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View Full Version : [Fatescape Campaign Journal] Planar Shenanigans!



potatocubed
2011-05-12, 05:00 AM
So, in my ongoing quest to knock my homebrew game Fatescape (available here (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18386467/fatescape.pdf), plug plug) into shape I started a tabletop group to put it through its paces, using the Planescape setting that the game was originally designed for.

In this thread I will chronicle the terrible things that happen to these brave player characters - and my game system - as they bop around the planes.

Dramatis Personae
I have three player characters, with a fourth joining us in a couple of weeks.
I have four player characters.

Sven is an Ysgardian bariaur - a goat-centaur for the uninitiated, complete with curling ram horns, from a plane that resembles Viking heaven: lots of wild natural scenery, heavy drinking, and fights. He's independent, competitive, and strives to 'fight the good fight' in all things.

Sven is a member of the Sign of One, a faction of solipsists who specialise in imagining things into and out of existence; his imagining talents are backed up by a wild psionic talent that lets him create items out of nowhere.
Aspects: Bariaur; Chaotic Neutral; Sign of One; Wanderer; Competitor
Skills: Great Psionics, Good Survival, Fair Alertness, Fair Athletics, Fair Endurance, Fair Intimidation, Fair Might, Fair Weapons, Average Gambling
Stunts: Discipline Familiarity (Metacreation), Grit, Villainous Survival

Ephram Fizzlewick is a gnome engineer from a prime material plane. He resembles a miniature Einstein, has a house that walks around on brass steam-powered legs, and is a pretty decent shot with his steam-gun.

He has had some experience working with the Fraternity of Order, a faction devoted to uncovering the inner workings of the universe, but didn't hang around long because their bureaucracy frustrated him.
Aspects: Arcane Engineer Flippant; "Where did I put my glasses?"; Moral and Political Apathy; Curiosity Killed the Cat; Tinkering Gnome
Skills: Great Craft, Great Equipment, Good Lore, Fair Arcane Magic, Fair Archery, Fair Investigation, Fair Resources, Average Art
Stunts: Headquarters, Master Craftsman, Magical Crafter

Ares Sen the Stormweaver is an aasimar priest of Apollo, mighty arcanist, and weapon-master. He is deranged, exceptionally dangerous, and hasn't got two social skills to rub together. Perfect adventuring material, really. Favoured attack: rays of fire shot from his eyes.
Aspects: Aasimar; Stormweaver; Survivalist; Terminally Capricious; Prehensile Hair (!)
Skills: Great Arcane Magic, Great Archery, Great Divine Magic, Great Weapons, Average Endurance, Average Nature Magic, Average Resources, Average Survival
Stunts: Exotic Weapon Master, Healing [Divine Magic], School Familiarity (Evocation, Abjuration)

Avramaxis is a blind aasimar wizard, and like Ares he knows his way around a sword for those moments when magic doesn't quite cut it. He bears a heavy and unspecified debt to Titivilus, the messenger of Dispater, who is the lord of Dis, which is the second circle of Baator. Like the other PCs, he is totally devoid of social skills.

Avra is a member of the Fated, a faction who belief that if you're strong enough to take something and hold onto it, it's yours.
Aspects: Aasimar; Fated; Blind; Preternatural Senses; Indebted to Titivilus
Skills: Good Alertness, Great Arcane Magic, Fair Leadership, Great Lore, Great Resolve, Good Weapons
Stunts: Member of Note (Fated); School Familiarity x2 (Conjuration, Divination, Evocation, Transmutation)


***

The first session was mostly occupied by character gen, but we did get a little gaming in...

1.1: Interfering tso and tsos...
We open with a rumour sweeping the streets of the Cage: somebody's learned the dark of the tso's flying ships!

Side note: the tso are a lot like the neogi, but fractionally less evil and a lot more dangerous. They're smugglers, slavers and general chancers, who travel the planes in flying spider-like ships called arachnites.

Well... somebody's learned where the tso - a secretive bunch - are building one of their flying ships.

Or... somebody knows someone who knows where the tso are building one.

Actually... somebody knows where to find someone who knows where the tso are building one. And that place is 'Games of Chance'! Games of Chance being a gambling hall run by a rogue modron who calls itself Perfectly Random.

Our player characters - and a number of other spivs, treasure-hunters, bashers and berks - descend upon Games of Chance to investigate. Ephram is interested in the technology of the flying arachnites. Ares is interested in the weaponry of the flying arachnites. Sven is just kinda curious.

Also, he knows a plot hook when he sees one.

Sven muscles his way to the front of the crowd, then waits for the clockwork automaton doorman to let him in: the place operates a strict one-in-one-out policy when it's at capacity. Ephram is stuck at the back of the crowd, but gets a helping hand from Ares when he arrives - the two know each other from exotic weapon research.

While Ephram and Ares scan the building - and the crowd - for magic, evil, good, natural snares and pure water (Ares has three different kinds of magic, letting him detect a wide range of gubbins) from outside, inside Sven has decided, Sign of One style, that the portal must be in the basement. A variety of other types are crowded round Perfectly Random asking it about the tso, which it stringently denies knowing anything about. Sven asks it where the basement is.

PR: "The employee-only basement is through the employee-only door over there, and down the employee-only stairs to the left."

Naturally, armed with this information, Sven decides to become an employee.

Luckily for him, Perfectly Random could use some help controlling the crowds. It offers him a job then retreats into its office to draw up a suitably precise contract. While the modron is absent, one of the other bashers squares off with Sven - this is a reave, a violent four-armed race who all wear full helms and veils. (Hint: Don't try to look under the veil.) He likes Sven's idea enough to steal it, and challenges the bariaur to back down.

Reave: "Get lost. I'm the best at smacking heads, and this head-smacking job is mine."

After a bit of macho posturing, the reave and Sven agree on a 'head-smacking' contest (first to four). The targets being the handful of other adventurers who were hanging around not gambling. The reave wins handily, thanks to a bit of bad luck on Sven's part and the natural advantages of having an extra set of arms.

Perfectly Random returns and is not happy at the sight of its patrons laid out on the floor. It instructs the reave to leave - which it does so, after a moment of 'maybe I'll just stay and kick some more ass' - and then offers Sven a long scroll of contract detailing a day's work with mandated breaks and fair pay. Sven signs without reading it.

Lucky PR is a straight-up, honest modron, huh?

Sven gets to work, failing to intimidate the crowd into an orderly line.

Meanwhile, inspired by this display of cunning, Ephram also decides to get himself hired. He approaches Perfectly Random with an offer to redesign his clockwork door automaton. Perfectly Random is sceptical, but Ephram busts out an insane result on his Craft check to draw up some blueprints and the modron, impressed, instructs him to return later when the gambling hall is closed.

Time passes. Ares hangs about and Is Not Tempted by a fiend (an osyluth, for those fiend-spotters out there). Ephram retreats to his mobile workshop (which he parked next door) to work on parts for his design, and Sven has to eject a gambler who has run out of credit but won't leave. On one of his breaks, Sven heads for the basement and cannot find the portal he knows is there. He finds beer, wine, spirits and spare automaton parts, but no portal.

Later, the gambling hall closes. Perfectly Random retires to its office to count money and do paperwork, while Ephram heads for the basement to work on the automaton. He also finds the portal with his limited ability to detect magic and rejigs the lock on the hatch to the street so that it can be opened from outside. Then he upgrades the automaton, gets his pay, and leaves.

Outside, the gang all meet up. (Ares and Ephram have met Sven before; and they were talking inside the casino earlier. It was Sven who revealed the location of the basement portal.)

A side note on the basement: Sven failed his Lore roll to declare that that was where the portal was, even tagging his Sign of One aspect for a bonus. However, I took a leaf from Burning Wheel and decided that failing a declaration means that you can be wrong, or you can be right with bad consequences. At least, I think that's a BW thing. I may have mangled it a bit. Plus I didn't really know where the portal was, so the basement was as good a place as any.

So they move around to the cellar hatch, open it, then proceed to stand around outside wondering what to do next while Ares directs his omnivision (TM) at the portal to see if he can work out what the key is and where it goes. (It goes to Acheron, but he doesn't know what the key is.)

Then the portal flares with rust-red light and three tso come through, accompanied by six goblins with spears and battered chainmail. The tso notice the open hatch and send two of the goblin minions to check it out - despite the total absence of Stealth in the party they manage to hide from the goblin's search, thanks in no small part to a metacreated barrel from Sven. The tso, tsatisfied, head out of the basement up the stairs.

