prove me wrong.

Anyway here's a meme.


Me to me: Guys we have too many NPCs.
My players to me: We want more NPCs, we're taking the evil woman.


Behind the scenes fun facts:

• I had to shorten the questline haha oops... originally the mid-point was going to be people walking through Zahliya's memories thanks to Zonari's magic and seeing a lot more things that happened to him that he wasn't aware of. The vision of Corrupted Moder squishing him was supposed to be one of those that people got stuck in and could potentially fight her. Sorgy this didn't happen.
• The group split between Temple Crew and Outside Temple Crew was supposed to be longer. But I shortened it.
• Also related: The voices that played as you entered the Temple were supposed to be established to have come from the swords, but ya girl forgot to establish that in the condensing. Beiwe and Ourania don't actually speak there. Magic swords be magic-ing.
• If Zonari was killed, there was going to be an option to have Zahliya do it, or let player characters do it, and then her loot table would've included the Shards that you guys got. You were also not supposed to sway her but you're good RPers so >:/
• At some point I got tired of typing so I started to describe Zonari's flames as just black instead of purply-black, please assume they are purply-black. I'm sorry I'm like this.
• Zahliya was never supposed to eat the shards originally, but then Mizuki convinced him and it worked to strengthen his magic so RIP now he eats them. He does not need more, do not give him more.
• This entire questline regarding Zahliya's endpoint and Zonari is a reference to their OG lore from the OCverse they're from (hi, if you didn't know this these two are my OCs I stix-ified for fun because it fit the setting nicely), where they very much never have a good ending. This is also my justification for Zonari referring to Zahliya as her brother despite them technically being cousins here; in the original lore she's the older twin, but in this one she's hundreds of years younger. And they're not legally twins, legally. Hooray!

Okay that's it bye, any questions direct them here or in the discord or idk i'm not your dad