Jack Daniel
Legend
Um… you bet I did, Barbaraloqw!
Sprocket and Mira have completed their first epic quest. They are now officially immortal, and both have gained enough APs to become experience level 36th/epic rank I. (Incidentally, this little dry-run test for the AP system has proven to be a resounding success. The ability to ad-hoc awards on a percentage basis is perfect for regulating high-level advancement. It seems that I can make it so that a new epic rank comes as quickly as every three sessions or as slowly as every six, which is just about ideal for the way we play.)
Before I get on with the story, let me first say a few words about my theory when it comes to DMing high-level games. The AD&D 2nd edition Dungeon Master’s Guide had a section that offered advice for this sort of thing. It said, basically, that after 20th level, the PCs are going to be so powerful that the only way you can challenge them is to strip them of their magic and their equipment, or to place them in moral dilemmas and catch-22 situations which are impossible to resolve. In other words, cheap and dirty tricks. But that sort of thing gets old fast, said the DMG, so sooner or later, you’re going to have to retire those characters.
Hogwash!
I don’t believe in resorting to dirty tricks, but the DM has another tool up his sleeve when it comes to challenging the players. He does control the game world, after all. The DM is at once the over-deity, every NPC in the multi-verse, and most importantly of all, the physics engine. No matter what their level, no matter how much magic or technology or resources, the PCs still live in the DMs world. They have to play by those rules. So, what happens when the rules change?
I’m talking about a good old-fashioned mind-frell. (If you don’t know what that means, it’s kind of like a mind-frak, but lighter on the Battlestar Galactica and heavier on the Farscape.)
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The player characters opened the door in Kurtulmak’s realm, the deepest part of the Underdark that they had ever visited. This was the passage to the Underworld. Very quickly, they learned that the Underworld was a feywild realm, or to be more specific, a series of self-contained realms and demi-planes, each one leading to the next deeper world. The laws of physics weren’t too very much altered here; but each place was filled to the brim with anachronisms, pop-culture references, and incessant homages to the writings of Lewis Carol, L. Frank Baum, and Ruth Plumley Thompson. (If you don’t know who Baum and Thompson are, tsk tsk, for shame! Get your ignorant butt to a library and start reading, this instant, before you DM another session of any fantasy RPG!)
The first demi-plane? Wonderrealm.
Sprocket and Mira landed in a pleasant country, when they were accosted by a white rabbit, crying and fleeing for his life. Soon they learned that this dapper bunny was called the Hat Rabbit, and he was fleeing from the ruler of this realm, a wicked witch called the Red Queen. They also learned that the Red Queen possessed the First Key, the way into the next realm below. So they convinced the Hat Rabbit to lead them to the Queen’s palace, promising to protect him. What they did not know yet was this: the Hat Rabbit was one half of the Red Queen’s most powerful magical item, the other half being the Magic Hat. By placing the Rabbit within the Hat, the Queen can grant herself one wish—meaning that the Rabbit was the source of the greater part of her power.
Sprocket and Mira arrived in the Red Castle and invited themselves in. Literally. (“Who are you?” “We’re here to see the Queen.” “Oh. And were you invited?” “Yes. We each invited each other.” “Ah. Very well, then. Right this way.”) The Queen was taking tea in her garden with a bunch of insufferably fashionable nobles. The nobles all scoffed at the sight of Sprocket and Mira, but the Queen said that she would give them the key if they would help her find her dear pet Rabbit. Sprocket and Mira accepted the challenge and left the palace, and Sprocket built a rabbit-shaped automaton and covered it with fur and padding, to make a reasonable facsimile of a live rabbit that looked, behaved, acted, and spoke just like the Hat Rabbit.
They returned to the castle and presented the fake Rabbit to the Queen. To test it, she placed the automaton in her Magic Hat and tried to wish. After three unsuccessful attempts, she began to grow angry, and suspected deception. Sprocket convinced her to try again, but this time, as the Queen made a wish, Sprocket granted it himself with a discreet use of an improbability engine. Satisfied, the Queen gave them the First Key, and Sprocket and Mira got away safely with the real Hat Rabbit. To keep the Rabbit safe from the Queen, Sprocket then teleported him up to the surface of the world.
