Adventure 11, Avatar of Revolution: God Answers Prayers of Paralyzed Colosus
After splitting into Gyre and Lanjyr duplicates, the Lanjyr party manifested back in Flint instead of the Ziggurat of Av, because everyone who was supposed to be present for the big Avatar of Revolution opener - Kaja, Pemberton, and the gnolls - were all dead for us. Um. Oops!
At this point, the party had thrashed the Ob so thoroughly that timeskipping three months ahead would have stretched their suspension of disbelief to the breaking point, so I had the party reform
years after
Grinding Gears (which, if you recall, I ran
after Avatar of Revolution) - and just
days before the world was set to crash into the Gyre.
So instead, the party awoke in MacBannin manor, overwatched by the ghost of Reed MacBannin himself, who had fled Nicodemus’ wrath in
Schism. He, as a ghost lingering on this plane, was unaffected by the hivemind, and had found the few who could resist the hivemind’s grip and formed a rebellion to get his revenge on Nicodemus.
And during this time, Nicodemus, Lya and Amielle had perfected Watchmakers into an iron-clad utopia - at least, it would eventually be, but not for Lanjyr as it stood. Lanjyr, today, was naught but a testing ground - discovering all of the ways the Watchmakers arrangement could become flawed, stressing the simulation, collecting data, and running things again to make sure their perfect utopia ran the way it was supposed to once it was put into motion. However, Nicodemus hid evidence of the Propoganda experiment in Danor from Amielle, knowing Cherage was her home, and also kept her blind to the scorched-earth failsafes.
Yeah- I don't- I don't know. Sorry.
As well, my players like to pick apart lore more than this
Jonathan Frakes Interrogates You clip. I knew they wouldn’t accept Nic being able to cast the Sacrament of Apotheosis as a ghost (they’re STILL mad that Ghost MacBannin could cast Bonds of Forced Faith on that dwarf in Schism), so instead, I had Nicodemus use the pacifying lanterns combined with the Hivemind to brainwash the world into worshipping him as a God. Because the game had already set up the faith of the Millerist Monks being the source of Nicodemus’ power, they readily accepted that the forced faith of all the hivemind channeled through him granted him divinity.
Sigh. I can't explain this one, either.
Because the lantern light and Hivemind combination only needed to work
once before it spiralled out of control, the number of people who had not been captured by Cult of Miller were astonishingly few. But these survivors had carved out a small resistance - and this rebellion, of course, was made up of the party members who the players would link to in the Gyre. Chief among them was Morgan’s daughter, Antonia - who had literally formed an underground movement of rescued Flinters, using the Witch Tunnels as their base of operations.
Kasavarina and Arthrylla, against all odds, had also set aside their difference to join forces with the Flint Clergy - all in the name of stopping the Obscurati. So, in some way, Nicodemus had finally brought peace to the Eladrin and the Clergy… though perhaps not the way he had intended.
Over the years, Antonia had to commit unspeakable atrocities to ensure that the last bastion against the Ob still stood - including decreeing that her people, who were not immune to the lanterns nor the affect of the Hivemind, never leave the witch tunnels. At one point over the years, someone had defied her order and was spotted fleeing back into the North Shore tunnels - at which point Antonia had the North Shore tunnels collapsed, killing everyone taking refuge there, so no one could be captured and assimilated into the hivemind (since Nicodemus would know
everything about the resistance if that happened). Because of this, much of the Flint Family was dead. Antonia flatly told the King of Risur that she had to kill her own godfather, Morgan’s best friend, to save
his people. She had to become a husk of a person willing to kill her own loved ones just to make sure
Flint survived.
One of our players wrote a novella, starring Antonia, about the years the party was missing. I’m sorry to say that the story went unfinished, but man, what she wrote was fabulous:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/40065576/chapters/128709154
As always, no pressure to read, but I wanted to put it out there.
Noticeably absent from the Rebellion was Harkover, who, while he had been freed from the hivemind, fled to Axis Island to guard the Axis Seal and the Apotheosis Ritual Components to make sure the party still had a chance. If Nicodemus approached the Seal, Harkover would fight to his last breath to buy the party precious seconds until they could arrive.
