46: Not Dead Yet

🎧 Podcast coming soon • March 20, 2026

The Birthday Party Interrupted

The fireworks are still going when Olivia looks up.

The sky inside the pocket village is close—unnaturally close, like a ceiling painted blue—and through it she can see what looks like tears opening across wet black paper. Void figures emerge from them: human-shaped, edged with starlight, traveling hundreds of feet per second. Behind the smaller figure, something larger follows. A flowing sheet of darkness, near-invisible against the void, rippling like a black bedsheet, pin-pricks of stars threaded through its fabric.

Naomi sees them at the same moment and points.

Naomi: "Everybody behind me. Now."

The cake is still on the table. The golden fountains are still sputtering. And then everyone rolls initiative.

The larger being moves first. It casts what looks like a net around the picnic table—a miniature black hole that begins pulling everyone toward its center. The party wrenches free on strength saves as it rips the table apart. The void beings aren't communicating. They haven't said a word yet. They're just working. Two lashes of void whip at Olivia; both brush off her armor.

The void weaver—the closer of the two—blinks directly into the middle of the party and detonates a pulse of force that rattles teeth and ruptures the air. Silas slips into a flanking position and drives his blade into it for 25 psychic damage, then scurries under the disintegrating table and vanishes into the chaos with a 29 on stealth. Bru tosses out his cannon, hexes the nearest figure, and holds.

The void weaver answers with an explosion of force. Then Olivia, armored and unmoved by the earlier lash attempts, draws her battle axe and swings.

Her battle axe drags through the void weaver's form—the physical edge barely registers—but the lightning from Iro's infusion hits clean, and when she follows with a divine smite, the radiant damage tears the thing apart in a way that seems fundamental. The void fabric visibly shreds where the radiant energy passes through: 44 damage in all.

(The void weaver sniffs. It sniffs again. It sniffs the picnic table.) Void Weaver: "I smell the water."

The void weaver splits into three figures. The being in the sky reaches into nothing—tendrils popping out from under the table, groping for Silas's leg—and he squirms out of the way. Then it speaks for the first time:

Void Figure: "We must destroy them so they do not throw us back into the deep places."

It hurls another void explosion at the party.

This Little Light of Mine

The moonlight starts small.

Behind Naomi, pressed together in a knot, the people of the pocket village begin to sing. One quiet voice at first—and then the whole group joins in, with Leliana leading them.

This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.

A light like moonlight begins to brighten in the space. The void beings react to it the way something photosensitive reacts to a flashbulb. They shriek. It burns. It burns. Where the moonlight falls across the void fabric of their bodies, it doesn't illuminate—it unravels.

Silas springs out from under the table and stabs the void weaver twice more. It splits to the side, and the picnic table lifts into the sky and hurtles toward Naomi and the crowd. Silas teleports in front of her in the same breath (a 32 on his Dexterity save), knife drawn, and slices a clean weak point down the center of the flying table. Naomi, already primed, punches it in half with a single fist. The two halves spin away from the party.

Silas and Naomi pose dramatically. The music grows louder. More and more moonlight spreads from the crowd, emanating first from Leliana and amplified as the chorus grows. The being near the party is practically fried alive, smoke coming off its sides, and the one in the sky begins to ignite. Desperate, they pull out all the stops.

First Kill

The force ballista fires.

Bru's shot is a natural 20 against the hexed void weaver: 33 damage. The beam of destruction chops it up like a Philly cheesesteak, and its dying words drift out as it evaporates:

Void Figure: "More will come. There's nothing to stop us anymore."

It erupts in a little supernova on its way out, catching Bru and Olivia in the blast. Silas is almost dead.

Into the Void

Olivia Misty Steps thirty feet up into the sky and lands two hits on the last being—the axe drags through it again, but the lightning strikes true. The being splits into three and sends two figures at Bru; he throws up Shield. Silas's blade passes straight through one of them—illusions, his Insight tells him—so he throws his second dagger into the real one in the sky, beside Olivia, and chunks of void rain down.

Silas: "You ruined my birthday party, you piece of s***."

Then it tries to consume Olivia.

She fails the strength save. She burns a lucky point. The roll comes back worse.

The void being folds around her and she disappears.

