ZEITGEIST [ZEITGEIST] The Continuing Adventures of Korrigan & Co.

[gideonpepys]

I am thrilled at all this detail

Thanks. You deserve it! It's pretty mechanical by this point, but it was still fun to write (if a little time consuming).

and worried I somehow didn't write enough villain dialogue for Nicodemus.

Oh, don't worry. You're good...

 

[gideonpepys]

Session 258, Part Six

Round 17

A bright spot appeared at ‘4 o’clock’.

Nicodemus rallied Borne, who gradually lowered the Time pillar, once Nicodemus had replaced Illocus with Regulus, the lynchpin of the Watchmaker design.

Korrigan handed off Jiese to Matunaaga, who ran like the wind back to the Air pillar.

“Did you just give an icon to someone?!?” Rumdoom demanded, outraged.

Korrigan reached Borne’s chest-plate, where he said to the colossus, “Nicodemus is not your father. Your father was Alexander Grappa, who tried to free you; Kasvarina is your mother, who fights alongside us even now. You were made to view Nicodemus as your god, but you don’t have to follow a god unwillingly.”
Leon brought Kasvarina to Borne’s shoulder. There she tried to talk to her boy, who was clearly very worried about his actions.

Angrily, Nicodemus unleashed both worldwide rebuke and thoughtseize on Kasvarina. But even as she shrank back before him, he suddenly cried out, “No! No!” as if seized by some invisible enemy. The sky rumbled with deafening thunder that rolled in from the horizon where the Gyre hung low, and then Nicodemus fell to the ground and gripped his head in both hands. His form distended, as if a second person was trying to move inside a single body, hands and faces pressing out against his spectral skin.

William Miller had arrived.

Those who had been to the Gyre felt themselves joined by their reflected selves and were at once fully whole. All of their memories came flooding back and they were both versions at once, able to recall their odyssey in the Graveyard of the Planes and their confrontation with the Voice of Rot.

Matunaaga stopped running at the energy tendril, waiting for it to move; Gupta lifted the Life pillar; Linia took the Death icons; Uru found the weak spot under the chest plate and caused the wayfarer lantern to shatter. “Well, done, son,” said Pemberton.

Rumdoom had been still for a while. Suddenly, he flew towards the Fire pillar. When he landed, he said, “Nicodemus is right about one thing. Let’s not fool ourselves. We have become the Obscurati, and I, the Avatar of the End will not be tainted with that brush, not will I have breath! Korrigan, I said before that we are on different paths. My path leads to freedom for everyone, for ever!”

He struck the Fire pillar with the Stone of Not and utterly destroyed it.

Korrigan regarded him in abject horror.

Round 18

Quratulain’s rocket boots began to phut-phut and sputter. She complained, loudly, that they were a total liability. “Just alter the settings,” said Alden Wondermaker, calmly, via Korrigan’s telepathic network. “I’m not a complete idiot!”

She did so, and they propelled her on an intercept path with the falling Nicodemus.

Despite the removal of the Life pillar, the golden disc began to rise up again and slowly drifted towards the centre of the circle.

The tendril jumped to 4; Matunaaga set off at a blistering pace towards Gupta.

For everyone but Nicodemus time slowed, as he benefited from restoring the Time pillar. The others watched as he fell to the ground, struggling and arguing with himself at double speed, and in a very high-pitched and silly sounding voice:

“Whoareyou?Getoutofmymind!”

“I’mwhoyoushouldhavebeen.Weopposedtheholywarbecausethehierarchscaredmoreaboutvictorythanfollowinganysortofmoralcode.Nowyou’rejustlikethemandjustasblind.OurarrogancecausedtheMalice.Youshouldhavebeenhorrifiedbywhatyou’ddone,butyouweretooproudtostopfighting.Well,I’vespentfivecenturieswiththeghostsofthoseyoukilled.Feelwhattheylost.”

