It's been a long, long run, but we finally finished my mythic Kingmaker game.
I decided to let Nyrissa (a dread lord nymph in my campaign) show herself earlier than planned with a bloom I called "Sleeping Prince." She was supposed to fight, then teleport out to fight the players later, but they got a lucky hit.
I offered my players a choice: End the campaign there, or have a coda. They voted coda.
I had at my disposal Ithuliak, the Knurly Witch, the Jabberwock, and Phomandala as the last named adversaries.
So I concocted a scenario. Thousandbreaths was collapsing. If it collapsed, the creatures there would spill out into the kingdom and the surrounding area. Some, like the Knurly Witch, would just find their own homes and not molest others overmuch. Others, like Ithuliak, would seek to conquer.
The only way to stop this? Someone must take Nyrissa's place as the new Lady of Dreams.
The Knurly Witch showed up at the PCs' celebration and told them of this. After some negotiations to see to their kingdom's future, the NPC duchess led her ruling council into Thousandbreaths to take up the reins of the Lady of Dreams, and thus spare the Material Plane.
They made their way through the mostly depopulated Thousandbreaths, knowing that somewhere in the wilderness between Glades, fey armies were preparing to invade. They tried to take the rivers upstream to the Nyrissa's home, but the rivers turned them back.
They stalked into Ithuliak's glade, where Ankous and charmed Tyrannosaurus's were on patrol. The ankous spotted them ... and battle was joined.
The party faced down their first opponents. The ankou used Greater Darkness to strike from stealth, and one Tyrannosaurus ate the barbarian at one point. ("It's my thing," the player said as he grabbed his trusty handaxe and cut his way out).
And then Ithuliak joined the battle. In my campaign, she was a very powerful mythic dragon, ancient beyond belief, possessed of a high AC, many attacks, and a bad attitude. After a few rounds of battling, the queen realized she could not face down this menace.
She and the party alchemist fled intent on making their way to Nyrissa's castle, as the barbarian and the wizard continued their fight. (In real life, I put down a dice that indicated how many rounds it would take for queen and alchemist to flee the Glade and escape Ithuliak. If the wizard and barbarian fell before then, all was lost).
Queen and alchemist made it through. They trudged through the entry to the castle, and found the Jabberwock in the courtyard. (Real life: I sensed a very heroic moment coming, so I decided not to run a full combat between Jabberwock and the diminished party). The duchess, echoing the deed that one her kingdom when she sneaked up on the Stag Lord and killed him in his sleep, again crept past a foe. Meanwhile, the alchemist, possessed of Briar, engaged the beast to keep it at bay.
When his liege lady had fled to safety, the alchemist took gaseous form and also fled the Jabberwock.
Together, they moved further into the Lady's castle, bypassing a Phomandala intent on sculpture. They discovered Nyrissa's lab, with unicorn horn, Ovinnrbaane, and shards of the cyclops' eye. Exploring further, they found a diadem, a cloak, and a scepter. The duchess took this up, and claimed the mantle of Lady of Dreams. She visited the glade of Ithuliak to retrieve her friends' bodies. The dragon recognized the new Lady of Dreams, but proclaimed her hatred even as she stood by.
The new Lady of Dreams, now confined to this realm, arranged for her friends' bodies to be returned to their kingdom, where clerics in service to Erastil and Abadar could raise them from the dead, to live out the lives they were meant to have.
And the duchess, once known as the Bandit Queen, took up her new mantle. She had dubbed her mortal realm "The Kingdom of Second Chances." She adopted the same sobriquet for her new realm, building a place where fey, no longer welcome in a civilizing world, might find refuge.
And the Bandit Queen, and her retainers, passed into legend, their stories a part of the founding of the newest, and perhaps someday the greatest, of the River Kingdoms.
