Monster Mission: What Wears the Shape

Tessaly the Masked, North Ro camp · Theme: Takish-Hiz · You play: a thing made of sand

What Tessaly says

Beneath Takish-Hiz lies the answer to what I am, and to what you become when you wear a shape. Go alone. The shape will not hold two of you. Are you [ready]? If you fell in there, I can send you [back].

Your form

A shape made of the temple's warm sand. This is the finale, and you may want to play the other four missions first (see step 1). - Signature: Battle Stomp - Shape abilities: Sand Blast, Reform, Quicksand - Race abilities: Glass Skin, Grit, Sandstorm

How it plays out

"Beneath Takish-Hiz the sand is warm, and it knows you. You wake in a shape made of it. On the walls, pictures you have never painted."

1. Read the murals. "Four murals line the hall. [Hail] each one." Each mural shows one of your other missions the way you played it, for example "A choir of ghouls, all three singing. A small thief lies still." If you have not played a mission, its mural is blank, such as "An empty cage of ice -- unwritten." "The last mural shows the temple you stand in, and sand pouring through the ceiling. Then the ceiling above you cracks."
2. Climb the sand. "Sand pours into the temple. Climb." Reach each landmark before the sand covers you. If it catches you: "The sand closes over you. Keep moving!" Pell the Quick ambushes you partway up: "Remember me, frog? Or whatever you are now." "Above the sand at last. Oswin Grey is waiting, with his pillars already raised."
3. Break the binding. "I have followed you through five dungeons. Hold still." "Oswin's binding circle spreads from where he stands. Break his four pillars -- and do not stand in the circle." The circle keeps getting bigger ("Oswin's circle widens."). "The last pillar shatters. Oswin staggers back: 'Captain -- it is yours.'"
4. Face Thorne. "Whatever you are, it ends here." Captain Varsa Thorne starts the fight already weakened by every memory that went well for you, and the opening line tells you how many. As the fight goes on she calls her company ("To me! All of you!", then "The last of Thorne's company comes running."). "Varsa Thorne falls to one knee and lowers her sword."
5. The ending. Thorne: "Every dungeon. It was always you." Oswin, the last to leave: "The dungeons wear you when they need defending. I will write that down. No one will believe me." "The sand settles. The shape lets go of you gently, like it will need you again."

If the run fails: "The sand closes over the temple, and the shape you wore goes back into it."