The Chained Tyrant and His Servants

Session Summary: 08/18/2024

Ahhhh, a BOUND POWER breaks its bonds! Deep in the Glade, in a space that even other Fey seemed to navigate around rather than through, the heroes found Agatha's cauldrons: three massive vessels still warm, still stirring, their contents the result of years of accumulated dark work. The guardian of the cauldrons emerged immediately, a thing assembled from the leftover material of every ritual Agatha had conducted, given protective purpose by the same binding principles she had spent her long life studying. The heroes destroyed it with the efficiency of a group that has gotten very good at destroying things born of binding magic.

The Chained Tyrant was different in kind from anything they had faced in the Glade. He was a being of IMMENSE power contained by chains that had been forged specifically to contain him, each link inscribed with binding script that had required coalition effort from multiple Fey lords to create. He should not have been accessible. He was accessible because someone, the heroes suspected the Withering Man, had arranged his accessibility, had been feeding him gradually increased freedom while maintaining the appearance of his secure containment, building toward a moment when the Tyrant's power could be aimed rather than simply existing as a threat.

His servants emerged with him when the heroes triggered whatever threshold had been waiting for their approach: lesser bound things that had been orbiting him in the Glade's deep spaces, drawn to his power the way lesser satellites are drawn to a gravity well. The battle was enormous in scale, the Tyrant's strikes carrying the weight of something that has been restrained for a very long time and is applying all of that restrained energy to the immediate problem of destroying the people in front of him.

The heroes found the weakness in the chains: not in breaking them further but in using them, applying the binding script's own logic to constrain the Tyrant's movement and reduce his effectiveness even while directly combating him. Charles identified the technique. Mutu applied the approach. Kiren found the implementation points. Diana ensured that what needed to end did END. The Chained Tyrant fell, his servants fell, and the cauldrons went cold and still!