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<blockquote data-quote="Jack Daniel" data-source="post: 4639855" data-attributes="member: 694"><p><strong>Well, it finally happened. My Lv-35 PCs befriended Bahamut and slew Orcus.</strong></p><p></p><p>Wow, it's been a while since I've thought to blog about my campaign. But it's got to happen now, because we're all done with the Masters Set. Session before last, the player characters hit that 4.35 million XP mark -- the most XP that a character can possibly earn in OD&D -- and made 36th level, the maximum attainable level. It's like reaching 99th level in a computer RPG. That's how epic this campaign is. It's a first for me, and I have to say, a heck of a lot of fun.</p><p></p><p>Jeez, the Great War was so many game sessions ago that I'll have to see if I can remember all the details. Suffice it to say, the Hesperian navy threw everything it had at Olympia. Sprocket and Mira stayed there to rally the troops and direct the war. Elysium was too discombobulated to bring anything more than a token force to the table. The Amarna corsairs might have been troublesome, except that Avalon's Royal Air Force flew southeast, past Olympia, to keep them at bay. Mira was able to muster everything that Sylvania had, and just in time to repel Hesperia's main ground invasion, saving Olympia. The Amarnans, meanwhile, hurled back Avalon's Air Force and sent them limping back home, retaking quite a bit of lost territory in the process. The main theatre of the war was Olympia and Elysium, and in a long and entrenched battle that went back and fourth for nine whole days, the Hesperian invasion force was finally defeated, forcing a surrender and a treaty. </p><p></p><p>Now, here's where things get funky: the treaty was to be signed at Marvilles, a city in Utopia. In attendance were Duke Sprocket, Empress Maeve of Avalon, Governor Lucilli of Hesperia, King Olibios of Olympia, a senator representing the Elysian Federation... and then, into the room walked General François Biendit, presumed dead (because Mira had killed him and burned up the body to prevent any unwanted resurrections). In the treaty negotiations, Hesperia essentially lost its sovereignty to Utopia, which in turn gave Elysium over to Olympia, as Sprocket had already proposed.</p><p></p><p>Now, where was Mira through all this? During the war, Duke Konstantinos had tried to sneak-attack Elysium, to take it for Sylvania. Mira didn't like this very much, and so she surprised the Duke and all his generals while they were making war-plans, killed everybody in the room, and declared herself the new Duchess of Konstantinos's realm. Then, when she marched the Sylvanian armies into Olympia to help throw back the Hesperians, and this won them the war, she was able to return to her homeland as a war-hero... and the people made her the Empress of Sylvania!</p><p></p><p>Not to be outdone, Sprocket sensed that something was very strange about General Biendit's reappearance, so he returned to his own homeland, Utopia, to get the down-low in this. After many games' worth of spying and intrigue, he finally discovered that the General had a whole compound under Reville, Utopia's capital. It was your typical Bond-villain lair, with henchmen, a doomsday machine (just in case), and (let's not forget that Biendit was a gnome, just like Sprocket, and therefore a mad scientist extraordinaire) an automaton factory and cloning vats. As it turned out, this General Biendit was not the original Biendit, but an automaton (a clockwork robot) with an exterior of cloned flesh... and there were seven or eight others wandering around the complex, just in case the the current one got bumped off. </p><p></p><p>Well, Sprocket did the impulsive thing and decided to just flat-out attack Utopia. So, he gathered his own troops from back in Norwold (including his gnome techs, and about a hundred automated, steam-powered war-mechs) and got them ready for a war. Then he made a pact with the Empress of Avalon and the President of the Lemurian Republics to attack Utopia in concern when the time was right. Sprocket then spent the next month working one of his technologies---a <em>teleportation</em> device---into a practical means of secretly transporting his armies to Reville (actually, to a factory in that city that he owned). Marching his armies from the heart of the city itself to the palace, while foreign armies assaulted the shores of the country, Sprocket confronted Biendit for a battle gnomo-a-gnomo.