He struggled and screamed, and through the power of the sacrament of apotheosis everyone in the battle understood what was happening. Then, as time returned to normal, he stopped falling just above the ground, and righted himself. Miller, now in control of the ghostly body, called out, “I have only a moment. For now he’s overwhelmed, and I’ve ended his link to the sacrament. Quickly, destroy me. I don’t have time to apologize for it all, but I can help you stop him.”

Quratulain knew that this was the moment she had been waiting for. Matunaaga halted his run and watched as she landed and took aim. Was this the moment he had foreseen?

For Quratulain, this was just a test shot, to see if her hunch was right. She took aim at Nicodemus’ chest and fired. But that was all it took. The bullet ripped a hole and began to unravel him. A look of intense relief passed across his face and he dissipated entirely in just a few moments.

Matunaaga nodded, sagely. He had passed the baton of Living Weaponhood to Quratulain, and now she had done what was required.

“Wait! What? Was that it?!?” stammered Quratulain in growing alarm. Every sensor indicated that Nicodemus was in fact dead, but she could not accept it. “No, it can’t be. He can’t be dead. What about my vendetta bullet?” Then she fell to her knees and let out an agonised cry.

By now, Rumdoom had reached the Air pillar, and obliterated that too.

Borne groaned and shook his head in confusion.

Korrigan gave Conquo’s golem heart to Uru and flew towards the Life pillar.

From up on Borne’s shoulder, Leon teleported Rumdoom over to the Water pillar. “What are you doing?” cried Korrigan over his shoulder.

“I think he’s right,” said Leon. “I’ve been thinking all along that we’re doing the wrong thing. We should set things back the way they were before the Ancients interfered.”

“He’s insane,” Kasvarina shouted. “You’re following another madman!”

Matunaaga ran on towards the Life pillar.

The golden seal was now drifting over Gupta. Just in case, she replaced the Life pillar. Then she used Hildegaard’s voice to speak to Rumdoom. “Kagan, wait, maybe we can fix things.” But Rumdoom knew that Hildegaard was watching this, and was behind him every step of the way.

Pemberton gouged out the remains of the broken wayfarer lantern from Borne’s chest cavity. Uru crawled inside and found a slot at the back where the tip of the lantern unit fitted. It just so happened to exactly match the dimensions of the golem heart. Uru slotted it into place, then crouched in the cavity, thinking about which way to jump.

 

[gideonpepys]

Session 258, Part Seven

Round 19

As soon as the golem heart connected, Conquo found he was able to speak to Borne, just as Xambria had been able to speak with him when they shared a head. “Now, come on, Borne,” he said. “We both know what’s right and what’s wrong. Mother taught us both well.”

Still on her knees, grimly staring into the space where Nicodemus should have been, Quratulain shook her head. “I don’t buy it. He’s gotten away. It can’t have been that easy.” Her vendetta bullet was still burning a hole in her pocket. She looked up and saw the way the tide had just turned. “So, what’s next for this world? The End? Ok. It will have to do.”

Rumdoom whacked the Water pillar. That one disappeared too.

“Does anyone know what will happen if he destroys everything?” asked Xambria. She was supposed to be the expert.

Leon said something hopeful about ‘everything going back the way it was before the orcs’. “But do you know that? Do you actually know that?” cried Kasvarina.

Korrigan headed towards the Death pillar to intercept Rumdoom. Linia was already there with the icons. “Is this where we’ve ended up?” he asked. “Stop this madness. End has no purpose. End renders everything else meaningless.”

The immensely heavy golden seal continued to drift slowly and silently towards the middle of the site.

Uru stayed hidden in Borne’s chest cavity, debating which side to take. He could hear Borne saying, “Uh huh. Uh huh,” to Conquo. Then Borne slowly slowly turned around to see what was going on behind him. “I don’t know if that’s good,” he rumbled.

“It’s not!” Kasvarina shouted, directing her ire and frustration at Leon. Leon gave her an almost helpless shrug and teleported Rumdoom to the Death pillar. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time,” he said. “I’m sure it’s for the best.”

Xambria was furiously ruminating. “It can’t be. It can’t be,” she said. “Can’t anybody work it out?”

