Danny (Paul)...Survivalist/Doomsday Prepper
JJ (Jim)...Surfer Bro
Gabby (Joe)...Redhead (Sorry, don't know her job)
Ricardo (Alan)...Chubby Mexican Geek
Ryce (Robert)...Spiritual Dude
Barret (Darren)... Pharmaceutical Rep
We start in Vegas, playing slots, having drinks, attending conventions (Prepper, SciFi, Drug). In the midst of this, sirens go off, phones display the emergency text, and the news reports that the US is under attack by a North Korean missile. It's slightly after that, in the midst of chaos, that we find out that it's headed to Vegas specifically. We spend the last few minutes as we lived: In confusion.
FLASH. Each of us wake up alone, in the cold, in the desert, at a sort of twilight point... that never changes. Hungry, unable to find anything in any direction, eventually we each are set upon by a fiery demon who delights in whipping us. As the pain becomes unbearable we go unconscious and wake up somewhere else (again). This time we're in the presence of an angel, while not far off are what are decidedly demons. The Angel, who introduces himself to us as Lucifer, regales us with a story about how mankind overran heaven and broke the machines of heaven, and that caused a trickle-down as the angels book the machines of hell. Lucifer saved the people of Vegas by pulling them into his realm, and he gives us an odd, if somewhat easy conundrum: They can life in the weird twilight we just experienced, hungry and cold, for all eternity, or they can have twenty years of life and fun and then burn for all eternity (wages of sin, I guess). Given the option, everyone says "Darkness" except Gabby, who goes "Burning".
Because we, a group of total strangers, are told that we have been touched by God, we are entreated with the duty of going to fix a broken world which should help us fix hell, and potentially, heaven.
Next place we wake up is in a barn. Not far off are a pack of zombies, who rise immediately. When we move to exit the barn a woman in the loft makes herself known by screaming to keep the door closed. So we face off with the zombies (later known as "Husks"). One gets his head kicked off by Ryce, another gets pulped under the a bale of hay, another gets torn in half, etc. When they are all down the lady in the loft is Ranna and she has a child which appears to be some sort of vampire. Ricardo feeds it some blood.
The vampire is actually a race of this world, not something that took over a human. I should also mention that the majority of people here are black, while we are almost exclusively white. Ranna tells us that it's basically a world of scavengers due to limited resources and that the White folks ("Din") prey on the black people.
Some of us seem to have undergone some obvious outward changes since meeting Lucifer. Danny is now blue. Gabby has become more attractive (whether it's physically really or just her essence). Barret has grown about 6 inches in height and hulked out in musculature. JJ has a mechanical hand.
Powers exhibited during that fight included Barret power-lifting a bale of hay and squashing a vampire, and JJ nearly instantaneously crafting a functioning sword out of straw! So we see Barret has the word MIGHT and JJ has the word ARTIFICE.
The barn needs to stay closed because there is a mist outside that hides murderous things. When it finally lifts, Ranna directs us out of town and to another city. We avoid another husk horde in the streets thanks to a quick fake wall (I believe put up by Gabby, so there's another power). Also, Danny makes an ice flow, which we use to float down river. Gabby turns out to have the word DECEPTION and Danny has the word WINTER.
We deal with some kind of squidly creature by pummeling it senseless. I should mention that as the game goes on we gain new capabilities (Everything from more hit points to the ability to burn effort to perform a miracle, to knowing that we can burn an effort to bring ourselves back if we're out of hit points).
We reach the city of Qualm via river. We are only accepted in after Ranna talks with someone at the dock and convinces them that not all white people are bad. Seems the Din are atheists, which doesn't go over well. Believing is not a problem for us now that we have met the devil and exhibited Godly powers. We have to undergo a few interrogations by people (Including the Negus, the divisive leader of this town, and Ranna's friend, the local Priest). We find out about the local religion (monotheistic). The environment seems to be a strange mix of ruined technology and medieval practices. We seem to speak the language.
Husks wander outside the gates in the thousands. Ricardo has discovered he can manipulate one husk into trying to eat another husk. He and Ryce have also spotted a building in the distance outside the walled town, which appears to be a skyscraper that has tilted on a 45 degree angle.
The local problem is that the while the vast majority of the black population are industrious, only need to sleep an hour a day, and only consume 10% of what your average white person does, there still is not much food and the city is having problems with getting more food. The fishermen have problems with large crabs attacking their fishing nets and boats. We rest over night and then convince a fisherman to take us out there. Our magical godly essence seems to draw the crabs to us, who turn out to be pretty large (8' wide). So we do battle with 6 of them. During this we see an array of powers. Daniel does a small amount of damage to virtually all of them with his cold powers. Barret bare-hand cracks some with his fists of stone. JJ keeps the boat together as the crabs slam it and try to rend it, but his magical powers counter their magical rend. Gabby creates a fake version of the tentacle beast we fought earlier and that distracts some of the crabs. Ricardo convinces one crab to eat another. Ryce tries to make their limbs fall off. And then there's good old fashioned hitting things with weapons.
We return with pieces of the crabs, and since they carry their eggs on them we've likely taken care of the problem for at least a while. Also, JJ makes some extra good nets for the fishermen to use, and lots of trinkets as gifts to grease the palms of people around town.
We get an audience with the Negus. At dinner, inside the Negus' house, we start to experience a sort of disconnect, a reversal of the slow connection we'd been getting to our powers. Ryce excuses himself as ill, Barret goes with him, and outside they feel normal again. Ryce plants himself nearby with the proviso that Barret will break a window if when he goes back some sort of fight breaks out. Upon re-entry to the building, the same weird disconnect is there, so it's likely the building, not the people.
Ricardo does this thing: He looks at someone and determines the amount of madness they have and what kind. It's not until he scans the son of the Negus that he discovers someone with a legitimate insanity. The guy is a wannabe serial rapist, a legitimate scumbag in the making. At this point Ricardo does two things: He interposes himself between Gabby and the psycho, and, unrelated... he decides to pocket some of the oversized portions of food that are given to us because there are lots of people who can use it. This shuts down the dinner as the move was spotted by the man in charge and we are asked to leave. Food thievery is frowned upon, even when we're given too much.
On the way back to our room we encounter a woman who heard about our deeds and wants us to help her. Sadly, there isn't much we can do. Her baby has "the howling sickness" which is the wasting disease that results in people becoming husks. She's at the hungry but still alive stage, and Ricardo can cure it of the hunger, though who knows what the result of that will be as for its future behavior if it turns.
We found out that the curses that cover this land have something to do with the "night roads" opening and some sort of chaos coming through and infecting things. We were told by Lucifer that we'd have to open a Night Road to Earth at some point to get home.
So the things we have unresolved at this point are:
The building is 1 mile away and Barret can jump that far easily, probably carrying a few people, so we can leap over the zombies if we need to.
---
Mark sent the following out in response to the game recap:
Also, here are some key terms and notes for your PCs:
Lucifer called himself Sammel
The Creator made heaven and earth, angels and mortals out of the Uncreated Night
He blames the Angels for the current state of humanity, in that their goal is to punish humanity and make them all die, and burn in hell forever.
Because of the broken Celestial Engines of Heaven the Uncreated Night is able to spill into the world and speed up its destruction.
You are in the land of Ancalia, in the True World-Arcem
Three basic races are Kham (blacks), Din (whites), Ren (asians)
Languages: Trade Cant is like pigeon English, but only a few people speak it.
Kerez is the basic language of Ancalia.
EVERYONE in Ancalia is the descendant of Theo-genetically engineering.
All Khamites are very religious, and follow the Unitary Church (monotheistic faith) that mirror Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
The most important religious ceremony for Khamites is to bless the dead, to fail this is the greatest sin that can be committed. Apparently they know what happens to the souls of people who die, unlike people on Earth.
