Cosmic Hunters (OOC)

[remetagross]

Alright Meta, I have a question: what's a some-to-nobody? Is that somebody which is almost a nobody?

[Metastachydium]

Alright Meta, I have a question: what's a some-to-nobody? Is that somebody which is almost a nobody?

Kinda, yeah. A person who's nobody enough to feel innocuous, but somebody enough to casually interact with. Or that's what I meant to mean anyhow; it's not a standard English word or anything.

[remetagross]

I see, it's Deljanese basically :D

[Metastachydium]

Well. The little twit does like to keep her **** short!

[remetagross]

Let's take bets about the flavour. I bet it's gonna be strawberry/Cornugon brain juice.

[Metastachydium]

Cornugon brain juice.

I'm sure there's folks in Sigil who like to drink that. I'm not sure I'd like to run into them in a dark alley, though.

[remetagross]

Oh, no need for that, they're right at the next table :D

[Metastachydium]

…happily chatting up an actual Cornugon who's cool with the whole brain juice thing. Fair.

[chaincomplex]

So, I just want to lay out the situation. We really only have 2 active players, 1 somewhat inactive, and 1 MIA. To be clear, I'm absolutely not throwing shade at anyone, I understand the real world gets in the way, "is only game" as a wise man once said.

At this juncture I just want to rerecruit, and because this campaign has been basically chasing a rabbithole, it'd be better to just start a new campaign than bring new players up to speed. Since I'd like to transition to more activity on my end and aim for a longer campaign from the get-go, this is ideal.

So here's my idea. All current active and inactive players have a spot if they want it, immediately, on rerecruitment. You can use the same characters, with or without modifications. The new campaign will take place some time after this one with connections in concepts, except be more tightly focused. This game got, as I mentioned, kind of like chasing a rabbithole in energy, definitely my fault as a DM, but as a result I don't think you guys ever got involved enough with one thread to suss out what's been happening. So if you guys are OK with this, I will just end this game with two things. Ask any questions about what's happening behind the scenes, I'll answer straight up. Then I'll let you decide what your characters did down the road.

Then I'll open up a new game recruitment thread and bring your characters over, if you want to stick with the concepts. You can change builds in the meantime and fluff it as retraining -- plenty of time should have elapsed to make this make sense. Or just roll new characters.

How do you guys feel about this? Feel free to chime in, both active and inactive players (if any of the latter are still around). Again, absolutely not being critical of anyone here. It's only a game.

[remetagross]

Yeah, OK. Fair enough.

Tell you what chain, I've always considered that each post we got from you to further the plot ever since the Obyriths was gravy. At that point, I had reached my personal level of return-on-investment as far as I was concerned, RP-wise. So now that you're offering a new campaign...I say sure. I really appreciate the group we're having, and the pace is to my liking.

I'll be having a few questions about the ongoing plot.

1. Did we understand correctly the dynamics behind the murdering spree and the slave ban vote?
2. How was that related to the plane of ooze?
3. Was Teru a bastard, or was he not?
4. What taste does cornugon brain juice have?

[Metastachydium]

For starters, "chained tales" (wherein completing the original mission requires an escalating amount of (seemingly or actually) unrelated other missions that have each other's completion as prerequisites) is a well-respected staple of storytelling, and I enjoyed chasing that rabbithole with you folks. Further, full-disclosure: I'm often somewhat wary of joining games offered by freshly materialized DMs; some just can't keep up, others disappear mid-sentence… You, nevertheless, (and I'll join remetagross in emphasizing that) delivered far beyond what I could hope to expect, and how you handled a rather high-level game with a party of an unusual composition was a real thing of beauty to behold.

So, let me spell it out. For as long as you'll have me in it, wherever this game goes, I'm heading along and so is the little blue twit (unless you're tired of her unhittable behind, that is). Oh, and do know that I'll probably ask weird questions of my own too.

[chaincomplex]

Cheers all. I'll start working on a follow-up campaign recruitment thread. As for questions, I think I'll just briefly preamble by how things were run.

1. This campaign was actually a pointcrawl following the Rule of Threes. Each location I attempted to give three interesting things or interactions, to be stumbled upon. My hope was to build a more dynamical world this way.
2. I generated NPCs and factions by giving them stats and goals. Nothing more, there is no predetermined plot or even predetermined points of choices and consequences. As a result, there was no narrative structure. Whenever something happened, whether directly by interaction with the players or in the background, I would adjudicate their most likely reaction mostly in isolation without consideration of the overall narrative. This dramatically increased complexity of what NPCs ended up doing and led to the "chained tales" Meta references. But the game didn't last long enough for any of this dynamicism to reflect in a compelling way. In fact, the players have probably only met or heard of half the active NPC roster. I have an idea of how to fix that in the PbP format for the next one re: pacing.
3. The core conceit of the campaign is that the Far Realms were expanding into the planescape. This is Bad^TM, but so far this phenomenon has been limited to the true fringes of the cosmos, and very few were aware of this happening. The PCs would have been putting out fires way downstream of this event and piecing it together, with the campaign concluding on the resolution of a relevant dilemma.

The follow-up campaign will take place in two years' time, when the takeover of "normal" spacetime by the Far Realms has become more dramatic and noticeable, with PCs thrust right into it.

As I answer your questions to your satisfaction, we should briefly discuss how Ux and Delja would have resolved the current campaign.

1. Did we understand correctly the dynamics behind the murdering spree and the slave ban vote?
2. How was that related to the plane of ooze?
3. Was Teru a bastard, or was he not?
4. What taste does cornugon brain juice have?