The party wonders what to do. Did they see what the tso used to open the portal from the other side? (Yes)

Two of the tso leave through the front door of the casino, four goblins in tow.

The party wonders what to do.

The remaining tso-and-goblins trio return to the basement, the tso looking agitated.

The party attack! In the ambush Sven grabs the tso and wrestles it to the ground, while Ares rakes it with his laser eye beams. Ephram deploys his steam gun and calmly headshots the two goblins. The tso recovers slightly, keeping Sven at bay with snaps of its poison bite and deflecting a hail of magic missiles with magic of its own - then Ephram shoots out one of its eyes and it collapses into a wailing heap.

The party waste no time looting the tso, finding its spell components, the portal key (a rusted link of chain, broken) and another of those long modron contracts, which they don't have time to read because someone is coming down the stairs!

The trio quckly activate the portal and leap through, Ephram taking the time to execute the tso before they go. The portal closes behind them just as Perfectly Random enters the basement, although they don't reckon the modron saw them.

The party are now in Acheron, the distant ring of battle echoing through the still air and the smell of oil and rust in their nostrils.

Well, to be precise, the party are in the void between cubes in Acheron, drifting.

Actually, to be really precise, they're not so much drifting as falling - plummeting, even - towards the surface of the nearest cube. It's just a trick of the plane that makes motion always seem relative to the observer.

End of session! Will the party figure out how to avoid being pancaked against the unyielding iron surface of an Acheronian cube, or will they be forced to rely on the high-priced aid of Liriel the friendly baatezu? What will they do when they find the tso? What's even going on, anyway? Tune in next time!

potatocubed
2011-05-20, 08:34 AM
As we open this week, Ephram's player decided to trade his 'Arcane Engineer' aspect for 'Flippant' as a) he felt that Arcane Engineer overlapped with Tinkering Gnome and b) he was enjoying being flippant and wanted to get some fate points for it.

This isn't part of the game rules (although I may add it) this is just something I do when I'm running a game: for the first few sessions characters can be redesigned freely, so people don't find themselves locked into bad choices.

1.2: Tsocial Networking
The trio drift in the grey void between the floating black cubes of Acheron. They flail about in an attempt to move but don't get very far. Thanks to a succession of terrible Alertness rolls the first they know of their company is when she speaks: a beautiful woman with bat wings flaps lazily next to them at a strange angle. She is armed but seems friendly. A little thought on the behalf of the player characters also reveals the fact that she is an erinyes. (Hint: Don't mistake an erinyes for a succubus.)

The erinyes makes casual small talk for a while; she asks who the characters are and what they're doing in Acheron. She explains that she's here recruiting for the Blood War and, oh, by the way, did you know that you're currently falling at high speed towards the nearest cube?

The announcement is met first with disbelief (a literal attempt at disbelief from Sven, playing to his Signer philosophy), then some experimentation, then an array of measures aimed at preventing a pancake landing. Sven creates himself a sort of parachute using his psychic powers; Ephram repurposes one of his elemental canisters (a sort of combination element-and-steampunk device, core to his style of technology) into a jump pack; and Ares summons a mighty wind to reduce his speed of descent.

The erinyes watches all this, commends the trio on their ingenuity and admits she was hoping to give one of them a lift down and thus extract a favour from them in return. She says she'll see them on the ground and flaps off.

With varying levels of *bump* the trio touch down. On their descent they spotted what looks like a fairground - a riot of light and colour in an otherwise dim and grey plane - and, since it's the only landmark they have, make for it.

At this point Ephram also used his Equipment skill to produce a telescope. The telescope saw a lot of use from here on in.

The fairground is a riotous din of colour and entertainment: drinking, fighting, gambling, other things. Ephram notes that while the place is almost as ethnically diverse as Sigil, most of the women here are tieflings; but before they can get too far the party are challenged by an elephant-headed giant with a halberd and a bad attitude. (A maelephant, fiend-spotters!) After some cursory 'git lost' talk he agrees to show them to "Mistress Liriel", whose carnival this is. Surprise surprise, Liriel is the erinyes from earlier.

The trio explain that they're after the secrets of the tso arachnites. Liriel explains that she's after the tso's slaves. Liriel's been offering the slaves her deal - temporary service in the Blood War, then discharge with all the battlefield loot they can carry - and if they agree she buys them from the tso. Unfortunately the tso have twigged that she's very good at persuasion (and getting unreasonably low prices) and won't tolerate her being on the same cube side as them. She wouldn't ordinarily take no for an answer, but there are 30-odd tso, 120 or so slaves, and some of them are powerful magic-users. Liriel proposes that if the characters bring some tso slaves to hear her pitch, she'll tell them how to approach the tso without being enslaved. She throws in directions to the tso side of the cube for free.

The carnival, incidentally, is where the recruits get to spend their time before being shipped off. Liriel plans to leave when the tso do, as her ready source of recruits will dry up, and in the meantime the debauchery acts as an extra draw. The players did find this out, but not until much later.

The player characters obediently slope off to the tso side of the cube, noticing that motion really does feel relative to the observer - stepping over the edge of a cube doesn't feel like stepping over the edge so much as it feels like the cube rotates under your feet to provide a new place to stand.

Ephram to Sven: "You should like this plane; it makes you the centre of the universe."

Sven: "I prefer glorious battle. This is a plane of mediocre battle."

As they trek across the scarred and battered surface of the cube towards the glowing lights of the tso encampment, Sven notices the howling of wolves and - borrowing Ephram's telescope - wolf-riding goblins trailing them at a distance. Ares decides to attract their attention and releases a massive display of pyrotechnics overhead. Not long afterwards, a small contingent of wolf-riders approach the group. The leader of the group is obvious: his eyes are on fire. ("A gift from the Dread Lord Maglubiyet!")

The party negotiate with the suspicious priest, and discover that his primary goal is to purge the tso off the cube. Unfortunately his goblins are too weak-willed to resist the tso enslaving magics, not to mention that they have several powerful slaves who decimate goblins sent against them. The goblin agrees to a truce between his forces and the characters, since they seem to be working against the tso, although he fully expects to meet them on the field of battle as the tso's new slaves. He leads them to a ridge overlooking the tso encampment so they can get a better look at things.

What they see is a long crack in the surface of the cube which is being mined for iron. Processed iron and steel are being carried from the rift - the forges must also be down there - and used to construct a huge spider-like structure nearby. That must be the new arachnite. Next to the new arachnite is a smaller, older arachnite made of various materials - metal, wood, stone, whatever they had available to patch the hull. Around all of this is the slave camp.

Surveying of the camp and discussing of plans begins. The tso, it is surmised, spend all their time inside the arachnites. Some slaves wear iron collars, and they seem to follow the direction of slaves who wear no collars.

The party decide they need to snatch some slaves to hand over to Liriel. They spot a group who are harvesting Acheron's strange cubic fungi - all the nutrients a body needs, and the flavour of urine-soaked cardboard - and decide to sneak up on them. One of the slaves present, a drow, has no collar, so he becomes the primary target.

This is where we discover that the party has no Stealth. The slaves see them coming and the drow calls them out. They are wary but willing to talk - everyone on this cube seems to be recruiting. When asked why he isn't wearing a collar, the drow insists that he enjoys working for the tso and that they look after their servants. Ares scans him with his magical omnivision and discovers that he's under a potent enchantment effect: one blast of dispelling later and the drow has come to his senses. He explains that his name is Aramil and he was sold to the tso by his matron mother after causing some unspecified trouble. After causing more unspecified trouble the tso used more effective methods of enslavement: their touch carries a powerful will-crushing effect.

Aramil also fills the party in on the internal politics of the tso: there are three families in competition to see who gets to ride away in the shiny new arachnite and who gets stuck in the crummy old one. Whichever family accumulates the most wealth by the time the arachnite is completed gets to move in. The Ditsa family are currently in the lead thanks to their aggressive acquisition of potent slaves: they select only the fittest, the strongest, those with special skills, and those with magical powers. The Morotsa are in the middle, and the Tsilotsa are bringing up third.

At this point Sven goes from being 'here because I'm curious' to 'OMG MUST COMPETE'. He loves a contest.

The party decide to release the goblin slaves to return to their unit and bring the others to Liriel. They hit another group of slaves on the way and their final slaves-for-Liriel tally is Aramil, an orc named Brak, and two unnamed dwarves. Liriel gives her pitch: Brak signs up immediately, the dwarves flat-out refuse, and Aramil signs up for the Blood War after critically failing a 'find the trick in this contract' roll. Liriel spills what dark she knows of the tso.

