Eurus
2021-06-26, 09:06 AM
I've been running a campaign for a few months now, and I thought it would be fun to do a campaign log writeup. All players involved have signed off on this, but (user)names will be changed. This is a D&D 3.5 campaign using a bit of homebrew and the occasional piece of Pathfinder material, but the journal should be fairly system-agnostic. So...
There are many worlds in the multiverse, and even more gods. Some gods cast a wider net than others, being worshiped in many different worlds. One such god is Manai, the God of Royalty. An ancient and powerful deity, Manai is generous to his followers and ruthless to his enemies on the planes where he's worshiped -- and somehow, his reach even extends occasionally to planes where he's not known or worshiped. And our players, somehow, have found themselves on that enemies list.
The campaign takes place in a divine realm created by Manai to serve as an eternal prison for those who offend him grievously, a personal hell for traitors and regicides. The goal, naturally, is to escape. On the bright(?) side, the nature of the prison is such that it does not allow its occupants to die. In theory, you can fight forever. Nothing can stop you, at least not permanently. In practice... well, nobody's escaped yet.
Yes, anyone who dies in the prison finds themselves eventually resurrected by the plane itself. In fact, "dying" is a bit of a flexible concept around here. Any PC that dies becomes a sort of semi-solid spirit, instead. A spirit PC is still able to move and act, but is reduced to approximately 50% effectiveness. If a spirit is healed back up to full HP, they come back to life. If every PC is reduced to spirit status at the same time, they are unable to maintain their hold on their forms, and discorporate; the battle is lost, but they'll reform in a few days.
To this maelstrom of misery we add five PCs, with only three names between them. A summary...
He instead returns with a somewhat short, frail-looking man wearing a frayed hooded robe.
He seems anxious or agitated.
He has several bats sitting on his shoulders.
-----
He lowers his hood, awkwardly grinning. Seems to have bandages on his neck and wrists. He's got long hair, and is quite pretty, if relevant to one's notice!
Player Pink controls the nameless mage, an amnesiac changeling wizard. Magey's earliest memories are of being stuck in a dungeon cell in the prison-plane, with nothing but his spellbook, an extensive and impressive tome of unclear origins. He managed to remember enough magic to escape that cell, but found himself in the bigger one of the prison-plane itself. Generally cheerful and optimistic, Magey has no idea what he did to end up in this place, and seems mostly unconcerned by the question.
Magey's build is... fairly unique, a Wizard/Spell Sovereign with some spellcasting ability but mostly being focused on controlling four shapeshifting familiars. The familiars can turn into a variety of utility forms, including huge swarms of bats, and even oozes made of pure magic called Living Spells. In play, Magey uses a combination of swarm distraction, moderate but reliable damage, and physically moving the party around with super-fast engulfing oozes. As a changeling, Magey could look however he wants, but it's not entirely clear if he knows that he's a changeling, so he tends to look like a waifish human.
Player Red controls the nameless prince, also an amnesiac, but a very different one. Prince made a deal with an archdevil, you see. The result of that deal was that his entire family line was destroyed so hard that they were scoured from all history and memory, including his own. This had all sorts of bad consequences for the kingdom that his family had been ruling up until that point, but more relevantly for Prince, he also signed his eternal service to the Lord of Malbolge, Glasya. On her orders, he went around founding cults to Glasya and leading them to overthrow other kingdoms, until he finally got dragged to Manai's prison. He was stuck there for quite a while, trapped powerlessly in another dungeon cell (although still doing his best to convert people to the devil cult), until an erinyes servant of Glasya arrived and informed him that his patron had managed to get his cultist-powers restored to him, although she was unable to secure his release. Met Magey shortly thereafter, and took on a sort of protective older sibling role to the other amnesiac.
Prince's build is a debuffer and DPS. Mostly melee with some secondary ranged blasting ability, he's an Avowed, which is a homebrew warlock made with a more modern design sensibility. He does solid damage with dual-wielded blades, has an incredibly high intimidate check to throw around shaken conditions like candy, and a nifty little trick that makes an enemy more vulnerable to attacks from his allies. Physically, he doesn't remember what he originally looked like, because Glasya's influence has physically reshaped him into looking more or less like an extremely pretty fiend. Bright red skin, horns, the works.
To one side of the new arrival, under the shadow of one loose building, was a small tent, the inside darkened for now at least.
Until it began to shift, thin lines of light forming along it, as it raised to cover what was now obviously its lone occupant. A youngish human (or at least human-looking) woman, whose cloak seemed to glow on the inside. Had she been sleeping, or just idling? Hard to say. But her expression seemed kind of flat at first.
