Isle Imperium: Episode 1.10 -- The Corrupted Temple

Eris warning the party not to let their
powers flare too brightly in the Underworld
(from Adam Gorightly's Discordian blog)

The party returns to the shoreline to rest and reconfigure abilities. MANTIUS is again whisked off by one of the Warder overseers, in the course of which he learns that the temple they are about to enter is “one of the earliest strongholds of chaos”, the breaching of which was a task originally assigned to Rogelio and his compatriots, who failed. The Invictus Vigilo is credited for initiative in the fight against the blue, and Mantius is returned.

CATALINA checks up mentally on ALINA, who, wearing the Frost Adjutant shard from Rogelio’s set, is assisting the captain in his effort to build a ship. Catalina warns the girl to be wary; and the rest of the party hies off to the temple to face, in succession:

1. two guardians similar to the first one they faced earlier; one bearing a staff, and one a flail

2. four guardians and the underwater creatures that lurk in a chamber of rising water

Following the challenge of the latter battle, the group considers returning to the beach to rest once more, but is given pause by Mantius’s sense, as a warder, that it would be a betrayal of duty and of their shards. They therefore elect to proceed, thereafter dealing with:

3. a series of puzzle rooms involving traps and moveable boulders

4. a spiral staircase on which they are assaulted by the mindless Evicus the Shadow Biter and his insects

Finally, they arrive at a sort of ground level, at which a prayer to Dis Pater reveals that they must pass a battery of tests in order to continue. ALECTO and Mantius face a set of hooded guardians to win their companions the right to battle in the first place, after which ARCTURUS faces a room whose walls close in on him; DUMAS, the famed underworld judge Rhadamanthus; Catalina, a young boy and girl in the game of Karma; and VARIAN, an emotional confrontation with CARNELIAN, in which the former throws away the Gorgon spirit stone.

All manage to succeed and, after answering questions as to what they learned in their tests, witness the unveiling of ERIS, goddess of discord (previously one of the hooded figures confronting Aly and Mantius). She warns them of the greater perils that await them, since they will now be entering the underworld—perils that include the infestation of various denizens, including possibly the lord and lady of Dis themselves. The party remains resolute, however, and, after ascertaining what shards each of them has borne, Eris gifts Aly, as Comitisa Dolor, with a golden apple, and cautions them all not to “let powers flare too brightly” in the realm of the dead.