[Games] Grand Finale (This Time For Sure)
Mar. 4th, 2018 09:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jordangreywolfThis weekend, we wrapped up a few stories. The big one was the matter of the Iron Kingdoms campaign.
Iron Kingdoms - Grand Finale
Since the Reclaimer and Paladin Siegmeyer's stories were already pretty much resolved, NinjaTheWolf took over Prince Ivan as a character (in an attempt to redeem himself for all his foolishness up to this point), while TheNewGuy hastened to throw together a Khadoran Greylord, and we threw together a rather hasty reason for his inclusion, with a few gratuitous references to "The Gamers," courtesy of Goober_Chris. ("You seem trustworthy. Would you care to join us in our noble quest?" "Yes. Yes I would.")
There was a bit of time for Ivan to familiarize himself with the two beasts that had been entrusted to him by the former Reclaimer (now Elder of the Garden Temple of Menoth): the fiery Aethon, majestic steed -- and the fiery Urcaenhound, protective guard dog. (I had to give NinjaTheWolf a crash course in "warlock" rules -- basically, his powers were focused on boosting the attacks and actions of his beast followers.)
The adventurers puzzled over what to do with the athanc (life crystal) retrieved from the heart of Khanjira the World-Breaker. As best they could sort out, the original dragon slain by the Orgoth was a different dragon. When its athanc was split up into so many tiny slivers, each sliver had the potential to become a completely different dragon with its own consciousness. When those dragons began devouring each other, they kept their own consciousness, and though they gained POWER from each additional sibling devoured, that dragon would still never achieve the same level of consciousness as the once-intact dragon that had "birthed" them all. The adventurers ALSO happened to be in possession of the last remaining sliver that would complete the athanc: if they rejoined it (rather than letting Khanjira "devour" the last shard), then technically that would recreate the original dragon's athanc in its entirety -- and restore that dragon's consciousness. They figured this would make the athanc more valuable to bargain with the Orgoth ... so they decided to go ahead and do it (but keep the athanc contained within the voidfire cage that Thale had fashioned from the accursed voidfire dagger, so that it couldn't reconstitute a new body).
Exploring Paradise
The Orgoth "paradise" was divided into "facets." In one such "facet," there was an ongoing war going on between two opposing forces of infernals -- and, upon observation, this wasn't just a battle of arms, but also of LAWYERS, as each exchange of blows was accompanied by arguments being made as if in a court of infernal law. Thale recognized that this represented a certain interpretation of the spiritual reality going on between the factions of infernals in their dealings with each other: among the infernals themselves, law was not an absolute (since there was no such thing as an impartial, neutral judge to mediate between parties), but a resource in their ongoing struggles with each other.
The also saw a distant tower that had a mechanism that looked like a cross between an egregore and an orrery -- a marvelous and impossible infernal machine of rings upon rings, intertwining with and overlapping each other in ways that defied sensible space. It seemed distant and unreachable, something located far away and at the center of all these "facets" of this reality.
Most of the facets, however, were portions devoted to allowing the Orgoth overlords to live out their particular fantasies, with a court of their underlings along for the ride, and a host of souls being squeezed into the roles of servants and of opposing soldiers -- the latter doomed to be slain and reconstituted for battle again and again and yet again.
There were gaps in the landscape of the facet the adventurers visited first, and the adventurers soon sorted out why: that which was not being focused upon by one of the important dreamers in this fantasy were not important enough to be maintained by the magic, and so it melted away. That which was focused upon by a conscious entity would become more distinct. This caused Thale to worry that all attempts at finding anything were doomed, since they would simply "find" whatever they imagined, but they soon discovered that reality wasn't QUITE that uniformly pliable. For instance, Prince Ivan conjured up a mechanical dragon to ride on to the top of the tower of the Orgoth Overlord, but the Orgoth Overlord, once he noticed it, disbelieved, and it melted away. Fortunately, once Ivan fell out of the Orgoth Overlord's range of vision, it was easy enough for his fellows to imagine something soft to catch him, without fear of being contested.
They played around with manipulating the environment, getting closer to the Overlord's domain, clobbering a bunch of his lackeys, and then working their way up to his court. Many of the servants were excited to be noticed by newcomers -- any time the Overlord's attention was directed away from them for long, they would begin to melt away, so attention was what helped them to maintain their substance.
