Dead Gods - Message From Thanatos

 

This chapter is where Dead Gods really starts to kick into gear. I really like this and the next few adventures. I feel like up until now, the slow burn was too slow.

The Heroes

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled  Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard

Downtime

The adventurers had gone back to their business following the altercation with the Sign of One at the Ubiquitous Wayfarer. Word was spreading that major entities were being slain. This included Bwimb, Maanzecorian the mind flayer god, and even the greek god Apollo!

During the downtime, the adventurers learned that their NPC friends Alamandra the githzerai and Stewart Seven Fingers were planning on getting married. I'm probably going to have the githyanki attack during that scene, as all the major Sigil githzerai will all be in one place.

Bidam and Theran received a note from Veridis Mov, ruler of Crux. They were having more problems and were requesting the aid of the PCs.

The adventurers decided to go check it out, and were told about a shortcut to Crux. They had to go visit someone called "The Queen" to find out what it was.

The Queen

This is a weird part of the adventure. "Vlrc" The Queen is a formian (ant-person) who lives in a clock tower. She's got elaborate flavor text and there's even a painting devoted to her in the book. All she does is tell the group about the shortcut to Crux. No encounter, nothing. Weird, right?

So this shortcut involves going through a portal to a mortal world called Ranais. The heroes will need to walk 15 miles through this world, and they'll come upon a portal to Crux. The heroes went through.

Ranais

Ranais is really cool. It's a world in ruins. The heroes appear in the remains of a city that was once full of people who worshiped gods of death. While the adventure says that the DM should keep the gods faceless (to avoid spoiling the big bad guy), I decided to go ahead and let it be spoiled. Why not now?

So as the adventurers followed the road through the city, they came upon statues and mosaics relating to:

• The Raven Queen: Everyone loves the Raven Queen. It's a scientific fact.
• Vorkhesis, Master of Fate: The Raven Queen's son, a criminally under-utilized NPC.
• Zahar, General of the Raven Knights: This is actually a former PC from my 4e campaign. He ended up with the Shadowfell blade in Nightwyrm fortress and has gone on to become the Raven Queen's right hand man and perhaps even her lover..!
• Orcus: Yep! The big bad guy!

Along the journey, the heroes heard wailing. They were being stalked by wraiths! These wraiths called themselves The Lovelost. They led the heroes to a special spot in the city and explained that the mysterious bad guy had ruined their world and that he was one who "lived again."

Orcus

Art Commission from my last campaign - Orcus in center.

My players sat there and tried to piece together how Orcus did this. See, in my last campaign, their old characters fought Orcus godzilla-sized and chucked him into a massive sphere of annihilation. They didn't understand how he could be reborn after that.

They don't realize that they made a fateful oversight during that battle - they didn't grab/destroy the wand of orcus. They were too busy doing really unspeakable things to this evil imp who'd been teasing them for the latter half of the campaign. To be fair, the imp was trying to kill the Queen of their city.

The Backstory of Dead Gods

In this adventure, the official version of things goes like this. The drow goddess Kiaransalee killed Orcus, who had gotten bloated and lazy. Orcus servant Acererak raised Orcus as an undead god/lich. Orcus in his new form renamed himself "Tenebrous." He needs to find his wand to become his old self again and regain his status as a god/demon lord.

Obviously my version will be different, but I'm going to try to stay as true to this adventure as possible.  In my campaign's continuity, the 4e Orcus storyline (E1-E3, where Orcus tries to kill the Raven Queen) happens before this 2e storyline. How weird is that? And I do intend someday to run the 3e Savage Tide finale, where Orcus and Demogorgon face off.

The Temple

After a bit of concerned discussion, the adventurers decided to poke around the city. They came upon an active temple of Orcus. There were cultists in purple robes, and black reeking death emanated from the interior.

This is partly an illusion created by the visages. There's no cultists or reeking death. Instead, there's a ruined temple that contains a portal to Orcus's secret lair on the Negative Material Plane! But to get there, the heroes need to brave the illusion, which is really messed up. Check this out:

Wow, right? I did my duty to blare out every warning I could, and the players decided to leave this place be for now. They'll be back. They have to go through this portal in the next chapter.

The heroes found the portal to Crux and went through. It turned out more visages were wreaking havoc on the town. In fact, as the ruler told the heroes about this, a person knocked at the door. My clever players immediately suspected that the lady at the door was a visage, and they jumped her! They were right.

The Salience

 

They learned that the visages were meeting with a messenger on the World Tree in two days. The heroes decided to go there and spy on them, to see what they could learn.

Along the way, they ran into some ratatosks. The ratatosks (squirrel-people) are friendly with the heroes and decided to accompany them. So 12 ratatosks joined the party. I made names for them, each meant to be stupider than the last. Remember, their leader's name in the module is Glittereye. The names: Nutterchip, Fluffyface, Twitchycheek and Raspytaint.

They made it to the meeting point a day before the meeting. The location was a place called The Salience, formerly the net of giant eagles. The place had wooden eagle statues and it was basically a big bowl sunk into the wood of the tree. The heroes were able to befriend a giant eagle, who agreed to help if things got dangerous. Theran paid the eagle with a javelin of lightning.

The next day, 8 visages showed up. They met with a mist mephit. It told them that there was a prisoner held in Tcian Sumere, in "The Bottom of the Multiverse," among other things.

Then, the visages killed the mephit, declaring "None may know the master's secrets." The heroes fired off spells, rolling ridiculously high and just pummeling the crap out of the visages. It was a slaughter with the aid of the ratatosks.

Bidam and Theran returned to Crux. They learned that "The Bottom of the Multiverse" was slang for the Negative Material Plane. They made plans to go back to that ruined temple in Ranais....