It occurs to me now that Liriel could have wormed out of the deal because when they were brought before her the slaves were actually ex-slaves, now free of iron collars or magical control. But I wanted to keep things moving.

Liriel explains that the tso will enslave anyone they think they can get away with: if the party want to deal with them they will have to have some sort of pretext - slave-trading is always good - and avoid letting the tso touch them.

At this point the trio realise they're feeling quite tired. They've been up for about 24 hours now. (The absence of a day/night cycle will do that to you.) Liriel agrees to let them sleep in a tent in the carnival, but they are forbidden from partaking in any of the delights: "Those carry a price." Ares feels the tug of temptation but resists the urge to go wandering.

I compelled his Terminally Capricious aspect, but he spent a fate point to resist. Probably wise. =3

Now rested, the trio head back to the tso encampment. This time they wander in like they own the place and get directions to the Tsilotsa, who are living in the old arachnite. The guard is a frost giant - Ephram: "Out the way, snowcone." - who lets them in at the mental command of the Tsilotsa-khan, the leader of the family. They discover first-hand how cramped the smaller arachnite is. Turns out the Ditsa aren't far in the lead, but far enough that the Morotsa threw in their lot with them and now the Tsilotsa - the largest family - are going to be stuck in the smallest arachnite.

Inbetween bouts of embittered ranting about the duplicity of the Ditsa, a deal is worked out. The characters will ensure that the Tsilotsa win the wealth-gathering contest, and in return they will provide instruction on arachnite technology and weaponry. A rider states that no more than three tso may die in the process, or the deal's off. (All the tso here are part of one extended family, after all.) The Tsilotsa-khan offers to shake on the deal, but pre-warned Sven spins a story about how shaking hands is an insult to his people, a suggestion that they cannot be trusted. No touching takes place.

The party decide upon a two-pronged strategy: they will sabotage the forges in an attempt to delay construction of the new arachnite, and try to free (or kill) as many of the Ditsa's slaves as possible in order to reduce their net worth. With this plan in mind, they head for the forges.

The forges are within the rift; they take advantage of the strange inside-cube gravity of Acheron to occupy the walls and floor of a cylindrical pit. Beneath the thick black smoke belching from the forges many dwarf slaves are at work smelting and shaping iron, overseen by a salamander - a creature of elemental fire, humanoid from the waist up and serpentine from the waist down - and two tso of the Ditsa family.

Ephram strides in and in an epic display of total lies convinces the Ditsa that their khan has sent him and his "assistants" to improve the efficiency of the forges. The salamander, whose elemental nature is fuelling the forges, gets angry at this insult but is overridden by his tso masters. Ephram takes advantage of this to insult and denigrate the salamander at every turn.

Meanwhile Sven creates from nowhere an elemental oven that will pump out massive heat for 10 hours before failing completely. Ephram applies chemicals to the molten metal hoppers with the intent that they all fail and douse the pit with molten metal in about the same time frame. Sabotage complete, the trio leave the forges in search of mind-controlled slaves to point Ares' abjuration magic at.

And that's it for this week! Can the party continue to play off five lawful evil factions against each other without getting burned? Will Apollo get a bit narked with Ares for such casual disregard for life? (Hint: Yes) Will Ephram display any kind of morality at all? What will the new player character be? Tune in next time on... Planar Shenanigans!

potatocubed
2011-05-26, 05:21 AM
This week Sven's player was absent so Sven went off to crack heads elsewhere, and we gained a new player and a character to go with him: Avramaxis, the blind aasimar wizard.

Items in italics are added by me - these describe what was going on but remained undetected by the PCs.

1.3: Tso Long, Suckers
Ephram and Ares have about 10 hours before the forges flood with molten metal, so they decide to occupy their time freeing slaves. Not for any altruistic reason, you understand, but to weaken the Ditsa's standing. The first band of slaves they encounter features several goblins and Avramaxis, led by a hefty-looking orc. Ares does his dispelling trick and the orc immediately resumes his war on the goblins - since that's what orcs do on this plane - strangling the nearest one.

Avramaxis uses his chains to club the orc to the floor on the grounds that "he was very annoying". Concerned that the fleeing goblins will draw attention to them, Ephram shoots them in the back with his steam gun. There are some introductions and a bit of discussion about what to do next. They hear a horn sound back at the tso encampment, and Avramaxis informs them that it's the gathering horn, summoning everyone to a central location. A quick scan through the telescope confirms this; the tso are discussing something in the middle of the camp.

"Ditsa-khan," Hassit said, sinuous neck dipping in approximation of a bow, "other revered khans. Low treachery is afoot: our slaves are vanishing, the magic that holds them being unravelled. Liars and sneaks slip through the camp and harrass the forge-guards."

The tso known as Ditsa-khan, its original name discarded in recognition of its leadership role, considered the situation.

"Gather the slaves. Send out hunting parties."

The characters shrug at the tso antics and get back to figuring out what to do next.

While they're talking, Avramaxis hears the scuff of a boot nearby; he responds by blasting the location with lightning. Rewarded by a faint 'argh' he follows it up with a gout of holy fire, which prompts a handful of goblin slaves and a man in black leather to leap from the low cover offered by a nearby cube-collision scar and charge the group. The goblins attack Ares, who casually parries all their attacks with his sword while doing other things, like dispelling the magic enslaving the man in black.

The dispelling doesn't seem to change his behaviour though, as he slices with his twin swords at Avramaxis, who parries as best he can with his chains but still takes a few cuts here and there.

So he blasts the man about the face with a burst of fire.

Enraged, the man flings his swords aside and tries to sink his fangs into Avra's neck. Vampire! Avra manages to block so that the vampire only gets a mouthful of chain. Ares, still untouched by the goblins' assault, walks over and blasts the vampire with positive energy. Avra finishes him off by calling on the holy power of his aasimar blood to burn the vampire, which with a howl of pain adopts gaseous form and slinks off.

Ephram shoots all the goblins.

Suspended above them on bat-like wings, safely invisible, the duergar Erastopol circled and observed. Thoughts flickered back and forth between him and his master, the all-powerful Ditsa-khan: descriptions, capabilities, weaknesses.

Back in the safety of the nearly-completed arachnite, Ditsa-khan bent his magical powers to a summoning. There were no elementals on Acheron, but the lumpen figure of black iron that he called from the depths of the cube was close enough.

Moving away from the dead goblins so that they are not connected, the party make wolf cries - the agreed-upon signal to summon the wolf-riders they met previously. The cleric returns and the party explain that they want the goblins to act as a distraction while they take care of the more potent slaves. The cleric is not interested in being anyone's patsy, and asks them to prove their capabilities by taking out one of the powerful slaves without his help.

Avramaxis proves key to this plan: he uses his divination magic to assess which slaves have hidden magical powers - the tso favour humanoid slaves with powers over obviously monstrous ones - then chooses one and summons him with a reversed teleport spell. Ares dispels the magic on the slave (name of Johan, not that anyone asks) who immediately agrees to help them free the other slaves. Johan also knows abjuration magic, so he can do the same dispelling trick that Ares uses.

The goblin cleric is grudgingly convinced and agrees to a raid upon a predetermined signal. He and his wolf-riders retreat for the time being.

It's at this point that the group starts making use of one of Acheron's planar traits: whenever a spell is cast a spell crystal containing an equal and opposite effect is created, which scoots off to another part of the plane to unleash its payload. Balance in all things, see. Ares casts an assortment of spells while Ephram busies himself catching the crystals - over the next few hours he has stocked up on crystals with create fireballs, crystals which create 'gateways', and crystals which 'intensify magic' (whatever that means; they never tested them). Ares makes loaded arrows, and Ephram adapts his steam gun to fire them. Avra will take no part in this lower-planar phenomenon, preferring to keep his magic pure.

While all this is going on they ask Johan to contribute some reverse magic. Johan claims to only be skilled in abjuration - Ares suspects that he's hiding something, but they don't press the issue.

In addition, Avra detects the sense of palpable doom that accompanies someone making a prediction about an enterprise that they are engaged in. This has the potential to be bad, because predictions on Acheron are always bad and they always come true.

So of course they shrug and keep making spell crystals.

The prediction was made by one of the Ditsa and went something like "The Tsilotsa will suffer casualties, the deal will fail, and the interlopers will never get the secrets they seek." I was all set up to make it come true in a variety of ways, but in the end I didn't need to.