</p><p></p><p>Sprocket won, but he discovered a nasty surprise: the Biendit-bots were all equipped with a deadman switch and a subatomic phlogiston bomb. So, Reville was nearly nuked in the ensuing blast, and in order to undo the destruction, Sprocket had to develop his greatest invention. (Now, keep in mind, the player characters are pushing the early 30s in terms of experience levels---with Biendit out of the picture, Sprocket is the <em>greatest scientist in the world</em>.) So, he finally develops an <em>improbability engine</em>, a technological item that essentially duplicates a mage's <em>wish</em> spell. Now, like any good level-thirty-plus-odd bookworm type D&D character, Sprocket can alter reality. So, he un-nukes Reville. And now, Utopia has a capital city again, but no government. Ergo, Sprocket runs for president... and wins. And, since Hesperia is still subject to Utopia, that makes Utopia technically an empire... which makes Sprocket an emperor as well. </p><p></p><p>*whew*</p><p></p><p>Now, as I catch my breath, I have to take a little detour and explain two things about Sprocket, so that this next part of the story has the proper impact. </p><p></p><p>(1) When the campaign first began, the "hook" used to draw Sprocket and Mira into the adventure was a letter from Sprocket's uncle, a rich but dotty old gnome named Thaddeus Q. Thimblequimby. Uncle Thaddeus was a collector of artifacts, and a descendant of the nobles of <em>l'ancien regime</em> displaced by General Biendit's government.</p><p></p><p>(2) Since day one, Sprocket has been using aliases and pseudonyms like most adventurers use arrows and healing potions. He's got an alternate identity for every situation. And he takes pains to make other people, even close friends and allies, think that his multiple personalities are real people. He'll use a holographic projector and a phonograph to make it look like he's in his lab, working on machines... when, in reality, he's out adventuring, dressed in ashigaru armor and carrying the daisho, calling himself "Lo-no-Mai, the wandering gnome ronin," and acting like a Lawful Good samurai warrior. Or he'll use makeup to make himself look like a hobbit, and a <em>polymorphic mutagen</em> to transform Mira into a golden dragon, and then go adventuring as "Tellwiggly the halfling dragon-rider, atop his loyal steed, Theracuzia the dragon." </p><p></p><p>As far as Mira's player ever knew, she was in on all the secret identities.</p><p></p><p>When Sprocket Astroturf was officially crowned <em>l'Empereur d'Utopie</em>, he announced to the world that he would now go by his real name---his <em>real,</em> real name---and rule as Darius Thimblequimby VI. </p><p></p><p>Mira's player? Her jaw dropped. She positively freaked out when she realized that "Sprocket Astroturf" had been a pseudonym all along.</p><p></p><p>The coronation of Darius/Sprocket was a huge affair of state, and all of Sprockets' and Miras' important friends and allies attended, including most of the local royalty. Queen Maeve, King Olibios, the President of Lemuria, princes and senators of Elysium, the high kings of Midjard and Pohjola, and so on---people that our heroes have been dealing with for quite a long time now, so they're practically old friends. Since Maeve, Sprocket, Mira, and Olibios are now the major players in Arcadia, and their countries form an adjoining band all across the continent, and they have such a tight alliance that while they reign wars are very unlikely, it seems that a "Pax Arcadia" of sorts has emerged. </p><p></p><p>When the curtain fell on this scene, Sprocket and Mira were 34th level.</p><p></p><p>==========</p><p></p><p>Backing up again, Sprocket once recovered a very powerful and useful artifact. Once, (around 18th level or so), while adventuring in the land of Asgard, our heroes found themselves deep beneath the dwarven capital, the great hall of Niðavellir. The high king of Asgard, Jarnhammar, was sorely pressed by orcs and trolls swelling up from the underdark. The tunnels under his hall were a festering hole of evil. Sprocket and Mira, along with a small band of dwarves and an aged old priestess from Sylvania named Bloduedd, delved into this hellhole to meet the foe head-on. At the Battle of Gaðrhal, some tricky tactics and powerful technology helped to collapse a cavern and decimate the main force of orcs, holcs, and trolls. Our heroes themselves still had to fight off a quartet of nightshades, no easy task even for high-level characters, but they survived. </p><p></p><p>In the mess, Sprocket, Mira, and Bloduedd got separated from the dwarves and went deeper underground than they intended. They wound up in the Kingdom of the Kobolds, and they came into the maze-like palace of Kurtulmak, the Kobold King. (This campaign world does not have gods per se, nor does it really have "immortals" in the traditional OD&D sense. Immortals in this game world cannot be killed, but neither do they have any godly powers beyond what a wizard could accomplish. <em>Wish</em> is as powerful as it gets; no epic spells, true dweomers, or salient divine abilities.) As an immortal, Kurtulmak could not be killed, but he could be outwitted. And much of his power rested in an artifact, a bejeweled golden girdle which granted its wearer some protections from magic and the ability to <em>teleport</em> and <em>polymorph other.