Click here to see the next chapter. 

Dead Gods - Crossed Swords

This adventure is part two of the second storyline in Dead Gods. If you remember, part one of "Into the Light" was about a temple that some factions were fighting over. This scenario is very short, so I added in some of my own material.

The Heroes

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled  Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard

Downtime

• The adventurers had been away from Sigil for a while, and they were very happy to be back.
• They made a bunch of money off of their business, the festhall.
• Theran made and sold a few javelins of lightning.
• The sentient Razorvine known as "Patch" said it wanted Theran's demon amulet (he got it way back in the great modron march). The heroes didn't get involved in this. It was meant to be a clue as to the secret of the razorvine.

The ABCs of Planescape

Somewhere around here, I ran a really messed-up side adventure. If you are squeamish you should skip this whole section.

I saw this movie called ABCs of Death. It's a collection of five-minute horror movies. One of them is about this secret game.

Basically, a bunch of people in masks gather to watch two guys are strapped to a chair. The guys in the chairs have a masturbation competition. The guy who finishes last is killed, impaled on a spike that shoots up through the seat of his chair.

They have to pleasure themselves to what is presented in front of them. So in the movie, this one guy keeps winning, and each time the thing he has to watch is more and more messed up. The woman running the whole competition takes a liking to the guy, and helps him get through it by titillating him.

I had to turn it off because it got way too horrible for me, but I thought the basic idea was awesome. I had already established that the daughter of my Donald Trump NPC was a crazy, spoiled lady, so I figured she'd be perfect to run this competition.

I added another layer to it, by having her dress up in a Lady of Pain costume, which is exactly the kind of thing that the actual Lady of Pain will kill you for.

So basically, my idea was to invite the heroes to this secret party and see what they did with it.

Now, when it comes to D&D, Jessie like to dive right in. As soon as she saw the set-up of this competition, even before the rules had been explained, she signed up!

You should have seen her face once Bidam was strapped into the chair and the rules were explained. Theran was up on a balcony, frantically using magic to help Bidam survive each round (Bidam had to make constitution checks). Bidam's poor rivals were impaled and killed over and over.

Gronard Flumph's daughter, Srivlanka Flumph, took a liking to Bidam and also helped him as the competition wore on.

Bidam finally lost. Flumph walked over to his chair to activate the impaling spear. Theran fired off a spell at Bidam's chair, freeing him. Theran jumped down, took out a dude, untied Bidam and they fled as the party-goers howled with rage.

Sensory Stones

Bidam had his revenge. Bidam is a member of the Sensates. He can "record" his memories in a sensory stone, which is kept in the Sensates sprawling headqarters. Lots of people come there to experience the stones, it's sort of like watching tv .

Bidam put his memories of that entire competition in a stone, hoping people would recognize that it was Srivlanka Flumph and see her dressed up... mocking... the Lady of Pain. Bidam even made sure to have the stone featured prominently on a pedestal so as many people as possible would use it.

Bidam's plan worked. Srivlanka fled Sigil to the gate town of Tradegate.

But during this downtime, Srivlanka wanted revenge. She hired an Ettin bounty hunter to kidnap the heroes and to bring them to Tradegate. She wanted to use them as "living furniture".

The Ettin, named Killigan, sent a message to the heroes through Planescape's most popular tout, Kylie. Killigan knew Flumph was a bad person, so he wasn't overly enthusiastic about this job. He held up a sack and told them to get in. The heroes decided to pay him off, and they did.

With all that out of the way, we got into this adventure, which was extremely short.

Daniphe

 

The heroes were approached by a silver-haired woman named Daniphe. She told the heroes that her sister was crazy, and that she was going to spread a plague in an area conveniently near the temple.

This is a lie. Daniphe is trying to get the heroes to spread this rumor so there will be chaos near the temple. This way, Daniphe and her fellow members of the Sign of One can get inside the temple under the cover of chaos.

Daniphe is a member of the Sign of One. The Athar has a blockade up around the temple.

Daniphe is also a foxwoman with an innate charm ability.

This is an exhausting amount of details for yours truly to keep track of. I barely kept it straight. It's also extremely difficult to run someone who innately charms people. Theran was extremely suspicious of her, trying to figure out what type of elf she was.

Our heroes go around with Daniphe, questioning people about this fictional plague-bearing sister. People freak out and a riot breaks out at the temple. The Athar guards blame the heroes and try to arrest them. Daniphe sneaks away, meets her friends, and they rush the temple.

Each round of this battle with the Athar, I added a chaotic element that got in the way of the battle - NPCs stumbling around in the crowd, trying to get to safety.

• A guy with a tray of urine samples.
• Dustmen with a cart full of dead bodies (the Dustmen collect the dead bodies in Sigil).
• A dabus holding a pair of hedge clippers.

The adventurers defeated the guards. They saw Daniphe and her Signers run - they had failed to get into the temple.

Stalemate

That leads us to the meat of the adventure. The Signers are holed up in a tavern - The Ubiquitous Wayfarer. The Athar are outside, demanding they come out. There are a bunch of innocent bar patrons in there.

So it's kind of an open situation, here. This standoff could be resolved in many ways. The patrons might become hostages. What would the heroes do?

Well, my group snuck in through the cellar and killed every single member of the Sign of One, especially the foxwoman. A few tried to flee through the windows and the Athar cut them down.

Problem solved!

I'm not sure I really get why this whole secondary adventure is even in this book. Maybe it will make more sense when I run the final part.

Click here to read the next chapter of Dead Gods.

