Session #47, GM's Notes
So Prince of Redhand is off to an interesting start. So far the characters have decided not to bother too much with subtlety, and they've already garnered the attention of the Blessed Angels. The repercussions of this will be interesting to see going forward and could throw the whole adventure somewhat off the rails, which doesn't really concern me, as I don't really care if they follow the "script" or not.
In my opinion this adventure will be pivotal to the direction the remainder of the campaign takes, so depending on what they do they might end up on the path to follow the rest of the AP or this might the adventure that sends the whole thing in a different direction and we might see a very different end to the campaign.
For instance:
Session #48, Part #1, Prince of Redhand (Cult of the Ebon Triad and preparing for Zeech's feast)
[b]Characters: Rak (samsaran, magus 14, Mythic Archmage 1), Gimpy (half orc, barbarian/oracle/rage prophet 14, Mythic Defender 1), Clive (half elf, wizard 14, Mythic Archmage 1), Sir Nat (human, paladin 14, Mythic Champion 1)
The heroes are in the midst of exploring a former lair of the Cult of the Ebon Triad in Alhastar when Clive receives a magical message from the chaplain of his ship informing him that he is needed urgently. He bids his companions farewell and teleports away, promising to return as soon as he can. Rak, Gimpy and Sir Nat are left alone to continue their exploration.
They drop down the great shaft, using featherfall and flight magic to descend safely to the bottom. Here they find a vaulted cathedral like chamber that must have once been some sort of shrine for the cult. Standing at the far end of the room is the massive, thirty foot tall, animated “statue” that Gimpy had previously discovered and fled from (see the end of session #47). As soon as the heathens enter, it lets out a below of rage from its bestial face, and it charges forward trampling the heroes underfoot. At the same time it summons a spiritual flail of hextor in front of Rak. The force weapon begins swinging away at the magus, inflicting modest damage.
Rak does his best to evade the force flail, and casts a slow spell on the six-armed fiend. He penetrates its spell resistance, and it succumbs to the spell, which vastly inhibits its offensive capabilities. Sir Nat senses overwhelming evil in the creature, and he calls upon the power the power of Saint Cuthbert to grant his allies the ability to smite the monstrosity. Sir Nat then starts smiting away, hacking deep rents into its legs, nearly severing one. Rak also hits it hard with his own enchanted blade, and after Gimpy easily ducks one of its massive clawed hands (natural 1 to hit Gimpy), he leaps into the air and savagely cleaves the thing across the chest. It staggers and convulses, and suddenly its entire body explodes, blasting the heroes with chunks of gore and ichor. The spiritual weapon attacking Rak vanishes, and the room goes quiet.
Healing is administered, particularly to Rak, and the heroes begin an extensive search of the room. Rak discovers that it sounds as though it is hollow behind the back wall of the room, but they can find no trigger to activate a secret door. Sir Nat decides to make his own door. He gets out his adamantine sword, and starts slashing at the wall. It takes him several minutes, but he eventually cuts a gash big enough that they can see through. Beyond is room containing four large chests. Sir Nat continues cleaving with his sword, and after about half an hour of tiring work he has made a hole through the wall that is big enough to squeeze through.
He wriggles his way into the room beyond and Gimpy follows behind him. Rak remains in the chapel room and watches them through the hole in the wall. Nat then approaches the first chest. He sunders lock with his sword, but doing so triggers a spell effect. Fortunately he resists it and spares his sword from being disintegrated. Inside the chest, he finds several leather sacks. Each contains 1000 gp.
Next, he sets about cutting the lock on the next chest, and again he is forced to resist a spell. This one seeks to drain his life force, but Saint Cuthbert protects him and he survives. The second chest holds platinum and a large sack of valuable gems.
Just as Sir Nat is looting this chest a rather dangerous looking individual suddenly appears in the room. The being is an undead wizard dressed in decaying robes. He already has spells prepped- mirror images swirl around him and a spectral hand hovers beside him. He doesn’t take kindly to the heroes’ presence, and he immediately starts casting spells. A blast of prismatic spray streaks from his hands hammering Gnat and Gimpy, and both of them call upon their will to resist being hurled to the astral plane. At the same time, his spectral hand flies forward and touches Gimpy sucking out his life energy (quickened vampiric touch). The heroes defend themselves. Rak blasts it with acid, while Gimpy summons a spiritual sword to help him reduce the mirror images he’s up against. Gnat moves in and attacks. It doesn’t take them long to cut through the mirror images, but they discover that the lich is also protected by a displacement spell, and it remains difficult to land a true blow against. It attacks with more powerful spells, again draining Gimpy with a quickened vampiric touch, and then blasting him finger of death. After that it moves onto quickened magic missile spells and disintegrate magic. The heroes weather it all and press the attack. They manage to destroy the undead fiend just as two more liches teleport into the room.
The second two liches aren’t as powerful as the first one, but each one opens combat with a maximized fireball and a quickened magic missile spell. Rak, Gimpy and Sir Nat are all scorched by the fireballs, and Gimpy is also forced to endure the magic missile barrages. Luckily Gimpy and Sir Nat have some active fire resistance up. Rak is not so fortunate, but the cover provided by being in the other room allows him to avoid the worst of the fire damage. None-the-less, he is quite injured, and he falls back to cast a ward that will protect himself from fire.
Gimpy and Sir Nat move in on the two new enemies, and find that they are also protected by displacement spells. Here Rak lends a hand by using a dispel magic to bring down the displacement on one of them. Sir Nat then targets it with a holy smite, and both he and Gimpy focus all their attacks on the lich. With its primary defense down, the mythic warriors hack the thing apart in a matter of seconds, causing it to crumble to dust. Its companion sees the devastation the two heroes are capable of and teleports away before it shares the same fate.
With the liches destroyed or driven away, they finish plundering the remaining chests. More spells are triggered as Nat hacks the locks away, but he resists the worst of their effects. In the finals chests they find extensive magical treasures, including dozens of potions, a magical ring, belt, cloak and wand. They gather up all the loot and Rak teleports them back to Greyhawk.
They spend a few days back in the city selling off magical items and acquiring new gear. During this time they see little of Clive or Gorman. Clive remains temporarily occupied by pressing personal business regarding his ship and the construction of his wizard tower, while Gorman has lost himself in alchemical research at the Wizard’s Guild. Thus, for the time being, Sir Nat, Gimpy and Rak are forced to carry on with business in Alhastar on their own. Gimpy makes an effort to support the clerics of Kord in Alhastar. He buys them food and building supplies, and with the aid of Rak’s teleportation magic and a bag of holding he transports the supplies into the temple.
After spending several days attending to their personal business Rak, Gimpy and Sir Nat continue their mission. They arrive at night and appear before the gates to Lashona’s residence- Mistwall Manor. The two guards on duty are a little surprised to see them suddenly appear, but one of them had been on duty the first time the heroes paid a visit, and he recognizes them immediately. In the conversation that follows the heroes learn that Lashona is currently occupied with important business in her homeland, but they expect that she will return to Alhastar to make an appearance at Prince Zeech’s birthday feast in a few days hence. One of the guards also hints that for a bit of coin he can tell them how they might obtain invitations to the party. Coin is exchanged, and they discover that several of the nobles from the surrounding region turned down their invitations (that’s weird). Not wanting empty seats at his banquette table, Prince Zeech entrusted the extra invitations to the owner of Alhastar’s most expensive and exclusive establishment- The Deluxury. Armhim Loratio is the man’s name, and apparently he has been instructed to find worthy individuals to give the invitations to.
Despite the fact that the heroes have already mixed it up with Zeech’s Blessed Angels, they decide to try to get some invitations to his party and pay him a visit. Sure he might order them killed on sight, but in that case they figure they can teleport away if they must. Alternatively, their brazen move might intrigue and impress him, in which case he may decide to let them join in his party so that he can size them up.
As they make their way to the Deluxury they encounter a patrol of city guards who accost them and accuse them of being out after curfew. The sergeant threatens to place them under arrest, but when he realizes who he is dealing with he becomes easily cowed. Sir Nat convinces him that he would be better off accepting a small escort fee for leading them safely to the Deluxury. And so it is that the town guard takes them to their destination and introduces them to Armhim Loratio. It takes a bit of convincing, but soon they get their invitations. Loratio informs them that weapons are not permitted at the feast, though armor is as long as it is clean and in good repair. He encourages them to dress their best and buy Zeech a lavish gift. The heroes then teleport back to Greyhawk to do some birthday shopping for the Prince.
Sir Nat decides to give Zeech a copy of Saint Cuthbert’s holy book, but since he figures that the prince might not be that impressed by a simple prayer book, he decides that it would be much better if it were signed by Saint Cuthbert himself. He takes the book to Temple of Saint Cuthbert and spends three days and three nights praying before the altar, asking that Saint Cuthbert bless the book so that it might serve to help Prince Zeech right his evil ways. On the dawn of the day of the feast Saint Cuthbert answers his prayers. Sir Nat awakens to find the book signed, and he can sense that Saint Cuthbert himself has done the deed. The inscription reads,
“To Prince Zeech,
May the words of wisdom in this holy book put you on the path of common sense and help you to mend your evil ways,
Saint Cuthbert”
Sir Nat smiles and gives thanks. How could the Prince not like such a thoughtful gift?
Gimpy decides to go with a similar tactic. He purchases a fine tankard and takes it to the temple of Kord in Alhastar. There he and his new found friends spend three nights drinking out of the tankard, engaging in arm wrestling and other manly activities (it’s probably best not ask). Once again on the dawn of the day of the feast an inscription appears on the side of the tankard.
“Prince Zeech,
May the ale you drink from this tankard give you strength and courage in righteous battle.
Kord”
In addition, the tankard seems to have gained a magical property that allows it to fill itself with ale on a regular basis. Gimpy is confident that his gift is much better than Nat’s, and he eagerly awaits his chance to hand it to the Prince.
Rak is more “tactful” with his gift buying. He combs the city of Greyhawk until he finds a well-rendered painting that depicts several bodies being impaled on tall, sharpened poles. He figures that the subject matter would appeal to the Prince so he buys it immediately.
Session #48, Part #2, The Prince of Redhand (Prince Zeech's feast, the giving of gifts)
The time for the feast arrives, and the heroes are escorted from the Deluxury to Prince Zeech’s palace in a carriage pulled by four trolls dressed in outlandish costume. The heroes gather on a large terrace overlooking the Nyr Dyv where the other guests mingle while awaiting Prince Zeech’s appearance. Serving staff come around with drinks and snacks. There is no sign of Lashona, but there are plenty of other interesting guests about.
Sir Nat strikes up a conversation with a cultured quaggoth named Shag Solomon. Shag is smoking a pipe and talking to a man named Professor Montague Morat. Nat finds them both to be quite friendly and learns that Professor Montague only recently came to Alhastar. He had previously established the Emporium in Diamond Lake, but with all the undead troubles in the area he decided that it was time to move on, so he came north across the Nyr Dyv hoping for a new start. The group of misfit freaks that provided entertainment at the Emporium accompanied him, and they now serve Prince Zeech as part of his serving staff. Shag Solomon was one such individual.
Gimpy takes more of an interest in a strange “woman” named Hemriss. He can see that she has fiendish lineage, for she has vestigial wings and one half of her face is attractive while the other half is offset in manner that makes her disturbing to look upon. She is in the midst of conversation with another slightly older woman named Mahauddril. They seem to be discussing Mahauddril’s gift for the Prince, which is a fiendish horse that is tethered to the balcony and watched over by several guards. Neither of the two ladies are very friendly, and Mahauddril has no interest talking to the half orc. She almost immediately excuses herself from the conversation and leaves Gimpy to talk to Hemriss alone. He learns that she serves Prince Zeech by leading a band of warriors that patrols the surrounding region and helps “keep the peace.” Gimpy doesn’t speak with her long, as the conversation quickly becomes awkward, and it is clear that she wants nothing to do with him. Montegue Morat notices Gimpy chatting with Hemriss and mentions it to Sir Nat. He whispers that he has heard rumours that Hemriss is in fact Prince Zeech’s half fiend daughter.