So anyway, the Rebellion introduced the party to the score - that they had very few allies, that Lanjyr was hours away from crashing into the gyre, and that the Ob had captured every country and bent it to their will in the name of "progress".
The party decided they would stealth across Lanjyr to release as many people as they could from the Ob's experiments, in case the backlash from killing Nicodemus wiped out everyone. This ended up being a little problematic, because since they were stealthing, Nicodemus rarely saw them, and when he did, the party would just knock out whoever he was channeling… which deflated the tension, because the players never got to hear his threat that he was about to raze everything.
...In hindsight, there are so many ways I could have prepared for this. Not starting in allied territory, for one.
Oh well.
So, rather than split up one by one like the books suggests, or use Pemberton’s duplicants (which no longer existed) the party instead decided to sacrifice their souls into a series of Tinker's duplicants and travel as a party. This meant I had to do some extra work to plan harder encounters, but it was fine. I do think it would have been a little more dramatic and interesting to have run it as intended, but oh well.
So the party set out to all the world's capitals simultaneously, but here is the order I ran the events in:
Ber
Ber was the only place in the world other than Flint where the people had resisted the hivemind and struggled for survival. About half of Ber’s population had fallen, including Bruse Shantus, leaving the Executores to lead the people in revolution. Through Bruse, Nicodemus wreaked unspeakable acts upon Ber, rounding up the monstrous races who did not belong in his utopia (as in the book) and having them executed.
The party arrived at one of the scheduled executions, where Glaucia had been captured. Instead of being saved by Damata, Glaucia was instead saved by her protege, Damata’s daughter Dabo, as well as Sor, who had come to ensure that his student was safe.
A sidebar - Mona was so enraged that Sor had dared to show his face in public again that she committed to terrorizing him for the rest of his life once Ber was safe. She polymorphed her duplicant into Kasavarina, and willed that shred of her soul to stalk him whenever she was piloting it - always in the corner of his eye, but never there when he turned around...
In the original image, Kasavarina was a goose.
Gatria used Dabo's distraction to pounce out of hiding and 1 v 1 Bruse Shantus. Shantus promised her he would unleash the wrath of Ber upon the catfolk, to which Gatria shouted
“I AM the wrath of Ber!” and turned him into a smudge on the cobblestone. Metaphorically - she beat him within an inch of his life, decided that Bruse no longer deserved to rule, and delivered the crown on his head to Citadel Cavallo. She presented it to Cavallo de Guerra’s daughter, and irreverently named her the rightful Queen of Ber. Gatria took no joy in this task, other than the satisfaction of knowing she ruined yet another person’s life, I suppose.
Cherage
Ashima Shimtu's arc went a little differently for us, since she was immune to the effects of the lanterns and hiveminds because Mona had chosen her to link to in the Gyre.
In our campaign, Ashima Shimtu had received Mona's soul for safeguarding in
Grinding Gears, and believed Mona when she promised that they would return to save the world. The former demon, in her new and impotent human form, waited for
years while the Cherage Propoganda campaign became worse and worse, and
millions died. The party never showed up to stop it, and with each passing day, her faith wavered and her resentment grew. By the time the party arrived, she was outright hostile, and attacked them on sight. She defeated a surprised Mona, and, with a metaphorical knife to her throat, asked her why she had let her become mortal and live through such misery and suffering. To have let her be executed by the clergy would have been a preferable fate.
Mona talked her down from the cliff while Cleone dealt with Gardienne. Cleone took pity on her for her genuine horror at the Cherage Propoganda Campaign going awry, and promised her she would save what remained of Danor.
FINALLY I had the opportunity for Nic to appear, and threaten the party with his Scorched Earth approach. He told Gatria outright that if the party didn't listen to his generous offer, he was going to kill everyone here and in Alais Primos - the hearts of the party's emotional investment. Gatria indulged him
only to keep him talking while Cleone used her engineering skills to stop the trains, and while the party duplicants in Crysillyir rushed to find Morgan in Alais Primos.
Alais Primos
Alais Primos would serve as the final gauntlet of the campaign before the final boss encounters.