Dead Gods - Masks

Crux

I don't know if I mentioned this, but if you're wondering why I run for 2 players, there's a few reasons:

• We play at midnight on Sunday night/Monday morning, which most normal people can't do. But it's the only time all 3 of us can get together. We've been playing campaigns since 2007.
• I am extremely picky about who I play with.
• I love running for just a few players. People are much more loose and comfortable. Things go much faster. You can really get to know a character. Probably the best campaign I ever ran was a solo Al Qadim campaign back in high school.

The adventurers were in Crux, a town built on the massive World Tree. They had just checked out The Warpwood, a tainted area that was evidence that some great evil had come to Yggdrasil.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled  Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard

Murder Most Foul

They settled in for the night at one of the inns. A maid made a discovery in a nearby room. There was a dead body in a chest.

This adventure starts off as something of a murder mystery. It also introduces the visages - monsters that serve the big bad guy of Dead Gods.

Basically what happened was that a visage killed a guy and took his place. Visages have the power to assume the form of those they kill. The visages have infiltrated Crux, and it's up to our heroes to root them out.

Theran and Bidam asked around town, and it turned out that this dead guy was seen walking around town long after he had been slain. This brought them to an alley near High Point (home of the town guards), where the heroes spotted a visage leaving Crux.

The adventure wants the heroes to follow the visage. In fact, it's kind of crucial that they do. My players wanted to attack it. I was able to get them to follow without being too ham-handed. I could have just let them kill it and had another visage spotted off in the distance, I guess.

The heroes followed the visage out onto the tree, very wary of the khaastas. They'd killed the khaasta leader and were certain that the khaastas were looking for them.

Desert's Night

They followed the visage down a black, gnarled branch of the world tree and saw it pass through a portal. They followed. It brought them to Set's Realm. I'm not too keen on mixing real world mythology with D&D, but this happened quite a bit back in the AD&D days.

So the deal here is that the visage is looking for a certain plant that relates to the overall story of the campaign. The heroes are attacked by agents of Set. In the adventure, they're humanoid guards. I decided to use a manscorpion, as I think they're cool.

Way back when, a friend of mine ran a Greyhawk campaign based on Rary the Traitor and we fought many manscorpions in the Bright Desert. I really liked it. Here's my 5e version:

Manscorpion AC 15 HP 84 2 claws: +4/+4 6(d8+2), 1 tail sting: +4 7(d10+2) and DC 12 CON save or 22 poison damage (1/2 on save).

• Blindsight 60 feet
• Obsidian-studded clubs, bolas

The manscorpion struck Theran with its tail stinger and dropped him! Bidam was barely able to slay the manscorpion and dump a potion of healing into the wizard before he died. He was on his last death save.

Their hearts sank as they spotted more manscorpions coming from over a dune. The creatures called out to the heroes. They wished to bring them to their leader. Things were afoot. The fact that the heroes killed one of their kind had impressed rather than enraged them.

The heroes were escorted to a regal pavilion made of black material. The place was home to hundreds of manscorpions and 20 giant snakes.

Nekrotheptis Scorpios

In the adventure, the leader of these creatures is an Egyptian guy named Nekrotheptis Scorpios. I changed him. There's not enough female NPCs in this adventure. So I cooked up Nekrotheptis Scorpia, a black-skinned woman with a pet snake that rested on her shoulders. She had "...black skin like ashes and eyes like smoldering flames..." I was quite proud of myself. "What a badass NPC," I thought.

Of course, Jessie began to harass me about what I meant by "black-skinned" and trolled me about the snake, saying some extremely inappropriate things about the phallic nature of my creation. She tried to take me down a peg but I was having none of it, dear readers. Nekrotheptis Scorpia is a top notch NPC, no doubt about it.

So anyway, this encounter boiled down to Nekrotheptis learning about the visages, telling the PCs that she will handle it, and for the heroes to get out of Set's Realm.

The heroes were escorted out of and back to Yggdrasil. They tried to head back to Crux, but found that the tree branch seemed never-ending. A visage was lurking nearby, and altering their perceptions! It tried to split the heroes up, but they made their saving throws.

Also, the rogue modron was with them. The modron was unaffected by the visage powers, so the heroes were able to use it to help them. It could give them advantage on their saves, I ruled.

The visage was able to lure them into a khaasta ambush. The adventurers made mincemeat out of the khaastas and the visage.

Battle With the Visages

They returned to Crux and heard a pile o' rumors:

• The town constable, Nacen Jon, was acting weird.
• Rumor has it that Bwimb, ruler of the Paraelemental Plane of Ooze had died.
• Another "big time god" had died, too.

Obviously the constable had been replaced by a visage. The heroes went right to High Point for the final showdown. Nacen and another guard had been killed and replaced.

The bad guys got the heroes to come upstairs to meet with them, but then used their lucidity control to make the stairs seem infinitely long and slippery. The heroes struggled to snap out of it, and engaged in a sprawling fight where the visages tried to make them think that the room had vanished, that there were pit traps, and even that they were floating in the chaotic expanse of Limbo.

The rogue modron again was of supreme use, helping the heroes cut through the perception-warping. The visages were defeated.

The adventurers had rooted out and destroyed all of the visages in Crux. While the bad guys overall plan was still a mystery, the adventurers were anxious to return home to Sigil.

This was an OK adventure. I didn't like how the heroes are kicked out of Set's Realm, and in general I wish all of this stuff had happened in Sigil rather than Crux.

Click here to proceed to the next chapter of Dead Gods.

Dead Gods - Crux

In this session of Dead Gods, we finished chapter two and played through chapter three. Last time, the adventurers were inside a walking tower, owned by a wizard named Tiac Nami Ro. Theran had touched his "beauties" - stones enchanted by Circean Embers. Obviously this means we need to roll for initiative.

