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Sunday, December 10, 2017

Planescape - Blood War XXVIII. Theran's Soul

You can check out the podcast version of this session right here.




Recordings: I have recordings of hundreds of D&D sessions stretching back to 2008. I have recordings of many of these Planescape sessions. I can't really post them as they are full of real life conversations and it would be a huge hassle. I am thinking of cutting out good parts and putting them into collections, though.

Unity of Rings: Theran had actually died in the last session. I had to think for a while about what happens when the living embodiment of a law of the multiverse dies. Unity of Rings is the law that states: "Everything comes full circle." If Theran dies, is the circle broken? Or is his death part of the cycle somehow?

I decided to go with the death meaning the end of the multiverse as we know it. There's fun consequences to that one. Most bad guys won't want to kill him, but the Doomguard will! The Doomguard is looking forward to the end of everything. Killing Theran ushers that in!

Once the Blood War is over, I can have a field day with that story. I want to do a bunch of Sigil and faction stuff once we wrap up the Blood War.

I mapped out the final sessions of the Blood War. I am hoping to get this finished in the next three sessions, complete with a final battle against Lamashtu. I have plenty of ideas and I think it will wrap up quite nicely.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Black-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Thrul Ravenscroft - Albino Dwarf Fighter

Lamashtu

George had made his new character for the next campaign, which will be a Spelljammer/Rod of Seven Parts thing. I thought it would be fun to introduce the character (named Thrul Ravenscroft) now and use him here and there.

We used Xanathar's to roll up his backstory, which was hilariously horrible:
  • Thrul was a dumpster baby
  • His mom was tortured to death
  • His siblings were killed by monsters (spyder fiends searching for the Rod of Seven Parts).
  • He was forced to be a pirate.
  • He ended up a slave.

Bidam bought slave Thrul and boom, he's in the campaign.

Bidam found out that Ygorl, one of the Slaad Lords, had Theran's soul. This is because Theran was technically a golden slaad when he died.

The heroes visited the ruler of the earth genies to get some info, and then made their way to Limbo. They brought their new friend, Goldforge the golden dragon, to use as a mount.

While flying through Limbo, the group came upon a chaos pinwheel. If you mess with it, it deals out random effects. Thrul touched it, and gained a sinister ally that only he could see. The entity told Theran that he'd been trapped in Limbo for ages, and now he was free, but bound to Theran.


Ygorl, Lord of Entropy
The group got to one of Ygorl's repositories. It was guarded by a death slaad riding a dragon. Bidam fought the bad guys while Thrul busted in to the repository. I rolled out a bunch of Xanathar's traps to overcome, which he did.

Bidam used the mutability aspect of Limbo to make a big water phallus and beat the bad guys with it.

The group got the soul, returned to the ruler of the earth genies, and he offered to grant them a wish. Bidam carefully worded his wish, which was for Theran to be brought back to life. We stopped there.

Character Death: On the one hand, it feels a bit cheap to bring Theran back so easily. What meaning does death have in D&D when there's no truly major hurdles to resurrecting someone?

In this case, I let it be easy because Theran's death means the death of everything. The entire multiverse would be scrambling to bring him back, right?

The True Danger: I guess the real threat of this campaign isn't the death of the heroes, it's the death of their NPC friends. On top of that, the threat of simply failing to achieve their goals would have disastrous effects. If Iggwilv can, she will ruin the group utterly.

I think that the big threat that they are avoiding is that they could end up trapped in the Wells of Darkness for all eternity! They have about 64 days to capture a major entity in their iron flask. If they fail, they really are doomed.

It could actually be interesting for that to happen. In future campaigns, other heroes could visit them and get advice. Bidam and Theran know a lot. Also, if they're in the Wells of Darkness, they won't die and thus the multiverse will be stable.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So what happened next?!?