Into the Mirror 7–9 - Claws of Sand, Shifting Sands, Hourglass (session 2)


Champions and players	BdTeej as Flynry; Miss_Magitek as Locket; Ahnubyss as Toddleheim; ParallaxStella as Elianna
Result	n/a (party encounter; the party destroys the sand scorpions and the giant scorpion, then Locket is killed)
Arena	the Sands of Eternity (a cold blue-sand desert, a realm of the dead)
Hosts	Mudcat (Mudcat), narration and all monsters

What happens

The sand scorpions (combat already underway)

0:00:01 Flynry slams down his sword and a flame streaks out across the sand. A second sand scorpion burrows up at him and takes a claw and a stinger at him. Both miss.
0:00:36 Flynry the bullfighter. “The experience of Flynry’s time in this place is starting to show.” He sweeps his “now rich black cloak” over the first scorpion’s head and spins it out of the way “like he’s bullfighting.” He turns to face the next one and sidesteps a tail that slams into the ground.
0:01:14 Locket arrives. She comes over the hill and sees Flynry’s new look in the fire and the glass. She is stunned for a second, then joins the fight. As a Gloom Stalker she gets three short-sword attacks in her first round, each adding an extra d8. Every claw she hacks off reaches back to snap at her. Each time she cuts off a claw or tail, the sand below sucks up into the scorpion and a new one forms. Her repeated hacking slowly makes it dissipate. She finishes it with a last hack as its tail comes in, then one final slash across the torso. It dies.
0:04:17 Locket warns the others: “these things, they are… They’re pretty hefty, so be careful.” She uses her extra tabaxi movement to advance.
0:04:52 Toddleheim’s experiment. He saw that Flynry’s fire turns the sand to glass and hopes his own fire will do the same. His fire bolt misses. He follows with magic missile, which knocks a chunk off the scorpion, but the chunk quickly re-forms.
0:06:32 Flynry smiles at Toddleheim. With a sword that “seems far too wieldy for its size,” he does a spin-move backhand slash, then a second strike. Both hit with magical slashing and fire damage. Where the flaming blade cuts, the scorpion turns to glass. The lost claws and tail do not grow back, leaving “that mere finish where that limb should be.”
0:08:14 Flynry takes a ready stance: “I’m waiting. I’m ready.”
0:08:29 Drew flips a coin “because I love chaos.” A scorpion sneaks up through the sand behind Flynry and rolls a nat 20, pinching the back of his legs with its claw. He deflects the sting.
0:09:41 Elianna’s first battle. Drew notes she is with people she doesn’t really know, somewhere she has never been, facing sand scorpions she has only read about. Her reaction is a string of “fuck, fuck, fuck.” She casts faerie fire on the scorpions around Flynry. Both fail their saves and are outlined in a blinding neon purple that stands out against the blue sand.
0:11:49 She moves up to the dead scorpion and casts Shield of Faith on Flynry, which wraps him in “another shimmery, sparkly purple outline.” Flynry (player): “Flynn’s been alone a long time. We’re ready to have whatever buffs or bonuses.” Elianna keeps cursing under her breath: “I didn’t sign up for this.”
0:13:13 The scorpions all go for Flynry. Wave after wave of claws and stingers miss him or bounce off the shield. Drew: “Flynry just making this look easy… Clearly an expert in this space now.” The player describes acrobatics “you guys have not seen this large man do before”: flips, “very like Legolas with a big sword,” “like LeBron James is doing a one-on-one against some elementary schoolers.”
0:14:48 One scorpion goes for Locket. She dodges “in your tabaxi ranger ways.” A nearly dead scorpion takes a “last death throw” at Flynry and misses.
0:15:45 Locket slices into the scorpion that tried to sting her. It survives as chunks re-form.
0:16:24 Toddleheim fires another fire bolt with advantage at “one of the glowy ones.” The hit glasses the scorpion, leaving “a shiny reflective surface as an imprint.” Fire deals double damage to these sand creatures.
0:17:29 The sweep. Flynry asks about a sweeping greatsword spin. Drew has him make a Dexterity check against the scorpions’ saves, so he can hit “one and a half.” He slashes the glowing top scorpion. Half the damage carries into the badly wounded one, which had crept toward his back thinking it wasn’t the target. The aqua flame blinds it and it is “slashed in half, dead ski.” His second strike at “Captain Glowy” misses: the scorpion sinks into the sand and reappears. “Ever slippery.”
0:20:32 Flynry stays defensive in the middle of the scorpions rather than take opportunity attacks. A claw finally lands on him: “Finally a 22 hits.”
0:21:30 Elianna (“Oh, my God, there’s so many”) casts Toll of the Dead on the glowing scorpion, “assuming they’re not very wise.” It makes the save exactly despite a −1. Drew lets her try a second spell. She considers darkness (Drew: magical darkness blocks darkvision), then casts Spiritual Weapon in the shape of a scythe. Drew’s token is a mace: “I don’t have a scythe, but I got a mace.” The table calls the bonking token cute.
0:25:38 Elianna’s first kill. The scythe spins in the air, slices off both pincers, then takes off the head, which lands right next to Flynry’s feet. Drew calls it “scorpion sushi.” The head lands “almost like it’s a gift,” looking up at Flynry’s eyes. He gives it an inquisitive look, then gives the stranger a nod: “yes, this is the way.” Elianna tries to curtsy and falls over.
0:27:12 Three scorpions attack Flynry and all miss, one with a nat 1. The player asks what its punishment is; Drew: “Undecided at the moment.” One scorpion’s claw lands on Locket. Drew notes the scorpions have not made a single sting, “which is the worst of the two.”
0:28:33 Locket’s crit. She rolls a nat 20 on the scorpion in front of her, then finishes it. Inspired by the scythe, she makes “scorpion sushi” of it with her short blades. She moves and casts Hunter’s Mark on the next scorpion: “It’s next in my sights.”
0:30:13 The retreat. The three remaining scorpions start to disappear into the sand. Flynry takes an opportunity attack. For the first time this fight he shows “a sense of urgency… like the thought of these escaping is deeply bothersome to Flynry.” He rams the aqua-flamed sword straight down at a burrowing scorpion and misses. The scorpions don’t so much burrow as “become the sand. They back into sand rather than their scorpion form.” All is calm. The cold wind keeps blowing.