Visage

Chapter four will introduce the main monster type of Dead Gods, the visages. I figured I'd post my 5e conversion for them, and explain what their deal is before they "debut" here in the next post.

Visage: AC 14 HP 45 2 claws +4/+4 5 (d6+2)

• Takes half damage from non-magic weapons.
• Undead immunities.
• (bonus action) Lucidity Control: WIS save DC 13 or the visage controls the victim's senses, save each round.
• When the visage kills someone, it can shapeshift into their form. During this time, the victim can't be raised or resurrected. If the visage is not slain within 24 hours, the victim's soul is obliterated.

A visage is an undead demon created by the villain of this adventure. They look like wispy, translucent spirits with white masks where their heads should be. Other demons consider these creatures to be abominations and attack them on sight.

Their lucidity control is extremely powerful. They can control their victim's senses, creating a false reality.The 2e version of these monsters also have the ability to dominate, but I chucked that. Too powerful!

You can really screw over your players with the lucidity control if you're not careful. There's a part in this adventure where the visages somehow are able to make it so that if the heroes enter their temple, the heroes just die. There's a whole paragraph on it. We'll get to that soon.

The Heroes

Bidam - Platinum-Scaled  Dragonborn Fighter
Theran - Drow Wizard

The Beauties

Tiac Nami Ro stood on a balcony, looking down at Theran who was coveting his precious stones. He pelted Theran with magic missiles and screamed obscenities in his native tongue. There was a chaotic fight, with Bidam charging up the stairs and tearing into the wizard. The heroes defeated the wizard and then the whole tower started to vanish.

This was mentioned in the module that the tower vanishes under certain conditions. Once it is gone, the heroes fall to the ground. Thinking back, I realize that the innkeepers should have fallen from a pretty great height (they were upstairs) and died.

The heroes dusted themselves off, picked up the trail and followed the khaastas to a forest of vast trees called The Norns. The forest is a magic place. There's thick growth. If you try to hack through the underbrush, you'll take damage from thorns and within d6 rounds you'll become trapped and lost. The only way to get through safely is for the PCs to find a path without causing harm to the vegetation.

Theran got one look at the norns and knew something was up. No birds were singing, no flowers bloomed. He consulted his lion skull mimir, and it told him what the deal was.

Yggrasil

After a few hours of wandering, the trail led up to Yggdrasil, the world tree. Yggdrasil is this impossibly huge tree that reaches into many different planes. The adventurers used it in the great modron march, when they led the modrons into Limbo.

The path of the khaasta at last leads to a knot in the tree. In that knot is a portal that leads to a "half-world" called Naphraks. Half-worlds are special demiplanes accessible only from Yggdrasil, spawned from the tree like fruit. The heroes went in.

They passed through the opaque portal, and found themselves on a large flat boulder, hurtling through an endless expanse for minutes. I really should have ran some kind of combat encounter while they were hurtling through space on the rock. The boulder landed them in Naphraks, a small muddy realm 800 yards across.

Naphraks, the Half-World

There's a few buildings: A barracks, a slave pen, giant lizard stables, and a tower. Bidam and Theran sneaked about a bit, then slipped into the tower.

They stumbled right into the khaasta ruler's throne room, where he was organizing the circean embers. The room was full of plants. The heroes watched him for a few minutes while they worked out a plan.

They approached him and tried to cut a deal. The ruler, named "Haac(!)nss" (it's supposed to sound like like you're hacking a loogie, which is really gross and I refused to do). This went south immediately, so Bidam rushed him while Theran snatched two bottles. Then Theran used a spell to shatter all of the remaining bottles.

Haac(!)Nss

Bidam cut down the ruler and they ran. They had used warp sense (a planescape spell) to find an exit from this half-world, and they ran through it. The innkeepers were hiding there, and together they went through.

They had the bottles, but they knew the khaastas would be coming after them. They spotted a town in the tree nearby. They headed for it.

Crux is a town that features heavily in Dead Gods. I sat down with a piece of paper and made myself an outline of all the stores in town, all the major NPCs, everything I'd need. It turned out that the heroes took a look around and didn't find it of interest so none of that material ended up being used.

They were really paranoid about the khaastas. They figured the khaastas were going to attack the town. This makes sense, but unfortunately this adventure sort of demands that the heroes venture out onto the tree again.

I was able to explain it later by saying that the khaasta raid party ran into some visages. The visages were going to use them for their own needs.

The heroes heard rumors about how the ratatosks (squirrel-people) who lived near Crux were freaking out, talking about how a great evil had come to the tree. The town druid was saying the same things. The ruler of Crux, Veridis Mov, asked them to check it out.

The heroes still had the innkeepers with them, concealed in hooded robes so as not to cause a stir. They left them in Crux.

Glittereye

The heroes ventured out onto a branch and eventually found a ratatosk. These are one of those annoying D&D monsters that likes to tease heroes and tell them riddles and stuff. If they answer the riddles, he'll take them to his leader. Here's one of the riddles:

"River that flows when death is near
Giver of life, you arrival brings fear"

Riddles can grind a game to a halt. I usually give the players a chance, and if they tap out we just roll an INT check to see if a PC figures it out. We have stuff to do!

In the past, I've found that the best way to use a riddle is to have it be part of some side quest. The player can mull it over in his or her real life for a week or two, and usually they'll get the answer.

They find that very rewarding and I think it helps get people more invested in the game. Putting a riddle right in the session as a roadblock sometimes puts people in an uncomfortable spotlight, and it can backfire.

Our heroes go to the leader's lair - a tunnel in the bark. The interior is wet and sticky with sap, which is pretty amusing. Worse, it's mildly poisonous and can cause hallucinations.

"Colors change and even begin to peel away from the object they're associated with... a friend's speech sounds small and distant..." Awesome. They made their saves.

