Burning Sky's campaign

Skyscraper

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I also made a Ragesian cult of personality around Coaltongue, but in my world, there are no hybrids: Half-orcs are an ethnic group of orcs, which had been oppressed by both the orcs and humans of the region and now basically rule Ragesia.
In fact, the whole "half-orcs are born of humans and orcs" is a blood libel.

Similarly, the Eladrin, Elves and Half-Elves are ethnic groups of elves in a caste-based society.

Interesting ideas.
 

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Skyscraper

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Session 3

The PCs had subdued one of the black horse bounty hunters instead of killing him, and they interrogated him to get some information as to what they are and where they come from. They learned that Kathor had visited a strange house on his own earlier, and that he had been acting strangely for some time. The PCs wonder whether this is linked to the larva that came out of his ear...

They visit the strange house in question (after having gone through the terrorizing dragon encounter) and find an old, small abandonned place that has little furniture left and no sings of anyone having lived there for a while. Manacales attached to the basement wall is the first hint that this might not have been an ordinary place.

The second storey reveals two rooms: an office with an altar-like table with its feet sculpted in almost incomprehensible multiple facets and blood stains on top of it; and a second room devoid of furniture with old curtain poles along the walls and a crystal-like splashes on the wall. When they scraped the crystals with a dagger, viscous liquid oozed out of them. They also found three other larvae on the floor of this second room, dead. While they were inspecting the house, the goliath, standing sentry outside, sees a neighbor come out of his house, bare-footed in the snow, and enter the house where the PCs are. They confront him on the ground floor, where he walks mindlessly towards the rogue who had scraped the crystals. His empty gaze fixed on the rogue, the latter starts to have a viscious headache (takes psychic damage). A bit freaked out, they kill the weird old man and leave.

They move towards the depository. There, they decide to send in only the rogue and the cleric, to avoid scaring the gnome Rivereye (since his usual contact Peppin is dead). The two of them meet with Larion-diguised-as-Rivereye and uncover his disguise due to good bad acting on my part ;). The session ends again on a cliffhanger as Larion unfolds from his crouched position, throwing off Rivereye's cloack, and kicks the cleric to try running away.

*********

I'm starting to refine the larva-domination thing: I think I'll be going towards a far-realm/Cthulhu type of enemy, that will be linked to the power the Ragesians are trying to tap into. (I.e. to power their great weapon, they are mingling with magic that they shouldn't be mingling with that will replace the trillith.) I might also have the Ragesians deal with demons and the demons will want this chaotic power to be unleashed onto the multiverse to have it die into chaos, without the Ragesians being aware of it. I had the idea during our session that a cult might already exist, independent of the Ragesians, that wants to tap into the far realm thing, a cult of madness and despair (thus the house with the crytals: they managed to open a gate for but a moment, a fraction of a second, that allowed some of the madness to seep in, including those larvae. Those that interact with the crytals for a bit too long, like that old neighbor, loose their mind). I may refine the far realm approach a bit, I'm using this expression to identify the concept as far as I imagine it right now.
 

Skyscraper

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Session 4

The rogue and the cleric chased Larion inside a redefined library-type structured depository, engaging in a skill-challenge type encounter.

Meanwhile the wizard, who was outside the depository, got a hunch that something was amiss. (I use the Insight skill as a sixth-sense type of intuition, after reading this suggestion on these boards.) He started moving around the depository and found a back door, through which he heard one of his friends shouting. Calling for his friends, they tried to break in, but the door was locked and solid. It was one of Larion's allies that opened it, coming face to face with the PCs!

There ensued a battle between the PCs (comging from outside and inside both), Larion (restatted into a level 1 elite skirmisher), two eladrin archers, two lesser fire elementals and one lesser earth elemental. I'm going to give the eladrin a bit of an elemental theme as a race, the idea came up when I restatted Shealis with strong fire-based powers. I'll bring in fire, earth, water, wind conjurations or summonings as eladrin rituals every now and then.

Larion almost killed the rogue PC on the first round and the latter lost three rounds to flee, use his second wind, then move back near the cleric PC who was far away from him. The avenger PC stepped in front of everybody else and got pounded pretty much all battle long, losing consciousness twice. And finally the cleric PC was isolated from the others (until the rogue got there), battling the earth elemental. The PCs had to give it all they had to come back from this shaky start.

One interesting move was from the cleric PC. I had positioned four half-orc guards and Rivereye on the battlemap, tied up and gagged on the floor. He opted to have his cleric free the unarmed guards. It took him two rounds to free the first, but from there each guard moved to free the next and it went quickly. The cleric gave his weapon to one of the guards and between the two of them, with the help from the rogue in the end, they were able to kill the earth elemental without too much problem.

The chase and the battle lasted for pretty much our entire game session. They captured one of Larion's friends and plan to interrogate him.
 
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