</em> Sprocket had no training in thievery, no capacity whatsoever to pick pockets, but there's always that one-in-a-million chance... long story short, when they finally confronted Kurtulmak, Sprocket roleld that unbelievable "1" on his long-shot pick pockets roll and just nicked Kurtulmak's golden belt, just like that. They had been sneaking about in the Kobold Kingdom for some time, so they knew the kinds of powers that Kurtulmak was feared for, and they had seen him operate the belt. Sprocket at once polymorphed the Immortal Kobold into a bunny rabbit, and that was it. "Kurtulmak the Unkillable Bunny" was thereafter a running gag throughout the campaign.</p><p></p><p>Needless to say, Sprocket abused this belt at every turn. And I kept careful track, counting the number of times it was used. What Sprocket didn't learn until much later, and much to his chagrin, was that this artifact was a little piece of Chaotic Evil. Its proper name was the <em>Girdle of Orcus,</em> and it had a foul purpose. Orcus once gave it to Kurtulmak, thinking that he could use the artifact's taint to bring the Immortal Kobold under his power. It didn't work, and Kurtulmak kept the belt, using it for his own gain.</p><p></p><p>When Sprocket stole the girdle, it woke up, and it started whispering Chaos to the gnome. Every time Sprocket used the belt, it also weakened the fabric of reality. There was always a possibility, for example, that using the polymorph or teleport power would just conjure up a hostile demon instead. Also, (in order to avoid alerting Mira's player), I had to be subtle about the belt's effects on Sprocket's mind---prompting him that chaotic or evil acts were worth considering, or weren't so bad and wouldn't change his alignment. It took quite a while (and a visit from one seriously ticked off archangel) for Sprocket to catch on, but eventually he realized the nature of belt and started using the item more sparingly. Nevertheless, the damage was done. He overused the item (use number one-hundred happened during the melee with Biendit), weakening the boundaries of the Prime Material Plane, and Orcus stepped through. Not right then and there, of course. He made a nest in the Underdark and started gathering an army, everything from goblins to balrogs.</p><p></p><p>These beasts started swelling up from underneath all over the world, first beneath dwarven mountains, much like the evil underneath Niðavellir once had. In Mira's dominion, back in Norwold, one her barons was a dwarf---Lord Dexter Rockbuster---with a dwarven hall of his own. He called for help to Mira, an ocean away in Sylvania at the time, to push the orcs and demons back into their hole. Sprocket and Mira came, and they led a massive army into the mines. They crushed orcs, zombies, and trolls, but when it came to balrogs and mandraks (fear-inducing demons), they were defeated and repelled. </p><p></p><p>Now 35th level and really pissed off, they went back to Arcadia and summoned the newly formed "Council of Nations," bringing their allied rulers together to discuss the problem. Most of the rulers were too sorely pressed in their own countries to offer much help, but then the council was crashed by a famous archmage by the name of Griswick---a wizard that Sprocket and Mira had met before, and one whose advice everybody respected. He told Sprocket and Mira that the <em>Girdle of Orcus</em>, an item in Sprocket's possession, was the key to stopping this madness. Griswick then proceeded to tell a story, revealing an important secret of the campaign world to all the royals present (and this, let me tell you, is just the tip of the iceberg):</p><p></p><p>The planet Gaia is home to two very powerful immortals, the Lawful dragon Bahamut and the Chaotic dragon Tiamat. Bahamut is the Guardian of Gaia---the closest thing the world has to a god or deity. Tiamat is the source of all evil, the creator of orcs and undead, and the mother of Orcus---and she is imprisoned in the core of the world. As long as Bahamut stands guard over Gaia from atop the Blessed Isle, Tiamat cannot be freed. But her son, the demon-lord Orcus, can still wreak some havoc. And he wants to wreak some major havoc, by releasing the Weapon of the Enemy. The Weapon of the Enemy is nothing less than Tiamat's avatar, an agent of pure distruction. (You guessed it, kids: it's the Tarrasque. Sprocket and Mira still don't know this little tidbit.) But in order to free the Weapon, Orcus needs his belt back. So, it’s on our heroes to destroy the evil artifact. And only one entity has both the knowledge and the desire to see the belt destroyed: Bahamut.