A large hobgoblin warrior named B’kruss intentional bumps into Gimpy as the half orc makes his way back to Rak and Sir Nat. B’Kruss introduces himself as a mercenary in the service of Prince Zeech; he brags that he leads a large band of hobgoblin warriors that call themselves the knights of Redhand. Clearly the petulant hobgoblin is bored with all the mingling and chit chatting. He immediately starts boasting to Gimpy that hobgoblins are known to be much better drinkers than half orcs, and he challenges Gimpy to a drinking contest. Gimpy who is equally bored with mingling eagerly accepts his challenge. There is only wine to be had, but that doesn’t stop either of the pair. B’kruss reaches for a glass of wine off a nearby tray and gulps it down. Seeing that the contest is on, Gimpy goes for one as well. Unfortunately, he pulls the wrong glass and upsets the balance of the server’s tray. The tray falls, and the remaining wine glasses shatter on the terrace tiles, leaving a huge puddle of red wine. Everyone stops and stares. It is right at this moment that Prince Zeech steps out onto a smaller terrace that overlooks the great terrace where the guests are mingling. Accompanying the prince are four guards and strange little creature wearing a tricorne hat and carrying a mummified raven. The prince sees the mess on the terrace, and his expression immediately turns to a frown. B’kruss blurts out, “The half orc did it!” and points at Gimpy.
At this point, the little man with the hat and raven blows a horn to get the crowd’s attention. He introduces himself as the Ominous Fabler, and then proceeds to welcome the guests and introduce their host- Prince Zeech. The spilt drinks are quickly forgotten, and the Fabler informs the party that the festivities will begin with the presentation of gifts to the prince.
No one seems eager to be the first to give their gift, so Sir Nat steps forward. He introduces himself and brings his wrapped holy book up the stairs and hands it to the Ominous Fabler who in turn passes it to the prince. He then returns to stand by Gimpy, Rak, Morat and Shag on the terrace. Zeech opens the wrapping paper, and upon seeing the nature of the gift he scowls. He then opens the book, and reads the inscription.
“To Prince Zeech,
May the words of wisdom in this holy book put you on the path of common sense and help you to mend your evil ways,
Saint Cuthbert”
Zeech staggers back a few steps as he senses that the book truly has been signed by a god. His face turns red with rage, and for an instant it looks as though he is about to throw the holy book off the terrace into the sea. For some strange reason he can’t quite bring himself to do it, and he hurls it back over his shoulder through the open doors behind him. It goes bouncing down the hallway into his palace.
Professor Morat looks to Sir Nat and whispers. “You do know he’s a devout follower of Hextor don’t you?”
Sir Nat just smiles and nods.
Zeech’s face is red with anger, and for a moment he appears to be deciding just what to do. He manages to calm himself, but this doesn’t last, for the next gift is Gimpy’s tankard of Kord. Like Sir Nat’s book, it too gets tossed angrily into his palace. The Prince is now truly annoyed. In a voice filled with spite and venom, he glares at the guests.
“What is the meaning of these gifts? Is this some sort of joke? The next gift had best be something far more appropriate or heads will start to roll!”
Fortunately, Rak gives his gift next, and upon seeing the subject matter of the painting Prince Zeech smiles. He holds it up for all the audience to see and says, “Now this is more like it!”
Rak’s present seems to improve his mood, and much of the tension leaves the air. The next several minutes are spent opening the remainder of his gifts. None of the remaining gifts offend him, but they don’t particularly seem to impress him either. Mahauddril presents her gift last, and the fiendish horse proves by far to be the prince’s favorite present.
Session #48, Part #3, The Prince of Red Hand (Prince Zeech's feast)
After the gift giving the Ominous Fabler introduces a play that he claims to have written himself. Prince Zeech comes down to sit on a chair in front of the guests, and the play begins on the upper terrace. The fabler acts as a conductor of sorts, and animated skeletons dressed in colourful costumes come out onto the terrace and start reenacting scenes of their own demises. It is amusing if one has a twisted sense of humour and is not easily offended. Gimpy doesn’t pay much attention. He is far more interested in the prince who is sitting in front of him. He feels a strange breeze and heat from somewhere above him. He tells Sir Nat, and the paladin attempts to detect evil. He notes multiple overwhelming auras of evil nearby. Prince Zeech, Hemriss and Mahaudrill all have such auras. In addition there are several auras of evil hovering in the air above them. This inspires Gimpy to bring forth the gem of seeing that he borrowed from Clive. He peers through it, pretending it is a monocle. Doing a quick scan of his surroundings he sees that there are four Blessed Angels hovering in the air above Prince Zeech that must be using invisibility magic to conceal themselves. They have arrows on their bows and are paying close attention to Gimpy, Nat and Rak. He also notices that Mahaudrill in not what she seems. Her true form is not human at all but a hideous worm-like monster. Gimpy hastily hides away the gem and goes back to watching the play. In a whisper he passes on his observations to Rak and Nat. He wishes that Clive were around to link them with a telepathic bond.
The play finally comes to an end. The audience gives their applause, and the Ominous Fabler leads the party down a flight of marble stairs and along a pathway towards another terrace. Along the way Rak notices that Mahaudrill has left the party, and is making her way back towards the palace. In response Gimpy does his best to cast an arcane eye spell without attracting attention. He sends the invisible sensor after Mahaudrill, and it follows her into the palace. There he sees her cast a spell of her own and she vanishes. Gimpy is no expert in spellcraft, and he can’t tell whether she teleported away or made herself invisible.
The guests reach the next terrace, and the Ominous Fabler introduces the next event- “The Slaughter of Curious Avians.” Nat and Gimpy had noticed this event listed on the invitation, and they had hoped that it would involve the killing of Blessed Angels. Sadly this is not the case. Prince Zeech asks if there is a guest who fancies himself as skilled marksman and is willing to challenge Zeech in a contest to see who can shoot down the most birds with a repeating crossbow. He offers a purse of 1000 gp as the prize for beating him. The birds themselves are no ordinary birds. They are magical birds called corollaxes that release a colour spray type effect from their tail feathers as they fly about. Rak decides to step forward to take up the challenge, and the fabler hands him a fine crossbow. The birds are released from their cages, and the slaughter begins. Zeech brings down one more bird than Rak and wins the contest, which pleases the Prince (Rak is definitely doing the best out of the PCs at keeping the Prince happy).
With this contest complete, the Fabler escorts the guests into the palace and they enter into a room that contains a small, round arena with a sand covered floor. Here he explains the next event, “Lively Sport and Baiting.” Once again it features a contest against the prince, and this time the prize is a large golden egg. In this case the contest requires Zeech and his opponent to each wear a magical ring that grants them control over a cockatrice. The objective is to turn the most cats into stone. Both Gimpy and Nat are a little disgusted by the nature of this contest and have no interest in participating. B’kruss is intrigued, and the hobgoblin volunteers. He puts on a ring, and then he and Zeech send their birds rampaging through the arena chasing down cats and turning them to stone with their petrifying bite. In a few short moments the arena is filled with stone cats. Zeech again emerges victorious. B’kruss is not a particular good loser, and he rips off his ring and hurls it down on the ground where it goes bouncing away for a servant to chase after. Zeech looks disgusted by the hobgoblin’s lack of tact. He moves over to the fabler and whispers in the little gnome’s ear. The fabler then clears his throat and makes an announcement,“The Prince has decided that this last contest was not suitably entertaining. He proposes a new contest. B’kruss you fancy yourself as the greatest warrior in Redhand. The prince is considering having you serve him in a greater capacity, but first he would like you to prove that you are worthy. Is there anyone among you who thinks you can best B’kruss in a contest of arms?”
The fabler stares directly at Gimpy as he says the last sentence. As a follower of Kord, Gimpy can’t resist such a contest. He steps up from his seat and stares the hobgoblin in the eye.
“I challenge you.”
B’kruss grins, “I had hoped you would.”
Servants clear the stone cats out of the arena and a rack of weapons is brought in. The contestants make their way into the arena sands and prepare to fight. Then the prince stands up and says, “Oh, and by the way, I think this contest will be much more interesting if we make it a fight to the death!”
The hobgoblin’s face goes a little pale for a brief instant. Then he regains his composure, smiles and mutters, “Excellent. I will enjoy killing this pup.”
The session ends here.
Nice. Are your players enjoying the feast?
Looks like the Ebon Aspect went down like a chump. Of course, I noticed the PC's had a level of mythic. Mythic tier(s) should help them considerably through the rest of the campaign.
They seemed to be enjoying the feast. Lots of fun rp opportunities.
The Ebon Aspect did go down like a chump. He had a good shot at not being slowed, but I rolled crap on his will save. That was a big nail in the coffin. I had nice attack lined up for Gimpy, but rolled a 1. The real kicker was the paladin. Since he can share his smite ability by spending two smites, and since smite is particularly nasty against evil outsiders he really gave it to the poor Ebon Aspect. In one round I think he did around 200 damage to the thing. If he hadn't been slowed and had been able to do a full attack on either Rak or Sir Nat, he had a good shot a coming close to killing either of them in one round. Gimpy would have needed at least two full round attacks to take out. I'm noticing this is an issue with pathfinder in general, especially at higher levels. The game starts to become like rocket tag. A lot of the baddies can drop a PC with a single round making a full attack (assuming they hit consistently and have a feat like power attack). However, the PCs can also dish out so much damage that it can be tough for even the nastiest monster to survive more than a couple of rounds- unless said monster has really high AC or other defences (like mirror image, displacement etc..). I've been trying not to have too many encounters that feature only a single monster, as PCs tend to stomp such encounters. LoLR is not so good for that, so I may need to make some tweaks. I'm really looking forward to KotR though (I think it has the potential to be really epic).
I gave them a mythic tier for completing spire of Longshadows (specifically taking down the Harbinger of Worms). Most of the party took mythic toughness as their first feat. They will have a chance to earn 2 more mythic tiers before the final adventure (depending on the choices they make).
You know that's funny. I was so worried about my PC's when they faced Ebon Aspect "lite" back in 3FoE. Party came in respecting it and wiped the floor with him.
You're absolutely right about the encounters in this one and LoLR; however, it could also mean really letting loose in a certain encounter later in that adventure. I'm personally really looking forward to running that fight myself.
I actually toned down the Ebon Aspect a bit. I believe he was originally a 30 HD outsider. I brought him down to a 20 HD outsider. I did up his Con though, so the hp were still basically the same, but his accuracy was lower. However, it was still plenty good enough to land hits on the PCs (except when are slowed and and only get a single attack and then waste it with a 1).
Session #49, Part #1, Prince of Redhand (The final Insult)
Characters: Rak (samsaran, magus 15, Mythic Archmage 1), Gimpy (half orc, barbarian/oracle/rage prophet 15, Mythic Defender 1), Clive (half elf, wizard 15, Mythic Archmage 1), Sir Nat (human, paladin 15, Mythic Champion 1).
Prince Zeech has decided that in order to spice up his birthday feast, he would like to see B’kruss and Gimpy fight to the death in his arena. The fact that both Gimpy and B’kruss have offended him has also helped him to decide this would be an entertaining impromptu event. Gimpy doesn’t normally shy away from a fight, but he also doesn’t want to engage in a fight to the death merely for the amusement of the evil prince. Still, after some deliberation, he accepts the challenge, and the half orc and hobgoblin face off. B’kruss, who is already wearing armor, grabs a shield and bastard sword from the weapons rack that the prince orders brought out, and Gimpy takes hold of a great sword. Just prior to stepping into the ring, Gimpy casts a number of potent spells on himself that give him an edge in the fight. Although B’kruss is a highly trained warrior with a fearsome reputation in the region, the combat proves largely one sided. The hobgoblin, who is more accustomed to fighting mounted, only lands a couple of minor strikes against the half orc, and he doesn’t effectively defend against the raging barbarian’s attacks. It isn’t long before he is badly wounded and begs Gimpy for mercy. Prince Zeech orders Gimpy to kill his opponent since it was agreed that the fight would be to the death. Gimpy complies, but then casts a breath of life spell on B’kruss immediately afterwards, restoring him to life only seconds after killing him. Zeech is incensed by the half orc’s disregard for the intent of his instructions, and for a moment it looks like he is going to have the half orc thrown out of his party or worse. However, there is much applause from the crowd at Gimpy’s actions, and Zeech, not wanting to kill the mood, contains his rage. He orders servants to take B’kruss’s unconscious body elsewhere so that it can be suitably “taken care of”.
