What is the most interesting/fun D&D adventure you have ever had? I don't need a whole walkthrough, just a synopsis would be fine.You can go into detail if you'd like, I just want to hear some cool stories.
>>20396689OP here. It doesn't really have to be D&D, just any old fantasy setting would be fine.
one time i had a character keep alive a character who should have died (i'm the DM here) and I had to improv this character for like two sessions. completely changed the adventure and whatnot, now that they were working with the NPC instead of fighting him. It was very fun
Bump.
>>20396757Nope.>>20396754Situations like that always fuck up my adventure.
>>20396765i think its way fun. i prefer to improv while DMing, although i have guidelines
>>20396793I really do wish I was better at improv, but alas, I am not. I always go way in depth when making my adventures and someone always finds a way to fuck with me since they know I'm not good at improv.
> "BBEG" Wizard King creates a pocket dimension that is a perfect replica of his kingdom, contained inside a tower.> Replica kingdom will house the uninfected survivors of a "plague" (actually a genetic mutation caused by too much exposure to raw arcane power) ravaging their land, until such time as the "plague" is cured or all infected outside die from it.> Seals the "uninfected" populace inside with powerful magic wards.> King remains outside. Works for years to find a cure, with no success. Becomes a Lich to combat the "plague".> "Plague" mutates, becomes much worse; people begin turning into monsters.> Lich annihilates the populace to eradicate the plague once and for all. > Learns of the true nature of the "plague"; realizes those trapped inside his pocket world are probably all mutated by this point as well. Vows to keep them contained at all costs.> Goes through periods of activity/hibernation, waking whenever the tower is threatened by outside forces (colonists, adventurers, etc...)
>>20397026That... is pretty fucking cool.
Continued... > Goes through periods of activity/hibernation, waking whenever the tower is threatened by outside forces (colonists, adventurers, etc...)> During one hibernation cycle, a clever group manages to disable his alarms but fails to breach the tower's wards and open it.> Lich sleeps for too long; wakes up to discover a city has popped up around the tower, which is still sealed. However, the tower is like a giant magnet for adventurers, treasure hunters and knowledge seekers, and will only remain unopened for so long.> Us, the PCs, are adventurers who have come to this city, seeking fame and fortune. > "Oh, hey, what could be inside this massive, magically sealed tower?"
>>20397055Do continue.
>>20397026>>20397055This is brilliant. I NEED MOAR!
>>20397026>>20397055This is great so far.
>>20397084All that shit was just some of the backstory from the three-year campaign our DM wrote. The campaign started in this town that had sprung up around this tower. It started as a small settlement founded by a pirate who saw the tower while sailing a desolate, remote region and went to check it out. When he couldn't get in, he "hired" wizards to come and help him get inside, but to no avail. This continued for months and then years, him bringing in more and more people. Others started hearing rumors of this tower and came on their own. Camps grew into settlements, which warred with each other for control, until a bloody, yet decisive battle established the pirate as the de facto ruler of this settlement. Some decades later, the pirate died of old age, but the place continued to grow until a full-on city stood surrounding this fucking tower that no one could get inside (again, this is all backstory).
>>20397168Off topic, but how do I successfully incorporate deep backstory into my adventures? The players seem to get bored when I go on for more than 3 sentences without letting them do something.Also you should continue, at least tell us what happens with the tower.
>>20397168So we, the PCs, were a bunch of wannabe adventurers who signed on with a guild to do quests and other stuff PCs do. We knew about the tower but it was established that by this point it was considered background dressing for the city, because it had stood for so long without being opened. We knew nothing about who built it, why it was there, not even how long it had been there (the "BBEG", who was in hibernation at this point and no one alive knew anything about). There was an oligarchy running the city at this point, who were basically a bunch of dickhead politicians who wanted all the power. They had deposed the queen from power about 50 years back (she was the elven wife of the pirate and thus still alive) and forbade any research into the tower, which pissed off just about everyone at the time. They pulled the whole "if it's sealed this hard, there's probably a reason" schtick (ironically, they were right) and interest in the thing had waned in the decades since. Even the mages' guild had found other things to do by this point.
>>20397242Interdasting...
>>20397242It was probably a good six months worth of sessions, doing seemingly random and unconnected shit, before we caught on to anything: find out what happened to a senator's missing brother-in-law, liberate a nearby village from an ogre warlord, investigate a town where the entire populace experiences the same nightmare every night.Then during another seemingly random quest, we stumble on some knowledge that shed some light on the old kingdom before ours, and about the tower.There was this ruin far removed from our city, surrounded by wasteland and where undead were known to roam. Nobody ventured there for the most part, as it was so far from the nearest village that it posed no threat to anyone...usually. But all of the sudden, there were more undead, stronger undead, wandering farther from this haunted land, so it started to become a problem. We were dispatched to investigate.
>>20397242You gotta continue this.
>>20397427see>>20397423
We get there, fight our way through lesser undead to the ruin, and are confronted by some more powerful undead (some intelligent enough to speak, but we did not know the language). One was this revenant knight or paladin who was charged with protecting this place before he died and whatever made him undead, and he continued to do so after death. There was also some sort of ghoul like sorcerer (a huecuva?) and a banshee, all of which seemed to have something more to them than just lolrandom encounter, but at this point we didn't have any context. There were some interesting things about the ruin though, certain statues and inscriptions and things that were obviously ancient and unfamiliar. And then there was the whole thing where any spells we cast seemed to be far more powerful than they should be... The air felt thick with magic, oppressive almost, giving us all headaches.The one thing that we do notice is that even though undead were crawling all over this place, it didn't look evil. It looked more like a large estate or scho than anything.So we get to the "final chamber", I guess, with this massive glowing crystal suspended in midair above some strange arcane device, when the intense arcane pressure swells, and everything goes dark.
>>20397529large estate or school*typing on my phone is a bitch.
>>20397529I wish my adventures were this cool.
>>20397576Start making your own and make your group better. Doesn't even have to be all that interconnected. Just go on a mission by mission basis. Bullshit when you need to and you will find yourself and your players having a fucking blast.
>>20397604My players always seem to be more interested in fighting than story. I don't understand them.;_;
>>20397529We "awake" inside the same room, as it was ages ago, when it was intact. A well-dressed man with long hair stood before us, and when he spoke, we could understand him.His name was Lantherion, and he explained that what we were seeing was not real, but a sort of dream-like, semi-interactive reenactment of the "final moments of [his] life" (imagine a non-hostile, repurposed Weird spell); everything we were about to experience was all happening in the blink of an eye.Lantherion led us on a "tour" of his school, while he explained the details of what was happening around us. "Everyone" else in the "dream" was runnung around panicked, as the place was under siege. Lantherion seemed unconcerned; he knew he was already dead and this was just a reenactment of his demise. However, he said the purpose for this vision we were experiencing was so that someone would know what happened here so long ago, and that it would not be repeated.> Captcha: Illustra assinera> mfw the queen's name was Galeia Illustra Amaralys
>>20397672It's a sign that you must continue this story.
>>20397634Sucks man, but even that isn't too bad. My group has 2 players that either make joke characters because LOL SO RANDUMB, or just make killing machines with no personality. The other two consist of a bro who is transitioning from that mentality but still thinks minmaxing is cool, and a guy who is still pretty much exploring what kind of character he wants to play. I've managed to get them all involved by asking for a 1 or 2 paragraph backstory for each character before playing. I could actually care less about what the character's did in their past, but it helps them build something from personality first rather than stats. Of course, that is entirely pointless if they do stat generation first, in which case they will simply write one to fit around the statblock.
>>20397719That sounds like a great idea. They're only level 5 so they'd be able to write their characters without contradicting something they've done so far.And I know what you mean about the LOL SO RANDUM characters, one of the players is a goliath barbarian who can't speak more than a few sentences and wants money; apparently the player thinks this is entertaining. I don't.
>>20397672Lantherion's school was for the study of necromancy, but not as it is practiced in the PCs time. It was more concerned with life after death, the manipulation of spirit or life energy and how it is used by living beings (can it be exchanged? shared? partitioned? repurposed?) as opposed to just pumping out undead.Lantherion knew of the "plague" and was researching a method of treatment, but opposed King Perethron's ideas. He knew it was not a plague, and that Perethron's quarantine was doomed to fail. Judged guilty of being a sympathizer and rabble rouser, he was destroyed by royal forces.Lantherion told us that it was their kingdom's (Andrassia) dependence, overuse and overexposure to arcane power that was the cause of the "plague", and it would soon be the cause of its downfall. He was right, though he did not live to see it. It was probably for the better. We asked what questions we could (those that the "dream" was programmed to answer), before we witnessed the death of Lantherion, his wife (the banshee we fought earlier), his apprentice (the ghoul/huecuva mage) and his person guard (the revenant), as well as the wholesale slaugther of the students of the school.We awoke among the ruins once more, in our own time, 5000 years later.
>>20397775That giant crystal machine that we saw before the dream Lantherion had called a "magic engine" for lack of a better term. Think of it as a massive arcane battery. We saw it in the dream during the "tour", where it was intact; in our time it was heavily damaged and nearly spent. We learned that during the raid that killed Lantherion way back in the past, the engine was damaged and started basically venting necromantic energy. Anything caught in the blast withered and died, rising as undead (thus the wasteland we were in). We shut it down safely via methods Lantherion told us, but little did we know at the time that doing this had a much worse side effect.Shutting down one of the engines, which were networked (though only a few remained active) woke up the BBEG, Perethron, as his hibernation was directly tied into the energy network.Awaking to see an entire civilization built up around the tower/planar quarantine (Lantherion called it The Ark of Andrassia), where before only small groups of adventurers or explorers had discovered it and were easily annihilated, Perethron panicked.
>>20397854continue...
>>20397854Sorry, was busy getting something to drink. Still reading, please continue.
>>20397854So to go any further I must explain a little about Perethron. He isn't actually a lich.During the final days when the doors of the Ark were being opened to allow the uninfected to make their exodus inside, there was tremendous unrest. Those that were to be left behind had learned of the king's plan, and a resistance movement had grown. Knowing that once the king and his loyalists left, those that had the knowledge to operate the magic engines and all the devices that they powered would be lost, the kingdom might literally tear itself apart. For one example, the Andrassians had devices that controlled the weather; if they lost control of them, or even the act of shutting them after years of artificial climate control was predicted to cause near-apocalyptic weather disasters.No one wanted to be left behind. So when Perethron, his (pregnant) second wife, and his loyalists opened the Ark to usher the uninfected inside (along with himself), the people rioted.
>>20397943OP here. This is a great story, thanks for going so in depth.
>>20397943During the struggle to keep the uninfected out (rioters were slaughtered in the streets), they were overwhelmed. Perethron and his wife, among others were trampled. His wife died. Perethron was nearly killed, but was spared thanks to a priviledge only the powerful were afforded.Anyone remember Shield Guardians from the 3.0 MM? They're like golem bodyguards with some spell retention, that high level wizards could build. Well in Andrassia, these served as the police force, army and personal guard of the wealthy. Lesser ones were basic models, but the more advanced, possessed by kings, nobles and the wealthy, were linked to their master's life force almost like a walking phylactery. They would know when their master was in danger, and had several abilities tied to this link. They didn't give you immortality (and the DM doesn't allow resurrection in his campaign), but they sort of hold a part of your soul to power them and link them to you.In this case, it saved Perethron's life.
>>20398026Really though, good story.
>>20397995No problem. Though I do have a confession; this is actually my campaign story. I wasn't sure if you wanted stories from a player perspective or not, but as a Forever DM I have none, but thought this would be fun to share. I also forgot how long winded I can be.Continuing from >>20398026...Perethron's body was shattered. Loyalists managed to clear the riot in his area and recover his body, but it was irreparable. Other loyalists, plus a handful of uninfected, managed to make it inside the Ark and seal its gates, leaving Perethron outside.They retreated to his palace and performed a ritual to save him that had never been attempted before: using knowledge they acquired from the ruins of Lantherion's school, which they had destroyed, they discovered a means to transfer Perethron's soul fully into his golem protector's mechanical body.
Perethron awoke in his new form. Learning what had happened to his body, his wife, and that he was shut out of the idyllic planar world he had built to ride out the "plague", he went mad. After a time of adjusting to his new form, he found it to be superior in almost every way. His remaining loyalists were converted as well (although with some "restrictions" Perethron implemented without their knowledge). Once the transformation was complete, Perethron exerted hia newfound power over the lesser golems of his police force and army, and began his Eradication War against the infected; those that cost him his body, his wife, his unborn child, and his utopia.Thus, the first Warforged were born.