</p><p> </p><p> But to get to the Blessed Isle, which floats above the world far higher than any airship can sail, a group of heroes would have to travel over the impossibly high Drachendorn Mountains, cross the blighted wastelands of orc-infested Tuonella, and then pass through Cursed Land Draconia, a place that nobody has ever returned from.</p><p> </p><p> ========== </p><p> </p><p> Our heroes decided to simply fly over Tuonella, little interested in wrangling with an entire kingdom of orcs. Once they arrived in Draconia, though, they were grounded. (On a globe, it’s in the same place as Siberia. And the weather is just as lovely.) The Cursed Land is a twisted place, where practically everything is evil and mutated, and some places are just plain weird. Stretches of country are magically invisible, made of rubber, moving up and down, spinning, low-gravity, you name it. Between these regions are haunted forests, haunted swamps, haunted farms with evil and carnivorous crops… you get the idea. But in the middle of it all is a high cliffside with a monastery at the top, and some very serene monks who *really* enjoy their solitude. And beyond this, a rocky valley with four stone pillars in the center. And in the middle of those pillars, a crystal tower that stretches into the clouds. </p><p> </p><p> After taking some rest among the monks (who were, in fact, half-dragon humanoids), they passed to the pillars, which formed an impenetrable barrier around the base of the tower. This was defeated by teleporting, and they passed onward, to the gates of the tower. Inside, a spiral staircase carved into the crystal, that wound up, and up, and up. They had to climb for three days straight before they arrived at the half-way point, temple in the clouds, where they were confronted by… none other than Griswick the archmage, who revealed his true identity to be the archangel that had once visited Sprocket to warn him about the evil of the girdle. To test their worth to appear before Bahamut, they would have to defeat the world’s most powerful wizard. This they did, though not without some difficulty.</p><p> </p><p> From here, they were permitted to proceed up the crystal tower again, another three days of climbing. As they rose, they noticed that they needed rest less and less frequently, and that they stopped noticing the passage of time. Outside the tower, only stars were visible—-Gaia could be seen far below, the curvature of the planet’s surface apparent. Finally, they reached the top, a crystal palace guarded by ancient gold dragons. Taken into the awesome presence of Bahamut, they presented the <em>Girdle of Orcus,</em> upon which the Lord of Dragons summarily performed a <em>divine disjunction,</em> breaking the belt, and with it, Orcus’s immortality.</p><p> </p><p> Sprocket and Mira spent an untold span of time in the crystal palace (time didn’t actually pass in this place, convenient for Sprocket, who needed to build some more robots and weaponry), before asking Bahamut to teleport them into Orcus’s lair to carry out an assassination. This they did, although the battle was about as difficult as the one with Griswick. Orcus fell, and so his armies were dispersed. The world was saved… and our heroes reached 36th level for their efforts.</p><p> </p><p> ==========</p><p> </p><p> Sprocket has a very nice airship. It’s called the <em>Expedition,</em> and it’s outfitted with all the latest technology: <em>shields</em>, <em>lightning cannons</em>, a <em>dimension door drive</em> for short-range FTL jumps, a <em>teleport engine</em> for the long-range travel… or so Sprocket hopes, if he can ever figure out how to make the thing airtight and launch in into space. </p><p> </p><p> After defeating Orcus, our heroes teleported back to the crystal palace to confer with Bahamut. The Dragon God informed them, for their reward, that they were now worthy to drink the <em>elixir of immortality,</em> the substance that once gave Bahamut his own immortality some twenty-thousand years ago (along with that of all the other immortals on Gaia). The elixir is fatal to anybody that tries to drink it before reaching 36th level, but Sprocket and Mira were now strong enough to survive the elixir and join the ranks of immortals. The only problem? The elixir is deep beneath the surface of Gaia, in the feywild. Sprocket wants to quaff the elixir before venturing into space. So, this is their new quest.</p><p> </p><p> This evening, our heroes traveled back to the dwarven kingdom of Asgard, for deep under Niðavellir is the great cavern of Gaðrhal, and in the tunnels from that cavern is the way to the Kobold Kingdom. And beneath the Kobold Kingdom is a Stone Door that our heroes were unable to open the first time they visited the place. This door, Bahamut informed them, is the passage to the feywild.