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.

 

[Fuzzybear]

The End of Tyranny​

With Pilus dead, the finale of the set of finales was imminent. But first there was time for one final set of downtime activities and feat learning. While others trained, bought items, and visited friends, Jack decided to extract the body of Pilus from the wreckage of Tempest and bring it to Guthwulf for investigation. I liked the way that Jack's player is buying into the gray area of his character - paying in morality for the power to do what is needed - so I wanted to give him a bit of a reward for it. I decided to explain Rev's situation a bit more and have Guthwulf be able to opine about Ming's failures and the waste of his time. He then distilled the remaining power from being attached to Tempest and infused a stone with the reroll option of a Wish spell.

I decided to skip all of the Ragesian incursion for a couple of reasons. The first was to give Bryn's husband a purpose. After she moved on, I decided to have Brent commit himself to the Resistance to do what he could to help. So he joined a suicide mission into Ragos as a spy. In the end, his cell ended up getting tapped to deal with the shield around the Opaline Wastes. As she tried to make contact with him a few times, she eventually just got a response of "I'm sorry." But the group did their job and distupted the ritual. The second reason I decided not to have the party make the attack was that I felt it was so against previous instructions. Ever since they got the Torch, they were told how important it was they were safe and didn't teleport into dangerous locations. Multiple times they can get punished for blind teleports. But now they are apparently supposed to do it. Either way, I just didn't like how it felt.

Our next session was Winry's last fireside game. We decided to end with a return to the beginning - another game of 2 truths and a lie. This time we decided to have each person send their answers to me (an NPC in the game on slips of paper) anonymously where I could read them off and let everyone guess who they think put them in and which was the lie. I would really recommend to any other GMs to include games like this and encourage your players to take them seriously. They are very effective at bringing out backstories, bring up controversies, and just have deeper in character discussions. I know this does require having the right kind of party and all, but I would say they were some of our favorite character development times honestly.

The next day, the armies teleported to the Opaline Wastes. Shortly after arriving and getting set up, Crystin approaches with a warning before a very sneaky ambush begins. The combats in the next few sessions were largely straightforward and had to be buffed pretty significantly. I decided to pull the pit fiend from the Ragos incursion and add it as a second wave to the fight with the devils and fire giant. This gave the combat more legs and kept things going longer. I also thought it might allow more of the help to be useful. Unfortunately, it still wasn't really enough most of the time. I did have Katrina help initially, and then Kathor Danava ride in to steal the Grand Standard away from a General Titus who was keeping his distance. Kathor almost paid for the attempt with his life, but the party was able to recover him after he was paralyzed.

Then a messager arrives from Shalosha asking for more help. The party heads there, but instead of going along the traditional route for this, they decided to go off script. With a lot of flight options at high level, they avoided the majority of the combats and found a pinned down Rantle. They rescued him and quickly teleported back instead of fighting either of 2 combats I had planned. Not frustrating for me honestly, but it is a lesson for other GMs at high level that even in a pretty scripted battle set, things will still go off plan. They continued to fly and located the general of this front. Swooping down in a superhero-esque attack, they quickly dispatched the quirky but frail necromancer and ended the threat for the day.

As the army settles in a enjoys a successful first day, the group prepares for Crystin's warning. They couldn't figure it out, so the enemies got the drop, but they were getting camped in the tent as well, so it came to a fight. It was dangerous, and very nearly deadly for the leaders of the Resistance, but the party got control after a moment. What they didn't expect though was a second prong of attack targetting Shalosha who was nowhere nearby. She was taken easily and only considered after a runner came with news of her abduction. Even though Shaaladel was removed from our game already earlier, the idea of capturing one of the leaders like this and using them in the final battle, especially because of Myetharia's connection there, was still appealing, so I'm glad that it paid off.

With all of their success over the campaign, and how easily they dealt with the side battles at the start of this final act, they had easily amassed enough points to ignore any further battles. I think there could be fun to be had here, but at max level already, the power the PCs have to decimate battlefields over and over again just didn't make it seem worthwhile. They had a chance to enjoy their powers, have a rest, and then move to the end of the story. What I did do as the party planned the descent down the last tunnel was have Parallax explain to Jack his price and the role he must play. I impressed on Jack that the hand that strikes the Heart with the Torch must be his. I wanted to add this extra difficulty to the fight (forcing them to get into risky positions some) but also as a payment for what was done earlier at the Eye when Parallax helped to prevent a TPK. Jack's body would be used as part of the fuel required to restore the Pheonix to life.

Next came the tunnel. The group was suspicious of the deserter, but with so many deserting and giving up, they trusted them pretty quickly. Following the map, they avoided notice with invisibility and made it directly to the confrontation immediately without too much issue. Just before they would have been noticed by the green dragon, the group opened up on them anyway along with a polymorphed Naizelasa to keep things even. A battle ensued, but it was always going to go badly for the defenders when max level heroes were already within all the defenses on onto the leaders. It didn't take long for the green dragon to dive down the pit as a surrender is called and the defectors to take control of the rest. As the Resistance moves in, the heroes don't wait and dive down the pit. They do their best to convince Naizelasa to join, and she helps fly them down, but she quickly gives up and drops the heroes as fast as she can once she sees water below and flees.

This is where Winry had one of the best long plays I've seen. Way back before heading off to Dassen, she bought a robe of useful items. While not a ton had come of them, it had come up a couple of times. But here, one of the things that we had written off as a joke when it was rolled came up so clutch. Off from the robe come 2 patches, each containing a rowboat. It was perfect. I described to them the troubles they would have had normally with the glyphs and traps, but they just sail on by. At least until the rapids comes. As they see the waterfall coming, they bail out and begin to fly. Since they were beyond the dispeling glyphs by this point, its just fine, so they get to watch the rowboats be crushed as they fly effortlessly onwards through the cavern and towards Time.

The dragon had peered in at them a couple of times, aging all by Winry (monk body), but I knew where this was going far before they had ever encountered them. This was a party that would talk first and punch second, so it wasn't a surprise to me that they talked with Time when they could, passed his tests, and gained his benefit easily. I had made up a killer map for this in Foundry that never got used, so I did show that off though.

I'll save the fight with Leska and the epilogue for another post as this is fairly long already. I know I made a fair amount of changes to the adventure here, especially cutting out a few sections that could have lengthened it, but we were all feeling worn by this point of the campaign. I'll talk about this more next time, but being now on the 4th climactic ending arc in a row was draining, so I didn't want to drag it on further. I think it turned out quite well though and it was cathartic for everyone to have some random scrubs to punish with epic level magic and powers. Point thoroughly made, it was time to wrap things up and close out the story more than revel in the glory.

Next time, an end to war.

 

[RangerWickett]

Yeah, high level combats get exhausting. I'm not sure how I'd handle it differently if I wrote it today. I mean, you want the climax to involve some big battles, given the campaign's name, but I think I overdid it. Lord of the Rings didn't have the Battle of Pelennor Fields last multiple days.

I can't wait to see how your campaign turned out.