>>20398134Perethron continued on his tirade for sometime, driven by his madness. People would come to theorize his madness was caused by the instability of his mind during the first few years of his transfer into his mechanical body. Similar traits were observed among other loyalists I had undergone the same procedure. Eventually, he regained control of his mind and conscience. Realizing the horror of what he had done (nearly wiping out the remainder of his kingdom, and scattering the remaining survivors into the wilderness), he regained himself and begin anew to seek a cure for the "plague".It would be decades before he discovered the true cause of it...far too late for the remnants of his kingdom outside the Ark. He also then came to realize a terrible ftruth; those were already inside the Ark would fall to the same fate, becoming arcane-warped monsters, because they were contained inside a pocket plane powered by the most powerful magic engine in the entirety of his empire.
>>20398126I just wanted stories, this is absolutely perfect.
I love threads like this, there's always people somewhere out there having the wildest adventures.
>>20398176*that had undergone the same procedure.Fucking talk to text.Anyway...So here's the other catch: in his "Warforged" form, Perethron was unable to cast spells conventionally. His body was unable to tap into the arcane ether as his living body could. The only way for him to use magic would be to draw upon an existing power source. He found that he could draw upon the energy that powered his mechanical body, but it shortened his "lifespan" to do so. So instead, he would draw power from the magic engines that powered his kingdom. Well, those that still remained. Many went haywire when there was no one competent enough to control them and were destroyed. Others Perethron had destroyed himself when wiping out Andrassians during his madness. The few that were left were drained, and thus their power had to be conserved. For one reason, when all the power was gone, the wards sealing the Ark would fail, and the gates would open.The other reason: Perethron's body would fail, and he would die.
>>20398250I will be screencapping this, it's great.
>>20398250Perethron devised his plan: he would enter periods of hibernation, awaking only when the Ark was threatened, to deal with the threat. At first he tried reason, but greed always seemed too powerful a motivator for those who discovered the Ark. After a few awakenings, Perethron realized that only swift and decisive deterrence would work...and it did. Not forever, but for much longer periods of time. During his times of activity, he would search for ways to power the Ark indefinitely, or shut it down safely, but to no avail. Eventually he would retreat back into hibernation to recharge and conserve energy, discouraged but not defeated.Cut forward 5000 years to the PCs shutting down one of his few remaining magic engines. Perethron awoke and perceived the greatest threat to the Ark yet. Realizing that something had gone terribly wrong and he had "overslept", he reactivated the entirety of his Warforged army, and began setting into motion his plan to drive out, or destroy, the PCs fledgling kingdom, whose capital was built on the bones of his own.
This is what I love to see; antagonists that aren't villains, or even all that evil. People standing against the players, with motivations beyond "I am evil and want to rule the world because I am evil ha ha ha".
eff-motherfucking-five
>>20398359Agreed, Perethron is giving me a few ideas for a campaign of my own.
>>20398359Hm, I gotta disagree with you a bit there. Personally I think the whole "Oh, what are you doing heroes! I was doing good all along!" shtick is overused a bit lately, so it's currently not my favourite type of villain (although the story about Perethron is great).However, I agree with you that evil should have motivations beyond being evil - sometimes even just things like revenge are good, too.But sometimes evil shouldn't have a motivation, sometimes an evil that is so evil that you can't discern it's motivation should have a special appearance - you can't argue, you can't reason with it because it is evil for evils sake, something even heroes should have problems fighting, since they can't oppose it's reason for being evil.
>>20398397Use 4chan X, bro.
>>20398291So now, in the PCs time:Even though he has a sizeable force of Warforged, Perethron still knows that the PCs kingdom is a formidable force. That, and his need to conserve power, means he needs to be subtle rather than guns blazing this time.Now here's the funny part: I mentioned that the ruling oligarchy deposed the queen and established a ban on research of the tower? Well, get this. The PCs did not like the senate. At all. They are a bunch of power hungry politicans (surprise, surprise), and the PCs didn't like being told no. That, and since the city was founded by a pirate, and thus had this reputation for being loose with law enforcement prior to the senate disposing the queen (the deceased pirate's wife), they felt that the "soul of the city" was being smothered, they organized a coup to overthrow the council. Seriously.It wasn't too hard to dig up dirt on them. After that, a little political trickery of their own, and the already unfavorable view of the senate turned in to all-out dissention.
>>20398428Nice, that 20 minute period since your last post made me think you were stopping there.
>>20398412>However, I agree with you that evil should have motivations beyond being evil - sometimes even just things like revenge are good, too.One of my favorites is where the antagonist is seeking what he calls "justice" and thinks he's doing right, but all he really wants is revenge.
>>20398435Not the story poster, but have you ever typed such a story (not beforehand, but on fly as is)? It takes a fucking whole lot of time, especially when it's so well formulated as he is doing
>>20398456The story poster can take as long as he'd like, it's a great story. I was just a bit worried, that's all.
>>20398428Staging a coup while a golem army is massing right next to you doesn't exactly seem like the best idea...
>>20398412>But sometimes evil shouldn't have a motivation, sometimes an evil that is so evil that you can't discern it's motivation should have a special appearance - you can't argue, you can't reason with it because it is evil for evils sake, something even heroes should have problems fighting, since they can't oppose it's reason for being evil.Is it bad I like this kind of evil the best? I've been thinking of a way to incorporate it into a campaign, but to no avail. Everything I think of just keeps coming back to either it's A. Too powerful for a group to fight orB. It has some way of being bargained with/controlled/banished to another realm.
>>20398428So now Perethron really freaks, because those that were holding back research on the tower are out of power (I had other plans for making this happen, but the PCs did it for me).The queen returns to power, and all restrictions are null and void. Perethron changes gears (ha ha). Even though he has a sizable force, he doesn't think he can just walk over the PCs kingdom as he has before. That, and he needs to conserve power. So he begins trying to undermine the kingdom while also bolstering his forces. He makes alliances with privateers and mercenaries; he begins secretly recruiting talented sorcerers and wizards into a reclusive Conclave, where he teaches them ancient magics long forgotten; he unearths and restores powerful artifacts from Andrassian ruins, all of this in secret.During all this, the PCs still don't know much about Perethron other than his name. They certainly don't think he's alive. Lantherion died before the sealing of the Ark, so he had no idea what happened. As far as the PCs were concerned at this point, Andrassia is still long dead, with only the haunting story of Lantherion's death and the knowledge that there is an ancient and powerful kingdom inside the tower at the center of their city. They are not aware of any threat it poses.
>>20398533If you don't mind me asking, how much did the PC's know at this point? About what Perethron and all.
>>20398492See the last paragraph here; >>20398533. They have no idea Perethron still exists at this point.He was still human at the point where Lantherion's story ended. He was believed either dead, or inside the Ark, at this point. No one living knew what happened concerning his near-death and transition to a Warforged body, and Andrassia was so long dead that few knew it existed, other than obvious things like the tower in the city. Virtually nothing about the kingdom was known.
>>20398572This answers >>20398559Thanks.
>>20398572I'm interested to see how the PC's learn everything. Are you going to finish this whole story in this thread?
>>20398559Just that he existed once, and probably went inside the Ark with his uninfected populace 5000 years ago. Believed long dead. No idea about any threats looming on the horizon (remember, I had them doing seemingly random quests for six months as they ventured out and learned about their kingdom's layout and (brief) history. They thought this campaign was simply a collection of random quests strung together by the regional history. I even gave them choices as to which quests to take and which to ignore.
>>20398594I"ll try. It's hard to summarize three years, especially when there is so much backstory. Most of the campaign in the second half consisted of piecing together the facts to understand what happened, and then turning the tide of the war against Perethron.
>>20398516Well, what about a campaign that starts the PCs of as adventurers that then become real heroes (who fight some kind of BBEG who has clear cut motivations such as revenge, power, fame, etc). They could prove themselves as "real" heroes, fighting against an emeny who ambushes them, tortures loved ones for information and all those other despicable things. However, you do it much like our good storytiming Anon here - you keep on dropping hints that there might be something more, maybe the BBEG uses magic/an artifact that is beyond their understanding, subtle whispers of terrible beings lurking on the fringes of the mind and so on.When they finally defeat the BBEG and are hailed as heroes across the realm, the ancient evil finally awakens (maybe not even because of their doing) and they start fighting it. But do you know what bypasses a Paladins damage reduction? What counters and dispells a wizards most powerful spells? Yes, it is evil and those that are hailed as heroes will fail against that. They will be shattered, broken and cast away - but not killed.No, they will be left alive, to be able to find a way to defeat the evil - and that may just be evil itself.
>>203986293 years IRL? Wow, good stuff.
>>20398629Thank you based anonMy children's children will know the story of the Ark of Andrassia.Although I keep picturing the Ark as looking like the Circle of Magi from Dragon Age, and I keep reading Andrassia as Andraste.
>>20398516Perhaps your evil should be somewhat alien. Unknowable, not just in morality but in every sense of the word. Such a being doesn't even have intelligence, as we would know it. That covers the reasoning part.As for the too powerful, well as DM you do have some say about it's power. Hell, you could have the PC's go on a quest not to defeat the evil, but to weaken it. I'm thinking like Giygas from Earthbound or Dark Falz from Phantasy Star. They weren't truly defeated, merely cast away.
>>20398533Okay, so at this point, the PCs hear Lantherion's story. Interesting, and sheds some light on things, but doesn't really change anything. They thought it was all just flavor for the region. Mission complete, return to Merudo (BTW, Merudo is the name of the PCs city, the capital of their region. The Andrassian capital that it was built upon was called Jozel).The PCs return to doing random missions for a while. Meanwhile, Perethron escalates things...like starting a war between Merudo and a nearby region of (formerly) disorganized tribes of primitives (orcs, ogres, etc). Perethron unites them under a leader he helps rise to power, and fabricates some events to whip them in to a frenzy and point them at Merudo. Then he backs off and lets them do their thing. Suddenly, Merudo is embroiled in a war, and has to focus its attention towards its northern border, while Perethron waits in the south, waiting for the strain to take its toll.
3.5e; was part of a group whose general party goal was to prove themselves innocent of the betrayal and murder of a high-ranking military officer, then later returning a goddess to her rightful place in the pantheon, winning a tournament, crushing an evil cult, and taking down a powerful lich in a foreign land. (Lv5 start, Lv20 finish)I played a charismatic halfling rogue/master thrower, loosley based on the character Michael Westen from Burn Notice. Roleplayed the shit out of him (right down to "I'm not wearing a chain shirt because I'll go Clanky-clanky"), took leadership for story purposes (made a spy network, not a meat-shield hallway test group), and always did shit away from the group when we were in town (both saved and put the group in danger).Lied my ass off more than half the time.The party never knew we were rescuing a goddess (all on me due to a fucking geas), and I took down the lich thanks to enough abilities and gear to let me sneak attack undead for strength damage. Also, my first kill was an evil town guard that I sneak-attacked with a knife I stole from his guard buddy (whom after one bluff check later, was successfully blamed for the deed).I'm gonna miss that character. Most fun I ever had.Also, pic unrelated, but was gonna be my next character to play.
>>20398703Now here's where things get really crazy. I had the PCs roll up new characters, and temporarily sideline their others. Why? Well, with the war on, their guild went on a huge recruitment drive, and fresh meat came pouring in. While their other characters were off on a war-related mission, these fresh recruits were whipped in to shape and sent on other tasks related to the war. I started bouncing between each group; after one completed a quest, the other group became active for a quest. They saw the war unfolding from two perspectives. Eventually they would meet for while, exchange info, and then were ordered on separate missions again.By doing this, I played their knowledge against them at times. One group would learn one thing, the other learn something else, and when they came together, new questions would arise. It was crazy and I had never done it before but it worked brilliantly.One such example came down to discovering who was the power behind the monstrous army (known as the Rohn'Akkor). There were four major tribes before they unified to attack Merudo, and no one was truly sure who was in power. Both groups had to go behind enemy lines to find out the truth.
>>20398790Why can't you be my DM.;_;
>>20398790I wish the people I played with took the game more seriously, then we could actually have cool stories like this. But nooo, they just want to fuck around the whole time.