After this event Zeech decides that he is hungry, and that the Bowling of the Devious heads can wait. He has the Ominous Fabler lead the guests to his great dining room where they take their assigned seats around a large circular table. Just as they are getting settled Rak becomes magically alerted to an emergency crisis that he is needed for. Thus he teleports away. At about the same time, a valet leads Clive Taskerhill into the dining hall. It seems the wizard has completed the business Captain Egil needed help with aboard Clive’s ship, and he is now free to join the festivities. Unfortunately, in his rush he had no time to find a suitable gift, and he instead shows up with a small chest filled with gold.
When Prince Zeech opens the chest and sees that it is filled with gold coins, he is insulted. “Coins, what sort of gift is this? This is an outrage! You already insult me by arriving late to my party, and then you bring me mere coins! I’ve had enough! I’ve tried to be pleasant host, but a man can only take so many insults, and it has been one after another with you southern outlanders.”
His rage escalates. His face turns red, and he then motions to Clive, Gimpy and Sir Nat, “I want you all to leave now! Get out of my home, and get out of my kingdom!”
The heroes are about to teleport away, when suddenly another late guest arrives. It is Lashona. The tension in the room immediately diffuses, as the gorgeous elven maiden steps in. All eyes turn to her, including the prince’s. The rage leaves him as he is completely entranced by her radiance. She glides in and takes her seat at the table.
“Happy birthday handsome prince, and my most sincere apologies for my tardiness. Your gift awaits you in your chambers for later. Now tell me, what have I missed?”
For some reason Nat feels the need to fill her in. “Wellll… The prince was just in the middle of kicking us out of his party because he didn’t like Clive’s present or mine or Gimpy’s for that matter. I don’t really see why not. The book I got him was signed by Saint Cuthbert himself.”
“I see,” says Lashona. “For some stange reason none of this surprises me. I have heard much about the deeds of you and your companions. Prince Zeech, you should not be so easily offended. I am sure they mean no insult. You should consider yourself lucky to have such heroes gracing your table.”
“Well I suppose maybe I was being a little… No, wait. These so called heroes have directed one insult after another at me, and now they are leaving.”
Lashona looks like she is about to respond when suddenly Sir Nat receives a mental message from Saint Cuthbert himself. “Nathaniel, the temple in Greyhawk is under attack you are needed now!”
The paladin forgets all else and bolts up in his chair. “Clive, Gimpy the temple is under attack. We must go to Greyhawk now!”
Clive doesn’t hesitate, he casts a teleport spell, and as he does he touches the chest that he had given to the prince and takes it with him.
Sir Nat is now one of Saint Cuthbert's favoured mortal servants, so the god is beginning to interact with the paladin more directly.
Session #49, part #2, (Attack on the temple of Saint Cuthbert)
It is after dark; the heroes appear in the middle of the cathedral of Saint Cuthbert. A massive section of the ceiling has fallen in over the transept crossing, and a battle rages inside. A huge green dragon and a large white dragon are devastating the interior. Only a few defenders remain- High Shepard Walter Manfred Preston III, Brother Cahill, and one of Saint Cuthbert’s powerful divine servants- Granny Mur (an astral deva). The dead remains of other members of the clergy lie scattered about. Some are buried in the rubble where the ceiling collapsed others have been frozen by supernatural frost, and still others have been nearly melted by acid. The place stinks of death and dragon fear.
In addition to the carnage and the two dragons, the heroes notice a little kobold flying up near the ceiling. They also spot Ilthane. The dracolich isn’t in the temple, as it is warded to prevent undead from entering, but she hovers above, and her magic and breath weapon still pose a threat to those inside. A twenty-foot high, conjured wall of fire bisects the temple near the altar, and it has the three remaining defenders trapped behind it, standing near the altar. The white dragon charges in at the heroes, biting Sir Nat. Sir Nat then reaches into the bag of holding where their weapons are stored and draws his sword. He drops the bag, and smites the white dragon. With a single swing of his blade he cuts the dragon’s head clean off, killing it instantly (mythic power attack + smite evil+ critical hit = 150+ damage = dead dragon). Gimpy grabs the bag and looks for his weapon and flies up over the wall of fire to land near the priests, so that he can defend them. This proves wise as the green dragon swoops in over the wall of fire and lands before the altar to attack the clerics, but finds Gimpy standing in his way. Clive puts a sleet storm up around the kobold, blocking its line of sight. The little thing still casts a quickened fireball, which detonates nearby, scalding Nat and Clive. Then it uses dimension door to teleport across the nave and escape the sleet. Finally Ilthane expels a line of acid that burns both Clive and Sir Nat, which leaves Clive only barely alive.
The wizard takes a dimensional step to escape Ilthane’s line of sight. He then conjures a windwall to protect against further breath weapons. Granny Mur sees how hurt he is and flies over to him. She uses up her most potent healing magic and restores him to full health. Sir Nat knows that Ilthane can’t enter the temple, so he activates his winged boots and flies over the wall of fire to help fight the Green Dragon. The kobold dispels Clive’s wind wall and detonates another quickened fireball among the heroes. Luckily Sir Nat is outside the blast radius. Unfortunately, the fireball is enough to bring down the high shepherd and brother Cahill. Gimpy attacks the Green dragon, and it retaliates with a flurry of natural weapons (1 bite, 2 claws, 2 wings). The half orc defends himself well, and only a few of the attacks connect, but they inflict no more than minor injuries on the mythic hero. It also grazes Sir Nat with a tail slap. He staggers a couple of steps, but quickly regains focus and calls upon Saint Cuthbert to smite the dragon. The cathedral is Sir Nat’s home. It is where he was raised, and he is filled with divine fury that foul dragons would dare to attack. Holy power surges through his dragon bane sword, and with a single full attack he cuts down his second dragon of the day. Thanks to the spell hurling kobold, Clive is once again in rough shape, and he casts a fire resistance spell to protect himself from the kobold’s fireballs. Gimpy rushes to the high shepherd’s aid and revives him with a breath of life. The high shepherd’s return to life is short lived, for the kobold sees Nat kill another dragon, and the sight fills his vile, little heart with fury. He targets the paladin with a chain lightning spell, and casts yet another quickened fireball. Sir Nat and Gimpy are both hammered with magic, but they are champions of their respective gods, and they survive onslaught; brother Cahill and the high shepherd are not so fortunate, and they are unquestionably deceased. Luckily for Clive he is too far away from his allies to be caught by the chain lightning, and his fire resistance protects him from the fireball. If this had not been the case he too would be dead.
With the two dragons dispatched the heroes realize that they need to take out the kobold sorcerer. Granny Mur, Gimpy and Sir Nat all fly to the thing and surround it. Granny delays an attack, waiting for it to try to cast a spell. As anticipated it tries to escape with a dimension door, but Granny thumps him with her cudgel and disrupts his casting. Then Sir Nat and Gimpy cut him down, sending his little body plummeting to the ground below. Now only one enemy remains- Ilthane. Remembering the danger of the dracolich’s paralyzing attacks, Gimpy wards himself with a freedom of movement spell.
Granny Mur leads the charge, and the heroes fly up out of the cathedral to engage the dracolich. Ilthane blasts them with another breath weapon as they close. They fly through the gaping hole in the ceiling into the night sky where the draoclich circles. As they clear the cathedral, they have a chance to glance at the surrounding the city. Greyhawk is in flames. The attack on the cathedral is only one of many. Dragotha has come to Greyhawk with a great murder of dragons, and he seems intent on destroying the city. The main focus of their attack is the renowned wizard’s guild, and it is here that Dragotha and his most powerful dragons have concentrated their wrath. A huge aerial battle rages between the city’s wizards and the dragons. Flashes of magic and dragon breath light up the night sky over the pyramid shaped guildhall. Elsewhere fires rage and smaller clusters of dragons attack other important structures, such as the city’s temples and the citadel.
The fight with Ilthane resolves itself quickly. The undead dragon is a dangerous foe, but the heroes have beaten her once before, and that was before they gained mythic power. With Granny Mur’s aid, it doesn’t take them long to hack her down again. Her skeletal body plummets through the hole in the ceiling to land among the rubble below. Yet, as long as Ilthane’s phylactery exists, she will never be permanently destroyed, and it almost certain they will have to face her again. They sustain their share of wounds in the process, and extensive divine healing is required afterwards. By the time they are finished tending to their wounds, the fighting over the guildhall has wound down. It seems Dragotha and his flight of dragons have either completed their mission or been driven off, for they are starting to fly north away from the city. Some of the smaller clusters of dragons that are attacking other targets have not yet noticed the call to leave and continue with the raid. Gimpy looks towards the Halls of the Valiant and sees the silhouettes of at least two dragons circling above, blasting the temple with lightning. He motions to Nat. “I helped you defend your temple. Now it is time for you to return the favor.” The paladin nods grimly as her surveys the fire and destruction. He fears that despite their efforts Greyhawk has been lost. “Let’s go.” Clive responds to the cue by teleporting his two companions to the Halls of the Valiant, leaving Granny Mur behind to tend to what’s left of the once great cathedral.
Session #49, GMs Notes
So there's obviously some home brew content in this session. I decided that it was time to start turning up the heat, and make the coming of the AoW feel like a threat. One of my issues with this AP is that supposably the heroes are fighting to stave off the Apocalypse, but there is nothing in the adventures that really includes any kind of signs that such of event is approaching. The world is basically the same as always until the very last moment, and even then the apocalyptic stuff is pretty much confined to Alhastar. In my campaign I've been trying to include signs that the AoW is approaching. Undead are plaguing the lands. Wizards and clerics can animate dead without onyx etc... To give them a real taste of the high stakes game they're in I figured it was time to crush Greyhawk. This also serves to get rid of a bunch of the high level good characters that in theory should be working to stop the Age of Worms, leaving more space for the PCs to be the ones that have to get the job done.
I also wanted to make Dragotha a more proactive villain. I don't like how he pretty much just sits in his lair for the entire AP waiting for the heroes to come fight him. I realize they came up with an in game justification for his behaviour, but I felt it was kind of boring to make him a coward, who doesn't have the confidence to leave his lair because his phylactery is missing. I figure that he's starting to realize, through contact with his minions, that the forces of good are waking up to the threat he poses and beginning to mobilize against him. Consequently, it's time for him to make some preemptive strikes- hence the attack on the Gray Malkin academy in Gradsul that I mentioned a few of sessions ago and now the attack on his biggest target- the city of Greyhawk.
The destruction of Greyhawk will have a number of consequences. The primary hot spot for the arcane arts and the magic item trade is now gone. That means they will have a lot less ability to sell off magical loot and commission/buy new magic items. They are going to have to work more with what they have and what they find in future treasure hordes. They'll probably look for a new city to use as a market, but with undead plaguing the lines there has been major disruptions to trade of all kinds including the magic item trade.
Mage Point will probably become their main base of operations. At any rate, it will be interesting to see how they proceed.
The books list the events of the Shackled City AP and several other things I dont recall (as I'm at work) that I used to illustrate how jacked up the world has gotten and that it has everyone else "busy".
When they're asked to go to Alhaster, they'll quickly realize they are the only ones powerful enough to do it.
I've been thinking of trying to work in a tarrasque encounter as one of the prophecies/harbingers to the AoW. I figure It will probably be a long time before I try to run a really epic style campaign like this again, so I might as well pull out all the stops, and how often do DMs actually get to use the tarrasque anyhow?
On the other hand, I haven't fully decided how I want to go forward with the rest of the campaign; it will depend partly on my players, but I've been running it for two years now, and although I'm also running the RotRL game to break it up a bit, I'm getting to the point where I'd like to try to wrap it up sooner than later. Part of me wants to play through the entirety of the last four adventures, but another part of me wants to truncate the campaign and find a way to wrap it up quicker, especially since I'm getting a little tired of pathfinder and would like to play some other game systems for a while.
