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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Novaseaker" data-source="post: 6713710" data-attributes="member: 48566">(Warning! This post is even longer than the first!!)Paragon TierThe PCs are taken to a battlefield of the Captain's choosing: The Mournland. The Crimson Ship appears in the waters of a lake inside the Mournland, and the PCs are told their target is a warforged titan. Once they and Victor defeat it, the Crimson Ship's captain fufills his end of the deal, and takes them to a pond just outside of Greenheart (One that shouldn't be deep enough for the ship). They unload their goliath passengers, but find out the Emerald Claw prisoner escaped while they were off-ship fiting the Titan. Victor fills out a letter of credit to pay for all of the goliath villager's byshek weaponry, and a few help the PCs lug their cargo back to the Dragonbite in Eldeen Bay. They then set sail to return to Regalport.When they arrive, they notice the skyline of Regalport is different. when they became close enough to dock, they spotted a large oblong dome, like an egg, in the process of being constructed. They ask around town and find out it's a "monument of friendship", gifted to High Prince Rygar by his new Inspired allies from Reidra. Luckily, there was an Adaran monk in the party, who clued the rest of the PCs and Victor in that this was a very very bad thing. When they meet with High Prince Rygar, they mentioned they had returned with armaments to fight off the aberrant threat. They were told that the Inspired were lending the services of their navy to hunt down the monsters, and that that was sufficient. Apparently Rygar had suggested it. The PCs make their Insight/Sense Motive checks to detect that Rygar was being influenced by an enchantment or psionic effect of some sort.The PCs regrouped at the Dragonbite and hatched a plan. The Adaran monk mentioned a kalashtar community in Stormhome north of Aundaire that his kalashtar sister lived in. They would take Rygar there and see if his condition could be removed. Victor and the first mate of the Dragonbite (A Warforged wizard/artificer that just went by "Forge") went to kidnap Rygar while the PCs caused a distraction by attacking the Reidran soldiers at the Quori Monolith being built. Everything went off without a hitch (Except Forge incinerating two loyal Lhazzarite guards) and the PCs escaped Regalport with Rygar captive. They fought of a Reidran outrunner naval ship that caught up to them, and continued on to Stormhome.Once there, the PCs learned that the kalashtar of Stormreach were not strong enough to remove the controlling influence from Rygar. However, they mention that The Enlightened Havakhad in Sharn might be wise enough to undo it. The PCs took the news with mixed feelings: A solution was great, but they had they had to cross a war-torn continent to get to Sharn.The Kalashtar then revealed some of their current situation: They had been monitoring the state of Dal Quor and discovered that the Inspired were drawing the Plane of Dreams ever-closer with every Monolith they built. However, they were able to utilize this to increase the cooperation of kalashtar and adaran communities across the world by harnessing dream-travel. In other words, they could get the PCs to Sharn within one nights sleep by traveling through Dal Quor. A dream-guide by the name of Lanhakhad offered to take them, and crafted a set of "dreamsteel" manacles to keep the compromised Rygar bound even in his dream-self.One by one, Lanhakhad entered each PC's dream and forced them into a lucid-dreaming state, then gave them their own mini-encounter where they had to overcome their id in order to gain the ability to leave their own private dreamscape in Dal Quor. (The id being the part of the brain concerned primarily with the self and survival, it instinctively knew that to leave the dreamscape was too dangerous to allow.) Once the PCs dream-selves were gathered with Lanhakhad, they entered Victor's dreamscape, which was just a single, barren room. Unlike them, Victor was already lucid dreaming, and seemed to be in deep concentration, and demanding to leave with them quickly.Confused, Lanhakhad insisted that Victor had to face his id first. Hearing this, Victor lost his concentration, and a wall of his dream-room morphed into bars. Behind the bars a great winged beast, cloaked in shadow, began slamming against the cage, roaring in fury, fire streaming from its tooth-lined maw. When the shocked PCs asked what the giant monster was, Victor said it was his id, and that his concentration was slipping, and that they all needed to leave immediately.Lanhakhad woke everyone up and they unanimously decided to leave Victor in Stormhome, rather than confront his bewilderingly strong id. The next night, they traveled to Sharn, encountering a few non-quori dream monsters as they wandered through the outskirts of Dal Quor. The way I envisioned dream travel, it works by entering someone's dreamscape and then forcing your dream-self to wake up. When you do, you'd appear in close proximity next to the dreamer in the real world. So Lanhakhad guided the PCs to a dreamscape corresponding to someone sleeping in the upper-ctiy of Sharn.However, they walked in and found a Tsucora Quori hunched over a non-lucid dreaming figure. When it saw them, it forcibly woke the dreamer with a nightterror, causing