>>20398790Eventually they discovered that someone was manipluating the Rohn'Akkor and had fabricated the events that started the war. One group was sent on a decapitation strike mission to kill this agitator; the other was sent to investigate a ruin where some strange magic was brewing, and the Rohn'Akkor were using to their advantage. It was there the PCs found another intact magic engine, and discovered that they were not only still functional, but were linked and being manipulated by someone. Remembering what they had learned, they began to suspect someone from Andrassia was still around, and not friendly.Meanwhile, the other group rooted out the mole working with the Rohn'Akkor, with the help of an exiled "noble savage" (one of the clan leaders who was driven out) and helped force a cease fire, when they were able to present some evidence that they were being manipulated. As bloodthirsty as orcs can be, they were not amused at the thought of being pawned around.
>>20398853>>20398837Would you believe that I have a player that wishes I would just do simple quests and not have a plot in my campaigns? I totally had him fooled for a year or so before he figured out I was weaving a story the whole time.
>>20398878That player is a total pleb, this story is badass.
>>20398878Some can't appreciate genius. I'm not the best at RP, I'll admit, but I'd love to be a part of something like this. Seriously, I'd debase myself in ways unknown to mankind for a chance to be a member of your group when you were running this.
>>20398924Me too.I will track you down, storyteller, and make you DM a game for me.
>>20398859So now they know they are being dicked with, but still don't know who or why. They do suspect that whoever it is has ties to Andrassia.By the way, now that restrictions are off, research has begun again to open the tower. Old archived research is brought to light. The mages guild knows that a carbon copy of Andrassia exists behind the gates of the Ark. The prospect of their ancient knowledge is too much to pass up, especially with Merudo in a state of war. It's ground forces are heavily depleted at this point, thanks to the war inland. Finding a way to open it and plunder its secrets becomes top priority.Perethron knows his time is running out. The time to strike is now.Mustering his forces, and thanks to his unearthing of several old ruins (after all, he knows where everything was), has recovered two Andrassian airships. With those, his construct army, and a conscripted "navy" consisting of pirates and privateers that ply the waters south of Merudo (remember the history of the city; this region is fraught with piracy because of it - the region is called The Gunpowder Gauntlet, and with good reason...), Perethron launches a blitz against a weakened Merudo.
>>20398948Oh man, that would be fucking crazy for the players.I wish I was there.
>>20398948I mentioned that Perethron had two aerial gunships; however, he only was able to deploy one during the blitz of Merudo. I'll tell you why later, but it involves another campaign.Merudo as a region is a technologically advanced as the Age of Discovery, which means lots of guns, black powder, etc. Just an FYI to help make things fit. Merudo is more advanced thanks to unearthed Andrassian artifacts, reverse engineered and such. There's even a guild for engineers there.So at one point during their adventures, the PCs learned of Andrassian airships, but hadn't seen one. Thinking such a thing would be useful, they worked with the engineering guild (M.I.G. - Meridian Inventors Guild) to design and build one, using their pooled wealth and some state fund assistance. What they ended up with was a lightly armed zeppelin, basically.When the blitz began, Merudo was caught with its pants down. Only the PCs actions helped save the day. Here's how:
>>20398982Even Max Payne is intrigued by your story now.
need. sleep. must. know. how. it. ends
>>20398982By the way, by this time the PCs had parted ways (cordially) with their old guild and had established their own, to cut out the middle man (they had the reputation to do it). They called themselves...get this...the M.E.R.Cs - Meridian Emergency Response Corps. No shit. Fucking brilliant.Anyway...One group of MERCs was in the queen's palace when the blitz started. The other group was in their guild house.Warforged started teleporting in groups into the heart of the city, led by Conclace sorcerers. A pirate armada appeared on the horizon, accompanied by an aerial gunship.Utter fucking chaos.Group 1, in the palace, fends off a couple waves, then decides to evacuate the queen out of the city on their zeppelin ("The MERCury"). Problem is, they can't get to it.Group 2 gets a message (spell) to pick up Group 1 atop the palace tower. They fight their way to the launchpad, launch the ship and pick up Group 1 and the queen, then start flying out of the city, but they start heading TOWARDS the enemy gunship. Me (thinking): WTF?The enemy gunship takes a few pot shots, but is flying low, escorting the pirate fleet and decimating Merudo's (rather strong navy), so it already engaged and not worried about a lightly armed balloon.Big mistake.
>>20399051I'm feeling the same way. I was planning on going to sleep about 3 hours ago, but now...
>>20399052Lol, didn't expect the PC's to fly towards the gunship?
>>20399052Group 2 gets the MERCury above the enemy gunship and fucking parachutes (Feather Tokens they stocked the ship with) down onto the deck. They fight their way to the engine room and manage to damage the magic engine core, causing it to destabilize and start going critical.Meanwhile...Perethron confronts them, but as he is drawing power from the engine (now going critical), is basically enduring what feels like a heart attack, so is at a disadvantage. He still outclasses them at this point, but they realize his weakness and utilize it to force him to retreat. They jump ship before the engine goes critical and annihilates it.The blitz falters, and Perethron retreats. Merudo is crippled as well. Both sides turtle up and size each other up, whily planning their next moves.(This is near the end of the story).
Sweet christicles im on the edge of my ass.This is fucking amazing.Imagine this shit in a novella or comic series.
>>20399106we need a drawfag stat!
>>20399106>Imagine this shit in a novella or comic series.I have been contemplating making this for about an hour now.
>>20399103Oh man, the shit you can do with tokens. I'm surprised they didn't buy a tonne of anchor tokens and just dump them onto the ship, like an anchor-based bombing run.
Someone either print screen / save this story or get on it!http://chanarchive.org/request_votes
>>20399144I've been screencapping every post so far.
>>20399103Merudo is now angry and desperate. They want the Ark open now. A solution is in the works, but it will take a few months to implement. They fear another attack will happen before they have a chance to complete it.Cashing in all their chips, the PCs are split again into two groups: one is sent to a nearby kingdom, known for its legendary ship building capabilities, to commission a replacement fleet of ships at an exorbitant price (practically liquidating state coffers at this point) and as fast as possible.The other is sent to marshall a ground force to land on Perethron's island sanctuary and take it by force. Merudo's military is still crippled though, and there are few options open to them. So what to the PCs do? Make friends with the Rohn'Akkor, of course!And by make friends, I mean whoop ass.Under a banner of peace, and utililizing the cease fire as cover, they negotiate with the orcs to speak with their new leader (the "noble savage" they worked with before) and presented him an offer: join Merudo in the attack against Perethron, getting revenge on the one that manipulated them, and Merudo would grant them the island as new sovereign territory to rule over when Perethron is defeated.The noble savage, Urtok, agreed, but the other three clan leaders did not. They did consent that if the PCs could prove themselves trustworthy to each clan, they would consent. This involved the PCs undergoing certain tribal rituals (like a coming of age test of strength, skill or cunning) for each clan. When they emerged victorious, the Rohn'Akkor entered into an uneasy alliance with Merudo.
>>20399121The story of two worlds separated by time but bound together by magic. Treachery, Intrigue, Action.Stay tuned next week for another amazing installment of... The Ark of Andrassia.
>>20399165I can see it now...
>>20399162I might be going full retard right now, but why exactly does Merudo want the Ark open so bad? I mean I understand that they know it has a shit ton of magic/tech/treasure etc. in it, but shouldn't they be focused on fighting right nwo?
>>20399191Pretty much what you said. I'm not the writer but i imagine much of their technology has been previously bolstered by Andrassian tech.So opening the ark could mean the power to turn the fight in their favor... The fools. THE FOOOLS.
I was supposed to be at my girlfriend's house half an hour ago. Little does she know that she's been replaced by the Ark of Andrassia.
>>20399224I was supposed to be asleep 3 hours ago. I have a shit ton of stuff to do tomorrow but right now I don't give a fuck.
>>20399162Meanwhile, the other group: Merudo gets their fleet, although there was a huge naval battle with some pirates sent by Perethron to destroy the fleet while it was being built in drydock. The PCs had to coerce the ally government to intervene and protect them. Perethron had sent one of his minions (an actual lich) to oversee this operation. The PCs defeated him and stopped his plans, but failed to locate his phylactery and destroy him for good (BTW, this guy survives the end of the campaign, and is the BBEG of the campaign I am running currently, which is a semi-sequel to this one).With fleet and orc army under their banner, Merudo launches a pre-emptive strike against Perethron's forces.Perethron is unprepared, and his forces suffered even greater losses. He lost one airship, the other was crippled before the blitz and only just recently repaired (how was it crippled, you ask? I'll get to that later...it involves the sequel campaign I just mentioned). His ground forces were virtually nil. The madness that once possessed him welled up inside once more. In his mind, the Meridians had become the embodiment, or the reincarnation, of those rioters that cost him his body, his wife and his child so long ago. His pride would not allow him to concede defeat. Not to them.Between frustration and futility, anger and loss, his mind finally broke. All he could feel was wrath. Merudo wanted to open the Ark?"I'll do it for them."
OP here. Damn, glad I made this thread, this story is god-tier.
>>20399191Probably something along the lines of "That asshole really doesn't want us to open it. Now we REALLY want to get that shit in there, just to spite him."Not to mention that magitech is always good, and in their minds, more dakka could turn the tide here.
>>20399239"I'll do it for them."Oh shit nigga...
>>20399239IT HAS A FUCKING SEQUEL. I HAVENT PISSED AN HOURS BECAUSE IM SCARED IM GONNA MISS THE NEXT UPDATE.NEVER STOP I NEVER WANT THIS TO STOP.
>>20399205>>20399191>>Pretty much what you said. I'm not the writer but i imagine much of their technology has been previously bolstered by Andrassian tech.>>So opening the ark could mean the power to turn the fight in their favor... The fools. THE FOOOLS.Exactly. When the city was first founded it was merely an object of curiosity and the focus of the pirate captain's greed. As the city group, it became an obsession or a pasttime for the mages guild. When it was forbidden, it became an intriguing taboo. And when Merudo became battered by multiple wars, it became a source of their desperate hope.
I wonder how many people are reading this and not commenting. Sitting in stunned silence.
>>20399267I'm sure plenty are trying to get caught up right now.
>>20399267I'd wager many. I was one of them until I wrote this.OP, you are utterly brilliant!
>>20399277OP here, I'm not the guy writing the story. But yes, he is brilliant.
>>20399267Not stunned. Awed. This is fucking amazing, bro. Keep writing awesome campaigns, perhaps I'll take inspiriation!
>>20399267I think many are afraid to comment in case the story hits the limit before finishing.Also, can someone get this up on suptg?
>>20399191a shit ton of magic/tech/treasure etc.= sustained fighting 1.Armies, mercs or not dont fight for free2.Equipment wears and breaks, more gear could serve as replacements or even improvements3.An army marches on its stomach, and wartime food aint cheap. if your stores run dry do your neighboring nations like you enough to make a delivery into a warzone?That just covers the army and you still got a whole city of civilians under seige that need food and care.So yeah opening that bitch is a priority.4.Arent you even a little curious about whats in there?
I got a question for the story writer.You said it took you three years for this to be completed, how often did you meet and for how long?This seems so perfectly intricate.
>>20399300I was thinking the same thing.
>>20399239Oh man, that rage...I can imagine it so vividly. Amazing execution so far.
>>20399239Merudo launched their counterattack. They hit hard. The remainder of the pirate fleet under Perethron's command crumbled before them. The orc army storming the beaches of his island fortress carved their way through man and machine alike. They destroyed his magitech cannon emplacements that bombarded their ships in the harbor. They sacked his magic engines. They stormed the gates of his palace and plunged into the depths of his private sanctum. But Perethron was not there.Aboard his gunship high above the clouds, Perethron arrived in Merudo and bombarded the city from the air, as a distraction. Under covering fire, he unsealed the gates and opened them wide, expecting a horde of nightmarish creatures to emerge.But they did not come.The PCs, realizing what was happening from scrying devices in Perethron's sanctum, rushed back to Merudo via Perethron's teleportation network (a series of anchor stones powered by the magic engines).They entered the Ark, mere minutes after Perethron had.
This is too perfect to be a campaign, you must be a great DM for it to go over so well.
>>20399318Sir, you must have the absolute best players ever.Fucking saving the inhevitable screen caps.
