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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pour" data-source="post: 6130766" data-attributes="member: 59411">The ardent's argument that all the gods would be needed, even the ugly  and evil ones, in the campaign against the Yth won out in regards to the  foreboding war goddess frozen mid-swing of her axe. The ardent  felt a deep-seated connection to all lost and wayward divinities, of  course being one herself. There was opposition amongst the party, but the majority were in favor. She broke Kishar free.Kishar made a defensive flourish and  prepared herself to fight the group. The ardent appealed to her while the  party recoiled, and Kishar's axe stopped within a hair's breadth of  splitting the psychic's head open like a melon. Kishar then grabbed the ardent by the  throat and lifted her off her feet. Our psion might have foiled the attack,  but the ardent chose to be grabbed, allowing the conqueror-queen to  process the immensity of her situation in her own way. Without warning, Kishar  planted a deep, voracious kiss on the ardent's lip, biting her tongue with  jagged teeth and drawing knowledge from the blood. When Kishar pulled  away again, she understood, and tossed the ardent aside. The warlock (protege of a succubus sorceress) and Kishar shared a brief moment, involving the licking of  an ear and a promise. After that, Kishar agreed to join the party in  their defeat of the Exgod, and the Yth afterward. Kishar seemed somehow challenged by Karana and the angel, though neither let it bother them.The party continued their exploration of the isochron chambers,  coming upon several unusual god-beings, including a cobrasaur,  a giant white ape (Primal Rage, anyone?), and an eladrin with a startling likeness to  the late swordmage. They released this elven god, only to discover he was no god at all, rather the swordmage's son from an alternate reality, one in which the Yth  succeeded in destroying Creation in the time of his adulthood (in this  reality, he's still an infant). Just a little lore to make sense of this next bit, but the campaign largely revolves around planar gems called hearts or har'venoth in Elven, containing all the knowledge of their attributed plane, so vast as to inspire sentience. Since late Heroic, they've been a precious commodity and highly saught after by many campaign factions. They've been used and abused, by NPCs and PCs alike. Some of them seem to have their agendas. Oh, and they act as batteries for alien ships.Anyway, in the final moments of the eladrin's system, his mother Kaylan (a half-elven princess, prophet, and former PC) enacted the "Gloriandel Contingency" or the ritual of combining  select har'venoth into forming a new reality from the information stored within their limitless facets. In her ritual, she omitted  the Strangeheart (Heart of the Void), hoping to create a sanctuary without threat of the  Far Realm (as her grandfather Highking Gloriandel intended to do thousands of years  prior). Instead, the ritual proved only to jaunt the eladrin into a  reality where the Yth had not yet won, perhaps the only reality where  they had not yet won. The  contingency was a fool's hope. The eladrin's reality was subsequently devoured.The eladrin had been transported millions of years into the past,  then frozen in a crystal until this very moment. However, he radiated power enough to lure  the Ibha Varana into snaring him alongside divine vestiges. Why? He  explained this was because the soul of the ancient gold dragoness  Celinduil fused with his own soul during a failed resurrection ritual (which, in the current time line, their NPC ally Kaylan is currently in the process of trying herself).Thanking all the gods to be found by "Auntie Warlock" and other dear  alternative-reality family, the hopeful, young Dragon Prince (I just like the sound of it) joined the party. The ardent and psion in particular were interested in  learning more about his past and their future, hoping to garner some  advantage in the days to come. And so the player who lost his swordmage introduced his new alt, which brings a decided lighter air to the war-weary and battered party. The player and I had hashed out the character several nights prior, enough to get him started at least, and though a little complex in origin, so is everything else in this campaign. If it made him happy, it made me happy. And it does have plenty of ties to the existing story, which is always my major concern, specifically endgame potential.The next isochron chamber contained a faceless beauty with small  horns, flowing purple locks, and a black, tattered dress. The crystal  read "Terris-Thule" (The Yth also destroyed Norrath, it seems). The warlock and Kishar both took an interest in the  goddess, which many guessed was a deity of secrets, spies, and  subterfuge. The angel disapproved of her release, but then again she  disapproved of every release...Kishar and Eilessa simultaneously broke the crystal, and the former  grabbed the goddess by the waist and claimed her for her own. Such was  the goddess of blood, slaughter, and conquest's nature. However, claiming  Terris-Thule was not such a wise move. Terris-Thule proved to be the goddess of nightmares and fear,  bringing even bloody Kishar to her knees in a sudden, black-lit moment.  