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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Novaseaker" data-source="post: 6713711" data-attributes="member: 48566">Epic TierSo the PCs survived on the barren moon by rationing the effects of sustaining magic items. (3.5: Sharing Rings of Sustenance, 4e: Basket of Everlasting Provisions+Cask of Liquid Gold). The rift the dealkyr tore into reality did not seal itself, remaining open but seemingly stable for the time being, orbiting geosynchronously over the surface of Vult as the moon traveled around Eberron. Victor filled in the PCs about the true nature of Vult, how dragons repurposed it to replace the 13th Moon that the giants destroyed. When asked how many of the moons the dragons had built, Victor replied "all of them". The PCs endured the rest of the long wait in their own fashions. Then one day, while they slept, Lanhakhad, the kalashtar dream-traveler, entered their dreams and woke up on the moon. He told them it took him nearly three years to find them, and that the kalashtar of Sharn needed their help again. Jumping at the chance to get off that blasted moon, the PCs agreed to do anything and everything in their power so long as they left immediately.The only hitch was that Victor was the only one yet to dream-travel, and he still needed to confront his id. However, when the lucid-dreaming PCs entered Victor's dreamscape, he was alone in a vast, featureless, flat grey plane. He didn't have an id anymore. Somewhat shamed by his own barren dreamscape, Victor joined the rest of the PCs in leaving it without a problem.Outside the dreamscapes, the PCs's relative distance from the planet allowed them to see the entirety of Eberron's dreamers, each dreamscape appearing as a point of light slowly rotating around a darker core (Like a ring-shaped galaxy). The PC followed Lanhakhad back toward the outer ring of dreamers, battling odd denizens of Dal Quor, including draconic sentry-beings  constructed by the stuff of Dal Quor by meditating dragons to ward Eberron's dreamers from the  dreams of beings "outside".They found their way into the dreamscape of someone dreaming in Overlook in Sharn and reappeared in the real world. (At this time, the PCs of players who weren't around to continue the game anymore left the party on their own quests). The remaining PCs and Victor listen to the plight of the community of OVerlook, as well as news of how the world has been handling the last three years. First, Thrane has "miraculously" been restored by "benevolent" mystics from Reidra, and Aundaire and Breland have come to rely on the good will of the Inspired much more. Peace talks are in the process of happening, but first Aundaire and Breland have to stomp out Karrnathi resistance (Who remains coolly receptive to Inspired aid, but doesn't seem to have become as reliant on them as the other nations.)Aundaire has apparently re-annexed its western lands, taking advantage of an unexplained lack of protection by the Wardens of the Wood. (Hearing this, the PCs resolve to travel to Greenheart after helping the Kalashtar with their problem, concerned with how the druids fared against the devestating Xoriat entities summoned in the Tower Pandora)In Breland, King Boranel had died of old age, but the first prince has admirably stepped up to the throne. Along with his exotic Sarlonan wife. However, the movement for a democratic government began getting more desperate once yet another strong monarch was on the throne, causing a build up of civil strife.And in Sharn itself, the hate crimes against kalashtar have worsened. The "protective quarantine" by House Denieth blademarks has become more draconian in its messures to keep the adarans and kalashtar "safe" in their district. The "investigation" of kalashtar involvement in the fall of the Crystal Tower has led the city council to issue an warrant for the Enlightened Havakhad's arrest, about a year ago. When the city's interrogators failed to crack the Havakhad's stoic serenity, the Inspired ambassadors offered to help. They transfered Havakhad to the Reidran Embassy in Central, next door to the "friendship monument" Monolith they had finished building over two years ago. The PCs and Victor agree to get the Enlightened Havakhad back from Inspried imprisonment, and storm the embassy. In the process of their rescue opperation, they enter the interior of the Quori Monolith from an adjoining bridge between it and the embassy. The crystal column inside the monolith began pulsing at their presence, and then a Du'lorra Quori pulled itself through the crystal into the material plane. The Inspired had built enough Monoliths to drag Dal Quor