ZEITGEIST The affirmative action racial recruitment team of the RHC

[Andrew Moreton]

They seem to be interested and sympathetic to Kasavarina, Nevla and her have the strongest link which is expected with the familial link set up they also seem to be considering there to be two different Kasavarina's the 'old' Kasavarina who was an Ob leader , and the new Kasavarina they are travelling with and helping understand her self, overall they are not that keen on the Old one but are sympathetic to the new Kasavarina's reaction to her old self.
We forgot Manuels parents in Seobriga , as it slipped my mind and he forgot that Seobriga was that city, we'll do it in a flashback at the start of the next session. Nevla is revisiting much of Dala's past , the mysterious bits of her own recent past happened in in Danoran occupied territory so they consider that hard to visit. William and Ulvaar don't have any great mysteries to visit. To make up for that they have considered or are considering all the following options
1)Harkover Lee , can they persuade him to cooperate and look into his past, they also considered asking Pemberton
2) William. Can he use his ties to the kings of Risur to see their histories. I am thinking about this one
3) The Humble Hook can they use the arc on this (definetly no)
4) Ashina-Shintu well Manuel wants to try this no one else does
5) Early incidents at Cauldron Hill and Maccbennins mansion

The Arc of Reida is getting close to being as popular as the Absurdist Web

 

[Andrew Moreton]

This session the Absurdist Web continues its campaing to be declared MVMI.
We started with a flashback to the team in Ber as after a discussion they decided on their being 2 more historical events they wanted to revisit(There would have been more if they thought they could persuade Pemberton or Harkover Lee to participate)
First we go back to the tragic murder of Manuels parents outside a theatre in Seobrigga. Manuel dressed in his Straw hat, blazer and short is eating a dried frog lollipop as he and his parents leave the theatre where they have watched a performance by Alonzo the Half giant and his troup including the incredible hummin Alpaca's perform a musical story of a family forced to flee over the mountains to Risur by evil dragon tyrants called the Sound of Yodelling. Two Hobgoblins in clown make up confront the family , as Manuels Father confronts them standing up to their waste bands shots are fired by large caliber Drakran Bear pistols. Manuel flee's and as the hobgoblins flee their pistols mysteriously misfire as if a stealthy invisible spell caster had intervened . (Speculation about a time loop involving Manuel and the Arc of Reida is rampant as is the assumption it is El Extrano or his agents). As Manuel fleet to the butler Alfredo the team watch as the Hobgoblins meet with the Lizardman Lissa (of railroad challange fame) who was a rival of Manuels family and are paid before being stabbed by other lizardmen as they leave. As Glaucia witnesses all this she promptly arrests Lissa , sentences him to a severe beating and confiscates his company and assets , justice is done speedily in a very Beran fashion.
Next they enlist the help of Gale carrying Ulvaar to the ziggurat of Avilona with the rest of the team in the Absurdist web. They are distracted by speculation at this point as to why Copperhat gave them such a useful item and conclude it is a faerie trick with the evidence of his crimes such as the theft of she who writhes swim suit stashed within so he can deny that he has said stolen items. They then use the Arc of Reida and witness Kasavarina trying to switch the plane to point to another plane of air, the explosion of energy from Nem and then the near disaster as their flight spell fails as they leave. They speculate if Nic knew this would break the plane of air or if it was an accident, they decide it was probably an accident from an early version of the later plans.
Then we move back to were we left them on their way with the God Hand Vitus to the island of Odeom. Arriving on the island they encounter the Simulcram of Grandis Komanov whose cunning plan is somewhat undermined by the presence of Vitus who is almost immediatly aware she is not in fact one of the clergy guardians assigned to the island resulting in her destruction, the party are alarmed that such a powerful spellcaster is opposing them, later they are able to identify her as the exteremist eschatological leader and are rather glad she was not around to learn the ritual. Moving through the vaults they expose Vitus to all the evidence of the long standing corruption of the clergy shaking his faith and setting the seeds for his trial of the gods later, which makes it convenient for me to blame the pc's for their own problems later. When the reach the vault with Ashima-Shintu in it Wiliam notices the new statues are duplicants , they consider leaving them alone to talk with Pemberton but decide it will risk messing up the memory event to Manuel and Ulvaar stuff them into the absurdist web before they activate. Once Kasavarina and Nic finish opening the vault they watch the conversation and learn the ritual of apothesis they also realise what caused the death of all the Eladrin women and think Dala must have been the subject of the ritual, they are divided on wether the death of Ssramma was Nics objective or if he really wanted to kill the clergy war god. They part with Vitus determined to finish purging the clergy of corruption and Ob influence. Kasavarina blames herelf from the death of Ssramma the team make a good point for it all being Nic's fault with Kasavarina having beem a victim of his schemes.

