Wow, okay, so it's been a minute. I can't believe I haven't posted a real update since 2014, or a brief update since 2018. This game is still going! The players just got to the fort on the Governor's island in Flint to try and stop Stanfield's ritual. We're taking a break for a month or so due to scheduling conflicts, and will pick up after that to finish off this sequence and then FINALLY kick off Act 3!
Quick recap of what has gone on...
The active characters:
-
Viveen, goliath runepriest, Yerasol veteran, avatar of war - a former soldier turned scholar, studying what she believed to be the "language of the gods," with lingering trauma from wartime (also, my partner of many years in the real world, since before this game began)
- Vesta, eladrin swordmage, Vekeshi mystic - recruited to the Constabulary by a friend-turned-lover who subsequently died, returned to the Constabulary after a leave of absence, but also dove into the teachings of Vekesh and links to his own heritage and religion, current wielder of the First Blade of Srasama and Risur's new liason to the Unseen Court (he turned down a seat on the Court, despite Thisraldion's best pitch)
- Reginald, human psion, urban empath - a delinquent minor noble who makes a habit of trying every unique consumable he can get his hands on, has taken an interest in urbanized civilization and the collective consciousness of cities, and in related research is working on a process to "unmake" witchoil to free the souls trapped therein
- Bela, human warlock, mad shootist - a career Constable, master of all things bureaucratic, but with only the vaguest understanding of where his magic comes from (despite being a dual pact warlock!), although a conversation regarding the metaphysical nature of Law with former seneschal of the Demonocracy, Ashima-Shimtu, did prove somewhat illuminating...
Former character:
- Murdok, human ranger, martial scientist - a former Constable turned submarine pilot for the Risuri navy, has been married to Rock Rackus since the (as yet undisclosed!) events of Rock Rackus and the Ruby Rod of R'Lyeh, run by our own @RangerWickett all those years ago (2014); she had to leave the game, but stayed a friend
What's up:
Night of the Living Dead
After the Ob Convocation, where Viveen and Murdok died, the party invested considerable effort trying to figure out how to restore them to life.
The souls of Viveen and Murdok awoke in the Bleak Gate, experiencing the first stage of the afterlife. In contrast to how souls normally comport themselves in these circumstances, however, both retained a powerful will to live. They explored their environs, and managed to find their way out to sea away from the Ob island... however, the seas of the Bleak Gate contain strange multitudes. They were swallowed by a spectral whale, and found themselves among other devoured spirits. As Viveen's player wrote...
As we’re hiking along a sea bed a phasing spectral undead whale eats us, because this is naughty word. There’s light coming from down its throat. We walk toward the light, and can hear a group of something singing a sea shanty. Group of spectral men and women of various species drinking spectral ale and singing, lead by a human woman with glowing eyes. We drink some ale, and join in the song for awhile. Spectral woman asks us where we’re headed. We tell her, but think she intends to have the whale eat the boat. She touches the wall of the whale and it turns around. Murdoch goes to the front of the whale and hits it with her axe, and there’s noise that sounds like the ghost council and we get spit out, but the whale continues towards where we told it the boat would be.
We continue.
Meanwhile, the rest of the party transitioned back to the waking, and boarded their highly customized ship, Storm Surge. It was capable of both brief submersible operations and brief planar transitions (thanks,
Admiral o' the High Seas), so the main things they needed to do were preserve the material bodies of Viveen and Murdok (easy, with the Absurdist Web), and find a way to arrive at the same place geographically, so they could plane shift and recover the souls of their fallen comrades. From Viveen's player again:
The boat gets there. We’re not there. They use trig to figure out how far away we are. We warn them about the ghost whale. They get to us and drop the anchor. We start climbing. The whale is coming, from the west. We’re back on the ship! And in naval combat with the whale.
We sink the whale! No booty.
While still in the Bleak Gate, the living players were able to use Mortal Possession to pull Viveen's and Murdok's souls back into their bodies, and the ship's surgeon was able to heal their bodies enough to restore them to life. After the transit back to the Waking, Viveen and Murdok were alive again!
One other note: Viveen came out of this wearing the Humble Hook. She still has it, and has in fact nearly maxed out its concordance.
