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SleepyShadow
2021-01-30, 05:24 PM
Hi, I love Planescape. It's my favorite campaign setting, no questions asked. So, when my previous campaign ended and my players wanted a new game, I excitedly offered up Planescape. Now, my players are all a bunch of 5e only players, so they aren't very familiar with campaign settings other than Forgotten Realms and our group's homebrew settings. So I was pleased when they bit the hook. Planescape was greenlit by the group! Almost all of them decided to roll up characters who were new to Sigil, so they got to be just as Clueless as their characters :smalltongue:

Kharim: Silverbrow Human Crusader 8/Binder 4/Paladin 2 - A hothead "knight in training" from one of the group's homebrew settings. His father was a Paladin of Heironeous, so Kharim feels inadequate because he was not chosen by god to be a champion at long last like a knight. Joined the Harmonium. Finally admitted to himself that he still has feelings for a girl back home. Has a vestige whispering in his head after throwing himself from the Wishing Cliffs. At last, he's a real paladin!
Tulany: Wood Elf Ranger 14 (Horizon Walker) - A runaway princess who is totally-not-Mongolian; she's from the same homebrew setting as Kharim. She just wants to not get caught by her mother. Joined the Free League, but is thinking of switching to the Athar. Has a crush on Prince Feirefiz Avilius the space marine Kharim.
Daegan: Simic Hybrid Blood Hunter 8 (Mutant)/Rogue 6 - A poor sod who was afflicted by the biomancy experiments of one of the BBEGs of the last campaign. A pretend edgelord who's a secret cinnamon roll. Joined the Bleak Cabal. Has a crush on Dating Barrock.
Eirik: Sterich Trueblood Cleric 3 (War Domain)/Fighter 11 (Eldritch Knight) - A viking orphan raised by a totally-not-Greek priestess of Nike. The big friendly guy who just wants to have fun and get into fights. Has a big crush on Currently dating Sharwyn.
Aurelius: Fallen Aasimar Warlock Marshal 8/Artificer 6 (Gizmometer) - This guy is fixated on Incarnum magic and wants to figure out how it works. Shoots eldritch blast with a gauntlet like Iron Man. He's really leaning into the Izzet flavor these days, hence the homebrew artificer archetype I whipped up for him. Joined the Fraternity of Order. Dating Rowena. Lost his warlock powers after throwing himself from the Wishing Cliffs. Retrained his warlock levels as Marshal.
Cassius: Githzerai Monk 14 (Mercy) - One of the few locals in the party. He's an orphan raised in Sigil, who wants to one day find the Arsanith monastery and train there. Joined the Transcendent Order. Has a crush on Linvala Storm Silverhand.
Kai: Ice Genasi Cleric 14 (Life Domain) - The calm one in the group. He's mostly interested in making sure the Clueless don't mess up Sigil too much. He claims to be happily divorced. Joined the Transcendent Order. Left the group. Came back! He's been putting in a lot of effort to repair his relationship with his ex-wife and his kids.
Mubarak: Air Mephling Bard 8 (Whispers) - A rockerboy who has ties to multiple characters in the party. He's from the prime, but migrated to Sigil a few years ago. Joined the Society of Sensation. Loves using his recording stones to make fail compilations about the other party members. Has a crush on his rival, Chainer. Taking a break for personal reasons.
Now that I've listed the party members, I'm realizing just how many orphans are in the group.

JadedDM
2021-01-30, 06:27 PM
What a weird and eclectic group.

They should fit right in! :smalltongue:

SleepyShadow
2021-01-30, 07:53 PM
The Eternal Boundary: Chapter One
In which our heroes search for a barmy and find that sinister shadows are abroad in the Cage, and a Dancing Man tells them the names of the Powers that inhabit the Abyss.
The players split themselves into three groups at the start: the locals, and two different prime groups. The first group of PCs (Kharim, Tulany, and Eirik), as well as two NPCs (Soraya, who is Kharim's little sister, and Toda, who is Tulany's neurotic uncle) are chasing after a grell who was spotted alone. Oops! Turns out grells are never alone, and so the party was on the run from a whole pack of grell. Still, they managed to corner the grell which had been sighted originally. The wounded creature fled through a portal, and the PCs chased after it in the hope of eluding the rest of the grell pack. They popped up in Sigil, the grell still trying to escape.

Meanwhile, the second group (Daegan and Aurelius) were hired by Lady Kindernis to see who was stealing flowers from her white rose garden. It was more of a curiosity than anything desperate or world shaking, but she still wanted someone to get to the bottom of the mystery. So the two PCs did a stakeout and spotted Yangol the Plunderer, a githzerai thief, sneak into the garden and pluck a white rose. The two chased after him, so he grabbed a fistful of flowers and hightailed it for the main window into Kindernis's manor. The PCs followed him through, and found themselves chasing him through the streets of Sigil, rather than the halls of the manor.

The two groups appeared across the street from each other near the Great Foundry. The third group, the Sigil local PCs (Cassius, Kai, and Mubarak) and their NPC friend (Meletros Stronghoof, a bariaur fighter) watched as these two groups inadvertently collided with one another, as well as with a passing spinagon. Unsurprisingly, a fight broke out. The locals tried to step in and break things up. The fight was rough but short, with Kharim trying to 1v1 the spinagon, Eirik getting electrocuted by the grell, and Daegan grappled with Yangol. Meletros tried to run off with Soraya in a rather silly attempt to diffuse the situation. A Harmonium patrol showed up at the start of the second round, led by Medea Blackwood (a spellscale paladin of Bahamut). Kharim and the spinagon (who I decided to give a Brooklyn accent) were both fined 10 gp for causing a ruckus in the street, but were otherwise let off the hook. Yangol weaseled his way out of a bad situation by promising to put them in contact with a mysterious benefactor by the name of Bendon Mawl. Daegan's curiosity got the better of him, and so decided to go along with it. Aurelius soon discovered that Soraya also had some connection to incarnum magic, and thus the two groups of Clueless were stitched together. The locals offered to show them the way, and decided to stick around after hearing Yangol's sales pitch.

Along the way, the party bumped into Faithful Servant Li, a proxy for the Judge of the Dead. Li had accidentally allowed a new petitioner to escape! He begged the PCs to find her, a woman he called Golden Morning Radiance. The PCs agreed, not really sure where to start, and so took Li with them for now to keep the hapless clerk safe.

The party went to the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts, and the players were pretty fascinated by the idea. They chatted with Fall From Grace, who is a redeemed succubus paladin and owner of the establishment. Eventually, Bendon Mawl arrived, and hired the PCs to find a barmy (a person who goes mad from exposure to the planes) named Eliath. This missing crazy person allegedly had information on a place called the Isle of Black Trees, a legendary demiplane rumored to hide great treasure. Bendon offered them the chance to be a part of the first exploration team if they found Eliath. The PCs agreed, as the newcomers were eager to explore the city, and the locals wanted to make a good impression with Fall From Grace (since she and Bendon were part of the same faction). The PCs headed to the Hive, where the city's asylum was. Meanwhile, Soraya, Toda, and Meletros opted to stay in the BSIL to keep an eye on Li.

The party's first stop in the Hive was the Gatehouse, the headquarters for the Bleak Cabal, since the Bleakers were in charge of the asylum and taking care of the unfortunate barmies. They were met with by Daria Yasir, a yuan-ti pureblood who started harshly interrogating the PCs about dead barmies. The PCs explained they were looking for Eliath, and didn't know anything about dead people. Daria explained that someone in the Hive had been systematically targeting and killing barmies and drunks (locally called 'bubbers'). Daria agreed to help the party in their search for Eliath by searching through the asylum's records, and also offered to help in their search for Golden Morning Radiance; in exchange, the PCs had to promise to put a stop to the killings. The PCs agreed, and so an accord was struck.

While searching the area for clues, The PCs encountered a barmy who constantly repeated the phrase "I'm homeless, I'm gay, I have AIDS, and I'm new in town" (http://youtu.be/pWaqFcMPG9M). The PCs decided to follow him, ostensibly using him as bait to see if anyone would come attack him. While tailing this random guy, the party encountered the Dancing Man, who sang about demon lords while doing the Charleston. He screamed at Daegan about flies, then stumbled down an alley and left the PCs alone. The party split up, with half following the first guy and the other half following the Dancing Man. The first guy doubled back, pushed Kai, and kept walking. While the Dancing Man was out of sight, the PCs heard him scream about flies again, and then heard a crash. By the time they caught up with him, he was face down dead in the alley without a mark on him. The party scoured the street for clues, but found nothing. A short time later, the PCs met the Collectors, a group of ne'er-do-wells who get paid by the Dustmen to pick up dead bodies and bring them to the mortuary. The party paid the Collectors to piss off leave the body alone, and the party debated the merits of conducting an autopsy.

At this point, I got a little worried. The Dancing Man wasn't actually dead. He was just under a modified version of the feign death spell.

Thankfully, the party decided not to do an autopsy in the middle of the street. Instead, they decided to take him to the Mortuary themselves ... to do the autopsy there :smalleek: On the way, the party bumped into a small Harmonium patrol led by Medea Blackwood. They chatted for a bit, apologized for the tussle earlier, and explained why they were carrying a dead body. Medea offered to help catch the killer if the PCs got a solid lead on their identity. A short time after the two groups parted ways, the PCs got jumped by the Xaositects, who were also looking for the murderer in their own way: by attacking every random passerby they came across.

As a side note, I really hate the Xaositects. I can rationalize all of the other factions (even the batsh*t Mercykillers), but the Xaositects are absolutely unbearable. From a DM usefulness standpoint, anything they do for the story could be done better by the Revolutionary League, and anything else they do falls under the insufferable "lol, so random" mentality all of them have. So don't expect these clowns to show up for anything other than mook duty when the other factions have better things to do.

Anyway, the PCs nearly got wiped out by the Xaositects when everyone failed their saves against the Xaos priest's "icy burst" effect. The leader of the Xaositect thugs allowed them to surrender, and the proceeded to explain his plan of "beat up everyone on the Hive until the killings stopped". The party appreciated this guy about as much as I did. However, one good thing did come out of this encounter. The icy burst had harmed, but not killed, the Dancing Man that Eirik was packing around. This tipped off the PCs that he wasn't actually dead, and they got to the important task of identifying what spell he was under. Kharim's player decided now was the time to use his alchemy skills to look for foreign substances on the Dancing Man.

I shrugged and said there was a peculiar tobacco on the guy's clothes, and it smelled like chocolate and sea salt. The PCs tried to identify it, and Kai got something ridiculous like a 24 on his check. Since I was already making stuff up on the fly by this point, I spun a tale about how this particular tobacco was found only on the world of Eberron in the country of Valenar, and it was a particular favorite of House Lyrandar's dragonmarked half-elf skyship captains. The party got the grand idea to find out which shops in Sigil sold this tobacco, and conduct a stakeout for any half-elf customers. First, though, they agreed they had a couple of stops to make first.

The PCs decided to split up again, with half of the group going back to the Gatehouse to tell Daria what they had learned, and the other half went to the Mortuary to speak with the Dustmen in an attempt to stop any more unidentified barmies and bubbers from being interred. The group that went to Gatehouse took a brief stop at the Night Market to soak in the local flavor and enjoy cranium rat kebabs. They met Vrischika the alu-fiend, and she invited them to check out her store sometime. The PCs then spoke with Daria, and she let them take a short rest in the guard house while waiting for their companions.

The second group learned from the Dustmen that identified dead bodies are sent back to their home plane for proper interment, unidentified dead bodies are cremated in the Elemental Plane of Fire. This alarmed the PCs, and they demanded that the cremations stop. The guards told them to take it up with a woman named Toranna, who was in charge of cremating unidentified bodies. The PCs spoke with her at length, and she told them about how a mysterious wizard known only as Green Marvent had rescued her from the demon infested town of Plaguemort, and in exchange he asked her to send undamaged bodies through a special portal to the Plane of Fire which was somewhere other than the cremation fields the Dustmen normally used. She told the PCs that she hadn't spoken with Green Marvent since he rescued her, and her only line of communication was through an unidentified cutout known only as The Shadowknave (who was now a Khorvarian of House Lyrandar). The PCs believed her, and rejoined their comrades back at the Gatehouse.

The PCs asked Daria to dispel the feign death effect on the Dancing Man, and got very little information out of him. The group then decided to head back to the Brothel to get a much deserved rest before conducting their stakeout. On their way, they stumbled across the Shadowknave and six of his dwarf goons assaulting an onyx-skinned tiefling who was on her way home. Shadowknave used his forced feign death while the dwarves held her down, but the PCs valiantly jumped in to rescue her. The dwarves died like frogs in a blender, but Shadowknave (a 6th level wizard) made good his escape. The party carried the unconscious tiefling back to the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts, and settled in for a well-deserved rest.
TL;DR: I really like low-level investigation games, and I think The Eternal Boundary is a pretty great introductory adventure for people new to the Planescape setting.

JadedDM
2021-01-31, 05:19 PM
Oh, weird coincidence; I just acquired a copy of The Eternal Boundary a short time ago and recently finished going over it. I had been considering running it for one of my groups, if I ever find the time to do so.

SleepyShadow
2021-02-06, 06:17 PM
Oh, weird coincidence; I just acquired a copy of The Eternal Boundary a short time ago and recently finished going over it. I had been considering running it for one of my groups, if I ever find the time to do so.

It's a pretty solid module, though I can see things dragging a bit if your group decides to take the "dungeon crawl" approach to investigating the Mortuary.

The Eternal Boundary: Chapter Two
In which our heroes acquire numerous new enemies, and are troubled by the untimely return of old acquaintances.
At the end of last session, the party had agreed to put the tiefling woman they had rescued in Eirik's room, and to have him stand guard outside. Naturally, this session started with Eirik getting awoken by the tiefling as she tried to sneak out of the room. He confronted her and tried to assure her that he wasn't going to hurt her, and that he wasn't with Shadowknave. He botched his Charisma check, so the woman used some illusion magic to distract him as she bolted into the washroom and locked herself inside. Eirik decided the best solution was to storm about the hallway and wake the rest of the party up to try to corner the tiefling before she could escape. Everyone jumped to the call, except for Kharim and Daegan; the former failed his Wisdom check to hear the commotion, and the latter chose to go back to sleep. Aurelius, Cassius, and Tulany went to break into the washroom where the tiefling had hid, while Eirik, Kai, and Mubarak went downstairs to cut off her escape in case she managed to give the others the laugh.

The first group opened the locked washroom door, and found the tiefling had slipped out the window. Aurelius failed his Wisdom check, but Tulany and Cassius spotted the woman just as she stepped inside another room at the inn through a window. The two of them chased after her along the edge of the building, while Aurelius covered the door to the room she had gone inside. Tulany followed the tiefling into the room, while Cass stayed on the window ledge to keep her from escaping again. The tiefling had accidentally snuck into Daegan's room, who fell out of bed and got tangled up in his sheets. Cornered at last, the tiefling gave up the escape attempt. Tulany succeeded in calming her down and convinced her that the PCs really weren't with Shadowknave. The tiefling agreed to meet with the rest of the party, and they left the room to give Daegan time to get dressed.

Once the whole party assembled downstairs (Kai bought everyone "poached lance bird" for breakfast), the tiefling introduced herself as Sharwyn Calaruk, a songstress and waitress at the Black Sail tavern. The party questioned her about Eliath, Shadowknave, and the killings in general, but Sharwyn didn't know much about the murders or the man who had attacked her last night. However, she did recognize Eliath's description and told the PCs that he had been hanging around the Black Sail lately. She also heard Shadowknave mention something about taking her to "The Eternal Boundary", though she didn't know what he meant by that.

About this time, Bendon Mawl showed back up at the BSIL, accompanied by his masked female bodyguard. Bendon was rather displeased that Eliath had shown up alive and well, and apparently not barmy, in the company of the Doomguard no less. Bendon was also displeased to see the party having breakfast with Sharwyn, since she was also a member of the Doomguard (she had a faction pin on her blouse). He told them to speed up their investigation and get to Eliath before he told the Doomguard anything about the Isle of Black Trees. He then left in a huff, followed closely by his bodyguard. The PCs opted to take Sharwyn with them to investigate the Black Sails (since they didn't want her getting attacked again), while Soraya and Toda stayed behind to research the Elemental Plane of Fire, since the party suspected the Dustmen's crematorium was connected to the Eternal Boundary somehow. Fall From Grace offered to get the party some oil of elemental invulnerability, provided they gave her a day to do so. They accepted her generous offer, and set off to check out where Sharwyn worked.

Along the way to the Lower Ward, a series of profanity drew the party's attention to a familiar spinagon, who had an armful of crudely drawn posters written in sloppy Infernal. The spinagon berated Kharim for a bit, but ultimately offered a half-hearted apology for stirring up trouble with the PCs yesterday. Kharim didn't take his apology very seriously, and so as soon as the spinagon went back to gluing his posters to walls, Kharim hurled a javelin across the street and nailed a poster to the wall of a potter's shop. The spinagon spewed several more profanities at him before storming off in a huff. After he left, Aurelius figured out that the spinagon's posters were advertisements for freelance assassin work.

The party got to the Black Sail without getting into any further trouble, and had Sharwyn show them around the tavern. Unfortunately, she got roped into working overtime by the vrock barkeep, but the party convinced him to let her go after they left. So she had to be their waitress while they spied on Eliath and his new Doomguard pals. Eliath had ditched the stereotypical wizard outfit, and had opted for more of a "biker mage" look. He was hanging out with about a dozen Doomguard soldiers, plus a birdlike tiefling named Zaren who (according to Sharwyn) owned the Black Sail. Mubarak sneaked over to Eliath's table to listen in while the rest of the party kept an eye out for trouble. He overheard Eliath tell Zaren about Hikari "Golden Morning Radiance". The Doomguard had an interest in kidnapping her and filling her head full of propaganda; since she was an escaped petitioner, she was essentially a blank slate that any of the factions could force their philosophy on if they could catch and keep her. Zaren figured the Bleak Cabal was already doing that, so kidnapping her for Doomguard reprogramming was only fair. Besides, he figured he could get a promotion out of the deal.

The PCs didn't like the sound of that one bit, so they opted to hurry back to the Gatehouse to warn Daria and Hikari about the Zaren's plan. Mubarak and Cassius elected to stay behind so they could tail Eliath after he left the tavern. The rest of the party and Sharwyn hurried out of the tavern, but were stopped just outside by a Harmonium patrol led by a very disappointed Medea Blackwood. Behind the Harmonium guards was the spinagon, who flapped up and down while making rude gestures at the PCs. Medea was just about to arrest Kharim for damaging city property, when Aurelius stepped in and explained to her that the spinagon was allegedly a freelance assassin. Since murder was definitely a crime, Medea and her troops rounded on the devil, but he flew away and teleported to another part of Sigil once out of sight, vowing revenge on the PCs. Kharim and Medea agreed to get together after she got off work, and the others teased him about setting up a date. The group then hurried to the Gatehouse.

After all the commotion had settled down, Eliath left the tavern. Mubarak and Cassius successfully followed him back to the inn he was staying at, but chose to leave him be for the time being, and hurried to rejoin the rest of the party.

Once back at the Gatehouse, the party learned from Daria that the Doomguard wasn't the only faction after Hikari. The Dustmen wanted to kill her and set her soul on its way, since she was technically a spirit of sorts, while the Mercykillers wanted to capture and torture her for the crime of avoiding her proper place in the multiverse, even if she had no idea she was breaking any sort of cosmic laws. The PCs decided to hang around the Gatehouse and stand guard over Hikari, since they thought it was only fair to give her the choice of where she went. It's a good thing they decided to stick around. A gang of Mercykillers, led by a hobgoblin wizard and accompanied by a Dustmen Aasimar, broke into the Gatehouse to capture/kill Hikari.

The fight was a rough one for the party's frontline, but they had Sharwyn, Daria, and Hikari helping them out so they wouldn't get overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Cassius and Daegan had it the worst, but Kai did an excellent job keeping people in the fight, and both Eirik and Sharwyn stepped in for backup healing when necessary. Mubarak tried to have a one-on-one battle with the Aasimar, but the group ganged up on him and dropped him before he could get a second turn. Eventually the party triumphed over the hobgoblin and his forces, and we ended the session with the party patching themselves up at the Gatehouse.
TL;DR - My group thinks the idea of a spinagon being a reoccurring annoyance villain is hilarious, and I'm inclined to agree.

JadedDM
2021-02-07, 05:19 PM
Are any of the PCs members of a faction, or are they all independent still?

SleepyShadow
2021-02-09, 01:06 PM
Are any of the PCs members of a faction, or are they all independent still?

Mubarak is with the Society of Sensation, and Cassius is a member of the Transcendent Order. The others haven't joined a faction yet. Daegan is looking at joining the Bleak Cabal (Daria unintentionally won him over by being as motherly as a yuan-ti can muster), and Kharim is debating between Harmonium and the Fraternity of Order. I haven't heard which factions the others are looking at yet.

JadedDM
2021-02-09, 05:09 PM
Hopefully nobody joins the Xaositects. :smalltongue:

SleepyShadow
2021-02-13, 05:48 PM
The Eternal Boundary: Still Chapter Two
In which our heroes learn a bit about their enemies, and make contact with a not-so-barmy wizard.
We started at the Gatehouse, where the PCs patched themselves up after the tussle with the Mercykillers. Eirik and Mubarak weren't able to attend, but I had gotten a message from Mubarak that he was going to slip a note in the pocket of the dead tiefling. Mubarak figured there was a good chance the Dustmen would bring their agent back to life at some point. Since their headquarters is the Mortuary, I was inclined to agree :smallbiggrin:

The PCs reminded me that they had done nonlethal damage to the Mercykiller hobgoblin (something I had forgotten about), and so they woke him up and interrogated him about why he had come after Hikari. The hobgoblin told them he had wanted to break her will and replace her own ideas with the philosophy of the Mercykillers. Since she was an escaped petitioner, and thus only had about ten days of her own memories, he figured she was the perfect empty vessel. Belief is power, or so they say in the planes, and the hobgoblin figured nothing could be more powerful than an entity whose only beliefs were those of the Mercykillers. The PCs kicked him to the curb and told him never to bother Hikari again. The party then decided to enact a cunning ploy to ambush the Doomguard they were sure were going to assault the Gatehouse next. Their plan? Have Kharim and Daegan hide in the rafters, using Hikari as bait, while the others hung around and kept watch. They waited around for about ten minutes before they decided to just take her back to the Brother of Slaking Intellectual Lusts. They figured she'd be pretty safe in a place run by a succubus paladin. Before they left, Daria slipped some food in Daegan's pack (she thinks he's too skinny). Only Tulany and Cassius noticed her mediocre sleight of hand attempt.

Back at the BSIL, the PCs found that Fall From Grace wasn't there, and she had left Nenny Nine Eyes (her specialty is showering people with positivity and optimism) in charge while she was gone. Nenny told them Grace had left to go round up those oils of elemental invulnerability, but she wasn't back yet. The PCs decided to settle in for a while. Daegan baked some cookies with Nenny, Cassius and Kai talked shop about Transcendent Order stuff, and Kharim, Aurelius, and Tulany checked in with Soraya and Toda to find out what they had learned about the Elemental Plane of Fire. Sharwyn stuck with this group as well, in case they needed a local to help interpret something or translate some local slang.

Toda had done the wizardly equivalent of checking a Wikipedia page, and basically told the party that "there's a lot of fire there. Lots of fire elementals and stuff. Don't go, you can't breathe." Tulany wasn't very pleased with how he had spent the entire day playing Dragon Chess with Dolorra (a beautiful clockwork woman who specializes in games of skill and debate). The two elven nobles got into an argument about whose childhood was worse, and Toda revealed that he wasn't planning to go home anytime soon since there was an upcoming Dragon Chess tournament in Sigil. While the elves yelled at each other, Kharim, Aurelius, and Sharwyn checked in with Soraya. She had spent the entire time the party was gone with her nose in one book or another, trying to scrape together any information she could on the Eternal Boundary and its connection to the Plane of Fire. She told them about the pocket of air around the fabled City of Brass that the efreeti had constructed in order to trade with outsiders and support their slave population, and Aurelius surmised that someone must've figured out how to build another of these air pockets. Soraya also mentioned that she had learned a little about Green Marvent (since they had learned the name from Toranna), but she was a little disappointed with herself over how little she had been able to find. Green Marvent was a powerful mage who was the leader of a mercenary group called The Illuminated. They are an incredibly secretive sect operating out of Plaguemort, and their motto is "Rule what we can, control what we can't rule, and destroy what we can't control."

Kharim and Aurelius immediate set to work drafting a conspiracy pyramid, when Meletros the bariaur trotted into the brother and immediately zeroed in on Cass and Kai. He'd been looking all over for them, because he really wanted them to meet a new sketchy guy that had just joined their faction (Meletros was in the Transcendent Order as well). The new guy (Rick Baker, whom the party insisted on calling "D*ck") had been identified by Daria as one of the first barmies to wind up dead at the beginning of the pseudo killing spree. Now he was back, alive and well, not crazy anymore, and had just joined up with the Transcendent Order. Meletros didn't trust the guy one bit, and wanted his buddies to talk to Rick. Cass and Kai interrogated Rick while Meletros rounded up the rest of the party just in case the guy flipped out and went hostile. Rick was a scumbag (he kept making lewd remarks about Tulany and Sharwyn), but he wasn't hostile. He claimed that he had only been in Sigil for about two weeks, but Kai called him out on his story, and Rick folded pretty quickly. He admitted he was originally from Oerth, and had been in Sigil for about six months when he had accidentally stumbled into the Abyss for who-knows-how-long. He somehow made it back to Sigil, but his time in the Abyss had driven him mad, and so he had wandered around the Hive for a while before he eventually died. He remembered seeing a darkly beautiful angel, and a lot of heat, and then he was in a place surrounded by bright light filled with the glory of St. Cuthbert. His god told he was to be given a second chance at life! All he had to do was to join with the Transcendent Order and honorably serve the faction. In due time and good faith, St. Cuthbert would send a messenger to him with further instructions.

Aurelius had a brilliant revelation at this. "Marvent is trying to take down the factions from within!"

Kharim reminded him that they didn't have enough information to jump to that conclusion, though he did concede it was a good idea. The party debated on where to go next, and ultimately decided it was time to go pay Eliath a visit. Meletros escorted Rick back to the Great Gymnasium, promising to keep an eye on him, while Hikari and Toda stayed behind at the brothel. The PCs brought Sharwyn with them (they figured she could help them get into the Doomguard controlled inn that Eliath was staying at), and they invited Soraya along as well (to give her a break from Toda's complaining). So the party headed down to the Lower Ward and schemed about their infiltration.

The plan was to split up into multiple groups (Kharim and Sharwyn, Daegan and Soraya, Cassius and Tulany, and Kai and Aurelius), and sneak into the inn separately. That way they could cover more ground and not tip off the guards that there was a big group of adventurers looking for someone hiding out there. Kai and Aurelius decided not to go in at all, rather they stayed outside to cover the front and back of the building to prevent Eliath from escaping should he catch wind of what was going on. Kai watched the front from across the street, while Aurelius wandered around back pretending to be drunk ... and then he actually started drinking whiskey out of his hip flask, so he stopped pretending and just started to get drunk. The plan started off well, with Kharim and Sharwyn getting in without issue. Kharim then suggested that Sharwyn go door to door, posing as housekeeping, and he'd tail her and keep her safe if some trouble went down. Fair enough, decent plan, I'll roll with it.

Then Tulany decided Kharim and Sharwyn had been inside too long (they had only knocked on two doors by this point). Tulany stripped down to "a legal amount of clothing", dumped her armor and weapons on Soraya, and headed inside to pose as a prostitute. Daegan panicked and followed after her, leaving Cass and Soraya at a loss for what to do. Tulany rented a room, then used her ranger voodoo to contact a cranium rat. It offered to tell her which room Eliath was in for a loaf of bread. The rat kept referring to itself as "us" and "we", but nobody seemed bothered by that. Anyway, the deal was made, and the rat gave up the intel. It would've been the fifth room that Kharim and Sharwyn tried. The two groups met up, and Kharim and Tulany started arguing about how each of them had a terrible idea. Daegan continued panicking, and Sharwyn was just baffled by the group's apparent disfunctional nature.

Cassius decided to take Soraya inside at this point, who was just glad not to be standing around awkwardly holding onto Tulany's gear. She handed it off to Kai, who accepted the burden with his usual level of stoicism. Cassius rented a room (the innkeeper was pleased with the uptick in business) and took Soraya up to the third floor for meditation. They didn't make it to their room before they found Kharim and Tulany arguing in the hall. Cassius made the reasonable suggestion to just knock on Eliath's door and ask if they could speak with him. The party agreed to the plan, with one modification: Daegan and Tulany went out through a window and clambered around the outside of the building to Eliath's window, that way they could get in and surround him if a fight broke out.

Eliath was peery, but he let Kharim, Cassius, Soraya, and Sharwyn inside (though he was rather suspicious of Sharwyn, since he recognized her from the Black Sail Tavern). Cassius did a brief stint as room service, and brought by some beer and egg sandwiches. They shared a drink and talked to Eliath for a little while, and he explained that he had once been a Red Wizard of Thay on the world of Toril before coming to Sigil fifteen years ago. He had been researching the fabled Isle of Black Trees, but the book with its location had driven him mad, and so he became another lost soul of the Hive, surviving on the charity of the Bleak Cabal until his death. He had a brief glimpse of a darkly beautiful angel, and then awoke in a place of great light and heat. His mind was clear for the first time in years, and his ears were filled with the voice of Lathander, the god of his youth before he had become a Red Wizard. Lathander gave him another chance at life, and bade him to join the Doomguard and to serve them faithfully. Lathander promised to send him further guidance in the future, and asked him to heed it when it came.

While this discussion was going on, one of the Doomguard soldiers had spotted Daegan and Tulany creeping around on the third floor ledge, and ran inside to alert the guards. Daegan spotted the soldier's activity and panicked. He crashed through Eliath's window and scared the bejeezus out everyone in the room. Eliath, being a former Red Wizard, still had those old twitchy reflexes. He did a quick draw wand maneuver, spun around like a gunslinger, and blasted Daegan and Tulany with aganazzar's scorcher as they fell into the room. Daegan only took a glancing hit, but Tulany dropped unconscious from the spell. Eliath immediately rounded on the rest of the party, accusing them of trying to lure him into a false sense of security. He also accused Sharwyn of being a spy and a traitor to the Doomguard.

It was at this point that the inn security guards and the Doomguard soldier burst into the room and launched an attack on the party! Unfortunately, it was getting pretty late by this point, so we ended the session there, ready to square off the Doomguard next time.
TL;DR - Mostly character development this time, but that's okay :smallsmile:

JadedDM
2021-02-13, 07:42 PM
Sometimes a party's real enemy is their own inability to stick to a plan. :smallbiggrin:

SleepyShadow
2021-02-16, 04:45 PM
We had an extra session this week, since everyone had a holiday :smallbiggrin:

The Eternal Boundary: Chapter Two Part Three
In which our heroes make some connections, and meet some faces of The Cage.
The party started the fight against the Doomguard in a rather scattered formation. Kharim, Cassius, Daegan, and an unconscious Tulany squared off with the Doomguard captain and his soldiers, while Kai, Aurelius, Eirik, and Mubarak had to fight their way past the inn's security team to link up with the other half of the party on the third floor. Thankfully, the upstairs team had Sharwyn and Soraya with them ... for all of one round. Kharim told them to escape out the window using Soraya's racial Feather Fall spell. Aurelius tried to shortcut the inn by using Misty Step to teleport up to the third floor directly, but he flubbed the Dexterity check to stand on the window sill and fell through a razor vine patch. The upstairs team was able to fight of the Doomguard pretty well, using choke points to minimize the number of attackers they had to deal with. The problem was the captain, who was a fighter/wizard with plenty of AoEs to throw through doorways. Stuff on the ground was a little easier, since most of the security team was fairly weak. The trouble was the innkeeper. She was a professional prize boxer with one hell of a Dempsey Roll. She managed to repeatedly KO Eirik and Kai until Mubarak was finally able to take her down. Eventually the two halves of the party were able to link up and finish off the Doomguard soldiers. Sharwyn (being a Doomguard member herself) was quite troubled by being forced to fight against her own faction, and being accused of being a spy by both Eliath and the PCs themselves.

Eventually, a Harmonium patrol (https://youtu.be/GxM3wstBcD4) showed up to investigate the disturbance reported by the nearby locals. This time, it wasn't Medea and her reasonable squad, but rather a more hardheaded crew captained by a man who hated the Doomguard, so he applauded the PCs for their actions, helped them dispose of the bodies, and only tried to arrest Sharwyn once. The PCs, banged up and out of resources from the fight, went back to the Brothel to rest up and recuperate. Eirik had a few drinks, Kai scribbled furious notes about his party members' various mental issues, and Aurelius brooded in his room. Daegan and Tulany learned to bake bread with the help of Nenny Nine Eyes, and while in the kitchen caught Sharwyn crying on the shoulder of the half-elf woman washing the dishes. They only overheard a snippet of what she was saying before she spotted them and made a hasty exit, but it went something like this:

"I don't know what I'm doing anymore, Mom. I think Dad was right about me."

Daegan and Tulany resolved to bake cookies for Sharwyn to cheer her up.

Meanwhile, Kharim had to be reminded that he had a sort-of-date with Medea that evening. He did his best to scrub the blood out of his hair before she showed up in a slinky black cocktail dress. Unfortunately for him, she spent most of the evening explaining how things worked in Sigil and how throwing javelins into crowded streets wasn't acceptable behavior, even if he was aiming at an annoying fiend. He declined her offer to join the Harmonium, but he took more interested when she mentioned she was also a member of the Knightly Order of the Silver Chalice. Soraya had been receiving dreams and visions of a silver chalice kept in a dark place, and Kharim guessed this was some kind of lead. When he tried to apologize to Medea, she told Kharim that she wasn't the one that needed the apology. She ended the evening by telling him that if he kept up his behavior, he'd never become a real knight.

After Medea left, a dejected Kharim helped Soraya research the Order of the Chalice. They learned that it was an organization sponsored by Heironeous and a handful of demigods; their mission was to stop the influence of fiends on the Prime, and the recovery of a sacred artifact held on the second ring of Baator in the city of Dis. This artifact was allegedly a silver chalice that had been used to collect the blood of a solar who was wounded in a battle against a pit fiend. Soraya begged Kharim to help her find the chalice, hoping to learn more about the dreams she had been having. He couldn't say no to his adorable little sister :smalltongue:

Meanwhile, Cassius and Eirik had a heart-to-heart with Sharwyn, who asked a lot of questions about githzerai, their culture, and their connection to the Lower Planes. Cassius, who was raised in an orphanage by humans, didn't have any direct answers for her questions, but offered to help her learn a bit more. When asked why she was so curious about the gith, Sharwyn explained that her father was a githzerai. Eirik pressed a little harder, and she explained that her father was Rule-of-Three, a local sage who acted as an information broker all across the planes. She had little contact with him, but he occasionally gave her mother money to "take care of the child". She suspected he was the reason the Doomguard had scouted her out in the first place, as he was often in their employ when not dispensing cryptic advice from the Styx Oarsman tavern. Sharwyn wanted to know why she had been born a tiefling, when (as far as she knew) neither of her parents had any fiendish heritage.

The next morning, the party decided to split up into two groups to accomplish more at once. Group A (Kharim, Kai, Aurelius, Mubarak, and Soraya) would go to the Fraternity of Order headquarters to get permission for the Harmonium to investigate the disappearances more thoroughly, since it had been implied that they weren't allowed to conduct investigations on property owned by other factions. This group got bogged down in paperwork and modrons for a couple hours. Group B (Tulany, Daegan, Cassius, Eirik, and Sharwyn) headed back to the Gatehouse to get Daria to help with their investigation. They figured that since she was a Bleaker, she'd be able to spot any barmies that had been planted inside the other factions as sleeper agents. Daria suggested starting with the Dustmen, since their headquarters were close by and the Bleak Cabal was on good terms with them. The PCs liked the idea.

Once at the Mortuary, it didn't take them long to call on Toranna again. They asked if she knew about the barmies showing up alive and not-crazy in the ranks of the other factions. She honestly didn't know about that and told them as such. However, when the PCs insisted on continuing their investigation, Toranna's loyalty to Green Marvent won out over her sense of self-preservation, and so she ordered her zombies and her assistant to attack. The fight went pretty poorly for the PCs at first, with half the crew failing against a Bane spell, which hampered them for the rest of the fight. Eirik suffered a very unfortunate critical hit, which outright killed him! Even so, there was only so much speedbump duty that four zombies could do, and the party thrashed Toranna and her assistant once the distance was closed. However, the party wisely decided to beat a hasty retreat. They put Eirik on a gurney and rolled him out of the Mortuary. Not sure what else to do, they headed back to the Gatehouse, where a Bleak Cabal cleric offered to Raise Dead Eirik. The cleric also wrote out a quick contract so that the PCs could pay for the spell in installments (950 gp is a lot at level 3). The party was just glad to have their Viking back! As long as the party made regular payments, there would only be a 1% interest rate (which the party thought was pretty fair). However, if they missed even a single payment, the cleric would notify The Fated (which are very similar to the Orhzov Syndicate from Ravnica, now that I think about it) of the party's debt, and let the consequences fall as they may.

This oughta be fun :smallamused:

While all of this was going on, Group A finally finished their paperwork to get on the waiting list for a meeting with a proper high-up of the Fraternity of Order. They decided to go check out the tobacco shop (the one that Shadowknave bought his Eberron tobacco from) and possibly conduct a stake-out while they waited. It turned out that the only shop in Sigil that sold this particular flavor of tobacco was a curious little place run by A'kin the Friendly Fiend (a bizarre arcanoloth who likes to give people baubles and ask a lot of questions). He answered almost all of their questions with another question, but the party finally managed to find out that Shadowknave was likely to come shopping that night. Kharim also came dangerously close to a violin duel with A'kin, but backed down at the last minute. After leaving the shop, the party also had a brief "conversation" with a pair of dabus (floating humanoids that communicate only in Wingdings), and Kharim apologized to the shopkeeper whose building he had nailed with a javelin the day prior.

Shortly after this, Group A got into a tussle with none other than The Spinagon! He brought along a couple of other spinagons with him, who both referred to him as "Boss". Of course, having slightly more hit points didn't mean that ol' Spine-O lasted longer than two rounds. Still, the encounter was tough enough to warrant two hither-to unused powers: Kharim triggered his Aberrant Dragonmark in a last-ditch effort to protect his little sister, and Aurelius revealed himself as a fallen Aasimar with his necrotic wings! Unfortunately, the spinagons passed their saves against both the dragonmark and the fear aura. Still, the cat was out of the bag, and I'm sure many questions will be asked next session.

We ended the session after the fight as the party rendezvoused at the Styx Oarsman.
TL;DR - Some future plot hooks now dangle dangerously in the wind.

JadedDM
2021-02-17, 12:11 AM
Definitely get the feeling poor Kharim isn't getting a second date. Poor guy.

AllHailthed4
2021-02-17, 12:40 AM
Definitely get the feeling poor Kharim isn't getting a second date. Poor guy.

Hey, a paladin can always hope, lol.

SleepyShadow
2021-02-20, 08:13 PM
The Eternal Boundary: Chapter Two Part Four
In which our heroes gather some information, and learn their actions have consequences.
The party was back together again at the Styx Oarsman, a shady tavern that catered to tanar'ri, staffed by tanar'ri, and owned by tanar'ri. There, they met with Rule-of-Three, the githzerai sage who fathered Sharwyn. Aurelius, Cassius, and Sharwyn spoke with him directly, while the others huddled together at a separate table to keep an eye on Eirik and Kharim, since neither of them were in shape for a fight (and Soraya was still plucking spinagon quills out of her brother). Rule-of-Three waxed poetically for a little while, but he did slip a bit of information about the Triple Layer of Azzagrat, the domain of the demon prince Graz'zt. Rule-of-Three admitted to buying and selling information there. He also suggested that, given Sharwyn's appearance (https://i.ibb.co/0FqgdhC/Sharwyn.jpg), she might be related to Graz'zt somehow, though he had "no idea how such a thing could happen". It didn't take long for the PCs to get fed up with Rule-of-Three (in between his cryptic advice, he would talk about Sharwyn as if she wasn't even there), so they beat a hasty exit from the tavern to discuss their plans.

Back at the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts, the party chatted with Fall From Grace about what she knew regarding Rule-of-Three (not much), asked Sharwyn if she wanted to go to the Abyss (she thought it was a bad idea, at least right now), and Tulany made peace with Toda. Kharim and Aurelius decided they wanted to go back to the Fraternity of Order to take the entrance exam to get into the faction so they could use the Frat's extensive library. They hoped to do some research into their curses (the aberrant dragonmark and the fallen aasimar troubles). The two of them buckled down and studied planar knowledge and the Sigil legal system for the rest of the evening. Daegan asked Fall From Grace to get Bendan Maul for them, so they could get paid for the information they got from Eliath the day before. She agreed, and off she went, leaving Nenny in charge again.

While all of that was going on, Kai was approached by a talking cat named Jassen. The cat explained that he needed Kai's help in a delicate matter that could negatively impact both his and Kai's reputations. Jassen explained that a thief had broken into his owner's house, but had gotten blown up by mistake (his owner was a tabaxi artificer, and frequently left high-grade home made explosives lying around). Kai's boss from the clinic he works at was getting stoned with Jassen's owner at the time (tabaxi sure do like their catnip), and so a junior medic was sent to clean up the mess from the explosion. The clinic had decided to bring the thief back to life, since it would look really bad for them if the Harmonium caught wind of all the drugs and IEDs. The medic stitched the body back together, but scrimped on the material components for a Raise Dead spell. Specifically, the medic used gems "pressed from troll bones". Although the spell was successful, the thief came back with her body still held together by the stitches, rather than having healed normally. Another side effect was that her limbs and even her head could operate independently of her body at a short distance (I gave her the "loathsome limbs" troll feature from the 5e monster manual, since I think that mechanic is awesome and criminally underused). Now this thief was causing trouble in The Lady's Ward, and Jassen needed help from Kai and his friends. Jassen promised that it was a low priority problem, but he was sure his owner would cough up some cash if the PCs helped out. Kai agreed to look into the problem when he had time.

With everything taken care of, the party settled in for a much needed long rest. Too bad they didn't get one.