1. To a decent degree. Midai is in fact LE whereas Sauvais is in fact LG. The serial killer is the firstborn son of the Sauvais patriarch. He's just nuts, there's no political reason for the killings. The patriarch is LG but he has lost his mind over his son being a serial killer, and refused to confront reality. The secondborn daughter of the Sauvais family, who is CG, intends to kill her older brother and depose her father. But she doesn't want to stir up political chaos prior to the slave vote, which she regards as more important on a per-life basis. So, for now, she and her trusted retainers are working to cover up the crimes of the firstborn. It is her party you may have met in The Twelve Factols. There are several resolutions here, of course. You could've only uncovered part of the story, got into a fight, etc. Or helped her deal with her serial killer brother discretely, though this would turn out to be at odds with your Dustman deal. And so on.
2. Barely. The whole affair with the Huntress was a red herring because Midai barely cared about the slavery vote. Slavery in Sigil was just one income source, they had slavery everywhere in the planes. The Huntress was actually there to investigate the Ooze Portals. Pseudonatural ooze creatures have been entering via the Ooze Portals and building hidden nests in the upper layer of the Catacombs where they would then bring kidnapped Cagers to undergo horrific Far Realms transformations. This has Midai substantially spooked. Midai doesn't know about the Far Realms expansions that precipitated this, but they have the canniness to understand they're on the precipice of something big, so they asked the baddest devil around to deal with it. The Huntress herself is a templated erinyes with 20 levels of Arcane Swordsage and PC wealth, making her a rather nasty optional encounter.
3. Teru is in fact NE, he was apprentice to the epic demilich Sharlee the Enchantress (a figure in the Epic Level Handbook). He was raised in the merciless magical culture that believes in the moral and political supremacy of casters. For instance, his view of his right to bind outsiders to his service. That said, his primary goal was the growth of his interplanar trading and expeditionary fleet rather than something nefarious. When one of his trade stops, Dymos, gets gobbled up by Far Realm influence, he is one of the first in the cosmos to realize this and take action. In his case, he has long recognized the Book of Vile Darkness to be an existential threat since they have a habit of summoning elder evils, so Teru's made a concerted effort to discover and destroy as many as he could. For various reasons he was unsuccessful in one such destruction attempt, thus his current predicament, I can elaborate if you're interested. His build was 24 levels of gestalt Wizard/Artificer/some other random stuff but very much not specced for combat. He is of course still an incredible threat as any epic spellcaster would be. He was one of the main potential patrons for this campaign, but it would've been alright for his fate to end up differently. To wit, there would have been ways to convert his soul gem into getting an epic destiny for free (naturally, in a questionably moral act). It was intended to be a dilemma, what to do with him.
4. Pumpkin spice, obviously.

[remetagross]

Yeah, well, I really appreciate this "rule of three" mindset. It's how open worlds should work, I guess. Too bad we didn't get to see all the NPCs! I suppose that lightens the workload for you as well, since you don't need to map out everything in detail in advance. What's a pointcrawl though?

Oh, Ux Utanar is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. I was actually not as close to the truth as I was thinking was that second daughter purportedly masquerading the victims as House Sauvais members to garner sympathy or did the victims just so happen to be Sauvais members? And man, this Huntress devil. I think she could have mopped the floor with us 3 (though maybe not with us 4 had Azlin joined).

For Teru, please do elaborate on how he failed to destroy the mcguffin :D fascinating motives, though. Having an Evil character trying to destroy BoVDs around for a legitimate reason is a nice craft. And we did have a moral conundrum about his soul, so that was a success for you. We even asked a bunch of questions to the oracle of Bahamut related to what was and was not fair to mete out to him.

Anyway, I'm a bit jaded playing a Knight. It felt like playing chess. If I take a 5ft-step there, and move diagonally there for square, then my lance can reach this square over there, but I can flank to get the +2 bonus by moving diagonally upwards there which amounts to 5*(square root of 3) feet, and... I had soooo many magic items and so many ways to expand my swift actions that I was quickly lost in my character sheet and in my combat options. Though the Knight's challenge focus did work out as well as expected: these obyriths had to focus on me. Yay! Too bad I didn't get to try the Knight 20 ability where I can expand Knight's Challenge uses to survive even at -500 HPs.

I'm not jaded playing Ux, though! I'm thinking he lost someone or failed to protect someone in battle (maybe Ereshki?) and had a change of career: he took a Vow of Poverty and retrained as a Dragonfire Adept of Bahamut 20. How does that sound, guys?

[Metastachydium]

This campaign was actually a pointcrawl following the Rule of Threes. Each location I attempted to give three interesting things or interactions, to be stumbled upon. My hope was to build a more dynamical world this way.

Well, it really was dynamic! I liked it.

The core conceit of the campaign is that the Far Realms were expanding into the planescape. This is Bad^TM, but so far this phenomenon has been limited to the true fringes of the cosmos, and very few were aware of this happening. The PCs would have been putting out fires way downstream of this event and piecing it together, with the campaign concluding on the resolution of a relevant dilemma.

Well, ouch. That would certainly explain all the Pseudonatural Mephits, though.

The follow-up campaign will take place in two years' time, when the takeover of "normal" spacetime by the Far Realms has become more dramatic and noticeable, with PCs thrust right into it.

Even more foes with Delja-level AC ahead? …yeah, I kinda deserve that.

As I answer your questions to your satisfaction, we should briefly discuss how Ux and Delja would have resolved the current campaign.

To a decent degree. Midai is in fact LE whereas Sauvais is in fact LG. The serial killer is the firstborn son of the Sauvais patriarch. He's just nuts, there's no political reason for the killings. The patriarch is LG but he has lost his mind over his son being a serial killer, and refused to confront reality. The secondborn daughter of the Sauvais family, who is CG, intends to kill her older brother and depose her father. But she doesn't want to stir up political chaos prior to the slave vote, which she regards as more important on a per-life basis. So, for now, she and her trusted retainers are working to cover up the crimes of the firstborn. It is her party you may have met in The Twelve Factols. There are several resolutions here, of course. You could've only uncovered part of the story, got into a fight, etc. Or helped her deal with her serial killer brother discretely, though this would turn out to be at odds with your Dustman deal. And so on.