Many hours later, it's go time! Ares does his pyrotechnic signal again and the wolf-riders rush to attack. Avra teleports a number of the exploding crystals above the slave encampment so that they rain down all over, then detonates them. Death and chaos ensue. Right on time, the forges flood with molten metal. More chaos, more death.

Ares, Johan and Avra head for the encampment so they can get to fighting tso and freeing slaves. Ephram hangs back to cover them from a distance with his steam gun, scanning the camp for threats.

He sees one! A goblin with a crossbow is perched up on top of the new arachnite. Ephram shoots at him with an exploding fire shell, and there is a brief sniper duel between the two that ends with Ephram sporting a bolt in his leg and the goblin bouncing down the outside of the arachnite while on fire. Although still alive, the goblin sniper scurries off to lick his wounds and Ephram turns his attention to other things.

Avra does a phenomenal job of freeing slaves, disintegrating their manacles with his magic and then rounding them up to free more slaves in a sort of slave-freeing pyramid scheme. Ares intends to do the same thing but gets distracted when an enlarged, winged, chameleon-skinned, fire-breathing duergar lands on his back and proceeds to kick him around the battlefield.

I don't think the players ever worked out what he was: a duergar psion with the psychometabolism discipline for shapechanging and the psychokinetics discipline for elemental attacks. And a few other tricks that I didn't get to use because he ran out of fate points.

Ares' healing magic keeps him whole, and for a while the duergar and he remain on equal footing. Ephram takes a few shots at the duergar but is quickly distracted when the Ditsa-khan's pseudoelemental rises from the ground next to him and gives him a brutal battering. With the world growing fuzzy around him and strange effects manifesting in his distorted vision - hooray for intracranial bleeding - Ephram activates his steam-powered jump pack and flees the scene to higher ground.

Although something Ephram spots and nobody else notices: Johan's not exactly freeing slaves like he said he would. In fact, what he's doing strongly resembles animating the corpses of the fallen and setting them on the defenceless slaves nearby! Turns out he was lying when he said he was a scholar who had learned a little magic for protection.

=3

In the control room of the almost-completed new arachnite, Ditsa-khan made its decision. Panicked tso looked to it for leadership, for direction.

"Recall all the family that you can and whatever slaves are convenient. Hold the interlopers and walking dead outside. We shall finish the arachnite with brute force and leave this place."

With a mental command he dismissed his pseudo-elemental and began the process of summoning another; he would need its metalworking skill.

In the chaos Avra's small army of freed slaves mounts an assault on the metal arachnite and successfully battle their way inside. Ares is just getting the upper hand in his battle with the duergar, blasting him with a monstrous lightning bolt, when the duergar gets the instruction to retreat back to the arachnite. Ares pursues. Ephram, not in great shape, uses his jump pack to keep up. He doesn't want to be left behind!

While all this was going on, the Ditsa-khan was using his transmutation magic and the metalworking skills of an Acheronian pseudo-elemental to close the final gaps in the arachnite's hull. Why didn't he do it this way before? Laziness.

Avra and his minions burst into the control room of the arachnite! Ditsa-khan utters an excalamation of surprise, and Avra responds by unleashing a fireball in more or less that direction. As the other party members pile into the control room and the fifteen (!) tso present ready their magical defences, Ditsa-khan offers to cut the interlopers a deal. A short parley takes place wherein the characters negotiate a ride to the gate back to Sigil (which hangs in the void between cubes) in exchange for leaving the tso alone. Repairs complete, the tso use their co-operative magic ability to lift the arachnite free of the cube it was on and take off, flying to the space between cubes where the gate lies.

While this is going on, Ares subtly sprinkles explosive and passwall crystals around the control room. Just because.

The arachnite arrives and hangs in space. Ditsa-khan informs the characters they may leave through the forward hatch. Just as they're about to go through the gate that hangs in the void not far off, Avramaxis turns his divination senses on it.

In a last attempt to screw them, the tso have dropped them off at a gate to Baator.

Avra detonates the crystals.

The combined explosions and material-weakening spells have the effect of slicing the control section out of the tso arachnite, splitting the spider-like craft in two and spilling everyone present into the void. Ephram and Ares turn steam gun and lightning bolt on Ditsa-khan, but the lead tso throws up a wall of force which blocks both attacks. At the khan's command of "Banish them!" the tso invoke a co-operative spell, each individual feeding its power to the khan. The characters try to resist but the overwhelming arcane might of 15 tso rips a hole in space and kicks them far across the plane.

In the blink of an eye they have a cube beneath their feet and they're in the middle of a war. Around them orcs and goblins clash in military formations, and the air is filled with the clangor of battle and the screams of the slain.


Where have the characters ended up this time? How will they survive with their various injuries on a cube of pitched battle? Is Ephram Fizzlewick the most evil gnome ever? For the (possible) answers to these questions and more, tune in next time on... Planar Shenanigans!

GM Musings
I had several different ideas for how the characters might get off the cube: this was not one of them. I sort of wanted them back in Sigil by next session, but instead it's going to be a (hopefully) one-session interlude where they get off the plane.

And the prediction came true, sort of. The Tsilotsa lost several members of their family in the whole 'wolf rider attack and also army of the undead' thing, the deal failed, and the characters didn't get any of the secrets they were after. Not what I thought was going to happen, but oh well.

I also completely forgot to give Ares the Disfavour of Apollo which he so richly deserves at this point. Next session!

potatocubed
2011-06-02, 08:59 AM
I remembered to give Ares the Disfavour of Apollo at the start of the session!

1.4: Professional Bridge-Burners
We rejoin our intrepid quartet - Sven was on the arachnite too, and got caught up in the banishing spell - on the surface of a random Acheronian cube. Nearby a force of berserk orcs are crashing into an organised line of goblin defenders. Arrows shoot through the air, people die, there are screams and crashing all around.

After a moment's discussion the group decide that their best bet is to get off the cube they're on and find someone civilised to ask for directions. There is one other cube visible in the sky, and it has lights on its surface that look like organised settlements of significant size. Between magic, psionics and a steam-powered jetpack the group take to the skies and head for the other cube.

There is a brief encounter just before they take off with a scouting party of goblins, but the characters see no reason to stick around and leave the goblins behind.

They land on the other cube, just outside the giant iron walls of the city of Shetring - it's inscribed in several languages by the nearest gate. Having been somewhat less than subtle in their approach, a detachment of goblin soldiers comes to meet them. The goblins are wearing the same uniform and using the same basic equipment as the ones they flew away from on the other cube, but that doesn't raise any eyebrows.

"You're under arrest!" says the goblin leader. There is some back and forth and eventually the goblins lead the players inside the city walls and off to a guardpost - the goblins reckon the characters are coming quietly and the characters think they're being taken to see a general or equivalent. There is a brief standoff when the goblins tell the characters to get into the cells, and an equally brief fight which ends with Sven's hands around the goblin sergeant's neck and Ephram - who is the only PC who speaks goblin - translating that they are mercenaries looking for work.

This is where I finally grasped the suckitude of minions in FATE. Boy, do they suck.

Side note: Shetring is in the realm of Maglubiyet, chief goblin god, which the players knew in- and out-of-character at this point. I thought about having him show up and win at everything, but I decided that a) arbitrarily slaughtering all the PCs was no fun and b) he's probably got better things to do than stamp on every little spot of trouble in his domain.

He did dish out a Disfavour of Maglubiyet to Ephram, though, because the gnome kept taking his name in vain.

The sergeant, ever-careful with his own life, agrees to refer them to a recruiter down the street. The recruiter interviews them - Sven answers only in the planar tongue of Ysgard, which the recruiter doesn't speak, and Avramaxis gives his name as 'Smith' - and decides that they should go to work for a general named Grik who is having some trouble on the Battle Cube.

A little questioning by the characters reveals that the Battle Cube is the one they just left, and that it has a portal off the plane at its centre. There is some facepalming.

I said it was a portal to Sigil, then remembered later on that the portal in the Battle Cube actually goes to Rigus, the gate-town to Acheron. Oops.

Ephram's player to Sven's player: "Well, you imagined all this, so the plot holes must be your fault too."

The characters are given their orders and told to visit a warlock nearby, who will teleport them to the Battle Cube. They briefly discuss roughing up the warlock and making him teleport them somewhere more convenient, but realise that they have no way of forcing him to send them anywhere specific. So they give him the orders and he zaps them to a goblin war camp on the Battle Cube.