I'm not sure the best way to do that. I was considering significantly shortening the next adventure by reducing the number of tests (or even skipping it by having someone like Tenser or Mordenkeinan figure out where the phylactery is and inform the PCs). I think Kings of the Rift looks like a pretty cool adventure, so I'd like to play through most of that. I think there' some room to shorten things up in the Worm Crawl fissure if you find a way with a bunch of the Bucknard side quest stuff. However, those are fairly important if the PCs are going to stand a shot against Dragotha. If the characters end up a bit behind in levels I can either just give them some extra xp to keep on tract or give them an extra mythic tier or two.
I know the players like the idea of being able to reach 20th level, so I'd like to give them that chance, as some of them have never played that high level a game before, and the only time I've ever run one that got all the way to 20th was when I ran Savage Tide.
Session #50, The beginning of Library of Last Resort
Characters: Rak (samsaran, magus 15, Mythic Archmage 1), Gimpy (half orc, barbarian/oracle/rage prophet 15, Mythic Defender 1), Clive (half elf, wizard 15, Mythic Archmage 1), Sir Nat (human, paladin 15, Mythic Champion 1).
After defending the temple of Saint Cuthbert, Clive teleports Sir Nat and Gimpy to the Halls of the Valiant. Like the Temple of Saint Cuthbert, it too is the victim of a Dragon Strike. A section of the roof has fallen in, and a fire burns inside the mead hall/temple. The place is swarming with worm zombies. All of which, appear to be former patrons and worshipers. A gargantuan, green drake dominates the hall. Its head resembles an enormous kyuss worm and hundreds of the foul worms infest its toothed maw. The high priest, Bromal Roaringhorn, stands near the great statue of Kord, fending off a pack of worm zombies. Amri the barbarian and her dwarf companion are the only two surviving worshippers in the temple. Amri stands atop of one of the great trestle tables fighting worm zombies, while her companion is battling his way through another pack of undead that stands between him and the doors.
The heroes arrive nearly directly beside the worm drake. Before they can take action a blue dragon hovering above the hole in the hall’s ceiling blasts Nat and Gimpy with its lightning breath. Luckily Gimpy has his dragon hunter’s ring and Clive had casts a ward to protect Nat from just such an attack. As a result their injuries are minor. They decide to deal with the biggest threat in the hall- the worm drake. Gimpy strides forward and hews its neck with his greatsword, spilling out dozens of worms. Sir Nat casts a death ward and prepares to smite the horror. Then it expels a horrible cone of freezing acid. Its breath weapon is more deadly than any they have yet faced. Clive collapses and is on the verge of death (125 damage and only 81 hp- hero points are spent to keep him alive), and Sir Nat and Gimpy are both terribly wounded.
Fortunately for the heroes, Dragotha had already put out the order to withdraw. The blue dragon looks out over the burning city and notices his fellow dragons flying north. He calls out to the worm drake, and the great beast takes to the air and flies up through the hole in the ceiling. The dragons then fly off to join their kin. Only the zombies remain, and the heroes furiously cut them down, thus securing the hall. As soon as this is done, Sir Nat tends to Clive’s wounds with his healing hands. Gimpy and Bromal Roaringhorn start conjuring water to dowse the flames, and once Clive is conscious he casts a spell that transforms him into a water elemental, and he aids them in putting out the fire.
The heroes spend several days in Greyhawk dealing with the aftermath of the attack. Large portions of the city have been decimated by fire. Luckily a massive storm was summoned over and the torrential rains put out the fires before they completely consumed the city. The fire and dragons killed thousands, and many of the dead arose as undead or were infected with Kyuss worms from the likes of the worm drake. Most of the surviving citizens fled the city, though some groups congregated in certain “safe” areas like the temple of Saint Cuthbert and the Citadel. The Wizards’ Guildhall was destroyed, as it was primary target of the attack. Several of the city’s most prominent wizards, along with numerous lesser mages were killed in the attack. However, sixteen of Dragotha’s dragons were also slain (2 of them thanks to the heroes- 3 if you count Ilthane). Most of these were younger less powerful dragons, but even so it can’t be said that the people of Greyhawk didn’t put up a fight.
Sir Nat helps out in the temple of Saint Cuthbert tending to the wounded and gathering and organizing food and water supplies. He and Gimpy lead regular forays to gather supplies and slaughter what undead they can find. Clive investigates the status of his fellow wizards. He learns that Rak was seen helping Tenser and Cymria defend the wizard’s guild (which is perhaps why he had mysteriously left Prince Zeech’s party). Sadly all three were seen killed by Dragotha. This news causes Clive to gather Sir Nat and Gimpy and teleport them to Mage Point.
In Mage Point they find Tenser alive and well, but this is thanks to a clone he had stored away in his tower. Rak also lives, but only because Tenser cast a wish spell that brought him back from the dead after he had been killed by Dragotha. Tenser’s attempt to bring back Cymria failed, and he is greatly saddened by her death.
Tenser is most concerned about the attack on Greyhawk. Truly it was a great travesty, and the ramifications of the fall of the city will shake the Flaness, but they will be trivial compared to the destruction that will occur should the Age of Worms come to pass. The archmage cannot recall a time in modern history when so many evil dragons have worked together, for usually they have little interest in cooperation. Furthermore, this marks the first time that Dragotha has been seen outside leading an attack. All this factors are cause for great concern.
In Tenser’s mind it is becoming ever more critical that Dragotha be faced and destroyed. However, this is much easier said than done. As a dracolich, Dragotha is bound to his phylactery, and as a long as it exists it will be impossible to permanently destroy him. Tenser has consulted extensively with his colleagues, including Mordenkeinan. Together they have worked powerful divination magic, but they have had no success in locating the phylactery. The heroes decide that they will attempt once more to consult with Lashona.
Clive, Gimpy, Sir Nat and Rak teleport back to Alhaster and arrive in the temple of Kord. That evening they dine with the brothers who have become very loyal to Gimpy, for each time he visits he makes a point of bringing them food, water and building supplies (thanks to a bag of holding). Around dusk the adventurers make their way to Lashona’s manor. Clive casts a mass fly and telepathic bond spell on them prior to their departure. At the gates the two guards inform them that they are expected and that they may enter. They make their way through gates and the grounds. Clive takes out their gem of seeing and scans the grounds. He sees that about a half dozen invisible stalkers patrol the skies around the manor. He also takes note of the massive, stone wyvern statue sitting on top of a huge stone plinth to the right of the mansion. The plinth itself is the size of a small building, and the wyvern statue is nearly as big as the worm drake they encountered in the Halls of the Valiant. The craftsmanship is highly exquisite and very naturalistic. Looking at it with the gem of seeing, doesn’t reveal anything unusual, but Clive decides to cast a detect magic spell. The wyvern sculpture radiates magic, but he is uncertain if the magic is in place to help make the sculpture structurally sound or something else.
Inside the manor they find themselves in a beautiful foyer lit by globes of magical light that drift through the air. Two sets of sweeping stairs lead up to a balcony on the far side. They are greeted by Emilio the steward, and he informs them that Lashona will see them shortly. They wait in the foyer, and a few minutes later Lashona steps out onto the balcony. The gorgeous elf woman greets them, and invites them to accompany her to her library and study, so that they might talk in private. She explains that she values her privacy and that she doesn’t normally meet with strangers, but they made an impression on her at Prince Zeech’s party and she was intrigued.
They talk to the enchanting sorceress at length. She had already assumed that Clive would be seeking news of his father, for although Tommen had been travelling under the named Bucknarde, Lashona had come to learn his true name and his obsession with the Age of Worms. It has been years since she has seen Tommen, and the last she knew he had decided to venture to the Wyrmcrawl Fissure to confront Dragotha. Lashona had advised him against it and assumes he is now dead. Before he left he entrusted her with a letter to Clive. He told her that if one day Clive came to her seeking him out she should give him the letter. In the letter Tommen goes on about how he feels that slaying Demogorgon and allowing Orcus to become the new Prince of Demons may have inadvertently triggered the scenario necessary to bring forth the Age of Worms. Consequently, he feels that it is his duty to do what he can to stop the Age of Worms, and this is the source of his obsession.
The letter also reveals some more personal details regarding Clive’s mother. Clive had grown up believing that his mother had died when he was young, but the truth of the matter is that his mother is none other than Iggwilv (which makes Iuz his half brother, and Baba Yaga his grand mother- yikes). Tommen had met the witch queen when he and his companions were trying to find a means of stopping Demogorgon and the Savage Tide. After the events of the Savage Tide, Tommen had met with Iggwilv a number of times. At first it was strictly academic, and the pair shared much lore with one another, but over time their relationship became more intimate, and eventually Tommen impregnated her. The result of their union was Clive. Iggwilv insisted that Tommen take the baby and raise him. She told him that he must not let anyone find out that she was his true mother, for she feared that if that were to happen word might reach her own mother- Baba Yaga, and no good could come of drawing the attention of the crone.
This news comes as quite a shock to Clive and his companions, who can’t help but discover what he reads through their telepathic bond. Lashona asks if the letter contains anything of interest, but Clive keeps this revelation private.
Sir Nat asks Lashona what she knows of the woman named Mahaudril, for they noticed at the party that she was actually a horrible worm monster masquerading as a human, and she left the party rather abruptly. Lashona says that she is an advisor of Prince Zeech much like herself, but that she had no knowledge that she was a “worm monster.” This is intriguing to her, and she says that she will investigate the matter.
Sir Nat also asks her what she knows of the pyramid Zeech is having built, for he can’t help but notice that it bears a striking resemblance to the one they explored in Kuluth Mar. Lashona is dismissive about Zeech. She claims that he has delusions of grandeur and seeks to become a god. He believes that building this structure will help him to achieve this end, but Lashona assures them that she is monitoring the prince closely, and that there is no chance that such an event will come to pass.
Lashona then turns the discussion back towards Dragotha and the threat he poses. She hands them a fragment of Tommen’s journal. It mentions a druidic order called the Order of the Storm. It seems that some 1500 years ago, shortly after Dragotha became a dracolich, he attempted to help Kyuss bring forth the Age of Worms. He was opposed and stopped by the Order of the Storm. The druids managed to steal his phylactery, and this caused Dragotha to lose confidence and abandon his undead armies and retreat into hiding. Since then he has had little do with the world, but it seems that circumstances have now changed, and he once again works to bring forth the Age of Worms.
Lashona explains that Order of the Storm was mostly destroyed over the next several decades, as the members were individually hunted down and destroyed by servants of Kyuss. However the arch druids were never killed. They went into hiding of sorts. According to Lashona, they retreated to their stronghold on Tilagos Island. On the island there is said to be a great repository of all their lore. For centuries sages and scholars have sought this library, and she believes that it is here they might be able to find an account of what the druids did with the phylactery.
To protect their secrets the Order of the Storm gave their lives to strike a bargain with powerful primordial forces. The interior of the island was transported off the material plane, and the island is now nothing more than barren rock surrounded by an ever-raging tempest. Yet Lashona believes that somewhere on all that rock there may be a portal that provides access to the true interior of the island. She encourages the heroes to seek it out.
There is however one final complication. It seems that one of her former servants, a man by the name of Heskin has betrayed her. He took this information to a man known sometimes as Darl Quethos. Darl is a powerful servant to Vecna, and he too covets the secrets held on Tiliagos. As the heroes are preparing to leave, Lashona asks if they would like to see what Heskin has been up to. They agree, and she brings forth a large mirror that she uses for scrying. She then pulls forth a scroll and a lock of Heskin’s hair. She casts a scrying spell from the scroll, and the mirror fills itself with the image of Heskin. He is strapped to the mast of a ship, which appears to be caught in a raging storm. They observe him for some time, and catch glimpses of a number of other beings that are aboard the ship including a kenku, a pair of tieflings, several orcs and an efreeti. Then Darl himself appears in their view. He approaches Heskin and tells him that they will soon be arriving at their destination. Darl wears a robe patterned with images of eyes, and Clive suspects it is a robe of eyes- a powerful magical item that greatly enhances the wearer’s perception and allows one to see things that are invisible. Darl notices the invisible scrying senor, and his head whips around so that he is staring right at it. He hisses and reaches out to touch Heskin with a horrible withered hand. Clive and Lashona both recognize the hand for the artifact it is- The Hand of Vecna. As Darl touches Heskin the man’s lifeforce is snuffed out, and he dies almost instantly. This severs the connection to the scrying sensor and ends the spell.