close enough for quori to manifest physically without hosts. The Du'lorra Quori was, in fact, the same Du'lorra the PCs had defeated when it transformed the body of the hatemongering Fury-worshiper. However, in it's true form, it was much more powerful.In the course of their battle with it, the PCs set off the control crystals of the Monolith, causing it to overload until it exploded, causing much colateral damage to the surrounding city. When they returnedf Havakhad to Overlook, he was in a comatose state and was determined to be stuck in some sort of mental prison, locked in his own mind. Unable to help any further, the PCs departed for the Eldeen Reaches by way of House Orien teleportation circle (Causing a little trouble, as they were identified as the "terrorists" who destroyed the Monolith.)Once in Greenheart, the PCs find it mostly deserted, with a bare skeleton force of Wardens left to guard a new clearing at its center. When asked about the battle of the Tower Pandora, the Wardens related that the Great Druid Oalain uprooted himself and traveled south to join the fight. But he ordered the remaining Wardens in Greenheart not to follow him, so none have seen him since.The PCs travel southwest toward the edge of the Towering Wood bordering the Shadow Marches, until they come across an area of twisted trees with trunks of human flesh and other such unnatural attrocities. They venture into the vile corruption, battling twisted animals and violent plant-life until they encounter the first natural sight within the blasted area: A greatpine, but a dying one.Oalain relates the story of what happened when the PCs ask, in a dying, rasping voice: He traveled south while sending animal messengers ahead to coordinate with the druids in the Marshes. The druids lured the aberrant horde and the Xoriat entities into the Wood, where Oalain could battle them, but most of Wardens and Gatekeepers died in the running battle. The Greatpine druid slew the entities, but their corpses corrupted the land for leagues around, and he was unable to leave the area before his roots absorbed the corruption as well. Oalain was forced to strip his own bark from his trunk to stop the corruption from spreading, and now stands at the center of the corrupted clearing, slowly dying but free of taint. Just before he dies, he beseeches the PCs to take care of his seed, and he shakes a branch to drop a pinecone. The PCs catch it before it touches the corruption. Out of respect, they torch Oalain's corpse so it wouldn't fall and touch the twisted grounds, then return to Greenheart and plant his pinecone in the clearing there, unsure if his offspring will even be sentient.While in Greenheart, the PCs were approached by an odd trio: A mummy wearing the vestments of a priest of the Blood of Vol, and two Karrnathi Zombie bodyguards.The mummy introduced himself as Malevanor, the High Priest of the Blood of Vol, and assured the PCs that he has not come to do them harm. In fact, he came to ask for their help. He told them that as a member of the Crimson Covenant, Malevanor was privy to the true leader behind the Emerald Claw, the Queen of Death. He told the PCs that he disagreed vehemently with Lady Vol's manipulation of the faith and faithful he believed in, but knew he stood no chance in defying her. When he heard of the PCs interferance with several aspects of Operation Leviathan (The Emerald Claw pirating operation in Lhazzar and the khyber-shard prospecting way back in Heroic), he had taken special notice of them. He had feared that they had died when they disappeared "from  the face of Eberron" several years ago, and had been biding his time since. He tells them that their return to the public eye, as terrorists in Sharn, was fortuitous. Operation Leviathan was nearly complete.The PCs and Victor were reluctant to trust the undead priest at first, especially when Malevanor admitted he didn't know Operation Leviathan's true objective, but they eventually agreed to help. Malevanor gave them the address to a private teleportation circle just off the coast of Lake Dark in eastern Karrnath.The party prepared themselves, then opened a portal to the circle. Once in Karrnath, they saw an entire contingent of the Emerald Claw guarding an entrance to a mindshaft curiously close to the lake. They plowed their way through the fanatically loyal soldiers and entered the mine, taking it down to below the level of the lake. Fighting more Emerald Claw elites and members of the Crimson Covenant, the PCs continued allong a horizontal tunnel below the lake until they came across a wall of pure obsidian with abyssal runes on it.Touching the wall revealed it wasn't physical, and