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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fuzzybear" data-source="post: 9410129" data-attributes="member: 6917259">It's been quite a long time, so I should probably do some recapping. We haven't played as often recently due to schedule, but we have still made quite a bit of progress.<h3>Protectors of the Pass</h3>Using the group's name as the recap title fits quite well as they finally have returned back to Gate Pass. Before they could go, there was some discussions to happen. Jack wanted to talk with Guthwulf some more, and I wanted to draw some more parallels between the Ragesian's efforts and the party's, with the main difference often being perspective. I did my best to make Guthwulf both semi-reasonable and also clearly too extreme, so I think he really resonated quite well with Jack's character arc. Bryn had a sit down with her son about what caused her to start her adventuring career (she walked in on her husband cheating on her) and got a promise that the 3 of them would have a real conversation about it together, though Keth was planning to kill his father. Finally Rev wanted to discuss his past with Etinifi. I wrote into Rev's backstory a hook of him going along with Etinifi and Leska to the Heart of History where the original Rayland (Rev and his "brothers" are clones of Rayland) sacrificed himself to a spectral dragon to allow the other 2 to succeed and continue onwards. Rev is only starting to learn about this past as his player wanted me to have full control over the pre-clone events and memories. So this conversation served as a confirmation of the visions seen at the Temple of Lost Souls that indeed Rayland had worked with Leska. He seems to think this was more significant than it was, as Rayland's true purpose for going along hasn't come out yet fully, but he was not there because he loved Leska or anything but for his own quest.Eventually the time comes and the party teleports the army west of the city before trying to teleport inside themselves. Saved from the teleport trap by Rantle and some old friends from session 0, they move to their real task of removing the dragon threat from the city. The fight in the tower was fun, though I (as always seemingly) had to give the dragon some more advantages to make things tense. Myetharia got thrown out the opening to fall, but Jack jumped out to cast fly on them both to save her. With effectively everyone having the ability to fly reasonably well, the advantage of the dragon was mostly lost. I did my best to keep them mobile, but eventually it was felled. Following Rantle back to a session 0 location for the Resistance, the group met up with Menash and Kathor which provided some surprises.Here is where I had to make some changes to the adventure. First, my party really did not love how the combat at Gallow's Fend went a number of adventures ago, so I removed them from the actual fighting in the streets there where the groups of soldiers are fighting. I described the action for a moment with Rantle and Kathor leading the guerilla fighting there. Instead I had them going to counter a high level demon assault that the Ragesians called to break the lines. This fight ended up being really stressful as nearly everyone was down until Bryn remembered about Banishment and succeeded on all of the enemies including the ones that had advantage! It was a massive moment for the party as they were in a very tough spot. I had purposefully overcooked this encounter to use a lot of resources and stress them before the tower events that were to come.Speaking of the tower, upon returning the party is confronted by Metamorphasis and given a new point to assault - Gabal's tower which is being used as a prison. Jumping straight towards it I had the elven deva messenger appear and talk to the party. I also had them steal the hair from everyone before only Bryn succeeded on her perception check at the end to notice. No one confronted this entity though, or put together that the deva who approached them a few minutes later might be the same person, so while they angered Shaaladel, the deva's mission was successful. I was shocked as my party is typically very aggressive when something happens and reacts very quickly with violence. This time they didn't, and it will come up later, though they did talk about it a lot and worry about why Bryn's hair being cut was so meaningful.At the tower, they handled the first floor fight with the ease I expected, but I had laid a bit of a timer trap into the fight that they didn't know about. In one of the cells where the wights were killing prisoners for the battle, one of the cells contained Bryn's husband Brent. Fortunately for them, they ended the fight before the wights made it to his cell, saving his life. There was a brief exchange here, but I knew that they didn't want to get into everything right now so I didn't force it. Brent also isn't in the best state either of course, so he's fine with the time to recover first. Heading upstairs, they eliminate Gabal in a pretty fun combat before shattering the mirror and saving everyone trapped within. They needed a LOT of encouragement to shatter the mirror though as they figured (reasonably) that might destroy all of the souls trapped within. I had to have 2 different NPCs trapped within encourage them this was the right move before they did it. They were very shocked to find Vigilance (Indomitability) there, and especially shocked that he had changed so much. He told them of the upcoming threat, but the party is much more focused on the immediate at this point in time, so I think the ending of this adventure will be a surprise still.I'm going to end this recap here as this is quite long already. I'll discuss the events of Shaaladel in the next one as it has quite a lot loaded into it from a party perspective.</blockquote>

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