The 5 most prominent bloodlines in Ancalia (Khamites):
Alazar: The Thirsting Blades (Bug)
The Henok (Most of Qualm): The Ones who Live
The Kalay: The Seers Enthroned (you haven't met one yet)
The Senai: The Bright Beloved (Jalala and her son)
The Tilahun: The Towers who Walk (Sir Varagel and Mire)
There are also rare lesser bloodlines like the Amala: those Who Know (FANA-not Rana)
The Shattering took place in Arcem about 1000 years ago when humanity warred on and pillaged Heaven.
Analia as an independent nation is about 600 years old, ruled by the High Negus.
The Leader of Qualm claims to be the current High Negus.
Five years ago a series of Night Roads opened up throughout the land, spreading the HOLLOWING Plague, that kills the victim and turns them into Husks.
Symptoms of the Plague are fever, gluttony, and an irrationality driven by increasingly piercing hunger pains that can only be satified by cannibalism. The disease has a 100% fatality rate.
Ricardo (Alan), JJ (Jim), Gabby (Joe), Daniel (Paul), Barret (Darren)
We are in Qualm. We consider our next options, and one of those priorities seems to be to learn the language. However, after a long day of learning the language, we are awakened by a disturbance outside. After some jockeying for position it turns out that a necromancer has shown up at the gate and he demands that the "newcomers" be given to him in chains.
A knight who speaks our language says that the Negus has ordered them to put us in chains but that he won't do it.
Soon the walled city is under siege, a la "World War Z" as the zombies pile atop one another and pour over the wall. Barret and Ricardo address the mob at the wall, though Danny's cold power freezing a large bunch of them at the wall helps to slow the tide. The Negus and his people retreat. Gabby sneaks out with intent of taking out the necro. As we kill a few tides of bad guys with our fray dice, Danny builds an ice slide down off the wall into the chaos, but not until after Ricardo has waded into the zombies and tried to use their stacked corpses as an incline to the ground. I should clarify that in addition to the husk army that comes at us in groups, there's the necromancer, a warlord type leader, an ogre-like husk (Druegar I believe), and then further out there is another necromancer and a Druegar.
There was a LOT of fighting this game (and it all went pretty quickly) but I'm losing a ton of details for the sake of getting through things. Probably the peak of the fight is reached when after Ricardo makes us look to the husks like we are also husks (so they ignore us unless we attack them), Iceboy forms a dome of ice over the prime necromancer and his servant and that seems to cut off his ability to command the husks. There's a scrap inside the dome and then when a door is added the good guys finally win. By then Barret is off getting rid of any that came over the wall.
The Negus' son comes to us to express concern that it might have been construed during the crisis that they were trying to give us up to the bad guys. Barret's not interested in being diplomatic and expresses a not so veiled threat to never do that again.
Next day we spot a procession. It turns out the baby that had Huskism (aka Howling Sickness) has died and the mother is being banished from the town for not disclosing the illness and putting others in danger. She's put in a boat and chained to it and set adrift to go downstream. Before Jim can use his subtle power to guide the boat to safety, Ricardo jumps in the water and swims toward it. For his interference he will be banished, and because we don't leave anyone alone, we go too. Unfortunately that leaves us in the wilderness, with one article of human baggage, and no direction.
So Gabby sneaks back into the city and asks a few people about nearby cities and towns, finding out from the priest about one to the north. So we head north.
During the expedition on the river, we stop off to camp. While fishing for food (which is very scarce), a bassinet floats up river Moses style with a baby crying in it. Ricardo leaps in to rescue the baby and shortly thereafter, all weapons we had on us fly out of our hands and stick in the bassinet. When Ricardo gets there, the baby picks up the sword and wields it, and hurls arrows at us. It's horrible, and Danny puts that baby on ice! Arrows are lost, but Ricardo gets his sword back.
Next part of the voyage involves reaching a small hill with a cairn on each side of it and a tiny Garden Gnome-sytled man who is happy to see us AND to eat us. He does a shit ton of damage to Barret, putting him down before being killed. Our passenger calls it a "Cousin".
Finally reaching the town, a Mott & Bailey with wooden palisades, Gabby gets us inside without having to bewitch anyone, and the guy we deal with, Sir Selman, is a friendly, straightforward individual who listens to our tale of being white people who actually believe in god. We offer to do good for the town and their biggest problem is with a band of pirates who come to the town to demand tribute. We agree to get rid of them.
So they come to town the next day, we engage them, and the town guard play archer. In all, we deal with another mob of Husks (much smaller than at the other city), an "Ice Queen", and a couple Druegar. Danny cancels he first attack, an attempt to drop ice projectiles on us in a hail, and again the next turn he cancels her attempt to summon an ice construct. Still there's a lot of blood and we're saved when JJ (who was absent from the game for a few hours) shows back up in time to do the last point to each and every thing we were fighting.
We get new words! That's right, we're on to our second words. The ones I know:
Barret (Might and Bow), JJ (Artifice and Protection), Danny (Cold and Underworld), Gabby (Deception and Time), Ricardo (Crazy and... crazier?)
Part of Gabby's new powers includes being able to tell when bad things are gonna happen. Also, it seems the Lord who runs this city also is not as nice as he pretends. It seems there's some concern that he will, give the right situation, sell his people. We cook up (or half cook up) a scheme that involves blowing town, letting events form that might expose the Lord for who he is, then swooping in. Unfortunately instead we get another band of ice princesses.
Yes, a new horde of husks, three ice princesses (weaker than the queen but more of her), and 3 Duegar. This fight goes considerably smoother, as we put down the ice princesses.
Ricardo (Alan), JJ (Jim), Danny (Paul), Barret (Darren)
(...At least for now.)
After some discussion of possibilities, we opt to continue the trip we aborted last game, to the city of Herreto, to the North. On the way it's decided that since it's a two day trip, which means staying overnight in the open, that JJ will build a permanent structure at the halfway point, and he does just that. We sleep there overnight (at what surfer-boy christened the Banzai Inn) and awaken to a crowd of husks outside. Fortunately, since Barret's throwing axes come back to his hand, he just stands on the roof and throws and frays until all 34 are down.
We continue toward Herreto where our mouthpiece, Sir Seleman, greets them (because he'd been there once many years ago) and gets us inside. We talk to the king and explain our mission to make the world a better place. His assistant, Zuffa, is the evil assistant who does his best to steer the boss against us. Not easy to do until later when we give him an opening. But for now we're given a place to stay and have dinner with the king.
During dinner, talk of trade comes up and they are interested in more food, which is something the city of Aqesta has plenty of. Thing is, as we walk around the town we notice they are hyper-focused on producing food, even though they've got plenty. One of Danny's new "underworld" powers allows him to see, well, pretty much everything. He knows about every inch of the city. One thing he sees from afar is a wagon leaving the north gate, full of food.
That night, as we are supposed to be sleeping, we instead hatch a plan to go investigate to the north by bringing up the floor boards, removing the worked stone, JJ constructs a trap door and Danny digs a tunnel out to the north, where we exit the ground about 3/4 of a mile up the road, then Danny (the only one who can see in the dark) helps us get to the next encounter...
There's a big-ass manor. In said manor, JJ can see there are 3 ogres, one larger ogre, two bears, and a massively fat giant. They sleep, and the giant, wakes up occasionally to sleep eat. We consider leaving and coming back later, but instead we hatch a plan...
Danny can make us see into the place. Richardo can maybe induce them to kill each other. At the same time, Barret can burn a couple effort and hurl his axes that distance and through any non-magical surface. So suddenly the ogres are quarreling, and an axe flies in and takes off the head of one. The larger ogre proceeds to turn himself invisible (he was also healing quickly). The small ogres kill each other, the madness spreads to the bears and the giant kills them to stop it, and he slowly is picked at with axes he can't defend against. He flees the building and ultimately falls under the wounds. This means only the invisible guy got away.
We head back to town and sneak back in through our tunnel. We are awakened from our sleep by a disturbance. Yup, there' s giant at the gates. We show up and it's the big fat giant, the one who was cut down last! As we start to focus on him, in comes the invisible ogre. The giant goes down first and then the invisible guy. Zuffa seems to think we are the reason the giant suddenly and unexpectedly attacked. We know the knight will not lie (and he was privy to the whole thing, even though he didn't come kill with us), so our default mouth piece, Barret, confesses. He explains that the team figured out what was going on, may have overstepped, but they've made things better there. However it falls short (as I roll a 1) and the conflicted king rules that we should leave.
