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  1. - Top - End - #1
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    Default Planescape Campaign Journal (Completed)

    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

    Spoiler: Characters
    Show
    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.
    Last edited by SleepyShadow; 2022-04-21 at 10:25 AM.

  2. - Top - End - #2
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    Default Re: Planescape Campaign Journal

    What a weird and eclectic group.

    They should fit right in!

  3. - Top - End - #3
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    Default Re: Planescape Campaign Journal

    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.
    Spoiler: Session One
    Show
    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". 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 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.
    Last edited by SleepyShadow; 2021-02-13 at 05:49 PM.

  4. - Top - End - #4
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    Default Re: Planescape Campaign Journal

    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.

  5. - Top - End - #5
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    Default Re: Planescape Campaign Journal

    Quote Originally Posted by JadedDM View Post
    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.
    Spoiler: Session Two
    Show
    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.

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    Default Re: Planescape Campaign Journal

    Are any of the PCs members of a faction, or are they all independent still?

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    Default Re: Planescape Campaign Journal

    Quote Originally Posted by JadedDM View Post
    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.
    Last edited by SleepyShadow; 2021-02-09 at 01:07 PM.

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    Default Re: Planescape Campaign Journal

    Hopefully nobody joins the Xaositects.

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    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.
    Spoiler: Session Three
    Show
    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

    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
    Last edited by SleepyShadow; 2021-02-16 at 04:46 PM.

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    Sometimes a party's real enemy is their own inability to stick to a plan.

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    We had an extra session this week, since everyone had a holiday

    The Eternal Boundary: Chapter Two Part Three
    In which our heroes make some connections, and meet some faces of The Cage.
    Spoiler: Session Four
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    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 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

    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

    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.
    Last edited by SleepyShadow; 2022-02-17 at 10:41 AM.

  12. - Top - End - #12
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    Definitely get the feeling poor Kharim isn't getting a second date. Poor guy.

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    Quote Originally Posted by JadedDM View Post
    Definitely get the feeling poor Kharim isn't getting a second date. Poor guy.
    Hey, a paladin can always hope, lol.
    Last edited by AllHailthed4; 2021-02-17 at 12:57 AM.

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    The Eternal Boundary: Chapter Two Part Four
    In which our heroes gather some information, and learn their actions have consequences.
    Spoiler: Session Five
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    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, 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 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.
    Last edited by SleepyShadow; 2022-02-17 at 10:45 AM.

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    Wow, a near TPK! Shadowknave is what, 6th level, if I'm remembering correctly?

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    Quote Originally Posted by JadedDM View Post
    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

    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.
    Last edited by SleepyShadow; 2021-02-23 at 10:06 AM.

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    Looking forward to it!

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    To Catch A Thief
    In which our heroes decide to do their own thing, and realize how strange The Cage can be.
    Spoiler: Session Six
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    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

    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
    Last edited by SleepyShadow; 2021-02-28 at 11:33 AM.

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    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?

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    Quote Originally Posted by JadedDM View Post
    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!

    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, but if he does I think it'll be later in the campaign.
    Last edited by SleepyShadow; 2021-02-28 at 11:32 AM.

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    Did anyone take any feats or just stat boosts?

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    Quote Originally Posted by JadedDM View Post
    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.

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    I've never heard of either of those, but I do know what a Deepspawn is, and that does, indeed, sound quite gross.

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    Quote Originally Posted by JadedDM View Post
    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

    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.

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    Ah, okay, good to know.

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    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

    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.
    Spoiler: Session Seven
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    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

    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!

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    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.

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    Heating Up The Blood War
    In which the heroes encounter a strange undead, and witness an even stranger event.
    Spoiler: Session Eight
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    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

    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
    Last edited by SleepyShadow; 2021-03-13 at 03:08 PM.

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    Default Re: Planescape Campaign Journal

    What influences were those?

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    Default Re: Planescape Campaign Journal

    Quote Originally Posted by JadedDM View Post
    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.

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