---
campaign: Avalon Adventuring Academy
type: session
session_number: 6
date: 2025-12-10
arc: leyline
status: planned
tags:
last: "[[session_5| Session 5]]"
next: "[[session 7]]"
---
# Cold Open
# Cold Open

>[!quote] Cold Open
>Fire. Smoke. Everything feels slow.
>
>Movement, and heat.
>
>The only thing you hear clearly is breath. Not quite your own – like someone is using your lungs for practice. Your body feels heavier than it should, but it moves when “you” tell it to.
>
>Mikey – right now, you’re not playing Joe Football. You’re playing his grandfather, Pappy, a young soldier in the Leyline War.
>
>The sky over Korrin is wrong.
>
>It should be night, but the darkness is washed thin – a flickering bruise of purple and sickly blue, pulsing every few seconds from the city in the distance. At its heart, the Convergence Engine rises over the buildings, a tower of crystal and steel with veins of light crawling up its sides in jittery bursts.
>
>You’re crouched behind what used to be a stone wall and is now a jagged line of half-melted rubble. The air stinks of ozone, hot metal, and something sweeter underneath, like meat left too long in the sun.
>
>Every few heartbeats, the ground gives a slow, heavy *thump*. It’s not artillery. It’s deeper. Like the bedrock itself is… breathing.

Call for a Perception or Insight check, DC 11.

>[!quote] On Success
>The pulses in the ground aren’t random. After a while, you start to feel a rhythm. Three heavy shudders, a pause, three more. Like a heartbeat that’s far too slow and far too large.

>[!quote] On Fail
>You can’t shake the feeling that each thump is getting just a little stronger. The wall vibrates with each one, gritty dust sprinkling into your hair every time like the trench is trying to shrug you off.


>[!quote] Cold Open (Cont'd)
>A sergeant scrambles along the trench, boots slipping in the mud, voice hoarse from shouting. “Eyes up! HQ says one more push from the Engine and the bastards fold. You see that tower?” He jerks his chin at Korrin. “That’s our ticket home. We ride this surge, we walk into their lines like gods.”
>
>Down the line, an older soldier with a half-melted helmet spits into the muck. “We’ve ‘ridden the surge’ three times this week,” he mutters. “Doesn’t feel like gods.”
>
>Another *thump*. A crack zigzags a little further along the wall at your shoulder. Bits of glowing stone dust tumble down – warm against your cheek.

What does pappy do? Does he peek over the wall? Check his gear? Say a prayer?

Give Pappy a moment to react.

>[!quote] Cold Open (Cont'd)
>There’s a whistle – not the sharp, clean kind from a ref, but a rising scream that your body recognizes faster than your mind. Incoming.
>
>The sergeant shoves you down. “Heads—”
>
>Impact.
>
>The world becomes white noise and ringing. The wall in front of you jumps, then slams down in the mud in chunks. For a few seconds, all you see is dust and orange light.
>
>When the sound resolves back into separate noises, there’s a new one: someone sobbing, wet and panicked, right next to you.
>
>A kid – younger than you, barely stubble on his chin – is on his back, armor cracked open like a tin can. Shrapnel, or stone, or both has torn through his side. There’s too much blood and he’s trying to stuff it back in with his hands.
>
>His eyes lock on yours. “Sarge— Sarge, I can’t— I can’t feel my legs. Am I—”

Call for a Medicine check, DC 10.

>[!quote] On Success
>You grab his wrist, shove his hand away from the wound, and slap a bandage patch from your kit over the worst of it, pressing down hard. He screams, then gasps, but the bleeding slows. You can’t fix the missing pieces, but you can keep the rest from pouring out for now.
>
>The kid clamps onto your sleeve. “You’re not… you’re not leaving me here, right?”
>
>You don’t have time to answer before the next *thump* hits.