the PCs entered a strange chamber of onyx and crystal, with vaulted, sinister walls. There they encountered a lich-priest and a death knight, and as they fought them, the chamber began shaking and rocking hard enough to knock all the combatants to their feet. The lich laughed and immolated itself, leaving the PCs to defeat the death knight.With the chamber still trembling, the PCs found another wall with strange abyssal runes on it, and entered into another section of the structure. They raced along corridors and ascended staircases as the place began shifting around them, reconfiguring itself. When a hallway they were in rotated so the end they were running towards shifted to give them an open view of the Ironroot Mountains, they realized whatever structure they were in had risen above Lake Dark and was ascending into the open sky.Eventually they reached the top surface of the structure, a huge slightly convex dome about half a mile across with a dark spire jutting up from its center. Beyond the edge of the gently sloping plane, huge black prongs, the size of any tower in Sharn, were moving and snapping into upward-pointing positions before sprouting more prongs and spires from those.Victor seemed to have another nervous breakdown. The PCs realized he recognized this thing because he used to be a dragon and told him to fill them in. At the dawn of time, in the first age of the world, Eberron was ruled by demons, and the dragons and their allies huddled in the dim twilight of the glittering ring of Siberys. Eventually, a dragon named Dolarnaxai hatched a plan to bring the light of day to the world. Literally. Along with their couatl allies, the dragons constructed a huge lattice of mithral and brass, then with Dolarnaxai at its center, launched it into space. Once at a safe distance, Dolaranai used her life to ignite the structure and create Eberron's sun. To honor her victory over the demons, the dragons elevated Dolarnaxai to their pantheon of saints as the Sovereign of Sun and Sacrifice.Victor also told them about the failed demonic attempt to destroy the sun. That the demons created their own structure to launch into space, but that when they tried to launch it, the dragons had managed to force it down before it left the atmosphere, causing it to crash land on Khorvaire. And that they were on it, the stellar-devoring statelite. For whatever reason, Erandis Vol had ordered the Emerald Claw to help her launch a black hole bomb into space.With the enormous importance of their task known, the PCs and Victor raced toward the central spire of the still-expanding structure and found Lady Vol. They nearly destroyed her, but she threw herself between the shifting walls inside the Spire, cutting her undead body in half and leaving the PCs unable to persue her. Thinking fast, the party raced back down the sun-eating machine to its khyber-shard power source and destroyed it.They ran to the outside edge of the structure as its momentum began to reverse and watched as the central spire seperated itself from the rest of the machine. The spired continued up into space toward the sun, and the PCs were stuck on the falling bulk of the structure. While had it ascended, it had passed over the Ironroot mountains and the Mror Holds as a whole, until it began descending into the waters of the Lhazzar Principalities.Satisfied by Victor's explaination that the spire couldn't harm the sun without the rest of the structure, the PCs lept from it, and soaked the 20d10 damage as they smacked into the waters at terminal velocity, barely surviving. (Yay epic!)Clinging to the wreckage, they waited a day for sea vessels to arrive, investigating the crash landing of the stragest meteor they had ever seen. During the night, the PCs noticed that Vult seemed off-color and realized the rift in reality that had remained stable while they lived on the moon had begun to grow in their absence. At this point the PCs started to demand answers from Victor, pertainting to where the hell the dragons were and what the hell they were doing to stop all these doomsday occurances. Shrugging, Victor admited that he was an outcast from Argonessen, having fully taken on the role as a human when he came to Lhazzar. He told them that the Prophecy predicted all possible futures, and he knew the dragons wouldn't lift a finger to stop anything that didn't register in the Prophecy as threat to their saftey.When asked how destroying the sun wouldn't effect the dragons, Victor had no answer.When the ships arrived the next morning, the PCs saw one of the vessels flying the flag of High Prince Rygar's Seadragons and they boarded it and returned to Regalport.The PCs and Victor