Lashona is disturbed by this turn of events, and suggests that the characters use great caution going forward. Sir Nat is unfamiliar with the concept of caution, and he immediately suggests that Clive use his magic to teleport them to Darl’s ship, so that they can pay the evil priest a visit and engage in some righteous smiting of evil. For some reason the rest of party seems to think this is a good idea, so they immediately begin casting preparatory magic and readying their weapons. Lashona (aka the DM) is a little shocked; even she had not expected the heroes to be quite so bold.
The session ends here with the heroes preparing to teleport to Darl’s ship.
This is the letter that Clive got from Tommen/Bucknarde
Dear Clive,
I leave this letter in case I do not return from where I fear I must now go. You are still too young to involve in these matters, but I hope that you will understand that what I must do is necessary. I believe that I have inadvertently set into motion events that could lead to the destruction of the world as we know it. When Captain Breca, Argent, Alhanna, Sir Roland Pommelpoint and myself destroyed Demogorgon we allowed room for a new demon lord to take the crown of Prince of Demons. I have since learned that this new Prince of Demons is Orcus the demon lord of the undead. His ascendance has resulted in subtle but profound changes to the laws of reality- more now than ever the rest of the dead can be corrupted by the taint of undeath. Thanks to the dark gods, the dead have always found finding peace a potential challenge. Now it truly is a challenge for all souls. By the time you read this you will surely have come to understand that the dead are more restless than ever.
Kyuss is a minor god by divine standards, a former mortal priest of Nerul in ancient times, now a god of undeath who has been imprisoned in the very monolith that allowed for his divine apotheosis. However I believe that the growing strength of the curse of undeath has given Kyuss the power he was waiting for to make ready for freeing himself from his prison and unleashing the Age of Worms on the world. I will do everything in my power to prevent this from happening, but should I fail, I ask that you take up this great burden. Dragotha is the herald of Kyuss. Dragotha has the monolith that holds Kyuss, and it is Dragotha that seeks to set him free. If the Age of Worms is to be averted Dragotha must be stopped.
You have great potential Clive. Moreso than you may even realize. Magic is thick in your veins, and you will find that it comes more easily to you than others. You will need all this strength to face Dragotha, but if there is anyone that can do it, it is you. When I write these words I cannot help but think about your mother, and I suppose that if I don’t tell you now you may never learn the truth.
In the months following the destruction of Demogorgon I was in a dark place. I had witnessed horror after horror that were not meant for mortal eyes; madness threatened to overtake me. During this dark time I was vulnerable, and the Witch Queen Iggwilv reached out to me. To this day I do not know why. She had forsaken the material plane, but perhaps the contact she had with our band during our quest to defeat Demogorgon reminded her of life among the living and made her yearn for the company of mortals once more. Whatever, her motive she reached out to me. At first our conversations were purely academic- discussions on history, the nature of magic and how best to harness its power. I know full well that she is as black hearted and evil as they come, but she can be a truly charming seductress when she wishes, and I was weak. Our relationship became more intimate. I did things I regret. I gave her access to tomes that should never have left the Great Library. I also put a child in her belly, and that child was you.
I think you were the first good thing to ever come out of her womb. It changed her. At first I thought she would want to keep you and would try to destroy me if I tried to take you, but I was mistaken. For some reason she decided that this one pure thing she had ever created should stay pure. She told me that if she was in any way involved with your upbringing she would surely corrupt you and turn you into a thing of evil. She insisted I take you away, and she wove magic that would in theory keep your grand mother from ever learning of your existence. I know I lied to you. I know I told you that your mother had died from illness when you were young, but please understand it was too dangerous for me to tell you the truth. I beg you, do not ever seek her out. No good can come of it. I love you Clive.
Your father,
Tommen Taskerhill
Session #50, GMs Notes
So this session marks my first time running a session online using a virtual table top. We've been having a lot of trouble with scheduling the past several weeks, and I thought I'd try running a virtual session. I used the roll20 website. Overall I think it worked pretty well. There was a fair amount of set up on my end, but now that I have a bunch of that done I think I will probably run some more sessions using this format.
There are certainly advantages and disadvantages. The audio was decent (it never cut out or crashed etc..), but because I couldn't always see the players I couldn't really read their body language to gauge whether the session was going well and if I needed to adjust things to engage them more. There was definitely less table talk and side conversations which made it easier to focus on the game. I like that I can build nice looking battle maps and have them saved, though it takes longer than quickly sketching one out with a marker (which I could do on roll20 if I had to, but with access to all sorts of cool tiles and such it's fairly easy to build an evocative battle map). The problem is that even though will still narrated things as we would in a face to face session I found it felt a bit like a video game, but I think that this is kind unavoidable since you are spending the whole session staring at a computer screen.
We only played for about 2 hours, but I felt like we got through a fair amount.
Seeing how the session ended (with the heroes deciding to teleport directly to Darl's ship) the next session should prove eventful. It will likely happen online next week.
You know its funny, I havent read your session recap fully yet, but I picked up on the online table top thing in your session notes. I've been running Roll20 for my group who live in a different city for the last 2 years.
There's a lot more work involved with the maps, adding tokens, etc, but its really just a part of the prep for me now and I love having them loaded at the start of each session. The fog of war is probably the single best feature for online RPGs. To your point, I had an extremely akward time roleplaying the first session as half my guys didn't have cameras and it just felt weird. I got over it though and we have fun. Things you'll notice as time goes on is the mics constantly pick up background noise from EVERY person's house, not just the host residence. Fans, kids, pets, wife's wanting to ask their husbands about going out with another couple on Saturday....you'll have one guy that you'll have to ask to mute his mic. It sucks, but its necessary.
Honestly, I totally miss the face-to-face interaction of RPG's, but from a mechanics standpoint, I find the map tools and tokens to be superior to traditional tabletop. If I ever run a home game again, I would actually hook my computer up to the TV and run our maps on the VTT.
I've seen a few gamers on youtube do a set up where they run maps and such off a virtual table top or computer, but use a mirror and projector setup to display the images on their game table. That seems pretty cool because then players and GMs who like using actual minis can still use those, but you can still do tactical maps with fog of war functions.
Session #51, Library of Last Resort (roll20)
Characters: Rak (samsaran, magus 15, Mythic Archmage 1), Gimpy (half orc, barbarian/oracle/rage prophet 15, Mythic Defender 1), Clive (half elf, wizard 15, Mythic Archmage 1), Sir Nat (human, paladin 15, Mythic Champion 1).
Session Notes: The heroes teleport onto the deck of Darl’s storm-tossed ship, as it attempts to navigate the hurricane surrounding Tilagos island. Darl accuses the trespassers of being dogs of Lashona, and orders his minions to attack. A hulking fire genie unleashes a quickened scorching ray spell, then draws his great falchion and nearly cuts down Clive. Sir Nat saves the wizard with a hasty prayer that causes him to take the damage from one of the genie’s attacks. Gimpy strikes back at the genie, but the lashing winds and rain, along with the slippery, shifting deck make fighting difficult, and he doesn’t land any attacks. Clive is bloody and wounded, but he musters his concentration and puts a wall of force across the deck of the ship that separates the genie from the party. Suddenly two agile tieflings leap down from the rigging to flank Gimpy. The half orc fends them off with his greatsword. Unfortunately, Darl casts a horrid wilting spell that withers the entire party. Clive collapses, unconscious and nearly dead (2 hero chips spared him). Rak’s throat is dried out, and he can barely speak, yet he somehow mouths the words to a teleport spell, and takes the party back to the Temple of Kord in Alhastar. Here they heal their wounds, and revive Clive.
After taking an extended rest they teleport back to Darl’s ship. They find the ship is now in ruin, smashed on the rocky shore of an island that sits in the eye of the great storm. On the beach they discover the surviving members of the orc crew. The orcs have no interest in fighting them, and after questioning the downtrodden sailors they learn that Darl, the hand of vecna, has ventured inland with his war band. The heroes follow them, flying over a maze of menhirs. They see no real sign of their enemies, and it seems that they must have a significant head start on the heroes. The heroes eventually reach a portal, and Clive determines that the secret to triggering it seems to be strange crystals that can be found growing in patches among the menhirs. They harvest enough crystals to trigger the portal, which takes them to hidden demiplane where the interior of the island now exists.
Here they find themselves on a sprawling plain. To the north are craggy mountains, to the east is a dark forest, and to the west and south are more plains and wastes. As they take in their new surroundings three figures materialize out of the trees. The creatures are powerful fey. They introduce themselves as the custodians of the island, and in ages past they were mortal druids of the Order of the Storm. They explain to the heroes that if they wish to access the secret knowledge of their lost order they must first complete three trials to prove their worth. The first involves bringing them a feather from the living body of the roc king. The second requires them to slay the Thornvale Nightmare, and the third is to bring them the belt of Krathanthos.
Clive inquires about Darl’s party, and the watchers tell them that they met, and that they too are attempting the trials. With this in mind the heroes decide they must make haste. They decide they will first venture towards the mountains, as that seems like a good place to find the roc king. The session ends here.
Session #52, Library of Last Resort (roll20)
Characters: Rak (samsaran, magus 15, Mythic Archmage 1), Gimpy (half orc, barbarian/oracle/rage prophet 15, Mythic Defender 1), Clive (half elf, wizard 15, Mythic Archmage 1), Sir Nat (human, paladin 15, Mythic Champion 1).
Session Notes: Clive teleports the heroes into the mountains, to the side of the tallest peak. He casts a mass fly spell on the party, and they begin searching for signs of the rocs. It isn’t long before they locate the body of a massive dead roc on the ground in a nearby valley. A few of the enormous birds circle in the sky above the dead body, but don’t seem to take much note of the characters as they fly down to investigate- perhaps the adventurers are just too small to seem worthy of their attention. Investigating the dead bird, they conclude it was likely killed by Darl and his band. Clive recalls what he knows about rocs and informs the heroes that they are normally quite solitary creatures since they are so big and require such a large territory for hunting. They are also known to mostly have animal like intelligence, so the idea of them banding together and having a king is most unusual. In one instance that such a thing was ever documented it was the smartest roc, not the biggest roc that was the king. Clive suggests that is possible that Darl and his cronies may have taken a feather from the wrong bird.
They fly back into the sky still cautious of the rocs circling above them. It is then they spot a large nest not far ahead, and they see a roc in the nest. It seems to be observing them, and every so often they notice the circling rocs looking towards it as if waiting for it to give them some kind of signal. They decided to approach in a peaceful manner, sheathing their weapons and attempting to look as non-hostile as possible. The great bird spreads its wings and squawks to show its dominance. Clive reaches out to it telepathically and learns that it claims to be the king of the rocs, and that it is angry about the murder of its kin. Diplomacy ensues and the heroes convince it to give them one of its feathers in exchange for bringing Darl and his minions to justice. Of course the roc isn’t willing to give them the feather until he is convinced that they have fulfilled their end of the bargain.
The adventurers depart. From high up in the mountains they have a commanding view of the island, and Gimpy makes out what looks like a structure on the southern coast. It is too far away to see any detail, but they decide they should investigate, so Clive teleports them to it. They find the crumbling remains of a keep. Using an arcane eye to scout they learn that only the battered remains of some exterior stonewalls still exist. The inside is open to the sky, and here they find a great stone throne with a colossal giant brooding on it. Before him is the body of a dead minotaur- the same minotaur they encountered on Darl’s ship. Four over-sized gargoyles also sit on the walls keeping a watchful eye on the surrounding lands. Clive is confident that the giant is in fact a titan- a titan wearing a giangantic belt bearing the symbol of Kord. They decide to attempt to parlay with the creature. As they fly towards the keep they gargoyles take to the sky and intercept them. One of the garoylges attacks, but before a full on fight with the gargoyles occurs the titan emerges from the keep and bellows at his minions in anger. He reminds them that they are to bring visitors before him, not attack them. He then raises his mighty hammer and crushes the gargoyle that attacked the heroes.