Glittereye, ruler of the ratatosks, is on the verge of insanity. The evil that has come to the tree is changing him. He agrees to bring the heroes to a place he calls The Warpwood.

The Warpwood

Along the way, they run into a modron who had gotten lost during the great modron march. Modrons are immune to the visages lucidity control. The ratatosks made fun of him, and the heroes let him join the group. They agreed they'd eventually help him get back to his home in Mechanus. Here's some of the warpwood flavor:

"The wood in this area is rippled in a huge circular pattern, as if something large and heavy had been dropped on the branch and the bark had reacted like water, moving outward in tiny waves... But the most disturbing thing about this strange warping is the intense blackness that makes up its center."

The deal here is that this is where the big bad guy crossed over from the astral plane to the tree. This bad guy has such a corruptive aura that he was dripping with negative energy.

This energy is too much for Glittereye. His eyes go black and he orders his ratatosks to kill the heroes. Bidam and Theran are able to subdue the squirrel-people without killing them, something that earns them the eternal friendship of the ratatosks.

Back to Crux

Having scoped out the Warpwood, the adventurers returned to Crux to find a building on fire. Marlus, the town druid, has also become corrupted by the evil tainting the tree. She was burning down her own lodge, and people were trapped inside.

Bidam and Theran burst in. Bidam battled the druid, while Theran got the people out. The smoke in here almost did him in. Each round, he had to save or begin coughing and choking. Each consecutive fail made it worse.

Marlus was defeated without being killed. The adventurers had done well so far, but Crux was not done with them just yet...

P.S. The answer to the riddle is "blood."

Click here to proceed to chapter 4.

Dead Gods - Circean Embers

This is chapter 2 of Dead Gods.. or, I guess, chapter 1 of  the "Out of the Darkness" section of Dead Gods. The book is broken into two intermingling adventures, if you recall.

It is always painful for me when there's a Planescape product that doesn't have DiTerlizzi art. This one fares better than most. The interior art is done by RK Post, who is good. It's also done by a guy named Josh Timbrook. He does this really awesome, slightly anime stuff. I tried to find out what else he's done, but it looks like he mostly did art for Vampire.

Then there's another guy who does these player handout art pieces, which are kind of muddy and generally it is hard to tell what's going on in them. The cover of the book is kind of weird, too. It's well done, but I'd have preferred a different look for the god.

Thief of Charms

This adventure is about a bunch of lizardmen who use an item to steal people's beauty. The adventurers must track them down across The Outlands. Basically the point of all this is to get the heroes to Crux, a town on Yggdrasil, the World Tree.

Crux is where a lot of stuff happens in this adventure. Honestly, it's kind of a boring town. We'll get to that in due time.

Let me tell you about the item in this adventure: The Thief of Charms:

• It's a rod attached to a bottle. The bottle can be detached.
• When you touch someone with it, you teal their beauty. The beauty goes in the bottle. Beauty in a bottle is known as "Circean Embers."
• People with lost beauty are sort of shunned by people. They just look drab and weird.
• If you give somebody circean embers, aka someone else's beauty, that person becomes mega-attractive. Everyone who sees them must make a saving throw or have a deep desire to possess them. This effect lasts for a week.

This is a very fascinating item for characters who own a festhall.

Khaasta Raiders

Two of the employees of the heroes' bordello, known as "F***haus," showed up one night for work looking distinctly unattractive. Their beauty had been stolen by khaasta raiders, just moments ago. Bidam and Theran raced down the street to find the beauty thieves.

Along the way, there's a "githzerai crosstrader" named Drozeg Rake who tells the heroes that there's a child in need of aid inside. Theran immediately thought this was a trap. He was right. The githzerai's plan was to lead them into his den and have them fall in a pit trap. Instead, he got thrown in by our street-smart bashers.

The adventurers caught up with the lizard-men, called Khaastas. As far as I can tell, a khaasta is pretty much exactly like a lizardman. They've got a cart full of bottles of beauty that they're bringing through a portal. The khaasta toilmaster (awesome word) sicks a bunch of khaastas on the adventurers.

This is a bit tricky. The bad guys have to get through the portal for this adventure to work properly. The entire rest of the adventure is about tracking the khaasta cart. So as the heroes fight some khaastas, the portal closes. Our heroes need to obtain the portal key, which takes time and gives the bad guys a big head start.

Theran and Bidam get the key (a silver feather of an Arcadian dovetail, bought from Alluvius Ruskin). They go through the portal, which brings them to The Outlands. The bad guy tracks are visible in the mud. Our heroes are in for days of walking.

The heroes don't know it, but they are walking right on the border of two very scary realms. On one side is the home of a mind flayer god of  knowledge and philosophy named Maanzecorian. On the other side is the land of the beholder god, Gzemnid.

The Rotting Oracle

This leads to a really cool encounter. There's this building called The Rotting Oracle. It's in mud and is tilted at an angle. It's a mind flayer temple to Maanzecorian! That's a pretty alarming place for PCs to stumble on.

The mystery villain of Dead Gods has killed Maanzecorian, the mind flayer god. So the mind flayers are freaking out. Here's the flavor when our heroes get close to the building:

"As you watch, a figure emerges from the door of the structure. The skin surrounding its huge, white, pupil-less eyes is sallow brown with a hint of violet. Four small tentacles flail wildly from below where you'd expect to see its nose and mouth. The finery it wears grows filthy from the ooze it runs through as it stumbles closer, but it pays you no heed. Three-fingered hands clutch at its soft skull, and suddenly, wordlessly, the creature's face and head are drawn inward by an irresistable force - an implosion that resembles nothing so much as a giant, invisible hand crushing the skull of the creature like a grape.

