Horror Campaign (prev. Army of Commoners)

[Anxe]

I would make one of them release a cream pie and the other drop a 5 ton weight on the closest halfling.

[SilverClawShift]

I have a couple of questions, does your group listen to any music to help set the scenes, and if so could you list some of the songs?

The DM is pretty much in charge of audio. A lot of the time, we're not listening to anything in particular, but he'll play stuff quietly when warranted. Actually, he has a habit of playing classical music really faintly, or anything with the proper mood he's trying to set up, but it's more often quiet.

He DOES have a habit of preparing sound clips and keeping them ready to play every now and then. Screams, growls, noises. Sound clips from movies or songs that might be appropriate.

But then, we have a pretty big area and a good set up for stuff like that. He has three "map" boards which are layered plexiglass, that we can put sheets of paper under. We use dry erase markers to keep track of stuff, make notes about areas, ect. Sometimes he'll put up artwork or miscellaneous stuff to help tie everything together (like an old timey image of a compass on an area where there's nothing else, or just symbols and things like that.)
But in addition, we all have laptops. Cheap ones, mostly, but the DM has a kickin' one, and he uses it for everything from notes about the campaign, to the sound bits, to stuff he typed up about classes or monsters so we have rules and info at the ready without digging through books all the time. I know, for instance, that he has crib-notes about dozens of monsters in little text files, so he can pull up whatever he needs us to be fighting. He also keeps 'flavorful' notes about it all, along with sadistic ideas he has in store for us :smalleek: :smallbiggrin:
We also use the laptops to give information that needs to be kept secret. When the DM is passing notes or we're disscussing plans in quiet, we type it out to each other in IM while still carrying on the main game. Keeps things flowing smoothly, and lets use actually pass good 'notes' without spending the time scribbling back and forth on paper.


Also, I'm curious about the monster ratio in this world, lots of aberations and undead to be sure, but are there any monstrous humanoids, and if so how are they handled effectively in a horror setting?

We've been through a lot actually, stuff happened before the kython attack after all. Actually, the Archivist, paladin, and deceased clerics church has been a driving force for big parts of the game. We weren't railroaded into anything, (and we're not overtly religious in real life), but when half the party shares an explicit allegiance of faith, you not only have an instant reason to be learning about things that are 'wrong' in the world around you, but you have a driving reason to seek out why these things are going on.
I'm rambling, what I mean to be explaining is that the church wasn't assigning us 'missions' or anything like that. But we WERE getting information about stuff that the churhc was concerned with, and when the religious trio took it upon themselves to set out to find more, the rest of us accompanied them.

The religious grounds also gives you a lot of instant creepy gothic flavor when you're in a horror setting. :smalleek:

Anyway. We've had problems with undead from the start, but we (and by 'we', i mean everyone) were under the immpression that it was a series of localized phenomena, not some problem with reality fracturing itself. Dead bodies would raise, but they'd be put back down and things were mostly under control.
While we were on the island, the undead apparently reached critical mass. With the undead creating new corpses, well, you get the multiplication effect. What was just a half dozen corpses, in the wrong situation, turns into 12, and then 24, and then 48, and then 96, and before you know it all hell breaks loose. We're hopign we'll find citys that are still keeping things somewhat sane, but no matter where we go, the threat of 'critical mass' being reached remains.

Erk. I keep trying to bleed this into answering your question, and going in the wrong direction. There's a reason I'm NOT the DM :smalltongue:

But yes, we've had trouble with other monsters.
Noteables:
We had trouble with a doppleganger infiltrating the church. He turned out to not be Evil with a capital E, but was trying to find out more about the undead thing going on (because apparently it's affecting the dopplegangers too. We didn't kill him, in the end, but we made the situation too hairy for him to stick around any longer.
He left us a note telling us where we could find the missing people (who he kidnapped to use their forms freely). Yeah, he buried them alive with a weeks worth of water and air tubes. They were all pretty psychologically messed up, but they recovered. Mostly.
So yeah, the doppleganger was insane, and a badguy, but not Big E evil, because he could have just slit their throats and left them in the woods, but didn't want anyone to die for his little fact-finding mission.

We ran into Gargoyles in an abandoned temple grounds. The DM successfully blindsided us with them too, mainly because we haven't fought gargoyles in... actually I don't remember ever fighting gargoyles!
So when the DM described the creepy statueary all over, we figured we were dealing with a screwed up cult with a penchant for stone work. Then the statues started moving when we weren't looking. When we came out of the church basement and back into the main hall, and saw stone monsters sitting motionless all over (doorways, windows, and sprinkled throughout the church pews), we realized too late that the trap we were walking into had allready been sprung.

We've also dealt with some 'mobile' plant matter in a stone maze, and a minotaur. And then an undead minotaur.

Surprisingly? Solid lack of human enemies. Our DMs favorite is human (and humanoid) villains, but I guess he figured he had plenty of ammo for us in this campaign.


I have to ask, would it be possible to apprentence under your DM?

lol :smallbiggrin:

I dunno if he's accepting apprenticships at the moment, but I'll see if he has anything to say about it. I can also tell you a lot about what we do, including what he does to prep (the main thing is, anything will reflect the amount of effort you put into it. Sometimes you can put in a lot of effort and see little return, but you almost never see big return with little effort).


I gotta say, among his many gifts, I think the greatest talent your DM has is a good sense about when to just put down the rulebook and go with a cool idea.

Absolutely. Our DM will shut any rules lawyering down point blank. It's okay to point out when a rule mistake has been made, and our DM does try to play by the rules (it just makes sense, the system is there for a reason after all), but he's also happy to say "Nah, we're gonna do this instead"
For instance, sometimes there's just no dice rolling. When rolling the dice is a formality, straight up, he'll say 'forget it' and let things keep flowing smoothly. An example from another game, I attacked a first level commoner. I was a 5th or 6th level shifter/binder (who was also on fire). The DMs response? "Don't bother rolling, you tore his face off".

(I think the DMG even has a few lines about that. Something like "Don't make your players roll jump checks to hop over 3 foot high fences, or roll knowledge checks to buttons their shirts" or something along those lines).

The game is what counts, really. The rules exist to create the game, not the other way around, and when the rules are standing in our way, the hand gets waved :smallsmile:.

*********************

Anyway, we're gonna be playing a lot tonight, but I'm gonna try to get the posts up to date with the story before we get together.

I'm glad you're all enjoying this, in any event. :smallsmile:

[Eldritch_Ent]

Spiderdin, spiderdin, does whatever a spider c'n, Spins a web- to catch flies, Detects Evil with eight eyes- look out, here comes the Spiderdin...


You campaign fills me with much joy. Which state do you guys play in? I'll move there and hunt you down so I can play with you all.

[Shas aia Toriia]

Still amazing campaign. :smallsmile:

I also notice you got an undead-fied version of your avatar. Related at all to this campaign? :smallconfused:

[SilverClawShift]

Which state do you guys play in? I'll move there and hunt you down so I can play with you all.

Missouri, but I'm honestly not sure if we could support another player. Our 6th player (the dragon shaman) joined because he was friends with another player. My DM kicks ass, but 7 players?


I also notice you got an undead-fied version of your avatar. Related at all to this campaign? :smallconfused:

Nope, just re-colored it for halloween. :smallsmile:

[Eldritch_Ent]

Aww darn. Well if I'm ever in Missouri and you need a player, I'd love to attend!

Now for an odd question- when that Vestige the Kython summoned vanished, did you remember him tossing something to the Kython, and more importantly, what that item was? I just cracked open my old "Tome of Magic" to read up on Binders, and I'm wondering if your DM payed attention to that particlar quirk of that particular vestige...

[Doresain]

argh! i wanna join the campaign too! i havent played a serious game in a few months now...it always degenerates into movie/video game/anime/whatever else we can think of references...

[Ninja Chocobo]

After reading this, I have come to the conclusion that my campaign sucks, and I must make it better.

Thank you, both for this insight and your wonderful storytelling.

[TheSteelRat]

Seriously, if this guy has the campaign notes, can he arrange something on E-Bay to sell them to GM's only? This is the type of "adventure pack" I'd be willing to pay money for.

Keep it comin'!

[SilverClawShift]

Well if I'm ever in Missouri and you need a player, I'd love to attend!

Absolutely.


Now for an odd question- when that Vestige the Kython summoned vanished, did you remember him tossing something to the Kython, and more importantly, what that item was?

No, he didn't, and I know what you're talking about (I actually play binders, or dip into them, quite often). That's pretty easily explained by the fact that the vestiges are done with whatever charade they were acting out to get to this point, I think. When he opens up his spiel with "Sorry, no pacts anymore", it's a new dance you're taking part in.


argh! i wanna join the campaign too! i havent played a serious game in a few months now...it always degenerates into movie/video game/anime/whatever else we can think of references...

In all fairness, you can use other movies/games as base starting points fairly easily. We do it often enough, no one can have 100% fresh ideas 100% of the time.
Our DM either masks it well, or he uses those bases as a springboard in a new direction. Our he'll cherrypick different concepts and see what kind of story comes up from it (lich? bard? Bard lich? Phantom of the opera? Lichbard of the Opera!")

The main thing is a touch of planning and creativity in whatever you're doing.


After reading this, I have come to the conclusion that my campaign sucks, and I must make it better.

Thank you, both for this insight and your wonderful storytelling.

I don't know your campaign, so I can't comment, but be more optimistic :smalltongue:

In any event, you're more than welcome.


Seriously, if this guy has the campaign notes, can he arrange something on E-Bay to sell them to GM's only? This is the type of "adventure pack" I'd be willing to pay money for.

He's joke about making modules/game packs before. He's also discussed it seriously before, as a group endeavor (with us as the testers). We're working on some actual 'polished' content, but most of our stuff (and his notes) are very chaotic. It comes with the terrtiroy of keeping track of that much, I suppose.

We're working on a campaign world (featured in my sig), and part of that is going to be modules/campaigns (both generic ones applicable to any world, and ones that are campaign specific) but a lot of work goes into it. And we don't have time lately, since we're gaming every time we get together.

I'll tell him someone thinks so highly of his work though, I'm sure he'll be flattered.

[Shas aia Toriia]

He should be more then flattered. He sounds awewsome!

Also, I agree with Steel Rat, this would make a great module.

[Forrestfire]

wow...I wish that I was in this campaign...

Also, when I was reading about the cause, I was reminded of the books "The Rising" and its sequal: "City of the Dead." Can you ask your DM if he gained inspiration from either of these two books?

[Thorguy]

Edit: Missed it. D'oh.

[13_CBS]

Actually, I think you might have a chance of taking out the slaymaster:

Train a couple of the villagers as Bards, Marshals, etc., but train the vast majority of them as Warlock 1/Something Else 1, with Eldritch Spear. Have all the warlocks take Weapon Focus(Eldritch Blast).

Each Warlock will have +3 or +4 to hit, and deal 1d6+2 or 3. I'm not sure what the Slaymaster's Touch AC is, but unless it's crazy high, the villagers can deal 100+ damage per round from 250 feet away. And the PCs haven't even acted yet.

A bit too late for the party, sirrah.

[bugsysservant]

A bit too late for the party, sirrah.

No, no, I think he's on to something there. :smallwink:

@SilverClawShift: Seriously, though, consider either changing the title of the thread, editing the original post, or both. I hate racing to this thread every time I see it in the "most recent" listing hoping for a new instalation only to find more recomendations for how to kill kythons.

[SilverClawShift]

That's not a bad idea. I'm working on the next bit, but it's a lot of writing and all.

[Shas aia Toriia]

Oh well, enduring the masses who still think this is a kython-killing topic to see the latest news from the best campaign ever is worth it! :smallsmile:

[SilverClawShift]

Well, in all fairness, it's only been two i think ;)

[bugsysservant]

That's not a bad idea. I'm working on the next bit, but it's a lot of writing and all.

NEXT BIT!!!

Oh Frabjous Day, Calloo, Callay, I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve! 'Course that still means I have to wait. :smallsigh:

And two people can be a masses. Especially if they are unwashed. :smalltongue:

[Thorguy]

Yeah... sorry about that. :smallredface: Anyway, I read the rest of the thread, and I'm eagerly awaiting your next post.

[SilverClawShift]

Okay, where were we.

The psychos of the party are sleeping in the stone cellar/hidden temple of the church, for lack of better locations. The vampire is staked and beheaded, we've got some loose upgrades to our total party wealth, and the commoners we're with are actually kind of fond of us, even if we creep them out, because the one who mumbles constantly about evil things in the dark and chews his nails compulsively (archivist) occasionally comes out of the cellar and summons enough oatmeal to keep everyone in good health.

The paladin finally named his mount, "Gold Widow", and the people learned about it when we started making runs out throughout the town looking for survivors. We made a ladder system out the second story window so we could get to the roof of the church, and the paladin summoned his giant spider mount.
One of the commoners response to seeing the paladin riding around the outside of the building on a silvery spider? "*throw up hands* whatever, sick of this, things are normal and then BOOM, zombies, giant spiders, vampires, I DON'T CARE ANYMORE, JUST DON'T LET US DIE"

Anyway. The archivist learns some decent new spells, and discovered more about the Orcus problem. Now, for anyone who doesn't know a lot about D&D demons, or binders, I'll summarize what's up and what we have figured out.
Orcus is a demon lord. Arguably, he's one of the three most powerful demons in existance, warring with Demogorgon and Graz'zt (two other demon lords). At one point in this endless parade of death and slaughter, Orcus was killed.
Orcus, was ressurected however. A surge of negative energy transformed him into the undead demon, Tenebrous, who became so wrathful and powerful that he even became a deity. For a time, Tenebrous existed in this form, trying to find a way to return as "orcus" instead of as tenebrous, until one way or another he too was killed. His power managed to cause Orcus to rise once again, but as a living demon, not a god.
The power of his divinity, "Tenebrous", faded into the nothingness between nothings, the void that vestiges reside in. Now, the binder base class (using pact magic) can summon forth Tenebrous (as with any other vestige) and bind him to their soul, granting him the ability to experience existance in exchange for some taste of his power. (This was all official D&D stuff, not something our DM made up).
Orcus, however, is not happy with this setup. Orcus doesn't want to be a demon prince, he wants to be a GOD. He struggles to, among other goals, steal Tenebrous back from the void and regain that measure of divinity.

And apparently, he found a way. Or at least, we can only assume

Which leave us with exactly bubkiss. We're level 9 (12 now actually, but 9 at this point), and we discover that the world is broken because one of the three more powerful beings in existance did something horrible. Sounds like business for the gods, right? Except divine natures: 1) aren't simple, and 2) aren't something they just chat with mortals about. We kinda feel hopeless here.
To distract ourselves from how helpless we feel, we spend some time trying to ge tthe town in some semblence of working order. There's too many zombies to just start hacking away at, even with ranged weapons and magic it would be a waste of effort. So our paladin weaves a web from the top of the church to the next building. And so on. Meanwhile, we're using whatever material we can find to build makeshift ladder/bridges, and laying those between other rooftops. We didn't find many survivors, but the people can now move across the rooftops, and we did save a few of them (though they all freaked out when they saw their 'champion' come descending down on a strand of spider silk and a monstrous vermin). The dragon shaman can spider climb at will, thanks to his dragon type, so he used that to good end as well.
While we were doing this, our archivist (who took "Craft Wonderous Items") is warding some of the hallways with divine traps to prevent anything from coming in that way, and crafting something for the townspeople. He made a series of dishes with lids that, once a day, can produce enough food to feed three people each. He made enough for everyone (and a few extra) and kept three of them for us. (as a note, yeah, our DM will let us design our own magical items, and is pretty lax on XP/gold costs for it, as long as we don't abuse it (and everything is approved by him in the end anyway, so we can't really abuse it)).
(Also, I used my ability to go ethereal (now twice per encounter, and twice a day anytime in addition to that as 'ace up the sleeve' uses) to good ends while searching the town, and looted the heck out of it, not that there's anywhere we can spend anything currently. Hey, good team or not, dead or alive, I am still a rogue.)

We tried to figure out who was in the Cult of Orcus in the city, but there's no way we can tell, as far as we're aware. If anyone in the crowd of survivors WAS an orcus worshipper, they're smart enough to not draw attention to themselves now. And most of them are probably shamblers at this point, so we're kind of at a loss on that front.
While we were trying to figure it out though, we picked up on something some of the commoners thought was just rumor, and some swore was true, about a witch who was visited by 'otherworldy forces', and who was driven away and lives in the woods outskirting the city as a result.

So left between searching the town for clue about the Orcus cult, or the catacombs under the city to see exactly what's up with it, or go to see this spooky witch. We did something that, any horror movie fan knows to never do.

That's right suckers. We split up.

Team "Lunatic" set out through the city to get to the woods and look for the witch. The dragon shaman, the duskblade, and the paladin (and Gold Widow). We figured they'd be doing the most sword swinging, so having both heavy hitters and a heal-battery would do them to most good.

Team "Dora" (....really). The Archivist, me the rogue, and the warforged bard, all set down into the catacombs. We're all the exploring type, the archivist would know more about what was going on, I'd know more about getting us through whatever we found, and the bard would be good backup for us.

For anyone wondering how this works, we'd go back and forth between the teams at natural sticking points, but we were all interested, even if we weren't actually actively particiapating in between teams.

The Shadow Lady
Now, I talk about moving around the town like it was no big deal. It wasn't. There was enough zombies that just being mobile enough to get through was problematic, and they weren't that dangerous, but even zombies hit on a natural 20, and some of them were heavy hitters. No sentient ones, thankfully.
But it was stressfull going rescuing people, much less leaving with no guarnateed route back in, or wondering when a zombie was going to smile at you and spring a trap because it still had a brain.

So, the 'hitter' team sets out across the rooftops, weapons ready. Some of the zombies follow them as they move across the rooftops, but most don't pay that much attention. They make it to the edges of town fairly easily, move down off the buildings, and out into where it starts to turn rural, keeping their eyes peeled for signs of trails or travel that might lead to a house or cottage. They wished we had a ranger, or druid, or something.
The woods were... rough. But more creepy than numerically troublesome. They kept getting attacked by undead animals. A rough patch was a swarm of squirrels. Zombie squirrels. Like I said, numerically they decimated everything they had to fight, but it was just kind of depressingly creepy. The undead animals were attacking the living ones, most of the wilderness had no real chance to speak of. It was a dead place. Sunny day after the storms or no, this was horrible.