-----
Under the cloak, she whispered a command word, her comfortable pajamas seeming to swap out for something far fancier on her form - looking like an ordinary bodysuit to the others (What little of it could be seen under the cloak at least), other than the material being oddly shiny. Entirely out of sight was what was now in her hand, quickly shuffling into a holster on her belt.
A gun. Good one, for her needs, too, and she'd made it better. It gave her at least some confidence to know that if this new person went on the attack, she could fight back with it and the blade hidden along her other hand.
Player Blue controls Unit Eight, a hacker from a high-tech but extremely dystopian plane. Eight rebelled against her world's oligarchs, and uniquely among the party, was actually framed for regicide as a sort of political hit-job. Despite not actually having killed any kings, this accusation, and the widespread belief in it, somehow got her pulled into Manai's prison. Once in the prison, she stumbled upon a walled settlement called Outpost Nineteen, the only place she found that had anything close to "modern" technology. Unfortunately, as soon as she entered the Outpost, something invaded her mind and dominated her. She's not sure how long she served the Outpost's mysterious master, but at some point she must have died in an accident, and that was enough to free her when she reformed outside the Outpost's range of control. Needless to say, she would quite like revenge.
Eight is an artificer, with her magical abilities fluffed as a sort of high tech reality hacking. As an artificer, she can do pretty much anything given enough prep time, and can craft items for the party as well. She also has a gun!
Nil is similarly unperturbed, though she is sizing up her surroundings and company in a way that might give the impression that she didn’t know precisely what she was getting into or where she’d wind up. (Those impressions would be correct.) She’s slim and soft-looking, with too-clean skin and hair, and seems underdressed in a very-light dress that blatantly offers no protection whatsoever. She doesn’t even have shoes. She does not seem remotely uncomfortable or concerned about her apparent vulnerability. She carries no visible weapon.
------
Nil strides out under the vargouilles, and with a cackle, unravels, stretching out to obscene proportions, over eight feet tall. She turns towards the party as her left arms stretches twenty feet over to the vargouille on that side, and pulls it in.
Player Green controls Nil, a knight from Cyre. If you know Eberron, you probably know Cyre better as the Mournland, and that's Nil's fault. The exact circumstances are... somewhat mysterious, seeing as there's nobody else alive to confirm exactly what happened, but she was originally a sort of diplomatic liason to House Cannith who heard about and became obsessed with the concept of the Becoming God, and came to believe that all of reality was a machine predisposed to a certain outcome, grinding away imperfections and forcing outcomes into line. It was this obsession that led her to first alter her body into a more artificial form with steel and magic, and then to commit her crime, which was to sabotage an experimental creation forge with a horrible weapon in an attempt to somehow rip herself out from the role that the god-machine cast her in. Regardless of how rational that idea was, she arguably succeeded.
Mechanically, Nil is -- if you'll pardon the technical term -- a grapplemonster. She was originally a changeling (fluff-wise, anyway), now she's essentially a shapeshifting mass of metal spikes and tendrils capable of compressing itself back down into an innocuous human form; she's immune to a lot of things that fleshier creatures would be afraid of, she has some low level psionic powers to make herself big, and she can grab you from twenty feet away and put you in a headlock. She's not quite as tanky as that description might imply, but she's not especially fragile either.
At a glance, you'd be excused for mistaking Rook for a pile of scrap. She doesn't do much to challenge the impression; singed, scratched and dented metal covers her from head to toe, and it would take an expert eye to recognise any of it for adamantine, and every bit of it creaks and groans with her movements. Parts of her are newer than others, and look out of place; either the result of repairs, or she's been assembled piecemeal from whatever was on hand. The uneven mix of steel and adamantine across her body suggests a rushed, threadbare construction she's spent her life scavenging to make up for.
The main sign of life is in her face. Bright green eyes, and a furnace glow creeping past jagged scrap metal when she opens her mouth. It's offset - and the towering bulk of near-broken metal covered up - by a black coat that's part cloth, part feathers. It gives the impression (and not at all by accident) of some enormous crow, digging through mountains of broken metal to steal away what prizes it can. On her back, a heater shield damaged past any kind of use - scratches and marks on her forearms point to being used as a replacement for longer than anything should be. Under it, an almost equally battered and notched greataxe, with the words 'ROOK TAKES KING' carved into the handle.
She looks like she's been through hell already; a little premature, really.