were met at the docks by Rygar, who was immensely glad at their return. Victor looked around for the Dragonbite in the dock, but didn't see it. Rygar just smiled and lead them to the other side of the city (which now sported an Airship Tower. Rygar had been busy continuing Regalport's economic expansion in the three years the PCs were gone.) He led them to a private airship hangar, and inside he revealed the Dragonbite transformed into an airship. When Forge saw the beam of light pierce the moons on the horizon, and the subsequent disappearance of his captain, he deduced that Victor was stranded on the moons. He had immediately begun forumlating plans to transform the Dragonbite into a space-worthy vessel. Seeing their arrival, Forge appologized for wasting Rygar's resources, but the High Prince laughed. Although Forge hadn't yet found a way to protect against the vacuum of space, the Dragonbite was sky-worthy. Forge had given Rygar plans for airships that didn't require economic reliance on House Lyrandar.While Rygar officially returned captaincy of the Dragonbite to Victor, the PCs went information gathering in the city. They began looking for any unexplained, weird occurances, fearing the widening rift above Vult was affecting the world. With the new-and-improved Dragonbite, the PCs began flying to different regions of Khorvaire, each time discovering a Gatekeeper seal was weakening and dealing with the aberrant creatures or influence seeping forth from them. They flew back to Greenheart and tried to find any remaining Gatekeepers, but all they could find out was stories about an ancient gatekeeper stronghold that they used to use during the first Dealkyr invasion.While flying toward the rumored location of this stronghold, the PCs exerience a solar eclipse, though they count all the moons in the sky and know none should be blocking the sun's rays. The eclipse passes momentarily, and the party spots a streaking comment falling from the sun to the southern horizon, toward Xen'drik. Fearing Vol's spire reached the sun and did something horrible, the PCs resolve to go to Xen'drik after dealing with the weakening gatekeeper seals.The PCs recover ancient gatekeeper artifacts from their forgotten stronghold and strengthen the seals beneath Cazhaak Draal in Droam, around the Madstone in Karrnath, and in a jungle south of Sharn.From there, the PCs go south to investigate the crashed comet, only to find the entire continent of Xen'drik under a dark shadow. Descending toward the City of Stormreach, the PCs find it in the middle of a calamity, as ancient undead vampires, wraiths, and dread ghouls run through the streets creating full-powered spawn from the fleeing citizens.While fighting the undead, the vampires boast of the ressurection of Qabalrin rule. Victor informs the party about the ancient Qabalrin society of elves powerfully versed in necromancy.Deciding to stop the undead apocalypse at its source, the PCs leave Stormreach and continue south, following Victor's hazy recollections of where he learned the Ring of Storms was.Landing rather than attempting to pass through the storms, the PCs continued on foot into the heart of the ancient Qabalrin society, battling immensely old and powerful dead along the way. In the middle of the valley, they saw the black spire of the demonic star-eating structure, embedded in the massive Heart of Siberys dragonshard, having pierced it upon landing.Understanding that Vol was behind the continent-wide empowering of undead, the PCs rushed to confront her inside the spire. They found Vol was far different from the dessicated husk of a lich she once was. She could have been confused for a living (half-dragon) woman if not for her skin completely lacking in color. But her body-spanning Mark of Death was now active. (The reasoning behind this was that the dragon-constructed sun wasn't like our sun. It wasn't just a massive ball of fire and heat, but literally just a source of life and warmth. Vol managed to jumpstart her body with enough life-energy that it became quasi-living again. This was her true objective for launching the demonic spacecraft.)The fight was vicious, as Vol absorbed the souls of fallen PCs to power her massive dragonmark, but in the end, the PCs were drawn back to life and the Queen of Death was defeated. (For an ascended Vol, I started with the stats for Acererak, reflavored the soul gems as being her dragonmark, and added in a few unique powers.)Once Vol was defeated, she shriveled up into her previous undead lich-body, which they easily destroyed, sending her back to her phylactery whereever it was, but once again with an unactive dragonmark.When her mark shriveled