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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tolamaker" data-source="post: 9499931" data-attributes="member: 7031495">Sessions 100-103: What Dreams May ComeSession 100: Speaking with the dragons, the party is able to trade a good amount of jewelry (secretly transmuted by Metamorphosis from gold) in order to pass into the dream realms. They find themselves in an ethereal cloudy sky, endless and strange. Gruz and Aripos find that if they focus, they can fly, while Mishka is unable to convince her body to become weightless. Eluriah transforms into a drake in order to give Mishka a ride. They see several wondrous sights, including a giant worm (which ate and was then eviscerated by Mishka), a comforting tree, and a tower in the clouds.They approach the palace and are met by flying automatons, who wear infernal glyphs that read "Gabal." They are taken into the tower where they meet Gabal, who reveals that he and the fire elemental fell through the earth, and came upon the portal. Since discovering this realm, he has become entranced, and only gives cursory acknowledgement to the suffering of Gate Pass and mages under the Scourge. He demonstrates his ability to create wondrous things from the cloudstuff, and offers no real help or hindrance in their search for Trilla other than saying he has not braved the storms of Nightmare off in the distance.Session 101: The party travels through the air again, passing an impossibly enormous ox, bleeding from wounds it says are from trillith seeking the taste of flesh. The party tries to convince him that there is more to life than being food. It doesn't understand.The party comes to the storm wall, which is a literal wall that is painted like a mural. Passing through, they are tossed about by the storm, and are thrown to the ground in the nightmarish forest of Ycengled. There, they come across the enormous forms of an angel, a devil, and Coaltongue fighting one another, getting dragged into it. As they defeat each combatant, they fall and their color drains. As the last dies, their bodies form together to create a stony statue of a dragon hatchling, with a missing piece of stone in its forehead.Session 102: The party comes to an endless ocean, and a drawbridge falls from nothing, and a voice beckons them in. They come into a palace where Freedom tries to convince them to "free themselves" from their mortal bodies. When they refuse, she sics her palace guards on them, and retreats with Deception behind a curtain.The party fight through several rooms, facing each trap and defenders as they go. When fighting living tapestries, Gruz is able to dominate one, aiding in their assault against cryohydras and treants.Session 103: The party pushes through a room with nothing in it. There’s nothing in it. There’s nothing in it. But there has to be something, right? How can there be nothing in it? How can there be a door if there’s nothing in it? They start to suffocate, but find their way through.The next room is a tower, filled with thousands upon thousands of crystal balls, showing all kinds of images. They find a crystal ball with Mishka’s father in it, showing a nightmarish version of his time in the Scourge Prison. Mishka smashes the ball, and the room transforms into the prison. They continue to smash crystal until Eluriah finds a ball that resembles the tower once again, bringing them back to the palace.The next room is filled with gold, that unfortunately transforms into young gold dragons. After defeating the dragons, they see that there si a map on the wall that shows the palace and the location of every creature. In a central chamber, there are Freedom, Deception, Vigilance, Metamorphosis, and several Nightmare Architects. They surround two other names: Trilla, and Annihilation. The circles have filled in on the curtain, allowing them to pass through the space into the central chamber, where they see Vigilance and Metamorphosis “fed” into the body of a black dragon, intertwined with a gold dragon. The friendly trillith are swallowed up, and the black dragon’s body becomes more solid.Combat breaks out, and Freedom dodges in and out of the party, able to slip past their attacks. Deception is not so lucky, and while he grapples Mishka and Gruz and changes into their forms, Eluriah’s keen eye is able to keep track of him and mark him so that he can be targeted. Freedom cries out as he dies, and calls for the nightmare architects to join the fight.Post Session Thoughts100: Largely an exploratory session, feeling out the strangeness of the dream realm. Lots of fun playing with things that happen in dreams, like moving towards something, but it gets farther away. The players were very distrustful of Gabal, and were convinced he was going to attack them for trying to wake Trilla, but I played him as more dreamily fixated on his own research.101: I cannot stress how long my players spent trying to figure out what was going on with this ox, and I only included it because I rolled to see which strange and wondrous sight they would see as they traveled. They were very concerned with his wellbeing. They also thought that Trilla's cracked forehead was a puzzle to solve for a moment, but I just meant it as symbolic.102: These fights in the palace are quick and dirty, and I like them. It's a nice way to see how hard high level characters can hit and get hit in just a few rounds. The domination of the tapestry giant was a big help as well, and has made Gruz a target for every enemy as they fight. He has passed every single save, which makes sense, as any damage below 22 is impossible for him to fail.103: I was caught off guard when they broke the crystal ball, as my inclusion of Mishka's dad was on a whim, but it turned into a fun little excursion. Changes to the Module100: So, I was fully prepared to start the Crystal Dragon fight, had the battlemap up and ready, when one of the players asked if they would accept gems in trade. I was about to say no, because the book says they won't, but then I decided on a whim, why not? I changed Montrezor to Gabal, because I felt like I didn't really want to throw in a random character that doesn't add much to the lore. I had already decided to cut Flight, and so giving an answer to a question no one asked about what happened to Gabal's body. I did make him a tiefling for fun though.101: I ran the storm pretty by the book, but I then cut some combats, and changed the Jesepha combat. Jesepha is a corrupted planetar in the book, and I decided I was going to keep things focused on this being Trilla's dream realm. So instead of an evil angel, I portrayed the fight as her memory of the creation of the Torch, and the fear she would feel as these powerful creatures fought over her. This is why the creatures were bigger than they should have been, and why I described their attacks as against each other, and only tangentially wounding the players. 102: I brought Deception back for the trillith finale, because I felt like we had to see him one more time, even if it was just for a fight. Got to have a little fun in the heroic back-and-forth where Freedom tells him "You speak the truth." 103: I decided to steal a little from Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings as I fed the trillith into Annihilation. I'm rationalizing it as how Freedom and the rest are crafting Annihilation, giving it all of thee traits to be used for evil.Next session, we'll see what the players want to do with Trilla!</blockquote>

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