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Hate-O-Tron
Apr 1, 2007
- Stealing from the Best

What brought us to Coruscant was the promise of picking up a large shipment of weapons and munitions that was on a freighter that crashed into the lower levels of Coruscant that a whole lot of people were looking for on both sides of the law.

With some diligent legwork we got in touch with Stazz Calrissian*, Lando's father and a dirty cop that found and stashed the shipment and was looking to sell it to the highest bidder. Alex's Padawan managed to use the force to get a tracking bug slipped onto him at our first encounter, and we set up a meet in a hotel in the higher levels, while Willie's Zeltron is working some of his connections to secure a cargo speeder to move the goods to our ship once we get them.

Unfortunately, Alex's Padawan was spotted as being wanted with a sizeable bounty, so the whole thing was a set up. Alex pushes my 'decrepit oligarch' into the hotel room and there are 4 thugs waiting for us. Due to a lucky shot, Alex goes unconscious and it's left to me. So I unfold my arms and legs and hulk out, tearing my cheap prosthetic shell. Unfortunately, the deal was I could either be armored or have the fake-out prosthetic shell and most of my levels were in Tech Specialist, so even with premium hardware, I was mostly outmatched. So instead of fighting, I just scoop up Alex and jump out the window (1000 floors up).

The next round, I use my grappling line hands to swing to the next building over, Spider-Man style, followed up by a Die Hard inspired rappel jump away and shoot at the windows before crashing through on the back swing deal. Straight into an Ithorian grandma's indoor garden. She starts bellowing about her ruined flower bed while I take the opportunity to remotely trigger the 2 thermal detonators I had wired into the hoverchair I had left behind, dealing with those thugs and wiping out evidence of my droidifcation.

After cowing the Ithorian by sparking Alex's lightsaber and bellowing "Jedi Business!"**, I revive Alex with a medpac just in time for the Coruscant Security Force to show up in a gunship. With a good roll for his Move Object check, Alex boosts my jump far enough to get us into the gunship. We kill the two door gunners inside and a successful dual Intimidate/Affect Minds to both of us simultaneously yelling, "Get Out." sends the pilot leaping to his own grappling hook exit from the situation and us up one gunship.

We knew we couldn't get it to our ship without being noticed, we were pissed at the double cross, and we had the tracking beacon on Calrissian, so we go pay him a visit at his apartment. While I keep the gunship hovering outside his window during dinner, Alex mans the door gun and goes St. Valentine's day massacre. As we fly off from the scene of carnage and charred bodies, we see a 8 year old Calrissian standing in the broken window, watching us leave with the implicit promise he was going to track us down and gently caress us up 10 years down the road.

We ditched the gunship after stripping one of the cannons off to weld to our flagship and got the hell off planet, abandoning the weapons shipment in order to get off the planet before anything traced back to us.


* Completely made up character, before Lando's actual backstory was written in canon

** An inside running joke that we would yell at witnesses of our violence and/or crime, after Anakin did it in Attack of the Clones.

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Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.
Gearing Up

Severance says, “I’ll be a-goin’. I couldna pass up an opportunity to meet Jenny Greenteeth. She be a learn’t demonologist and I’ll be a-sittin’ at her knee. That is, if she’ll have me.”

I was going and had my own reasons, but I kept them to myself. Ospar was content to follow my lead and Snakeeyes would come if only to learn more about the Overlord. We decided we would leave under our own power, though, and would walk out the gate rather than rely on the Overlord’s transport. Severance and Snakeeyes felt that it would be easier to find our way back if we knew the way there.
So we decided to kill some time and pay a visit to the armory and gear up for an “extended overland campaign” as Severance put it and asked the ghostly chamberlain to take us there. The armory was a great hall that looked more like a hall of curios rather than a store of arms. There were racks and shelves and cabinets and piles of gear of all sorts throughout the room and a small, sour-looking Halfling met us there.

“I am the Curator,” he wheezes. “I have received word that I am to outfit you for a quest handed down by the Invincible Overlord, may he live forever. We have any piece of equipment you may require, plus curios rare and wondrous from my own collection.” He adds with a gleam in his eye, “but these are available at a price.”

“Do you accept trades?” asks Ospar, looking at some of the blades on the walls.

