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Barsoom Tales II: Romance, Revolution and BLOODY REVENGE!!! -- COMPLETE
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<blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 4619604" data-attributes="member: 812"><p>Sorry, I forgot to type the last two words of that last update. Sorry about that.</p><p></p><p>Not so much of an extended ending, you see. That was the end of the last session.</p><p></p><p>So I know, I know, you want to know what happened to everyone.</p><p></p><p>Arrafin does NOT come back. She stays dead. Etienne, Elena and Isaac all receive boons from the Tarn -- there's actually a bit of story missing around them, as Nevid had forged a bit of a relationship with them.</p><p></p><p>And uh, Nevid didn't die here in the actual campaign. He survived this and JOINED the Tarn (that was the boon he asked for).</p><p></p><p>So Season Three started with Isaac, Etienne, Aubrey (remember Aubrey) and two strangers suddenly finding themselves in a bizarre jungle. The strangers included the Old Kook (who turned out to be a member of the Tarn who was sort of "riding" Nevid around) and a Kishak woman who turned out to be the Nevakada officer responsible for the party's case file. She'd been blamed for the disaster on board the party's ship (where the Nevakada totally failed to kill the party with a bunch of demons) and had been sent here.</p><p></p><p>"Here" turned out to be a wacky "dimension" called Kiriku, which had been created ages past by the goddess Ky'in when she needed somewhere to put a vast army of draconic sorcerer-soldiers that just wouldn't die. Kiriku wasn't as stable as Barsoom and it appeared that folks who hung around here started to change into awfully weird forms.</p><p></p><p>Like Spider Women. And Ghouls. And Yang Fei, the giant centipede with a cheerful fellow's head, who joined up with the group and followed them around.</p><p></p><p>Elena showed up as well, and it turned out the Nevakada had acquired all these "demons" that they could control but that they didn't really know very much about. What they did know was that if they commanded a demon to take someone away, that someone was never seen again. Because they brought the someones to Kiriku. And it was impossible to get from Kiriku back to Barsoom.</p><p></p><p>Of course, PCs being PCs, they found a way, but they inadvertently made it possible for Gedak Gan, the Tyrant's Shade and ruler of Kish, to return as well.</p><p></p><p>If you've been paying attention, that will surprise you, since the Tyrant's Shade was already ruling Kish. It turned out there'd been a switcheroo, and so our heroes found themselves having to fight not one but TWO mad undead emperors with legions at their disposal.</p><p></p><p>It also turned out that Barsoom wasn't TOTALLY stable itself, and that in fact it was beginning to unravel. Mechanisms had been put in place long ago, but the knowledge of how they worked had been lost and the mechanisms were starting to fail.</p><p></p><p>Season Three ended with the fights against the Shades (and this is where Nevid actually died, in exactly the manner described in this Story Hour).</p><p></p><p>With respect to the fate of Arrafin and Madame Yuek, the ex-vampire was returned to the mortal world after a year and day as the brutalized slave of the Tarn, and immediately set about trying to recover her beloved. By the time the PCs made it back to Barsoom, she had gathered an army and collected a bunch of sorcerers and was trying to get someone to retrieve Arrafin's soul.</p><p></p><p>Unfortunately, Matai Shang wasn't quite as dead as everyone had hoped.</p><p></p><p>Season Four started with the Blood Council coming to discuss some things with the party.</p><p></p><p>First off, the BC admitted that they'd been running a sort of breeding program a la the Bene Gesserit, to produce a sort of super-psion that could resist the goddess Ky'in who was making her big comeback play (this had actually started in Season One, but things were finally coming to a head). Thing is, the BC were basically decent folks and never "bred" people forcibly. They just tried to encourage the right strains to cross paths, and threw obstacles in the way of undesirable matches.</p><p></p><p>But once the Blood Mother had her mojo back, she realised WHY Shang had destroyed the BM's soul in the first place. He'd taken control of the BC for a century, and had "accelerated" their program with forced breeding of prisoners, and had produced their Kwisatz Haderach well ahead of schedule. The child was born the same year Matai Shang died. The child had been prepared with special rituals and so now, the one hope of humanity to resist the encroachments of an insane, all-powerful goddess, was a baby... </p><p></p><p>...with the soul of Matai Shang in its chubby little body.</p><p></p><p>Our heroes set about trying to assemble a "dream team" of powers to face up to Ky'in, but things went from bad to worse: the great warrior king of the draconic Keyadar managed to follow them from Kiriku and began laying waste, Barsoom was struck by dozens of bizarre asteroids that brought with them the intelligences of the ancient foul evils that originally created the entire world, which set about dominating religious practices across Barsoom so as to allow themselves to manifest fully in the world.</p><p></p><p>Things went very poorly indeed. But it turned out that the TARN were in fact one of these alien entities -- one that had been bound to Barsoom as a spirit and now manifested itself as this bizarre court of creatures -- and with its help they learned of the Ghostwalk -- a half-dimension leading to Omean, the Buried Sea (where human souls go when they die), and where Ky'in, in the midst of a desperate battle, had hidden the Seven Thrones, which were the control systems for Barsoom itself.