After enough traveling, they started seeing obvious traces of something more than just the dead wildlife. Obvious low-scale harvesting and hunting, things like that. They follow the paths they pick up to find a small cottage, Now, this cottage was assembled hastily, and some long time ago at that. Part of the cottage was ALIVE. Specifically, it was built so close between trees, that when the trees grew, they grew into and around the walls (anyone who's seen trees growing through powerlines knows what i'm talking about). Bulging masses of living wood like... like cancer or something. It wasn't a friendly looking place. It was dark inside.

The paladin opted to approach it first, knocking and asking if anyone was there. He received no answer, but opened the door slowly, sword drawn, announcing that he didn't come with violent intentions, but would defend himself.
He enters the cottage. Nothing but Blackness. It's like he stepped through a veil and there was nothing on the other side. He immediately stumbled backwards back into the bright, natural, streaming sunlight. The duskblade steps forward and pushes her hand through the doorway. It's just...black. The sun is shining normally, and the cottage is surrounded by windows, but there's nothing but blackness inside. And worse, all three of them are humans, with only natural light sources, and nothing that will let them see inside.
But this is where they NEED to be. That much is clear. What choice do they have? The dragon shaman refused to enter. They didn't blame him. But the paladin knows no true fear, and the duskblade was always way too brave for her own good anyway. So the Dragon Shaman waited outside with gold widow, eyes peered for trouble, standing nervously at the entrance to the door (just so his aura would still affect the two inside) staring into the abyss.
The paladin and duskblade held hands, so they wouldn't lose each other, and started feeling their way around. Knocking into this or that with a thud or crash. Sound was fine, they just couldn't see anything. They reached out carefully, finding a wall and padding their way along it, trying to discern what they were touching.
Finally, they feel something warm. After a bit of 'manual' epxloring, they realize it's a person, curled up in the farest corner of the cabin. As they touch it, the darkness folds back from the doorway into them (revealing that it is a she, so it must be the witch they're looking for). Her eyes are 'gone', as in focused on nothing, staring into the distance, pupils dilated all the way out. She's shaking slightly, just staring. And now, even with the light streaming through the cottage naturally, she still looks like she's in some lightless corner, as if she had a thin layer of shadow smudged over every inch of her.

And the entire cabin is full of bones. Bones everywhere. Human bones, animal bones, bones bones bones... and the paladin notices at least one human skull with horns and sharp teeth.

Dragon Shaman: "Get out of the cottage right now."

But they both start trying to figure out what's wrong, shaking her gently, asking her what's going on, who she is, ect. Trying to get any response out of her. She looks up at the paladin and says, shakily, tearily, and very slowly, "....he.......hates."
Then the door slams shut.
"It's all he does.... he hates... it's all he does."

The dragon shaman starts pounding on the door, moves to break a window and finds that they're not glass. Whatever they are, he can't do anything to it. He breaths a line of acid onto the door? nothing. It's acid-proof.

psycho woman: "He can't escape."

And the walls start bleeding acid.

To quote our paladin: "Oh holy wow jesus wow that sucks!"

The woman just sits there, shaking, holding herself, the acid doesn't seem to be bothering her. But it's dripping from the ceiling and burning the paladin and duskblade. The dragon shaman switches his aura to provide acid resistance, but the cabin is literally puddling up with acid, the resistance won't protect them when they're swimming in it. They start freaking out, the duskblade punches the woman, but she doesn't respond, they start beating the walls. Nothing. The paladin bullrushes the door, hoping to knock it off its hinges. It buckles, but he hits it hard and stumbles back. He takes another charge, the door finally cracks, breaks, and the two of them come spilling out.
They look back. The blackness has returned.

The cottage is some kind of freaking venus flytrap. It's assumed that the bones are from other people and animals which were brave or stupid enough to wander in, and the woman apparently calls it home. The darkness, the walls, the acid, the window (which the duskblade checks, and apparently they're panes of force). It's all to keep everyone else out, and the woman in.
But they need her, right? She's not responsive, but we need to know what's going on. So after much debate, the paladin breaks the door off from its hinges, chucks it into the woods, and charges in alone. He reaches the woman, and the darkness fades again, and the walls start dripping acid again. But he has an exit. He picks up the woman (who's now screaming in rage) and charges out the front door with her. She's fighting, weakly, but Gold Widow spins her up into a bundle of web.

She immediately calms down. She still looks like she's covered in shadows, even with the sunlight beating down on her. She speaks. "Don't....let me go. Don't let him go" and resumes staring into nothingness and not responding.

The cabin now looks normal, aside from, you know, the bones of everything that died in an acid bath. The paladin goes in again (yes, he has a death wish. He's a death delver, remember?). He can't find much that survived the acid. Wood and bone is just about all of it. But he does find a few items that were apparently treated to be acid resistant. Some kind of magical experiment. He came to the conclusion that it was the woman herself who set this up. Whatever's wrong with her, she didn't want anything coming for her, and she didn't want any way out herself.

So, you know, hopefully we didn't screw up by tearing her out of her little burning nest.

Team "lunatic" starts setting out back to the church in the city, unsure of themselves.
They run into real trouble coming back. The shamblers that followed after them are thicker on this side of the city now, and they have a helpless 'hostage' in tow. They can't get to the rooftops. But they CAN get to the cemetery.
Long story short, they go over the wall, up into the cemetery, and start hoping it's not a dead end. They find a mausoleum that is locked like a bank vault, and break into it. And find out that it's not a mausoleum. It's just a marble shell around a pit into the darkness below.

Gold Widow starts dropping on a silk strand down into the pit, carrying the psycho witch woman, and the three others start climbing down after them.

(And as a side note, my DM apparently does a really good "crazy woman who can barely speak" voice, because when he said "....he....hates?" It seriously sent a chill up my spine. It helped that his face was behind a screen.)

**********************************************

I don't have the energy to keep typing this up, i'm brain fried. I'll post what happened with "Team Dora", us explorers three, when I have the time.

I'll also make an effort to get this caught up to wear we are, so that when the campaign ends on halloween, it won't be more than a few days before I can get the finale up (whatever that'll be).

[Doresain]

In all fairness, you can use other movies/games as base starting points fairly easily. We do it often enough, no one can have 100% fresh ideas 100% of the time.
Our DM either masks it well, or he uses those bases as a springboard in a new direction. Our he'll cherrypick different concepts and see what kind of story comes up from it (lich? bard? Bard lich? Phantom of the opera? Lichbard of the Opera!")

The main thing is a touch of planning and creativity in whatever you're doing.


well the main thing with the campaigns im in, they often de-rail after some amount of time...either we arent interested enough to continue, or there is too much span in between game sessions(on account of either work or school) that we kinda just forget what happened last game...another contributor to game de-railment is we usually find some way of making enough obscure movie references that we just shift away from the game into talking about other things...

question about the orcus/tenebrous thing: i have the fiendish codex on demons, orcus include within, im just wondering where all that info came from...i wish the codex went into more detail but it doesnt...

[SilverClawShift]

Wow, that post was kinda incoherant. I'm kinda tired, and was trying to explain what happened without turning it into a 700 page novel.

Long story short.

In the city: the rooftops have spiderwebs and makeshift bridges between them, to buildings that are secure enough that zombies can't get up them. There's nowhere to really go, but people can get up on the roofs to get out of the church if they need to.
The archivist made some 'religious artifacts' that will feed the hungry survivors while they're trapped.

Three of us went into the woods to find a (rumored) witch. They found her. Her house was basically a giant flytrap, and something's seriously seriously wrong with her.
When they were coming back, they couldn't go through the streets or get to the rooftops, so they had to go to the cemetery. Inside, they found a suspiciously barricaded and locked mausoleum, which turns out to be a giant pit leading underground. They're heading down it.

The rest of us went deeper into the catacombs, To Be Continued.

[Doresain]

Wow, that post was kinda incoherant. I'm kinda tired, and was trying to explain what happened without turning it into a 700 page novel.

Long story short.

In the city: the rooftops have spiderwebs and makeshift bridges between them, to buildings that are secure enough that zombies can't get up them. There's nowhere to really go, but people can get up on the roofs to get out of the church if they need to.
The archivist made some 'religious artifacts' that will feed the hungry survivors while they're trapped.

Three of us went into the woods to find a (rumored) witch. They found her. Her house was basically a giant flytrap, and something's seriously seriously wrong with her.
When they were coming back, they couldn't go through the streets or get to the rooftops, so they had to go to the cemetery. Inside, they found a suspiciously barricaded and locked mausoleum, which turns out to be a giant pit leading underground. They're heading down it.

The rest of us went deeper into the catacombs, To Be Continued.

dun dun DUUUUUNNN!!!

[SilverClawShift]

question about the orcus/tenebrous thing: i have the fiendish codex

There's info on Tenebrous in Tome of Magic (since he's a vestige and all). That's where a lot of the info comes from.

[Doresain]

There's info on Tenebrous in Tome of Magic (since he's a vestige and all). That's where a lot of the info comes from.

ahhh...i wasnt sure what source that was from, seeing as how the hordes of the abyss is rather lacking in detail for a good portion of the demon lords...which is rather sad since the book is all about demons

[EL HUEVADOR]

Damn, this is epic.

[SilverClawShift]

I fully agree, with a capital A. The codex about the devils was fantastic, with plenty of information and flavor. The one about demons kind of fell flat, even though there's so much information they could have given about them.

[Doresain]

they put more info behind the obyriths (which i dont mind one bit...lovecraftian based critters are always great) than they do the tanar'ri, which in my opinion is stupid because players are more accustomed to the tanar'ri than obyriths

[SilverClawShift]

Can you ask your DM if he gained inspiration from either of these two books?

Sure thing. :smallsmile:

After the campaign :smallbiggrin:

[Wooter]

I hope I find a DM as good as yours. You have yourself a great group of roleplayers there.

[Darkantra]

Have the undead paid any particular attention to you? Do their vestiges realize the danger that you pose since you escaped the fate of their bodies and can communicate with kythons (of whom at least the slaughterking knows a great deal about binding) and thus attack you or have you been wading through undead hordes?

[bugsysservant]

Damn, another cliffhanger. I really don't know whether to be happy or not that you said that your campaign will conclude at Halloween. On the one hand I would hate to see this campaign peter off without a definite conclusion. ON the other... bugsysservant likes storytime! :smallbiggrin:

[SilverClawShift]

I hope I find a DM as good as yours. You have yourself a great group of roleplayers there.

As much as everyone goes on about how good our DM is (and it's true, he is a fantastic DM :smallbiggrin: ) there's another part of that line that deserves emphasis. "Group".

It's a group game. Never forget it. Our DM rocks the house, but if the group was: A powergamer who refused to roleplay, a cheater, a jerk who thought killing the entire group when they least suspect it was fun (every game), ect, the games would still suck.

You've all gotta be on the same page when you sit down to play. Like I said before, the dragon shaman's player had a small rough patch adjusting to playing with us, because his previous groups were dysfunctional. "Play....TOGETHER? Insanity!"


Have the undead paid any particular attention to you? Do their vestiges realize the danger that you pose since you escaped the fate of their bodies and can communicate with kythons (of whom at least the slaughterking knows a great deal about binding) and thus attack you or have you been wading through undead hordes?

Nope. In fact, they may be less quick to attack me than everyone else (but they're still willing to destroy me, don't get me wrong. they just aren't swarming after me). I attribute that to the fact that, regardless of what's going on, almost all of them are literally mindless. They're shuffling after things that are alive and trying to kill them.

As for communicating with the kythons, I'm not sure how useful that's going to turn out. The only kythons we've seen were on the island, who knows if there are even others in this world?

Now, if (I say if like there's a chance) we run into any more sentient undead vestiges? Especially ones that retain their powers? They'll probably be particularily upset with me. I know, for one specific example, that the rogue vestige (the jester we saw talking to the kython) is specifically angry at me, presumably because he was trying to take over my body when I beat fate or something.


Damn, another cliffhanger. I really don't know whether to be happy or not that you said that your campaign will conclude at Halloween. On the one hand I would hate to see this campaign peter off without a definite conclusion. ON the other... bugsysservant likes storytime! :smallbiggrin:

Well, to be fair, they're all basically going to be cliffhangers. If the story doesn't have a hanger that leaves us going in some direction, the end of the story would be "So we sat there in the church waiting to die, without any clues as to what to do next" :smalltongue:

And yeah, it might be a day or two after halloween, depending on if we can get together on halloween or not, but that was the plan from the start. We all agreed that we should play a 'big' horror campaign for october, so the DM worked on it for a while in advance, and we all got started late september, with the goal of getting to (or near) the end mark around halloween.

It defiantely won't peter off, our DM has some plan. It might not be some epic incredible twist or something, but it'll definately come to a conclusion.

Glad you like storytime :smallsmile:. And we're not gaming tonight, and I have no real plans, so I'm gonna try to write up what happened down in the catacombs, (we call them that, not the DM. The funny part is, after we started calling them catacombs instead of tunnels, they seemed to get....deeper. That might have been our imagination, but it's also likely that our DM took our expectations of the place and ran with them. Part of the "staying on the same page" thing).

I'll try to be coherant this time :smalltongue:

[LightWraith]

As much as everyone goes on about how good our DM is (and it's true, he is a fantastic DM ) there's another part of that line that deserves emphasis. "Group".

It's a group game. Never forget it. Our DM rocks the house, but if the group was: A powergamer who refused to roleplay, a cheater, a jerk who thought killing the entire group when they least suspect it was fun (every game), ect, the games would still suck.



I've been reading along since the thread got started, and I was going to mention something to this effect.

While your DM has been amazing at setting up scenarios, odds are that without ya'll playing as well as you do (and not only well, but in character!) the campaign probably would have ended somewhere around the town battle. For most parties that was just a TPK waiting to happen.

On another note, you're doing a great job of relating the story to us, I look forward to the next installment :smallbiggrin:

[Copacetic]

I've been reading along since the thread got started, and I was going to mention something to this effect.

While your DM has been amazing at setting up scenarios, odds are that without ya'll playing as well as you do (and not only well, but in character!) the campaign probably would have ended somewhere around the town battle. For most parties that was just a TPK waiting to happen.

On another note, you're doing a great job of relating the story to us, I look forward to the next installment :smallbiggrin:

I agree, But espcially with the next intallment bit. Frigsies likes hearing spooky stories with undead and witches.:smallwink:

[Shas aia Toriia]

I really do enjoy reading aboaut this campaign. And Frigs, is your avatar the Eternal Blade from ToB?

[bugsysservant]

I'll try to be coherant this time :smalltongue:

Eh, don't bother. I have only had two hours of sleep, so I can't notice the difference anyway. :smallbiggrin:

And I didn't mean to whine about the cliff hanger, I appreciate the story and your effort, keep up the good work!

[13_CBS]

"Welcome to another episode of Story Time with Ms. Clawshift!"

*plays jingle*

[Doresain]

once again, i wish i had a DM/group that was this awesome...we occasionally get in a good campaign, as a matter of fact my buddy who has never run a game before took up the DM mantle last game...so far, it was my favorite campaign that ive been in, despite all of the forced plot

[Anxe]

once again, i wish i had a DM/group that was this awesome...we occasionally get in a good campaign, as a matter of fact my buddy who has never run a game before took up the DM mantle last game...so far, it was my favorite campaign that ive been in, despite all of the forced plot

How dare you insult my fine DMing? Just because I don't bother with plot anymore...

[Doresain]

its not that there wasnt plot, i was just restricted from killing enemies that i wanted to kill, because he would have them kill themselves...i was the big Intimidation based fighter, so when i did get to kill someone it was usually in a very gory and awesome fashion...but those moments were few and far between

but enough about my lame campaigns, back to SilverClawShift

[SilverClawShift]

Previously, on Lost.

Or, in this campaign. Whatever.

The Striker team leaves the church through the rooftop pathways we've constructed, while the exploration team, me the rogue/factotum, the bard warforged, and the archivist, all set down into the stone halls branching out from the church.
The DM describes the halls, including mentioning that everything's extremly dusty. My response? "So am I. Even this outfit is dusty".

I joke, but this part is actually pretty chilling. While the attack team is topside, in stark unforgiving sunlight and running past moaning zombies, we're lowering ourselves quietly into what amounts to one giant tomb. We know there was a vampire down here, what else?
It's slow going too. I'm creeping forward looking for dangerous situations, the bard is aiding me and doing some searching himself a few footsteps behind me (never know when the bard will roll a 20 while I roll a 1 right? We might as well both be checking). The archivist is a few steps behind the both of us, shining a small wooden pole with a magical light on the end (which doesn't provide much illumination) and scribbling notes about the construction of the area and some of the markings/designs of the stuff we encounter.
Every now and then, we come across a door. I didn't have any trouble unlocking them, and there were no real traps to speak of (actually, there was one door that sent a small spike into the openers palm. 1 peircing damage, and a wicked STR damage poison with a high save DC. "I'm glad I'm dead". Even managed to get a few doses of the poison out of the device, after it pricked me).
Inside the rooms were, sadly, a lot of nothingness. There were tables and chairs, tapestries, occasionally you'd find a weapon or two. We found a vial of black liquid that we had trouble identifying. The archivist couldn't figure it out, and it didn't seem to be magical. Out of sheer curiosity, the archivist popped it open and let the smell of it reach him. He actually had to roll a fort save to resist vomiting.
"it's just ichorous sludge. Blood, or some other biological matter that's gone far rotten. Probably collected from a gravesite or something for a dark ritual of some kind"

The warforged is still humming. I ask him why he hums so much, especially when we might be trying to hear danger approaching. Apparently his creator enjoyed his humming, as silence made him uncomfortable. So he made a point to hum whenever there wasn't much going on.
But he'll be quiet if his new friends want him to.
I hated telling him it was a good idea, but really, when every noise you make echos throughout the dusty stone chambers of unknown horrors, it's time to shut the heck up. So he agreed to keep the humming to appropriate times.