“As a general rule, yes.”

Ospar turns to me. “I have my gear at the Department of Sanitation Department. We should go there and get our stuff and trade with him.”

“If it’s still standing. But yes, we should go. We can swing by the Sage’s Guild as well to check on news from Allustan.”

So we pick out some general supplies and adventuring gear, tell the Curator that we’d be back in a day or so and tell the chamberlain to let the Overlord know.

We wait until high noon to leave Overwatch, a time when undead are at their least active and least effective, and head out across the remains of the Market Plaza towards the Department of Sanitation Department. We very quickly run into a pack of wights but between the two of us, Ospar and I manage to dominate the pack and we use them as bodyguards to get us through the main part of the city. We see the occasional signs of life on rooftops of the taller buildings and in the windows of upper floors.

As we walk towards the Merchants Quarter, we approach a phalanx of wights and see that they are controlled by a half dozen men dressed in plate armor and wearing the seal of Hextor.

They call out to us to make way but Ospar stands his ground. “Hail to the God of Battle and his disciples!” he cries.

“By His might we shall prevail!” shouts a man in the center of the squad. “Who are you and state your business.”

“I am Ospar and these are my comrades and our business is our own. I am a friend of the Church.”

The priests command their wights aside and the leader of the group approaches Ospar. “The Ospar of High Priest Statinstor’s Miracle?”

“The same.” Ospar nods acknowledgement.

The man steps forward and removes a gauntlet to shake Ospar’s hand as we stand in the undead infested City. “I am Lucius and it is an honor to meet you. Your warning from Hextor helped us immeasurably and under the leadership of Lord Statinstor, our might has helped provide strength and backbone to those inhabitants who remain. We patrol day and night to show the citizens of the City that Hextor’s might is unflappable.”

Severance snorts, “An’ th’ other temples? They do be idle then?”

The knight of Hextor turns. “Nay, sir. All temples aid how they can, but only Hextor is meeting this terror head on.” He turns back to Ospar. “Can we be or service to those whose business is their own?”

I step forward. “You can escort us to the Sage’s Guild. We have business there.”

And thus we merge our marching undead into one phalanx and we make our way to the barricaded doors of the Sage’s Guild where we part ways with Lucius and his patrol and bid him well. We walk up the stairs and a rope ladder is lowered for us from the second floor windows.

We are quickly brought before Head Librarian Iquander who grills us for information. He is astounded and amazed by the events at the Thalos Arena, Loris Raknian’s ascension, and our encounter with the Overlord. When I ask, he tells us that Allustan disappeared into his research and then suddenly left the city before the Games to head to the Tomb of Blood Everflowing in the Cairn Hills. He had had some kind of epiphany about something called the Whispering Cairn and fled the city alone to check on it but has not been heard from since.

Ilor
Feb 2, 2008

That's a crit.
Allustan never struck me as the adventuring sort. No doubt this ill-conceived solo foray has gone poorly for him. Can't wait to see how that turns out.

Ilor fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Sep 7, 2019

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Hate-O-Tron posted:

** An inside running joke that we would yell at witnesses of our violence and/or crime, after Anakin did it in Attack of the Clones.

stop making Star Wars actually sound like a setting it's possible to have fun in.

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


PurpleXVI posted:

stop making Star Wars actually sound like a setting it's possible to have fun in.

It was before 2015.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company
It is entirely possible to have fun in Star Wars. The key is to use the source material for its setting details and completely ignore its overwrought mood and story.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
It also helps to have a DM that's willing to let you have fun and nips adversarial party dynamics in the bud.

Hate-O-Tron
Apr 1, 2007
Star Wars is a great setting if you divorce it from the space opera melodrama, like DCB says (Didn't you used to post on WORA, back in the day?)

The campaign fell apart shortly after that, but we continued to play Star Wars campaigns over the years.

When Saga Edition came out, Willie ran a game which was as hackneyed and cliche as all get out, but it was exceptionally fun since I played a Padawan that was spared Order 66 by the fact that he was in some backwater turnip farm planet helping locals grow crops when the hammer dropped*. In the years since, he became an alcoholic degenerate. I essentially described him as Billy Bob Thorton playing Bad Jedi. Brian played a medical droid that acted as my trip sitter, bartender, and paramedic when I would OD on something.