With a letter of permission from Vitus they head to the Clergy colony which has been built on Kasavarina's home town. They determine their are three sites were either Kasavarina or Nevla have memory events they decide to start with the Temple of Ssramma were they get a vision of Nevla 3 day before the Great Malice, Nevla/Dala is sleeping at the temple when Clergy God Hand assassins assault the temple silently killing all the other priests and acolytes before capturing Dala and teleporting out with a Word of Recall spell back to Crissilyr. The next vision on this site is from 3 BOV and is Kasavarina attending the service were Dala/Nevla is consecrated as a full priestess of Ssramma the maiden with Luanga in the crowd, the final vision on the site is from about 90 BOV and is Kasavarina's marriage.
They then procede to the site of Vekesh's performance and witness Vekesh turn around the despair of the Eladrin army and the dance of the Matriarchs . They are impressed by the performance Nevla and William more as they have a better understanding of Eladrin culture.
Then they procede to the site of Kasavarina's home and Nevla is drawn into the memory event, the team is very alarmed to realise that the Nic of the event is the real Nic not just a vision, Nic apologises for not being able to save Kas's daughters and she resists blasting him into ashes, he then delivers his ultimatum that she join him or risk the death of all here, and gives the end of the memory event as a deadline, the team brace for the end of the memory event and having they think got everything important from here plan of fleeing by Teleport. As the event ends Nevla tries to exorcise Nic and fails, the Golems and zombie swarm appear and Kasavarina manages a teleport spell before the golems attack taking the team to a safe teleportation location the Flint Opera House where the team appears in the middle pf the Operatic tragedy of King Oliver. Quickly and to the applause of the crowd William and Nevla join in the performance to the applause of the crowd while the rest of the team slink off the stage.
William then has the idea of creating a bardic performance about the teams exploits to make sure they have many supporters in case they ever need to use the sacrement of apothesis,. Manuel suggests they should plan on using Rock as their god candidate, William says no there is no way they should do anything to encourage that man to think himself as a god, Manuel says he thought it was a good idea as Rock is popular and expendable, then it is pointed out if he dies under the ritual all his docker followers die and Manuel says in that case he is not expendable and so not a good candidate.

Next time they will investigate cauldron hill and then probably Kasavarina's enclave and if they can find it Pala. They think getting to Methia is important but difficult so should be left until last

 

[Andrew Moreton]

This session starts in Flint with the players investigating Macbennins mansion and the remains of the cauldron hill facility. The Mansion is a dissapointment, during the memory events of their visits they have uninvolved pc's and the B team rifling through all Macbennins papers and unfortunatly discover he did not know any secrets of the Ob they have not already got.
The Cauldron hill facility is more exciting, their aim here is to try and have the B-Team go through the bits of the facility they did not search and try to find more out about the Collossus. The problem with this is that the design areas for the collossus do not seem to be near the area's the characters visited so they do not find much although the B-Team is able to recover notes on the process of making shadow soldiers and flayed Jaguars all of which they consider the university ethics committee would not approve of.
However something else finds them, a Bleak gate Umbral dragon has been drawn to the site out of curiosity and when the memory event activates creating a link to the Bleak gate it surges through and starts attacking people starting with the pc's. Their first action is to board the dragon dimension dooring onto its back, while Nevla tries to blind it. It responds by brathing on them sucking much of the strength from their bodies notably Kasavarina is reduced to strength 1 and cannot stand up in her gear, and Manuel is reduced to 0 strength and collapses before he can activate his steam suit . Ulvaar hastes everyone , Padme stabs the dragon a lot which also triggers attacks of opportunity from Nevla. Ulvaar and William which do more damge, and Kasavarina unleashes lightning. The Dragon survives all that. Nevla hits it with another spell which bounces off its spell resistance, William commands Kasavarina to try another spell which bounces of its spell resistance. The dragon picks up Padme in its mouth and flies upwards dropping Kasavarina, Manuel and Ulvaar off it. Ulvaar pacesit with flight and lands a blow, padme tries to stab it in the mouth but fails, Kasavarina unleases lots of lightning hurting it badly and finally it is finished off by a blow from Nevla.