Inside, it's not darkness. It's the opposite: she sees everything, much like the visions of the booping sheep. All the planar dimensions stacked against each other, phased in and out, different moments in time layered on top of each other like transparencies. She is not falling anymore. She is suspended in the fabric between things, and the void beings are all around her.

On the ground, Bru watches her vanish. He moves his hex to the one in the sky.

Double Kill

The force ballista fires again: 22 to hit, 22 damage. A voice rings through the whole dimension:

"Double kill."

The little pocket of reality Olivia was suspended in dissolves. She falls—rapidly, in full plate armor—flailing with the components for Find Steed in her hands. Bru still has his action. Levitate catches her at the last moment and she begins to drift slowly toward the ground.

She lands. She hugs Bru.

Olivia: "I love you so much, little guy. Thank you so much." Bru: "I smell terrible." Olivia: (does not hug him for very long)

Not Dead Yet

Silas rounds on Scarlet: a black hole monster just showed up. What the hell?

Scarlet: "That was it. That was exactly what I needed. All of a sudden I started getting some major signals, major activity in this dimension. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to stabilize this pocket village. But it just stabilized, right? Were y'all doing something? Because it worked."

Then she hands it over to Victor, who has been working on something of his own.

Victor: "I was honing in on this sending stone. I believe you had connected it to the corpse of a dead god. And interestingly... it appears that our dead god is not so dead."

A woman's voice comes through.

Luna: "I'm not dead yet."

She appears in the pocket village in brilliant moonlight—small, slight, but very much there, her features elven. She thanks them. She is Luna, the moon goddess, and something about this space—the belief, or whatever they're doing—lets her reside here.

Anyone can give her religion, arcana, or insight. Silas rolls a 28.

What he understands: the pocket village resides between things. It is the fabric that connects all the different dimensional spaces, and because of that, it is easier to connect to the actual essence of a deity here—enough to give Luna an immediate physical manifestation. And the space itself is beginning to materialize and solidify. The stars in the sky begin to recede. A glimmer of a barrier appears between the village and the rest of space.

Silas: "Holy s***, guys. This isn't just a pocket village. We've created our own moon base."

The Warden's Scent

One thing the void beings said is still sitting in the air.

Naomi: "It said something about a warden. It smelt a warden on you, Silas."

Silas does not think he has a warden. He does not have the dragon orb with him—it would blow up if he brought it into an interdimensional space, and Scarlet did not let him—so Elspeth is guarding it just outside. But as Olivia points out, he has spoken with Astro directly, virtual face to virtual face, several times. Something of that contact may have left a trace.

Bru rolls a 23 on religion. The pattern assembles itself.

The Ninja Turtles, on the boat. Their conversation about balance. A dragon of the void doesn't just consume. Astro's endless appetite, in its own terrible way, may have made her a natural predator of the void. The void beings running through the dimensional tears and attacking birthday parties are no longer being hunted the way they used to be. The prison that was supposed to solve everything created a different problem.

Bru: "An outbreak situation is maybe happening here."

Morning by the Lake

Long rest. The village fills in around them like a city-builder game on super speed—little houses popping up the moment someone thinks one should be there. Olivia takes the beach and keeps the cabana boy busy with refills. She also drags Bru to the spa as part of a secret plot to get him to bathe; he accepts once he learns he can bathe in mud and drink brown at the same time, ends up muddier than before, and smells marginally better by morning. Silas spends as much time with Naomi as the night allows, through the floating door to the Lotus ringed with Greek statues.

In the morning, Luna is sitting by a tranquil lake at the edge of the village. The reflection off the water below her is a tiny moon.

Luna: (looking at her hand) "I feel better. I feel more myself. I can imagine."

She is ready to talk.

Her account of what happened is careful and honest. Much of it she frames as her own failure—she believes it started when the dwarves imprisoned Astro, the void dragon, which first began thinning the veil, and she did not worry about it at the time. She herself had been a mortal once. She had ascended to godhood because it was the only option she had—otherwise the world would have been destroyed—and the only way to keep the people she loved safe had been to remove herself from the world.

Luna: "I think that a lot of this started because it's often hard when a god stops considering what mortals can do."