He gives the party a welcoming smile and bids they come before his throne. The titan is amused by the rash of visitors he has received over the past couple of days, and he demands to know what the heroes want of him. Gimpy tells them that they need his belt of fulfill one of the trials. This causes the titan to grow annoyed. He has a hatred for the fey that imprisoned him on the island, and Darl and his minions were also demanding he give them his belt. The titan manages to control his suddenly growing anger, and says that he will only give it to them if they can get him back to the material plane. The heroes aren’t eager to do this, but the titan assures them that he is righteous follower of Kord. At this point Sir Nat asks the titan, “If you are a follower of Kord how come your aura radiates so much evil?” The titan is insulted by Sir Nat’s insinuation that he is evil, and he smashes the paladin with his maul, nearly killing him with a single strike. He then stands and looks ready to smash the rest of the party. Clive decides they need to rethink their plan, and he casts a teleport spell, transporting the heroes away before the angry titan can pulverize them. The session ends here.
Clive has a lot of teleports (teleport and greater teleport). Rak can cast teleport as well. I'm currently having trouble finding time to write my journals due to my work schedule. I'm two sessions behind right now.
16th level lends itself towards a group packing bunches of assorted teleportation spells, especially the lower level ones dimension door and teleport.
Session #52, Library of Last Resort (roll20)
Characters: Rak (samsaran, magus 15, Mythic Archmage 1), Gimpy (half orc, barbarian/oracle/rage prophet 15, Mythic Defender 1), Clive (half elf, wizard 15, Mythic Archmage 1), Sir Nat (human, paladin 15, Mythic Champion 1).
Session Notes: The heroes take an extended rest after their “negotiations” with the titan. They decide that they aren’t quite ready to confront the angry titan again just yet, so they opt to go back to the mountains to search for the Thornvale Nightmare. Eventually they locate a dark vale infested with thorny briars. The entrance to a large cave sits at the far end of the vale, and the heroes suspect this might be the lair of the nightmare beast. An arcane eye is sent in to scout the lair, and in the back of the cave they find the terrible beast in the midst of devouring its most recent kill. The creature is a massive, four-legged, tusked brute with a thick leathery hide and glowing yellow eyes.
Clive teleports them in, and Sir Nat imbues the entire party with the ability to smite the beast. It bellows in rage against the trespassers and attacks, but before it can close in Clive sends it crashing up into the ceiling with a reverse gravity spell. Sir Nat, Gimpy and Rak then fly up to engage it. The fighting is fierce, but quick. It gores at them with its massive tusks and rends with its claws inflicting nasty wounds, but it is no match for the powerful adventurers. Their blades cut deep, imbued with the smiting power of Saint Cuthbert, and soon it is dead. Afterwards Clive uses a shrink item spell to reduce the massive body to the size of small dog. They then wrap it in burlap and toss it in their bag of holding.
Emboldened by their victory over this dangerous foe they decide that they will confront the titan. They return to vicinity of its lair and use prying eyes to scout it out. They find that the titan is just outside the ruins of its keep using its gigantic warhammer to turn the body of a dead antelope into paste. Clive casts a teleport and suddenly they appear before the titan. It turns towards them, gives an evil smile and then raises its hammer and readies itself for battle. Sir Nat again imbues the entire party with the ability to smite the titan, which allows them to inflict tremendous damage in melee. This is fortunate since it is highly resistant to mortal magic. As usual Clive hastes the heroes to make them that much more dangerous. The titan’s fury is tremendous. It focuses its initial wrath on Sir Nat, but by the divine grace of Saint Cuthbert he survives- barely. Clive is not so fortunate; the wizard accidently gets a little to close to the fray and is felled by a single, brutal hammer stroke. Thankfully, Gimpy rushes to his aid and casts a breath of life spell on him that brings him back from the brink just before his soul abandons his body. Krathanos’s gargoyle minions swoop in to join the action. The heroes do their best to ignore them and focus all their offensive power on the titan. Clive is the exception. Since his magic isn’t proving very useful against the titan he turns it on the gargoyles slowing a couple of them, making them much less dangerous. Sir Nat’s ability to share his smiting powers with the party proves to be a huge boon. It gives the heroes the power they need to get past the titan’s impressive defenses, and in the end it may well be the factor that allows them to fell the creature before it destroys them. Krathanos is by far the single most dangerous being they have yet faced in combat, and by the time they bring him down they are all suffering from grievous injuries. They then turn on the gargoyles and cut them down before the fiends can finish what the titan started. With a major battle won, they immediately set to healing their wounds. Next Sir Nat and Gimpy start removing his massive belt while Clive prepares to shrink it to a more portable size.
The session ends here.
At titan that takes a swing at someone using greater vital strike does a lot of damage with one hit, so does a paladin smiting an outsider with a power attack.
Blimey! What a lot of "Almost killed in one blow/spell" in those sessions, and...how many teleports has Clive these days? :-)
Welcome to high level play, I guess!
Session #54, Library of Last Resort (roll20)
Characters: Rak (samsaran, magus 15, Mythic Archmage 1), Gimpy (half orc, barbarian/oracle/rage prophet 15, Mythic Defender 1), Clive (half elf, wizard 15, Mythic Archmage 1), Sir Nat (human, paladin 15, Mythic Champion 1).
As Gimpy and Sir Nat pull the belt free of the dead titan, Darl, his fire genie bodyguard, and two tiefling monks suddenly appear before them via teleportation magic. Darl decides to attempt a parlay with the heroes, but Sir Nat will have none of it. He’s not interested in engaging in diplomacy with one who wields the hand of Vecna. Instead he activates a smite and flies straight for the vile priest. He soars over the two monks and comes down in front of Darl, slashing him across the chest as he lands. Blood sprays forth, and the evil priest staggers back with a grievous wound. The attack triggers a contingency spell that Darl has in place, and it heals some of the damage (cure critical wounds). Darl then casts a barrage of spells (10th level mystic theurge ability allows him to cast a divine and arcane spell at the same time once per day + a quickened spell= 3 a spell nova round). The first spell is a much needed heal spell that brings him nearly back to full health. At the same time a horrid wilting spell withers Clive, Rak and Gimpy. Finally a ray connects with Clive putting a dimensional anchor on him. Clive casts a slow spell, but he only successfully slows one of the monks. The fire genie hefts his massive falchion and engages Sir Nat with a flurry of deadly slashes. The paladin parries several strikes, but a couple of attacks get through his defenses, inflicting nasty injuries. The genie also sears Clive with a quickened scorching ray. Rak takes to the air and tries to take down Darl with deadly line of conjured acid. The spell doesn’t get through the priest’s spell resistance, but it does blister the flesh of the fire genie. Gimpy flies to land beside Sir Nat and battle against the priest and his minions. At the same time the monks step up, focusing their attacks on Sir Nat, but only landing a few strikes. Suddenly a barrage of hand crossbow bolts assails Rak from behind a nearby rock, leaving the already withered magus quite wounded. Rak looks to try to locate the assassin, but he can’t see him (improved invisibility).
Sir Nat ignores the efreeti as best he can, and continues to focus on Darl. He comes at the priest with another series of strikes. Darl has never faced such a determined and deadly foe. The power of Saint Cuthbert courses through Sir Nat; he sees an opening and slashes the head clean off of the priest (Darl rolls a 1 on a massive damage save). The fire genies bellows in anger and cuts down Sir Nat, luckily Sir Nat has a spell ready for just such an event, and he is healed just enough damage to keep him conscious. Though Gimpy wants nothing more than to start fighting, he sees how wounded his friend is, and he gives him much needed healing. At the same time he helps fend off the monks. Meanwhile Clive casts a dispel magic to remove the dimensional anchor on himself, while Rak targets the location where he believes the sniper is hiding with a fireball. This doesn’t seem to do much, and Rak is subjected to another barrage of hand crossbow bolts.
Sir Nat heals himself with a lay on hands and turns his fury on the fire genie. Unfortunately for him he can’t heal and smite, so his damage out is not as impressive as usual. The genie goes back on the offensive and cuts down the wounded paladin once again. This time he has no magic to save him and falls dead to the ground. Luckily, Gimpy is right behind him and casts a breath of life spell that revives him. Rak then flies down to the pair, grabs Darl’s head and teleports them back to their camp. Clive has a telepathic bond with his companions and knows exactly what is going on, so he flies over to the titan’s belt, grabs hold of it and also teleports back to their camp.
At titan that takes a swing at someone using greater vital strike does a lot of damage with one hit, so does a paladin smiting an outsider with a power attack.
Blimey! What a lot of "Almost killed in one blow/spell" in those sessions, and...how many teleports has Clive these days? :-)
Welcome to high level play, I guess!
Greater Vital Strike is the poo, except against old school Crane Wing. Auto-deflection ... *muttergrumblebooshiznit*
especially when your weapon deals 6d6 to start with.
Titan with Greater vital strike using a power attack= +31 [24d6+46 (+2d6 unholy)], which is about 137 average damage.
Of course if it makes a full attack using power attack and lands all its attacks it will likely do more damage than that, but 137 is enough to put some serious hurt on a PC, and I don't have to waste time rolling 4 attacks.
especially when your weapon deals 6d6 to start with.
Titan with Greater vital strike using a power attack= +31 [24d6+46 (+2d6 unholy)], which is about 137 average damage.
Of course if it makes a full attack using power attack and lands all its attacks it will likely do more damage than that, but 137 is enough to put some serious hurt on a PC, and I don't have to waste time rolling 4 attacks.
That's what I adore about the Vital Strike feat chain, it simplifies things for me, speeding up gameplay. It's a "tax" worth paying to accelerate game play.
I'm waiting to see if Unchained addresses this topic in a more official manner.
Session #54, part #2, Library of Last Resort (conclusion)
They rest the night in their camp, and the next morning Clive uses a discern location spell to locate the Fire Genie. They spy on him through this powerful divination and discover that he and the two monks are on the move, walking across the plains. The heroes make ready for battle and teleport to the genie’s location. They offer no quarter and attack, focusing fire on the genie. The ambush is successful, and they quickly dispatch their enemies. Afterwards they recover a haversack from one of the monks. The sack had belonged to Darl, and inside they find his robe of eyes, spellbook, gems, gold, and the dread hand of vecna.
They next teleport to the nest of the roc king and offer him Darl’s head. Gimpy uses a raise dead scroll they recovered to bring the roc that Darl’s band had killed back to life. The rock king is appeased, and offers them one of his feathers. Thus, with the three trials complete they return to the portal stone to parlay with the Wild Watchers.
The Wild Watchers are satisfied with their performance, and agree to give them access to the Fountain of Dreams. They work their fey magic and the portal stone transforms into a simple stone fountain filled with crystal clear water. The heroes drink from the waters, and as they do the world swirls and all goes black.
They suddenly find themselves standing on the edge of a great canyon. Clive recognizes it as the infamous Riftcanyon. Nearby is a large cabal of flan druids along with an army of barbaric, tribal warriors. The army of tribesman is engaged in a terrible battle against a horde of undead that swarms up out of the canyon seeking to overwhelm them. From the air Dragotha and his dragon minions decimate ground forces with their breath weapons. The situation is dire for the defenders.
One of the arch-druids approaches the heroes claiming that they are the heroes of prophecy come to aid them in their hour of greatest need. Clive and Rak recognize the druid. They are fairly certain he is the mortal form of the fey leader of the Wild Watchers, though the druid shows no sign of knowing the heroes and appears to be human. This adds more support to Clive’s theory that they have somehow travelled back in time. The druid leads them to where the remaining arch-druids stand. They surround a strange looking receptacle made from ruby and copper. It is Dragotha’s phylactery, and the druids claim that they are counting on the heroes to help hold back Dragotha’s forces long enough to buy them time to move the relic to the secret hiding place they have prepared for it. It is then that an elf woman with silver hair steps out from the trees. It is Lashona, and like the druids she doesn’t show any sign of recognizing the heroes. The druids look to her and say, “Now is the time your grace.” Lashona then transforms into a majestic silver dragon and soars up into the sky. Other metallic dragons burst up out of the trees and follow her into battle. She seeks out Dragotha, and in seconds a terrible aerial battle is raging through the skies.
The leader of the druids looks grimly to the sky and says, “We must now take the relic to Kongen Thulnir. We beg you to hold back the tide as long as you can. Once we have hidden the phylactery its connection to Dragotha with be severed. We pray that when Dragotha senses he has lost this connection he will be demoralized and abandon his army. It will then fall in to disarray and there is a chance that we might snatch victory from certain defeat. Can we count on your aid?”