So we head out and take the knight home. One thing we'd found out about was that there's a city to to the north (beyond the manor the giant had held). However, on the way back to Aqesta, we come across the Banzai Inn and it is occupied by the Azari (the sharp-toothed people who crave blood, like the one we met back in Qualm). They call themselves "Leiben". They tell us that we and what we own now belong to Leiben and demand we put Leiben's things on the road, to which Barret whipped it out and peed on the road, thus starting a fight. Danny pretty much ended the right by encasing all of them in a block of ice. They can still dodge somewhat but they couldn't move and they take damage every round. We went around and slaughtered them and one of them got interrogated. We learn from him about another encampment, a hidden village of amazons up the river.
So we return Sir Selemen to Aqesta and then head north to look for the amazon village. After a few misdirections, we find the place. Without any violence we worm our way into the village and explain our helpful ways. They insist we be gone before sunset but won't elaborate on why other than that it would be dangerous, so we agree.
We leave and move as far as we can before it's too dark, then JJ throws together a quick shack. Did I mention the weed? Oh, yeh... seems that we might have been able to get out of the swamp by dusk if maybe Danny hadn't failed this save vs. pipe, as we smoked with the amazons. But chances are we'd be there anyway, frankly, sitting in a shack when suddenly one of the few males from the village, the son of the amazon chieftain, is there inside our shack and we all take damage. The two on the weed (JJ and Danny) are not only sleeping through this but are locked in nightmares! Barret gets up and punches him once, snapping his neck, and the spirit move into the dreaming body of Danny! Ricardo uses his madness powers to remove this temporary insanity, awakening Danny instantly. Barret wakes up JJ to make sure the shadowy thing that inhabited the boy and Danny didn't move on to him.
No one is really sleeping now because of nightmares and/or possession, when a huge alligator breaks down the door. It tries to drain us with it's dark breath, and also bite and tail swipe. One thing I keep leaving out is the awesome amount of damage that JJ has prevented not just here but during the entire game, as every time one of us is about to get slammed for a big hit, his protection power intervenes!
Soon we've got the raw materials for alligator shoes, but more importantly, the spirit, called Jojun, is destroyed because of the magic arrow he took from Danny as the final damage.
We leave the swamp with the body of the boy, not intending to let the village know that one of theirs came after us, but before that happens, we get our THIRD WORD. And now the freakening begins.
Barret's hair grows white and lengthens, his eyes are black as bottomless pits. He announces that "Barret" was someone else who no longer exists, he is to be called "Phobos" now, the embodiment of FEAR.
Surf-hippie JJ has a slight electrical charge that zips around him. Taking on the aspect of SKY he adopts the name "Thor".
Winter-Underworld hybrid, Danny, undertakes a more drastic change. If you've seen the Night King on Game of Thrones then you know exactly what he looks like, as he adds DEATH to his portfolio. He is calling himself "Frozen Night" with an option on changing that later.
Ricardo dips his toes in the WAR game. So now murder can be personal or just business. He keeps his name.
One obvious problem is that Barret had been doing the talking in the absence of Gabby and now he's, well... creepy. And Danny is now somewhat less lovable as well. We make two stops: Our new avatar of death has resurrected the mortal son of the chieftain whom I one-punched and we follow him back to his village where we explain the the curse is broken. Jojun, it turns out, was the prior tribal leader, husband of the current leader, and his spirit would possess a men and kill any other men. (Yes, the alligator was male.)
The other stop is Aqesta, where our less spooky members explain the changes we've undergone to the knight. We also decide we will set up shop at the Banzai Inn.
In the meantime we want to make sure that Fat-Giant Manor is empty. We go there and encounter gargoyles, which Phobos area effect attacks with his throwing axes as they whirl about in a circle striking each one every turn. Some fly off to hide because Ricardo instills a fear of being outside, but we execute those when we find them inside the manor.
We also encounter a creature in the fireplace that is part trash and ash. It tries to eat Ricardo and JJ and fails. The rest of the manor is uneventful.
Leads to follow are... Samry (the village of the Alizar) has thousands of citizens. We know this because when we were interrogating "Leiben" earlier, Ricardo made one his best friend (for a while) and found out about Samry. We won't be going there unless it's to fight thousands of angry sharp-toothed bastrds. Another lead is that we know there's another city to the west of Samry... but we don't know what lives there. What we do know is that even further to the west is THE NIGHT ROAD.
The fat giant is a "Glutton Lord", one of the tall warrior types from this world who has been "touched" by the night road.
Husks ignore us now primarily because Frozen Night can command them at will. Alternately, Phobos can scare the dead if he likes, along with anything else.
Ricardo (Alan), Gabby Morganna (Joe), JJ Thor (Jim), Danny Mercius (Paul), Barret Phobos (Darren)
All spelling of names and locations below is purely phonetic and should be be presumed to be the actual spelling as designed by the GM.
We left off in Aqesta. There's discussion of where to go next and then we head toward Samray,
city of vampiric people to decide if they are defeatable and how me might protect the local cities from the marauding Alizar (who call themselves "Leiben"). There's some prophetic analysis done of the situation by Morganna, and also we capture a few Alizar to interrogate them. Near as we can tell they are a few thousand strong and they have at least 500 slaves. Most tactics we adopt will create a problem with the slaves getting killed. Foresight tells us that approaching them won't result in accord, it'll result in an attack.
So we table this and start analyzing the next city, the one to the west of Samray but not as far as the Night Road. BUT during out downtime on one of our may way station/lair-building endeavors, Thor uses his remote sight and sees that there are problems back in Qualm. Namely, that the the psycho-pervert son of the Negus has started in on his reign of victimization. We decide we have to stop this guy next and foremost.
After a discussion of the many different ways we can go about dealing with this guy, Death wins: Mercius uses his remote-killing power to make the bastard die of natural causes. And we head back to the "town" to the west of Samray. Thing is, it's more an assemblage of ruins. The citizens shift the rubble around and use it in maze-like fashion to keep themselves safe from invaders. It's a hard life. We FLY up to the front gate, request access and let them know that we are there to help. They let us in and there's a discussion of what they need, which is the death of "The Rider". They provide us with a sketch of the rider, who appears to be some horrible Nazgul-like undead on a horse who comes and takes their people away.
We head out to the hills to unwind in our latest cave and as we begin to exit the cave next morning we discover the exit is covered in husks and The Rider is there! Phobos blocks the entrance and fights. Those behind do ranged attacks and fray the crowd. they fraying goes really well as we deal tons of damage to them. Phobos takes out the rider in two hits, but it shifts bodies to another of its minions nearby. Phobos does more damage to it but not enough as he drops first. Ricardo steps up and finishes off the Rider who doesn't have any more husks to move into. It had been emanating that power-stifling coldness and when it dies we feel that lift.
We haul the rider's horse back as proof of his demise and take some time to help fix the city. This includes Thor fixing things and Ricardo devouring their leader's delicious pain returning her to sanity.
We get our FIRST GIFT point. Spendable on...
Another remote view of the towns we've visited shows us that Qualm has not recovered well. Seems they are in some sort of distress as a result of the Negus' son dying. We head back that way.
We set up another lair, do some recon, and also spend some downtime in our compound while Thor learns some new artifice knowledge. During this time, we plot against he Negus. But we also decide to check out the long ignored Tower. We leap in and begin to check the place out. We had advanced warning courtesy of Morgana's foresight, that there were both "Unstable reality" and "a guardian relic" in the building. The former presented itself as an opening in the roof which caused Ricardo to fly UP and OVER then fall DOWN. We find another hole and repel down that one since it actually goes down. Investigation goes fine but then a staircase collapses and Ricardo is rendered unconscious. While we're retrieving him something with lights begins to come up toward us from below. It turns out to be the classic Gamma World "Warbot". We opt to fly out. Unlike last time we were chased...