the dreamscape to rupture and sending the PCs flying into seperate dreamscapes, waking up in different parts of Sharn. The PCs in seperate groups explore the city trying to find each other. Through each of their searches, they find Sharn in an aggrivated state. Apparently there was "new evidence" that implicated the kalashtar of Overlook in the destruction of the Crystal Tower during the Last War. This caused several hate crimes to be commited against the kalashtar and adarans of Overlook, and several riots had been triggered recently. The city council hired the local House Denieth Blademark garrison to supplement the city watch in the "protective quarantine" of Overlook.When the PCs finally meet up and bring Rygar to the kalashtar, they agree to have the Enlightened Havakhad roused from his meditations to help. The PCs were shocked to see the kalashtar taking the current situation in stride, and learned that most of the community believes in the path of the lightbringers: peaceful medicants who lead by example.However, while the PCs waited for the Enlightned Havakhad to be roused, they were approached by a cadre of shadowwatchers, kalshtar that believe in fighting the darkness actively. They asked the PCs to help them as they had discovered the source of the most violent riots: A hatemongering worshiper of The Fury. Eager to help, the PCs went with the shadowwatchers to the district of Fallen and crashed the dark priests's hateful sermon, dealing with the mob he stirred up. As the fight went on, however, the priest became more and more unstable, until he eventually transformed into a Du'lorra quori. The kalashtar were shocked, not realizing Dal Quor was so close to Eberron that a quori had been able to transform a possessed host.The party put the Du'lorra down, and in death it's body transformed back into the priest of The Fury. They returned to Overlook to find Havakhad awake, and he agreed to help them, curing High Prince Rygar of his insidious condition. Rygar was especially grateful for the PCs and immediately wents to draw funds from his First Bank of Kundarak account to reward them and buy himself a Ring of Mind Shielding.They then returned to Stormhome through more dream travel and boarded the Dragonbite, sailing back to Regalport. On the way, Rygar informed the PCs that the Inspired were rather curious about the Isle of Trebaz Sinara, an island in the Lhazzar Principalities that is universally avoided by every Pricipality fleet because of its monstrous inhabitants, despite rumors of Lhazzar's Tomb being somewhere on it. He told them that an Inspired delegation left to try to explore it, and hadn't returned by the time the PCs found him mind-controlled.After dropping Rygar off, Victor took the PCs to the island, joining them when they disembarked. They found the Reidran vessel shipwrecked on the shore, and followed the tracks of its survivors, battling the incredibly dangerous indigenous animals as they plunged deeper into the island. Eventually they found a campsite with murdered bodies (The fatal wounds being too clean to be from claws or fangs) and the scattered pages of a journal. Piecing the pages together, the PCs read the story of a hired Thunder Guide escorting the Reidran delegation, slowly growing insane. The last page was an incoherent jumble of words, but murderous intent could be gleaned.The PCs began following the scattered tracks from the campsite, until they were ambushed by the lone Thunder Guide. They incapacitated him and tried to interrogate him, but he just babbled "gagethgagagethgagagethga" and pointed off in the distance. When his babbling started to worm its way into the PC's heads, they killed the Thunder Guide, putting him out of his misery before they could catch his madness too.Setting off in the direction the guide was pointing, they found a broken slab of stone in a forest clearing, revealing descending stairs. The PCs delved into the catacomb, unable to read the Old Common addorning the slab. Below, they were confronted by mind flayers outfitted for battle (I used the Body Tamer prestige class from a Forgotten Realm book to make melee-oriented mind flayers) and dog-sized flayer larva. Further in, they found a ghastly room with several people hanging from chains, all but one of them with their skulls emptied out. The survivor, not just a Reidran but an actual Inspired, began babbling "he knows he knows he knows". After a casual attempt to get him coherent met with failure, they went further underground until they found a large grotto with a strangely luminescent pool.Standing in the pool was the beautiful man-creature they saw claw its way out of the cultists head so long ago. It was holding another Inspired, its hand embedded in hisr forehead up to its wrist. The man-creature smiled as the PCs and Victor stood stunned, knowing instinctively that they were still no match for these strang too-perfect human-looking creatures. It began speaking to them in stilted common, as if it was pretending to be a friendly human. It related that the "mindspawn" inside the Inspired's head knew what caused the Second Mourning, pouting as it added that the "dreamspawn" stole certain artifacts that belonged to it to create the device that spread the Mourning into Thrane. Casually ripping the Inspired's brain out, the man-creature informed the PCs that it was going to find its artifact and use it for it's "true