Shadowknave, accompanied by Yangol the Plunderer, six warforged, and one very ticked off grell broke into the Brothel and attacked the party in the middle of the night. Cassius, Tulany, and Eirik heard them coming and avoided the surprise round, but the rest of the party suffered through two rounds of unanswered attacks. The warforged and Yangol were quickly dealt with once the surprise attack was over, but Shadowknave was elusive and cunning, and the grell was just too damned stubborn to go down quietly. Shadowknave fought conservatively at first, using cantrips and defensive spells to gauge the party's strength, but as the fight wore on he started popping from room to room with Misty Step and using Cloud of Daggers to devastating effect. At one point, Aurelius fell unconscious inside the Cloud and fumbled his death save, which killed him outright. We're not even level 4 and I already have a body count of two :smalleek: Shadowknave managed to drop almost the entire party, plus Soraya and Sharwyn, after funneling the whole team into a hallway and obliterating them with Aganazzar's Scorcher. Only Eirik remained standing after that, and he was barely on his feet, not to mention still suffering the death penalty from Raise Dead. He threw out a desperate Toll the Dead, and Shadowknave failed the save (after passing pretty much every save thrown at him the entire combat) and finally went down. Victory to the PCs!

The party scrambled to get a Revivify from Ecco (one of the girls that works at the BSIL), and were forced to take out another loan to bring back Aurelius. Now they owe both the Bleak Cabal and the Society of Sensation, and if either of these debts goes unpaid for too long, The Fated will be notified and the leg-breakers will soon follow. I've never had a party this desperate for cash before. Still, they've got a couple of decent paydays coming their way, so hopefully things won't get any worse for them.

The PCs were finally able to get to bed, and with that we ended the session.
TL;DR - Evil wizards are never late, nor are they early. They ambush you precisely when they intend to.

JadedDM
2021-02-21, 04:27 PM
Wow, a near TPK! Shadowknave is what, 6th level, if I'm remembering correctly?

SleepyShadow
2021-02-23, 10:05 AM
Wow, a near TPK! Shadowknave is what, 6th level, if I'm remembering correctly?

Yeah, he's a 6th level wizard, but he doesn't know any destructive 3rd level spells. That's good adventure design in my eyes. It wouldn't be fair if the most active antagonist could just dump a Fireball on a group of 1st-3rd level characters and one shot the whole party. Most of his spells known are aimed at making him function more like a magical rogue than anything else, so bravo to Shadowknave.

Getting back to the near-TPK, it's not as bad as it looked. The party was basically tapped for resources when the attack happened, and it's always rough when the baddies get a surprise round. Even if the whole party had gone down, Shadowknave wasn't there to kill them all. He wanted to take them back to the Eternal Boundary and try to get them to join the Illuminated, either willingly or as sleeper agents. The adventure would've turned into a prison escape scenario, which could've been fun. Still, I'm glad the party didn't get captured, and I feel bad for the two deaths I already have on my hands :smallredface:

That said, this adventure does have one glaring issue in Chapter Three. I fixed it for my game, but I'll discuss it more once my group gets to it.

JadedDM
2021-02-23, 01:25 PM
Looking forward to it!

SleepyShadow
2021-02-27, 02:11 PM
To Catch A Thief
In which our heroes decide to do their own thing, and realize how strange The Cage can be.
Kharim started off the day by heaving the dead grell out of a second story window. Since this is Sigil, nobody on the street level even batted an eye. Mourner Tom and The Collectors were hot on the scene, simultaneously praying and dissecting the thing in hopes of finding gems in its gullet. Nobody was particularly surprised to find the Harmonium in the common room of the Brothel, but thankfully none of the PCs were under arrest. Medea Blackwood and her squad were following up on the report they got about the attack during the night. She interviewed Fall From Grace and the other working girls, asked the party a few questions, and left without much of an incident. Her partner, Bullock, (the hardhead half-orc who helped the party clean up the dead Doomguard in Session Four) made a few half-assed attempts to flirt with Grace, but the party redirected him to the hotdog stand across the street. Kharim followed Medea outside to talk with her a bit longer (much to the amusement of the rest of the group). She left a short time later, disgusted at Bullock's choice of condiments.

"I've seen a lot of disgusting things in my time with the Harmonium," she said, "but nobody, and I mean nobody, puts ketchup on a hotdog."

While Kharim was totally-not flirting with Medea, Daria showed up at the Brothel to give Daegan and his "dead friends" a pot of homemade chicken noodle soup. The party is convinced this strange yuan-ti woman is the mother Daegan never had. While soup was being shared, Tulany helped Toda with his laundry, as he had wet the bed during the Illuminated attack the night before, and Eirik chatted with Shawryn in her bedroom while listening to her accordion music. Once the whole party was gathered together, they got on with the important business of meeting Bendon Maul. He paid the party for their troubles, and the party agreed to travel to the Isle of Black Trees in a week's time. Bendon wasn't happy about having to take Eliath on the trip, but he wasn't going to force the party to renege on their deal.

After Bendon and his masked bodyguard left, the party debated on what to do next. They knew they needed to head to the Eternal Boundary and put a stop to the Illuminated's plan, but they didn't feel comfortable heading there while Eirik was still suffering from his Raise Dead penalty. So the party decided to do a few side quests until Eirik was back up to snuff. Half of the party (Cassius, Kai, Eirik, and Mubarak) opted to meet up with Jassen the cat to help him track down the regenerating thief, while the others went to the Fraternity of Order so Kharim and Aurelius could take the entrance exam to join the faction. While they were doing so, Daegan, Tulany, and Daria went sight-seeing in The Lady's Ward. The party had decided to leave Soraya, Toda, and Hikari at the BSIL to take the day off, and Sharwyn left to get a "lucky charm" for Eirik to keep him safe in future adventures.

All of this meant I would have to wing the rest of the session :smallwink:

During the search of Jassen, the first group noticed they were being tailed by a Githzerai. It didn't take them long to realize he was sizing up Cassius. Our monk snuck through the crowd and managed to catch this newcomer by surprise. The startled gith introduced himself as Ash Mercury, student of the Shra'kt'lor monastery under Master Haeronimil (I slipped this in as a hook for a later adventure I have planned). Cassius introduced himself, as, well, Cassius. Once introductions were out of the way, Ash took a fighting stance, thumbed his nose, and asked Cass how he wanted to do this. It took Cass a bit to realize Ash was challenging him to a duel. Cass set the terms (unarmed, to first blood), and initiative was rolled. They tied! So they swung simultaneously. I found it rather amusing that they even hit each other for the same amount of damage. Cassius had a one-point higher Dexterity than Ash did, so his hit connected a fraction of a second faster. They both shook off the hit, Ash conceded the duel, and asked to meet with Cass later that day to talk shop about martial arts. Cass agreed, and I gave him DM Inspiration since he won the duel.

A short time later, the group met with Jassen, who reiterated the information he knew about the thief (female, red hair, lanky, race unclear). The group asked around the area to gather some intel, hoping to figure out a pattern to her heists. I liked the idea, so I went with it. The party learned the thief was targeting businesses and prominent people with ties to The Fated, and she was making her way to the Clerk's Ward where The Fated have their headquarters set up in the Hall of Records. The group headed in that general direction in the hopes of spotting the thief, and sure enough they did. Unfortunately, she spotted them too (specifically, she recognized Jassen), and she bolted.

I ran the chase scene as a skill challenge, where the group had to get eight successes before getting three failures. In reality, they only needed six, since Jassen was with the group and wasn't likely to fail. Unfortunately, Kai and Eirik botched their first skill checks, so Kai ended up in a dead end alley while Eirik accidentally crashed through someone's window and took a fair chunk of damage in the process. The group ended up failing the skill challenge, but that just meant the thief had time to get the help of some sympathetic Free Leaguers to fight the party. Because I didn't want half the group sitting out of a fight, I decided the sight-seeing trio was nearby enough to help, and I gave Kharim's and Aurelius' players the character sheets for Daria and Jassen respectively.

The Free Leaguers were concerned citizens, not hardened warriors, so I decided they were just a group of 2nd level Experts. I already had stats for the thief (razorclaw shifter rogue 4/battle dancer 1/weretouched master 1), so at least I wasn't going in completely blind. It was a pretty straight forward battle, with the Free Leaguers pulling speed bump duty while Daegan and the thief knocked each other around. Inevitably the party took her down, and I was a little disappointed her Loathesome Limbs ability only triggered once (it was the head, so we got a good laugh out of that). Eirik tied up her body and carried her over his shoulder while Daegan held onto her head and chatted with the grumpy tiger-girl.

She told them her name was Nadia, and that she had been targeting The Fated as retribution, since they killed her gang over a rigged shell game. She explained her gang was just a group of small time crooks, more a makeshift family of street urchins than an organized crime unit. It was The Fated that had sent her to rob the tabaxi artificer in the first place, giving her "one last chance" to save her family, and she was pretty sure they had set her up, since "who rigs their attic with black powder and ball bearings?!" The party sympathized with her plight, but a job is a job. They handed her over the clinic to have the troll blood removed, and got paid for a job well done. On their way out the door, Cassius and Eirik overheard the clerics at the clinic mention a couple of unsettling things.

"Set up the juicer," and "Notify Duke Darkwood."

A quick History check let the locals in the party recall that Duke Rowan Darkwood was the leader of The Fated. The party realized they had been hoodwinked! They busted back into the operating room, and saw the priests had already pulled Nadia apart at the joints and were getting ready to shove her piece by piece into a hand-cranked orange juicer. Mubarak used his Words of Terror to frighten the clerics long enough for Cass and Eirik to gather up Nadia's body parts and make good their escape. The party met back up with Kharim and Aurelius (both of whom had flunked the entrance exam), and the party decided staying at the BSIL another night might bring more trouble to Fall From Grace and the other girls. Kharim suggested the party stay at the Harmonium barracks, since the cops and the mafia don't exactly get along. The party teased him for wanting to see Medea again, but they largely agreed it was a pretty safe place to go. The group sent a couple of their members to the Brothel to let Sharwyn, Soraya, and Toda know what was going on, while the others headed straight for the barracks. Daria headed back to the Gatehouse (her shift at the asylum was starting soon), and Jassen left to go do cat things.

On the way there, a group of wererats in cheap suits approached Kharim and told him that their boss wanted to speak with him. Kharim told them bugger off (he didn't want to get into a fight, since both Daegan and Nadia were in single digit hp), so the wererats relented, leaving with a whispered warning of what happens to those who cross The Us.

The group made it to the barracks without further incident, and explained the situation to the Harmonium guards. Kharim name-dropped Medea, so one of the guards went and fetched her. She wasn't exactly pleased with being called upon on her night off, but she didn't want to see the party run afoul of Fated agents. She warned them specifically about the "Knight of Obligation", and gave them permission to lay low at the barracks for a few days. Nadia had to cool her heels in a holding cell, but Medea wasn't going to hand her over to the Mercykillers when the only charge against her the Harmonium cared about was one instance of rigged gambling. Kharim offered to go on patrol as payment for letting the party stay, so Medea signed him up as a volunteer, signed herself up for overtime, and took the eager crusader on patrol through the neighborhood.

We ended the session and the party leveled up.
TL;DR - It's times like these I'm glad I studied improv :smalltongue:

JadedDM
2021-02-27, 07:48 PM
Well done. I know how tricky it is to have to improvise an entire session on the spot, so I sympathize.

So what did everyone do for their fifth level?

SleepyShadow
2021-02-28, 11:31 AM
Well done. I know how tricky it is to have to improvise an entire session on the spot, so I sympathize.

So what did everyone do for their fifth level?

Thanks! :smallbiggrin:

They just hit 4th level, so most of the party is staying single class for now. Eirik split his levels between cleric and fighter, and plans to take Eldritch Knight as his archetype next level (his stat block is ridiculously good). Aurelius picked up his first level of artificer, and he's been talking about retraining his levels of warlock into Marshal (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=3475), but if he does I think it'll be later in the campaign.

JadedDM
2021-02-28, 04:38 PM
Did anyone take any feats or just stat boosts?

SleepyShadow
2021-02-28, 08:43 PM
Did anyone take any feats or just stat boosts?

Kharim took Stone Power, since it's almost mandatory for crusaders, and Daegan continues to up his gross factor by taking the Deepspawn aberrant bloodline feat.

JadedDM
2021-03-01, 07:55 PM
I've never heard of either of those, but I do know what a Deepspawn is, and that does, indeed, sound quite gross.

SleepyShadow
2021-03-02, 10:57 AM
I've never heard of either of those, but I do know what a Deepspawn is, and that does, indeed, sound quite gross.

I should mention that I'm using material from 2nd, 3rd, and 4th edition for this game. If I or one of my players see something from an older edition that looks fun or interesting, I'm more than happy to convert it into 5e rules. So my games tend to look like a happy little Frankenstein's monster :smalltongue:

Stone Power works like Great Weapon Mastery, except if Kharim hits something while taking that -5 penalty, he gains 10 temporary hit points instead of dealing extra damage. It's a really good feat for crusaders, since it helps soak up the delayed damage from Steely Resolve.

Daegan's Deepspawn feat gives him a pair of tentacles growing out of his ribs (which brings him up to four tentacles in total, thanks to Symic Hybrid). He can use them to attack for 1d4+STR, but he'll likely be using them like an offhand weapon and not get his Str mod to the damage. They also give him a small bonus to grappling, which he's really excited about since that's all his Symic Hybrid tentacles are able to do.

JadedDM
2021-03-02, 05:24 PM
Ah, okay, good to know.

SleepyShadow
2021-03-06, 03:36 PM
Kai's player decided to leave the group. He didn't like his character, didn't get the setting, didn't want a mystery adventure, and didn't enjoy the difficulty of the combats. So... yeah :smallfrown:

Also, Mubarak's player wasn't able to make it to the session this week.

Poking Plots
In which the heroes tie up a few loose ends, and discover some bloods have agendas of their own.
The session started off with everyone splitting up to go do their own thing for a bit, since Eirik was still recovering. Kharim and Aurelius spent most of the day unsuccessfully trying to get into the Fraternity of Order. Eirik headed to speak with A'Kin the Friendly Fiend about a glove Sharwyn had gotten him as a good luck charm. It was only the right glove, and the left glove was missing. Eirik determined the glove was magic, but not what it was supposed to do. Regardless, it didn't work without the matching glove. A'kin said he didn't have the other glove, but he knew that a nymph named Selera had it. According to A'kin, she spent most of her time out in the Beastlands performing shows for the wemics (they're like centaurs, except with lion bodies instead of horse bodies). Eirik really wanted to know what the gloves did, so he resolved to take a trip out there once he was feeling better. He made sure to buy something from A'kin to avoid being given another odd piece of junk. He opted to buy a flask, and A'kin even filled it for free with his own orange-based wine. The arcanoloth was just starting to get into the brewing business, so he was glad to have someone test his first batch. It turned out Eirik really likes oranges :smallbiggrin:

Meanwhile, Tulany was told by a Harmonium guard that Nadia wanted to speak with her. She agreed to go, and found Nadia pacing back and forth inside the holding cell like a caged tiger. Once the guard was out of earshot, Nadia chatted with Tulany for a bit, asked fairly innocuous questions and offered to act as a tout once she was free. She also expressed concern that the Harmonium might hand her over to the Mercykillers, and pleaded with Tulany to help free her. Tulany reassured her that Medea was an honest woman and would free her at the end of the day. Nadia didn't trust a hardhead as far as she could throw one, so she asked Tulany to give a gift to Kharim. She handed Tulany a pillowcase and told her to leave it on Kharim's bed. Tulany was confused, but agreed... until she looked inside the pillowcase and found Nadia's hand and eye inside. Not sure what else to do with it, and not wanting to be complicit in a jailbreak attempt, Tulany took the pillowcase back to her bunk and put it in her footlocker to show the others later.

Cassius met with Ash Mercury over tea, and a few of the players immediately made the joke about Ash being the group's Vegeta. I thought it was funny, so I ran with it. Ash couldn't believe he had been beaten in a duel, much less by someone who didn't understand the true githzerai way. Cassius learned Ash was a bounty hunter for the Mercykillers. He would track down people who had escaped justice and bring them in, though he didn't much care for the punishment aspect of his job. He cared only for the thrill of the hunt, and the promise of payment. The two monks exchanged verbal barbs for a bit, and eventually Ash left, though he vowed to return again soon.

Daegan had a panic attack about his new tentacles, and did a terrible job lying about it. Sharwyn and Soraya tried to comfort him, while Toda ran off to go tell Tulany that "Daegan was dying". Daegan yelled at the girls for trying to help, which made Soraya cry. The waterworks did the trick, and Daegan's big brother insticts kicked in. He apologized to her and showed her the new pair of tentacles he had growing out of his ribs. She pitied and hugged him, then suggested they go find a sage who might be able to help. Daegan didn't know what else to do, so he agreed to go out on the town with her. Sharwyn opted to stay behind to let the others know what was going on. Soraya and Daegan had no idea where to go or who to ask, but they weren't too far from the Grand Bazaar, so the two Clueless headed for the biggest market in the multiverse to find a graybeard. Eirik and Cassius returned about the same time as Tulany, and Sharwyn told them what was going on. They weren't thrilled that she had let the two of them go off by themselves, but there wasn't much they could do but go track them down. Tulany used Speak with Animals to ask a crow to help out in their search. It turned out the crow was an abandoned familiar, so he was agreed to help in exchange for some firecrackers. The party thought this was fair. The crow called up all the familiars in the market, which resulted in a motley swarm of critters descending on Daegan and Soraya while they were asking around for directions. Crows, cats, snakes, and even a few exotic animals piled on Daegan while he shielded Soraya with his body. Tulany managed to get the swarm to disperse, although Eirik wasn't about to let somebody's koala familiar get away without a few snuggles first.

Of course, since this is Sigil, a swarm of semi-coordinated familiars only managed to raise a few eyebrows before the jaded populace continued on with their days.

After the confusion was settled, Soraya explained to the group what was going on (she can't keep a secret to save her life), and that she found someone who might be able to help Daegan with his condition. The party agreed to follow her, so she took them to a bauriar alchemist named Wooly Cupgrass. Wooly loved dandyism, taste-testing alchemical ingredients, being a huge jerk to the women in the party, and stealing pies offering discounts to first time customers looking for flesh grafts. He did a relatively quick procedure on Daegan to check what parts were natural, and which had been grafted on in the process of becoming a Symic Hybrid. Much to Daegan's dismay, the ribcage tentacles were a natural part of his body (they're from a bloodline feat, so no escaping that one). Wooly offered to do some fleshwarping at a reasonable price, but Daegan turned him down. He tottered off to the curb, sat down, and cried. This time he didn't fight it when Soraya tried to comfort him.

The party met back up at the Harmonium Barracks, where Kharim and Aurelius admitted defeat, and Daegan admitted he might have a few issues of his own. Sharwyn and Eirik made the group a "Dwarven Chocolate Cake", which is like regular chocolate cake but involves a fifth of whiskey. Tulany showed the bag with Nadia's hand and eye to the rest of the group, and Kharim lost his lunch. Aurelius and Tulany went to speak with her, and to give her the body parts back. Nadia was disappointed with Tulany, but Aurelius made it up to her by picking the lock on her cell. He warned her not to leave until later, to keep the guards from suspecting the party immediately. She just purred at him. They considered it "good enough", and went back to the party.

While the rest of the group enjoyed the booze-cake together, Daegan went to the rooftop to brood, while Kharim climbed up after him to have a heart-to-heart. Neither of the heavy armor boys were particularly good at stealth, so it wasn't long before they were spotted. Medea Blackwood rolled her eyes and scolded them for being on the roof. They climbed down, but Kharim flubbed his Athletics check and accidentally knocked the gutter off the side of the building. Thankfully he can cast Featherfall, so he avoided embarrassing himself too badly in front of Medea. Kharim told her about his struggle to get into the Fraternity of Order, and how much he wanted access to their unparalleled library. Medea suggested joining the Harmonium instead, since both they and the Mercykillers also had access to the library. He wasn't interested in taking another exam, but she reassured him that he wouldn't have to. In order to join the Harmonium, he'd have to undertake a quest given to him by Factol Sarin, the leader of the faction. This piqued his interest, and he followed her to the tallest tower of the barracks, where they passed by a group of guards who wore black and gray, rather than the usual blue and white uniforms of the faction.

Kharim, Medea, and Daegan met with Factol Sarin, an imposing man with ash-blonde hair who wore glittering silver and white armor. He brought them into a grand hall decorated with tapestries of make and design foreign to the group (they were from the faction's home world of Ortho). Sarin explained he knew much about the party thanks to his information network all throughout Sigil, and told them it was the Harmonium's destiny to bring peace and order to the multiverse, and viewed Sigil as the perfect beachhead to use. He offered Kharim a quest to prove his worth: claim a feather from the wing of a trumpet archon and bring it back. Sarin explained this would take the party to Mount Celestia, and that Kharim should only take "his most trusted allies" on the quest. Kharim was all too happy to accept.

Just as the trio was leaving Sarin's presence, a silent Alarm went off, and a pair of the greyguards rushed to the holding cells. The trio followed, and were spotted by Cassius on the way, who decided to tail them with a near-unbeatable Stealth check. The group followed the greyguards to the cells, where they found the two Harmonium soldiers unconscious and the cell door busted open. One greyguard stayed with the downed soldiers to tend to their wounds, while the other searched the cellblock with his halberd ready to strike. The party also searched the area, and found someone had cut into the cellblock from the outside. Daegan went full bloodhound, and picked up two scents: one was Nadia, and the other was some sort of powerful undead. He and Kharim took off like a shot down the street to chase after whatever had abducted Nadia, while Cassius ran back to get the rest of the group. Medea doubled back to get her equipment (she had tried to take the night off again), but promised to meet up with the party later.

The party followed the trail, and Daegan even managed to keep the scent after the undead had taken a carriage. They tracked the scent to a portal at the end of an alley. None of the party knew how to work the portal, but Tulany's horizon walker abilities came in handy here. Since we're playing Planescape, detecting the nearest portal was a pretty weak ability, so instead I'm allowing Tulany to cast Warp Sense once per long/short rest. Warp Sense is a 2e spell that allows the caster to detect a portal within 60ft., and with a couple of caster checks determine where the portal goes and how to activate it. Using this ability, Tulany was able to tell how to activate it (a 3" metal rod), but not where it went. They haggled with a merchant for the portal key, and stepped through without hesitation.

The party found itself in the streets of Automata, the border town outside of Mechanicus.
TL;DR - You get a plot hook! You get a plot hook! Everyone gets a plot hook!

JadedDM
2021-03-07, 02:19 AM
That's too bad about Kai. But I guess Planescape isn't for everyone. It's weird and fantastic, and while I love it for that very reason, it also means some people just can't click with it. I've run into the same problem with Spelljammer.

SleepyShadow
2021-03-13, 03:05 PM
Heating Up The Blood War
In which the heroes encounter a strange undead, and witness an even stranger event.
Upon arrival in Automata, the party was immediately accosted by a group of town guards. They cajoled the PCs into filling out visitor passes (along with the 5sp processing fee, of course), and while they were filling out paperwork the party asked if any strange carriages had passed through the portal recently. The captain of the guard admitted that one had come through just a few minutes ago, but the driver had residency papers. One of the junior officers mentioned hearing some strange noises coming from the back of the carriage, but the captain silenced him with a glare. After the party had filled out their papers, the junior officer asked to speak with them in private. He led them a few blocks away from the portal, and started chatting in a casual and overly familiar tone. Aurelius soon realized the guard was using thieves' cant (checking if any of the party were rogues), but nobody in the party understood his lingo. So the guard switched to speaking in Elven without the cant, since he knew his captain didn't speak that language. Unfortunately, only Tulany understood what he was saying, so she was constantly having to translate what the guard was saying, since he refused to speak in common without also using cant.

The guard introduced himself as Heron, and said he had heard muffled shouts coming from the storage compartment of the carriage that passed through. He also said he knew the driver, a rich cutter named Sreeja who was a good friend of the captain. Heron described him as a dandy who liked to throw parties at his estate. Kharim soon surmised Sreeja was a vampire, but couldn't figure out why he kidnapped Nadia. Heron gave the party Sreeja's address and asked them to tell Nadia that his debt to her was cleared. The party agreed, and so began to plot their daring rescue.

The plan was something like this: Kharim and anyone terrible at stealth would knock on the front door and keep Sreeja distracted long enough for the PCs who weren't terrible at stealth to sneak in and rescue Nadia. That was it. That was the plan. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Kharim, Aurelius, and Eirik went up to the front door and asked if there was a party going on. Sreeja, a dandy and a gentleman, politely said there wasn't a party that evening, but they were welcome to come in and have a drink. All throughout the estate were Sreeja's servants, hooded creatures wearing bronze masks who were completely silent. Although they had a rather unnerving appearance, they mixed a darn fine cocktail. Sreeja had a goblet of totally-just-red-wine brought to him while the PCs enjoyed their drinks, and he made polite conversation with them. Aurelius casually mentioned they were looking for their friend Nadia, but Sreeja said he didn't know who that was. Several furious Insight checks revealed only that he was either a masterful liar or he was being honest. Sreeja said he was looking for someone as well, a priestess of Set, but he soon changed the subject back to more casual topics.

Meanwhile, Tulany, Cass, Mubarak, and Daegan searched around the outside of the estate until they found an unlocked window. They slipped inside and saw a single servant sweeping the unoccupied dining hall. They hid until he went into the kitchen, and once they determined nobody else was in the room, the group decided to follow the servant. Inside the kitchen they found another servant making angel hair pasta and alfredo sauce. The PCs backed out, and were just about to explore the ballroom, when Tulany had the big-brain moment of the night: "If Sreeja is a vampire, why is he having dinner cooked?" The group decided to follow the servant to see where the food would be taken. I asked for a new round of Stealth checks, and lo and behold Tulany failed. I bounced back to the first group before I revealed how she was caught.

Kharim and company asked Sreeja for a tour of the house. One Persuasion check later, he relented to their request, although he said he would only show them around the ground floor. The upstairs was his private quarters, and he liked his privacy respected. The group agreed, so he showed them around the ballroom, allowing them to admire the tasteful décor. He explained he had hired the best dwarves money could buy to build and detail his estate. He was fascinated with their architecture, since there were no dwarves on his home plane. Aurelius asked where he came from, and Sreeja said he was from Zendikar.

Aurelius and Kharim's player had a small panic attack at this. Vampires are a base race in Zendikar, rather than just a monster, so all assumptions about what Sreeja was capable of had to be thrown out. The other players in the group don't play Magic, so this news didn't register as anything more than a neat-sounding place to go adventuring sometime.

Sreeja guided them toward the back hall, intending to show them his library, when this group bumped into the stealthy group as they were entering the same hallway while following the servant. The party scrambled to cobble together a cover story about why they had broken into his house. Sreeja still didn't seem to get why the group was there, so he just invited them to stay for dinner. Again, furious Insight checks were made, but no information could be gleaned from the vampire. The party nervously agreed to have some pasta and another round of drinks. Once again, Sreeja had a servant bring him a goblet of totally-not-blood-you-guys, but this time Eirik looked inside the goblet and saw it was actually blood! To the surprise of nobody :smalltongue:

Four shots of vodka in, Kharim dropped the ruse and flat-out accused Sreeja of being a vampire and kidnapping Nadia. Sreeja admitted to indeed being a vampire, but he still had no clue who Nadia was. Getting a little frustrated, Kharim told him what she looked like. Sreeja was genuinely surprised to find out that the girl the party was looking for was his "new drinking fountain". He said that he had been on his way home from Sigil when he spotted a girl escaping from the Harmonium holding cells. He smelled a peculiar blood quality to her, so he broke into the cells and took the convict off the prison's hands. He claimed he was just doing his civic duty. Being a man of honor and supreme boredom, Sreeja offered to return Nadia to the group if someone could best him in a duel.

"Or, I can call in my servants, and we can have an ugly brawl if that's what you prefer."

Kharim swung at him in the hopes that the rest of the party would jump in and help him out. Much to his disappointment, the rest of the party was content to let him 1v1 Sreeja. The vampire played around, using a variety of flashy but low-damage attacks, willingly failing checks against Kharim's maneuvers, fighting while lounging in a chair and smoking, and so on. He treated the duel like a game, while Kharim put his all into the fight. Aurelius threw a healing spell Kharim's way at one point, and while Sreeja disapproved he did nothing but admonish the party for not telling him they wanted to do a tag-team battle. It was all fun-and-games for Sreeja until Daegan got sick of watching Kharim get thrown around, so he took a swing at Sreeja's back. The vampire used Shield to stop the attack, a spell he had not demonstrated until that point. Sreeja apologized to Kharim for the interruption, then retaliated by striking hard enough to drop Daegan from full health to single-digit hp. Kharim whacked him again, and Sreeja dramatically fell to the ground. He was conscious, he was smiling, and he wasn't even bloody. Still, he accepted defeat and let the party take Nadia.

I gave Kharim DM Inspiration for being a good sport about the duel.

While most of the party was patching up Kharim and Daegan outside, Aurelius and Eirik stayed behind to ask Sreeja about the priestess he had mentioned earlier. The vampire said he had been tracking a woman named Nekrothepta. She was a powerful and charismatic woman able to disguise her true nature - she was a mummy, though she looked like a beautiful woman. According to Sreeja, she had recently taken up the mantle of leading a cult of death worshippers who revered Orcus, Demon Prince of Undeath. Thanks to Nekrothepta, the cult had spread like a disease across the planes, even managing to gain a foothold in places like Mechanus and the Shadowfell. It was the shadar-kai still loyal to the Raven Queen who had asked Sreeja to track her down. He didn't know what her true intentions were, but he knew it wasn't good. Sreeja didn't have an issue with undead (obviously), he just didn't want a demon prince growing to dangerous levels of influence. After all, Orcus had once attained divinity, and it wasn't impossible to fathom it could happen again.

About this time, Medea finally caught up with the party, and they gave her a brief rundown on what had happened. She apologized for being late, and the party was just about to head back to Sigil, when the portal to Mechanus opened and an army of screaming and dying modrons fell out into the city streets. They were being overrun by sickly half-dead demons! Worse still, the modrons weren't fighting in their usual tightly knit formations. They were scattered, uncoordinated, and panicked. The party rushed to the scene, where over a dozen of these disgusting plague demons swarmed to their location. Medea fought alongside the PCs against the horde, and Nadia jumped into the fight as well to repay the party for her rescue.

The plague demons didn't exactly have a coordinated strategy. They just swarmed over whomever happened to be closest. Thankfully, that happened to be Kharim and Nadia, so the rest of the party was spared from their rather painful attacks. They didn't have a lot of hp, so the party was able to mop them up in just a few rounds of combat. Once the demons were dealt with, the party asked the modrons what had happened. The highest ranking modron on-scene, a pentadrone, explained that a "terrible shadow" had entered Mechanus and killed Primus, the leader of the modrons. The four modrons directly beneath Primus immediately began to battle for supremacy to see who would ascend to become the new Primus, and while that was going on this "terrible shadow" had opened a portal to the Abyss and allowed a huge swarm of demons to invade. The modrons were too divided to put up any real opposition against the sudden attack, and the formians (ant-people) were completely overrun. The pentadrone had been part of a desperate plan to escape to Automata in order to seek aid, but a portion of the invading demons had followed them through.

Aurelius suspected that the "terrible shadow" was Tenebrous, an aspect of Orcus that was long thought severed forever from the demon prince. He likened it to Peter Pan, with Orcus always chasing after his own shadow but not being able to reclaim it. He surmised that someone had helped Orcus reclaim his lost shadow, and it only took a little bit of deliberating to put the blame on Nekrothepta. Medea also pointed out that with the modrons currently without a leader, the army they had stationed in Avernus (the first layer of Baator) would effectively be useless against any sudden tanar'ri attack, putting even more pressure on the baatezu than before.

The party returned to Sigil for some rest and recuperation, now determined to go to the Eternal Boundary, and then it would be off to the Isle of Black Trees in search of information to help them battle against Orcus and Nekrothepta.
TL;DR - I wear my influences on my sleeve, and I wear them with pride :smallwink:

JadedDM
2021-03-13, 07:01 PM
What influences were those?

SleepyShadow
2021-03-18, 09:49 AM
What influences were those?

I'm a big fan of fighter games, and I'll sometimes drop a reference into my game for a few laughs. I patterned Sreeja after Slayer from Guilty Gear, and Nadia takes her cues from Skullgirls. They're relatively minor NPCs, so we can have a laugh and move on. I don't do that with NPCs more involved in the plot, though, like Medea or Shawryn.

JadedDM
2021-03-18, 02:24 PM
Ah, okay. Sorry, I have very little experience with fighting games, so those references flew right over my head. :smallredface:

SleepyShadow
2021-03-22, 06:23 AM
Ah, okay. Sorry, I have very little experience with fighting games, so those references flew right over my head. :smallredface:

No worries, every group has their in-jokes lol. Also, there's no journal update this week. We had a pretty short session, since Eirik couldn't make it and Mubarak had to duck out early. I'll roll what we did into the next update.

JadedDM
2021-03-22, 04:30 PM
Looking forward to it.

SleepyShadow
2021-03-27, 05:11 PM
The Dark of the War
In which the Heroes discover the third faction of the Blood War scheming in the unlikeliest of places.
The party decided to kill some time in Sigil and wrap up a few loose ends before heading off to the Eternal Boundary. First, the group headed to the Great Gymnasium, the headquarters of the Transcendent Order, to finally tell Faithful Servant Li that they had "failed" in the search for Golden Morning Radiance. Of course, the PCs just didn't want him dragging Hikari back to the Palace of the Dead against her will. It took a bit of convincing, but Li agreed to give up the search and headed back to the Palace empty-handed. While there, the party caught up with Meletros and chatted for a bit. They learned that the Transcendent Order was organizing a tournament as a way to drum up interest in their faction. Most of the party signed up, but Cassius was going to decline ... until he heard Ash Mercury calling him out. Ash posed dramatically and mocked the "inferior" martial artist, claiming he had improved his skills since last they met. He signed up for the tournament and dared Cass to do the same. Cassius accepted the challenge, and thus the whole party had signed up for the Battle Arena Transcendent.

With that done, the party went with Cassius to go visit his adopted mother, and had tea and cookies. She explained that she had a runaway from the Xaositects hiding out in her house who wanted to train at the githzerai monasteries to help rebalance her mind, and asked Cass and his friends to escort her there when they had the time. They agreed to do it after their trip to the Eternal Boundary. After the pleasant cookie break, Kharim asked the party to help him with his quest to acquire the feather of a trumpet archon. The party agreed, and so it was off to Mount Celestia.

Before heading off, the group snagged Soraya and Toda and brought them along. Nobody told Sharwyn what was going on or where they were going, and thus she was left behind.

The group stepped through the portal and ended up knee-deep in the holy ocean around Lunia, the first layer of Mount Celestia. They wandered about for a bit, taking in the quiet serenity of the place, until the encountered a lantern archon who politely requested them to meet with his mistress. The group agreed, and so followed the lantern archon through the woods to a beautiful stone arch overlooking the sea. There, the party met a female sword archon named Alziel, who asked for their help. She told them that some sort of disquieting shadow had fallen over one of the villages in Lunia, and the petitioners living there had become increasingly paranoid. Her two sisters, Brigid and Segra, had gone to investigate, but they had not returned. Alziel feared to investigate on her own, lest the shadow claim her as well, leaving Lunia defenseless in its lord's absence. The party agreed, and so they set off for the village.

Once there, the party discovered groups of hooded petitioners patrolling the streets with man-catcher poles in search of whatever was plaguing them. The party spoke with the captain of the guard, and learned that the shadow was not only inciting paranoia throughout the village, but also prevented any sort of creativity or innovation. Curious, the PCs tried to whistle a few songs to test if they were affected by the shadow as well. While they had not grown paranoid yet (they hadn't been there long enough), the group discovered that nobody in the group could even carry the simplest tune. This was especially troubling for Mubarak, being a bard and all that. The party also learned that there was a back entrance into the village via a door to the Infinite Staircase. It didn't take long for the party to suspect that whatever was causing this had snuck into town through the Staircase, though how it could have bypassed the lillendi guarding it was still a mystery. Doing a bit of research, and talking with the only survivor from a group of failed monster hunters, the party came to the conclusion that the shadow must be the handiwork of the yugoloths, since those sociopaths will do just about anything if the price is right. The party learned it was most likely caused by an empatholoth (a refluffed jovoc with better mental stats and jacked up to large size), and learned that the best way to take it down was to slap it with Cure Wounds, since it was harmed by the spell and reflected all other types of damage. They armed themselves with as many potions as they could, and borrowed some cold iron axes in to finish the job in case they ran out. Tulany and Daegan tracked the yugoloth to the chapel, and the party busted in, ready for battle!

The yugoloth and its minions (lizardfolk tieflings with scorpion tails) had captured Brigid and Segra and bound them with infernal chains. The reptilians were carefully collecting the angels' blood in iron bowls while the empatholoth directed their work. However, the party was caught off-guard by the presence of a baernaloth (a proto-yugoloth and one of the lords of the fiends). The party sprung into action! Notable events of the fight include Cassius kicking a bowl of angel blood into the face of one of the reptilians to scald it with its holy water property, Kharim's mostly successful attempts to corral the empatholoth, and the empatholoth's unfortunate success in summoning a second empatholoth. Because I'm not interested in butchery, the baernaloth's only turn in the combat was to snag the unspoiled bowl of blood and Plane Shift out. The party hacked apart the reptilians, and did their best to protect Soraya and Tulany while they cured the empatholoths to death. The fight ended when the last empatholoth decided to claw himself to death in an effort to take down the PCs. Thankfully, it didn't work, and the PCs were victorious. Overall, it was a pretty well executed fight :smallsmile:

The party met with Barachiel, the trumpet archon lord of Lunia, who thanked them for their service in his absence. He explained that he had been called away to deal with a sudden incursion of flying demons over the holy sea. The party explained that it was the yugoloths who had caused the problem, and Barachiel admitted he suspected their involvement, saying that the sudden tanar'ri attack was too well coordinated to have been their own idea. Kharim requested a feather, explaining that he had been sent on a quest, and Barachiel was happy to oblige. The trumpet archon lord plucked a feather from his wing and handed it over... to Soraya. The PCs could feel Kharim's heart silently break. The archon then mounted his giant celestial octopus and was gone. Once he was out of sight, Soraya immediately gave the feather to her big brother. Mubarak recorded the whole thing with his sensation stone, deciding to make the best Fail Compilation in the entire Sensate library. Cassius doubled back to the cathedral to check on the sword archons, and found them being tended to by a tearfully joyful Alziel. She gave him her magic cloak as a reward for saving the lives of her sisters, and promised to aid them in the future should they need it.

With their quest complete, the party headed back Sigil to rest up and prepare for their adventure to the Eternal Boundary. Kharim and Daegan took the feather back to Harmonium headquarters, and met with Factol Sarin. He rewarded them with a bit of gold, gave Kharim the official uniform and badge of the faction, and called in two dwarven artificers and a confused looking Medea. The artificers carried with them a fabulous silver sword, and at Sarin's instruction they fused the angel feather into the blade. Sarin explained that the feather was the last ingredient needed to craft a Holy Avenger. Once the process was complete, he bestowed the mighty weapon to Medea, who grew even more confused than before. He took her, Kharim, and Daegan to a Harmonium rally, and announced to the cheering crowd that Kharim had officially joined the faction, and that his comrades were allies of the Harmonium and were to be treated as such. He also announced that Medea was to be sent to the front lines of the Blood War, specifically to Avernus to help cull the demons threatening to overrun the first layer of Baator. The party didn't like that idea too much, since they had a soft spot for the cop who had decided to not arrest them on multiple occasions. Once the rally was over and Medea was contemplating her fate in the barracks, Kharim, Daegan, and Tulany asked Sarin what the heck was going on.

Factol Sarin explained that he wasn't sending her to Avernus alone, nor to a strategically important location. He told them about a gate-town called Fortitude, which was almost ready to ascend to Arcadia. However, he knew the town would need a strong figurehead to make the final push into apotheosis. His plan was to have Medea, a paladin born among the working class, to cut her teeth on the fringes of the Blood War and make a name for herself as a "Fiend Slayer". He would then appoint her to lead Fortitude into ascension, certain that the locals would rally behind her. He would send a squad of volunteers with her for protection, and was certain that the Order of the Chalice would send more experienced knights to protect her. Sarin admitted to the group that his predecessor, the previous Factol of the Harmonium, had cost Arcadia a lot of territory, and he felt it was his duty to help undo the mistakes of the past. He knew that a single town was a pittance in comparison to what Arcadia had lost, but he felt it was a step in the right direction. The party's fears were assuaged, and so they went to celebrate their latest adventures and to take Medea out for dinner before she departed for the Blood War.
TL;DR - Side quests are finished!

JadedDM
2021-03-28, 05:27 AM
Sometimes a promotion isn't what it's cracked up to be. Hopefully Medea does well, though.

SleepyShadow
2021-04-03, 03:59 PM
Sometimes a promotion isn't what it's cracked up to be. Hopefully Medea does well, though.
She'll be okay... for now. I'm doing a bit of foreshadowing for an adventure I plan to modify and run in the future. It's called Fires of Dis, if you're curious.

The Eternal Boundary
In which the Dark of things becomes clear to the Heroes following their travel to the Elemental Plane of Fire.
The session started out with Kharim and Medea getting accosted by a pair of wererats and Tiny the werebear, who dragged the two of them down into the sewers. There they were met by The Us, one of the cranium rat hive minds vying for control of Sigil's underbelly. The Us explained that Kharim had offended them by harming one of its rats when he was testing out his dragonmark cantrip. The hivemind said the only reason he wasn't dead was because Tulany gave them some bread, and sparing Kharim's life constituted paying back the favor. However, this meant that Kharim now owed the hivemind a favor, or else Tiny was going to start breaking kneecaps. The Us also knew about Soraya, and said it would be very unfortunate if something were to happen to her. Kharim got the hint. He agreed to help the hivemind as long as it left his little sister alone. The Us instructed him to go to the gate-town of Excelsior, and to meet with Vaimish Crasad for further instructions. Kharim agreed, and The Us had Tiny escort the two knights out of the sewers, saying that it wanted to conduct no further business on the day of its daughter's wedding. :smalltongue:

Kharim walked Medea back to the barracks, then hustled to meet with the rest of the group at the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts. Everything was right with the world again.

Daegan and Eirik did a bit of last minute research about the Plane of Fire, while Aurelius did some artificer tinkering with Daegan's armor. After the group was rested and ready to go, it was off to the Mortuary to finally explore the Eternal Boundary and put a stop to the Illuminated plot! The group used their stash of Potions of Invisibility to sneak through the Mortuary, since they were still on bad terms with the Dustmen after their last trip there ended in multiple dead faction members. They made it most of the way to the portal before a pair of Dustmen heard the heavy armor lads. Aurelius broke his invisibility to distract them with some grade A flimflam while the rest of the party hustled through the portal. As soon as they were through, he used Misty Step to slip past the Dustmen and jump through the portal.

