A Monk, a Wizard, and a Swordmage Walk into a Fallcrest; a 4e Story Now game

[Grendel_Khan]

LIEF takes off his hat and moves into the dim light, closer to the Crep and its stench. He shows the raised brand on his forehead—the sun-bright sign of Pelor.

"I don't understand the rules of this. What to do, what not to do. I don't even know if I have a choice in any of it. Or how to make you believe me. All I know is that you will help me some day—and it will work."

Lief's face screws up in frustration. "Or it already worked? This...I have a friend who could explain this, maybe. Maybe I should have asked him to come. But you helped me. And whatever it takes, I need to make that happen."

The Creep's face is impossible to read, a knot of cynicism and pain. It rumbles with mirthless chuckling, graverot pouring across Lief. The shifter keeps talking, desperate now, taking a shot in the dark.

"Pelor blessed me. He aimed me through the void, threw me like a spear, and I spoke to you here and you helped me—17 years from now! If you agree to that, maybe he'll bless you, too. Maybe he'll take pity"

A terrible miscalculation. The Creep is wretched, but all it has left is pride. It flows forward, its eyes seeming to lurch toward him first, and tattered skin following behind.

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Intent: Convince the Creep that Pelor will help it, in return for it helping Lief.

Secondary: Religion. r(7)+4 = 11 vs. Easy DC 13. Fail.

Primary: Bluff w/ -2 penalty for Secondary failure. r(2)+3-2 = 3 vs. Medium DC 18. Fail.
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Complexity 2 SC, Level 10 (DCs 13/18/26)
Goal (staged): Reach the Creep (3) and convince it to help Lief stop Acamar (5), when that version appears 17 years in the future—even if it costs present-day Lief his life (6).
4/6 Successes/2 Failures/1 Hard DC Available/1 Secondary Skills Available/1 Advantages Available/Primary Skills Exhausted: Endurance, Acrobatics, Athletics, Heal, Bluff

 

[Manbearcat]

Complexity 2 SC, Level 10 (DCs 13/18/26)
Goal (staged): Reach the Creep (3) and convince it to help Lief stop Acamar (5), when that version appears 17 years in the future—even if it costs present-day Lief his life (6).
4/6 Successes/2 Failures/1 Hard DC Available/1 Secondary Skills Available/1 Advantages Available/Primary Skills Exhausted: Endurance, Acrobatics, Athletics, Heal, Bluff

* See bottom for prospective consequences of this failure

Wait. That is neither flesh nor bone. Not of this world, at least.

That is boneless appendage waving...undulating. Hook-like...things...adorning it asymmetrically. Protracting and retracting from some impossible orb-creature...toothy maw abundant on its form.

A Langolier.

Reaching for Lief. Where The Creep was...or was supposed to be...alleged to be.

"Am I still in that terrible place? In that temporal-spatial membrane from the Far Realm's hellscape...Acamar lurking?"

---

Alright, two prospects for consequences from the preceding action resolution failure:

1) A simple -2 forward to Lief's next Wisdom-based Primary Skill Check as he struggles with this madness...with impossible insight.

2) Resolving the above is like a Devil's Bargain; it's vs the HARD DC but (a) it is as if you had an Advantage spent so you can gain 2 successes and (b) this cannot be resolved by the use of a Daily. Some part of Lief, a simulacrum...or the real thing split off in some kind of quantum collapse (or magical BS), is still in that tunnel in the Far Realm...and that Lief has to fight off this Langolier horde within it to let our material Lief hopefully reassert himself and carry the day.

What do you do?

 

[Grendel_Khan]

LIEF moves by instinct, recoiling from the Langolier. How did it get here, of all places? How is Acamar and its hordes everywhere, even now, even in defeat?

The Langolier is still moving, flowing forward as Lief pulls away. But something's wrong.

Something's wrong.

Lief feels eyes on him. He wheels around the cave. The faces of his people are everywhere, watching him, confused. No, not their eyes. These are old eyes he's feeling, a heavy glare, like a weight crushing him, the burden of centuries, millenia. Something impossibly ancient. The Langolier's teeth are brushing his hand now, getting ready to enclose him. Lief notices, but this is more important. There, at the cave entrance. He sees it.

The damn stag. Perversely large, like always, and framed by moonlight. Smug, like always. Looking—demanding—as usual. Lief can tell by its damn face and its damn posture that it wants to talk. He opens his mind, like a flower's bloom basking in sunlight.

What, he asks.

Surrender, the stag says.

And Lief gets it. He sees the entire puzzle, stretched across time, space, and reason. His eyes flutter shut as he takes in the horror of his new life.

There are two Liefs now—one moving forward, and one never moving at all.

