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Wahad
May 19, 2011

There is no escape.
Lucan

Lucan just stares at the images of Sekja and Naan. "You know..." he starts, thumbing at the Fey Princess' likeness as he turns towards Hope, "you're probably right. Just because it says she's deceased doesn't mean she's dead now. I mean, she's a Fey. Maybe she died a while ago, but she got herself resurrected. Maybe she's been dead a while, but what we saw in Ralzberg was her...spirit? She's got powers that none of us probably even know about. I could see her doing it."

As William makes her displeasure known, though, Lucan joins in. "I'm with Will. Can we just, like...get this over with as fast as possible? While I'm cool with giving that electrical bastard a whooping, if he keeps coming back, that's impractical at best and lethal at worst. For us. We should get what we came here for and get out. As swiftly and as non-electrified as possible."

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Ham Equity
Apr 16, 2013

i hosted a great goon meet and all i got was this lousy avatar
Grimey Drawer
Kardrum Giltstaff

Kardrum briefly considers the display, then shakes his head, nonplussed. "If Sekja were dead, I'd know it. This is no more convincing than a piece of paper or tablet saying the same thing; Arc is just trying to rattle us, turn us against each other. He could have been listening in on us this whole time, or gotten lots of information from his previous visitors. In any case, I'm with Lucan; let's grab our spoils and go, while the going's good."

LightWarden
Mar 18, 2007

Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!
Aramanthia

"Why a trick? He only hears rumors and stories from visitors, so it's entirely possible that rumors of the Princess's demise could take on a life of their own... misunderstandings are a common thread in both comedies and tragedies after all, and it's much better to be an actor in the first one!"

Aramanthia laughs.

"Come then, let us show Arc some hospitality of our own!"

Doomykins
Jun 28, 2008

Didn't you mean to ask about flowers?
: "Let me guess... straight ahead to the central core?"

: "Were you really expecting anything else?" She pumps both fists and beams.

LightWarden
Mar 18, 2007

Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!
Aramanthia

"Oh, right, the Eastern Chambers and the Geothermal area, that does sound intriguing... exploring those might give us an edge against Arc's defenses, and I am most curious about this giant individual!"

She examines the doors.

"...how do we open them?"

Arcana: 1d20+13 24
Streetwise: 1d20+20 24

Any luck with either William or Aramanthia's history checks about events ~200 years ago when Sekja and Bael'waag visited?

Doomykins
Jun 28, 2008

Didn't you mean to ask about flowers?
: "The Giant is to the East, actually. Geothermal is in the West. Since we're in a hurry, lets make a choice and commit to it, yeah? And we have enough to do more than one thing... well, if we're not just going to dogpile the Core. Up to you."

History: Knowledge of events that distant and with regards to a structure that has no recorded history in the outside world turns up nothing. Recent history ties the time of the visit to shortly before the start of Ye King's Anger, which itself occurred after the Tiefling Uprising in Ralzberg. Seems to be more than coincidence!

Checking the doors, you can attempt to quickly unlock them or to take the time to break them down. Although you can't fail to eventually destroy them, it is more time consuming. On approach to the Northwestern Door you're surprised to see it produce some runic script that swiftly becomes unintelligible before flickering and fading entirely. The door slides halfway open, like it isn't properly connected to the rest of the structure. Peering inside things are completely unlit and don't seem to be made of the same metal... in fact, you could swear the interior of this chamber is wooden!

The Northeast Door leads straight ahead to Arc's Core.

The Northwest Door leads to parts unknown. A mystery to investigate but it doesn't seem implicitly tied to "Arc's Inner Workings What We Means To Beat Up."

The Western Door leads to Geothermal Processing.

The Eastern Door leads to Extraplanar Processing. Omaric has told you of a strange giant in the area.

LightWarden
Mar 18, 2007

Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!
Aramanthia

"Oh, I should quite like to meet this giant... what if Arc is holding another being as a prisoner under the guise of hospitality?"

Aramanthia walks up to a door and quickly knocks on it with one hand... oddly, it's more effective than it might seem.

Thievery: 1d20+10 28

Aramanthia attempts to unlock a door, preferably the one with the giant unless the others really wants to get on with it, in which case I guess she attempts to unlock the door leading to Arc or wherever else we're going?

Mortify
Feb 4, 2005

Hope

Looking for anything to occupy her mind, Hope absently wanders over to Aramanthia and tries assist in opening the door.

Thievery +12, so auto assist

Half to herself, she mumbles, "No, you have to..." before trailing off again. Quietly while she works, she continues to mutter "How can she be dead. Is she like me? How could she be like me? No no no, this won't do. This stubborn door," Hope weaves in and out of coherence from there for a while longer.

Doomykins
Jun 28, 2008

Didn't you mean to ask about flowers?
(Sorry for the delay, will get a map up in a day or two.)

Thievery Success: Hope's assistance turns a building surge of retaliatory power into a narrow success as you alter the flow of currents and convince the door that it has received the magical signal to open. The path to Geothermal Processing is opened.

Ham Equity
Apr 16, 2013

i hosted a great goon meet and all i got was this lousy avatar
Grimey Drawer
Kardrum Giltstaff

Kardrum approaches the Northwestern door, and takes a look through, counting on his low-light vision to let him get a lay of the land.

Perception check for Northwestern room: 1d20+13 29

LightWarden
Mar 18, 2007

Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!
Aramanthia

Aramanthia lends her assistance in the search!

Perception: 1d20+11 17
Dungeoneering: 1d20+11 25
Streetwise: 1d20+20 21

Doomykins
Jun 28, 2008

Didn't you mean to ask about flowers?
(Read This!)