</p><p></p><p>On the Ghostwalk they met the soul of Madame Yuek -- she had been killed when warlords directed by the infant Matai Shang defeated her army and she was impaled in front of the great palace that had been (unknown to her killers) her family's ancestral home. She never did manage to retrieve Arrafin's soul, which remained trapped in the whirlwind over Zuyang.</p><p></p><p>Isaac's curse was part of the Ghostwalk -- Ky'in had created three potent guardians for this place but a curse upon them made them into uncontrollable beasts. All Ky'in could do to limit their savagery was to bind them to mortal bloodlines. But that meant Isaac could traverse the Ghostwalk and restore the Thrones.</p><p></p><p>But the Thrones were damaged because the "maintenance system" for Barsoom required human souls. It turned out that humans had been CREATED by the ancient evils as "walking batteries" -- unlike the evils or the Keyadar, humans could carry within them BOTH Shadow and Dream, and as such they were very useful for managing and directing supernatural energy. So thousands of souls were needed to restore the systems of Barsoom and somehow reverse the damage being done by the returning ancient evil. Temperatures were dropping and the atmosphere was thinning all over the world. It was only a matter of time before everyone in the world died.</p><p></p><p>Shang got on board with the Save Barsoom program but Ky'in had to be destroyed first. That accomplished (and one of my great regrets as a DM is that the battle against Ky'in was TOTALLY <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" />ING LAME), our heroes settled into the Seven Thrones and did battle against the ancient evils, and triumphed. They found a way to release the souls over Zuyang and channel most of them into the maintenance systems so that Barsoom could survive -- in the process Arrafin's soul was released so she and Madame Yuek got to go into eternity together. I was glad they got a sort of happy ending, as Madame Yuek is easily my favourite character ever. I killed her off because I knew I was having way more fun telling her story than the PCs, and that's never good for a game. But I love her to pieces still. </p><p></p><p>Really, I wrote this Story Hour so I could tell HER story. Or at least part of it.</p><p></p><p>Etienne, Aubrey and Nevid all died along the way (well, technically, Aubrey was sold to some Spider Women as breeding stock...), but Elena and Isaac both survived the entire campaign run.</p><p></p><p>Whew.</p><p></p><p>There were pretty lengthy breaks between seasons -- nearly a year passed between Two and Three, and it was at least six months between Three and Four. By then I was hitting my limits as a 3rd edition DM and found creating and running high-level opponents more tedious than fun. The party finished the campaign at around fifteenth level, I think.</p><p></p><p>Good times all around. Season Four wasn't as good as I was pretty fatigued, and got a lot more busy with jobs and stuff, so I just couldn't put the prep time in to really nail the details right. I still feel bad about it to this day.</p><p></p><p>But my players were awesome all the way through, and making up that story with them was never anything less than inspiring. I had no idea what was going to happen when I started the campaign, and it far exceeded my expectations.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="barsoomcore, post: 4619604, member: 812"] Sorry, I forgot to type the last two words of that last update. Sorry about that. Not so much of an extended ending, you see. That was the end of the last session. So I know, I know, you want to know what happened to everyone. Arrafin does NOT come back. She stays dead. Etienne, Elena and Isaac all receive boons from the Tarn -- there's actually a bit of story missing around them, as Nevid had forged a bit of a relationship with them. And uh, Nevid didn't die here in the actual campaign. He survived this and JOINED the Tarn (that was the boon he asked for). So Season Three started with Isaac, Etienne, Aubrey (remember Aubrey) and two strangers suddenly finding themselves in a bizarre jungle. The strangers included the Old Kook (who turned out to be a member of the Tarn who was sort of "riding" Nevid around) and a Kishak woman who turned out to be the Nevakada officer responsible for the party's case file. She'd been blamed for the disaster on board the party's ship (where the Nevakada totally failed to kill the party with a bunch of demons) and had been sent here. "Here" turned out to be a wacky "dimension" called Kiriku, which had been created ages past by the goddess Ky'in when she needed somewhere to put a vast army of draconic sorcerer-soldiers that just wouldn't die. Kiriku wasn't as stable as Barsoom and it appeared that folks who hung around here started to change into awfully weird forms. Like Spider Women. And Ghouls. And Yang Fei, the giant centipede with a cheerful fellow's head, who joined up with the group and followed them around. Elena showed up as well, and it turned out the Nevakada had acquired all these "demons" that they could control but that they didn't really know very much about. What they did know was that if they commanded a demon to take someone away, that someone was never seen again. Because they brought the someones to Kiriku. And it was impossible to get from Kiriku back to Barsoom. Of course, PCs being PCs, they found a way, but they inadvertently made it possible for Gedak Gan, the Tyrant's Shade and ruler of Kish, to return as well. If you've been paying attention, that will surprise you, since the Tyrant's Shade was already ruling Kish. It turned out there'd been a switcheroo, and so our heroes found themselves having to fight not one but TWO mad undead emperors with legions at their disposal. It also turned out that Barsoom wasn't TOTALLY stable itself, and that in fact it was beginning to unravel. Mechanisms had been put in place long ago, but the knowledge of how they worked had been lost and the mechanisms were starting to fail. Season