The last one I ran was set in the Old Republic era, and started with everybody in the brig of a Republic Cruiser that was accosted by a pirate fleet that operated out of a gigantic mining capital ship, tractor beaming asteroids into hyperspace lanes or at capital ships. In the confusion, everybody escaped on an ugly freighter in the docking bay.

The first adventure had them searching an uncharted planet for some fuel rods and an astrogation computer after they were hit by a missile just as the hyperdrive activated, and the second involved them on an early colonial Naboo to make permanent repairs to their ship only to be accosted by a gang of red-eyed Rasta-inspired Gungans with vibro-machetes. During the downtime after the second adventure, they finally discovered the secret cargo compartment, packed with a million credits worth of spice that belonged to the Hutt Cartel. The original owners of the ship were going to come hunt them down and I made an NPC crew that was their scummier counterparts. A Rodian sniper named Sleez that had a disturbing collection of porn and a sex droid, a transdoshan gladiator to go up against my brother's wookie, a huge cargo moving droid that was reprogrammed to perceive people as containers that needed to be opened, a Quarren slicer (Willie was playing a Mon Calmari), and a mechanic spice addict that I described as looking like a Sullustan Iggy Pop.


A couple years back, hot off the Rogue One hype, I did put together an Imperial Black Ops/Suicide Squad/Dirty Dozen campaign with Savage Worlds, set in the early days of the Empire, but it died in the crib. It was a shame, because I had all sorts of ideas for adventures like putting down a labor uprising on a heavy gravity mining planet that was supplying materials for the Death Star, neutralizing a famous Ithorian Punk Rocker without it looking like an Imperial Boot stomping him down, sniffing out rebel spies at a gala held by the Alderaanian royal family.


* I have no idea if it's still canon, but the Jedi did have a peace corp type operation for Padawans that didn't make muster Jedi Knighthood.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Hate-O-Tron posted:

Star Wars is a great setting if you divorce it from the space opera melodrama, like DCB says (Didn't you used to post on WORA, back in the day?)

Many, many, many moons ago, when I was more mean-spirited than now, yes.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
Jesus, WORA. That's a name from the grave.

Lemniscate Blue
Apr 21, 2006

Here we go again.
Wotsa WORA?

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!
Not much, wotsa WORA wit you?

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

I still want to run a Star Wars game some day that’s all about a heist gang.

Otherkinsey Scale
Jul 17, 2012

Just a little bit of sunshine!

a computing pun posted:

how are we not talking about the fact that they guy lead with "You may refer to me as Critical 20." like did he write it wearing a freaking opera mask and a cape?

I can't remember the context, but a while ago I had a conversation with a friend where I said DMing should be like DJing and you have to come up with a cool stage name.

I stand by that despite this terrible example.

Preechr
May 19, 2009

Proud member of the Pony-Brony Alliance for Obama as President
Our Rogue Trader DM changed his name to Critical 20 after reading that shameful letter.

Rorac
Aug 19, 2011

My Traveller group (for clarity, I'm a part of, not the GM), just got a Kill by Enemy Error on what was supposed to be a boss encounter. This is Mongoose 2e, by the way.

Right now we're flying around in what amounts to a TL14-15 ship; it was a prototype that ended up kind of lost for a while due to reasons that would take way too long to explain, suffice it to say it has been reclaimed and somewhat upgraded by it's polity's owners, and we're tasked with, quite simply, going to a specific system, setting up a line of communication with that system's 'owner', and pretty much destroying anything that tries to stop us. Given that a major, major pirate force is blockading an important station, we've been doing a lot of the latter. Now we've got a bounty on our ship and heads, and with it, one of the larger blockaid ships challenged us.

Specifically, "Postmodern Firing Solutions." Which, yes, if you were part of the Aurora campaign on these forums some time ago, that name is a reference. :v:


How this played out is that we, rather than being prudent and not directly engaging it, did instead what Travellers are wont to do and rushed headfirst into danger. We got half of our hull integrity carved up with very little to show for it, because while the owners of our ship prefer medium and under range, the polity that made PMFS prefers long and very long range (and it being a strictly military ship, is not us by a long shot, all but my character are part of the actual military. My character is on the ship due to Reasons that again would take way too long to explain and are not relevant to the story).