Finally, Player Yellow controls Rook, a warforged with a very big axe. Rook's past is alluded to rather than defined; she was created as a machine of war, but became a devotee of a god at some point. More recently, she renounced her deity when she learned about Manai's prison and decided to do something about it, which was a course of action that her god found sympathetic but foolhardy and politically impossible. Unlike the other PCs, Rook came here intentionally, flinging herself headfirst into hell in order to free everyone. For obvious reasons, people tend to think of her as a paladin, although she's really not shiny enough for that.
Mechanically, Rook is made of metal and has a very big axe. She's a single classed Crusader, so she can take a ton of damage and hits like a truck full of other, heavier trucks. She's not very mobile, and in fact has a flaw that makes it very hard for her to move away from any enemy that she's in melee with, but she can pretty reliably smash through one target at a time.
The prison realm is not, all things considered, that big. Perhaps a hundred miles across from end to end, you could easily go from one end to the other, if you avoid the monsters, murderers, and occasionally malevolent geography. But from the crater, it looks endless.
The crater itself is about twenty feet deep, with steep walls and shards of fused glass embedded into the rock. The sky overhead is dark orange, like an eternal sunset, or perhaps a summer day seen through a haze of smoke. Around the crater, a cracked expanse of baked mud stretches in every direction, whipped with bone-dry wind.
In the shadow of the crater, something like a shanty town is built. A dozen small buildings in various stages of disrepair hide from the wind, which would probably knock them over outright. Half are empty, abandoned by whoever realized that there was nothing to be gained by staying here.
The flash of a set of new arrivals is visible for miles. Impact is always disorienting, but you don't seem to be seriously hurt.
When you arrive in Manai's prison, you land at the Crater. When you die, you respawn at the Crater. It's surrounded by sand in every direction, and it's the place where you're most likely to get mauled by an angry respawning monster that's working off some resentment from its last death. Some people try to live there anyway, for at least a little while, and right now, our entire party is there for various reasons. Prince and Magey have a little shack to themselves while they try to come up with a plan, Eight has just recently escaped the Outpost and is recovering from being a mind-thrall, and Nil and Rook have just arrived, along with a third new arrival; an older man in bloody robes, with luminous symbols floating around his head. He passes out shortly after appearing, leaving the party to meet.
The initial meeting is tense, but productive. As it turns out, nobody wants to be here, and Rook in particular is vocal about how she fully intends to break out as many people as possible. Nil and Eight are on board with this at least in terms of getting themselves out, while the Prince is a little more reluctant. Part of it might be that playing devil's advocate comes naturally to a cultist... part of it is that, having spent more than a century unable to even escape his dungeon cell, he has a greater sense of just how difficult this is going to be.
Parallel to this discussion, Rook tries to find if anyone is able to help the unconscious man. Although dying wouldn't really be permanent, she doesn't exactly want to just let him bleed out. One of the shantytown's few occupants, a kenku, shambles over and guides the PCs to his home, a tiny shack covered in little bits of glass and metal to catch the light. He does some basic first aid on the man, and also tries to pocket the man's necklace. Rook notices and offers him her silver holy symbol instead, claiming that it's no longer in active use.
The party establishes that they are all, more or less, regicides, whether accused, accomplished, or simply prospective. Despite this, Rook's plan is to get as many of the prisoners as possible to work together, and even the fiendish guards, insisting that only teamwork can shatter the prison. Prince quips that their imprisonments may not actually be unjust; Rook simply responds that there is no just prison.
Prince: The prince holds his hand out palm-up, a small ball of sickly yellowish fire hovering above it. "What about those who are innately dangerous?"
Rook: "A good question. I am..." she puts her hand in the fire, holds it there for a while, then takes his hand in hers. "Doing my best. To help."
Prince: "..."
He blinks, his hood falling down as he tenses up.
He freezes with his hand in her grasp as the fire sputters out, apparently genuinely speechless at her gesture.
It's not the most eloquent, but it gets everyone on the same track, if not the same motivations. Everyone rests for the night, and in the morning, the unconscious guy is no longer unconscious. The tengu, Feather, has even created a crude map to help the party decide where to go.
