There had been a call for a meeting at the Astral Advent: there was a new development in the situation with the Prism and the individuals surrounding it.

A weapon had been delivered to the company that possessed a shard of the prism within it. Although the weapon, an astromancy star globe, had been mostly destroyed, the prism shard itself remained intact and still possessed the typical aetherially-boosting, addictive power as seen before. How it came to be delivered to the company was anyone’s guess. What’s more, the box, when interacted with in a specific way, pointed to the north with a glowing aetherial glyph.

Everyone agreed that the directions were most-likely a trap, thus the company agreed to divide its forces. While some worked to investigate the box and the star globe itself and others looked to discover where it had come from, N’hara, Louma’li, Suwan, Dylan, Natja, and Autgar decided to head “north” to discover just what the box was pointing to. In an incident prior, Zachary had been given a vision of a church to the north, thus the group agreed to begin their search in Coerthas.

Uniquely sensitive to ambient aether, Suwan detected a hint of the corrupted aether in Camp Dragonhead. Their search, then, lead to an older hyuran man working at the local chirurgeon’s. Autgar, Natja, and Louma’li attempted to speak with the man under the guise of adventurers seeking succor and medical attention while N’hara, Suwan, and Dylan trailed them in secret.

The three followed the group as they headed south from Camp Dragonhead, venturing down Haldrath’s March. During the conversation, Autgar became forthright and revealed that the Astral Advent was investigating the prism. The man became suddenly defensive and began to amass a devastating amount of magic, all aimed at the three.

Not about to let the mage simply decimate their companions, the three in hiding sprung from their hiding place in an attempt to disrupt the “Broil LV” spell the man was casting. N’hara’s One-Ilm Punch and Dylan’s gales did very little to shatter the man’s protective barrier and the power he wielded wouldn’t have been blocked by the shield that Suwan attempted to raise. It seemed only a miracle that the man didn’t actually seem to want to attack them, revealing that he possessed an “Archcrystal” weapon… specifically, an aetherial familiar in the form of a fairy. In the brief, tense stand-off, the man vanished with a teleportation spell.

Frustrations all around, the group decided to teleport back and relay the news of what had happened…

Nikolai had called an emergency meeting with any Agency members who could be there. Among them were Reks, Dylan, Sejad, Suwan, Louma’li, Zachary, Cerina, Zaius, Natja Bafsk, and… Jock, of all people.

The hrothgar had been attacked near the floating city of Nym in Outer La Noscea by an unknown assailant empowered in a manner that could only have been through the use of the white prism that, as far as anyone knew, was still under lock and key in Limsa Lominsa. The intent was to investigate and figure out what was going on and possibly neutralize any threats.

The trip to Outer La Noscea wasn’t very eventful and even the initial search yielded little results… until the group happened upon a strange mage sitting in a floating chair overlooking a cliff. When the group approached to investigate further, the man seemed only interested in the mages of the group, completely disinterested in all others, a fact which confused N’hara, as he was also a mage, just not wearing his vestments for that particular mission.

Without another word, the martial fighters of the group were teleported away, leaving the mages to contend with the enigmatic sorcerer.

N’hara, Zaius, Cerina, Natja, and Jock contended with a whole host of sell-swords, all seemingly empowered by the same prism as they had witnessed before. The struggle lasted for quite a while, the group being peppered and assaulted with intense aetherial attacks leaving them bruised and bloodied, though still standing. The fight lasted for far longer than N’hara would have wanted, but ended all the same when the last of the fighters were struck down. The half-highlander collected the prism that had been empowering the group before leading the charge back to the mages.

The sight they arrived to was one of an intense magical battle, the ground scarred and broken by spells cast beyond the limits of even the Agent’s most skilled. The central enemy, an elezen woman, vanished from the scene as the others approached, no trace left of where she might have gone…

An anger bubbled up in N’hara’s chest. The party had been split, the enemies had delayed them enough that the martial fighters were unable to help defeat the clearly more dangerous magical enemies, and the seeming ring-leader was now nowhere to be found. He wanted to punch a hole in the wall, such was his fury.

Silently, within his pocket, the prism latched onto that anger and let it fester and grow, tainting his thoughts. N’hara was not a man to get outwardly agressive, and the corrupting influence of the prism found quite a lot of unspoken anger to latch onto. It very quickly spilled over once the group had arrived back at the mansion to discuss the events of the mission when the half-highlander lashed out at Reks and Natja. It took the two and Dylan to finally subdue the already quite injured N’hara, relieving him of the prism and breaking its hold on him.

With a heavy punch across his face that broke Reks’s hand, N’hara drifted into unconsciousness…