Though the warlock used her power to delay her, Terris-Thule ultimately  fled against the might of the poising party. The psion's empathic probing revealed that Terris was, in fact, just as  terrified as trembling Kishar. Her system had been destroyed. She  herself had just been released after potentially millions of years in  stasis. And her first interaction was one of potential slavery. Narra  tracked her flight to the ethereal realm of thought, dreams, and  emotions, close and yet impossibly far at the same time. She appealed to  the goddess, but received no response. Kishar, humbled for the first time perhaps ever, was quiet for a long while afterward, brooding after being overwhelmed by fear.They moved ahead, and in that time the archdruid ruminated on his experience interfacing with the Varana vessel as an psionic illumine. You see, he had learned where the crystals fed and their ropey cables and  veined circuitry led: a crystal seat in a removed chamber called the  Throne of H'sinn, where the aliens would sit and assume the energies of  their captives. However, he was quite unwilling to share the information  with the party upfront, as the potential was there to simultaneously  slay all the prisoners and catapult one of their number to godhood, or  perhaps something much more abominable (a new Ythlord?). The process was  all too similar to the Emperor's distillation, and he hadn't the  stomach for such deviancy. Previously, the ardruid had played a pivotal role in discovering and dismantling his homeworld's emperor from hunting down those with traces of divine lineage and distilling their essence into ambrosia elixirs- with hideous, soul-destroying results for the victims. Keep in mind, these were the war crimes of the psion's "father", but more exactly her creator (she being an artificial human called a mannequin). When stumbling upon another pentagram and more explosive runes, the cautious warlock enlisted  the psion's aid in diffusing a potentially lethal, ship-wide conflagration (46d10 fire damage).  However, initial difficulties only partially deactivated the enchantment  before a massive necromantic spell was cast over the entire Varana  vessel. The Exgod, knowing the party was somewhere in the ship but  (because of the warlock's amulet) unable to pinpoint their exact location,  rose whatever alien corpses resided in the ship into active service. One player coined it a carpet bombing maneuver. The Exgod knew the isochron chambers had been unlocked (the amulet's blanket  scry-block was only fifty feet). More importantly, the Throne of H'sinn  had been unlocked and there was the potential for him to reclaim his  godhood. Answering the necromantic call were liquid-metal alien corpses (bodaks) which rose from stasis freezers to combat the  party. They had the startling ability to reflect energy attacks and  possessed mutable limbs that could be fashioned into stabbing weapons.  Mechanically, I had them immune to all "energy-based" ranged attacks (regardless of damage type) which they were able to reflect. Attackers rolled hits normally, but then rolled a 1dx where x was the number of available targets. After an initial foray, the party began to rethink their tactics.The ardent was able to discern that  intense cold would return them to hibernation. The archdruid tried a different strategy, managing to re-entomb  many of them in the chamber they'd yet to emerge from with a Karana-bolstered wall of flourishing nature, but  others across the ship raced to secure the throne. At that point, I had to provide stats for the vestiges, or at least some boon for having freed them. I really took the kid gloves off and decided Karana gave advantage on all primal attacks and damages. Kishar allowed any in Aura 3 to score critical hits on 15-20. Together, they made the archdruid a powerhouse.Meanwhile, the angel's lodestone sensed the nearest portal lied to the  south, a means of exiting the Varana ship entirely and escaping the massing bodak. It was a wise move... if there weren't something worth staying to defend or destroy. The archdruid was forced to divulge