Eventually, they sorted out that the Orgoth Overlord was the first of his kind to have successfully dealt with the Orgosis, and the first to establish the "pyramid scheme" of putting a debt burden upon his own kingdom and offspring, forcing them to conquer and subjugate for any hope of coming out even. What he didn't realize (until the interlopers called this to his attention) was that his scheme had fallen apart. By stopping the harvesting of souls on the Forbidden Island by the war witches, and reclaiming it for Menoth, the "inflow" of souls was no longer sufficient to keep up the "debt" the Overlord was incurring for all the tiny miracles needed to maintain his paradise facade (and his personal immortality).
A mysterious "accountant" showed up upon demand, to make this clear for the Overlord, whereupon he immediately proposed that he could make up for this by declaring war upon the adventurers and subjugating their souls. (He also seemed rather surprised at the accountant's appearance, insisting she was not his USUAL accountant, but she explained that his USUAL accountant was no longer available, since the Overlord could no longer afford his hourly rates -- paid in souls, of course.)
Since the Overlord had taken his attention for too long away from the "battlefield," it had melted away entirely, and the cost in souls, he was informed by the accountant, was too much since he was already overdrawn on his main credit line, and was quickly running up an insurmountable debt.
The adventurers inquired about this, and wondered whether they might persuade the Overlord to work out a trade for, say, some captured Iosan deities. The accountant clarified that the Overlord had no such assets, but rather that another one of her clients had possession of that particular "resource." Thale approached her, suggesting that he might have something of interest to her other "client," and gathered enough information about him to sort out how he might navigate the magical "gates" that joined the facets, so that he could pay a visit. By this point, the infernals were already starting to repossess parts of the palace itself, and the adventurers beat a hasty retreat so that they wouldn't get caught up in it.
Ayisla's Captor
They reached another facet, with another opulent palace -- this one looking far more intact, rather than constantly melting away, even though it was still dreamlike and abstract, details only appearing when focused upon by the viewer. They met with the accountant again, but she seemed to be stalling them rather than allowing them to meet her "client." If anything, while before she seemed to be quite willing to let slip information that allowed them to find their way to this palace, now she seemed to be providing only obstructions. Eventually, they had enough of this, and launched into attacks on the guards in the courtyard. The accountant, even though Brah-Lurh assumed she was an infernal, was perhaps surprisingly incompetent at defending herself. To everyone else's surprise, Brah-Lurh grappled her rather than killing her outright -- but even then, she seemed to just be goading them on: "You'll never see him except over my dead body!" and so forth.
Despite the boast, they did manage to break into the "pleasure chamber" of the Orgoth overlord, though he seemed rather a disappointment to Ximena -- unlike the first Overlord, whose self-image as a great conqueror demanded that he be a larger-than-life hulking being of destruction, this one was just a sleazy little creature devoted to demented pleasures, surrounded by courtesans. In a bizarre twist, they walked in, just in time to see him seduced and then horribly KILLED by one of his harem ... but then he just came back and the macabre events seemed to be ready to play out in another variation (quite possibly resulting in a different extreme death for the Orgoth lord -- who seemed to rather enjoy the demented experience).
The Orgoth was nonetheless in terror upon realizing that these newcomers were not part of his fantasy -- but when the adventurers started personally threatening him, and then looked as if they were going to torment the accountant, he regained his composure and some measure of bravado. Still, once Ximena pinned the accountant to the wall and began threatening her, he started making statements challenging the newcomers and loudly asserting his dominion over the court and over his servants -- though he wouldn't refer to his accountant by name.
Thale caught onto this, and pointed it out. "I can't help but notice that you aren't calling her by name."
"AHA!" the Orgoth responded. "I shall not fall to your tricks! You see, I am quite clearly stating that I am referring to HER (points deliberately), the one I am pointing to, and to no one else, so that you shall not trip me up by word games on such petty matters as names."
The accountant repeatedly made statements that seemed to be goading Ximena into just killing her, but Thale forbade her from doing so. And then, they started noticing that some of the trappings of the palace started to seem less solid than they had before -- and they could hear the sounds of "battle lawyers" outside the gates of the palace (which, incidentally, had been wide open when they'd arrived).
Through some amount of back-and-forth, Thale figured out that this "accountant" was not quite what she claimed to be. "Show us your true form," he demanded.
Ayisla Revealed
At last she complied -- appearing as Ayisla, though not quite as glorious and "painfully beautiful" as the vision had been on the Forbidden Island when the Champion of Anarchy had tried to portray her form. Thale sorted out that this Orgoth overlord had nominal possession of her, and had been treating her as a plaything and servant, fearing no threat from the outside. As soon as Brah-Lurh had grappled her and been able to threaten her life, the overlord's "claim" on her became weakened -- and that's what had attracted the infernal lawyers to descend upon the palace. It also meant that the overlord could no longer drawn upon the promise of an inflow of Iosan souls thanks to possessing Ayisla, because ownership could be contested.
