Fabula Ultima - Celestial Echoes: Requiem of Worlds - Session 2

31 May, 2026

We picked-up our magical college girl game of Fabula Ultima this week with the fallout from the celestial ritual the team were drawn into. After that the girls experience or ignore the first day of classes, learn that Sylvie has a stash of magic items and dead monsters, and meet two unusual folks living in the sewers beneath the city.

Celestial Echoes: Requiem of Worlds (CERoW) - Session 2

Cast

• Alison Moreau, she/her, The Devoted Hell-bound Hound
• Clotilde Bellecort, any, Fey-Blooded Dancer Reaching for Greatness
• Iris LaRue, she/her, Rebellious Rockstar Hero
• Margot E'tincelle, she/they, Inquisitive Occultist Career-Student
• Melodie Monet, she/her, Troubled Mechanic With A Heart of Gold

Ritual Fallout

The session resumes where the last left off, with the party caught in a magical ritual that Professor Sylvie Larousse seemingly lost control of. The girls undergo transformation sequences, each revealing a new outfit... except for Iris, who already can transform. Each outfit - including Iris' - then manifests a glowing symbol, a five pointed star, same as the one the group stands in, their respective element positioned at the top of the star. As the group come out of it, Alison collapses in shock while Margot swiftly pulls the group into helping her identify details in the manifested magic circle. Sylvie, despite kicking all this off, is too flabbergasted to contribute.

Margot recognizes the obscure text in the circle, deciphering swiftly - "Body without soul / Soul without Body / Bind the soul through the Heavens." She also recognizes the six symbols in the circle, five at the points, one in the center:

Points
Alison - 🝯 - Night (Shadow)
Clotilde - ▽ - Water (Ice)
Iris - ☉ - Sun (Light)
Margot - 🝏 - Scepter of Jove (Bolt)
Melodie - 🜁 - Air

Center
♄ - Saturn

Sylvie collects herself, tepidly explaining this was not what she expected. She thought it would enable the women to cast sparks or something similarly small. This admission shocks Allison, who grabs a stray pointer out the piles of junk that fill Sylvie's lab, swings it dramatically in her direction, and unleashes an unexpected blast of dark energy. The shock is enough to allow Margot time to redirect Sylvie's conversation while Alison retreats to sulk at the door to the lab.

Sylvie's spent the past several decades studying aether, the residual elemental energy that makes-up the world, focusing on the extremely volatile unaspected aether.¹ While aspected aether seems comparatively rare and difficult to manipulate in this present age, unaspected aether will coallesce into volatile crystals that can be used to power magic items... if the crystal doesn't explode in the process!²

Sylvie's research led her to identify changes in astronomical aether signaling a return of magic. These changes allowed her to identify sixteen candidates for having magic, but somehow only the five ladies have expressed it. At this point, Alison snaps, incensed that Sylvie spent months, if not years, tracking sixteen young adults, all for the goal of exposing them to magic. She demands Sylvie collect her information on these people to hand over to the group, then storms out of the room.

The conversation winds down from there, with Sylvie overwhelmed by the night's events. Margot calls for an end to the meeting for now, then tries to transform back to normal to no avail. The group focus on returning to normal together - while the angry Alison keeps trying to wish her own self back to her normal clothes as she storms away - and the collective act seems to work. As they revert, they are treated to one last vision, hearing voices whisper "We will forget for a time."

Melodie and Clotilde return to their rooms, but Iris heads out for a late night snack - a dozen donuts from a nearby bakery. Margot, in-turn, opts to stay-up just a bit later to experiment. She returns to her lab, which is full of dormant magical trinkets. She retrieves the tiniest crystal of unaspected aether and exposes it to a photo. Where this had no strong effect previously, this time it summoned up a ghostly image of the man in the photo, who spoke, encouraging an unseen loved one to move on from him. Margot grows excited at this reaction!

A flowchart map of Le Maison de E'tincelle as of Session 2.

The Day After

Unable to sleep well, Alison opens an e-mail client on her laptop and sends an report to her handler in the Church, Rosalie Brasseur, secretary to the Cloistered Order of Absolving Flame. She excludes most details, failing to identify the other women and crediting Sword Saint with resolving it in the time it took Alison to get her equipment and reach the battle. Shaken from the omissions she made, she is startled by a knock at the door and slams her laptop shut. Iris has arrived with significantly less than a full box of donuts, and offers to share some with Alison.

