ZEITGEIST [ZEITGEIST] The Continuing Adventures of Korrigan & Co.

[gideonpepys]

Session 237, Part Two

The Final Murmur

This planar mote was smaller than most, barely ten miles across, and it floated ten miles from Mavisha. As they drew closer, Uru, Uriel and Leon noticed that proximity to the plane was rapidly draining the ship’s arcane levitationals. So they once again mounted the stone discs – which were powered by psionics – and maintained the Coaltongue at a safe distance.

The surface of Avilona was mostly barren, with just a few scraggly grasses and brushes inhabited by flightless birds. Angular wind-eroded stone dominated the landscape, with slender uneven arches, knife-like overhangs, and huge boulders balanced precariously on pillars of weaker rocks that had been weathered away.

All the erosion was ancient, though. The wind was practically still now, although some unseen presence murmured irregularly, disturbing the silence. Gupta could not identify any meaningful language; Uru could sense no lingering spirit. Uriel, however, sensed the presence of the divine and used location loresight to find out more:

The remains of Avilona were the literal remains of something like a dead god. Ages ago, an eagle whose wings spread a thousand feet perished here, and as the elemental air energy that empowered it drained from its body, feathers, flesh, and skeleton turned to stone. Now the titanic petrified eagle lay sprawled on its back. Its neck had twisted in death so its head – skull and eye sockets exposed – lay near its chest. There the killing blow was revealed: its heart was torn out by another equally colossal creature. The cracked ribs were wrenched open, and now the hollow of its breast yawned up to the sky.

At the very moment they peered over the lips of the pit formed by this chest cavity, the creature shuddered. Its lungs drew in a thin breath, and its head shifted slightly so one empty eye socket could glimpse unit – bracing themselves for trouble. Then, like a sigh, it exhaled. The continuous murmur ended.

Uriel realised that this explained the weakness of air magic on Lanjyr. Only there were already two explanations for that: the eroded, fossilised tree on Axis Island in which the golden icon of Avilona had been embedded; and the failed experiment Kasvarina had carried out on the Ziggurat of Avilona, high above the Cold Claw Sea. How could it be that air magic had always been weak? How could the dragons ever have flown? “And what about Gale?” he wondered aloud. “How can her magic be so strong?”

They would find no answers here.

“Where to now?” asked Uru.

“I think we should go here,” said Gupta, half-joking – pointing at Ascetia on Calily’s chart. Everyone knew how keen she was to go there.

“Eventually,” said Korrigan. “Next on our path is Apet.”

 

[RangerWickett]

In Pathfinder there is a spell called Breath of Life.

I used the Gyre as inspiration for a scene for my high-level PF game.

They resurrected Avilona.

The game was already bonkers by that point, so I ran with it.

 

[gideonpepys]

Session 237, Part Three

The Distant Plane

From afar, Apet appeared to be nothing but a ball of whirling dust. Once the Coaltongue had pierced these clouds, though, a much more bizarre reality was revealed: Apet was not a place of stone and rock, but of pure, solid force. The ground consisted of scattered platforms – akin to magical walls of force– translucent sheets, impossibly thin and completely impenetrable.

Most of these platforms were slightly off kilter from horizontal, and they spanned only a few dozen feet, always assuming simple two-dimensional geometric shapes with perfect symmetry: circles, triangles, squares, and so on, all the way up to octagons.

The force platforms had a slight static charge to them, causing the gritty dust that swirled around Apet to stick to it and provide traction enough to walk. Visibility was limited to about thirty feet for the most part, but certain patches of heavier dust cut visibility completely.

After they touched down on a random platform, using the stone discs, Kai tried to identify the plane’s trait, while Uriel conducted his location loresight ritual. Kai said that Apet made it impossible to travel out of the local system – a trait that was redundant here in the Gyre.

Suddenly, Uriel began to shudder and shake. Korrigan could tell that he was under an immense psychic assault. Before anyone could react or do anything to help him it was over. He had fought off the assault but was drained and exhausted.

“Didn’t your foresight help?” asked Uru.

“What I needed there was hindsight,” Uriel responded, breathlessly. In conducting the loresight ritual he had raised the dormant psychic spectre of all the gidim that had perished here when the plane was cut off – the gidim which had formed the Thing from Beyond that had crawled through Sijhen’s portal and slain Krazy Krauss.

Xambria had been rendered unconscious by the assault. Uriel senses that she would be okay, but could do nothing to revive her. Alexander Grappa had been able to defend his mind as Uriel had, but had been terrified by what he had seen. It transpired that Grappa had never heard of the gidim. The idea of creatures that consumed minds was the stuff of nightmares to the Mindmaker, especially since he now resided solely in psychic form. Grappa was appalled that the actions of the Ob, to which he had made an invaluable contribution, had led to the exposure of Lanjyr to alien predators of this kind.

(Over the next few days, Grappa would keep up a constant line of questioning on the topic, questions which Xambria helped to field once she recovered. They were at pains to stress the fact that Lanjyr was even now flooded with gidim energy and under constant threat from hiveminds. While they had fended off an initial invasion, the threat was far from over. They had left the maustin caji on guard while they came here, and would have to hope that was enough.

“Our first priority must be to defend the world,” said Grappa.

“No, our first priority must be to get the sun back,” said Uru.

“I thought you were a creature of darkness?” Uriel asked.

“Shadow,” Uru said, emphatically. “You can’t have shadows in darkness.”)