The characters are met by more goblins, and after displaying their orders they are escorted into the presence of the goblin general Grik (who was actually a barghest, not that anyone ever found out) and his "pet wizard" Castor (a mercenary; his pay is good enough that he puts up with the disrespect). Grik fills the characters in on the situation: the orc gods are on that cube over there and the goblin gods on that cube over there and the Battle Cube is in the middle. It's strategically important and its got the Rigus gate in it, so the fighting is constant.

He also explains that the Rigus gate only stays in one place for a week before cycling to its next exit according to a complex formula based on fatalities in Rigus the week before. It's open on the Battle Cube right now and the mercenaries have set up a neutral camp on the Acheron side where they hawk their services, but it'll only be there for a few more days.

He gives the quartet their mission: the orcs have discovered a way to land troops on the Battle Cube without the disadvantages of the two existing methods: void-flying landing craft which carry many soldiers but are slow and unsubtle, or teleportation which is quick and quiet and only works for small groups. He directs them to seek out the leader of the orc armies in this region - a priest of Ilneval, orc god of war and strategy - assassinate him, and dismantle whatever method he's got of bringing soldiers in quietly and en masse. He writes the characters their orders and papers that will get them through the front lines, then hands the lot to Ephram.

Mistake. =P

Ephram decides that rather than cross the front lines they should go through the tunnels. He wanders over to the tunnel entrance in the goblin camp and presents his papers, only to be told that he's not cleared for the tunnels.

So he gets out a quill and some ink and - right there in front of the goblin officer - forges the right permissions on the orders. Then he presents them again.

Goblin Officer: "Well, those look pretty convincing. You're under arrest for forging orders and probably spying."

There follows a short debacle where the goblins try to imprison Ephram only to find their cages are filled with solid blocks of metal conjured by Sven's psychic powers. They decide to execute the gnome instead but Avramaxis manages to persuade everyone to see reason; the goblin officer tears off the forged part of the orders and sends them on their way to attack the orcs.

Avramaxis divines a way through the front lines and the party reach the main orc camp without encountering any orcs. They observe from a convenient point nearby, making good use of Ephram's telescope. In the centre of the camp a crude temple has been raised out of the metal of the cube (thanks to the priest's magic, not that anyone found that out). The priest of Ilneval, wearing his distinctive red armour and brandishing a spear, is leading about 100 orcs in a war chant.

Ephram also spies a shadowy figure lurking in the temple doorway, watching the chanting. Everyone then proceeds to ignore him.

Sven, filled with the lust for glorious battle, raises his voice in a counter-chant. The orcs notice, and in a ragged mob charge out of the camp. Sven metacreates himself some wings and flies to meet them. Ephram fires up his jump pack, Ares summons up a storm to carry him through the air, and Avramaxis teleports - all in the opposite direction. Sven meets the orc priest in glorious combat alone.

And gets his ass handed to him. He is last seen vanishing under a dogpile of howling orc berserkers.

Meanwhile, Avramaxis has arrived back at the goblin camp and is confronted by a guard patrol. This is about the point when he remembers that Ephram is carrying the papers.

Luckily Ephram is not far behind. (Neither is Ares, although he lands at a safe distance from the camp and doesn't get involved.) Ephram presents his orders.

Goblin Sergeant: "'Ere, these orders have been tampered with - look, there's a bit torn off! You're under arrest!"

There follows a failed execution attempt, which Avramaxis teleports away from and Ephram escapes using his jump pack. The three of them regroup under Ares' storm, which is hanging around over his head - and Sven wanders up, not a scratch on him.

The 'Villainous Survival' stunt gets its first outing!

After some recriminations and accusations of incompetence, they decide to head for orc territory and go into one of their tunnels since they tend to be less organised than the goblins and, presumably, easier to bypass.

Avramaxis explodes the puny defences outside the tunnel entrance with a fireball. Ares picks up an orc greataxe and, using his Exotic Weapon Master stunt, tells a short story of the first time he ever used one - when he was ambushed in a swamp by a party of orcs, he incinerated the first one with his magic and snatched up his weapon to fight the others.

The party enter the strangely square tunnels under the surface of the Battle Cube. They travel for a full day and then some - the Battle Cube is pretty big - before encountering some orcs with a cart of caged elves. The orcs don't seem interested in starting anything but the elves beg the party for help.

Elf Captive: "Please, help us! Are you not friends of liberty?"
Ephram: "My liberty, sure."

Then Ares challenges Sven to take out more orcs than him. Sven, unable to resist a competition, wades in and takes out one. Ares puts the bonus from his Exotic Weapon Master stunt to good use and puts down three. The orcs fight back, but succeed only in kicking several shades of tar out of Ephram before Avramaxis raises his hands and blasts all the remaining ones with chain lightning. The elves are free! (Although Ephram did shoot one by accident.)

Ephram loots the smoking corpses and discovers that the elves were destined for sacrifice on an altar of Gruumsh. He rounds up the survivors and arms them with the orcs' weapons. Ares tries to raise the dead one but the Disfavour of Apollo makes a difficult task into a nigh-impossible one (he needs to hit a Legendary difficulty). They take the body along anyway.

Some time later, they can see the lights of the mercenary camp - neutral ground, and the portal beyond! The only thing between them and it is an orc barricade built around the walls of the tunnel. (Remember Acheronian gravity in the tunnels is relative to the nearest wall.)

So Ephram blows a hole in it with the last of the explosive crystals. He tries to snipe a few orcs from down the tunnel but they take cover. Sven leads the charge for the hole in the barricade, body-checking orcs out of the way and sprinting to safety. Avramaxis follows, using his bloodline connection to the upper planes to summon a phoenix echo - a ghost of the power of a true phoenix - which blazes with a blinding light. It leads him for the hole in the barricade, and the phoenix echo's shining radiance repels the light-sensitive orcs. Avra and the elves are safe!

You can't normally summon things not native to the plane you're on, but Avra tagged his Aasimar aspect to call on the celestial power in his blood.

Ares is right on Avramaxis' heels, but the glare of the phoenix echo is too much for him and he has to look away - so he runs smack into the barricade. Orcs swarm around him, grabbing for him, but Ephram is covering them with his steam gun and puts them all down. Ares uses the moment of freedom to dive through the gap and escape.

Ephram super-charges his jump pack one last time and goes springing over the barricade. He proceeds to taunt the orcs from the neutral ground of the mercenary encampment.

A short jaunt through the gate to Rigus and a few questions from the Rigus gate guard later, the party are home free! Ares even manages to burn his last few fate points and raise the dead elf at last. They return to Sigil through the nearest portal, to lick their wounds (entirely cosmetic, thanks to Ares' healing) and discover their next challenge...

Sven has bariaur troubles! Ares is on a Mission From God! Avramaxis is on a Mission From Rowan Darkwood! Tune in next time, when Planar Shenanigans goes to Ysgard!

GM Musings
The plane of Acheron is the plane of blind conformity, bigotry and small-mindedness. I set up three tests the PCs could pass to speed their passage through the plane:

The Test of Conformity: All they had to do was follow orders without screwing around, and everything would have worked out for them. FAIL.

The Test of Not-My-Problem: If they left the elves to their fate, they'd have been sped on their way. FAIL. (A moral success, sure, but Acheron is Lawful-with-a-hint-of-Evil.)

The Test of Abuse of Authority: If the party had bothered to get proper orders from Grik (or the orc priest) they would have been confronted at the barricade by soldiers who tried to push them around because they were outsiders - the correct response is to brandish the orders and get all threatening. However, their epic screwing around meant they never even got the authority they would need to abuse their authority. FAIL.

And that's why they had so much trouble travelling through the plane. Watch for similar situations in Ysgard!

potatocubed
2011-06-10, 05:38 AM
We began last night by levelling everybody up. (I'm running a 'level after every arc' system.) Going from level 5 to 6 gave everybody an extra stunt and an extra skill point.
Sven took Wrestler and an extra level of Might, making him more effective in combat.
Ephram bumped his Lore up to Great and took his steam gun as a Special Item.
Avramaxis expanded his repertoire of magic to include Enchantment and Abjuration, and boosted his Alertness - making the blind guy far and away the most alert person in the party.
Ares expanded his repertoire of magic to include Transmutation and Conjuration... and took a point of Psionics. He now has levels in every kind of magic but with limited ability to use any of it. His omnivision - a term we've adopted whenever he casts a 'detect everything' spell using all his magic - is pretty good, though.

And so we began the second story...

