Khaganapped

MISSION STATEMENT AS FOLLOWS:
As of now unknown Inchoasis
The Ganbaatar Khaganate has dominated and expanded across multiple continents and subcontinents over the 12,000 plus years of its existence, since it's original formation under the One True High Khagan Lucifer Morningstar.
Between the Khanates of Gandhara and Abkhazia located in the vast Khazarian subcontinent, lie several disputed Emirates. The Emirate of Malastan is where your mission brings you today. A large group of magic students has gone missing while exploring some ancient ruins before resuming their studies. Their master is worried about them after receiving a telepathic message from a hysterical student a week ago,but has heard nothing from them since.
Their last known location is within a single location in the ancient ruins of Sarayadin just 10 miles over the Gandharan border. The mission objective is to search the ruins of the former floating city and see if you can find them, or any information as to what happened to them and where they might be now.
The Enclave has very little, almost no confirmed information about the Khaganate, and is trying to gather what little they have to prepare the agents during Assembly. However, the client has confirmed to Enclave HQ that they have arranged a location for the agents to port into along with an escort across the Gandharan border into Malastan. Be aware of any additional objectives you may come across along the way.
Some extra information provided by the client: due to the immense amounts of magical energy around Sarayadin, your badges may be unable to port you directly into the ruins themselves

The Agents, Eina the Spectral Thane, Tel the Postman the Wanderer, and Bellatrix the Brainiac ported into the border fortress of Al Basalem. Meeting up with their mercenary escort led by Soraya Barzikani, Zahak's twin sister, they made the ten mile journey on horseback to Sarayadin arriving relatively quickly (Bellatrix was NOT happy riding her horse, especially since the Ancaryon horses set aside for the agents are among the fastest throughout the Khaganate. After a rather surprising encounter with a Storm Giant outside the gates, Morgan the Illusionist ported to their location as they entered the ruins of the former floating city. As they made their way to the large temple in the heart of the city, Eina heard an echo of a past battle fought within the streets of the city. The magical energy around Sarayadin seemed to have an additional effect on her due to her status as a spirit. As the agents entered the temple with Soraya and some of her people, they began searching for the missing students. Following footsteps spotted by Tel, the agents arrived in what appeared to be a ruined library. Searching the remnants of the bookshelves, Morgan came across a magic tome that more or less turned out to be a copy of a teacher's version of a textbook.

While flipping through the pages, the agents found themselves seeing an echo of the students travelling through the rooms of this library and followed them down the paths marked by their footprints. In one of the rooms, they all saw a vision from the past after spotting a damaged portrait of the patron deity of this city. It showed the battle that caused the city to fall, with the draconic looking deity taken out in a single blast by an avian- like creature. Coming across what looked like a journal in the next room, the agents saw it had a list of the students' names amongst its pages. The magical energy of the temple showed a vision of what happened: the students were ambushed within the temple. The guards escorting them were wiped out by a well-armed group of what appeared to be slavers. They witnessed the student who sent out the telepathic message, Mori, blast several of them with what appeared to be either magic or telekinetic power while calling for the last uncaptured student to run. As the vision faded away, the agents read a familiar name in the journal: Aurora Barzikani. Soraya confirmed that Aurora was their youngest sibling. Suddenly, a hidden pathway was revealed as a group of mercenaries came pouring out led by a man who demanded to know where Mori was.

Recognizing the leader as her cousin Levan Anchabadze, Soraya managed to calm both sides down and avoid unnecessary combat. Realizing they're both searching for the same people, the two groups agreed to share information and join forces while they continued their search. Tel's scanning of the book found a location where the students may have been taken, a location far away across the sea from Malastan. (and on a completely different subcontinent to boot) Turning the pages of the book also resulted in a folded piece of paper falling out of the middle, being used as a bookmark. Opening it, Soraya and Levan both recognized it bearing the seal of Levan's father, the Khan of Abkhazia. As they were agreeing to leave and take the information on the missing students to a safe location, Tel and Morgan both heard before the others the sounds of large footsteps approaching them, while a large group of small reptilian creatures fled past them in complete terror. While Bellatrix suggested it may not be so big, it could just partially be an echo, the source of the footsteps revealed itself. A vraal, a massive dinosaur-dragon looking creature (think Indominus Rex from Jurassic World, but bigger and even worse attitude) came around the corner and began approaching the party. Morgan managed to make it flee with a combination of Glitter Bombs, Morgan's Songbook, his Portable Amp, and using his Persona Mask to disguise himself as the avian creature from the previous vision. The flash from the Glitter Bombs triggered the vraal's extreme sensitivity to bright lights and caused it to fall back. The combined groups decided to leave the subterranean portions of the temple after finding footprint evidence that there was more than one of those things down there.

Upon their reemergence into Sarayadin, they found a massive battle raging between their escorts and an army from the slavers' homeland. With the Emir of Malastan and his army coming to their aid, the agents were eventually convinced to make their escape from the city and back across the Gandharan border with their information before Abkhazian forces surrounded the place. As they made their escape through the desert, they eventually found themselves being pursued by the vraal from the temple, it having escaped and bringing its six friends along to hunt them down. Morgan managed to blind the vraals by using Phantasm to summon a miniature sun, causing one of them to run right off the edge of the nearby cliff, and temporarily taking a few others out of the fight. Bellatrix used her Gantry arms to punch one of the vraals to distract it from a fallen ally, unfortunately, all that did was piss off the beast. Despite heavy losses from their escorts, the agents managed to make it to a safe spot to teleport away, but they were still being pursued by the remaining six vraals.

With a sudden appearance of Khan Xasayar Barzikani, he covered their escape into the teleportation spot, which deposited them into the middle of Zahak's throne room in his capital. As the agents began sharing the information they discovered with him, Khan Okhropir Anchabadze of Abkhazia stormed into the throne room with his entourage demanding to speak with his nephew. While trading insults with the agents, (and dismissing Eina altogether due to her being a spirit) he was confronted with the information along with the evidence of his involvement with the slavers. As he arrogantly denied his involvement and the allegations, he was eventually ordered out of the palace by Zahak, who also electrocuted one of his own cousins after one too many insults against Zahak's friends and family. When Okhropir threatened war against his nephew, the Thunder Lord of Gandhara gladly declared war on Abkhazia and blasted the Abkhazians out of his palace with a massive Thunderclap after Eina's spectral horse trampled the arrogant Khan. Morgan confirmed before the Thunderclap that Okhropir knew about the missing students, but he arrogantly refused to reveal anything.

The agents finally had their conversation with Zahak, and he summoned his old combat master, Paimon to answer some questions as well. Everyone was a little surprised due to Paimon being the same avian creature that took out a dragon god in one attack in the earlier vision. The agents discovered that the location listed in the journal from earlier was within the Sultanate of Afrikia to the south. Paimon reactivated the Enclave badges so the agents could ping out (they were probably pinging for quite some time, but that moment was the first time the agents could feel it.) Zahak gifted the agents with emblem pins to mark them as honored guests if they return to aid in finding the missing students. While Morgan, Eina and Tel pinged out, Bellatrix elected to remain behind while preparations were made to gather a fleet to sail to Afrikia to track down the missing students.

Mission Success

Next time, the search continues in the south.

• Morgan Darillium

• Bellatrix unregistered
• Tel the Postman unregistered
• Eina unregistered