The giant scorpion

0:31:30 Perception. Elianna hears it first. Toddleheim is “just kind of lost in the sight of Flynry.” The ground rumbles. Elianna: “Does anyone else hear or feel that?” Her player says “This is Dune.”
0:33:01 A giant blast of sand shoots into the sky behind Flynry. Everyone makes Dexterity saves and two of them fail. The small scorpions suck back into the sand and re-form into a giant scorpion that bursts from under their feet, “double on everything.” Drew: “It means we got rid of the babies too easily… Couldn’t let the first combat just, you know, be easy.”
0:34:52 Toddleheim says “fireball,” corrects himself to fire bolt (Drew: “you’re fucking scaring me here, bro”; Flynry: “We’re all about to get singed”), and hits the giant for doubled fire damage. He adds a 4th-level magic missile.
0:36:06 The giant scorpion snaps its claws at Elianna and stings Flynry. Flynry fails his Constitution save and is poisoned. He is resistant to poison, so he takes half.
0:37:45 Elianna’s hellish rebuke. The claw hits trigger her reaction. She “of course, is screaming in pain because like she’s never really been on the battlefield. Again, personal assistant.” Then she remembers the Grandmaster’s words that she must come back safely. In a sudden calm she points at the scorpion and stares, and a burst of purple flames engulfs it. The fire damage is doubled. “These are made of sand. I don’t think it matters [if they have eyes].” The giant scorpion explodes. Combat ends.