>>20399333Agreed, there is no way I'd be able to pull this off with the people I play with.Also nice dubtrips.
>>20399333Ah, that reminds me:Is someone already screencapping this? If not, I'll do it.
>>20399318They caught up to him; he wasn't moving that fast. Perethron was dumbstruck.The Ark...it was as if time had not passed at all within its borders.Or at least, at a fraction of the speed that had passed. 5000 years to the real world; perhaps 5 within.Graves. Graves all around the outside of the tower that stood inside this mockery of his former kingdom.The sky...unnatural. In the distance, purple lightning raged across a sky like shattered glass: manastorms. This was no utopia -this was a nightmare. A failed experiement.Everyone had died.The land, though a perfect copy, was only just - it could yield no crops. The water that fell from the sky or flowed down riverbeds could quench no thirst.Perethron had condemned them all to death. He wandered in a daze. The players followed him. They didn't know what to do.
>>20399340Hah, yeah, awesome.But yes. I could pull something like this off, but sadly my previous Forever a DM would end up accidentally breaking the plot because of his tendency to either see through plot, or to build a character that totally throws all the carefully planned things out the window.I should nick name him The Plot Defenestrator.He isn't even that guy. He's this guy who accidentally a whole plot. Granted he's even more awesome when he does roll characters that fit well.
>>20399349I'm sure many of us are. I am.
>>20399355>make a magical utopia>doom everyone to become fucking zombies>make a complicated system on how to seal them for all eternity>someone pisses you off REAL badly, you want to unleash the hordes on him>they are all just dead, EVERYTHING you did was uselessPoor guy.
>>20399355I'm not part of this campaign. It happened years ago. Yet still, after reading this, all I can do is sit here going "fuuuck".Sir, you tell a fucking amazing story. And you tell it so damn well. There is no reactionface that can accurately display my emotions. I'll be running a D&D game soon, and can only hope to ever be at a point where I can realistically aspire to be like you some day.
>>20399355i just want you to know that you have a true skill and i would pay good money to have you DM a group for me
A great turn of events. Marvelous.
Perethron wandered until he came to his palace, where his mind began to unravel.Memories, mementos...copies of things he wanted to save. Some the real McCoy that he had stashed for when he retreated inside. Memories of his wife, trampled to death by the rioting crowd...The crowd right behind him....Perethron turned and raged at the PCs. There was nothing left of him now. He would destroy them. He would destroy everything!He began the spell that would end the world. The plane would collapse from within. All would die, himself included.The PCs were too far in to run back in time.They fought him. They were powerful, but so was he. They threw everything they had at him. They widdled away at his defenses while he chanted. Finally they broke through, but too late.The walls of the plane began to collapse. Reality folded in on itself. The vast kingdom shrank towards the center - the Ark at the center.The PCs, standing over Perethron, started to run as fast as they could, but their enemy's feeble voice, from his malfunctioning body, called to them. In his last moments, his mind returned to him."My heart," he said. "Take it..."Perethron tore the magic engine crystal from his chest, wires sti dangling from it."It will...hold back the nothingness..."Perethron died, the last words to leave his lips were the name of his wife and child.The PCs fled. The engine in their hand flickered and sputtered, but held back the planar collapse as they ran.They plunged back through the Ark as the heart went dark.The tower collapsed.It was over.
>>20399402I used to think Chris Perkins was the best DM, but now...
>>20399416Bra... Fucking... Vo.
>>20399416HOLY FUCKING SHIT10/10
Thanks for listening everyone. Whew, long story. Lots of details left out, some cleaned up for storytelling, but you get the gist.The hardest part for me is not railroading my players. I've played with them so long I can usually anticipate what they will do in any given situation, but every once in a while they throw me for a loop. I had to adapt this story and ret-con my own notes (stuff they weren't aware of yet, so it didn't mess with continuity) to make it work.
>>20399369Just imagine the desolation of the soul he would be feeling. Not only had he cursed them. He had spent fucking millennia trying to reverse the curse he had subjected them to in the first place.> City built on Mana that poisons everyone.> Tries to protect the last survivors in pocket world.> Turns out they will be afflicted to.> Turns himself into a hibernation never die warforged lich to try and reverse the effects.> Slaughter millions over the course of millennia trying to protect them.Then... Finally after all he has been through, every trial and tribulation over the course of 5000 years there comes an enemy he simply cannot overcome.> Torn between protecting those he spent thousands of years working on defending.> Defeat immanent. His centuries upon centuries crumbling to dust.> Embroiled in madness he plans on releasing the eldrich horrors that were once his friends and family.> Dead. Every. Last. One of them.> And they've been dead for 99.9% of the time hes been trying to protect them.> Finally he succumbs. Lost to the nothingness he created all those years ago.This is some fucking next level shit.
>>20399416Mmmh. Why did he suddenly decide to help them?Wasn't he rather analravaged by the end? Or was it a broken man's attempt to do one last good before he vanishes? If that's the case, then I can imagine it rather beautifully if written right.
ok would someone like to share the screencap?
>>20399437Thank you so much for sharing the story with us.I'd be interested in hearing how that sequel turned out, but not today. I think i've already blown enough loads of awesome.Mind answering this by the way? >>20399300
>>20399442> In his last moments, his mind returned to him.That's why. He wasn't a baddie, just went bugfuck insane after 5,000 years of utter failure.
>>20399442Pretty much. He didn't start off bad, he just kept having to escalate his ideas to protect his original plan. Kinda lost sight of why he was doing what he was doing. Everything kept going wrong, and he would lose it once in a while.Mind you, the PCs had very little direct interaction with him, and only really put everything together about his past at the end. So even with all that knowledge, they found him to be an unsympathetic character, because of all the shit he put them through.
That was an amazing read. I feel... empty, now.i's 4:45 AM here, and I'm at work. I would just like you to know: you made this incredibly boring shift bearable, sir. In fact, you made time fly.Thank you.Man, now what am I gonna do for an hour and a half?!
Here you go.1/3
>>20399453>>20399300Once a week at first, every week for about 2 years, give or take a few. The last year was kinda sporadic, sometimes every week, sometimes every two, or once a month. Work kept me busy. Ironically, work is where I wrote this campaign (and where I am right now).
2/3
3/3
Welp, I stayed up 5 hours later than planned. Oh well, was worth it.
You have made my year, based anon.
Be on rocky terms with some noblesget on zepplin with them and flying around to some new placemurder mystery timesolve which noble is killing other noblesbefore we can get him blows up zepplinride a fiery ball of death straight into a castle get charged with war crimesgotta wait till next weekend to see what happens
>>20399416Oh, man. Damn! Just as I started reading this came on. Thank you Winamp, you truely know exactly what to play when. Your timing is most superb.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlijGWVi_FMMan, that's an epic story, bro. Utterly epic. Shine on you crazy bastard!
Saved those screencaps and thinking about writing a novella on this. I'd share it on the interwebs but wouldn't try to get it published.Magnificent work. Can I have your name or someone to credit for this?
>>20399549Either novella or comic. Either way, it would be awesome.
>>20399472Heh, I guess I could embellish with a few extra details. I won't get too heavy unless people ask questions.Let's see..."Perethron" is actually not a name, but a title. Andrassian nobles who reach a certain level of power and prestige take on a title relevant to their skill set. Perethron was a Conjuration specialist, whose real name was Arran'el Iras, before he was king. Perethron means "world builder".Andrassia was divided up into 13 kingdoms, each with a specialty school of magic as its focus. Perethron was only king of one region. There was an Emperor who commissioned Perethron to build the Ark. An Andrassian King is called an Archon. Lantherion was the Archon of Tyrfannon, and the Primus of Necromancy. The Emperor died inside the Ark.
>>20399549>>20399554I wish so hard i had some marketable skill to add to this endeavor.
You deserve a fucking medal, storyteller.
>>20399554I'm actually writing a story myself based on this. I only have the prologue chapter so far. I'm having a little difficulty with where I want it to go. I'm thinking it has to be at least two books - one to tell Perethron's backstory, and the other concerning the PCs encounters with him in the current era.
>>20399577Are you the original storyteller?
>>20399577I'm thinking of making a weekly updated comic. It would switch every once in a while (possibly every week) to the past and the present, telling Perethron's story and the PC's story.Oh the possibilities.
>>20399483>>20399487>>20399493Quoting these screencaps in case anyone here hasn't seen em yet.
I'm not usually one for it but if the storyteller could take up a name or trip it would probably help with questions.
>>20399561So for the purpose of imagery, can you describe what you envision the architectural style inside and outside of the Ark to be?
>>20399612 >>20399587Yes. You can refer to me as Captain Impulse. >>20399561Some more added fluff:In his madness, Perethron began to believe one of the Warforged he created carried the soul of his unborn son, Menelathas. He raises him to be his right hand man and the highest ranking member of his Conclave, other than himself. Menelathas became the First Accolade - one of Perethron's four chief generals. The other three consisted of two other Warforged "survivors" from Andrassia, and the lich I mentioned earlier (the only one to survive the campaign, who is the BBEG of my current campaign).Arran'el had another wife before the one that died on the steps of the Ark. She died during childbirth, and the child was stillborn - both a casualty of the "plague". In all, he lost two wives and two children.
>>20399624Did the PC's ever confront these generals?
>>20399624You say you wrote this at work?What damn job is so boring that you have the time to come up with this?
>>20399624Dammit, forgot the trip. >>20399620I always described it as similar to ancient Greek architecture with Mayan-influenced embellishments (obviously not Mayan specifically, but with runic symbols laid out on sundial-looking decoratives), lots of intertwining lines (not curved, more angular, lots of framing other designs).
>>20399649Is that really your e-mail? I might want to contact you in the future about this story.
>>20399649What were the PC's that were in this adventure? As in race, class, personality, etc.
Has anyone ever done Bogged Down? It was from this edition of Dungeon magazine and it was the first adventure I ever DM'd.It was a long time ago and some of this could be from bad memory but the story went something like this:The PCs have to figure out the backstory as best they can to resolve the adventure. The hook is that there is a mummy killing people on the periphery of the town. It turns out the townsfolk had executed this couple for practicing witchcraft or something. The wife survived having her throat slit and being left for dead. She lives as an insane hermit in the nearby swamp where her husband's body was dumped. The husband became a mummy and was killing townspeople in the swamp.It was a great adventure as it was based off a great and tragic storyline, rather than a standard dungeon crawl. In fact if anyone has a reliable pdf version of Dungeon 091 or just that adventure it would be great to post it.
>>20399660Yes it is.>>20399636Yes. All but the lich were killed by them. One was Perethron's son, killed on the second airship above Merudo by their second PC group.Another was an enchanter/illusionist who manipulated the orcs and drove them to war.The third was a chronomancer, and one of the 13 archons. Chronomancy is not a normal school of magic in D&D/Pathfinder (there are only 8), but I had it written that Andrassia possessed knowledge of other schools, some lost to time, others split up and incorporated into other schools. Chronomancy was a lost art.Now I play by the rule that time is fixed, so if something happened a certain way, it cannot be changed. Also, moving between past, present and future is still a colossal undertaking; most spells involve local manipulation of time, and there is some pseudo-Divination crossover. It was something I wanted to explore as an idea without getting too heavy into it.This chronomancer had displaced herself from the distant past into the present to aid Perethron, but was an unreliable ally. She was never able to solidify her location in time. However, the PCs battle with her made for some interesting side effects, which carried over into the sequel campaign.
>>20399735You should really tell us about that sequel campaign sometime...
Alright, I'm headed to bed. It's been a great night. Hopefully this thread is still up when I wake up.Damn, it's 5:30 AM here, this kept me up way too late...
>>20399683A druid, elementalist master (forget the build archetype). He forgoed Wild Shape in favor of being able to turn into elementals early. Snarky, rough around the edges. Played the angle of not a nature druid, but one who is at one with all the elements, like a spirit caller/wanderer.A wizard, evoker, daughter of a prestigious family of gunsmiths. Primadonna who had everything handed to her. Sent to the mages' guild at a young age. Eventually married the druid.A holy warrior from a nomadic barbarian tribe (cleric, played like a savage wise man/shaman warrior). Abducted at a young age and sold into slavery. Broke free, became a mercenary. Urbanized due to time as a slave.An elf rogue, but one of a special type from another previous campaign whose god stripped them of their immortality for grievous sins. In response, these elves sought to regain their immortality by any means, eventually succumbing to undeath. They basically exist as a strange zombie/vampire hybrid. They must consume blood to live, buy otherwise have zombie like fortitude. They can infect other elves with a bite and are thus shunned by them. Fled to humans lands where there is less stigma.There are more, some less regular players, plus their secondary characters.
