Cramulus's D&D Game

[Cainad (dec.)]

RELEASE THE FUCKING KRAKEN!

It's the gift that keeps on giving. Badass adventure, dude.

[Telarus]

Hells yes.

[Cramulus]

a few shots from yesterday's game:










yesterday was one long fight. Didn't expect it to take nearly that long. It was like four or five hours! Combat length is basically my biggest gripe with D&D 4e.

Amazing encounter though. The mission was to kill a lich that lived in a tower. We started the encounter about 200 feet away from the tower, where the players first encounter the lich's minions. (shitty undead spirits with 1 HP) But this signaled them that they were in for the long haul.

The lich was an eladrin, he has a lot of movement and teleport powers. So as they fought him, he moved back through the tower, and back outside. This fight was all over the place! The lich's phylactery and some treasure chests were hidden somewhere on the board. They managed to find/crush the phylactery before they killed the lich, ensuring that he wouldn't be back to haunt them.

[Telarus]

Epic!

[Aucoq]

The last few weeks have been a really fantastic series of games. It's the situation every DM wants - the players are hooked, they're chattering about the game all the time, everybody's really excited to play. I come downstairs into the living room and everybody's theorizing about what's going on and what to do next.

So here's what's going on.........

Aedremere

The party was in the city of Aedremere, which is mostly dragonborn. They successfully defeated the witch queen Silona (a mummy/medusa) and her thrall Captain Daven (a dragonborn Death Knight). City is safe, right? Well, not quite. As the adventurers returned to the city, they saw the Flame of Sehanine (the city's artifact, a twin to the artifactual Flame of Erathis that the party carries) disappear from Aedremere's palatial tower. Somebody stole it!

The players spent a lot of time in the council hall, where they were asked a lot of rude questions by hopeless and cynical old men. The magistrate apologized profusely to the adventurers - seems the council's been shaken up by the recent undead attacks. They're humans with short lifespans, they don't see that we always triumph in the end.

Walking around the city, the adventurers can tell something's up. After spending a few days in the city recovering from mummy rot (the rogue rotted so bad, he came one die roll away from death!) the party had picked up on a song that people in the city are humming or whistling. They heard a lot of people humming it, but upon questioning them, the people didn't know what it was or where they'd heard it. Something weird was happening, but nobody could figure out exactly what.


The Geas

After that, long story short - the players got captured by two Kaladari (read: conquestadors) of the Dromen Commonwealth, this expansionist empire across the sea. They were forced into a geas -- a ritual contract -- in which they agreed to serve the two Kaladari as vassals. The contract ends when they've completed three tasks: they have to cleanse areas called Tanaret, Sataviseen, and Torobrask. Until that time, they can only rest in this one city. Sleeping outside of that city will not help them recover hit points or powers.

[according to the logic of my world] Geases must have a "back door", a way for the contract to be voided early, usually something very abstract in nature. The creator of the Geas usually phrases this as some impossible task. So this geas can also end "When a serpent swallows the sun". This got the players scratching their heads. What does it mean?

And they're strangers in a strange land. The game's been moved to the continent of Suldain, which is basically "Fantasy Australia". This equates to Australia during an early phase of English colonization. The only cities are basically Sydney and Perth, on the east and west coasts. Between that, there's a big open outback with lots of different terrain types (desert, mountains, tundra, jungle) and horrible australian monsters. (BTW, the monsters of Australian mythology are weird!)

The Dromen Kaladari inform the players that this is the Dreamlands, it may be the place where you go when you sleep. So things might not work like you expect, this is a supernatural place. It's also at the edge of the world -- this is the southernmost island that anybody's ever discovered. Go much further south than this, the currents take you, and you'll fall off the edge of the world. (surprise! My game setting is FLAT. "Round earth" is a foolish theory that wizards have repeatedly proven false.)

First Adventure in Suldain

The aboriginal locals call themselves Kalashtar. The players had a few run-ins with them, and found them to be suspicious and reserved, but not opposed to diplomacy.

In the salt flats to the south of Maedar (the Dromen city on the west coast), the players encountered the Tuddo tribe, a group of Kalashtar that have been displaced from their homeland by a Dromen outpost. Underneath the outpost, there is a sleeping Aeon called Bequmuni.

A Sleeping Aeon?

"People from your realm have the world upside down," said the Kalashtar shaman, Father Tuddo, "You are not in the dreamlands. You are in the real world. The world you live in is a dream."

Underneath the surface of Suldain, there are huge silver sleeping buddha statues, sometimes a hundred feet tall. They are dreaming, and their dream is the world.

The players investigated the garrison at Bequmuni, and were allowed to see the aeon. There was a small Dromen base, about 10 soldiers and 8 bards inside. In the central chamber, where the Aeon sleeps, a string quartet was camped. They were perched next to the Aeon's ear, and were playing a song, the Dromen national anthem.

"That's it," somebody said, "that's the song we heard in Aedremere..."

That's when it clicked. The Dromen aren't trying to end the world or anything like that. They're trying to take over as many city-states as possible by manipulating the beings which dream the world. It seems like playing this song next to an Aeon's ear puts the people of that city into a kind of trance. It makes them much more open to Dromen rule. The Dromen destabilize an area, then offer aid. The aid gives them seats on local councils and cabinets. Slowly, they gain control of those cities without exercising military force.