The illumian's name turns out to be Jarich, and he's of limited assistance, being a wizard with no spellbook. He's confused as to where he is and what's going on, and the party explains that he's in a prison plane created by a vindictive god and that they're trying to break everyone out. He's somewhat bitter, but agrees that escape is probably a good idea, bringing the party's list of "allies" to one spell-less wizard and one nonverbal birdman. Since the party doesn't really have any leads, they decide that they might as well look for a spellbook for Jarich, and Feather suggests either the Outpost -- which Eight is torn between wanting to avoid and wanting to destroy -- and a place called the Rustyard, which is rumored to have an undead spellcaster living there. The party eventually decides on the latter, figuring that a settlement with some kind of horrible mind control is the kind of place they should probably make detailed preparations before attacking.
(Since Magey's player wasn't able to attend the first session, all of this happens without him. The explanation is that Prince, fearful for Magey's safety, decided to keep Magey hidden until he could at least somewhat trust the others. He's introduced now, as the party decides where to actually go.)
Eight and Magey chat about magic and technology, curious what the other can do. As it turns out, there's a fair bit of overlap. Who knew? Everyone else summarizes their own battle capabilities, which is fortunate, because after a few hours of trekking across the desert, they see shadows on the horizon. A swarm of creatures that look like severed humanoid heads with bat wings and lampreylike mouths are flying in, fast.
Magey identifies the creatures as vargouilles, monsters with the ability to emit a paralyzing shriek and give a "kiss" that can lead to a slow, agonizing death over a day or more. What's more, the party sees a group of humanoids chasing behind the swarm, harassing it with slings and seemingly herding it, with some sort of flying implike creatures (unidentifiable at the distance) accompanying them.
Magey melts a significant portion of the swarm with a fireball from a distance, and Prince throws a blast of energy that clears out several more. The implike creatures are close enough now to be revealed as mephits, and the party ends up incinerating one of them before the humanoids call the other one to disengage. Magey's casting style is commented on as being unusual; he asks his magic politely if it would mind making a bunch of fire, please. The rest of the party is dubious about the necessity of this, but if it works, it works. All in all, it's a quick fight, followed by a tense standoff with the humanoids...
DM: Slowly, one of the humanoids steps forward until she's about twenty feet away from the Prince. She unbuckles her mask, freeing her face enough to speak.
"...Useless (redacted) mortals, you ruined our hunt, you dumb (redacted)-"
That is to say, to yell, loudly and with phenomenal invective.
Magey: The mage is agast!
DM: "-meat is ruined, and we lost a mephit-"
"-your mothers-"
Her lung capacity is impressive.
The party isn't exactly apologetic, considering that a swarm of deadly monsters was just herded right into them, but they manage to talk the not-quite-humans down from their hostility. The party tells the hunters that they're heading for the rustyard, and the leader of the hunters -- introducing herself as Amah-La -- claims that they have some concoctions that will be helpful there, and will give them in exchange for help with a hunt. She also says that they're fools, that the ruins are dangerous and the "squatter" even more so, but doesn't try very hard to discourage them. The party is willing to go along with this, so they follow the hunters to the den of their prey.
The creature, which the hunters call a shraggi, turns out to actually be a beast called a Shrieking Terror; essentially, a giant vargouille crossed with a hydra. Magey shows off for the first time what will turn out to be a staple of the party's repertoire, having the group pile into his slime familiars like a party bus and boosting them to absurd speed to drop the melee folks in melee as fast as possible. Unfortunately, the shriek of the terror is far more powerful than its lesser cousins, and half of the party gets paralyzed on the spot. Nil and Rook are immune, however, and the hunters seem to have expected this, because they pull out smelling salts and try to help get the party back on their feet (giving the PCs additional saves each round with a +4 bonus to shake off the paralysis early). In the end, the luck on those saves isn't great, and Nil and Rook have to tangle with the thing for a while before enough of the party is moving to collectively stab it to death.
At the end of that, the hunters are feeling quite a bit more charitably disposed toward the party, since there's a huge pile of meat to make the day's efforts worth it. True to their word, they offer each PC a choice of one out of three consumables: a vial of Liquid Rust, which can be thrown at a metallic creature to do a lot of damage or applied to a nonmetal weapon to make it hurt such enemies more; a bit of herbal ointment which can be smeared around your eyes to give you the ability to recognize illusions on sight; and a paste made of grave dirt and bone dust that hides you from the perceptions of the undead until you break the concealment by attacking one, then continues giving a sizable bonus on saving throws against them. All of these things will spoil if not used within a few days, which is my way of trying to avoid the "useful therefore never-used" effect. The party takes an approximately even split between grave paste and clear-eye ointment, and the hunters -- who the party finally manages to identify as Gautiere, a species native to Carceri about which not much is known -- part ways amicably.