Barely. The whole affair with the Huntress was a red herring because Midai barely cared about the slavery vote. Slavery in Sigil was just one income source, they had slavery everywhere in the planes. The Huntress was actually there to investigate the Ooze Portals. Pseudonatural ooze creatures have been entering via the Ooze Portals and building hidden nests in the upper layer of the Catacombs where they would then bring kidnapped Cagers to undergo horrific Far Realms transformations. This has Midai substantially spooked. Midai doesn't know about the Far Realms expansions that precipitated this, but they have the canniness to understand they're on the precipice of something big, so they asked the baddest devil around to deal with it. The Huntress herself is a templated erinyes with 20 levels of Arcane Swordsage and PC wealth, making her a rather nasty optional encounter.

Okay, that's just hilarious. So the "good guy" faction was murderizing people, going nuts and coveing it up, while the "bad guy" faction was just chilling about doing Good things with Evil tools and letting the "good guys" have the Good thing vote? Man.

was that second daughter purportedly masquerading the victims as House Sauvais members to garner sympathy or did the victims just so happen to be Sauvais members?

I'd guess that Sauvais people were just available in a greater number and closer at hand for a Sauvais member serial killer who really doesn't care to kill.

And man, this Huntress devil. I think she could have mopped the floor with us 3 (though maybe not with us 4 had Azlin joined).

Well, if she liked attack rolls and targetting Ref, I'd have liked the little twit's chances. But yeah, damn.

Anyway, I'm a bit jaded playing a Knight. It felt like playing chess. If I take a 5ft-step there, and move diagonally there for square, then my lance can reach this square over there, but I can flank to get the +2 bonus by moving diagonally upwards there which amounts to 5*(square root of 3) feet, and...

Heh. Try doing a flying charge build with 20' (average) flight. (I did that. Calculating stuff took a spreadsheet and drawing actual movement trajectories so I don't run out of 60 degrees angle movement mid-action.)

I had soooo many magic items and so many ways to expand my swift actions

I feel that one.

Though the Knight's challenge focus did work out as well as expected: these obyriths had to focus on me. Yay! Too bad I didn't get to try the Knight 20 ability where I can expand Knight's Challenge uses to survive even at -500 HPs.

Too bad on the latter count, yeah. BUt I do love Knights, and I especially do love Kinghts doing what Kinghts are done to do and tanking. It was uplifting to watch.

I'm not jaded playing Ux, though! I'm thinking he lost someone or failed to protect someone in battle (maybe Ereshki?)

NOOOOOO! Not the big funny bat! (I'm warning you: I can and will make Delja even grumpier if you try that!)

and had a change of career: he took a Vow of Poverty and retrained as a Dragonfire Adept of Bahamut 20. How does that sound, guys?

Once more, I enjoyed knightly Knight Ux Utanar immensely, and at any rate, I hope his outlook stays mostly intact. But whatever makes him more fun to play for you will naturally fly with me. (Also, I love invokers.)

♣

Meanwhile, WEIRD QUESTIONS TIME:
1. speaking of Teru and the Obyriths, were those Far Realm stuff related (what with being Chaotic creeps of creepiness), or just an unhappy accident to happen to Teru's folks? Or did the Book ultimately not have anything to do with what happened to Dymos?
2. Also, Midai and the Dustmen and stuff… What was the weird little note Azlin found at the Dustmen about? I figured it had something to do with the Huntress and the whole gathering of Outsiders the Eladrin guy was heading to, because of the whole listing stuff, the signature and the thing with the exile's funeral but I'm suddenly not sure.
3. Was the Styx Oarsman Bariaur conspicuously bumping into the party at the Triona just a red herring or was that about something?
4. And on that note, the Sahuagin priest told the party the Goat will find out the party's trying to double-cross the Sensates (and is probably keeping Teru hostage); had Azlin stayed in the picture longer, how bad was getting at odds with two big factions the party was nominally in the employ of having reasons to be PISSED was likely to end up?
5. Were the Guardians going to murder that poor little Elf Azlin sent for the body at the Dusters?

[chaincomplex]

What's a pointcrawl though?

A lazy DM's hexcrawl, or a hexcrawl minus the hexes, etc. The idea is you populate the map with points rather than tile it with hexes. You supply each point with an interactive mechanic to compel its relevance to the evolving world, or otherwise ground it in an event or faction. Then you come up with a rule for how travel between points works. The goal is to make a map filled with points where players can consistently understand what kind of location each point corresponds to, as opposed to an abstract geography where players feel railroaded from one part of the map to the next.

This is why I open every new district with a listing of landmarks that would be obvious/apparent to the players. So players can be like, "Hey, I remember a place that may have the stuff we need, let's head back there."

The Alexandrian explains it well: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress...es/pointcrawls

Oh, Ux Utanar is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. I was actually not as close to the truth as I was thinking was that second daughter purportedly masquerading the victims as House Sauvais members to garner sympathy or did the victims just so happen to be Sauvais members?

I hadn't fully determined each victim yet but they were intended to be in House Sauvais's circle. Our serial killer is mentally stunted and targeting those he felt slighted him in some way. For instance, Inda of House Midai was exiled for opposing her family on the matter of slavery. She sought support from Midai's foes, House Sauvais, and became a popular figure in their circles, attending all sorts of events with them. There she met the heir to Sauvais, who made romantic advances, which she rejected. Infuriated and embarrassed, our heir and serial killer murdered her.

In general our serial killer would've been meeting Sauvais's supporters and friends in his daily life, had personal issues with some of them, and promptly thereafter killed them.

For Teru, please do elaborate on how he failed to destroy the mcguffin

The BoVDs as artifacts are, mechanically, impossible to destroy permanently. It is canonical that: (i) so long as evil exists, a BoVD will appear to replace a destroyed one within a century or so, and their true number is more or less constant, though a large number of fakes do abound; and (ii) the line of BoVDs nonetheless was penned by Vecna, who obviously is not the source of evil in all the planes, so the BoVD isn't just a product of evil existing.

