ZEITGEIST The affirmative action racial recruitment team of the RHC

[RangerWickett]

I kinda wonder, if ZEITGEIST had been a TV series like LOST, how soon the audience would have figured out the Ob's plans from the clues available.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

The constables start creeping along the train to the first freight car were they remove the less stealthy team members from the Absurdist Web and then uncouple the freight cars from the passenger cars behind as this gives Leone/Magneto less trains to throw at them and also reduces the risk of collateral damage,
With this done they move through the freight cars towards Leone's private carriages of course the jolt from detaching the main part of the train has alerted Leone and his bodyguard ,as the train map we are using has a Piano then Leone begins to play a villanous overture as the 4 clockwork soldiers, 4 clockwork gunslingers, 4 Arcane Marksmen and 2 Witchoil powered pseudo golems fortify the last freight car ready for the constables. At this point I am in two minds if the force I have assembled is going to overwhelm the constables , I will soon see,
The fight starts with a volley from the clockwork gunslingers which largely misses, Manuel would love to suit up and blast them with a cannon but fears to use the steamsuit with Magneto nearby instead he runs up and unlocks the door to the carriage of gunmen, it turns out this is franlkly a waste of time. William casts a lightning bolt spell which blasts through the door both golemns numerous minions and deep into Leones passanger car, then using her recently aquired shoes of lightning assault Nevla transforms into a bolt of lightning and crashed into the middle of the enemy formation injuring several of them. Then the detonate spell she cast earlier releases its energy in a truly impressivly high damage roll a sphere of lightning blasts out and drops all 4 clockwork gunmen and 3 clockwork soldiers it badly damages both golems, the remaining soldier and all 4 arcane marksmen. At this point I start worrying that the fight is going to be one sided in the opposite direction. The lightning blast also leaves the carriage on the verge of breaking in two.

Padme rushes up and stabs the clockwork soldier in the back fatally, Ulvaar charges in and assaults a golem then the golems act one punches Nevla then moves away from the collapsing area and takes an attack of opportunity, the other one also punches her most of these attacks miss, the arcane marksmen blast her with scorching rays. Manuel moves forward past the breach in the train and casts shield, Padme moves forward and stabs the central arcane marksman , he dies, the train breaks in two and all the rear freight cars start to derail , only one Golem is left behind but he catches up soon as Leone rises from the piano and unleashes his power a shard vortex encompasses the pc's. he raises his shiedld and throws the golem at all the pc's except Padme doind a fair amount of damage and wrecking the golem. William casts confusion at Leone and fails, Ulvaar finishes the last golem.

The arcane marksmen step back and shoot at Nevla and Padme they all roll badly and all 9 shots miss Ulvaar moves forward and drops all 3 with a whip of lightning . Padme moves and attacks Leone but the metal shield largely prevents damage, Manuel moves up and throws alchemists fire on Leone, William Boneshatters him leaving him in pain and exhausted, Nevla hits him with blindness which he fails to save against. Using his magneto senses Leone hits William with the roof critting and smashing him through the floor (2 hero points to stop the huge damage spike killing him) then ulvaar moves up and hits him again the metal shield blocks most of it.

Manuel takes a chance and unleashes a nock gun blast with ironwood bullets which slams into Leone hurting him through the shield, William picks himself up on the rail tracks behind the train, padme lands a flurry of flanking attacks and draws blood, Nevla hits leone with a Boneshatter which flips him over the edge , his power surges restoring his sight and begginning a massive train crash. Leone rises from the whirling mass of train carriages and the fireball of the engine, Ulvaar rises up to meet him on wings of air and the two duel over the train crash with Ulvaar landing several blows and taking glancing blows from a couple of trains which he is tough enough to shrug off finally as the train comes to a halt the batterred Manuel and Nevla join in a burst of radiance dazzles and injures leone and Manuel fires an alchemical icendiary ironwood bullet from his rifle which breaks through Leones shield and knocks him out. Ulvaar grabs him with TK to stop the fall killing him,