The party found itself on a skull-shaped citadel floating in the raging fires. They were almost immediately attacked by a group of dwarves and hobgoblins, mercenaries hired by the Illuminated to protect the portal to their secret lair. It was a pretty quick fight, as the mercenaries were no match for the party. The party took an enemy priest captive and dragged him through the citadel to get directions. Eventually, they found their way to a white marble chapel which contained a brilliant green gem radiating waves of cool fresh air. It didn't take long for the party to realize the jewel was the source of the safe atmosphere in the citadel. The jewel was also guarded by an ogre-sized brass warforged, who politely introduced himself as Ben Birdland.

Rant time!

This is where I deviated from the prewritten module, as the original calls for a Stone Golem to be at the beck and call of the captain of the citadel. That's an absurdly powerful enemy to throw at a group of 5th level characters, so I replaced it with Mr. Birdland. He's a warforged juggernaut bumped up to large size and given a few levels of War Hulk. However, he's fighting unarmed, so his high strength modifier is only riding on a 1d4 unarmed strike, so while he can do some interesting things (like swing at three targets simultaneously), his damage output was something the party could handle without struggling too much.

/rant.

The party chatted with Ben for a bit, and he told them his job was to protect the jewel. He was a pleasant giant robot, so the party left their captured priest with him and headed for the captain's quarters, which were hidden behind a secret door. However, Aurelius thought that meant an illusory wall, so he confidently strode forward and smacked his face on the solid stone. Once they found the secret door, they then proceeded to trigger the trap in the hallway, but a bit of poison gas wasn't going to slow them down now! They made it through and busted into Captain Imogen's office, where she was busy questioning Toranna, who had been brought back from the dead. Captain Imogen humored the party and explained the plan to the PCs like any good Bond villain should. The Illuminated wanted to plant sleeper agents inside each of the factions to subtly steer them and influence Sigil politics. After all, the Illuminated creed did say to control what you can't rule. The party didn't like this one bit (especially Kharim, since he had just joined a faction, and didn't want sleeper agents in it), so the inevitable battle broke out. Toranna died before she even got a turn, but Imogen put up a reasonable fight (she was an Abjurer/Eldritch Knight). Ben Birdland also came rocketing down the hall for the assist, which was greatly appreciated since Imogen's mercenaries were pretty useless in every encounter they had been in. The party eventually battered through Imogen's magical defenses, and kept Ben busy long enough to mop up the rest of the baddies. Once he was the last one standing, Ben surrendered without much fuss, and the party seemed keen on trying to adopt him into the group. Players are strange like that :smallwink:

The party looted the room, triggered a poison dart trap on a chest that nearly dropped Aurelius, and rescued a group of people that were halfway through Imogen's "reprogramming" process. However, the group noticed a sudden increase in temperature, and raced back to the jewel room just in time to see the priest they had taken captive swan dive off the ledge and into the fire while holding the air jewel and screaming "Illumination!". With the jewel gone, the air bubble around the citadel began to collapse. The party raced for the portal back to Sigil, but their escape was halted by a mysterious figure clad in a hooded green cloak. Kharim attempted to use Charging Minotaur to get past the guy, but the hooded figure intercepted his charge with a headbutt and nearly knocked him prone. Though he didn't reveal his face, the cloaked figure claimed to be Green Marvent, and said he still had some use for the party. He then used Plane Shift to escape before the party could try attacking again. They didn't have time to ponder about their new enemy, as the citadel began to collapse around them. They hustled through the portal, and scared the daylights out of the two Dustmen just trying to do their jobs. They were escorted out of the mortuary by Boris the zombie minotaur, and Kharim (trying to ice his forehead) wondered if the zombie was the only minotaur encountered that day.

The group took the rescued barmies to the Bleak Cabal for proper treatment, and left Daegan there for Daria to tend to him, since he had gotten pretty banged up in the fight with Imogen. Daria doesn't know anything about curative magic, but she bandaged his wounds, made him some chicken noodle soup, and put him to bed. The rest of the group headed back to the BSIL. On the way there, they bumped into a red-skinned goblin who wore a lot of knickknacks and piecemeal armor. He introduced himself as Zada, and he just wanted to wish Tulany luck in the upcoming tournament. He explained that the tournament bracket (https://challonge.com/a0mdqn3h) was posted at the Great Gymnasium, and that Tulany was his first opponent. He looked forward to the fight, and said that win or lose she should come to the potluck dinner that the Free League was hosting after the first round. She tentatively agreed, and the friendly goblin sauntered off. Once the group returned to the Brothel, Soraya and Sharwyn were relieved to see them safely back. The party spoke with Bendon Maul, who was rather cranky about them taking so long, but he wasn't going to back out of the deal with them. He made them promise to accompany him to the Isle of Black Trees first thing in the morning, to which the party was more than happy to oblige. After Bendon and his bodyguard left, the party settled in to relax and enjoy themselves for the rest of the evening.
TL;DR - After much difficulty and side-questing, we've finished the first published adventure of the campaign! Next, we'll be heading to the Isle of Black Trees, which I'll have to write myself since there was never any official follow-up to The Eternal Boundary.

JadedDM
2021-04-04, 05:32 AM
Well done. Hopefully the party does well at the Isle of Black Trees.

In the original, the stone golem is just a mindless automaton, but the warforged you replaced it with is sapient, right? Doesn't that mean it was a member of the Illumination? I'm surprised the party was so quick to trust it, considering.

SleepyShadow
2021-04-06, 05:37 PM
Well done. Hopefully the party does well at the Isle of Black Trees.

In the original, the stone golem is just a mindless automaton, but the warforged you replaced it with is sapient, right? Doesn't that mean it was a member of the Illumination? I'm surprised the party was so quick to trust it, considering.

The group has a habit of becoming attached to anyone with a smooth baritone voice. I don't get it either :smallconfused:

JadedDM
2021-04-06, 06:02 PM
Well, on the bright side, if you ever have a plotline later that requires the party to trust a bad guy who is going to betray them, now you know how to pull it off. :smallbiggrin:

SleepyShadow
2021-04-10, 06:34 PM
Well, on the bright side, if you ever have a plotline later that requires the party to trust a bad guy who is going to betray them, now you know how to pull it off. :smallbiggrin:

They also have a weird trend of distrusting any female NPC with a sweet or caring personality, referring to her as a "puff" and living in constant fear of her "inevitable betrayal". My group can be a little strange sometimes lol

The Isle of Black Trees
In which the Heroes investigate a pocket plane and discover a maddening treasure trove.
The party took it easy the morning after their big day at the Eternal Boundary. Late out of bed, an extra cup of coffee, brown sugar in the oatmeal, all the good stuff. Once the party was awake and assembled (not necessarily in that order, and Daegan had to be fetched from the Bleak Cabal headquarters), the group met up with Bendon Maul, his bodyguard (the party finally learned her name is Zedoris), and Eliath the former Red Wizard. Kai also rejoined the party for this adventure, so things were looking good! After a bit of discussion, Kharim suggested that Sharwyn stay behind and scout out the competition of the upcoming tournament. His idea went over like a plumbum blimp; Sharwyn was tired of getting left behind, and Eirik wasn't about to miss the chance to adventure with the lady of his affection. Kharim decided to hire Kylie the Tout to spy on the competition instead, offering her half of his winnings. She agreed to it, but only after she got his promise in writing. She's crafty enough not to get peeled by a Hardhead :smallcool:

With that taken care of, the expedition team headed off to the fabled Isle of Black Trees!

After stepping through the portal at the Abandoned Church, the group found itself ankle deep in swamp water, surrounded on all sides by spiraling black trees that reached up toward a concrete gray sky. The group soon encountered a reptilian fey creature who bore a lantern. It gave them cryptic directions toward the library before it blew out its lantern and disappeared. Daegan, Tulany, and Eirik managed to keep the party from getting lost in the swamp, which was no easy task. The group discovered that the trees were copies of themselves; every set of five trees was identical from the last. The party encountered a many-armed witch who offered them apples, but the group politely declined, even after her cryptic warning of "try not to starve". They also found a trail of glowing stones, which they didn't follow, and a gingerbread house, which they didn't eat.

Eventually, the group arrived at the Black Library. I described the place as such:

"The Library, not sane, stands by itself against the black trees, holding darkness within. It had stood so for eight hundred years, and might stand so for eight hundred more. Within, walls continue upright, bricks meet neatly, floors are firm, and the front doors are sensibly shut. The silence holds steady against the wood and stone of this place, and whatever walks there, walks alone. The building has an unbelievably faulty design which leaves it chillingly wrong in all dimensions. The walls seem always in one direction a fraction longer than the eye can endure, and in another direction a fraction less than the barest possible tolerable length."

My group appreciates some non-Euclidian geometry :smallbiggrin:

Inside, the place was a seemingly infinite series of interconnected hexagons (https://cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/26223757/babel-offcenter2-e1477551588960.jpg), all of which were lined with bookshelves along the walls. Bendon and Eliath immediately began to scour the tomes, and found that most of them were complete gibberish, but each one was distinctly unique. The group soon discovered the entire building was warded with a two-way barrier to keep fey out, while also trapping any fey inside. Bendon and Eliath, along with Zedoris, opted to stay near the entrance and look through the books while the more adventuresome members of the group explored deeper into the library. As the party went, they stumbled across a few skeletal bodies. A couple of long-dead elves in the black and white robes of priests of Boccob, and the broken remains of goblin-like creatures Daegan identified as redcaps. Tulany used her primeval awareness to check for living people within a five-mile radius, and she detected a lone individual three miles up. So the group decided to start hiking into the impossible space.

As they started trekking up the stairs, they came across countless battle scenes, the long left behind remains of skirmishes between the elves and the redcaps. As the party kept going up, they noticed a slow trend of change for both sides of this ancient conflict. The elves had adopted more combat oriented garb, trimming the design of their holy raiment and incorporating light armor into the design, while eventually losing all Boccob symbology. The redcaps, on the other hand, slowly became more ferocious and feral as the party ascended, growing claws and fangs, and eventually completely discarding the use of weapons and armor. Every mile, I asked for an easy Constitution save against exhaustion, but I should've remembered that if you set a low DC, it's inevitable that a disproportionate amount of characters will fail. By the time they got to their destination, about half the group had a level of exhaustion, and poor Eirik (who's tied with Kharim for highest Con score in the group, I believe) had two levels.

At the two mile mark, the bodies became noticeably fresher, and as they neared the third mile the sounds of feral howling could be heard. The party hustled to the source of the noise and found about a dozen redcaps trying to smash their way through a hastily built barricade of bookshelves. The party leapt to the attack! The redcaps weren't much of a threat (two of them ended up going over over the railing and down the pits), but it took a while for the party to chop through them due to the lack of cold iron weapons. The party eventually triumphed, and soon they were the ones trying to break through the barricade. They soon stopped trying to smash it down, and instead called out to whomever was on the other side, announcing "we're not redcaps!"

The barricade was taken down from the other side, and the party was greeted by a shadar-kai woman clad in the stylized black and white garb the party had grown used to seeing. She introduced herself as Rowena Labyrinth, and she claimed to be the last surviving guardian of the Grand Archives. She took the party up ten floors to where her village was, a ramshackle collection of lean-tos fashioned from empty bookshelves. The village was occupied by other shadar-kai unfit for combat; those crippled, too elderly, or too young to fight. The village was dominated by a massive pile of books that Rowena referred to as "The Tomb of the Guardian". When asked what that meant, she told the party a story about how The Creator had given his people a guardian made of clay to protect them from the monsters that came from below. Once the librarians were able to fend for themselves, The Creator had put the guardian to sleep, and the priesthood had buried it. Rowena said that was all many hundreds of years ago, and she had no idea if it was even true, but if it was, her people needed the guardian now more than ever.

The party was introduced to Cyrus, the village elder. He was the only cleric in the village, and was also Rowena's grandfather. Kharim and Aurelius tried to convince Cyrus to do something to help, like reanimate the guardian, but they both managed to Nat 1 their Persuasion checks, and succeeded in getting the elder rather cranky with the party. Cyrus expressed his rather extreme distaste for planeswalkers (although he's never met one), and said that if the group wanted to help, the best thing they could do would be to help Rowena dispose of her dead comrades. The party followed Rowena back downstairs to the site of the most recent battle and began to arm themselves with the slain elves' cold iron weapons, all while plotting how best to help the otherwise doomed librarians.
TL;DR - The party found a mash-up of at least three different stories :smalltongue:

JadedDM
2021-04-12, 02:16 AM
Out of curiosity, what would have happened if the party had accepted the apples, eaten the gingerbread house or followed the glowing stones?

SleepyShadow
2021-04-12, 12:47 PM
Out of curiosity, what would have happened if the party had accepted the apples, eaten the gingerbread house or followed the glowing stones?

Accepted the apples: They would've taken some poison damage and been attacked by the witch and her animal allies.

Eaten the gingerbread house: They would've been attacked by the hag and her animated oven.

Followed the glowing stones: They would've found a petrified elven man, and the fairies that petrified him.


So they would've had a few extra fights to wear them down a bit before arriving at the library.

JadedDM
2021-04-12, 05:04 PM
Sounds like their paranoia paid off then. On the other hand, less XP, I suppose.

AllHailthed4
2021-04-13, 12:52 AM
In hindsight, I'm a little sad we didn't end up fighting the oven :smalltongue:

serpentalis
2021-04-17, 01:32 AM
Daegan's player here, I decided to draw everyone's characters since I had the opportunity. Still working on Cass and Kai since my tablet broke, but once that problem gets solved I'll throw them in here. I also drew Soraya, since she's a rather important NPC at this point.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/642629164813254659/822638931643858984/image2.jpg

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/642629164813254659/823272275436109854/image1.jpg

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/642629164813254659/822639829194899486/image0.jpg

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/642629164813254659/822638930935545927/image0.jpg

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/642629164813254659/823272275767328799/image2.jpg

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/642629164813254659/823272275066617856/image0.jpg

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/642629164813254659/822638931928809482/image3.jpg

Cerrita
2021-04-17, 01:37 AM
To be entirely honest, I'm the only party member paranoid of the puffs. I am often teased for this, but I won't have the "sweet innocent NPC betrayal" trope catch me off guard. Never mind that it's happened a total of Zero times in our combined campaigns...

JadedDM
2021-04-18, 02:53 AM
Those pictures look great, serpentalis. They must have taken forever to draw.

SleepyShadow
2021-04-18, 12:35 PM
I forgot to talk about the homunculus Aurelius built last week. It's a bird robot with three primary objectives:

1) Protect Aurelius.
2) Eliminate all enemies.
3) Master comedic timing.

Just thought I ought to mention that :smallbiggrin:

The Isle of Black Trees - Part Two
In which our Heroes uncover a grim secret, and true motives are revealed.
The party still wanted to figure out a way to help Rowena and her people, so they split up to look for clues. Soraya and Toda hit the books, while Tulany spoke with Elder Cyrus in the hopes of getting him mellowed out and willing to reason with the group. She learned that Cyrus planned to take the young and healthy shadar-kai to a hidden village farther up the library and abandon the crippled villagers, leaving them to slow down the advance of the redcaps. He expressed his irritation at "Heretic Maddock", the best smith in the village and Rowena's uncle. He also expressed his continued dislike of planeswalkers and made it clear that he wanted the party gone.

Meanwhile, Eirik, Cassius, Kai, and Sharwyn wandered around and met with the surviving villagers. They got to meet Maddock sitting by his cold forge, telling fairytales to the children gathered around him. The adventurers also decided to sit and listen for a little while, and were regaled with odd tales such as "Goldilocks the Bear Hunter", "The Tragic Romance of Red Hood and The Wolf-Man", "Snow White and Rose Red vs. the Ice Queen", and "Bigby Wolf and the Three Wereboars". After they had their fill of offbeat fairytales, the group chatted with Maddock for a bit and decided they liked the cut of his jib. Eirik gave Maddock a jar of griffon grease (random trinkets get weird sometimes) to use on his prosthetic leg.

While all of this story time and pleasantry was going on, Kharim, Aurelius, Daegan, and Mubarak were breaking into the Tomb of the Guardian. They even managed to convince Rowena to help them (not very difficult, to be honest.). They found a clay golem inside the tomb, as well as a book called "Destiny of Souls", which had a peculiar inscription on the inside cover:

"This book is bound in elven skin parchment on which no ornament has been stamped, to preserve its elegance. By looking carefully, you easily distinguish the pores of the skin. A book about the soul deserved to have a proper covering. I used this piece of elven skin taken from the back of a woman."

The group was appropriately horrified :smalleek:

After they examined the golem, they discovered a piece was missing from its forehead, which meant its animation spell was incomplete. Rowena told them her grandfather wore a stone pendant that might fit the hole in the golem's forehead. Mubarak immediately volunteered for a little snatch and grab. He failed to Charm the old cleric, so he resorted to just snatching the necklace right off Cyrus and making a break for it. Cyrus chased after Mubarak, and our favorite pesky bard stuffed the pendant into Daegan's backpack and flew out of reach. Unfortunately, Cyrus saw the hand-off, but Daegan decided to roll a Perception check to see if he noticed... and promptly botched the roll. Cyrus decided now would be a good time to get rid of these meddlesome planeswalkers who "turned his own granddaughter against him". He cast Combust on poor Daegan, and animated a half-dozen paper golems to attack the party!

While the fight was ongoing, Cyrus explained that the party wasn't the first group of planeswalkers to come to the library. He had killed the previous group and used "Destiny of Souls" to use their life force as fuel for animating the paper golems. Not a very nice thing to do.

Cyrus had a few tricks up his sleeve, but ultimately he couldn't do much about the action economy advantage the party had. His paper golems also proved less effective than I thought they would be, and their fire vulnerability certainly didn't help. The party triumphed over the golems, and even managed to capture Cyrus. He was a bitter old crow who did nothing but insult the party and call Rowena a traitor to the library.

Aurelius managed to reanimate the clay golem, much to the wonder of Rowena and the gathered shadar-kai. The golem spoke, and knew it had to protect the elves, but remembered nothing else. Aurelius and Cassius decided to name the golem "Prometheus", although Daegan and Kharim are already advocating changing his name to "Bosh". Naming aside, the golem and Rowena dismantled a few bookcases and fashioned a crude sled for the crippled and children to ride in during the three-mile descent to the ground floor. The golem would hold the sleds, while the rest of the group forged ahead of the civilians to protect them from another redcap attack. While this was going on, Cyrus managed to spit one last curse at the party before hurling himself down the stairwell to his death.

Just as the party was getting ready to escort the villagers to freedom, they got a message from Bendon about some trouble with Eliath. Figuring that it would be a simple matter to resolve, a handful of the group opted to dive down the stairwell and use Featherfall to catch themselves near the ground floor. Kharim, Daegan, Soraya, Mubarak, Rowena, and Kai (he's got a terrible fear of heights) took the plunge. They managed to time the Featherfall a little early so as to not accidentally end up in redcap territory.

Down on the ground floor, Bendon and Zedoris explained that Eliath had apparently gone barmy again. He had stripped naked (except for his hat) and ran off downstairs while muttering about books and losing his sense of time. Daegan tracked Eliath as best he could, and found the red wizard's backpack just one floor down. He also found the trail doubled back upstairs. The group double-checked that neither Bendon nor Zedoris saw Eliath after he ran off, and they both confirmed they hadn't. However, Zedoris mentioned that she heard something like footsteps a little while after Eliath left, but she didn't see anything. Daegan followed the tracks out of the library, and saw Eliath standing on the other side of a line of dark-armored warriors. With him was a plated abomination wielding a scythe, and leading the group was a black-clad knight. Daegan shouted for the others just as the black knight gave the order.

"Attack!"
TL;DR - Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

JadedDM
2021-04-19, 01:04 AM
Gotta love those cliffhangers. (I mean, I love them. My players seem to really hate them for some reason. :smalltongue:)

serpentalis
2021-04-19, 07:35 PM
This cliffhanger is definitely a rough one, too. Talk about suspenseful.

And I figured I'd hop in and mention this. Everyone who wants to is welcome to make a prediction for the Transcendent Order tournament. Absolutely feel free to do so lol.

SleepyShadow
2021-04-30, 01:03 AM
Sorry about the delay on the update! Family vacations will do interesting things to your routine :smalltongue:

Isle of Black Trees - Part Three
In which our Heroes battle a mysterious foe, and learn the dark about one of their own.
The battle against the black knight and the Illuminated took the entire session. I handed out NPC stat sheets to those players whose characters are still on the staircase with the librarians, so nobody got left out. Eirik got to pilot Bendon (Fathomless Warlock 8), Tulany got Zedoris (Sun Soul Monk 5), and Aurelius had to unravel Rowena's sheet (Knowledge Cleric 2/Swordsage 4). Cassius missed the session, unfortunately.

The party split up into smaller groups to break up the larger enemy team, forcing the enemy warriors into more manageable bunches. The Illuminated warriors proved a little tougher than I expected, but the PCs handled them reasonably well. Traitor Eliath showed off his skills as a former Red Wizard of Thay, and busted out some nasty 2e necromancy spells to cause problems (Llarloch's Minor Drain was surprisingly effective). The black knight hung back for the first few rounds of combat, barking orders and casting cantrips. Daegan tried his best to 1v1 the plated abomination while the others handled the warriors. The results? Predictable! (https://youtu.be/OSbc1vn6O6I)

About halfway through the fight, Eliath started yelling at the abomination, and at one point called him Adair. Quick bit of backstory - Daegan's missing little brother is named Adair. Daegan, naturally, had a bit of a meltdown, which was really bad timing given that he still had a giant monster trying to smash him into the ground. Kharim managed to break away from the remaining warriors about the same time that Rowena fought her way over to Eliath. Kharim gave it his all and charged the black knight, which got Daegan reluctantly back into the fight. Our favorite squiggly boy went to help Kharim with the black knight, leaving the rest of the group to deal with Adair.

The black knight finally did something other than spam cantrips - he cast Wall of Fire to trap Kharim and Daegan in with him, while simultaneously preventing the rest of the group from joining them. The knight, who gave his name as Ashram, proved to be more than a match for the lads. He downed them with little trouble, but he started rummaging through their possessions instead of finishing them off. Soraya ran through the wall of fire, went to 2 hp, and did her best to distract Ashram. She wasn't going to last long against the blackguard, but Daegan got lucky and nat 20'd his death save, and popped up at 1 hp. He saw that Ashram had looted the skin-bound book "Destiny of Souls", so he knocked the book into the wall of fire instead of attacking Ashram. Disgruntled, the black knight pulled out a scroll and cast Dimension Door to get away before the rest of the group got brave enough to charge through the fire. Adair ran off into the woods, and by this point Eliath and the Illuminated warriors were dead.

After the fight, Daegan tried to run off into the woods after Adair. Kharim stopped him, but some heated words were exchanged between the lads, including Daegan saying "Stop pretending you're a paladin. You're not."

Harsh.

Kharim knocked Daegan out with a solid right cross. At Kai's direction, of course. Otherwise the lad would've gone running off without the group. They hauled Daegan back inside the library to rest up and wait for the other half of the group.
TL;DR - It's hard to write a summary of a six-hour combat :smallredface:

JadedDM
2021-05-01, 02:53 AM
Oh, I remember Larloch's Minor Drain from Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. Did they ever make a 5E version of that spell?

SleepyShadow
2021-05-05, 11:57 AM
Oh, I remember Larloch's Minor Drain from Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. Did they ever make a 5E version of that spell?

No, I had to update it myself:
1st-level Necromancy

Casting Time: 1 Action
Range: 30 ft.
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous

With this spell, you drain the life force of a creature and add it to your own. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. If the attack hits, the creature takes 1d4 necrotic damage, and you gain that many temporary hit points. These temporary hit points last for one minute.

At Higher Levels: When you cast this spell with a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the damage increases by 1d4 for each slot level above 1st.

Spell List: Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard
Feel free to use it for your own game :smallbiggrin:

Isle of Black Trees - Part Four
In which our Heroes rescue some bait, and one of their own is taken.
This session focused on the half of the group escorting the shadar-kai librarians to the ground floor. Once again, I handed out NPCs to the players without their characters in the group. Kharim got Maddock (Forge Cleric 9), Daegan wanted Sharwyn (Valor Bard 5), and Mubarak had some fun with Bosh (Savage Species Golem 6). Kai's player had just gotten his second vaccination shot and was feeling the side effects pretty badly, so he opted out of the session.

The group spotted someone watching them from a few rooms over, so the party decided to split up further. Aurelius, Tulany, and Cassius decided to go check things out, while Eirik and the NPC squad stayed behind to look after the librarians. The trio followed a small blood trail (not enough blood to indicate a grievous wound, just a painful one) for several rooms until they spotted an injured shadar-kai woman resting on the floor. She wasn't one from their group, so they figured she was a survivor from one of the other floors in the Grand Archives. Tulany cautiously approached her, trying not to spook the clearly frightened elf, when the group was jumped by the nine redcaps that had been using her as bait. Yay ambushes!

The rest of the group was alerted to the danger thanks to the caterwauling from Rey's robot bird, so Eirik and the others hurried to join their imperiled friends, leaving Toda behind to look after the librarians. There were a couple of problems, though. Eirik was still suffering with multiple levels of exhaustion, so his movement speed was cut in half. Coupled with Maddock's crippled leg and Bosh's inability to take the dash action, the trio of big fellas quickly fell behind Sharwyn, who raced ahead of them in an effort to reinforce the first group. Of course, now that the party was split up even more, they all naturally got attacked by redcaps.

Aurelius, Tulany, and Cassius held the line against the nine redcaps, hoping the others got to them in time. Sharwyn performed a fighting retreat to get back to the rearguard, using Dissonant Whispers to excellent effect. Eirik, Maddock, and Bosh just pounded their attackers into bloody lumps and kept going. The two groups linked up in the nick of time to keep Rey and company from getting completely overrun, and though the battle was hard-fought, the day was won! They even managed to rescue the shadar-kai from the redcaps, so I threw in a little extra XP for good measure. They learned her name was Willow, and her village had been overrun by redcaps a few years ago. They had kept her alive to use as bait, luring in explorers and librarians from other villages. As long as she succeeded, she got to live, though she was under the constant threat of being the redcaps' next meal if she ever failed them. She hated what she had been forced to do, but didn't know what else to do to survive. Cassius took pity on her, and brought her back to the main group of shadar-kai. Aurelius even gave her his father's old spellbook, since she told them she was a wizard.

Back at the group of waiting librarians, the group discovered that Toda was missing. One of the shadar-kai children told the party that a "pretty lady with long fingers" took Toda down the stairs. Tulany was distraught at the thought of some evil fey kidnapping her uncle. The party suspected it might've been the Redcap Grandmother, or at least one of her minions, though they didn't know what she had targeted Toda and left the librarians alone. A little disheartened, the group completed the otherwise uneventful journey to the ground floor.

At last, the gang was all together! Well, except for Toda...

Maddock used a bit of his remaining magic to patch up the group that had tangled with Ashram and the Illuminated, which happened to get Daegan conscious. He immediately jumped up and tried to chase after Adair again. Nobody in the party could beat his ridiculous grapple checks, so Aurelius asked Bosh to help. The golem happily proved that he had a 90% record from the free-throw line by hurling a 300lb. bookcase at Daegan. The poor guy still had a mutagen running from the last combat that gave him resistance to slashing damage, but it also gave him bludgeoning vulnerability. The bookcase would've killed him if Bosh hadn't declared nonlethal damage before rolling.

The party dragged Daegan's unconscious body back inside, and decided that at this point a long rest was going to be required before making an attempt to rescue Toda. The party had Bosh bury Daegan under another bookcase to keep him from running off in the morning. Afterwards, the party finally managed to get Daegan to admit that he suspected the monster they had fought was his little brother. The group agreed to help him track Adair down after they rescued Toda, and so off they went downstairs, using Tulany's Primeval Awareness to help them track his position. Only Rowena accompanied the PCs. She insisted that this was her chance to take down the Redcap Grandmother, and the fight was as much hers as it was theirs. The party agreed, and left Soraya in charge of things topside.

And so they descended into the heart of the redcaps' lair.
TL;DR - Faerie shenanigans and family troubles.

JadedDM
2021-05-05, 11:23 PM
Feel free to use it for your own game :smallbiggrin:
Nice, I just might do that.


Kai's player had just gotten his second vaccination shot and was feeling the side effects pretty badly, so he opted out of the session.
I can relate. When I got my second shot, I was pretty out of it. I had to take an hour long nap for every 10 minutes I spent awake, even if all I was doing was sitting at my computer or watching TV on the couch.

SleepyShadow
2021-05-28, 10:01 AM
After a bit of a hiatus, we're back! :smallsmile:

The Beastlands
In which the Heroes take some time for themselves, and discover that evil doesn't rest when they do.
The party made it down to the heart of the redcap lair, where they crossed blades with the Redcap Queen. She was a malevolent shapeshifter, and had taken on the guise of Rowena's long-lost mother to confuse the poor girl. She had also Charmed Toda, convincing him that he needed to protect his new queen at all costs. The party kept it together by and large, fighting their way through her hordes of redcaps while dealing with the Queen's charm and disruption magic. Even while charmed, Toda did little more than spam cantrips, but it turns out Chill Touch is more of a problem for PCs than it is for most monsters. At one point, Kharim got afflicted with Enemies Abound, but the party just pivoted and kept whacking him until he passed the save. Poor kid.

At last, the Redcap Queen fell, and Tulany managed to break Toda out of the enchantment. Rowena shed a few tears for her mother once the party found her real corpse, but there wasn't time for an extended mourning period. The whole floor started to shake, as if something massive were approaching. Kai and Cassius realized whatever was coming was approaching from below, so they ushered the party back to the surface with all haste. Aurelius dared to look down one of the stair shafts, and saw a colossal mass of churning corpses forcing its way toward them. The party raced back to the surface and started a forced march with the librarians through the forest, desperately trying to reach the portal before the monster could catch up. It burst forth from the library and assumed a vaguely humanoid shape, with none other than Cyrus forming a part of its crown.

Daegan and Tulany kept the group from getting lost as they fled through the forest. They raced through the portal back to Sigil, only to be met by Green Marvent and his goons on the other side. Aurelius and Mubarak intervened before a fight could break out, explaining the situation; they managed to convince Green Marvent of the danger the creature posed to Sigil, so once the last of the group was through, he Shattered the portal just as a giant hand made of corpses came reaching through.

There was a tense moment where neither side was willing to act first. Daegan decided that the time for talk was over and took the first swing. Aurelius panicked, shouting for Bosh to stop him. He did so in his usual fashion - he clobbered Daegan with a 300lb. boulder. Green Marvent offered to "look into the situation" with Adair, then dispersed into the city with his minions. The party offered to give Rowena her mother's magic sword that had been looted off the Redcap Queen, but Rowena wasn't very good at handling heavy weapons. She offered to let the party use her mother's bastard sword, but only on adventures where she got to come along.

With that taken care of, the party decided that some rest and relaxation was in order. They spent the next few days recovering in Sigil, taking care of a few bits of personal business. Cassius spent some time helping out his adoptive mother at the orphanage. Kai went back to his day job and made a reasonable sum of money patching people up from barfights. Aurelius finally passed the entrance exam and became a full-fledged member of the Fraternity of Order. Mubarak spent most of his downtime shagging his rival/boy-toy Chainer. Daegan completed his internship and officially joined the Bleak Cabal. Tulany joined up with the Free League during their block party potluck, and made quite a name for herself at their impromptu Three-Dragon Ante tournament. Kharim spent most of his downtime on patrol for the Harmonium, and spilled his life story to a couple of officers and a Grey Guard over lunch; this didn't exactly help his reputation, but he felt better afterward. Eirik took Sharwyn out on a date to the Salty Tower, where they had a lovely time eating seafood and getting free drinks for Sharwyn's accordion performance.

During the downtime, Kharim and Aurelius decided to start competing with each other to see who could win Rowena's affections. We'll see how well this little love triangle turns out.

After the carousing and resting for about three days, the party decided to take a trip out to the Beastlands in an effort to get the matching glove for Eirik. It was in the possession of a nymph, but the group was pretty confident in their ability to handle giant beasts, hostile plants, and a few watery tarts. With a bit of research, they found a portal with a cheap key (just a rabbit's foot), and so the PCs headed out, bringing Sharwyn and Rowena with them (Eirik thought of this adventure as another date with Sharwyn, while Kharim and Aurelius wanted a chance to prove how cool they were to Rowena). Not long after their arrival, the party found a pile of wemics (they're like centaurs, but lions instead of horses) who had been skinned alive and left to rot by a lake. With a bit of searching, they found that the skins seemed to have walked away under their own power. Daegan made the check to recall information about forsaken shells, a disgusting type of undead created by powerful necromancers using only the skin of a body; the fresher the corpse, the stronger the undead. The party spoke with the nymph of the lake, who confirmed their suspicions and informed the party that a "strange desert woman" had been the one to take the skins away; this woman had also taken the glove Eirik was looking for, though the nymph didn't know why. Aurelius pieced it together that the necromancer was likely Nekrothepta, the priestess of Orcus that Sreeja had warned them about. The party hustled after her, hoping to stop whatever nefarious plot she had concocted.

Of course, this was still the Beastlands, and no trip out here would be complete without a couple of run-ins with the local fauna. The first thing to attack the party was a giant while lion with humanoid hands instead of regular cat paws. It had randomly generated attacks, and got an extra turn in the initiative cycle since it was fighting more than five opponents. Unfortunate for Kharim, who got dragged around the battlefield like a toy for most of the encounter. The lion seemed to take great offense that Kharim had scales for hair :smalltongue:

Shortly after the lion was put down, the group was attacked by a screaming antelope with a chest mouth and human eyes. Yay! This thing managed to trample Eirik to death, but luckily Kai always keeps a bag of diamond dust handy for Revivify, so we got out Viking back after the antelope was slain. Tulany briefly considered harvesting some monster parts from the critters, but decided she didn't want to carry it all back to Sigil when they still had to find Nekrothepta.

The party hit the road again, hoping to find the necromancer without getting attacked by more giant mutant animals.
TL;DR - The party took some much-needed downtime, and I made them fight Kingdom Death monsters :smallbiggrin:

Cerrita
2021-05-28, 10:44 PM
Mustn't forget the part where Tulany's curse finally presented and she galloped across the board on all fours like a horse to reach her cousin Kharim, then paused mid fight to pull up a grassy plant used in healing potions and ate it as her action. Kai was understandably concerned by this behavior and the practice that must have gone into it, and attempted to council her on "this horse obsession that most young girls go through". She was quite embarrassed and frustrated, considering she's never done this before four days ago.

JadedDM
2021-05-29, 03:44 AM
Welcome back. I've never heard of Kingdom Death, but it sounds wild.

GravityEmblem
2021-05-29, 12:21 PM
Welcome back. I've never heard of Kingdom Death, but it sounds wild.

It sounds pretty intense, at least. :)

AllHailthed4
2021-06-03, 03:31 PM
Last call for tournament predictions! Betting closes tomorrow evening. https://challonge.com/a0mdqn3h

SleepyShadow
2021-06-05, 10:12 AM
Welcome back. I've never heard of Kingdom Death, but it sounds wild.

It's a horror-themed board game where you try to build a settlement and fight monsters that want to eat your townsfolk. It's got a lot of cool minis and a wonky story, so I think it's pretty neat :smallsmile:

The Beastlands - Part Two
In which the heroes find a peculiar undead, and find that a tournament in Sigil is never simple.
The party tracked Nekrothepta to a makeshift concert hall set up in the middle of a grassy clearing. Guards were posted all around to keep out the wild animals, and the cheers of excited people could be heard within. Tulany approached and asked the guards what was going on, and they told her a nymph was hosting a concert for people from all over the planes. Although the PCs might be a little naïve at times, my players were quick to guess that Nekrothepta was at the heart of whatever this was. The party bought tickets (except for Mubarak, who just flew over the wall and started bobbing to the music) and headed inside. The place was packed with people dancing, and at the center of the concert hall was a nymph clad in outlandish clothing, flanked on either side by wemics acting as backup dancers. Most of the group was a bit on edge, and they were right to be.

On queue with the music, the dozens of forsaken shells erupted from the ground and started attacking the attendees. They would rip people's skins off after killing them, and the skin would rise as another forsaken shell only moments later. The PCs battled their way through the undead, while Rowena and Sharwyn headed back toward the main doors to help people escape, since the guards had locked the doors from the outside. Eirik was distraught at having to split up from his girlfriend, but the rest of the group convinced him Sharwyn could take care of herself.

The party fought their way to the center of the concert, where the nymph and her goons danced and sang without a care in the world. It was then the party realized she had the glove they had come out here to get in the first place. The nymph scoffed at their interruption. "Want in on this number? Then show me your moves!"

The party handily defeated the wemics, though they were a little concerned at how much damage the goons could dish out. After they had gotten in a few good hits on the nymph, she cast Dimension Door and shouted "Sorry! No time for an encore!" as she fled through a door that led outside the arena.

Using Kharim's Featherfall ability, the party gave chase. They battled their way through a second group of wemics, who did their best speedbump impression. Shortly thereafter, they were halted by a pair of peculiar wemics who bickered with each other as they fought the party; one smashed people with a tower shield, while the other dual-wielded crossbows and constantly twirled them to show off. They went down a lot faster than I thought they would, but hey, that happens sometimes. After the PCs took the two dorks down, the nymph came strutting back, looking thoroughly disappointed in her minions.

She dismissed her illusory disguise, revealing herself to be a beautiful desert woman with a heartless gaze: Nekrothepta herself! She told the PCs she had done all of this for a bit of a laugh, and just wanted to find new and creative ways of gathering minions to her master's cause. She was sure she would be rewarded for all the chaos she was stirring up. Eirik demanded the glove she had stolen from the real nymph, and she flung it into the air disdainfully.

"Fine, it's yours," Nekrothepta said. "But it won't be yours for long, love!"

Turns out she was quite wrong. Solo bosses just can't keep up with large party action economy, especially when she's only a bard :smallsigh:

The party gathered up the loot, reunited with Sharwyn and Rowena, and opted to head back to Sigil. On the way to the portal, Tulany's player made a joke about how she was glad they didn't run into the Phoenix from Kingdom Death. Never give your DM bad ideas :smalltongue: Sure enough, a giant shadow passed overhead, and everyone scrambled for cover. Poor Kharim didn't scramble fast enough, and he got coated in rainbow-colored bird droppings. Thoroughly disgusted and in desperate need of a bath, Kharim led the charge back to the portal.

Once back in Sigil, the group headed back to the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts for a well-deserved rest. Daegan decided to head to the Gatehouse instead to help Daria and Hikari with their work in the asylum. Kharim dumped his excrement-covered clothes off with Soraya and asked her to wash his laundry, not bothering to tell her what the mess was. She was disgruntled, to say the least.

The next day was the long-awaited tournament! The party gathered together for breakfast, where Soraya lost her temper with Kharim and accidentally triggered her curse power: a spell called Seething Eyebane, which is a nasty little number that deals acid damage and makes the target blind by causing their eyes to bleed. Kharim failed the save, but only Soraya seemed to feel bad about what happened to him. The rest of the party seemed to think he got what he deserved. Mubarak was concerned about Kharim, but only because he had placed a bet on him to win the tournament. Soraya patched up the damage she had done, and apologized profusely.

With that bit of drama resolved for the moment, the party reviewed Kylie's dossier (https://ibb.co/ZTvTkSm) she had put together on the challengers, and headed off to the tournament for Round One!

The arena was packed with people who came to support the different participants. Free food and drinks were provided to the challengers by a saucy dark elf, who Eirik made a point of not looking at, and Kharim couldn't help himself but to stare. A pair of commentators were up in a raised platform, bantering with each other over the goings-on of each match; the halfling and the orc had a playfully antagonistic relationship.

The matches in Round One broke down like this:

Aurelius vs. Marnie: It was a remarkably close fight, but in the end Rey was undone by the action economy advantage that a summoner has.
Nadia vs. Chainer: Nadia trounced Chainer pretty hard. It was an NPC vs. NPC fight, so I glossed over it pretty quickly.
Tulany vs. Zada: It was a very even fight, with a lot of back and forth. Eventually, Tulany got the upper hand and took the win.
Ash vs. Daegan: Daegan utterly destroyed Ash. It wasn't even close. Ash didn't even make it to his second turn in the combat.
Fierefiz vs. Cassius: Cass dropped out of the tournament, so Fierafiz got the win uncontested. He paraded around the arena throwing money to the audience for a bit.
Mubarak vs. Abban: Our flirty little mephling almost got it, but then we all remembered he is very squishy. A few solid hits took him down, though his aerial advantage certainly made things tricky.
Kharim vs. Hibana: It took pretty much everything he had, but once Kharim finally managed to lock Hibana into place, she was as good as done. He took the win, though he didn't feel good about it.
Eirik vs. Meletros: This was a weird one. Eirik had the advantage early, but Meletros just kept dumping superiority dice on him, and the bariaur defeated our viking.


After the first round of the tournament, everyone got sent home to rest up and lick their wounds. Eirik took Sharwyn back to The Salty Tower for a few consolation drinks, though Kharim followed them their to ask Eirik for dating advice, claiming that he must know how to get with a girl, since "Sharwyn's hot! How did you do it?" Kharim admitted to having a crush on Rowena, and Eirik told him to find out more about her, rather than awkwardly staring at her all the time. Unbeknownst to them, Aurelius had already invited Rowena to spend some time with him at the Fraternity Library where she could relax after a stressful couple of days of being surrounded by lots of people and loud noises. She really appreciated the time away from the constant press of the city. Meanwhile, Mubarak organized a dinner party for a few of the group, inviting Tulany, Daegan, and Kharim along. He also invited Abban along, and even offered to pay for her meal once he realized that she only had ceramic coins. He's a good fella at heart :smallbiggrin:

Before heading to the dinner, Tulany and Kharim headed back to the Great Gymnasium to check on a couple of people. Tulany had a bit of a heart-to-heart with Fierefiz about the pressures of being royalty, and came away from it with a much cheerier attitude. Kharim went to check on Hibana, whom he noticed was having some kind of health trouble during the match. She became infatuated with him, and told him that she came to the tournament to find someone capable of defeating her; she needed the party's strength to rescue her homeland.

She was a fair damsel with a mysterious quest. How could Kharim refuse? :smalltongue:
TL;DR - The party thwarts an undead bard, and things get weird at the tournament.

JadedDM
2021-06-06, 02:06 AM
Step by step, Kharim slowly builds up his harem. :smalltongue:

AllHailthed4
2021-06-08, 08:59 AM
I'm sure this won't ever backfire on him even once.

