Week 60/61 - The Age of Worms.

It's been a long two or so years. A fair bit of work and commitment. Sometimes great, sometimes a bit of a struggle. But we bloody did it.

Many thanks to my players - Andrew, Bevis, Dave, Morgan and Steve. Thanks, also, to Paizo and their authors.

The campaign has suffered the usual fate of things that go on for a wee bit too long: we rushed it towards the end. After all the intrigue and mystery, the final stage was simply one or two straight-up fights. And I have left off writing this blog for far too long. But, for what it's worth, here's what happened next:

Jericho scouts up the stairs leading up. Upstairs is Lashonna! In elf form, and with a few Blessed Angel guardians. They are altered, somehow, but he has concealed himself well. The part buff, and ascend.

Above, Lashonna gives her evil overlord speech and offers the party a chance to accept. Mend and Jericho are tempted and proceed forward, but Mend recalls that he has a Protection from Evil on and is protected from vampiric charms, and Jericho strays through Frith's Protection from Evil 10' and similarly snaps out of it.

And it's on. Lashonna stars casting spells. The Blesses angels - not being creatures of Kyuss - are unhindered by Manzorian's Dimensional Lock, and teleport … to Mend! They attack him - one even tries to grapple! But Flash works out what is going on, for when last the angels saw that vial from Lashonna's treasure-room, Mend had it. So Flash produces the vial from his own backpack and taunts them with it. Taunt! One of them teleports to flash and manages to grab it, but Flash hits her with a spell causing the victim to collapse in painful convulsions. Another teleports in and attempts to seize the vial from the first - there's a real catfight brewing.

Meanwhile, Frith or Mend has teleported in a mighty being of legend - a Solar, who joins the fray. The fight proceeds, someone drops a Disjunction on Lashonna. She attempts to escape, but cannot get away from an Enlarged Gauthakan, and is killed. The last Blessed Angel is killed juuust on the point of leaping out of the window, with the vial in hand.

And as Lashonna dies, the terrible sense of the presence of Kyuss fades. The demigod has turned his attentions inward, for he knows that the time is short.

Lashonna drifts away in a wisp of vampiric mist. But she's about to find out just how badly this day has turned out, because her coffin has been thoroughly destroyed. She winds up in Hell where, because she had ruthlessly ruled in life, she spends the next several eternities starving and cold, dressed in rags, blacking the boots and emptying the chamber pots of her betters who whip her cruelly for every tiny mistake.

The party ask the Solar about the vial. He replies

Truly, you bear Ballphaegor's Grace - an artifact of ancient power and cruelty. A draught will grant you power over the Erynes for one day, but beware! For its malign influence will surely corrupt your soul. I answer your summons freely, for your cause is just and needful, and so I insist - not as payment, but because it is needed, that you surrender this cursed thing to me, for destruction. No, no - you mustn't keep it! It's, like, way too much temptation for you blah blah blah talky-talky.

The party decide to be rid of the thing, and the Solar departs. There is very little loot - they already have Lashonna's good stuff.

Jericho scouts ahead again. Above them, the room is empty save Hemriss, whom they have met before. They charge, and Flash Dominates the poor girl. It seems that Lashonna enchanted her and forced her to attack her own father - Prince Zeech. All she desires is to leave and make peace with him. The party decide to leave her dominated, send her into the city to stay out of trouble, and continue on.

At about this point, the spellcasters start to complain of being low on power. So Jericho teleports them to Mend's workshop in Sharn, where they enter his alternate dimension where time runs fast. After an hour or so - Eberron time - they are suitably refreshed, and teleport back.

The next level above is empty. They don't know why.

The next level is a bit of a surprise - a small room at top of the ziggurat, the base of the spire, contains several Kyuss Knights and … Tom! But Tom hideously transformed: Kyuss worms where his eyes should be. A fight ensues, and I think Tom actually manages to make an impression on Gauthakan. A room full of Kyuss Knights would normally slay Gauthakan with Intelligence drain, but one of the casters deals with them - summonning a Greater Air Elemental to pick them up and deposit them in the sea outside. The elemental is slain by Broodfiends, but its work is done. Without a room full of dangerous minions, the party defeat Tom, and perhaps his soul goes to a better place.

Then, all that's left is a long walk up the spire. An internal spiral staircase, with periodic landings connecting to protruding balconies. They investigate the obelisks, and narrowly miss being zapped. Just to see what happens, they destroy all four obelisks around one of the landings. The lightning which was being attracted to the obelisks begins to ground itself in the structure of the spire. Mend is of the opinion that the discharges will weaken and eventually destroy the spire, but it's difficult to say how long such a thing might take.

And so, to the top.

I can't do justice to this - I'll just write what I can and leave it.

At last they confront the demigod in person. Worms pour out of the obelisk and form themselves into hands. But Kyuss is crippled - without his source of negative energy, or the waves of terror from the people of Alhaster. The powers that remain to him are mind-affecting and negative energy, against both of which the party is well warded. The casters summmon great dragons to deal with the circling broodfiends, and Gauthakan begins the simple task of striking the demigod with a hammer blessed with the power of the circlet of the ancient Wind-Duke, Zosiel.