On the way out of the Red Castle, a “jabberwock, with eyes of flame, came whiffling through the tulgey wood.” Sprocket and Mira used a charm monster and convinced the jabberwock to run past them and attack the Red Castle head-on! That accomplished, they found another stone door in a hillside and put in the key, opening the way to the next realm.
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The second realm: Chessrealm.
Taking a cue from “Through the Looking Glass,” the second plane was a giant chess board, divided into black and white squares. Sprocket and Mira found that their clothes had turned white, because they were now “white pawns” in the great game that governed this realm. A black-and-white striped referee appeared, blew a whistle, and explained that as pawns, Sprocket and Mira could only advance one square at a time, and only by going on foot. They had to hike across alternating terrains of frozen white squares of snow-and-ice, and muddy black bogs filled with enemy soldiers, knights, clerics, and charioteers. Only by defeating the King and Queen on the eighth square were they able to recover the Second Key and pass through the doorway into the third realm.
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The third realm: Dreamrealm
This is where things start to get trippy. Passing through the doorway, Sprocket and Mira found themselves in a hallway lined with doors, honking and shouting coming from somewhere outside. They were inside an apartment building in Brooklyn, and an old lady in room B2 was hollering for someone to come fix her drainpipe! Having little better to do, Sprocket offered to deal with the plumbing, and he and Mira were promptly ushered into the bathroom, where the bathtub attacked and swallowed them whole! Now sliding down a green copper pipe, they were spat out the other end in a strange country full of funny plant and rock formations, stacks and pyramids that seemed to be made of blocks of red brick or solid gold. Wandering everywhere were turtle-shelled lizard-men wielding spears and war-hammers. (That was when Mira’s player recognized the eerie resemblance to a Super Mario game.)
As it turned out, this was Dreamrealm, home to a race of fey folk called the Dreamers, and an evil Turtle Tribe had taken over the castle and enchanted all of the Dreamers with endless sleep. At once, our heroes went to the castle to confront the King of the Turtles. Sprocket scared the living daylights out of him and convinced him to lift the curse and cough up the Third Key.
On the way out of Dreamrealm, Mira’s player joked that they defeated the evil turtles, but they hadn’t seen any mushroom people. I laughed, because I knew what was coming next.
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The fourth realm: Rainbowrealm
The doorway to the fourth realm was a ring of concentric circular stones, each one a different color of the rainbow. On the other side of the door, the sky was made of shifting colors, like light on a puddle of motor-oil. Everything was psychedelic, shifting like a kaleidoscope. And the only structure on the landscape was a city of high-rise buildings.
Sprocket and Mira wandered through the deserted streets until they came to a skyscraper with music coming from it. The penthouse, it seemed, was home to an important personage called “the Main Cat.” Inside, they met a toasted elevator operator in hippie hemp-and-tie-dye who conducted them to the top floor. There, they found a swinging, shagadelic pad filled wall to wall with go-go dancing party-goers, all led by an anthropomorphic cat with a curly red wig, blue crushed-velvet suit, frilly lace cravat, etc. who spoke in slang that would make Austin Powers proud.
The Cat informed our heroes that the city was dead because a real square, Dr. Mad Hatter, and his foul henchmen, March Hare and Doormouse, were perpetrating crimes all over the city. Citizens were too afraid to leave their homes! At that very moment, in fact, Doormouse was robbing a bank downtown.
Sprocket and Mira leapt into action, Batman and Robin style! Borrowing the Main Cat’s “Shagmobile” (yes, Sprocket knew how to drive), they raced across town and confronted Doormouse, just in time to keep her from pulling off the heist. Then, one quick “enhanced interrogation” later, they were made aware that Dr. Hatter’s Evil Lair was in the sewers beneath the city. They broke into the lair, defeated the mad doc, nicked the Fourth Key, and got the heck out of dodge ASAP.