the  location of the much more strategic throne north, and what it might allow. If the Exgod gained the throne, he could be back to full strength in no time. The party just couldn't allow the chance. The archdruid felt an added pang of worry, as he'd more or less revealed a secret which could radically alter the fate of anyone who dared sit the crystal chair. The race was on,  bodak and party members alike making north with all haste, the assassin and the angel in the forefront...The party ended up defeating a gathering host of bodak at the entrance to the throne's antechambe through a clever combination of cold-based, aura, and close burst attacks synergized across the NPC druid and the ardent. The  warlock dominated one, making it stab itself in the face. The psion took out another. And Kishar,  rushing one, proved her axe is a sweet, sweet Epic weapon which tore the  bodak from existence.The assassin cast his darkest shadow magic and slipped ahead of the others  unseen (Stealth check 56 I think). Finding his way into a formidable swarm of bodak, one false move  would prove his certain demise. Mercy, sensing mischief, flew in just after, using a level 25 protection against undead scroll which repelled the futuristic undead despite their most ardent  wish to slay her.  The assassin found the giant-sized Throne of H'sinn, thrumming deeply and  swimming with strange lights. Three isochron crystals overshadowed it,  containing deities from some forgotten realm: Tempus, Ilmater, and  Auril (oops, the Yth destroyed Toril as well...) Vaguely familiar with Varana technology from his meddling during  the unlocking of the isochron chambers, and sensing, at long last, an  escape from his eternal debt to the Grave, he leaped upon the chair and  activated it.For a good deal of Paragon and Epic, the assassin has been looking for a way to escape the unpleasant side of his Darklordship, and more importantly the inexorable hold the Dark Powers of Cadavera (Ravenloft) had over him. On a deeper level, he wanted to be the true master of his own destiny and the sole owner of his, well, soul. He'd been bred into an assassin cult, his soul split into fragments by his father to make him a more efficient killer, and throughout his life he'd known brief glimpses of happiness stained in blood and the tears of those closest to him. He'd bent all the resources of his extensive assassin order toward his true freedom and still come up short. And three times he'd been slain or cast into the Grave, his ultimate afterlife, paralyzed in total darkness, imprisoned in his mind for the promise of all eternity. He'd nearly gone mad each time, and each time he was brought back he'd lost a little of himself. The entire ship trembled and quaked as the chair was hacked.  Thirteen captured divinities were extinguished in moments (some of the revealed tokens were Mum-Ra and D'Sparil), their power  feeding into the chair and the one who sat upon it. Thus began an epic  struggle of wills between the Darklord and the remnants of a baker's  dozen of the universe's vanquished deities. He passed two out of three saves, then made 11/13 saves afterward. In essence, the assassin won, much to all of our shock, amusement, and (for a few players) annoyance and even frustration/anger. I give a ton of credit to the assassin's player for taking the initiative, playing the character, and being pro-active- risking really, really tough odds to see his character reach his ambition. He actually pulled it off! One player felt that kind of action a betrayal and didn't like what the player had done. Another actually left the chat room before he lost his temper. Everyone else cheered him on, myself included. Judge as you like, I suppose.And so the assassin has been obviously removed from the party, though I'm still weighing the ramifications of a living god now in the Siege to oppose, among others, the Exgod and perhaps Orcus as well. It could go a lot of ways. I've got plenty to work with, in any case. The player is already working up some cool alternate character ideas.With anger, fear, and great trepidation, all the party knew what had  happened as the Varana's cables began to burst and the circuitry  overloaded. The assassin had reached apotheosis. The Exgod, too, knew of the  crippling turn of events, and one of any number of sources began to  dismantle the ship in thunderous tremors. The party's only avenue then  was south, to the portal, and back to the Siege proper. The psion, the assassin's love, was hit hardest by the apparent abandonment. And the Abyssal portal in her chest roiled as her hope faltered, burning away the paltry gauze wrapping. Dun, dun, dunnnnn!</blockquote>

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