Sir Nat nods, as do the rest of the heroes. The druids then begin working their magic to transport the phylactery. Clive casts a mass fly, telepathic bond and haste spells on the heroes, and they soar into the sky to join the front line of flan warriors against the undead. The battle rages on and on. The heroes use every spell and ability they have. Scores of undead fall to their magic and blades. The flan warriors have never seen such powerful heroes in action before, and the sight boosts their morale, giving them the strength to hold back the tide.
In the end, each of the adventurers eventually falls to the undead horde, but just before they do, they witness Dragotha land a killing blow against Lashona that sends the silver dragon plummeting down into the misty depths of the canyon. Then something seems to change in Dragotha. The dracolich wails in frustration and rage and flees the battle.
Despite their apparent deaths, the heroes discover they still live. They find themselves sitting on the circular portal stone. They are uninjured and have regained all their expended spells and abilities. There is no sign of the Fountain of Dreams or the lush plains, or dark forest. The island is now nothing more than barren, windswept rock sitting in the midst of a great sea. It seems that the magic of Tilagos Island is gone, and that it has returned fully to the material plane.
Clive insists that they venture down to the rocky beach where Darl’s ship was wrecked and where they encountered the remains of his orc crew. Here they find that there are only a half dozen surviving orcs. They are all very desperate and want nothing more than to be free of the island. Clive and Sir Nat ask them if any of them followed Nat’s instructions to convert to the worship of Saint Cuthbert, for those who have shall be saved. All the orcs immediately claim to be ardent followers of the god, but Nat senses that all but one is still stinks of evil, and he is certain that they cannot be trusted. The one that is no longer evil is named Grock, and he was the ship’s cook. The orc professes a keen interest in the magical arts, and promises to serve Clive loyally for the rest of his life if Clive will allow him to be his apprentice. Clive figures it’s about time he took on an apprentice or at least a personal chef. He agrees to the orc’s offer.
Clive teleports Grock and the heroes back to his tower. He sets Grock up in the kitchen as his chef for the time being. The next morning he teleports the heroes to Mage Point, and they meet with Tenser. They tell him all that happened on Tilagos Island, and they entrust him with the hand of Vecna. Their mission has been a success; they have learned the location of Dragotha’s Phylactery- Kognen-Thulnir. Clive has heard the name before. The place is said to be an ancient fortress city built in the side of the Riftcanyon ages ago by stone giants. Giants are still believed to inhabit the site. They are known to be very reclusive, and though they make no trouble in the surrounding lands, they value their privacy and don’t take kindly to visitors.
Tenser goes into his library and finds a book with references to the location. As he opens it up, he sees that the book now contains pages of information about the topic that he was certain were not there before. He starts looking through other texts in his collection and finds more examples of information that had not previously existed. Tenser, Clive and Rak do some theorizing, and they soon conclude that drinking from the Fountain of Dreams has somehow returned the lost lore of the Order of the Storm to the world. Tenser suggests that this might mean that given time Dragotha will be able to locate the hiding place of his phylactery. Time is therefore of the essence.
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GM's Notes
I'm caught up on my journals for this campaign now. We have completed Library of Last resort, though I did truncate it a bit by removing one of the trials. The heroes are ready to move into what I feel is the home stretch of the campaign. I'm looking forward to ploughing through the last few adventurers and wrapping it up.
Session #55, Kings of the Rift
Characters: Rak (samsaran, magus 17, Mythic Archmage 2), Gimpy (half orc, barbarian/oracle/rage prophet 17, Mythic Defender 2), Clive (half elf, wizard 17, Mythic Archmage 2), Sir Nat (human, paladin 17, Mythic Champion 2).
The heroes spend several days of downtime back in Mage Point recovering from their expedition to Tilagos Island. Clive and Rak devout this time to studying with Tenser and learning powerful new spells. Sir Nat and Gimpy spend much of their time in Greyhawk seeing to their respective temples and attempting to restore order to the ruined city.
They know time is of the essence, so before long they teleport back to Alhastar and attempt to consult with Lashona before going after Dragotha’s phylactery in the ancient giant stronghold of Kongen-Thulnir. They are informed that Lashona is away on important business and not able to meet with them. Thus, they decide to head for Kongen-Thulnir.
Clive casts a telepathic bond and mass fly spell on the party, and then he teleports them to the ancient giant city built into the side of the infamous Rift Canyon. They find themselves hovering in the air above the canyon. The canyon itself is deep. It drops several hundred feet, at which point only a cloudlike layer of mist is visible, making the true depth of the rift impossible to determine. About two hundred feet down from the top of the rift, in the side of the cliff face, they see an enormous cave, and in that cave is built the giant city of Kongen-Thulnir. Unfortunately, it seems that Dragotha’s forces have already learned that the phylactery is hidden in the city, for he has sent his dragon army to besiege the place. Close to thirty chromatic dragons of varying sizes soar through the skies around the city, blasting it with their breath weapons. The giants have retreated to cover in the buildings, but now and then ballista bolts and hurled rocks are spotted, making it clear that the giants are still offering some resistance. Clive promptly casts a mass invisibility spell to conceal the heroes before the dragons spot them. They know the magic won’t hide them from the dragons up close, but they hope that the spell will prevent them from being spotted at a distance.
The heroes then cast some resist energy spells to ward them from breath weapons. They notice that the dragons seem to be concentrating their attacks on a large hexagon shaped tower built on a spire of rock that rises up out of the mist and stands like an island out from the main city. Three blues and two greens circle the structure and attack it with their breath weapons. These dragons are led by a gargantuan red dragon, and it is quite possibly the most dangerous dragon in area. Sir Nat reasons that if this red is making a concentrated attack on the structure than perhaps it is where the phylactery is located. They decide that they must go there and get the phylactery before the dragons do.
They descend down into the mists and use the mist for cover to fly to the rock spire that supports the tower. They then fly straight up the side of the spire, hoping to come up underneath the dragons and fly or teleport into the tower before the dragons can breach it. Their plan fails when the red dragon sees them coming, despite them being invisible. Hovering in the air, it looks down at the heroes and prepares to obliterate them. A wave of intense dragon fear washes over the heroes. Sir Nat’s holy aura gives them strength to resist, but even so Rak succumbs. He starts to fly back down towards the bottom of the rift, as Sir Nat readies his adamantine great sword and soars up to smite the mighty dragon. Gimpy is close behind him, and Clive readies his magic.
Sir Nat imbues the party with the ability to smite the dragon. Then he flies up to close on the dragon. As he does so it smacks him with its massive tail, sending him spinning. The paladin recovers from the tailspin and closes in on it. Channeling the divine powers of Saint Cuthbert, he slashes the dragon across the chest. The adamantine blade cuts through its scales, and wounds the ancient red. It bellows in rage and pain, shocked that a tiny mortal gnat could cause it such pain. It then lashes out, biting and clawing at the paladin. Its deadly power attacks are enough to bring him to unconsciousness (he would have been dead were it not for the spending of 2 hero chips). He starts to plummet towards the canyon floor far below, but his ring of featherfall kicks in, drastically slowing his fall. His sword is not so fortunate, and it disappears down into the mists far below.
Rak manages to shake off the dragon fear, and he flies up to catch Sir Nat. Clive dimension doors down into the mist far below and starts searching for Nat’s sacred blade. Gimpy had previously used magic to bond himself with Sir Nat, and he channels a heal spell into him. The heal spell brings Nat back to consciousness just as the dragon blasts Gimpy with its flaming breath weapon. Gimpy’s dragon hunter ring spares him the worst of the fire, and he flies onward to attack the mighty wrym. Gimpy holds his own against the dragon, while Nat heals himself, draws his dragon bane sword and rejoins the battle. Rak hovers in the air, and blasts at the thing from a distance with potent acid rays. As Nat rejoins the fight, the two smaller greens enter the fray, but the heroes work only to fend them off, focusing their attacks on the red. Sir Nat has shared his smite ability with his companions, and this proves to be the deciding factor in the battle (as it is in many battles). The damage they dish out is epic, and soon the great beast falls from the sky, plummeting down into the mists far below. With the red finished they turn their attention on the two greens. By this time one has flown to down to engage Rak and is keeping him busy. The morale of the second green is shattered by the red dragon’s death, and it flies off. Gimpy and Sir Nat don’t bother to try to chase after it; instead they soar down to help Rak and soon another dragon has succumbed to their blades.
Looking towards the fortress the dragons were attacking they see that a large section of the front wall has collapsed, and in a big antechamber, which is now exposed, several fire giants engage three blue dragons. The heroes take a moment to cast some healing spells, and they then fly in to help the giants. The dragons and giants are already injured, and it doesn’t take the heroes long to slay the three blues. With that task done the giants hesitate. They don’t seem to know what to make of the heroes and are not eager to fight them. A parlay is about to begin when two more dragons fly in. One is a huge black and the other is a huge white. Dragon slaying is the order of the day, and Sir Nat and Gimpy fly out of the fortress to confront them. Rak holds back and covers them with ranged spells. There is another fierce skirmish, but again the heroes come out victorious, adding two more dead dragons to their count.
They then begin their talks with the fire giants. Sir Nat explains that they have come in search of Dragotha’s phylactery, which they believe is somewhere in the city. The giants don’t seem to know what they are talking about, but eventually the heroes learn from the giants that there is said to be a great treasure housed in a vault somewhere below the Citadel of Weeping dragons. The giants don’t know what the treasure is and can’t verify if the vault houses what the heroes seek. Still, it’s a good lead, so they decide to investigate.
The adventurers fly back down to the mists where they rendezvous with Clive. The wizard has kept in touch with them via his telepathic bond spell, and he has recovered Sir Nat’s adamantine sword. Using the mist for cover they fly to the great rock spire that houses the citadel, and then they fly up it until they reach their destination. The citadel itself is a mighty fortress sized for giants. It too has come under attack by dragons, though none as mighty as the great red seem involved in attacking it at the moment. They notice that one of the towers has a breach in it that was most likely caused by a lightning strike from a blue. The hole is too small for dragons to easily enter, but it is large enough for human sized creatures to negotiate.
They make their way for the tower, but before they can enter they are confronted by a big green dragon. The green puts up a fight, but it is no match for the heroes, and in seconds they send it plummeting down to the mists far below, making it the eigth dragon to die at their hands this day. Inside the citadel they discover a great hall. A dead hydra occupies much of the floor space. Clive takes a moment to inspect the thing. Its body is withered and desiccated. He determines that the injuries were likely inflicted by necromantic magic, possibly a horrid wilting spell or some similar effect. They press on into the citadel and find a staircase that they follow down. It takes them down deep and eventually opens onto a level that houses a couple of chambers. One of the chambers is a spacious bedroom and study. Here they have the misfortune of running into a hulking balor demon that is in the process of ransacking the room. A pair of pale, hairless, undead giants wearing banded male armor and carrying enormous flails assist the demon. Their eyes and mouths are stitched shut, making them all the more disturbing. The balor has pale, rotting flesh, and an undead look about it. Its sword and whip are both made of bone, and both Rak and Clive suspect that fiend might be a powerful servant of the Orcus. The demon immediately senses their presence in the hallway, and it turns, lashing out at Sir Nat. The paladin looks ready to confront the fiend, but Rak and Clive call for a retreat. He listens, and Clive teleports the heroes back to the great hall.
Total PC Deaths to date: 13
Characters Saved by Hero Points: 10
Session #56, Kings of the Rift, part #2
Characters: Rak (samsaran, magus 17, Mythic Archmage 2), Gimpy (half orc, barbarian/oracle/rage prophet 17, Mythic Defender 2), Clive (half elf, wizard 17, Mythic Archmage 2), Sir Nat (human, paladin 17, Mythic Champion 2).
Having teleported out of the dungeon of the Citadel of Weeping dragons after encountering a balor demon and its powerful undead minions, the heroes spend a few moments in the great hall casting healing spells and death wards. Only a couple of moments pass before they hear a war horn blow and heavy boots in the adjoining hall. They move up to the doors and peep through. A frost giant and four fire giants are hurriedly moving through the hall towards the stairs to the dungeon.
