D&D 4E The Final Arc of my Epic 4e Campaign

[the Jester]

All righty then.

It has been a long week- apologies I have not been able to post anything more until tonight. I'm not sure whether one post will cover everything that happened, but anyway:

We last left out heroes having finally learned the dreadful truth from Charon- that Tenebrous is Orcus trying to return. They already knew that Fray is at Tenebrous' body.

So, to clarify- the pcs weren't entirely certain, but after some discussion, were fairly sure that Fray and the cult of Tenebrous were sort of mutually using one another, and rather than being true allies, the pcs expected that they might turn on each other, but almost certainly wouldn't work too hard to help each other. (They were absolutely correct in this assessment, as it turned out.) The party knew that Fray was planning on somehow harnessing the power of the Final Word ritual that the Tenebrous cultists were attempting to perform to usurp Coila's power (Coila being the goddess of time, natch).

Anyhow, at the start of the session, Shifty showed up.

Shifty is one of the original members of the group from 1st level, a gnome rogue whose player moved away not too long ago. Said player just happened to be in town for the finale- awesomesauce- and his epic destiny, Dark Wanderer, lets him walk anywhere in 24 hours. Kind of like an Amberite, if you're familiar with Roger Zelazny's Amber Chronicles (and if you aren't, you really ought to be ). So it was easy to justify Shifty finding them on the banks of the River Styx. A little roleplaying got him past Kane the Conqueror's rage at Shifty for screwing up an alliance with some goliaths recently- Shifty claimed it was one of the "Shifted", his evil duplicates from the future, which actually seemed pretty reasonable given all the times they have seen doubles of themselves.

So, the pcs boarded their spelljammer and went to find Shom.

Shom is an astral domain that is abandoned and mostly forsaken. Via knowledge skills and (mostly) some divination rituals, the pcs learned a few interesting things about Shom while en route.

• Before it was abandoned, Shom was home to a race called the illumians, who were connected to the Words of Creation (of which the Final Word is one). The illumians had two pieces of one of the words, but eventually fell into factions.
• The illumians called upon the maruts, cosmic adjudicators, to settle their dispute. The maruts ruled against both illumian factions, and both were destroyed.
• Shom is now mostly empty, but maruts are one of the most common things one might encounter there.

The pcs decided to explore Shom a little, and they found a group of maruts, 9 performing a ritual with 3 standing guard. The pcs engaged the guards in conversation- and the guards claimed that the ritual was to protect the pcs from "the greatest energies". They were only willing to have a very limited dialog, but the pcs left them feeling that they were allies to some degree.

The party still had about two months until New Years Eve. They have had several warnings that if they move before the time is right, they will be destroyed. The opposition (supposedly) is too strong. And what is the right moment? Why, when the ritual is complete. Between what they already knew and a whole buttload of divination rituals, they discovered a number of interesting and things.

• Direct questions about Fray fail to reveal anything.
• They might be able to disrupt the ceremony to raise Orcus by killing enough of the cultists before the ceremony is complete. (The pcs surmise that the cultists will be slain by the Final Word as part of the ritual, sacrificing them to bring Orcus back to life.)
• There is no way to protect them from the Final Word if they are too close. Minimum safe distance is one mile.
• The body of Tenebrous is guarded by "meteor defenses".

They also stumble upon a piece of information so disconcerting and unexpected that it brings everyone to attention.

There is apparently a third contender for the powers of the goddess of Time.

This is something that the pcs had no clue whatsoever about until this moment. They speculate about who it could be- Maltar? Boccob? More divinations seem to indicate that neither of them is the one. They put the matter aside, hoping it won't bite them in the ass in the near future.

 

[the Jester]

The pcs' next move (well, actually, this was before many of the divinations, but hey) was to scout the situation out- get a final location on the body, see what the scene looked like, etc. Equipped with spyglasses and using divinations to find their way toward the corpse. As they got closer, they could see that it was immense- probably a mile across- and swarming with people. Docking pillars held a dozen or more astral skiffs, one of which soon moved to intercept them. They tried to draw it out and away from the corpse-island, but it refused to play their game, breaking off pursuit quickly. Their next approach was met with a much larger group of skiffs, so they retreated to await the alleged "right moment".