(PAUSE.) That reminds me, I skipped something. When we were in the hills after taking out The Rider, we decided to take a peek at THE NIGHT ROAD. Problem there is that when we approach the place we were told it was in the mountains, we are assaulted by 8 crab-insect-like flying creatures the size of horses that do straight damage (not the converted damage we normally do). After most of us take one nasty hit each, we flee! We use Thor's flight power and Morgana's ability to help us outpace any pursuers.
(UNAPUSE.) ...Which takes us back to fleeing the Warbot. It fires on us with three types of attacks: Missiles, Lasers, and a barrage of shrapnel, bullets, and the like. They take out Thor, which is fortunate since Phobos is carrying both him and Ricardo, so all the unconscious folk are being lugged outta there. We get away.
But we plot to go back. We have "foresight" tips to stay away from the south side of the building. We go back ready to fight, go in from the ground level, and after a while the rickety building nearly comes down on Phobos, but for the quick protective actions of Thor. But noise is made and it triggers the Warbot which shows up to fight us. The plan is for Phobos to take the brunt of the attacks and possibly deflect an attack back at it, but the first round isn't all that deadly, and in the second round all the other players except Phobos manage to pile damage on the bot and crush it. Thor collects pieces.
That takes us back to our original Negus problem. From what we gather from spying on various crazy people via Ricardo, loaned artifice items via Thor, and from the air Birdseye view via Thor, we learn that the Negus has stopped sending out the boat to feed his people because he's depressed.
After running all the permutations we decide we may be able to influence the people and confront the Negus, possibly convincing him to change his ways. We leap into the fight at his courtyard and the guards call us outcasts. Before they can fight us though, war-boy Ricardo takes command of them. More troops come out from inside and the battle is joined between the two mobs of troops. The Negus shows up and cancels Ricardo's command. We start hurting the Negus himself and fraying his men non-lethally. When the Negus goes down he drops a mirror from his pocket and a little gold man appears. He gets cut down in one turn but the guards all saw it so they know something odd was at work here. Seems the Negus was driven mad by this thing. We crush the mirror so that the creature who fled back into the mirror after being defeated cannot trouble us again.
We gain a second GIFT POINT.
The town is now leader-less. The priest who is friendly to us does not have a desire to get into politics and in fact is a little turned off by the crowd's actions when, as he pleads for the redemption of the Negus, one of the guards steps up and kills the Negus. That leaves the Knight as probably the next best ruler, but who knows what they will decide.
Mercius (Paul), Morganna (Joe), Phobos (Darren), Ricardo (Alan), Thor (Jim)
We discuss the ins-and-outs of the town not having leadership. Amid this we are informed by the worried priest that the death of the Negus has left a power vacuum in a different regard...
It seems his blood, as one of the two known pure-blooded Henick people, he would ritually sacrifice willingly some of his blood down in the catacombs below, to keep a monstrous 28' tall woman called "The Buried Mother" from running amok. Morganna uses her powers to see that she was the product (1000 years ago) of the techno-magic nonsense that took place at the tower. She has been magically contained below ever since and each month the pure blood sacrificed keeps her contained.
We work out an escape plan for the people of the city in case we can't find a way to stop her and it involves Mercius digging a very long tunnel. We evacuate the city but the calamity never occurs because... Thor performed one of his gifts in which he can prevent a doom from happening. This causes a previously unknown Henick girl to be found. She's not willing, but Phobos removes her fear and she participates in the ritual.
After that we try to convince the leadership of the town that they need to form some kind of government. there's a discussion about whether to tell the town's elders about the little girl and the big monster below. For now we do not. We want them to have leadership first then tell that person.
Thor seeds the town with objects he can use to spy on people later. Mercius built a 4-chamber underground complex at the end of the tunnel.
In the meantime we look into getting rid of the Leiben (pseudo-vampires). There's a lot of prophecy (on Morganna's part) to see what the outcome of various encounters would be. ("Half of the slaves will be murdered", "10% of the slaves will be murdered")
We throw some rocks over the wall and use them as spy devices. This, plus Thor's spy-powers and some expended effort allow him to see who the leader is and also causes that leader to cause some kind of sight backlash! He is blinded momentarily and can no longer see through the rocks we've left around.
We get a sense that maybe he saw where we were. So we set up for a fight and wait. Shortly a a few guys show up and they are roundly creamed by us. Eventually we decide to wait for the followup group, who show up en masse and headed by their big bad guy (who exudes the "cold" dampening aura thing). We fray lots of bad guys, Mercius' zombie troops do some damage, and we do some damage to the leader (Leiben) before Morganna gets in a finishing blow. After that we annihilate the troops.
The city is still standing and we try to parlay. It requires impressing them with our powers for intimidation purposes and then talking them into releasing their slaves if we can initiate some kind of bargain with the cities that will end slavery and feed everyone.
We then set out to talk to the cities and the discussions go well until the last city comes up... Haretto, the one that we were kicked out of. Seems they have a new advisor and the long hated Zuffa has been demoted one step. The new agenda of the city seems to be destroying the Alizar (the toothy bastards formerly known as Leiben). They also seems to know about some of our spying tricks and possibly Morganna's lie detecting because of their cagey answers to questions.
After that we have to decide if we are going to save the Alizar in Samray or if we're going to let this happen. We're unlikely to let it happen. Morganna uses prophecy powers to determine what will happen to Samray. All we know is that they intend to use tactics, insight, and probably some magic powers (they don't seem to have an outside force or other trick that we can tell).
Ricardo sneaks in to talk to Zuffa, who confirms that Lam (the woman) is a problem of his. We decide to attempt to murder her by remote. Unfortunately she can disappear, and does twice! First time was after sustaining a bunch of damage and second time she only took another point.
This does nothing to derail the events as the next day the army shows up to see us at the mansion north of Harreto.
Ricardo (Alan), Thor (Jim), Mercius (Paul), Phobos (Darren)
This game ran only a few hours. Paul was feeling his arrhythmia and so we deposited him at the hospital. He was undergoing testing last we heard. We unanimously opted to break up the game after that for the evening.
We did take care of one order of business...
Outside our facility walls had gathered the troops belonging to the city of Harreto. They demand we surrender. We opt instead to attack Lam (and hope Zuffa doesn't assist her). Paul gives us the good sight and then puts up some impenetrable darkness around the troops. Alan attempts a Murder and does 4pts. Jim does 2pts. Phobos does 4pts. She's still up. She tries to "vanish" but 3 of us make our saves and see her, and her direct attacks mostly have saves (She tries to make Phobos love her, but natural 20 says no). So we do another round of damage and another 4 from Phobos puts her down. The king sounds retreat and the troops who can't see try to flee.
They leave the body of Lam behind. Lam was probably a Lamia (snake woman) or Yuan-Ti. We take her corpse to Harreto the next day to prove to the king that what we did was necessary and that he should go along with our plan to stabilize the world. He puts conditions on his end. We head out to see other leaders, Ricardo doing the talking, and we can cross off the Amazons, who have lost too much to the Alizaar and are too hostile to them to agree to anything.
Thor (Jim), Ricardo (Alan), Mercius (Paul), Phobos (Darren)
We continue to go village-to-village trying to get everyone to get along. However, when we get back to Samre, the village of Alizaar, Phobos can tell that something is off. So I uses his power to detect someone's fears, and as he scans them he discovers they all have the same fear: A terror of some kind of 8' long Karp with tentacles and 3 Cylon-like moving red eyes! When I ask to confer with my friends, the Alizard decide to run back for the gate and we let them go. They then proceed to try and rain arrows down rather than talk. Phobos relays what he saw and that he doesn't know where they are. There's some combat as Phobos flings their arrows back at them, Thor blocks incoming attacks, Mercius puts up an ice wall, and Ricardo takes control of the soldiers on the wall to command them to surrender and come out.