When he recovers Leone taunts and insults the team but he is in mage cuffs low on hp and nowhere near the crashed train sp he can't do much , soon his exhaustion brings him to sleep and Grappa wakes up. He explains his plan, they decide that killing Leone by ripping his soul out is no worse than hanging him and the lich will be stopped from escaping. (With a side order that if they don't go the Ob will probably release the Lich and that makes this a better plan). They discuss the archeologist in the head and think that they can use this to transfer her to a duplicant of herself turning her into an Indiana Jones/Terminator crossover. Then rather than put up with Leone on their trek they stuff him in the absurdist web , which also means Grappa will be in charge when they pull him out. They report to Harkover and he asks for a copy of the mind switching spell. Manuel is further convinced he is a Blue Dragon in disguise.
While most of them are really bad at survival , William channels Queen Zidi and is now a master of survival making the overland trek easy

Nex week a Legion of my Finest Frost Giants guards the secret lair in the ice of the Lich of the Demonocracy

 

[Andrew Moreton]

The write up above was for my players as Williams player was not avaialble this week my impressions are It was an impressive fight although I cheated a bit to keep Magneto fighting, his shield did not run out if it was breached more bits of metal just flowed into place and I gave him blind sense against anyone touching or carrying metal. The minions went down way faster than I expected to Leone/Magneto had to carry the burden of the fight on his own more than I expected. They agreed to the mind/soul swapping faster than I expected indeed I was concerned they might decide it was evil

 

[Andrew Moreton]

Again the Absurdist Web has become the basis of their logistic and movement strategies.

With the return of Williams player there was a brief revision of the ethics of Soul transfer and agreeing to free a Lich. They discussed with Harkover Lee via teleport and thought the Lich may have been weakened , they did consider that there was an expert who may know how powerful the Lich was and may be another source for the Soul Transfer spell. But they were even more afraid of Ahima-Shintu than the Lich and were worried to discover that everyone who had met her could use a sending scroll to contact her even through the wards.
Killing the Frost Giants was then planned, they decided to set up a secure base camp by using the Abusrdist Web to bring in 3 Squads of Risuri Riflemen and a pair of Field guns which were set up to cover the entrance to the Canyon, Manuel and Padme then sneaked in to try and blow up the Cave holding the reserve Giants with a demo charge but the totems and death bears detected them. The players were very worried by the demonic death bears suspecting they were more dangerous than the Frost giants. Manuel and Padme ran away staying in front of the chasing Frost Giants who re-enacted Rorkes Drift or maybe the Charge of the Light Brigade charging into massed riflemen plus cannon support b Willian channelling the first King of Risur as a Marshall and giving everyone +3 to hit and +5 damage which translated to of the 12 Frost Giants and 2 bears involved in the attack only 3 injured Giants made it out of the Valley of Death , Nevla blinded several of them but the rest could just not stand up to covering that much open ground in the face of havy firepower including Tinkers advanced explosive shells.

With the Frost Giants forced back on the defensive the Constables moved the firing line closer to block off any movement down the ravine and moved in to assault, as they moved along the rift floor they saw the lantern light and Nevla gor suspicous and cast Detect planar energy , immediatly they realised that the lanterns were a trap and started shooting them out except for a few they could grab with TK and shove into the absurdist web for later study. The waterfall pool the crossed easily as Ulvaar;s Life bubbles protected them from cold and water allowing them to walk through the pool.

