DMDM's Strange Aeons

Game Master Douglas Muir 406

Harry potter, obviously.

My wife is a huge HP geek so it's the only thing I can think of when random magic words come to mind.

Of course.

Waiting on DM.

Was about to poke the DM.

Probably not smart to poke the DM.

Hey Mrakala, please poke the DM.

Sick weekend! Spent most of Sunday in bed. (Missed a chance to see the Moscow Circus, darnit.)

The man in the Mirror, the seems like that's lose end, we need to tie up.

I agree, it feels like he's there as a trap in case we haven't adjusted to the whole "horror not heroes" bit yet. He's likely a soul to possess people or something like that. I bet this "Carl" messed with the mirror and got sucked in as prey.

Or who knows.

The DM knows ;)

It's almost certainly a trap, but only almost. In any case -- nobody has smashed the mirror yet (and why not, with all the ransacking going on?) or solved it. I think there's time to wait to figure out how to approach it. We need to know more about what's going on, too.

DM have you seen Stranger Things?

To my fellow patients, I know having to post over days is not easy, can we vote?

Can we question the Man in the Mirror we may lose the chance, and can we please search the rooms then return to chapel, I really think we should.

We may lose the chance - either he's slaughtered/subjugated - or it may be like the Upside Down: a distorted, mirrored reality. In which case, we could come across him again in another location with a mirror.

I'm wondering if we say the thing, and accept him into this reality, if he just comes through, we smash the mirror and that's that? Or, is that inviting everything on the other side to this reality? Or is he a spirit who will literally try to possess us?

I'm all for getting answers from him, but also for getting to "safety".

i think we can question him. We have some time while we finish searching the room. I really think that letting him out would be a bad idea.

Of course, it may be a moot point after the head injury thing.

Dm has me terrified of this game. Mrakala just wants to go hide behind the barricade.

That's because he is s coward :]. Just kidding, Ghelik is struggling as well. Other than wanting to kill whomever did this to him he just wants out...

Kyleen on the other hand is low wisdom and confused, and wants to know who she is above all else. After all, if you are nobody and have no memories, then what is the point of continuing.

Hope that last pole does not get us killed. Sorry if it does.

Aw yeah.

I was really wondering whether anyone would bite on that.

I can see why Kyleen did it, no problems there. Not sure it was a good idea, but things are likely to be interesting for a while. Hopefully not a brief final while.

Who prepared Protection from Evil today?

Bref any room in that place of yours?

Bref make room!

If everything is always trying to kill you, that gets boring and predictable. Paranoia is more fun if sometimes there's a puppy.

Well that is interesting and unusual. I will start to read up and level Kyleen as soon as I can. Not a class I am all that familiar with.

That was a twist I did not see coming.

A good reminder that sometimes there are things worth trusting. Of course, maybe that's all set-up for the next betrayal ;)

I was actually thinking it could be something like this...but I was thinking of something closer to possession. Interesting turn of events. Of course Ghelik would never willingly let something like that happen to him...not that his willpower save will stop something like that.

Jax got his extra Level of Rogue via his girlfriend's cards.

Did DM explain how she came by those cards? And what did she want from the Cardinal's room?

She wanted to free herself from the Cardinal's leash, I believe.

Also, congratulations Kyleen! Daring risk and a good result.

The cards were a version of the Deck of Many Things. She never said how she came by them. Not having dumped WIS, she considered herself their custodian, not their owner.

She wanted the Cardinal's pen because she wanted to fashion a divination ritual that would let her see every document the pen had ever written. This enabled her to discover a secret that the Cardinal had kept from her: he had intervened to save the paladin, Sir Richard Havelyn, from Irin's spell that should have killed him. So when the Cardinal stepped in a few moments later to save Irin's life, he was actually "rescuing" her from a fight that she should have won. Very Asmodean, of course -- by tricking her so, he got her to sign a contract for seven years' service.

Irin was fooled in part because she's not a fighter: that was her first actual hand to hand combat in centuries. Mechanically, she was super-optimized for divination and enchantment. Her instinctive responses to a crisis are "get more information" and "control or manipulate someone". In that particular case, she was surprised by the paladin's attack on her caravan and unexpectedly cornered. (She was actually higher level than him by a fair bit, but he somehow kept making his saves...)

That said, the Cardinal was just a bit cocky and overconfident when he tricked and bound Irin. As a centuries-old creature, she spent a lot of time designing all kinds of divination rituals. Given time and resources, she could find out pretty much anything. The Cardinal should have added a clause about "do not investigate my secrets"... but he didn't, and Irin's discovery of his treachery catalyzed her support of your eventual rebellion. So, the whole business with the pen when you were like 3rd level ended up being mission critical when you were 15th.

That is simply amazing DM.

Was Irin part of the original adventure? I personally only read the 1st part of the AP.

No, she was one of my additions. Zargo too.

They were such great additions.

Well, now we know why Winter wanted mirrors covered up.

(Though I still intended to look at him in a mirror and see if he's actually something that's revealable by one...)

Dm, able to tell us what would have happened to him?

HP: 1d8 ⇒ 5

+1 Rank - Heal, Knowledge(planes, geography, engineering), Spellcraft, UMD

Sorry for being so quiet this weekend. Will probably not get a post up until sometime later tomorrow.

Will bot Mrakala if we don't hear from him by midmorning Monday.

DM, and others if you have in game Cosmology in your own game worlds, please join in.

Of the fiends, demons and and devils have very distinct roles they play since 1st Edition.

Daemons, well they have had many different histories and motiviations, be it in Pathfinder or in the never ending Blood war in 2nd Edition.

What's your personal take on them.