</p><p> </p><p> They came to the door and found that now, it would open for them. And they passed through… and they fell. And they fell, and they fell, down the rabbit hole…</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jack Daniel, post: 4639855, member: 694"] [b]Well, it finally happened. My Lv-35 PCs befriended Bahamut and slew Orcus.[/b] Wow, it's been a while since I've thought to blog about my campaign. But it's got to happen now, because we're all done with the Masters Set. Session before last, the player characters hit that 4.35 million XP mark -- the most XP that a character can possibly earn in OD&D -- and made 36th level, the maximum attainable level. It's like reaching 99th level in a computer RPG. That's how epic this campaign is. It's a first for me, and I have to say, a heck of a lot of fun. Jeez, the Great War was so many game sessions ago that I'll have to see if I can remember all the details. Suffice it to say, the Hesperian navy threw everything it had at Olympia. Sprocket and Mira stayed there to rally the troops and direct the war. Elysium was too discombobulated to bring anything more than a token force to the table. The Amarna corsairs might have been troublesome, except that Avalon's Royal Air Force flew southeast, past Olympia, to keep them at bay. Mira was able to muster everything that Sylvania had, and just in time to repel Hesperia's main ground invasion, saving Olympia. The Amarnans, meanwhile, hurled back Avalon's Air Force and sent them limping back home, retaking quite a bit of lost territory in the process. The main theatre of the war was Olympia and Elysium, and in a long and entrenched battle that went back and fourth for nine whole days, the Hesperian invasion force was finally defeated, forcing a surrender and a treaty. Now, here's where things get funky: the treaty was to be signed at Marvilles, a city in Utopia. In attendance were Duke Sprocket, Empress Maeve of Avalon, Governor Lucilli of Hesperia, King Olibios of Olympia, a senator representing the Elysian Federation... and then, into the room walked General François Biendit, presumed dead (because Mira had killed him and burned up the body to prevent any unwanted resurrections). In the treaty negotiations, Hesperia essentially lost its sovereignty to Utopia, which in turn gave Elysium over to Olympia, as Sprocket had already proposed. Now, where was Mira through all this? During the war, Duke Konstantinos had tried to sneak-attack Elysium, to take it for Sylvania. Mira didn't like this very much, and so she surprised the Duke and all his generals while they were making war-plans, killed everybody in the room, and declared herself the new Duchess of Konstantinos's realm. Then, when she marched the Sylvanian armies into Olympia to help throw back the Hesperians, and this won them the war, she was able to return to her homeland as a war-hero... and the people made her the Empress of Sylvania! Not to be outdone, Sprocket sensed that something was very strange about General Biendit's reappearance, so he returned to his own homeland, Utopia, to get the down-low in this. After many games' worth of spying and intrigue, he finally discovered that the General had a whole compound under Reville, Utopia's capital. It was your typical Bond-villain lair, with henchmen, a doomsday machine (just in case), and (let's not forget that Biendit was a gnome, just like Sprocket, and therefore a mad scientist extraordinaire) an automaton factory and cloning vats. As it turned out, this General Biendit was not the original Biendit, but an automaton (a clockwork robot) with an exterior of cloned flesh... and there were seven or eight others wandering around the complex, just in case the the current one got bumped off. Well, Sprocket did the impulsive thing and decided to just flat-out attack Utopia. So, he gathered his own troops from back in Norwold (including his gnome techs, and about a hundred automated, steam-powered war-mechs) and got them ready for a war. Then he made a pact with the Empress of Avalon and the President of the Lemurian Republics to attack Utopia in concern when the time was right. Sprocket then spent the next month working one of his technologies---a [I]teleportation[/I] device---into a practical means of secretly transporting his armies to Reville (actually, to a factory in that city that he owned). Marching his armies from the heart of the city itself to the palace, while foreign armies assaulted the shores of the country, Sprocket confronted Biendit for a battle gnomo-a-gnomo. Sprocket won, but he discovered a nasty surprise: the Biendit-bots were all equipped with a deadman switch and a subatomic phlogiston bomb. So, Reville was nearly nuked in the