The next batch of soldiers however pick up where the last group let-off. About then Thor spots from his high position a well that suddenly forms a protective barrier around it. Phobos has punched down the gate and he and Mercius make their way into the crowd that has formed. Before too long he creates an underground tunnel and the two of them head to the well, punch through, and fight the "Aboleth". When it is dead they scan for more of them and end up heading (all together) as a group through a Mercies-Made tunnel into the throne room of the Alizaar.
There they meet two more of these things and promptly beat the snot out of them. Seems the creatures touch beings and give them water-breathing capability (and make their skin translucent), and they then need to keep wet or else dry out and die. For humans it's permanent where as for us it's only about 15 minutes.
The alizaar seem grateful. We go back to our bridge-making endeavors between the villages, and manage to book a summit. After three days of talk during which Thor is manipulating circumstances at the low-end (basically using his powers to prevent a catastrophic outcome to the summit) and Ricardo, who said he would not interfere with their discussions and then did so when things weren't going our way. Ultimately, Alectrea, probably one of the more stubborn negotiators, says they will not sign a treaty until the Night Road is taken care of. We get them to agree to a temporary peace (and to feed the alizaar) while we immediately go out and take on the night road.
(PAUSE). I just remembered another encounter. At one of the villages we found that the nicely made Thor-forged gate was torn down by a creature sent by the Ice Queens. The city had used our emergency flag to call on us. It's basically a big scary dragon creature. This one we made short work of... Ricardo used one of his powers to make a cloud fall out of the sky and drag the thing to the ground like a net, while Phobos picked it off from a distance and Thor neutralized its incoming lightning breath-weapon. Mercius work was largely prep, setting up tunnels and holes to work from if necessary. Took it out without harm. 20 Minutes later the Ice Queen shows up. She says that in honor of our victory she will not attack again this season but next season when she returns they will no longer demand 10% of the citizens, they will take all of them.
(UNPAUSE)
We head back to the night road, eventually opting to tunnel the final distance to the cave to avoid the flyer attacks. Travel gets slower this way because the area is full of magma pockets which means lots of re-routing. Eventually, some sort of cthuloid monsters attack us from within the magma, emerging and coming at us in the tunnel. They are defeated without too much harm to the party and not much effort use.
We emerge at the cave to find that the "coldness" is there, staved off by Richardo's... warmness? Anyway, not far beyond the entrance the sight granted us by Mercius fails to penetrate, likely because there's another layer of evil-bad-night there. Seems the cave has one layer of cold, and the three flying bat-creatures are another as they fly out to greet us.
The creatures in the lava below earlier had attacked for straight D4 damage per hit and these guys now attack for straight D8 damage. In both cases we have Thor to deflect large portions of the damage, with his gift for guessing which of the incoming attacks will be the most damaging and deflecting it. When all three are down we head in.
The gate is at the end of the cavern, but it is guarded by another serpentine, winged monstrosity. It also radiates "cold" and so we are currently at a 1 Effort deficit. It demands tribute in order to be allowed to leave. We offer it pain. It does some sort of poison/acid attack on the area and follows it up with a weird click noise that's targeted. We simply beat it like a drum, including the part where Ricardo goes full-crazy and charges it for a fist fight. We take it out and can sense that beneath it, in the small pool upon which the thing sat, is something "special".
Underground-boy uses his underground-boy-powers to move the object up to the surface and it is a dream catcher that is a piece of heaven. Literally. As he touches it his eyes light up and something seems to happen, but it's not like he explodes so Thor touches it and has the same reaction. Having no fear, Phobos follows suit. Only the mildly paranoid Ricardo does not.
So what's it do? Well, besides leveling up? We know that it is a piece of heaven that can be used to repair one of the broken machines of heaven. Also it can be broken now and instantly used to make a permanent change to the world we are in. Also, those who touched it now have the insight that they can create cults to worship them, and that as they gain worshippers they also gain influence (or dominion, I forget which) that can be used to change the world.
We presumably use Morganna to close the gate (since we can't come up with a reason the night road needs to stay open). This however makes us realize that this is not the only night road. Closing this one saves this area, but there are others in this world.
Tyr, aka Ricardo (Alan), Tecton, formerly Thor (Jim), Mercius (Paul), Phobos
(Darren)
We started the game with a long discussion of Cults, being gods, and the use of
Dominion and Influence.
We ultimately decide we will act as a pantheon rather than being every god for
himself. We need to come up with a name for our pantheon. Proposed names
were "The Eternals", "The Hand of the Creator" and pretty much every superhero
or villain group name.
Alan has to overcome Ricardo's natural aversion to touching the "piece of
heaven" (The dream catcher) or else he can't get in on the culty goodness, and
he definitely wants to. In the end, the best approach was just to do it on
his own terms, and that involved stealing it from Tecton during his sleep so
that he could touch it.
At this point both Ricardo and Thor change their names. Ricardo becomes
"Tyr" the god of war, and Thor becomes "Tecton", being more about artifice than
thunder and lighting.
We set to prosthlytizing the citizens of various cities and start to accrue
followers. No one is as yet outwardly stopping people from worshipping us,
but some aren't real happy because while we represent ourselves and a tool of
God, they think we're taking away from his worship.
Mercius tactic is to select someone in each city who has recently died and
resurrect them to show his power. Tecton is creating devices, workshops,
and other paraphernalia as sign of his skill and benevolence. Phobos is
using town squares to call people's fears out and then quell them live as he
explains the importance of understanding fear. And Tyr is rounding up
crazy people and soldiers (which frankly are kind of the same thing) and
creating places of worship.
During this, Mercius has cause to examine the way that souls behave in this
world. It now seems that when we were told that a prayer said over a body
keeps it from going to hell, we never really verified this. Instead it
seems that about half the souls are preserved and the other half are the target
of failed, misspoken prayers. That half are the ones who can be raised by
Mercius, god of Death.
Our first fight of the night comes about as a result of us heading north and
discovering a small family in a wagon headed south but who are being overwhelmed
by husks! Mercius tries to command the dead to stop but they do not obey
because they are being acted upon by five specific "superior" undead of some
sort in the group, so we go after them. After a few rounds of fighting,
Phobos remembers he's got a good area effect mob-shredding power, which he uses
to get rid of the four hundred or so dead. After that we play whack-a-mole
with the remaining leader undead.
The family are fugitives headed away from where their son, Seth, has been taken
by "the Cousins". Turns out the cousins are a known phenomena that we are
not familiar with, which are basically wolf men--not to be confused with
werewolves. No, these are more like the old school hairy-faced Lon Chaney
wolf men. They reside at some standing stones.
We head to the stones to retrieve the kid, on first trip we fight four cousins
who emerge from the standing stones, previously unspotted by us. We defeat
them but not before Tyr gets taken down. We find the entrance to the
underground lair but pull back because of depleted effort and being a man down.
When we come back, we go into the base and come across eight red-caps (just one
of whom shredded Phobos back in game 2 or 3). We plow through them pretty
easily now that we got skillz. That leads us to a chamber with two
elves... one is male and is up and about, and the other is female and in a glass
case.
I forgot to mention the underground lair. It is not a dark hole, it is
instead technology heavy with LEDs lining the corridor, etc.
Anyway, the elves... The male tells us we should go and we refuse and a fight
breaks out. He uses a small stalk of wheat to try and lash us,
specifically Tecton because he keeps defending everyone and neutralizing his
insane parrying ability. He puts Tecton down, but Tecton resurrects
himself through use of the once-per-level "Primal Fury" power that lets you
fight beyond when you'd be down. That gets him a few more rounds.
Because of the elf's ability to parry anything, Phobos switches to bolts of fear
that he doesn't seem to be able to parry. Eventually we put him down,
picking away at him.
We rest and recover then discuss opening the case with the pretty elf woman in
it. Tyr advises against it. Phobos can see it either way.
Mercius thinks we should open it. Finally, Tecton decides we should open
it and we do. Turns out Tyr was right because she's scary Galadriel, all
full of evil beauty. Fortunately though before we opened the case, Phobos
had extended his immunity to emotion affecting powers to his companions and so
her glance-and-break-your-heart power that she can do to everyone--fails!