>[!quote] On Fail
>You’ve seen bad wounds. This is worse. You go through the motions – bandage, pressure, words you’ve heard medics say – but the blood just keeps coming, sluggish and dark. The kid’s lips are already going grey.
>
>He clutches at your sleeve anyway. “You’re not… you’re not leaving me here, right?”
>
>You open your mouth to lie or to tell the truth – you’re not sure which – but the next *thump* hits first.

>[!quote] Cold Open (Cont'd)
>The next pulse is worse.
>
>It doesn’t just shake the ground – it *twists* it. For a second, the rubble in front of you stretches like taffy and then snaps back, like reality lagged and then caught up too fast.
>
>Every enchanted trinket on every soldier – wards, comm-stones, weapon runes – flares at once in a discordant burst of light. Half the squad swears and claps hands over their ears as their charms scream in different pitches.
>
>“Contact!” someone yells – but he’s not pointing at enemy troops. He’s pointing at *air*, about thirty feet out from your position.
>
>The air in front of you creases, the way heat over stone makes the world ripple – except this isn’t heat. It’s a jagged line of absolute stillness, cutting through smoke and dust. The world on either side keeps moving; the line doesn’t.
>
>A runner is sprinting along the trench, message satchel bouncing at his hip, eyes on Korrin. He doesn’t see it. He hits the crease at full speed.
>
>For a heartbeat, he is bisected cleanly: one half of him a fraction of a second ahead of the other. Then the next leyline pulse hits.
>
>The clean line becomes teeth.
>
>There’s a sound like someone tearing wet canvas, and both halves of him jerk in different directions – one slamming against the trench wall, the other flung into the air. His face… doesn’t decide which way to go. Features smear, then slough, like wax flicked against a fire. He doesn’t even have time to scream properly; it comes out as a raw, shredded noise that cuts off halfway.
>
>The tear snaps shut. What’s left of him hits the mud in pieces that don’t quite make sense together.
>
>**BEAT**
>
>The man next to you makes a strangled sound, then starts laughing – high, hysterical. “That ain’t spells,” he says. “That ain’t the enemy. That’s the leyline saying no.”
>
>Another *thump* rolls through the earth, stronger still. Dust sifts from cracks overhead. In the distance, the Convergence Engine on Korrin’s skyline flares brighter, then brighter again, the crawling lights on its surface stuttering into a repeating loop.
>
>Somewhere far behind you, horns and sirens start to wail all at once – too many warning systems tripping over each other. Officers are shouting, but their words are drowned out by the building hum.


>[!quote] Cold Open (Cont'd)
>Closer this time – just a few feet down the trench – another soldier wasn’t fast enough to get clear. The leyline didn’t cut him in half. It *caught* him.
>
>He’s half-embedded in the trench wall, stone and flesh fused together like the wall decided to grow him. One arm sticks out at a wrong angle, fingers clawing grooves in the mud. His face is turned toward you, eyes blinking out of sync with each other, like they’re taking turns remembering how.
>
>“Help me,” he rasps. His voice comes half a second late, chasing his moving lips.
>
>You know— in your gut, in your training, in every instinct screaming at you – that nothing about this is fixable.
>
>What do you do?

Suggestions: try to pull him free, put him out of his misery, freeze up, back away.

>[!quote] Cold Open (End)
>The hum under your boots builds into a single, continuous note. For just a second, as the next pulse hits, you feel something under the soles of your feet that is not earth and not stone.
>
>It feels like a *heartbeat that isn’t yours*.
>
>The cracks in the trench walls spiderweb outward. The lights on the Convergence Engine stutter in the same three-beat pattern you felt in the ground, then repeat. Then repeat again. The tower doesn’t look like a building anymore; it looks like an eye that just figured out how to open.
>
>All along the line, men are shouting, praying, screaming. A few start firing into the air at nothing at all.
>
>Somewhere behind you, an officer yells, “Cut the branches! CUT THE—”
>
>The word shears off as the world lurches sideways and—
>
>—you’re gone.