Their best estimate was that there were about six hundred people on the corpse. Including Fray- no... multiple Frays??

Mulmeer, the party's tabaxi sorcerer, recalled an old, long-lost ritual called simulacrum and speculated that the Frays might be simulacra of the real deal. Not good- they would still possess most of her power and magical might. One, the party thinks, is bad enough.

They spotted the meteor defenses- big rocks painted silver to be camouflaged against the astral sea- during this foray, and this is what led to them learning about the "meteor defenses" during their divinations.

Which reminds me- I left out something else: "Insurance."

That was the answer to the question, "What's the deal with Kane's eye socket?"

Kane lost an eye some time back, and there is some sort of temporal knot within the socket. The party had previously met future versions of Kane who were one-eyed, so it wasn't a huge surprise, but they were surprised that they couldn't seem to grow it back. It has been a curiosity for them for, oh, ten levels now, so they were hoping to discover what it was all about. "Insurance." Hmm. Whose?, they wondered.

Well. Nothing to do but wait for the moment.

Nothing except position their forces, all that they could, in the demiplane sanctuary of Maltar, a self-described god and ally of the party with a demiplane. The party has a fairly easy access method, and a way to bring many of their troops through to their location from the sanctuary. So they pre-positioned their people, then moved to a position not much more than a mile off the body. Their ship arrived about fifteen minutes before midnight- before the moment the ritual would be complete.

And then, somewhere at the corpse, the shade of Tenebrous spoke the Final Word and completed the ritual. The power of it reverberated through the Astral Sea, stirring dark currents. At the corpse, all the cultists, all the demons, all the simulacra, everyone- died. Every one of them.

 

[the Jester]

Okay, I'm not sure if I'm going to finish this tonight, but here's the roster for the body of Tenebrous' exterior before the ritual killed them all:

292 visage watchers (level 27 minion controllers)
185 toadies of Tenebrous (level 25 minion soldiers)
25 Walpyvmynan fighter-mages (level 28 minion brutes)
124 Walpyvmynan force initiates (level 24 artillery)
8 Fray's personal guards (level 30 soldiers)
2 nalfashnee tyrants (level 23 controllers) (MM3 pg 45)
6 simulacra of Fray (level 29 elite artillery)

As for the Final Word's mechanics:

Tenebrous uses the Final Word at midnight on New Year's Eve. When he does this, every creature within 1 mile takes 100 points of damage and gains ongoing 100 damage (save at -5 ends). Aftereffect: Ongoing 75 damage (save at -5 ends). Aftereffect: Ongoing 50 damage (save at -5 ends). Aftereffect: Ongoing 30 damage (save at -5 ends). Aftereffect: Ongoing 10 damage (save at -5 ends). In all cases, each failed save counts as a failed death save, and a third failed save kills the creature.

 

[TarionzCousin]

It sounds like the epic buildup paid off. Now call in sick and type up what happened for us!

 

[the Jester]

So the moment had come. The party began their attack run, their spelljamming vessel speeding them through the Astral Sea at the corpse covered with corpses.

As they did so, the meteor defenses activated. Propelled by magical engines, half a dozen house-sized rocks, painted silver to better blend in against the astral background, began to accelerate toward the incoming ship.

When they had gotten halfway there, the more observant members of the group spied the closest incoming meteor, but there was little they could do to avoid or outrun it. Helplessly, they watched as it sped closer- and then smashed into their ship to devastating effect. The impact threw many of the heroes and their allies prone, killed many of the minions and badly damaged the ship.

...the meteorite attacks [the ship] at +30, almost certainly hitting, and deals 20d20 points of damage to their vessel. It makes a secondary attack against each creature on board (+30 vs. Fortitude; Hit: 6d10 damage and knocked prone; Miss: Half damage).

The group had assigned an apprentice wizard from the Delphinate to pilot for them; but the impact snapped his neck, so Professor Bolivar, the dakon scientist, scrambled into the helm, shaking with fear, and took over. "I won't be able to monitor my instruments and pilot at the same time!" he warned the pcs. (Bolivar is a specialist in temporal mechanics, and he had constructed an apparatus to monitor the temporal shenanigans going on.) One thing at a time, Bolivar- first, to get to the corpse before the next meteor.