One of the more significant rooms we discover is, apparently, where the cult of orcus actually spent time whenever they got together. There are musty old books, and less-musty books (which turned out to be journals about some vague plans of theirs). In the back of the room was an altar made out of skulls and chains, and a bone pile in the corner. The bones were stained with blood, and the room smells like a slaughterhouse.
There wasn't much useful there, but we took a bit of a break while the archivist leafs through the books and journals, putting the ones that seemed relevant in his pack. One of the books he goes through is, at a glance, just a few hundered pages of music sheets. The bard perks up and grabs it from him, and starts reading it intently.
The bard is content to check out the music book. The archivist is more concerned with going through the rest of the tomes. But me? I'm thinking "Why the heck does the cult of orcus have a book full of sheet music? They don't seem like the jovial singing bunch, and if they do have some kind of ritual chants or something, I doubt they need a thick book of sheet music to keep it up.
So while the other two are nose deep in books, I get to one side of the bookshelf and give it a good stuff push. It slides along the ground (very, very noisily, echoing throughout the halls. Which made me uncomfortable, and ause the other two to stare at me akwardly). Yup. There's a hidden safe behind the bookcase.
The archivist says he's perplexed, and asks me why I would assume there was a safe behind the shelves just because we found a book of sheet music. I told him that he just couldn't think like a thief, and the if you find one thing that's out of place, it usually means there's something bigger out of place related to it. So while they set back to the books, I set to safecracking. Which actually took 3 rolls to bypass. Inside the safe, was some cool stuff. A skull charred black (creepy). A pair of masterwork lockpicks, a dagger with unidentified properties (later, it turned out the dagger was enchanted with the sole property of being able to convert sneak attack damage on the undead into either STR or DEX damage instead of 'nothing'! :D), and apparently the reason the safe existed. A flute, with imagery in Bas-relief from end to end. Beautiful imagery depeciting a sunrise and praying hands. The bard flipped through the book, and found some notes scribbled in abyssal, which the archivist translated. Apparently, the flute had belonged to a powerful priest of some unamed religion. It was stolen by the cult of Orcus, and was being smuggled around looking for someone powerful enough to destroy it. The book too, was tied to the flute, and would re-appear near the flute even if burned to ashes. It was full of "disgusting" (to the cult) beautiful holy music, most of which was mundane, but some of which apparently had real magical effects. The book was supposed to be locked in the safe too. Apparently, the book decided otherwise. Not that it's intelligent, just.... yeah. There must have been a reason it was on the shelf, right?
The bard tucked the book into the pack, and gave the flute a good looking over. Without thinking, he brought it up to his mouth (mouthpeice?) and started playing a few notes (and when the DM asked if he'd give up a use of his bardsong, he agreed).

The DM actually played the theme to Pan's Labyrinth here. Which, if you haven't heard it, it's really beautiful and haunting. He described the area around the bard starting to glow faintly, spreading out in a soft but all encompassing light, driving back the shadows.
Which is when we saw it.

Bad News
Through the doorway, along the wall across the hallway, a pale humanish figure with flat gray-green eyes hunched, apparently wearing nothing but a few light chains wrapped around himself, watching us intently. When it realized we could see it, it hissed and ran forward out of our field of view. The bard stopped playing, startled, and everything was plunged back into shadows.
We stood motionless for a while, nervous. Okay, terrified. We didn't want to leave thr oom, wondering if that thing was right around the corner waiting for a fight. We had no clue what it was (even the archivist. ROlled knowledge rolls, came up with nothing).
Finally we realized we had no choice but to exit. The bard lifted the flute and played his tune again while we walked. It cast light out to a 60 foot radius (30 feet past my darkivision I got from being undead). The bard had to make perform rolls to keep playing the song every few rounds). We'd advance carefully, making spot checks. The archivist had his bone shard pistol out, I had my new dagger and a few other daggers in my belt. We didn't see anything.

Then the bard failed a perform roll. The song ended, and the area was plunged into black again. The archivist had 20 feet of light around him, the bard could only see the archivist, and I could see in 30 feet around me (I could just barely see the archivist at this points, he was 30 feet away. (well, mind you, we were in a hallway, so I could see 30 feet in any given direction from where I was, not a 30 foot radius).
The DM rolled some kind of attack, and then told the archivist to roll a reflex save to hold otno his light-stick. he failed. The DM didn't give us tactical information, he just told us what we saw. And he gave a lot of the information to us individually, so we didn't automatically know what everyone else was doing)
Me and the bard both saw the archivist raise off the ground a few feet, and then the light source dropped and he was pulled.... well, away. Up, down, backwards? We didn't see, he was gone. The DM rolled for hitpoint loss on the archivist. Then he let the archivist take a shot with his boneshard crossbow, but he had to roll for direction, not anything specific. He did it by rolling 4 D20's. 2 D20's would be for the '2d' axis paralell with the floor, and 2 would be for opposite axis. Anything higher than a 36 on two dice was a re-roll. 1 and 36 were 'west' and 18 was 'east'.
We didn't get to see what he rolled, but the DM said we heard a 'tick' sound as the boneshard hit in a specific spot between the two of us.

Now, personally? I thought that was really darn clever. The archivist get s ablind pistol shot, so the DM rolls two 360 random directions and gives us the location the dart goes? It kinda pulled me in. Made me feel for the archivist, firing blindly, and really showed what a blind shot meant.

The DM made the archivist roll some checks in secret (escape artist checks, with the benefit of hindsight). He failed.

I had to roll a spot check. Then I got hit flat-footed, because the thing successfully closed the distance between us while hiding. It was a good hit on its part, and the DM said I could "Tell it was trying to sneak attack me, not realizing I wasn't alive".
The bard runs to the light source, naturally, he can't see anything and isn't sure what to do.
I debate running towards the bard, knowing he was probably freaking out as much as he does (I'm sure the DM just told him that he "heard the rogue shout in pain" or something). But instead I took a slash at the thing, hit it solid, and twice, but have no clue how much damage the thing can take.

The archivist fails another 'unknown' check. The thing dissapears. The bard runs towards where he heard me, ready for trouble. I run towards him.
Heh, now, our DM is great, but he's also willing to be a jerk. The bard apparently told him that he was gonna attack as soon as he saw it (or something comperable). The next thing he saw was me sprinting into his field of view. BOOM. The bard socks me hard in the stomach, knocks me over prone. He's very instantly apologetic.
I down a light healing potion, not sure of what else to do other than getting my hitpoints back to full, and take a scan for trouble, or seeing if I can see the archivist.

The archvist fails another check. Manages to make a noise we hear through his gag. He's on the ceiling, 20 feet up. Tied to some random creepy architecture and trying to get loose.
The thing comes sprinting, charging full speed, hits the bard with some kind of charging grapple, because it wraps around him and the two go sprawling past me down the hallway, tumbling over each other. The thing lands on its back and kicks the bard over him in one fluid motion, sending him another 40 feet down the hall into a metal door, 4d6 damage. The bard hastes himself and throws the light down the hallway, shouting at me to take it. I shout that I don't need it, and he says "SO I CAN FIND YOU"

Why didn't I think of that? So I tumble up to the light, grab it, and then coat my dagger in kython venom (I can make it once a day, 'spiritually', remember).

The archivist makes his escape artist check (natural 20) and wriggles out of the chains. But now he's clinging to a bunch of creepy spiked designs 20 feet up. He opts to drop, taking the 1d6 damage for the fall. The thing takes another dash this time past me towards the archivist (JEEZ it was fast. it must have had 50 foot move rate before adding running or charging on top). I got an attack of opportunity, and nailed it with the kython venom. It staggered, but didn't stop its charge, and bullrushes the archivist hard into the stone corner, think it was 2d6 damage. The bard sprints towards me, I sprint towards the creature.

The archivist? Casts the only spell he has prepared besides cures. Light. On the chains wrapped around the creature. The creature snarls in rage and opens a full attack on the archivist, and drops him to negatives. The bard manages to close the distance between the two, get to the archivist, and give the creature two solid punches. I get up to the whole brawl and sneak attack the thing. It howls in rage and sprints down the hallway away from us, leaping up to the ceiling.
The bard realizes that it's 50 feet away. His sound burst has a 45 foot radius. BOOM. 1d8 sonic damage, fails its save and is stunned. Drops from the ceiling and takes 1d6 damage from the fall. I UMD a cure wand, and bring the archivist back to conciousness.

The archivist looks down the hallway at the thing covered in glowing chains, he's sitting there covered in his own blood, he has about 2 hitpoints. Takes his boneshard cossbow and fires. Hits the thing. 1 damage.

It was the things last GOD D*** HITPOINT.

The DM ruled that it hit the thing in the neck and tore open an artery. It slumped against the wall and fell into a pile, drowning in its own blood.

Our jaws, all 6 players, are dropped. The paladin player (remember the other teams are still watching entertained) managed to erk out a small "...what?". The DM has his eyebrows raised, he was a little stunned too. The archivist player holds his hand like a gun and looks at it wide eyed. We all stare at the archivist.
Archivist: ".... uh. Hmm. For how little damage this thing does, it's been extraordinarily useful to have at hand. I guess I'll just keep hanging onto this".

One freaking damage. Un-freaking-beleivable.

*sigh*

Oh, also, he immediately came back to life, and was still pretty quick (which means he was probably a sentient vestige, just, you know, he wasn't smart to begin with, and they have the same mental faculties), but we cacked him pretty easily the second time. Basically just punched/stabbed him until he went down.

************************************************** ********************

So we patch ourselves up, and keep on pressing down. We came to the conclusion that the thing must have been a hunter for the cult of orcus. Or an enforcer. Or something. Wether it used to be human, or was just some monster they managed to wrangle into their service, it was obviously down here to keep victims chained up for sacrifice.
If we were nervous before, now we're jumping at our own shadows. The archivist actually paniced and shot a rat just because it squeeked near us.
But we're adventurers. More than that, we're explorers. An archivist of forbidden religious lore, a one-of-a-kind (in this world) sentient golem talespinner, and an undead rogue. If we aren't brave enough?...

The archivist pointed out that we were under the cemetery. The bard asked how he could tell, and he gestures to the ceiling. There is, what looks like, upside down blades of black grass. "Soulroot. It's a type of grass that only grows underground, near dead bodies or sources of negative energy. We must be under a gravesite of some kind".
Of course, when he tells us something like that, it's info the DM gave us. But having the player who would know about it explain it? So helpfull for immersion.

We also start finding spell components. More vials of, uh, that icky black stuff that smells bad. Small bones, animal parts, traces of gold dust glittering. We start noticing strange patterns etched into the walls. "Sealing symbols... they're often used by demonologists to keep their summons from turning on them. We need them in church rituals sometimes... they can weaken or hold evil outsiders in place..."
I've got a terrible feeling about this, but it's not like we're going to turn back. Finally, we come to the end of the line. Long stone hallway, metal door covered in "Sealing Symbols", with a red light glowing out from underneath it.

We didn't even talk. We could have bickered about wether it was a good idea or not, but what would be the point. We all knew, one way or another, that door was getting opened. So I set to work on the locks.

...It wasn't locked.

The door creaks open normally. The room is bathed in red light, and symbols on all the walls are glowing brightly with a more violent shade of red. In the center of the room is a tall dark figure with yellow eyes and sharp teeth. Circling him, are pillars of red light that seemingly have shapes of their own. The figure grins a wicked grin and waves slowly. We see that he has six fingers.

Me: What? But, how? What's going on here?
Archivist: It's... Graz'zt. A demon lord-

"PRINCE!" it interrupted with a smile, in a deep and confident voice.

Archivist: "A demon prince... wait. It's not him. it's an aspect... a lesser aspect."

The figure gives an overly friendly smile with his eyes closed.

So, yeah. To elaborate specifically. It was a weak splinter of the true graz'zt, an aspect who arrived on the material plane to complete some minor but specific task he wanted done personally. We didn't know what, but he did tell us that the cult of Orcus 'intercepted' his planar travel, magically, and bound him here to prevent him from succeeding in whatever he wanted to do.
We asked what he came here to do. "To destroy Orcus, of course". We kind of paniced a little at that. Asked it if Orcus was on the material plane. He simply rolled his eyes and dismissed us with a wave. Told us, actually very politely, that we didn't know the tiniest fraction of what truly going on. We asked if he would tell us more (the archivist, in particular, was wide eyed to actually be talking with an entity such as graz'zt, even if through an incredibly weak aspect).
He said that he might be inclined to shed some light on the darkness Orcus had shrouded us in, if we would do him a favor. Hesitant to make a deal with a demon, let alone a demon lord (er, prince), but really, REALLY needing to know what we were fighting against here, we asked what he wanted us to do. He told us that, somewhere in the area near the city, one of his more notable 'pets' was waiting to contact with him. He needed very much to come into contact with her, but was confined, mentally and physically to two locations. The True graz'zt was still sitting in his palace in the abyss. The aspect of graz'zt was currently confined to this small room with no way out. "Even if you somehow broke the seals binding me here, my time on this plane has run low. All that holds me here are these seals, and I don't know when I'll be able to return, or if I can avoid orcus's forces the next time."
Me: So you want us to bring her...
Graz'zt: Yes. Bring my pet to me, so I can do what I came here for originally. Then I might be inclined to tell you what, exactly, is "going on"".

Archivist: very well then. How can we find her?

************************************************** **********************

Now, I'm sure you all see what's coming. We had our suspcicions at the table.

At that moment, a bundle of human wrapped in spider silk descended on a thin strand, to land off to the side of the figure. Graz'zt lets loose a low chuckle, turns to us, and says "I'm impressed. That was very fast."

Come crawling down after her, are a dragon shaman and a duskblade, with a paladin riding a silver spider descending on his own line on the other side.

Paladin, from above: "What in the 9 hells is this?!?!?!"
Graz'zt, shouting up: "It's actually a tad bit more ABYSSAL than HELLISH down here.

Graz'zt turned to the witch, who was apparently his thrall/servant/worshipper/'pet'. She crawled to him like a worm, inching forwards in her silk coccoon. All she managed to say was "Master".

Dragon Shaman: I knew this was a bad idea.

The two didn't even look at us. Graz'zt held his hand near the edge of his 'cage', and the woman ran her face slowly along the other side with her eyes closed. Graz'zt told her to stay strong for him, all she could do was nod.
So then we get the exposition. Finally. We know, at least part of what's going on.

We've allready established the nature of vestiges, binders, tenebrous, orcus. We know Orcus is trying to get Tenebrous back from the 'nothing' to become a god, which would essentially make him unstoppable. Orcus is allready immensly powerful, Tenebrous was powerful enough to slay deities. If Orcus and Tenebrous managed to exist at the same time, in the same form? Well, we're talking about a being that would be able to go toe to toe with Asmodeus in a steel cage match, and Asmodeus is one of the most powerful beings anywhere. But Asmodeus has a calm collected restraint, he's a creature of law and rules. Orcus/Tenebrous would revel in nothing more than outright CARNAGE on a multi-planar scale. We're talking end of days, in more ways than one. No more world, no more AFTERLIFE, NOTHING. In the end, that is. First there would be a few hundered thousand years of slaughter and pain and inescapable suffering.
But why hasn't it happened allready? Vestiges are crossing over at an alarming rate. Some true powerful vestiges have come back as sentient creatures, and still more are probably inevitably going to come back with their power intact. If there's one vestige who should have allready found a way in, it's the one the 'jailbreak' was PLANNED for, right?
Except Graz'zt knew something was up, and graz'zt is one devious, devious bastard. He managed to get enough servants, with enough power, to learn pact magic (become binders) for him. In the final days before the veil between this world and the nothing was peirced, his servants summoned Tenebrous to them.
Tenebrous did not want to make pacts of course. His freedom from the nothing was close at hand anyway. But apparently, that's not how pact magic works. He couldn't just refuse, not yet, not before the veil was actually peirced. The difficulty in binding him (to make a good pact) was astronomical, but he could still BE bound.

Now, it's been pointed out that when you bind a vestige and make a pact with them, you show their sign, and are influenced by their behavior. Actually, you don't HAVE to show their sign, or be influenced by them. If you make a good pact (beat the vestiges binding DC on a charisma roll), you stay in control. You surpress their sign, control their influence, but still get their powers.
But because Tenebrous didn't want to make any pacts, the DC for binding him was outrageous. No one had a chance of succeeding. So any of those who forced Tenebrous to bind with them automatically made bad pacts. They had to show tenebrous' sign, and behave under his influence. What are his sign and influence?

You look like you're standing in shadows no matter what the light source, and you become apathetic and dettached. One of your powers? You can create an area of blackness around you at will.

The witch was Graz'zts servant. Always has been. A powerful one at that. When Graz'zt saw that the veil would be peirced, and tenebrous would escape, he had the witch (and several other people, 22 others in total, apparently) bind Tenebrous, knowing it would be a bad pact, knowing he would be fighting them to be freed.
As long as one living soul has Tenebrous bound to a pact? He CAN'T LEAVE THE VEIL. They're anchoring him away from Orcus simply by continuing to breath. Tenebrous is fighting them to escape, it's a terrible strain, they're forced to hold him longer than pacts are meant to be held (24 hours. It's currently going on weeks).
The witch set up her cabin (using power granted from graz'zt) as a pit for her to hide in. She's been there for weeks, eating scorched fragments of cultists or animals that have come to the house after her (or randomly), and alternating between catatonic staring into her own black shroud, or fighting the urge to kill herself (tenebrous trying to escape). She's actually RELEIVED to be bound head to toe in spider silk, because being powerless means she can concetrate all her energy on holding Tenebrous inside of her.

Yeah.

Wow.

So, in the end, Graz'zt gave her encouraging words and reinforced her resolve and power in her servitude towards him. He convinced us (reluctantly) to undo the bindings holding him in the room, and true enough, he immediately vanished back to the abyss, no longer able to visit the material plane.
He has no help he can give us, "Unless we come to the abyss to see him first hand, *evil chuckle*". But we really have only one SANE option here. We have to keep the witch with us. We have to keep her alive, defend her from the cultsist of Orcus who would gladly kill her on sight, try to find as many of the other 22 as possible before they die, keep THEM alive, and try to find some way to get them to graz'zt's layer of the abyss for safe keeping.

We feel very very small.

The dragon shaman asked if the paladin should 'fall' for consorting with Graz'zt and the witch. The DM pointed out that talking to a bound demon isn't the same as making a deal with it, and that the witch, despite being evil, is our PRISONER, being held to prevent greater evil being committed.
Really, sorry to bring up the paladin falling deal. We don't need another discussion about paladin ethics. Our DM said it was fine, it's fine :-p

So that's all there is about THAT. We have the witch, who can act as a beacon towards the other servants of graz'zt by her masters guiding hand. And we're, you know, screwed. As is the rest of the world.

And lest we forget, EVERYTHING THAT DIES is still coming back to life, so it's not like this new problem resolves the old one.

************************************************** *************************

So, we set out northeast. We told the commoners we were leaving, even though we aren't beholden to them anyway. We gave them dishes that produce free food, we've really done all we CAN in this world to help them. We're setting out to help more, if we can.

But try this on for size. As we're setting back out over the rooftops in the city, watching the swarms of zombies moaning angrily at us, I spot something. One of the zombies isn't moaning. it's not even moving. And it looks very familiar. It's rotten and beat to hell, but... it looks, like....
And then the zombie flies out of the crowd and swoops over in front of us for a moment to wink and blow us a kiss. It's the wizard. The one who used to be in our party. I draw my crossbow and move to open fire, but he snaps his finger, and he's gone with a laugh.