2.1: Go Large or Go Home
It's been a few weeks since the party got out of Acheron and went their separate ways. Sven's been wandering, as he does, Ephram's been tinkering, Ares has been studying magic and meditating to develop his psychic powers, and Avramaxis has been reclaiming his office at the Hall of Records - he's been away for a few years - and generally getting himself some decent clothes, a sword, and so on.

Avramaxis also encourages Ares and Ephram to join factions. His screed about the Fated finds fertile soil with the self-centred Ephram, although there is an encounter on the way to the Hall of Records with a Godsman who tries and fails to convince Ephram of the rightness of their philosophy instead. Ephram is introduced to Grimthar, a barbarian warrior from the Prime who is on ledger duty: if you want to join the Fated you have to take the ledger and write your name in it, but no one's going to just give it to you.

Grimthar waves the ledger out of Ephram's reach, so Ephram shoots him (flesh wound only) and he drops the book. Ephram writes his name in, and is now an official member of the Fated.

Avramaxis is approached by his superior in the ranks of the Fated, a man named Vlad. They bicker for a bit - it's clear that these two don't like each other - and it becomes clear that Vlad has recently been badly wounded and is now walking with the aid of a cane. Vlad informs Avramaxis that Duke Darkwood, the head of the faction, has a special request for him.

Avra's player used the declaration abilities of the rules to 'give' Vlad the crippling injury; I hadn't had much in mind for him before but now I know he's a small, angry man with a dodgy leg.

This is also where we established that Fated don't knock. Knocking is a sign of weakness.

Turns out the Duke knows of an auction of rare and potent artefacts taking place soon on Ysgard, and he wants one in particular: a journal of the mad mage Gifad. Avramaxis is to retrieve the journal - "Take it however you can, buy it if you must." - and return it to the Duke. And no one is allowed to read it under any circumstances. (Which is why he wants a blind man to get it.) In exchange the Duke will look favourably upon Avramaxis - a man could go far with the favour of Duke Rowan Darkwood. Avra rounds up Ephram (he could be useful) and sets out immediately.

Meanwhile, Ares is approached by the most incredibly attractive man he has ever seen. Rippling muscles, bronzed skin, perfect teeth, wandering the streets of Sigil in a loincloth and sandals. The dude rolls up to Ares right there in the street, checks he's got the right guy, then takes him around the corner for a private chat: turns out he's a messenger from Apollo, and Apollo wants something done. It's a chance to atone for all that murdering Ares did in Acheron.

One of Apollo's divine arrows has been stolen, and in his godlike wisdom Apollo has discerned that it will be auctioned off at an upcoming artefact sale in Ysgard. (The same one, surprising nobody.) Ares' mission is to get it back however he can and deliver it to the temple of Apollo on Mount Olympus. Ares, not one to turn down a mission from god, hunts down Sven - Ares is going to need a guide and the bariaur's a native of Ysgard - and heads for the nearest portal. Outside the portal, the four bump into each other once again and trade stories. Since they're heading in the same direction, they choose to travel together.

Side Note 1: Apollo isn't just the god of healing and medicine, he's also the god of the absence of healing and medicine - his arrows spread terrible diseases and epidemics where they strike. Even apart from its status as a religious artefact, the stolen arrow is a terrible weapon that shouldn't be in the hands of anyone.

Side Note 2: Ephram's workshop is mobile and the portal to Ysgard was big enough to drive it through, so for the rest of this session he was mostly driving it around like a walking tank.

On the top layer of Ysgard huge earthbergs float in an endless sky, with rolling hills, high mountains, and pine forests on the top and FIRE underneath. It's winter at the moment, so there's about a foot of snow on everything. Sven takes the party on a little tour; he knows of a bariaur tribe in the area - the Coastwalkers - who roam up and down the edge of the earthberg, and he wants to say hello. After taking a look at the edge of the earthberg (a rippling heat haze pours over the edge, as the fire underneath sheds its heat upwards) and doing a bit of tracking, Sven discovers that the bulk of the bariaurs went to the village of Hedringburg (where the auction is) and a smaller group split off. Sven decides to pursue the smaller group to see what's going on.

Avramaxis: "So when are going to reach this village, exactly?"
Sven: "We're scouting. We don't want to walk into this blind. So to speak."

They find the bariaur splinter group, who seem listless and apathetic to the point of total disconnection - highly unusual for a race known for fiery passion. After a bit of conversation it turns out that a giant stole their tribal heart, a physical representation of their drive, and it took all they had for this splinter group to resist her commands after that. The others went to Hedringburg. Sven sets his mind to getting that tribal heart back.

The party follow the trail to Hedringburg. Along the way they discover from woodsmen and other encounters that the village is the centre of some sort of impromptu gathering - some people went there, so some other people went there, and now the log buildings of the village itself are supplemented by tents and bivouacs all around. The party reach the village about lunchtime; people are getting drunk in the streets, brawling, singing, engaging in contests of strength... it's an Ysgardian good time.

They find an old geezer to question: Avramaxis insults the village, the geezer gets punchy, so Avra blasts him with a force bolt. A bit more questioning reveals that the locals know nothing about any auction.

Old Geezer, gesturing at the booze-swilling Viking party going on: "Does this look like the sort of place you'd hold an auction?"

Sven and Ares get involved in an axe-throwing contest - throw an axe, split a log, win the respect of your peers - Sven does okay, but Ares splits the log to everyone's delight. Ephram wedges the axe into his steam gun and blasts the log to splinters. A local gets angry at this, accusing him of cheating; there's a brief argument about 'the strength of a man's arm' versus 'your fancy weakling ways' which the man displays by snatching the gun from Ephram's feeble grip, so Ephram has his workshop stand on the man's leg, crushing it. He then loots the man and burns his clothes, for good measure.

Ares: "I could lend you a loincloth..."
Man: "I don't need your charity! I will walk naked and proud!"
Ephram: "Well, not that proud. A bit cold, is it?"

While all this good-natured violence is going on, Avramaxis overhears some people muttering about outsiders and that they should stay with their own kind at the inn. Within minutes everyone is at the inn, where indeed a collection of strange characters have assembled: a mean-looking dwarf, some dark elves, a strange muttering man, a stereotypical wizard complete with pointy hat, and others. Ares gives them a once-over with his omnivision and notices that of everyone present one woman stands out as really evil. She otherwise looks normal: light armour, bow, sword, just another adventuress. He immediately assumes she has the arrow he is looking for.

Avra talks to the innkeeper and decides to try a shot of The Other Stuff, brewed in a bathtub by a man called Olaf. A few minutes later he regains consciousness and manages to weasel out of the innkeeper the details of the auction: it's being run by giants, who are keeping a low profile because Ysgardians and giants don't get on. Everyone's waiting in the inn until the giants come to fetch them, but there's a signal you can use to get their attention if you have something you want to sell. Avramaxis' plan: get Ephram to knock together an item to sell, get the giants' attention, then follow them to where they're keeping the stuff.

Meanwhile Ephram and the dark dwarf chat about engineering; turns out the dwarf is into electricity.

While Avramaxis, Sven and Ephram put the 'find the giants' plan into action, Ares uses his newfound conjuration ability to call up an Ysgardian squirrel and compel it to find the arrow he is looking for. (He can talk to animals because of his Nature Magic skill.) It scurries off.

The signal works. One moment Avramaxis is alone in his room, the next he is suddenly aware of the presence of a giant in there with him. She is extremely stealthy. They talk a bit - her name is Freki - and she agrees to show the group the security they have for the auction. It's only fair since the giants are hoarding everything they plan to sell.

Freki: "I can't fault your reasoning."
Avramaxis: "Of course not. It's faultless."

Meanwhile Ares is talking to the evil adventuress downstairs in the inn taproom. He FAILS ENTIRELY at being nonchalant and subtle, instead coming off as an opportunistic criminal. If this bothers the women she doesn't show it. Turns out she knows Ares was on Acheron a few weeks back - so was she.

Then everyone traipses outside to Ephram's laboratory where he produces a mechanical automaton thing that certainly looks like a fabled artefact. The giantess - now people with eyes can see her, she is revealed as a frost giant about eighteen feet tall, with a sword and leather armour - asks what it is and where it came from. Avramaxis spins a story about it being a thing from Mechanus that may or may not be the Heart of Primus. Freki doesn't wholly believe the story, but it's plausible enough to make it a saleable item. She leads them to the auction site.

They note at this point that frost giants are unusual on Ysgard: the giants who live on the second layer, Muspelheim, are fire giants, although Loki counts a significant number of frost giants among his followers.