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The fifth realm: Desertrealm.
Here, our heroes had to cross a vast desert, aided only by a local caravan of Bedouins. They had to fend off attacks by Ifrit bandits and depose an evil Sultana before they learned that the Fifth Key was in a mysterious cave in the middle of nowhere. Trekking to the cave, they found it filled with treasure, but all treasure that glowed when hit by detect magic, detect evil, detect snares & pits, etc. After all, these players had both seen “Aladdin,” and they knew what they were doing. They went into the depth of the cave, took the key, and left. The door was in a row of mountains on the far eastern part of the realm that separated the desert from the seashore.
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The sixth realm: Oceanrealm
Now standing on a beach at sunset, with an ocean stretching as far as the eye could see, Sprocket had to devise a means of transport that would get them across the sea. He built a small motor while Mira put together a boat, and they went buzzing over the open waters. Along the way, schools of singing fish jumped out of the water over their heads, singing pirate shanties and warning of dire fates ahead.
The first island they found was a little volcanic island with a pirate port flying a Jolly Roger. From here, they booked passage on a schooner with a dashing, Errol Flynn sort of privateer who had a mermaid for a wife and a mute dervish for a first mate.
They sailed south and found first a jungle island with a crystal tower on it. The tower was a prison, and it was being used to seal up a good mage, the White Wizard of Waltz Island, to keep his power at bay. Mira managed to break through the crystal and free the wizard, and he joined the privateer crew.
Next, the came to the deserted Wedge Island. Here, all of the natives had been conquered and carried off as slaves by the barbarian king of the next island over. Only a young boy, the prince of the island, had escaped, and this by hiding. The privateer crew sailed over to the barbarian island, where they found the prince’s family and all the salves, but also the barbarian king, and his witch wife. (As it turned out, the king was a pansy and a coward. His wife wore the pants in the family.) A few neat tricks on Sprocket’s part, and the witch-queen was defeated. The king and the queen each had one half of the Sixth Key, and Sprocket claimed these and put the key together. The people of Wedge Island were freed, and went home; and the White Wizard went with them, to become the young prince’s tutor.
Onward they sailed, until a kelp forest could be seen rising up from the seabed, meaning that the water was getting shallower. Then they came to a span of ocean where stationary waves stretched as far as the eye could see, but remained fixed in place like walls of water. The privateer captain guided the ship over these “hills,” and now they came to the shoreline at the end of the world. And here, they found a keyhole in the solid crystal dome of “sky” that touched the ground here.
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The seventh realm: Underrealm
Sprocket and Mira went on by themselves from here. When they placed the key into the keyhole, it simply caused an earthquake and swallowed our heroes whole. They fell, but it was a feather-fall. Wherever they were, the gravity was getting weaker. They fell past a set of six colorful orbs, like tiny suns, each a different color, and landed in a realm where all the buildings and roads were made of glass. A crowd of emotionless, unsurprised “mole-people” appeared and led our heroes to the Palace of the Sorcerer, where Sprocket and Mira were charged with trespassing, and Sprocket had to duel with the Sorcerer, tech vs. magic, to win their freedom. Sprocket won, and they were led to the tunnel out of the Glass City, a tube that seemed to pass straight down, deeper into the earth, but the gravity was still low, so they just jumped in and floated.
They crossed a valley filled with invisible monsters, and then they passed into a cave filled with mist which turned up. They realized that they were now climbing again, up and up, inside a mountain. They passed through a country where everything was made of wood (the soil and grass were sawdust and wood-shavings, the houses were ramshackle and plywood), inhabited by vicious wooden gargoyles… who caught fire very easily.