purpose". Then it told them not to feel bad, and that they could play with its pet. The creature vanished, and the PCs had to fight a neothelid that errupted from the spawning pool.After that, they resolved to chase the creature into the Second Mourning. They went back to the Inspired still babbling "he knows he knows he knows" and worked even harder to get him coherent. They were eventually able to get the story out of him, the Inspired hedging it bets and deciding that they weren't as big a threat as the thing that was able to overpower a Quori's mind. The Inspired told them where to find the device that had caused the Second Mourning, and offered to teleport them there now that the man-creature wasn't blocking his attempts.Agreeing, the PCs arrived in the Second Mourning, facing a floating Dhakanni ziggurat, the dead-grey sky of the Mourning swirling above it like a churning hurricane, lightning striking UPWARD from the top of the ziggurat. They made their way onto it and to its summit, where they found the man-creature standing over the bodies of several Silver Flame templars (wearing authentic heraldry of the theocracy of Thrane). They briefly attempted to stop it, but it laughed off their attempts to harm it, setting of an insanity aura that caused the PCs and Victor to attack each other while it wents about its business and ripped an artifact, a Sextant of the Planes-looking thing, from the Mourning-spreading device. (Unfortunately, this doesn't reverse the Second Mourning). Then it vanished again.Once the PCs shook off the temporary insanity, they discover one templar still alive. He asks them to help him back to Flamekeep. Confused at first, the PCs learn that Flamekeep survived the Second Mourning. As the dead-grey mists rushed over the country, the font of Silver Fire inside Flamekeep exploded outward from the Cathedral to envelop the entire city. No one was harmed by the Flame, and when the mists met it, they stopped. Eventually the Flame receded back into the Cathedral, but the Mourning held its ground, leaving Flamekeep in a bubble within the Second Mourning.Once they fought their way through the nightmarishly transformed Thrane to Flamekeep, the PCs and Victor discovered the city had been barely surviving, scrounging for the resources to balance creating food and water for the overpopulated city and defending it against Mournland horrors. Jaela had also been missing ever since the miracle that protected the city, and the Flame had yet to call another Keeper.They stocked up in Flamekeep and then made their way to the Aundarian border. Once they passed through the mists, they noticed two important things. First, the 12 moons of Eberron were in an incredibly strange alignment, lined up one after the other vaguely aligned with the northern horizon. They were also almost immediately beset by dozens of Animal Messengers, each one from druids of the Eldeen Reaches, explaining that a twisted tower out of some nightmare had sprung up overnight in the Shadow Marches. Apparently Wardens and the Gatekeepers had heard about the PC's rescuing the goliath village from a aberrant cult deep in Khyber, and they requested the PCs come help.Guessing that the tower and moon-alignment had something to do with the man-creature from the Lhazzar Principalities and its strange device, the PCs booked passage to Stormhome on an airship and met up with Lanhakhad to quickly dream-travel to the Shadow Marches. When they arrived they found a starling battleground. The druids of the reaches were out in force, combating hordes of aberrations spilling forth from "The Tower Pandora". Gatekeepers informed the PCs that the tower was a Dealkyr stronghold that they had thought was sunk permanently below the swamps.As they watched the fight, a beam shot out from the top of the tower, toward the northern horizon, piercing the first moon dead center. Several pulses began immitting from the tower irregularly, traveling toward the moon.The PCs and Victor volunteered to punch through the aberrant hords and climb the tower to stop that beam. Ascending, they battled their way through hideous creatures of various twisted forms, some with far too many eyes, some with blades for limbs, some incredibly vile undead, etc. They even fought through shades of slain Dealkyrs (Idea stolen from Don Bassingwaithe's Dragon Below trilogy, where Geth fights the ghost of a cutting-obsessed dealkyr).At the top of the tower, however, they encountered the smiling dealkyr from Lhazzar, standing before a portal of some sort, a tunnel of yellow energy stretching off into seeming infinity. Before him was a vaguely familiar face: the ressurected form of the cultist the dealkyr clawed its way out of to reach the surface. The dealkyr stepped into the tunnel of light and dissolved into a pulse of energy that traveled down it. Meanwhile the cultist began summoning entities from the Far Realm into the portal chamber. After a few rounds of desperate battle the PCs and Victor put down the ressurected cultist-priest, but realized the entities he summoned were not leaving and that they were no match for these horrible things. They dove into the tunnel of light to escape them.They burst into energy and rocketed down the tunnel of light until they were falling down toward the surface of the first moon. Then they slammed into it and kept going, phasing through solid matter, over and over again as they passed through