The two girls briefly talk about the previous night, with Alison venting her anger at Sylvie. Iris asks if Alison had ever seen or done anything like this before, and in a panic, she answers "no!" Despite seeing Alison conjure a magic hound that ate a Vorash, Iris believes her. Iris commiserates, expressing regret she couldn't do more, which Alison then turns around to quickly console, pointing out she leapt between the Vorash and the two they'd chased. With morning arriving, the two leave on cordial terms to prepare for the first day of classes.

Elsewhere in the dorms, Margot starts to design and build a tool to detect magic - a Ghostbusters-esque EKG meter. She ropes Melodie in to help, and the two gearheads come-up with a design that shouldn't be too expensive or difficult to complete. In the process, they discuss sharing some of Margot's weekly allowance between the group.

As the school day winds down, Alison returns to Le Maison with a strong coffee and a bag full of drinks in hand. She makes her way to the fourth floor and knocks on the door of Clarisse, the nervous young woman she met the day before. Clarisse sleepily answers and Alison apologetically asks if she is good with computers - Alison failed to extract the promised photograph from her camera, having lost the instructions on how to do so when moving dorms. Surprised and a bit overwhelmed, Clarisse invites her in, eagerly accepting the bag and its variety of caffeinated drinks as well.

The two sit down around Clarisse's desk as best as possible as she gets to work with the camera and laptop. Her room is a step or three above in luxury from the first floor, though it is obscured by the immense amount of magical girl fandom ephemera in the room, including a replica of Sword Saint's signature floral scarf. Clarisse retrieves a SD card reader from her own elaborate computer set-up and gets to work extracting the photo, all the while apologizing for being tired.

The two chat for a bit, and Alison learns Clarisse is struggling to focus on the required general elective class she is taking, French literature. Alison offers to accompany her to the library later to see if having someone to study with helps her focus. Clarisse happily accepts, but then exhaustion catches up with her and she crashes out on her bed. Alison awkwardly covers her with a blanket and quietly leaves the room, just in-time to receive a text from Iris asking to meet-up.

Sylvie's Corpse Hole

While Alison met with Clarisse, Iris visits Margot to check-in on her and the Vorash they captured. Margot sends her to fetch Sylvie, and the three load the dead Vorash into a wheelbarrow and follow Sylvie out into the woods near the dorms. The professor reveals she's got a cellar hidden there, full of miscellaneous magical items (presumed defunct) and a selection of dead monster specimens. Margot seems impressed by the collection, even as she questions why Sylvie is keeping so many corpses. The three hide the door and pile into the RV with the remaining Vorash and drive it back so they can wake Clotilde and have her talk to them. Along the way, Iris texts Alison, asking her to meet-up.

Together again, Alison finishes off her coffee as well as some medicine and seems to finally be a bit less shaken. Sylive reveals she collected the Vorash from a nearby sewer, accessible through steam tunnels on campus. The group pile into Margot's RV while Melodie fetches her motorcycle, and the group head to the sewers, intent on releasing the Vorash there. Along the way, Sylvie feeds the two hungry hounds a tiny crystal of aether, lecturing the girls while she dows about how while the Vorash feed on magic, it doesn't fully sustain them. Margot reaches back and hands a granola bar to the two, who cheerfully devour it.

Sewer Dwellers

Arriving at the steam plant, Sylvie guides the group to a manhole cover inside the plant. Iris and Alison pry it open and the group squish the Vorash through the opening as Sylvie explains she found or released seven Vorash, leaving four unaccounted for. The party follow-suit after the pliable Vorash, and as they hit the ground below they see a man down the tunnel cheerfully greeting the Vorash.

Clotilde merrily greets the man, asking "Are you Daddy Kaelen?" The man tenses-up, then scrambles to cover himself up with his clothes as he says a quiet, audible "shit!" in response. Facial features - notably his ears - obscured, the man approaches, followed by the two Vorash and a woman. He introduces himself as Kaelen and the woman as Kieri, his half-sister. Kaelen stands around 6'5, sporting a wife beater paired with Victorian-esque slacks and wearing his black hair long and loose. Kieri, in-turn is dressed like a college student, standing around 5'11 and with a curvy, trim build.

Margot and Kaelen chat for a bit, with Margot informing Kaelen that Bill, the third Vorash, was killed after the trio of monstrous hounds attacked the dorm. This upsets the giant man, who is both shocked that the Vorash attacked people and that Bill is dead. He asks the group if they will take him to retrieve Bill's body, and the group agree.

As the party climb their way back-up, the two sewer-dwellers pull out and use peculiar inhalers before ascending to the surface. The session ends with folks piling into Margot's RV and onto Melodie's bike and heading to Sylvie's corpse hole.

Meet the Team

With this being a new campaign, I want to spend the first few posts introducing each of the new player characters. This week we meet the lively dancer, Clotilde!