We did manage to get to within medium range though, and responded in kind, blowing off some 1/3 of it's own integrity in one round. Trust me, our ship is terrifyingly lethal within medium range, but has almost nothing for long range combat.

PMFS powers down all weapons. Which is really weird. However, our sensor suite shows it diverting power to it's jump drive, and given that this specific ship is historical and has a very well known signature, we quickly realize that it's using a quick-spool jump drive; it's going to jump next round. We need to disable it right now.

Next round, we fire everything, damage it some more, but it's not quite enough. We DO get a hit on it's jump drive, so it's got -2 to the jump. It's also a bit too close to the planet) and the astrogator is kind of fumbling his own calculations, so it ends up being something of a "jump us... uhh, over there!" kind of thing.

GM rolls 2d6 for the jump. End result after all the penalties and the roll itself... -1. Technically, the ship did in fact manage to jump. It's just that the front and back 15% of it stayed behind as the warp bubble only encapsulated the center of the ship before locking down and going. Also, one of the critical hits damaged the life support, so even if they seal all of the bulkheads, they're totally boned when they pop back out into normal space wherever the hell they come out at. That all said, this was not in the plan. And, for that matter, nothing has gone to the GM's plans. I mean, he does account for luck and interesting plans, but almost every engagement has seen things go off the rails and he loves it, as have the players. I mean, as another example, I blew up a pristine 800 ton ship with a single 12-shot missile volley. You can't plan for something like that to happen.

Hate-O-Tron
Apr 1, 2007

WORA (When Online RPGs Attack) was a grudge site I made back in the days of angelfire and geocities pages, that later went on to become a forum. It generally showcased staff/player shittiness and horrible prose from (primarily World of Darkness) MU*es. I handed it off to some other folks to run after a while and it generally became a cesspool of infighting and melodrama.


I think somebody asked for Paranoia with a Pederast, so I'll throw that one out, since it's fairly short.

At some point, a guy named Clark entered our gaming circle. Clark was a coast guard vet, a gigantic star wars nerd, and a complete creeper. He ran a Star Wars game in which the Jedi were showcased to the seclusion of anything else. Every non-Jedi in the party was pretty much the pack mules and witnesses to whatever cool poo poo that he had written up for Force Users.

He was such a Jedi turbo-nerd, he played a Psionic Soulknife in a D&D campaign Alex ran and bragged that once he hosed his ex-girlfriend while she was cosplaying a Twi'lek. He immediately grudge-hosed me as a GM in his Star Wars campaign when I used an IED and a bunch of fuel drums to explode the gently caress out of a Dark Jedi antagonist (Recurring theme, I know). I distinctly remember him declaring that my astromech droid's actual body weight counted against carrying capacity (which was the primary limiting factor in attachments you could cram into a droid), so I was out of the gate medium encumbered if I picked up more than 2 kg. And immediately got salty that I just ate the penalty, got jets installed, and had another 30-40 kg worth of capacity before I hit heavy encumbrance.

Anyway, I had gotten my hands on a copy of Paranoia and was eager to get to it. Clark was hosting in his apartment, and almost immediately hated the game since there were no Jedi-analogues for him to play (I think I gave him the TK mutation just to keep him happy) and he played the game entirely straight, getting pissed off that he got shoved down an elevator shaft by Willie. I only got to run one game of it before scheduling problems gave it a crib death. It didn't help that my younger brother's friend and his then girlfriend showed up to hang out briefly.

Said girlfriend was 17, looked closer to 15 (My younger brother's friend was like 18-19 at the time, before any alarms are raised) and the moment she showed up Clark glommed onto her in the most pathetic and obvious way possible. I ended up ending the session early just to avoid having to watch this 30-something balding dude mack on somebody elses underage girlfriend in front of them. Thankfully, that was the last time I saw Clark, as he moved out of state a few months after that and nobody wanted to play with him in the group after witnessing that.

