Skip to content

1.7.3 - Afternight

To open a temple of justice you had to bleed the right blood, and Gunnar's was just elven enough.

You came up to level with the danger, hardened by the night you survived. The truth was out now: the Chosen of Osgilliath, the nightly tide of creatures from the catacombs, the weak dragged below, five days until Hannah rises again at midnight under the same sky that made her five centuries ago. The city did not know. You did. So you went back down for the runes, starting with Tyr.

The Temple of Tyr would not open for just anyone. A scale set in a seamless wall, a blood-drain beneath it, and worn elvish around it: not all blood weighs true, only the first children may tip the balance. Gunnar gave his half-elven blood, and Loki murmured in his ear about which half the stone would remember, the scale flickering cracked for a moment before the wall opened. Inside lay the Hall of Measured Wrongs, relief after relief of elven law in stone. An elf shamed for taking an orc to bed. Children beaten for letting lower races into their game. A hunter stripped for kindness to Norsemen. An orc starved to death in living roots for crossing a boundary. An elf branded for trading with humans. Then one relief stepped out of the wall as spectres and made you its court, each of you cast as accuser, defender, witness, or judge, with no say in the role. You ruled as the elves would have ruled. You upheld their law and their cruelty, and the cold hall accepted you and opened the way on.

Remember For Next Time

  • Level 7, and the clock is loud: five nights until the ritual, the Chosen revealed, the city under nightly siege.
  • Gunnar's blood is a key: the Temple of Tyr opened only for elven blood. His half answered. Loki found it very funny.
  • You chose elven law: in the Hall of Measured Wrongs you upheld the elves' brutal justice rather than temper or reject it. The hall marked you as aligned with it.

Where We Are

Inside the Temple of Tyr, past the Hall of Measured Wrongs, the first of the night's runes still ahead and the ritual days running out.