Any Epic Level campaign journals?

[Darthteej]

See thread title. Basically, I've always been leery of just how balanced or unbalanced epic levels turn out in practice, especially because the book is just ripe for it. I'm looking for a detailed campaign journal that hopefully goes beyond anectdotes.

[Glimbur]

I was in an Epic game a few years ago. The DM had never run an Epic game before, and we often surprised him by being more powerful than he expected. The journal does not include the last session, where the DM's girlfriend played Elric of Melnibone (which is where he borrowed the plot from) because I was not at that session. It might take a few posts but it's all typed already so I'll just spoiler it in.

A Brief Summary of the Life and Times of
Llary of Green Forest
Entry the First(backstory)
Well, tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow I head out with a group of other younglings and try to solve the goblin problem. But I should start this record of myself when I started.
The elves tell me I was born to humans. Then, because I was marked, I was abandoned. The elves found me and raised me. Apparently my being marked means I have extra reserves for this thing called Incarnum. So, the elves trained me in how to shape it and use it. I can do things as varied as healing someone else at the cost of my own vitality or spit acid. So I've been teamed up with a ranger, a truenamer, a skillful person, and a cleric of Corelleon. By the way, Corelleon is pretty awesome; seems he likes me well enough even though I'm not an elf. Removing these goblins is important, sure, but more vital is that we recognize that good exists and needs to be spread. It'd be better, in fact, if we could encourage these goblins to stop attacking people and instead to live in peace. But that seems unlikely, so we go prepared for war. Hopefully this won't be my last entry in addition to my first.
Entry one(campaign starts here)
It's not every day that I fall through a planar rift. It is even more rare that I descend upon the scene of an impending battle between what looks to be a group of mostly humans and a group of some humanoids with tentacles on their heads with construct backup. I decided to help the humans out of a sense of kinship.
And so the battle was joined. It seemed the squid heads were powerful in some type of magic I had never heard of. I later found out it was called “psionics”. They did a significant amount of damage to me and the group I had fallen in with, but we in exchange murdered them. Our most deadly member was some fellow with a bow who shouted about knowing their dark secrets, then shot the cephalopod looking buggers full of arrows when they were stunned. I sprayed some acid about and healed what turned out to be the cleric.
So, a quick rundown of the group I am currently in league with.
1) The aforementioned archerist; seems to know lots of divine spells as well. Has wings.
2) Some guy with a shifting weapon. Claims to be a “binder”, which seems to mean he can make pacts with various entities that only sort of exist, for power. I'd better watch this one...
3) A wizard cloaked in shadows all the time. Apparently she is part shadow. Also seems attached to the electrical type of spells.
4) A student of the draconic mysteries. Looks like he used to be about the same race as the archerist, but went through a dragonizing ritual, then studied how to breathe fire. I also overheard him talking about having a use for corpses. I hope he's not a necromancer...
5) Cleric. Wears lots of armour, casts flamestrike. Pretty typical fare, for a cleric.
6) The odd one out of the group, this seems to be a fighting type who dual wields. I've never seen swords like his before, and the soul energy I wrap myself in seems... afraid of them? Must watch him too.
That's everybody. We then pressed further into the dungeon we were exploring. We chatted for a bit with a being that seemed immensely powerful. He killed a vampire the party had been chasing without a second thought. That's a good trick, as usually vampires can only be killed by sunlight, running water, or a stake through the heart. We explored further.
Seemed we had wandered into a puzzle. There was one open door, so we took it. It led to a map of the area and let us open another door. Behind that door was a fairly simple puzzle. There were two cubes floating in the air, and it seemed we needed to make a bridge. Rather than solve the problem with our magical prowess, we rolled the cubes out to form a bridge.
Next there was a labyrinth. We solved it by the simple expedient of always going left when given a choice. We were then instructed to say “the name of god” and did so. Then we got a key made of Fire.
Our search for the key of Wind led us to a room with six places for people to stand. Granted, some were on the walls or ceiling, but that was no obstacle to us. We filled those spots and the seventh party member entered the next chamber which our actions had unlocked. He almost chose the wrong box, but we prevailed and got the key of Wind.
Finally, the key of Ice. We were told that “only those invisible to even themselves may pass”. I closed my eyes and walked forward. The a glowing column of light asked us why we fought. The archerist had a long answer about enlightenment and good and such, and received the last key.
Then we went to the three little doors by the big door. We opened the fire door and were met by two Blade Rager Trolls and some demon. We destroyed them with ease.
Next door: Ice. Fought a really pretty lady and two wolves. Again, not hard. The binder seemed to frighten her so much she up and died.
Finally: Wind. There was a ghostly thing that steals knowledge and two Phantoms which our cleric turned. We cleaned their clocks.
The reward for all this was the ability to enter a large room. It looked like a throne room, except there wasn't anywhere for anyone but the ruler to sit. There was also a large black sword somehow related to the two our fighter/ranger has sitting through the throne. We found a locket on it but decided to leave it there out of respect for the dead. Also the powerful guy we saw earlier walked up to the sword, touched it, and seemed to disappear. I think his time on this world was done. We then found his journal and some stairs down, but here we took a break to go back to town.
Town, by the way, means a bustling interplanar metropolis currently under siege by Mind Flayers. That's what the squid-heads are called. They seem unpleasant.
All in all, it seems like we're trying to save the world, so I can put my misgivings about helping questionable folks behind me for now. I think I'll sleep with one eye open though...