In the void, where Acamar's bridge to the material world is endlessly there and endlessly collapsing, a recurring and constantly resetting loop of terror and shuddering, cosmic violence, there's a Lief that's being assaulted by a Langolier. Others are coming, too, hoping to prove themselves before the Corpse Star, or at least get a taste of meat in his lifeless place. This Lief will never leave—of course not. No one goes somewhere like this, so close to Acamar's light and gravity sucking utterly blank face and hopes to get out.

In the cave, where his father died to protect him, and these years later his son is offering his own life to the Creep, there's a Lief trying to save the world. He's on the verge of it, too—he knows it. But the void wants its due. It broke him, wrenched Lief apart and fused him back together wrong. This Lief got out. But the other didn't. And Acamar is trying to use this irrational co-location to stop him.

Fear soaks through him as the Langolier's jaws engage, and start to tear into his flesh. He's whimpering.

Fine, Lief thinks, imagining the stag's eyes as the pain starts like a fire. Surrender.

He remembers his training. All the blows, from sparring and otherwise, in tests of endurance or as punishment. He remembers that you don't block the pain but let it move through you—let it cleanse you.

In the void, Lief is torn in half. Another langolier takes the loose half and shreds it into more pieces. Lief is awake and in agony, held in a grinding maw and watching his dismemberment.

In the cave, Lief feels that pain and continues anyway. "I'm going to take my people out of here," he says to the Creep, "after I feed them." He runs up the cave wall and darts along its face toward the dire leopard, raining blows across its body before breaking its neck. He does his as the other Lief's body is destroyed, and he feels his own death in that place. He nearly weeps, mourning himself, but he is Pelor's servant, and that would not do.

The shifters descend on the dead leopard. Lief returns to the Creep, weaving as he walks. "I lied. I'm sorry. Pelor can't heal you. You're beyond his powers, and, to be honest, beneath him." He goes to kneel again before the spirit and collapses instead. "I can offer you one thing," Lief says, looking up at the wretched thing. "I'll come back here as often as I can. And I'll talk to you."

The Creep's face is inscrutable, unreadable. It huffs.

"I'll be your friend, you awful damn thing. Or you can kill me."

Lief blacks out.


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Intent: Ignore the Langolier's attack in order to figure out what the Creep really wants. Taking option 2—Hard DC for the possibility of 2 successes.

Secondary: Endure. r(10)+6 = 16 vs. Easy DC 13. Success.

Primary: Insight w/ +2 bonus for Secondary success. r(13)+12+2 = 27 vs. Hard DC 26. Success.
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Lief doesn't die every night. But whenever he dreams, it's of the void, and of Acamar. And sometimes the langoliers come out of nowhere, sending the Lief that left into convulsions, as the Lief that stayed dies again and again.

His fellow shifters have gotten used to it—they make fun of him for it, after propping him against the nearest tree or putting something soft under his head. Lief refuses to be their leader, and they'd never call him that, but he's building a church to Pelor and they're helping. It's just outside of Fallcrest, on wild land reclaimed by Lief and the other shifters. They'll welcome any who come in peace, and shelter them if they can. They haven't decided on a name for themselves or their church yet. Lief keeps mumbling about the Keepers of the Stag. They laugh. Weird guy.

Lief makes regular pilgrimages. In summer he treks back to the Living Lake, and pours new waters into its lapping waves. He tells it about his travels, about his people, about whatever's on his mind. If the lake cares, it doesn't say.

In winter he makes the harder trek. Back home, to the cave of his birth and his father's death. He brings a fresh kill for the Creep, lays it out like an offering, and he listens to the withered spirit with its ancient stories and newer, equally petty grievances. It talks about a war coming, across all the realms. It tells him to be ready, and to ready his flock. Lief listens. If he cares, he doesn't say.

He's just here to keep the Creep in this place for 17 years, long enough to tell his future self how to break Acamar's bridge. But it's not all bad there. When he sleeps in that cave, practically choking on the Creep's stench, Lief can close his eyes and see nothing. No void. No Acamar. Just memories of the first people to accept him for what he was. Friends who fought at his side. We saved the world, he thinks, and laughs at the thought, while the langoliers draw closer and the Corpse Star fills the horizon.

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Complexity 2 SC, Level 10 (DCs 13/18/26)
Goal (staged): Reach the Creep (3) and convince it to help Lief stop Acamar (5), when that version appears 17 years in the future—even if it costs present-day Lief his life (6).
6/6 Successes/2 Failures/1 Hard DC Available/1 Secondary Skills Available/1 Advantages Available/Primary Skills Exhausted: Endurance, Acrobatics, Athletics, Heal, Bluff, Insight.