At the top of this chain of caves, they found another chamber, a workshop inhabited by an “artiste” name Charles de Jacques, who gave the Seventh Key to Mira and said the following: “The next realm is a race. The first of you to place that key in the keyhole and open the way to the next realm will receive a special prize. Mira, my dear, while you hold that key, you are under a charm of haste… and Sprocket, my friend, here is a crate of supplies, fresh from the ACME factory. I suggest you teleport ahead and set some traps along the way.”
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The eight realm: Toonrealm
The players decided to play along. Mira and Sprocket walked through the door and into a room where everything was bright and cartoony. They looked down, and beneath their persons were subtitles. “Sprocket (gnomicus crazius).” “Mira (birdus quickus).” Mira gave an enthusiastic “meep-meep!” and took off road-running.
Sprocket dimension-doored as far ahead as he could see, into a narrow canyon, and he filled it with all the explosives, bombs, rockets, and TNT in the crate. Then, just to make it interesting, he rigged up a giant electro-magnet designed to draw the key from out of Mira’s grasp.
Mira saw the trap ahead, and decided to use one of her favorite tricks: polymorph into a gold dragon, and try to fly past. Unfortunately, cartoon physics ruled the day here, and so the electromagnet latched onto Mira’s gold scales and started pulling. She resumed her normal shape just in time to break free, but the magnet had moved to follow her flight, and now it was pointing at the bombs. Sprocket teleported away, just in time to avoid the mushroom cloud.
On the other end of the realm, Sprocket found the doorway and the keyhole. He had exhausted all of his traps, except for the ACME All-Color Paint. And so, he tried the fake door trick, painting over the real doorway and making a pretend one with the paint. Needless to say, Mira arrived, put the key into the painted keyhole, and it worked. Because that’s just how these sorts of things go. Charles de Jacques appeared and awarded Mira a cartoon mallet of flattening +5.
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The final realm: the Sidhe Kingdom
In the last demi-plane of the underworld, Sprocket and Mira had to defeat a hungry swamp-witch and judge and friendly dance competition between some very large (and none-too-hasty) ents. Eventually, though, they found the Sidhe Kingdom, and the king of the feys directed them to the wellspring of the elixir, in the Caves of Life and Death.
Here, they heard a booming voice recite a riddle: “Life is change, matter in motion, yet atoms persist without alteration. Even should you take this drink, in spite of all that you might think, something else is ever true for all things living, even you: your road is done, but your souls to ascend, here your bodies meet their end.” Ahead, in the middle of the cave, a wellspring bubbled up with pink liquid, and empty flasks were scattered on the floor.
A commune spell was used to make contact with Bahamut, who clued them in on how the elixir worked: it was agonizingly and permanently fatal to any living body that consumed it, but a vessel stripped of mortal life would become immortal. Sprocket then figured it out: he would have to be dead before he could drink the elixir! This made Mira nervous, but Sprocket figured that he had the right answer, so he set about building a machine that would instantly fry his own brain by scrambling his neurons! He zapped himself with this device and fell down dead. Mira gave him the elixir, and he awoke, good as new, and no IMMORTAL. Just to be sure, he zonked himself with the brain-scrambler again and fell down to 0 hp, but he survived, albeit comatose. Mira now had to hit him with a heal spell to wake him up again. Then Sprocket whipped out a sixgun and tried to shoot Mira in the head! “Hold still!” “I don’t wanna! Hit me with the brain-fryer!” Of course, Sprocket did exactly that, fed the elixir to Mira, and she too was rendered immortal.
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Their task accomplished, they teleported home and discovered that precisely one year to the day had passed in their empires since they had entered the Underworld. The regents and stewards in charge of Sprocket’s empire were doing well enough keeping the peace, and Mira is married to another of the birdfolk, a fellow named Aramis, who had been ruling the empire of Sylvania alone the whole time.
Never one to sit on his laurels, Sprocket had to spend about 2.3 million GP making the Expedition space-worthy, but he succeeded! And at the end of the last game session, the players gained their first epic level, and Sprocket had launched his boat out of planetary orbit and towards the moon!
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