In my campaign, knowing that Morgan and Crysillyir presented the biggest threat to the Ob, and because Nicodemus was still horribly bitter at the Clergy institution, the Ob brought their wrath down upon Morgan in full force, possessed him, and turned them into their puppet. From there, the Millerist hivemind spread as Morgan installed lanterns, denounced the Clergy, and worked only towards progressing a Millerist agenda. Morgan himself, then, was the root of the Worldwide Hivemind, and defeating him was the only way to loosen its grip across the world.
…At the start of the campaign, I had asked Gatria's player to design me Morgan's character sheet so he could make skill checks against other characters. She gladly accepted. A few adventures before the end, I asked her to level him up to 20. You know, for no reason.
I then had the party fight Level 20 Morgan, as well as the four of his brothers who survived (who all used his Level 15 character sheet). Gatria's player, shockingly, never saw it coming, so I took her completely by surprise when I whipped out her own character sheets as the arc final boss. Heheheheheheh.
Someone should have edited the stars to be under Elegant, but oh well.
There is a scene in the original book that mentions that Morgan is the only person in the world who breaks out of the hivemind of his own volition, so I gave Gatria one chance to not be murdered in the final act. Just before Morgan was about to deliver onto her a fatal blow, he hesitated, and a tear ran down his cheek. Gatria took this opportunity to defeat him, and ripped him out of the hivemind.
A freed Morgan lamented that everything he had done against the Ob had been to find justice for Nilassa Hume, and in the end, he had ended up furthering the Ob's goal more than anyone. He told the party he would make up for what he had done by teaching Alais Primos the chant to protect the party from the energy at the Axis Seal, so all the party had to do was secure Flint's safety and they could head directly to Nicodemus.
...
…Hey, aren't we forgetting something?
Drakr
Oops, we didn’t have an eschatologist in the party, so Nicodemus didn't have hostages the PCs cared about in Drakr!
I’m sure this won’t have any repercussions when we start Death of the Author next year. (Fake spoilers, I'm working it into it.)
Flint
Since Harkover had been pre-freed, the party instead fought Gale, Delft, and Lauryn, here, while Cleone frantically figured out how to stop the Oil of Jiese from blowing the city sky high.
Defusing the oil in Flint presented another problem, however - dismantling the gas meant that all of Flint would be unprotected against the cold, and the city would die of exposure before the party could lock in the new arrangement.
Gatria, of course, had the idea. Back in Last Starry Sky, Gatria had captured Roland Stanfield’s soul in a Witch Oil Bottle. She decided his last service to his people would be to heat the city of Flint for a few hours while they saved the world. Hoya, the Urban Empath, was treated to the sounds of his suffering screams as his soul was refined into power. Yay! Yipee!
Cleone had no idea that Gatria trapped Roland, and probably would have had something to say about it if she did. She asked if Gatria was using Vicemi's soul, and the party just lied to her face. Again.
Once Flint was safe, the party took one last breath before the end. Mona finally revealed that she intended to use the Sacrament of Apotheosis to become a God to stop Nicodemus, and put the Axis Seal in the ground - and King Marcel would have to be the one to kill her so she could ascend.
There was no real time to digest this bomb, though, as it was time to face Nicodemus head on.
Axis Island
Cleone learned that her fiance, Nathan Jierre, was trapped in the hivemind working for Nicodemus somewhere on a boat off the coast of Axis Island. On the way to the final battle, the party stopped to rescue him. What they thought was a rescue mission was actually an elaborate trap placed by Amielle, Nathan's great grandmother, to have one last private conversation with the party in a place she knew no one would be the aggressor.
Amielle transmitted a message to the party's radioes, making one final appeal for Watchmakers, where she denounced the King of Risur as a tyrant who would never be able to lead the world towards true peace.
We are full of jokes and japes, but every single person at the table shuddered in terror when Amielle's player spoke into the radio...
The party had one last philosophical discussion with her, but were ultimately unswayed. Amielle knew that her only choice, then, was to defeat them in combat, and invited them to meet her on the battlefield.