OF COURSE he found us. He knows us personally, and is a diviner specialist. CRAP.

We kept our eyes peeled, but apparently he was just stopping by to make us wet ourselves. He seems to take great joy in making us uncomfortable. I wonder what vestige he was.

*sigh*

Ah well. That's all for now. It's gonna be a pain getting caught up in time for halloween, especially with the sessions going on :-p

[EL HUEVADOR]

This is the best thing ever.

[Wooter]

Your group is awesome. Everyone is cooperating, the characters are cool, the atmosphere is great. Everything is awesome.

I need to find a group so I can start playing.

[Cocky]

Amazing, truly.

[shadowdemon_lord]

Wow Silverclawshift, this campaign is awsome! I love the updates!

[Hecore]

Just posting to say that I love reading about your campaign and I'm looking forward to however many installments are left!:smallsmile:

[The VP]

This is a fantastically well-written (and well-played) campaign. Thanks for sharing, Silverclawshift, I look forward to the next installment.

[bugsysservant]

Wow, that was one of your best posts yet. The Labyrinth of the Faun song was a nice trick, I'm adding that to my gaming music library. Thanks again for the effort, I hate to think that we're pressuring you into spending forever typing these posts if you aren't enjoying it. :smallfrown:

[Doresain]

this campaign is epic

[bugsysservant]

Damn it!

Since you mentioned it, I have had the theme song to Pan's Labyrinth stuck in my head. And since I tend to whistle, its driving me and everyone around me insane. :smallfurious: :smallwink:

[Doresain]

Damn it!

Since you mentioned it, I have had the theme song to Pan's Labyrinth stuck in my head. And since I tend to whistle, its driving me and everyone around me insane. :smallfurious: :smallwink:

you should start whistling Take On Me by A-ha

[0oo0]

you should start whistling Take On Me by A-ha

No, that song must be sung in full falsetto at the top of your lungs. Really

[Shas aia Toriia]

An amzing campaign. I was wondering what happened with the wizard. I agree, I would really like to know what vestige he was.

[Copacetic]

I really do enjoy reading aboaut this campaign. And Frigs, is your avatar the Eternal Blade from ToB?

I nuno..... Just thought It looked cool.Got no Idea what ToB is, but since it's probapally DnD related, It makes wish even more that my small town had a DnD group.:smallfrown:

[Shas aia Toriia]

The Tome of Battle, or ToB is generally regarded as the best fix for melee classes. It introduces three new classes that actually retain thier uses at high levels.

[SilverClawShift]

Thanks again for the effort, I hate to think that we're pressuring you into spending forever typing these posts if you aren't enjoying it. :smallfrown:

Oh no, it's not that, I like talking about it. I just feel like I'm doing a diservice to the campaign and to the people taking the time to read about if i say "and then we killed some creepy fast monster in the tunnels, and then the wizard showed up again".
It just takes a long time to get it all down, that's all. I feel like I can't get caught up.

[XiaoTie]

Damn damn damn damn. This is EPIC material indeed. Thanks for posting the story. Damn damn damn damn, EPIC.

[Dullyanna]

As much as I love your stories, I have to say this: Just enjoy the bleedin' campaign, and maybe ask us if you need help again. Worry about relaying story properly when you've seen it end (And gotten some rest, too). Or you can do whatever the hell you want. Whatever works for you, really.

[Anxe]

Hey Silverclaw? You remember at the original battle before you became undead and you were ethereal. You stabbed a Kython or Slavemaster something and its soul died. Maybe you can do the same thing to Tenebrous.

[Dullyanna]

@Anxe: Yeah, but I'm not sure she could've done it to the vestiges that went body-squatting. Furthermore, I'm not sure if it's such a great idea to confront an epic vestige on his home turf.

[Anxe]

It was the only way to kill him I could think of.

[Dullyanna]

Sorry if I sounded like I was just poo-pooing your idea. Hell, the thought never even occurred to me. And it could certainly make for a climactic finale, if the DM buys it... which, given his method of storytelling, is a very real possibility.

[SilverClawShift]

It's an interesting idea, but not very likely. For one thing, if I could fight vestiges, I could have fought the vestige that was trying to take ME over.
Then, even if I could fight him, there's the factor that it's just me and him, one on one, while my party stands around scratching their heads, unable to assist.
Then, if we killed tenebrous somehow (even possible? He died before, it's what turned him into a vestige) Orcus would basically drop a train on us outright for proving we were that much of a threat.

Then there's the little fact that when Tenebrous was alive, he wandered the planes MURDERING DIETIES FOR FUN.

Yeah, I'd rather not try to headbutt the guy :smalleek:

[Anxe]

I agree with what you said except for the part about Orcus dropping a train on ya. He's know for not killing PCs when he should.

[Dullyanna]

I agree with what you said except for the part about Orcus dropping a train on ya. He's know for not killing PCs when he should.

But when it comes to this campaign, and this DM... Well, I'll have to say I'll go with SilverClawShift on this one. Don't piss off Demon Lor... I mean Princes in a genuine horror campaign.

[Anxe]

I'll piss off whoever I want whenever I want!

[Azerian Kelimon]

Unless you can do the "Back in Black", I'd stay away from it. 'Till you get level 70, at least.

[Gralamin]

It's an interesting idea, but not very likely. For one thing, if I could fight vestiges, I could have fought the vestige that was trying to take ME over.
Then, even if I could fight him, there's the factor that it's just me and him, one on one, while my party stands around scratching their heads, unable to assist.
Then, if we killed tenebrous somehow (even possible? He died before, it's what turned him into a vestige) Orcus would basically drop a train on us outright for proving we were that much of a threat.

Then there's the little fact that when Tenebrous was alive, he wandered the planes MURDERING DIETIES FOR FUN.

Yeah, I'd rather not try to headbutt the guy :smalleek:

I wonder if your DM knows about some of the vestiges from dragon magazine? Two particular ones would fit well into the campaign. One of the two I'm thinking of was killed by tenebrous, the other kills undead. (Both from Issue #341)

[Forrestfire]

Those two vestiges are called Kaas (Vecna's former servant, undead-hater and killer) and Primus (killed by teebrous when tenebrous took over the modrons)

[Manticorkscrew]

It sounds like you're having a really great campaign! I really enjoyed reading about it.

And you made me buy the theme tune to Pan's Labyrinth on Itunes! Oh wait... nobody made me do it. But you made me realise how much I liked it and wanted to listen to it again. So, thank you.

So melancholy, and so beautiful...

*Teardrop*

[Grey Watcher]

So, I was rereading one of the older posts in this thread. Given the backstory that's been revealed, aren't you glad you didn't train any of those Commoners as Binders after all? I mean, picture it:

PCs: OK, Binders, time to start making pacts.
Binders do their shtick, nothing happens.
Uh, oh.....

Also, on a more current page, I have to wonder where the heck this is going. I mean, even if the PCs do what Graz'zt wants, and even if they're wildly successful (all 23 binders are still alive, bound to Tenebrous, and brought safely to Graz'zt, who, we hope, can keep them alive, bound to Tenebrous, and safe from Orcus indefinitely), that still doesn't solve the problem of the gaping hole in the multiverse that's causing hordes of vestiges to come into the world is a rather anti-social undead.

You need some glue. Some hard core glue.

[hewhosaysfish]

I mean, even if the PCs do what Graz'zt wants, and even if they're wildly successful (all 23 binders are still alive, bound to Tenebrous, and brought safely to Graz'zt, who, we hope, can keep them alive, bound to Tenebrous, and safe from Orcus indefinitely), that still doesn't solve the problem of the gaping hole in the multiverse that's causing hordes of vestiges to come into the world is a rather anti-social undead.

And it doesn't solve the problem of what to do when Grazzt siphons off the trapped power of Tenebrous into himself, becoming an undead god and conquering the Material Plane with an army of zombie-demons. Bwahahahahaha!
Because that's the sort of thing I'd try if I was a demon lordprince.
Bwahahahaha!

[Telonius]

The dragon shaman asked if the paladin should 'fall' for consorting with Graz'zt and the witch. The DM pointed out that talking to a bound demon isn't the same as making a deal with it, and that the witch, despite being evil, is our PRISONER, being held to prevent greater evil being committed.



Seriously. That has to be preventing, like, 15 kilonazis (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0489.html) worth of evil. :smallbiggrin:

[FlyMolo]

Yup. come out of retirement to say how awesome this is.

I have this page individually bookmarked. I check it as often as possible, waiting for my next installment of whatever-this-story is called.

It actually needs a name. something this epic deserves a name.

The Binder Wars?
The DayTime the Dead Walked?
How to Turn a Celestial Mount Into A Spider?

[Grey Watcher]

How to Turn a Celestial Mount Into A Spider...

...Without Really Trying?

[blakyoshi7]

Yup. come out of retirement to say how awesome this is.

I have this page individually bookmarked. I check it as often as possible, waiting for my next installment of whatever-this-story is called.

It actually needs a name. something this epic deserves a name.

The Binder Wars?
The DayTime the Dead Walked?
How to Turn a Celestial Mount Into A Spider?


I've got it!
"How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Kythons"
Brilliant!

[SilverClawShift]

I have this page individually bookmarked. I check it as often as possible, waiting for my next installment of whatever-this-story is called.

Talk about pressure! :smalltongue:

I'm trying to get a post about it in tommorrow, and we have 4 more sessions. The 4th one will wind up being the climax, apparently. So that's cool. Mind you, it's not 1 post = 1 session, but I'll try to get up to speed as much as possible.


Seriously. That has to be preventing, like, 15 kilonazis (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0489.html) worth of evil. :smallbiggrin:

Also, 'kilonazis' is still the best measurement of anything, forever.

[Hyozo]

PSST: there is a delete option in edit post.

This is an astounding campaign, and I must compliment both the DM and the players for making something so great.

[Darkantra]

Out of curiosity has your party tried to contact that little e evil doppleganger? It's possible that by now he'd know something about Tenebrous and Orcus' plans. From what you said he seemed like a canny enough individual, and he was anti-murder and all. It might be a good idea to seek him out.

[Dullyanna]

He wasn't a murderer, but (If I remember correctly) he was pretty damn loony. And I, for one, am always wary around loony doppelgangers.

[Darkantra]

True, but they're already in the midst of a war between to princes of the abyss, and I'd be taking help from any and all quarters if I were them right now.

Also, are there any druid circles around, they'd fall over thenselves to help you restore the balance. Actually if any of your characters die (I really, really hope that they don't!) a druid might be a good class to play as given the setting of the natural world being carved up by otherworldly beings.

[SilverClawShift]

So we set out on the open road. Or more specifically, we set out through the woods, figuring the undead animals would be creepier, but less dangerous, than a lot of stuff we might face traveling in the open. We would make camp in the trees, sleeping in spider webs spun by gold widow, and we had relatively little trouble with undead animals.
We did have some stuff go on, but most of it was minor. We traveled for days, resting lightly, using our magic lightly so we could go on for longer without the (risking) resting period. Occasionally we'd fight, most of the time we just simply out-paced the forces after us. It bit us in the behind once, when we wound up resting and woke to discover that the monsters we outpaced had found us, and there were a lot more of them than we would have had to fight individually.
But we pressed on. After a few days of travel, the witch tells us the binder we were heading northeast for is dead. The next closest one is straight east.
So this is looking positive right? Pessmism instantly overwhelms us as a group. Not in a bad way (the game was still fun) but we're certainly feeling rather hopeless. We ask the witch how far the next one is, and all she says is "far".
We don't have a choice though. We change our course for east. As we walk, we start asking the archivist how we could get the binders to the abyss, alive and whole. He says that we can shift to the abyss, but without explicit knowledge of the plane, we have no way of telling WHERE we'll wind up. We could easily end up shifting directly in front of Orcus himself.
Ug.
Yeah, things are bleak.

To make matters worse, we noticed something that put our hairs on end. There was a large pack of wolves through the trees just ahead, all dead, sitting patiently and watching us. It seemed like there was something wrong with the picture (well, wrong in addition to the fact that they were rotting) and then we noticed. None of them had eyes. But they didn't just have eyes sockets. There was nothing but darkness there, as if their heads were hollow pits of blackness.
We walked forwards slowly, weapons draw, and eased along one side of them. As we turned, so did they. They turned their heads to keep us directly in their field of 'vision', and turned their bodies when they couldn't turn their necks anymore. They didn't attack us. They just watched. They didn't follow us. They just....watched.
We started looking around. Birds in the trees. No eyes. Craning their necks towards us. Squirrels. Rabbits. A deer. No eyes, not a single one, just that horirble empty blackness, all just staring at us as we traveled.
At some point, they stopped staring at us. They were staring forwards, in the direction we were going. We actually stopped to debate veering off in some random direction at that revelation. Talk about ominous? You might as well have thunder crash.
But after a long discussion, we come to the conclusion that, whatever's happening here, we can't FIGHT it if we don't know what IT is. So we press on in the direction the animals are staring. It's getting dark, very dark, even though the sun's only been up for a few hours.
We see, ahead, in the trees, a clearing... in a sense. It's the opposite of a clearing. It's a void. We can tell where the land is, it's still there, but it's like we're staring into a starless sky at the same time. There's a dead body in the clearing, twitching. The animals, they're all staring at the body. We're staring at the body. Some of the animals aren't just staring though, they're running in a circle, and darting across it in strange patterns, climbing over each other, and continuing to run counter clockwise.
As we watch, the corpse spins too spins. There on its back, it circles in brief jerking motions like a top. A blade thrusts OUT of one it its arms, shredding the hand into a puddle of gore with a sickening sound. It twists and jerks, spinning up onto the blade/hand. One leg rises straight in the air, and another blade thrusts from it calf, shredding the foot, poiting straight towards the sky.
One by one, the things hands and feet are shredded by blades coming violently from inside its body. It's distant, but we can tell the things face is distorting, horribly.
And then it begins to spin.

Archivist: "Saints have mercy on us, that's the dancer."

It sees us immediately, and comes dancing towards us in strange elegant patterns, spinning like some bloody bladed top the entire time. As it apporaches, it spins so rapidly against a large tree that the trunk turns into woodchips where it moved and the tree collapses.
We circle into a group, figuring splitting up is suicide. We put the witch in the dead center, to protect her.
The thing (Paimon, a vestige, for those who haven't guessed, a vestige of dancing blades) comes spinning towards us, up into a tree in on fluid motion, spins, POUNCES, and falls directly into the center of our square (won initiative :-\) and hits the witch, hard. I'll spare you the gory details, partially because it'd take days and days to write if I detail every encounter we've had up until this point.
But in the end, we had the vestige gurgling blood, and in its death throws. (Our DM, by the way, apparently does a really wicked death gurgle/vestige/garbled voice). And it asks us. "What do you think will happen if you kill me?"
And our paladin says, triumphantly, "Back to the void with you."
The vestige starts to reply. "yes... back to the void. But a more important question would be-" and here, the paladin rolls his dice (physically) saying he attacks the thing right now. He crits, destroys the thing utterly (sliced it in half in one strike), and the thing impolodes into nothingness.

We cheer.

And then, from one of the animals (a dog), we hear a gurgling garbled voice. "The more important question..." it wracks and twists, its form warping. A blade thrusts from one of its limbs, which are becoming more human every second. "The more important question, is why do you think I'll stay there this time?" *Suicide grin*

To quote our paladin... well... you know.

What can we do here? The thing, if it can't OUTPACE us, can at least KEEP pace with us. We're surrounded by dead animals. We don't know if there's a size limit on corpses, but apparently the link has been MADE, the dancer is MANIFEST, he won't stay GONE, and we are TREMBLING.
Then comes the awesome. The paladin and duskblade, fearless sods they are, both charge the thing in a rage. As this is happening, the bard nonchalantly (he's very non chalant) asks the archivist why they call him "The dancer". The archivist just looks at him (it) like he's crazy and starts casting to help the paladin and duskblade.
The bard? The bard whips out his flute and starts playing that song again. The light begins to glow around him... and Paimon (the dancer)? Begins to dance.
"Stop that" it howls. The bard keeps playing. It screams in rage. The bard keeps playing. It dances in circles around us, twirling furiously in the directions the bard takes it. And finally, the bard dances him straight between two trees. Two trees gold widow had spun a thick sturdy web in.
The dancer stutters, starts slicing through the web, but gold widow is there. She immediately begins spinning the dancer under her... wrapping him, tightly, arms and legs extended, until he's nothing but a tube of web (screaming furiously at us of course).

We book it. I mention that it's only a matter of time before it gets loose, to which the dragon shaman says "Then we'd better not stop to chit chat". Despite that, the archivist tells us a brief history of what we were just fighting. Most of us knew, in a meta-gaming sense though. But yeah, that was a vestige given flesh. Apparently they were starting to find ways in, and once they were here, they could just keep coming.

Dang.

Anyway, we ran and got some good distance between us. And then we notice? The animals. They're all staring at us again... :smalleek:

*****************************

Before a similar mess could happen, there came the wind. Distant and soft at first, but growing until the trees were swaying back around us and we could barely hear each other. The wind carried a voice with with it (complete with a spooky sound clip). It was hard to make out (thankfully, the DM let us listen to it a few times) but we picked out what seemed to be an echoing whisper saying a lot we couldn't make out, plus "come to the north. We can help".
The sound clip was very intimidating. It was ominous sounding at best. At worst it was horrifying.

So now we're left with a tough decision. Do we follow the breeze, and head north with the witch in tow, hoping we can keep her alive? Or do we head east, tring to save another binder bound to tenebrous.
We were fairly split over the whole thing, and actually talked about splitting up again (I convinced everyone that would be suicide at this point. Splitting up is one thing when you have a safe base, but at this point it'd be a game over).
We finally decided to head north. We were having a hard time keeping this one binder alive, let alone two at once. If whatever was up there was setting a trap, well, we were screwed anyway. Things couldn't really get much worse, right?

Haha. hee. Oh.

I am, unfortunately, going to gloss over the travel a little bit. We had encounters with the undead, of course. Sometimes, we'd wind up squaring off against foes that were still alive, including a small group of Orcus cultists (and some summoned demons...) who tracked us down trying to kill off the Tenebrous binder. We even had to fight a few more binders, but fighting them meant "Finding some way to keep them from following us while we book it". I'm not trying to be abrupt, it's just, it would be a small novel if I detailed the whole campaign :-p.