On they travelled now towards their next destination, Wilanir. But before they left the clouds of Apet behind, they came across the dead body of a golden legionnaire, lying on one of the force planes close by. It was a matter of sheer luck that they ran across it, otherwise, they might have blundered into a larger force unawares:

Uriel channelled Malthusius and studied the scene. A trail of writhing tentacles led away through the dust. The legionnaire had been tightly grasped, but his death had been caused by psionic energy mere minutes ago! Other legionnaires must be nearby.

Uru ranged stealthily ahead while the others followed slowly on the Coaltongue. The clouds parted before the deep faen to reveal a golden legion windskiff, the occupants of which were in combat with several gidim thoughtforms – attempting to restrain and enslave them with their golden chains. They were led by a succubus, two horned devils and a pit fiend, the latter armed with a huge staff it used to render the thoughtforms corporeal before they were enslaved.

Thus forewarned, the unit opened the engagement with the element of surprise and a blast from the Coaltongue’s brand, which tore the windskiff in half. The Coaltongue crashed through the remnants, opening fire on all sides: Uru shot and killed both horned devils; Korrigan challenged the pit fiend Laroj Roh; Uriel went ‘full cardinal’ and fired beams of radiant light all around him, picking the legionnaires off one by one and giving Quratulain a run for her money; Leon stunned Laroj Roh and Calily, Korrigan killed him. Rumdoom, still sulking, missed all the fun.

For her part, Gupta deliberately enticed the succubus by pretending she had not seen her, and standing apart from the others. The succubus fell for her ruse and sprang at her. Gupta reacted at once, fending off domination by wiping the demon’s mind completely.

The fight was over in moments.

While they kicked over the traces, gathering gold chains, and the pit fiend’s huge staff, the gidim thoughtforms began to assail them. Only after they had dodged the first few attacks did they realise they weren’t really attacking, simply throwing themselves at these ‘intruders’ for reasons they could only guess at.

Uru thought he was safe, hidden, and was taken by surprise when one whisked through the hull of the ship and straight through him. Its passage did not harm Uru, rather it deposited a thought in his mind: a sphere of purple flesh with infinite eyes and tendrils reaching out to the stars – the gidim homeworld – was shown to have a tiny black leech stuck to its side, siphoning its power. The emotional sense conveyed was revulsion and violation, mixed with intention to avoid the source of the leech in the future. …

End of Session

 

[SanjMerchant]

Out of curiosity, do you have any sense as to which players might be inclined to do what when it comes to The Big Decision at the end? (I know a lot could happen between now and then, but still.) Who might want to just put everything back the way it was versus who might want to tweak things to make them better? Have any of them picked up on the idea that they could, in theory, flip the proverbial table and go full metaphysical anarchy?

 

[gideonpepys]

Only Uru stands for the status quo. (In the same counter-inituative manner, he supports the Clergy in their ongoing war with the eladrin.)

Everyone else is up for tweaking things as best they can, to which end they are visiting every plane.

Metaphysical anarchy is not on the cards, unless you count Rumdoom, whose thoughts turn inexorably towards the endtimes...

 

[gideonpepys]

DM's Notes

We didn't run a full combat on Apet. They've fought the Golden Legion a lot already, and are about the fight even more of them pretty soon. More importantly, this small group would have been a pushover for the PCs even if they hadn't got the drop on them. So I told them they had won and asked them to narrate all the cool naughty word they did during the encounter. I love the image of the Coaltongue emerging from the dustclouds, brand flaring, with smaller lances of radiance firing all around, courtesy of Uriel. It was nice for the players to feel super-powerful: hand-waving a fight with a pit fiend!

 

[SanjMerchant]

Metaphysical anarchy is not on the cards, unless you count Rumdoom, whose thoughts turn inexorably towards the endtimes...

Do they know it's possible and have rejected it or has it just not occurred to them?

 

[gideonpepys]

Do they know it's possible and have rejected it or has it just not occurred to them?

Possible in what sense?

 

[SanjMerchant]

Possible insofar as that they realize that they don't have to establish a new Axis Seal at all. That they could, in theory, disable the whole mechanism that binds the world to a pre-defined set of planes, setting it adrift in the cosmos as it was in the time before the Axis Seal. The Rejection ending to the final confrontation in Adventure 13.

I can see where players (in general, I don't know your group in particular) might just assume they have to set up a new Axis Seal of some kind and not question that particular part of the premise.

Basically, has anyone (to your knowledge, in- or out-of-character) considered the question of "What would happen if we didn't have an Axis Seal at all?"

 

[gideonpepys]

Possible insofar as that they realize that they don't have to establish a new Axis Seal at all. That they could, in theory, disable the whole mechanism that binds the world to a pre-defined set of planes, setting it adrift in the cosmos as it was in the time before the Axis Seal. The Rejection ending to the final confrontation in Adventure 13.

I can see where players (in general, I don't know your group in particular) might just assume they have to set up a new Axis Seal of some kind and not question that particular part of the premise.

Basically, has anyone (to your knowledge, in- or out-of-character) considered the question of "What would happen if we didn't have an Axis Seal at all?"

Not yet, no.

I anticipate the issue will be raised in Adventure #13 when Nicodemus gloats that he has won the moral argument. I doubt they’ll take the Rejection option, though. Untried, untested. They also have a lot of attachment to Av and, hell, choosing new planes will be fun!