up, the shadow lifted from over Xen'drik and the PCs could see the sky clearly, they were horrified to see the rift had grown in the sky to be about the size of Earth's moon to us.From there, the PCs returned to Stormreach to clear out the remaining undead who could no longer spawn thanks to Vol's defeat. Oddly enough, they discovered that drow had stepped in to aid the city in their absence. Speaking with them, the PCs learned that they were called the Umbragen, and their culture was on the brink of exctinction. They had fought a war in Khyber for as long as they had been Umbragen against an enemy they named "The Corrupter", master of abhorrent monstrocities and warped creations. They also related that recently The Corrupter's forces had increased a hundredfold, and that they were forced to the surface, only to find themselves beset by undead.The PCs traveled underground with the Umbragen to clear their city from aberrant creatures mutated from drow and insects and mind flayers. At the center of the city, the party encountered Dyrrn, The Corrupter, a dealkyr general. For the first time they fought a dealkyr lord at full power head-on, and while they weren't able to defeat him, they did drive him off. At first the PCs wanted to chase Dyrrn through Khyber and hunt him down, but decided to check back with the surface world.They found Khorvaire locked in various crisises. They raced to respond to these events, like a civil war errupting in Breland, discovering that the prakhutu of the Demonic Overlord known as the Rage of War was behind the democracy movement. After a few of these, it dawned on Victor that the occurances were part of the Prophecy, and realized that the Lords of Dust were fufilling various clauses to raise The Tarrasque from its slumber. When asked what the final trigger of the Tarrasque's awakening was, Victor told them it was impossible. It required killing "one who hears the Flame" while they were "cloaked in ice and shadow", and the only person he was aware of  that could hear the Flame speak was a Keeper, and there hadn't been a new one called since Jeala disappeared.Realizing that Jaela was still the Keeper, with or without the Church being aware of her, the party began searching for the young woman (She was 18 by now) in earnest. All the while the rift in the sky was growing.They followed the clue about "ice", eventually finding her in the southernmost region of Eberron; The Everice. They had assumed being "cloaked in ice and shadow" meant that her whereabouts were hidden in a cold place, but they were only half-right. Jeala was currently fighting the possession of the Shadow in the Flame, having taken the demonic overlord into herself when she stepped into the font of Silver Flame five years ago and saved Flamekeep from the Second Mourning. She had then flung herself to the furthest corner of the world with the Flame's power, and then blinded herself to keep the demon from finding its way back.The party confronted the possessed Jeala and the Lords of Dust assassins sent to kill her, fighting an epic three-way battle. Eventually the PCs were victorious, incapacitating Jeala, and Victor suggested bringing her to the Ring of Storms. There, the party (which included a silver flame Invoker) performed an epic ritual to bind the Shadow of the Flame to the Heart of Siberys, freeing Jeala.Returning to Jeala to Flamekeep and feeling good about their victory, the party was shocked to see that the Tarrasque had risen from Lake Galifar and was currently stomping through the still-mostly-deserted countryside of Thrane. They had failed to stop the Tarrasque's rise, despite their victory, despite ruining the plans of the Lords of Dust, and most of all, despite the Draconic Prophecy.Still, the intrepid PCs and Victor resolved themselves to stopping the unstoppable beast and landed in the path of the oncoming abomination.After the fight, the party turned to Victor, now demanding he answer for his people and the failure of the Prophecy. And that he explain how the dragons didn't think the now half-the-sky-big tear in reality concerned them.Victor knew that the prophecy could be misinterpreted, could be misleading, but it had never been WRONG before. Agreeing with the party that they now had to speak with the dragons, Victor directed the Dragonbite toward Agronessen.Fighting their way through the wilds of the Vast, where being on an airship doesn't secure your saftey, Victor eventually navitaged them into the territory of the Thousand Flights of Argoenssen. A few tense encounters with the Light of Siberys ended with the party being granted audience with a limited selection of great wyrms from the oldests Flights. They