SleepyShadow
2021-06-18, 11:45 AM
Tournament Troubles
In which the Heroes learn that anything might be plot relevant.
The party and their friends assembled at the Great Gymnasium for the next round of the tournament. Everyone was in pretty good spirits, and everyone wished each other well. Zada, in particular, had brought his entire gang of goblins to cheer for Tulany. They had even smuggled fireworks into the arena! Frankly, those were quieter than the vuvuzelas they had the day prior. The saucy dark elf was once again the party's serving girl, and Eirik continued to make a point of not looking at her.

Round Two broke down like this:

Marnie vs. Nadia: Action economy was queen here, and the thieving shifter just couldn't keep up. Marnie took the round.
Tulany vs. Daegan: This was a weird one. It came down to a ranged battle, as Tulany immediately trapped Daegan inside a Spike Growth. However, the dice were not on her side this fight. Despite getting two attacks to Daegan's one (he was using a crossbow, so he couldn't use Extra Attack), Daegan managed to win the round. The goblins were on the verge of rioting.
Feirefiz vs. Abban: Even a psychic warrior can't tank a full barrage of smites. Feirafiz won the round.
Kharim vs. Meletros: This was a pretty good back and forth battle, but even a 5e Fighter can't keep up with a Crusader. Kharim took the round in good fashion.


While the matches were going on, Dr. Kai was patching up the injured. Down in the cleric pit, he happened to meet Hibana, who wanted to congratulate Kharim on his victory. Kai was puzzled as to who this girl was, so she rattled off her entire quest to him, ending with "Kharim promised to help save my home from Faerun." Kai was understandably baffled, but equally annoyed that Kharim had signed the group up for another side quest without consulting the rest of the group. But Hibana was a fair damsel with a quest, and thus Kharim insisted he couldn't turn her down.

After the party settled in for free drinks (provided by the saucy dark elf, of course), the semifinals went as follows:

Marnie vs. Daegan: Daegan realized that most of the summoner's strength came from her eidolon, and so he slammed the cat into the dumpster and proceeded to take Marnie down.
Feirefiz vs. Kharim: Poor Kharim couldn't land a hit on the paladin for almost the entirety of the fight. The only hit he landed was after he dropped his shield and went full aggro, but he passed out from his own delayed damage pool right afterward. Feirefiz felt bad for the kid, but he might have been the only one. Even Tulany and Soraya had been cheering for the handsome prince instead of Kharim.


After the semifinals, the party went for a night out on the town to congratulate Daegan and console Kharim's bruised ego. Daria had to talk Daegan down from a full-blown panic attack; he had it in his head that he was going to lose the fight and disappoint everyone he had ever known. It took Daria's full motherly affection to convince him that nobody was going to be disappointed with him. Kharim just got drunk, and for understandable reasons. His best friend and his little sister had been cheering for Feirefiz, and Aurelius was putting the charms on the girl he had a crush on. In his alcohol-addled mind, only Hibana the weirdo believed he was worth anything. Rowena tried to talk him down, but the best she could manage was to get him to go to the Harmonium Barracks instead of wandering the streets like a bubber. He listened to her advice, and had a bit of a heart-to-heart with the same masked grayguard he had talked to a few times before. Kharim found out that he had done better than most of his fellow faction members thought he would; Factol Sarin seemed to have the right of it, as he had wagered a large sum that Kharim would win the bronze trophy. Medea had even mailed in a small wager that he'd win the whole tournament. Emboldened by the notion that his faction still believed in him, he staggered to his bunk and slept off the drink.

The next day, the whole group headed back to the Great Gymnasium for the bronze match and the finals! They settled into their usual seats, getting free drinks from the same saucy dark elf (by this point I was getting a "yeah, yeah, yeah" response from the players every time I mentioned her), and chatting about wagers. Mubarak laid the pressure on thick; he had put pretty much all of his cash on Daegan winning the tournament. The following panic attack was predictable, but luckily for him the bronze match was first, so he had time to calm down a bit. Unfortunately for Kharim, he got wrecked by Marnie. It was going to be a tough fight for him, and his dice absolutely refused to cooperate. Factol Sarin wept manly tears when he saw Kharim go down. Kai went to go patch up the poor kid, and Daegan downed the last round of free liquid courage, steeling himself for the fight against Feirefiz.

It was at this point I asked him to roll a Constitution save :smallamused:

He passed the save, and only took half of the 10d10 damage. The party started freaking out, and Kai was working overtime to stop the second trigger of the poison from going off and possibly killing Daegan. The group scrambled, looking around for what could have possibly done this to him. Aurelius (more accurately, his robo-bird) spotted a familiar green cloak slipping through the crowd. Cassius took off like a shot to chase the hooded figure. Meanwhile, Kharim and Tulany went after the serving girl. They wanted to check the cup Daegan drank out of before it got washed. Sure enough, there was a small drop of green wax at the bottom of the glass. The little wax ball was hollow, and had been sealed by something that had dissolved in the drink to release the poison. Kai identified the symptoms of the poison as abyssal ophidian venom, and Kharim's alchemy check was able to verify that.

Cassius caught up to the cloaked figure, who revealed himself to be none other than Green Marvent. He warned the party to stay out of his business, or else he would destroy them. Cassius took the wise option of letting him escape. He knew he couldn't fight Marvent by himself with the rest of the group either on the other side of the building or were at least a few rounds away.

The party finally caught up with the saucy dark elf just outside the Gymnasium, and they found her in the arms of none other than Ashram! The party's immediate reaction was that she couldn't possibly be with him of her own free will.

https://media.tenor.com/images/b88ae97ed4dd160f97ad77c3b168fdf9/tenor.png

Turns out she was the poisoner! Ashram was there to help her escape, and to "keep her from going too far". The party was about to attack them, but Ashram warned that the arena had been rigged with alchemist firebombs, and he'd set them off if they didn't let him go. Begrudgingly, the party allowed him to escape, the dark elf lovingly held in his arms as they used Dimension Door to get away. The group got back together and told the officials what was going on. The tournament was postponed, the Harmonium was called in, and the party set about disarming the bombs while plotting their revenge.
TL;DR - Even a tournament arc can be important :smallbiggrin:

JadedDM
2021-06-18, 11:29 PM
Should have had Feirefiz give a speech to Kharim about how when you grow up sometimes there are changes you don't expect, and you have to face things you're not ready for. :smalltongue:

SleepyShadow
2021-07-02, 03:53 PM
Should have had Feirefiz give a speech to Kharim about how when you grow up sometimes there are changes you don't expect, and you have to face things you're not ready for. :smalltongue:

I didn't feel that Feirefiz needed to rub it in :smalltongue:

Downtime
In which half the group is missing, and many sidequests are accepted.
A lot of the group wasn't able to make it to the session for one reason or another, so the players that did make it wanted to do a few downtime activities they had wanted to get done anyway. It seemed like a good idea to me, since I wasn't keen on cancelling the session, so downtime was taken. Of note were a few events in particular.

First, the party met in secret with Detective Bullock and his partner Montoya (brownie points if you get the reference) to tell them that Ashram had infiltrated the Harmonium as an Illuminated spy. Bullock was naturally skeptical of the claim, but promised to look into the matter and at least get word to Factol Sarin without alerting the Gray Guards. The party learned from Bullock and Montoya that Ashram was actually the captain of the Gray Guards, and they had all gone to Plaguemort for a "training session". Since the party had figured out that Green Marvent and his crew were using Plaguemort as a base of operations, they were immediately put on edge by this information. Kharim wanted to go rushing off to deal with the Illuminated, but Rowena knocked him out (using Wolf Fang Strike was a bit overkill, but whatever :smallwink:) and forced him to get some bedrest. Hibana stayed with him while he slept off the 30~ nonlethal damage.

Second, Tulany went to the Athar headquarters to check in on Nadia, who had been getting progressively more ill during the tournament. She found the shifter wracked with pain and shaking uncontrollably, as the troll blood had been poisoning her, and the Athar healers could only do their best to make her comfortable. Factol Terrance explained that he knew how to cure Nadia, but there was a material component he couldn't acquire. He needed a sea sponge from the Holy Sea on the first layer of Celestia (he wanted to assemble what amounted to a magical dialysis machine), but the angels there refused to let the Athar have one, since the faction offered no prayers to the gods. Terrance knew that Nadia would die without treatment, but there was nothing he could do. Unsurprisingly, Tulany volunteered to get the sea sponge.

Thirdly, Mubarak heard through the grapevine that a prominent businessman named Spiral Hal'oight wanted to speak with him about a business venture. The party didn't decide to follow up on this one just yet, but I wanted to mention here because it's a hook to get them involved with the Blood War.

Deciding that Nadia's plight was the most time-sensitive, the party headed to Celestia. Tulany suggested that Kharim stay behind, since he had accidentally made a bad impression on the angels last time they were there. He eventually convinced the party to let him come along, but he kept a bit of a chip on his shoulder toward Tulany for the rest of the day. The party hoped that acquiring the sea sponge would be a simple matter. Of course, nothing in Planescape is ever straight forward. They met with Archangel Barachiel, who admitted that the party had helped the forces of good in the past, but they would need to help once again if they wanted to cure the "godless heathen". He instructed them to travel to a fledgling prime world called Seagraff and aid a half-celestial named Linvala, who had been tasked with protecting the only human settlement on that world until they could properly defend themselves. Barachiel told the party that Linvala's town had come under siege by a horde of aquatic giants, and that if they aided her they would be given the sea sponge. The party agreed to the terms, so the archangel gave them the portkey and bid them farewell.

The party decided that they were going to help Linvala first so they could heal Nadia, then go to the Githzerai monastery that Cassius wanted to go to, and after that they'd go find out what Spiral wanted. They decided to put the Illuminated on the back burner for a bit, since they didn't feel quite ready to tango with a 13th level minotaur wizard and his faithful minions. We wrapped up the session there, since we didn't want the missing players to get left behind.
TL;DR - Downtime was taken, and sidequests were accepted.

JadedDM
2021-07-02, 11:54 PM
Wait, is the Green Marvent a minotaur? I must have missed that.

GaiusOctavian
2021-07-07, 12:33 AM
Wait, is the Green Marvent a minotaur? I must have missed that.

Yeah, we've suspected Green Marvent was a minotaur since he face-checked Kharim as we were trying to escape from The Eternal Boundary. I think it was confirmed when we interacted with him as we were escaping the Isle of Black Trees.

-Aurelius's Player

GravityEmblem
2021-07-07, 01:51 PM
Harvey Bullock? And Renee Montoya? From Batman, of course. :smallamused:

SleepyShadow
2021-07-13, 06:00 PM
@JadedDM: I found an old article (https://mimir.planewalker.com/041120/the-illuminated) on The Illuminated talking about how Green Marvent is a minotaur wizard from Toril who spends most of his time under a disguise self spell to look human. I have no idea if the article is canon or not, but there's a remarkable lack of information about The Illuminated. I decided to run with it, since it adds a nice bit of flair to an otherwise boilerplate villain.

@GravityEmblem: Bingo :smallbiggrin:


The Battle For Seagraff
In which the Heroes fight sea monsters, and a villain is aggravated.
The party headed off to a small world on the Prime, and found themselves in a foggy island town. The locals, mostly dressed in long coats and tricornered hats, were suspicious of the newly arrived planeswalkers. Tulany managed to corner a comparatively friendly one, and he gave them directions to the Church of Celestian where the half-celestial Linvala resided. The church had been converted into a field hospital to tend to the villagers wounded in the defense of their home. Linvala had been running herself ragged healing people, and Mubarak noticed that she was using makeup to hide the bags under her eyes from her many sleepless nights. Kai used his powers of medicine to tend to the worst of the injuries, including fixing one woman's hip so that she could walk again. Meanwhile, Linvala gave a description of the sea giants to the party, which allowed Daegan to determine the monsters were some variant of merrow (later dubbed "skullcrusher merrow"). Kharim made himself useful by introducing himself to the captain of the guard, and older man named Olrich, who identified himself as an Oath of the Watchers paladin of Amarok. Olrich told him about how the merrow seemed fixated on killing Linvala, and that they were less ferocious when she wasn't on the battlefield. Aurelius suspected that magic was being used to lure the monsters to the village, but he couldn't figure out why this was the case.

The party spent the rest of the day coming up with a plan to deal with the attackers that would surely arrive that night. Since Seagraff was a TL 3 location (most typical D&D locations are between 1.3 and 2), the party decided to rig the beachhead with barrels of gunpowder and steel stakes. That night, the merrow came swarming up out of the ocean and made a beeline for Linvala. The party detonated the explosives, which did quite a number on the monsters, and then waded into melee to clean up. Once the battle was over, the party headed back to the church to rest up. While they were doing so, Aurelius finally managed to track down what had been luring in the merrow - Linvala's holy symbol. He questioned her on this, and she said that a planeswalker in a green cloak had come to visit the island and invited her to travel with him, but she had turned down his offer. The merrow attacks had started shortly after the planeswalker left Seagraff.

Kai broke the enchantment on the cursed necklace, but the church came under attack by Olrich and his men. They had found out the source of the trouble as well, and were determined to kill Linvala to rid themselves of the merrow. Kai, Cassius, and Linvala escaped out the back and hid among the headstones of the graveyard, while the rest of the party fled out the window and climbed up to the roof. Except for Aurelius. He helped people get through the window, then ran to make sure Kai and Cassius had gotten out the back. He then doubled back to the window, but by that point he succumbed to the gas grenades Olrich and his men were throwing into the church.

From the rooftop, Daegan spotted a familiar green-cloaked figure in amidst Olrich's men. He immediately recognized the man as none other than Green Marvent! With a few good Persuasion checks, the party managed to convince Olrich that Marvent had tricked him into attacking Linvala, and that it was Marvent, not the half-celestial, who had been luring the merrow into town. Green Marvent immediately used plane shift to escape once Olrich turned on him. The old paladin surrendered to the party, and said that Marvent had claimed Linvala to be the source of the trouble. With a few awkward handshakes and a heartfelt apology, the party left Olrich and his men to take care of Seagraff. Linvala, being an honorable sort, offered to repay her debt to the party by accompanying them on a single mission. Once her debt was cleared, she'd return to wandering Wildspace to continue her quest to aid those in need. The party agreed to her terms.

The group stuck around in Seagraff for an extra day to make sure the merrow attacks would stop. Once they determined things were going to settle down, they returned to Mount Celestia to report their victory. Barachiel awarded them the promised sea sponge, and they returned to Sigil with Linvala in tow. Tulany rushed back to the Athar headquarters and gave the sea sponge directly to Factol Terrance. He thanked her profusely for her hard work, and promised to let her know as soon as Nadia had made a full recovery.

The party headed back to the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts for a bit of downtime before the next adventure.
TL;DR - The party used an excessive amount of gunpower to blow up a bunch of sea ogres.

JadedDM
2021-07-14, 06:37 PM
Oh, interesting. The article you links not only says he's a Minotaur, but a Taladan Minotaur specifically. That tickles the Dragonlance fan in me.

Cerrita
2021-07-15, 12:13 AM
Nothing like some lighthearted downtime at the brothel. Good times.

SleepyShadow
2021-07-15, 01:13 PM
Oh, interesting. The article you links not only says he's a Minotaur, but a Taladan Minotaur specifically. That tickles the Dragonlance fan in me.

I didn't catch that bit. Awesome! The minotaurs of Krynn are the superior minotaurs :smallsmile:

Forget Me Not
In which a different group of Heroes takes the spotlight.
Only four players were able to make it to the session. Rather than steamroll ahead in the campaign with half the usual group, I decided to run a tangential one-shot session instead. I gave each player an NPC's character sheet (Soraya, Toda, Sharwyn, and Daria), though I had erased the names from the sheets, and gave them a few minutes to look the NPCs over while I cobbled together an adventure. I had them make a few saving throws right off the bat (Con, Dex, Dex, Wis, Wis), but I didn't tell them why. They'd figure it out soon enough.

If you're wondering why I called this session a "below deck episode", it's a reference to Star Trek. Every once in a while, the older series would have a one-off episode focused on what the red shirts got up to when the main cast wasn't around.

We started in media res, with the four of them waking up in a covered wagon listing to one side. Toda was the first to wake up, since the sickly elf wizard somehow rolled the highest Con save. The wagon was filled broken adventuring gear, including a few shattered sensation stones from the BSIL. Toda was also the only one to fail his first Dex save, so he woke up with a nasty gash on his forehead and dried blood crusted to his face. He climbed out of the wagon as the rest of the party started to wake up, and he found their wagon was stuck in a steep ditch just outside of a cornfield. Whatever horses they had before had snapped their reigns and fled into the night.

The whole party had dirt caking their clothes, faces, and hair. Everyone also felt like they had just gone twelve rounds with a heavyweight boxer. Their entire bodies ached, joints were stiff, throats felt raw, they had pounding headaches, and sour stomachs. None of them could remember how they ended up here, where they were, or even who they were. They still had foggy recollections of what bits of gear belonged to them, so the amnesia wasn't total, but it was nearly so. In their packs, they found keys to rooms at an inn called "The Coach and Lantern". Importantly, the keys they had were numbered 3, 4, 5, and 7. The party reasoned that they had a missing fifth person, though their first priority was getting some help. They packed up what gear they could salvage, and climbed out of the wagon.

At this point, I had each of them roll 1d4 to determine what temporary madness effect they were suffering. Sharwyn and Soraya got claustrophobia, while Toda and Daria both ended up with mysophobia. Really not much of a change for Toda :smalltongue:

The party headed through the night and cold rain (Sharwyn was glad the rain might wash some of the dirt off) to a nearby farmhouse. The residents, Mr. and Mrs. Baker, let them in and allowed the poor sods to get cleaned and warmed up. The Bakers mentioned meeting the party before, and when asked how they met, they said that the party had been asking for directions to the old Cooper estate. Soraya got a flash of memory which confirmed this, as well as feelings of both excitement and anxiety when thinking about the Cooper estate. Sharwyn was really concerned about not revealing the party's amnesia to anyone, and so quickly steered the conversation toward the wrecked wagon to explain the confusion. The Bakers accepted the story, and even offered to give the party a lift into town.

Once the party got dropped off outside the inn, they went to talk to the innkeeper and his wife. Sharwyn asked if they still had rooms, which was a clever excuse to look at the registry. They finally learned their names (which half of the group had already guessed), and learned that their missing fifth member was Lyn Zedoris - Bendon Maul's bodyguard. The innkeeper said she hadn't come back yet, but her room was good until the end of the week, same as the rest of the party. The group headed up to their rooms to look for further clues, and found newsletters, interview transcripts, and sensory stones all indicating the party had been looking into the Cooper estate for possible ties to the undead and incarnum magic. They also learned that they were in the village of Clio, which was about three days outside the Free City of Greyhawk.

The party agreed to go check out the Cooper estate again, but decided that doing it at night in the rain while injured was a bad idea. They took a long rest at the inn, but unfortunately for them it wasn't very restful. They were all troubled by disturbing dreams. Sharwyn dreamt of fleeing through the dark from some creature with a three-lobed, burning eye. Daria had visions of a sacrificial knife, an heirloom from her great-grandfather. Toda dreamed of being lost in a sea of pale fleshy spiders, all while being one himself. Poor Soraya had dreams of being summoned from the churning deep, sluggishly answering a call from her persistent worshippers, though it was not time to fully awaken.

I find that the best one-shots are horror games :smallsmile:

That morning, the party wasn't feeling too well. They all had stomach cramps and headaches, neither of which could be alleviated with the magic they had access to. Daria decided to examine everyone with a Medicine check, and found that they all had peculiar lumps just beneath the skin on various parts of their bodies. Curious, she poked one of the lumps on Sharwyn's back. This caused the lump to skitter around under her skin for a few seconds before retreating deeper into her body and out of view.

The players were thrown into a full-blown panic, both because of how gross it was, and also because they now realized four of their favorite NPCs were in serious danger.

Sharwyn and Soraya pinned Toda down while Daria cut one of the lumps off his arm. A pale fleshy spider fell out of the wound and tried to skitter away, but they managed to catch it under a cup. The nasty little thing was a cross between a leech and a tarantula, and Toda realized it was one of the creatures from his dream. Cue another round of panicking, which prompted the innkeeper to come check on them. They quickly spun a story about how Toda had cut himself, and Sharwyn distracted the innkeeper from asking further questions by inquiring about Lyn's room. The innkeeper agreed to let them in, but he said he'd have to stay with them "just in case". Toda, Sharwyn, and Soraya went to search Lyn's room while Daria stayed behind to examine the creepy crawly.

Inside, they found a list of people in town the party had talked to before losing their memories, as well as a few names of people they had planned to speak with but hadn't yet done so. They also found several steamy letters between Lyn and Toda. This came as quite a surprise to the players, since they were convinced his only love was chess. After they were done snooping, the party agreed to split up into pairs. Sharwyn and Daria would go talk with the locals for information on the Cooper estate, while Toda and Soraya headed to the library to do some research.

The library team learned that the Cooper estate had originally been owned by a foreign wizard named Edmund McCumsey who was obsessed with underground mazes. He had hired dwarves to build a dungeon beneath his home, and had even written a book titled Labyrinths in History and Legend. They dug up the book and found it to be a rambling account of how ancient people had constructed the underdark long before the drow ever lived there, thus "explaining" why different cultures across Greyhawk had built pyramids. They did find one clue, though. The book made several mentions about a "God of the Labyrinth" that was worshipped by these ancient peoples. It was a monstrous god, but one that could be bargained with to provide safe passage. This led Soraya and Toda to do some digging through old religious texts, where they found one such god existed: The Great Old One Eihort. When Eihort captures a mortal, it offers the captive a bargain. If the captive refuses, Eihort smashes the victim to death. If the captive accepts the bargain, Eihort implants its immature brood inside the victim's body. The brood will eventually mature and eat its way out of the host.

Meanwhile, the interview crew talked with the constabulary, who spun a few ghost stories about the haunted Cooper estate. They also spoke with Lilly Austin, the leader and sole member of the Clio Historical Society. Lilly happily talked with Sharwyn and Daria about the history of the town, especially about the occasional unsolved deaths that had been happening for centuries near the Cooper estate. She was particularly enamored with the grisly details, though a quick Insight check revealed she was little more than a true crime enthusiast. Sharwyn's player remarked that Lilly reminded her of a few little old ladies from her hometown. Lastly, Sharwyn and Daria spoke with Vanessa Volker, a beautiful and charming young woman who was in charge of finding a buyer for the abandoned Cooper estate. She told the party she had inherited the job from the previous custodian, who had died unexpectedly a couple of years ago. She offered to accompany the party out to the Cooper estate if they wished, since she had the keys to the place and she would rather not have the party break in.

The party, along with Vanessa, met back up and decided to head out to the Cooper estate, certain that whatever answers they sought would be there. Once inside the abandoned house, their memories came flooding back to them.

They had already been here, along with Lyn and Vanessa. There had been reports of the Lost, incarnum based undead, and so Soraya had asked the others to come to Clio. She's very curious about incarnum magic, and thought this would be a good place to learn a little bit about it, and rid the small town of some undead while there. The party had fought a few Lost, though nothing too troubling, when Vanessa suggested searching the basement. Once there, they found a secret door which led to a sprawling labyrinth. They entered in search of the source of the Lost, when the secret door closed behind them. Vanessa was no longer with them. They tried to break out, but Eihort emerged from the darkness to claim its latest victims. There was nowhere to run. Lyn was stomped to death by the Great One. The others surrendered, and were infested with Eihort's brood. Once the horrific process was complete, they were set free.

Realizing now that Vanessa had set them up, the party turned on her, paralyzing her with Hold Person and tying her up before she could break the spell. Once free of paralysis, she remarked that they had regained their memories faster than she had expected. With the party insisting on returning to the Cooper estate, Vanessa's plan had been to just lock them in the cellar until the brood hatched. The party searched her belongings, and found a copy of Revelations of Glaaki, which not only held a wealth of information on Eihort, but also contained the spell Balk Brood, which would let them rid themselves of the parasites infesting their bodies. The party took the book, turned Vanessa over to the constables, and burned the Cooper estate to the ground. They took turns using Balk Brood, since they figured out that if the same person uses the spell more than once, there's an increasing chance that an avatar of Eihort will show up to kill the caster.

Thoroughly horrified, and mourning the loss of Lyn Zedoris, the party went back to Sigil to recover at the BSIL. The players might also need some time to recover :smallamused:
TL;DR - Half the group couldn't make it to the session, so I ran a one-shot where the players got to play as some of their favorite NPCs instead.

JadedDM
2021-07-15, 08:44 PM
Especially Taladan Minotaurs. Ansalonian ones are basically just honorable pirates, but the Taladan ones have their own Romanesque empire going.

Also, wow, some spooky stuff in this one.

GravityEmblem
2021-07-16, 02:32 PM
Haha, one-shots are nice for horror, because it doesn't matter if all the PCs die gruesomely! >:)

SleepyShadow
2021-07-23, 01:54 PM
Law in Chaos
In which the heroes face a new challenge - the chaotic soup of Limbo - as they help a Xaositect turn stag.
The party regrouped with their NPC friends at the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts, and found out all about what they had been up to while the PCs had been gone. Tulany spoke with everyone in the party at length, only to realize she was the only one who wanted to go home. Everyone else had found a reason to stay (or was already a local), and so she spent some time trying to wrap her head around that. Kharim learned from Bullock and Montoya that Factol Sarin had officially disbanded the Grey Guard after learning about their betrayal. The detectives also mentioned Sarin was deeply troubled by Ashram's treachery, and had hired mercenaries to fill in the gaps.

The party went with Cassius to speak with his adoptive human mother, Kiosa, and she asked them to escort a girl from the Xaositects out of Sigil. She needed to go to a githzerai monastery called Shra'kt'lor and meet with Master Haeronimil. The girl, Kyran, had recently turned stag after learning the dark of her faction. She needed help rebalancing her mind, and also protection from her former faction. She suspected the Xaositects would likely want her dead for what she had uncovered.

I was honestly surprised nobody asked her *what* she had found out. Oh well.

Accompanying the PCs on this escort mission was Hibana. The party reckoned her psionic powers would come in handy. Kharim and Cassius also wanted to get to know her better. The other tagalong was a newcomer to the scene. Barrock, an orc wizard from Eberron, had watched the party in the tournament and offered his services to them. He was already going to Limbo for his own reasons, and preferred to travel in a group. He needed some muscle, and the party needed someone who could reliably chaos-shape terrain in Limbo, so they agreed to travel together for the time being.

At Kiosa's suggestion, they headed over to Yggdrasil and practiced some chaos-shaping on the border of Limbo before heading in. This gave them a good opportunity to familiarize themselves with the mechanics in a no-stress environment. They had a bit of fun making trees and statues and such, including a mile-tall bird statue that Aurelius conjured up. Once they had figured out how chaos-shaping worked, they headed into Limbo proper. Barrock would be the primary terrain generator, with Hibana and Aurelius acting as backups should something happen. After trekking through Limbo for a while, the party got attacked by a pack of red slaadi.

Rant time: Lemme tell ya, 5e did slaadi dirty. Their AC is garbage, their attack bonus is barely capable of hitting, and they lost a lot of the cool abilities they had in older editions. To top it off, the implanted eggs now hatch after three months instead of the one week that it used to be. Red slaad are just upgraded ogres. /rant

Anyway, the party mopped up the slaadi without much issue. The fight took longer than I thought it would, but that's only because the slaadi have regeneration and the party has fewer strikers than a group of their size normally would. We wrapped up the session after the fight.
TL;DR - The party went to Limbo on an escort mission, and 5e slaadi are remarkably weak.

GravityEmblem
2021-07-23, 07:16 PM
Players not recognizing vital information is spot on, haha.

JadedDM
2021-07-23, 09:55 PM
Did they shorten the incubation period of red slaadi in later editions? Because three months is how long it took back in 2E, too. I know, because one of my 2E parties had to deal with some recently and had a really hard time with them; their multi-attack, stunning croak and ability to gate in backup proved quite a challenge, despite the party being level 7. (Ironically, their regeneration really didn't add up to much; they only get 1 HP/round back in 2E.) How have they been nerfed in 5E?

And to be fair to your party, had they asked for the Xaositects secrets, would they have even made any sense? :smalltongue:

SleepyShadow
2021-07-26, 01:21 PM
Did they shorten the incubation period of red slaadi in later editions? Because three months is how long it took back in 2E, too. I know, because one of my 2E parties had to deal with some recently and had a really hard time with them; their multi-attack, stunning croak and ability to gate in backup proved quite a challenge, despite the party being level 7. (Ironically, their regeneration really didn't add up to much; they only get 1 HP/round back in 2E.) How have they been nerfed in 5E?

And to be fair to your party, had they asked for the Xaositects secrets, would they have even made any sense? :smalltongue:

5e slaadi don't have stunning croak, or the ability to gate in backup like most other extra-planar creatures. 3e/4e slaadi had the incubation period at one week. I think 5e should have it at one week as well, since it's so much easier to remove diseases in 5e than any previous edition. But hey, that's just my 2cp.

As for the Xaositect secrets, it's a matter of principle. If an NPC is waving a plot-hook in your face, the least you can do is look at it :smalltongue:

Law in Chaos - Part Two
In which progress is slow and uncertain.
The party started off the session getting jumped by a pack of blue slaadi. The only real difference between these guys and the reds is they have a few more hit points, and (more importantly) their attack bonus is actually threatening. Aurelius pulled a brilliant move during the fight. He used the chaos-shaping to put a stone dome over two of the slaadi, giving the rest of the party a much easier time. Daegan and Cassius spent most of the fight getting dribbled like basketballs, but Eirik and Kai had enough healing to keep them upright. Mubarak had gone through most of his spells last fight, so he just flew around shooting his crossbow and handing out bardic inspiration. Tulany managed to never get hit. Kharim, however, couldn't roll a double digit on the d20 almost the entire fight. He even managed to whiff a few attacks when he had advantage. Hibana did her best to bail him out, but with blue slaadi resisting pretty much every type of energy damage, her efficacy was really hindered. Toward the end of the fight, Eirik got particularly unlucky on a wild surge, and spent the next minute triggering additional wild surges at the start of his turn. Even with random spell effects like Confusion and Invisibility going off, the fight was always firmly in the party's hands. It just took a while to carve through all of the slaadi, since they have enough hp to make some dinosaurs blush.

Eventually, the party made it to a whirlpool which would spit them out near the monastery. They decided to head through and make camp, since by that point everyone was tapped on resources. They took watch in shifts, making sure to have one person concentrating on the terrain while the other kept a lookout for trouble. Unfortunately for the PCs, the Xaositect assassin sent after Kyran finally caught up with them.

The assassin was a pretty potent githyanki war mage, and she led a cadre of earth mephlings who were largely their to clog up the battlefield and provide the noble service of speedbump duty. The githyanki bloodied the party with her opening salvo, a well-placed Synaptic Static, and dropped a few of them with her follow-up Fireball. Luckily for the PCs, they took her down before she got the chance to Disintegrate anyone. Wizards might be powerful, but they still turn into chunky salsa once they get on the business end of a sword :smalltongue:

We ended the session there, since the two fights had taken about six hours to get through. Decision paralysis is a heck of a problem in the middle of combat, doubly so when there are eight players in the group.
TL;DR - Combat happened.

GravityEmblem
2021-07-26, 04:49 PM
Ugh, having whole sessions of unfun combat has really made me hate combat in D&D, especially IRL with strict rules. These days, I tend play loose with the mechanics.

AllHailthed4
2021-07-26, 06:03 PM
From the player side, there were some really fun aspects to the combats, like Rey's brilliant "thunderdome" idea, Daegan's new ability coming into play, and the limbo-specific wild surge mechanics. It was certainly entertaining enough to keep me engaged, even if I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn 😉

SleepyShadow
2021-07-26, 07:23 PM
Ugh, having whole sessions of unfun combat has really made me hate combat in D&D, especially IRL with strict rules. These days, I tend play loose with the mechanics.

The combats have generally been fun. Most of the critters they fight go down in three or so hits. Slaadi just have a ton of hit points to carve through, so it took longer than I anticipated.

JadedDM
2021-07-26, 08:38 PM
5e slaadi don't have stunning croak, or the ability to gate in backup like most other extra-planar creatures.
Oof, yeah, that is quite a nerf then. Kind of just turns them into mooks then, rather than anything terribly threatening.

GravityEmblem
2021-07-27, 07:31 AM
From the player side, there were some really fun aspects to the combats, like Rey's brilliant "thunderdome" idea, Daegan's new ability coming into play, and the limbo-specific wild surge mechanics. It was certainly entertaining enough to keep me engaged, even if I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn 😉

Good for y'all, but in the last big combat I ran, one of the players started juggling axes, and another searched for a "bendable tree" to use as a catapult.

serpentalis
2021-07-27, 09:52 PM
the combats have been pretty fun, the same goes for this one. even though blue slaad are apparently hit point cinderblocks that we weren't....quite prepared for lmao

GravityEmblem
2021-07-28, 09:01 AM
Me and my players aren't big combat fans. We've had a few fights against single big opponents (I'd list some, but I'm running the same campaign for JadedDM. So, spoilers. :P), which they enjoyed. But the ones against lots of little opponents, they struggled against and complained quite a bit. And, honestly, I didn't have much fun running them, either. So, nowadays, my games have a bigger focus on roleplaying and small, contained fights.

SleepyShadow
2021-08-02, 04:33 PM
Oof, yeah, that is quite a nerf then. Kind of just turns them into mooks then, rather than anything terribly threatening.

Hence my complaint about them being upgraded ogres.

Monastic Living
In which trust is built and broken.
After a rough morning around the campfire, the party headed out into the soup of Limbo for the last leg of their journey. After another six hours of travel, they finally arrived at Shra'kt'lor Monastery. Some githzerai monks met them at the front gates, and when they saw Cassius with the party, they called over Master Haeronimil to weigh in on the situation. Haeronimil knew who they were, as he had been expecting them. He waited for proper greetings to be made, but he got a little miffed when Cassius decided to be coy with him. This was part of the player's recent decision that Cassius has "a playful, trickster aspect" to his personality. Unfortunately, this was not the time or place to be indulging in new personality quirks. Githzerai aren't very appreciative of disrespectful behavior, especially when it comes from one of their own. The group managed to smooth things over before the situation escalated, and the PCs were even paid for the trouble of bringing Kyran to the monastery.

Aurelius asked Kyran why she was hiding from the Xaositects, and she told them she had discovered the Factol had fallen in with a group of demon worshippers, and they were secretly using the Xaositects to push the Tanar'ri agenda. Kyran had to escape lest she be silenced by the cultists. Nobody in the party was surprised by this.

The group spent a few days at the monastery resting, researching, and getting rid of the copious amount of slaad tadpoles they had accrued. Aurelius spent time learning about curses, and found out that every curse has an escape clause. He also learned that a woman named Madame Eva was an expert on curses, and that if he wanted to learn more he should seek her out. He's also now trying to learn the Lucid Dreaming skill from the Quori, so he can better interpret a curse's escape clause.

Kai and Eirik spent their downtime researching fiendish diseases and how to treat them. I cracked open my old copy of the 3.0 Book of Vile Darkness splat book, turned to the page about diseases, and told them to go nuts. They spent a good portion of the evening writing and comparing notes, though they couldn't come to a consensus on which disease was the worst.

Daegan spent most of his time hiding in his room so he didn't have to be social. He didn't want to be around Barrock, since the orc wizard made Daegan rather flustered.

Kharim, Cassius, and Tulany decided they wanted to train together with Hibana. I thought this was an excellent idea, so I continued to blow the dust off old splat books and dug up some of the Teamwork Benefits from the old DMG II and Heroes of Battle. Hibana tried to teach them Steadfast Resolve. She gave them a fragile glass ball, told them to pass it around in a circle, and she'd come back later. The idea was to get the three of them to trust each other, and to trust Hibana as well. Tulany gave up at the six hour mark, insisting that Hibana had tricked them and that the whole idea was stupid. When Hibana found out later, she was practically in tears.

Cassius and Kharim did some more training together the next day, and this time they were joined by Master Haeronimil, who decided to give them a manual on githzerai martial arts. Since I was already dusting off books, this time I pulled from some old Legend of the Five Rings accessories and converted some katas over to our Frankenstein version of D&D. The katas proved to be pretty well-received, and the rest of the group started eyeballing the martial arts with some interest. They learned a couple of katas with Hibana, and then buckled down to learn the Crowded Combat teamwork benefit. Once they figured out how to use it, they seemed pretty interested in teaching the rest of the PCs how to do it.

Speaking of learning new things, Kharim tried and failed to learn a 4e Dark Sun ability called "Mark of Thunder". It had featured in the last campaign I ran, which was a mash-up of the old 2e Al-Qadim setting and The War of the Burning Sky adventure path. Using stuff from other editions and other games is something I do all the time :smallbiggrin:

At the end of the trip, Cassius finally apologized to Master Haeronimil. The old githzerai accepted the apology, and Haeronimil told Cassius to take care of Hibana, as the old gith could sense she was not long for this or any other world. Cassius agreed, noting that Kharim was rather sweet on her these days. Of course, Cass failed to tell Kharim about what Haeronimil said. Maybe he'll remember next session.

The party headed back to Sigil, where they hung out at the BSIL for a little while before Toda told them that Sharwyn and Soraya had left to go speak with Spiral Hal'oight about a business proposition. Toda didn't know what the deal was, but he had overheard the guy offer 1,000 gold just to hear him out. Even after getting paid for delivering Kyran to the monastery, the party was still pretty light on cash, so the PCs hustled to The Lady's Ward and met up with the girls at Spiral's mansion. The man was as good as his word, giving the group a sack of cash just for coming.

Spiral told the PCs that a great battle between the Baatezu and the Tanar'ri had just occurred on the Grey Wastes of Hades, and that both armies had been practically wiped out. He wanted the party to travel to Oinos, look for the Baatezu campsite, and pilfer whatever battleplans the devils had brought with them. Spiral offered to pay each person who participates 1,000 gold. The party was curious why he wanted the battleplans, but Spiral just gave the cryptic answer of "information is worth more than gold". He also admitted he didn't know what he was going to do with them until he saw what the information was. Kharim was a little put-off by the idea of Spiral doing anything other than giving the information freely to the Celestial powers, but the rest of the group was lured in by the promise of wealth, and so the party agreed. Spiral even sweetened the deal by buying magic weapons for everyone who didn't have one. He called it a necessary business expense.

Newly armed and newly indebted to Spiral, the PCs prepared to brave Hades.
TL;DR - Teambuilding shenanigans and the hook for the next adventure.

JadedDM
2021-08-03, 08:32 PM
It's always fun to bring out old books and find ways to incorporate them into a new game.

SleepyShadow
2021-08-11, 11:51 AM
The Field of Nettles
In which our Heroes deal with a celestial who deals in misery, journey to a grisly battlefield where the plants drain life, and hunt for a fiendish general's plans for the Blood War.
After their meeting with Spiral Hal'oight, the PCs took the rest of the day for some carefree downtime. Cassius started work on a piece of jewelry for Linvala, Tulany spoke about heroics and politics with Ser Feirefiz, Kharim relaxed with Hibana, Aurelius helped Rowena study for her entrance exam to join the Fraternity of Order, Eirik got turned down by Sharwyn when he asked her out on a date (she had somewhere else she had to be), and Kai and Daegan studied up on The Grey Wastes of Hades. Mubarak was unfortunately absent this session.

The next morning, Tulany led the PCs, along with Sharwyn and Soraya, to the Market Ward. The portal to Hades was a large wreath of black roses fixed to the side of a flower shop. Once through the portal, they met with the marraenoloth Spiral had arranged for. The fiend, of course, asked the party for money despite being paid in advance. The party was savvy enough not to pay the fiend extra, so the 'loth let them on board without a fuss, and he took them down the River Styx. However, he still decided to screw them over in the easiest way he could. He dropped them off on the wrong side of the Field of Nettles.

The Field of Nettles ranks high in the foolishness of the Blood War. It's hosted thousands of battles, each more bloody than the last. It's a place of constant struggle where the lives of billions have been wiped from the planes, leaving only moldering bones to mark their passing. The worst part is that it's not even a site of strategic importance.

The party was dropped off at the tanar'ri side of the battlefield, and the marraenoloth left before they could complain. There were thousands of fiend corpses strewn about, and Kharim promptly lost his lunch. Once he had emptied his stomach, the party marched for the Baatezu side of the battlefield. They slogged their way through the blood and corpses, trying not to think about what they were walking in. On the first day of their journey, they came across a tower of bones that was building itself by absorbing the nearby skeletons and ripping the bones out of fresher corpses.

One of the corpses wasn't actually dead, he was just a human fighter that had gotten stuck when a pile of bodies had fallen on top of him. The party rescued him from having his skeleton eaten by the tower, and he thanked them by telling them of a hidden portal which led to the gate-town of Xaos in the Outlands. The party invited him to travel with them, but he had gotten more than his fill of the Blood War and just wanted to go home. The party wished him well, and off he went. Aurelius used his knowledge of architecture and civil engineering, coupled with Eirik's raw strength, to knock down the tower of bones before it could harm another living soul. Once done, the party made camp in the convenient clearing the tower had created.

One the second day of travel, Soraya forced Kharim to eat breakfast. That didn't stay down very long, but it was a start. During the day's march, they found a hill of corpses which blocked their view. Erring on the side of caution, Aurelius sent Baldwin the robo-bird to go scout it out before deciding what to do. Unfortunately for the party mascot, something else had the ability to fly. Seeing the bird get snatched out of the air, the party raced up the hill as fast as they could. Aurelius and Daegan led the charge, since Aurelius could hover and Daegan could skitter like a spider. The rest of the group had to slog up the hill of corpses the hard way.

It was a real shame, too. The three fiends atop the hill started casting Magic Missile at Daegan and Aurelius as soon as the two got in range. The fiends were a trio of legion demons who took the form of wolf-girls in classy suits. They barked and yipped at the approaching adventurers in between their spell barrage, and declared they were keeping Baldwin as their new toy. Tulany and Sharwyn did their best to return fire, but two archers weren't quite enough to dissuade the three demons. Daegan reached the top first, got blasted into unconsciousness, and managed to pop back up at 1 hp with a nat 20 on his death save! Once it was clear they were outmatched, the fiendish trio surrendered. Daegon used his Pokedex knowledge to figure out that the fiends (actually a singular fiend named Rhellyn, whose soul was split between her three bodies) came from Carceri, the prison of the Titans that Zeus and his pantheon had overthrown. Rhellyn admitted to working for the titans, and had been sent to the Field of Nettles to spy on the activity of the other fiends. She explained that after the battle between the Tanar'ri and Baatezu, the Yugoloths had been systematically hunting down any survivors and exterminating them. Rhellyn had feared the PCs were Yugoloth agents sent to kill her, which is why she attacked them. Most of the party felt sympathetic for the poor wolf-girl(s), and so gave Rhellyn directions to the portal back to Xaos. She happily took them up on their offer, and the trio ran barking and howling into the gloom of Hades.