My interpretation is that the BoVDs are actually material conduits created by Vecna to draw from metaphysical evil, written into the law of the planes by Vecna through his semidivine magic.

Teru is an artificer and has a "mind of metal and wheels" as the saying goes. After studying (canonical) BoVD lore himself he understands point (i) clearly and knows there is little point disjoining BoVDs. His partially correct chain of reasoning thereafter is: (i) the BoVDs have a constant number across the universe, thus there is a divination magic connecting all BoVDs to ascertain this number in order to maintain it; (ii) all divinations must travel through open paths like the astral plane, or minimally, not be blocked by a prismatic wall or something; (iii) but a BoVD will be replaced even if it is destroyed in a permanent prismatic sphere; (iv) thus each BoVD must be a permanent planar conduit allowing free passage of divination magic.

He concluded that the best approach is to try to rip through the BoVD and access this planar conduit, and see if he can follow it back to its root and find the rest of the BoVDs that must be in communication. He was smart enough to know how to do this first part. He is after all an epic mage.

His reasoning wasn't entirely correct however. When he accessed this "planar conduit" instead he found himself face to face with metaphysical evil. He wasn't prepared for this encounter and got owned with a combination of divine abilities, necromancy, and wish-type magics. The BoVD contemplated killing him but recognized that killing an epic mage is basically pointless, they have countless resurrection contingencies. So instead it decided to trap his soul in a gem and wished in obyriths from across the planes to deal with him how they saw fit, a terribad fate which the party interrupted.

I'm not jaded playing Ux, though! I'm thinking he lost someone or failed to protect someone in battle (maybe Ereshki?) and had a change of career: he took a Vow of Poverty and retrained as a Dragonfire Adept of Bahamut 20. How does that sound, guys?

I'm fine with this purely mechanically. We should discuss how Ux and Delja would have concluded this campaign in broad strokes to see if there are other candidates for death/dying, if you want Ereshki to stick around.

Meanwhile, WEIRD QUESTIONS TIME:
1. speaking of Teru and the Obyriths, were those Far Realm stuff related (what with being Chaotic creeps of creepiness), or just an unhappy accident to happen to Teru's folks? Or did the Book ultimately not have anything to do with what happened to Dymos?
2. Also, Midai and the Dustmen and stuff… What was the weird little note Azlin found at the Dustmen about? I figured it had something to do with the Huntress and the whole gathering of Outsiders the Eladrin guy was heading to, because of the whole listing stuff, the signature and the thing with the exile's funeral but I'm suddenly not sure.
3. Was the Styx Oarsman Bariaur conspicuously bumping into the party at the Triona just a red herring or was that about something?
4. And on that note, the Sahuagin priest told the party the Goat will find out the party's trying to double-cross the Sensates (and is probably keeping Teru hostage); had Azlin stayed in the picture longer, how bad was getting at odds with two big factions the party was nominally in the employ of having reasons to be PISSED was likely to end up?
5. Were the Guardians going to murder that poor little Elf Azlin sent for the body at the Dusters?

1. The influence of the Far Realms whispers to the weak or desperate. In Dymos it captured the mind of one such woman at the lowest point of her life, who located a BoVD and used its magic to rip open a rift to the depths of the Far Realms, which is established in Elder Evils as something it can do. This was an apocalyptic event and ended Dymos entirely. Teru sent an elite expeditionary team to pick up this BoVD. Then he attempted to do funny arcane things to the BoVD, leading to the appearance of the obyriths, and subsequent destruction of his crew, re: my response to remetagross.
2. A note lost by a younger member of House Midai who was asked to assess what slaves were available at auction in Union. The exile is Inda, prominent anti-slaver, who is much despised by Midai's slaving membership.
3. Red herring. A potential lead to the Styx Oarsman, where many fiends congregate but aren't outright hostile. A quick way to connect to the seedy side of the Cage from the get go. The two things of interest here are: (i) the bariaur was being bullied while at her job, good players might want to intercede; (ii) the party would get to meet Rule-of-Three, a very savvy demon existing in AD&D 2e Planescape canon, who could answer many of the party's questions. His name by the way is a reference to the Planescape concept, from which I derived the Rule of Threes I discussed before.
4. Don't underestimate the party. At level 20, the only real threat the factions would pose would be in its leadership, who may not even be level 20 at that. Even then, few of those in the right level range are even built for battle. Making an enemy of the Sensates would just be an annoyance, the bigger impact of doing so is it would close off a somewhat lucrative XP/retraining source via their recorder stones, one of this campaign's battle arena options. The Dustmen are one of the more dangerous factions to oppose. It's headed by a lich (Factol Skall) with 20 caster levels, and he's built for battle. He's not evil however, and was one of the viable patrons for this campaign, being as far-reaching as he is.
5. Potentially. The girl is just scared, which is fair, the guardians are shadesteel golems. They would not attack her if she was just retrieving a body. But she had disbelieved Azlin's bluff, realized Azlin was the attacker, and was going to search for an authority figure. This may have gotten her killed if she tried to break into Factol Skall's office, which would have triggered the guardians.

[Metastachydium]

Teru is an artificer and has a "mind of metal

[Cut to Teru doing some serious headbanging.]

A note lost by a younger member of House Midai who was asked to assess what slaves were available at auction in Union. The exile is Inda, prominent anti-slaver, who is much despised by Midai's slaving membership.

I was 66% right! Go me!

the party would get to meet Rule-of-Three, a very savvy demon existing in AD&D 2e Planescape canon, who could answer many of the party's questions. His name by the way is a reference to the Planescape concept, from which I derived the Rule of Threes I discussed before.

Heh.

Making an enemy of the Sensates would just be an annoyance, the bigger impact of doing so is it would close off a somewhat lucrative XP/retraining source via their recorder stones, one of this campaign's battle arena options. The Dustmen are one of the more dangerous factions to oppose. It's headed by a lich (Factol Skall) with 20 caster levels, and he's built for battle. He's not evil however, and was one of the viable patrons for this campaign, being as far-reaching as he is.

