D&D 4E Resuming and Concluding my Epic 4e Campaign

[nogray]

Wow; long delay. Sorry about that. I'll try to not disappear. Just getting behind on other things. At least I'm playing the actual campaign. We are about halfway through level 28. But this story has some catching up to do. Here's a small dose. I hope readers enjoy it.

Level 11 (in my notes, subtitled "Warnings") saw the characters receiving dire portents of what was to come. It was a time for flexing my foreshadowing, laying out the various potential allies of the characters as well as the troubles they would be facing.)

Freshly advanced to their Paragon Paths, the characters decided to venture to Veronia (the barony that Lucretia's player created for the intent of her eventually ruling) to cement Lucretia's position as nobility therein. North of Fallcrest, they were set upon by a catoblepas that was itself being pursued by several fey hounds that attacked their prey and the party indiscriminately. (DM Note: this was an attempt to have a battle with more than two "sides." It went pretty well, though it wasn't particularly memorable.)

When the Huntsman (a Winter Court fey) approached, the characters were able to talk their way out of a direct battle thanks to some quick Diplomacy on Lucretia's part. (This was a nudge towards the idea that the fey might be allies or enemies to Veronia, depending on how they were handled. The diplomatic path set them towards the "ally" option.)

Later in their journey, they passed by a frozen-over lake from which a "Deathbringer Dracolich" burst, its rest being disturbed by the nearness of Lucretia. (DM Note: as one of the unresolved "three troubles" was the Orcus cult, I knew I needed to ramp up the undead factor, so I took it to eleven. This was planting the seeds for how that "trouble" was escalating due to not being prioritized in the heroic tier.) The party attacked it, but it fled, flying towards Veronia. I repurposed a disease as "necrophage" that attacked the spirit and life force of the afflicted, and the Dracolich infected (or tried to infect) the characters with this contagion. They were able to fend off the pseudo-disease, however, with no lasting effect.

As the party crossed into Veronia, they began inspecting the border fortifications (a skill challenge, though one that was poorly run). As part of this inspection, the characters fought off several "random" encounters. A group of Verbeeg (a lesser giant-folk) raiders were driven off, with a warning to the survivors to never raid Veronia again. A squad of doppelganger assassins attacked the party, clearly with the intent of replacing them and infiltrating Veronia. A "Shadow Company" consisting of the named NPC Naramus and his retinue of "shadow knights" and a "shade witch" was found to be troubling some of the outlying towns and were pursued and captured. A cyst (my collective noun for any aberrant creature) of foulspawns was found harassing some dwarven traders, so the characters moved to intervene, slaying the monstrous alien beings (like the undead thread above, these foulspawn harkened back to the unresolved "trouble" that the characters had yet to resolve, though with lesser urgency and drama than the aforementioned undead.) Three devilish "sisters" hunted down the party, attacking them in a few encounters one harrowing night (one hag with each of a pain devil mounted on a griffon, a manticore bearing a kyton, and a bearded devil riding a nightmare; a squad of legion devil guards supported each wave). Most troubling was the encounter with a set of "phage zombies" that displayed the end results of the necrophage disease.

(These were foreshadowing an upcoming conflict between Veronia and some giants to the north, political intrigue in Veronia, and military attacks against Veronia from other sources. The devils were a call-back to the party's earlier encounters with that sort of foe and a foreshadowing that the devils would sometimes act to disrupt the Hell's Keeper in the party.)

I also dropped information that Bomire had been the target of an attack by a large (not the game term) greenish humanoid who burst forth from the center of the town, rampaged as it moved north, and eventually disappeared. The figure was a "Tulgar," though the party did not find out more about it until much later.

Up next: Giants Attack! Fey Involvement!

 

[Nefermandias]

After just over a year-long hiatus, my small group of players and I have resumed play of our long-running 4e epic campaign. We started this campaign just after the release of 4e, and it was at the time our "playtest" campaign -- as in "let's play this new edition and see if we like it." After nearly 13 years, I guess I can say that we like it. I suppose I'm glad I stitched together story elements into those initial play sessions and kept doing so as we played with the various releases pretty much as they came out, because this has been the most fun I've had with D&D. Having played each version of D&D except the original, I can say that 4th Edition is by far my favorite edition of the game. That may very well be due in some part to this campaign.

Now, this is not to say that we've been playing just this campaign for the whole time. Our group has mixed in other campaigns of 4e (at least two that were both abandoned in early paragon tier) and other games (a little Mutants and Masterminds, a little Savage Worlds in the universe of Firefly, a few sessions of Shadowrun, some Dungeon World), but this is the campaign to which the group always returned. The group has likewise changed. We've added players somewhat transiently, and some long-term players have left. Overall, the group has shrunk. What started with me in the DM seat and four players is down to just two (each playing two PCs).

The characters are now 28th level, and I have quite a few plot seeds, sown long ago, to resolve in the remaining time in the campaign. I think I will be using this thread to discuss the events of the campaign overall, where I am hoping to take some of the resolutions, and express my thoughts on 4e in general and our house rules in specific. While 4e is my favorite edition of D&D, I do recognize where it isn't quite perfect for our group, and I want a clear head as to where I will be going next.

The Cast (as they currently stand):

Spoiler

Lucretia: Cold-variant Tiefling Warlock (Scholar theme, Turathi Highborn, Heir to the Empire)
She was a blue-skinned tiefling who spoke with an Eastern-European accent before the player knew about WoW's Dranei and before Critical Role's Jester was a thing. She is nobility and acts it. A lot of the campaign, particularly in the paragon tier, centered on the barony she came to rule (that the player largely created).

Fulgrim: Human (sort of) Invoker (Seer theme, Morninglord, Avangion)
He has been around for longer than anyone can remember but isn't particularly old. He's grumpy, and he doesn't know his own history, but he has been an advisor to Lucretia's family for a very long time. (The first "secondary" character in the campaign, Fulgrim is played by Lucretia's player.)

Makaria: Tiefling Paladin of the Raven Queen (Ordained Priest theme, Hell's Keeper, Keeper of the Everflow)
She is Lucretia's (slightly) younger cousin, her bodyguard, and her confidant. She likes pirates and ahem adult reading materials. Of all the long-term PCs, Makaria has undergone the fewest revisions.

Rook: Revenant (Half-Elf) Skald (Infernal Prince theme, Master Preserver, Avangion)
The newest addition to the party (added at 26th level when the fourth member of our group departed), Rook has a less-well-defined personality at the moment, but I can tell that she's been played a bit like Oliver Platt's "Porthos the Pirate" from the 1993 Three Musketeers film. We'd settled on her being the first revenant, and she knows she has a purpose but is unsure of what that might be. (Rook is played by Makaria's player.)

That's exactly what happened to me too. We started out 4e campaign back in 2008 and finished just a few months ago. The difference is that we switched to 5e at the end.
Feels good to finally complete our Points of Light campaign.