It falls dead in the mud."

The adventurers decided to go in to the rotting oracle to check it out. There's a second mind flayer inside who tells the heroes "God is dead!" and then the text says "...the creature's spirit leaves its dying form..."

Basically, Maanzecorian died and his knowledge is seeping into the temple and it is making mind flayer brains implode. The heroes began picking up random pieces of knowledge from the god, really random stuff. It freaked them out, but for some reason they decided to take a short rest in there. I think they hadn't healed wounds from the fight with the khaasta.

A beholder started floating toward the rotting oracle, as obviously something was up with his neighbors. His name was Blvastin. Luckily, Theran was resting on the front steps and saw Blvastin off in the distance. The adventurers immediately fled.

I'd statted Blvastin out as a 5e version of the 4e Eye of Flame, but they wanted no part of him. The adventurers were able to sneak away and continue to pursue the khaasta caravan.

Ironridge

After three days of walking, Theran and Bidam came to a village called Ironridge. The khaasta had given an innkeeper and his wife some circean embers. They used them, and now there was a crowd of people fighting over them. Everyone wanted to be near them and "keep" them.

The heroes both investigated the crowd/brawl/burgeoning riot, got one look at the beautiful innkeepers... and failed their saving throws. Bidam and Theran both desperately wanted them for their own!

The adventurers pummeled some townsfolk, snatched their new friends and threw hooded cloaks over them. They fled and took the innkeepers back to their inn. There, the heroes tried to not hit on the innkeeper's wife or high five the innkeeper to death while they figured out what to do next.

Ultimately, they decided they needed to keep following the khaastas. Their precious, wonderful innkeepers would have to come with them!

So the party grew by two NPCs.

For a day they traveled past wildflower fields. As soon as I mentioned this, the players got extremely paranoid. They kept asking me if the flowers made them sleepy, or made them hallucinate, or if there were giant bees.

It was literally just one sentence in the book. Field of wildflowers. That's it. But let me tell you, the heroes wanted nothing to do with those wildflowers whatsoever.

During this time, the heroes chatted with and tried to impress their new friends. I'll leave it to your imagination as to what perverted things may or may not have taken place when they made camp for the night. All I can say is that dice rolls were involved.

Tiac Nami Ro

The next day, the heroes encountered something awesome: A walking tower. It had chicken legs. And it was controlled by a wizard named Tiac Nami Ro. He's a "...dark-skinned wizard from a remote prime-material world".

Here's his dialogue:

"Ah, hello? Yes? Please to pardon intrusion. Seen you gentles a group of... creatures with many bottles, yes? Am looking for these. Am looking to purchase more wonderful bottles, yes? Hmm?"

So is that an Indian accent? I decided to go with it and looked up some Indian swears to use for if/when the PCs made Tiac angry. There's a lot of filthy Indian sayings, it turns out.

During their journey, the khaastas accidentally shattered a bottle on some stones. Tiac found the stones, and failed his save. He is in awe of the beauty of the stones, and wants to collect more.

He invites the heroes in to his tower for a meal. He has a bunch of trained spider monkeys who set the table and serve the food.

Tiac took one look at the innkeeper and his wife and... failed his save. He asked them to come up to his bedroom for a private conversation. He was overcome by their awesomeness/beauty.

This left the heroes alone. Theran snooped around. He found the stones. He failed his save! The spider monkeys flipped out when Theran found the stones, and made a ton of noise. Tiac Nami Ro exploded out of this room, outraged that Theran was ogling his "Beauties." A fight was about to break out...

But it was really late so we had to stop there. I didn't like the khaasta or the fact that this adventure has so little to do with the overall story, but I love the thief of charms, the mind flayers and the walking tower.

Click here to read he next chapter of Dead Gods.

Dead Gods - Initial Forays

I know I've been absent for a few months on the blog, so I have a bit of catching up to do. My group is pretty far into Dead Gods as of this writing. Over the next week or two I'll be posting summaries here to get back on track.

Limp Biscuits

Once I stopped running games at the store, I kind of lost interest in D&D to a degree for a few months. I still like running games, but when I'm not plugged in to the encounters program I feel very out of the loop.

Dead Gods is hailed as something of a classic. It's a book with a pile of linked adventures, dealing with a mysterious entity who is killing gods and wreaking havoc. Obviously there's going to be spoilers in these posts, so beware.

We had finished "Umbra" by Chris Perkins, a really fantastic adventure set in Sigil. The thing I liked most about it wasn't the overall plot, but all the cool Sigil details and locales. It was very vivid and really made Planescape fun. Monte Cook is awesome, but his adventures don't quite reach the heights of the Perkins stuff. Monte has good ideas but in some cases they are not fleshed-out enough.

The Heroes

(Jessie) Bidam - A platinum-scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - A dark elf wizard

If you remember, the group started up a bordello. Their talking cat, Jysson, runs it.

The Flowchart

Dead Gods is organized very strangely. There's two adventures which are meant to occur alongside each other. It's quite confusing. There's a flowchart. One adventure is called "Out of the Darkness," and the other is called "Into the Light."

This adventure I was supposed to run first - "Initial Forays" - was really confusing to me. There's all these details to keep straight. Basically, there's this temple in Sigil that has some weird stones in it. Two factions are fighting over it. There's a mystery person behind everything, who is basically trying to get the two factions to go to war over it.

Buried in Details

The factions in Planescape have always been a problem for me. There's a million of them, and it's shockingly difficult to find succinct information on them. They have all these nicknames you're supposed to keep track of. It's hard enough to keep 15 (?) organizations straight, much less remember all of their different names.