Turns out the missing bariaur are here also: they're slaving away, even in the middle of the night, building a giant-scaled auction hall. The actual items are being kept in a smaller (but still giant-scale) building nearby. Another frost giantess is inside - Saeyun, although her name never came up - and she seems to be in charge of receiving and cataloguing the items, which she stores in a giant-scale metal safe, complete with combination lock. While she's stashing the 'Heart of Primus' Sven catches a glimpse of the bariaur's tribal heart in there too, along with an assortment of other things. Everyone tries (and fails) to catch a look at the combination as she enters it, but it's Avramaxis who hears the tumblers fall into place with his Preternatural Senses.

At this point Saeyun mentioned her sisters - plural - were part of the plan but nobody seemed to pick up on that.

The group return to the inn, where they concoct a plan to steal all the artefacts: Sven and Ares will distract the giants, Avramaxis and Ephram will get into the hut and then the safe.

Meanwhile, Ares (downstairs in the taproom again) is approached by the muttering man, who starts telling him to go away, that he's a lackey of the cursed gods, that he's not wanted here. Ares attempts to use his healing magic to cure the man's insanity but the man counterspells it and rants about how he doesn't want Ares' foul magic upon him. Ephram is having a nice chat with the evil adventuress about what they've brought to the auction. His lies do not wash with her.

The party was really feeling the lack of any levels of the Deceit skill here. =P

Later that night, the plan is enacted. Sven approaches the giants' hut, Ephram half-buries himself in the snow nearby, and the others hang back at the treeline ready to jump in. The bariaur workforce are mostly asleep by now, slumped wherever they fell.

Note how the plan has already started coming apart. Wasn't Ares supposed to be part of the distraction?

Sven bangs on the door and Freki opens it. Sven persuades her to step outside for a quiet chat. She disparages his 'ridiculous Ysgardian machismo', fully expecting a fight. He explains to her that the 'Heart of Primus' is a fake and, while she's digesting that, knocks the massive giantess to the ground with a clever wrestling move. She reacts but Sven dances out of reach; turns out he's pretty good at this. Drawn by the noise, Saeyun comes to the door - she reacts much like her sister, rolling her eyes, but doesn't seem too fussed. She's confident that Freki can handle one bariaur.

Ephram slinks with gnome-like stealth to the giant hut and steam-jumps up to the top of the giants' cabin. He produces a Fizzlewick-model Silent Saw and begins to cut through the logs of the roof.

The difficulty on the 'silent saw' roll was ridiculous, but he made it anyway.

The fight continues. Freki can't seem to lay a hand on Sven, but he manages to send her sprawling on the floor a second time. Saeyun, a little concerned, steps outside - Ephram drops in through his hole in the roof and closes the door behind her, jamming the lock with his tools. Avramaxis, seeing his chance, teleports into the hut. Ares, remembering he's supposed to be part of the distraction, tags his Stormweaver aspect and summons a blizzard: snow pours out of the sky in sudden sheets.

Freki takes advantage of this and vanishes into the snow and darkness. The next thing Sven knows, she's slicing at him with her sword. Turns out that this sort of hit-and-run ambushing is her specialty.

Inside the hut Avramaxis sets the correct combination and opens the safe. He shoves his hands in looking for goodies... and finds a handful of dead squirrel.

=3

Avramaxis snatches up - in approximate order - a book, two scrolls, and the bariaur's tribal heart. Ephram grabs the rest: an arrow, a hefty metal canister that hums with stored power, and six slightly-larger-than-human teeth with little runes carved on them. Outside Sven and Freki continue to fight, the blizzard proving a significant advantage for Freki the frost giant ninja.

Avramaxis feels the wooden sphere of the tribal heart pulse like a beat in his hand. He pours his enchantment magic into it, delivering a single command into the hearts of every bariaur of the Coastwalker tribe:

KILL THE GIANTS

As one the bariaurs around the worksite rise up, filled to overflowing with rage. They descend upon Freki and Saeyun from all angles. Freki takes two steps back and vanishes in a swirl of snow. Saeyun, lacking such skills, is overrun by the bariaurs and beaten into a bloody corpse; even her natural advantages in size and strength don't let her take on an entire tribe of berserk bariaur at once.

All that remains is the division of the loot. Sven snatches the tribal heart from Avramaxis' hand while the sorcerer is in mid-maniacal-laugh and returns it to the Coastwalkers. Ephram agrees to let Ares have the arrow if Ares a) carries the humming canister - which is a storage trap for a powerful lightning quasielemental - back to his workshop and b) buys him breakfast.

Ares takes the arrow, and the moment he touches it he realises that this is not the arrow of Apollo. It's heavily enchanted to resemble one, but it's a fake.

End session! Where's the real arrow of Apollo? What will the other auction attendees make of having their items stolen? What's the deal with the muttering man and the evil adventuress and, for that matter, the frost giant sisters? Find out next time (maybe) on... Planar Shenanigans!

potatocubed
2011-06-24, 05:49 AM
No game last week due to too many missing players. But this week we're back!

2.2: Big Deals
We left our heroes protagonists in a thorough blizzard, at night, with the dead body of a giant, an armful of ill-gotten loot and a fake divine arrow. Ares searches Saeyun's body and finds a giant-size dagger (which he wields as a sword) and a giant-size holy symbol of Loki. After some discussion Ephram takes the holy symbol, which he wears as an oversize medallion.

Ares uses his divine magic to divine the location of the divine arrow - he gets an image of the arrow still on Ysgard, in the possession of a frost giant. While everyone else decides that clearly the escaped giant (Freki) has it, Ares reckons that it's inside the dead one (!) and proceeds to dissect her in a messy and ham-fisted fashion. Once satisfied that there's nothing inorganic inside our giantess, the characters remember that on Ysgard those who die in battle resurrect the next morning - so they shovel what's left of Saeyun into the safe and lock it closed. Then they spend the night in the giants' hut.

Dawn arrives, and with it a muffled thumping from inside the safe. After a short discussion about what to do, the characters decide to track Freki - Sven having found her tracks the night before - and leave Saeyun in the safe (where she will suffocate, not that they care).

The party follow Freki's tracks to a fissure in the rock of the plane; going through the crack leads them to Muspelheim, the second layer of Ysgard: the terrain is mountainous and volcanic, the sky above is black clouds lit by blowing sparks, and everything is on fire. Maybe a mile away they can see a gargantuan fortress guarded by fire giants, which is one of the few parts of the plane which is not on fire. Ares whips up a floating cloud which carries them in that direction.

En route they discuss what they're going to do. They settle on a peaceful approach, and Sven uses his psionic powers to generate an ornamental sword and shield of phenomenal quality. A quick tag of his Sign of One aspect allows him to fix them into reality as permanent items, et voila: a gift fit for a fire giant king.

Presenting the gift gets them entrance to the castle and an audience with the king - a fat and lazy fire giant by the name of Lord Havindr - who is bedecked in thoroughly tasteless and ostentatious bling. They also meet the king's vizier, who is the only giant present not wearing armour. They suspected that Freki had to have some sort of edge to even survive on this plane, and by chatting with the king they learn that "the frost giant wench" had a special deal with the fire giants for safe passage.

They never did find out what the nature of that deal was - because between poor Alertness scores, being easily distracted and being blind they all failed to see the (regular-size) frost brand sword Havindr was using to keep his wine chilled.

And yes, I stole the name from the town in Magicka. I suck at names, I admit it.

The king loves his gift, and likens it to the finest works of the Niflheim dwarves - whereupon Ephram pipes up that he made it (lies) and proceeds to bad-mouth the dwarves. Havindr loves a contest (also gambling) and proposes, egged on by Sven (who also loves contests and gambling), that Ephram and a Niflheim dwarf should have a crafting contest. If Ephram wins he will be rewarded and Havindr will tell them where Freki went. If he loses he will be forced to serve the fire giants, turning out crafts and trinkets, for five years.

Ephram's Player: What does my Lore skill tell me about the Niflheim dwarves? *roll roll*
Me: They're noted across the multiverse for their skill and artistry in the creation of all sorts of items.
Ephram's Player: ****

Talks are suspended while Havindr's soldiers go looking for a Niflehim dwarf. Ephram puts the time to good use studying the lightning jar he swiped from the auction safe, aiming to reverse-engineer the technology. Avramaxis summons an efreet through a sympathetic connection to the plane of fire, and has it read the book and scrolls (also spoils of the auction) to him so he knows what they are - the book is the rantings of Gifad the Barmy, who mostly hates the Lady of Pain and thinks he's found a weakness in her he can exploit; he's also long-dead, so he probably thought wrong. One of the scrolls is a list of some stable portals between the upper and lower planes, and the other is a baatezu contract with an empty space for a signature. The contract is basically 'sign here to gain a service from a devil'.