The reunion

0:39:25 The cold wind whips at them in the desert. For Toddleheim and Locket, “looking onto the face of a friend.”
0:39:52 Flynry’s change. He has a different hair color and stature. “It almost doesn’t seem like him, but you can tell it’s him.” His once distinctive way of speaking has changed too. He turns to them: “My friends, you’ve made it.” Locket: “Flynry?” “Yes. Locket, Toddleheim. I’m so glad you’re here.”
0:40:53 Toddleheim rushes up and hugs him: “my boy, how you’ve grown.” Flynry asks how they are here; he never thought he’d see a familiar face again. Toddleheim: “We do owe it to the Arbiter. He sent us here in the most painful fashion”, and now they need to get everyone home, “friends once again, family even.”
0:41:32 Locket: “You’ve changed… Your hair, your voice, your sword, everything.” Flynry’s eyes well and glisten. He says he has been “surrounded by so much evil” and shuts his eyes; “that’s a story that you’ll hear soon.”
0:42:13 Meeting Elianna. Flynry thanks the stranger for “a rather eloquent dispatching of a troublesome scorpion.” “Hello, I’m Elianna, the Grandmaster’s personal assistant. I’ve actually never been in battle,” but she learned a few things from the Grandmaster. Flynry: “Sounds like I’m going to want to get me one of those.” Elianna: “I have a few I could recommend.”
0:42:51 Locket: “We’ve only been here for like not even 10 minutes, but I already hate it.” Flynry: “It is a truly terrible and dark place.” Locket: “When the Grandmaster, she wrote to us and told us that there might be a way to get you back. And we immediately came.”
0:43:43 Flynry asks whether this place is a structure of the Arbiter. Toddleheim: “There’s too much power here, simply. He’s not strong enough to contain something like this, I believe.”