The pcs got really lucky here. There was a very good chance that two more of the meteors would hit before they got to the body, but Bolivar's piloting check was a natural 20, so he managed to maneuver the spelljammer in under the left armpit of Tenebrous, the party and their npcs tossed rope ladders over the side, and down they went! Bolivar and a few members of the group stayed on board, withdrawing the vessel to an adequate distance and letting Bolivar get to his instruments (the meteor defenses didn't target retreating vessels, only incoming ones).

Now they were on the body, which seemed to be shaking apart. Cracks formed. Thunderous booms echoed through the astral void. Violent seismic-like events kept shaking them, killing more of their minions and throwing many from their feet- but, so far, there was no true opposition. Meanwhile, Mulmeer brought the rest of their strike force through to the corpse from Maltar's sanctuary, and Dianthus, the party's pixie vampire, used one of her soaring rake abilities to imbue a large group of the strike force with flying, letting most of them avoid the seismic dangers.

Bodies were everywhere, ghastly piles of dead fanatics and seekers of Fray's kind of immortality. Mulmeer found a pile of snow, indicating that his speculation about simulacra was likely correct. But there was still no sign of life. Then, at last, one of our heroes spied a black vapor that was emitting from the mouth of the great stony corpse- a mouth that was well over a hundred feet across. As they approached, a blast of acid came out from the shadows, and the pcs found the first batch of defenders that were still alive (but how??)- some of Fray's minions. But powerful ones (they were more of the lvl 28 minion brutes mentioned above).

A brief skirmish, then the heroes and their army were through, the blasted and hacked corpses of their foes left behind them. They flew down the vast mouth and into the throat of Tenebrous, where an open portal to a demiplane answered the "how are these guys still alive" conundrum- they had been on a different plane when the ritual had been completed!

And then a mass of Fray's personal guards attacked, rushing forward from within the portal, along with many more of the minions. Fray herself stayed in the demiplane; the portal was such that attacks could pass through it, so she slung spells from it while her guards formed an impenetrable front line, bogging down the pcs' fire titan and sword saint allies and beginning to hack them to pieces. Worse yet, the personal guards were almost impossible for the pcs or their allies to hit. (AC 46; each has an aura that gives adjacent allies +2 to AC and Reflex, +1 per additional adjacent personal guard- so, at least initially, some of them were sporting an AC of 49 or 50!) Meanwhile, the minions made good use of their acid bolts, which did damage to adjacent creatures upon hitting; in these crowded confines, with all these targets, splash damage was almost inevitable.

The body continued to break and crumble as the pcs made a heroic effort to storm the demiplane. Shifty managed to pull a very good trick, using a power gained from his paragon path (a custom one, Gnomish Illuminatus) to pull the unseen strings. Even though it missed Fray, it was extremely effective ("Miss: The target is dominated until the start of your next turn"), especially since Fray's growing mastery of time was now giving her three turns per round. Though he could have forced her to attack her allies, Shifty made a much more cunning choice. One of the group's greatest fears was Fray's robes of the archmagi (which allow her to maximize her damage once per day at the cost of half her full hps) mixed with her archaic (which is to say, 20d6) fireball. They had tasted its sting before.

So Shifty had her take her robes off with her first turn; then, on her second, toss them out the demiplane's portal; and on her third turn, pass her staff to him. Then he used an exodus knife to carve a small demiplane-within-the-demiplane and jumped in, hoping to get her to waste time coming after the staff.

Instead, Fray teleported past the pcs trying to bring her down, fled the demiplane and regained her robes.

THings were ugly, but Dirk the Daring, the party's dragonborn warlord, was amazing. He kept the fire titans on their feet much longer that I would've believed possible, which in turn helped keep Fray's personal guard tied down in their line. The place was shaking about every round, huge chunks of rubble crushing people on both sides, and then it got worse- for Orcus arrived, announced by his aura of death.

Dianthus flew up to him and tried to persuade him to simply go, but Orcus announced, "You are a devil and I am a demon- and YOU WILL DIE!!"

And he was right. He touched her with the Wand of Orcus, and with a shriek, Dianthus died.

(My version of Orcus' death touch with his wand, on a hit: "Take damage equal to your maximum hit points and lose three healing surges. If you don't have 3 surges, you die.")