What's more, Tyr has a mental defense that counter damages such an attacker.
Phobos puts in two big hits but she's using a lash of light to gouge big cuts in
him. I believe Tecton got in the final shot and opts for the kill.
The son, Seth, is long gone, the victim of hungry redcaps.
Mercius (Paul), Tyr (Alan), Mestopheles (Joe), Phobos (Darren)
The environment of the land being untenable, at the end of last game we had
headed into the mountains to find a hidden enclave of knights who may be able to
assist us with the relocation of the roughly 4000 people that the combined
villages represent. We reach the order thanks to Mestopheles "finding"
skills and her Journeying skills allow us to do it without supplies and non-stop
(except to make our classic citadels in the ground).
They are wary of us, naturally, but allow us in to discuss our problem with the
knights. Our first meeting results in a "Well, we'll talk about it and let
you know". When we come for the 'results' meeting their leader has
arrived, a Lord Baez, who thinks their resources would be stretched but it's
against their ways to simply deny people help, so he thinks that with a
horrible, horrible woman hunting the order--a necromantic type named Neesa, it
would be bad to bring on that many people only to have them get killed by her
and her undead army. He thinks if we are as good as we say we are he will
take us to find her and we will kill her preemptively. We agree.
During the trip we get to see what he brings to the table. Since Mark
forgot an early encounter we were supposed to have in searching for the hidden
valley, he stacks it on top of another encounter: We reach a tree that has 3
buzzards in it, each with gem eyes (Ruby, Emerald, and Diamond). The area
radiates that 'evil cold' but Tyr neutralizes it. The buzzards do things
like try to "rot" their targets, and create a hole under them so they fall into
a pit. Phobos the combat guy can't hit a thing, but Lord Baez more than
picks up the slack, doing nasty, nasty damage on every hit! Immediately
after the buzzards are down, in come the second encounter, two T-rex raptors
that leap into the scene. Mestopheles makes one fight an illusionary
monkey while we take out the other. Teamwork goes pretty well this time
and we win.
We arrive at the ruined city where Neesa lives and we spend some time
surveilling her and gathering information. We retreat to rest after
spending lots of effort on the stakeout. During our rest, a wraith shows up in
our underground lair and brings all his little buddies! We are swarmed with
dead. In one of the side chambers, some kind of ghoulish creature with bit
teeth tries to gnaw away at Phobos. Tyr goes down in the combat but brings
himself back with his once-per-level divine resurrection trick so he can act
once then he's disabled for the next five rounds. Mercius takes command of
the dead and turns them on the wraith (to no effect) but later puts them on the
ghoul to a much better result. Baez's weapon is not magic so he loses a
round on futiley attacking it, only to get another shot at it after borrowing a
magic sword from Mercius. The next night we'll camp further from the
scene... or wait... why not keep traveling? With Mestopheles around travel
= rest and nourishment!
Takes a while to develop our plan and use our collective skills to figure out
some things (Mostly the work of Mercius and Mestopheles). Seems closing
down the nearby night road will not cut off her power; she's gotten all she
needs from it. Her death powers seem to include the fact that she can draw
on the thousands of dead around her and use them like a shield and/or hitpoint
battery! 36pts worth, except of course Paul points out it should be 42 points
worth so she got tougher mid-fight. Her other power is a nasty "slap"
where contact with her will do lots and lots of straight damage, and she gets to
do it twice per round, so she could take out a character per round since she
hits automatically. She can also see through the eyes of the dead.
Our plan: Tunnel up to the spot, have Phobos pound through the worked stone,
then while Phobos and Baez do tons of damage on the dead, Mestopheles puts up
illusory walls to keep her from getting to us, Mercius holds to neutralize her
death effects, and Tyr does what he does, which is to get in the way of the
attacker. This all goes pretty much the way we expected, though damage
rolls are a little low on the mass-damage. We trash the zombie hordes
inside 3 rounds! Baez has moved to the middle of the room and becomes the
primary target of Neesa. Mercius neutralize one of her death-slaps per
round, but she still does one hit on Baez (putting him low on HP) and one on
Tyr. I think Baez gets in the final shot and Neesa's destroyed!
Our next step, the GM says, is to liberate the living slaves of Neesa.
Mercius (Paul), Mestopheles (Joe), Thor (Jim), Tyr (Alan), Phobos (Darren)
Following the defeat of the the undead queen, Neesa, we are left with the responsibility of cleaning up the town. There are still hordes of zombies out there and lots of slaves in the pits who probably look quite delicious to uncontrolled zombies run amok.
We fly to the slave pits and find that they are surrounded and about to be overrun. There's a death knight, two ghoul/ghast types, two mummies, and a bajillion zombies. We arrive and Mercius starts by taking control of as many as he can, which is all the lesser zombies, whom he then sicks on the bigger undead. Only the Deathknight is immune to them. He tries some power-words on us and fortunately all of us survive. Not too bad of a fight by the standards of this campaign, as we keep the slaves alive.
After getting those slaves back to the knight's protectorate, the next big project is the logistics of gathering everyone up and transporting them as well, and the enormous preparation to make sure everyone is taken care of. Between Uber-crafter Thor and master-digger Mercius they create a lot of structures, largely consisting of cave-like housing in the mountainside. Through use of 4 points of Dominion, we create enough infrastructure to allow for the population of 5500 to live comfortably, then the movers (Mestopheles, Thor) get the group relocated.
We have two different run-ins with these horrible fire elemental-y creatures. First fight had fewer, but was tougher. Second time we were more prepared. (First time we'd been flying using on-combat flight power, which meant we were flat-footed, for lack of a better term.)
This leaves our next big project as being the closing of the night road that exists in the castle we just liberated. We head back, sans the knight this time.
While resting we are attacked in one of our underground lairs by some kind of tentacled creature of chaos. Not too bad really, since Phobos was awake to attack it and it had targeted Tyr who can't be surprised. Once we get closer to the night road we encounter three more such beasts. As a team they're more of a problem. The caves we are in are filled with water and Mercius has been freezing the water for us to stand on but when one of these things rushes us he crushes the ice beneath him. We have a place to stand (and table footing due to some ice shoes crafted by Thor to stabilize our feet). One of the things manages to exude the "cold" ability to make our powers cost more. We defeat all 3 in typical fashion.
That brings us to the main event... a massive shoggoth is guarding the gate! There's a brutal fight that has 30 HP and thus takes a lot longer than usual to defeat. I'm sounding dismissive of this fight by not loading it up with details but we all get pretty damaged, especially by it attacking twice a round and doing straight d12 damage. Doesn't help that there's a run of misses. When Thor gets in the last show and its down we feel much better. Mestopheles seals the gate.
Now last time we closed a gate we found a "piece of heaven", so we search and find something else. This is an artifact-level ring which can be used to open gates, and that may very well be why all the gates exist in this land, since a mortal using it will eventually be compelled by the uncreated night to travel the world opening more gates! The ring can also close gates. We're immune to its influence, being non-mortals.
We finish in Sabat. Here's the thing.. Mark said, "Do me a favor and remind me that you are ______ in Sabat." So we're doing something in Sabat. Sorry, I've had 3 hours sleep so with any luck I'll remember later.
Mercius (Paul), Mestopheles (Joe), Thor (Jim), Tyr (Alan), Phobos (Darren)
Hear Ye, Hear Ye, Hear Ye... DOMINION POINT: The pantheon has agreed that they can spend the 1 pantheon dominion point only with a majority vote. This point is gained in addtion to the 1pt of Dominion we each get after a game.
Our Group Dominion Point was gained at the beginning of the game. Thor lobbied to make an airboat.
Bookkeeping: Thor (JIM) currently holds the shared of heaven. Phobos (DARREN) currently holds the black evil ring of evil evilness that evils gained last game.