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

Rorac posted:

GM rolls 2d6 for the jump. End result after all the penalties and the roll itself... -1. Technically, the ship did in fact manage to jump. It's just that the front and back 15% of it stayed behind

Sounds like you get 30% of the loot, at least

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company

Hate-O-Tron posted:

WORA (When Online RPGs Attack) was a grudge site I made back in the days of angelfire and geocities pages, that later went on to become a forum. It generally showcased staff/player shittiness and horrible prose from (primarily World of Darkness) MU*es. I handed it off to some other folks to run after a while and it generally became a cesspool of infighting and melodrama.

It really was fun at first, if only because no matter how bad a given player was I could always look at the description of Ishtar on WORA and know it could always be so, so much worse. But... yeah, it absolutely descended into misery and infighting and ugliness.

Hate-O-Tron
Apr 1, 2007

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

It really was fun at first, if only because no matter how bad a given player was I could always look at the description of Ishtar on WORA and know it could always be so, so much worse. But... yeah, it absolutely descended into misery and infighting and ugliness.

I wish I had kept some of the more choice logs and @descs. The only way I could describe Ishtar was if a non-Furry Doug Winger wrote it for a text adventure game.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
Ishtar was amazing, but I really miss Terry, he who was very not gay.

Hate-O-Tron
Apr 1, 2007
MVP was definitely Nymeria. We had to get hosting moved to Malaysia cause she kept threatening to sue who-ever hosted us over her mediocre @desc.

My personal favorite was probably Nosey T. Clown from Shangrila, the morbidly obese shirtless clown that thirsted exclusively for breast milk.

Lemniscate Blue
Apr 21, 2006

Here we go again.
I am sorry I asked.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
I keep trying to remember the name of the penis beholder.

Canuck-Errant
Oct 28, 2003

MOOD: BURNING - MUSIC: DISCO INFERNO BY THE TRAMMPS
Grimey Drawer
I just realized Critical 20 misspelled Gary Gygax. With whom his father was apparently playing since the creation of D&D, or something

Tuxedo Catfish
Mar 17, 2007

You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Bieeanshee posted:

I keep trying to remember the name of the penis beholder.

Well, there are many kinds of penis beholder, you'll have to narrow it down.

A Bechoder? A Dick Tyrant? An Elder Dong? A Dorkus? An Eye of the Pee? A Gauthful? A Hive Member?

Tunicate
May 15, 2012

Each penis beholder thinks it is the epitome of its race, and therefore all other penis beholders are inferior to it—even though, at the same time, it considers other penis beholders to be its greatest rivals. A penis beholder might be willing to cooperate with adventurers who have news about another penis beholder's lair or activities, and might be nonhostile toward adventurers who praise it for being a perfect example of a penis beholder.

Preechr
May 19, 2009

Proud member of the Pony-Brony Alliance for Obama as President
A penis beholder is unique in that its gaze attack causes itself to petrify.

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!
When you gaze into the penis beholder, the penis beholder gazes into you.

Usually from behind.

Tetracube
Feb 12, 2014

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN
peeholder

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.
The Department of Sanitation Department

We spend time with Head Librarian Iquander, sharing a meal and a pleasant bottle of Little Blackbird as Severance disappears into the book stacks to continue his demonology research. But we have to move on before the day grows into night.

“You don’t want to be out after nightfall when the undead are out in force,” says Iquander. “If you must travel at night, the brightest light you can summon works best to keep the weaker ones away.”

We depart through the second floor window and head into the street, the four of us ready for battle but moving in stealth. I cast a glamour of invisibility on us and we move out into the wasteland of Thalos.

As we travel we see bloated and half-eaten corpses of humanoids and draft beasts, buildings with their fronts torn down or ripped open, carts overturned. We see watchmen with torches and sunsticks on rooftops of taller buildings, and as we turn onto Outcast Alley and near to the Department of Sanitation Department, we hear the familiar cries and howls of a mob of wights and see that the tanner’s house on the corner of our street is under attack by a pack of zombies and wights.