Name: Clotilde Bellecourt
Identity: Fey-Blooded Dancer Reaching for Greatness
Origin: Feylands (which might be Scotland?)
Theme: Ambition
Major: Dance
Signature Element: Air
Starting Classes: Dancer (2), Spiritist (3)
Quirk: Fey Away From Home (renamed version of Outcast Fairy)

Clotilde appears to be in her early twenties and has pale skin, too-vibrant ice blue eyes, and reddish-blonde hair carefully styled to always show the slight point of her ears. She prefers refined, simple tops paired with loose, ethereal pants or skirt that allow for freedom of movement and convey a sense of grace about her.

When transformed, her outfit becomes a ice-blue, strapless, fitted bodice with a layered pauldron on the left shoulder. The dress' collar is silver, in a mandarin style, and the skirt is in a tiered hi-lo style with multiple layers of white and ice-blue fabric trimmed with lace. Her hands are covered by long, white opera gloves, her feet by knee-high white boots, and her face by a decorative mask that can transform to a full-mask as needed. Her hair is done in an elaborate braid adorned with silver beads and held by a silver comb.

Clotilde is fey, a known kind of people whose faith centers around magic, even if the general receding of magic from the world means their religious rites are rarely accompanied by actual spellcraft. She's enrolled overseas at L'Académie de la Tour d'Argent, where she is studying dance.

Player Thoughts

This was a peculiar session. One of those ones where it doesn't feel like we progressed things particularly far, but also that a lot happened. If I was to peg it to anything, it's that when you give our table the chance to RP without setting clear scene constraints around it, we will consume all the available time having interpersonal scenes. In this instance, we had a rest scene and that always becomes an excuse for us to indulge in RP. Part of me wants to chalk ome of this up to Seren being a new GM and not being the most prepped this session³, but I have the same problem in our Romance of Ys campaign. Pacing a session is just difficult for us!

I missed the particulars because I ran to the bathroom, but deciding Margot parcels out her allowance as the diegetic reason we receive the game's required allotments of treasure is an interesting idea. I think it will make it easier on Seren in the short-term since we can just assume we get 1,000 zennit per session as a group, then have Margot distribute it. That's one less thing for her to worry about when she's already a bit overwhelmed by the system and learning how to run a game. Longer-term, I will be curious how she mixes that with handing out actual items as rewards. Will Margot get less allowance that week?

Breaking a Fettered Heart commandment elicited an interesting reaction from the rest of the group. The way that quirk works, your character has three commandments handed down from their overbearing organization or handler. When you break, disregard, or ignore a commandment you lose half of your current HP and MP, become shaken and weak, but gain 2 Fabula Points. If you break a commandment during a rest scene, the consequences impact you afterwards. Break your commandments six times and you prime yourself for a showdown with the group or person you are rebelling against. Break a commandment again during that showdown and you stop being bound to them and gain a bunch of bonuses, including treating bonds as stronger than normal.

I pitched Alison not reporting the girls or Sylvie to her Church handlers as violating the commandment "Diligently heed and abide by the clergy's word" - she's been tasked by her clerical superiors to report the supernatural to them, and she explicitly withheld important details. The group agreed and were fine with that, but immediately became panicked as I gleefully mentioned that put Alison in Crisis and stuck her with two more status effects, bringing her to a total of three after a failed roll in the first session made her dazed. I explained this was fine, was intended, and even pointed out I could use IP to generate tonics to clear the status conditions, but folks were panicked. Seren especially seemed especially worried, so when Melodie suggested we use the alternate rule that allows a single Tonic to heal all status conditions, she jumped on that.

Credit to Fettered Heart mechanically generating a strong reaction from the table, but it is odd I was the one assuring the GM that no, it is fine, I actively want this. I think some of the reaction from Seren in-particular was just the shock of realizing Alison hit Crisis, but I also wonder if it ties into what increasingly feels to me like a core worry she and Iris share that surrendering is some sort of failure of the game, instead of one of the more interesting tools for generating tension and novelty within a story. If that is the case, then using Shadowstrike to chip away at Alison's health so she can explicitly enter Crisis is going to be an issue.

It's been interesting to see just how much tension and strangeness Fettered Heart's generated in even two sessions. The Church continue to be positioned as an enemy - Sylvie called them out by name as an organization that hordes unaspected aether and magical items without mentioning similar groups like the Techno-Illuminati. It's not an issue yet, but that statement combined with the fallout from seeing Alison suffer the consequences of breaking a Fettered Heart commandment give me a lot to think about.

#CERoW #celestial echoes #fabula ultima #rpg #ttrpg