The team rest for a couple of days to recover strength drain with the aid of magical healing and in that time start to plot how to get to Methia. They do not fancy walking through Danor, and they decide a submarine would be nice, however Risur does not have one but they know Danor does so they plan to steal one. To get to the Ushanti enclave they take their ship and its escorts and wait for a naval ambush when it occures they teleport Padme into the submarine while Nevla, Ulvaar, Manuel and William teleport onto one frigate and Kasavarina onto the other massive use of AOE Spells and cannister cannon shot soom clear the decks while a Greater Invisibiity Padme stabs all the sub crew . The sub with a prize crew is detached to sail towards Danor for the team to meet up with it.

Before going to Ushanti they return to Sentosa to borrow a guide and some suitable trustworthy eladrin notables they can leave in charge of Ushanti when they overthrow the Ob leadership. The guide and a disgusied Nevla enter the enclave as messangers from Sentosa , and that night they release from the Absurdist Web the rest of the constables who creep around the enclave and knock out the leaders ( after checking for an Ob ring, and using divination to check anyone without a ring is not Ob) stuff them in the absurdist web before having Kasavarina make a speech about changing the direction of policy and trying to integrate with the other Eladrin enclaves to make a rebuilt nation in alliance with Risur which has promised them aid and then to deal with the other enclaves as a united race and see if they can be forced out or restricted by diplomacy. This is a bit of a suprise but she is very charismatic and their leader and they go along with it for now.
The constables then check for memory events, realise why Nic arranged for Launga's death and decide he is definetly on the evil side of things, they also witness his return from Pala and finally discover its location just after they recieve a message from the kings scholars who have also found a location. They teleport to the railroad and then walk to Pala, reaching the ranch and speaking with the locals just as a hideous monster climbs out of the rubble.
Next week monster slaying, and Walking into Methia after a nice sub journey

 

[Andrew Moreton]

Yet again the players have built their entire plan around the Absurdist Web. How does one stealth a Dwarf through Methia , stick him in the web and pull him out when magic works again

 

[RangerWickett]

Wait, how are they expecting to put someone in an extradimensional space in a null magic zone?

 

[Andrew Moreton]

They did not, they stuffed him in the web before reaching the city and expected to be able to take him out when they got access to magic at the main tower, they based this expectation on their vision of the near future. They felt he would get them into more fights than his ability without magic would win.
Write up to follow

 

[Andrew Moreton]

To start off I demonstrate why I should not allow mellee monsters to start the fight multiple rounds away from the pc's. The Writhing dead walks towards the pc's and takes 2 cannon balls, several arrows , a fireball and some chain lighnting it expires before it gets within reach of the characters or the ranch. In future I will make sure that monsters start off withing combat range of the group.

Angus the ranch hand was poised to leap into mortal combat but was saved the trouble, he is aware that the pc's are looking for Pala and so agree's to lead them there he also tells them of the Sons of Pala the constables talk with them about William Millar and his philosophy and conclude the group is not linked to the Ob. They get permission to view the events of the past and see the martyrdom of William Millar and take advantage of the visions to let the Sons of Pala to recover some lost texts from the burned library.

They then have a long discussion about what this has revealed of William Millar/Nicodemus they are certain that this is at least his second body , as it did not look like the one they has seen before the Great Malice. Williams player is very convinced that William Millar has never been William Millar, and that he is some sort of possessing spirit/demon and that he predates this event by some long time, others are more certain that he is the ghost of William Millar . They also conclude he must have died sometime between when they last saw him en-route to Methia and the founding of Pala , they think it is likely to have happened at Methia. The debate starts to get very speculative and in the end they end it when they realise they have lost touch with the evidence. Instead they decide to get on with learning more.

