Age of Umbra: The Unforgiving City

Runtime	Break start
3h 46m	2h 22m

Last we left off, you all were fleeing from the Screaming Forest and suddenly were stopped at the edge of a recently erupting, ever-shifting sinkhole that had stopped you in your tracks (while something had been notified of your recent presence and was giving chase). Mother (the matriarch of the Hive beneath the forest and the one responsible for the unique mutations that make up August) assumed that she could clean you out and drag you back to the Hive for her own experimentations. The battle was hard-fought and many of you fell multiple times, and it got very hairy. However, before she could truly flee, she was struck down, and with that, you rent from near her corpse the massive glaive that she used in that struggle (which is now wielded by Idyl) as well as at least a momentary bit of comfort in knowing that the Screaming Forest is slightly less dangerous, for the time being.
You then left the forest and came to the Amber Gate. You took a long rest there, had some strange visions, and upon waking, stepped into Amber Reach itself. You decided amongst the various paths that you could take towards your destination, to head westward, past the Drowned Sprawl, into the Ashcall Quarter, then onward into the Cinnabar Quarter, past the Astrofoundry, and then eventually to the Barrow of Blind Repose.
Entering the water-sunken district known as the Drowned Sprawl, you had to leap from rooftop to rooftop while spirits from the past began to manifest (beginning to recall and reenact tha ancient riots that set fire to this city after the Apostasy). Some of these spirits took notice of you. You battled with a number of them while some of you dove into the waters and began to uncover secrets from that moment of the past and convinced them to look away (eventually breaking what held these spirits to your presence here in the sprawl) and battered, jumped and swam your way to the edge of the district, climbing onto the base of the Ashcall Quarter.
Here, looking up, this crumbling mountain of cracked cobblestone and winding stairways around ever-taller academies and institutions slowly crumbling with the passage of age rise before you. At its apex, you can see the mighty university fortress known as the Celsian Athenaeum. It looms like a lone survivor against the shaded spaces and dark that surround it (the distant fiery Sacred Pyre burning from one of its reinforced towers) the one little spark of light and safety and possible promise should you make it.
As you all catch your breath, trying to dry, your bodies soaked, those that fell into the murky, thick waters, eventually try and shake it off. You gather yourselves, prepare for what's ahead of you.

Previous Episode: Ages of Pain