Matunaaga stood waiting for Gupta to lift the Life pillar. The golden seal had now passed over them, was almost in place over the rift. Gupta raised the pillar, and Matunaaga switched the icon for Jiese.

Gupta stared in wonder. What would happen if Rumdoom succeeded?

Round 20

“The Icy End of the World,” said Gupta. “That’s what the destruction of the ritual site will bring about.”

“Oh,” said Leon. Not a bucolic paradise, or a year 0, or whatever else he might have been thinking.

By now, Quratulain had him in her sights and was only waiting for Korrigan’s word. Rumdoom was immune, it seemed, bolstered by a combination of the sacrament, his inherent toughness, and his worshippers’ belief in his immortality. But Leon, of course, was not.

Suddenly, to everyone’s surprise, the Fire pillar returned, whole and in place as if it had never disappeared.

Uru made up his mind. He leapt out of the chest cavity and flew down on Little Jack towards Borne’s knees.

Korrigan finished his intercept course with Rumdoom, and hovered before him just out of reach. Linia was there too. Rumdoom was looking at the returned Fire pillar, which – needless to say – had given him pause. He turned and caught sight of Korrigan. “Are you going to give me those naughty word icons?” he asked.

Korrigan shook his head, then made a grab for the haft of Rumdoom’s weapon. Rumdoom was now gargantuan in size; Korrigan was not. But he was empowered by the sacraments. They began a titanic struggle.

Matunaaga wanted more icons. The energy tendril was in his way. He came to a halt, meditated for just a second, then ran straight through the tendril and emerged, unharmed.

“Here, Uncle Dobre,” cried Kai, using Matunaaga’s caji name. And he threw the time icons to the speeding gith, who caught them unerringly and ran on.

Gupta lowered the Life pillar.

Uru used the powers of creation, invested in him by the sacrament, to fix Borne’s broken left knee. No one else could have managed such a subtle recreation, but Uru had an instinct for such things.

Up above, Leon made his second volte face of the day, and teleported Matunaaga to the Time pillar. Then he tried to teleport Rumdoom somewhere he couldn’t do any more harm, but Rumdoom resisted his spell.

Kasvarina lowered her hands. She had been about to cast a power word at her errant lover.

Then the Air pillar returned!

Round 21

A glow began at 9 o’clock.

Borne gently lifted the Time pillar.

Gupta slotted the Life pillar into place. (She was not huge or mighty enough to move these things in one go.)

Uru buzzed across to Borne’s left knee and fixed that too.

Matunaaga plugged Ascetia into the Time pillar.

Leon cast timestop and used the time to open portals beside every planar column. Rumdoom couldn’t use them. He was too big.

Normal time resumed and Borne lowered the Time pillar. Teykfa had not been added, though that was the least of their concerns, and the third of their minor planes in order of importance.

Rumdoom wrenched himself free from Korrigan’s grasp and turned away.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion for a moment as Korrigan watched Rumdoom go. He experienced a strange moment of calm. It was if the universe was asking him, the unbeliever, to have Faith. Korrigan had to decide whether to trust such an instinct and in the moment he decided to give in to it. He just stopped. ‘What can I do?’ he thought. Then he asked Kai, “Do you think the icons have returned with the pillars?”

“They have! They have! They have!” cried Kai. “Someone’s looking after us, daddy! It will all be all right.”

Rumdoom began to run towards the golden disc, which was now gently coming to rest with its central hole over the rift, concentrating a beam of energy up into the sky. The energy tendril now arced off this beam, forming a jet rather than a wall.

Quratulain fired a shrink ray at Rumdoom. It worked! He shrank to merely large and carried on going.

 

[RangerWickett]

I would love to hear, once you're done, how this played out among the players.

 

[gideonpepys]

Session 258, Part Eight

Round 22

The energy tendril jumped to ‘9’.

Two pillars had descended, and the unit benefited from two corresponding boons: they were bathed with the healing energies of the Life pillar, and they were all granted a little extra Time – time they desperately needed if they were to fix the ritual according to their design it before Rumdoom was able to destroy it.

