WotBS Fuzzybear's Burning Sky

[Fuzzybear]

Annihilating Annihilation​

I actually thought I had finished up the last adventure when I responded, so here is the actual end of Trilla's dream world.

Heading into the dream within a dream (Inception anyone?), I decided that I didn't want to do most of the events that happen within the dream. It felt very nebulous at the time and hard to run effectively. I also wanted to challenge the party a bit more as they were expecting a big boss fight at the end. In the end, I decided that even though this wasn't going to be the last adventure, I wanted to run the Annihilation fight anyway... likely at least.

While I removed all of the chasing around and running, I did leave the option for the party to abandon or kill Trilla while still being successful. I would have been very surprised if my group had done either of those options, but they were possible for them. As expected, they wanted the fight.

I changed the fight a fair bit here as well, taking some inspiration from the Sin fight near the end of Final Fantasy X. I wanted to make things terrifying, and I thought that between the HP total and the damage a group can put out at this level Annihilation just wouldn't be truly scary. Instead of just having things disintegrated if they are touching Annihilation at the start of its turn, I had Annihilation destroy the map slowly each turn. I made a darkness radius starting just off the side of the map that would grow by a random amount of feet each round. Anything in the darkness would lose all their vision and take disintegrate damage at the start of their turn. The idea here was that the normal attacks that it did were less threatening than the slow, impending doom that the darkness represented. I also buffed the attacks, focusing on dispelling buffs, knocking prone, and max HP reductions, which did add to the concerns, but the real threat was time.

Even this ended up being too slow how I had drawn it up, as it just doesn't take long for 5 level 18 heroes to chew through 600 HP in 5e, even with resistance to all, especially when the creature gets stunned every other turn and doesn't move. I ended up doubling the amount of ground that it covers each turn once it went below half health.

All of these changes made for a great moment when I rolled the max distance on the last turn and the creature ate up more than half of the remaining ground in 1 turn, swallowing up a couple of the heroes (Myetharia and Winry) at the same time. Myetharia had her turn shortly afterwards and was disintegrated... thankfully she was just a projection of a dream and not real. Winry was in real danger, but the fight ended just in time for her to stay alive.

Slaying the creature, saving Trilla and escaping, the heroes were presented with the choice of how to repair the Torch. While things initially hinted towards killing her to do so, they eventually figured out that it just needed some of her blood, not necessarily all of it. Trilla then blasts it with her draconic fire and reforge the artifact as she is purified.

Exiting the dream world and heading back up to the surface, the group finds out that a full month has passed since they entered. The war has ground on, but things were quickly coming to their end. This was mostly because I realized the timeline was weird as things were going too fast. I know it didn't really matter, but I also wanted this to be strange and mysterious. I had allowed Myetharia to do something else while this happened, so if it was just a day things weren't going to work out. The month let me play with timelines a bit as well as to make what messages they got and such even more weird.

As soon as they make it back out, they are contacted and told to come to Seaquen quickly as Pilus' Tempest airship is on the way...

 

[RangerWickett]

I admit to starting off a little lost from the pause since the last update, but a quick reread refreshed my memory.

I was not involved in Under the Eye of the Tempest due to scheduling stuff, so I wonder whether the boss fights in this one will actually be challenging.

 

[Fuzzybear]

Tempestuous Skies​

This will cover the entirety of the penultimate adventure as it was honestly a quite short affair. A large portion of the book is focused on the biomantic airship Tempest and the ways the party could potentially attack it if they didn't follow the instructions. What this meant in practice was that Act One went largely as planned (though I moved Caela's ghost to the prison entrance), Act Two's pages were completely unnecessary if the party doesn't go completely off script, before Act Three had some changes based on our campaign's story but largely followed the plan again.

Picking us back up returning to Seaquen after reforging the Torch, Myetharia rejoins the group officially. Her trial return in the tail end of the last adventure went pretty well despite the new baby, so she decided she was ready to plan for every session again. This meant that Myetharia arrived with a contingent of Shahalesti in the opening stages of this adventure to help support the Resistance's defense of Seaquen. Talking to Simeon, the group finds out about a group of monks heading into the old prison they previously fought Lee Sidoneth at. They decide to investigate after having left the monks on poor terms previously and with the airship inbound, they of course were suspicious of subterfuge and further attacks.

Before they could leave, Winry gets a response to a letter she had sent to Papuvin of the Seela before heading to Trilla's nightmare. She (and her player) was getting more concerned about the forever nature of the tie to the Seela people, so I wanted to give her a bit more agency and freedom. The good news is that a First Tree sapling had been found and it was showing signs of taking root. The plan is that once the world is stable again, Winry can return with the living weapon and embed it back into the First Tree. They've begun the ritual, so even in Winry would fall in battle, the Seela could be safe until the weapon is returned by allies instead. This allows her to be able to use the final benefit of the weapon (a one-time Wish cast at the cost of her life) as well without dooming the entire race.