A New Body for Dr Meredith
Later, once the hunt for Kasvarina's memories began, the party tried to make landfall on the coast of Elfaivar, but were waylaid by Danoran ships and a submarine, which rammed their ship. They managed to board the submarine and engaged its crew hand-to-hand. This gave Lya Jierre, captaining the sub, another chance to separate party members from their limbs. This time, Viveen lost an arm, but Lya lost both her rapier and her life.
Xambria's consciousness was still inside Vesta, and he knew she had been looking for a new body for herself, so he consulted her and asked if she would like to inhabit Lya Jierre's now-deceased mortal form. She said yes.
Murdok offered to take some of the Storm Surge's crew and pilot the submarine back to Risur. (This is when her player left the game; Murdok and the sub are now offscreen as part of the Risuri navy.)
Almost Convincing Borne
Later...
Vesta is a frog.
Vesta is no longer a frog.
In the search for the Lost Arc of Reida, they did find (among other things) the First Blade of Srasama. I found the 4E stats for this a little underwhelming, so I made it into an artifact with concordance. (Yes, we're quite literally still playing 4E D&D! There was a lot about 5E that didn't appeal to us, and I particularly wanted my players to experience the total brokenness of epic tier 4E, which isn't quite the same in other editions.)
They fully explored Kasvarina's memories, including most if not all of the more obscure ones -- notably, unearthing Nicodemus' true identity and witnessing the destruction of Pala firsthand. With Kasvarina fully on board, when they finally went to Methia and encountered Borne, through their combined efforts they were able to convince Borne to climb the tower with them and find out the truth.
Witnessing the memories as they climbed the tower was quite confusing to Borne, but sobering to Kasvarina and the party. It cemented for them even further that it wouldn't be possible to compromise with Nicodemus.
At the top of the tower, Nicodemus made his pitch to Kasvarina and to Borne, but Kasvarina was having none of it - she pretended to succumb, but remained on the party's side. They all fought Nicodemus while debating back and forth with Borne, who stayed entirely out of the fight - a somewhat unsatisfying win for the PCs, because while Borne didn't attack them, Nicodemus did ultimately convince the colossus that only they could change the world. Borne, despite being sympathetic to the PCs' arguments and displeased by Nicodemus openly attacking Kasvarina, concluded that they truly were uniquely positioned to affect great change, and still being young and naive, believed they should do everything they could to make things better with the abilities given to them.
And the Killer is... actually, we don't give a crap
Once in the Dreaming, while they did investigate Rock's "murder" fully enough to locate and rescue him, they declined to accuse anyone, and instead left immediately to petition the Voice of Rot to banish them back to the Waking - leaving the Unseen Court literally coming to blows among themselves, with unknown consequences.
Thisraldion did quietly offer Vesta the empty Court seat at one point, but Vesta instead agreed only to replace the mysteriously absent Asrabey as the new liason between Risur and the Dreaming. Bela, having been friendly to gremlins throughout the campaign, also came out of this sequence with Granny Allswell's boon.
The Voice of Rot offered to take them into its service, asking for a favor in exchange for "banishment" -- if the party would travel to Axis Island and sabotage the Ob ritual, something the Voice seemed confident they would want to do anyway, the Voice would send them back to the Waking. But after some deliberation, the party declined, reluctant to be beholden to the fey titan. Instead, they forced it to banish them the old-fashioned way -- through violence.
Defending the Palace, the King, and the Realm
The Torfeld Palace sequence is written as a collection of encounters intended to be run as montages, with periods of zooming out and possibly even short rests (or equivalent) between them. I knew my players better than that, though, so I prepped the entire palace as a single battle map in advance, and sure enough, they moved from lantern to lantern fast enough that I had to run basically the entire collection of encounters straight up as a single mega-battle.
The King did name Viveen his primary successor, and Nigel Price-Hill as the fallback, and being forewarned about the Ob's impending attempt to replace him, he also named all four Constables Dukes in order to have a quorum of the nobility present.