each moon in order until the last one. The tunnel ended abruptly just above the surface of Vult. The PCs and Victor had little time to catch their bearings as they were beset by strange constructs speaking draconic. The constructs seemed damaged already, and the PCs found their source: An open hatch on the surface of the moon.Descending underneath the surface of Vult, they found not a natural underground landscape of caverns and tunnels, but a sterile construction of hallways and corridors, seemlessly crafted. Further in they found the destroyed remains of more constructs, and pressed on their advance. Battling their way through insane cultists and Ulitharid Meat Towers (Ulitharids with the Body Tamer prestige class), the they hacked their way to the interior of Vult.They descended until the constructed corridors gave way to a massive open sphere, and realized Vult was hollow. At it's center a complex shell of mithral and adamantine housed a throbbing, glowing energy source. A long bridge extended from the interior shell of Vult to this center construction. As they raced across the bridge, they could see the pure white energy source at the center of Vult shifting hue to a sickly green and then purple.When they finally arrived, the dealkyr smiled at them, telling them they where too late. His back exploded into sixty-seven different kinds of wings and he crawled up into the air on them, rising faster than any of the PCs could manage.Victor then seemed to have a nervous breakdown, falling to his knees and punching the bridge. He screamed in defiance saying this wasn't how it was supposed to be, that the Prophecy stated "so-called" lesser beings were supposed to defeat the Lord of Shattered Thoughts. The PCs were confused by Victor's behavior as he stood up and removed his holy symbol, breaking it. Victor grew in size and changed into his true form, that of a great wyrm red dragon. He told them to take care of the Dragonbite, then flew into the air to catch up to the dealkyr.The PCs watched as the dealkyr paused in its flight to fire a sickly purple beam of energy at Dragon-Victor, aimed directly for his head. They watched as it hit Victor, causing him to roar in immense pain. From the back of Victor's horned head, another dragon head burst out, then along his spine this dragon seperated itself from him. It was cloaked in shadow, with flame spilling from its maw. It was the id-beast from his dreamscape.The PCs saw the dealkyr land on the inner shell of Vault hight above them and begin burrowing through the metallic shell. They watched as Victor battled his own id and decided that they couldn't rely on him to finish the dealkyr off.The PCs raced back the way they came, running through the halls of Vult's shell until they reached the surface, just in time to see the dealkyr's grotesque menagerie of wings blossom from the tunnel it was burrowing like some sick flower. Then it clawed its way, slithering on its mismatched wings, into the sky. It slowed down just before they lost sight of it amongst the stars, and then there was a flash of light as the dealkyr ripped a whole in reality, tearing a rift the size of a football field into the sky.The PCs felt a rumbling beneath their feet and a beaten and battered dragon, the real Victor, wedged itself up through the dealkyr's burrowed tunnel and flung itself up into the sky after it, catching it just before it entered the rift. The PCs watched the aerial battle as each mighty combantant fought each other. They watched as Victor snapped the dealkyr's wings off with his jaws, watched as the dealkyr clung to Victor with its tentacle whip and corrupted his flesh. Finally, the dealkyr tore Victor's wings off as well, and they both plummeted back to the surface.The PCs rushed to the crash site, and readied their weapons when they saw that Victor remained unmoving, dead, but the dealkyr rose. They threw themselves into battle as the beaten dealkyr took them on, demanding to know who wanted to be its new wings. He fired his body-splitting ray at the PCs as well, forcing them to fight their id-beasts in the flesh just as Victor had to. In the end, thanks to the damage already dealt to the dealkyr by Victor, the PCs were able to narrowly prevail over a threat that they could not have faced on their own.After the fight, they heard a noise coming from the hole the dealkyr had burrowed through the shell of Vult and readied their weapons again, only to find the human form of Victor deperately climbing up the tunnel, clenching his weapon in his teeth. They found out that when Victor was struck by the body-splitting ray in dragon form, his human persona was seperated as well, but he was so far above them at the time they coudln't distinguish him from the other bits of gore and flesh that resulted from Victor's id-beast clawing its way out of him. He was also closer to the interior shell of Vult than the bridge the PCs were on, so gravity caused him to fall upward toward it.The reunion was soured when the PCs and Victor realized that they were stuck on the moon, the tunnel of light not having a visible exit on this side. Without knowing how the battle around Tower Pandora ended, the PCs settled in for the long haul, trying unsuccessfully to find a way off Vult for the next three years....Thus the game went on hiatus after I graduated from college. This was also a perfect end to the paragon tier.</blockquote>

Verification