Some people, she believes, have realized that there is great power in godhood, and all it takes is belief. The Eldoran Empire has realized it: they have raised mortal kind into a position of power through belief in themselves, using technology as an apparatus of faith.

She does not know yet what the balance looks like. The orb is part of it: sealing Astro solves one problem and opens another, because the sealed dragon can no longer cull the void beings running rampant, and the veil between the worlds thins. Astro is a being of the void, and the void seeks to engulf everything. Luna's partner Noraxis, the sun dragon, had found a balance with her—creation against consumption. Noraxis and Astro are very close.

Luna: "I think he would be quite enraged about the attack on me. I do worry that his wrath may scorch the very earth we live on."

Silas asks whether Noraxis might scale back from nuking the earth if the party roughed up Eldora a little on his behalf.

Luna: "I could talk to him. Usually very few other than me have been able to talk him down from one of his wrathful fits. But I think it's clear to me that you've helped me come back. I think I could try to speak to him and point his anger towards those responsible."

She also worries that if Noraxis came, the Eldorans would use their weapon against him too.

Silas lays out their idea: Leliana's concerts seem to channel holy reverence, and they could direct it Luna's way. Luna lights up—that is the music she followed here. If they helped her that way, she could be restored, and then she could speak to Noraxis. She has other followers, too: many of them, in a city called Haiou that resides in the ocean, a powerful group that could help them. And if the party deconstructs the apparati of Eldora's worship, that would significantly undermine her.

The Plans Take Shape

Olivia floats a more direct idea: bring down the power grid and send the Eldorans back to the dark ages—destroy their faith in technology from the inside. Silas has a simpler version: Bru blows it up.

Victor pops out of a bush.

Victor: "Wait—do y'all want to blow up an Eldoran capital? Oh, sorry. Is this a private meeting? I slept here." Bru: "Victor. How long have you been in that bush? Did you follow us in here?" Victor: "I followed you in. I've been here the whole time. Are we blowing something up? Well, I've got the person you should talk to. I've been working on this for months for her. Lady Viper has this whole plan—blowing up a grid. There's even a long-term plan to blow up the space station, but that seems kind of crazy."

Silas offers some competent people to help carry out that plan. Victor is thrilled. Bru pulls Victor aside.

Bru: "Victor, what the heck? You're working with other people that do explosives behind my back? Are you cheating on me with other explosives experts?" Victor: "I didn't want to tell you this way. I've sent so many messages." Bru: "Victor, you're not sending messages. You keep creating these archaic ways to talk to me, and you never actually tell me that they're there. I find them retroactively." Victor: "Why would you respond to me? I moved on. Lady Viper tells me how to blow things up now." Bru: (sniffle)

Silas hands Bru a pint of ice cream, a box of tissues, and a big pat on the back. Bru doesn't need Victor. He's his own explosives expert.

Lady Viper, it turns out, is an older Twilight Company figure—Victor's employer for a while now, and a name Silas remembers from the Twilight Company meeting they infiltrated back in High Forge. She's got her head on straight, Victor says. She tells him what to do.

Olivia asks Luna more about the weapon that shot her down. It was an incredible beam of bright white light, Luna says, reaching her in the blink of an eye from thousands of miles away. It came from the center of what looked like a giant dish or bowl with little tongs, mounted on the side of the space station. The whole spacecraft seemed to glow right before it fired.

Luna: "It shattered me in the weave—the fabric itself. It destroyed me beyond just my physical form. It moves across these dimensions that we interact with in belief. And I don't know—it was more terrible than anything I've experienced before."

It pulled her back into her human form, and she felt her connection to her followers diminish instantly, as if they had lost their spiritual touch with her.

The party has a name for it within thirty seconds.

Silas: "Should we call them space bowls?" Olivia: "Space bowl. Space bowls. I like space bowls." Luna: "Yeah, a space bowl. I think that's what it is."

The space bowl, Luna believes, is part of the space station.

Olivia: "I also had a thought. We have the perfect setting for a commune here. We could gather her followers, bring them to the pocket village. They could interact face to face with Luna. We can imagine a farmland. They could grow their own food." Luna: "Olivia, that sounds great. I do want you to know this is not your real world. Don't get lost in here. It's not real." Bru: "And really, what is real? Reality is just a shared hallucination. So what's the difference?"