It takes a while, and complex enchantments are cast - miracles and whatnot. But Kuyss - the ancient necromancer who aspired to godhood - falls, his story over. He too goes to hell, where what happens to him next is best left undescribed. The various Kyuss beasts around the world are thrown into panic - many simply dissolve into nothing. The very tower on which the party stands dissolves into a mass of worms, which burrow into the ground. The party flies, feather falls, teleports, levitates, cloak of the bats, and variously makes it to the ground.

Where someone is waiting.

Prince Zeech is there. He's been thinking, having finally realized that he has been a mere cats-paw all these years. And so has decided to put the matter in the lap of the Gods.

“So you saved Alahaster from destruc- tion, something I was unable to do. If not for you, my domain would not exist anymore. Yet you have also brought woe upon my city, for who here knows what role you played in bringing these events to Alhaster?”
“Alhaster lies in ruin, and it needs strong leadership to recover. By The Mockery’s law, the strong shall rule. And I intend to prove my strength by defeating one of you heroes in an honorable duel. I shall defeat those who defeated a god, and with this victory I shall raise Alhaster again to glory!”

On hearing this, Gauthakan flies straight at Zeech and fucking trashes him. And so Zeech ends his days a faithful worshipper of The Mockery and dies precisely as his god would wish.

All that remains is to tell you what happoened in the years that followed.

Jericho

Having a Sibberys dragonmark is no guarantee of influence in Eberron, but it's a damn fine start. Jericho resumes working his way through the murky politics of house Orien, becoming wealthy and powerful, a nice house in Sharn, couple of kids - all that. He continues on occasion to work for Manzorian and other beings, some of them extraplanar.

Mend

Mend revisits Zulshyn and the two make a pact - each to work for the other for a period of time. With Mend's aid, Zulshyn produces works of stunning craft and depth - almost all priceless - from miniatures to a series of epic installation pieces for the Farie Queen of Thelanis. In time, a mere page or two of her sketches from this period will become sought after, such fetching at auction a price of many souls.

In return, Zulshyn collaborates with Mend on Warforged Tower and the great intra-city lightning rail network of Sharn, bringing her own macabre and rather goth aesthetic and sense of humour to the work. Nothing so crass as festooning the platforms with screaming skulls, of course, but they say that at certain times of the day or year when the light is just right, if you travel certain routes on the rail and look at the grillwork as you go by, you can see the artistic touches of a certain rather disturbed Illend.

Eventually, Mend retreats to his pocket plane to work on his real passion - to rediscover the secret of making warforged. There's plenty of people working on it, but he may very well be the one to succeed. As matters stand, no-one has heard from him for years.

Frith

The Gatekeepers are long gone, of course, but their work goes on. In every age have been some group to defend Eberron against the various extraplanar incursion of the time. In between smoking dope and wandering the countryside dispensing hippie wisdom, Frith spends his time battling various extradimensional horrors with Manzorian and others, every time there's a disturbance in the force. Most people will never know just how fragile their normalcy is, and that's cool with Frith. It remains to be seen whether he will fall in battle, or set up a temple somewhere and retire.

Gauthakan

Gauthakan takes up the crown of Alhaster, and basically takes over from where Zeech left off - gladatorial combat in the Alhaster arena, expensive parties, although with a bit of a change of emphasis. None of this larks tongue bullshit. Goliaths are fond of stories and boasting, and a great many lays and poems are commissioned. You've almost certainly heard a few. As time passes, Gauthakan becomes a little erratic: perhaps a side effect of his never - ever - removing his circlet of Mind Blank. There are a couple of pirate attacks on Alhaster, but no-one tries it on a second time.

It's not easy to get a Goliath really, really drunk. It takes a couple of kegs of Mountain Mead (It's mead for mount'n!), spiked with a poison that's been enchanted with the Goliath's own blood. But thanks to Gauthakan's fondness for the arena, the latter is not so much of a challenge as it may seem, and Hemriss soon has everything in place. When Gauthakan has passed out in her father's bed, she strikes. Has a couple of goes, too.

Gauthkan survives, but decides "screw this" and leaves the city. I don't know if he goes home to the mountains, or decides go wandering to find something capable of an actual fight. If you've heard stories about some lone warrior/giant performing impossible feats of strength and battle, it's quite possibly about him.

Frith

Frith begins wearing his hot-chick disguise, and subtly modifies it to make it a little more elven, perhaps even just the tiniest bit draconic. Nothing so tone-deaf as wearing Lashonna's face, of course, but enough to remind the good people of Alhaster where the power in this town has always lain. He effectively runs the city, and becomes very, very wealthy. And eventually bored. After Gauthakan's dissapearance, he heads in to Shan to dive into the politics there. As matters stand, there are a couple of dozen "go-to" people in Sharn, and Flash is one of 'em.

And that's it. But don't fret: Andrew is running Legacy of Fire, and David is doing Delta Green. I commit these pages to google and to the wayback machine.