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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 2268697" data-attributes="member: 1210">Kyrion, Albin, Jared, Bennodel, Lazenby, Grimdim- their names are famed throughout Erath.  They have faced down many terrible enemies, from entire guilds of assassins to that cursed kuo-toan priest-queen, and they have earned the accolades and friendship of many nations, churches and organizations of their world, Erath.  They have even negotiated a possible deal with their arch-enemy, the Dark One, to spare the lands of human and demihuman from a terrible orcish horde.Contrast this with our heroes, who, as Lester confides in the Erathian heroes, have been kicked out of or made enemies of many places and organizations.  And the Church of the Light, of course.“They aren’t our enemy,” Horbin protests.”Their High Priest is, sort of,” Sybele says, “you know, that one guy?  Who rules Forinthia, right?”Anyway, the Erathians explain that, on their world, the orcish homeland was ravaged by a magical accident they themselves witnessed when they time traveled to the past.  The orcs could no longer live in those lands, and thus their great leader, the Dark One, arose to lead them forth in a terrible war on more hospitable lands, to claim as their own.  It gets complicated from there, but the Erathians eventually learned a few key relevant facts.For one, there used to be ten Hells, but the Big A “compressed” the Tenth Hell when he took over.”That must be when he banished or bound the Big L,” suggests Orbius.  Lazenby nods.  Eventually, after a series of adventures with the clock running (the Dark One had only given them a month to solve his lands’ problems), the heroes of Erath found themselves in combat against the Lord of the First Hell, Bel.  With Tiamat in a cage secretly aiding them, they managed to destroy the Arch-Devil and free the Chromatic Dragon.“That was you guys?” exclaims Sybele.“Impressive,” grunts Inoke.Alcar merely mutters an imprecation about Bel.Since then, they’ve been following the trail of some deadly villains- or so they thought.  “Desecrated churches, a trail of corpses, murders and villainy of the blackest sort: it all led us to you.  But it is now obvious that the whole thing was a set-up,” Bennodel explains.  “We should never have listened to the Big A or his agents at all; they manipulated us masterfully.”  He appears tranquil, but Grimdim seethes with anger.Orbius and Kyrion are discussing an interesting conundrum.  “How come we’ve never heard of each others’ home planes?  I’ve never hear of this ‘Galador’ or anything, and from what you tell me he is important enough on a planar level that I should have,” the priest says.  Orbius and her get into a very esoteric discussion about abstract planar theory.  While the rest of the party exchanges tales, the two of them work on the question, and eventually they arrive at a conclusion.  Their planes must be very far apart, part of different cosmologies completely.  The planar layout that Orbius knows is not precisely the same as Kyrion’s.  But they share the Nine Hells.”That must be the connection,” Orbius reasons.  “And if the proper conjunction ocurred, our realms might come within reach of one another.”The two parties discuss what to do.  “We were relying on the Big A for help,” Jared remarks, “but that now seems much less like a good idea.”  “Well, the Big T is kind of a behind-the-scenes supporter of us,” comments Bennodel.  “The Big T?” asks Sybele.“You know, lots of heads, dragon?”“Oh, gotcha.”Lillamere says, “Well, that helps us avoid immediate trouble.  But surely you realize that the Big A will be after you now- and trust us, that isn’t a good thing.  He can strike you through the planes, and it hurts a lot.  Maybe you should consider helping us against him.”“Well, we can beat the scrystrike- we have an artifact that produces a 10’ radius mind blank,” Lazenby replies.  “Yeah, what’s in it for us?” Albin demands.  “Why should we help you?  Attacking the Big A sounds like suicide to me!  How many thousands of pit fiends does he have?  And how many can he summon to do his bidding?”“Oh, we can reward you,” Orbius smiles.  He proceeds to tell them about the party’s winnings, using divination magic to cheat at gambling. The Erathians are aghast.  “Cheating at gambling!  That’s... that’s...”“That’s brilliant,” laughs Gerontius.”Seriously, you can make a killing,” Veil says with a big grin.  “Good money to be made, that’s for sure.”“Just pony up the money and we’ll do the rest,” Lester chortles.  “Your reward is only limited by your ability to invest!”“Think about it, you’re cheating Hell,” Orbius says.  “How can that be wrong?”  Slowly, the Erathians become more and more interested.  Eventually, they accept the idea, but Bennodel can’t help but wonder whether associating with these Cydran loose cannons will lead his party to more and more compromises.“I say we help ‘em, regardless,” Grimdim rumbles.  “I got a thirsty axe and there’s someone who tricked us all needs talkin’ to.”  He grins a mad dwarvish grin.Next Time: Assault on Asmodeus!!!***Another interesting contrast between the Erathian and Cydran parties that my group later remarked on was that the Erathians are all single-classed except Grimdim, who has the dwarven paragon class plus fighter, whereas of my group, most have 3+ classes with the notable exception of Horbin.  However, that doesn't fit well in the context of an update... thus a little annotation here at the end. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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