>>20399841>>20399841Who piloted the MERCury? Awesome name for the ship, by the way.
>>20399841>An elf rogue, but one of a special type from another previous campaign whose god stripped them of their immortality for grievous sins. In response, these elves sought to regain their immortality by any means, eventually succumbing to undeath. They basically exist as a strange zombie/vampire hybrid. They must consume blood to live, buy otherwise have zombie like fortitude. They can infect other elves with a bite and are thus shunned by them. Fled to humans lands where there is less stigma.mfw
>>20399775I will. I'm still writing it and I'm about 1/4 of the way through DMing it. I just solidified all the details of the plot last week, actually.The gist is the lich wants his phylactery back. Unfortunately, when Perethron defeated and enslaved the lich, he moved the lich's soul from the phylactery and placed it in one of his Warforged; one that he kept at his side at all times, like a pet.During the blitz of Merudo, when Perethron's gunship was destroyed, this Warforged disappeared. The lich couldn't find it (it was warded against divination) and Perethron had bigger concerns.Here's the catch:One of the players in the first campaign lost his character during the blitz. When he rolled up another, he wanted to do something unique and interesting.I allowed him to play a Warforged monk, whose memory was damaged during an explosion and washed ashore in Merudo after the blitz...
>>20399860Primarily, the elf rogue was the tinker/engineer, and handled most everything regarding it. They also had an NPC pilot, ex-sailor that they called "Scruffy" (I'd have to look up his name).Seriously, the list of NPCs they befriended, recruited or worked with during the course of it all is staggering.Funny thing is, I wanted to write a completely different campaign, but they started to get antsy after the last one ended. I decided to make up a "quick" sequel one in the Merudo region (the Myddlaen) since I didn't have to invent a whole new cast. This would in theory be low impact, so I could write the other campaign while running this one.Yeah...six months later, here I am....
this whole thread ...
>>20399895Sequel campaign continued...So its two years later. The MERCs now answer directly to the queen. They have become like a special operations group that do missions outside normal military channels. The PCs are new recruits, and get to interact with their old characters a bit (DM controlled with some player input).New recruits get loaned out to the navy to assist with some search and rescue operations. During the course of their tour of duty, they eventually stumble upon the wreckage of a Meridian ship. They find the captain's log in the debris and learn that it was to rendezvous with a ship from a neighboring kingdom and deliver some sort of confidential cargo. The pirates intercepted it, stole the cargo (unaware of its signifigance) and disappeared, but left the ship crippled. When the rendezvous ship arrived later and found the crippled Meridian ship, they slaughtered the crew and scuttled it to cover up their tracks.
>>20400011Impulse here. Driving home from work. I will be back on in a little bit.
>>20400029>>20400029Bumping as my duty to Cpt impule as he drives home.
DM (me): A short gurgle escapes from the warlord's throat. He tries to touch the arrow lodged in his neck, falls over and passes on.Fighter: Great, I loot him.DM: As you remove his armor you discover a note under one of his shoulder plates, lodged between the steel and his fur.Ranger: Fur? What? What race is the warlord?DM: Nature check.Ranger: ... Okay (passes it) Is he a shifter? A werewolf?DM: You realise that the warlord is not humanoid. He is a bear.Mage: What?DM: In fact, the warlord's retinue are all bears as well.All: What.*I refuse to elaborate, so they go to the nearest city to sell their stuff and stop at an inn for the night*DM: The evening seems to be a regular one. The innkeeper serves his regulars at the bar, several groups of people sit at the various tables. Most enjoy their drinks in silence, with only a few patrons conversing.Rogue: I try to listen in, see what's the talk of the town.DM: Streetwise check.Rogue: *nat 20*DM: You realise they are not talking. They are growling.Ranger: Wait, more bears?DM: Nature check.Ranger: Oh for fucks sake *passes*DM: You come to the realisation that aside from you there are only bears in the inn.Rogue: Are they aggressive? Looking at us?DM: No.Fighter: I've had enough. I slam my beer and-DM: Nature check.Fighter: What? Untrained?DM: Nature check. Do it.Fighter: Alright... *rolls*DM: You realise you are not drinking beer. You got a pint of mead.Mage: What the shit.
I'm trying to inject a good plot into my current campaign. Thus far the players have really only done random quests. I've started with a new arc, but am unsure of how to continue: When travelling from one city to another, the PC's observed a meteorite falling from the sky, with a bunch of fragments seperating from the whole. They found one, brought it to the city and had it stolen by a Faceless Stalker masquerading as a friendly Cleric. At present the city is plunging into madness and the PC's are after the fragment.
>>20400231This went on for several sessions, the players eventually uncovering the scheme of a bear-lich (which the players immediately took to call the bich) to turn everyone into bears. It did not work on the players because they were in a magically shielded area. The players worked together with an "insane" stonemason turned prisoner for his "crazy ranting" (he had avoided the bearification as well) to destroy the Bich, who had a rather powerful phylactery in the shape of the bearrasque rampaging through a city.DM: You stand victorious, the corpse of the monster still in the city square. You see several people stumbling out of their houses as if they all have terrible hangovers, but all remembering what had happened. The city guard approaches you to figure out what had happened.Rogue: I explain to them what had happened.Ranger: I talk to the people to explain the dead monster.DM: They believe your story and you are hailed as heroes, the people carrying you through the streets, the people reflected in the few unbroken windows (the main city in question was famed for its intricate glass work on buildings with wealthier owners), and you will be remembered as heroes for centuries to come.Ranger: Alright, that was a fun story-DM: Perception check.Ranger: What?Mage: Oh no.Ranger: All right... *nat 1*DM: You see yourselves reflected in the glass, bloodied and beaten, but victorious. *grins, gathers notes and closes screen*
>>20400231>>20400316LOL SO RADNUM
>>20400192>>20400029Bumping again for the ever interesting Sir Impulse
We all played Evil characters, fucked up the world, got involved in a god war, killed good gods, now I run the sequel. Also played a Dwarf with a mystical dick necklace.
>>20399162>And by make friends I mean whoop assSo they went Nanoha? Your campaign is glorious and you should feel righteously epic.I have one question...Can you info dump?
Know what sucks raw ass.Now i wont be able to think of any unique story elements without this story popping into my head and corrupting me.DAMN YOU CAPTAIN IMPULSE.DAMN YOOOUUUUUUUU~
>>20400670Sorry for the delay. Unexpected spousal interference. ;)I also need to be heading to bed since I have to be at work again tonight. I'll look for this thread and continue if its still alive.Thanks again for listening all, and all the positive feedback.
Typing up mines right now, brace yourselves.
>>20401002Thanks boss.Please tell the parts you cut out, since you detailed the general story.
I DM'd a game that was basically STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, but with magic and demons. In this setting, the entire world had suffered a magical catastrophe that had left all but a single island left above water, drowning the rest of the world. In the centre of this land was a place called The Zone, which was said to whisper in the minds of men in the night. It drew people in, tempted them deeper and deeper inside, into the thick fog that men never returned from. Every time a man was claimed by the Zone, it grew a little more. There were entire towns inside the Zone, most notably the Hub, where magicians who were exiled after the apocalypse went. They maintained a relative safe zone away from the dangers of the Zone. This is where Exorcists gathered, where men traded deadly artefacts and other pieces of the old world trapped in the Zone.You have to understand: the Zone is alive. It's always shifting. Walking for miles in one direction might bring you back to where you started, or it might lead you down a trap. To travel within the Zone, you must hold that place in your mind as you walk. This means that people can only travel to places they know about. Therefore, old maps and knowledge of the world before the Zone claimed it is utterly invaluable.
>>20401228The place is also overrun with demons, which will tempt and trick players with promises of the one thing they desire the most. Hordes of men who have been claimed by the Zone still roam it as Constructs, twisted representations of what they wished for in life. The Zone often grants your wishes a bit too literally. At the Zone's heart lies something terrible, but nobody has ever succeeded in getting there. One man was there when it all began, and painted it. The painting is locked up deep within the Mage's quarters in the Hub, far from prying eyes. Men have lost their mind looking upon it. That's how deadly it is. Anyway, the scene is set: here's what happened to my players.
>>20401232I made them pick a Vice and an ultimate goal that they wanted to achieve. Money and wealth were common, but the most interesting ones were the Sheriff who wanted a place to bring the law to, since he had no town of his own. The Zone was the ultimate challenge. There was an investigator trying to track down a missing person, who ultimately sought answers to the larger question: what exactly IS the Zone? There was our ex-philanderer turned Monk, who had a soft spot for pretty girls and was quietly very determined to find peace and redemption in the Zone. Then there was the wealthy outcast son, who was travelling in search of his own riches and would stop at nothing to get money. Then there was our Barbarian Queen, head of a small clan in the frozen north, who carried a battleaxe the size of herself and was trying to find her own husband, the King of their small clan, who was one of the few men to ever escape the Zone. People do not escape the Zone easily. Vices were things like a vengeful spirit, a darker propensity for torture in search of answers, and a disregard for the wellbeing of others in pursuit of true justice, and so on. The adventure began with them heading to a small town on the outskirts of the Zone for their own seperate reasons. They ended up in the same inn that night, and saw that most of the town had been evacuated as the Zone slowly encroached on it's limits. Whatever they were all seeking, hell came to the town that night.
>>20401237In the middle of the night, somebody within the Zone, a renowned warlord called The Fury, slaughtered a hundred captives to rapidly expand the Zone, consuming the town. They all woke up to find the place warped and twisted, and under attack. There was a girl being kept in the basement of the Inn called Elise, a magically sensitive girl who had been held by the bandits due to her ability to navigate the Zone in relative safety. She was like a human compass. The barman was paid a great deal of money to hold her until The Fury could come to collect her. Regretting his actions, he implores our group to defend her, and so they barricade themselves, with Elise, in the church. The Fury eventually breaks the door down and marches in. Our monk, who up until this point had been very quiet and reserved, body slams the Fury and gets into a fist fight, rolling on the ground with him. A bloody struggle ensued, and the other characters managed to get the door shut and keep his men out. The Fury tore our Monk's ear off and it took the investigator diving on him with two daggers to eventually subdue him, the battle only ending when the Sheriff shot the chandelier chain with his crossbow and dropped it on the Fury.
They let the doors open and showed the bandits their leaders head, and they agreed to back off. After much deliberation and a quest to get the Monk some healing herbs (the Fury wore poisoned gaunlets) and the Barman being secretly devoured by a Changeling when nobody was watching and trying to eat the Queen, they set off with Elise to find the Hub, a place where they would be relatively safe. To get there, they headed through the underground passage. Unbeknownst to them, the Bandits had approached the young outcast who sought his own riches whilst they slept. They offered him enough money to satisfy his goals if he ensured they took the underground passage, where the Bandits would ambush the group and take the girl. He agreed. This was all done OOC with written notes that nobody could see.
>>20401249So they descended into the dark tunnels and found themselves walking the same set of stairs over and over. As they descended into the depths, they heard human cries for help, getting louder and louder, until at the bottom they found a scarecrow with a smiley face stapled onto it's head, limp at the bottom. They left, uneasy, and found that whilst they had descended over 200 steps, they climbed up only 5 and found themselves back in the tunnels. There was a harsh breeze and their torches flickered. They heard a shuffling. When they turned around, the scarecrow was behind them atop the stairs, limp and smiling. They made the light = safety connection and the Mage kept a constant ball of light around them. Something followed them down the tunnels, always staying in the darkness where they couldn't see it. Then the Bandits struck. They surrounded the group and demanded the girl. She begged them to protect her. Something shuffled in the darkness. The young outcast, weighing up the cost of achieving his goals, looked at the desperate girl and made the decision. His first move was to swing the sack of coin at the leading bandit, sparking a massive battle. In the midst of the battle, Elise, herself a powerful Mage, tried to keep the light field up so that they were safe from demons.