Surely, there will be no consequences for sending a fiend directly to a mortal town on the Outlands. Good has surely triumphed this day :smallamused:
TL;DR - The party thinks Hades is gross, and fiends come in all flavors.

GravityEmblem
2021-08-11, 12:31 PM
oh dear, furry demons

Well, look at it this way: you have an excellent opportunity to show the players their actions have consequences!

GaiusOctavian
2021-08-12, 08:33 PM
oh dear, furry demons

Well, look at it this way: you have an excellent opportunity to show the players their actions have consequences!

We have been shown many times that our actions have many consequences, some of which we came at us in ways we did not expect. We've mostly learned, but occasionally we make very dumb mistakes, some "intentional" others complete accidents.

GravityEmblem
2021-08-13, 10:59 AM
We have been shown many times that our actions have many consequences, some of which we came at us in ways we did not expect. We've mostly learned, but occasionally we make very dumb mistakes, some "intentional" others complete accidents.

Oh, I figured. I was just making a joke about getting an opportunity to make things go really badly, if the DM is so inclined. Hopefully not, haha.

SleepyShadow
2021-08-14, 11:00 PM
Are any of the PCs members of a faction, or are they all independent still?

Kharim joined the Harmonium, Aurelius is with the Fraternity of Order, Tulany is a member of the Free League (though she's considering switching to the Athar), Daegan is with the Bleak Cabal, Cassius and Kai are both with the Transcendent Order, and Mubarak with with the Society of Sensation. The only one still without a faction is Eirik, and he's thinking of joining with The Fated.

JadedDM
2021-08-15, 04:11 PM
A Hardhead, a Guvner, an Indep, a Bleaker, two Ciphers, and a Sensate, all working together. It's beautiful. :smallsmile:

SleepyShadow
2021-08-16, 05:42 PM
A Hardhead, a Guvner, an Indep, a Bleaker, two Ciphers, and a Sensate, all working together. It's beautiful. :smallsmile:

I'm sure this will go well when the Faction Wars inevitably happen :smallwink:

The Field of Nettles - Part 2
In which the Heroes encounter a knight from Hell, and they learn the Dark of the battlefield.
The party left the hill of bodies and continued on their journey. They came upon a small city made of smoke which hovered above a pit of greasy fire. Curious, the party climbed up a ladder to go investigate. It was a welcome relief to walk on spongey smoke instead of squishy fiend bodies. Once inside the city, the party found a pack of minor tanar'ri and cambions (led by a maralith) scouring the city in search of something. However, the demons' chaotic search pattern meant they would need a lot of time to find whatever they were looking for. The city's inhabitants, a large number of skittish smoke mephits, told the PCs that the demons were looking for a knight from Baator. He was a survivor from the great battle, and the tanar'ri wanted to find him before the yugoloths arrived to clean up.

Tulany managed to find the baatezu, a bearded devil wearing black full plate, hidden in an abandoned house. He was badly wounded, and barely able to stand, but nevertheless he took a fighting posture with his broken glaive. While Kharim and Daegan argued about whether or not to kill him, Soraya waited for someone to heal the wounded fiend. When even Kai seemed reluctant to do so, Soraya proved her goodie-two-shoes nature and healed the wounded devil. The devil knight, who introduced himself as O'ja, just grumbled about being made a debtor.

The party decided to smuggle O'ja out of the city in exchange for his help getting into the baatezu war camp. He agreed, and so the players spent the next half hour debating on whether to sneak back to the ladder or to jump off the edge of the city and Feather Fall down. Decision paralysis can be real sometimes.

Eventually, the party fed O'ja a potion of Invisibility and decided to sneak their way back to the ladder. Rather, they hid O'ja in the middle of the group and walked back to the ladder, as the tanar'ri had been too busy searching the city to pay the PCs much attention. Guarding the ladder was a cambion in a nice white suit, and he had a half-dozen lackeys with him. I did my best Kimblee impression as the party tried to smooth-talk their way out of the situation. Not!Kimblee agreed to let them pass, but he made them promise to take a special bronze coin with them and deliver it to Rule-Of-Three when they got back to Sigil. Unfortunately for Sharwyn, none of the PCs seemed to recognize the significance of this. Oh well. I'm sure she'll be fine.

The party left the city, and the next day encountered a pair of piscoloths (lobster fiends with scorpion tails) forcing human prisoners to dig a trench to drain a lake of blood. Any who collapsed from exhaustion were thrown into the pool and devoured by the ravenous nettle roots. The PCs would not stand for such atrocities, and they charged into the fight to save the POWs. Finally, a real fight!

Well, it would've been a real fight, but piscoloths have trash saving throws. Oh well. The PCs got to look cool and feel like heroes, so it all worked out.

The party gave the survivors a small armory of spare equipment (read: vendor trash) and gave them directions back to Xaos, using the same portal they had sent Rhellyn the legion fiend. Thankfully, Tulany rolled very well on her Survival check to give the POWs directions, so all fourteen survivors made it back to Xaos!

Despite how often I tease my players for making poor life choices, they do have the best of intentions at heart :smallsmile:

Anyway, the PCs finally made it to the baatezu war camp. It was little more than a pile of rubble, but at least it was well-organized pile of rubble. O'ja helped steer the PCs to what was left of the strategy building. They had a brief run-in with Spino and his spinagon lackeys, but the party just spooked them off like feral cats. Inside the building, they found a series of heavy urns, all but one of which were trapped with Fireball spells. The party carefully searched the untrapped urn, and found the baatezu battle plans sketched out on a well-crafted scroll of eladrin flesh. Why the plans were in the only untrapped urn is beyond me, but hey, I'm not going to question devil logic.

The battle plans detailed the baatezu strategy for the next 100 days of The Blood War. Looking over the battle plans carefully, the PCs discovered two things of great significance: Avernus was under heavy siege by demonic forces, and the millions of dead fiends here at the Field of Nettles was just a feint to draw the demons away from Baator. The party decided this was too important to just hand over to Spiral, who would likely sell the plans to the highest bidder, so the party made two copies of the map. One was to be delivered to Mount Celestia in an effort to petition the heavens to send aid against the demons, and the other was given to O'ja so he could report back to General Bel and Lady Zariel. Once that was done, the party cut off the part about Avernus and seared the flesh scroll, intending to deliver the damaged original to Spiral.

One trip over the River Styx later (Daegan surprised the marraenaloth by thanking him for safe passage), the party split up to report their findings. The silver-tongued half of the group went to give Spiral the damaged report, while the holier types went to Mount Celestia. Lady Azriel, the sword archon the party had met previously, graciously accepted the information and promised to petition the higher levels of Celestia to send aid to Avernus. She explained that the celestials could not help directly, as the overwhelming fiendish energy would certainly corrupt them, but they always had a host of petitioners and mortal warriors who could aid in the fight. Things went surprisingly well with Spiral as well. He accepted the report with only a whiff of suspicion, and he paid the party in full. He also said he would have further work for them in the future, but that's an adventure for another time.
TL;DR - Sometimes, being the big dang heroes pays off.

JadedDM
2021-08-17, 08:31 PM
Well, you know what they say...the Baatezu is in the details.

(Also, what's a Kimblee?)

AllHailthed4
2021-08-18, 12:08 AM
Well, you know what they say...the Baatezu is in the details.

(Also, what's a Kimblee?)

A Kimblee is a sociopathic blaster caster and one heckuva smooth criminal.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/c/c9/Kimblee.jpg/revision/latest/top-crop/width/360/height/450?cb=20110221222039

He's also a secondary antagonist in Fullmetal Alchemist :smallwink:

GravityEmblem
2021-08-18, 10:03 AM
Ah, you're a fellow of culture, as well! ;)

though would you say the characterization was closer to the manga/Brotherhood or the original Anime

AllHailthed4
2021-08-18, 10:28 AM
Ah, you're a fellow of culture, as well! ;)

though would you say the characterization was closer to the manga/Brotherhood or the original Anime

I'd say closer to Brotherhood, but I'm no expert.

GravityEmblem
2021-08-18, 02:49 PM
Well, the Manga had him as more of a suave, disempathetic killer, while the first anime adaptation made him a straight-up nutcase psycho. So, yeah, Brotherhood.

SleepyShadow
2021-08-25, 01:17 PM
Alright, this one is a bit of a doozy and it needs some context for it to make sense. This group of players has, in one iteration or another, been playing together for several years now. We have a soft agreement that anything the group does is considered canon for our group. We like to do this because it adds a sense of accomplishment to the campaigns, and so we don't repeat modules. This has been a lot of fun for us (two of the players consider tracking timelines and family trees to be hobbies), but it can sometimes lead to some peculiar situations. For the sake of brevity, I'll only detail the adventures which directly influenced this session. I promise, the session won't make a lot of sense without a little knowledge of my group's past activities.

The first factor is a Spelljammer campaign I ran a while ago. I'll try not to go too far down the rabbit hole on this one. One of the PCs' backstories involved her mother fleeing from the Sword Coast aboard a space pirate's ship because she had been illegally selling off-planet firearms in Waterdeep. The PC wanted to learn more about Faerun and possibly make amends for her mother's criminal actions. At the time, my knowledge of Faerun came only from the Baldur's Gate video games and a couple of R.A. Salvatore books I had read in the 6th grade, so I was on-board to learn more about the setting alongside my players.

The first thing we figured out was that it was definitely The Harpers that chased her off the planet. Their long-term aim is to recreate the "perfect" society of the elven empire of Myth Draenor, because every good idea has already been had by them. This means that every idea not had by the extinct elves of Myth Draenor is a bad idea by default. Without too much of a stretch of imagination, it looked to us like the Harpers were actively stopping the advance of civilization, especially since they seemed to be the reason why most of Faerun hasn't advanced past the city-state level. The fact that the Harpers organized themselves as a grassroots movement with a decentralized powerbase, and were more than willing to use violence against anyone who didn't agree with them, rang a few uncomfortable bells. Then we learned Elminster was a Harper, and the group's opinion of Faerun went from bad to worse.

We dug into Elminster's lore, and we were driven mad by the revelation didn't like him very much. I'll summarize what we found in as brief a manner as possible. Elminster's goddess girlfriend, Mystra, possessed a mortal woman and seduced a ranger who had been pining for this woman. They were together for several years and had six daughters, all with magic powers and silver hair. However, Mystra's divine energy had char-broiled the woman from the inside out, and so the seventh baby was going to kill the host body. The ranger finally figured out what was going on, and fled into the woods, turning his back on magic forever. I can only assume he ran laughing into the darkness like a Mythos detective after losing a few too many sanity points. Mystra was desperate to save the life of the seventh daughter, so she found a pregnant drow, and used her divine power to simultaneously disintegrate the unborn drow child while replacing it with her seventh daughter. The rest of the daughters got dumped on Elminster's doorstep, and things got even worse from there. I'll try not to get too deep in the weeds, but suffice to say Elminster convinced the girls to start up The Harpers (decentralized grassroots organization my butt), and when they "came of age" he seduced one of them and she became his lover. I get that Elminster isn't her biological father, but come on, he slept with his adopted daughter and that's atrocious.

This information shifted the campaign's focus from "let's be space pirates!" to "let's build an army and drop tungsten rods on the Sword Coast!". Unfortunately, the campaign ended before we could get to that point, as one of the PCs opened fire on an Elven Imperial Fleet battlecruiser, which resulted in the loss of the group's main ship and almost all of the crew.
This is the other relevant piece of group history. This also happens to be one of the few times when I wasn't the DM, so make of that what you will. I don't have as many notes on this one, but the Curse of Strahd game was odd even by our standards. The party was bananas (a kenku werewolf, an axe murderer, and a WH40k space marine were only a few of the PCs involved), the tone was less "Gothic Horror" and more "Spooky's House of Jumpscares", and the DM had a "me vs. them" mentality throughout the entire game. IIRC, the only PC that lived through the game from start to finish was the space marine. Anyway, that's all to say that the campaign ended with Strahd as a pile of ash. However, one of the PCs smuggled his ashes back to her home world to later revive him outside of Barovia. No, that's not how Ravenloft works, but just roll with it for now.

This led to a modified version of The Dracula Dossier set on that world. This game is, to put it very briefly, spies vs. Dracula. Just replace every instance of "Count Dracula" with "Strahd von Zarovich" for our game, and you have the gist of what was going on. Unfortunately, that campaign was doomed during character creation. Everyone knew it was going to be a spy game, so a lot of stealth, espionage, and undercover operations were going to be had. However, everyone simultaneously assumed everyone else would roll up the smart/charismatic characters, so everyone rolled up a heavy combat character. When the party was assembled it looked more like "The Expendables" than James Bond or Jason Bourne. The party's pet wyrmling had the highest intelligence in the group. We dropped the campaign after most of the party got wiped out trying to storm the front gates of a black-ops military site.

We still have plans to come back to this idea someday, but with more communication between players during character creation. However, that left Strahd stranded outside of Barovia partying it up with drug lords on the Danube River.

Big Trouble in Little Barovia
In which the Heroes make some unusual allies, and peculiar plans are set in motion.
The session began with Kharim asking Fall-From-Grace about her time in the Blood War, and how she managed to escape. She told him about how she had served as a spy against the tanar'ri, and how her life had been spared by a merciful human cleric. She had followed him out of the darkness, and after many years of toil had managed to reclaim her soul and cast off her infernal shackles. She hopes to one day be allowed into Mount Celestia, even if only for a brief time.

Medea came by to say hello to the party, and she spent a few minutes talking with the group. She and her unit had been recalled back to Sigil when Avernus came under siege by a tanar'ri army, massive even by Blood War standards. She was clearly disturbed by her time spent in Baator, but the party decided not to press the issue. She invited them to attend Fortitude's ascension, and they promised they would be there for her big moment.

With chatting and breakfast taken care of, the party decided now would be their best opportunity to help Hibana separate Kara-Tur from Toril. They didn't really have a plan on how to do it, but they figured they could find a way once they were in Faerun. It would also be a great opportunity for Aurelius and Tulany to speak to Madam Eva about dreams and curses, as Barovia was currently attached to the Sword Coast. Rowena insisted on accompanying the party as well (she was being piloted by a guest player with a serious bone to pick with Elminster), and Linvala agreed to meet up with the party at a later time. The group took a portal to Athkatla, and from there decided to hoof it to Barovia, being warned by the locals in Athkatla about roaming packs of werewolves coming out of the Barovian forests.

Getting into Barovia is always easier than getting out, so the party had little trouble making their way to Barovia Village. Ten years had passed since the events of "Curse of Strahd", and the village was flourishing in its own gothic way. The party asked for Madam Eva's whereabouts, and the locals informed them to check Tser Pool, as the old woman rarely left that area. Madam Eva proved easy enough to find, and the party asked her many questions.

She explained that Barovia had been attached to the Sword Coast ever since the Devil Strahd disappeared, and this upset her greatly. Elminster and the Harpers had been forcing changes upon the whole of the Demiplane of Dread, making it conform more to their ideals, and there was nothing that could be done so long as Barovia remained attached. Madam Eva needed Strahd back in Barovia to seal its borders and allow Ravenloft to move away from Faerun, else the entire plane might be corrupted to fit Elminster's "sensibilities". As much as Eva hated Strahd, the only other option was to have a new Darklord take over Barovia and seal its borders. She agreed to teach Aurelius lucid dreaming if the PCs managed to separate Barovia from the Sword Coast. To this end, she offered two allies the party could use. The first was Mordenkainen, a legendary wizard from Greyhawk whose power was matched only by his poor decision making. The second was Arabella, a young Vistani who was the last surviving descendant of Strahd von Zarovich.

Tulany asked Madam Eva about her trinket, which was an old Tarot card with a painting of Tulany on it. She had received the card as a gift from her aunt and mentor, a horizon walker NPC from the previous campaign. Eva suspected the card was of Vistani creation, and possibly from the missing tribe which vanished from Borca many generations ago (as an aside, in a Ravenloft campaign I ran a very long time ago, one player led a large group of Vistani out of Ravenloft and into a quiet little world on the Prime; this world eventually became the group's default homebrew setting). Eva warned her that it might be a calling from Ivana and Ivan, the co-Darklords of Borca, but Tulany would only find out for certain if she traveled there herself. Madam Eva offered to take her there once Barovia was separated from Faerun.

Speaking with Mordenkainen, the party soon realized he was still a touch barmy from the time Strahd threw him off a cliff. He had been nursed back to health by Storm Silverhand, figurehead leader of the Harpers and one of Elminster's adopted daughters, but he hadn't seen her since his return to Barovia. He was concerned about the current situation, both in regards to Barovia still being here and the goings-on of the Blood War. While normally such things were none of his business, even he knew how dire the Blood War was getting if the Baatezu were dragging whole cities into Baator just for reinforcements. He explained that a city from each major Prime world had been pulled into Baator, and he was "observing the situation" in case he needed to step in so he could "preserve the balance". When asked about Hibana's situation, he suggested doing some quest in exchange for Elminster releasing Kara-Tur back to its own world. In regards to Barovia, he posited that the only reason Elminster was "good" was because of Mystra's slavish devotion to protect him. He suggested luring Elminster to Barovia, where is divine protection wouldn't function, and just let the Dark Powers snatch him up and use him as the new Darklord of Barovia. Mordenkainen even went so far as to suggest using Arabelle as bait, since "Elminster's one weakness is pretty girls with magic powers". The party thought it was a reasonable basis for a plan, but not everyone was comfortable with the idea of using an innocent young woman as bait. As for dealing with Strahd, he just said to "put it off and deal with it later".

Kharim asked Mordenkainen about The Chalice that Soraya had been dreaming about, and the archmage gave him the runaround, spouting the same story three different ways. It was a story Kharim already knew, but it was pretty obvious Mordenkainen knew more than he was telling. Perhaps he'd let more information slip later.

With a slightly barmy archmage in tow, the party headed off down the road, setting their sights on the home of Elminster himself.
TL;DR - Things get weird, and canon is pushed to the breaking point.

JadedDM
2021-08-26, 01:18 AM
He explained that a city from each major Prime world had been pulled into Baator
Oh, no, even Dragonlance? :smalleek: I can only guess which city it might have been.

SleepyShadow
2021-08-26, 08:26 AM
Oh, no, even Dragonlance? :smalleek: I can only guess which city it might have been.

Yup, even Dragonlance. The Baatezu stole Port Schallsea!

JadedDM
2021-08-26, 04:43 PM
Well, at least it wasn't Palanthas again.

Hopefully all the mystics in Schallsea can help keep the devils at bay. If Goldmoon is still alive, then the Baatezu are probably regretting their decision right about now.

SleepyShadow
2021-09-02, 01:02 PM
Hopefully all the mystics in Schallsea can help keep the devils at bay. If Goldmoon is still alive, then the Baatezu are probably regretting their decision right about now.

The Baatezu are regretting a lot of things right now :smalltongue:

Elturel Has Fallen
In which our Heroes make a deal with an archmage, and Baator's desperation becomes clear.
On their way back to Barovia Village, the party gets attacked by a pack of werewolves in the company of a psychotic revenant. This revenant was El Chapo, a surviving PC from our train wreck Curse of Strahd game. Don't worry, I asked the player before using their character. El Chapo was a serial killer in life, so not much changed now that he was dead. At any rate, the party fought off the werewolf pack while Mordenkainen used Dimension Door to find a good hiding place, citing a lack of spell slots as his reason for not helping in combat. The battle wasn't terribly difficult, but it was a good chance for the PCs to flex. Once the fight was over, the party dragged El Chapo's armor back to the Vistani camp and gave it to their resident artificer, an old aasimar named Avilius who was there when Strahd disappeared. He explained that the armor belonged to him back when he first arrived in Ravenloft, but he didn't have much need for it now. He made a deal with Aurelius, teaching him how to upgrade Baldwin in exchange for the PCs returning his armor. He also offered to escort Arabelle to the edge of the mists once the party had need of her.

Once that was settled, the PCs returned to Barovia Village without further incident. From there, they headed back to the Sword Coast proper. Finally outside of Barovia, Mordenkainen was able to Teleport the party directly to Elminster's home, which appeared to be a simple log cabin in the middle of a forest. The inside of the cabin was, naturally, much larger and more grand than the outside. The party spoke with Elminster at length, and he eventually agreed to release Kara-Tur (a place he doesn't care about) in exchange for the party bringing the city of Elturel (a place he does care about) back from Baator. He also wanted to thoroughly examine Hibana to find out how she could possibly know that Kara-Tur was once a separate world, but the party politely declined his request.

Luckily, the Harpers are the good guys, so there won't be any repercussions from this. :smallwink:

Once outside Elminster's house, Mordenkainen used Plane Shift to take the party directly to Elturel, where it hovered precariously over the River Styx, anchored to the ground by massive chains. The base of the chains were protected by makeshift Baatezu forts, which were under a massive Tanar'ri attack that threatened to overwhelm the defending devils. Aurelius sent Baldwin to scout out the city, and found that the surviving civilians were concentrated in three places. The first was a crude prison pen, where the devils had gathered up good and neutral aligned civilians to either hold for ransom or just to keep them out of the way. The second was a battered cathedral dedicated to Torm, where a resistance force was entrenched while the devils desperately tried to break in. The third was a pit of maggots watched over by a coven of night hags, where evil aligned civilians were being thrown in and fed to the maggots. When asked what this was about, Mordenkainen explained that the maggots were soul larvae, and feeding them mortal souls of a compatible alignment sped up their transformation process into Baatezu. This clue is what caused the whole situation to click for the party.

The devils were so desperate for reinforcements that they were dragging whole cities from the Prime.

The group parted ways from Mordenkainen for a time, as they agreed that a coven of night hags was a bit out of their weight class. The PCs instead headed to the cathedral to relieve the human defenders, while Mordenkainen went to go stop the night hags. The PCs fought through a couple waves of fiends, including a female chain devil who wanted to introduce Daegan to "the pleasures of pain" (nobody at the table got my Hellraiser reference), but eventually the devils scattered against the PCs onslaught, and the remaining fiends at the cathedral withdrew. The surviving humans in the cathedral were relieved to see the party's strength, and ushered them inside before more fiends showed up.
TL;DR - The party went to Hell to help!

JadedDM
2021-09-02, 06:55 PM
To be fair, I wouldn't have gotten that Hellraiser reference either.

Brookshw
2021-09-03, 03:35 PM
Now that I've listed the party members, I'm realizing just how many orphans are in the group.

I've never been able to tell if this tendency is (a) so the players don't have to make up a lot of backstory, (b) to explain not being tied to a location, (c) to avoid giving the DM a big flashing neon target sign, or (d) all of the above.

Always glad to see a PS fan, I will enjoy catching up on this journal

GravityEmblem
2021-09-04, 02:09 PM
In my last game, all of the players had parents, and all of them met them over the course of the campaign. It was a lot of fun! I'd definitely recommend giving yourself family next time you play, haha.

AllHailthed4
2021-09-04, 04:18 PM
To be fair, only three of the eight PCs (Eirik, Mubarak, and Cassius) are orphans, and they all have giant glowing neon targets adopted family members to round out their backstories.

For example, IIRC, Eirik is a minor noble from an impoverished, war-torn country. His parents gave him up to a high level adventurer in the hopes that she would have the resources to raise him well so that he could one day come back and help rebuild Sterich.

The rest of the characters' families run the gamut from nuclear (Tulany and Kai), to happily blended (Kharim and Rey), to completely disfunctional (ask serpentalis about Daegan).

SleepyShadow
2021-09-08, 03:15 PM
Descent Into Castlevania
In which the Heroes meet another fabled person from the Sword Coast, and a contract with Old Scratch is made.
Inside the cathedral, the party was greeted by Pharria, a young traveling priestess who had come to Elturel when the fiendish troubles first began, and had become the de facto leader of the hundred or so survivors hiding there. The party explored the upper part of the cathedral, and helped her organize the survivors into a more defensible group. They found two important things while poking around - a drunken but capable warrior named Trevick loitering around a pipe organ, and fifty flasks worth of holy water. The party got the more combat-capable survivors to the windows and gave them standing orders to pour holy water on any fiend that approached the cathedral.

Once their exploration was complete, Pharria explained that Captain Ravenguard, a paladin of Torm, had gone into the crypts beneath the cathedral shortly after the city had been pulled into Avernus. He told her about "The Tomb of the Unknown Hero" where a weapon was hidden. Unfortunately, Ravenguard had not returned, and Pharria was worried that he had run afoul of some trap or monster. The PCs offered to go find him, while Pharria and Trevick stayed topside to fight off the fiends which were regrouping for another assault on the cathedral.

The party poked around in the catacombs for a while, and eventually ran across a knife-wielding necromancer commanding a pack of fiends. The PCs kept the baddies divided, and only the necromancer himself proved to be much of a challenge. Shortly after the necromancer fell, a squad of abyssal minotaurs attacked the party, and they put up a bit more of a fight. Once all the fiends were dealt with, the party uncovered the Tomb of the Unknown Hero, where Captain Ravenguard lay immobile on the floor in front of an ornate sarcophagus. Daegan and Aurelius soon deduced it was the captain's helmet causing his paralysis, and our favorite Witcher blood hunter took it off the man. While Ravenguard was recovering, Daegan got pulled into a communication with Asmodeus, Lord of Baator. It turned out Ravenguard's helmet normally allowed for direct communication with Torm, but Asmodeus had hijacked the signal and had been offering a deal to the desperate paladin. A deal he now generously offered to Daegan.

Asmodeus felt that Zariel had overstepped her reach by pulling Elturel into Avernus. He didn't care about the other cities, and was glad to have a fresh source of souls, but he wanted Elturel returned to the Prime before the Celestial reinforcements the PCs had petitioned for arrived. He explained that Elminster had long ago imprisoned an Astral Deva within the city, and Asmodeus didn't need the celestials getting the wrong idea. He offered to delay the Baatezu retaliation against the cathedral in exchange for Daegan's binding word that he would return Elturel to Faerun before the angelic host arrived. Daegan reluctantly agreed, and Asmodeus offered two pieces of information to assist the party in their task. The first was the sword built into the sarcophagus. It was an adamantine greatsword capable of cutting through the chains which tethered Elturel to Avernus. The second was the person inside the coffin - Jander Sunstar, a nosferatu who had once been mentored by Strahd von Zarovich.

The party released Jander from his sealed sarcophagus, and made the mistake of asking him how he got there. Jander started at the beginning, giving the tragic tale of his transformation into the undead and how he got pulled into the Mists of Ravenloft after he slaughtered an insane asylum when his girlfriend died. Strahd took him in, taught him magic, and then Jander betrayed Strahd when he realized his girlfriend had been a reincarnation of Tatyana (the woman Strahd is fixated on). His betrayal went about as well as could be expected, and Jander and his new lady-friends barely escaped with their lives. Jander tried to off himself via sunlight, but found out that sunlight doesn't kill nosferatu. The Mists dumped Jander back on Faerun, where he joined forces with Zariel back when she was still a solar, and they rode into Hell alongside faithful paladins of Torm. Jander panicked at some point during the battles in Hell, and allowed Zariel to be captured by Asmodeus so he could escape. After his escape, he pled to Lathander for forgiveness, but Jander had by this point ticked off three different gods in just one career. He awoke trapped inside the coffin until he was released by mortal hands.

The party didn't really take a shine to Jander.

We ended the session with the group back in the cathedral proper, scheming with Trevick, Pharria, and Jander on how to free the city while fighting off hordes of Baatezu and Tanar'ri.
TL;DR - With only minimal changes to a prewritten WotC adventure, we accidentally made a Netflix show.

JadedDM
2021-09-09, 09:35 PM
Never a Belmont when you need one.

serpentalis
2021-09-10, 01:33 PM
oh, don't worry. we have the knockoff Belmont Trevick to fortify the cathedral door with a single bookshelf!

SleepyShadow
2021-09-15, 02:04 PM
The Cost of Victory
In which the Heroes are triumphant, but an Ally is lost.
The party split into two teams, one to stay at the cathedral and protect the survivors, while the other went with Jander to fight off the fiends while he cut the chains which tethered the city to Avernus. Team Cathedral was Daegan, Kharim, Rowena, and Mubarak, while Team Sunstar was Aurelius, Kai, Hibana, and Tulany. Cassius couldn't make it to this session.

Team Cathedral had an easy time, for the most part. They squared off against a group of cultists and their lead fiend - none other than Spino the Spinagon! The baddies put up a decent fight, but stock Monster Manual critters seem to struggle when punching in their own weight class. Rowena managed to slay Spino with a critical Guiding Bolt, and because we're in Baator the poor little guy finally died for good. RIP Spino. The second group of baddies was a horde of fiendish giant crabs led by a Chain Devil. This fight was dubbed "Crab Rave" by Daegan, and who am I to argue? The Chain Devil got in a few good hits, and at one point she was threatening to drop three party members, but Mubarak gave the signal to the citizens in the cathedral, and they doused her with a half-dozen vials of holy water, which softened her up enough to let Kharim and Rowena finish her off.

Team Sunstar also had an easy go of things. They had to fight off a group of bearded devils and spinogons, plus they rescued a woman from a trio of barbed devils. The woman was a scout sent from the cathedral a few days ago who had tried to break into the holding pen and rescue some prisoners, but her team had been wiped out by the devils there. She was the only one who hadn't been captured or killed, and she had only managed to rescue a pair of children. After the fighting was over, Hibana was sent back to the cathedral with the children while the woman (whose name was Harkina) stayed with the group to help out. Shortly after Jander finished cutting through the chain, Aurelius was contacted by Bel, the General of Hell. Bel wanted the party to come collect Mordenkainen. Since the PCs knew that Asmodeus would only hold up his end of the bargain if both Jander and Mordenkainen were returned to the Prime, the group hustled to meet with Bel before the city broke free. Bel agreed to release Mordenkainen into their custody if they explained why there was such a fuss to return Elturel to Faerun when the other cities that had been captured weren't receiving the urgent attention of so many planeswalkers. Reluctantly, Aurelius told him about the angel held captive within the city, and how the celestial reinforcements would likely turn on the baatezu if they found out about it. Bel was pleased to hear about this (he could use the information to discredit Zariel, and possibly get his old job back), and handed Mordenkainen over without a fuss.

By the time Team Sunstar made it back to the cathedral, the city had broken free of the other two chains. The whole thing rocketed back through the portal and slammed back into place on the Prime. The party checked to make sure nobody had gotten injured in the transition (only Trevick had, who took a bookshelf to the face during the ascent), and they celebrated their hard-won victory by sleeping in the church for the rest of the day. Afterwards, they headed out of Elturel so that Mordenkainen could teleport them back to Elminster's house. Hibana was thrilled that she would finally be able to have her homeland restored to its proper state. There were so many places she wanted to take her friends, and she was especially excited to show Kharim the fabled Wishing Cliffs, one of the most beautiful places in all of Kara-Tur. It was very cute.

Once back at Elminster's abode, the party met Storm Silverhand, one of the archmage's adopted daughters and the leader of the Harpers. Mordenkainen was a little awkward around her (she was the one who nursed him back to health after Strahd threw him off a cliff), but Storm was a genuinely pleasant person to be around. The party took a liking to her, and a few of them immediately started scheming on ways to get her out from under Elminster's thumb. Kai in particular seemed to enjoy her company, and they talked over a cup of tea while the rest of the party kept Mordenkainen from stealing out of the liquor cabinet.

Eventually, Elminster met with the party and agreed to petition Mystra for the release of Kara-Tur. However, there was a caveat. He wanted to study Hibana's mind to he could learn how she found out the truth about Kara-Tur. Kharim was particularly reluctant, but there did not seem to be any other option. They followed Elminster into his laboratory, where Daegan found a new friend. A sentient ooze was being held in a giant flask, and Daegan immediately felt sorry for the poor creature. While Elminster prepared his ritual spell, Daegan and Rowena plotted with Mordenkainen on how to free the ooze. Mordenkainen cast Silence on the flask, and Daegan pushed it off the shelf. Rowena brushed the broken glass under a bookshelf, and the ooze hid as best it could until they could sneak it into a bag of holding.

Elminster cast his spell, and Hibana dropped to the ground, completely unconscious. Kharim was about ready to throw down with Mystra's Chosen, but the party managed to drag him away. Elminster nonchalantly told them to come back in the morning after he had time to study Hibana's memories. Kharim carried the unconscious girl in his arms, and the party hurried out of the house before any more trouble got stirred up. Tulany suggested waiting for morning in Barovia, but the rest of the party wasn't interested in spending time in Ravenloft beyond what was strictly necessary. Now completely on edge, the party also didn't want to spend the night on the Sword Coast, just in case the Harpers came after them for some perceived slight against their beloved archmage. Mordenkainen suggested going to "the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism Elminster... Krynn!" (http://youtu.be/g1Sq1Nr58hM)

The party agreed, and one Plane Shift later they sought shelter at a temple of Paladine. When the party told their story to the knight-on-duty ("the girl was bewitched by an evil wizard" "we were betrayed", etc.), he was brought to manly tears at the sorry state of poor Hibana. The session ended with the group taking shifts watching over Hibana while she remained comatose.
TL;DR - The party won, and also lost.

JadedDM
2021-09-15, 10:02 PM
Krynn is a great place to take a short breather. Unless it's during one of its many world-shattering wars or apocalypses, that is.

Cerrita
2021-09-16, 12:16 PM
We've had some history with Krynnspace in our old Spelljammer campaign. It's a nice place. The party's initial inability to remember the name Krynn resulted in our continual references to the "The Paladins of Paladine, in Palspace", to SleepyShadow's eternal suffering. Somehow we were never smited into an oblivion for our misdeeds. :smallconfused:

SleepyShadow
2021-09-22, 06:07 PM
Krynn is a great place to take a short breather. Unless it's during one of its many world-shattering wars or apocalypses, that is.

Agreed. Thankfully, it only seems to have an apocalypse every once in a while :smalltongue:

Make a Wish
In which our Heroes offer up more than they bargained for, and find that old magic still holds sway in certain realms.
The party returned to Elminster's house, where they politely declined Storm's offer of tea and less-than-politely spoke with Elminster about his treatment of Hibana. Kharim, in particular, was irate with the archmage. Understandable, too, as Elminster had robbed Hibana of her mind. The archmage relented, so he restored Hibana's mind, then used Plane Shift to send her to New Kara-Tur before she could regain consciousness. When confronted about it, he explained that he had simply removed memories that "conflicted" with the "new reality" of New Kara-Tur. He didn't want an entire world's worth of people angry at Faerun, so Elminster called upon Mystra to rewrite the memories of everyone living in Kara-Tur to believe it had always been its own world. Kharim accused him of being a control freak, so Elminster responded in a completely logical fashion.

He cast Time Stop, walked to the other side of the room, cast Delayed Blast Fireball, and blew poor Kharim to smithereens. Somehow Kharim didn't die, but the message was sent to the rest of the party. Elminster was absolutely a control freak, and confronting him about it had dangerous consequences.

Kai got Kharim back to consciousness while the rest of the party kept Elminster distracted with talk about the Demiplane of Dread. He was intrigued by the idea of meeting with Strahd's last living relative, and agreed to meet them outside of Barovia's borders later that day. When asked why he was so interested in Ravenloft, he explained that he wanted to change it to meet with his own personal standards, but the nature of the Demiplane of Dread made it impossible to make grand sweeping changes. Rather, he had sent Harper Agents into the Mists to slowly change the place from within.

The party quickly skedaddled, pausing only long enough to explain to Storm what the explosion had been. She was appalled that her father had attacked the party, but she was certain he had a good reason for his actions. She apologized on his behalf, and used some healing magic on Kharim to show her sincerity. She was also alarmed that Elminster had gone behind her back and used the Harpers (the organization she was ostensibly in charge of) to enact his plans in Ravenloft without telling her. Several furious Insight checks were rolled, and all results came back positive. Storm continued to be a genuinely nice person, which only furthered the party's interest in getting her away from Elminster.

The party cajoled Mordenkainen into taking them to New Kara-Tur so they could check on Hibana. One Planeshift later, the party headed to a seaside monastery while Mordenkainen and Jander lurked around a nearby town. After a bit of communication difficulties, the party eventually got inside the monastery and spoke with Hibana. She didn't recognize any of them. The party did their best not to cry when she introduced herself to them as if they were complete strangers. They chatted for a little while, but eventually they left the monastery.

Getting a wild idea, Aurelius asked one of the locals about the Wishing Cliffs. According to local legend, the Wishing Cliffs could grant wishes, but only to those who leapt from the cliffs into the mist below. After getting some directions, the party began the arduous climb up to the tiny village built by the cliffs. Once there, Aurelius threw himself off the cliff, wishing to undo Elminster's magic on the people of Kara-Tur. Rowena jumped with him, wishing only for Aurelius to be alright. The wish went as intended, restoring everyone's memories of their lives back on Faerun. Unfortunately, they still remembered the false memories that had been planted in their minds to craft the rewritten history of New Kara-Tur. Mass panic broke out across the globe, as people struggled to come to terms with having two lifetimes worth of memories. Seeing the chaos, Kharim leapt from the Wishing Cliffs, wishing to undo Aurelius' wish and restore peace to Kara-Tur. Again, the wish was successful, and the people returned to having only memories compatible with New Kara-Tur.

At the bottom of the cliff, the three jumpers realized they had lost something in exchange for their wishes. Kharim had lost his peace of mind, as the vestige Deception was now talking in his head. Rowena was now being hunted by something tracking her across the planes, though she didn't yet know what was after her. Aurelius had paid the heaviest price, as he had completely lost his warlock powers.

As an aside, Aurelius' player was planning on redoing some of his levels, so his "price" was largely an in-game justification for retraining levels. I'm not heartless enough to arbitrarily remove people's class features.

The party headed back to the monastery to see if Hibana had survived the chaos. She had, and was pleasantly surprised to see the party again. In the few minutes where everyone in Kara-Tur remembered their old lives, Hibana had written a letter to the PCs. She didn't remember writing it, but she had come to her senses with it written and sealed in an envelope addressed to "the planeswalkers". She gave it to them, and the party again did their best not to cry when they departed from the monastery.

The letter thanked them for everything, and she apologized for being unable to keep adventuring with them. She knew she wouldn't remember any of them, but hoped that they wouldn't forget her. She said she would miss them.

The party met back up with Mordenkainen and Jander, and together the group headed back to Faerun for what the PCs hoped would be the final time. On their way to Barovia, Kai and Tulany contacted Avilius via Sending, instructing him to smuggle Arabelle out of Barovia's borders. Once at the border, they met up with Elminster, and Mordenkainen led the archmage into the woods to the spot Avilius had last been. The party waited outside for a couple of hours, but Ravenloft's misty borders were still open. Confused why Barovia hadn't snapped shut, Aurelius and Daegan put their heads together to seek out any sort of magical effects keeping the borders open. After a few Arcana checks and an Identify spell, they realized that Elminster was using True Name magic to keep the Dark Powers from claiming their new prize. Alarmed by this, the party split up to desperately come up with a solution. Half the group raced back to Madam Eva's camp in the hope that the old diviner would have some useful information (Kai also contacted Avilius to have him and Arabelle meet back up with the party), while the other half Teleported back to Elminster's house with Jander to ransack the archmage's laboratory for anything that could help them undo the True Name effect in place.
TL;DR - Sadness abounds.

JadedDM
2021-09-23, 07:48 PM
When the party jumped off the Wishing Cliffs:

https://c.tenor.com/dW-Pb6qvsq8AAAAd/thanos-infinity-war.gif

SleepyShadow
2021-10-01, 01:49 PM
When the party jumped off the Wishing Cliffs:

https://c.tenor.com/dW-Pb6qvsq8AAAAd/thanos-infinity-war.gif

Oof, that's hilariously accurate :smallbiggrin:

Faerun, We Hardly Knew Ye
In which our Heroes make an unlikely ally, and a face of the Realms is brought low.
Daegan, Aurelius, Rowena, and Kai bluffed their way past Storm Silverhand to gain access to Elminster's lab, but they were stymied by the unusual arcane ward which sealed the door. Rather than try to gain entry through trail and error or brute force, the PCs just asked Storm if she knew how to open the door. She explained that she had never been down in the lab without Elminster's company, and that he used a vial of red liquid to bypass the wards. Daegan suggested that Jander should lick the doorknob to check if it was blood, and the moody nosferatu obliged. Daegan was right, it was blood, and when Jander's tongue started sizzling the party guessed it was holy blood. Jander, ever the practical sort, suggested slitting Storm's throat and using her half-celestial blood to open the door. The rest of the group was understandably miffed. After a couple of good Persuasion roles, they convinced Storm to prick her finger and open the door, enticing the curious demigoddess with the secrets Elminster had been keeping from her.

Once inside the lab, the group immediately started ransacking the place for anything related to True Naming (Daegan's new ooze friend just pilfered random trinkets). During their search, Kai stumbled upon some medical equipment, and he was appalled at lack of widespread medical knowledge that could be used to save countless lives. Storm said there was little need for such knowledge, since clerics were always available to offer healing. Kai argued that people should have more options than just picking between high-priced clerical services and herbal remedies from hedge witches. Storm was easily swayed, as nobody scored less than a 20 on any Persuasion check made to convince her of anything. This trend continued for the rest of the session.

Back in Barovia at the Tser Pool, Kharim, Tulany, Eirik, and Cassius met back up with Avilius and Arabelle and discussed what to do next. The rangers had both noticed the natural environment had been fighting against their travel, indicating the Dark Powers were up to something. Madam Eva described it as a "shadow over Barovia". Eirik had the old witch tell his fortune, since he had missed out on that last time the party was here, and she advised him to do everything he could to "protect the daughter of darkness". Eirik figured she was talking about Sharwyn, but decided to keep that to himself for now. Still feeling rather gloomy, Kharim decided to hang out with the Vistani playing sad songs on his violin while the others prepared for the inevitable confrontation with Elminster. This was also the first time the party had gotten the chance to meet Arabelle, the last living member of the Zarovich bloodline. Although she was only distantly related, the young woman was convinced she was destined to be the heir to Barovia and guide it in a new and prosperous direction.