Returning to Risur they start to prepare for their visit to Methia, they have the submarine en-route and they start making plans they consult with their associates in the family and are suprised at how well connected they are to the clergy with the key , they start to be concerned that their may be more links to the clergy but in the end they decide this is not a real problem for them. Concerns about ending up at the top of a tower which will suddeny dissapear concern them, unfortunatly parachutes do not exist and man carrying kites or gliders do not seem practical so they decide they will have to use the teleport portals in the historical vision or their own teleportation spells. They conclude this means they ust be fearful of dimensional anchor spells so they will have clerical spell immunity vs dimensional anchor cast .
Next they plan the infiiltrationa nd realise that Ulvaar is pretty much impossible to sneak into the city so they decide they will put him in the absurdist web before entering the anti-magic zone , they also decide that to reach the island with the tower they will need a boat as none of them are good swimmers so they requisition a Risuri special forces team who will infiltrate with them and use collapsible boats and swimming to get them across the river. The special forces will once the island is secure retreat into the city and make use of the players actions as a diversion to escape Methia and either rendezvous with the sub or use druidic abilities to escape to the coast.

The submairne journey up the river is unventful , the Danorans are not really looking for a submarine. Before the river narrows and the fortifications around Methia the constables and the commando team land and circle around the city approaching the western gate under cover of darkness, with the lack of guards they are able to enter the city unobserved and lay up for the day in the cellar of one of the buildings, Manuel who is feeling seriosuly hampered by being only the late evening rather than the night, and the fact that he can only carry 22lb of gear which means even a mithril Nock gun would leave him naked if he wanted to move. In fact almost every pc;s had minimal carrying capacity which is another reason to bring the commando's so they can carry things. The observation team cont the guards, notice the cannon at the dock and the tank. Manuel wants to steal the tank.

The next night they move down to the water front, several of the commando's swim over to the rear of the island to make sure no one sees the collapsible boat crossing bringing the constables over. Once across Manuel, Padme and a commando sneak up on the tank, Padme and the commando kill the two scouts while Manuel gets into the tank. As the fight starts the rest of the group rush forward throwing smoke grenades, Manuel blows up the gun turret with the tank gun and then switches to the machine gun, the use of grenades , the tanks and the commando's rapidly overwhelm the remaining guards. Before reinforcements arrive the constables start up the tower and the commando's swim back to the shore. They are relieved to see the Arc of Reida kicking in , and extract Ulvaar and their magical gear from the Absurdist web. The rapidly growing size of the Arc's effects starts to distract the Danorans and alert the Ob agents, letting the commando's get back across the river and start their escape.
Nilisa Humes ghostwarns them of the threats ahead but they encounter few hostile Ghosts/haunts before coming across the first 2 memory events. They are unhappy to discover Stansfield is an Ob agent but it makes sense to them, and they did have some suspicions in the past, but at various times they have thought almost everyone is an Ob agent. They consider using a sending to warn Harkover but are far from certain that will work in their current situation, the rest of the vision was stuff they already knew. The vision of Kasavarina telling them that Bourne considered her as his mother interests them, particularly when Bourne starts striding into the city, they had not considered that the lack of Dreaming and Bleak gate here means that Bourne could return to the normal world here, they rather hope that he does not knock the tower down and that Kasavarina being his 'mother' means there will be no incident.

We left it there , they are really expecting an ambush by Nic further up the tower and once they have everything they can learn here they want to rush back to Flint and arrest Stansfield , they are going to be dissapointed

 

[Andrew Moreton]

The session starts with a discussion about Bourne and what they can do about his approach, it concludes when they decide there is nothing they can do and that they need to keep moving up the tower as the Arc seems to weaken when they remain still.
Continuing up the tower they encounter several apparitions, and are pleased that as far as they can tell most of the people who they have killed are people they really are glad to see dead. Boone, Eleanor and Kell in particular they are glad to see dead. When they encounter Lya's specter they appreciate her lack of hostility and also regret her death, Manuel in particular would rather have taken her alive.

They view the visions of history and note that Nicodemus is definetly ruthless and callous particularly with his attempts to prevent people leaving Danor before the nation could be established. They also were interested in discovering that the Ob wanted the Risuri to steal a steamship from the Danorans to help get industry going in Risur. The scene with Nic commisserating with Kasavarina about the death of her daughter further emphasises Kasavarina's break with her past self and cements the desire of Nevla and Kasavarina to kill Nic.