Playing remotely and meeting at most once a week, the entire sequence took us almost a year of calendar time! Pandemic fatigue played a part, as there were many weeks during the year that one or more of us didn't feel up for D&D, and so we just hung out and shot the breeze instead of playing. When we did play, though, they pulled out all the stops -- Bela used his gremlin affinity to make short work of the first lantern near the vault, giving them a safer base of operations, needing to defend only against phasing ghostly enemies once they made it inside. But King Aodhan refused to leave the palace staff to be taken prisoner. Viveen and Rock turned themselves invisible (which I had missed in the encounter text was supposed to be prevented by the lanterns) and flew from one lantern to another, with Rock trying to disable them once Bela showed him how it was done.
However, Viveen hadn't counted on the reanimated dragon tyrant having true sight, thanks to the runes for life and death illuminating its empty eye sockets. She realized that the dragon could literally see their souls directly. This precipitated an extended aerial chase, while the other half of the party combined King Aodhan and Reginald's earth moving power to tunnel from the vault to the reception hall, and stage a daring rescue of the collected prisoners right out from under Catherine Romana's nose.
By the end, bereft of healing surges, potions, and with Harkover Lee surviving multiple brushes with death, the party managed a near-complete victory -- they disabled all six lanterns, rescued the prisoners, and held out for long enough for the cavalry to arrive. Quite literally, sixty combat rounds, of which I fully ran at least forty in initiative order:
The only enemy to escape somewhat victorious was the dragon tyrant, who rebuffed overtures of parley when it became clear the Ob were going to lose, and instead taunted the party as it flew away to find its own destiny.
What Happens Now?
The PCs have known about the Axis Island plan since the Ob convocation, but while they did initially consider trying to go there, they ultimately decided to go to Flint. I'd say that was driven by a general antipathy for naval combat among the players, combined with a view that if Risur's navy plus Pemberton's aid can't carry the day there, then nothing can, so they're acting as a failsafe to ensure that even if the Axis Seal is opened, Risur survives intact through the Monarch's power. Reasonable enough. Thus, we're playing the Flint sequence as written, except that the King and most of the other government NPCs stayed in Slate -- why have the King go with the Heir when the Heir is already the backup plan?
While I'm painfully aware that the King is supposed to die, he's actually pretty hard to kill by RAW. That said, when the seal opens and the fey titans begin to contest the King's hold on the realm, I plan to have him step down -- essentially saying, "look, I've defended the realm for a long time, but I know myself, and I know I can't defeat all of fey titans in rapid succession anymore, if I ever could have; if I try to do this now, I know I'll die, and I know I have a capable heir in Viveen."
From there, I've been spending some time with the Act 3 book and looking at it in light of my players' chosen epic destinies, one of my favorite parts of 4E and one of the big reasons we're still playing that system.
- Viveen plans to further develop her relationship with the Humble Hook, which may culminate in her quite literally manifesting as a god, as she pursues a deeper understanding of how what she believed to be the "language of the gods" ties to the literal construction of the world in the form of planar alignment metaphysics.
- While Vesta rejected Thisraldion's direct overtures, he may be more amenable to a seat on the Court if it is reconstituted in his absence. At minimum he has already become an archfey, and plans to further develop his connection to his heritage, the Dreaming, and his religion as the chosen wielder of the First Blade of Srasama. (He has another level of concordance to reach with it, and a power I'm quite excited to reveal to him.)
- Bela has long believed that underneath everything lies some form of bureaucracy, or as Ashima-Shimtu might put it, Law. He has no aptitude for ritual magic or other forms of magic that require study, but instead taps into the forces that underlie all such magics. This, as one might imagine, can make him rather terrifying to be around (think a scarier version of Gandalf confronting Bilbo). Where this may take him, he isn't sure, but the journey toward immanence will be fascinating for all of us.
- Reginald has long been interested in whether his own consciousness could diffuse outward from himself, in much the way that cities seem to have their own personality and consciousness when he speaks with them, even if they don't necessarily communicate in words. Combining this interest with his interest in safely undoing witchoil by studying the binding and unbinding of souls as energy, he plans to ultimately become a plane unto himself.
After two years off due to the pandemic, we're hoping to resume our formerly-annual once per year in person week-long get togethers later this year. I'm hoping to have some of the crazier early epic tier stuff ready to run by then, maybe the fey titan sequences after the opening of the Axis Seal.
Glad to see some of the other long-running campaigns are still going / have finished up, I'm definitely reading through those for ideas on how to run epic tier, even among folks who left 4E for other systems.