Thank you so much to everyone who participated in this character challenge! We wrapped up the quest last night and we wanted to give a little summary on the story line and the nail-biting conclusion. Some of the characters are still active, and ready to move on to the next "chapter" of their lives!

If you've been following along since the beginning, here is the add on for the original launch emails, aka what happened at kickoff in SECRET:
Making another round through the Lyceum, the figure leans against the lamp post in the religious section and thumbs through texts describing ancient faiths.

"What a delicious name. I think I will steal it." With a wave of his hand, he plants in the minds of many the notion of Loki's return. As he pores over the book, a devious grin comes over his features.

"It would be so nice to have some sweet children running about! Why return just ONE god to the lands?"

He looks down at himself, contemplating his male form and with a snap of his fingers, becomes a plainly-clad woman instead. "There! Now for the mothering," she says, tittering a shrill laugh.

She knocks several books to the floor, delighting in their haphazard array, and conjures from them several persistent ideas. She bids them, "Go and be someone, my darlings. Mummy will come for you again when the time is right!"

Satisfied with her mischievous doings for now, she slinks into the Graveyard of the Gods to practice her impersonations.


Overall synopsis:

In long-forgotten times, an entity of chaos was trapped by priests in a book, effectively putting an end to his reign of havoc. Through the careless eons, this book somehow wound up unprotected on the shelves of the Lyceum, and an unwitting Maellina opened it, becoming the first of the entity's many victims.

This character challenge involved two teams who would oppose one another in their desire to return to the way things were before Lalois Rershanfur (Loki/Chaos Mommy) got out of Book Jail. Initially, none of these people knew their precise origins or relation to specifics of the character challenge. We provided a brief description--an essence--of which mob or book they were based on and let the participants do the rest with the role command. Through dreams, hallucinations, and roleplay, the avenues of information began opening up to them. Most of the people who acquired an extra soul through Loki's machinations were instructed of a desire for things to go back the way they were. Others, and the characters based on old gods, were told they did not, under any circumstances, want to go back.

It took a while for people to notice that the Spooky Inn denizens weren't all simply costumed for the season. We changed several Inn and Lyceum mob descriptions to hint at their damaged and soulless nature. Once the word got out, people became concerned with how they could help heal the victimized Innfolk.

A Hillcrest-based gnomish healer named Miripirisir Theofellow followed his bulbous nose to the center of the rumors. Across a number of interactions, Miripirisir described the abstruse nature of his research. He divined the presence of what he called "heavy" souls through the use of a dowsing-rod like instrument. He took blood samples from Inn denizens and challenge participants who felt up to the task of volunteering it. He also sought out obscure, ancient knowledge, searching for an answer that would put right the abhorrent chaos that occurred at the epicenter, the Inn. He was convinced that Loki wasn't finished making soul-soup out of the world, and once people began seeing themselves outside themselves, his urgency increased.

Miripirisir located the means originally used to trap the chaosmonger and began describing it to the heavy-souled people he met. He advised them to find the others and determine just whose soul they were harboring, deeming it necessary to enter the plane of pages, a mysterious place said to be the birthplace of ideas. In his research, Miripirisir discovered this plane of pages contained the very device that trapped 'Loki' in a book to begin with.

Meanwhile, Lalois began gathering her "children" up as a means to strengthen her power. She vowed to never be chained again and convinced each of her "children" to vow themselves back to her, using the guise of an old god to trick them.

When she caught wind of Miripirisir's research, she knew she had little time to waste.

Draining the strength of her children, she became empowered while they became amorphous blobs powered by nothing more than broken faith and betrayal.

Strength of broken faith was not enough when faced with science and magic, however, and Miripirisir and his band of unlikely heros triumphed over Lalois, locking her back between the pages of a powerful tome. The book was summarily entrapped in five dozen mithril chains and buried under several mountains.