Seeing the founding of the Ob they are delighted to discover how to scry on the Ob and appreciate that it was a very clever scheme to keep the conspiracy secret for the last five centuries. Then when the Arc kicks into supercharge mode , Kasavarina tells them to be careful she can feel that this memory event could if it goes wrong badly enough she may revert to her old self. The constables cast a few long duration buff spells notably spell immunity against several spells which don't matter and Dimensional anchor. Then settle in to deal with the memory event, Padme and Manuel stand ready to use wands of cure light wounds to heal Kasavarina and Nevla if she gets pulled in as Dala. They watch events carefully and take note of how unpleasent the Hierach Silvestre is , Nevla is pulled into Dala's roll bur fortunatly does not get teleported out when Dala goes through the portal. They see Nic disintigrated by the blast of Divine energy and most of them have concluded that is how he died and became a particularly potent ghost, then the real Nic manages to ambush them. I was surprised I expected them to have deployed Ulvaar or William as sentries but they heglected to do so. Also worth noting before getting to the fight is they suspect that the turning of the clergy to Tieflings may have been a curse by the Clergy war god(Iomedea) as the plan to murder all the Eladrins for reasons of racism stikes them as a very evil thing to do in her name.

Nic comes up the outside of the tower grabs Kasavarina and leaps into the middle of the tower holding on to her, meanwhile Cilliam Creed rebuilt yet again comes up the interior stairs and prepares to attack. Padme and Manuel move quickly, then Nic most of the rest of the party and then Creed with Ulvaar bringing up the rear.
There is a complicated fight which I did not keep notes on and so I have forgotten some peoples actions .

In the first round Padme tries to get Kasavarina away from Nic and fails , she takes a very unpleasent blow from Nic , Kasavarina thanks Nic for rescuing her and seems sincere, the constables though decide to judge her on her actions and thoughts before this point and trust her, she hits Ulvaar with a Power Word Blind which supports their view as he is the only pc with too many hp to be effected, he pretends to be blinded flailing at Creed , Nevla cast particulate form protecting all pc's against Crits and sneak attacks they expecct from Creed. He and Nic demonstrated negative energy abilities.

In the second round William, Ulvaar and Padme gang up on Creed badly injuring him, Manuel knocks Nic away from Kasavarina with a cannon Ball and Nic finishes appealing for help from Bourne who starts swinging, he never hits a pc but makes them move around a lot. Nic hits manuel with a series of viscous blows just before Nevla renders everyone immune to negative energy which cuts out several attacks from Nic. Kasavarins moves back to where she should be and resumes the memory event.

The next several rounds see Nic burning through Ubergheist abilities to heal himself, and fight he puts two walls of force between Kasavarina and the portal both of which are brought down by disintigrate spells from Nevla, meanwhile everyone else lays into Nic keeping him busy and away from Kasavarina apart from the walls of force. Technically he should have fallen down by this point but that was anticlimatic so he kept going. Finally just as Kasavarina is about to go through the portal , Andrei's body is disabled and Nic's ghost manifests it moves after Kas who has been hidden behind a wall of stone from Nevla as he does so expecting the fight to end William tries to teleport everyone out and foiled by the Dimensional lock stone, Manuel finds the stone and throws it away. Nic casts dimensional anchor on Kasavarina which is foiled by Nevla's precautions , Kasavarina goes through the portal, Nevla follows her and William teleports for the second time.

The teleport shock is bad for the party and they all end up somewhere in the dreaming with Andrei but without Kasavarina. They pc's imediatly think to use the message rings from book 6 to warn Harkover about Stansfield but the dimensional turmoil will prevent that.

The players enjoyed this adventure , they liked learning of the secrets of the past and grew to like Kasavarina as a freind and ally , they also found the final battle interesting with the complication of trying to maintain the memory event while fighting a dangerous opponent with unnusual abilities

 

[RangerWickett]

I'm glad the group was intrigued by the 'final boss' encounter. I figured not many adventures have a climax where you're more worried about surviving the environment than the bad guy.

Did they get Cillian? Is he somehow teleported to the Dreaming too?

 

[Andrew Moreton]

Cillian is technically dead (again) he got a very thorough stabbing. I don't think the players will want to see him again so I think I will leave him dead.

They spent a lot of time worrying about being caught on top of the tower when it vanished and the magic null zone came back, unfortunatly they could not come up with a good reason why anyone would have invented parachutes yet and any glider they could think of would be unreliable and take ages to assemble, hence their emphasis on teleporting out at the end