Thale tried to find out what Ayisla's game was. She confessed that she had exploited her master's lapses so that she could visit the other Overlord's palace and draw the attention of the interlopers to her own master's domain -- and then she had tried to goad the adventurers into slaying her, though only Thale or Anya could have actually succeeded in dealing the killing blow, as "children" of Ios. She would be personally destroyed, and the souls of dead Iosans would be scattered in Urcaen or perhaps even doomed to haunt Caen as restless spirits, with uncertain fates, but she saw this as preferable to their CERTAIN doom as play-things of the infernals.
Thale reviewed the contracts that spelled out Ayisla's bondage to this Orgoth lord. He finally got to piece together the whole sordid deal: Thamar had, through her followers, contacted the scattered Iosan gods who had been trapped in Caen, when they spread out to try to find a way back to the Veld, and had promised them help -- but had turned around in treachery, weakening and subjugating them, then turning them over to the infernals of the Nonokrion Order in a gambit to bring the powers of arcane magic to the humans of Immoren (so that they might drive back the Orgoth invaders).
The Nonokrion Order in turn dealt with the Orgosis Order, offering to pay them an Iosan god if only they would withdraw their forces (or abandon them, at least), and stop invading their domain. The Orgosis Order apparently had a better idea of the roles of the Iosan gods than the Nonokrion Order did, for they named Ayisla as their price -- and with her, they gained a steady stream of Iosan souls. They then abandoned the Orgoth invaders to their doom (the Orgoth invaders were eventually driven out of Immoren by rebelling humans, and made the mistake of ticking off Turok and raiding the Scharde Islands on their way out), and retreated to their homeland to enjoy a steady inflow of spirits. This Orgoth lord was only involved as a formality: someone to be the nominal mortal owner of this soul, as an Orgoth representative (and one of the few survivors of the Orgoth invasion force to make it back to the homeland). In other words, he wasn't particularly remarkable at all -- he'd just fallen into a stroke of amazing, stupid luck.
Since the whole deal was built on deception -- the Nonokrion Order didn't quite realize what they were giving up -- the contract made mention of Ayisla as an entity, but it made no mention of her role as a goddess in charge of the shepherding of souls of the Iosan dead. Thale also realized that the roles of the Iosan gods were somewhat ... flexible Scyrah, after all, had been Goddess of Spring, but in the absence of the rest of the pantheon, she had taken up quite a few deity roles left abandoned by others.
In other words, roles could be transferred. Thale presented this idea to Ayisla: could someone else be nominated as the new Shepherd of Souls? Ayisla confessed that this could indeed be done, but that entity would have a new and incredible burden. "How about Nyssor?" Ayisla then explained that Nyssor was, after a fashion, already attempting this: He was fashioning new souls that were cold and unfeeling, like deep winter and cold steel, and placing them into newborn bodies that would otherwise be left empty, without the souls destined to be placed in them via reincarnation. Nyssor's purpose, Ayisla guessed, was that these souls could not be tempted, and could never be claimed by infernals -- they were apart from magic, and would pass on into death without regrets, so they were in no danger of becoming undead or otherwise trapped in Caen or worse. Ayisla, however, thought that this was a terrible thing, because while these souls might all find their way to the Veld (the Iosan afterlife), they had never truly lived.
So, Thale realized, Ayisla did in fact have a soul after all ... just one that had been fashioned differently. Ayisla confirmed this by touching his forehead and allowing him to see souls as she did: Anya shone a cold and icy blue in this vision, just as Ximena had seen Anya through the soul-scope in the Temple of Power.
So, Thale thought that there might be some way to save the souls of Iosans -- transferring this duty to someone else to take on the role -- but what of Ayisla herself? Ayisla confessed that the contract was quite binding, and while it said nothing about the Shepherd of Souls, it quite clearly referred to HER. She believed that the Nonokrion Order might have actually acted in various ways to aid Thale's journey to the Orgoth lands precisely so that he might challenge their hold on her ... so that she might be reclaimed by the Nonokrion Order. If they no longer benefited from an influx of Iosan souls, then they would simply see her as a powerful soul in itself ... and partition her up just as they did with other souls, to be fashioned into new servants and creations of their own choosing. (In short, a fate worse than death.)