ensuing blast, and in order to undo the destruction, Sprocket had to develop his greatest invention. (Now, keep in mind, the player characters are pushing the early 30s in terms of experience levels---with Biendit out of the picture, Sprocket is the [I]greatest scientist in the world[/I].) So, he finally develops an [I]improbability engine[/I], a technological item that essentially duplicates a mage's [I]wish[/I] spell. Now, like any good level-thirty-plus-odd bookworm type D&D character, Sprocket can alter reality. So, he un-nukes Reville. And now, Utopia has a capital city again, but no government. Ergo, Sprocket runs for president... and wins. And, since Hesperia is still subject to Utopia, that makes Utopia technically an empire... which makes Sprocket an emperor as well. *whew* Now, as I catch my breath, I have to take a little detour and explain two things about Sprocket, so that this next part of the story has the proper impact. (1) When the campaign first began, the "hook" used to draw Sprocket and Mira into the adventure was a letter from Sprocket's uncle, a rich but dotty old gnome named Thaddeus Q. Thimblequimby. Uncle Thaddeus was a collector of artifacts, and a descendant of the nobles of [I]l'ancien regime[/I] displaced by General Biendit's government. (2) Since day one, Sprocket has been using aliases and pseudonyms like most adventurers use arrows and healing potions. He's got an alternate identity for every situation. And he takes pains to make other people, even close friends and allies, think that his multiple personalities are real people. He'll use a holographic projector and a phonograph to make it look like he's in his lab, working on machines... when, in reality, he's out adventuring, dressed in ashigaru armor and carrying the daisho, calling himself "Lo-no-Mai, the wandering gnome ronin," and acting like a Lawful Good samurai warrior. Or he'll use makeup to make himself look like a hobbit, and a [I]polymorphic mutagen[/I] to transform Mira into a golden dragon, and then go adventuring as "Tellwiggly the halfling dragon-rider, atop his loyal steed, Theracuzia the dragon." As far as Mira's player ever knew, she was in on all the secret identities. When Sprocket Astroturf was officially crowned [I]l'Empereur d'Utopie[/I], he announced to the world that he would now go by his real name---his [I]real,[/I] real name---and rule as Darius Thimblequimby VI. Mira's player? Her jaw dropped. She positively freaked out when she realized that "Sprocket Astroturf" had been a pseudonym all along. The coronation of Darius/Sprocket was a huge affair of state, and all of Sprockets' and Miras' important friends and allies attended, including most of the local royalty. Queen Maeve, King Olibios, the President of Lemuria, princes and senators of Elysium, the high kings of Midjard and Pohjola, and so on---people that our heroes have been dealing with for quite a long time now, so they're practically old friends. Since Maeve, Sprocket, Mira, and Olibios are now the major players in Arcadia, and their countries form an adjoining band all across the continent, and they have such a tight alliance that while they reign wars are very unlikely, it seems that a "Pax Arcadia" of sorts has emerged. When the curtain fell on this scene, Sprocket and Mira were 34th level. ========== Backing up again, Sprocket once recovered a very powerful and useful artifact. Once, (around 18th level or so), while adventuring in the land of Asgard, our heroes found themselves deep beneath the dwarven capital, the great hall of Niðavellir. The high king of Asgard, Jarnhammar, was sorely pressed by orcs and trolls swelling up from the underdark. The tunnels under his hall were a festering hole of evil. Sprocket and Mira, along with a small band of dwarves and an aged old priestess from Sylvania named Bloduedd, delved into this hellhole to meet the foe head-on. At the Battle of Gaðrhal, some tricky tactics and powerful technology helped to collapse a cavern and decimate the main force of orcs, holcs, and trolls. Our heroes themselves still had to fight off a quartet of nightshades, no easy task even for high-level characters, but they survived. In the mess, Sprocket, Mira, and Bloduedd got separated from the dwarves and went deeper underground than they intended. They wound up in the Kingdom of the Kobolds, and they came into the maze-like palace of Kurtulmak, the Kobold King. (This campaign world does not have gods per se, nor does it really have "immortals" in the traditional OD&D sense. Immortals in this game world cannot be killed, but neither do they have any godly powers beyond what a wizard could accomplish. [I]Wish[/I] is as powerful as it gets; no epic spells, true dweomers, or salient divine abilities.) As an immortal, Kurtulmak could not be killed, but he could be outwitted. And much of his power rested in an artifact, a bejeweled golden girdle which granted its wearer some protections from magic and the ability to [I]teleport[/I] and [I]polymorph other.