Bru passes Luna a joint. She takes it, and it scatters into a thousand pieces—then, to prove a point, she gathers them all back into another joint. It's not real.

Bru: "Can I have it back, bro?" Luna: "No. Make one yourself."

Scarlet arrives with a map.

Scarlet: "All right, I've got it. I figured out our plan. The Dragon Balls. I found their location."

The orbs—the binding artifacts for Astro scattered across the world—are the linchpin of whatever comes next. The working theory is that each can be rebound to imprison Astro further, or used to release her; either option requires collecting them. Asked for her opinion, Luna admits she is a little biased: she would seriously consider a peaceful way to return Astro to some state, unless they have another idea for stabilizing the interdimensional fabric. Astro was doing a decent job. Dragons are impetuous and macho, but they're obvious about what they want, and you can work with that.

Silas wants leverage—the other orbs—to get Astro to play ball. Luna warns him to be careful: dragons react to threats, and they have a lot of bite.

Silas: "Luna, I've been talking out my ass at people way more powerful than me literally my whole life. This is just the same thing on a different scale." Luna: "I think y'all are well placed to deal with it."

Silas's Insight (21) adds a warning of its own: the first time he handled an orb, Astro attacked his mind, and bringing more of them together could make that assault stronger.

The parallel paths emerge:

Path One: Leliana's concerts, directed toward Luna. The singing that held back the void beings tonight was a proof of concept. Real performances, real crowds, real belief could restore Luna's power enough for her to speak to Noraxis.

Path Two: Blow up Eldoran infrastructure. Lady Viper has the plans. Deconstructing the apparati of Eldoran worship—their temples, their technology, their space bowls—would undermine Eldora's power. Olivia wants to talk to Viper first to understand what's happening.

Path Three: Collect the Dragon Balls. Scarlet's map points to where the gnomes live, the orc lands, and back into Norman territory—and probably further south still. Whatever the party decides about Astro, they need the orbs first.

And meanwhile: the Iron Claws still operating in Greyport remain unfinished business for Silas and Bru. Leliana might put together a concert here. Jasper is somewhere in the city—unless he got blown up in the bakery when they first arrived, though that was probably just one of many locations. And there might be a race.

Silas offers Luna their violescence orbs. She declines: this space is not real, and she cannot grow stronger here—she needs the real world for that. As Bru suspected all along, she is only a metaphysical representation. But she can be found here. She can speak here.

---

Key Information Learned

The Void Beings:

• One of them smelled "a warden" on Silas—possibly a trace of his direct contact with Astro
• Their stated motivation: "We must destroy them so they do not throw us back into the deep places"
• Their dying words: "More will come. There's nothing to stop us anymore."
• They are hurt by radiant damage and moonlight; physical weapons register weakly or not at all
• Bru's theory, backed by religion knowledge: Astro's imprisonment removed her as the natural predator of void beings; they are now running rampant through the dimensional tears she would have hunted

Luna:

• Is alive—present in the pocket village as a metaphysical manifestation, able to reside there through belief
• Was a mortal before ascending to godhood; ascended to protect those she loved at the cost of removing herself from the world
• Her partner Noraxis (the sun dragon) would likely be enraged by the attack on her; she could try to point his anger at those responsible
• Has followers in an ocean city called Haiou who may be able to assist the party
• Cannot grow stronger within the pocket village—she needs to be restored in the real world, and Leliana's music is what led her there

The Weapon:

• Luna describes a massive white beam fired from a dish/bowl mounted on the Eldoran space station
• It moved across dimensional and spiritual layers, shattering not just her physical form but her connection to followers
• The party names it: the space bowl

The Pocket Village:

• Is stabilizing into a permanent dimensional space—no longer just a prototype
• A visible barrier has formed between the village and the void, suggesting it is becoming its own dimension
• The villagers' singing ("This Little Light of Mine") brought a moonlight that burned the void beings
• Victor followed them in and was there the whole time

Victor and Lady Viper:

• Victor has been working for Lady Viper—an older Twilight Company figure—on a plan to blow up the Eldoran power grid, with a long-term plan to blow up the space station
• He left messages for Bru in archaic formats Bru only ever found retroactively

The Orb Dilemma:

• Sealing Astro further: keeps the void dragon contained, but keeps the void beings' natural predator locked away while the veil between worlds thins
• Releasing Astro: restores the balance but frees a being of the void, which seeks to engulf everything
• A third option is emerging: negotiate with Astro using the additional orbs as leverage
• Collecting the orbs is necessary regardless of which path the party chooses; Scarlet has a map
• Silas's Insight: bringing more orbs together may strengthen Astro's assault on the mind

Character Moments

Silas: The birthday party was supposed to be his. He got the cake and the song and Naomi walking through the golden door—and then he got void beings. What he does with void beings is stab them, teleport in front of Naomi, roll 32 on dexterity, slice the flying picnic table down the middle, and pose dramatically with Naomi while the crowd sings. When Bru cries about Victor, Silas hands him ice cream and tissues without hesitation. His 28 insight check about the pocket village being their own moon base is delivered with the conviction of someone who already knew this was going to happen and has been waiting for everyone else to catch up.

Bru: The force ballista scores both kills—a crit on the first void being, then the one that swallowed Olivia—and Levitate catches her before she hits the ground. Bru at full efficiency. But the Victor revelation breaks something in him that isn't repaired by Silas's ice cream. He has been replaced, professionally, by someone named Lady Viper, who is apparently better at blowing things up. The mud spa with Olivia helps. He comes out marginally less fragrant and emotionally no better, but he comes out.

Olivia: Gets consumed by a void being, witnesses the layers of dimensional reality stacked on each other, and comes back calm. She immediately hugs Bru for saving her and does not hug him for very long. Her combat instincts are on full display throughout—taking damage on purpose to save lucky points, Misty Stepping into the sky to reach the last void being. The "space bowl" naming is hers and Silas's. The commune idea—actual followers living in the pocket village, face-to-face with their goddess—is the most interesting strategic thought in the room.

Luna: Her first words since her fall are "I'm not dead yet." She is careful, honest, and self-aware about her own failures of perspective. Her account of why she ascended to godhood—to protect people she loved, at the cost of removing herself—gives her a dimension that gods in this story don't always have. She takes Bru's joint only to prove a point.

Unresolved Threads

• The void beings will return—they said so themselves. What comes next, and in what numbers?
• Noraxis, the sun dragon and Luna's partner, may soon learn of the attack on her. What is his current disposition, and how close is he?
• Collecting the Dragon Balls: Scarlet's map points into gnomish, orc, and Norman territory, and further south. What guardians, factions, or hazards are waiting at each site?
• Lady Viper and the Twilight Company grid disruption plan: what does she actually need, and when does the party meet her?
• Haiou, the ocean city with Luna's followers: who are they, where exactly is it, and what can they contribute?
• Astro is still imprisoned, and the void beings smelled "a warden" on Silas. What happens when the party approaches her for negotiation rather than re-binding?
• The Iron Claws remnants in Greyport remain unaddressed
• Jasper is somewhere in Greyport—unless he was caught in the bakery explosion when they first arrived
• There might be a race

Notable Quotes

Naomi: "Everybody behind me. Now."

Void Weaver: "I smell the water."

Void Figure: (dying) "More will come. There's nothing to stop us anymore."

Luna: "I'm not dead yet."

Silas: "Holy s***, guys. This isn't just a pocket village. We've created our own moon base."

Bru: (to Victor, tearfully) "You're not sending messages. You keep creating archaic ways to talk to me and never actually tell me they're there." Victor: "Why would you respond to me? I moved on. Lady Viper tells me how to blow things up now."

Luna: "I think that a lot of this started because it's often hard when a god stops considering what mortals can do."

Silas: "I've been talking out my ass at people way more powerful than me literally my whole life. This is just the same thing on a different scale." Luna: "I think y'all are well placed to deal with it."

Bru: "What is real? Reality is just a shared hallucination." Luna: (scatters his joint into a thousand pieces and gathers it back together; it's not real) "No. Make one yourself."

The session ends in the morning light by the lake, with a map of Dragon Ball locations, a moon goddess sitting in a dimension the party built out of imagination and belief, and plans pulling in three different directions at once. The birthday party was ruined. The pocket village is permanent. Luna is alive. The void beings are still coming.