Sorting out the details, Thale tried to come up with a happy solution, but he could not. In the end, he bid Ayisla to transfer her role as Shepherd of Souls to Anya. This, she did -- and Anya, overwhelmed by the experiences of Iosan souls, collapsed and began to wail, while Thale rushed to comfort her. The others were moved enough to help, while Thale tended to the other, less pleasant task: with Ayisla's blessing and forgiveness, he took a blade and put an end to her life (such as it was), whereupon her body disintegrated into a radiance of moonbeams. Thale quickly instructed Anya to find Ayisla's soul and to guide it to be reborn in the body of an Iosan child. Anya attempted to do so, but she had never done such a thing before, and she could not tell Thale with any certainty that she had succeeded: she only knew for sure that wherever Ayisla's soul was, the infernals no longer had any hold over it.
At this point, the palace began falling apart, along with its defenses, and the infernal lawyers started charging in.
(I started setting up for the epic final battle with a bunch of infernal lawyers.)
Thale: "I throw the athanc at them. 'Here! I bet this is worth a lot. Have at it!'"
Me: "??? ... Still in the voidfire cage?"
Thale: "You only live once. No, I'm pulling it out and throwing it."
Me: "Draconic lore check! (passed) You DO realize that the athanc is one big malevolent consciousness, right?"
Thale: "Yep. Dragon bomb."
So ... essentially they throw this mega-soul right into the middle of a bunch of infernal lawyers. Their first instinct is to make moves to go toward it and claim dominion over it. A moment later, they're realizing, "Oh BLEEP."
As was hinted at earlier, a strong consciousness can impose itself over the environment. And the master of this particular paradise facet just got overthrown. So, while it would normally take some amount of time for a dragon athanc to grow a body, and then devour enough flesh to grow to a more impressive size, HERE, where force of will can affect the environment...
BOOM. Instant dragon. Instant dragon with the sheer size and power of Khanjira, but also INTELLIGENCE to go alongside it, and magical power. Its mere manifestation wiped out a huge chunk of the competing infernal lawyers and their minions -- and then it began a rampage, gobbling them up, intending to demonstrate its dominion over THEM.
At this point, the distant tower with the mega-egregore infernal machinery that was "powering" this pseudo-paradise started to make some worrisome thunderous noises and to wobble off its axis. The whole operation was starting to fall apart.
The adventurers began imagining bridges and conveyances to get out of the palace, and wished the portal closer, and were pleased to see that the boat had not melted away in their absence. (Observation and self-awareness are integral in this place, as previously established -- but it still takes some TIME for material things to break down unless someone is actively imposing his will to shape it into something else.) They managed to get out even as the portal was starting to collapse, and the warped nature of the Dead Land was starting to reshape itself. Several infernals attempted to spill out of the gate and into the material world as a means of temporary escape, but a colossal draconic claw thrust out and smote them, dragging them back in just as the portal collapsed.
Epilogue
The steam-launch made it back to the Island. Surrounding it, the land was still desolate and grey, but the sky had returned to something resembling normalcy, and the strange "Aurora Borealis" effect to the west had vanished, along with any trace of the Gate of Immortals, leaving only a tangle of blackstone ruins in its wake. With the infernal contracts severed, Caen's normal reality was reasserting itself over the domain, and the ley lines were reconnecting themselves. The land was still mostly desolate and dead, and it would likely remain a strange expanse of muck for quite some time, but at least it was no longer quite so broken apart from the world. In time, the blighted lands might even return to some semblance of normalcy, now that draconic influences had been completely sealed off in another dimension.
Returning "home" would still be a challenge, with Cryx forces attempting to pursue the Rusalka ... but Thale imagined that Anya, with her new title as Shepherd of Souls, could prove to be quite a disruptive force to an army of the undead.
(Goober_Chris's imagining:
Scene: The Cryx warship is churning its way through the sludge, having finally made it through the blighted forest and into the Grey Land. The skies are lively now -- dark and stormy.
Zombie Crewman: "Captain! There's an intruder on the deck!"
Cue: Lightning flash! Illuminated silhouette of Anya, in a frilly dress, with new ribbons, atop the bowsprit.
Captain: "AN intruder? Just one? Why bother me? Slay it at once! Then bring the corpse to me for interrogation! What is it, exactly?"
Zombie Crewman: "It's ... it's ... a little girl!"
Captain: "... What?"
Cue: Another lightning flash, and the several undead warriors who had been near the bow are now minus their heads. Soul cages, glowing green, suddenly shatter all around the deck, one after the other, as souls burst free. The necrotite furnaces of the bonejacks and helljacks suddenly sputter out. A few bluish will-o-wisps dart about, and fly into the chests of a few assorted undead thralls -- thralls with the remnants of pointy ears and once-flowing hair -- and they go from slack-jawed and dazed to suddenly crying out in anguish ... as their souls are returned to them!
Zombie Crewman: "The crew! They're ... they're ... MUTINY!"