That's enough for an introduction, I think. I don't actually remember where each session split up, since I'm going through the discord logs, but I think this corresponds approximately to the first two sessions. Interesting at all? Are campaign journals still a thing anybody does? If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
There are many worlds in the multiverse, and even more gods. Some gods cast a wider net than others, being worshiped in many different worlds. One such god is Manai, the God of Royalty. An ancient and powerful deity, Manai is generous to his followers and ruthless to his enemies on the planes where he's worshiped -- and somehow, his reach even extends occasionally to planes where he's not known or worshiped. And our players, somehow, have found themselves on that enemies list.
The campaign takes place in a divine realm created by Manai to serve as an eternal prison for those who offend him grievously, a personal hell for traitors and regicides. The goal, naturally, is to escape. On the bright(?) side, the nature of the prison is such that it does not allow its occupants to die. In theory, you can fight forever. Nothing can stop you, at least not permanently. In practice... well, nobody's escaped yet.
Yes, anyone who dies in the prison finds themselves eventually resurrected by the plane itself. In fact, "dying" is a bit of a flexible concept around here. Any PC that dies becomes a sort of semi-solid spirit, instead. A spirit PC is still able to move and act, but is reduced to approximately 50% effectiveness. If a spirit is healed back up to full HP, they come back to life. If every PC is reduced to spirit status at the same time, they are unable to maintain their hold on their forms, and discorporate; the battle is lost, but they'll reform in a few days.
To this maelstrom of misery we add five PCs, with only three names between them. A summary...
He instead returns with a somewhat short, frail-looking man wearing a frayed hooded robe.
He seems anxious or agitated.
He has several bats sitting on his shoulders.
-----
He lowers his hood, awkwardly grinning. Seems to have bandages on his neck and wrists. He's got long hair, and is quite pretty, if relevant to one's notice!
Player Pink controls the nameless mage, an amnesiac changeling wizard. Magey's earliest memories are of being stuck in a dungeon cell in the prison-plane, with nothing but his spellbook, an extensive and impressive tome of unclear origins. He managed to remember enough magic to escape that cell, but found himself in the bigger one of the prison-plane itself. Generally cheerful and optimistic, Magey has no idea what he did to end up in this place, and seems mostly unconcerned by the question.
Magey's build is... fairly unique, a Wizard/Spell Sovereign with some spellcasting ability but mostly being focused on controlling four shapeshifting familiars. The familiars can turn into a variety of utility forms, including huge swarms of bats, and even oozes made of pure magic called Living Spells. In play, Magey uses a combination of swarm distraction, moderate but reliable damage, and physically moving the party around with super-fast engulfing oozes. As a changeling, Magey could look however he wants, but it's not entirely clear if he knows that he's a changeling, so he tends to look like a waifish human.
Player Red controls the nameless prince, also an amnesiac, but a very different one. Prince made a deal with an archdevil, you see. The result of that deal was that his entire family line was destroyed so hard that they were scoured from all history and memory, including his own. This had all sorts of bad consequences for the kingdom that his family had been ruling up until that point, but more relevantly for Prince, he also signed his eternal service to the Lord of Malbolge, Glasya. On her orders, he went around founding cults to Glasya and leading them to overthrow other kingdoms, until he finally got dragged to Manai's prison. He was stuck there for quite a while, trapped powerlessly in another dungeon cell (although still doing his best to convert people to the devil cult), until an erinyes servant of Glasya arrived and informed him that his patron had managed to get his cultist-powers restored to him, although she was unable to secure his release. Met Magey shortly thereafter, and took on a sort of protective older sibling role to the other amnesiac.
Prince's build is a debuffer and DPS. Mostly melee with some secondary ranged blasting ability, he's an Avowed, which is a homebrew warlock made with a more modern design sensibility. He does solid damage with dual-wielded blades, has an incredibly high intimidate check to throw around shaken conditions like candy, and a nifty little trick that makes an enemy more vulnerable to attacks from his allies. Physically, he doesn't remember what he originally looked like, because Glasya's influence has physically reshaped him into looking more or less like an extremely pretty fiend. Bright red skin, horns, the works.
To one side of the new arrival, under the shadow of one loose building, was a small tent, the inside darkened for now at least.
Until it began to shift, thin lines of light forming along it, as it raised to cover what was now obviously its lone occupant. A youngish human (or at least human-looking) woman, whose cloak seemed to glow on the inside. Had she been sleeping, or just idling? Hard to say. But her expression seemed kind of flat at first.