They were soon rejoined by the lab team (who used a scroll of Teleportation stolen from Elminster's lab), and they informed the crew that Elminster had only managed to acquire the True Name of one of the Dark Powers, and that it was reversible with the right utterance. The party had figured out that the Dark Power in question was actually Tenebrous, the divine shadow of Orcus. It was all coming together now. (https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/561/446/27d.jpg) The party reckoned Orcus had sensed his shadow being messed with "like some kind of evil Peter Pan" and had instigated the massive assault on Avernus as a ploy to get to the Sword Coast. The party figured that if they could undo the True Naming on Tenebrous, Orcus would revert back to his usual level of apathy and pull his forces back to his realm on the Abyss, giving the Baatezu and the Celestials the breathing room they desperately needed. Tulany also had the idea to alert the local wereravens to the possibility of Nekrothepta being in the area (she wasn't, but it was a fantastic idea and I wish I had thought of using her).

Kai contacted Mordenkainen to find out where he and Elminster were, and the archmage said that the forest had guided them to Castle Ravenloft (insert dramatic lightning here). With a plan of action in place, Aurelius and Daegan performed the True Naming ritual to undo the binding of Tenebrous and allow the Demiplane of Dread to retreat back into the mists, severing it from Faerun with Elminster trapped inside. Because neither of them were trained True Namers (and I don't begrudge them for that lol), there was a bit of magical backlash from the utterance. The entire party passed the Wisdom save to avoid the side-effects, but Aurelius and Daegan were very unfortunate, both suffering 4 points of Charisma damage (it was only 1d4, and I had them roll their own damage :smallsigh:). With Aurelius a little less social than normal, and Daegan barely recognizing himself as a person, the party set off for Castle Ravenloft.

Before they left, Madam Eva gave them the Sun Sword, which they promptly gave to Jander because they thought it would be funny for him to lose his vampire powers every time he activated it. Storm Silverhand insisted on accompanying the party, saying that she wanted to confront her father about all of the secrets he had been hiding from her. Kai was the one to break the news to her that Elminster wasn't even her real father, a manipulative old man who had groomed her into becoming the leader of the Harpers for his own purposes. This didn't go over well, and, already unnerved thanks to her severance from Mystra's divine power, she fell into a quiet state of defeat.

Upon arrival at Castle Ravenloft, the party found that Elminster had not taken the loss of his divine connection well, and had taken his anger out on Mordenkainen. The Archmage of Greyhawk had put up a good fight, but had ultimately fallen to Elminster's sheer firepower. Fortunately, he was only mostly dead (he was using Feign Death) and Elminster was too irate to check for tomfoolery. The party was about ready to throw down with Mystra's Chosen now that he had blown his most powerful spells taking down Mordenkainen, but the fight was interrupted before it could begin by a cloud of mist forming in a chair at the back of the room.

We're in Ravenloft, and they really thought Strahd wasn't going to make an appearance? :smallamused:

Strahd von Zarovich was amused by the presence of so many famous people, and thanked the party for letting him come home. His time away from Barovia had been fun, but he was the land, and no archmage or young usurper would take his castle from him. He instructed the party to leave Barovia and never come back, and the party was happy to oblige. Jander, however, leapt to the attack, Sun Sword in hand. The party was more than happy to let him get killed, and so left Jander and Elminster to chase Strahd around his castle while they made a clean getaway. Jander bounced from room to room, triggering traps and guardians as he went after Strahd. Without the party's help, he didn't really stand much of a chance. He was a less powerful mage than Strahd, and using the Sun Sword wasn't much of an option either, since without his vampiric strength he couldn't match Strahd in a sword duel. Elminster would normally have little trouble with Strahd, but between the loss of his clerical magic and having used his most powerful spells to bring down Mordenkainen, the running fight was a battle of attrition he couldn't keep up with. Thus, the party condemned Jander and Elminster to a slow death at the hands of Strahd von Zarovich.

You're welcome, Daegan :smallwink:

Meanwhile, the party fled back to Tser Pool, where they apologized to Madam Eva for failing to kill Strahd outside of Barovia, which is likely the only way to kill him for good. Still, they felt pretty good about ridding Faerun of Elminster and ridding themselves of Jander. Since they didn't want to risk vampiric attacks in the middle of the night while Aurelius was without his warlock powers, they left Mordenkainen in the care of the Vistani and headed into the mists, following Arabelle deeper into the Demiplane of Dread.
TL;DR - Planeswalkers get up to weird stuff sometimes.

serpentalis
2021-10-01, 07:17 PM
Just want to make it very clear: Daegan is currently sitting at a 4 charisma. I'm.....sure he'll be fine.

SleepyShadow
2021-10-07, 08:01 PM
Borca Business
In which the Heroes look for a way home, and encounter charming distractions.
Arabelle led the PCs into Borca, a domain characterized by three traits: poison, crushing poverty, and twin darklords. The darklords, Ivan and Ivana, were technically only cousins, but they were both born at the same time, and they each inherited half of the previous darklord's powers (and curses) when she died, so people often referred to them as twins. The party stayed at the inn of a small town for a night, where they learned the basic ins and outs of Borca from a helpful barkeep. While staying there, Daegan cajoled Kai into casting Sending in order to contact his mother, who berated him for losing track of his younger brother Adair. He didn't take that particularly well, and started eating even less than he normally did (which was barely enough to keep himself functional), despite his ooze friend, who was now dubbed Umori, attempting to feed him bacon. After resting up, the party headed for the nearest major city. Most of the party just wanted to find a way out of Ravenloft, but Tulany wanted to know more about her Tarot card, so after a day's hike through a poisonous pine forest, the party began asking locals questions.

They bumped into a nobleman and his entourage, who teased the party for their colorful clothing before leaving. The PCs decided it wasn't worth trying to kill the guy, and kept Aurelius from punching him in the mouth. While looking for a good place to stay the night, the party met a young lad named Toby who was selling "Mr. Pirelli's Miracle Elixir" on the street corner. He tried to get Kai to buy a bottle, but the "elixir" was quickly found out to be a fraud. Cassius took pity on the lad, and offered to employ Toby while the party was in town. He was soon to regret that decision, as Toby proved to be a gin hound.

Eventually, the party found housing at a rowdy tavern, and most of the party settled in for the night. Tulany wasn't quite ready to turn in, and so Kharim and Arabelle accompanied her to a high society establishment for a few drinks. While there, they were approached by a dashing older gentleman named Dilisnya, who was quite intrigued by the strangers. Tulany was intrigued by his claims of being an arcane scholar, and showed him her Tarot card. This piqued Dilisnya's interest further, and offered to meet with her again to discuss the card further, and perhaps uncover more information about it.

The next morning, the party was approached by a mysterious masked man who called himself "The Abbot", and invited them to partake in the next hunt sponsored by the Ashwood Abbey. He instructed any who came to "bring good arms and sharp clothing". The majority of the party was interested, and Cassius even managed to convince Storm to join them. Tulany declined, and opted to head to the library to meet with Dilisnya instead. There, he told her about how Darklord Ivan allegedly had an interest in rangers as of late, and several local hunters have gone missing. Dilisnya suspected Ivan had learned of the existence of the Well of Many Worlds which allegedly existed at the heart of the city. Dilisnya offered to help Tulany learn more, and all he asked for in exchange was her help getting to the Well without alerting the agents of the twin darklords.

The rest of the PCs decided to check out the Ashwood Abbey...
TL;DR - Borca is a strange place.

JadedDM
2021-10-08, 09:22 PM
A hunt in Ravenloft? Why do I get the feeling the quarry will not be foxes?

SleepyShadow
2021-10-13, 10:12 PM
A hunt in Ravenloft? Why do I get the feeling the quarry will not be foxes?

You'd be absolutely right :smallamused:

Ashwood Abbey
In which our Heroes mingle with high society, and find their position is precarious.
The PCs (save for Tulany) went to the Ashwood Abbey, where they found a colorful costumed party hosted by the hunters, many of whom were the second or third sons and daughters of the Borcan elite. The party were mocked by some for being poorly dressed, and idolized by others for being exotic newcomers. The hunters showed off a few of their trophies (the half-pelt of a werewolf was a real prize), allowed the PCs to indulge in drinks, drugs, and pleasures of the flesh, and even offered a snuff of vampire ashes to the daring. Whilst partying, the PCs learned that each hunter and huntress had their own motivations, ranging from noble ("There are things that go bump in the night, and I'm the one who bumps back") to revenge ("I rescued a girl who had been assaulted by a six-fingered devil, and I vowed that men would die for this"), but each had a reason for joining the vigil. Eventually, the hunters drew lots to see who got to go on the next hunt, and guess who won?

Of course the game was rigged, and the PCs knew it, but they thought it was a good opportunity to prove themselves to the local hunters and scratch their itch for combat. The Abbot told them their mark was some creature haunting a travelling Vistani circus which had come to Borca from Odaire a few nights ago. The Abbot didn't care about the Vistani, of course, but he didn't want any further innocent Borcan blood to be shed. The party travelled to the circus, and after a brief investigation they learned that the culprit was most likely a carrionette (an evil puppet with paralytic needles). They enlisted the aid of a Vistani woman to help them navigate the sprawling carnival, and eventually they narrowed it down to three tents where the toys and prizes were kept. The party opted to just go through the tents waving torches at the dolls to see if any flinched. One of them did. Of course, Cassius got a 30 on his Perception check, which utterly foiled the ambush the other seven carrionettes had set :smallsigh:

Kharim protected the Vistani woman from the murder-puppets, and the rest of the party butchered them in short order. It turns out the little buggers rely heavily on surprise to take out their victims. Ah well. Sometimes it's good for the players to have an easy win. The party brought the carrionette corpses back to the Abbey as proof of their victory, and the Abbot congratulated them on having passed their entrance exam. He then offered to boil down the puppets to see what kind of high one could get by drinking their lacquer, and naturally offered the first taste to the PCs. Unsurprisingly, they declined. The rest of the night was spent partying it up with the fabulous hunters and huntresses, save for Kharim who left the Abbey and went back to the inn.

While the rest of the party was living the high life, Tulany was spending quality time at the library with Dilisnya. He was charming and kind, if a bit distant, and explained that he needed her help to uncover the location of the Well of Many Worlds which was rumored to be located beneath the city. He had no intention of leaving Borca, as he quite liked his home, but thought it would be the best way to get Tulany and her friends home (or at least back to Sigil). He had studied everything he could about the Well, and knew that it needed to be properly attuned to a specific destination before it could be used safely. Otherwise, anyone who jumped in would be spat out in a random location somewhere in the Multiverse. Dilisnya suspected he could use Tulany's Tarot card to attune the Well to her home world. He also warned Tulany that they had to act fast, lest Ivana the Black Widow learn of the Well and try to use it for her own dark purposes. He stressed that foiling Ivana's plans was paramount. Tulany wasn't paying too much attention, and was just happy to be in the company of a charming gentleman who needed her. Eventually, the two of them got dinner together at the finest establishment in the city, where Dilisnya talked about his many travels across Borca, his study of the dark arts and the occult, and other such topics. Tulany was fascinated by him.

The next day, the party met for breakfast briefly before splitting up once more. The majority of the PCs headed off to the Ashwood Abbey again, while Tulany went to meet with Dilisnya again. Kharim declined to join either group, and hung around at the inn asking questions. Of course, asking too many questions is dangerous in a place like Borca. Before he could get himself into trouble, he bumped into a faux-dandy by the name of Sydney Charles. He hauled Kharim down to the lowest-grade pub in town, where the constant noise and roughhousing would provide an excellent screen for conversations best not overheard. When Kharim explained that he was worried about Tulany spending so much time with Dilisnya, Sydney was quick to explain that Dilisnya was the family name of the twin dark lords of Borca, Ivana and Ivan. Since nobody had seen Tulany since breakfast, Kharim assumed the worst had happened, and he (along with Sydney) raced into the night in a desperate search for the missing elf.

While that little drama was playing out, the rest of the PCs volunteered for another hunt. This time, their mark was a young woman by the name of Camilla Lucille Freeman, who was a waitress at one of the smaller restaurants in town. Camilla, who had been nicknamed "Shakes" by her coworkers on account of her constant shivering, was connected to three strange deaths in the last six months. Each victim had gone missing, only to turn up weeks later with nary a mark on the outside, but all of their organs frozen solid. Each body had been found near a body of water (two by the river, and one by a well), and The Abbot suspected that the girl had something to do with it. Two of the victims had been Camilla's former coworkers, and one had been a regular customer at the restaurant. The PCs agreed to investigate, but pledged not to kill her until they could prove she was the murderer.

Their plan was pretty straightforward. Aurelius (who had the highest Charisma in the group) and Daegan (who could use his blood hunter powers to sniff out the supernatural) would pose as customers and casually ask Camilla questions. Eirik, Kai, and Cassius would wait outside and watch the exits to prevent her escape if she tried to flee. The plan worked, perhaps a little too well. As if in a dream, Camilla took Aurelius and Daegan to the back room by the meat locker, where she told them her story.

At the age of twelve, she was taken to another world by an angel made of icicles and frost, and she spent five long years studying at his frozen feet and learning his strange sorceries. Every day, the angel threatened to crack the icy floor beneath her, to entomb her with all the others who had failed in their studies, their frozen bodies still visible beneath the smeared ice. Camilla never gave him the chance. On her seventeenth birthday, she snapped off one of the angel's icicle toes and stabbed herself through the heart with it. When she woke up, she was shivering in Borca.

She told the story as if in a trance, and she couldn't stop herself. Too late, Daegan realized there was Fey magic at work. Both he and Aurelius failed a Charisma save.

And the session ended there.
TL;DR - Nothing is ever what it seems.

JadedDM
2021-10-14, 07:00 PM
Uh-oh, trouble!

Yeah, I didn't say anything but after last session I googled Borca out of curiosity, so naturally I saw the name 'Dilisnya' right away and was like, "Oh, dear. That's bad. :smalleek:"

Cerrita
2021-10-14, 10:04 PM
This Sidney fellow must be mistaken. Dilisnya has been nothing but a perfect gentleman. Maybe he's just distantly related to Ivan or something. I'm sure it will be fine. Don't worry about it. :smallbiggrin:

SleepyShadow
2021-10-20, 06:06 PM
The Long Night
In which our Heroes give pity, and receive none.
Cassius went into the restaurant to check on Aurelius and Daegan, and found only Camille crying by the meat freezer as she desperately smoked a hand-rolled cigarette. She didn't spot him, so he snuck back outside to get Kai and Eirik. The trio came back and started interrogating Camille about where the other two had gone. It only took a few minutes for them to realize that if they prompted her with questions about where Aurelius and Daegan had gone, she would utter the same phrase in the exact same way.

"Do you want to share a smoke and hear a story?"

They concluded that Camille was under some sort of compulsory magic, but none of them were mages, so they couldn't figure out what exactly was going on. However, they were smart enough not to let her tell her story to them, since it was obviously upsetting her to be forced into saying her luring phrase. They continued to question her, doing their best to dance around anything that might force her to say her phrase instead of answering normally. Camille twigged that they might be hunters, and Kai botched the deception check to convince her they weren't. Our brave hunters then proceeded to chase the girl around the restaurant while she used her faerie-given powers to teleport from doorway to doorway.

Meanwhile, Daegan and Aurelius awoke in a palace made of ice and snow. A Gentry Fae (quite powerful, but a step down from a proper Archfey) with the appearance of an angel made of ice offered to take them into its service, else it would bury them in the icy floor as it had so many others. They decided to turn down the "offer", Aurelius because he didn't want to be forced into the service of a faerie, and Daegan because his Charisma score wasn't high enough to become a Warlock. A battle ensued, and just when the two adventurers looked to gain the upper hand, the angel of ice banished them back to Borca. Eirik heard some commotion from the back of the restaurant, and stopped his pursuit of Camille long enough to find that Aurelius and Daegan had reappeared in the bathroom stall. Once they had disentangled themselves from each other, they helped the others corner Camille where she had tried hiding in the bushes behind the restaurant.

The hunters dragged Camille back inside, bundled her up in a blanket by the stove, and they managed to convince her they were interested in killing the Fae she was bound to instead of just killing her. She gladly took them up on their offer, and so she relayed her story to them once more. The PCs willingly failed their Charisma saves, and were thrust back into the Feywild where they battled with the "angel" once more. With five hunters suddenly arriving at its doorstep, the Gentry Fae was quickly overwhelmed. Once the killing blow was struck, the PCs were sent back to Borca, emerging from the river just outside of town. When they made it back to the restaurant, they found Camille had fallen asleep in front of the stove, an icicle toe clutched in her hand. Cassius gently woke her, and she apologized for dozing off. She had gotten so warm, she just couldn't help it. Once she realized that she could finally feel warm again, she threw herself at the party in joyful tears, hugging and kissing each of them in turn. Just as a test, Kai asked if she wanted to tell them her story. She was finally able to say, "No, I don't want to", and the PCs called that a win.

The PCs took the icicle toe back to the Ashwood Abbey and presented it as proof of their hunt. The Abbot congratulated them on dealing with the Fae, and proceeded to use the icicle toe to stir his bourbon. The PCs hung around the abbey long enough for a celebratory drink or two, but soon retired for the night.

Meanwhile, Kharim and Sydney tracked Tulany down to an abandoned church. Sydney explained the church belonged to Ezra, goddess of the dawn, but Ivana's mother had denounced the church and its followers many years ago when her brother (the prophet of Ezra) had grown more popular than she was. The church was slowly making a return, but Ivan had taxed the church so heavily that the priestess could only afford to hold congregation once a month, and that was held in her backyard. The church was too expensive to maintain, and so it had become abandoned.

The trail led into the crypts beneath the church, and Sydney spotted a few hastily laid traps along the way, but was able to disarm them without trouble. In the deepest part of the crypts, they found Tulany and Dilisnya examining an ancient stone well while a half-dozen bodyguards stood watch over the area. After much debate, Kharim managed to convince Tulany to come back to the inn. Dilisnya tried to pickpocket the Tarot card, but Tulany caught him in the act. He casually played it off as just groping her. No alarm bells here. Once away from the church, Kharim and Sydney explained their suspicions that Dilisnya was Ivan the Terrible, but Tulany didn't believe them.

Anyway, the party met up the following morning to hash out a plan of action. The hunters were going to keep hunting, and Kharim enlisted Avilius into babysitting Tulany. The space marine had a quiet chat with her in her room, usual old guy mentor stuff, and then fell asleep in a chair outside her door. The hunters headed back to Ashwood Abbey, while Kharim distracted Arabelle from her Folk Hero background destiny obsession by getting her to help him research binder magic. Sydney went full Sherlock Holmes by pretending to be a singing beggar and patrolled the neighborhood while also collecting spare change.

The hunters found the abbey formal and reserved when they arrived. After speaking with the Abbot, they learned that Ivana Boritsi was paying the abbey a visit that evening to pay her membership fees. The PCs met with her, a raven-haired seductress that immediately started flirting with them, and she told them she had a "special hunt" prepared for the whole hunt club to participate in. She expected "fabulous results" from the PCs in particular.

While the hunters were trying to placate Ivana, Dilisnya called upon Tulany once more. She questioned him about the accusations Kharim and Sydney had leveled against him, but he danced around the question of what his first name was, saying that he was "unfortunately related to a Dark Lord" and that "the name Dilisnya gets you farther in life than a name like 'Saint Germain' would". Convinced by his conversational tapdancing, Tulany agreed to accompany him back to the church to finish the activation of the Well of Many Worlds. Dilisnya had already prepared a Teleportation Circle in the catacombs, so no need for any of that pesky walking. Kharim noticed the trickery at work, but it was too late.

He caught up to them just as Tulany and Dilisnya disappeared.
TL;DR - There's a lot of tap-dancing going on. (https://youtu.be/PjoS9xu_HyM)

JadedDM
2021-10-22, 06:59 PM
Wait...Saint Germaine? Hmm...

Infinite Corridor = Well of Many Worlds? :smalltongue:

AllHailthed4
2021-10-25, 05:05 PM
In hindsight, teaching binding magic to an "ambitious young Tsarovich" might not have been the brightest idea, especially after Tenebrous was named as one of the dark powers...

Oh well. Not our plane, not our problem. Right?

SleepyShadow
2021-10-27, 06:42 PM
In hindsight, teaching binding magic to an "ambitious young Tsarovich" might not have been the brightest idea, especially after Tenebrous was named as one of the dark powers...

It's "Zarovich". Your background in Russian has betrayed you. :smallwink:

Bye-Bye Borca
In which our Heroes finally leave the Demiplane of Dread.
The Hunt Club PCs went along with Ivana's "special hunt", which turned out to be a vampire with her fangs pulled out. Ivana let the vampire loose into the forest around The Abbey, and assured everyone there that her guards had the forest completely surrounded to prevent the monster (or the hunters) from escaping the grounds. The hunters partnered up into groups of two, and poor Daegan got stuck partnered up with Ivana herself. She was fascinated by his complete immunity to poison, and had designs to keep him around after the hunt was over. The PCs took umbrage with this, so they waited until Ivana was isolated from the rest of the Ashwood Abbey (save for her two personal bodyguards), and they ambushed her in a cave behind a waterfall. Ivana and her guards roughed up the party pretty badly (Cassius had a real bad time with her contact poison, and Daegan even suffered his first death of the campaign), but eventually the party took them out and celebrated a hard-won victory over one of the Dark Lords of Ravenloft. The party was a little disappointed that they had accidentally gotten the vampire killed, but they took the ashes back to The Abbot and quietly explained the situation about Ivana. He promised to keep things quiet, but told them not to go flaunting Ivana's death, as she is/was the more popular of the two lords of Borca.

Meanwhile, Kharim and Sidney race to save Tulany from Ivan's clutches. They were accompanied by Avilius and Arabelle, who were largely there to balance out the encounter and provide commentary. This little group tripped its way through a few traps pulled from Grimtooth's Book of Traps and managed to not die or even get maimed. Once through the trap gauntlet beneath the abandoned church, they found Ivan guarded by half a dozen flesh golems. Ivan gave the villain's exposition about how he was going to use Tulany's Tarot card and the Well of Many Worlds to drag the descendants of an escaped Vistani tribe back into Borca. Not because he had any particular hatred for them, but merely because he hated the idea that other people could leave Borca and he could not.

Bravely, Kharim and company fought to rescue Tulany, who was desperately trying to convince Ivan not to do it. I gave the NPCs over to the players whose characters weren't present, and away we went. The fight turned out not to be that hard. Kharim tanked half of the flesh golems long enough for Avilius to ventilate the Dark Lord, and Tulany got the last hit on the bad guy after finally realizing Ivan wasn't going to stop with his plan. Once Ivan went down, the remaining golems went inert, and the group skedaddled back to the surface.

The party reconvened after their respective fights, and decided to use the Well of Many Worlds to get back to Sigil at long last. They allowed Camille to come with them, and though Sidney was invited, the detective declined, saying that he had unfinished business in Borca. Arabelle wanted to stick around Borca as well, since now the domain was in need of a new ruler, and that Folk Hero background of hers was still unfulfilled. Avilius opted to stick around to guard the young Zarovich for now, or to put a bullet in her should she fall like her ancestor.

And thus, the PCs finally returned to Sigil, the city of doors.
TL;DR - The bad guys are dead, and we're back in Sigil!

JadedDM
2021-10-28, 05:39 PM
Hopefully nothing too big has happened since they were gone.

SleepyShadow
2021-11-03, 11:47 AM
The Sting
In which our Heroes discover what transpired in their absence, and a Paladin is beset by fiends.
Before I get into the meat of this session, I need to bring up some character backstory stuff. This group's previous campaign was playing through a modified version of The War of the Burning Sky (a campaign I highly recommend), and during the campaign one of the major villains of the story cursed the party with his dying breath. The curse proved to be hereditary, and despite that a few of the players wanted to run the descendants of the previous party for the Planescape game. Specifically, Kharim, Aurelius, Tulany, and Soraya are all having to deal with this curse. With all of that said, on with the show!

When the party returned to Sigil, the first place they headed was the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts. They received a remarkably warm and teary reception from their friends, and learned that while only about two weeks had passed for the PCs, they had been gone for about three months by the reckoning of everyone in Sigil. The NPCs thought the party had signed the dead-book. When the PCs explained they had been in Ravenloft for a time, the locals just nodded sagely and said the ebb and flow of time is distorted in the Demiplane of Dread, and that the PCs were lucky to have come back at all. When asked what the NPCs had gotten up to in their absence, Sharwyn told them about how they had to deal with a job from some cranium rats, otherwise Tiny the werebear was going to break Soraya's legs. The job was lending aid to a knight in the outlands who the cranium rat mob boss owed a favor. Barrock complained about how the job forced him to work with his ex.

"You dated Sharwyn?" Aurelius asked.
"No," Barrock replied. "Tiny."

Tulany received a visitor from home. Her father, Ganzorig, had followed her trail all the way to Sigil, thrashing every passing grell he encountered along the way. He had been very disappointed when he first found out she had been staying at a brothel, but then he learned it was really more of a weird coffee shop run by cute monster girls. Tulany was delighted to spend the day with her father, though he had to return home with the good news that she and her friends were still alive. There was some political turmoil going on at home, so he advised her to stay in Sigil for a while longer, and that he'd come to collect her when it was safe for her to come home. He also promised to smooth things over with her mother.

Daegan and Barrock went to the Bleak Cabal headquarters, and "Octo-Lad" received a similarly tearful welcome from Daria and Hikari. Daria had been particularly distraught, and Hikari explained that Barrock had been coming by to check in on the heartbroken yuan-ti. Most yuan-ti are completely incapable of feeling emotion, so even Daria's relatively stunted emotional range made her an outlier and outcast amongst her own kind. Such a woman would naturally interest Barrock ... at least, those were the excuses he gave for why he had been taking care of her in Daegan's absence. In truth, beneath the orc wizard's exterior of cynicism and arrogance, he had a good heart. I think Daegan was just surprised Barrock had gotten himself involved in anything to do with the party after the Limbo adventure.

Kai got a visit from his ex-wife and oldest son. His son wanted to enthuse about getting to go to bard college, and promised to become a doctor just like his father. Kai's ex-wife decided to give him an early Christmas present, and gave him the unsigned No Contact Order so he could throw it in the fireplace. The three of them got coffee together, and though the visit was short it was quite heartwarming.

The next day, curses started popping off left and right. Tulany could now run at twice her speed, but only while loping on all fours. In addition, she grew paw pads on her hands and feet, and also suffered disadvantage on saves against fear effects. Aurelius vomited up spider swarms, and had to eat ten pounds of meat for breakfast to keep the swarm from eating him from the inside out. Soraya now had the ability to cast Seething Eyebane, and it gave her crippling migranes until she used the spell. Kharim's curse was delayed until next level, but he still ended up adding to the confusion of the morning when he botched his Binder check, making a bad pact with his vestige and being forced to speak in half-truths. All in all, it was a heck of a breakfast :smalltongue:

After the chaos had settled, the PCs split up to do their own thing for a while, whether that was visit faction headquarters, wander the city, or just go back to bed. Aurelius and Kharim traveled together, since their factions were close allies. Aurelius was given a magic watch for giving his report to the Fraternity of Order. The watch always kept track of time in Sigil, so that no matter where in the multiverse he was, he always knew how long he had been away in real-time. The two lads then went to the Harmonium headquarters, hoping to visit with Medea and ask her about the Order of the Chalice. They were told by the Hardheads that Medea was going around Sigil, using her status as a local celebrity to drum up support for the Ascension of Fortitude. The lads tracked her down to the Great Bazaar, where they carefully avoided getting conned into buying anything useless. They did purchase a few bowls made of cooled lava from the Elemental Plane of Fire, since the merchant selling them was an honest woman and it felt wrong not to do at least a little shopping while at the Bazaar.

While there, somebody pulled a pretty blatant snatch-and-grab, stealing Kharim's violin. Naturally, the boys chased after the thief. While running after the fellow, they passed by an alley where they saw Medea, wearing only her fancy black dress but still armed with her holy avenger, getting savagely attacked by a trio of green abishai and a gelugon baatezu. Kharim and Aurelius immediately rushed to her aid, though Aurelius sent Baldwin to keep chasing the pickpocket. Strangely, as soon as they were engaged with the fiends, the pickpocket simply Teleported away.

The lads got a surprise round on the fiends, and threw the abishai into disarray with spells and maneuvers. However, the gelugon was not to be dissuaded from its task. It grabbed Medea by the throat, tore her swordarm completely off, and dumped her into the razorvine like so much garbage. The baatezu then Teleported away while the lads were busy trying to keep their dear friend from bleeding to death.

Baldwin was sent to fetch Kai and Eirik, Aurelius ran to get Wooly Cupgrass (an NPC I had honestly thought they had forgotten about, but I'm glad they didn't), and Kharim did his best to keep Medea stable until Wooly could get there. The bariaur helped the lads extract her from the razorvine without causing further injury, and set to work on her shoulder. By the time the rest of the party arrived, a sizeable crowd had gathered around the alley, though like in any big city most everyone just stood around and watched. Kai got her healed enough to stop taking damage from blood loss, Kharim gathered her in his arms, and the party headed straight for Harmonium headquarters.
TL;DR - A lot of feelgood, a little weird, and a sprinkle of tragedy.

JadedDM
2021-11-06, 04:39 PM
Hopefully Medea is okay.

SleepyShadow
2021-11-12, 10:18 AM
The Fires of Dis - Part One
In which the Heroes are charged with recovering a dear object that has been lost.
When the party arrived at the Harmonium headquarters, Medea was rushed to the faction clerics to have her injuries treated. Meanwhile, the party was taken directly to Factol Sarin to give their report. Sarin explained that both Medea and her Holy Avenger were vital symbols for the ascension of the gate-town Fortitude. Harmonium bards had been working overtime for months spreading stories of Medea's fight for good and justice down in Baator, and she had become a hero in the eyes of the Fortitude citizens. Without her, and without her sword, the people's faith would be shaken, and Fortitude wouldn't be able to ascend into Arcadia. Factor Sarin tasked the PCs with recovering the holy avenger, but he wanted them to wait a few days. His plan was to send a squad of soldiers in ahead of them, both to verify the sword's location, and to make the Baatezu assume the Harmonium would keep trying to recover the sword through brute force. In the meantime, he asked Kharim and Kai to watch over Medea in case the fiends tried to come back and finish her off. He also provided Aurelius a mentor to retrain his dead warlock levels into levels of marshal. While those three were doing that, Daegan's time was split between his work at the Bleak Cabal gatehouse and keeping Barrok out of trouble. Eirik spent his time with Sharwyn, and Tulany got pressured into going out for ladies' night with Nadia the cat burglar and Detective Montoya.

Shenanigans ensued, including a half-orc named Dr. Jar Jar and a training montage in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, but the four days passed without another attempt on Medea's life. The party was summoned back to Sarin's chamber, where he told them that his soldiers had confirmed the sword had been taken to Dispater's Iron Tower. He gave the party a few magic items to help them find and recover the holy avenger and promised them 10,000 gp when they returned with it. He instructed them to go to the gate-town Ribcage and seek out a woman named Shandrala, who would provide them a with a purse of gems and help them get into Baator through one of the safer routes. The PCs agreed, but before they headed to Ribcage, they stopped in to say goodbye to Medea. When they told her where they were going, she suggested talking to the Order of the Chalice on Greyhawk first. The Knights of the Chalice made frequent forays against Dispater's Iron Tower, and she thought they might have some useful information. The party liked the idea, so they hopped through the nearest portal to Greyhawk and headed to the legendary Free City.

There was a festival of sorts going on when they arrived. It was a celebration in honor of the famed hero Rigby. The PCs took in the colorful rough-and-tumble celebration, sought out directions from the locals, and came to the conclusion that even Greyhawk seemed small when compared to Sigil. They headed to the Order of the Chalice, where they took full advantage of Soraya's puppy-dog eyes to weasel their way inside. Kharim rattled his bone-box to a priest that the PCs knew the chalice was a girl and not a cup, and they were immediately hauled in to see the Lightning Councilor. The Councilor explained that knowledge about the chalice's true identity was top secret, and demanded to know how a bunch of second-rate planeswalkers knew anything about it.

"Mordenkainen," they all said.

The Lightning Councilor was enraged that the archmage continued to bungle things up in his quest for "balance" across the multiverse. When the PCs told him they were heading to Dis, and since they already knew half of the story anyway, the Lightning Councilor told them the dark of things. The Chalice was the daughter of Heironeous, and her mother was one of his attendant devas. The angel-goddess had been kidnapped by agents of Hextor and locked away in the Iron Tower, where she had been held in durance vile for the last 1290 years. The Order of the Chalice had been founded with the express purpose of rescuing her, but as the years wore on and failures mounted, the Order lost most of its information about her. They no longer knew her name, nor did they know anything about her powers or domains. The only things they knew for sure was that the silver chalice was her holy symbol, and that she was still alive. They could confirm this by praying directly to her symbol for spells rather than offering prayers to Heironeous. They only received simple magic when they prayed this way, but it was enough to know she had not yet succumbed to the lower planes.

As far as information about the Iron Tower, the Lightning Councilor could only tell them that the tower always appeared within line of sight, and it always stayed a city block away. He didn't know how to breach the tower, because none of the Knights of the Chalice had ever been able to reach it. He thought perhaps a fiend might be able to get them inside, but the honor and purity of the knights forbid them from consorting with the Baatezu. Having no such restrictions, the PCs considered contacting their old pal Oja, the barbezu knight. He still owed them a favor, and this seemed like a good way to cash it in.

The PCs then headed for an inn called The Sill, which had portals connected to all of the gate-towns on the Outlands. On their way, they bumped into a Free League member named Kerris, who offered to help them out in Ribcage. However, the PCs caught on that he was just trying to weasel information out of them about their mission, so they politely declined his insistent offer and headed straight to the inn. They were met by a tiefling woman named Cedlie, who gave them the key to a room upstairs. When examined, the key's handle was made out of rib-bone. Cedlie didn't know why it had to be that way, she just knew it worked. The party went up to their room and fumbled about as they tried to get the key to work. With some gentle encouragement from Cedlie, they figured out the portal was in the window, and so the party was off to Ribcage.
TL;DR - It's a fetch-quest and a rescue mission all rolled into one!

JadedDM
2021-11-12, 11:12 PM
I never really thought about it before, but I did some research, and the population of Greyhawk City is about 160k while the population of Sigil at any given time is usually around 250k, so I suppose Sigil really is much bigger than Greyhawk City.

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ImmenseFearlessCockatiel-size_restricted.gif

SleepyShadow
2021-11-18, 02:40 PM
I never really thought about it before, but I did some research, and the population of Greyhawk City is about 160k while the population of Sigil at any given time is usually around 250k, so I suppose Sigil really is much bigger than Greyhawk City.

It makes sense that the center of the multiverse is a bigger city than the capital of a country. Sigil locals need the extra space to store their snarkiness lol

The Fires of Dis - Part Two
In which our Heroes seek aid from the citizens of Ribcage to ease their passage through a dark and evil plane.
The portal from The Sill took the party to the mountains just outside of Ribcage. When they got closer, they saw the town got its name from the earthen spikes which hung over the city like ribs. They had to pay the guards at the gate 10 gp each just to get in, and they were given passes which were only good for a week. The guard was kind enough to inform them they needed to keep the passes on them at all times, lest the Blackguards inside the city imprison, fine, or execute them. Once inside Ribcage, the party found almost all of the citizens were tieflings of the infernal variety. They also found most of these tieflings were barely able to scrape by, between the high cost of living and the constant shakedown for "taxes" by the city's militia.

Rather than trusting a local tout to show them around, Tulany convinced a vulture to show them the way to the Gymnasium of Steam. On the way, they encountered a few bits of city color, such as:

A street urchin selling expired visitor passes.
A small band of priestesses of Asmodeus proclaiming the superiority of the baatezu.
Two of the five city senators arguing about whether to increase taxes or to keep them the same.
Posters which threatened a food delivery strike to the common folk unless a senator's demands were met.
Five Blackguards shaking down a grocer for "unpaid taxes".

This last one got the party to intervene on her behalf, and they paid the guards to stop looting her fruit stand. Daegan also gave the poor woman enough money to leave the city and move to Sigil. The grocer, a tiefling woman named Tora, thanked him profusely, and promised to work hard to pay him back one day. She then fled Ribcage, never to return.

When the party arrived at the Gymnasium of Steam, they found it was a ritzy bath house built around a network of natural hot springs. They met with Shandrala, a big, beautiful, blue-skinned tiefling who immediately started flirting with Eirik. The Viking awkwardly turned her down to keep Sharwyn from disowning him. Shandrala took them into her private bath, where she gave them the bag of gems Factol Sarin had promised them. She asked the party to send him her regards, and asked if he was still married. The party didn't question how Shandrala and Sarin knew each other, though they had a few ideas. They told her what the mission was, and she suggested hiring a guide to help them across Baator. She made three suggestions - hire a guide from her (reliable but expensive), hire a priestess of Asmodeus (cheap but untrustworthy), or get help from a local spice merchant who was looking to set up shop in Dis. The PCs opted for the third option, and set off to the market district.

I think they were only a little disappointed when they found out the merchant was actually selling herbs and spices, and not drugs :smalltongue:

The merchant, Dermont, had letters of introduction for the PCs to show the fiends, as well as free samples of spices for any who were curious. He offered them 5% of his first year's profits if they were successful in setting up a shop in Dis, and they agreed to the terms. He also offered to let them take his apprentice with them, to help with wheeling and dealing, but the party declined, not wanting to risk the poor girl's life in Hell (she was only a 1st level bard, so they made the right choice).

They headed to the portal, paid the guards to let them through, and stepped out into Avernus. As soon as they stepped through, they were stopped by a cornugon, but the party showed them their paperwork, and bribed him a pinch of onion powder and a little gem from their bag. The fiend let them pass without trouble. Sharwyn had made a rough map while the party had been taking care of Medea in Sigil, so she suggested going to Tiamat's lair, and from there take the portal into Dis. Tulany about had an aneurism when she saw the route was called "The Road of Good Intentions".

The party hadn't traveled far, when they ran afoul of a massive army led by General Bel. The party hid along the side of the road, but they were spotted by a few fiendish scouts. Fortunately, the rest of the army passed them by without notice, but the party was forced to fight about a half dozen black abishai. The fight went pretty well for the PCs, but the fiends concentrated all of their firepower on Sharwyn, and the party had to keep the abishai from flying off with her and tearing her to pieces. The fight ended with the PCs realizing that having an abyssal tiefling in their ranks was going to cause them problems here in Baator.
TL;DR - Ribcage is one Hell of a place :smallwink:

JadedDM
2021-11-19, 05:35 PM
I mean, hey, wars have been fought over spices, so they are a pretty big deal.

SleepyShadow
2021-12-01, 08:49 PM
I mean, hey, wars have been fought over spices, so they are a pretty big deal.

It's true. I just hope they don't go full East India Trading Company :smalltongue: Also, I'm sorry for the delay in updating the journal. Holiday trips are terrible for keeping a regular schedule.

Fires of Dis - Part Three
In which our Heroes cross the perilous wasteland of Avernus in search of the doorway to Dis.
The party trekked across Baator and met some of the colorful denizens there. An amnizu sic'd his hunting yeth hounds on the party, and only agreed to let them pass if they fought the hounds off. The amnizu was entertained by the party's dedication to protecting Sharwyn, and so he let them pass without further trouble. Later, the party ran across a group of ozyluths looking for deserters from the Blood War. As it turned out, a bit of jink and a pinch of cayenne powder was good enough to dissuade the devils from pressganging the PCs. Another encounter led the party to cross paths with some spinagons who were trying to herd some lemures to some far-off destination.

I was a little surprised nobody made any cowboy jokes :smallbiggrin:

The PCs decided to help the spinagons out when some of the lemures got loose from the herd. They were drawn to Sharwyn's delicious abyssal blood, but the party just used Eirik's ice hound and Aurelius' noisy robot bird to lure the runaway lemures back to the spinagons. The baatezu ranchers were quite grateful for the party's help. When the party explained what they were doing in Baator, one of the spinagons told the PCs he had a friend in Dis who went by the name of Heji, a powerful tiefling who controlled most of the market trade. He offered to take a jar of spices to Dis ahead of the party to help make a good introduction for them. The party was a little skeptical about giving him a full jar, but they eventually agreed, since having an ally in Dis seemed like a good idea. I don't remember what they gave the spinagon exactly, but he took the jar and flew away at top speed while the other cowpokes led their cattle out to pasture.

At one point, the party came upon a field of half-buried dead bodies. Amongst their number were the corpses of the Harmonium soldiers who had been sent ahead of them. While the PCs were investigating the bodies, an invisible baatezu struck up a casual conversation with the party. I shan't divulge what the fiend was, since, y'know, my group reads this journal :smallwink: Anyway, the fiend introduced himself as Kri'ik, and he offered "great wealth" to the party in exchange for stealing the holy avenger. Kri'ik admitted he wanted to embarrass Dispater, and perhaps even usurp him. The PCs were understandably suspicious of an invisible scheming fiend, but they made some noncommittal agreement to do what they had already planned to do. Kri'ik promised to contact them with further information once they got to Dis.

After the suspicious meeting, the party arrived at the pit of maggots outside of Tiamat's lair. The pit was guarded by a powerful looking red abishai. As an aside, one of my players (Aurelius) is running Tyranny of Dragons for a different group, and he used his meta-knowledge to great effect. By that, I mean he did a great job convincing the rest of the group not to fight the devil-dragon :smallbiggrin:
The red abishai demanded a full jar of spices to allow the group to pass. When they gave it to him, he threw it in the maggot pit just to see what effect it would have on the burgeoning fiends. He offered to keep meticulous notes, but the party just wanted to get across the pit without being eaten. The abishai commanded the maggots to hold still long enough for the party to cross. Eirik carried Sharwyn across in his arms just to be on the safe side.

Once inside, the party followed Tulany as she guided them through the tunnels with her portal sensing ability. This allowed them to bypass the dragons and head straight for the portal. They even ignored the Chamber of Greed! Oh well, maybe next time. The portal to Dis was guarded by a trio of spider golems, but they were programmed only to attack those who failed to activate the portal correctly. The only way to enter Dis was to crawl through the portal on hands and knees, with head bowed in supplication. A bit humiliating, but the party wasn't going to let that stop them. They crawled through the portal without trouble, and we ended the session as they at last arrived in Dis.
TL;DR - Not every baatezu is a scheming mastermind. Some just want a fistful of onion powder, and they'll do anything for a few snuffs more.

Cerrita
2021-12-02, 12:49 PM
Once inside, the party followed Tulany as she guided them through the tunnels with her portal sensing ability. This allowed them to bypass the dragons and head straight for the portal. They even ignored the Chamber of Greed! Oh well, maybe next time.