Eventually, the breeze came back. It directed us, in small bits, through the area we needed to go. We came to a rocky mountain pass we had to traverse, which was very stressfull. The paladin opted to travel horizontally, on his mount, occasionally peaking out over the tops of the "canyon' we were in to make sure nothing was comign over the top. The rest of us just moved quickly, eyes peeled, panicking everytime we saw a hole in the ground.
At one point, as we came along a far skinny path, we saw faintly glowing runes etched into the sides of the stone walls. Being the rogue, I had to inch up to them. They were some kind of magical trap, so I started to disarm them. Rolled a natural one. They triggered instantly.
We all had to roll will saves. The paladin rolled a 1, the dragon shaman and me both failed. The paladin experienced no effect, me and the shaman ran back the way we came, screaming in terror. And coming crashing down the path? A giant violent wave of... thick syrupy blood. The smell hit like rancid meat and we saw from a distance that there were corpses in the wave. Some of them were flailing. The Duskblade did a swift-fly and got out of the initial crash of blood, but her and the paladin could only watch in terror as the wave crashed over the rest of us.

Then we all got another will save.

We passed this one. Instantly, the canyon was bone dry, though me and the dragon shaman were still sprinting back the way we came, hollering in utter nightmareish terror. The wave of blood was an illusion, nothing more, accompanying a symbol of fear effect that had me and the shaman consumed with panick for several rounds. guh.
Finally the group managed to get back together, and me and the shaman managed to calm down, and we all (reluctantly) pressed on. When we came back to the area where the symbols of fear had been, we heard a quiet echoing laugh. Eil Ei. The dead wizard. That rat bastard.

***********************************

Anyway. We eventually got out of the canyon with minor violent encounters, the wave of blood was certainly the (horrifying) highlight.

But as we came out of the canyon, we realized what we had been heading towards. As the last bit of rock turned from our field of vision, we got a clear look at one massive ginormous valley. Immediately after our rocky stone path, the stone began showing signs of being intelligently worked. It followed regular patterns leading down, all the way to the bottom, at which there was a massive MASSIVE keep, the size of a city itself. Its towers stretched to the top of the valley, where the stoney mountain/hills made it blend in with the naturally occuring peaks. It was covered in jagged patterns that looked like some kind of massive defensive shielding, or violent seige weaponry, or possibly both. Spikes everywhere. We instantly got the feeling that this had been a very bad idea.

From a ways up ahead, marching down the spiraled stones leading to the keep, another group hailed us, waving hesitantly. We started climbing down, and they climbed back up a short distance. We approached very hesitantly, but they were just as hesitant. I think we were the more fearful looking group, with our rune covered golem, our spider riding paladin in black armor, our (by this point) clearly dead and stitched together rogue ragdoll, and the rest of us weren't exactly the most normal batch. Plus we had a prisoner bound head to toe in spider silk.
They were a smaller adventuring party, and an intentionally humurously generic one. An elf wizard, a halfling rogue, a dim-witted looking half-orc with an axe, an a human in tattered priestly robes. They had a fifth person with them, not counted in the initial description. A ragged and tired looking man who looked like he was covered head to toe in shadows, staring blankly at the sky.
We exchanged stories, but I'm sure you can guess. They heard the call of the breeze too. They were adventurers as well (in fact, the archivist, priest, and paladin had all heard of each other in church documents, though they didn't share a faith). Quote the priest? "That seems like ages ago..."

Anyway, yeah, they had one of the tenebrous vestige bound with them. They heard the same breeze we did, and decided to follow it as well. As we talked, I spotted a small group (no pun intended...) emerging from another rocky outcropping a distance across the valley. They were kobolds, all of them. And one of them? Yeah, covered head to toe in shadows, being dragged along by two others.
We were, apparently, where we needed to be.
We actually all (both groups) caught up the kobolds, who sneered and hissed at us (though one did make a small bow towards our dragon shaman). They huddled together and mumbled something in a reptilian tongue before nodding. One of them approached us, and said in stunted common, "we hate you."

AWESOME. -_-

He added though "must work with" and the kobolds began marching with us. Ah. Well, it doesn't take an 18 INT to realize what he meant. He was right too, this was bigger than whatever they hated humans for.
So we marched on down the spiral path. We saw others inside the keep, sparring, meditating, some of them looked to be adventuring parties too. As we came up to it, a knight on horseback came out of the front gate. He had a strange symbol painted on his shield... it looked almost like a... seal.
The archivist (outside the game) gets a note from the DM. And immediately says that he screma s'Blasphemer!" and picks up a rock and pitches it at the knight as hard as he can. Rolled a 17 too (still not enough). The knight knocks the stone aside with his shield and WHISPERS "your reaction is not surprising, but is nevertheless too hasty."
Archivist: "You're a heretic!"
Knight/binder, still whispering: "no."
Archivist: *to us "He's a binder! he's one of the ones responsible for this mess!"
KB, whispering harshly: "no."
Archivist: "Your kind has finally ruined the world!"

And the binder hisses "no" again. From him, comes a feirce come of wind that knocks all of us (kobolds and all) back 20 feet.

The archivist draws his crossbow pistol, but the binder hisses "stay your hand and have patience, we are not responsible for this and seek to see it ended"
The archivist reluctantly tucks his pistol back away, and we go with the knight into the keep.
Then we get to trade expositions. The keep is a stronghold for Knights of the Sacred Seal. Vestige worshippers. But when all of this began, most of the members of the organization (which was a collection of knights worshipping several vestiges) either left or were driven off. When it was realized that most vestiges were no longer answering their calls, and the role some of them had in this mess... Well, things got hectic. A lot of them even committed suicide. It's taken this long for them to get everything straightened out, and order restored.
They're a skeleton crew now. Only two groups of Knights remain in the keep. The Knights of Orthos, and the Knights of Halphax.
Both of the 8th level vestiges. And the only two vestiges who are still answering the call and making pacts with binders. They could leave the void. But they don't. Halpax is so indifferent to the whole thing, that he sees no point. Orthos... well, orthos is called the Sovereign of the Howling Dark in the book for a reason. He's quite probably THE original vestige. The nothingness is his domain now. Those two vestiges are staying in the void willingly, not trying to escape, and making pacts just the same as they always have.
It's the lesser vestiges that are taking the opportunity to escape. The greatest vestiges? "Whatever".

So fitting.

So the knights are still in order, and both vestiges, Orthos in particular, want the breach, the 'veil' returned to normal. It wouldn't bring the dead back to life, and it may or may not kill the undead currently marching around with vestiges driving their corpses, but it would at least mean that vestiges killed would either re-enter the void, or cease existing entirely.

****************************************


WHEW.

We're caught up!

I had to gloss over some stuff, and skipped some relatively generic rounds of combat and a few encounters, but you got the important stuff. That's where we stand, going into tonights campaign. In the keep, with the knights of the seal, a heap of other high level adventurers, and currently 13 (natch) of the tenebrous bound binders, who are currently being aided by the other knight/binders to help strengthen their resolve.
The knights say that a few other of the bound exist, and that the whispering call is still being sent out, but that many of the bound are alone and helpless, and they don't expect any more to show up.

So we'll see how this goes. (Oh, and we're level 16 at this point, and yeah, we'll probably wind up at 20 just before the climax).

So. Yeah. Actually ending on a (relatively) high note this time. Not that we're not screwed.

The group is gaming tonight, so If there's problems in this post, or if I didn't explain something right, I'll have to wait to fix it, sorry.

[Alex12]

Words fail me. Calling this awesome is like calling a supernova an explosion- vaguely appropriate, but woefully inadequate to describe what it truly is. This campaign long ago passed the boundary between the lands of awesome and far beyond awesome.

[SurlySeraph]

Wow. Just wow.

Now, one of my friends mentioned a game when he was in a situation like this. When lots of high-level adventurers are summoned by mysterious entities to a heavily fortified place, it's almost guaranteed what's going to happen next.

I think you're going to be besieged. Thousands of zombies, most likely, with spellcasters to break down the walls, and maybe some demons. I think you'll be wanting lots of area-destruction spells, as well as a few battlefield control spells. Lay down traps around the keep. Start looking for potential traitors among the other adventurers now, and hope that the orders of binder knights are not themselves traitors (that is, they lured you and the other adventurers there so they could eliminate everyone strong enough to be a threat to their new world order).

Granted, the kython attack on the village and the siege of the church may mean that the DM has filled up his siege quota for this campaign, but when a DM tells you a place friendly to you is heavily fortified, you're probably going to need to use the fortifications.

Good luck, and I await the next update anxiously.

[Cocky]

This should really be stickied...

[bugsysservant]

Awesome, just awesome. Keep up the great work! :smallcool:

[SilverClawShift]

I think you're going to be besieged. Thousands of zombies, most likely, with spellcasters to break down the walls, and maybe some demons.

SOMETHING'S definately going to happen. We're not morons, introducing a keep like that a few sessions from the climax... well, "Duh" that something's going on.

I don't know if he'll do a traditional seige or not. I have a feeling this could be a lot more sinister. I guess we'll find out.

*EDIT*

Also, It's kind of a shame I'm glossing over certain stuff, but keep in mind that what's in the post isn't the only stuff that's happened. The bard's become a sublime chord (using the book as guidance, apparently). And he started calling me "Flutefinder". I asked what the heck he was calling me that for, and he asked, confused, if it was an unacceptable term of endearment.

So I'm like "awww" and just said it was very sweet of him, which seemed to make him content.

Or the duskblade becoming more and more obsessed with the undead, and effective ways to fight them for a swashbuckling type, or the dragon shaman becoming more active at the table as he gets used to the group more... stuff like that. it's important, but adding it all would be crazily time consuming.

[tomaO2]

This is a wonderful campaign and I have very much enjoyed reading it.


It's too bad your not including all the extra details but that's how it goes, I guess.

I was wondering if you plan to talk about your next campaign after this one is over and if it might be possible to play The Giant's custom "Champion" class. Unfortunately, I have only played a little D&D and that was ten years ago but there is something I find really interesting with the class and I've been making my own ideas of how I'd use if it I ever had the chance. This isn't likely but I'd love to read a story that featured this class.

For instance, perhaps some villian had found a way to use the Avatar form so that it wasn't limited to the 3 minutes (plus charisma bonus). If someone found a way to to stay in the avatar form for as long as they wished and was at champion level 20 he would be close to unstoppable because he would only go back to his mundane form when the avatar was badly damaged and he could then transform right back and be fully healed FIVE TIMES A DAY. A worthy goal for any aspiring villain. However, something happens and the spirit escaped and joined with your charater. Making you a hunted man once the villain finds out your the new host (which would probably not be right away). That would be a great long-term side villain to worry about.

If you feel like writing another one and the Champion class is something that sounds interesting to you too. Regardless, your group sounds so fun that you should totally keep writing these stories and learn how to draw stick figures too. Then you can make your own comic from these adventures. I've always thought about how great it would be if D&D campaings would be turned into comic stories.

[Darkantra]

I can't wait to hear how your dragon shaman develops his wings at 19th level. With the way your DM and the paladin player handled the celestial spider mount I just know that it'll be epic. Those kobolds would probably start to see him as almost kin, yay kobolds :smallbiggrin:.

[GoC]

I think you're going to be besieged. Thousands of zombies, most likely, with spellcasters to break down the walls, and maybe some demons. I think you'll be wanting lots of area-destruction spells, as well as a few battlefield control spells. Lay down traps around the keep.

The best traps are Spell Turrets from the DMGII.
They are cheap, can fire continuosly and repair themselves.
In fact, when used as is, with thier current CR they will easily cause TPKs...

[Hyozo]

Don't use traps unless you think you will need them. If you have kobolds (arguably) on your side, they'll want to be the ones to set up those traps, and remember what they said they thought of you. If I were DMing this situation, even if the kobolds dodn't have a betrayal planned, they wouldn't have any trouble sleeping after neglecting to inform someone they hate about a particularly fatal and easy to set off trap.

[SilverClawShift]

tomaO2, We do use custom classes from time to time, and I've looked at the Champion class. It seems interesting, but the flavor has never appealed to me personally. And I'm not going to try to suggest to someone else what they should play, hehe.
Also, I'm not sure what we're going to do next, as we haven't talked about it yet. We're probably going to spend at least a little time working on our Dustlands campaign world at the very least.
And a stick figure comic? I couldn't step on the giants toes like that, he's the master of D&D stick figures. Also, I have no sense of comedic timing, dramatic timing, story pacing, or.... yeah, I'm no writer.


I can't wait to hear how your dragon shaman develops his wings at 19th level.

We'll likely find out tonight. Second to last night for this story, if the pacing holds steady (supposedly).


If I were DMing this situation, even if the kobolds dodn't have a betrayal planned *SNIP*

We don't trust ANYONE here but us. We won't even let the witch out of our sight, cause gods know what kind of whacky stuff is going to go down. We're approaching the endgame, we're keeping our cards tight to us and checking every corner right now :smalltongue:

[Grey Watcher]

Also, I have no sense of comedic timing, dramatic timing, story pacing, or.... yeah, I'm no writer.

You sell yourself short, madam. This thread should prove that you have some talent for writing, or I don't think as many of us would be as interested as we are.

[Hecore]

Yes, what Grey Watcher said is correct.


We see, ahead, in the trees, a clearing... in a sense. It's the opposite of a clearing. It's a void. We can tell where the land is, it's still there, but it's like we're staring into a starless sky at the same time. There's a dead body in the clearing, twitching. The animals, they're all staring at the body. We're staring at the body. Some of the animals aren't just staring though, they're running in a circle, and darting across it in strange patterns, climbing over each other, and continuing to run counter clockwise.
As we watch, the corpse spins too spins. There on its back, it circles in brief jerking motions like a top. A blade thrusts OUT of one it its arms, shredding the hand into a puddle of gore with a sickening sound. It twists and jerks, spinning up onto the blade/hand. One leg rises straight in the air, and another blade thrusts from it calf, shredding the foot, poiting straight towards the sky.

I just took the above quote and gave it a ...makeover... of sorts. What is written below is what I'd call bad writing - it still gives you all the basic details but it lacks any kind of spark. What you write is excellent, so don't underestimate your own abilities.



Ahead is a kind of opening in the trees. A corpse is lying there, twitching, and animals are watching. We also look at the body, and see animals running all over it.
As we look the body begins spinning, and it begins to rise, blades popping out of its limbs.


Also, I'm still looking forward to how this whole thing turns out; it's been a throughly good read from start to finish (in fact it reminds me somewhat of the DM of the Rings play-by-play transcript).

[SilverClawShift]

So, we're in the keep of the binders. We all get rested up in shifts, the groups organize themselves, a lot of the adventuring parties actually joined into bigger groups, the ones who suffered casualities especially. We also went up a level, for finding the keep, so that was cool.

We spent a while discussing various plans for fixing the problem (you know, the whole "the world is over" problem. That little thing). None of it really sounded... er, positive.
Live Free or Die: Entreating the always eager unholy forces for aid, become their servants for protection and a new home (quote the archivist: "you seem very ready to make pacts with evil creatures, no surprise there").
Noah's Ark: Attempting to cobble together as a group, circle the world looking for survivors, and physically shunt everything alive into some other plane of existance, to buy us breathing time (quote the dragon shaman: "abandon the entire world?").
Martial Law: Go military and try to erradicate every undead creature we could, while keeping living creatures under close watch on various buddy systems and legal restrictions, destroying new corpses immediately, and trying to fan back out. (quote the warforged: "they all sound fine to me.")
Of course, any plan involves facing the inevitable. Praying Orcus doesn't find a way to kill Graz'zt's thralls and free himself from the void, and knowing that sooner or later they'll die of old age anyway. We're not in a very strong position on the tabel here.

What's more, it starts coming out that we're facing some very serious, and very rapdily approaching threats. No one was quick to mention it, but on adventuring party said they've been stalked for days by a massive band of orcus cultists. Way too many for them to fight, they only got here by thinking on their toes and moving fast. Our Duskblade says: "that's not a problem, there's plenty of us now, banded together we can stomp them out the second they show their faces."
The bard scratches his head. "There's the dancer too remember. He's tracking us down, and he won't stay dead. Will that be a problem?" The binder knights kinda freak out at that and ask for details. Oh gee, yeah, Paimon, the vestige, has a physical form that won't stay destroyed and is tracking us as we speak. Not to mention the handful of other vestiges given flesh who we also had to tangle with. Then I have to mention "The rogue/jester vestige is also ticked off at ME personally, because I was supposed to be his body".

Before anyone can even react to the idea that we've got vestiges physically in the world, and coming HERE specifically, the kobold that knows common speaks up. "master. ours master, he dies. humans kill him. comes for us."

...

So we're like, Aw CRAP. You know what that means. UNDEAD DRAGON, HEADIN THIS WAY. HUNTIN KOBOLDS.
Then everyone else starts piping up too. Vestiges, hoardes of undead, a massive band of TROLLS of all things, that are still alive by the virtue of refusing to stay dead when they get torn apart by the undead. Seemed like every adventuring party had at least one thing hunting them through the woods leading to this point.
Then something else crosses my mind. Eil Ei. "Uh, yeah, by the way, there's this undead wizard. He's a diviner specialist, knows us personally, probably has this place scryed to the last inch, might be contacting god knows what to stop us from whatever we're doing and may or may not be listening to any plan we concoct".

Everything gets really quiet. We hear a gurgle and look over in the corner it came from. One of the adventurers killed himself in despair. Oh, yeah, that's, yeah. Fantastic. Wait. CRAP. BURN THE CORPSE.
The dragon shaman, thinking on his toes (he's getting better and better, it's comforting to see him coming into the group) immediately hits it with an acid breath that disolves it almost to nothing. it's still twitching, but we all just immediately pounce, a sorcerer hit it with a fireball, a cleric hammered one of the bones that went flying. We turned it into DUST within seconds. It was kinda comical, except not. It was also very depressing. Kinda.... Yeah.
Yeah, things were akward for a while.

Anyway. Given that new bit of information (the walls have ears), the arcane mages group together to discuss sure ways to get us some privacy, ways that can't be beaten by the other person knowing about them (cause heck, any plan for privacy we come up with he might be listening to). The binders mention that they do have one plan, that they're glad they haven't elaborated on. Then they tell us that everyone needs to start preparing. War is coming, after all.
The archivist pulls us aside, and mutters something about Orthos, then asks us if we know anything about Halphax.
Dragon Shaman: "Oh yeah. Everything. In detail. But you know, maybe you should refresh our memories."
So the archivist mentions stuff you can find in tome of magic (metagaming versus roleplaying here). Halphax was a gnome, who specialized in building defensive structures. At one point in his life, he was blackmailed into using his defensive structures against his own people, keeping them as slaves to prevent someone he cared about from dying. That's part of how he became a vestige. The archivist ends his little comment about it with "Don't trust them. None of them".
Still, the Archivist heads off with the Binders to discuss what to do and prepare some war spells. And the rest of us take watch around the keep. Allready we get the feeling that this is the calm before the storm, because that's exactly what it is.