>>20401257Someone got an arrow off and it hit her in the shoulder. In pain, the light field dropped, and something moved. When she got it back on, the scarecrow was draped over the sheriff's shoulders and he is freaking out. With a sudden realisation of how powerful a weapon this thing is, the Mage shouts for him to throw it at the bandits and, as he does, he summons the darkness to shroud them and extinguish their lights. There are a few sickening snaps and the bandits scream and scatter as a demon tears them to pieces in the darkness. Our heroes run for the exit and finally make it into daylight, emerging in view of The Hub, where they are quickly checked out by Mages and ushered inside. The game settled for a while there as they took on some quests, finding artefacts and taking down demons with the help of the Exorcists. One notable occasion was when the Queen found her missing husband in captivity, held by Exorcists (basically demon-battling war-priests). He was possessed, and when she found him he had gnawed most of his fingers away and was daubing the walls with her name.
>>20401257They let her in to see him one last time, 4 men with crossbows trained on him just in case. She's a tough bitch, this Barbarian, but when she sees her lover in his own shit and blood, murmuring her name, his mind completely lost, she nearly breaks down. He manages to whisper a last message to her, recognising her somewhat, before rage overcomes him and he flies at her. Four crossbow bolts shatter his skull and the Barbarian Queen rages. First time a player has nearly cried OOC. She demands a duel with the Exorcist who ordered the crossbowmen to fire, for the honour of her dead husband. He agrees and they battle outside the Hub, a brutal one on one battle that happened to the IRL Skyrim Theme, which then became her motif and was played whenever she raged in battle. Elise and the Monk fell in love, and he had to make the heartbreaking decision to let her leave. She escaped the Zone in one piece, since nothing had ever kept her there with hidden desires. She was forced to stay, and so was free to leave. He set her free, despite how useful she could have been. Another emotional moment. The players made connections and friends within the Hub, and finally the endgame began.
>>20401272Demons and constructs were growing in number and their attacks were becoming more frequent. The players tracked the source of the Zone's anger to a place called the Black Monastery, where a powerful mage had enthralled legions of slaves and men over the ages. The Zone, you see, is also out of time with the rest of the world. Something the sun won't set for days at a time. Sometimes there are three suns. Sometimes, the grass is long and lush, and sometimes it is dead and arid. 'The Zone is fucked' became a bit of a campaign catchphrase. At the Black Monastery, they observed the Black Mage harness a spell that cut the throat of every enthralled slave in his audience as he gave a black oratory, and the blood drained from their bodies and cast him in a vast cloak which he then absorbed into a blade that he held. Having seen enough, the players charged.
>>20401279After a tough battle, during which they realised that the blood of all these people was what was powering him, we had a bit of a revelation. He dropped his mask to speak to his brother – yes, his brother. The young outcast, who had by this stage given up ever having his riches and would settle for escaping the Zone, found his brother in the Zone, a Black Mage of horrendous power. The characters backstory, which nobody had bothered to remember, was that he had been the lesser brother, and that when his father had died he had left his fortune to the older brother. Now they were facing off once more, and at the climax of the battle the younger brother threw out something he'd carried in his inventory since Day 1: his father's ring. “He may have left you his fortune, but he left me his love.” Momentarily undone, the Mage stopped for a moment. His senses seemed to return to him, and in that moment the Barbarian and Sheriff nodded to each other. The sheriff dropped to his knees and the Barbarian used him like a springboard, launching herself at the Black Mage and cleaving his head clean off.
>>20401279They fled the scene as the Mage's death heralded the arrival of the Demon he served, which they wouldn't stand a chance against, and they returned to the Hub only to find it under attack by hordes of Constructs. Something was happening – the Zone was angry. After fighting their way inside and aiding in the first wave of the Siege of the Hub, the player's had to make a decision. The Mages and Exorcists took them into their inner circle and showed them the truth of the Zone; the painting. The Zone is chaos. Pure chaos. The magical apocalypse all those years ago had shattered the world and allowed in demons that broke the laws of this universe just by existing. The Zone doesn't make sense and it doesn't follow rules – that's why nobody can ever go to the centre of it, because they expect it to make sense. To reach the centre of the Zone, you have to truly lose your mind.
>>20401296Insanity is something that has threatened the characters since they entered the Zone. They have to roll Willpower every time they encounter demons, and every time they lose they lose a point, meaning the next rolls are harder and harder. Losing willpower also earns you a little note from the DM that I can activate at any time. For some of them, it's the overwhelming desire to bite someone, or to whisper things in the night, to steal things and misplace them, or to shatter anything nearby made of glass. It gets them all on edge and keeps them from trusting each other too much. The characters had to choose: with the Zone trying it's best to destroy the Hub, they could either let one of their number lose their mind permanently to lead them through to the centre of the Zone and try to destroy the demons there, or they could stay and fight, and assuming that they won the Battle of the Hub they could then take the time to use a powerful artefact that would let one of them temporarily lose their mind and lead them there, before regaining their sanity to face down the demons.
>>20401296They chose to fight, and the Exorcists revealed their Nuclear-Weapon. In this setting, Demons can only be harmed once they are weakened, and to weaken them you have to hit them with Patronus-styled spells of pure positivity and faith, the opposite emotion of what the demon represents. A fear demon would be beaten by a huge display of bravery, for instance. Doing so takes a lot of Willpower. The Exorcists, however, being a sect of secretive battle-priests, had kept a sacred artefact beneath the Hub since it's construction that grew in power every time a positive emotion was felt, and held it's power inside itself. Every time a weary traveller made it home, every time a cold pint sated the thirst of a warrior, every time a man and woman went to bed together, every time a laugh was heard, was powering a super-fuck-you-demons-bomb that they were saving for the End of Days. The End of Days was upon them.
>>20401310The Demons launched their final assault on the Hub, and on our second last session they fought a tooth and nail battle for the Hub. Waves of constructs descended upon the poorly armed defenders, who fought with fists, clubs and teeth against creatures who represented every vice and failure in the heart of men. They were losing. Our Mage, pained at the loss of his love, charged a powerful spell for almost eight turns (and added dice to it every time). When he finally unleashed it, the wave of decay wiped out almost forty of his enemies.Still, it wasn't enough.Back to back, the Barbarian, Sheriff and Investigator cut down swathes of enemies. They were struggling not to trip on the corpses of the invaders.Still, it wasn't enough.The young outcast stood atop piles of bodies and delivered a heart-pounding speech out of character that inspired the defenders to fight to their last. Still, it wasn't enough. As our heroes were whittled down by sheer attrition, and the toll began to set in, they saw the futility of their battle. They were literally fighting their own demons.
>>20401320After they fended off a horrifiyng attack by a golem made up of Autumn-Mages and several demons, they had a brief respite. Only a small contingent of dedicated defenders stood behind the barrier, shaking and desperate. Then they heard the footsteps. Someone was coming. A naked man, well built and exquisite in his features, walked in with a face mask much like the ones worn by Greek theatre actors – think the happy/sad face often seen in theatres. He is one of the first demons, the Truth. To gaze into his eyes is to see the truth of the Universe, an assault on the rational mind that breaks men instantly. He offers them the chance to be heroes, and to look into his eyes. If they can withstand the mental destruction that it holds, then he will leave them be. Of course, you should never trust a demon. Several defenders try, and are left weeping softly on the floor in the foetal position, babbling. Before the Barbarian charges forward to try and fight the demon hand to hand, the Investigator steps forward. Now remember earlier when I menionted that a Demon can be defeated by blasting it with a strong enough display of the opposite emotion? Well, the Investigator's Vice was always a dire need for answers. She needs to know the truth, and will stop at nothing to get to it, often harming others who get in her way.
>>20401320She steps forward, and the Truth senses the need deep within her to know what lies behind his mask. She closes her eyes as he takes his mask off, and he asks her to look into his eyes, to know the truth once and for all, to know the answer to every case she couldnt solve, to know the truth of the Zone, of the Universe, of everything...She takes a deep breath, and says no.She gives it all up. She accepts that there are things she will never know the answer to. In doing so, the sudden blast of the opposite-emotion that the Truth represents weakens him enough that he stumbles back, and his honour guard of Constructs and Golems made of flesh and bone and broken dreams charge in to save him. It's at that moment that the young outcast, the socialite who has given up his desire of ever having a fortune, surfs the Positivity-Bomb through the crowd, carried in a chest by six exorcists, and screams his defiance at the demons before detonating the bomb.The Hub is bathed in a sea of happy memories and nostalgia, scents and feelings of times long past, the perfume of their mothers and the softness of their own beds. It destroys the attacking demons. Still, it isn't enough.Having won the battle, but spent their Ace-in-the-Hole, the Mages and Exorcists are unsure if they can even assault the centre of the Zone. Whatever is there is too powerful, they reason, for all but their most dedicated warriors. They put together a strike team, whilst the others stay to defend the Hub from the next wave of Demons.
>>20401327Then, our Monk/Mage gets a letter. A letter from the future. Flown to him on magical winds of desire and love, it's from Elise. Outside the Zone, time is going differently. It's the future, and the Zone has expanded to the edges of the island's coast. There are only a handful of survivors, and Elise knows that she is going to die.She knows that by the time the letter reaches her lover, she will be dead.But he has a chance. A chance to change the future. They are in the past, in a time before the Zone consumes the land, and they can still stop it. She'll see him in another life, she tells him, in a universe where he saves her.
>>20401331As if they needed any more motivation, the heroes take the artefact and the Investigator let's herself go insane. She opens a door in thin air, and skips through it whistling, descending an invisible staircase of her own childhood memories to a narrow bridge of rock suspended over a sea of boiling lava in which a million tortured souls scream for mercy.In the distance is a small platform, and above it is a flaming curtain of molten bone marrow and nerves dangling like wires on the puppet that hangs from them, a giant twisted demon that looks like two unborn fetuses mashed together forcefully.The two demons at the centre of the Zone.Desire, and Despair are their names. One of them lures men into their realm. The other turns their desires into despair and together they have fed for aeons, bloated by the offerings that Man brings them. Our heroes charge down the bridge, and our Investigator gets her sanity back as giant human hands erupt from the lava and pull the rest of the strike force in, screaming. They barely make it to the platform to face the demon, and they know what they have to do.
>>20401340>>20401331>>20401327>>20401324>>20401320>>20401310>>20401307>>20401296>>20401289>>20401279>>20401272>>20401263>>20401257>>20401249>>20401243>>20401237>>20401232>>20401228I'll let everyone catch up if anybody wants to read all that haha.
>>20401375FINISH THE STORY GARKAHDFAWRG
>>20401375>>20401446As legions of demons descend upon them, they are given a choice by both demons. Written on a piece of paper so that no player is influenced by each other, they must make a choice. One choice is leave the Zone alive, their desires and wishes granted. The Barbarian will have her husband back, and a family. One will have his riches given to him, the Sheriff will have his deputy, the Investigator and the Monk will finally know peace from their own demons and they all live happily ever after.Or they give up their desires and bravely face the fate that is crashing down around them. They can destroy the Zone, and any chance they'd ever have of having the things they want the most.
>>20401482Two of them made a deal. The Barbarian Queen and the Investigator, both played by women, made the deal. You never trust a demon. As the demons reached for their souls, to rip the sated Desire out of them and twist it into Despair, the men of the group made their choice.They said no. They chose to spit in the face of Desire and Despair and gave up the things that they wanted the most in life if it meant saving their friends, the world, and in some cases their lovers. The overwhelming force of Anti-Desite and Anti-Despair shocked the demons into vulnerability, and together the warriors took them down. For good.
>>20401488They were blinded by a bright light and woke up where they started the entire campaign – in a carriage on the way to that Village. Except that they were going there for different reasons. The Sheriff was going there to take a post with the local law enforcement with his deputy, the Investigator. The Monk was going to see Elise, his lover, and together they would build a house. The Barbarian Queen was returning to her people, and to her King, who she missed so dearly on these diplomatic missions. One of them was going to work that day, head of his father's company, and proud to have his picture on his wall. They won. We all did a bow at the end of the campaign. If any of them are reading this they'll know it straight away, I know 2 of you frequent /tg/.
>>20401495Never explained why Elise could navigate?
bump
>>20401523I left a lot out. Elise had a kind of sixth sense of anomalies and tended to know when shit was about to get real. A lot of people used to have it, but people with the talent died off after the apocalypse when Mages became outcasts and were generally executed or sent into the Zone.