The factions involved in this scenario:

• The Athar: They believe the gods aren't actually gods, just powerful mortals. They search for the real true secret of the multiverse.
• The Sign of One: This group believes that everything exists because they imagine it. Nobody really exists except them. There's also two splinter factions that play into this adventure: The Will of One and The Way of the One.

All sorts of factions are hiring out investigators to find out what is going on in the temple. My job as a DM is to keep track of the investigators timetables to see if they either bump into the PCs, or beat them to the punch. This was just too much for me, so I simplified it. The investigators:

• Ivth: A cool bad guy, an evil wind duke who has a bunch of cranium rats acting as his eyes and ears.
• Gremmith Mi: A hefty rogue with a blowgun
• Troubleshooters: Adventurers hired by the Athar to keep people away
• Malweis: A good paladin who might become an ally of the heroes

Post-Umbra Downtime

We started off our session with a bunch of subplot stuff.

• The heroes found out that the gorgon that got loose in Umbra was dealt with by Shemeska the Marauder.
• The heroes' friend, the alu fiend Vrischika, found Patch. Patch is this clump of razorvine that and answers questions in blood if you give it a living offering. Bidam and Theran were fascinated by Patch and did extensive research, coming very close to learning the secret of razorvine in Sigil.
• Vaimish and Greir Crasad, the paladin lords from The Great Modron March, were brought back to life by their church. They had been turned into modronoids, if you remember. Vaimish thanked the heroes for recovering their bodies, and offered to let them stay at his fortress in the outlands any time.
• Bidam continued building his heart for the Lady of Pain, buying philters of love from Wesley Powderbottom in Heart's Faith. I have ideas for what the Lady of Pain will do when Bidam gives it to her, but it's not all figured out just yet.
• I had some bordello reviewers who write for the Sigil Scroll stop by and experience the heroes' business. I'll spare you the naughty and amusing details. The heroes got a decent review, not great.

Finding Hulester

The adventurers are hired by my D&D Donald Trump NPC's son to look into this whole church thing. They were told there's this guy Hulester who knows stuff, and that he's at the Ubiquitous Wayfarer, a tavern I've been foreshadowing for a very long time.

The heroes went to the tavern, which is a cool locale. It's full of portals to different planes. It has a statue that tells riddles, And there's a really cool NPC in there. She's a tiefling named Nherid "...who sports long black nails and black eyes with no pupils."

The heroes met Hulester, who agreed to talk to them if he'd hook them up with the woman who owned the Wayfarer. The heroes set up a date in a nice area of Sigil. He gave them a bunch of clues.

Ambush

Ivth, his barghests and his cranium rats

The adventurers decided to spy on the date, wondering if Hulester was shady. Along the way, they spotted a few cranium rats watching them. They snatched one and learned that Ivth was also investigating the temple.

Another agent was on their tail. It was Gremmith Mi, the hefty rogue. As the adventurers spied on the date, he spied on them. He fired off a poison dart that missed, and sparked an epic battle on a rooftop. Gremmith ended up plummeting to his doom.

Dark Sun Crossover

Barmy Kank

Outside the Wayfarer, Bidam and Theran had met a guy called "Barmy Kank." He's from Dark Sun. When I was younger, this bothered me a great deal, because Dark Sun is a closed sphere.

Barmy Kank knew of a secret entrance into the temple. He brought the adventurers there. Malweis the paladin was checking it out too. The heroes befriended him.

Showdown at the Temple

Inside the temple, Ivth and his barghest henchmen were poking around. A big fight broke out, and the heroes won with Malweis' help.

The interior of the temple had 5 huge, weird stones which apparently had caused some people to vanish. Theran assumed they were portals, but he couldn't figure out how they worked, even with warp sense (the function of the stones isn't revealed until the very final chapter of the whole book).

That's it. There's nothing more to do here. The adventure just kind of shuts down at this point.

This scenario had some cool stuff in it, but it was a heck of a lot of work to prepare for. Worse, even with all my notes, I still couldn't keep it all straight when I ran it.

But Dead Gods was off to a start. The next adventure had a lot of fun ideas in it...

Check out the next chapter of Dead Gods here.

Umbra - The Zactar Cathedral

Umbra, the alu fiend

On Sunday night, we finished up Umbra. I think it's safe to say that the adventure more than lives up to its reputation. If you break it down, here's what it has:

• An exploration of a tower that is home to 99 gargoyles.
• A scenario where the heroes must kidnap a kid from the home of a police lieutenant (more or less).
• Deal with the mother of the kid, a succubus, who wants to sell her own kid off as a slave.
• Bring the kid to the temple where, supposedly, she will become a god.

On top of that, you've got a bunch of cool street encounters which include a hag pushing a wagon full of maggots and some barghests bringing captives to a jail.

In addition to all that cool stuff, there's a bunch of NPCs that really jump off the page and a lot of really well done flavor text. The read aloud stuff is long, but it's so fun and full of engaging stuff that it didn't bore anybody. In fact they actually asked me to repeat some of it because they liked it so much.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Drow Wizard 

Durkayle's Stronghold

Gargoyles grabbed the adventurers and flew them to Durkayle's compound. Their mission: steal a kid named Umbra. Apparently, she was the chosen one of some long-lost faction called the Zactars.

Durkayle's compound had a tower and a courtyard teeming with Harmonium soldiers. Bidam drank a potion of giant strength, removed the bars from the highest window in the tower, and entered with Theran.

There was a lot of creeping around. They messed with an orb that could turn you lawful if you touched it. They listened at some doors. They decided to use a grappling hook and rope to lower down to the next floor and peer in some windows. They spotted a woman in a room with a baby carriage. They figured that was where they needed to go.