*******************************************

Comic Releif

And boy did we need some of it. But this next bit actually really tickled me. We notice a little commotion on one side of the courtyard. Nothing major, just activity besides moping under the heavy weight of an entire world suffocating and collapsing and there's not a damn thing we can do about it and oh god the horrible crushing feeling make it stop.
So the 5 of us head off to see what's up. There's a bard with scales tattooed on her wrists, and decked out from head to toe in miscellaneous clutter and bags and packets and pouches and extradimensional holding space. She's got "So much random crap" she barely knows what to do with it. So people are just shouting out stuff and she's digging in her packs and, if not coming up with the exact item, coming up with something reasonably similar. People are throwing gold at her and she's stuffing it in the packs, and, and...

it's me.

Or it's one of my old characters, a bard obsessed with dragons who has an item collection fixation. *SQUEEEE*

Anyway, we get what's going on. Martial gear like armors, weapons, magical items that might save our butts, are going to end up getting handed out based on who needs what. If you've got a crappy sword, she's going to dig around and find a better one, to try to help make sure we're ALL (everyone there) geared up for the fight as well as we could realistically be. Afterall, stuff is useless if you can't survive to enjoy it.
Anything beyond that? Selling at discount prices. There's not enough gold in this part of the world to dent all the random crap she has stowed away, none of it's good to her if the world ends, and if we save the world she can at least go shopping herself later. So if you want something, you can go for it. A dwarf asks for dwarven ale, she apologetically says all she has is elven wine. His reply? "Better'n nothin!" 25 gold. He also turns out to be a drunken master.

We can't think of anything particularily worth asking for, but she did wind up gearing us up along with everyone else, good armor, good weapons, good times.

*******************************************

Good times which came to a sudden, and screeching halt, when a giant shadow passed over the courtyard. We look up. Yeah. Rotting dragon.

Two of the kobolds scream, shrill and hard, while the others scatter. Even the shadowy one bound to tenebrous ran from the sight of the dragon. We ALL scattered, actually, but, we're all high level adventurers. We scattered with a plan. We...

Yeah. We had no plan.

The archers opened fire on it, the duskblade scrambled for the main door to the keep and shouted "get the mages out here NOW". Then all hell breaks loose. We see, on top of the dragon, Eil Ei, our ex-compatriot. The realization is sickening. If he managed to find the dragon, then...
Right as we're coming to the realization that he could have been getting a lot done, we see stuff cresting the hills in the distance, and pouring out of the passages we came through. Undead. A lot of sentient ones, and enough shamblers to make things interesting. Vestiges too. The only one we made out specifically was Paimon (the dancer), striking a pose on one bladed arm at the pinnacle of one of the stone faces.
The knights came out and started rallying everyone, we got all the gates in sealed up and supported, the archers opened fire on the undead pouring down the hills, the archivist came out and tried to shout to them to ignore the runners and hit the dragon first. Clerics started turning undead as the first of them hit the wall, and the dragon swooped in low. Bear in mind that, as usual, we largely get examples of what we see and react to, no raw tactical information.
The dragon lights up the courtyard. One kobold fries to a crisp, the other manages to take partial damage from the flames and wises up and runs for cover with the other ones. The binders are shouting at everyone to get the ones bound to tenebrous INSIDE the keep, and a few knights run in with them and start barricading the doors to keep them protected. Something explodes on the other side of the courtyard, we have no idea what it was, or if it was friend or foe.
We get to the top of the outer walls. Oh dear god we are screwed. The valley is flooding with undead. Which might be manageable, if it weren't for the much more dangerous unique enemies burning, slicing, rending, jumping, and screaming as they tear through the hoardes to get to the walls.
We hear the wizards laugh echo through the valley. DAMN him. We also can't help but feel partially responsible. If we hadn't come, there might have been more time to prepare, it was probably Eil Ei that brought everyone here. We open fire on the crowds. The archivist opens with a storm of vengeance, straight to the big guns (I love it). The dragon dodges around the edge of the stormcloud and swoops in for another pass, once again filling the courtyard with fire. He gets hit with a few spells, but undead or not, he's still a dragon, and he starts circling around for another pass. There's screaming everywhere. There's blood everywhere. The rear of the keep sounds more violent than the area we're at, and we have a freaking storm of vengeance just outside the keeps walls.
The archivist says we need to figure out some way to keep the dragon off our backs.

And the dragon shaman gets the best line he had in the entire darn campaign.

"I'm on it."

He sprints down from the wall, across the courtyard, takes a running leap up onto the wall over the place where the kobolds are hiding and starts spider climbing up. It takes him a few rounds to get up high, but he gets a lofty position, and jumps clean off the tower.
And sprouts wings.
And starts flying clockwise to intercept the dragon going counter.
And spits a line of acid into the dragons face, enraging it and making it follow him through the air while Eil Ei misses with a ray spell of some kind.

Oh hells yeah.

(Now the usual disclaimer applies. As this is going on, so too is other stuff. We're casting spells, firing crossbow bolts, lending aid to other adventurers, and generally trying to keep the keep in one peice. Describing everything that happens would take pages, and it would be like reading lines of code "I fired for 2d6 damage, he fired for 9d6 damage" ect ect.)

So the fight continues. The Dragon shaman actually pulls some really nice, off the books kinda stunts like swooping through the crowd of zombies and getting the area toasted with dragon breath as he makes a save to swoop back out of the area. (I can't adequetly describe it here in text, but I'll repeat for the third or fourth time, that it's nice to see someone get away from the numbers and get into the story).
After a while of warring, and thinking "Wow, we're doing surprisingly good", we start getting screamed at to fall back and get inside the second portion of the keep. The paladin shouts something about us holding the wall, and one of the other adventurers screams "THE WALL'S ALLREADY BEEN BREACHED IN THE REAR". The courtyard is starting to fill with the undead. We start sprinting for the door. Some of the binder knights start throwing down walls of iron to buy us extra time. It made me physically sick to my stomach (and gods knows what was going through the paladins head) but we had to seal the doors before more than 3/4 of us made it back in. It wasn't an issue of bravery or cowardice. It was an issue of suicide or not. Nevertheless, my first course of action was to sprint headlong up the nearest stairs I could find, trying to get to some kind of window to yell to the dragon shaman to try to save someone, and to get himself in through the window as well.
The adevnturers try to start fortifying the doors as well as possible, the rest of my group runs towards where it looks like the ones bound to tenebrous are. They come to a locked door and hear screaming on the other side. After a number of strength checks, the paladin finally kicks in the door. The room they were in? Covered, wall to wall, in blood and viscera. There are exactly two "tenebrous bound" left. The knights in the room protecting them? One of them turns to the group and says, calmly, "Praise orcus."

Sonuvacrap.

Our group manages to keep the cultists, the lying, sneaking, devious bastards, from killing the last two. Namely, by utterly maiming them beyond recognition, and then multiating their corpses so thoroughly they can't return. They do the same to some of the dead "tenebrous bound", and manage to best the ones that have returned. Our archivist grabs the witch (ours, one of the only surviving ones, despite (or perhaps because of) being utterly bound in sturdy spider silk. The paladin grabs the other one (a shady (no pun intended) looking elf, and they all run deeper into the keep.
The dragon shaman (alone) manages to get back into the keep through the window I was at, and me and him run off to try to find the rest of our group. We spent a long time exploring the maze like stone and iron halls of the keep, until finally we come to what was likely the center. It's a massive stone chamber with six hallways leading down every direction, and a massive spiral staircase leading straight up. Four of the knights (think they were knights of Orthos) were charging up the spiral staircase. For lack of a better lead on where to find our friends, we charged up after them. We reached the top just as they were activating some kind of crystaline device, which immediately let loose a horrible gust of wind that threatened to deafen us, and then broke into 6 dark fragments.
I asked what the hell they just did, and one of them turned to me and said "We're not sure yet". In elaboration, it was revealed that that was the firs step to opening a portal. A one of a kind portal to a one of a kind place. "Nowhere". After some mage-babble that my character couln't understand (in character that is), they laid it out flat for us. They were basically going to open a portal inside out. The effect would be the destruction of the keep and a large chunk of the terrain around it, and the end result would, theoretically be a passgeway straight to....well, nothing. The portal wouldn't go anywhere.
And why the hell did they want to do this?
They figure if they toss all the living tenebrous-bound binder into the portal to nowhere... well, one of two things will happen. Either the binders will become quasi-vestiges themselves, unkillable creatures, permanently locking Tenebrous away in the void, as some fragment of him could never permanently escape the 'sacrificial gates' tossed his way. With the one the 'breach' was intended for permanently trapped, it should naturally seal itself shut.

Or?

Or, tenebrous will be unleashed, Orcus will become a god, 10,000 years of pain unimagineable and then the end of creation.

Wonderfull.

So I have to ask... what are the odds either way? "Well, we have no way of knowing, at all, so.... 50/50?" Yeah. Great. Grand. Awesome. a 50% chance of utterly damning or potentially saving the world. Of course, even if it works in our favor, it won't solve the problem of everything allready THROUGH the void. it'll just mean things will finally start staying dead.
The dragon shaman asked the binder if he really thought that was a good idea. He just shrugged weakly, asn said "please help us..." handing each of us one of the 6 crystal fragments. Apparently, the location of the fragments would effect the size of the portal. They agreed to activate the portal in 5 minutes, on the dot, wherever the chips lay. The goal was to destroy the keep entirely, ensuring that the tenebrous bound inside would be sucked through it as well. What about the tenebrous bound being consigned to an eternity of nothingness? What about everyone else in the keep? Collateral damage. Somewhere, we heard the sound of iron wall groaning, maybe giving out.

Ugh.

What can we do though? We agree to help.
We all go back down the spiral staircase, to the chamber with the hallways. The knights all charge off a hallway on their own, instructing us to get the crystals as far to each point as we possibly can. Then they're gone. We look at the crystals, at each other, and down the two hallways we're supposed to be running down. Our directions are northwest and southwest.
I grab the crystal from the dragon shaman, and tell him to find as many people as possible. "you've got 4 1/2 minutes. Get as many people as you can to head west, come hell or highwater, and leave the binders in the keep." He asks what I think I'm doing, and I tell him I can handle both crystals, he needs to ensure there are survivors.
So off I sprint, down one of the hallways, two crystals in tow. I figure I can get as far as I can in 3, or 3 and a half minutes, go incorporeal and take the crystal a similar distance in the slightly-off direction. That would leave things slightly off balance in that direction, giving any potential survivors a realistc chance to escape from the portal, as it would be off center on the west side.

The dragon shaman moved as fast as he could, a sprint the whole way, through the side door we came in and shouting for anyone still alive to answer him. He finds one of the kobolds cowering in a corner. He manages to grab it during his run. In the end, he found a handful of adventurers, and our group heard his shouting. He had a heck of a time convincing the archivist to leave the witch behind. The archivist kept swearing it was a trick, it was a trick, they were setting us up for the biggest fall of all... the dragon shaman couldn't even argue. All he said was, "If it's a trick, we're doomed anyway". The archivist finally left the (now cataonic) witch in a quiet room and booked it with everyone else. As they ran, barricades were failing everywhere. Zombies were pouring in through holes in the walls, opened doors, crawling in through high windows (presumably they were so thick they were simply clawing over each other and through 12 foot high fixtures). Eil Ei was among them, and so were a number of vestiges. All they could do was run.
They arcanists managed to get enough people flying that between them holding people, the dragon shaman flying (and he was strong enough to carry the kobold and one other person), and the paladin riding gold widow, that they managed to get over the crowd of zombies for just long enough to give them a running chance for the edge of the valley. They lost numbers, but most of them made it to the point where they were sprinting for their lives.

Then the dragon saw them.

The dragon shaman took to the skies yet again, while those with enough magic left were hitting the thing from the ground while on the run. He fought it viciously, acid versus fire. And he DROPPED the sucker clean. Oh yeah. During the commotion, the paladin managed to down Eil Ei. I know that sounds anti-climactic? but it wasn't. We were pumped up, cheering, the DM was dancing circles using magic, and the Paladin finally leveled him with one heavy power attack. Practically turned him inside out. GOD yes.

************************

Meanwhile, I'm running through maze like halls with two black crystals, trying to keep track of the time close enough that I know when to drop one and worry about the other. Finally I reach that point, throw down the crystal, and start running in a reasonable direction (southish). Then I get hit, hard, with a fist to the side of the head. I go sprawling, the crystal goes sliding in the wrong direction, and a nimble but malformed shaped dances between me and it. I move to get up, and I see the Rogue vestige standing between me and the crystal. "I know your tricks, rogue. I dreamt half of them up" it says with a creepy smile. Its arms are a blur. Its hands (there are numerous) all have black daggers. I try to get around him, but he's too fast for me to stand a chance, dancing circles around me and taunting me. It says again "I know all your tricks"
Finally my brain clicks, and I don't see why I didn't think of it before. "I don't even know all of my tricks". Then I go incorporeal, dash past him, turn solid, grab the crystal, and ghost once again through a wall while he stabs at me (caught me twice, more brutal hits, I'm low on hitpoints actually). I hear his scream echo as he dashes down one of the mazelike halls to try to catch up with me. It's a pretty even race, actually. He's fast as a bolt of lightning, but I'm shortcutting through solid stone.

Finally, I realize that I'm running out of time. I stash the crystal in a hiding spot, and bolt westward.

We never did find out exactly how the portal got activated. None of the other binder knights were ever seen again. But with a sickening groan, the world shuddered, and suddenly everything felt a lot emptier.
For some reason? I expected it to happen instantly. It didn't. The keep started to groan, and fall apat from the inside out. The portal was starting dead center, and spreading outwards. Crap.

******************************

So we're dashing west, not knowing how far it'll come, hoping it'll stop at the crystals. Of course, I'm lagging behind everyone else, I'm the one who was placing the crystals. I didn't want to look back, but I couldn't help it. Behind us, consuming the keep, was just an inky black void. Blacker than a starless sky, blacker than the blackest nightmare of negative energy and darkness. It was an aggressive blackness. Nothingness.

Iron fell, stone crumbled, and the very earth gave way. Wind rushed past us into the pit, threatening to suck us back towards it it was so powerful.

Finally, with another groaning shudder, it stopped. We could still hear the moans of the zombies around us. We were sitting precariously on a hill, the bottom of which was a pit of terrible emptiness. And at the edge of the pit? Two scrabbling figures. The rogue vestige. And a silk wrapped cocoon with a face. CRAP. Then that sickening guilty feeling. If I'd gotten the crystals farther, none of us would have survived, but neither would the vestige and the binder.
The rogue had a strand and was trying to pull her away from the pit. That boded well for us, in the sense that the rogue was obviously afraid of her falling into the void for some reason. bad for us, becuase he could kill her the second he got back to safe ground.

No chance to hesitate. I ran, moving like I was going to tackle him. The rogue-vestige noticed me, and with a sick grin, pulled out a dozen daggers from thin air, ready for me. I was ready for him. I went incorporeal at the last second, slide past him and tackled the cocoon.
The vestige howled in rage. sliding along with the two of us down the rocky slope into the void, holding the silk strand feircly. The cocoon came to rest on a rock, I gave the strand a sharp tug, and we got stuck in a tug of war match. For a moment. Then the bard came dashing behind him and threw an elbow into the back of his head, staggering him, throwing him off balance long enough for me to pull and send the rogue screaming over the edge, with me wrapped up in the chord. The paladin came charging down too. The archivist, wisely, held the duskblade back and screamed at the survivors to stay back from the edge of the pit. The dragon shaman tried to take to the sky to come help us, but the wind was too strong. He moved to chase after us, but he was way too late.
The void was closing. The rogue was screaming, holding his end of the silk strand. The cocoon was dangling on the other end, the middle stuck on a rock. I was clinging to both strands, trying to pull myself up it in time. The paladin tried to pull me up, but the combined weight of me, the vestige, and the cocoon/witch, he couldn't quite do it. In fact, the ground crumbled and he fell down next to me, clinging to my side, and I started slipping down.
Paladin: "I'll let go!"
Me: "Don't you dare! I can't make it anyway!"
The Vestige slipped. He didn't fall. He just hung there, glaring at us angrily, cursing at us the entire time as he faded from existance. The Bard tried to pull us up, but couldn't even come close.

So he started climbing down the strand, casually.

Me: "What in the nine hells are you doing?!"
Him: Coming with you?
Me: "You don't have to do this. You can save yourself."
Him: "But you're the flutefinder. And it's dark, and you'll need light."
Me: "You can't light this place"
Him: "then I'll keep you company"

I couldn't argue. Wether he understood or not, he wasn't going back. The void started to close. The wind reached a peak, so ferocious we couldn't even hear each other. And the last of the light slipped away as the portal closed, and suddenly, we weren't hanging. We were just floating there.

The paladin looked up at me, "You know what's funny?"
Me: "What could possibly be funny right now?"
Paladin: "I didn't even use any of my extra lives."

I started laugh crying (borderline for real). The bard played his flute nonchalantly.

And then there was nothing.

************************************************** *

And, uh. The end.

I mean, sort of.

Then the DM started the epilogue. The survivors, including three of our party, had a small but uneventful fight with Paimon. He danced around them, aggressively at first, then cautiously, then he started reacting to something they couldn't detect. In the end, he backed away from them in fear and climbed over the stone face they were near, dissapearing quickly.
He was afraid of them, because the breach was closing. When he dies now, he'll return to the void. Trapped once more. The same holds true of every vestige still in the world, every undead creature still shambling. The world is not fixed. But now it CAN be fixed. Existance is no longer fighting a losing battle. Whether or not the world CAN be saved remains a question mark, but at least no more ground is being lost.
The Duskblade said something about Paimon, the Dancer getting away. The archivist just replied calmly that it didn't matter. It was only a matter of time now, before the fight was settled. One way or another. A somber but realistic conclusion. The dragon shaman asked the kobold he was carrying if he was okay, and it replied "yes master". Made the dragon shaman snicker, and flutter his wings proudly.

The DM informed the three of us lost to the pit? We've become vestiges. Full blown contacteable vestiges. We're working on them as homebrew vestiges currently, and the paladin is probably done and ready to play with. Me and the bard still need to be finished though. What's cool is that the DM is going to gladly let us use those vestiges anytime we play binders, so as tragic of an ending as it is, it's still also fairly cool.