>>20401584So the real lesson here:Women almost doomed the world
screencappedlet's see if i made it too big and have to split it into parts
>slaves rowing on a boat>overthrow the slavemasters and run ashore>attacked by evil gummy bears>realize the entire island is made of candy and candy creatures>slaughter all the inhabitants of Candyland and conquer all in the name of the Candy King (who was actually a dragon demigod imprisoned on the island)Best adventure ever. Went from 1-10, took over a year and at least 30 sessions
>>20396689>band of adventurers happen upon an old beggar who has been beaten bloody by bandits and left for dead>he is protected by his old faithful dog>my adventurers beat and raped the dog and made the beggar watch before slitting his throat>asked them why...they said "just for a laugh"or>goblin searching through rubble to find gold>female elf wizard does a sexy striptease>while goblin is wanking himself off, cleric dwarf creeps up behind and bashes his brains out with his warhammer....sigh, my gaming group....
>Ark of Andrassia>mfw>but also tfw I will never do something as amazing as this
I'm glad I clicked this thread in the catalog.Fucking filled with "Glorious".Archives are in order.
best thread
The very best
>>20401108>>20401002>Thanks boss.>Please tell the parts you cut out, since you detailed the general story.Impulse here.Alright, let's see, where did I leave off.Okay, so, sequel campaign. The only bad guy survivor is the lich, and he wants his phylactery back. Problem is, before his death, Perethron bound it to a Warforged that he paraded around like a pet or trophy. The warforged was lost when the PCs blew up one of Perethron's gunships during the blitz of Merudo. One of my player's PCs died during the blitz. He wantes a new character,something unique. I allowe him the option to play a Warforged, and he did. He played one that washed ashore after the blitz, with no memory of its previous loyalties.Unbeknownst to the PC, this was the lich's walking phylactery. The accident, plus the lich's soul, gave the previously mindless golem (which he called C.I.D.) sentience.Fast forward to two years later, after Perethron's campaign. The Ark is gone. All of the remaining magic engines are spent or dying out. Merudo begins the rebuilding process.The lich, Zormodoth, realizes he has a problem, and makes his move.
>>20406841Most of the warforged were destroyed during Merudo's counterattack, but some, including C.I.D., survived. The problem is, with the magic engines gone or dying out, the warforged are basically dying as well. Zormodoth doesn't know where his phylactery/warforged is, and begins to panic.During the previous campaign, after the PCs spoke with Lantherion's "dream" and shut down the magic engine that was creating all the undead, the undead elf rogue PC, Drake, returned to Merudo and obtained a land grant from the queen for the region around the ruins of Lantherion's school; the Haunted Lands as they were called. The necromantic aura was benificial to him, after all. Well, Zormodoth liked it too. After being released from Perethron's control, he moved there to set up a base of operations. It was already crawling with undead...what better place?Drake encounters Zormodoth. A battle ensues, but Zormodoth has the upper hand. He seizes total control of the "lesser" undead Drake, and makes him his unwilling minion.How convenient.
>>20406978Zormodoth, with Drake in tow, travels south to the neighboring kingdom of Cantalanna (where he was once a court wizard) and, along with Drake and his newfound undead host, stages a coup and overthrows the ruling power. Rather than assume direct control, he allows the monarchy to remain in power as his puppets, using hostages and threats of force. He then arranges for a diplomatic summit between Merudo and Cantalanna to take place, to discuss peace in the post-Perethron era.Zormodoth, using Drake as a means to soothe any fears, draws the queen out of Merudo. When she arrives in Cantalanna, Drake gets close enough to kill her personal guard and kidnap her. Zormodoth has the Cantalannians take the blame for the kidnapping.A ransom message is sent to the Meridian palace: her majesty, in exchange for CID. No questions, no negotiation. Send him or she dies, and do so in secret - if the MERCs become involved, she dies.
This is where the sequel campaign starts. The PCs are new MERC recruits, fresh meat. The MERCs are unaware of anything bad happening, so its business as usual. The PCs get loaned out to the navy to work as marines and assist with some search and rescue operations. There's been a lot of pirate activity since those privateers that were working with Perethron became "freelance" again, and the navy needs more muscle.(repeated from earlier) During the course of their tour of duty, they eventually stumble upon the wreckage of a Meridian ship. They find the captain's log in the debris and learn that it was to rendezvous with a ship from a Cantalanna and deliver some sort of confidential cargo. However, pirates got to it first. The pirates intercepted it, stole the cargo (unaware of its signifigance) and disappeared, but left the ship crippled. When the Cantalannian ship arrived later and found the crippled Meridian ship, they slaughtered the crew and scuttled it to cover up their tracks.They have no idea, but you can guess what that cargo is - CID.
>>20407384The PCs aren't much farther than this at this point. They went to a notorious pirate city to try and track down the ship that stole the secret cargo. After much shenanigannery, they have found out where the pirate's lair is. They are headed there to confront them and recover the cargo. When they discover it is CID, they will become instantly curious as to why he was being shipped to another country.Their plan at present is to return to Merudo with the cargo and question some high-ups exactly WTF is going on. Unfortunately, they don't have any idea how much worse they (and the pirates) have made the situation.After that, they still won't know that Drake or Zormodoth is involved. I'm going to let them decide how they want to handle things from there.I'm debating having Zormodoth start harassing Meridian settlements with undead to draw their attention elsewhere. The PCs will likely head to Cantalanna at some point as well, to question the nobility there.One thing is for sure, and that is they will have to fight Drake at some point, hopefully sparing him and breaking Zormodoth's control.
The Ark of AndrassiaOrThe Greatest Story Ever Told>but seriously.. you should get a book deal
This thread. This fucking thread. This is the thread by which all others shall be judged. Brother Captain Impulse, the Emperor smiles upon you this day.
Bumping because everyone on /tg/ needs to read this thread.
Bumpity bump
>>20409729Captain Impulse here.Someone asked that I keep people updated as the sequel campaign continued, but the post appears lost after 4chan shit itself last night. I'll post what I was writing in case people are still interested.So, the PCs are in this town that used to be a pirate haven called Corona, in the previous campaign. In the years since, the Meridian naval admiral, Nathaniel Bishop, led a massive assault on the city, in an attempt to assert control over the Gunpowder Gauntlet. The pirates had suffered heavy losses defending Perethron's isle. It was now or never.Bishop was a friend to the PCs, a cool bro that they helped rise to Admiral, and they nicknamed "Bishop the Crippler" because he had an uncanny knack for crippling enemy vessels in my homebrew naval combat system. To put it simply, Bishop was talented. Clever. The battle for Corona went favorably, and they captured the city six months after Perethron's fall. The city was renamed "Bishop's Gambit".
>>20410962After discovering the wreckage of the Meridian naval ship and the theft of its secret cargo, the PCs set sail to Bishop's Gambit. Thanks to the logbook they found, they had a ship name, The Peregrine, and the captain of their ship was familiar with it and the madwoman at its helm: Carmilla de Falco.The Peregrine has a reputation for speed and secrecy, and Carmilla is known for being cruel, cunning and street-rat crazy. They arrived in Bishop's Gambit, hoping to find Carmilla, or at least some clues as to where here hideout might be.Bishop's Gambit isn't as conquered as the Meridians would like to believe. Though the Sovereign Legion (Merudo's military) has a presence there and is attempting to curb its chaotic and violent nature, the locals are resisting. The end result is a city divided by two factions; a powder keg ready to blow. Tensions are high on both sides, and threaten to explode in to all out anarchy at any moment.
>>20410978The PCs speak with the Magistrate and try to find out what they can about de Falco. No one knows where her lair is, but there are supposedly some ex-crew/mutineers in Bishop's Gambit who bailed and fled from Carmilla when things got too crazy for them to handle. Supposedly Carmilla is out for blood and wants them dead, so they can't reveal her secrets to anyone. These pirates are staying low because they are wanted by the law and by Carmilla. The PCs need to track them down.They start canvassing the town, greasing some palms with coin and conversation, trying to track these guys down. They eventually learn that one of them apparently likes to watch the public executions that happen weekly in one of the city's wards.They scope out the place in advance, make a plan. The day arrives. They watch as the guy and his posse arrive and take positions to watch the executions. They begin to approach cautiously, stealthily.A shot rings out. The target slumps to thr ground, his head blown wide open.Sniper.PCs scramble, looking for the shooter. One of them spots him with a ridiculous roll. They give chase; he has a head start, cover, and terrain advantage. He breaks line of sight and loses them in the crowd.The PCs are angry. Who the hell was that?
>>20410999Carmilla apparently hired an assassin to hunt down her ex crewmembers. Now one is gone, only two left. They resume their search, but also try to find out more about this sniper.They learn that the assassin may be someone called "The Guttersnipe", a notorious but infrequent assassin who is very deadly, but not exactly prolific.More investigation turns up rumors about the second crewmember, a Rakasta (cat person race I lifted from an old Sierra game and put in my world; not furries, I hate that shit) who knows he is wanted by the law and being hunted by an assassin. Apparently he is in hiding and has hired a courier to acquire some supplies to help make a disguise so he can escape the city via the front gates (which are guarded).There are a lot of Rakasta in this city (the central pavillion market is ironically and mockingly called "The Dog Run" because its filled with Rakasta merchants). The Rakasta pirate, Kesselatta, is banking on his disguise and the human perception that "all Rakasta look the same" other than their fur colors and markings that he can skip town without too much trouble.
>>20411015 They find the courier and tail him from the shadows, eventually cornering him and forcing him to take them to Kesselatta's hideout. They find the Rakasta and cut off his escape routes, and force him to talk. He confesses he knows the lair but is basicall scared shitless, and just wants to flee town. He tells them he will reveal Carmilla's lair if they can smuggle him out of town.No deal, the PCs say, because they're afraid he'll get picked off before he can reveal. They compromise - Kesselatta will write down the location and either give it to them if he escapes, or they can take it off his body if he dies.Deal.Here's the funny part: I ask the PCs if any of them have paper/parchment and/or a writing utensil.They check their character sheets...not a single one of them. Kesselatta has few possessions, and a pen is not among them.Crap. Well, the PCs decide they have to try anyway. They go ahead of Kesselatta and lead him out the exit of his lair (a narrow tunnel they have to crawl through).The Guttersnipe has no idea where these sailors are, BTW. The first guy had a traceable pattern, which made him easy to locate. Kesselatta, he had no idea. But he saw the PCs chase him after he killed the first guy. He marked one PC and has been tailing them ever since, hoping they would lead him to his next target.They did, and now they're leading him down a narrow tunnel. Like shooting fish in a barrel.Kesselatta emerges last...and falls moments later.
>>20411024The PCs spotted him again, amazingly, and pursued, even managed to stab him once before he basically out-parkoured them and got away again.At this point, they're livid, and know they're being followed. With only one guy left, they need a new plan, because they only have one chance left. They don't know where this third guy, Arlokh, is hiding, but they figure he shouldn't be too hard to find: apparently he's a 9 foot tall half-ogre with one eye. Some start scouring the city, while others try to come up with a plan to keep him alive. They are desperate at this point; one of them even went so far as to buy a cast iron pot to throw over his head when they find him. Also, they made sure to buy paper and pens. ;)They learn that Arlokh was hired by a merchant to protect his caravan; a friend of his told him that it was a good idea to skip town for a while, to avoid being picked off. They had actually learned this is a few days before Kesselatta's assassination, but Arlokh wasn't due to be back for a week or so at that time.They thought about waiting for him at the city gates, to try and intercept him when he returned, but they assumed the Guttersnipe was probably still tailing them to find his last target. They decided they would try and sew some disinformation about the ogre's location, while also trying to discover the true identity of this mysterious sniper.
I see you're able to give much more detail this time around due to its currency.Approval!
>>20411112After a lot more research and investigation, that begin to piece together a little bit about the Guttersnipe. Apparently he was only known for a dozen or so hits, had only been active for 3 or 4 years, and seemed to have a grudge against people involved in the slave trade, for which the city of Corona/Bishop's Gambit was known for. They we're not sure what to make of this information, but it gave them something at least.The PCs spread some disinformation around the city, then set a trap for the sniper at a pub that the ogre was known to spend a lot of his free time. They scouted out the best sniping positions, then did whatever they could to make it more difficult for the sniper. One example: they send anonymous tips to the guards that there would be trouble in some of these locations, so that the guards with increase their presence there, making it hard for the sniper to operate in secret.While they were setting up, one of the PCs stumbled into Arlokh, who had just returned to town, and was on his way to his favorite pub. They had to act fast.