Uru used his mastery over spirits to draw Gupta’s family out of Borne. Then, in desperate hope, he summoned what he called the ‘spirit of the world’ to help them by lifting up the Earth pillar. To his surprise, he received a reply:

“I’m already here,” said a soothing voice. “And I’m already doing it.”

Sure enough, the Earth pillar began to rise!

“Are you the one making all the pillars return, too?” asked Uru.

“Of course I am,” said the spirit of the world, benignly.

Gupta used Leon’s portals to move to Death and lift it. Linia had both Av and Iratha Ket in her hands. Despite warnings from the others, she felt she would be able to install both icons, and pressed on in her attempt to do so. She failed. At once, the energy tendril jumped to her position and Linia – not protected by the sacrament of apotheosis – was vaporised in an instant.

Korrigan lamented such a senseless waste. The angel had been too headstrong, and now she was gone. Anyone else would have survived the attempt! Shaking his head, he picked up the icons and put them in place himself. Nestled between them, he pinned a feather from Linia’s wings which had escaped incineration.

Matunaaga sped around the battlefield, picking up and handing out icons. Uru took Dunkelweiss.

Leon asked Borne to raise the Time pillar again, then placed both Ascetia and Teykfa within it. As a master of the arcane, his attempt succeeded.

Quratulain was flying to intercept Rumdoom, although she had no idea what she would do when she crossed paths with him: he was heading for the golden seal, hammer raised. As she sped along she tried to make a prediction – where would they find the icon of Mavisha? Even as she wondered, the icon appeared in Kai’s hands.

“Uncle Uriel knew we would need it!” shouted Kai, happily.

“You mean you fellas really didn’t have it?” mused Pemberton.

As Rumdoom flew past, Quratulain patted him encouragingly on the back. “Good luck,” she said. Then she drew both her pistols and emptied them pointlessly into his back.

Gupta stood in wonder, then said: “We need to complete this now. Something final is about to happen.”

Rumdoom arrived at the centre of the golden seal. He raised the Stone of Not and muttered runes of destruction. The Stone of Not began to glow.

Round 23

Uru ducked through Leon’s portal and placed Dunkelweiss in the Earth pillar, alongside Mojang. Then the Earth pillar was lowered. Uru gave thanks to the World Spirit, who he knew in that instant to be the being they once called Uriel.

Gupta lowered the Death pillar.

Korrigan stepped through a portal and Borne lifted the Space pillar. Korrigan swapped out Urim for Mavisha. “Much obliged,” said Pemberton, as Borne dropped it into place.

Matunaaga watched serenely. The need for further effort was over. Korrigan gathered the others to him, through the portals.

Rumdoom stood with the glowing Stone still raised above his head. He toyed with the idea of saying a few words, but realised that he didn’t really having anything to add. He’d proved his point. But he did have a yen to bring Hildegard here, if she wanted to come. Some time ago, they’d been linked with magic runes that enabled Hildegard to follow her husband across any battlefield, but as the sacrament could not extend to her, she had remained behind. Now Rumdoom asked her if she would like to join him in this moment, though the risks were great, and when she said yes, those runes brought her to him. A moment later, with his wife by his side, Rumdoom struck the golden seal with the Stone of Not.

With the fragment of a dead sun driven firmly into its centre, the ritual was complete, and the sky blazed brightly. A final burst of energy bathed everyone at the site.

Rumdoom and Hildegard vanished in a blaze of light.

In later days, Skyseers the world over reported the appearance of a new, binary star system in the night sky, and at once understood its origin. It would come to be known as ‘Avatar Plus One’, and would be revered by Rumschatologists everywhere.

End of Session

 

[RangerWickett]

We have become spoiled by the rush of updates. Do you have more to post?

 

[gideonpepys]

We took a month off after the finale and will meet for the final denouement session in two days. I have a few observations to make about how the finale went down, but wasn’t sure where to begin.

Is there anything you’re particularly curious about?

 

[gideonpepys]

I would love to hear, once you're done, how this played out among the players.