Then the DM went around the table, asking the survivors what happens to their characters.

All of them, of course, are going to band together to try to locate and protect survivors, as well as laying waste to as many undead as possible to try to restore some kind of balance.
The duskblade is going to go back to being a teacher, but with training focusing on martial combat and spellcasting. A swashbuckling duskblade academy, with special courses on combatting the undead.
The Dragon Shaman is going to focus partially on nature, and on the wilderness. Once again looking for survivors, tracking down any undead dragons as a result of this catastrophe and destroying them, and trying to find living animals to group them up together and keep them safe until nature is strong enough to return to normal. He'll also probably wind up with a number of kobolds helping him in the matter.
The archivist is going to particularily focus on restoring whattever remains of his church are around, and destroying the undead. Dark knowledge and divine magic are very handy for things like that. The next part, I'm gonna try to remember his everything he said.
"I write a 2,500 page treatise on the nature and evils of pact magic, including how to identify binders and other practitioners of pact magic to avoid something like this ever happening again. No one ever bothers to read the entire thing, but everyone says they agree with it entirely, and a copy of it exists in almost every sect of my church. Included in the book, as examples of dangerous pact magic, are explicit step-by-step instructions for summoning and binding three vestiges. Despite my hatred of pact magic, I've at least ensured that my friends will always have a way to experience the material world, hidden forever in plain sight". Probably not word for word, but that's the jist of it.

Yeah. he rocks.

So that's that. A lotta candy, a lotta tragedy, and three new vestiges.

I hope it was a satisfactory read, and that I didn't bore anyone too much with the way I tend to ramble. Thanks for being interested in it :). And sweet god, I hope it made sense.

*Edit*

Again with the little details. One thing I'd like to point out? I dunno if it mattered or not. But our DM kept flipping a coin every now and then. Either he had multiple paths laid out, or he just wanted to make us sick with worry.

[Manticorkscrew]

Wow... just... wow!

[Alex12]

...
...
...
This...
I...
Wow.
That was epic. Utterly, truly, totally and completely epic. Seriously. That was arguably the most awesome thing I've ever read.
This whole game was epic. You may not have been epic level, but it was still epic.

[TheLogman]

Amazing. Just Amazing. You guys rule.

Your vestige has the potential as awesome. A few Undead qualities, perhaps Sneak-Attack progression depending on Binder levels, and Etherealness are all perfect.

The Paladin vestige is awesome as well.

Not like I know what I'm talking out, but just my thoughts.

[lordbrocktree]

wow that was awesome

[Darkantra]

Buh... BRILLIANT! Please, PLEASE, post the vestiges for your characters!

I'm thinking the names will be something like
Rogue, The Flutefinder
Paladin, Nine Lives
Bard, The Lightbringer

And possibly have a special condition where if a binder makes pacts with all three of your vestiges they gain some additional benefits.

But... wow. Thank you so much for sharing the campaign. You do malign your narrating skills but trust us, you are very worthy of this praise. Thanks to your fellow players and fantastic DM, and I'm putting forth another call that he should do some campaigns for distribution.

And I knew the kobolds would be important :smallwink:

[Illiterate Scribe]

Damn fine campaign!

[Callos_DeTerran]

....I...am.......well dumbfounded...utterly and completely dumbfounded. Everything from the kyton attack to the collapsing keep and the full-blown vestiges was done so completely masterfully.

I actually felt sad that the three of you who went into the void...but the turning into full blown contactable vestiges? Awesome. Pure Awesome. I cannot completely state my admiration but I'm gonna keep trying.




I do have one very important thing to ask though....Will we get to see the vestiges? The only way I can think of to show the awesomeness of that ending is to make sure those three vestiges see the most play they can possibly get. (That and I'm very very curious as to which powers each grant)


EDIT:...Forgot one more question. If your DM ever runs a game on this forum FOR THE SAKE OF EVERYTHING HOLY, let me know! PLEASE!

[Magi_Ring_O]

Definitely an amazing ending.

[Glyphic]

Could.. could you Post the home brews? It makes a -great- legend for a 'second' rebirth' of the world kinda thing. I'd absolutely love to see them.

[shadowdemon_lord]

Dude, woah, just woah. That was ridicoulously awsomely overthetoply epic. I love it! It was so awsomely epic you had to gloss over epic parts to fit in all the really epic parts. I am in awe.

[13_CBS]

It's...it's over.

Such a long, frightful, yet wonderful tale.

It's over.

:smallfrown:

I must immortalize this within my computer.

[Darth Mario]

I would absolutely love to see what you guys come up with for your vestiges, and would love the homebrews as well!

Frigging EPIC!

Edit: Also, can you clone yourself, your group, and your DM so I can play in the next campaign from the comfort of my own home? Muchly appreciated.

[dyslexicfaser]

Truly fantastic, start to finish.

Everyone got their time to shine (I love your guys' new vestige's last words, and that last bit with the archivist. Very, very clever.), your DM sounds like a god in his own right, and the homebrewed vestiges sound interesting. I'm a big fan of those little touches that survive from campaign to campaign.

And your writing style is great. A bit longwinded, perhaps, but look at your target audience: We're DnD players. We love this stuff.

[Wooter]

Oh, god. The bard. That was the sweetest, saddest thing ever. You were the flute finder, and he kept you company.

Excuse me as I cry a little.

[Grey Watcher]

Bravi tutti!

That was a great ending.

I too think it would be a great postscript to this campaign to "publish" (via a post in the Homebrew boards) the three new Vestiges.

Also, it makes me wonder... in your campaign setting (since, based on the appearance of your previous character, the collector, you seem to be using one ongoing campaign setting for many adventures), what happens when a Binder tries to bind Tenebrous, now that he's a vestige trapped within a vestige? Can you gain his powers by binding the Witch (or her other "surviving" compatriot, unless perhaps they collapsed into a single vestige, there is a precedent for "compound vestiges" right), or can the Witch grant other powers when bound and Tenebrous is out of reach forever?

(Hehe, if your group ever decides to play Evil characters, a band of cultists with a mission to unseal Tenebrous from this "prison" might make a interesting campaign.)

[Hecore]

The only flaw I could find with the ending is that once you told it the story was over. :smallwink:

[Doresain]

i dont know what to do now...i have spent every day for the past like 2 weeks reading this (started late) and waiting for updates...but now its over...

[SilverClawShift]

Also, it makes me wonder... in your campaign setting (since, based on the appearance of your previous character, the collector, you seem to be using one ongoing campaign setting for many adventures), what happens when a Binder tries to bind Tenebrous, now that he's a vestige trapped within a vestige?

We don't usually explicitly play in specific worlds, unless we note at the beginning of the game that we will be. Even when we play eberron themed games, it's usually less about the existing eberron world, and more about the eberron style.

If any of us play binders, i'm sure it'll pretty much function normally. And I don't think we'll be making vestiges for the other people lost in the void, even if they would turn into them logically. Just too much work, hehe :smallsmile:

*********************************

To everyone else who enjoyed it: :smallredface: :smallredface: :smallredface:

*********************************

To everyone who wants to see the vestiges, sure thing! But they're not done or anything yet (scept probably the paladin). The way we're figuring we'll do it is... wait
(I just realized I didn't really mention any names, cause it's easier to keep track of classes and races when talking about this stuff. The bard was named Core for reasons he refused to elaborate on, I was Selena, and the paladin was Tevler. The Duskblade everyone only ever called Miss Beverly, the Dragon Shaman was Therric, and the archivist was Ferelian Sethian).

Anyway, the bard is going to be Core, the Guiding Light. He'll be a lower level vestige with group-bolstering abilities, diplomatic magic, and of course, the ability to fend off darkness (fending off even powerful magical darkness based on your binder level). Largely not fleshed out, except for being low level and centered mainly around light.

We haven't come up with a good name for me, but we're thinking "Selena, the Corporeal Ghost". I'll be a mid-level vestige, based more around adaptability and factotumishism than rogueness. Probably grants anyone who binds me a number of inspiration points, and some binder-ish stuff they can do with them (like using them as fuel to activate other binder abilities more often, or with stronger results). The ability to blink ethereal for a round or two as a free action, once every five rounds maybe. (That may sound random to people who don't use binders, but binder abilities are traditionally not-devestatingly-powerful abilities that can be used at will, but with a 5 round delay). It's a good one, but not a game breaker.
I also won't answer the summoning unless you've been bound to Core, the Guiding Light within the past day.

Here's the paladin though:


Vestige Level: 8th
Binding DC: 33
Special Requirement: Yes

Once a spider-riding paladin, then a death delver, Tevler was fearless by nature. His courage in the face of death eventually carried over to courage in the face of nonexistance, and Tevler became a vestige. He grants his host the ability to laugh in the face of certain destruction, as well as several abilities related to his spidery companion.

Legend: The legend of Tevler is unique among most vestiges in how detailed it is. Information about his life prior to becoming a vestige -and the details of his vestigehood- is readily accessible in the Pact Execarium, an infamous document on pact magic archived in most reasonable sized churches around the world. Unfortunately, the Pact Execarium is 2500 pages long.
The short version of Tevlers history is that he is one of the brave souls responsible for saving a world from a destruction brought upon it, supposedly, by pact magic. In saving that world, Tevler was forced to bodily enter the void between realities and become a vestige himself.
Special Requirement: You must swallow a live spider. After you are no longer bound to Tevler (wether through dismissal or the natural binding period coming to an end), you cough the spider up and it will descend from your lips on a silken strand. If you kill this spider, Tevler will never answer your call again.
Manifestation: Tevler descends from above as if crawling down an invisible strand of spider silk. His form is that of a spiderous creature, similar to an armored drider in shape and size. At times both the spider half and human half will appear dark and chitinous like that of a normal spider, and at other times both halves will appear in beautiful gleaming shades of silver and platinum. Whichever color Tevler appears in, his face always remains the same, appearing as a human male with 6 spider-like eyes which glow with a pale golden light. Despite his terrifying visage, Tevler always greets his summoner in a relaxed and friendly fashion.
Sign: A golden hourglass appears on your torso - either on your stomach, chest, between your shoulder blades, or on the small of your back. The placement of this hourglass is completely random, and can be seen through most articles of clothing or armor (only metal can conceal this glowing shape).
Influence: When Tevler influences you, you must go to great lengths to protect spiders and spider like creatures. Any act you can accomplish to keep such a creature safe must be taken, including treating those who would destroy spiders with hostility and anger. Tevler makes exceptions for spiders which are an immediate threat to you and your companions, but if you have a chance of ending combat in a way that leaves the spider alive, you must take it.

Granted Abilities: You gain abilities related to spiders, as well as a chance to walk back through death's door.
Lifeline: You gain a single extra life in addition to your own. One time during the 24 hour period you have summoned and bound Tevler, upon your death or destruction, you will return to life with half of your hitpoints, no matter how violent or seemingly permanent that death was. If your corpse is destroyed entirely, or is in a location where returning to life would be immpossible (such as being crushed underneath rocks) your body will reform at the nearest safe location. This will occur 5 rounds after your death, but prior to your death you may willingly increase that delay by a number of rounds equal to your effective binder level.
Spider Climb: You can constantly move as if under the effects of the Spider Climb spell, except you have a climb speed equal to your base land speed regardless of surface traversed, instead of 20 feet as normal.
Spidersilk: You can freely call into existance a wonderously strong rope which resembles unusually thick spider silk. At any given time, you can have 10 feet of rope per your effective binder level. You can choose to produce this rope as one long strand, or any combination of shorter strands at least 5 feet in length each and totalling your maximum amount of rope available. If you call more rope into existance, existing rope begins to dissipate in the order it was created.
This rope can be burst with a Strength check (DC 31) and has 20 hitpoints per inch of thickness and 15 hardness. This rope will also stick to any surface you choose at your discretion. In addition to creating easy climbing points, this grants you a +8 circumstance bonus to Use Rope checks made to tie up a creature.
Silken Armor: One creature of your choosing gains a +4 boost to their armor class, as their armor (or body) is coated in a layer of the strongest spider silk. You can use this ability on yourself or on any one ally you can physically touch, and can change the target of this ability as a free action, but once you have chosen a target to receive this armor boost you cannot change the target again for 5 rounds.
This spidersilk armor will last indefinately while your pact is active, but will dissipate immediately when you are no longer bound to Tevler.
Parlour: You can instantly create a mass of webs that cover all terrain, objects, walls, and even ceilings in a 120 foot radius centered on yourself (these webs will stop at natural barriers such as walls, so indoors they will only cover one room unless there are open doors and windows leading out). These webs are not particularily sticky, and will immediately fall off of any creature of object in motion, and can easily be brushed aside to allow access to areas or objects. However, the build up of these webs causes all non-allied creatures to acrue penalties to their attack rolls, reflex saving throws, and any dexterity boost to their armor class.
This penalty begins accumulating each round they are within this area at -1. They continue to collect -1 penalties each round they spend within this area, until they exit it (at which point, the penalty starts fading at 1 every round). This penalty has a maximum of 5.
This ability can only be used once each day, but the webs last for 24 hours, or until Tevler is no longer bound to you.


We made him an 8th level vestige, partially because having one "get out of death free" card every day is a powerful ability, but it also fits him thematically. He was utterly fearless and willing to embrace death and destruction anyway, after all.

I hope I'm not forgetting to reply to anyone here. (Also, Forrestfire15, the DM laughed and said that The Rising book was part of the influence, yeah, tweaked to include the tome of magic :smallsmile: )

[SurlySeraph]

Wow. Just wow. Make sure to post this in the Homebrew forum as well, I don't want anyone to miss this.

And do get back to working on Dustlands when you can, because it's unbelievably amazing. But, you know, no pressure, don't rush. :smallwink:

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

...


Woah...


Just...


Woah...

[bugsysservant]

...
wow
...
I...mean...
I think...
you just...
but...
...
wow...

You, your group, and your DM officially win. Life, death, the internet, whatever, you just win. If you ever get rid of your gaming table, could you break it up into splinters instead? I know quite a few people who would pay good money for D&D reliquaries. :smallbiggrin:

And seriously, thank you. I appreciate the time and effort you put into this. Thank you.

[SilverClawShift]

Make sure to post this in the Homebrew forum as well

I think I'll do that when we have all three done :smallsmile:


And do get back to working on Dustlands when you can, because it's unbelievably amazing.

:smallredface:

Thanks. We plan on getting some work done for it, not in the least bit because in our next campaign, one of our group actually wanted to play a glyphcrafter, but it's just not ready for full on serious play yet. So we'll probably be giving a little attention to brewing us up some new content in the near future.


And seriously, thank you. I appreciate the time and effort you put into this. Thank you.

More than welcome :smallsmile:

[Grey Watcher]

One critique of Tevler's vestige form: It struck me as odd that immunity to fear is a class feature of both the Paladin and the Death Delver, yet Tevler doesn't grant any kind of immunity or resistance to fear when bound. I mean, in addition to being immune to fear by virtue of not one, but two class abilities, he was also a pretty reckless guy (second only to Miss Beverly).

[Temp]

About the campaign: Pretty much what everyone else's said; sounds like an incredible game.

I don't know if this has been asked--I sort of skimmed over most of the congratulations and "You're-so-Lucky"s-- but how often does your group meet and how long (time-wise) were the sessions you typed out?


I got the impression that this month-long campaign involved more play-time than I've had in the last year. So I'm curious as to how accurate that inference really is.

And a quick comment on the vestige: As-is, the Lifeline ability's a bit much. Perhaps only applying it to death through hit-point loss would be more reasonable.

[SilverClawShift]

Tevler doesn't grant any kind of immunity or resistance to fear when bound.

Yeah, we brought up the immunity to fear thing.
Scept, all binders are immune to fear at 6th level as long as they have a vestige bound :smalltongue:. So any vestige that granted it would be really redundant.


how often does your group meet and how long (time-wise) were the sessions you typed out?

We usually meet once, sometimes twice a week and play for a few hours (5 hours is probably the average meeting, unless it's at a time when we have longer). For this campaign we planned in advance to meet a lot more (around 3 or 4 times a week) specifically so we would finish the campaign on halloween.

Mind you, we also talk and plan in between meeting, individually.


And a quick comment on the vestige: As-is, the Lifeline ability's a bit much. Perhaps only applying it to death through hit-point loss would be more reasonable.

One thing we considered doing was making it require some portion of the binders body to still be around, to bring it into step with a ressurection spell. As of now, it's basically a once per day true ressurection. The difference being that it doesn't have a crazy diamond cost.
The other difference, and the reason we kept it this way, is that it only effects the binder. You can't bring anyone back from the dead, you can't die twice (even if you wake up alone in front of an ancient red dragon), and you're probably worse off than you were when the fight started.
It's powerful, but it certainly doesn't grant the binder immortality or anything (dying twice in a day isn't exactly hard for an adventurer to accomplish). It's a rez effect with the harsh limit of only applying to one person. So yeah, probably just gonna leave it as is.

[vegetalss4]

i just read this thread, it is so awesome.
when you are done with the other vestiges will you post them to?
please:smallsmile:

[Tor the Fallen]

Wow, that was great. Keep us updated on you future gaming, yeah?

[Manticorkscrew]

Yeah, and if you have any more awesome gaming tales to tell, please share them with us.

[Xefas]

I've been reading this thread ever since it first started, but haven't really felt like I had anything to add by posting.

And I still don't...I just want to say that your tale had me tearing up at the end, and you should definitely compile it all into a whole post so that new people won't have to dig through the whole thing to read your great work. It was very inspirational, and I loved it.

[SilverClawShift]

when you are done with the other vestiges will you post them to?

Absolutely, just gotta actually make them first :smallwink:


Wow, that was great. Keep us updated on you future gaming, yeah?


Yeah, and if you have any more awesome gaming tales to tell, please share them with us.

The problem is, it feels kinda weird/pompous to just create a thread talking about my groups activities.

Me: "Hi, tonight my group didn't get killed by a doppleganger"
World: Hi, are we supposed to know you?


you should definitely compile it all into a whole post so that new people won't have to dig through the whole thing to read your great work. It was very inspirational, and I loved it.

Glad you liked it, and that's actually probably a good idea. That's gonna be one crazy long post though... it'll be a freakishly large post even if it's in spoilers :smalleek:

[Neon Knight]

The problem is, it feels kinda weird/pompous to just create a thread talking about my groups activities.

Me: "Hi, tonight my group didn't get killed by a doppleganger"
World: Hi, are we supposed to know you?



On the other hand, you apparently have God's Own DM as your DM, so that makes it cool.

[Alex12]

Me: "Hi, tonight my group didn't get killed by a doppleganger"
World: Hi, are we supposed to know you?