-----
Under the cloak, she whispered a command word, her comfortable pajamas seeming to swap out for something far fancier on her form - looking like an ordinary bodysuit to the others (What little of it could be seen under the cloak at least), other than the material being oddly shiny. Entirely out of sight was what was now in her hand, quickly shuffling into a holster on her belt.
A gun. Good one, for her needs, too, and she'd made it better. It gave her at least some confidence to know that if this new person went on the attack, she could fight back with it and the blade hidden along her other hand.
Player Blue controls Unit Eight, a hacker from a high-tech but extremely dystopian plane. Eight rebelled against her world's oligarchs, and uniquely among the party, was actually framed for regicide as a sort of political hit-job. Despite not actually having killed any kings, this accusation, and the widespread belief in it, somehow got her pulled into Manai's prison. Once in the prison, she stumbled upon a walled settlement called Outpost Nineteen, the only place she found that had anything close to "modern" technology. Unfortunately, as soon as she entered the Outpost, something invaded her mind and dominated her. She's not sure how long she served the Outpost's mysterious master, but at some point she must have died in an accident, and that was enough to free her when she reformed outside the Outpost's range of control. Needless to say, she would quite like revenge.
Eight is an artificer, with her magical abilities fluffed as a sort of high tech reality hacking. As an artificer, she can do pretty much anything given enough prep time, and can craft items for the party as well. She also has a gun!
Nil is similarly unperturbed, though she is sizing up her surroundings and company in a way that might give the impression that she didn’t know precisely what she was getting into or where she’d wind up. (Those impressions would be correct.) She’s slim and soft-looking, with too-clean skin and hair, and seems underdressed in a very-light dress that blatantly offers no protection whatsoever. She doesn’t even have shoes. She does not seem remotely uncomfortable or concerned about her apparent vulnerability. She carries no visible weapon.
------
Nil strides out under the vargouilles, and with a cackle, unravels, stretching out to obscene proportions, over eight feet tall. She turns towards the party as her left arms stretches twenty feet over to the vargouille on that side, and pulls it in.
Player Green controls Nil, a knight from Cyre. If you know Eberron, you probably know Cyre better as the Mournland, and that's Nil's fault. The exact circumstances are... somewhat mysterious, seeing as there's nobody else alive to confirm exactly what happened, but she was originally a sort of diplomatic liason to House Cannith who heard about and became obsessed with the concept of the Becoming God, and came to believe that all of reality was a machine predisposed to a certain outcome, grinding away imperfections and forcing outcomes into line. It was this obsession that led her to first alter her body into a more artificial form with steel and magic, and then to commit her crime, which was to sabotage an experimental creation forge with a horrible weapon in an attempt to somehow rip herself out from the role that the god-machine cast her in. Regardless of how rational that idea was, she arguably succeeded.
Mechanically, Nil is -- if you'll pardon the technical term -- a grapplemonster. She was originally a changeling (fluff-wise, anyway), now she's essentially a shapeshifting mass of metal spikes and tendrils capable of compressing itself back down into an innocuous human form; she's immune to a lot of things that fleshier creatures would be afraid of, she has some low level psionic powers to make herself big, and she can grab you from twenty feet away and put you in a headlock. She's not quite as tanky as that description might imply, but she's not especially fragile either.
At a glance, you'd be excused for mistaking Rook for a pile of scrap. She doesn't do much to challenge the impression; singed, scratched and dented metal covers her from head to toe, and it would take an expert eye to recognise any of it for adamantine, and every bit of it creaks and groans with her movements. Parts of her are newer than others, and look out of place; either the result of repairs, or she's been assembled piecemeal from whatever was on hand. The uneven mix of steel and adamantine across her body suggests a rushed, threadbare construction she's spent her life scavenging to make up for.
The main sign of life is in her face. Bright green eyes, and a furnace glow creeping past jagged scrap metal when she opens her mouth. It's offset - and the towering bulk of near-broken metal covered up - by a black coat that's part cloth, part feathers. It gives the impression (and not at all by accident) of some enormous crow, digging through mountains of broken metal to steal away what prizes it can. On her back, a heater shield damaged past any kind of use - scratches and marks on her forearms point to being used as a replacement for longer than anything should be. Under it, an almost equally battered and notched greataxe, with the words 'ROOK TAKES KING' carved into the handle.
She looks like she's been through hell already; a little premature, really.