There have been a lot of “best scene in the Campaign”s, but this was probably the climax of the whole show for us. You had to be there, but I'm telling you,
chills. Amielle's player and I swapped seamlessly between dialogue and chilling narration without planning it much beforehand - we were just on the same wavelength the entire time.
At the Axis Seal, Nicodemus and Amielle approached the lurking Harkover, and Amielle shot him down. The party retrieved the components for the Ritual of Apotheosis from Harkover's almost-corpse, and Mona ascended as the Goddess of Family - channeling the Crysillyiri family's faith to save the world.
Nicodemus stepped foot onto the seal and regarded Borne- who had failed once before; whom he no longer needed to complete his Grand Design; who had strayed from the Obscurati's philosophy- with
contempt. This triggered Mona to use her godlike powers to rescue Borne, and he agreed to help Mona complete the Ritual of the Axis Seal.
Combat began. I had Amielle's player level her up into an absolute beast of a final boss, capable of killing any party member with a single full attack (though completely accidentally, but somewhat poetically, Nicodemus kept getting in the way of her shot…).
Hoya could not understand why Amielle would choose to help Nicodemus after all of the atrocities Nicodemus had committed. Amielle gave her usual monologue about her commitment to the Ob - but Hoya revealed what Nicodemus had done to Cherage, as well as his scorched earth plan, which caused Amielle to be taken so aback that she stopped attacking the party.
With Borne's help, Hoya then switched out the icon of Jiese with Etheax, giving her a column of fire to wield freely. She used this on Nicodemus, and, with utterly
perfect timing, Nicodemus was brought down to the HP threshold where he becomes William Miller burned on a pyre. He then snapped, and made it his final mission to kill this sweet little gnome, the Saint of Triegenes, the embodiment of the Clergy and everything he stood against.
Before he could kill her, though, the timer ticked down, and William Miller of Ascetia entered Nicodemus’ body. From there, he cut off Nicodemus’ divinity, and invited the party to destroy him. This was an invitation Gatria accepted without hesitation, and ran her claws through his now vulnerable form.
What was left of Nicodemus' psyche lamented that their world would just be chaos, and he disappeared for good. The party took a moment to breathe, finished the ritual at their leisure.
Here I invited every character who contributed to closing the changing an icon to make a Wish - they could name any one thing they wanted that wasn't a part of the arrangement, and the universe would bend to their command.
Most of them wished for selfish things - Gatria tried to Wish to empower Lanjyr against invaders, but her
player said that she actually wanted Gatria to wish Nilassa Hume back to life, so I had her emotions override her intentions. Nilassa Hume awoke in Flint, alive and well.
King Marcel wished Mona back to life, stripping her of her divinity, solely so he could have his friend back. Mona, in turn, wished to save the life of King Marcel's ill husband, promising her beloved friends a happy ending.
And Borne, in spite of himself, wished to be mortal so that he might yet change the world in his own humble way (and became a manifestation of the half-elf son of Kasavarina and
Alexander - notably, not Nicodemus).
Two party members actually considered the world before making their wish. Cleone wished everyone would have the choice of reincarnating at death, as though everyone were devas. She believed this choice would allow the world, and their future selves, to remember what had happened here, since they would retain the memories of their past lives. And Hoya wished for the extinction of Gidim across the universe, so they could never destroy civilization again.
After the seal was shut, Borne sat at the edge of the lakebed and asked the party if they had done the right thing - a question no one could answer. He thanked Mona for saving him nonetheless, and told them that he would do his best to make the world a better place in his own way.
Amielle enjoyed a slow cigarette for the last time before immolating her witch oil battery, killing herself and releasing herself from a hundred years of toil.
With their "happy ending" secured for everyone except the Eladrin, Cleone summoned Dala to face Kasavarina in combat and claim the divinity of Srasama. Kasavarina waxed poetic that she could never win against a
Goddess... but she knew her
daughter too well to lose. The two of them fought, and Kasavarina prevailed, becoming the Demigod of Femininity, and saving the Eladrin from their fertility crisis.
King Marcel claimed Axis Island for Risur, and subsequently used his nature connection powers to find and save the shot-down Harkover. In a burst of enthusiasm, he gave the austere dragon a decidedly un-kingly hug...