 

[the Jester]

Ha! I left out the insurance!

As Fray came into clear view, Kane's eye socket had been itching madly, and suddenly things erupted from it: two varakhut and two quarut, types of inevitables that safeguard cosmic rules of space and time and the proper arrangement of divine power. They were here to help! Or at least, to destroy Fray. But they had a devil of a time catching up to her- they would engage her, maybe enclose her in a force cage, but she would teleport away, keeping her distance.

Periodically as the battle went on, Bolivar would announce over the telepathic link they had established before making their attack that he could see weird temporal distortions, and was trying to mitigate them. The fact that he was out of the fight and not in danger was, in truth, a godsend to the pcs, though they didn't know it. Without him interfering with Fray's chronal shenanigans, she would have eventually attained godly powers in the fight, and that would have almost certainly meant a TPK. (For starters, imagine each of the bad guys getting an extra turn each round.)

In all fairness, Orcus did just want to leave- but the fire titans were too big for him to move through, so the pcs' front line forced him to engage the group. As he and Fray and her guards rained death everywhere, including on the moonbridge that Mulmeer had set up to enable quick entry into the demiplane, killing scores of the pcs allies (mostly minions), they kept up the pressure, trying to target non-AC defenses, using flanking and whatever tricks they could to hit the personal guards. The fire titans, unleashing indiscriminate waves of flames, had some luck, but they were damned tough, and could cover each other very well with their shields.

The battle was brutal, but Fray was finally in the thick of it. She had suffered a few wounds, and Kane rushed to engage her- and scored a critical hit, breaking her sternum. She teleported away, spitting blood, reappearing on the opposite side of the battlefield- just as the few surviving non-flying minions following the main group caught up with them. One of them, a member of the mercenary company that Kane had belonged to, left, defeated and eventually recruited to his service, managed to land a javelin in her shoulder. Most of the pcs rushed back to re-engage her, to prevent her escape; meanwhile, one of them managed to dump a potion of life down Dianthus' gullet, and she jerked back to life, only to have Orcus strike her down again. She was brought back again, and managed to get some distance and avoid a third slaying.

The party managed to surround a haggard, badly wounded Fray, keeping up the pressure, and despite her magical puissance they finally brought her down. Then they got the hell out the way and let Orcus escape.

And then it was just a matter of mopping up the few remaining lackeys, whose morale broke.

And victory.

There was a denouement, of course- Dianthus went back to Hell to reign in Dis, Dirk the Daring ended up doing the quantum leap and will explore sideways through time, etc. But damn, that was a hell of a game- I think we played like ten or eleven hours the final day/evening. Well done, players! Victory is yours- although, not total victory.

Because, after all, for the first time since 1e, Orcus is back in my campaign world.

 

[the Jester]

I'll post some stats and other mechanical bits in this thread eventually, but that was a lot of typing just now! Possibly later tonight, I'll post stats for Orcus, Fray and their lackeys. And if there are any requests, feel free to post them- now that the 4e group is over, anything goes... as long as it isn't something that might spoil something in the 5e game.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm curious what you were doing with the hundreds of minions - were they prettymuch just window dressing, with a few of them occasionally making a roll that mattered?

A trick I pulled in an massive Epic combat was to have a fairly large number of minions of worthwhile level, and, where there were hundreds of decidedly lesser ones, gathered them into Swarms.

 

[the Jester]

No, all the minions got to attack when their turn came up. In one case, when there were like 24 attacks or something, I rolled 8 and multiplied the number of hits by 3. Usually, it was easy to say, "Okay, these six guys are attacking Kane," and roll all those dice at once. And for the first time, I REALLY came to appreciate the "no need to roll for damage" part of minion design!

Most of the time, the pcs' minions didn't have much of an effect on the combat, but they had a few moments to shine- especially when the last surviving Double Javelin managed to peg Fray with a javelin!

One thing that helped was that the flying attackers quickly outdistanced about 50 - 75 of the pcs' minions, who were outside of Dianthus' "give everyone a fly speed" ability. So I only needed to track their progress toward the fight and remember to deal with them when the corpse shook and did potential seismic damage/knock prone effects.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

What a tremendous finish!

Thanks for posting your campaign recaps here. It's been a lot of fun following along with your group.