The Sands of Eternity

0:44:00 Elianna, now a little more settled, makes a history check. Nobody knows much about this place, but she knows its name from books, scrolls and whispers: the Sands of Eternity.
0:45:02 Toddleheim’s memory. The name sparks something from “some deep, dark library… maybe decades ago… when you were a young man, even, warring over tomes” in his schooling. It came from a book of legends, built on loose sources and secondhand accounts:
- The Sands of Eternity is a realm for the dead, “but it doesn’t quite exist in the same place as any other underworld.”
- Not everybody comes here. Only those “whose soul has in some way been attached to this place, who has been consumed by this place in some manner,” end up here, no matter where they are.
- They are not alive. “This is not a place to live and go.”
0:46:54 Toddleheim delivers it: “I do regret to inform you that we are all dead.” He hopes they can remedy it, “but if not, I look forward to an eternity fighting scorpions alongside you, brother.” Elianna protests that they came with a plan to save Flynry. Toddleheim: “sometimes plans change.” Flynry: “So quick to resign us to eternity.” Elianna stammers.
0:47:51 Locket: “That explains why it hurt so much when we got here, when the Arbiter essentially disintegrated us. So we don’t have bodies anymore.”
0:48:12 The sword named Truth. Toddleheim’s confirmation that they are dead, plus Flynry’s years here and his long battle with “a certain form of psychosis,” lets Flynry fit some puzzle pieces together. He slings his sword so that Elianna can glimpse its inscription: “Truth.” She succeeds on a perception check and reads it clearly.
0:49:39 The wooden spoon. Flynry kneels and pulls a wooden spoon out of the sand. Before their final departure from home base, he had bought a wooden spoon for Frank, the disgruntled chef who used bones and sticks to make the heroes’ food. He hands it to Toddleheim: “Your experience here is what your mind makes it.”
0:50:55 Toddleheim: “That’s a little odd that you say that, since I didn’t imagine any scorpions.” Flynry: “This sword, this armor, this me is of the sand.” Toddleheim warns that the sand “is of evil origin.” Flynry: “But that is what this is for.” Asked if he means the spoon, he says no and gestures over his back at the sword. Toddleheim: “I see that you’re taking good measures to stay to your true self.” Flynry: “I suppose it was time that I upgraded from my fists to a little extra hardware.”
0:51:53 Flynry’s doubts. Drew: what has been years for Flynry has been months for them. He has learned a lot and suffered a lot. Flynry fights the urge to scoop them up and become “a puddle of joy and also sorrow.” “His origins here are based on lies,” so he holds part of himself back: “Is this just another construct of this environment or is this really happening?”
0:53:28 The setting. They stand alone again in the desert, the bones of a dragon in the sand beneath their feet, under a celestial sky. The sand blows in an indiscernible way. There are no monuments, no people, no sound but the howling wind.
0:54:16 Toddleheim sits and meditates again. He recalls his emotional outburst when they first arrived and wonders if they just need to ask for a way home. He can still feel the magic and hear the souls and the screams, but the place is “just dead.” He senses no path or doorway.
0:55:33 What they gave. Flynry asks Locket how she stands here: “I was engulfed in flame and death… I only could assume that you’ve all given something tremendous of yourselves.” Locket: “We were in that room… The room with the mirrors. We all looked into the mirrors. But we all resisted.” Flynry: “And you’re stronger than I was.” Locket: they thought about saving him, “and then the next thing we knew it, our bodies were being torn apart by magic.” They were sent with no instructions to return, but Toddleheim adds: “the Arbiter did say some have returned.” Locket: “We’ve been through a lot together, the three of us, and now we have four.”
0:57:29 Elianna’s notebook. She has been sketching Flynry for the Grandmaster, since the others were so surprised by how he looks. She writes a word-vomit of everything that happened: she is excited about her first kill and that she pulled off maneuvers she’d seen the Grandmaster do. She is also very worried she can’t keep the promise she gave. She runs her hands through the sand to see if she can make it respond to her mind as Flynry described. She can’t; the sand is surprisingly cold and “feels like shards of glass.”
1:00:11 She examines Flynry’s scars and casts Cure Wounds. Flynry: “I’ve not felt the effects of healing magic for quite a long time. I’ve forgotten how refreshing it can be.” Elianna: “I had to learn how to heal because I’m constantly tripping and hurting myself.”
1:01:11 Time here. Flynry is sure it has been years: “There is no rising of the sun. There is no shifting of the stars. There is simply the void. My body, my mind, remains in stasis. I feel no effects of age… Once one event ends, another begins.”
1:02:02 Elianna asks Locket how different he looks. Flynry gets “the anime pink lines” (a blush) for a moment, and Toddleheim grins to himself while meditating. Locket: “If not for my intuition, I would say that this isn’t even Flynry.” Flynry remembers “a warmer existence… a simpler me, driven by emotions rather than survival, driven by a desire for my family, for… for you.” He didn’t realize how much had changed. He hasn’t seen his own face in a long time. He has only noticed he is “a little grayer” and no longer has “that very large beard.” (He starts to say more and stops: “I’ll zip it for now.”)
1:04:30 The mirror-sword. Elianna asks to see the sword. Flynry: “Oh, you must mean Truth… a sword that may as well be a mirror. It is a mirror shaped like a sword.” He looks into it almost daily, and in it he sees his old self: “velvet cloak and slightly beastish visage with my long, beautiful brunette hair and beard.” Drew confirms that is not what the others see.
1:05:35 Flynry last asked the sword a question about half his time here ago (“say I’ve been here 10 years… five years ago”).
1:06:25 The vision of the ziggurat. Elianna looks into the sword seeking “any sign of hope… something with positive energy.” She sees a pyramid, a ziggurat, topped with what looks like a gem of glass or mirror, shining a beacon of light straight into the void sky. The vision then moves in reverse, rewinding through distance and travel along a path, and ends with her looking over her own shoulder in the mirror. It is a path to the ziggurat, on this plane. Drew: “This sword has shown you the truth.”
1:08:52 Elianna draws the path and the ziggurat. She runs to Flynry, hiding the part of the page where she’d been writing to the Grandmaster. Flynry: “I haven’t seen a single structure of any kind” in all his time here. Elianna: “Your sword showed me the truth of this place… I feel like we need to go there.” Flynry gently rotates her arms because the drawing is upside down.
1:10:54 Toddleheim breaks his meditation, sand falling off him, and studies the paper. It is just a map of what she drew, of a place he doesn’t recognize.
1:11:48 Asking again. Elianna asks the sword, “Is this the way out?” She sees only her normal reflection. Toddleheim: “Smells like single use.” Toddleheim takes the map, asks the same question, and also sees only his reflection. Locket: “That’s all this sword is going to tell us.” Elianna: “No, it’s not enough.” She kicks sand at the sword. The sand is absorbed into the blade “as if it was a puddle” (speaker uncertain). She asks whether the sand is made of mirror bits.