DM: There's a doorway to the left emitting a warm, glowing light. Wanna check it out?
Tulany: Ominous. What the heck, I'll poke around the doorway and take a peek. What's inside?
DM: Mountains of glittering gold, shimmering jewels, treasure beyond imagining. More than you could spend in lifetimes.
Tulany: ...
DM: Just laying there, unguarded. Feel free to help yourself.
Tulany: :smalleek:
Kharim: Hey Tulany, what's in there?
Tulany: ... Nothing we need to concern ourselves with. Moving on.
DM: You don't want the treasure and you don't want to fight three ancient dragons. No fun at all. :smalltongue:

SleepyShadow
2021-12-10, 03:38 PM
Fires of Dis - Part Four
In which our Heroes find the city of Dis to be as dangerous as the inhabitants, and the Iron Tower is breached.
The party headed to the city of Dis, following a winding road of skulls half-buried in the earth. Along the way, they were met by Kri'ik, the invisible speaker from before. No longer hiding, he appeared to them as a handsome but plainly dressed human. He laid out his terms to the party - he wanted them to steal the holy avenger from the Iron Tower, and in exchange he'd give them a ruby the size of an elephant's head. He also reiterated that he wanted to embarrass Dispater and bring him down a peg or two. The party was reluctant to make a deal, but eventually agreed once he promised to let them keep the sword as long as they held up their end of the bargain. Both parties also agreed to a pact of nonaggression, and that seemed to ease the players' minds a bit. Once negotiations were over, Kri'ik gave them a Flower of Holes, which acted as a dispenser of single-use portable holes. He told them it was the only way to move from room to room inside the tower, as there were no doors anywhere to be found. He then disappeared, and the party finished its trip to Dis.

They took in the sights and sounds of the city for a little while before they made contact with their old pal Oja. He was stuck working as a bodyguard for a comely erinyes named Sauraphine, who was overseeing a work crew of petitioners. One of the workers turned out to be a living human named Rubio, and the party felt sorry for him. Kharim was looking to start a fight, but Sauraphine talked him down, saying Rubio had come with her willingly. Naturally, the party asked him about that.

"When she said she'd take me back to her place, I thought she meant in Waterdeep!" Rubio said.

The party bribed Sauraphine to release Rubio at the cost of two magic items, which was just some vendor trash the party had rattling around in the bottom of their bag of holding. Satisfied, she let Rubio go free, and allowed Oja to accompany the party for the next 48 hours so he could pay off his debt to them. She didn't want her bodyguard to be indebted to anyone but her, after all. After they took their leave of her, the party at last explained to Oja what they were really doing in Dis.

The poor fiend almost had a heart attack.

The PCs stuck to their guns, and Oja had no choice but to help them get inside the Iron Tower. Before they could, they were met by a group of tiefling thugs who asked if they were the spice merchants. When the party admitted that they were, the thugs invited them to speak with Heji to hammer out business negotiations. Heji was a tiefling with control over most of the market district, and he told them they would have to pay 500 gp up front as a "new business" fee, plus 60% of the profits from the sale of the spices. Kharim did some wheeling and dealing, and eventually Heji agreed to only a 200 gp fee plus 40% of the profits. With both parties equally unhappy, it was concluded as a successful negotiation.

At last, the party headed for the Iron Tower. Oja told them non-baatezu could only reach the tower by finding it without looking. To facilitate this, he shrouded the whole team in Darkness and led them to the front gates. The party had an awkward encounter with some cornugans at the gatehouse, one of which was named Baalug. He proved to be one of Oja's former lovers, and when he heard about the barbazu's predicament with the PCs, he had a good laugh at Oja's expense, but let the group into the courtyard. Once inside, the party showed Oja the Flower of Holes they had, and he told them they could move around the tower by writing the name of the room they wanted to go to before plucking it from the stem. Since they didn't know any of the room names, Oja told them he had a friend on the inside who could help them move around the tower. Her name was Lilian, and she was an erinyes who had served as a scouting captain on an important expedition to the Prime. Her success had earned her a promotion of sorts, and now she served as a ceremonial guard in the Iron Tower. The party used the flower to navigate to where Lilian was, and they told her what they were doing before she could attack.

Lilian was puzzled by their honesty, but agreed to help them navigate the tower. In exchange, the party had to agree to take a friend of hers out of Baator. This friend as a very special alu-fiend named Janelle, with whom Lilian had a close working relationship. However, she didn't tell the party what made this particular alu-fiend so special. The party agreed to her terms, and Lilian told them she would arrange for Janelle to meet them at a portal of their choosing. Once the bargain was struck, Lilian told them the chalice was held in "durance vile" while the holy avenger was held in Dispater's personal study. The party was understandably worried about running into the archfiend, but Lilian assured them the study was currently empty. The party figured it would be their best chance, so they wrote the room name in Infernal on one of the petals and stuck it to the wall. It acted as a portal and teleported the group directly there.

The study was unguarded, and the holy avenger hung from a peg on the wall, the skeletal remains of Medea's hand still clutching its hilt. The party found no traps or wards, so they took the sword down from the wall. As soon as it left the peg, Dispater and 27 of his most powerful minions Teleported into the room. The party panicked, and there was a bit of a hot-potato game played with the holy avenger as Kharim, Aurelius, and Daegan scrambled to get it in the magic sheath the Harmonium had given them.

Dispater laughed at their antics, and assured the party he meant them no harm. He was glad to be rid of the holy avenger, as it had caused him nothing but trouble since a group of ambitious fiends brought it to him as a present. No fiend could touch the sword without getting blasted with holy energy, so it was more of a workplace hazard than anything else. Of course, the party had broken into his house and connived with some of his minions, and Dispater insisted reparations had to be paid for such trespass. He demanded each party member give him a single hair. The whole party was relieved to find the archfiend so amiable, and most of the party was won over by his deep voice and fabulous fashion sense (http://art-assorty.ru/uploads/posts/2014-10/1414122178_000003_disp.jpg). Only Kharim and Soraya was upset by the notion of striking a bargain with Dispater, but eventually the siblings consented, and everyone in the party gave him a strand of hair. The party then asked him about Chalice. Dispater dismissed his bodyguards before he spoke further.

He explained that Graz'zt had snuck into his tower and abducted the angel. He had taken her back to his realm in the Abyss, the triple lair of Aza'grat. Dispater had kept her abduction a secret from everyone involved in her original kidnapping, even Hextor. Only Dispater and Asmodeus knew what had befallen her. Dispater was sure Graz'zt treated her far worse than she had ever fared in Baator. He asked the party to rescue Chalice from Aza'grat, and swore them to secrecy about her being taken from him. In exchange, he gave them one of twelve magic cups he regularly allowed the Order of the Chalice to "rescue" from his tower. The party agreed, and so with a holy avenger and a magic cup in hand, Dispater teleported them to a portal back to Ribcage.

They were met by a group of barbazu pulling a small cage behind them. Inside the cramped little cage was Janelle the alu-fiend, an alabaster-colored woman with four wings - two feathered and two batlike wings. A sign on the cage read "Scragged for Good Behavior". The barbazu dropped the cage at the party's feet and walked away. Daegan set to work opening the lock, and Janelle was soon free. Before they could ask her anything, Kri'ik appeared before them once again. He was no longer disguised as a human, but in his true form - that of a pit fiend. He was also accompanied by the pincer-clawed gelugon that had torn Medea's arm off. Kri'ik demanded the party hand over the holy avenger, and he'd let them live. When the party argued that he had agreed to let them keep it, he reminded them the bargain only held up if they stole the sword. Since they had been given the sword, and paid for it no less, the agreement was nullified. He moved to attack, but Dispater appeared between the two sides, and was appalled by Kri'ik's shoddy attempt at betrayal. He stripped the pit fiend of all the powers granted by his station, and told the party that many places paid a premium for the jawbone of a pit fiend. The archfiend then teleported away again. The party decided to just bolt through the portal to Ribcage and let Kri'ik fight his own sidekick, who immediately turned on him now that he was a pit fiend in form only.

The party stopped in Ribcage only long enough to give the business paperwork to Dermont the spice merchant, and then it was back to Sigil. They left Janelle with Fall-From-Grace, who promised to take care of the frightened alu-fiend until the PCs returned. Aurelius met with Rowena's uncle Maddock, and the two of them devised blueprints for an artificial arm to give to Medea once The Ascension was complete. Maddock promised to work on it while Aurelius was gone, but invited him to help finish the project once he got back. With that done, the party hurried off to Fortitude, and found the town abuzz with activity. Everyone there was doing their utmost to maintain order to even the smallest degree. Not a cobblestone nor flowerbed was uneven or unkempt. Most of this looked to be a good thing for the town, but the hard marching Harmonium soldiers coupled with some unnerving graffiti ("Be Good or Be Dead") let the party know not everything was quite so wholesome as it first appeared. They met with Tonat Shar, who took the holy avenger and had it authenticated by the dwarven priests who had forged it. Once it was verified to be the real deal, the party was rewarded and invited to attend The Ascension ceremony, which was to take place in twelve hours. Until then, they could do as they pleased.

The first thing they did was find Medea, who was being kept under careful watch by a half-dozen Harmonium soldiers while she sat otherwise alone in a city park. She was overjoyed to see them again, and relieved to hear they had recovered her holy avenger. The sword had become just as important to The Ascension as she was, and felt sorry she hadn't been able to help the party in its rescue. She was also saddened that she had no way to properly thank them. However, the party would hear none of it, and were glad to help out their friend. Medea told them Fortitude's people were on edge, and even the slightest disruption to the orderly way of the town was met with harsher punishment than strictly necessary. She wanted to go assure the people she was alright, but she was under strict orders not to speak with anyone until after the ceremony was complete. She asked the party to go around town in her stead and try to allay peoples' fears.

The party headed to a once-rowdy tavern called The Tears of Tyr, and heard more unsettling rumors from the locals about how harsh things had been lately. Hoping to lighten the mood, the party convinced Sharwyn to play some music for the somber crowd. She needed little prompting, of course, and soon she was up on the bar counter, dancing and playing her accordion while singing a bawdy sea shanty. A few Harmonium soldiers came by to stop the sounds of happiness, but Kharim pulled rank on them, and Aurelius convinced them of music's orderly nature. The guards left, but only after Kharim agreed to arrest Sharwyn if she got too suggestive in her dancing. The party enthused with the crowd, and soon the people had relaxed a bit.

The session ended with a horn sounding from the town square, announcing it was time for The Ascension to begin.
TL;DR - I don't want to draw parallels between Dispater and Ted Bundy, but apparently the devious charm is there.

JadedDM
2021-12-10, 09:13 PM
Wow, the Hardheads criminalized singing and dancing. Where's Kevin Bacon when you need him?

SleepyShadow
2021-12-15, 04:13 PM
Wow, the Hardheads criminalized singing and dancing. Where's Kevin Bacon when you need him?

My guess is he's with the Society of Sensation :smallbiggrin:

Fires of Dis - Conclusion
In which our Heroes must resolve the differing fates of a cunning fiend, a faithless paladin, and a shifting gate-town.
The party had front row seats to the Ascension ceremony as the entire town gathered around the portal to Arcadia. People were overjoyed when they saw Medea alive and well, flanked by a pair of dwarven priests, though there was some nervous talk about why her arm was missing. Because the party was worried about Medea's safety, Aurelius cast Arcane Eye to watch the ceremony with a bird's eye view and to keep a lookout for any magical trickery. Medea began to give her speech, encouraging the townsfolk to join her in hope and solidarity. Fortitude began to ascend. Halfway through the process, Aurelius spotted a little mote of red light emerge from the holy avenger and enter into Medea's head. Because he was viewing the scene through his arcane eye, he was the only one to see it. He warned the rest of the party, and they started toward Medea as she began to change her tone. Before they could reach her, Medea slew the two dwarves and disappeared. The town stopped its ascension, trapped in between the Outlands and Arcadia. Daegan and Aurelius made some great skill checks and realized that planar travel in or out was currently impossible, so Medea couldn't have gotten far. They didn't have to look for her though, since she reappeared at the head of an army of the dead. The town's entire graveyard had been animated as zombies, and the Harmonium soldiers moved to combat the undead while the PCs had to deal with Medea.

The party nerds once again made some fantastic skill checks and realized Medea was under the influence of an extremely powerful fiend of possession. They got some good hits in on her, but her damage output was intense. She managed to drop Daegan in just a couple of hits, and the fiend inside her was able to cast Fireball on her bonus action. Kai was a superstar in the fight, blowing all of his resources to keep the party upright. Kharim rescued some trapped townsfolk from a Wall of Fire, which gave Aurelius the opportunity to rally the townsfolk into not losing hope. Tulany made his job easier by slapping Medea with Protection from Good and Evil, which while not powerful enough to expel the fiend, did grant Medea advantage on her saves to resist it. Between that and the townsfolk chanting for her to remember who she was, she managed to suppress the fiend to a degree. She still fought against the party like a wild beast, but her will was strong enough to keep the fiend from casting spells or speaking through her. The party chipped away at her defenses, and just when the line of Harmonium soldiers was about to break, the party dropped Medea low enough to force the fiend out of her body. Thinking fast, Daegan trapped the fiend in a silver mirror before it could possess anyone else. The mirror revealed it as a pit fiend, confirming the party's suspicions that it was a Baatezu trick.

The Harmonium soldiers dragged Medea up for an immediate trial, which the party thought was incredibly unfair since she had been possessed and was barely conscious after the beating she had taken. There was no reasoning with the soldiers, and so Medea was hauled to the town square and clapped in manacles. She told the party she had committed a crime and needed to be punished. Kharim convinced the townsfolk to defend her, and as the party argued for Medea's innocence, the town began to shift once again. The Ascension was complete, and the Harmonium soldiers took it as a sign that the party was right about the situation. They released her into the party's custody just as Factol Sarin and a pair of trumpet archons emerged from Arcadia to greet the newly ascended town. The city was kind of a wreck, and the PCs explained to him what had happened. Sarin believed the party and held no ill-will toward Medea, however, his word was not the final one.

An agent of Bahamut appeared before Medea and stripped her of her status as a paladin. The party and Factol Sarin both argued against this, but the agent of Bahamut was indifferent. The closest thing to mercy shown was that Bahamut would allow Medea to go on a dangerous quest to atone for her "misdeeds". Once the agent was gone, Factol Sarin started to ask the party for help, but they cut him off and promised to aid Medea in whatever the quest was. They felt it was entirely unfair that Medea was getting punished so severely for something she had no control over, and Sarin agreed with them. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do.

The party took Medea, now powerless and armed with an unresponsive holy sword, back to Sigil and went to the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts for some rest and relaxation. Cassius and Tulany went to speak with Spiral Hal'oight and finally collected their payment for the job they had done for him way back when. He then offered them a new job, but wanted to speak with the whole party before detailing any information. The two agreed to bring the rest of the group back the next day. Eirik took Sharwyn out barhopping, and Aurelius spent the day working with Maddock on Medea's new prosthetic arm. Daegan paid off the party's outstanding bill with Fall-From-Grace, and then spent some time working with Barrock and Daria down at the Bleak Cabal asylum. The rest of the crew spent the evening checking in on the girls at the BSIL and making sure Medea was doing alright.

That night, Aurelius tried to use his Lucid Dreaming skill, but couldn't manage anything but realize that he was dreaming. Inspired by his failure, Kai, Daegan, and Rowena tried their hand at it as well, and all succeeded in traipsing from their own dreams over to Aurelius to say hello. He didn't find this very amusing, so he forced himself awake and booted them back to their own dreams. Kai then went dreamwalking again, this time to check in on the rest of the crew. When he got to Kharim, he found the poor lad in the middle of a seizure brought on by the worsening of his curse. The good doctor raced to his bedroom and managed to stabilize the boy. Tulany heard the ruckus and did what she could to help. After a solid Medicine check, Kai realized the curse would end up killing his friends sooner or later. He didn't show it, but it definitely bothered him. Kharim was kept under watch for the rest of the night, and we ended the session there.
TL;DR - Dispater and Asmodeus were watching the entire time through that holy symbol Daegan was wearing. I bet they were eating popcorn, too.

JadedDM
2021-12-16, 12:15 AM
Poor Medea can't catch a break. But then again, considering her namesake, that's probably to be expected.

SleepyShadow
2021-12-21, 01:48 PM
Poor Medea can't catch a break. But then again, considering her namesake, that's probably to be expected.

Things won't be getting any better for her, either. At least she got to take a couple days off while the party did a side gig.

Strange Bedfellows
In which our heroes seek errant cargo of a most delicate nature, and learn even the forces of good may walk in the shadows.
The party went to Spiral's house to find out what he wanted them to do. He told them he had lost a shipment of "Celestial spices" and the buyer was eager to have the goods found and returned to their proper place. He offered the party a handsome purse of 10,000 gp as a reward, and even gave them an extra 1,000 gp to cover their traveling expenses and to cover any bribes they might have to pay. When the party saw the "travel expenses" were all in gems, they started to get a bit suspicious. Aurelius suspected Spiral was lying to them about the nature of the goods, and Spiral admitted the shipment was actually several crates of weapons forged on the upper planes. They party agreed to do the job, and Spiral was eager to help them on their way. He wrote a letter of introduction to let them meet with his associate, Miaoli the Just, and gave them a portkey for the gate to Glorium, which was a town on the Outlands nearest where the shipment went missing. It was also the gate-town to Asgard, which got Eirik quite excited, since he was a priest of the Norse pantheon and a big Viking lad. Kai was also excited about going to Glorium, but he was predictably more reserved in his enthusiasm. The party grabbed Sharwyn and Barrock, and it was off to the Outlands!

The gate dropped them off just a short hike outside of town, and once in Glorium they spent a while just taking in the sights and exploring the city. It was a decent-sized burg of about 20,000 people, and a squadron of seven beautiful but deadly Valkyries kept the peace. After they had located the best taverns in town, they met up with Miaoli. She was a dark-haired tiefling with very angular features, but the only real sign of her Infernal blood was a pair of horns so small they were still under the skin on her forehead. Tulany correctly deduced Miaoli was several generations removed from her fiendish ancestry. Miaoli used a magical gem to verify the authenticity of the party's letter of introduction, and then she gave them the real chant.

The shipment of Celestial weapons, forged right in Asgard, had gone missing along a mountain pass which led to a secret gate to Avernus. She had been out to the pass to investigate, but she hadn't found a trace of the shipment or the guards who were with it. The party suggested taking a dummy shipment of empty crates out to the mountain pass in the hopes of luring out whomever or whatever had waylaid the weapons. Miaoli thought it was a great idea, and provided crates, wagons, horses, and even a few "disposable berks" hired from one of the taverns. Thus prepared, the party set out.

They made it about halfway through the mountain pass when Baldwin the robot-bird spotted fifteen hard-luck brigands hiding in the rocks. The party started the fight before the brigands were ready, and they put the pressure on the baddies early in the fight. There was a little confusion why the bandits were soaking up damage like sponges and resisting lightning damage, but the party reckoned it was just a gang of barbarians and kept on fighting. After all, the bandits were not hitting very hard when they managed to hit at all. Kai caught one with his Spirit Guardians, and the bandit botched his Concentration check on the Disguise Self spell he had running. That's when all hell broke loose. The bandit was revealed to actually be a mezzoloth, a foot soldier for the yugoloths. With his disguise broken, the others dropped their spells as well, revealing that all of the bandits were mezzoloths. As a demonstration that they had been holding back on the party, they started casting Cloudkill, and threatened to dump a dozen more on the party unless they surrendered. Kharim bargained for the release of the surviving mercenaries, and the mezzoloths agreed to let them go. The fiends then encircled the party and herded them to a cave hidden in the mountains.

Inside the cave, the party was confronted by an ultraloth, who caused the cavern to spin around him with the party inside. It was a disorienting trick, but it was an effective display of his power. The ultraloth instructed the party to tell the archon to stop shipping weapons to the Blood War. He wanted any further weapons shipments to be sent to the yugoloths, who would then decide the dispensation of arms. When the party mentioned that Spiral was an aasimar, the ultroloth got rather cranky. He clarified that he had, in fact, meant "Archon", and that Spiral was of no consequence. He told the party the archon had seven days to reply, then spun the cavern back around to let the party leave. Kharim was quite fed up with having to make deals with fiends, especially after what happened last time the party involved itself in the politics of the Blood War, but the rest of the party was intrigued about the business going on. They returned to Miaoli, who was glad to see them safe. The surviving mercenaries had told her what had happened, and she was surprised the mezzoloths had let them live. The party told her about what the ultraloth said, she suggested talking to Spiral about it. However, the party wanted to cut him out of the deal.

Miaoli didn't know anything about archons, but she had a meeting with a courier from Mount Celestia the next day, and invited the party to speak with him after the meeting. The courier's name was Braus, and he was a cleric of Mitra. He was also a member of the Fraternity of Order, and apparently one of the nicest Guvners in the whole faction. The party agreed to speak with him, and retired to one of the taverns for a few drinks and to recover from the battle. The party messed around with Lucid Dreaming again that night. Aurelius managed to do a bit of dreamwalking, so he visited Rowena in her dreams for a quiet evening together. Kharim, on the other hand, decided to check in on what Soraya had been up to. He got bombarded with images of The Yellow Sign of Hastur for his trouble. Coupled with a bad binding pact the following morning, there were some breakfast time hijinks. Kharim drew the sign on a napkin and showed it to Daegan, who showed it to Tulany, who showed it to Aurelius, and on it went until Kai cleared the whole mess up with several casts of Remove Curse. Sharwyn mentioned she knew about a play called The King in Yellow and how it supposedly cursed those who read past Act One, but she didn't like to get involved in Far Realm nonsense. Fiends were enough trouble, as far as she was concerned.

After the breakfast kerfuffle was settled, the party went to Miaoli's house and met with Braus. The priest explained to the party that the stolen shipment of weapons had been Cursed to cause fiends to covet them and make them fight over them. Braus told the party that after their involvement in Avernus, the tide of the Blood War was shifting back in the favor of the Baatezu. While certainly better than letting the Tanar'ri run amok on the lower planes, the archon Zalatian was concerned about the Baatezu's rapid advance. He had wanted to slow them down with the cursed weapons, as the calmest periods of the Blood War are those when the fiends are at a stalemate. Braus offered to let the party speak directly with Zalatian, but only if they made a modest donation to the church of Mitra. They handed over the bag of gems Spiral had given them, and Braus happily led them to Mount Celestia.

In an ivory tower outside the beautiful town of Goldfire, the party met with the trumpet archon Zalatian XXIII. They explained the situation to the archon and delivered the message from the ultraloth. Zalatian was crushed to learn he had been found out by the fiends, and was at a loss as to what he should do. Daegan used his knowledge of psychology to walk Zalatian through the decision paralysis, and gently coached him into the idea that he should stop shipping weapons altogether. It seems spending time with the Bleak Cabal has been good for the lad :smalltongue:

The party reckoned they weren't going to get paid by Spiral for the job, so they asked Zalatian if he knew of a way to sneak into The Triple Layer of Aza'Grat. The archon didn't, but he knew of an old priest named Father Irynimus who would be able to help them. When Zalatian asked the party why they needed to go there, they told him everything they knew about Chalice. This came as a shock to the archon, as even in Celestia Chalice's existence had been kept hidden. They swore him to secrecy about it, but promised to keep his involvement in the weapons dealing a secret in exchange. Since the information about Aza'Grat was more important to the party than the cash owed, the PCs considered their business with Spiral at an end. Kharim and Aurelius knew selling weapons to fiends was an offense punishable by 20 years hard labor in Sigil, so they resolved to scrag Spiral as soon as they made it back to The Cage. The party decided to treat themselves to some downtime first, and spent the rest of the day hanging out in the beautiful rose-gold town of Goldfire. There, Kharim encountered a lantern archon with the voice of his father.

It's never easy to find out one of your parents died, but I suppose chatting with their spirit in literal Heaven has to be one of the nicest ways to do so.

The party returned to Sigil the next day, and the first stop they made was the Harmonium to pick up a squad of cops to help make the arrest. They chatted with Spiral just long enough to get his guard down, then the Harmonium busted in through every available window. His servants scattered, and Spiral went down with a whimper. He was dragged off to the prisons, and the party gave high-fives all around for a job well done.
TL;DR - It's not often we finish an adventure in a single session!

SleepyShadow
2022-01-05, 06:56 PM
Now that the holidays are over, we return to your regularly scheduled tomfoolery.

The Illuminated Strikes Back
In which our Heroes discover that off-screen villains are still active, and a confrontation is staged.
After a longer than usual period of catching up about various holiday activities, the party met with Father Irynimas Sanuire. He told them he had been sent a dream by an angel (whom the party suspected was Chalice), and the angel sent him visions of the party. He spoke at length about a being called Maeldur Et Kavurik, and that this entity was supposed to be the source of all fiendish planar travel. If the party could slay this creature, it would prevent fiends all across the multiverse from using their Planshift, Gate, or Teleportation abilities. Irynimus suspected that finding this creature would put them on the path to rescuing Chalice from Graz'zt's clutches. He didn't know where Maeldur was, but he was certain one of the libraries in Sigil must have something on it. The party agreed to check in out, but first they went to the Harmonium barracks to make sure Spiral hadn't slipped the blinds.

When they arrived, the Harmonium threw them a small surprise party. The Harmonium had been looking for a way to scrag Spiral for years, and thanks to the party's hard work and Zalatian's testimony, they finally had charges that were going to stick. The party ate cake and drank beer for a while, enjoying the fruits of their labor. After a little while, they went to see Factol Sarin in his office, where he was taking tea with his wife Faith. The party introduced themselves to her, and Sarin offered to help them in whatever way he could. He offered Kharim a promotion, but the young knight declined the offer, since he still wanted to go home after all was said and done. Sarin understood, and suggested instead the promotion be temporary until Medea could atone for her "misdeeds". Kharim agreed, and Sarin and Faith bid the party a warm farewell.

The PCs headed to the Fraternity of Order next, since Aurelius rolled pretty well on a History check to recall a book called Pihnmid's Translation, a handwritten collection of translated excerpts from the legendary Book of Inverted Darkness. This book likely had information on Maeldur, and it gave him an excuse to check in on Rowena and her family. Bad news on that front. Her uncle Maddock was worried sick about her. He told the group that Rowena had gone out on a date with Aurelius the night before, but she had not come back yet. He also told them that Bosh P. Golem had been deactivated; someone had scratched out part of the old elvish on his activation stone, changing the text from "Life" to "Death". The party explained that they had been out of town for the last two days, and they couldn't have been responsible. Aurelius promised to find Rowena, and Maddock promised to look for Pihnmid's Translation.

The next stop was the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts, and when they arrived it was a bloodbath. The girls were all dead. Even Fall From Grace, whose demonic essence was pulled back to the Abyss. Scattered around the brothel were the dead bodies of a handful of Harmonium Grey Guards - the same ones who had betrayed the faction and joined Ashram in The Illuminated, The only survivors of the attack were Medea (just barely) and Janelle (whom Storm Silverhand had died to protect). Soraya was nowhere to be found. Sharwyn was understandably distraught at finding her mother dead in the kitchen. Once the party got Medea conscious and Janelle calmed down, they learned that "Aurelius" had led the Grey Guards into the brothel, claiming it was just a routine inspection. The girls were caught completely off guard by the attack, and only Grace and Marissa the medusa had been able to fight back. During the PCs' search for survivors, they found a letter written in green ink which read "Come to Plague-Mort. Let's finish this." The party raided the cash register and brought Storm and Sharwyn's mother back to life, then headed back to the Harmonium to have Sarin make good on his offer of help. He promised to bring the girls back to life, and only charged them a fraction of what Raise Dead would have otherwise cost.

Aurelius cast Sending to contact Rowena, and was relieved to learn she was still alive. She told him that Green Marvent had lured her out using his illusion magic, and that Nekrothepta wanted to use her to lure Hogakk to Plague-Mort. She didn't know what happened to Soraya, but she could tell from the noise coming from the floor above that she was being held in the cellar of a rowdy tavern. Aurelius promised to find her soon.

The party headed to Plague-Mort, armed to the teeth and spoiling for a fight. It wasn't hard to track down Green Marvent; he was handing out in a tavern he had taken over has his headquarters. The other members of the Illuminated were there as well: Ashram, Pirotess, Nekrothepta, Adair, and the two dozen Grey Guards who were loyal to Ashram. Joining them were Ash Mercury (who wanted to prove he was a better warrior than Cassius), Nappa (who wanted to beat up Kai because he was blue), Vanessa Volker (who wanted revenge against Soraya and Sharwyn for what they did during the one-off horror adventure), Rhellyn (the wolf-girl legion fiend who the party had sent back to the Outlands during their adventure in the Field of Nettles), and Benjamin Birdland (who had never left the Illuminated and had been spying on the party the entire time).

Green Marvent offered the PCs a deal. He wanted the party to go about their business and rescue Chalice, but he wanted them to kill her when they found her. He saw her as nothing more than a bargaining chip in the Blood War, and he wanted to shake things up a bit. In exchange, he offered to release Rowena to them if they agreed, and would release Soraya to them once Chalice was dead. Understandably, the party (especially Kharim) was sick of making deals with the baddies. Weapons were drawn, spells were readied, and The Illuminated prepared to wipe out the PCs once and for all.

However, we wrapped up the session there. Daegan's player was still on holiday, and Cassius' player had a bit too much huckleberry vodka that evening. Will our heroes stand triumphant, or will they fall to Green Marvent and his dastardly schemes? Tune in next time to find out!
TL;DR - Cliffhanger sessions are the best :smallbiggrin:

Cerrita
2022-01-05, 09:02 PM
However, we wrapped up the session there. Daegan's player was still on holiday, and Cassius' player had a bit too much huckleberry vodka that evening.

To be fair to Cassius, everyone had a lot of huckleberry vodka. That bottle should have survived the night, but didn't.

SleepyShadow
2022-01-12, 06:18 PM
The Light Goes Out
In which our Heroes snuff out the Illuminated, and friends are reunited once more.
The battle between the PCs and the Illuminated was a 6 hour slug-fest, and it was one hell of a fight. Since long fights don't make for good journal entries, I'll attempt to hit the highlights of the night.

Cassius dumpstered Ash Mercury without breaking a sweat.
Green Marvent spent most of the fight running around the bar while trying to keep away from Kharim and Tulany.
Sharwyn managed not to die while getting ganged up on by the Rhellyn sisters for almost the entire fight.
Nappa managed to bleed to death because he couldn't pass a single death save.
Kai more than earned his keep this fight. The party likely would've lost without him pulling out all the stops to keep people alive.
Daegan spent half the fight in Banishment, and the other half grappling his little brother Adair.
Ashram went on a smite-fueled rampage after Tulany killed Pirotess while the dark elf was unconscious.
Aurelius more or less soloed Necrothepta, save for a few arrows from Sharwyn.
Green Marvent went down like a chump.
It took the combined efforts of Eirik, Kharim, Kai, and Aurelius to finally bring Ben "Big Band" Birdland down.
Vanessa Volker straight up murdered Barrack. Daegan shed many tears.
Soraya got possessed by Eihort and started attacking the party.

After Vanessa Volker went down, the party allowed Ashram to leave, taking Pirotess and the Rhellyn sisters with him. Ash Mercury swore a brotherhood with Cassius, Aurelius rescued Rowena from the basement, and Kharim stayed with poor Soraya while she vomited up Eihort broodlings. The party went back to Sigil for some well earned rest and to plan their next move. It was a hard fight, and I'm glad they pulled through. Good job everyone :smallsmile:

TL;DR - The party won!

JadedDM
2022-01-13, 06:38 PM
Congrats to the party. Sounds like quite a fight.

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ColossalCheeryHarrier-size_restricted.gif

SleepyShadow
2022-01-19, 07:19 PM
Squaring the Circle - Part One
In which our Heroes learn of a way to make a permanent difference in the Multiverse, and all that dream-walking pays off.
After the party recovered from their fight with Green Marvent, they checked in with their old pal Maddock to see if he got Pihnmid's Translations. Aurelius studied the book for a while, and learned that Maeldur was a celestial kidnapped by a baernaloth, Daru Ib Shamiq, during the early days of the multiverse before the division between Law and Chaos, when Good and Evil were the only alignments in existence. Daru used ancient True-Naming magic to warp Maeldur into something unnatural, then hid him away. Daru fashioned a talisman which let the wearer speak the ancient language of the baernaloths, which was the only language Maeldur now understood. Both Daru and Maeldur disappeared since then, with the only clue being a place called "Daubei's Obscure Woe".

While this research was going on, Tulany met up with Feirefiz at Woolly Cupgrass' alchemy shop. Feirefiz told her that he was heading home soon. His time spent planeswalking made him realize he had a real responsibility to his people, and to the people of the neighboring kingdom which was beset by slivers. There was no point in winning glory for his homeland if he didn't have a home to come back to. Tulany empathized with him, and confessed that she felt terrible about her actions lately. Her mother was a barbarian content to let her subjects conduct raids on their only ally, and she didn't want to follow down that path. Feirefiz admitted that the army of his home was powerful but small, and might prove ineffective against swarms of slivers. The two nobles struck a deal - Tulany would petition the war chief of her nation to lend troops to the battle, while Feirefiz would petition his mother to fund the operation.

Once Aurelius' research was done, he conducted a bit of Lucid Dreaming to see if he could glean any insight into Maeldur's nature. Instead, he was contacted by Chalice herself during his dreaming. She explained that she knew what he was searching for, and would help in any way she could. She had tried to contact the group many times before, but had only succeeded because she managed to catch someone using the Lucid Dreaming skill. She and Maeldur were being held in the same prison, but she didn't know where it was. Before the dream ended, Aurelius asked her for her real name.

"Erisiel," she answered.

Meanwhile, Kharim finally got the chance to tell Soraya that her father was dead. She took the news a bit better than expected, but it still broke the poor girl's heart. Aurelius busted into the tender moment to tell them all the sweet lore he just learned. He then called a conference to talk to the whole party (except Tulany, who decided to bounce) about their next move. While Aurelius had been reading and dreaming, Sharwyn and Barrock had also gotten up to some research of their own. Rule-of-Three had told his "beloved" daughter that her granddaddy Graz'zt wasn't actually a Tanar'ri. His mother was Pale Night, queen of the Obyriths, the fiends which inhabited the Abyss before the Shard of Evil from the previous multiverse came in and wrecked house. He was in league with Asmodeus, who wasn't even a Baatezu himself, to reunite the fiends and wage war on the Upper Planes. Asmodeus had crafted his famed Ruby Rod from a portion of the Shard of Evil before it was lost to the Abyss, which was what allowed him to control the Baatezu. Graz'zt was searching for the rest of the Shard so he could craft a similar item and control the Tanar'ri. He had abducted Erisiel with Asmodeus' full permission, since he needed her power to cleanse the Shard of the abyssal chaos. Once purified, he could command the Tanar'ri, join forces with Asmodeus, and bring the Multiverse to its knees.

Kai managed to get a Sending spell to work on Fall-From-Grace, confirming she was still alive. She told him she was being held in a place called the Tower of Indifference, a place where Graz'zt threw dissidents who refused to fight in the Blood War, as well as any victim who had yet to succumb to his "charms". The party figured that's where Graz'zt was keeping Erisiel as well, which meant Maeldur was there, too.

Aurelius, Cassius, and Storm took a short trip back to Faerun to rummage through Elminster's lab for anything useful, but found his estate had been cleared out by Harper loyalists. The Harpers had missed a few things, though, including notes on a place in the gate-town Torch (which led to Gehenna, the home of the Yugoloths) which was referred to as "Daubei's Obscure Woe". The trio went back to Sigil to dig around in the Fraternity of Order's archives, and found a portal to Azagrat hidden in an old Frat safehouse tucked away in the Slags, which were the worst part of the Hive slums. While they were running around collecting information, Kharim and Daegan busied themselves making alchemical weapons for Medea to use until she could recover her status as a paladin.

With every lead chased down and every scrap of information gathered, the party decided to head to Torch first. They hoped they'd get some useful information or assistance there, which seemed a better idea than waltzing into Graz'zt's home base without so much as a plan. Out of curiosity, Aurelius decided to do a bit more dreamwalking to see if he could glean any insight on the Maeldur, but he was interrupted by a Nycoloth who had been stalking him with a Dream spell. The fiend warned him that he was meddling in affairs that mortals had no business in, then punched him hard enough to wake him up.
TL;DR - A lot of roleplay and lore gathering, which was a nice change of pace after the session-long combat last week. We've entered the endgame, folks!

SleepyShadow
2022-01-27, 08:03 PM
Squaring the Circle - Part Two
In which our Heroes find a Guvner safehouse, and a barmy guarding the portal within.
This is two sessions, because we had two sessions in the same week. We weren't happy with the lack of progress we made on our usual night, so we scheduled a follow-up session a few days later.

The first session was the party's arrival in Torch. The gate-town to Gehenna was split into two halves: The Spires, where the wealthy and affluent lived in luxury, and The Mires, where the rest of the population lived in abject poverty. The party asked around for help, and a skittish local directed them to The Fountain of Fortune, a tavern/casino run by a drow from the Sword Coast. The party infiltrated the tavern, and found it got its namesake from the enchanted fountain which rained gold coins. Nobody touched the money, and when Cassius asked why that was the case, he was told the fountain would electrocute any would-be thieves proportionate to the amount of money the thief tried to steal. Aurelius inserted himself into a high-stakes game of Three Dragon Ante, and lost a bit of money while gaining a little information about Torch. Kharim made friends with a bariaur named Thassol, who was friendly but unhelpful. After bumming around the casino for a while, Eirik and Shawryn are told the owner wanted to meet the party in private. They were also told it was not a request.

The party met the owner, a drug-addicted crime boss named B'derth. He told them he knew everything that went on in The Mires. All six gangs that operated in Torch answered to him, and he knew of the party's coming before their arrival. He told them Daru Ib Shamiq wanted to meet with them at his mansion in the graveyard. When Kharim asked how B'derth found out about them, he informed them that Daru told him everything about the party. Unhappy about being spied on, the party headed to the graveyard.

Tulany led the way, sensing a hidden portal to Gehenna, and to nobody's shock it was in the cellar behind the mansion in the center of the graveyard. Heading inside, they passed through the portal quite by accident. They ended up in a part of Gehenna owned by Daru himself, and the Baernaloth told them about a gem called the vuulge which would allow them to communicate with Maeldur. In exchange for the information regarding its location, he wanted the party to swear that they would free Maeldur rather than kill him. Kharim was very unhappy about making a deal with yet another fiend, but everyone else was just fine with it. Once assured the party wouldn't kill Maeldur, Daru told them the gem was kept in the Tower of Indifference, but Maeldur had been abducted by a third party. Daru wasn't sure where Maeldur was, but he assured the PCs they could use the vuulge to track the wayward creature. The party thanked the fiend, Kharim punched a wall on the way out, and the group headed back to Sigil.

The second session began with Kharim, who made his first good binding pact in over a month, who blew up at the party during breakfast for casually making a deal with Daru Ib Shamiq. He was sick of cooperating with fiends, and let the party know it. The rest of the party brushed off his concerns. After breakfast, Eirik was approached by the factol of The Fated himself, Duke Rowan Blackwood. He took Eirik for a walk down to the stables, where he showed off his fancy nightmare mount he stole from Nessus, the bottom level of Baator. He then invited Eirik to join The Fated. Eirik jumped at the chance, since he'd been wanting to join the faction for months. He was confused though, since he hadn't done much on his own to prove his personal strength. Rowan told Eirik he already knew about the party's plans for breaking into Aza'Grat. His spy, Thassol, had been watching the party's activities in Torch, and had reported to Rowan about the party's meeting with Daru. Rowan then suggested that instead of freeing Erisiel, he should just "keep" her, as she "performed a unique function" in the Multiverse. Eirik said he'd think about it, and Rowan left on his nightmare mount.

The party headed into the Slags, the worst part of the Hive in Sigil. Harmonium patrols never went there, because people would garrote and club them to death. It was the worst part of the bad part of town. It was Whitechapel during the Ripper murders, and nobody was there to help.

The PCs got attacked by a gang of mezzaloth tieflings after only fifteen minutes of travel through the Slags. The tieflings hit pretty hard, but they were wholly outclassed by the party. It only took about three rounds to mop them up. After the battle, the party arrived at the "Dark House" without further trouble. It was a safehouse owned by the Fraternity of Order with a portal to Aza'Grat, but because of its location it was all but abandoned. Its sole occupant was a barmy modron who was trying to impose order on the most chaotic part of Sigil. However, it turned out the safe house wasn't actually that safe. Less than two minutes of being there, the party was jumped by a pair of half-dragon nycoloths who were trying to abduct Sharwyn to use her to break into the Tower of Indifference for themselves.

Those poor nycoloths only got one turn :smallfrown:

The party rested up, and the cursed party members realized their curses were getting worse. Kai used his Medicine skill to confirm the curses were consuming them, and would be lethal (or worse) the next time the curses took hold. The party was on a race against time to find Erisiel so she could remove their curses!
TL;DR - Two sessions for the price of one!

JadedDM
2022-01-29, 12:00 AM
Honestly, what could possibly go wrong when making deals with fiends?

SleepyShadow
2022-02-02, 03:04 PM
Honestly, what could possibly go wrong when making deals with fiends?

Especially when tanar'ri and yugoloths are well known for upholding their end of the deal? :smalltongue:

Squaring the Circle - Part Three
In which our Heroes travel to the Tower of Indifference, and discover nothing is ever easy.
When the party stepped through the portal to Aza'grat, they found they were in a network of tunnels beneath the city. The geometry was warped, as the city pulled three layers of the abyss onto itself. The PCs didn't have much time to marvel, though, as they were attacked by a pair of half-fiend loxodons. These buggers weren't much to look at on paper, but they had solid spellcasting (including multiple uses of Blade Barrier) and a breath weapon which wiped out all of a character's prepared spells if they failed the save against it. Fortunately, Kai always passed the save, so nobody died to the magical onslaught.

Once the loxodons were dealt with, the party followed Sharwyn through the tunnels. She had no real idea where she was going, but she felt pulled in a certain direction, almost as if the city above was calling to her. Along the way, the party was ambushed by a pair of bebiliths, who were none too happy to see mortals intruding upon their nest. During the fight, one of the demons managed to grab Daegan and Plane Shift over to the Astral Plane, hoping to eat its meal in peace. However, Tulany was able to use her horizon walking to track the demon across the planar boundary, and the party proceeded to clown it in combat. Tulany then tracked the demon back to its "respawn point" in the Abyss, where it promptly surrendered. It offered to take the party to the Tower of Indifference in exchange for its survival. Kharim argued against this, but the rest of the PCs took the bebilith at its word.