[/I] Sprocket had no training in thievery, no capacity whatsoever to pick pockets, but there's always that one-in-a-million chance... long story short, when they finally confronted Kurtulmak, Sprocket roleld that unbelievable "1" on his long-shot pick pockets roll and just nicked Kurtulmak's golden belt, just like that. They had been sneaking about in the Kobold Kingdom for some time, so they knew the kinds of powers that Kurtulmak was feared for, and they had seen him operate the belt. Sprocket at once polymorphed the Immortal Kobold into a bunny rabbit, and that was it. "Kurtulmak the Unkillable Bunny" was thereafter a running gag throughout the campaign. Needless to say, Sprocket abused this belt at every turn. And I kept careful track, counting the number of times it was used. What Sprocket didn't learn until much later, and much to his chagrin, was that this artifact was a little piece of Chaotic Evil. Its proper name was the [I]Girdle of Orcus,[/I] and it had a foul purpose. Orcus once gave it to Kurtulmak, thinking that he could use the artifact's taint to bring the Immortal Kobold under his power. It didn't work, and Kurtulmak kept the belt, using it for his own gain. When Sprocket stole the girdle, it woke up, and it started whispering Chaos to the gnome. Every time Sprocket used the belt, it also weakened the fabric of reality. There was always a possibility, for example, that using the polymorph or teleport power would just conjure up a hostile demon instead. Also, (in order to avoid alerting Mira's player), I had to be subtle about the belt's effects on Sprocket's mind---prompting him that chaotic or evil acts were worth considering, or weren't so bad and wouldn't change his alignment. It took quite a while (and a visit from one seriously ticked off archangel) for Sprocket to catch on, but eventually he realized the nature of belt and started using the item more sparingly. Nevertheless, the damage was done. He overused the item (use number one-hundred happened during the melee with Biendit), weakening the boundaries of the Prime Material Plane, and Orcus stepped through. Not right then and there, of course. He made a nest in the Underdark and started gathering an army, everything from goblins to balrogs. These beasts started swelling up from underneath all over the world, first beneath dwarven mountains, much like the evil underneath Niðavellir once had. In Mira's dominion, back in Norwold, one her barons was a dwarf---Lord Dexter Rockbuster---with a dwarven hall of his own. He called for help to Mira, an ocean away in Sylvania at the time, to push the orcs and demons back into their hole. Sprocket and Mira came, and they led a massive army into the mines. They crushed orcs, zombies, and trolls, but when it came to balrogs and mandraks (fear-inducing demons), they were defeated and repelled. Now 35th level and really pissed off, they went back to Arcadia and summoned the newly formed "Council of Nations," bringing their allied rulers together to discuss the problem. Most of the rulers were too sorely pressed in their own countries to offer much help, but then the council was crashed by a famous archmage by the name of Griswick---a wizard that Sprocket and Mira had met before, and one whose advice everybody respected. He told Sprocket and Mira that the [I]Girdle of Orcus[/I], an item in Sprocket's possession, was the key to stopping this madness. Griswick then proceeded to tell a story, revealing an important secret of the campaign world to all the royals present (and this, let me tell you, is just the tip of the iceberg): The planet Gaia is home to two very powerful immortals, the Lawful dragon Bahamut and the Chaotic dragon Tiamat. Bahamut is the Guardian of Gaia---the closest thing the world has to a god or deity. Tiamat is the source of all evil, the creator of orcs and undead, and the mother of Orcus---and she is imprisoned in the core of the world. As long as Bahamut stands guard over Gaia from atop the Blessed Isle, Tiamat cannot be freed. But her son, the demon-lord Orcus, can still wreak some havoc. And he wants to wreak some major havoc, by releasing the Weapon of the Enemy. The Weapon of the Enemy is nothing less than Tiamat's avatar, an agent of pure distruction. (You guessed it, kids: it's the Tarrasque. Sprocket and Mira still don't know this little tidbit.) But in order to free the Weapon, Orcus needs his belt back. So, it’s on our heroes to destroy the evil artifact. And only one entity has both the knowledge and the desire to see the belt destroyed: Bahamut. But to get to the Blessed Isle, which floats above the world far