Locket’s death

1:13:26 Locket steps past them and looks into the sword: “Show us the way.” She concentrates on how they got here: the feeling of being disintegrated, and the feeling of seeing Flynry again. The hairs on her neck stand up. Beyond her reflection she sees a figure cloaked in shadow on top of a sand dune, then a number of figures, one perhaps chasing another.
1:14:00 A high perception roll tells her it is not a vision. She turns with the sword in hand, and an arrow goes straight through her throat. Her blood pours out almost in an instant and she falls to her knees in the sand. In her last moments she stares in shock at Flynry and Toddleheim.
1:15:52 Flynry rushes to catch her, sliding through the sand. As his arms go around her, her body becomes sand and falls through his fingers. Toddleheim: “Oh my god.” (End of file.)

Who and what appears

Characters

Flynry (BdTeej)

Trapped in the Sands of Eternity for what feels like years to him; months for his friends.
Appearance has changed: different hair color and stature, grayer, no longer has his very large beard, changed voice. He wears a rich black cloak and armor “of the sand.”
In the sword he still sees his old self: velvet cloak, slightly beastish visage, long brunette hair and beard.
Used to fight with his fists. Now wields Truth, a mirror shaped like a greatsword, which burns with aqua flame and turns the sand creatures to glass.
Resistant to poison.
Has battled “a certain form of psychosis.” His origins here are “based on lies,” so he doubts this reunion is real.
Says he “was engulfed in flame and death” to get here.
Bought a wooden spoon for Frank the chef before leaving home base.
Fights with new acrobatic grace.

Locket (Miss_Magitek)

Tabaxi Gloom Stalker ranger with short swords and Hunter’s Mark.
Says the Grandmaster wrote to them about a way to save Flynry. Also says “I’m still under her prisonment” (unclear).
Resisted the mirrors in the room of mirrors.
Killed by an arrow through the throat from figures on a dune; her body turned to sand.

Toddleheim (Ahnubyss)

Spellcaster: fire bolt, magic missile, arcane meditation.
Studied in libraries “decades ago… when you were a young man,” so he is old. Remembers a book of legends about the Sands of Eternity.
Calls Flynry “my boy” and “brother.”
Thinks the Arbiter isn’t strong enough to have built this place.

Elianna (ParallaxStella)

The Grandmaster’s personal assistant. Never in battle before; learned “one or two things” from the Grandmaster.
Clumsy: learned healing because she is “constantly tripping.”
Promised the Grandmaster she would come back safely.
Spells: faerie fire, Shield of Faith, Toll of the Dead, Spiritual Weapon (a scythe), hellish rebuke (purple flames), Cure Wounds.
Keeps a notebook and sketches Flynry for the Grandmaster.
First kill this episode. Saw the ziggurat in Truth.

The Arbiter (mentioned only)

Sent the party here by “essentially disintegrating” them “in the most painful fashion.”
Said “some have returned.”

The Grandmaster (mentioned only)

Wrote to Locket and Toddleheim that there might be a way to get Flynry back.
Sent Elianna with them, telling her she must come back safely.

Frank (mentioned): the disgruntled chef at home base who cooked with bones and sticks.

Shadow-cloaked figures: on a dune, one perhaps chasing another. One of them shot Locket.

Sand scorpions / the giant scorpion

Made of sand. Hacked-off parts re-form, except where fire glasses them; fire deals double damage.
They retreat by becoming sand, then merge into a giant scorpion that does double everything.