Finally, Player Yellow controls Rook, a warforged with a very big axe. Rook's past is alluded to rather than defined; she was created as a machine of war, but became a devotee of a god at some point. More recently, she renounced her deity when she learned about Manai's prison and decided to do something about it, which was a course of action that her god found sympathetic but foolhardy and politically impossible. Unlike the other PCs, Rook came here intentionally, flinging herself headfirst into hell in order to free everyone. For obvious reasons, people tend to think of her as a paladin, although she's really not shiny enough for that.
Mechanically, Rook is made of metal and has a very big axe. She's a single classed Crusader, so she can take a ton of damage and hits like a truck full of other, heavier trucks. She's not very mobile, and in fact has a flaw that makes it very hard for her to move away from any enemy that she's in melee with, but she can pretty reliably smash through one target at a time.
The prison realm is not, all things considered, that big. Perhaps a hundred miles across from end to end, you could easily go from one end to the other, if you avoid the monsters, murderers, and occasionally malevolent geography. But from the crater, it looks endless.
The crater itself is about twenty feet deep, with steep walls and shards of fused glass embedded into the rock. The sky overhead is dark orange, like an eternal sunset, or perhaps a summer day seen through a haze of smoke. Around the crater, a cracked expanse of baked mud stretches in every direction, whipped with bone-dry wind.
In the shadow of the crater, something like a shanty town is built. A dozen small buildings in various stages of disrepair hide from the wind, which would probably knock them over outright. Half are empty, abandoned by whoever realized that there was nothing to be gained by staying here.
The flash of a set of new arrivals is visible for miles. Impact is always disorienting, but you don't seem to be seriously hurt.
When you arrive in Manai's prison, you land at the Crater. When you die, you respawn at the Crater. It's surrounded by sand in every direction, and it's the place where you're most likely to get mauled by an angry respawning monster that's working off some resentment from its last death. Some people try to live there anyway, for at least a little while, and right now, our entire party is there for various reasons. Prince and Magey have a little shack to themselves while they try to come up with a plan, Eight has just recently escaped the Outpost and is recovering from being a mind-thrall, and Nil and Rook have just arrived, along with a third new arrival; an older man in bloody robes, with luminous symbols floating around his head. He passes out shortly after appearing, leaving the party to meet.
The initial meeting is tense, but productive. As it turns out, nobody wants to be here, and Rook in particular is vocal about how she fully intends to break out as many people as possible. Nil and Eight are on board with this at least in terms of getting themselves out, while the Prince is a little more reluctant. Part of it might be that playing devil's advocate comes naturally to a cultist... part of it is that, having spent more than a century unable to even escape his dungeon cell, he has a greater sense of just how difficult this is going to be.
Parallel to this discussion, Rook tries to find if anyone is able to help the unconscious man. Although dying wouldn't really be permanent, she doesn't exactly want to just let him bleed out. One of the shantytown's few occupants, a kenku, shambles over and guides the PCs to his home, a tiny shack covered in little bits of glass and metal to catch the light. He does some basic first aid on the man, and also tries to pocket the man's necklace. Rook notices and offers him her silver holy symbol instead, claiming that it's no longer in active use.
The party establishes that they are all, more or less, regicides, whether accused, accomplished, or simply prospective. Despite this, Rook's plan is to get as many of the prisoners as possible to work together, and even the fiendish guards, insisting that only teamwork can shatter the prison. Prince quips that their imprisonments may not actually be unjust; Rook simply responds that there is no just prison.
Prince: The prince holds his hand out palm-up, a small ball of sickly yellowish fire hovering above it. "What about those who are innately dangerous?"
Rook: "A good question. I am..." she puts her hand in the fire, holds it there for a while, then takes his hand in hers. "Doing my best. To help."
Prince: "..."
He blinks, his hood falling down as he tenses up.
He freezes with his hand in her grasp as the fire sputters out, apparently genuinely speechless at her gesture.
It's not the most eloquent, but it gets everyone on the same track, if not the same motivations. Everyone rests for the night, and in the morning, the unconscious guy is no longer unconscious. The tengu, Feather, has even created a crude map to help the party decide where to go.
The illumian's name turns out to be Jarich, and he's of limited assistance, being a wizard with no spellbook. He's confused as to where he is and what's going on, and the party explains that he's in a prison plane created by a vindictive god and that they're trying to break everyone out. He's somewhat bitter, but agrees that escape is probably a good idea, bringing the party's list of "allies" to one spell-less wizard and one nonverbal birdman. Since the party doesn't really have any leads, they decide that they might as well look for a spellbook for Jarich, and Feather suggests either the Outpost -- which Eight is torn between wanting to avoid and wanting to destroy -- and a place called the Rustyard, which is rumored to have an undead spellcaster living there. The party eventually decides on the latter, figuring that a settlement with some kind of horrible mind control is the kind of place they should probably make detailed preparations before attacking.