Sir Nat steps out and introduces himself. The fire giant leader, one Kurgo Thundersmiter, is hostile and curses that more intruders have invaded his fortress. He looks ready to attack when Sir Nat explains that the adventurers are enemies of both the dragons and the demons, and that they will help the giants kill the demons. He is honest, and tells Kurgo that they are after Dragotha’s phylactery, which they believe is stored in the vault. He emphasizes that the phylactery is the only treasure they seek. Kurgo is hestitant, but decides that the demon is a greater threat than the adventurers. He orders them to lead the way and help the giants destroy the demon. The heroes agree, and they venture down into the dungeon.
Soon they arrive in the deepest level of the citadel. Here they find a chamber that houses a set of massive, stone doors, which presumably accesses the vault. Two enormous giants lay dead on the floor, as well as a pair of the undead hulks (deathbringers) that had accompanied the balor. The balor is here with two more of its deathbringer minions, and the demon is in the process of trying to cut its way through the doors with its blade. Though the balor is having some success, it appears to be a long ways from breaching the enchanted doors.
Clive casts a mythic haste spell, and Gimpy rushes into the room to face off against the deathbringers. The balor turns and casts a horrid wilting spell that harms the adventurers and giants (note: horrid wilting is not a standard balor spell-like ability, but as a servant of orcus this balor had slightly different abilities than a typical balor). Sir Nat moves right past the deathbringers and goes straight for the balor demon, smiting the fiend with his greatsword. Kurgo Thundersmiter, the frost giant and one of the fire giants also move in to aid Gimpy against the deathbringers. The giants are all veteran warriors and incredibly strong, and they deal a lot of damage against the deathbringers with their oversized weapons. Rak is low on his more potent combat spells but he detonates a fireball in the room, shaping it to leave his companions unharmed. The fireball is useless against the balor, but it does harm the deathbringers.
The deathbringers strike. One cleaves at Gimpy and the giants with its mighty flail, while the other channels negative energy. Luckily, Gimpy and Sir Nat are protected by deathwards, and the death magic doesn’t harm them. The balor engages Sir Nat with his vorpal sword and whip. Saint Cuthbert protects and none of the balor’s attacks connect (a ridiculous series of low rolls on my part). Sir Nat continues his own assault, and lands multiple critical hits. The damage is horrendous and proves to be enough to send it back to the abyss. It doesn’t go quietly. Instead it explodes in a blast of fire and unholy power, harming everything nearby. The explosion kills Clive instantly, but the rest of the heroes, giants and deathbringers survive. Gimpy abandons his fight with the deathbringers and hurries to Clive, casting a breath of life spell that just barely revives Clive (in my books it was still technically a PC death). After that a heal spell restores him to fighting form. With the balor defeated, the giants and heroes finish off the two deathbringers with relative ease.
With the demonic invaders defeated, the giants turn their attention to the adventurers. Kurgo orders them to leave immediately, claiming that while he lives no one will enter the vault. Sir Nat tries again to convince him to allow them to take they phylactery, but Kurgo is resolute and grows increasingly impatient. He is on the verge of attacking when Clive realizes that Kurgo’s fanaticism is in a large part due to some sort of magical compulsion. In a bold move he casts a disjunction spell in the middle of the room. The giants all shake their heads as if some sort of enchantment had suddenly been dispelled. Sir Nat attempts his argument for a final time, promising that the only thing they will take is the phylactery. This time his charisma penetrates the stubborn giant’s thick skull, and Kurgo agrees. However he does tell them that the vault requires two keys to open, and one of the keys was recently stolen. Gimpy groans, thinking that they will now have to go off in search of a missing key before they can complete their quest, but Clive is not deterred by such things. The disjunction spell has dispelled more than the enchantments on the giants. It has also, at least temporarily, disabled the wards protecting the doors. He casts a passwall spell, and the magic creates a tunnel through the doors into the vault.
Inside the vault is a great plinth, and on it stands a stone statue of a dragon. The statue’s chest area is open and floating inside like some strange sort of heart is Dragotha’s phylactery. Sir Nat bravely moves up to the phylactery, grabs hold of it and removes it from the statue. Horrible, sanity rending voices assault his mind, but his will power is astounding, and though they would likely drive a regular man to madness, the paladin is for now unscathed. He carries the phylactery to Clive who stands with a bag of holding open. He drops the phylactery inside, and the heroes promptly thank the giants and teleport back to Mage Point.
In Magepoint they easily gain an audience with Tenser where they show him the artifact. They decide they will destroy it, and the next day they teleport to the mountain known as Iggwilv’s Horn. Here Sir Nat cleaves the phylactery apart with his enchanted adamantine sword.
The session ends here. The heroes have completed their quest and feel they are now ready to take on Dragotha.
I just caught up and really enjoyed reading the journal. Thanks a ton for posting it.I think it's cool the way you have change the story to better fit the characters in the campaign and have the narrative be a bit more organic.
Thanks Ghufufin. I've been trying to make this campaign a bit less linear than the AP presents.
King of the Rift definitely got truncated quite a bit. The PCs went straight for Brazzemal, and they aren't really supposed to take him on until the end of the adventure, but I figured if that's what they want to do let them go for it.
There's also the whole quest for the vault keys part of the adventure that they pretty much bypassed with some use of high level magic, but I was fine with that as well since I'm looking to get this campaign wrapped up sooner than later.
Overall I was satisfied with how the adventure played out. The ending of this campaign will hopefully prove interesting. I'm concerned about play balance at this point. Characters like Nat do huge offensive damage in a round, but so do the tougher baddies they are facing; that makes the game very swingy. A PC can easily be taken from full health to death in a single round, but so can many monsters.
It's always tricky at high levels. There are a lot of factors that come into play and missing any can really change a fight.
The most sucessful tactic I have seen is denying PCs full attacks through either hit and run tactics or forced movement. One of the more challenging encounters our party faced at the end of the Jade Regent AP was versus an enemy that used repulsion every round. The downside to this being that it can lead some very frustrated players if they get kited around repeatedly.
The second thing i've noticed (and this more my opinion than any real data) is that saves and A.C. matter a lot more than HP. I had a GM max and double the Hp of foes we fought but at best the lived a round or two longer and barely any other effect.
From what I can gather your players are decently challenged and past a certain point death is just an inconvenience to high level PCs ( barring one of the rare forms of permadeath). That being said, there are a couple of people on these forums who could provide something to terrify... I mean challenge your players with.
It's not challenging them that's really the problem. It's finding the balance where there's tension in a fight because both the heroes and villains are having their resources depleted over several rounds, as opposed to creatures getting dropped nearly instantly- both monsters and PCs.
A lot of the encounters as written in this AP feature the heroes against a single foe. I'm trying to minimize fights like this because they just don't work that well.
I'm still running this campaign, hoping to do some updates soon. We're getting near the end. In our most recent session the heroes took on Dragotha.
Session #57, The fall of the Blessed Angels
Characters Present: Rak (samsaran, magus 17, Mythic Archmage 2), Gimpy (half orc, barbarian/oracle/rage prophet 17, Mythic Defender 2), Clive (half elf, wizard 17, Mythic Archmage 2), Sir Nat (human, paladin 17, Mythic Champion 2).
The heroes are ready to venture to the Wyrm Crawl fissure and attempt to slay Dragotha and hopefully put a stop to impending the Age of Worms. But before they do they decide that they should check in with Lady Lashonna. They discover that she is unavailable for an audience, and they are told that she is attending to business with some of her kin.
Gimpy does receive a message from his brethren at the temple of Kord in Alhastar requesting that he come immediately, as they have important news. Gimpy, Sir Nat and Rak teleport to the temple, and when they arrive they discover that most of the priests are dead and the few survivors are under attack by the Blessed Angels. The heroes dispatch the Blessed Angels, but not in time to save any of the priests. After the fight they raise the highest ranking cleric from the dead.
The cleric explains that he recently noticed something odd about the ziggurat being built by Prince Zeech. The pace of its construction has hastened, and there is speculation that magic is secretly being used. When he was viewing the completed structure he noticed a bird flying over it. The bird seemed to collide with something above the pyramid- something invisible. Unfortunately, he thinks a Blessed Angel might have seen him inspecting the dead bird and the step pyramid, which may be what prompted their raid. He suspects that there might be more to the structure than meets the eye.
The heroes consider investigating, but first they decide to avenge the priests of Kord. Gimpy leads them in an all out assault on Angel’s Aerie. Here they battle and destroy over a half dozen Blessed Angels and their Horned Devil commander, freeing Alhastar from their terror.
Shortly afterwards they receive a magical message from Lashonna urging them to come speak with her. They tell her what they learned from the priests of Kord, and she promises to investigate. She ensures them that Zeech and his Ziggurat are the least of their concerns, and that the true danger is Dragotha. With his phylactery destroyed they must press their advantage and finish him while he is still recovering from the blow. Her arguments are convincing, and the heroes decide to leave Zeech to her and head for the Wyrmcrawl Fissure.
Is the campaign still alive?
We did end up finishing this campaign. Due to logistical reasons, I had to move it from a face to face model to roll20. Unfortunately, I got behind in my journals and never quite got a chance to catch up.
The characters did defeat Dragotha, and they pretty much plowed through the final adventure in one or two sessions. They headed straight for the top of the tower, where they confronted Ilthane and several of those nasty demon things all at once. Finally they fought cause. It was fairly epic. The mythic paladin in particular proved devastating- easily able to dish out 200-300 damage per round when smiting.
All in all it was a satisfying campaign wrap up, though I felt like Kyuss and Dragotha went down a little easier than I had hoped they would. I don't think I even killed a character in either of those two fights, which was a let down for me- especially since in my Savage Tide campaign there were something like 9 deaths in the final fight against Demogorgon (that was with a 5 PC party- some character died more than once in the final battle)..
After Age of Worms I spent the last year or so running a home brew 5e campaign that incorporated a bunch of material from Princes of the Apocalypse. I have journals for the entire campaign, but I didn't bother posting them.
I had also started a Rise of the Rune Lords campaign, but the group of players that I was running that with was a little different than my Age of Worms group, and due to some issues with player attendance/punctuality I disbanded that campaign near the end of the fourth adventure. That was a bit of disappointment as I would have liked to see it through to the end, and I had a fairly comprehensive journal on the go for it that never got completed.
I've also been running some home brew Dark Heresy lately, which has been quite fun.
However, tonight we are returning to Pathfinder. I've decided to do a Pathfinder conversion of the Eberron adventure "Eyes of the Lich Queen." It's a fairly involved adventure that should take a good amount of time. Characters are beginning at level 4 for this one and I expect it to take them up to around level 11. I will be keeping a journal of this campaign- not sure if I'll bother posting it though.
I've enjoyed all your journals thus far, PH, and I'm glad to see you're still writing them (regardless of whether or not your post them)! I hope you and your group have a blast with your upcoming adventure =)
All in all it was a satisfying campaign wrap up, though I felt like Kyuss and Dragotha went down a little easier than I had hoped they would. I don't think I even killed a character in either of those two fights, which was a let down for me- especially since in my Savage Tide campaign there were something like 9 deaths in the final fight against Demogorgon (that was with a 5 PC party- some character died more than once in the final battle)..
PH, this is a tragic development. Though I couldn't have helped with a system other than 3.5 or Pathfinder, I nevertheless feel that the rest of us in the GM community let you down, if your players skated through Kyuss and Dragotha without even one PC buying the farm...
Well it was a pathfinder game. However, we were using the mythic rules, which gave the heroes a big edge. The mythic paladin is truly a force to reckoned with.
Well it was a pathfinder game. However, we were using the mythic rules, which gave the heroes a big edge. The mythic paladin is truly a force to reckoned with.
It was a lot of fun. It was pretty sweet to finish the campaign. And I agree way too many of the mythic abilities are broken beyond the point of even trying to fix them. Like mythic smite and that ability that allows you to spend a mythic point and teleport instead of being hit in combat. Essentially it allows you to completely dodge a full attack from a mythic creatures. 7 mythic points means you can do it 7 times... and how many fights last that long at 20th level. Still the AP was amazing. Hopefully we can run another one some day (where I'm a player again :) though I know it's not high on our groups list of next campaigns.