If it's anything near as awesome as this one was, then you left out the following line
Everyone Who Read This Thread:(to World->) Shut up, I want to read this! (to you->) This is awesome!

[bugsysservant]

The problem is, it feels kinda weird/pompous to just create a thread talking about my groups activities.

Me: "Hi, tonight my group didn't get killed by a doppleganger"
World: Hi, are we supposed to know you?

Actually, I'm pretty sure that many people on this board would love to read it. The only problem is, as I see it, the amount of work we are asking you to do. But if you don't mind...:smallwink:

[SilverClawShift]

Well, I guess it couldn't hurt. If someone thinks it's silly, there's plenty of other threads to read. It's not like we'll run out of new thread uses or something.

Also, I tried to compile everything into a post? Yeah, it's over three times the boards maximum characters-per-post limit (I didn't even know there WAS one!). Was gonna shove it all into spoilers, but whateryagonnado.

[Alex12]

I find it mildly amusing that in the OP you said you didn't want this to turn into a 5-page thread, and now it's 13 pages long. Not that I'm complaining, precisely the opposite, because this has been far better than a large portion of the fiction I've read, and I've read a lot of fiction. I just thought it was amusing to point out.

[Mezzalli]

I only have two things to say.

First, this is the best campaign I have ever read, and I will shamelessly steal everything that your DM created and use it later in my games. I doubt Gary Gygax could have done better. I believe that WotC could use DMs like yours.

Second, where can I find your vestiges? I've looked through the homebrew but I can't find it.

[SilverClawShift]

There's only the one so far, This Post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3454554&postcount=365), near the bottom.

[Grey Watcher]

Also, I tried to compile everything into a post? Yeah, it's over three times the boards maximum characters-per-post limit (I didn't even know there WAS one!). Was gonna shove it all into spoilers, but whateryagonnado.

Perhaps you could set up some sort of Wiki or blog? (Blog would probably be simpler and better suited to episodic campaign reporting, but a Wiki would be a nice format in which to present your homebrew material.

Oh, and, for the record, I'm on the website staff and I didn't know there was a character limit on the size of posts (though I suppose it makes sense that there would be one).

[SilverClawShift]

Not really sure how to set either of those up, actually.

And as for the character limit, I'm sure it doesn't come up often. It's 50000 characters per post apparently :smalleek:

[Xefas]

I just wanna say that if you set up a blog in which you detailed your tabletop game sessions, I'd bookmark it/subscribe to it/check it very regularly.

Just wanna show my support...:smallwink:

[The_Werebear]

I have been reading since the beginning. I too would follow a blog of you and your group's adventures and exploits.

[Alex12]

@blog idea: I am not currently a big reader of any blogs. In fact, the number of blogs I visit even semi-regularly is zero. If you started a blog about your gaming sessions, that number would go up to one, and would be checked regularly.

[SilverClawShift]

I don't know where in the world I'd want to set up a blog, but if people really wanna read about it, sure. For lack of a better plan of action, I guess I'll just make a new thread about our current (one session in) campaign. It probably won't be updated as much as this thread was though, we'll be gaming a tad less and spending more time on homebrew for a while (probably).

[Grey Watcher]

I know there are websites specifically dedicated to blogs and such. Livejournal, and I think the other big one is called blogspot....

[SilverClawShift]

I know there are websites specifically dedicated to blogs and such. Livejournal, and I think the other big one is called blogspot....

Yeah, but I can't picture myself continuing to go there to update stuff. I'd just get distracted and wind up browsing here instead.

**********************************

And the vestiges got worked on, probably finished, last night :smallbiggrin:
So here we go, all three of our new vestiges in one easy to digest post.

Core, the Guiding Light

Vestige Level: 2nd
Binding DC: 10
Special Requirement: Yes

In life, in the world of his existance, Core was a one-of-a-kind sentient golem. His time as a vestige has left him struggling to bring light and music to a place that can never have either. As a vestige, he grants his summoner the ability to manipulate light and noise around them.

Legend: Core is the first of three vestiges created during a horrible cataclysm started by pact magic. In the process of saving that world from destruction, Core and two of his allies became vestiges themselves. The full details of his creation, existance, and the nature of his summoning and vestigehood are all excruciatingly detailed in the Pact Execarium, a 2500 page document archived in most reasonable sized churches. While the Pact Execarium warns strongly against pact magic, and advises the destruction of those who would practice it, it does include explicit information about the three vestiges that inspired its creation.
Special Requirement: When calling Core, the Guiding Light from the veil beyond, you must speak no words. Calling Core is done with nothing buut musical notes (a binder without access to a musical instrument can still call Core by whistling or humming, but his binding DC increases to 15 in such circumstances). Unlike some vestiges, if you do not meet this special requirement (such as by accidently speaking during the summoning or pact making process), Core will still enter a pact with you, but the pact will automatically be a 'bad' pact, and you cannot suppress his influence or sign.
Manifestation: Core begins manifesting as nothing more than a subtle glow in the middle of his seal. As the summoning and pact making process continues, the glow becomes stronger, spreading outwards to a radius of 60 feet. At some point during the pact making process, glowing magical runes begin taking the vague shape of a humanoid form, as if covering an invisible creature. These runes become more and more defined, until they glow with a peircing light themselves. Just before the pact is made and Core vanishes once more, these runes reveal themselves to be some form of musical notation. Many binder and religious scholars have questioned the exact nature of those musical notes, and it is noted that they always appear identical from summoning to summoning, though they do not know what -if any- exact music they represent.
Throughout the pact making process, Core speaks no words, replying only to the musical notes the binder summoning him plays in a wordless duet.
Sign: While bound to Core, your entire body becomes covered in faintly visible musical notes in a pattern suggesting arcane notations like those found in a wizards spellbook. These musical notes are never identical, and seem to change in pattern and color based on what other vestiges, spells, or creatures you come into contact with.
Influence: Cores influence pushes you to be jovial and good natured, even against those who would oppose you. You are not prohibited from combat of any kind, but your attitude remains sunny and cheerfull throughout, never sullen or angry. In addition, you are inclined towards cleanliness, taking any otherwise idle time to straighten clutter or brush away messes from your immediate surroundings.

Granted Abilities: Core grants abilities related to light and sound, manipulating them to your own purposes.
Glow: The area around you glows with a soft friendly light, providing natural light to a radius of 30 feet. This light will fight back darkness, even magical darkness. When facing an area of magical darkness, you automatically make a caster level check (using your effective binder level as your caster level). Success means the area of darkness is surpressed in favor of Core's glowing light. You gain a +1 bonus to this caster level check per four effective binder levels, allowing you to fight off even powerful areas of magical darkness.
You can turn this ability on or off at will.
Sublime Sunglow: The area of your glow becomes equivalent to true sunlight for one round (affecting creatures sensitive to sunlight as normal). This ability will peirce any magical darkness, regardless of caster level checks succeeded or failed, providing sunlight for one round (but only one round). Once you have used this ability, you cannot use it again for 5 rounds. (Note that one round of sunlight is enough to disorient, but not destroy, a vampire. it will likely urge them away, however).
Resonate: You create an uncomfortable deep hum in a radius of 30 feet. This hum will distract and sicken creatures who fail a fortitude save (DC 5 + 1/2 your effective binder level, rounded down). This effect lasts for 2 rounds. If a creature who is allready Sickened (such as from another source) fails this fortitude save, they become nauseated instead. Once you have used this ability, you cannot use it again for 5 rounds.
Pact Aura: You can project an aura that gifts all your allies within a 30 foot radius temporary access to your Pact Augmentation abilities. For 2 rounds, all of your allies gain access to any Pact Augmentations you have as a result of your binder class. Once you have used this ability, you cannot use it again for 5 rounds.

(A note to people who may not know details of the binder class, regarding the last ability, Pact Aura. Binders gain the ability to select from a list of 'augmentations' anytime they have a binder summoned. It's simple mechanical boosts, things like +1 to attack rolls, damage reduction 1/-, 5 resistance to an energy type, things like that. As you level up, you can pick more of those augmentations at once, and they stack. You can also re-select them every time you bind a new vestige, so it can change from day to day as you need it to.
The Pact Aura just temporarily lets those augmentations apply to your nearby allies in addition to yourself, fitting the theme of a bard vestige who boosts his allies, while using mechanics from the binder class itself).


Selena, the Corporeal Spirit

Vestige Level: 5th
Binding DC: 30
Special Requirement: Yes

Selena was a rogue factotum who, through a series of fluke occurences involving Kythons and Vestiges, became a undead creature like no other. Her time as a vestige has only served to further blur the lines between the physical, the incorporeal, and the non-existant. She grants her summoner powers over corporeality, as well as adaptability and the ability to produce venom to use against your foes.

Legend: Selena is one of three vestiges created during an apocalypse brought on by pact magic. During the saving of that world from the forces bent on its destruction, Selena and two others became vestiges themselves. The full details of her life and vestigehood, as well as the two others, can be found in the 2500 page religious document, the Pact Execarium. The brief version, is that her and her companions were forced to bodily enter the nothingness, transforming themselves into vestiges in an indirect effort to seal off the other vestiges from overrunning reality.
Special Requirement: Selena will not answer a summons unless the binder calling her has been in a pact with Core, the Guiding Light within the previous day.
Manifestation: Selena does not noticeably manifest in any way whatsoever. No sound, no shape, nor presence is felt even if she is successfully called from the void. There is only her empty seal. The binder must attempt to make the pact with that empty seal, causing the pact making process (and the binding DC to complete it) to be unusually difficult for a vestige of Selena's level. Only once the pact is actually made, does Selena give any hint of her presence, as a faint gust of wind is felt rushing into the binder who has summoned her.
If the binder summoning Selena is also currently bound to Core, the Guiding Light, and is showing Cores sign of glowing musical notations, those notes begin to pulse softly when Selena is summoned... the only indication of her presence. In such circumstances, the binder is reassured that she has been called from the void, and the Binding DC to make the pact drops to 24 instead of 30.
Sign: You become vaguely visually transparent. This effect is not particularily noticeable under most lighting conditions, especially shadowy illumination. However, light sources will be notably visible through your body, and anytime you are between a light source and someone else, that person will realize they can see through you. This applies to your clothing, armor, and any equipment you are carrying. This sign does not affect your hide skill, nor does it provide any miss chance to avoid attacks.
Your voice also sounds hollow and distant, as if carrying through some invisible barrier. People who are not listening to you directly (only overhearing your speech casually) will be under the impression that you are speaking a language of demons and devils, until they stop to actively listen to you (at which point, they will hear whatever language you are choosing to speak as normal).
Influence: Selena's influence causes you an intense curiosity when faced with physical barriers such as closed doors or walls. You will have a powerful urge to explore such structures to see what secrets lie behind them.

Granted Abilities: Selena grants you the ability to move as a ghost, adapt to your situation, strike at your foes with a terrible venom, and speak the languages of devils and demons.
Kython Tongue: You gain the ability to speak Abyssal and Infernal fluently, if you could not speak those languages allready.
Discorporate: You can turn incorporeal for one round, giving you a 50% miss chance and allowing you to pass through solid structures. Ghost Touch weapons still affect you normally, and force effects cannot be bypassed even while you are incporporeal. Once you have used this ability, you cannot use it again for 5 rounds.
When your Effective Binder Level reaches 20, this ability allows you to tread through nothingness instead of the ethereal plane. You cease existing as anything other than a concept of yourself, giving you a 100% miss chance and allowing you to pass through any structure, even force effects. This ability still only lasts for one round, and you must still wait 5 rounds in between uses.
Inspired: You gain a number of inspiration points equal to one per every 3 effective binder levels you posess. These inspiration points function identically to the class feature of the Factotum (reseting every encounter). If you have Factotum levels in addition to binder levels, these inspiration points are added to your pool of inspiration for that class, and can be used with factotum class features normally. Wether you have factotum levels or not, you can use Inspiration points in the following ways:
- You may spend an inspiration point before making an attack, damage, or saving throw roll to add 1 to that die result. There is no limit to the number of inspiration points you can spend this way, except for the number of inspiration points you have remaining.
- You may spend an inspiration point before making a skill check to gain a bonus on that check equal to 1/2 your effective binder level, rounded down. You can only use this ability once per each skill per day, regardless of how many inspiration points you have left.
- You may spend an inspiration point to make a skill check in skill you have no ranks in, as if you had 1/2 rank in it. You may use this ability any number of times, provided you have inspiration points left to use it. You may use this ability in conjunction with the above ability as well.
- Before using any vestige ability, you may spend an inspiration point to reduce the delay between uses, on a 1 point per 1 round basis. For example, when activating Selena's Discorporate ability, you may spend 3 inspiration points to reduce the 5 round delay to 2 rounds between uses, allowing you to activate it again 2 rounds later. After you have used this ability, the delay returns to the normal 5 rounds (unless you spend more inspiration points to reduce the delay yet again).
Spiritual Venom: Once per day, you can produce a spiritual venom as a free action, automatically coating a weapon (or your fists) with it. This venom is a cotnact poison with a fortitude save DC of 10 + 1/2 your effective binder level, rounded down + your Charisma bonus. The venom deals 1d6 points of ability damage to an ability of your choice (chosen when creating the venom, capable of affecting even mental abilities such as Intelligence or Wisdom). It deals an additional 1d6 damage one minute after the initial contact.


Tevler, the Golden Weaver

Vestige Level: 8th
Binding DC: 33
Special Requirement: Yes

Once a spider-riding paladin, then a death delver, Tevler was fearless by nature. His courage in the face of death eventually carried over to courage in the face of nonexistance, and Tevler became a vestige. He grants his host the ability to laugh in the face of certain destruction, as well as several abilities related to his spidery companion.

Legend: The legend of Tevler is unique among most vestiges in how detailed it is. Information about his life prior to becoming a vestige -and the details of his vestigehood- is readily accessible in the Pact Execarium, an infamous document on pact magic archived in most reasonable sized churches around the world. Unfortunately, the Pact Execarium is 2500 pages long.
The short version of Tevlers history, is that he is one of the brave souls responsible for saving a world from a destruction brought upon it, supposedly, by pact magic. In saving that world, Tevler was forced to bodily enter the void between realities and become a vestige himself.
Special Requirement: You must swallow a live spider. After you are no longer bound to Tevler (wether through dismissal or the natural binding period coming to an end), you cough the spider up and it will descend from your lips on a silken strand. If you kill this spider, Tevler will never answer your call again.
Manifestation: Tevler descends from above as if crawling down an invisible strand of spider silk. His form is that of a spiderous creature, similar to an armored drider in shape and size. At times both the spider half and human half will appear dark and chitinous like that of a normal spider, and at other times both halves will appear in beautiful gleaming shades of silver and platinum. Whichever color Tevler appears in, his face always remains the same, appearing as a human male with 6 spider-like eyes which glow with a pale golden light. Despite his terrifying visage, Tevler always greets his summoner in a relaxed and friendly fashion.
Sign: A golden hourglass appears on your torso - either on your stomach, chest, between your shoulder blades, or on the small of your back. The placement of this hourglass is completely random, and can be seen through most articles of clothing or armor (only metal can conceal this glowing shape).
Influence: When Tevler influences you, you must go to great lengths to protect spiders and spider like creatures. Any act you can accomplish to keep such a creature safe must be taken, including treating those who would destroy spiders with hostility and anger. Tevler makes exceptions for spiders which are an immediate threat to you and your companions, but if you have a chance of ending combat in a way that leaves the spider alive, you must take it.

Granted Abilities: You gain abilities related to spiders, as well as a chance to walk back through death's door.
Lifeline: You gain a single extra life in addition to your own. One time during the 24 hour period you have summoned and bound Tevler, upon your death or destruction, you will return to life with half of your hitpoints, no matter how violent or seemingly permanent that death was. If your corpse is destroyed entirely, or is in a location where returning to life would be immpossible (such as being crushed underneath rocks) your body will reform at the nearest safe location. This will occur 5 rounds after your death, but prior to your death you may willingly increase that delay by a number of rounds equal to your effective binder level.
Spider Climb: You can constantly move as if under the effects of the Spider Climb spell, except you have a climb speed equal to your base land speed regardless of surface traversed, instead of 20 feet as normal.
Spidersilk: You can freely call into existance a wonderously strong rope which resembles unusually thick spider silk. At any given time, you can have 10 feet of rope per your effective binder level. You can choose to produce this rope as one long strand, or any combination of shorter strands at least 5 feet in length each and totalling your maximum amount of rope available. If you call more rope into existance, existing rope begins to dissipate in the order it was created.
This rope can be burst with a Strength check (DC 31) and has 20 hitpoints per inch of thickness and 15 hardness. This rope will also stick to any surface you choose at your discretion. In addition to creating easy climbing points, this grants you a +8 circumstance bonus to Use Rope checks made to tie up a creature.
Silken Armor: One creature of your choosing gains a +4 boost to their armor class, as their armor (or body) is coated in a layer of the strongest spider silk. You can use this ability on yourself or on any one ally you can physically touch, and can change the target of this ability as a free action, but once you have chosen a target to receive this armor boost you cannot change the target again for 5 rounds.
This spidersilk armor will last indefinately while your pact is active, but will dissipate immediately when you are no longer bound to Tevler.
Parlour: You can instantly create a mass of webs that cover all terrain, objects, walls, and even ceilings in a 120 foot radius centered on yourself (these webs will stop at natural barriers such as walls, so indoors they will only cover one room unless there are open doors and windows leading out). These webs are not particularily sticky, and will immediately fall off of any creature of object in motion, and can easily be brushed aside to allow access to areas or objects. However, the build up of these webs causes all non-allied creatures to acrue penalties to their attack rolls, reflex saving throws, and any dexterity boost to their armor class.
This penalty begins accumulating each round they are within this area at -1. They continue to collect -1 penalties each round they spend within this area, until they exit it (at which point, the penalty starts fading at 1 every round). This penalty has a maximum of 5.
This ability can only be used once each day, but the webs last for 24 hours, or until Tevler is no longer bound to you.


An a note on balance, Selena's ability to turn incporporeal is touching the high end of the power curve for 5th level vestiges, but it's not out of line when you remember that it's only for one round. Comparably, spellcasters who turn themsevles ethereal get to do so for 1 round per LEVEL, so her ability is really nerfed compared to a real caster.

The only current balancing issue might be turning Selena's Inspired ability into 1 inspiration point per FOUR levels, instead of 3. That'd round her out to half as many as a real factotum, which seems like a good compromise. every 3 levels isn't too bad either though. Just need to examine the numbers a little more, really.