At the prison, the ghost of Caela along with a swath of monks fight the party first before they push down deep into the pyromancer's tomb again. More monks awaited here with Longinus to talk to the party. They were able to sow seeds of doubt in his brother Pilus, so Longinus disappeared into the rock once the monks moved to confront him. I removed the changling aspect to these monks as it felt unnecessary to suddenly introduce. These 2 battles against largely underleveled monk mooks were honestly really annoying for everyone. They never really threatened (outside of stunning someone and pushing them into the lava) as they just don't do damage. The hit chances are quite low intentionally and the saves are low for many of the party as well. Once Twilight Aura goes up, there just isn't much they can do unless they pushed Bryn into the lava and knocked her unconscious to drop it. Otherwise they just couldn't get through 25 temp hp a round without a miracle.

Once the monks were summarily defeated, Longinus reappeared and annoyed Jack by saying he wouldn't pick a side. I was surprised by how unhappy this made them, but he did at least spell out the plan of attack for the party. Using the portal to the plane of elemental fire along with the Torch's power, the group was prepared to unleash lava on the Tempest as it moved into position. The plan settled, it wasn't long before it became action a couple of days later.

After wounding the flying airship with the lava, the party teleports on at the expense of a soul (an increasing worry for Bryn which has been fun to prod) along with an army. While the army keeps swarms of monsters busy on the deck of the ship, the party heads below to seek out the heart. Along the way they fight some acidic creatures in an active stomach, wind elementals in the lungs, before finding Pilus himself in the heart along with a slew of monks and friends.

This is where I should explain my change to the adventure for my party. This is where I decided to put the climax of Rayland / Revansoul's storyline of clones and biomancy with Aemon Ming. Ming fell in with Pilus after the initial attack on Seaquen failed, finding a kindred soul in the man in his pursuits of biomancy, necromancy, and renewed life. Ming had lost someone dear to him and would do anything to have her back. In his experiments, he accidentally created the clones of Rayland, his servant, when Rayland died during Leska and Etinifi's confrontation with Time. Things get shaky here timeline wise honestly, but I figure that could be expected in a way with how the final location works anyway.

Since that day when Rev and his clone brothers awoke, Ming has been selling the world for a chance to have his daughter back again. This includes helping Pilus with the finishing touches on his creation. So instead of Onamdammin and Ostalin guards we had Aemon Ming, Rev's brother Rivenstone (a winged rogue now with biomancy), and an army of biomatically enfused monsters.

The fight itself had a couple of moments of danger, though I really had to boost up the difficulty to make it that way honestly. Adding 2 more monks with a minor chance to stun but only 33 hp just doesn't mean much as they get dissected by the damage dealers in the party. Instead I made the boneclaws more of a threat by changing up the map and let Pilus cast more high level spells without worry as he feeds on the power of Tempest instead of being limited by spell slots. I will say though, Time Stop as a spell is always more interesting in theory than reality. It just isn't good with concentration and limited buffs in 5e. I was a little more loosey goosey with the rules here though...

Rivenstone as a high level rogue worked well as I tried to mimic the hit and run at range powers of Rev in our party. He stayed out of sight, went invisible some, attacked soft targets with massive sneak attacks from his token friend monks. He was perhaps the biggest threat in the fight. In the end, the party succeeded though, killing Pilus before finishing off a downed Ming. In the end, Rev helped Bryn kill him with the Torch, freed the impressionable Rivenstone from his grasp, and teleported themselves and the remains of the army off the now dying and falling airship back to the ground. While there were losses, the party once again saved the Resistance.

I am sorry to disappoint @RangerWickett as you might not get to know how the boss fight was without your influence as I did kind of change it quite a bit. It was a fun idea, but the adventure itself was fairly short again. I did like being able to plug my own stories into the place as it left things quite unconnected. I think it needs something to make it more than just a short attack by a side character.

I am just finishing up my detailed notes for the final fight of the campaign as I write this recap, so you can tell how close we are now to the end. My party is a full combination of excited, sad, and scared at this coming to an end. We are looking to leave 5e behind (sorry all) and move towards trying out Pathfinder 2e, but at the same time we are sad to leave behind the characters we've made over the past nearly 4 years (by the end). I should have a couple more write ups still to go as I imagine one for the main part of the adventure and then one additionally for the epilogue and closing thoughts. Thanks for everyone's interest in following along!

 

[RangerWickett]

Good luck with the finale. And no worries about changing whatever you like to change. Any version of the adventure that involves the party teleporting an army onto a living airship, then rescuing everyone aboard as the ship crashes is going to have my approval.