Finally got some time to piece together a response to this. I think the first thing I should say is that the finale of Zeitgeist lived up to the rest of the campaign, at least for us. The roleplaying gods smiled on us, and the 'big event' approach paid off, lending the final session the weight it deserved. With just a few modications, I was able to make the final encounter sufficiently challenging for my large group (adding a few powerful additonal foes instead of hordes of weaker ones, which the players later said they had been expecting).

Luck also played a substantial role in the encounter itself. Without my direction, little set pieces found their place, and the dice made all sorts of dramatic stuff play out. Then there was the pre-planned twist involving Rumdoom. Neither I nor his player were certain how that would go, or when exactly. But both of us were thrilled when Korrigan started ignoring Rumdoom's demands for an icon. Mostly, this was perforce: he couldn't get the icons to Rumdoom. But the repeated demands and repeated failures added a lovely build-up of tension between the two characters.

It can't have escaped readers' notice that this twist dominated the end of the fight, and Nicodemus' demise was all-but sidelined. This was accentuated by the odd twist of fate which saw Nicodemus speeded up by his addition of a new time plane at the very moment he and Miller came into conflict. Their exchange became quite ridiculous. Then, of course, he was slain with a single bullet, which had an unexpectedly negative impact on Quratulain's player, who took quite a while to get over it.

I have to say I loved the way this played out. Being written out of the story in this way was a fabulously tragicomic way for the prideful mastermind to go. And the shock of his sudden demise will certainly live on in the player's mind longer than any run-of-the-mill epic showdown. (And, I mean, come on: we'd been playing for about ten hours by this point, so a hit-point grind would have been horrible.)

In any case, no one was given a moment to think about it, because events had already taken a terrible turn for the worse. Rumdoom hobbled Borne and then set about destroying the Axis Seal. Again, the timing was perfect. There was no prearranged signal, he chose his moment, and took out the Fire pillar even before Miller exposed Nicodemus, so the two huge moments overlapped.

When he took out the second pillar, everyone needed a break. Korrigan's player was looking ashen-faced and I've no doubt feared that the campaign would end in ruin. But I had told Rumdoom's player that, while I liked his idea of turning on the team at the last minute (something we'd been building up to throughout the Gyre odyssey), it mustn't allow the whole finale to become 'the Rumdoom show'. I'd got the World Spirit waiting in the wings to set things right.

What I couldn't know was whether the team could fix the ritual the way they wanted it before Rumdoom struck the seal. I was almost certain they wouldn't. What may not have come across in the write-up was how close and tense that all was. Without Matunaaga's speed and Leon's network of portals, there would have been no chance at all. Matunaaga's inclusion was a tip of the hat to his absent player, who had hoped to make it if he could. (And his initial appearance - another nod to Nic's possession of Andrei - drew groans from the others, who couldn't know how easily he would shrug Nicodemus off, and were all too well aware of what a dangerous foe Matunaaga could be!)

Then there was Leon's little 'wobble'. His surprise decision to help Rumdoom took everyone by surprise, including me. Rumdoom's player was thrilled. He began openly taunting Korrigan, and enjoining other players to follow suit. (Uru, who loves throwing a spanner in the works, was severely temped.) The others were appalled. As was I. I realised that a few off-the-cuff remarks I'd made earlier had given Leon's player the wrong impression about how destroying the seal would turn out, and used Kasvarina to set him straight. But his choice was fabulously in-character, focused on misgivings that were brought into sharp focus when Nicodemus taunted them for imitating his grand plan.

It was also the culmination of a seven-year character arc in which the consummate traitor sought to demonstrate that he was in many ways the most trustworthy unit member of all, only to throw it all away in the final furlong. I'd spent so long tempting him to betray the others, to no avail, only for him to suddenly do so of his own accord! Magnificent!

All of this added up to an incredibly intense final hour. We could easily have lost focus by then, gotten punch-drunk, but the way fate and great roleplaying weaved these disperate threads was a joy to behold.

Our session didn't end when Rumdoom struck the seal. I finished the account there because it felt right, and will add the coda (or the immediate aftermath) to the start of my next session report, which I'll post in a few days. Something for everyone to read in self-isolation!