The demon guided them through the tunnels, and the party eventually emerged onto a rocky field just outside of Aza'grat, where a lone tower stood amidst a sea of corpses. Many of the bodies were yugoloths, but an equal number were humanoids who wore the holy symbol of Iuz around their necks. As soon as the party started for the tower, the bebilith turned around and headed back into the tunnels to lick its wounds and plot its revenge. When the party got closer to the tower, they saw its walls were constructed of iron bars with prisoners shackled into the very structure itself. The front door to the tower had been smashed inward, and Tulany sensed there were still many fiends inside. The party retreated back to the tunnels to rest up and prepare for their assault on the tower.
TL;DR - The tower is pretty grisly.

JadedDM
2022-02-02, 09:29 PM
...and a breath weapon which wiped out all of a character's prepared spells if they failed the save against it.
Wow, that's pretty hardcore for a 5E enemy. I'm impressed.

SleepyShadow
2022-02-09, 06:19 PM
Wow, that's pretty hardcore for a 5E enemy. I'm impressed.

It was converted from a 2e critter. The breath weapon originally made the victims forget everything if they failed the save, just as if they had fallen into the Styx :smalleek:

Elephant Demon (CR 8; 3,900 xp)
CE Large Fiend 8
Str 16, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 14, Wis 13, Cha 14
HP: 72
AC: 20
Speed: 60 ft.
Attacks: Claw +6/+6 1d6+3 and Trunk Spike +6 2d6+3
Feats: Piercer, Tough
Abilities: Magic Resistance, Physical Damage Resistance (bypassed by adamantine), Surprise Immunity, Darkvision 240 ft., Regeneration 2, Improved Grab (trunk only, Str DC 14), Constrict (2d6+3), Spells (@will unless otherwise stated, DC 13; Hold Person, Alarm, Blade Barrier (3/day), Entangle, Gust of Wind, Light, Polymorph (3/day), True Seeing), Breath Weapon (recharge 5-6, 30 ft. cone, Con DC 13 or lose all spell slots)

Squaring the Circle - Part Four
In which our Heroes invade the Tower of Indifference, and missing friends are rescued.
The tower was largely a linear dungeon crawl, and the PCs made their way from floor to floor, killing every fiend that got in their path. They were smart about it, though, and used Pass Without Trace to avoid fights where they could, most importantly bypassing a squad of bodaks on the second floor. As the PCs made their way up the tower, they found a few doors with fleshy writhing demons bound inside them, and those doors would only open to Sharwyn's touch. One door-demon stated it was waiting for "the daughter of the dark god" (which is foreshadowing for an upcoming adventure), and Eirik had to do a bit of convincing to get Sharwyn to touch the disgusting creature. Poor girl.

On the third floor, the party encountered a barmy who had gotten free from his wall-socket during the fighting between the tanar'ri and the yugoloths. He had the severed heads of a succubus and a bauriar (both of whom had been his adjacent "cell mates" while they were alive) which he used like grisly sock puppets. He didn't have much useful information for the party. He was just another reminder of how horrid the tower was.

The party almost got tricked by a group of six cambions who were disguised as adventurers on the fifth floor, but Tulany managed to sniff out their fiendish essence just before they could spring their trap. No surprise round for the baddies. However, an unexpected guest crashed the party's backlines during the fighting. The bebilith the PCs had spared last session was back for revenge, and took down Soraya in a single sequence of attacks. Thankfully, the party pivoted and killed the bugger before he could escape with her to the Astral Plane.

Demons never honor their bargains.

After clearing out the fifth floor of enemies, the party found there wasn't a way to get up to the sixth floor. Most fiends can teleport, so there wasn't any need to install a staircase or door to the top floor, after all. However, the party did find a deactivated teleportation circle which led to the top. Suspended from chains above the circle were two iron maidens, each of which had a corresponding switch on the ground. Pulling a switch would open one and trigger the other, killing whomever was inside. The party decided to investigate the room before randomly pulling switches, and found the iron maidens were occupied: one held Fall-From-Grace, while the other held Linvala. The PCs were eager to figure out a way to free them both, but the iron maidens were impervious to most forms of damage, so breaking them was out of the question. However, Aurelius discovered (with his godlike Arcana check) the teleportation circle was activated by a sacrifice, but not necessarily requiring the use of the iron maidens. Cassius enlisted Daegan and Kharim to help kill him, and Kai was on standby with Revivify. Once Cassius was dead, the teleportation circle activated, and both iron maidens opened, freeing their prisoners. Kharim told Grace and Linvala to go back to Sigil and wait at the Harmonium headquarters, since that's where everyone from the Brothel of Slaking Intellectual Lusts was staying until the BSIL could be opened again. Grace was relieved to know her "prostitutes" were alive and well, and Linvala apologized for trying to rescue Grace without waiting for the rest of the party.

Once the two of them were safely away from the Tower, the party revived Cassius, patched him up, and prepared to face off with whatever awaited them at the top of the tower.
TL;DR - Sometimes puzzles don't tell you all the rules.

JadedDM
2022-02-10, 07:00 PM
Oh, I just realized I know what you're referring to. Maelephants, right? From the Planescape Monstrous Compendium? I didn't pick up on it at first, until I saw the stats for them.

SleepyShadow
2022-02-17, 10:30 AM
Oh, I just realized I know what you're referring to. Maelephants, right? From the Planescape Monstrous Compendium? I didn't pick up on it at first, until I saw the stats for them.

Yes, you're right. They are normally Lawful Evil, and the module I'm running gave a half-hearted attempt to explain why these specific Maelephants are Chaotic Evil and hanging out on the abyss. I didn't like the justification (corrupted water from the Styx), so I filed the serial numbers off, gave them a new name, and called it a day.

Squaring the Circle - Part Five
In which our Heroes destroy a minor Power of the Lower Planes, and a major Power of Celestia proves to be a roadblock.
The top floor of the tower was split in half, with a lower floor where the prisoners were singing a discordant tune, and a raised platform suspended forty feet in the air by chains anchoring it to the walls. Shortly after the party's arrival, somebody on the platform started throwing prisoners at them. The thrown prisoners had been Polymorphed to look like the PCs' loved ones (Rowena, Barrock, Kai's ex-wife, etc.). Daegan scurried up the wall to scout out the platform, and saw Erisiel trapped within a cage of still-living prisoners whose bodies had been warped to fashion her cell. Their heads all faced inward and gazed upon their prisoner in mute horror. This grisly cage was topped with a glowing green gem. Daegan also saw the one responsible for hurling bodies at the party.

Fun fact, Graz'zt has a little sister. Her name is Rhyxali, and she's only slightly less obscure than Chalice being Heironeous' daughter. Seriously, Rhyxali, the "Demon Princess of Shadows", got her start as a web enhancement for the 3.5e Fiendish Codex II, then got name-dropped in a couple of 4e Dragon Magazines and maybe one module. Since I was already digging up obscure bits of D&D lore, I figured now was as good a time as any to introduce her.

Another fun fact, Aurelius has the Izzet Engineer background (partly because his player is an engineer in real life). When Daegan reported the situation to the party, Aurelius concocted a simple plan, made a couple of skill checks, and brought the whole platform crashing down within a few minutes.

Once on the ground, Rhyxali told the party that Iuz had been the one to abduct Maeldur. She said his betrayal was disappointing but very predictable. "He always was a mamma's boy." Of course, she refused to give the party any further information. She offered to let the party take Erisiel if they handed over Sharwyn, but the party adamantly refused. Rhyxali figured that would be the case, so she got to work. She was a pretty tough customer, and managed to outright kill both Cassius and Kharim during the fight, but ultimately the party was able to bring her down. Of course, Cassius and Kharim didn't stay dead for long. Kai always saves a couple of spell slots for Revivify just in case things go sideways. As far as solo bosses go, it was a pretty good fight.

The party broke Erisiel free of her nightmarish cage and retrieved the green gem. Aurelius was able to identify it as the vuulge, and he knew they could use it to track down and speak with Maeldur, but the gem was immune to any real analysis. It was crafted in a bygone age with powerful truenaming magic long lost to time. Even the Identify spell wouldn't work on it, since the gem existed before that spell was ever created. Aurelius was rather uncomfortable with the thing, and let Tulany hang onto it. She would need it later anyway.

However, the first thing the party wanted to do was get out of the Abyss. They knew they couldn't go back to Sigil, since Erisiel was technically a goddess (albeit of the weakest kind) and the Lady of Pain prevented any Power from entering her realm. Instead, the party decided to sneak through Aza'grat and find a portal to Plaguemort, then hoof it across the Outlands to Excelsior, and from there return Erisiel home after nearly 1300 years of imprisonment. The plan went without a hitch. None of the demonic patrols in Aza'grat seemed to notice the party, nobody in Plaguemort challenged them, and even the journey across the Outlands was quiet. Along the way, Erisiel used her powers of purification to remove the various curses the party had accrued.

When the party arrived in the Holy Sea of Mount Celestia, they were halted at the shoreline by Barachiel and his celestial giant octopus (who, of course, gave Daegan a high-five as a fellow tentacle monster). A hastily assembled council of Powers had been assembled by Bahamut to discuss the matter of Erisiel's return during the party's journey across the Outlands, and now a select few of these Powers waited for the party on the beach. Swayed by the Platinum Dragon, this council had determined that Erisiel had spent too long in the Lower Planes, and thus she could not return home. The council did not want to risk Erisiel's presence corrupting archons or petitioners with any lingering fiendish taint. The Powers stripped Erisiel of her status as a goddess, and Bahamut threatened to destroy her himself if she returned to Celestia before spending enough time away from the lower planes to be deemed "suitably cleansed". The party argued vehemently on Erisiel's behalf, but the will of the Platinum Dragon would never be swayed by the words of mortals. With the decree handed down, Bahamut and the rest of the council departed back to their respective realms. Only Heironeous and his allies remained on the beach. Naturally, he had voted to let his only daughter come home, but he had been outvoted. He apologized to the party, hugged Erisiel for a long time, and bade the party to look after his daughter.

Heironeous and his allies departed, and the party took the grief-stricken angel back to Excelsior.
TL;DR - No good deed goes unpunished.

JadedDM
2022-02-17, 08:46 PM
They should appeal this decision to an authority higher than Bahamut. Like Neo Bahamut. Or even all the way to the top--Bahamut ZERO. :smalltongue:

SleepyShadow
2022-02-23, 03:40 PM
They should appeal this decision to an authority higher than Bahamut. Like Neo Bahamut. Or even all the way to the top--Bahamut ZERO. :smalltongue:

Unfortunately, they don't have the right materia for that :smallwink:

Squaring the Circle - Part Six
In which the Heroes make a change for the better in the Multiverse.
The session started off with the party getting harassed by the daubus the moment they stepped into Sigil. Erisiel was no longer a power, and thus could enter Sigil, but the daubus wanted to let the PCs know they were on thin ice. Once the daubus left, the party split up to recuperate before their next foray into the Lower Planes. Of note, Tulany recruited her old friends Nadia and Jassen to help break into Spiral's house. The trio looted his book of business contacts, and Tulany took it to the cranium rat mob boss The Us, both to cultivate a good relationship and as an apology for the many headaches the party has caused over the course of their journey. Meanwhile, Kharim introduced Erisiel to Fall From Grace and the girls at the BSIL, and Kai met with his ex-wife for a cup of coffee.

After a bit of rest, the party used the vuulge to track Maeldur to the seventh layer of Baator. Tulany used her horizon walker powers to transport the party as close as they could get, and they found themselves outside a rolling fortress as it rumbled its way across the blasted plains. The fortress was guarded by patrols of fire giants, Nessian war hounds, and barbazu knights. The PCs debated on how to sneak inside, but ultimately decided to use a combination of Aurelius' engineering skills and Kharim's newfound ability to function like a siege weapon.

They tunneled in through the underbelly of the fortress while it was parked.

The PCs crept through the inner fortress for a while, exploring the dungeons and talking their way past some arcanoloth mercenaries. Eventually, they found Maeldur trapped inside a pool of brine. Tulany, Kharim, and Erisiel climbed on top of Maeldur to communicate with him via the vuulge, while Aurelius used a combination of Heat Metal and smiths' tools to weld the door shut to keep the enemies out. Erisiel began the ritual to purify Maeldur of his corruption, and the party readied to defend against the fiends. Iuz himself led the charge in trying to batter down the door, but the party did a fantastic job keeping him ranting instead of actually making progress smashing through the welded door. The arcanoloths didn't bother helping him, because they were paid to keep the fortress running, not capture intruders. Even his own paladin, Ashram the Black Knight, betrayed Iuz by revealing his true allegiance to Iggwilv and leaving. The party kept Iuz ranting long enough for Erisiel to purify Maeldur's corruption, and Maeldur transported the party out of Baator.

He took everyone directly to the Holy Sea of Mount Celestia, and Barachiel, the guardian angel of the first layer, called for an immediate council. Barachiel went straight to the top to report Maeldur's return after countless eons. Maeldur was an older entity than even most of the gods which now existed, so none of the Powers were quite sure what to do. There was, however, one being who still knew about Maeldur.

Zaphkiel the Watcher, leader of the Celestial Hebdomad, knew who Maeldur was. Both PCs and Powers watched in awe as the two primordial beings conversed on the beach. At length, Maeldur was transformed into pure Celestial light and transported to the very top of the mountain. Zaphkiel returned to the top of the mountain without another word. Barachiel explained that the yugoloths would have forever hounded Maeldur and attempted to recapture him, so Zaphkiel took him to the highest point on Mount Celestia where they could never harm him again. The gathered angels and Powers dispersed back to where they came from, and the party was amply rewarded for their priceless service to the Multiverse. They struck a deadly blow against all fiends everywhere, but they would need to watch their backs from now on.
TL;DR - Mission complete!

JadedDM
2022-02-23, 09:01 PM
Congrats to the party!

SleepyShadow
2022-03-02, 02:57 PM
Congrats to the party!

Yeah, they did a great job throughout the adventure. Squaring the Circle is one I would highly recommend, as long as you don't mind some pretty big changes to your campaign. It's tucked away in a big supplement called Hellbound: The Blood War.

Personal Time
In which our Heroes take some much deserved downtime, and tie up some loose ends.
Aurelius used the vuulge to bring Bosh P. Golem back to life, and there was much rejoicing. There was also a bit of surprise, as Bosh could now Plane Shift a few times per day, albeit with laughable inaccuracy. Together with Kharim and Rowena, the little group went back to the Isle of Black Trees in order to retrieve Rowena's father, who had been petrified and was being held captive by a coven of night hags. Along the way, they met a young girl named Rose, who was wearing a red hood and skipping through the forest to take a basket of goodies to her grandmother. The group found this incredibly suspicious, but they decided to escort her through the forest anyway. They arrived at a Southern Gothic style cottage, and they found Rowena's father being used as the centerpiece of a fountain overgrown with weeds. The PCs were quick to put two and two together, and realized that the night hag they were after was the little girl's grandmother. The party bargained with Granny, and eventually settled on exchanging a bag full of beads which acted as keys to the Elemental Plane of Fire (which they picked up way back in the Eternal Boundary) for the petrified elf. Once the deal was made, Rowena expressed concern for Rose's mother, since the Huntsman was often the villain in her uncle's twisted fairytales. The party hurried back the way they came, and eventually came across a pair of skinned wolves. Worried that Nekrothepta was somehow involved in all this (because of her penchant for using forsaken shells as minions), they raced to save Rose's mother from some terrible state. When they reached the cabin, Kharim kicked the front door in with all the authority the Harmonium granted him. Inside the PCs found the Huntsman and Rose's mother enjoying a nice evening together while the little girl was out of the house.

Meanwhile, Daegan took Erisiel to the Bleak Cabal Gatehouse and had her purify his little brother's madness. Adair had taken to eating insects lured with sugar, eating spiders lured with the flies, eating birds lured with the spiders, and had gotten it into his head that Daegan had replaced him with Hikari as his "new sibling". He also wanted a kitten for unspecified purposes. Erisiel healed Adair's madness, but there wasn't anything she could do about the physical augmentations brought on through biomancy, so Daegan took Adair to Woolly Cupgrass for some alchemical remedies. The cranky bauriar promised to help, though it would take time and likely be a costly endeavor. Since the party had just received a hefty chunk of change from their last adventure, Daegan had no problems with this. He just wanted to get his little brother back to normal.

While all of this was going on, Kai was enjoying a pleasant visit with his ex-wife, Tulany was engaged in negotiations with Ser Feirefiz's mother Queen Secundilay, and Cassius was getting reacquainted with his long lost brother Alistair. Cassius was invited to join in an investigation regarding a place in Greyhawk called Tovag Baragu, which seemed to be a place divorced from the normal flow of time. According to Alistair, Tovag Baragu was seemingly affected by a catastrophe which had yet to occur. Minions of both Iuz and Graz'zt were vying for control of the region, so Alistair naturally thought his brother's experience with the cults would prove invaluable in the investigation. Cassius agreed to look into the matter once the party was back together, and the two brothers spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying tea together.

Last but certainly not least, Eirik was met by a petite woman with a fiery temper who bade him come to Ysgard at his first available opportunity. This was an invitation to join the hallowed Hall of the Einherjar, and rejection would mean forsaking his rightful place and being forever labeled a coward. Eirik was never one to turn down a challenge, so he packed his gear, grabbed Sharwyn, and headed straight for Glorium to take the quickest route to Ysgard.
TL;DR - The party wanted to do some personal side quests before jumping into another big adventure.

AllHailthed4
2022-03-02, 08:36 PM
Once the deal was made, Rowena expressed concern for Rose's mother, since the Huntsman was often the villain in her uncle's twisted fairytales. The party hurried back the way they came, and eventually came across a pair of skinned wolves. Worried that Nekrothepta was somehow involved in all this (because of her penchant for using forsaken shells as minions), they raced to save Rose's mother from some terrible state. When they reached the cabin, Kharim kicked the front door in with all the authority the Harmonium granted him. Inside the PCs found the Huntsman and Rose's mother enjoying a nice evening together while the little girl was out of the house.

A nice evening together indeed. I'd never considered the implications of... um... "recreational lycanthropy" too carefully before. Kharim is wondering if there's still time to transfer to a celibate order 😵*💫

SleepyShadow
2022-03-10, 06:00 PM
End of Vacation
In which our Heroes endear themselves to the Norse Pantheon, and head to a peculiar site in Greyhawk.
Eirik, Kai, Cassius, Sharwyn, and Storm took a few days of vacation time in the Great Hall of Ysgard. By vacation, I of course mean drinking, fighting, and making merry. Eirik even got into a duel with a Valkyrie. He dunked her without breaking a sweat. Kai got some love life advice from Freya, and Cassius got to be delightfully confused about the whole situation.

Meanwhile, Tulany finalized her negotiations with Queen Secundilay, and briefly went home to see her aunt and talk to her father. Back on Sigil, Kharim and Aurelius got blisteringly drunk and had to clean up the Harmonium mess hall to repay Faith after she cleared up their hangovers.

Once all the partying and personal business was taken care of, the party gathered once more to discuss what to do next. They decided to investigate Tovag Baragu and its connections to Graz'zt before just gallivanting off to Greyhawk. The site itself was outside the normal flow of time, had gates which connected to alternate versions of itself in other dimensions, and was under the affect of a great calamity which had yet to occur. The place had been turned into a temple to Graz'zt about ten years ago, and the cult of Iuz had recently invaded the place, though the motive was unclear.

Kharim, however, decided to research Iggwilv/Tasha instead. He found out all about her scandalous love life with Graz'zt, her time being mentored by Mordenkainen, and that she was the daughter of Baba Yaga herself. Most recently, Tasha had decided to become an Archfey (I have no idea how), and was going by "Natasha" to avoid the bad PR her other personas had accrued over the years.

Armed with this knowledge and trivia, the party headed to Tovag Baragu to put a stop to the squabbling demon prince once and for all.
TL;DR - Wrapped up personal quests and prepared for the finale.

SleepyShadow
2022-03-16, 03:27 PM
With the campaign drawing to a close, I decided to run a classic adventure to wrap things up with a nice little bow. I modified Die, Vecna, Die! as the endgame, replacing the titular villain with the party's "behind the scenes" nemesis Graz'zt.

Tovag Baragu
In which our Heroes find a clash between two cults, and a third party looms from the shadows.
The party trekked across the Sand Steppes of Greyhawk and entered Tovag Baragu. The place was a circle of eight stone archways similar to Stonehenge. The PCs found three of the arches functioned as portals, so they hopped through one at random in search of Meletros and Alistair, who were supposed to meet them there. By good luck, they picked the right portal (the other two led to either a flooded ruins populated by sahuagan and an underground cave with a pair of uropheons), and met with their contacts outside a watchpost built in a dinosaur infested jungle. Meletros and Alistair had formed an alliance with the steppe nomads, who were more than happy to pick off stragglers from either the Graz'zt or Iuz cults. Inside the watchtower were some Graz'zt cultists the nomads had trapped. After chatting with Alistair and Meletros for a bit, the party headed deeper into the portal network of portals, each of which led to a different version of Tovag Baragu in an alternate universe.

Along the way, they encountered a dead world populated only by ghouls, and another which existed in perpetual twilight. It was on the twilight world they found an inn, which the Iuz cultists had ransacked during their raid. There were survivors lurking in the upper floor of the inn, however, a vampire woman by the name of Drelnza and her two consorts Illya and Noma. They were here at the behest of Tasha, and Drelnza claimed to be the only daughter of Tasha not sired by Graz'zt. She helpfully told the party that Tasha was somewhere in the portal network as well, trying to mend the rift between her lover and her son. She didn't want them killing each other, or so Drelnza believed. To my surprise, the party was pretty chill about leaving a trio of vampires to their own devices, and moved on in pursuit of Iuz and Graz'zt.

A few portals later, they met Rule-of-Three and almost two dozen cultists who had been dispatched to stop the PCs and bring Sharwyn to Graz'zt. Rule-of-Three claimed the demon prince wanted a "grand family reunion" to complete his plan, which he had been forced to accelerate thanks to the party's constant meddling in the Blood War. Rule-of-Three offered the party a chance to surrender Sharwyn to him, which they took exception to. Aurelius used his artifice gadgets to drag Rule-of-Three out from behind his wall of cultists, and the party laid the smack down on him without remorse. He demonstrated considerable arcane power, and also his crippling ego by not retreating back to the safety of his cohorts. When Rule-of-Three inevitably perished, the surviving cultists surrendered.

The party questioned the cultists, and learned that Graz'zt was luring Iuz into some kind of trap. Furthermore, he had gathered all of his children together save one, a fiend who dwelt on the Demiplane of Dread known only as The Gentleman Caller. Not much was known about this fiend other than that he was a handsome man with six fingers on his hands who seduced and/or violated Vistani women, with a preference for those from the Zarovan bloodline. The cultists didn't know what Graz'zt's ultimate plan was. Barrock, Storm, and Erisiel offered to take the cultists back to Sigil where they could be dealt with properly by the Harmonium, and the PCs agreed. Everyone made everyone else promise to stay safe, and NPCs departed with the captive cultists in tow.

The PCs, along with Sharwyn as the sole remaining NPC (she considered this a family affair and wanted to see it through to the end), pressed on deeper into the Tovag Baragu network until they at last found a portal which led to Ravenloft rather than another version of the ruins. Steeling themselves for whatever awaited them, the PCs headed into the mists. They wandered through the fog blindly for a few minutes, but soon enough they were approached by a Grim Reaper lookalike who warned them to turn back and not interfere with the Dark Powers. The party refused, saying they needed to stop whatever Graz'zt was planning, but the reaper would not be dissuaded. When the party refused to back down, more reapers emerged from the mists and prepared to strike them down.

Naturally, I ended the session there :smallbiggrin:
TL;DR - The start of our final adventure!

JadedDM
2022-03-16, 07:57 PM
Were they particularly hot vampires? Maybe that's why they were left alone. :smallwink:

AllHailthed4
2022-03-17, 10:26 AM
Were they particularly hot vampires? Maybe that's why they were left alone. :smallwink:

I can't speak for the others, but I just kinda felt sorry for her. Being Tasha and Mordenkainen's kid seems like a rough start, lol.

Cerrita
2022-03-17, 01:49 PM
Being Tasha and Mordenkainen's kid seems like a rough start, lol.

Indeed. Condolences all around were offered.

SleepyShadow
2022-03-24, 06:26 PM
Invidia
In which our Heroes return to the Demiplane of Dread, and the full moon saps their coordination.
The session started off with the party fighting off the grim reapers, who were known for "never missing their mark". While that was true, the reapers' attacks did a laughable amount of damage. One swing per round and only 2d8 damage (with a save for half) impresses nobody at level 12. Needless to say, the party mopped them up in short order.

With the reapers cleared, the PCs found themselves in the domain of Invidia, ruled over by a half-vistani enchantress, Gabrielle, who had been seduced by the Gentleman Caller many years ago. When the party arrived, the city was already a war zone. Fiends and cultists clashed with the bewildered soldiers native to the domain. Thanks to Tulany's sign language skills, the party learned that both Graz'zt and Iuz were assaulting Gabrielle's palace, fighting both each other and the dark lord's outmatched forces. The party hurried to stop the fighting at the palace, but that's when the distracting side quests started popping up around every corner.

First was a half-crazed girl from Athas who had been snatched up by the Mists a few months ago. She could tell the PCs were outsiders and begged them to help her escape the demiplane. After a bit of convincing, and some magical healing from Kai, the girl agreed to wait for them outside the palace rather than follow them around like a lost puppy.

Next came a desperate father who begged the party to help find his missing daughter, who had been kidnapped several weeks ago and taken to Gabrielle's palace. The party placated him by explaining that they were on their way to the palace anyway, and would look for her while there if they had the time. As soon as the father departed, the party was confronted by a vampire detective (the module is a little strange, just roll with it) who said he was already looking into the girl's abduction. He knew she had been taken by one of Gabrielle's court officials, but he had yet to determine who the kidnapper was. He asked the party to inform him of any clues they happened across, and the PCs agreed if only to get a move on.

At last at the palace gates, the party was attacked by Drelnza, her little coterie, and a cranky fairy courtesy of Tasha's connection to the Feywild. This is where things kind of went off the rails. This fight took much longer than I anticipated. The players' ability to coordinate and cooperate just disappeared for this fight. I blame the full moon :smalltongue:

However, when all was said and done, the party still managed to stand triumphant. When Drelnza fell, the PCs were approached by none other than Ashram and Pirotess, who demanded to parley. Since the PCs were tapped for resources after the fight, they capitulated and followed the black knight and the dark elf away from the palace to a more secluded location where they could talk without fear of interruption.
TL;DR - I think this adventure intentionally tries to distract the party so the villains have more time on the clock.

SleepyShadow
2022-04-06, 06:30 PM
The Showdown
In which our heroes make an unlikely accord, and two demon princes are faced.
I decided to combine the last two sessions into a single post, as they were both combat-heavy. However, important plot stuff happened at the start of the first and the end of the second :smallbiggrin:

To start, the party followed Ashram and Pirotess into the Mordenkainen's Tasha's Magnificent Mansion. There, they had an in-depth chat with the witch queen herself, who was desperate to change her public image despite having been a supervillain over the last four editions of the game. Tasha revealed one of the deepest secrets in Planescape canonical lore, so if you don't want major spoilers, I'd suggest you stop reading here.

Graz'zt's father, Asmodeus, the Lord of Hell, wielder of half of a Shard of Evil, and a god worshiped on multiple Prime worlds, was just an avatar. The entity behind the facade was the primordial serpent Ahriman, one of four entities who exist outside the normal cosmology of the Great Wheel (the other three being Ao, The Lady of Pain, and Jazirian the primordial coatl). Ahriman had been using Asmodeus and the Blood War to distract the multiverse from the real threat which dwelt in the deepest recesses of Nessus. Tasha explained that when the party interfered with the fate of Maeldur, they had inadvertently accelerated a plan which had been in the works for millennia to acquire the other half of the Shard of Evil. Tasha didn't know what the end goal was, but she suspected it was more than just marching the combined Fiendish forces on the gates of Celestia.

With the talk at an end, Tasha armed the PCs with quirky intelligent magic weapons before teleporting them to the top of the castle (I had no interest in running through a 70+ room dungeon, and neither did the players). The party found itself in the castle library, where they discovered a young Vistani woman, though she quickly revealed that she was in fact Madame Eva. She admitted the Gentleman Caller had seduced her with promises of restoring her youth, which would help immeasurably in her fight against Strahd. Unfortunately, she had already played her part in the drama. The portal Graz'zt had wanted was already open. Only the interference of Iuz and his minions had kept the demon prince from acquiring the Shard of Evil. Before the party could ask her anything else, they were attacked by the son of Iuz, Korbadur the Cruel (an ogre tiefling). The party battled Korbadur and his minions, and handily defeated them all.

The PCs rushed to the throne room where Graz'zt and Iuz were doing battle, but they were halted by the Gentleman Caller and his six Dhukars (Vistani men with the power of prophecy who were fated assist in the destruction of the Demiplane of Dread). The Gent proved a much tougher opponent, but even his powerful cleric magic was eventually overwhelmed by the party's tenacity and good positioning in combat.

At last, they breached the throne room. Graz'zt and Iuz were still doing battle, and neither showed any sign of weakness. The presence of two incredibly powerful creatures who were not supposed to be in Ravenloft was tearing the Mists apart. However, before the party could move to attack, they came under fire by the Dark Lord of Invidia, Gabrielle. She wanted the two demons to destroy Invidia's ties to the demiplane so she could at last be free.

The party dunked her in a round and a half :smalltongue:

Iuz shattered his sword on Graz'zt's chest to no effect, and was too stunned to react when Graz'zt cut him down and began to absorb the demigod's soul. Blood and viscera from all of Graz'zt's slain brood began to pour into the tower, and even Sharwyn was getting dragged into the maelstrom. Eirik and Daegan held onto her to keep her from getting pulled in, and the rest of the party started burning the flow of blood and pouring holy water into it. They did everything they could to keep Graz'zt from gaining any more power. They did a good job, too. However, even just absorbing Iuz was enough to let Graz'zt shatter the bonds of the Demiplane of Dread. He reached through the misty portal Eva had opened, and claimed the Shard of Evil from the bottom of the Abyss. With his newfound godhood, he tore all of Ravenloft apart, sending the Dark Lords spinning through the multiverse back to wherever they had come from. The mortal inhabitants of the plane were wiped away. The party thought they were going to suffer the same fate as well when they went plunging through the darkness.

However, most of them ended up on the Outlands instead. They had been dumped into whatever Gate Town corresponded with their alignment. Sharwyn, Eirik, and Daegan ended up directly in Sigil, since they were still holding onto her when Ravenloft was broken, and Sigil was Sharwyn's home. While the party contacted each other via Sending to make sure everyone was still alive, Aurelius and Kharim made an absurdly high Arcane check to figure out what had happened. First, there had been a lapse of three days since their departure into the Mists. Second and more importantly, the two lads realized Graz'zt had attempted to unmake the entire party along with the Demiplane. He had only failed to do so thanks to the direct intervention of The Lady of Pain herself. This was a monumental occasion, as she almost never intervened, and it was unheard of for her to assert her influence outside of Sigil. The lads realized it was an invitation to meet with the enigmatic entity.

The party gathered together once more in Sigil, and found the entire city in an uproar. Graz'zt had planted himself at the Armory, the Doomguard headquarters, and had brought in a host of fiends to boot. The factions were all working together in teeth clenched teamwork under the direction of the dabus, who took their orders directly from The Lady of Pain. A great army was massed outside the Armory, but they had been unable to penetrate the magical wards which guarded the fledgling demon god.

The party headed through the crowd to meet with the Lady of Pain to learn the dark of the situation.
TL;DR - Major campaign setting spoilers ahead!

JadedDM
2022-04-07, 06:24 PM
No big deal, just an audience with

The Lady of Pain

I'm sure that's never gone poorly before. Good luck to the party!

Xervous
2022-04-11, 10:27 AM
No big deal, just an audience with

The Lady of Pain

I'm sure that's never gone poorly before. Good luck to the party!

I’ve heard those can be really a-maze-ing

SleepyShadow
2022-04-13, 06:52 PM
The Armory
In which our Heroes meet with the enigmatic ruler of Sigil, and puzzles are solved.
The party met with the Lady of Pain, and learned from her dabu attendants that she was using her power to limit Graz'zt's power to just the area around the Armory. She could not do more, because she still had to keep all of the other gods out of Sigil. Benevolent or not, the presence of any other deity in Sigil might prove disastrous to the multiverse. The Lady needed the party to eject Graz'zt from Sigil by any means necessary. There was only one thing she could do to assist them - she could blind Graz'zt to their presence, who still believed he had destroyed them when he destroyed the Demiplane of Dread. The "invisibility" would allow the PCs to bypass the divine wards Graz'zt had set up around the Armory. The PCs accepted the offer, and the Lady returned to focusing her power on binding Graz'zt to the Armory.

A prophet of Graz'zt, a succubus dressed in a nun's outfit, flew out from the Armory to speak about the glory of her demon god. Kharim responded by throwing a javelin at her, which galvanized the rest of the onlookers to join in and pelt her with ranged attacks. The succubus retreated back to the Armory, followed by the laughter of the Sigil locals. The party put Sharwyn on a crate and had her tell the locals the plan in flowery narrative. After her speech, the party learned that the Factol of the Doomguard, Ely, betrayed the other factions and joined Graz'zt. Most of the Doomguard did not go along with the plan, and so the survivors of that faction decided on the spot to make Sharwyn their new Factol. Naturally, the party encouraged this.

With the blessing of The Lady of Pain, and the cheering from the onlooking army, the party made its way past the orbiting Spheres of Annihilation and infiltrated the Armory. Inside, they found a grand chapel with frescoes detailing Graz'zt's exploits and victories throughout the multiverse. A few hesitant converts lingered in the chapel and studied them, but because the party came inside without getting blasted or annihilated, they assumed the PCs were new converts as well. The converts told the PCs that they could only meet with the new god if they managed to pass three trials (because, of course, The Rule of Three still applied). The PCs were pretty confidant they could manage.

The first puzzle chamber involved four torches, one on each wall, and an altar asked about Igqilv's great victories. The party went back to the fresco chamber, found a map of Greyhawk, and read up on Iggwilv's four victories over Mordenkainen. The PCs lit the corresponding torches, and the way opened up. Easy enough.

The second puzzle chamber had three sleeping women (a blonde, a redhead, and a raven-haired woman), a bunch of pillows, and a magical chalice filled with a sleeping drought. The PCs used Lucid Dreaming to see what was going on with the three women, and saw Graz'zt's plans to defeat three specific women with ties to his past: Mayaheine (a red haired planeswalker turned goddess who thwarted Graz'zt on the world of Greyhawk), Jallarzi Sallavarian (a blonde sorceress who was the only female member of Mordenkainen's Circle of Eight), and Tasha (who very recently betrayed him). The party debated about what to do with them, but eventually settled on having Sharwyn kiss them in a Sleeping Beauty style to wake them up. They did it in the right order, the women woke up, and the way to move forward opened. I had intended for the PCs to just carry the women out of the room, but it was a good enough solution to me.

The third and final puzzle chamber had four women each sat on their own bench around a pit which spewed hot air and toxic smoke. Each of the women had a different holy symbol stitched into a removable panel on the back of their robes: Heironeous, Hextor, Iuz, and Asmodeus. This was the puzzle that gave them trouble. They were convinced this puzzle followed different rules than the other three did. The party flipped the benches over, destroyed some decorative statue, and even contemplated sealing the pit shut (honestly, not the worst idea given the toxicity). Eventually, they went back to the room of frescoes to look for clues. They found one of Graz'zt abducting an angel who wore the symbol of Heironeous, followed by one of a six-fingered knight stealing into a tower watched over by Hextor, and lastly of Graz'zt casting Iuz into the void. All of these were under the watchful eye of Asmodeus. The party returned to the puzzle chamber, tore up the cloth symbols, and threw them into the pit.

Not quite right. The symbols reformed back on their corresponding benches.

The second time they got it right. They tossed in Heironeous' symbol first, then Hextor's, and third Iuz's, all while holding Asmodeus' symbol aloft. With the puzzle solved, the party was able to enter a hall decorated with gold. Also in the hall were many scrolls, all of which were spells stolen from various worlds around the multiverse. Unfortunately, the module only provides one example spell and left me to determine the rest, so I promised Aurelius I'd get back to him on that :smallredface:

With a mighty cry of "Harmonium! Open up!", Kharim kicked the final door open, and the party stormed into the chapel to confront Graz'zt and his minions. Final session incoming!
TL;DR - Sometimes players out think themselves, but that's okay.

JadedDM
2022-04-14, 07:52 PM
Reminds me of that one Oglaf comic (https://www.oglaf.com/trapmaster/) about the 'Overthinking' trap. (Don't worry, it's one of the few SFW ones.)

AllHailthed4
2022-04-15, 08:43 AM
Reminds me of that one Oglaf comic (https://www.oglaf.com/trapmaster/) about the 'Overthinking' trap. (Don't worry, it's one of the few SFW ones.)

Yeah, that's about accurate.

SleepyShadow
2022-04-21, 10:24 AM
The Showdown
In which our heroes battle against an ascended demon prince, and the fate of Sigil is decided.
The fight got underway against Ely Cromlich and his henchmen, and things were off to a rocky start. The party struggled to decide what aspect of the fight took priority: Ely the high level eldritch knight, the pair of succubus warlocks dumping fireballs on the party, or the half dozen cultists who were spamming cantrips at Daegan while spamming Healing Word at Ely. Kai was the focus of attention for the two tanar'ri, because he was quickly identified as the party healer. Whenever the succubi had the chance, they would target him. The party struggled for the first few rounds of combat against the magic damage coming at them from all sides. Eventually, Eirik and Sharwyn managed to get Ely bloodied, and that's when Graz'zt took to the field in person.

That's also when a switch flipped for the party. I'm still not sure whether it was desperation or sheer grit, but as soon as I put Graz'zt's mini on the battlefield, the party became very cohesive. It wasn't just their teamwork, either. Even the dice started cooperating to stop the destruction of Sigil. The party passed more saves, landed more attacks, and got hit less frequently. Daegan scored more critical hits in this one session than he had across the last four months of game play.

Eirik and Sharwyn managed to take Ely down when they weren't busy throwing out healing spells (it was one of the few fights where Kai wasn't able to keep up with the damage by himself). Daegan and Cassius cleaned up the cultist even though both were teetering in single digit hp for most of the fight. Tulany and Aurelius shot down the two succubi, saving Kai from their barrage of aerial spells. Kai put everything he had into keeping the party alive. Kharim kept the whole party on task, and kept Graz'zt occupied long enough for the whole group to pivot and turn on the burgeoning god.

Graz'zt spent the first couple of rounds trying to use his godlike powers to obliterate the party, but the protections given to them by the Lady of Pain made them nigh invulnerable to deity-level magic. He couldn't Wish them out of existence, and the party took minimum damage from the epic level spells he threw their way. Eventually he got fed up with the party, identified Kharim as the party leader, and just tried hacking him to death with Wave of Sorrow.

He almost killed Kharim in a single round of concentrated melee attacks.

Fortunately, Aurelius managed to punch through Graz'zt's divine barrier before the demon prince could finish Kharim off. That moment of distraction was all the opportunity another Power needed. As soon as the barrier was broken, the Lady of Pain took over the situation. Her shadow smashed through the giant stained glass window and dragged Graz'zt screaming into her Mazes. The party got a first hand look at the power the Lady commanded, and it was a bit too close for comfort.

As the party limped out of the Armory, they found all of Graz'zt's images had been scrubbed from the walls, and his decorations were gone. As soon as they stepped outside, the gathered army outside cheered and hailed them as heroes. Over the next few days, a celebration was held in their honor. It wasn't every day some leather heads from the Prime turn into real cutters. They even gave a demon god the laugh! During the festivities, the Lady of Pain herself even acknowledged their existence. She only paused in her usual route through the city long enough to give them a nod of approval, but that was an unheard of event. To the locals, it was even more impressive (and horrifying) than the defeat of a god.

A second unheard of event occurred shortly after the festival. The Lady of Pain spoke. She uttered once more the Words of Creation used to form Sigil, reordering the laws of the portal networks and the protections over the city so this could never happen again. The long-term repercussions of this would not be fully felt for more years, nor fully known for many years more.

Of course, Sigil was still the same jaded center of the Multiverse it always was. The festival ran its course, the portals began to function once more, and life went back to normal. Or at least whatever passed for normal in Sigil.

The PCs were rewarded by the dabus a few days later. They were granted three gifts (of course) from the Lady of Pain. First, they were promised protection from Graz'zt's kin so they wouldn't have to fear reprisals for their actions. Second, they were granted a Key to the City, which they could use to turn any archway, doorway, or window into a permanent two-way portal to Sigil, but they could only use it three times (of course). The third gift was the deed to a mansion in the Lady's Ward. It was theirs to keep, it was fully staffed, and it would be kept and maintained by the dabus during any time when the PCs were absent from Sigil. When the party went to inspect their new mansion, they realized it was Spiral Hal'oight's old mansion. They were pretty happy to get one last chance to rub salt in that particular wound.

Over the next few months, the party drifted apart and went their separate ways. Tulany left Sigil and met up with Feirefiz, and used her knowledge of portals to establish a lasting alliance between her country and his. Aurelius went back home, taking Rowena and the other library elves with him, and started up a new group of adventurers after taking the opportunity to rub his planar thesis paper in his old professor's face. Eirik and Sharwyn were married in a Nordic church in Glorium, and settled down in Sigil after a few months of adventuring and planeswalking. Cassius and Storm met up with Alistair and worked to repair relationships between the githyanki and the githzerai, culminating in preparations for taking down Vlaakith XIII, the lich queen of the githyanki (an adventure for another time). Kai got back together with his ex-wife, who was finally convinced he hadn't been cheating on her with his boss at the clinic, and the two of them sent their oldest son off to medical school. Daegan took a day trip back home to tell off his mother, then settled down in Sigil with his patchwork quilt of his chosen family (Daria, Hikari, Barrock, and Adair). Kharim took Erisiel back home with him to safeguard her from planar threats, and he reunited with his childhood sweetheart Zenobia.

This story might be over, but I'm sure the gang will have their own adventures in other places down the road.

TL;DR - This campaign was a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone for sticking with it, and thanks to everyone for reading our adventures.

JadedDM
2022-04-21, 08:07 PM
Congrats to everyone for completing the adventure and saving the planes!

Any ideas on what will come next?

SleepyShadow
2022-04-21, 09:21 PM
Congrats to everyone for completing the adventure and saving the planes!

Any ideas on what will come next?

We're starting up a diesel punk spy game cobbled together from Delta Green, Dragon Mech, Pulp Cthulhu, and Night's Black Agents. It's set in a homebrew setting of my own design.