Epic 4E D&D Game Winding Down

[Leewei]

After a years-long game, the DM has announced that the campaign is likely to wrap up within the next few months. We've had a lot of fun, so I figured I'd share some of it here.

The game itself was a homebrew campaign with customized races. In most cases, races were based on existing 4e races, or a combination of two races.

The setting was an empire thousands of years old, where ascended humans had conquered and converted the native normal human population. If you're familiar with Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos chronicles, the ascended humans resemble the Dragaerans. They're called Wheelfolk.

Characters are as follows. Races were renamed and refluffed. I'll just substitute 4e races, below:
(Deva) Laser Cleric, played by yours truly.
(Half-Orc/Dragonborn) Templar Cleric
(Goliath) Fighter
Human Rogue
(Wood Elf) Swordmage
(Kalashtar) Psion

The (Half-Orc/Dragonborn) race was modified as follows: Mostly Dragonborn features and feats, but no breath weapon or related stuff. Instead, gain the Half-Orc +1[W] Encounter power and supporting feats.

The game begins with our party entering Praxis, a large outpost of the Empire of the Wheel. Characters are young veterans who served the Empire together. One of the group is granted ownership of a family property. The party moves in and starts looking for employment. Even with a large, slightly run-down manorhouse, we still have bills to pay.

After settling in, the group awakens in a dreamscape that is somewhat familiar. We have found ourselves in Praxis, as it was a few years' before. The adventure continues from here, with all characters apparently having two identities: our own, and that of someone who fell in the unrest during the city's conquest. Sure enough, the conquest begins! The empire and the city's defenders do not do things by half measures, as we'll soon see.

The party begins leading a band of refugees in flight past attacking dragons, a beholder, demons, pretty much every paragon-level threat from the Monster Vault. We are level 1 - we're not fighting most enemies, just running like mad, and trying to bring along survivors we find as great forces battle for the city. In game mechanics terms, the DM had an extended skill challenge going on where each success advanced us toward safety; each failure resulted in attacks from progressively more powerful enemies. (The DM warned us that no XP would be awarded for fights -- they were to be avoided if possible.)

When we finally return to the same house in which we (were? are?) sleeping, an arcane blaze envelops the rest of the human section of the city. The manorhouse is safe, but shortly later, the Wheelfolk army arrives, forces entry - and kills everyone present, including the dream-selves of the PCs.

That's right, the same army in which our characters served committed an atrocity upon the empire's own citizens.

Upon awakening, PCs were intact, if shaken. We were also level 2. And so the game began.

[MoutonRustique]

A excellent start - hoping to hear the rest of the story!

[Leewei]

Thanks, MoutonRustique!

I'll digress a bit here to throw in some crunch. The empire of the Wheel (also known as the Commonwealth) has ten playable races, plus an NPC race.

The Wheelfolk have eight houses. Each house is a subrace -- a re-fluffed D&D race. In a few cases, the races change by combining two standard races. Wheelfolk are remarkable in that they have no Primal power users. (Other playable races do not have this restriction.) All Wheelfolk who use Divine power worship the Wheel, a great construct-deity which dwells in astral space.

My character's house, the Loremasters, was based almost whole cloth on the PHB2 Deva race. Rather than Ancestral Memories, Loremasters have Perfect Memory. Crunch-wise, it works identically. The Deva Necrotic and Radiant resistances are instead replaced by Resist Psychic: 5/tier. This is admittedly far less useful, so the DM balanced the ticket by adding in Lore Specialization: Loremasters pick one Knowledge skill. When using this skill, they roll 2d20 and take the higher result. I'm an enormous munchkin, so I sandbagged and took History.

Loremasters worship the Wheel in its role as keeper of Lore. The Wheel in this role works identically to Ioun (i.e. they qualify for feats and items usable by worshippers of Ioun).

[Leewei]

Levels 2-5

The party's patron, a Wheelfolk man named d'Winter, introduces us to some of the same characters from our collective dream. They're a pair of humans who call themselves Dancer and Jester. Both seem very much inclined to hate Wheelfolk (for obvious reasons, given that they survived a massacre). All the same, the party is giving them a big sense of deja vu. Was that dream just us reliving an event, or did we influence the past, somehow? For some reason, they put up with d'Winter as well, despite the fact that he's of the Wheel.

Dancer is the leader of what can only be described as a gang. The gang's members are exclusively human; they despise the Commonweath and Wheelfolk in general, but there are some exceptions. Some of the more perceptive party members note that the humans are wearing a lot of red, along with rose motifs. Odds are good that they're followers of the blood goddess, an outlawed cult known as troublemakers.

That's all relatively okay, though, since we have a common enemy.

That enemy is creatures called Lurkerfolk. If you're familiar with A Shadow Over Innsmouth, you know the type. Vaguely fishy-looking people who can pass as human. Almost all worship the Lurker in the Depths. They're a murderous cult who like to drag people away in the night and throw them to giant sea critters. Compared to an expy of Great C'thulhu, a blood goddess seems downright cheerful.

Distinguishing ourselves as heroes by battling the Lurker cults, the party attracts the attention of the governor of Praxis. So far, we have a fairly good build-up through the heroic levels.

There are, however, a couple items we stumble across:

Spoiler: Human cults

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From the Wheelfolk perspective, all human gods are lesser, and often dangerous beings. The Red Queen and the Black Lord are both equally reviled as filthy human gods. The followers of the Red, however, aren't really bad people. They're devoted to living through passion. Rage, sure, but also love, and even joy. The Black Lord, i.e. the Lurker, is wholly inhuman. His followers are murderous, insane, inhuman types who consider feeding themselves to an Aboleth to be a great honor.

Wheelfolk theology clearly isn't accurate. All the grubby cultists were supposedly conspiring against the Commonwealth. Instead, we discover that some engender a fair amount of sympathy.

Spoiler: d'Winter

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Our first patron, d'Winter, is someone highly placed in a local knightly order. These aren't the armored kind, for the most part. They're a sacred order purposed with acquiring artifacts and serving the Wheel. You'd think that someone like this would be all about stomping out the human gangs, but he's a big picture kind of guy.

Then there's this -- remember that Lore Specialization I mentioned? Wheelfolk have a naming convention where they will sometimes drop their familial name and instead adopt the name of someone whose principles or achievements they admire. Winter is a human name -- the name of a human leader who ended an insurgency against the Wheel a thousand years prior. Interesting.

[Leewei]

Levels 6-10

Now, the game gets rolling in earnest. The PCs have several adventures in and around Praxis.

Spoiler: The Scavenger

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Someone or something is abducting humans from a small area in the slums. A lot of these people follow the blood goddess, which is making her followers mad. Stopping this is a priority -- our patron seems to want the human population as allies. After exploring the area, we uncover a hidden magical laboratory with a number of abductees still alive. The experimenter is a Loremaster, who had been using the abductees as test subjects. She'd been developing a ritual to strip primal power from people.

Oddly, there was no combat at all during this pair of sessions. Roleplaying, skill challenges, and ultimately, once we had identified her, an arrest by authorities. Huh.

Spoiler: The Blood Cauldron

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Our patron dispatches us into the wilderness to find some burial grounds used a thousand or so years ago. After a number of brutal encounters with dryads and willowisps, we come across a cave complex. Inside, there are icons of all six human gods, plus something else. Bound into the site are weak avatars of these gods, as well as an avatar of a power none of us has heard of. This seventh god is apparently a precursor to the Wheelfolk. Following a spectacular melee with these powers, players hit level 11, beginning our paragon paths.

We also lay claim to a cast-iron, rusted cauldron that is constantly overflowing with blood. Ew.