Epilogue
Three months later, Cleone Weld resigned from the RHC and was “democratically” elected President of Danor. Cleone privately expressed doubts that her presidency was won legitimately. Kasavarina, who was similarly doubtful, suggested that perhaps Risur
had rigged the election - but from this point on, starting right now, Danor was free. After all, Cleone, herself, was no longer an Obscurati puppet, and she had renounced all connections to Risur - and so this was as good a place for Danor to start over as any.
In Risur, King Marcel appointed Hoya the minister of International Relations, attempting to broker a wordwide peace treaty, knowing the little Gnome Saint was his only hope at establishing a United Nations. He remained Machiavellian and stubborn to the end of his fifty-year reign, but always had the wellbeing of the common people in mind.
Mona, who retained a small fraction of her divinity as the Goddess of Family, teamed up with Kasavarina to help restore the Eladrin population. She also took it upon herself to bolster Cauldron Hill against the supernatural, using the quirks of the newly installed plane of Amrou.
Gatria resigned from the Family with her wife and rode off into the sunset back to Ber, where she would eventually be appointed The Strange One's protege. She lives on forever as a bogeyman, the Tyrant Slayer, who comes in the night and disappears badly-behaved children, or so the legend goes...
This left a power vacuum in the Flint Family that Morgan was no longer around to solve. Morgan visited Hoya, and asked that she take over as the Head of the Family, given that she was a sincere and well-respected pacifist that could push the Family towards a
truly better class of criminal. She took some time to consider it, and ultimately agreed.
As the last scene of the campaign, the party re-assembled on the docks of Flint to christen the first craft of this arrangement, the Paper Airship “The Guiding Star”. This is a scene from the book, but I decided to put a little twist on it.
I decided to surprise the players
one last time, and started an impromptu session mirroring
Island at the Axis of the World by inviting four other real-life friends to (pretend to) start the game over as brand new Constables. They all drafted a character sheet and backstory and everything!
My current batch of players stood in as the NPCs for Adventure 1 (The King, his sister, his advisor, the elite Constables, etc etc), and met the greenhorn Constables. Each of them reckoned with their legendary reputations, and each gave a word of advice to the Constables of their respective background. (The contrast was also pretty funny because, while this party was made up of toothpick-sized women, the "new" constables were all big, burly men. It's just how it shook out, aha.)
The campaign ended with a countdown as our new Technologist constable took a photo commemorating the King and his retainers.
…But, after all of that, what became of our friend Rock Rackus, the real main character of Zeitgeist?
Don't ask why GS is going as "Doorn't" in our chat, it doesn't matter.
Well…
…Sorry, everyone.
~*~
THE END!
Thank each and every one of you for reading!
And again, thank you so much to Ryan for creating such a wonderful world. It's truly been special.
In the new year, I'll unleash my players upon this thread. Some just want to say hi, some will want to share the good times I missed, and some will probably want to interrogate the Pathfinder 1e conversion. But regardless, everyone
really enjoyed themselves!
A word to my players: I have attempted to summarize perhaps thousands of hours of game into twelve 3,000 word summaries. I will have missed big moments, I will have summarized things closer to the
spirit of what happened rather than what
actually happened, and I will have straight up forgotten stuff. Unfortunately, there's only so much you can do when you only have time to explain 0.001% of the campaign. I hope you understand. But feel free to share your own stories!
The writeup may be complete, but I'll stick around the forums. I'll come back to share a few more of my thoughts and experience as a DM, unshackled from the format of the writeup. I also have a silly little playable epilogue to share.
I hope there will be more Adventures in Zeitgeist to come. I am planning on eventually contributing my own two cents to Zeitvice, or perhaps doing my own version. But don't, um, expect that any time soon. When I say I'll do something, I'll do it, but it could take anywhere from a few months to, uh, 10 years…
I may also consider running War of the Burning Sky, which I know almost nothing about, perhaps with a different group of players.
Thanks again for reading, and a very happy New Year to all!!! See you in 2024!
And how things go when you've got two separate unshakable 10% groups. I suppose I'm skeptical.