[Glimbur]

Part 2
Entry 2
We went shopping with everything we picked up and various rewards we collected. That's a lot of money we took in. I managed to spend it, but I'm no longer sure what else I can buy that will be helpful.
As we finished shopping a guard stopped us. Apparently the town guard went exploring in those ruins we hadn't finished clearing out yet. They met some sort of horrible monsters with no eyes; just a toothy mouth. Humanoids, but clearly not human. We descended to find them.
Find them we did, as we explored a maze. There were roughly a dozen of them, ten in a line and two further back. The two in the back made more of them, so we hurried to kill them. It took almost a minute for our various members to fly past the wall of bodies and slay the source. I helped a little but then had to defend myself against two of the beasts. When we killed both of the special ones they all exploded. This hurt. Luckily my armor from Corelleon combined with my skills at shaping soulstuff lets me heal everybody as long as time isn't a factor. So, we saved the city... again. We moved on.
Next up was a Hellfire Wyrm. Yes, those things you've heard about in legends that breathe on an army and fry half of it up. Then the remaining archers fire as the footsoldiers leg it, but neither tactic actually helps and a few seconds later the whole army is charred. We, fortunately, are not an army. We are like what happens if you strap a bunch of random blades to a waterwheel and hold people against it. It started the fight by breathing scorching hot fire that's hotter than... say... an oil filled shack made of balsa burning down. It hurt. The cleric patched us up, we spread out, and Sven the crazy man who joined us for this delve flew up to the bugger. He and the drow, who is named Komiyan Zaibach, hit the thing with swords and an axe until it stopped moving. But I'm forgetting the most impressive part of the fight: our archerist teleported on top of the beastie and flooded the room. It was about four times as deep as I am tall, and this was a very large room. Long story short, we killed the thing.
Then we looted the room. Found a fair amount of coin and gems, also a slew of magic items. Many will be sold, some will be used. As soon as we got the loot topside Mr. Powerful gave us some pointers. First, we were wandering around a prison killing inmates, and we had dealt with two of the weakest areas. I'm not sure what kind of prison leaves the prisoner with a huge pile of loot, but maybe it kept him happy and wasn't a threat. Whatever. Second, we really ought to go check out these huge doors. We did so.
Behind the huge doors were stairs down. Down these stairs was a city. It had clearly seen hard times long ago. There were ghosts of the last inhabitants, some of them running and screaming “he's back”. This probably referred to Aroch. I'm beginning to catch on to what's up with these Rubinians.
So, whenever a group of our power and influence visit a city, we always hit up the ruler-ship. In this case, we went to the palace. There we found a throne room and a tower. In the tower was a library, where Mr. Powerful chatted with us about his collection. It also looks like he's the ghost of one of the biggest Rubinians, the brother of the king. The Melbonians were almost completely wiped out by the Rubinians who then made a new multiverse because theirs was dying. But... Aroch was the Last Melbonian, and disguised himself as a Rubinian. He rose to the top, then slaughtered the lot of them.
The Elder Brain this group tangled with before I showed up remembers the last multiverse. There's a smattering of artifacts that somehow made it from that reality to this one, and the group has one. Mr. Powerful told us it's a control unit for a weapon created by an ancient and powerful race who have since died out. This means we need to assemble it and use it. The last thing we got from him is that the two swords Komiyan Zaibach has are part of a set of 147. They're also incredibly evil, but we are saving the cosmos at the moment. I also have no idea how I would get rid of them, so...
Anyway, that's how things are now. Looks like we might take a breather to get some magic books read to increase our already considerable powers.
Entry 3
They wandered off without me. They taught a dragon to be a transport service, kidnapped the daughter of an ancient dragon then returned her, and fixed a celestial whose brain was partially eaten.
But then we reunited and went to a Sandstorm on a desert world. On the way there the monk named Dart who was sent to help us apparently shared a secret with some of the party, but not me. He seemed depressed when I suggested that Good has the best afterlife. He'll come around in time.
Pushing through the Sandstorm wasn't too hard, but the drow really needs some way to fly. We spotted a door and wandered in...
And met an Umbral Blot. It's like the legendary Sphere of Annihilation, but alive. It ate the dragon-type guy and our cleric before we could get away. Then we found them outside. They didn't explain so we didn't ask. Moving back into the labyrinth, we met three writhing piles of worms. They were unpleasant. They cast spells that are outside of the nine standard spheres of power; one of which killed me dead. Luckily the cleric asked his god to bring me back, then healed me. We killed two of them and this monk who was tagging along killed the third with a word. We moved deeper.
Deeper was a room with a Rubinian Power Crystal and about thirty traps. That was difficult, and eventually we just flooded the place and the monk who was helping took the crystal.
On returning to the town, we discovered it had been attacked. Specifically, it was ablaze. We threw lots of water at the problem and darted around healing people. I wish we could have saved more, but we did our best. Then Dart learned the girl he liked had been kidnapped and took off after her. We were teleported to follow.
Turns out the “bandits” were really a city of demons. The drow sneaked in and the cleric warped us all to his location. The wizard called up two or three ginormous Air Elementals and the archer Gated in a Solar. Then we chased Dart to the biggest, most imposing building.
Inside were three Balors, and the remains of two more; as well as Dart and the lady. We sprung into action to rescue those that needed rescuing. A Balor, by the way, explodes in hatred when you kill it. That's fairly dangerous, but with lots of Mass Heal spells we did alright. Then we went back to the fortress we're building in the City.

And then the game ended.

[DoctorGlock]

Can't speak for any currently existing but I plan on starting one as soon as I am back in the states. Provided you don't mind waiting 3 months for a campaign log.