tried to convince the dragons that the Prophecy was failing, and were at first scoffed that. However when challenged by Zenobaal the Living Prophecy, the PCs held their own, convincing the dragons of the strength of their truth and they began to hear them out. And few sessions of epic-tier intruige later, the party was responsible for uncovering a thousands-of-millenia-long conspiracy perpetrated by the Talons of Tiamat to erase sections of the Prophecy. (As the embodiment of Greed, Tiamat could no longer stand not ruling over all creation, and decided that if she couldn't have all of it, no one could have any of it. So he instructed her worshipers to create a blindspot in any dooms-day prophecy they could, blinding the Dragons from the danger of the dealkyr plots to tear open reality.)Upon finally realizing the danger of the growing rift in the sky, the Thousand Flights of Argonessen flew up to the Moons and shifted them into a protective ward around the rift. Before they left they told the PCs they could not find the source of the rift's growth, and this was only a delaying tactic. Soon the moons would be used up, and the rift's growth would explode exponentially.A session of plane-hopping followed, where PCs learned the true shape of the multiverse from various sources like the Angels of Syrannia, the Inevitables of Davaani (I always like those guys), The Queen of Summer in Thelanis, and the living forests of Lammania. They learned how everything, the planes, the moons, and even the sun revolved around Eberron, and it was all being torn assunder by one pin-point intrusion, like a needle piercing a bubble to pop it. Something was trying to reach the center of Eberron, and the PCs had to get there first.Cue the last session of the game, where the PCs and any ally they could muster (Jeala, Oalain regrown from his seed, The Enlightned Havakhad rejuvnated from his coma, the entire cast of former PCs) stormed down through Khyber, plowing through aberrant hordes to confront their dealkyr lords. When they put down the likes of Dyrrn, Belashyrra, and Orlassk, they realized the dealkyr were guarding a hole leading down from Khyber into the Elemental Chaos, at the center of which was the vast, dark, swirling whirlpool of the Abyss. Into the center they plunged, fending off attacks from crazed elementals and demons, punching through weaker resistance to challenge the likes of Demogorgon until finally they plunged to the very bottom of the Abyss itself.They saw a plane of nothingness, and rising from it a sharp spike of physical evil itself, blacker than the darkest night. But around this spike of evil, a throbbing, pulsing mass of brain matter glowed rhythmically. As they saw it, a familiar voice entered their heads, that of the Lord of Shattered Thoughts. The dealkyr lord they destroyed on Vult. They had even burned his ashes.Registering their shock, the giant mass of grey matter throbbed and spoke amusement into their heads. "You've only ever seen a splinter of my existance. You even let one live."Just then, Victor began spasming and screaming as a tentacle exploded from his eye, wrapped around his head, and tore it off. Then a crazily smiling, beautiful face protruded from the gaping neckwound and proceeded to tear Victor's body in half, the body created by the dealkyr's body-splitting ray, reveaing the humanoid form of the Lord of Shattered Thoughts.The party battled both forms of the dealkyr lord. The mass of brain matter continued to throb and invade their minds and set off pulses of psionic power around them while the humanoid form lauched into a crazed fury, corrupting and poisoning their bodies, and gathering energy to fire his body-splitting ray, once againt ripping the PC's baser desires from their bodies and setting them against each other.In the thick of the fight, the PCs bloodied and battered but not broken, the daelkyr hesitated before firing its id-manifesting ray. It seemed to struggle with its aiming arm, as it slowly began aiming at its own head. Then it fired the ray and a young-adult sized red dragon burst from the resulting explosion of flesh. Roaring in fury, Victor returned and rallied the PCs as the brain-matter daelkyr began spawning multiples of its human form.(It should be noted, that my players really really liked Victor. I know DMPCs are not looked upon highly by some, but I knew my audience.)In the end, the PCs rose from the dead as they fell, refusing to die (Yay epic!), and tore the daelkyr-spawning monstrocity apart.The world was saved.The game ended.The players partied <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" /></blockquote>

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