Well. That means most of the party accidentally figured out our best bet on who to double-cross. We rock!

Potentially. The girl is just scared, which is fair, the guardians are shadesteel golems. They would not attack her if she was just retrieving a body. But she had disbelieved Azlin's bluff, realized Azlin was the attacker, and was going to search for an authority figure. This may have gotten her killed if she tried to break into Factol Skall's office, which would have triggered the guardians.

No dutiful deed goes unpunished! D-E-V-I-O-U-S.

(Also, Shadesteel? I thought those were simple Golem Golems. Wild.)

The BoVDs as artifacts are, mechanically, impossible to destroy permanently. It is canonical that: (i) so long as evil exists, a BoVD will appear to replace a destroyed one within a century or so, and their true number is more or less constant, though a large number of fakes do abound;

I'm fine with this purely mechanically. We should discuss how Ux and Delja would have concluded this campaign in broad strokes to see if there are other candidates for death/dying, if you want Ereshki to stick around.

Copy that. Still, to get there, I need to ask another question that got buried in my tired signalling paths the previous round, but is kinda very important for all that. In actual fact, we do have some divinely mandated word of advice on what to do with the immediate problem, i.e. the copy of the Book on the Pebbles. But since a more solid lead on that was the prize on offer for figuring out the serial killings on the Dustmen's behalf, we never got around to learning a key little detail, namely:

6. who's the First Servant of the Eternal Sun, and how could they dispose of the Evil artifact that cannot be disposed of?

I feel like the first step of the way forward leads through there.

[chaincomplex]

(Also, Shadesteel? I thought those were simple Golem Golems. Wild.)

Those were stone golems of varying sizes outside. Inside Azlin would have found the place mostly empty, except for shadesteel golems patrolling main halls and guarding critical locations, since (i) they fit inside and (ii) Skall would no doubt want something more robust than stone golems covering his vaults. Unfortunately her scenes never progressed to the point of a proper assault.

Copy that. Still, to get there, I need to ask another question that got buried in my tired signalling paths the previous round, but is kinda very important for all that. In actual fact, we do have some divinely mandated word of advice on what to do with the immediate problem, i.e. the copy of the Book on the Pebbles. But since a more solid lead on that was the prize on offer for figuring out the serial killings on the Dustmen's behalf, we never got around to learning a key little detail, namely:

6. who's the First Servant of the Eternal Sun, and how could they dispose of the Evil artifact that cannot be disposed of?

I feel like the first step of the way forward leads through there.

One of the big NPCs you didn't meet and arguably the closest thing to a Good-aligned potential patron in this campaign, though even this comes with asterisks. Sophaerna the Solar, a.k.a. "Sofie", one of the dead god Amaunator's greatest and most ancient angels. Her god's portfolio has since been inherited by Lathander, the Morning Lord. She would try to take the form of a small, innocuous, and cheeky elf but it's questionable how long such a disguise would last before a party of level 20s would call her out on it. I haven't gone through her build carefully. She obviously has the base solar statblock, but I was considering what else she needed to be worthy of being "The First".

Only a handful of Sigil's most powerful know she's in town in disguise, hunting down an archpriest of Orcus deep in the Catacombs. Her problem for the party is that she's a very old-fashioned sort of Good. Sofie's concept is that she represents what many would consider the harsh side of Amaunator, which has kind of dated her relative to Lathander's merciful and compassionate court. She loved Amaunator maybe a little too much and is extremely salty about Lathander coming in and taking Amaunator's place with his compassionate tendencies. As a result she refused to join Lathander's court despite him carrying the same portfolio. This has larger cosmic consequences given her position as a powerful angel, so Lathander's clergy has been reaching out to her to no avail.

It would turn out the archpriest has long since renounced Orcus and been redeemed. But Sofie believes in retributive justice—a major disagreement between her and Lathander's court—and time means little to her, so the (ex-)archpriest's head is still on her chopping block. This might have been a dilemma for the party, or not if they missed her, don't care, or are of the same mind.

As a solar she would supply many solutions to the party's problems. She has, for instance, canonical ability to (temporarily on the order of a century) destroy the BoVD just by tearing it in two. As for Teru, she has can cast 9ths and has a free wish everyday. I didn't note down what solutions I thought up here as being available to Sofie, and I try to avoid deus ex machina and have all things behave in canonical, mechanically predictable ways. But I'm sure she (and I) would be able to think of something if we crossed this particular bridge. Trap the soul is very loosely worded after all.

Fun tidbit: unlike the base solar, she would fight with two dancing scimitars and a musket. The musket would absolutely generate slaying bullets with no need to load, per her solar powers transposed onto a new weapon type.

---

Anyways, I quickly put together a recruitment thread. I'll post it... Soon^TM. Take a look and let me know if something doesn't sit well with you.

Spoiler: Recruitment Thread

Show

On any given world of the planescape, the wisest and most powerful will eventually learn rumors of a secret cosmic observatory hidden in the space between worlds. It is said that those who find this hidden observatory will find as well their deepest desires fulfilled. Many mortals and divines have sought this secret place. All have failed, until now.

Until, that is, you entered the picture.

You are among the wisest and most powerful on Toril, so you have heard these rumors. Your odds of finding this observatory remained nil, however. For a long time you have searched fruitlessly for this place that will, allegedly, grant any wish. For a long time you have failed to find any leads whatsoever. But one day you stumbled upon the one thing almost no one else across the entire multiverse has managed to find. The one lead that will bring you success where all others have failed. You now know this observatory's name.

It is called THE NOCTUARY, and it is calling to you.

---

Adventure Premise. OK, so there are three things going on. First, you want to get to the Noctuary. You have some dream or desire you want to fulfill that's beyond any mortal power available to you. Second, you'll want to figure out how to use the Noctuary once you get there. This is an extensive process of discovery that will take you across the planescape. Third, there is a hidden danger lurking at the edge of existence threatening the multiverse. You don't have to deal with it, but it might get in your way while you're working out how to make use of the Noctuary.