For the life of me I’m not sure why we waded in like we did. Maybe it was the days of helplessness. Maybe the running and hiding. Severance and Snakeeyes just brandished their weapons and charged at the back of the pack and engaged before Ospar and I even knew what was happening. Ospar and I seized control of several wights and had them engage the others while Snakeeyes cut his way to the front of the building. Severance was vaulting across wreckage to flank and decapitate zombies and Snakeeyes was laying about with his katana with ruthless efficiency until just the four of us and our seven wights were left. We walk up to the battered front door and I knock and when our neighbor, one Stopford Barkis the Tanner, opens the door looking pale and shaken we escort him to the Department of Sanitation Department. We levitate him and ourselves up to the roof and when we see Pike the Lefty and most of the crew still alive the sense of relief is palpable.

“Ospar! Pepper!” Pike exclaims. “How good it is to see you!”

We deliver the state of the City to him and tell him to stay behind his barricade until the temples and the Overlord can figure out how to rescue the City from itself.

“We have been using the sewers to get around. It’s been safer than the streets these days,” he explains.

We stay for a meal and I share some of my Velunian Fireamber with Pike and the other survivors and spend the night, listening to the roaming packs of undead howling through the night.

In the morning, we pack up our trade goods, bid Pike farewell, and head back out into the streets to return swiftly back to Overwatch to trade with the Curator from his collection of enchanted relics, securing for ourselves powerful weapons, armor and other items of protection and utility.

Though we are packed, outfitted, geared up and ready to go, it is four days before the Overlord and Marja come back into our suites with an announcement.

“I have sat with the stones and followed them through their history and have searched the wilds for Earthnodes that would attract her interest. I have found one that currently contains no fauna, which matches the natural behavior surrounding her hut. This node is a week’s ride northeast from here towards the Barrier Peaks. Take this charm. It will guide you to that Earthnode and hopefully you will find your way to Jenny’s hut.”

He passes me a spider wrought from silver. “Throw it up in the air and it will always land pointing towards the Earthnode. Good luck.”

Without further ado, they leave us to our own devices and Ospar says, “Well. Off we go, then.”

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!
So when your DM decides to take an archangel and turn them into a lich, thus creating the world's first celestialich...

:stare:

HiKaizer
Feb 2, 2012

Yes!
I finally understand everything there is to know about axes!
I hope you'll share the story with us!

Von Linus
Apr 6, 2006
I complete me.
I had a game night the other day. It was a noble idea, I've no experience but I'd read the instructions cover to cover and picked the easiest things I could see to pick up and play. I invited the neighbours round.

The first game was Skull, which people were a bit nonplussed by initially. They'd never been exposed to anything other than monopoly or poker. But we played a couple of hands and it went well. We moved onto Codenames, which again, took a little bit of grappling with, but we got there. Then someone in the group was demanding secret hitler. However, people were having beers by that point, and there were committed antifascists in the group, who didn't really follow the rules, so while a liberal, during the bit where the fascists are supposed to reveal themselves to each other, opened his eyes to see who the fascists were, and then loudly told everyone. Then we tried again, and I was one fascist, and he was the other. Everything I did he stymied, he wasn't playing as a fascist at all. He stopped play to ask what fascist policies exactly he was supposed to be voting on.

We stopped then and played Dixit which was at least less controversial but my gently caress I was annoyed.

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!
Last campaign – an archangel named Az who was imprisoned by the gods centuries prior attempted to claim/destroy the world by killing off the gods. He managed to off eight of them before our party destroyed him.

This campaign – our party was riding to the capital city of the kingdom, and the trip took us past the Shrine of the Lost Gods, a small temple dedicated to the defeat of Az and the memory of the dead gods. As we approached the shrine there were several bolts of lightning that struck around the Shrine. Our party headed towards the shrine only to be blocked by several cultists, a marble-skinned angel, and a warlock who called himself “Az-Ralin” and said “you will not stop the Great Work from being completed.”

We mow them down (the “angel” kept using Vampiric Touch and the more we hurt him the more he started to look decayed and skeletal) and head to the shrine. The walls of the shrine are glowing with wards of protection as two blue-skinned angels wrapped in chains hurl bolts of holy fire at the door. As we approach, the wards buckle and the angels descend, pulling out their greatswords and proceed to pry the doors to the shrine open before we can attack them. We manage to take them both down, and as they die they say in Celestial (which our Cleric understand) “free” and “thank you.”

