Hi Alpha, one of the reasons I ran this was because I played with you a time or two at Guardian Games when I lived in Oregon a while back. We had a great time! My group stuck to the Crystal Domes before flying out to battle the Cult.
I appreciate the full on fantasy of this module but it does have some ambiguities and issues that came up during play. In some ways its similar issues that come up in some of the more cosmic DCC modules, perhaps its a consequence of going big. You just have to handwave a lot of things.
I think the biggest challenge in the design of these kind of encounters is to have a theme and then make each challenge one that includes some sort of choice beyond dice rolling. In this way I thought it was better than the DCC mod "Court of Chaos, which was super evocative, but had fairly non-thematic challenges. My players were looking for a pattern in that one.
The Charity challenge was a great because it made players think about their own characters. Also fun to do the voice of an unsympathetic character.
The Realms Quiz in the Piety challenge was great because it encouraged some meta thinking. Our druid cast Wind Wall to keep the Shadow Demons away, and I just ruled that that worked well enough while the players dug into the questions.
The Compassion challenge was maybe the weakest because it was just a series of rolls, "see how hurt you get before you win", but it was epically cinematic, the damage has consequences in the final fight, and it had a great twist. Only one character touched the monk. We ran it quick. At the end I had the player switch character sheets with another random player. It was a couple who had to trade, so kinda cute. They played the final battle with each other's characters. My conceptual confusion there was this: How does completing the challenge ruin the ritual? It doesn't matter really, but it didn't make sense on my side of the screen.
Anyways, lots of fun. I recommend it for some over the top gonzo fantasy.
In case anyone is interested, here is the rough play recap I sent out to the players of my home game.
The heroes entered a place of peace and abnegation wracked by real and present chaos fear and violence.
A bitter old monk regained consciousness to revel in the suffering: "There will be more. Many of us have tired of the same old symbols of self-denial. Now we deny ourselves the air itself so that we can truly know the wind! Doesn't make sense to you? That's why its so perfect!"
A Cult of the Howling Hatred had abducted 4 monks and taken them to the uppermost tower of the uppermost monastery on the upper most mountain of the Graypeaks. Above this tower swirled the elemental chaos of Air itself, the domain of Yan Ci Bin. It was a massive blue egg swathed in cloud and lightning. A quartet of cocky cultists warned the heroes to retreat, blasting thunder at them when they did not. The druid went flying off the tower, but she became a small bird and flew straight up into the maelstrom, entering another world entirely.
Sir Dwarf and his surly Bard Halfling companion made short work of the rest and used their "War-wing Capes" to catch an updraft directly into the egg.
Within was a massive blue shell swirling with storm and floating cloud islands. Some had towers and temples, others had strange crystalline domes that shot yellow beams of light at a central Storm.
The heroes battled living suits of armor, and paid crow men to take them on their feather oared longship to the cloud islands. There they encountered test of their wits and of their souls. They rescued innocent monks who's life energies were being used to power the doomsday ritual that would bring "all of the Wind" to the world...
They stopped before Crystal Dome #3, waiting for reinforcements.
And lo, the Cosmic Egg devised by the cruel and capricious Cult of the Howling Hatred was shattered by the heroic interventions of the Elf-Dwarf Paladin Laden, mastery of the natural world of the Bear Lady druid, and the indomitable spirit of the newly arrived hobbit bard, called "Dogs", he who was never entirely sure why he was risking his life anyway.
The trio entered a third crystal dome where they discovered a dirty warrior who was very very confused, claiming that he was actually the other, a monk held fast upon a marble slab as his life energy was siphoned to power the Storm Gate that boiled in the center of the great Cosmic Egg. "I am he but no longer in my own body. I was meant to suffer for the greater good, the cleansing of the lands, but now I fear he is suffering for no good at all!"
Sir Laden bravely sought to free the tortured monk, experiencing a vision of a flying mountaintop, a circling of vultures and a fierce elven woman in flowing white robes and angelic wings who ordered him to claim his mount if he was to join the Cult of the True Wind! He did so, but not without enduring many wounds from the cruel beak of the vulture.
Returning to the crystal dome and the crumbled marble block, Laden discovered that he had changed bodies once again! He and the hobbit had switched!
Exiting the dome, the sharp eyed Laden/Dogs spied a second feather-oared longship floating from the Tower Cloud to the very center of the Storm Gate. With great haste they ran to their own birdman ruddered ship and sailed in hot pursuit. The ships crashed into each other and battle was joined!
Stormgale "Gail" the Ritual Master had already begun to channel the awesome power of the dimension of air through her glowing body. She floated above her ship and unleashed a bolt of lightening that revealed the skeletal forms of the heroes. The lieutenant Bloodwind created a Gust of Wind that blew Sir Laden right off the boat, but he controlled his War Wing Cloak well and swooped around. The heroes responded with mighty spells and swords, turning the lieutenant into blood in the wind, and directing Ice Storms and Moonbeams at the Storming Gale who finally completed her transformation into a harmless zephyr.
A harrowing escape on the flying ship ended in a crash landing in the muddy courtyard of the Monastery of the Four Winds. The monks rewarded the heroes with bluestone pendants. They traveled slowly back to the city of the Grey Citadel where they were feted yet again by Duke Angus, and much carousing ended in further gifts for the heroes, not least was that of the Enchantress of the Citadel, who brought to Sir Laden a Blue Egg of Re-Creation. "You can never regain your original state, when you were a half-elf, but you may again change your form. This egg, if powered by great chaotic energy, like the Storm Gate you recently closed, will allow you to switch forms with another. It is up to your own conscience whither you shall take such an opportune moment."