On the other side of the pool they faced a mass charge by Frost fiants and William channelled the king to encourage Manuel to frankly terrifying activity he got off 2 blasts of cannister from his cannon in the first round dropping 3of the 4 front rank Ice giants then manged a Nock Gun blast leaving the Frost Giant boss badly injured as he reached mellee and hit Manuel, then before he could act again a Holy smite blinded 3 of the 4 follow up Giants and multiple rocket propelled grenade salvo from Manuel injured almost all the remaining giants , Ulvaar and Padme killed the one Giant who could see what was going on and the boss in a series of viscous strikes encouraged by Williams cheerleading, at the end of the 2nd round with 8 more frost giants including their chief dead for no real signs of harm to the constables the rest of the Frost Giants surrendered if given safe passage out of the rift. Their offer was accepted as they were just Ob Mercenaries , the 2 Ob scholars were taken prisoner and it was discovered the Ob were looking for strange planar meteorites, the players bought the Ob scholars evasion for responsibility for hurting the prisoners. They freed the prisoners and were going to agree to sent Gbortiy to escort them back to Drakr when they realised it would be safer and easier for all if they stuffed them in the Absurdist web and teleported them to Risur then sent them home.

They started to debate how to be prepared to kill the Lich if they had to, at this point as I know my players and did not want to derail into a full session of Lich killing prep I guaranteed them no combat with the lich. They did decide to keep Leones soul in crystal sphere so his death would not warn the Ob. The Lich was contacted , the soul transferred the spell learnt and the party teleported out instead of freeing him, his curse failed and they were free and ready to infiltrate the Ob

 

[Andrew Moreton]

I have given the players access to the Ob briefing material they will encounter next session, this is Manuels immediate response thoughts on a slow work day

Manuel
This is all very fascinating, and honestly more than a bit worrying.

Guessing where the artifact / box is

I'm guessing the box is under Axis island, possibly offshore, possibly submerged caverns, beneath. Logic for this is obviously the local planar weirdness (frogs!) and the planar icons we have. Which could be part of the calibrations / testing process for building new pillars for the box. Also its a neat callback and the name is a hint.

Inferred summary of hos it seems to work

From the OB statement (which is little more than a Pr statement)

• The ancients built an artifact machine featuring a giant gold box and 8 pillars which can alter how the planes connect to this world.
• Opening the box and changing the pillars changes the connections when the box is closed, which changes the basic propertied of the world, which may change the planets too!
• There are multiple aspected planes reality can be connected to, possibly these are finite and the ob has a list, possibly they are infinite.
• The Ob are building lamps / lighthouses to assist this transfer.
• There is no control group, this is a change that will affect everything.
• Possibly reality could be reset to its current configuration if damaged, however there would need to be surviving people who could / would do that.
• Any reality changes that incapacitate Bourne and / or the ancient artifact machine are irreversible, as the box can't be opened and changed again if it doesn't exist or borne does not function.

What we can infer from the current setup

From the current configuration we can infer the the ancients altered this world to stop and hide from some external element as:

• Nem, Plane of Death. Its trait is Annihilation, and it destroys any who try to travel from our star system of planes to the outer multiverse, and vice versa.
• Apet, Plane of Space. The Distant Plane is responsible for keeping our world and its bonded planes far from the rest of the multiverse and less likely to attract extraplanar attention.
• Urim, Plane of Earth. This golden world has fractured into many pieces, but its trait — Barrier — causes gold in our world to block teleportation.
• Mavisha, Plane of Water. Its trait is Mystery, and it is responsible for the many islands that dot the world with their various secrets. We think this trait can be easily abandoned.

Which fits with the legend of Oswin and his golden legions invading, the stranded legions of the demonocracy etc.

Interesting unanswered questions:

• How soon after doing this did the Ancient civilisation decline? I suspect they altered something that broke them (possibly a law / cooperation aspect) which cause them to fragment into the modern day orcs / goblinoids with there more chaotic society and lower mental stats.
• Are the ancient temples the lantern equivalents of the ancients? If not why does the Ob think it needs lanterns?
• The ancient temples has weird partial gate things, are these part of distributing the planar energy change or a bunker to survive it?
• The Ob believe the plane of Avilona (Air) was damaged, we have seen the temple of air was damaged by Kasa-whats her name (big eladrin sorceress) on a time frame that fits flight breaking. So either the Ob is wrong, the Ob is lying, the ancient temples can attune to a plane sufficient to damage it when they are damaged (this is terrifying), its a composite between damage to the plane and temple or its the worlds most suspicious coincidence.
• A lot of the Ob seems to be undead (27 ghosts & founder Nicodemus) these will have an interest in the plane of life, which does not seem to have been declared. So the Ob has an interest in maintaining a world where sentient undead are possible. Is there a secret undead world agenda?
• The different factions of reality engineers working to complex philosophical goals imply either a deep, nuanced understanding of the artifact, the additional planes and how these would composite to change the world. Or (more likely) immense hubris. What evidence have the Ob got they can do this without utterly devastating everything? Do they have information on previous pre-ancient configurations? Where is this confidence from?