Captain: "IMPOSSIBLE!"
Etc.)
As for Ximena, she scooped up a writer of Orgoth ... ahem ... "romance" fiction from the "pleasure palace." The diminished spirit is little more than a "familiar" for Ximena, but she seems to be fine with that.
Brah-Lurh, oddly enough, decided to convert to the Menite faith, taking up a new career as a Monk of the Open Fist. (Yes, Menites can PUNCH things!) He figured it was preferable to his soul getting trapped in a crystal or being torn apart in the Abyss. (The Skorne don't have any hope for a happy afterlife at all. The best they hope for is that the souls of the worthy may fuel a golem for a few centuries before it goes insane or self-destructs.)
And Thale is preparing for a journey back to Immoren, intending to take Anya to meet with Scyrah and Nyssor -- and, if possible, he hopes that he will find if there are any auspicious births that have happened during his return journey (possibly the reincarnation of Ayisla).
...
So ... not the Ultra-Super-Happy Ending (it was kind of darkened by the only way of "saving" Ayisla being to kill her), but definitely one of the less-horrible ones.
Also, the bit about taking out the infernal lawyers with a "dragon bomb" was awesome. As Goober_Chris explained, it was the perfect setup because their GREED would make them pause for a moment (or even head FOR the crystal!) rather than immediately scattering to a safe distance.
I really couldn't have hoped for better. :) Whew.
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Date: 2018-03-05 10:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-06 02:05 pm (UTC)On the other hand, it was a really horribly-written system, and even now I don't think I had a very good grip on how to balance it properly. Plus, it's almost a "dead" system, as the makers of it are largely unresponsive to the "community" (dare I use that term), even though the forums are fairly active. It's pretty obvious that their real money-makers are in the miniatures wargame and related sales of minis -- not in the RPG.
In any case, I'm glad to no longer be wallowing around in the awfulness of the Orgoth. I prefer to have PCs who, if presented with a situation such as, "Mwa-ha-ha! Come to the darkness! All you need to do is kill these two defenseless peasants," are most assuredly not going to just shrug and go, "Okay, sounds like a good deal. *GANK*" Not that Thale was that way, but Ximena and Brah-Lurh at least played at being that way, and it was a real mess trying to justify how all the PCs would stick together. (Insofar as keeping the holy types with the party, it mostly amounted to, "BECAUSE MENOTH SAYS SO," and it doesn't get much more heavy-handed than that.)
This is the part where I typically fall into a depressive funk as I look back on the campaign and I see so, so many stupid things I did, or so many things I failed to do. There were so many cases where there was some NPC who joined up and just quietly fell into the background, so many cases where there SHOULD have been shenanigans and troubles stirred up by player dubious choices (even to the point where players were expecting it), and I just didn't go there because it would have been a big distraction (and I wanted to MOVE ON). It was a very, very imperfect campaign, but I put a lot of work into it, and I honestly tried to keep the players engaged. So I'm not going to let myself mope about it all TOO much.
Well, oddly enough, I was somewhat distracted from my depressive funk on Saturday by the excruciating pain of my EYEBALLS as I seemed to get a much worse allergic reaction than usual. I haven't yet pinned down who or what the "culprit" might be (who is bringing in radioactive cat dander or whatever) but it just seems a given that as I spend the evening in the GM's corner for a game session, my eyes start to get irritated, and by the end I'm rushing to the bathroom to douse my face in water, or I'm holding a refrigerated can of soda (still unopened) up to a closed eyelid for some momentary relief.
Maybe I need to wear goggles. Maybe it's nothing to do with my players, but something that is going on in the "GM corner." (I thought Gwendel had said she'd removed the full-spectrum lights, but I was somewhat aggravated when I asked, "So those are just regular lights, yes?" "Yes. Except for the one UV light." "ARGH?!?") So maybe it's connected with the sunburns I keep getting on my left side when I'm back there. (The left side of my face was noticeably redder than the right. And the left side was pretty much facing the light fixtures and plants the whole time.)
Anyway, this week, I've set up one of the tables for some painting, because I'm doing touch-up work on Digital_Rampage's "Mansions of Madness" minis, since he's going to run a game of it on Saturday. Otherwise, I'm working on breaking down the other tables and putting away all the gaming stuff -- except for the truly "generic" things (dice, pencils, erasers, notepads, tape measures, laser pointers, tokens) that Goober_Chris and the players might make some use of. The minis are all getting boxed up.
I'm strongly inclined to banish the plants and the plant lights as well. I know I've said that before and haven't done much of anything, but this time for sure, especially since some of the plant stuff is perched atop gaming-related items that I'm going to be removing anyway.