As we fly toward Cold Vigil, a group of 5 travelers flee from us. They fear the "Mercy Men", a group of theives and brigands that pursue them. Phobos allays their fear of us and when they join the group in traveling toward Cold Vigil because mouthpiece Mestopheles offered them shelfter. They say they showed up at "The Glenn" and offered to help but ultimately killed all the people in the Glenn. We put them in a Mercius-made approved underground shelter(TM).
The Glenn is a small village that now is predominately thugs with many dead villagers. Thugs are looting, the village is on fire. We procede to kick their asses since there's no bystanders to worry about.
We track their path back to a spot in the hills where there's a larger contingent of these guys seiging a walled city. We kick their asses (plus their 3 wizards and 3 special warriors). One of these Tyr compels to quit using his war power, though later on Phobos uses his fear power to sweep him up as a follower/potential priest. The people in the city get taken back to where we stored the 5 travelers from earlier and we guard them overnight then lead them back to cold vigil, where they become part of the population.
Hylar was a member of the Glorificant Order (Knight). He is grilled by the people of Cold Vigil, who do not like him for being a de-famed knight. The Bishop who leads the "Mercy Men" is a man called Bishop Lazaar, considered a "saint" by the knights here, many of whom met him.
After a vote, during which only Sir Baez votes NOT to kill the Bishop, we vote to kill the Bishop. Baez will accompany us to the Battle with the Bishop.
Tyr has influenced the citizens (not the knights) of Cold Vigil to make them more militaristic. A heated discussion happens between the PCs about the "unilateral" move to train these folks up. Thor and Mestopheles feel he should have conferred with us. Mercius doesn't say. Phobos says he did nothing wrong. Then Tyr mentions that even if we'd said "No" to doing this he'd have done it anyway, touching off an argument between Tyr and Thor/Mestopheles.
We travel to the camp of the Mercy Men (everyone spending a point to do their selective moves: Jump, Force March, Fly, then Fly). The camp is getting ready to depart when we arrive. We then spend a lot of time and powers to figure out what they are doing and how to counter them.
Thor leaves around some coins he made so that someone would take them into the camp. Once inside he spies on one of the coins and discovers a Seer looking back at him! He uses the coin to damage the Seer a couple of times before he raises alarm and gets help in subduing the coin. Thor forces the coin to rip through the bag and tent and fling away as far as it could be thrown, to be lost.
Thor flies Mestopheles and Tyr out to the ocean. Mestopheles uses his powers to move them underwater up by the ocean-side of the camp. Then they go in under subterfuge to poison the populace of the camp. Tyr pollutes the water supply so that they are disabled (eventually). They return to camp successfully however by afternoon a detachment of 150 people are following us. We pull back and wait to see if people sicken.
Eventually we engage the150 knights, who are a MOB OF SPECIALS. This means they 150 but act as the equivalent of a huge mob! Takes a few rounds before they finally get axed to death by raining axes. We head back a bit and after seeing that the camp is down sick, we camp for the night. Next day we go and engage the big camp.
The soldiers are down sick and we find the Bishop, who is dressed in burlap administering the sick. He tries to shame us but Phobos protects everyone from emotion affecting abilities so we persist. He spends the start of the fight targeting Baez, and by the third attempt he manages to smite Baez down. He spends a lot of effort neutralizing some of our attacks and then does 4 prayer attacks per round! After 30 HP we finally kill him!
Mestopheles uses a power to convince them the bishop was wrong. Within 24 hours they can reconsider the change made by Mestopheles. Phobos uses 2 influence to force them to remember their old ways of protecting people. They cannot go back to Cold Vigil because the knights there would kill these.
A friar named Dougal, who continues to be a believer of the Bishop, insists that the reason these people needed to be killed was so that The Patriarch (Pope) can put them to rest in the land of the dead. The Patriarch is weakening and can't keep doing that forever.
In the holy symbol around the neck of the Bishop was a shard of heaven.
Tyr spends 2 points of influence to take command of the soldiers.
We end in the camp of the surviving Mercy Men. We gain 1 gift pt, the ability to consecrate shrines, and 1 dominion point each.
Mestopheles (Joe), Mercius (Paul), Tekton (Jim), Tyr (Alan), Phobos (Darren)
Warning: This may be my worst recap in a while. Normally when we start meeting lots of groups, going to lots of cities, and have many tasks in a single session I start writing down notes. This session was too far gone by the time I got done fooling with the Traveller site and thought "You should be remembering all this".
We go to Hadia to see the Patriarch of the Unified Church. They are put off by the fact that we are who we are (even though we're in human form. NOTE: We can change back to our mortal form at will now as a freebie of sub-word level). They won't let us meet popey-mcpope unless we go retrieve a couple things... religious relics.
We head to Binai but decide to stop an an encampment to get some knowledge of the place we are headed. These guys feign being friends but declare us infidels and attack. We exit rather than killing them, with Mercius enshrouding us in darkness, Tyr flying us, and Phobos sending them arrows away.
We get to Binai and there are 400-500 people here who are tended by six healthy-looking leaders while everyone else is ragged. Mercius looks at them with his dead-related powers and sees that they are undead. At the same time Phobos sees that their greatest fear is discovering that they are really dead AND having others discover that they are dead (Seems their madness is that they don't quite understand that they're dead and if they should fully be confronted with this fact they might go mad, so we don't do that.) They will allow us to lead their minions away but they will not join them; they want to stay.
Somewhere in all this (I honestly don't remember who initiated this quest), we are asked to go and defeat a foe and bring his head back. He is referred to as a "Logician" and all of his attacks turn out to involve defying religion with logic and science. We defeat him but not easily, especially since he had a large well-trained army of minions and a pair of guys trying to neutralize our attacks.
We are resting below ground in one of our waystations when we are attacked. Three of the dark brothers attack us in shadowy form. Two come at us first and are very hard to hit and take only half damage, but we chip away until they are down. But sadly the third one shows up and starts doing nasty straight damage, taking out Tekton and Tyr before he finally goes down. (We gain 1hp).
We head back to Hadia and meet with the Pope. Seems that no one has the sufficient faith to replace him. There are five bound beings who were recently freed by the night roads and the uncreated night. These beings are the Eldritches and they are near a night road and we know approximately where. This means there are five guys of considerable power that we are going to have to fight with. Hopefully we can pick them off individually, but who knows. A five-on-five game would suck for us.
There's more, definitely, but I'm out of the knowing.
+1 Domain each, +1 pantheon Domain, +1 Base to hit, +1 HP
Tyr, Thor, Mercius, Phobos.
I'm lucky I remember my own name this week. Here's my attempt at a very late recap.
For the Patriarch we are headed on a mission to defeat the 5 Eldritches, the ancient evils that exist on the island of Gufar. To that end we go gathering information from a few sources.
It’s worth noting, and Joe should be very secure in his position in the group when I say this, that if Mestopheles was there we would have gotten 3x as much done in half the time. We were bogged down by a few problems that go directly to what she does. One of them is that the island has a weird time/space breakage problem where it takes WAY longer to get anywhere than it normally should. Another is that we don’t know exactly where to go on the island. And there are a few times where it might have been nice to peek at the potential outcome of events we pursue. And then there was the thief…
We find a town with people in it who are suffering under the current conditions which are: There’s a dark cloud literally hanging over the island so there’s no sun and therefore no growth, and there are tremors as the island seems to be morphing.
On the way to one source we pass a fellow on the road who has more goods than your average peddler for this world. Some of the group try to work out an agreement for him to take his goods and sell them in the first town we encountered (the one we are coming from) if he can make a better profit than he can from us. Our offer however is that in return for him giving his food and goods to the villagers we’ll help take him across the sea since he has no boat to get off the island.
We travel toward our destination when it is realized that Thor is not carrying one of his pieces of heaven! We knew there was something shifty about that salesman. We backtrack, catch up to the guy, and he plays the “Oh, look what I found after you left” card. He now is to go to town and feed the people if he wants to live… he and the INVISIBLE being under the wagon. He has a partner who pilfers from people they encounter. Despite the annoyance at losing 4 days (two days back to the guy and then two days forward to where we were) we persevere.