This adventure will be a lengthy pointcrawl taking place in the Planescape and Forgotten Realms campaign settings. All canonical AD&D 2e, D&D 3e, and D&D 3.5e settings are of course connected and so will be available. For our purposes your characters are natives of Faerûn.

I will run the adventure by populating the world(s) with points of interest and NPCs with their own goals. There will be no overarching narrative and I will always adjudicate outcomes in isolation according to D&D's rules and whatever else is salient in its microcosm. In other words, this is not an adventure with an epic story. This is a dynamically evolving game board with many small stories.

Of particular interest is that this adventure will start at level 20, and you will hit epic levels soon, so plan for that. Most -crawls, hex- or otherwise, tend to concentrate at the lower end of the power curve. We're starting right at the top.

Game Info. In summary:

• System. D&D 3.5e
• Setting. Canonical Planescape and Forgotten Realms (incl. Greyhawk, Dark Sun, Eberron, Spelljammer, etc.)
• Style. Equal parts combat and noncombat, be ready for trials of all kinds
• Theme. Role play however you want, but there will be minor elements of heavier themes like time, memory, etc.
• Mapping. Larger-scale maps will be posted in-thread, battle mapping will be through Google Sheets
• Player Count. 4–6
• Posting Rate. 1–2/week
• Variant Rules. Fractional BAB/saves, block initiative (players only)

Character Building. For the fluff just write a bit to characterize your PC. Something between a paragraph and a page. Can be history, personality, appearance, whatever—anything that gives your character compelling dimensionality. As for mechanics:

• Alignment. Any, but don't be hostile to other PCs without the other players' OOC consent
• Race. Any, LA buy off allowed
• Class. Any, no multiclass penalties
• Flaws. Up to 2
• Level. 20 (200,000 XP)
• Hit Points. Max first HD, average rest
• Wealth. 820,000 gp

Interested in joining this game? I request you submit a full character sheet. You don't have to: (i) pick all your spells/powers/maneuvers/etc.; (ii) spend all your wealth; (iii) account for all your crafting; or (iv) spec out your familiar/companion/etc. You can finalize these details if and when you join this game proper. But I need to see enough to know how your character works. If a spell, power, maneuver, item, follower, etc. is critical to your character concept, do include it.

Once we work out how your characters proceeded we can tie them into this new adventure concept. It's not going to be fancy. The party would, once they settled on a patron, get access to enough information to encounter these rumors of a Noctuary, and probably a little more.

[remetagross]

I have to admit, I'm quite impressed with the line of reasoning of Teru. Granted, it was not 100% right, but still, a series of logical deductions taken to their legitimate conclusion is way too rare in DnD. His plan was rather sound.

About Sofie (good question Meta, had forgotten about that)...yeah, I really wonder how Ux would've felt around her. Bahamut is, to him, sort of intermediate in the "justice versus pity" scale (ha). For chromatic dragons, it's 100% justice and 0% pity. For everyone else...it depends, and on average it's slightly more "pity" than "justice". So, he might have felt somewhat at odds with her...

Oh, and another not, chains. I really dig the care you take to ensure everything is 100% canonical, mechanically sound, fudged as less as possible and RAW compliant. Hat's off to this degree of dedication.

[Metastachydium]

As a result she refused to join Lathander's court despite him carrying the same portfolio. This has larger cosmic consequences given her position as a powerful angel, so Lathander's clergy has been reaching out to her to no avail.

Well, that's understandable. I know I wouldn't want to work for the Burning Hate.

As a solar she would supply many solutions to the party's problems. She has, for instance, canonical ability to (temporarily on the order of a century) destroy the BoVD just by tearing it in two. As for Teru, she has can cast 9ths and has a free wish everyday. I didn't note down what solutions I thought up here as being available to Sofie, and I try to avoid deus ex machina and have all things behave in canonical, mechanically predictable ways. But I'm sure she (and I) would be able to think of something if we crossed this particular bridge. Trap the soul is very loosely worded after all.

Oh, right, that. Teru would grump about it, but it's not like his emotional comfort was really high on the party's list of priorities pretty much ever, so yeah, that would do just fine!

Anyways, I quickly put together a recruitment thread. I'll post it... Soon^TM. Take a look and let me know if something doesn't sit well with you.

It looks good to me. Quick question, though: what happens to any loot that our folks acquired during this run? I'm mostly asking because said loot still includes a Ring of Less Than Three Wishes.

About Sofie (good question Meta, had forgotten about that)...yeah, I really wonder how Ux would've felt around her. Bahamut is, to him, sort of intermediate in the "justice versus pity" scale (ha). For chromatic dragons, it's 100% justice and 0% pity. For everyone else...it depends, and on average it's slightly more "pity" than "justice". So, he might have felt somewhat at odds with her...

Oh, man. Now, that would have probably made poor Delja cry. Not one but two goody-to-shoes to work with who don't even agree with each other?!

[remetagross]

Ah yes, that Ring of an Indeterminate Number of Wishes. Definitely something to keep around :)

Meta, I garner you're planning on keeping Delja as is? As to me, I swear I'll keep the eyebrowsn if nothing else :D

But fair question to the both of you. I just realized taking Vow of Poverty can be annoying for RP purposes. chain, how do you adjudicate "losing" exalted feats? If an exalted Ux lets Delja pull off a lie, is that considered an [evil] act by omission, and thus warrants losing exalted feats? And what if the act in question is not a lie, but, say, a maybe superfluous stabbing? Or if Ux walks by a Pit Fiend in the street of Sigili and does not immediately attacks it?

Also, how would Delja react? She's prone to get annoyed by Ux's Knight in Shining Armour trick already. Wouldn't that bear too much on her nerves? Let alone your nerves, Meta.

[Metastachydium]

Meta, I garner you're planning on keeping Delja as is?

Absolutely. Well, I mean, exactly how Tired of This All she'll get personality-wise might depend on the way those two years will be spent, but her build is very stupid (and oddly effective), so that bit definitely stays.

