Session 29: Mother Bog

After coming face-to-face (so to speak) with a talking swamp, the circle’s negotiations revealed that the creature called Mother Bog was some sort of behemoth from the First Age, a genius loci capable of slow but implacable movement. Her goal was to keep moving, absorbing new people to serve her as “swamp children,” and she wasn’t about to let to the whining of such short-lived creatures stop her. Moreover, upon learning that there were Exalted within her boundaries, she was quite livid—the Solars of the First Age had hurt her once, and she remembered it all too well.

A battle between the swamp creatures and the circle ensued, a pitched fight that gave no quarter and asked none. While they were able to recover Alazne’s body, they quickly found themselves overwhelmed until Prism of Truth discovered that his anima power could incinerate the host-bodies of the swamp beasts. They were not undead, after all—merely corpses acting as structural elements for the animating plants. Everything turned around in moments as Prism flared his anima banner to full and began turning the monsters into ash.

Though her “children” were defeated, Mother Bog herself was still prideful. She could not be killed, she boasted, and the circle had to concur. Blazer’s knowledge of First Age behemoth-fighting tactics showed that the usual method was to contain rather than kill, since killing such enormous beasts was often either impossible or had terrible consequences (such as the creation of a new hekatonchire).

Blazer and Ven worked quickly to cobble together a sealing plinth, modeled after the jade obelisks of the First Age that were used to hold back the Wyld. This one would lock Mother Bog in one place, effectively pinning her down like a butterfly on a tack board. The villagers were evacuated out of Mother Bog’s grasp to a nearby location, their village rebuilt and fortified with Blazer’s magic.

Once the villagers were safe from any immediate retribution on Mother Bog’s part, Blazer and Ven placed the mystic plinth, weathering the genius loci’s rage until it was settled into place. After confirming that the terrible behemoth had been imprisoned—at least for the time being—they said their goodbyes to the villagers and got back on the road to Marita. The last they saw of the place was Alazne’s spirit waving goodbye as she faded into Lethe…