Places

The Sands of Eternity: a realm of the dead apart from other underworlds. Only souls attached to or consumed by it come here.
- Cold blue sand like glass shards, a howling wind, a celestial “void” sky.
- No sun or star movement; bodies stay in stasis.
- The dragon bones where the party stands.
- “Your experience here is what your mind makes it.”
The ziggurat: seen only in Truth. Topped by a glass or mirror gem casting a beacon into the sky.
The room with the mirrors: where the party looked into the mirrors and resisted (recalled).
Home base: where Frank cooks.

Items

Truth: Flynry’s mirror-greatsword with the inscription “Truth.” It shows the truth when asked (seemingly once per person, inferred from 1:12:02–1:12:43) and absorbs sand like a puddle.
The wooden spoon, pulled from the sand.
Elianna’s notebook and map of the path to the ziggurat.

Lore statements

The living cannot be here: the party are all dead, disintegrated by the Arbiter.
Things pulled from the sand take the shape of memory (the spoon).
Fire turns the sand creatures to glass.

Quotes by character

Flynry

0:40:23 “My friends, you’ve made it.”
0:40:45 “Locket, Toddleheim. I’m so glad you’re here.”
0:41:01 “I never thought I’d see a familiar face again.”
0:41:44 “I’ve been surrounded by so much evil… But that’s a story that you’ll hear soon here.”
0:42:40 “Sounds like I’m going to want to get me one of those.”
0:50:41 “Your experience here is what your mind makes it.”
0:51:05 “This sword, this armor, this me is of the sand.”
0:51:48 “I suppose it was time that I upgraded from my fists to a little extra hardware.”
0:55:56 “For me to be here, I was engulfed in flame and death.”
1:00:42 “I’ve not felt the effects of healing magic for quite a long time. I’ve forgotten how refreshing it can be.”
1:01:19 “There is no rising of the sun. There is no shifting of the stars. There is simply the void.”
1:04:39 “Oh, you must mean Truth… It is a mirror shaped like a sword.”

Locket

0:04:17 “They’re pretty hefty, so be careful.”
0:42:51 “We’ve only been here for like not even 10 minutes, but I already hate it.”
0:43:13 “When the Grandmaster, she wrote to us and told us that there might be a way to get you back. And we immediately came.”
0:47:51 “That explains why it hurt so much when we got here, when the Arbiter essentially disintegrated us.”
0:56:17 “The room with the mirrors. We all looked into the mirrors. But we all resisted.”
0:57:12 “We’ve been through a lot together, the three of us, and now we have four.”
1:02:37 “If not for my intuition, I would say that this isn’t even Flynry.”
1:13:26 “Show us the way.”

Toddleheim

0:40:53 “My boy, how you’ve grown.”
0:41:13 “We do owe it to the Arbiter. He sent us here in the most painful fashion.”
0:43:52 “There’s too much power here, simply. He’s not strong enough to contain something like this, I believe.”
0:46:54 “I do regret to inform you that we are all dead… I look forward to an eternity fighting scorpions alongside you, brother.”
0:47:34 “Sometimes plans change.”
0:50:55 “That’s a little odd that you say that, since I didn’t imagine any scorpions.”
0:57:07 “But the Arbiter did say some have returned.”
1:12:13 “Smells like single use.”

Elianna

0:30:30 (approx. 0:12:30) “I didn’t sign up for this.”
0:32:45 “Does anyone else hear or feel that?”
0:42:29 “Hello, I’m Elianna, the Grandmaster’s personal assistant. I’ve actually never been in battle.”
0:42:46 “I have a few I could recommend.”
1:00:57 “I had to learn how to heal because I’m constantly tripping and hurting myself.”
1:09:44 “Your sword showed me the truth of this place.”
1:10:41 “I was looking for something positive and something the opposite of darkness and it showed me this.”
1:12:53 “No, it’s not enough. We need to get out of here.”

DM narration (Drew)

0:46:08 “It’s a realm for the dead. But it doesn’t quite exist in the same place as any other underworld.”
1:08:17 “This sword has shown you the truth.”

Canon notes

Locket is dead for good. The Sands of Eternity are an afterlife: if you die there, your soul dies forever. The party hopes her soul gem can bring her back; whether that’s possible is undecided.

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