We meet one info source and find out some general info about the crowns and the eldritches and that we may able to destroy a crown by using a piece of heaven and smashing it and the PoH with the crystal sword that had been used to defeat the eldritches.
Our next data source to give us directions is a giantess who informs us that the last we guy we met is dead now (Can’t remember how she knows). She also knows that we are being pursued. She helps us move further toward our destination and she then abandons her home in order to avoid the incoming pursuers.
We are now closer to the crystal sword, which we figured out from clues the first guy gave us that it is likely concealed behind or within a waterfall of mercury. (I say things like “we figured” but I can’t really count myself in that figuring, it was everyone else.). We see the lake of silver and the falls that feed it, we go way past it, and rest. Then underworld-boy uses one of his powers to retrieve the sword by remote. Since it’s in a cave it’s “underground” and he just concentrates and pulls it to him! POP!
Forgot the mention the giants on the way to the pool. On the way to the pond we were targeted from the ground by giants hurling boulders, but we got around that without too much trouble. (Phobos deflects the shots at others and Thor deflects shots at Phobos.)
Anyway, we have avoided the trouble at the lake, but wind up going back there anyway. Phobos is concerned we might trigger something but that is not the issue. Instead, as we arrive, our pursuers show up: They’re four horsemen on flaming steeds. They thank us for liberating their sword. Tyr surmises correctly that they can be hurt by the pool and hurls some of it at one; when it hits, he becomes more “solid” or “flickers” briefly. Thor nearly wins the combat outright by canceling their flight when they are over the pull, but they each burn an Effort to cancel the effect! This gets them to land. Phobos boosts his damage to max on every hit and this helps as every hit (and I was doing well) did 4pts. They go down, and as each does their horse goes with them.
There may have been more after this but I can’t remember.
The Crystals sword does no additional damage when we use it. However, it does have some bitchen power cancelling abilities that will help with the eldritches and did work well against the four horsebeings.
EXP: +1HP.
Tyr, Tekton, Mercius, Mestopheles and Phobos
We’ve got 5 Eldritches to hunt and very little time! Mestopheles can sense that something horrible will happen in 6 days and then a week after that, something even worse. So we get to going after the bad guys. What we know about them is that each Eldritch has a Phylactery (an object which can regenerate them if not found and destroyed), a crown (source of their power), and it seems… a piece of heaven. Mestopheles is able to combine two of her words (Deception and Journeying, I think) to figure out exactly where some of the hidden objects are, in a “now go right… now go left…” kind of way.
But before we get there we start off in one of our bunkers sleeping and that’s where the worst usually happens. In this case a trio of air-elementaly spirits come for our stuff while we sleep. One of them gets the ring of evil, another gets a piece of heaven and the third fails to get the crystal sword because Tyr is alert enough (and has danger sense) and catches it before this happens. We don’t realize they’ve stolen anything until the two spirits that got stuff immediately fly away and we defeat the third one. But then Time-girl (Mestopheles) decides to go back in time 10 minutes and manages to end up before the incident took place. Under the terms of this power the one we killed is not alive, so we deal with two of the things. This time we stop one but the other still makes off with the Ring of Evil Evilness. None of our abilities seem able to recall it.
So we get back to the biz of hunting eldritches, down one ring.
Each guy, as we find him/her, has a trap or other preventative measure between us and them. The first one has a massive lightning-bolt defense on his door, which fortunately Tekton can keep protecting us from. And when we can’t open a door, Phobos puts his foot through it. The eldritch itself is a shadowy figure that hovers in the corner in the shadows. We seem to have the right mix of abilities, plus the Crystal Sword, which Tyr uses to neutralize a LOT of the Eldritch’s abilities because Alan keeps winning the 50/50 roll. When this guy is destroyed, his crown falls to the ground and materializes, so we collect that. We also collect and destroy his Phylactery and find a piece of heaven. We’re in pretty good shape so we move on to the next one.
I’m probably going to misremember the order of the rest of the guys we encounter here. But here goes.
We find a room with a statue in it and know immediately it’s the next target. He does some damage until we get close to Tyr and the crystal sword does its thing plus Tekton continues to block stuff and Phobos chips away at him.
Another guy we encounter as we backtrack out, he’s there waiting for us with
an army of skeletons. He emits a damaging fire (unless you’re Mercius) and
also you’ve got to spirit save to get in close if you want to be close.
Fortunately we can mostly destroy him from range and Mercius delayed them
briefly as they try to control the dead. When he’s defeated we can’t find
his Phylactery and we decide we need to rest before we find it the next day.
During the night, an illusion of one of the Eldritches appears and tries to
offer us the location of the other Eldritch in exchange for saving him (the guy
making the offer) for last! We turn him down because we’ll find him
regardless and we’ll destroy whatever we come across in whatever order.
So the next guy is at the end of a long spiral. After we defeat him we find a book, which is a phylactery, and if we keep it we can learn its summoning power, but we destroy it because zero tolerance.
Did we run into the fifth guy? I honestly can’t recall if we got them all or if there’s one more. Either way, that was a pretty combat heavy game and it rolled right along because we had Tyr putting up the sword powers, Mestopheles getting us in the right direction and rewinding when necessary, Tekton deflecting damage, Phobos dealing out damage, and Mercius giving us sight and manipulating the dead.
Tyr, Thor, Mestopheles, Mercius, Phobos
We pick up right after last game where we take a moment to rest up for the next
fight. When we return to the caves we are greeted by a spirit. This
creature says we were "promised" to him, and we fight. We burn through
some effort and have a pretty good combat which includes one PC going down.
At the conclusion we get a gift point.
Investigating further, we find that some walls we can see through and some we can't because either those areas are magically protected or they are the barrier between us and the uncreated night. This is confirmed when Mercius tries to burrow through one in an area where there isn't much room to pass and ends up creating a hole into the uncreated night! He saves himself from being sucked in and Thor puts up a wall to seal off the night.
We bypass a room with a pentacle in it because we can see through the wall and don't want to deal with that because it doesn't look like the way to go. Instead we make a move for a room that has a pillar in it that we can't see through. The reason we can't see through it is because when Tyr opens the door to that room he discovers that it is a pillar of uncreated night that tries to suck him in. We avoid that room.
Further down he hall is a double-door that when Tyr tries to open it he unleashes a pulse the stuns people who fail the save (or don't blow an effort). Then comes the lightning. Thing is, it seems this is not a trap and is in fact targeting us. During the ensuing chaos of trying to avoid fireballs, lightning, etc., Tyr spots that the door has a hole in it through which a wand is being aimed at us. Attacks on the hole cause the wand-welder to retreat. Phobos punches a hole in the wall destroying it and the false door that had been there. Footsteps in the dust show that's someone had been there but hasn't left a trail leading away. We pause to recover some effort, then we punch through the next wall and discover a room, then squeeze down a narrow hallway where we come to... Our featured presentation!
A black plant and the lich that grew it! The planet is easily dispensed with but the lich is a caster who creates a mirror image of himself and casts spells through it. Once we figure that out we move in and attack him instead of the mirror image and that's when we start dropping. Many of us are previously injured and so we start to take turns dropping! Phobos goes down and then resurrects himself, then Tyr, then Thor. Fortunately the bad guy doesn't do that when he goes down. And now we have the fifth black crown, a piece of heaven, and in the next room is a gate to the uncreated night (that we close with the ring), and a sarcophagus (which is a relic) which contains the Eye and Hand of Vecna!
There's a long discussion of how best to treat all this stuff. Turns
out the main crown (the one we just got) can turn off the other crowns, though
that has to continually be done in order to keep them off full time.
Destroying each crown would require destroying a shard of heaven which we'd like
to avoid, and combining the 5 crowns into one crown would elevate it to a level
where we would need 10 shards to destroy it.
We end up destroying the eye and hand, but the crowns come back with us in the
sarcophagus. We take our items to the Pontiff, agrees to keep an eye on
some of our goods while we continue solving the world's problems.