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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neurotic" data-source="post: 8392512" data-attributes="member: 24380">IRON DM 2021el-remmen vs Neurotic, third-place matchINGREDIENTSFools Rush InMechaWeapon in WaitingFading DreamscapeFeast of FoolsMagical Workshop<h3>The Great Dream</h3>In The Great Dream anything is possible and Ayurin, the inhabitants live protected and peaceful lives. Each of them has power to change minor things of the dream so scraped knees, burned food or stubbed toes are non-existent. The carriages moved silent and soft over the cobblestones, light as feathers for horses to draw without effort. There were great buildings dreamed by the architects, weird ships on the waters that ran on their captains focus on the dream rather than the sails. There were street lamps whose light was dreamed into the world each evening as Daydreamers walked along the streets, lighting them, dreaming of the world enlightened.Great Dream is ruled by The Dreamers; The Queen who defined the world and sleeps eternally. The King who rules the world, maintaining Queens dream with magical dream-gems. The making of those gems is a secret that came from Before The Dream, legendary time when Ayuring lived dangerous lives, constantly fending off monsters, famine and greedy neighbors.Unknown to the most people, on the borders of the kingdom The Awoken sit, each holding a dream-gem and looking out over the Gray Mists. Each Awoken guards the border with its own contigent of guard, each guard raised from birth to be a guard.The Mists are an unknown expanse that occasionally shows other worlds as the Mist swirls and a shows glimpses of lives in other dreamscapes. Or spits out weird monsters that threaten the peace of the kingdom.The job of the Awoken and its guards is to prevent these monsters from reaching the inner kingdom where the populace lives.Dream-gems enable The Awoken to partially control The Mist closest to them, to hide or reveal details when other worlds appear. But its most important function is instant communication with The King whose master gem projects the kingdoms map in its central room. And each of the dream-gems is a light on that map, drawing near perfect circle of the Great Dream.The Dream went on, eternal and unchanging. Until one of dream-gems winked out. And The Mists moved in, the circle no longer perfect. Attuning to the master gem, The King tried to see the border, but only The Mist swirled in his mind-eye. He expected that guards will send a rider with some new information. But nothing happened for a week. And then...another gem winked out, the bulge of the Mist now obvious on the Great Dream. With the second gem silence, small tremor shook the kingdom and The Queen turned in her sleep.The worry started to gnaw at The King of Dreams and the world got that much darker. One month later, four of the gems disapeared, tremors got stronger and The Queen tossed and groaned in her sleep. People started losing their dream-granted powers and the confusion and worry permeated the kingdom.<h3>The Players</h3>The King needs to send people to see what is going on, his magical sight blocked by The Mists. But the secret of the border needs to be kept as long as possible. To that effect he choses people he can afford to lose, he choses people who defied the rules, who used their powers for personal gain, for harming others and for perpetrating crimes.The King goes into his Magical Workshop, dreaming about new king of dream-gems, one that will allow him to follow his 'suicide squad' and keep them in line.The PCs are these prisoners, each should make up a reason to be in prison. The Dream powers are fading with Queens Dreamscape (so any game system can be used with powers only for minor, flavor stuff). Each is promised freedom if they can restore the border. They are briefed about The Awoken, geased not to talk about it with anyone, but themselves and given dream-gems by which The King can follow their adventures.<h3>The Adventure</h3>Players need to come near The Mists. Which is about two weeks of travel away. But after about 10 days, the terrain changes. They need to fight through ever more twisted terrain, normal animals rabidly attacking; trees twisting their branches in an attemt to harm them; food and water tasting foul – this should be game of attrition just as much as power.They need to fight through, defeat (near The Mist border) strange human using some kind of mechanical animated armor the size of a giant. The study of the giant reveals parts written in the language never seen, but parts are written in archaic Ayurin. The markings indicate there is a hidden stash of weapons prepared behind the Border Forts in case of organized attack from The Mists.Brave (and unlikely) heroes need to track the giant footsteps into the Mists, find the stash of Hidden Weapons and return.The stash is row after row of Mecha robots, their special glass cabin enabling the driver to see through the mists. In that instant, the danger to The Kingdom is apparent as a group of formians drive their mindless drones through the border of the kingdom.Their complete lack of imagination is disturbing the World made of Queens imagining and the race to restore dream gems before the formians enter The Kingdom proper is on.The stash contains notes from Before The Dreaming, unknown things are mentioned, plague, nuclear weapons and lasers among other things. But there are notes on making of dream gems and The King needs to return to Magical Workshop to create more of them to combat this new threat.The Fading Dreamscape shakes ever harder as the formians advance, each soldier defeated and dominated simply turned against the unlikely heroes.PCs will need to coordinate with the king, organizing his people to defend the kingdom, with The Awoken to coordinate and try to strenghten the borders, and finally, to defeat formian handlers among the hordes of lesser or dominated species.The Formians don't really care about their drones, there are always more to be made, so like fools they rush in in whatever traps the players prepare making a feast of fools for the carrion eaters. With mecha powers (give them powerful ranged weapons, such as rays (lasers) or explosives (fireball) along with melee capabilities of giants) the PCs can lay waste in the horde, but it is by itself fools errand since they are essentially endless.</blockquote>

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