As to me, I swear I'll keep the eyebrows if nothing else :D

GOOD.

If an exalted Ux lets Delja pull off a lie, is that considered an [evil] act by omission, and thus warrants losing exalted feats?

If his Sense Motive modifier doesn't improve much, I don't think you have to worry too much. He'll never notice.

And what if the act in question is not a lie, but, say, a maybe superfluous stabbing?

That was more a Myriad thing. (Speaking of, even if he can't commit to going on with the game, I hope Geek can at least throw in some input on what happens to Myriad. It's, of course, quite easy to figure she saw a big, shiny portal somewhere and just jumped through without consulting the others or sped off int Wildspace on the Pebbles, but it would be nice.)

Also, how would Delja react?

Superfluous well-deserved shin kicking.

Wouldn't that bear too much on her nerves?

Yes, but she's an amoral twit. Let her suffer!

Let alone your nerves, Meta.

I'm confident that you can pull it well if it's what you want to do with Ux Utanar. If there are issues, those are strictly mechanical.

[remetagross]

Duly noted. By the way, I do hope we'll hear some from Geeks as well!

[chaincomplex]

It looks good to me. Quick question, though: what happens to any loot that our folks acquired during this run? I'm mostly asking because said loot still includes a Ring of Less Than Three Wishes.

The WBL is higher to represent the party having converted that loot into wealth, so we'll redo the equipment. Actually I'm probably going to increase it by another 40,000 gp. But I like the idea of holding onto some items. Go ahead and keep the ring of three wishes. IIRC it has just one charge, but a free wish is a free wish. Plus I think I have some ideas for it in the upcoming adventure...

Are there any other items of interest any of you would like to hold onto?

But fair question to the both of you. I just realized taking Vow of Poverty can be annoying for RP purposes. chain, how do you adjudicate "losing" exalted feats? If an exalted Ux lets Delja pull off a lie, is that considered an [evil] act by omission, and thus warrants losing exalted feats? And what if the act in question is not a lie, but, say, a maybe superfluous stabbing? Or if Ux walks by a Pit Fiend in the street of Sigili and does not immediately attacks it?

My interpretation of alignment requirements in general leans permissive and is concerned with the reasoning process. You can interpret this to mean: As long as there is a non-spurious line of argument for an action being good, whether or not said argument is airtight, it should not be an evil act. But this will always be grounded in whichever gods oversee the Good Domain, so merely having an argument isn't enough. It would have to be an argument that minimally tacitly recognizes the moral precepts of the gods of good.

All the examples you bring up don't directly contradict the moral precepts of Faerûn's good gods and are defensible, and so will not cause a fall. A maybe superfluous stabbing toes the line, but if by "maybe" you mean "Delja stabbed someone with 20% odds of being evil", that's definitely no good, whereas if by "maybe" you mean "Delja stabbed someone who may be the high priest of Demogorgon with 80% odds", that's defensible to at least some of the good gods and thus fine, of course assuming the reasoning wasn't lazy and motivated.

---

I made the recruitment thread. Feel free to pop in.

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...-20-Adventure)

[remetagross]

Okay chain, I think I'm liking it this way.

One more question. I am aware of at least two ways to rebuild one's character in the rules, as provided in the PHB II: these are sidequests named the Lost Isle and the Necrotic Cradle. The Lost Isle is some sort of magical location created by Pelor and whoever gets there can changee their race and up to 1/4 their class levels. Since Pelor and Bahamut are more or less buddies, I'm figuring it makes sense for Ux to undertake the pilgrimage 4 times so as to swap its complete build.

And also : Ux has blown 247.5k gp in inherent bonuses to ability scores. These can't technically go away by giving them to the poor. Which means that even by taking a vow of poverty, Ux is still walking around with 247.5k gp of inherent wealth. How do we handle this? Ux can maybe wish for them to go away somehow.

There's also some Dragon content that keeps popping in Dragonfire Adept handbooks that I'd like to ask for. It's this feat called Power Surge:

Spoiler: Power surge

Show

POWER SURGE [GENERAL]
You focus an additional burst of energy on one supernatural
special attack you possess, improving its potency at the cost
of decreased capacity.
Prerequisite: A supernatural special attack that you can
use at least three times per day.
Benefit: Choose one supernatural special attack that you
can use three or more times per day. You may apply any one
of the following improvements to that ability.
• Increase the save DC to resist the effect by +1.
• Increase the damage dealt by the effect by +1 per die.
• Increase the duration of the effect by 50% (not
applicable to any effect with an instantaneous
duration).
After using this feat, you must wait to use the
supernatural special attack for 1 round. If you must normally
wait to use the supernatural special attack, you must wait 1
round in addition to the normal period you would wait to use
the ability again.
Special: You may take this feat multiple times. Each time
you take this feat, it applies to a different supernatural special
attack.
Suggested Class/Race: Beholder
Dragon Magazine #: 313 (Eye Wares – Potent Powers of
the Beholders)

[chaincomplex]

One more question. I am aware of at least two ways to rebuild one's character in the rules, as provided in the PHB II: these are sidequests named the Lost Isle and the Necrotic Cradle. The Lost Isle is some sort of magical location created by Pelor and whoever gets there can changee their race and up to 1/4 their class levels. Since Pelor and Bahamut are more or less buddies, I'm figuring it makes sense for Ux to undertake the pilgrimage 4 times so as to swap its complete build.

Fluff like quests can be redone. Ux can rebuild at a place more closely tied to Bahamut. We'll say he made a pilgrimage to Mount Celestia or something. Got any specific ideas?

And also : Ux has blown 247.5k gp in inherent bonuses to ability scores. These can't technically go away by giving them to the poor. Which means that even by taking a vow of poverty, Ux is still walking around with 247.5k gp of inherent wealth. How do we handle this? Ux can maybe wish for them to go away somehow.

I'm tempted to say "keep them, Vow of Poverty is punishment enough". How many inherent bonuses are we talking about?