 

[RangerWickett]

I've been eager to see the aftermath. I want to know how the stories of these characters settle into an ending. And of course know how the players felt about how things turned out for their PCs.

Also, I'm pretty sure I asked, but if you could make sure Korrigan's player is okay with it: for the ZEITGEIST setting book set 20 years later, I've created a gestalt with a bit taken from each of the campaigns posted on these messageboards. I needed to decide who was Risur's ruler, so I picked King Baldrey.

 

[gideonpepys]

Session 259 - Denouement, Part One


As the enormous energies released by the Stone of Not washed over Gupta, she realised that she could now make the same choice she had rejected in the Gyre: relinquish godhood and restore life to the thousands of eladrin women who had died during the Great Malice.

Gupta chose to sacrifice her divinity. She was thereby cleansed of the taint of Hewanharimau too.

She saw thousands of glowing threads (or were they roots, or branches?) spreading out in all directions from her. At the tips of some of these threads were women she knew, or knew of, who had died not just during the Malice, but at other times, and she found that she could restore them to life too: her mother, her little sister, Helandra, Launga and Dala, and finally, in an act of pure kindness, Lya Jierre.

What about her father and her brothers, though? They were not to be found on this tree of femininity. Could she make her family whole again? Or would they have to live through a different kind of tragedy? For a moment, she considered letting them all pass on, if only raising half of them was the alternative. All of a sudden, she realised her wish had been granted and her father and brothers were alive again.

After Rumdoom’s wish, hers was the second to be fulfilled. All who stood in the energy of the seal, and had had a hand in completing it, felt themselves able to wish for something dear to them, and somehow understood that this was so.

Uru wished for Pemberton’s daughter Teraklir to be alive and whole again, to thank the dragon for all that he had done.

Quratulain toyed with the idea of bringing back Nicodemus, so that she could kill him all over again, but on reflection, she decided to let it go. Rumdoom had taught her that, sometimes, you just can’t stop things. Instead, she wished for her father to be restored to life, so that he could meet his grandson.

Conquo wished for new bodies for him and Borne – smaller ones (but not human size – that would be silly; just large). Likewise, Xambria chose to create a new flesh-and-blood body for herself, but her experience of living in a metal shell for so long meant that her new body was stronger and faster than her natural form.

Matunaaga wished to restore the Hidden Valley to its former glory, but to leave it open, and embrace a future without the fear of the gidim. The elders were dead – drowned in the wreckage of their citadel – but many of Matunaaga’s people were still alive, held hostage in the Ob’s fortress on Axis Island. Despite Nicodemus’ orders to slaughter them if Matunaaga rebelled, his minions had chosen not to do so, such was their respect for the legendary maustin caji.

Leon wished for wise guidance should anyone choose to alter the world in the future. Little did he realise, but this would enable the World Spirit to communicate directly with anyone who sought to interfere with the seal. (The World Spirit now surrounded the world with a protective psionic shield that would deflect intrusion from hostile outsiders like the gidim. Uriel had transcended mortality, and this was his final form. He had sacrificed himself for the good of others for the last time.) Leon also wished that the story of what happened here would not be corrupted over the generations, but who could tell if that one would be granted?

Korrigan considered returning Elizabeth to life, but decided that death should not altered and undone in this way; that such an act would be jarring and upsetting for Kai, who had learned to live without her; indeed, who had never really known her. It would be selfishness on his part to do so. In fact, the king chose not to make a wish at all.

When the radiance of the Seal subsided there were many more apparent strangers standing around the Seal, all of whom were embraced by those who had wished them back to life. The area was suddenly rather crowded.

Around the world a great cheer erupted, as the victory of the Heroes of Lanjyr became clear. In Elfaivar, thousands of women rose from where they had fallen when the Great Malice occurred and wandered out of the jungle in astonishment.

A beam of sunlight shone above the mountains at the edge of the valley and illuminated the jungle forest on the far side. Dawn broke for the first time in months. A new sun rose: The Avatar, followed a few hours later by his Bride.