Age of Worms complete! Dec 2006-Dec 2011

[Dr. Pweent]

Five years from start to finish (with some extended breaks scattered throughout for events such as the birth of children and the release of major operating systems), but we have at long last finished the Age of Worms campaign! Some notes:

- Began Dec 8, 2006; finished Dec 29, 2011.
- Started in D&D 3e; finished in 4e at level 28.
- Ran the campaign in Eberron, with Diamond Lake placed in Karrnath.

Party during Whispering Cairn:
- Octavius (Ocho), changeling Binder
- Weltschmerz, warforged Cleric
- D, warforged Fighter
- Doro d'Jorasco, halfling Warlock
- Karver d'Orien, human ranger

Party during Dawn of a New Age
- Octavius (Ocho), changeling Warlock (Binder pact)
- Gottleib, warforged Invoker (Weltschmerz eventually felt a name change was necessary)
- Gillian (JJ) d'Ghallanda, halfling Artificer
- Angry uncle Ethan d'Orien, human Fighter

We ended the game with four of the five players we began with still playing.

Party fatalities:
- Doro d'Jorasco died in the Ebon Triad's temple under Diamond Lake, charging back into combat with Grallak Kur just after being magically healed the previous turn's near brush with death. Who knew death priests might have a death touch...?

- Karver d'Orien made the mistake of separating from the rest of the party to chase down the fleeing Faceless One in the Ebon Triad's temple. The Faceless One summoned a fiendish ape which rended Karver in two, and ensured the Faceless One's place as the most hated recurring villain of the campaign.

- D was eaten by Madtooth the Hungry, a battle that they were mis-prepared and under-prepared for after some treachery during the Champions' Games. He was reincarnated a half-orc, but found the meat-body transition too shocking, and wandered off to hunt for "his own kind".

- Heilegas was killed in battle with the pit fiend Buldumech, who was guarding the Unlife Vortex (and other treasures) under Alhaster. The party was high enough level to resurrect him for the end battle, but it cost them a day of being holed up in the undead-warded Cathedral of Blessed Rest while things outside went from bad to worse.

In the end, Kyuss was defeated, and the Alhaster spire began to collapse. JJ was already flying off looking for something when the collapse began, and the others quickly put their plans into action - Gottleib grabbed Prince Zeech's unconscious half-fiend daughter Hemriss and leapt off the spire with his ring of Feather Fall; Ocho followed, able to fly under his own power for short period of time; and Angry Uncle Ethan announced he was leaping off too.

GM: "Okay, how are you going to stop yourself from falling?"
Ethan's player: "Um, I have no idea."
GM: "...falling damage at this hight is 55d10."
Ethan's player: "Yeah... I eat it. No! Wait! Ring of the Phoenix! I've never had to use it before! I hit, explode in a fireball, then reform a turn later!"

And that is how you escape in style.

-----

In the aftermath, I mentioned that one person who HADN'T escaped the collapsing tower alive was Prince Zeech -- to which Ocho the Changeling responded, "You know what? I beg to differ." He pulled off a natural 20 with his initial bluff check against Hemriss, and (the surviving population of) the town of Alhaster lived (relatively) happily ever after under "Zeech's" somewhat less oppressive rule.

The two members of dragonmarked houses went on to eventually control their houses, with Ethan managing to stage a family coup to wrest control of the house away from his (condescendingly) fearsome grandmother.

Heilegas took the Rod of Seven Parts with him off to bring LAW to the Demon Wastes.

And I vowed never to commit myself to running a campaign that involved again, nor 3rd or 4th edition D&D at levels so high. It's nice to have that campaign under my belt at last.

Next stops: Shadowrun, Gamma World, Warhammer Fantasy 3rd.

[TheWhiteknife]

Congrats!!!!!!

[mittean]

Congratulations, sir!

[burrahobbit]

That's fantastic. We got our high school and college gaming group back together on MapTools to run Age of Worms, but life, work, and time zones have put us on indefinite hiatus halfway through "Three Faces of Evil." Still hoping to get back to it one day.

[Phrennzyd1]

Congratulations. We're just entering into Blackwall. Nice to know I'll have something to do for the next 4 years...

[Reggie]

Bravo & Well Done!

My group have essentially finished Shackled City after a run of 7.5 years (very irregular, to say the least) and are just entering the Whispering Cairn.

I expect to complete Savage Tide just as I retire.

Reggie

[scootrose]

Well Done!! Major kudos!! We started in 2007 and through many pauses for countless reasons (1 pause was for a little over a year) we are currently making our way through 129 right now. Over HALF WAY, woot!!! Loads of fun and every time we finish a gathering, we cannot wait to schedule the next session. We actually have one scheduled for tonight. Thus the reason I am here... trying to find the supplement.

I posted our first few dungeon crawls at my website which can be found if you google 'versidium' and 'aow' (pHpBB3... third hit). I also put together a supplement for the Midnight Muddle and Diamond Lake that details all the people and associates knowledge rolls in a nice concise format if anyone wants... just hit me up.

[Oti]

Congratulations! My group is about halfway through Dawn of a New Age, with 7 characters of levels 20 and 21. I hope to be able to write a similar post within a couple of months. And I agree with the comment on high level play, I'm not sure if I will ever commit to DM a camaign that goes this high in level again, the sessions tend to move very slowly!

[Firelock]

Congrats!

My group finished AOW in just over two years, playing more than once per week for some of that. As the DM this was definitely the crowning achievement of my entire time of DMing for over 20 years.

[Kraven_Redcloak]

Grats

We've been trudging through this campaign since 05 I think, work coupled with some unforseen hiatus' and running Shackled City and Savage Tide around the same time (dad seemed to think a trifecta of epics was a good idea, now not so much) unfortunately put us behind schedule so the adventure is still ongoing...sorta.

The last time we played the party got their asses handed to them by Brazzemal resulting in most of the party fleeing, the capture of our cleric, and the death of our primary fighter.

In a nutshell several characters failed their save against Brazzemal's frightful presense and proceeded to panic leading to two of them running off and using the Ominous Fabler's helm of teleportation to escape the city (with Dragotha's phylactery), our mage (tiefling witch) wound up grabbing the rogue and teleporting them both to the furthest place he could think of at the time: Greyhawk; our cleric was driven insane after Brazzemal cast insanity and ended up getting captured, and our kobold vassal of Bahamut wound up getting ground to paste from a particularly noteworthy tail slap.

So now the party is scattered across the continent and don't really have any way of locating each other to get back together in time to stop the Age of Worms from kicking off. The two PC's that managed to score Dragotha's phylactery are presently on the run from Brazzemal, not to mention just about every other minion Dragotha has sent their way. The rogue and witch are currently still in Greyhawk trying to rally together help to prevent of Age of Worms, but they're essentially strangers in the city and the only people they really know are the survivors of the Champion's Games which ended rather badly. And of course our cleric is presently imprisoned in Wormcrawl Fissure and being interrogated by a very enraged Dragotha, at this point in time it is unclear what will wind up becoming of him as we've been discussing several possible ideas.

So at the moment it seems that the best hope we have for preventing Kyuss from rising or at least facing him is going to be a group of former NPC's led by the veterans of the previous group. We're actually going to have several adventures running parallel to each other dealing with everything that's going on in each of the seperate groups running around from this campaign, naturally all of it is going to tie into AoW.