There's also some Dragon content that keeps popping in Dragonfire Adept handbooks that I'd like to ask for. It's this feat called Power Surge:

Spoiler: Power surge

Show

POWER SURGE [GENERAL]
You focus an additional burst of energy on one supernatural
special attack you possess, improving its potency at the cost
of decreased capacity.
Prerequisite: A supernatural special attack that you can
use at least three times per day.
Benefit: Choose one supernatural special attack that you
can use three or more times per day. You may apply any one
of the following improvements to that ability.
• Increase the save DC to resist the effect by +1.
• Increase the damage dealt by the effect by +1 per die.
• Increase the duration of the effect by 50% (not
applicable to any effect with an instantaneous
duration).
After using this feat, you must wait to use the
supernatural special attack for 1 round. If you must normally
wait to use the supernatural special attack, you must wait 1
round in addition to the normal period you would wait to use
the ability again.
Special: You may take this feat multiple times. Each time
you take this feat, it applies to a different supernatural special
attack.
Suggested Class/Race: Beholder
Dragon Magazine #: 313 (Eye Wares – Potent Powers of
the Beholders)

OK by me.

[Metastachydium]

The WBL is higher to represent the party having converted that loot into wealth, so we'll redo the equipment. Actually I'm probably going to increase it by another 40,000 gp.

…
Oh, wait! I have 80000 gp to spend! THIS Is NOT A DRILL! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!

But I like the idea of holding onto some items. Go ahead and keep the ring of three wishes. IIRC it has just one charge, but a free wish is a free wish. Plus I think I have some ideas for it in the upcoming adventure...

Thanks! (And let me stress that how it's basically going to be a party item by neccessity makes me feel better about bringing it up.)

Are there any other items of interest any of you would like to hold onto?

Beyond the miraculous eternal wands of Prestidigitation? I'll need to go through stuff and think about it.

I made the recruitment thread. Feel free to pop in.

Neat. Will do! (Being basically ready to go should hasten that too.)

[chaincomplex]

…
Oh, wait! I have 80000 gp to spend! THIS Is NOT A DRILL! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!

840,000 gp actually, increased it again. Basically I want the PCs at the threshold of epic levels.

Edit. By the way, if you have LA on a monstrous race that has been discussed on the LA assignment threads, I'd be happy to reduce it accordingly.

[remetagross]

Ah yes, the wands of Prestidigitation are invaluable just so we can look clean after a dungeon crawl. You have no idea how annoying it is to remove dried blood lodged between each scale.

The inherent bonuses are as follows:

Tome of Bodily Health +4 - 110k gp
Manual of Persuasion +5 - 137.5k gp

For a total of 247.5k gp. Considering VoP was designed around a 760k gp WBL for a 20th-level PC and we now have 840k gp to spend, it means we're in excess of 80kgp. So, accounting for that, Ux's effective WBL would exceed that of his fellow teammates by 167.5k gp. That's not small change.

Now, it's notorious that VoP does a poor job at actually offering 760k gp's worth of bonuses...but still, I would be remiss not to point it out clearly to you, chains.

By the way, thanks for Power surge. And for a specific pilgrimage, here's a blurb. I'm really liking the idea that Ux Utanar failed to protect Ereshki - it conveniently explains why she's not there anymore, for one, and it also gives a thematic motivation for why Ux Utanar realizes sheer strength at arms is insufficient to ward off all the perils of near-epic level challenges. Hence his change of career. He now wants to serve the Platinum with more humility about his own worth and more carefulness about what he alone can or can not achieve, especially as far as proection of the weak is concerned.

I'm thinking Bahamut sent him first to Tiamat's lair, on the first layer of the Nine Hells, tasked with retrieving the soul of a "tarnished" dragonborn - a dragonborn having forsaken Bahamut - in order to give the repentant soul another chance. Then, he'd had Ux climb back from there up to Celestia and find the location of Bahamut's palace among the first four layers of the plane, to put the soul at his feet among his divine hoard. After having thought about it long and hard on his way, Ux also decided to give everything he possessed to the hoard of Bahamut at that moment and took a vow of poverty.

Reborn as a Dragonfire Adept, and devoid of any clunky stuff that gives him a false feeling of confidence, Ux Utanar is now slightly more aware of the ways of epic level challenges, slightly more humble in his assessment of his role in the Great Wheel, and slightly more acknowledging of the unique skills of his teammates - he has seen what Delja can do that he can not and has come to respect that. On the other hand, his utter conviction that he does the right thing and his tendency to spout annoying goody-two-shoes preaches have slightly increased as well :D

Apart from that, he is the same Ux, who barges in in social situations, laughs at goofy Myriad antics, enjoys good fruit juice, sports enormous eyebrows, doesn't like people standing on his knee, likes hot baths and irritates the hell out of Delja.

[chaincomplex]

OK, I like your pilgrimage idea. Let's do this:

1. Redo your ability scores and lose the inherent bonuses. The pilgrimages and resulting transformations were easy on neither Ux's body nor mind, and caused great changes.
2. Ux should have a keepsake from this adventure. Since his change is part of his experiences and not his build, and he cannot take anything of value, the keepsake will be this: He is treated as having had Sacred Vow and Vow of Poverty as bonus feats at 1st level, for free. In a sense then his keepsake is Ereshki, or her memory thereof.

[remetagross]

Noted, chain. Man, your last two sentences sent shivers of sadness down my spine

Let's do this for her, and for all the others that needed Ux but he wasn't there for them. You know what he's going to do with the Noctuary? A flattening. He wants every mortal to be of the same power level. Now, the specifics are murky even to him - having everyone be an ECL 1 character? An ECL 20 character? What about extraplanar creatures? Are there any unintended side effects to such a situation? His Int score is only 12. But the core idea is that if everyone wields equal power, there can never be brute-forcing of one individual onto another anymore.

There will not be weak and strong people, the former being oppressed by the latter - only people.