The Shrinetender, an acolyte of Arwin, Goddess of Protection, is standing at the altar as we walk in trying to reactivate the wards. She tells us that the angels attacked and she barely managed to seal the Shrine, but not before hearing them say “he beneath the shrine must be awakened from his tomb.” Our cleric breaks out a scroll of Legend Lore and casts it.

250 years ago on that spot during the worldwide battle against Az, a legion of Paladins of Arwin went up against Angels of the Eagle Host. The lead archangel for the host was commanding the battle from the skies and started to panic when the tide was turning against the Host. The archangel took a small box from around his neck and opened it. There was a huge flash of negative energy that knocked the Paladins flat as the archangel rippled with power and the box disappeared from around its neck. It dived down to join the battle and the Paladins discovered that they couldn’t even harm the archangel. They needed sheer weight of numbers to knock it down and bind it in chains before throwing it in a consecrated coffin and sealing it tight. The coffin was placed underneath the newly-built Shrine of the Lost Gods. Each day at midnight, the Shrinetender must go down into the basement and restore the wards on the wall that blocks the entrance to the archangel’s tomb. However, she doesn’t know (and none of the previous Shrinetenders knew either) what they were protecting. When she asked, she was told “something that is best long forgotten.”

The kicker is this – the small box had a symbol on it for Qord, the God of the Undead who NO ONE liked, not even his worshippers. He stole godhood and was pretty much Peter Lorre’s character from Casablanca in deity form. When Az came he tried to hedge his bets and offered one of Az’s generals part of his unholy essence (his “godspark”) in return for being hidden from Az’s sight.

The angel took the offer, however while Az didn’t find Qord someone else did – the Lich King (so named 20 years ago in a previous campaign LONG before Warcraft III), the world’s most powerful necromancer/lich, lord of the Kingdom of the Frozen Dead, eternal threat to the living, and militant atheist who took advantage of Az’s invasion to kill Qord before disappearing into the Shadowfell for reasons still unknown, leaving his throne vacant to be claimed by Lady Jezra, the first Death Knight on Tanicus, archenemy/archrival to the Lich King, and now known as “The Undying Queen.”

When the archangel opened the box, the godspark instantly turned him into a lich. The box became its reliquary and disappeared. The Paladins of Arwin have been searching for the reliquary for 250 years and have been unable to find it. So the Cleric tells us all this JUST as the floor of the shrine buckles. We try to head to the basement to see if we can reseal the wards somehow…but then the floor explodes, and coming up from the ground is a skeletal angel with rotting feathers, an elongated beak, and a tail. Our Cleric can speak Celestial, and they talk about how the war is over, the archangel (or “celestialich” as our DM put it) doesn’t have to destroy the world anymore, and it’s free to decide what to do. “Don’t destroy,” he told the celestialich, “create. Build something.”

The celestialich ponders his words, says “your words are wise. Qord has turned me into a god. And he has left his throne vacant. I will build a frozen kingdom of my own on the bones of the usurper.” And with that the celestialich takes off and heads south to fight the Undying Queen for the throne of the Lich King.

So yeah, we pretty much set one evil against another evil for the throne of the bigger evil.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

CobiWann posted:

So yeah, we pretty much set one evil against another evil for the throne of the bigger evil.

Somewhere, Metzin just got the weirdest boner that he can't explain.

Doc Hawkins
Jun 15, 2010

Dashing? But I'm not even moving!


Von Linus posted:

Then someone in the group was demanding secret hitler. However, people were having beers by that point, and there were committed antifascists in the group, who didn't really follow the rules, so while a liberal, during the bit where the fascists are supposed to reveal themselves to each other, opened his eyes to see who the fascists were, and then loudly told everyone. Then we tried again, and I was one fascist, and he was the other. Everything I did he stymied, he wasn't playing as a fascist at all. He stopped play to ask what fascist policies exactly he was supposed to be voting on.

i honestly sympathize with your frustration, but also: :laugh:

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!

Kurieg posted:

Somewhere, Metzin just got the weirdest boner that he can't explain.

Why? Thrall's not involved.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

CobiWann posted:

Why? Thrall's not involved.
Yet.

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Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

CobiWann posted:

So yeah, we pretty much set one evil against another evil for the throne of the bigger evil.

To quote Gandalf- and the winner would emerge much stronger and free of doubt.

Can’t wait to hear more!

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