Campaign: Illumina Saga
A guard who keeps the goddess Shalindra as prisoner in the remains of the Shrouded Isles. Identified by his white gold cloak and staff, the Gatekeeper is the final keeper of the sacred land of the lighthouse. His staff pulls from the power of the imprisoned goddess, torturing her in order to control her abilities over the fireflies of the island. It is his final job to seal away the goddess, and he has been left to his task by the people above. Despite his supposedly neutral stance, he has a rather short patience, easily provoked into action.
When angered, he transforms into a large brass dragon.
After assembling all the pieces of the lantern in the Old World, the Drifters were pointed to the lighthouse in the Shrouded Isles in order to obtain the power they sought to subdue Cal’Cadoth. Upon arriving at the island, the Gatekeeper appeared and attempted to scare them away from proceeding to the tower’s top. After adamently denying them entry to the top of the tower, the Gatekeeper was met with arguments and scorn by the Drifters as they picked his stance apart. After leaving them with a warning, the Gatekeeper departed. For his inability to give passage to the top, several of the Drifters gave him the nickname “The Wall” in mockery. Despite the failed warning attempt, the Drifters unanimously decided that proceding further was not necessary, and were torn as to what to do.
Spacejam, drawn to the sparkling lights which were left behind by the Gatekeeper, triggered the monster’s trap and became petrified in amber instantly. Before the other Drifters could parse what had happened, the remainder of the Gatekeeper’s orbs swarmed them and turned them all to stone (save for Reed and Sun). Sun freed the Drifters with her godly powers, but did not free Ashel or the orcs because her power had been drained. Sun was pressed as to what sort of power she would need to acquire in order to free the rest, and she answered that she required the power from the top of the tower. The Drifters, knowing they would have to face the Gatekeeper again, journeyed to the top of the lighthouse to retrieve this power. Before leaving, the Drifters left behind a note for the remaining statues, explaining the situation.
Along their journey, the Gatekeeper summoned up swarms of hiveminded fireflies to take the shapes of various enemies and attack them. The Drifters fought wave upon wave of enemies as they proceded further, and were quickly put on their last legs. Without any time to rest and recover, the Drifters lashed out in rage at the Gatekeeper, shooting at him from his perch atop the lighthouse with all they had. Sola, upon remembering the potion of flight she had stolen away, drank the contents of the potion and flew up to face the man one-on-one, without going through the tower below. The Gatekeeper’s patience finally snapped, and he transformed into a brass dragon, flying down to end the Drifters in their weakened state.
With low morale and several members already mortally wounded, the Drifters quickly formulated a strategy to kill the beast as quickly as possible and keep it preoccupied while they stole the power above. Sola, still gifted with golden wings, kept hidden in the above chambers of the lighthouse where she worked to free Shalindra from the Gatekeeper’s prison. Meanwhile below, Andel and Orro began to pass over and prepare the bottle of poison stolen from the apothecary over to Reed. Reed and Tasma teamed up together to aim a crossbow bolt holding the poison straight into the dragon’s maw, the bottle shattering glass into the dragon’s throat and releasing the deadly substance directly into its stomach. In the ensuing chaos, the Gatekeeper attempted to retaliate with its firely breath but was stopped when Andel threw several pounds of powerdered Blood Ore into the mouth of the beast, choking it and exposing the drug to everyone else around. With a few more well-placed shots and a strong defensive effort from the Drifters, the Gatekeeper collapsed and died. Tasma, mortally wounded in the prior fight with the fireflies, was saved at the last minute from the Gatekeeper’s final strike by an equally injured Rammstien, who had been casting the mark of his goddess on her.
As the group prepared to transfer Shalindra’s power into Sun and healed up their injured, Tasma was able to fashion a cape from the wing membranes of the Gatekeeper, which she later passed on to the Storyweaver. Reed and Orro fashioned a device capable of extracting the power of the goddess and preserving her as a firefly, and Sun was able to free Ashel, Grok, and Grom from the Gatekeeper’s amber imprisonment, and was ready to journey back up to the surface to face Cal’Cadoth.