>>20411207They met with Arlokh and his posse almost as soon as he arrived at the pub. They took precautions to block all lines of sight: closing shutters, blocking windows with blankets, even using their own bodies as shields, because it was apparent the sniper was not interested in killing them...at least not yet. They warned the ogre that he was immediate danger; Arlokh said he was aware of the danger, but seemed unconcerned, as if was invincible. They bantered back and forth for a bit, trying to convince Arlokh to work with them and give them the information they needed, since he no longer had any loyalty to Carmilla. He tried to extort them for money, but they kept pressing on that he was surely about to die at any moment. They managed to convince him of the seriousness of the threat, and he agreed to tell them because they vowed to take out Carmilla. One of the PCs then caught suspicious movement out of the corner of his eye. He called out in alarm...
First time I DM'd, had one month prep time when I was starting studies at a college in a distant new town.Had 14 players divided into two groups, made a D&D scale miniature based on each of their characters (by god was that a rush), and guided players into the wonderful world of roleplaying games.We got a few sessions in, players were doing all kinds of silly stuff while the world remained a mixture between Witcher, Warcraft and D&D. Fantastic fantasy with some darker elements.Cont.
>>20397168that sounds a LOT like azure dreams.
>>20411322One of Arlokh's posse took the bullet instead. The PCs turned around and spotted the sniper; it was much closer than he had ever been before. They're precautions had forced him to close the distance. People in the pub scrambled. The PCs pressed through the panicked crowd; Arlokh carved his way through instead, cutting wide swaths with his greatclub.They cornered the sniper in a nearby building. They battled; the Guttersnipe was as formidable an opponent at close range has he was at long range. For a time, he fended off the PCs attacks while staying out of Arlokh's deadly range, peppering him with pistol fire. The ogre was in bad shape. Then the PCs got smart: they manage to force the sniper in to Arlokh's range, and the ogre laid him out in a single strike (combined with the hits the PCs had been able to land).He may have been clobbered, but the Guttersnipe was not completely out yet. He played opossum until Arlokh got close, then quick drew a pistol and aimed it......One of the PCs is a swashbuckler with lots of disarm feats, and she was ready for him. The gun fired, but her disarm redirected the bullet. It still hit Arlokh, but the damage was mitigated. The ogre collapsed, bloodied but still alive. The PCs descended on the Guttersnipe and overwhelmed him, knocking him unconscious. They summoned the guards and had both the assassin and the ogre taken into custody.
>>20411373>Players decide not to buy any supplies at starting town>Decide not to take medical supplies from field medic OFFERING her assistance, warning about orcish hordes that have overrun the outlying settlements>Run into a ransacked town with former guards skewered on the ramparts as a warning shouting their challenge, but nobody answer>ambush the ambusher but get ambushed again by orcs and goblins, >one player gets a spear through his groin, another an arron into their eye, a third gets their arm lopped off... yeah, everyone of them in both groups got a little banged up. >Four of them rolled clerics / paladins, but as I told the players to go through the party and divide their healing abilities equally (Lay on hands, cure light wounds etc) those with healing abilities decide "me first, everyone else sometime.">Several poor decisions (drinking from town well which had a corpse floating in it), dozens of bad fortitude rolls and a night of pain, blood loss and diseased ridden nightmares later>Parties set out weakened, run into orcs and goblins again, all get turned into pincushions.>Players say game sucks and it's too unforgiving>They all leave, start shunning me like I did something terrible to themAnd that was only my first ever D&D game aswell.
>>20411407Can't say I know what that is, unfortunately. >>20411414Well, that's all for now. I need to go to bed, because I work night shift. Perhaps tonight when I am at work, if I have some time, I will write more. Thanks again for listening everyone. I hope it has been entertaining. Impulse out.
>mfw it was my post that disappeared>mfw when Impulse continues
I HOPE TO GOD SOMEONE ARCHIVED THIS SHIT BY NOW! THIS IS FUCKING BRILLENT
Bump for glorious glory.
im currently playing a chaos bardsassin, who has taken on the roles of heath ledgers joker, super violent batman, leader of a religious uprising, leader of a political uprising, puppet master of the oppressive church the people are rebelling against, the puppet master behind the corrupt nobles that more people are rebelling against, and "ally" to my unsuspecting party who i shall eventually all eventually betray, all at the same time, so i can destabilize the political structure of the entire area and leave it akin to the middle east. The DM has declared me the official villain of the campaign.
>>20411414Impulse here.The post here, where I left off, is basically where the PCs are now. Their next session will involve sailing to where Carmilla's lair is, rooting her out, and recovering the cargo. However, she's a crazy bitch, and I have all sorts of surprises for them...like how she is entrenched inside a heretofore unknown Andrassian ruin and has learned to use its "defenses" to her advantage (though I am still working out all the details of her lair...)Anyway, I just realized that I kept promising to recount the tale of why Perethron was not able to bring his second gunship during the blitz of Merudo, but never did. Explaining it all requires a bit of setup, involving things that the players did that set the stage for it.Settle in, kids...this will hopefully be entertaining.
High powered minions of an evil diety (Shar) working to gain divine powers to take over the world in the name of our diety.Went around and collected divine sparks from dead demigods, and eventually proceeded to slay a minor orcish diety, and eventually, Tiamat.The next campaign was us playing good characters trying to remove the evil overlords of the world from power.
>>20396689>>20396689>>20396689I've only been playing for about a year now, but the most fun i've had goes like this.>>One of my players is trying to sell broken magical swag in a city>>Tries to Charm a passer by into buying stuff.>>Fails, the passer by starts yelling for the guards.>>Player spams the rest of his spells for the day on each of the guards and succeeded with each.>>Opens a Bag or Holding and looks at the passer by.>>in the Batman voice "Get. In. The. Bag" I almost fell out of my chair laughing so fucking hard
>>20416548After the blitz of Merudo, a war summit was convened, in which several key objectives were laid out to the PCs and the military elite of Merudo. Gathering all the intel they had on Perethron's forces (not much), they determined that the best option was a counterattack as soon as possible, to minimize his recovery time. One objective was the rebuilding of the naval fleet, which I detailed earlier. Another was making an alliance with the orcs of Rohn'Akkor to bolster their ground forces. But there were a few other missions that were presented; 6 in all, but the PCs only had enough time to do 2-3 before the counterattack date. They had to choose wisely. Obviously they chose to make nice with the orcs and rebuild the fleet, and they had two teams of characters to send to accomplish these missions: their "A-Team" (original characters) and their "B-Team" (their secondary group). However, they really, REALLY wanted to take on a third mission as well, but just couldn't swing it in time.I presented them with an idea: they had made friends with a lot of powerful NPCs along the way, including other members of their old adventurer's guild, the one they were members of before they established the MERCs and separated from them. They formed a team of trusted NPCs from this pool of friends, called them "C-Team", and sent them to rebuild the fleet. I actually drafted up character sheets for these NPCs and rather just tell the players what happened on that mission after the fact, I presented the option of letting them control these NPCs and do this mission as well. They jumped on it. So the mission to rebuild the fleet was accomplished by the players, but using NPC characters. Made for an interesting change of pace, and they really liked it.
>>20416666Quads. I win the internet.Anyway, I digress. The point is, they were able to send one of their regular teams of characters on the third mission, which was to travel to a place called Brimstone Isle. Brimstone housed a couple of fortresses belonging to the M.E.F., Meridian Expeditionary Forces, which were kind of like a jungle special ops unit (Merudo is set in an equatorial climate, geographically). The island had a few bases that protected several high value resources, such as mines known for adamantite, as well as all the materials needed for blackpowder (sulfur, charcoal, saltpeter), because the island was highly volcanic.Apparently, in recent months, Perethron had established a base on the north side of the island and forced the M.E.F. back, and the island was a point of contention between the two sides. Neither could drive the other off, but neither could gain the upper hand, either.The PCs wanted a chance to change this. They set out for Brimstone Isle. When they arrived at the fortress of Foothold on the southern tip of the island, they met someone they would never forget.The C.O. of the operation was an NPC named, ahem, "Brigadier-General Clayton Thunderfoot, of the Meridian Expeditionary Forces. Retired, of course.", although this guy was anything but retired. He was also a Giff. Remember those from 2nd Ed/Spelljammer? Giant hippo men with a fascination with firearms? Yeah, that's right, I went there.
>>20416777...and trips? Wow. Anyway...While he was rather typical in appearance (huge, gray, wearing a pith helmet, safari vest and khaki shorts and wielding an elephant gun), Clayton was anything but typical in personality. He was like a cross between Teddy Roosevelt, Allan Quatermain and a honey badger. A creature of bravado, he had that quintessential British attitude that was a mix of nonchalance and serious determination. "Tally ho, what what" and all that noise. They liked him immediately.He informed them about Perethron's conclave on the north side of the island, and about their command structure. He told them that they were being led by a sorceress named Tessera, who had somehow managed to erect a creepy looking tower in the middle of their encampment overnight, and that there were strange things happening around the camp ever since her arrival. People experiencing deja vu regularly, or suddenly snapping out of a daze and finding themselves somewhere different than they thought they should be, and a significant amount of time had passed.The PCs knew about Perethron's Second Accolade, the chronomancer from ancient Andrassia. They knew right away that it was likely she was messing with time on a local level, but they needed to see it for themselves.They convinced Clayton to come with them (hell, they practically begged), and he led them through the jungle, bally-hooing as he carved his way with a colossal machete. (I've got to go to work now, but I will try and continue the story from there when I get a chance...)
Bump for interest
>>20416666>>20416777>>20416868Quads followed by trips followed by two-digit dubs.Clearly /tg/'s greatest story since STORYTIEM.
Impulse here.Updates will be spotty tonight, but I'll see what I can do.>>20416868So the PCs fight their way across the island, getting into all sorts of shenanigans: investigating a burned out MEF fortress, collapsing a mine and trapping Conclave forces inside, a battle on a cable car ropeway against flying Warforged, those sorts of things. All the while I keep dropping little snippets of info: the PCs get a sense of danger right before something bad happens, enabling them to avoid it. A strong sense of deja vu. Events repeating themselves; NPCs saying the same things over and over like a broken record. The PCs are sure its the chronomancer's fault, but aren't sure why.Without going into too much detail (trust me, it would be a lot and I don't have time to explain it all), they encounter a powerful but enslaved NPC that tells then what they have already guessed - they are stuck in a time loop. They have been repeating the same actions multiple times, and this is their 6th attempt to defeat the chronomancer; they have died five times previously, but something they did during the fight caused the loop and sent them back to a random point to start it all over again.
>>20420008Dammit, now that I think about it, I have to explain this guy.(Deep breath...)This NPC, an spellbound earth elemental titan, has a certain connection to the magic engines that Perethron uses - he has been imprisoned by one of the other Andrassian archons since ancient times, and his body has been used to grow the crystals used to make magic engines. They are essentially a part of his heart. The Andrassians would facilitate the elemental's growth, then break off a part of his heart to use for an engine. Not enough to kill him, but enough to weaken him and start the process over again.Because they are a part of him, the elemental can affect the operation of a magic engine if he comes into contact with it...but he is still bound to this chamber. If they could free him.Unfortunately, no magic they possessed was strong enough to do so without killing him.But then they had a crazy idea...
Throughout the campaign, the druid PC kept summoning this one particular earth elemental. The first time he summoned it, he ordered it to throw itself on an exploding magic engine to absorb some of the blast, so they wouldn't die from it.The second time he summoned an earth elemental, I cheekily had an elemental peppered with crystal shards appear. This became a running gag, and they continued to summon this specific elemental several more times, even throwing him at other explosions occasionally.They made a proposition: if the druid could bind the titan's soul to this particular summoned elemental, and then killed his actual body (that the Conclave was using to grow crystals), could he then leave the chamber.The titan said it was worth a shot. He certainly doesn't want to be imprisoned any longer. And it was an idea they had never thought of before in previous loops. Crazily enough, it worked. They unsummoned the titan, then made their way to the enemy encampment.
>>20419572Speaking of...dropping a link in case anyone here hasn't read it:http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/14188616/I've been blown away by the stories in this thread.As for STORYTIEM...the last I heard, his active group is on hiatus...if I hear anything new about his shenanigans, I'll make sure you guys know
>>20420373>>20420373Yes, please, as STORYTIEM is always welcome.