Emalica the Erinyes

Erinyes as depicted in the 2e outer planes appendix

The heroes went down some stairs and knocked on the door and spoke to the woman. She was Emalica, and while she appeared to be an elf in a red gown, she was actually an erinyes.

Emalica was technically one of the child's guardians but, being lawful evil, Emalica hated the kid and wanted her gone. She charmed Bidam and politely advised the heroes on the best way to "rescue" Umbra.

She explained that Umbra was Durkayle's daughter. The mother was a succubus who was apparently out of the picture. The Harmonium would be outraged if they found out that Durkayle had a dalliance with a succubus, so he kept her hidden in the tower.

The heroes never got to check out the baby carriage, which is too bad. It's full of poisonous snakes! Snakes that Emalica uses as ranged weapons! Why, I don't know, but it's awesome so who cares.

The adventurers were introduced to Umbra by Emalica. Theran was able to win Umbra over by doing some magic tricks. She showed them what she could do - she could teleport. This power would come in handy a few times.

Durkayle Returns

Durkayle

Then... Durkayle came home. He'd returned from a failed mission in a gate town. The heroes heard him talking loudly down the hall. Theran cast a fly spell, grabbed Umbra, and flew out the window into the night.

Bidam thought for a second and decided to jump out of the window. He plummeted to the ground, took a big chunk of falling damage, and then bluffed his way past a Harmonium guard as he limped to the gate.

The heroes reunited outside the gate with Umbra. Dirngrin, the cambion who got them into this mess in the first place, was there to whisk them away. The heroes didn't realize that Dirngrin was about to double-cross his boss.

He teleported the heroes and Umbra not to the Zactar Cathedral, but to a room at The Black Sail Inn where Umbra's mother, the evil succubus Karilyn, was waiting.

Karilyn the Succubus

Karilyn

Karilyn has a bunch of fun flavor text, trying to cajole Umbra into hugging her. Umbra shied away. Eventually, after a bit of discussion, the heroes tried to take Umbra and run. Dirngrin, the schmuck, did nothing. His sidekick, the barlgura, attacked.

Karilyn charmed Bidam and then kissed him, which normally does 32 damage. Bidam made his save though, so he took 16 points. He snapped out of the charm and attacked her.

Out in the hallway, the barlgura tried to snatch Umbra. Barlguras in 5e can jump 40 feet (and 20 feet high), so he tried this maneuver where he tried to jump over Theran, grab Umbra, and then crash out of the window down to the streets of Sigil with her in his clutches.

Umbra ducked, though, and the barlgura exploded out of the window and hurtled to the ground.

Karilyn took flight. The heroes really wanted to subdue her and hand her over to Durkayle, but she escaped with just a single hit point remaining. People in the bar below ran up to see what all of the commotion was. Turia, the crabby tiefling who is Inimigle's girlfriend, helped cover for the heroes in her own dour way.

Turia is a very interesting NPC. She is also in "Nemesis", the other Perkins Planescape adventure. In that one, she has a new boyfriend - Rule-of-Three, a major Planescape NPC.

The Zactar Cathedral

The adventurers took Umbra to The Zactar Cathedral, where apparently she could fulfill her destiny. Umbra immediately liked the place and knew the layout intuitively.

The cathedral is a magic dead zone. No magic spells or magic items worked inside! This obviously was a big problem for Theran, the party wizard. Umbra said she was pretty sure there was a grey orb in the temple that controlled the magic dead zone.

She lead them through the building, but an enemy was waiting - the 4 armed gargoyle from the screaming tower, Eyarq. He wanted to snatch the kid and ransom her off! The heroes were able to just barely hold him off as he tried to snatch Umbra.

They delved further into the temple, and came upon a statue of a woman with bat wings, holding out her arms. She had a strange symbol on her palm, just like Umbra. I don't think the heroes ever realized that this statue depicted Umbra in adult form.

The statue held a grey orb, which indeed controlled the dead magic zone. Bidam was hit by a lightning trap. Then, after a lot of amusing guessing, they figured out the command word of the orb - Zactar.

With the orb shut off, magic was now usable in the cathedral. The adventurers met with Inimigle in the portal room. I was wondering if the heroes would be paranoid, but they weren't. They let Umbra walk right into that swirling pool.

Zactar Priestess

There was a flash, and three statues came to life - they were the last of the Zactars, delighted to finally meet Umbra, their god (they called her The One True Being). Inimigle was free, and he has this really weird and funny celebratory dialogue:

"Free at last! Oh, the joy! Oh, what merriment! Let the horns sound and the whistles blow! I am FREE! No longer must I ruminate in this ghastly sepulchre of a church!"

So it looked like Umbra was going to stay in the cathedral and Sigil might have a new faction on its hands.

Then, the heroes go to leave, and a pile of people are outside. Durkayle, some barghests... and Karilyn the succubus, all bandaged up! The mother and the father of Umbra were arguing.

The heroes hated Karilyn and seriously contemplated attacking her right there. I had actually been foreshadowing her for a long time in this campaign with Vrischika, who is an alu fiend who had been on the run from the demon lord named Karaphon who collects alu fiend slaves.

The whole thing culminated in more flavor text, where Umbra transforms and ages 6 years in 3 rounds. Umbra admonished both of her parents, and told them to leave her be forever.

Karilyn flew off, angry. Durkayle swore revenge on the heroes.

That's where we stopped. If there's any negatives about this adventure, it's that there is no final battle. The heroes could end up just kind of riding out the flavor text at the finish.

But by the point you get to the end, it's been so awesome that it's not a big deal. This is a fantastic adventure!

Next week, we begin Dead Gods, another very highly-regarded planescape adventure. The heroes are 5th level, and they'll probably hit level 6 by the end of next week or the week after.

Click here and jump in to session one of Dead Gods.