This puts the adventurers in quite a dilemma. They're ritually tasked to clear these three Aeons, and set up linked portals so that the Dromen can access them. If they fail to do this, the geas can actually kill them.

What Dreams May Come

Sleeping in Suldain, you don't have dreams. You have out of body experiences. Each player got a dream, a series of images which indicate that something from their past is here in Suldain. For example, the rogue wants revenge on this guy, and he now sees that the man has an estate here in Suldain somewhere. How is it that some noble from the mainland has a mansion in the fantasy outback -- the middle of bumfuck Australia?

As the shaman explained -- there is something here in Suldain which caused that nightmare to happen to you in your world. It's like you are having a dream of somebody breaking through your front door, and when you awake, you hear a woodpecker banging on it. The troubles you have faced in your life are the result of something happening here, a point of corruption which has bled into the dream.

Underneath the Surface

A bit later, the players met up with the Tarrinah tribe, a horse people who live in the south western peninsula of Suldain. In order to speak to the shaman, they had to go through an initiation process. They had to hunt down a beast called a Quillian and put a handprint on it. If they are real warriors, they will slay it.

So the players tracked down this beast's layer. As they go down beneath the surface, they start encountering this bewildering freudian imagery. There are statues of the players fathers, their faces scowling and judgmental. There are statues of beautiful women - when you take the cloth veil off the statue's face, you see your character's mother. We are beneath the surface now. Any time you go underground in Suldain, you encounter, in effect, your id. Players that can pass through the feywild see that this is the location of a violent and chaotic party. Satyrs and Nymphs are fighting and fucking and drinking self-destructive amounts of liquor.

They kill the Quillian (barely!) and head back to the horse tribe.

Tanaret

Finally, they make their way towards Tanaret, the Silver Aeon who sleeps beneath the plateau. The adventurers clear the monsters and pass the three wards. (but not without making some shady deals with an immortal creature called a Berbelang.) They get access to Tanaret, and see a vision of a city they recognize - the quiet town of Arnetta.

The adventurers passed through Arnetta right after they left Ave Sestina. It was a really pleasant place that was being threatened by hill giants. The giants worshiped these primordial elemental beings, and the adventurers slayed all 18 of them. This was a few months ago.

They see that the Berbelang spends his time whispering in the aeon's ear, telling the story of how no matter what people do, the giants always return to Arnetta. The adventurers had promised to allow the Berbelang to do his task in secret in trade for passage through the third ward. So they were kind of stuck allowing this thing to happen. The fighter, thinking on his feet, found a moment to go over to the aeon and whisper a quick story into its ear.

In the story, the lord of the city, who is descended from giant slayers, conceives a son. And this son will grow up to be the greatest giant slayer that Arnetta has ever known. The Aeon smiled in his sleep.

At this point, the players lost their shit. They realized that they too could influence the world by manipulating the dreams of the Aeons.



The eladrin warlord started paging through notes. Something clicked. He recognized that the names of the Aeons they'd been sent to cleanse were anagrams of the cities they've visited. The Aeon Tanaret dreams of Arnetta. That must mean that the Aeon named Sataviseen dreams of Ave Sestina, and the Aeon named Torobrask dreams of Starbrook!


So what should we do?

Suddenly, the party was a torrent of ideas.

Maybe we can kick the Dromen out of the region by using the aeons?

Wait, what if we find the Aeon that's dreaming of the Dromen capital, Glasdazk?

We could wake up that Aeon, and them Glasdazk would cease to exist!

Ooh, or maybe we could tell it a better story, and make Glasdazk into the center of a better empire, a place that would make Erathis proud!

But first we have to find it.

And we also have to get out of this Geas.

As the Geas compelled them, the characters created a Linked Portal back to the city of Maedar, where the Dromen greeted them. This was the end of the first of their three geas-tasks.  This leveled them up to 13.

They have found out that there's a shaman in the desert who knows all about geases -- maybe they can track her down and get some answers from her?

Also, they have to find out where the rest of the Aeons are sleeping, and what their names are.

Also, they have to find out where the Flame of Erathis has been taken, and get it back.

Also, one of the party members, a Githzerai Fighter, knows that his son is here in Suldain, and he's considering joining the enemy Githyanki. The symbol of these Githyanki is a black snake biting its tail. (the character wonders, in private, if this is "the serpent swallowing the son"... is he willing to trade his son's life for escape from the Geas?)

Also, one of the party members, a rogue, knows his old nemesis is here.

Also, the eladrin warlord senses that the aeon that dreams of his home city, Starbrook, is restless in his sleep, and that's why the city phases between the middle world and the feywild every morning and evening.

Also, an aborigine has joined the party. He came of age on the same day that the party killed the Quillian, so his fate is linked to the Gatecrashers and has chosen to join the party. (new player, first time playing D&D, now he's hooked!)

Also, the Raven Queen has sent one of her ravens to assist the party. (a friend of ours is playing a new character, a kenku sorcerer/bard)



And I'll cut it off here because this post is already way too tl;dr 

But seriously, this has been a BLAST. The players are really hooked right now, they have so many choices about what to do, how to shape the world, and I'm super curious about how they're going to handle it.

I don't mean to necro the thread.  But wow!  This may be the coolest thing I've ever read in my life, Cram.  This had me on the edge of my seat.  I couldn't wait to find out what happens next. . . And I'm not even part of the game, lol.  I wish I had a fraction of your story-telling skills/imagination.