Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Isklexi" data-source="post: 6235551" data-attributes="member: 6684948">The constables boarded the train the following morning without incident. The passengers were abuzz with talk of an arrested serial killer and a spectacular fight at the arena. The group settled in for the long train ride out of the mountains and into Crissilyir. Irony decided to attempt further information gathering. Using a ritual to help her pierce disguises, she set out to see if Luc and Ottavia were really who they claimed to be and check for any other suspicious activity on the train. She attempted to invite Luc and Ottavia to lunch in the first class lounge, but they declined claiming to have some work that needed attending to and remained in their suite. Irony didn’t find anything else out of the ordinary. The rest of the constables played host to an unexpected visitor. Bree stopped by their suite to congratulate them on an impressive fight and to share some of the money she won betting on them. They enjoyed some small talk and shared lunch before Bree left. Soon enough, Malia made her rounds asking everyone to return to their seats as the train approached Sid Minos. Things took an unexpected turn when the lamps on the train flared with strange light, and the skies darkened suddenly. The constables quickly realized something strange had happened. The arcane inclined party members, Rai and Irony, realized somehow their spirits had been transported to the plane of death and ruin, Nem. After searching their suite, the constables found arcane marks etched onto the inside of the gas lamps in the suite as well as on the edges of the coins that Bree had given them. They also spotted a strange glow coming from the front of the train. Rai and Irony determined that whatever ritual was used to banish them to Nem would likely last less than a half an hour. Unfortunately, they didn’t have that much time. The train would soon move three miles from where their bodies had been separated from their spirits cutting them off from their corporeal bodies and trapping their spirits on Nem. Their best chance was to destroy the rituals primary focus: the only part of the spirit train still coterminous with the physical train on Lanjyr. Their best guess is that the source of the strange light at the front of the train must be the ritual focus. [gm]The players brainstormed several ways to counter the ritual including destroying the lamps or coins. I pointed out that they weren’t physically on Lanjyr anymore and destroying objects on the spirit train wouldn’t affect the actual objects back on Lanjyr. They were a little confused at how they could possibly overcome the ritual if they couldn’t affect anything physically, so I came up with the explanation that the ritual’s primary focus acted like a bridge and would exist coterminous in both worlds.[/gm] The constables began making their way across the roof of the train with the fleet footed Doran out front. Shadowy wraiths swooped out of the darkness to accost Doran and Irony. The scuffle had barely begun when Bellicose pulled out his Icon of Nem and commanded the wraiths to leave them alone. The bewildered wraiths fled back into the night. The constables continued confidant that anything threatening could be subdued by the Icon’s influence. That’s when they encountered the next obstacle: spectral visages of the passengers slain in the malice beast attack. The spectral ghouls leapt up through the ceiling of the train cars to lash and claw at the constables’ legs as they ran across the rooftops. Bellicose used the golden icon to command a second wave of wraiths to help subdue the ghostly assailants. As the visages fell, they left behind small glowing wisps that the wraiths were all too happy carry off into the darkness. The constables are steadily making their way to the cargo cars through the spectral visages. [gm]I was a little disappointed that the players remembered the esoteric powers of the golden icons right away. I’d hoped that they would fight through the first wave of wraiths before figuring it out. I ruled that the visages wouldn’t respond to the icon because they were the souls of dead people not actual denizens of Nem. I may rule the miniboss at the end is too strong for the icon to command it. If I don’t, this encounter would be pretty anticlimactic.[/gm]</blockquote>

Verification