A soldier comes to collect everyone: a dwarf has been found! The contest will take place in the throne room, under the eyes of Havindr and his vizier. Turns out the dwarf in question is Zardos, the one from the auction who was the original owner of the lightning jar that Ephram stole.

Turns out that Zardos is also the name of a movie featuring Sean Connery in red pants and thigh-high boots. There was a brief pause while a screencap from this film was found on someone's phone and we all boggled.

With Zardos is the muttering man who hates Ares (his name is Browen) and the evil adventuress (who never had a name, so I shall give her one now - Ariadne). The trio have followed the PCs here from the top layer of Ysgard (helpfully also called Ysgard). Zardos is quite happy to rant about how Ephram stole his contribution, while Ephram denies everything.

If you've been paying attention, you'll know that there's no way Zardos could know about the theft.

There's a whole load of stuff going on behind the scenes here, which I'm keeping secret for a payoff later on. The important parts are that the trio found and freed Saeyun from the safe, and that Ariadne knows a hell of a lot more than she's letting on. Once she and Saeyun compared stories, they could make a pretty good guess at the truth.

The fire giants have laid on tools and raw materials. Havindr declares that whichever contestant builds him the greatest weapon will win. The contest is on! Ephram tags his Flippant aspect to needle Zardos with verbal barbs throughout - Zardos attempts underhanded techniques of his own using his illusion magic but Ares casually dispels it.

Ariadne sidles over to talk to Ares and Avramaxis while all this is going on. She opens with some small talk, and Ares basically tells her everything about everything.

Avramaxis: "Now that you have cunningly evaded Ares' mental defences, how about we talk business?"

Turns out Ariadne wants the baatezu contract, and she's just as happy to buy it from Avramaxis as she was to buy it at the auction. They negotiate, and Avramaxis retains Ariadne to kill Vlad - his immediate superior in the Fated. If she does, the contract is hers. Ariadne exchanges a few words with the vizier, then slips out of the throne room.

She was just saying a polite goodbye, but I let the players wonder. =3

After failing at conversation, Ares gets bored of the contest. He conjures some hallucinogens and gets mind-bendingly high. Following the butterflies, he wanders out of the throne room - Sven thinks about stopping him, but decides not to bother.

I compelled Chaotic Neutral to have him leave Ares to his own devices.

A few moments later, Browen also slips out of the throne room. Sven watches him go and tells Avramaxis. Neither of them really cares.

Browen, of course, jumps Ares in the corridor. Browen - a priest, not that you'd know it - has pumped himself up with magic and attacks Ares in a berserk rage. He starts by dishes out a significant beating with his wooden club (including a Concussion moderate consequence, which haunts Ares for the rest of the adventure) but once Ares gets his wits about him his superior weapon skill and healing magic keep Browen at bay. After about a minute of fruitless battering where neither can gain an edge, Browen throws up his hands and walks away.

Well, he throws up his hands. Then Ares stabs him while he's not defending himself.

Tying up the seriously wounded Browen, Ares drags him back to the throne room where the contest is entering the final stages. There is some idle curiosity over why Browen hates Ares so much, but no one's really that bothered.

The contest ends! Ephram has created an ornate pistol, lovingly crafted and inlaid with gold, which uses a combination of regular shot and elemental magic to fire molten iron. Zardos has made what looks like an intricate sculpture. Havindr declares Ephram the winner! In a fit of rage, Zardos reveals that what he's actually built is a gnome-slaying device: the sculpture separates into a swarm of intricate steel insects that crackle with electricity, and they descend on Ephram!

This takes everyone by surprise - except Avramaxis. He uses his magic to summon a giant fiery hand that swats the insects out of the air. Zardos is picked up and carried off by a fire giant soldier, swearing eternal vengeance on Ephram. Ephram claims his reward: he wants Havindr to spread his 'better than Niflheim dwarves' reputation, and he wants the vizier to whisper something in his ear like he's been whispering to Havindr the whole time.

Ephram: I've never had a vizier whisper in my ear, and I'd like to take this opportunity.

The vizier, a 16-foot tall giant who finds the whole process of kneeling down to whisper in the ear of a 3-foot tall gnome demeaning, activates his divination magic and whispers in Ephram's ear: "You will be destroyed by that which you create."

That prediction now becomes an aspect which hangs over the rest of the game which I can compel to have something Ephram created attempt to destroy him. The moral of this story: Don't screw with evil magic giants. =3

After a little more wrangling, the party set off in pursuit of Freki. Turns out she left Muspelheim much the same way she arrived - through a fissure that leads to the top layer of Ysgard - but this is a different fissure that leads to a different location. The party enters the fissure and comes out back on the familiar snowy mountainsides of Ysgard. This time there is a brilliant rainbow in the sky. Sven finds giant tracks - two sets, one recent and one older - and follows them.

There is an uneventful blizzard. At some point Ares finally manages to cure Browen's insanity. He still hates Ares, but now he's cold about it. He's cold about everything, in fact, since Ares has been happily dragging him through the snow without a thought for his well-being.

The tracks lead to the edge of the earthberg the party is now on. Ephram scans the edge through the telescopic sight on his steam-gun and spots a frost giant armed with a bow. She is looking over the edge, but he can't see what she's looking at. Sven and Ares decide to head down to where the giant is while Avramaxis and Ephram hang back with Browen.

Sven disregards stealth and advances on the frost giant archer (the third sister, whose name is Lise). Ares slinks along behind, trying to stay hidden in the thick pine forest that reaches almost to the edge of the 'berg. As Sven breaks through the tree line to attack Lise, he notices that over the edge he can see another earthberg far below - one end of the rainbow is anchored there, making it Heimdall's realm. The frost giants, he works out, plan to use Apollo's arrow to savage Heimdall's realm with a terrible disease!

What he didn't get was that it would ravage the petitioners: death by disease doesn't count as death in glorious battle, so the petitioners would be exterminated. Since the arrow is an extension of Apollo, Heimdall can't just 'wish away' the disease, and there are no powers of healing in the Norse pantheon great enough to oppose Apollo's might. Heimdall's realm would be rapidly and effectively depopulated.

I was pretty proud of this scheme, too. My genius remains unappreciated. Sigh.

Sven strikes Lise, sending the divine arrow spinning into the snow. He dodges her return shot and snatches up the arrow, securing it in his pack.

Meanwhile Ares is caught completely by surprise by Freki, who drops on him from above. She slices him up a bit with her sword, then kicks him into a tree. Ares fights back by shooting fire from his eyes, which is extra-effective against fire-vulnerable frost giants.

Lise is joined in combat by Zathras, her winter wolf animal companion. He leaps at Sven but Sven is alert enough to dodge and is only slightly scraped. Sven, deciding to end things quickly, charges Lise and with a wrestling throw helps her over the edge of the earthberg. It's a long way down to Heimdall's realm; she'll liquefy on impact.

Freki continues to school Ares. He thinks for a moment her attack missed... until the tree behind him, neatly severed, falls on him and breaks his leg.

With the arrow safely secured in his pack, Sven sprints in the direction of Ares. Falling trees and laser vision make the fight pretty easy to locate. Freki lines up her coup de grace but Ares parries it with the last of his strength - and then Sven snatches him up and sprints away. A last attempt at laser vision is blocked by a tree, and then Sven and Ares are home free.

While the fight was going on, Avramaxis and Ephram have discovered that Browen is a priest of the titans - the massively powerful beings that the Greek pantheon overthrew and imprisoned on Carceri - and that's why he hates Ares. It's a 'my god hates your god' thing. They discuss what to do with Browen but while they're talking Ephram shoots him in the head, thus solving that problem.

Arrow secured, it's back to Sigil! Ares takes the arrow to the temple of Apollo, where he returns it and regains the favour of his god. Ariadne meets with Avramaxis - long story short she gets the contract, Vlad dies, and Avramaxis leverages his return of the book into a promotion. Ephram steps up into Avra's old office. Sven... wanders, as is his wont.

End of adventure! Will Ephram be able to just get away with promoting himself like that? (Hint: No) Will that prediction come back to haunt him? (Hint: Yes) What new duties will Rowan Darkwood have for his newest rising star? Find out next time on... Planar Shenanigans!