Guesses on Vital Planes for Borne to function

Bourne is vital to make changes to the artifact currently. Any change that incapacitates him prevents reverting or further changes. Once the changes procedure starts he is vital.

• Jiese, Plane of Fire. Its trait is Cunning. The fire from this plane is less destructive than a typical elemental world, and its Flames can be used intelligently, like a tool. Our scholars suspect most worlds never achieve the industrial revolution ours has because they lack this trait. Changing this plane might stymie technological progress (required for technology).
• Av, Plane of Life. This glassy hollow world is our moon and has the traits of Reflection and Dream. It allows our world to have the two parallel planes of fey and darkness, The Dreaming and The Bleak Gate. Changing this world would remove those planes and might have consequences involving dreams and undead. (required for Bornes witch oil power source to function)

Manuels perspective

Manuel would very much like to be able to tinker with the basic properties of creation! There is so much you could do! However he is aware that:

• Experimenting with yourself guarantees you are working with an idiot.
• Getting experimental consent forms for the entire world is going to be impossible.

So Manuel is reluctantly concluding stopping any tinkering is the correct approach until there is very strong evidence that the planar changes are easily controllable, extremely predictable, fully reversible and have occurred historically without massive death and disruption. While the current world is not perfect its far better than say "Endless Zombie without free will world". Something which I think the Ob has a decent chance of achieving by accident. Manuel is a "no change" vote.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

Also is Harkover's picture based on Peter Cushing ? My players thought it was and that lead to s brief speculation he may be a vampire not a Dragon

 

[RangerWickett]

Ricardo Montalban, actually.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

Write up to follow but at the end of the session one of the players came to the conclusion that Nicodemus is the Ghost of William Millar.
Her logic chain is good, she was told that Kasavarina knew William Millar and her flashbacks had a smoking man visiting their home, from that she has decided that it is likely William Millar and Nicodemus are the same person, she is not certain yet but the other two theories are that he is a Gidhim and she does not believe that one, and that he is ghost of an unknown person and I suspect that the proponent of that theory will like the William Millar theory.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

The session started with the group preparing for their journey to the convocation they were uncertain of their ability to blend in as several of them lacked social skills , and they were uncertain of their ability to control a Gestalt, particularly Manuel who has a somewhat poor will save. They left all of their weapons and magical hardware on their normal bodies which were placed in the absurdist web which keeps them in stasis. They realised that if the bodies were in Temporal stasis they could cast combat booster spells before putting themselves away and wake up with a full set of spells active. To facilitate this William took up his hierophant mantle and they cast a lot of spells with minutes per level or longer duration.

Once they had prepared as well as they could have then we cut back to the first meeting of their disguised selves with Nicodemus. The conversation with him was fairly short but he came across as fairly human and reasonable, as he explained that the purpose of the convocation was to guide the Ob in their choices as the leadership such as himself felt they needed to check in with the wider membership of the OB to check their plans were approriate and that he hoped the discussions would be informative. The players were surprised at how sincere he and the others seemed in their honesty and somewhat idealistic goals, but they also concidered a 500+ year ghost or whatever may be really good at faking it.