higher than any airship can sail, a group of heroes would have to travel over the impossibly high Drachendorn Mountains, cross the blighted wastelands of orc-infested Tuonella, and then pass through Cursed Land Draconia, a place that nobody has ever returned from. ========== Our heroes decided to simply fly over Tuonella, little interested in wrangling with an entire kingdom of orcs. Once they arrived in Draconia, though, they were grounded. (On a globe, it’s in the same place as Siberia. And the weather is just as lovely.) The Cursed Land is a twisted place, where practically everything is evil and mutated, and some places are just plain weird. Stretches of country are magically invisible, made of rubber, moving up and down, spinning, low-gravity, you name it. Between these regions are haunted forests, haunted swamps, haunted farms with evil and carnivorous crops… you get the idea. But in the middle of it all is a high cliffside with a monastery at the top, and some very serene monks who *really* enjoy their solitude. And beyond this, a rocky valley with four stone pillars in the center. And in the middle of those pillars, a crystal tower that stretches into the clouds. After taking some rest among the monks (who were, in fact, half-dragon humanoids), they passed to the pillars, which formed an impenetrable barrier around the base of the tower. This was defeated by teleporting, and they passed onward, to the gates of the tower. Inside, a spiral staircase carved into the crystal, that wound up, and up, and up. They had to climb for three days straight before they arrived at the half-way point, temple in the clouds, where they were confronted by… none other than Griswick the archmage, who revealed his true identity to be the archangel that had once visited Sprocket to warn him about the evil of the girdle. To test their worth to appear before Bahamut, they would have to defeat the world’s most powerful wizard. This they did, though not without some difficulty. From here, they were permitted to proceed up the crystal tower again, another three days of climbing. As they rose, they noticed that they needed rest less and less frequently, and that they stopped noticing the passage of time. Outside the tower, only stars were visible—-Gaia could be seen far below, the curvature of the planet’s surface apparent. Finally, they reached the top, a crystal palace guarded by ancient gold dragons. Taken into the awesome presence of Bahamut, they presented the [I]Girdle of Orcus,[/I] upon which the Lord of Dragons summarily performed a [I]divine disjunction,[/I] breaking the belt, and with it, Orcus’s immortality. Sprocket and Mira spent an untold span of time in the crystal palace (time didn’t actually pass in this place, convenient for Sprocket, who needed to build some more robots and weaponry), before asking Bahamut to teleport them into Orcus’s lair to carry out an assassination. This they did, although the battle was about as difficult as the one with Griswick. Orcus fell, and so his armies were dispersed. The world was saved… and our heroes reached 36th level for their efforts. ========== Sprocket has a very nice airship. It’s called the [I]Expedition,[/I] and it’s outfitted with all the latest technology: [I]shields[/I], [I]lightning cannons[/I], a [I]dimension door drive[/I] for short-range FTL jumps, a [I]teleport engine[/I] for the long-range travel… or so Sprocket hopes, if he can ever figure out how to make the thing airtight and launch in into space. After defeating Orcus, our heroes teleported back to the crystal palace to confer with Bahamut. The Dragon God informed them, for their reward, that they were now worthy to drink the [I]elixir of immortality,[/I] the substance that once gave Bahamut his own immortality some twenty-thousand years ago (along with that of all the other immortals on Gaia). The elixir is fatal to anybody that tries to drink it before reaching 36th level, but Sprocket and Mira were now strong enough to survive the elixir and join the ranks of immortals. The only problem? The elixir is deep beneath the surface of Gaia, in the feywild. Sprocket wants to quaff the elixir before venturing into space. So, this is their new quest. This evening, our heroes traveled back to the dwarven kingdom of Asgard, for deep under Niðavellir is the great cavern of Gaðrhal, and in the tunnels from that cavern is the way to the Kobold Kingdom. And beneath the Kobold Kingdom is a Stone Door that our heroes were unable to open the first time they visited the place. This door, Bahamut informed them, is the passage to the feywild. They came to the door and found that now, it would open for them. And they passed through… and they fell. And they fell, and they fell, down the rabbit hole… [/QUOTE]
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