Three ended with the fights against the Shades (and this is where Nevid actually died, in exactly the manner described in this Story Hour). With respect to the fate of Arrafin and Madame Yuek, the ex-vampire was returned to the mortal world after a year and day as the brutalized slave of the Tarn, and immediately set about trying to recover her beloved. By the time the PCs made it back to Barsoom, she had gathered an army and collected a bunch of sorcerers and was trying to get someone to retrieve Arrafin's soul. Unfortunately, Matai Shang wasn't quite as dead as everyone had hoped. Season Four started with the Blood Council coming to discuss some things with the party. First off, the BC admitted that they'd been running a sort of breeding program a la the Bene Gesserit, to produce a sort of super-psion that could resist the goddess Ky'in who was making her big comeback play (this had actually started in Season One, but things were finally coming to a head). Thing is, the BC were basically decent folks and never "bred" people forcibly. They just tried to encourage the right strains to cross paths, and threw obstacles in the way of undesirable matches. But once the Blood Mother had her mojo back, she realised WHY Shang had destroyed the BM's soul in the first place. He'd taken control of the BC for a century, and had "accelerated" their program with forced breeding of prisoners, and had produced their Kwisatz Haderach well ahead of schedule. The child was born the same year Matai Shang died. The child had been prepared with special rituals and so now, the one hope of humanity to resist the encroachments of an insane, all-powerful goddess, was a baby... ...with the soul of Matai Shang in its chubby little body. Our heroes set about trying to assemble a "dream team" of powers to face up to Ky'in, but things went from bad to worse: the great warrior king of the draconic Keyadar managed to follow them from Kiriku and began laying waste, Barsoom was struck by dozens of bizarre asteroids that brought with them the intelligences of the ancient foul evils that originally created the entire world, which set about dominating religious practices across Barsoom so as to allow themselves to manifest fully in the world. Things went very poorly indeed. But it turned out that the TARN were in fact one of these alien entities -- one that had been bound to Barsoom as a spirit and now manifested itself as this bizarre court of creatures -- and with its help they learned of the Ghostwalk -- a half-dimension leading to Omean, the Buried Sea (where human souls go when they die), and where Ky'in, in the midst of a desperate battle, had hidden the Seven Thrones, which were the control systems for Barsoom itself. On the Ghostwalk they met the soul of Madame Yuek -- she had been killed when warlords directed by the infant Matai Shang defeated her army and she was impaled in front of the great palace that had been (unknown to her killers) her family's ancestral home. She never did manage to retrieve Arrafin's soul, which remained trapped in the whirlwind over Zuyang. Isaac's curse was part of the Ghostwalk -- Ky'in had created three potent guardians for this place but a curse upon them made them into uncontrollable beasts. All Ky'in could do to limit their savagery was to bind them to mortal bloodlines. But that meant Isaac could traverse the Ghostwalk and restore the Thrones. But the Thrones were damaged because the "maintenance system" for Barsoom required human souls. It turned out that humans had been CREATED by the ancient evils as "walking batteries" -- unlike the evils or the Keyadar, humans could carry within them BOTH Shadow and Dream, and as such they were very useful for managing and directing supernatural energy. So thousands of souls were needed to restore the systems of Barsoom and somehow reverse the damage being done by the returning ancient evil. Temperatures were dropping and the atmosphere was thinning all over the world. It was only a matter of time before everyone in the world died. Shang got on board with the Save Barsoom program but Ky'in had to be destroyed first. That accomplished (and one of my great regrets as a DM is that the battle against Ky'in was TOTALLY :):):):)ING LAME), our heroes settled into the Seven Thrones and did battle against the ancient evils, and triumphed. They found a way to release the souls over Zuyang and channel most of them into the maintenance systems so that Barsoom could survive -- in the process Arrafin's soul was released so she and Madame Yuek got to go into eternity together. I was glad they got a sort of happy ending, as Madame Yuek is easily my favourite character ever. I killed her off because I knew I was having way more fun telling her story than the PCs, and that's never good for a game. But I love her to pieces still. Really, I wrote this Story Hour so I could tell HER story. Or at least part of it. Etienne, Aubrey and Nevid all died along the way (well, technically, Aubrey was sold to some Spider Women as breeding stock...), but Elena and Isaac both survived the entire campaign run. Whew. There were pretty lengthy breaks between seasons -- nearly a year passed between Two and Three, and it was at least six months between Three and Four. By then I was hitting my limits as a 3rd edition DM and found creating and running high-level opponents more tedious than fun. The party finished the campaign at around fifteenth level, I think. Good times all around. Season Four wasn't as good as I was pretty fatigued, and got a lot more busy with jobs and stuff, so I just couldn't put the prep time in to really nail the details right. I still feel bad about it to this day. But my players were awesome all the way through, and making up that story with them was never anything less than inspiring. I had no idea what was going to happen when I started the campaign, and it far exceeded my expectations. [/QUOTE]
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