Leaving their meeting with Nic they mingled a bit but Manuel and Ulvaar preferred to avoid doing to much talking as without a Gestalt they are very socially unskilled and may give themselves away. They talked with Hervinskugger and realised he was
a) dreadfully boring
b) a Genuine if unethical brilliant planar researcher.
Manuel got very interested in the techical details of the conversation, Pemberton probably noticed the social cluelessness and talking style of the goblin and also their use of language free communcation between the team and is fairly certain he has located the constables.
At the same time the team via William realised there was a Duplicant present and started to observe the crowds looking for those who did not eat very much remembering the change of behaviour of the Concillor in Ber when she was replaced

I had given them the presentations to read before this session and so we went straight to their opportunity to interview the representatives of the various plans
Manuel's player in particular had a lot of questions for them and I had to establish that the technical details were not necessarily well known by the faction representatatives (names of planes etc particularly as I can't name all of them) but the details of how it worked was.
The big overall impression they got was that the purpose of the lanterns was to spread the planar energies over the world and make a smooth transition between realities while the seal was open with the seal then closing to lock those energies in place , which will hopefully make them less keen to assault Axis island at this time.I consider this a misinformation effort by the Ob leadership with exactly the purpose of disguising how critical Axis island is.
The big bit of information they got was something I mentioned casually that Kasavarina had Known Willian Millar when they were talking to her disciple presenting Millar's pyre, Nevla's player spent the next 2 hours and the car journey home trying to fit this bit of knowledge with her other knowledge and concluded Nic was William Millar, I have yet to see if the other players believe her but the arguement she has put forward is fairly good and when they help Kasavarina in book 8 even if they don't get the vision which proves it the side information will be enough to make her certain.

The Arboreum plan they approved of except for the loss to technology which Manuel was not keen on, it seemed fairly safe and the questions they had about security and the effects on animals were asnwered to their satisfaction.
Millars Pyre they thought again was well thought out but the vulnerability to outside invasion and also the problem of psychopaths and others with no empathy they felt may be a flaw but overall Culani convinced them at the minimum it was a sincere effort to make a better world.
The Panarchists they approved of more after talking to Han , they had worried it would be a world of total anarchy but they were convinced he meant it as an anarchist utopia with the special abilities provided hopefully cancelling out the problems, they are still not sure it would work but at least they think it is a benign intent.
The Watchmen, they understood the point but frankly they did not like the idea and also thought it would collapse at the end. Further they were unconvinced that anyone could get a thousand year script correct.
The Collossus they considred to be like its proponent a scheme for power mad people to secure their power. They listened to her explantion about how new people could be granted powers and others have them taken away but thought the world would devolve into groups each dominated by a selection of Collossi feuding with each other and it would all end in tears, they are not fans and I suspect they want Miss Romana in a Jail when they get home.

They finished up inspecting the sample worlds and seeing if they lived up to expectations they did and they concluded teleportation and flight would be nice to have.
However they really think that despite the good ideas changing the world is a bad idea as if you screw up its a disaster and you ahve nowhere to go, if they had a spare planet to practice on Manuel would be all in favour of it but at the moment no.

Nevla is suggesting they should try to push for a plan which if it is implemented despite their efforts allows a good chance at a second shot when it goes wrong Arbatoreum, Millars Pyre or maybe Panarchist but Collossus and Watchmaker they think are really bad.

At the very end we had the first murder and that worried them, first they think a remade world influenced by the Voice of Rot would be really bad, secondly they are worried that they will be spotted by a series of interrogations as they screw up their gestalts. They did pick up the references to the witches but as the witches were clergy heretics they thought that several of the clergy may have access to similar rituals.

Next session of the 30th of December as on the 23rd I and another player are on Christmas holidays and it is the birtday of a third players child so no game.

Overall this session went better than I feared the players seemed to enjoy investigating the philosophical and practical problems for each of the new world designs and assimilated the data dumps of necesary information.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

So how would Nicodemus respond to this question which Manuel's player is proposing


"Nicodemus, as the ghost of William Miller, whats your opinion on the Millers Pyre option? Is the name in poor taste?"