I like the 3.x take on demons and devils, though I slightly prefer WotC 3.5 to PF. A bit underwhelmed by PF's daemons -- I feel that nihilistic death worship is a bit restrictive as a concept of pure evil. (The Horseman are pretty neat, though.)

There should be room for other concepts of evil -- the sociopath, the utterly selfish bastard, the callous brute, the vindictive mass of seething resentment. I mean, the Aspis Consortium are NE because they're utterly ruthless, greedy swine who will kill or hurt anyone in order to make a few coppers. That works for me -- but then, the Lower Planes should have a matching NE fiend for that. (For all the forms of NE, really.)

Arguing alignment is a mug's game, but anyway the daemons are, mechanically, no more than okay. They need something more to separate them from the other two IMO. (Besides a different set of immunities, I mean. "Oh, don't use acid on that, it's a /daemon/.")

I tend to think of it like this:

Devils want to trick and enslave you -- they want you to be their slave, their pawn, their prisoner, because having power over others (whether of fear or manipulation or misguided belief doesn't matter; power is power). They'll tempt you into having sex with someone who isn't your wife because now you're guilty and can be blackmailed and (ultimately) claimed by them.

Daemons want to destroy you -- they're offended by your existence and want it wiped from the multiverse. They'll tempt you into having sex with someone who has a lethal magical STD because that will kill you and reduce the chances of anyone you have sex with ever having children.

Demons want to do their thing with you. Sex with a demon is about satisfying its desires and the fact that you get mangled into oblivion and/or twisted into something demonic and non-human is just part of the kick for them. It's not about you, but about them.

I don't worry too much about the broad cosmological picture or the stuff going on in the background -- as a DM, I worry about the motivations of this particular specimen for the plot. But then I spend a lot of my DMing time below 10th level, where extraplanar adventures are rather rarer and fiends are usually summoned by someone else as a tool rather than being antagonists in their own right.

My favorite setting was/is the Planescape setting in 2nd Ed AD&D. Devils (baatezu) and demons (tanar'ri) embroiled in the Blood War which spans across the planes, with the daemons (yugoloths) arbitrating, manipulating and coordinating deals with both sides to their own benefit. There was so much flavor there, and I didn't think the Blood War background was too restrictive on how you could set up individual planar personalities or encounters; it was very much a strong underlying driver for many interesting scenarios (as conflict often is).

Sigil was also pretty amazing, in concept. It turned the game into a high-magic, high-politics (faction politics) plane-hopping adventure with which you could do so much. And the Lady of Pain ... well, let's not speak of her.

Some folks converted the 2nd Ed. version to 3.0/3.5 after WotC dropped it. You can find it here:

http://mimir.planewalker.com/sections/30-35-pscs

And intro to the conversion/history here:

http://mimir.planewalker.com/sites/default/files/chapter1.pdf

I think Mr. Eaten from Fallen London would be a good daemonistic genus loci. A hole of hate and hunger that can manifest through any well in the Neath and will take absolutely everything from you. The, imo significant reason Devils and Demons go after Daemons is that they still have something they want to keep, even if just themselves. Eaten will take all and then send you North to lick the plate that holds the last smears of your soul. In fact, Devils in FL are so appalled by Eaten, if they ever cotton onto the fact that you are a Seeker, they will hunt you down, rip the tattered remains of your soul out, jam it back in, and them curbstomp you. One devil even upchucks at the thought of being close to you.

In keeping with our nightmare campaign, this is actually an eel that has been scaled (skinned) and salt being applied directly to the exposed flesh and muscle.

Huh. Well this is a sticky situation.

I do not like Rocksauce. I'm still not sure if she's a doppleganger or not. ("Offspring Rocksauce." Why Offspring?)

Also, wow did we just get owned...

I do not like Rocksauce. I'm still not sure if she's a doppleganger or not. ("Offspring Rocksauce." Why Offspring?)

I love it when people pay attention.

Also, wow did we just get owned...

"Winter said we should cover the mirrorS"

That is what you get for messin' wid stuff yu don't understand...

I suspect that this is pretty much the entire Adventure Path ;)

Do we attack Rocksauce or not? I mean, she did help us (sorta), but... Yordan is certainly inclined to start swinging at her (once he stops retching) after that confession about tricking us, but he's a bit worried she might be too much for us to handle.

I like her sass, doubtful I would attack her. In a way she warned us. The one we should be thinking about attacking is Kyleen. She started this by touching the mirror before we had a change to fully examine it.

I think we could take kyleen... :]

"Winter said we should cover the mirrorS"

I think most of us figured that Winter was at least partly paranoid. (That's the problem with paranoia: do you trust people who tell you things are untrustworthy...)

This is an insane ap

Dm. Out of curiosity, how much are you adding and altering already? I'm curious if it is written this creepy

This is an insane ap

Dm. Out of curiosity, how much are you adding and altering already? I'm curious if it is written this creepy

I was thinking this AP would kill a party of 4 in rather short order.

Rocksauce had some inkling of what was in the mirror, or she wouldn't have been prepared with the mammoth. That, or she knew something about the mechanics of what would happen and that shattering the mirror would stop it.

We're being toyed with - she's having fun and exploring, and we're inconsequential yet convenient tools. I don't think that warrants killing/attacking, as she's likely mentally ill - perhaps highly ill, going by the doctor's exclamation. Which, when/if he calms down, maybe we can ask more about.

However, our characters - tired and stressed as they are - might have something to say to her about it. Nameless, for one, is interested to see if Rocksauce can actually hear The Voices, so while she is not happy about being manipulated she's not up for attacking the girl.

Speaking of tired and stressed, let's get to the chapel ASAP.

After, you know, none of us are melting and praising.

Yes, and that also gives us a chance to ask the chapel inhabitants about Rocksauce. They did mention her.