(Since Magey's player wasn't able to attend the first session, all of this happens without him. The explanation is that Prince, fearful for Magey's safety, decided to keep Magey hidden until he could at least somewhat trust the others. He's introduced now, as the party decides where to actually go.)
Eight and Magey chat about magic and technology, curious what the other can do. As it turns out, there's a fair bit of overlap. Who knew? Everyone else summarizes their own battle capabilities, which is fortunate, because after a few hours of trekking across the desert, they see shadows on the horizon. A swarm of creatures that look like severed humanoid heads with bat wings and lampreylike mouths are flying in, fast.
Magey identifies the creatures as vargouilles, monsters with the ability to emit a paralyzing shriek and give a "kiss" that can lead to a slow, agonizing death over a day or more. What's more, the party sees a group of humanoids chasing behind the swarm, harassing it with slings and seemingly herding it, with some sort of flying implike creatures (unidentifiable at the distance) accompanying them.
Magey melts a significant portion of the swarm with a fireball from a distance, and Prince throws a blast of energy that clears out several more. The implike creatures are close enough now to be revealed as mephits, and the party ends up incinerating one of them before the humanoids call the other one to disengage. Magey's casting style is commented on as being unusual; he asks his magic politely if it would mind making a bunch of fire, please. The rest of the party is dubious about the necessity of this, but if it works, it works. All in all, it's a quick fight, followed by a tense standoff with the humanoids...
DM: Slowly, one of the humanoids steps forward until she's about twenty feet away from the Prince. She unbuckles her mask, freeing her face enough to speak.
"...Useless (redacted) mortals, you ruined our hunt, you dumb (redacted)-"
That is to say, to yell, loudly and with phenomenal invective.
Magey: The mage is agast!
DM: "-meat is ruined, and we lost a mephit-"
"-your mothers-"
Her lung capacity is impressive.
The party isn't exactly apologetic, considering that a swarm of deadly monsters was just herded right into them, but they manage to talk the not-quite-humans down from their hostility. The party tells the hunters that they're heading for the rustyard, and the leader of the hunters -- introducing herself as Amah-La -- claims that they have some concoctions that will be helpful there, and will give them in exchange for help with a hunt. She also says that they're fools, that the ruins are dangerous and the "squatter" even more so, but doesn't try very hard to discourage them. The party is willing to go along with this, so they follow the hunters to the den of their prey.
The creature, which the hunters call a shraggi, turns out to actually be a beast called a Shrieking Terror; essentially, a giant vargouille crossed with a hydra. Magey shows off for the first time what will turn out to be a staple of the party's repertoire, having the group pile into his slime familiars like a party bus and boosting them to absurd speed to drop the melee folks in melee as fast as possible. Unfortunately, the shriek of the terror is far more powerful than its lesser cousins, and half of the party gets paralyzed on the spot. Nil and Rook are immune, however, and the hunters seem to have expected this, because they pull out smelling salts and try to help get the party back on their feet (giving the PCs additional saves each round with a +4 bonus to shake off the paralysis early). In the end, the luck on those saves isn't great, and Nil and Rook have to tangle with the thing for a while before enough of the party is moving to collectively stab it to death.
At the end of that, the hunters are feeling quite a bit more charitably disposed toward the party, since there's a huge pile of meat to make the day's efforts worth it. True to their word, they offer each PC a choice of one out of three consumables: a vial of Liquid Rust, which can be thrown at a metallic creature to do a lot of damage or applied to a nonmetal weapon to make it hurt such enemies more; a bit of herbal ointment which can be smeared around your eyes to give you the ability to recognize illusions on sight; and a paste made of grave dirt and bone dust that hides you from the perceptions of the undead until you break the concealment by attacking one, then continues giving a sizable bonus on saving throws against them. All of these things will spoil if not used within a few days, which is my way of trying to avoid the "useful therefore never-used" effect. The party takes an approximately even split between grave paste and clear-eye ointment, and the hunters -- who the party finally manages to identify as Gautiere, a species native to Carceri about which not much is known -- part ways amicably.
That's enough for an introduction, I think. I don't actually remember where each session split up, since I'm going through the discord logs, but I think this corresponds approximately to the first two sessions. Interesting at all? Are campaign journals still a thing anybody does? If you have any questions, feel free to ask.