Doomykins
Jun 28, 2008

Didn't you mean to ask about flowers?
(It's hard to try to give this game a wrap up. Writing everything out feels weird and off any way I slice it, but considering what's left and the state of player interest it seems impossible to power through to the end. Maybe I'll pass back through all this and edit it or maybe I just need to stop delaying and get it over with... ah well. I hope I won't forget anything as I go. And I would still like some PC feedback to the bolded bits, but it isn't strictly necessary to finish.)

Northwest Door: You enter a strange still-born part of Arckuarot, a naturally grown husk of a great tree amidst the great panes of metal. Roots grow to the side of the mountain and the whole of the place lacks the magical current in everything else. Above all else it seems that Arc is blind to this area. Here you find the living quarters of the late and infamous Dr Borre, an ancient Elven tinker who laid out theories about fey energies that would sound insane if you weren't standing in the end result.

His theories begin with the means to produce arcane artifacts by condensing energy that dances between magical, spiritual and emotional, a strong connection in the understanding of the Fey. The orbs of condensed energy you've pulled from the ruins near Nellen and Red Crown's grasp match the descriptions and are considered crudely refined. Arckuarot has means to correct this and although they are formidable magical items on their own, they are also powerful sources of planar energy. Sources intended to be used in Arckuarot to correct a "coming disaster." To guide this effort Borre's notes detail one of many loopholes he uses in technomagical research to push his projects ahead of contemporary levels of technology: metaphysical beings and their sentience.

He imprisons the original lightning elemental that would become Arc, drafting the world's first "automated building" from theorums closely linked to the creation of ancient golems. An elemental spirit, forced into a physical existence, unable to act beyond boundaries set by the creator. Traditionally this would only yield a robotic guardian... but Borre pushed for a living intelligence that he could control. You discover a set of hard rules that Arc cannot defy and evidence that after Arckuarot "fired" once, he has been alone for a thousand years since the Green took the world. Golem theory would suggest that all elementals eventually become unstable in their imprisonment. Arc has clearly spent a great deal of time working out creative interpretations and loopholes to as much of his "rules" as he could... but in the end he still ends up in a state where he must <PROTECT ARCKUAROT FROM THOSE WHO WOULD ABUSE IT.> There are several other rules that make it clear Borre's paranoia was the basis for his creation's.

There are several other bits that suggest an odd, eccentric man and a fantastic wealth of knowledge and understanding of supernatural creatures, but all of it is firmly set in an absence of morals. His discoveries could never have been made any other way. His work is felt in the ruined labs you've seen across the world and in the odd artificial life he's made in Sister... and as you pick up in conversation, Aquifis. Omaric met her in a lab in the East and freed her, a construct made for manipulation of physical matter via telekinesis.

Borre's outline on the coming end of the world and Arckuarot's purpose is obscure and fragmented, but tied to Arc's daily activities. You imagine the fine details are inside the facility.

Geothermal Processing: Investigating Arckuarot to try and depower Arc a bit, you discover a massive crude living cell built around one of Arckuarot's factory cores where great engines process energy drawn from magma below and the elements above, vents miles long built to reach up through the mountainside to the skies above. Technomagical devices regulate temperature and draw energy from natural sources. Inside this structure a great wounded giant, one of the ancient ashen-skinned Fomorians, the malformed mythical lords of the Underdark. Skin cruelly ripped open and restitched with mechanical devices embedded in bone, Arc makes a great show of appearing to stop you by "riding" the diodes in the giant and controlling it in a game of cat and mouse.

The process is far from perfect and Arc is clearly killing the creature in possessing it. Though insanely dangerous and capable of smashing any of you to bits in moments, it would surely perish over time... will you evade the Fomorian or face it head on?

Either way, one of Arc's power sources is disabled.

Extraplanar Processing: A sister facility, Extraplanar Processing has nearly a dozen masterfully crafted arcways, massive metal arches that hold powerful gates to other realms open. Although the idea of a meta-planar escape seems tempting... elements of pure energy, never-ending space and darkness, mad realms of machine and even a magnificently warded portal leading to a hidden corner of Hell all suggest situations that are amazingly bleaker than your current! They are also regularly patrolled by thousands of the robotic Horrors, each marching to Arc's tune and merrily harvesting materials.

Here Arc makes good on his promise to return to hound you, appearing several times in mass-produced models of his previous lanky humanoid bolt projector. Though he drains 2 surges from everyone, Arc is eventually fought back and one of his power sources is disabled.

Arckuarot Central Core (Updating again Thursday/Friday Night.) (Pushing this back, rough week.)

Doomykins fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Sep 3, 2016

LightWarden
Mar 18, 2007

Lander county's safe as heaven,
despite all the strife and boilin',
Tin Star,
Oh how she's an icon of the eastern west,
But now the time has come to end our song,
of the Tin Star, the Tin Star!
We face the challenge head-on!

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
Eh why not, It's what sully would have wanted.

Wahad
May 19, 2011

There is no escape.
Head on to our doom.

ArkInBlack
Mar 22, 2013
Like Sully would do it any way other than head on

Mortify
Feb 4, 2005

Fight the Fomorian

Doomykins
Jun 28, 2008

Didn't you mean to ask about flowers?
Right I keep putting this off. Time for a stream of consciousness from my awful notes while I'm in the mood.

I guess the plan was to keep track of people's surges as the fights go on and see if anyone dynamically dies or something but :effort: Everybody survives, good job everybody. Thank you for the heals William.

It was really nice not to have to think about or post for a game I knew I'd hosed up.

so anyways my notes were something like Arc fight -> leave Arckuarot -> the Neogi attack -> start another big battleground fight but something begins to eviscerate the Neogi with ridiculous efficiency -> Bael'waag fight(yowza) -> Sekja fight to finish.

humm I guess the big reveal is that Sekja died in the tiefling revolt and Shedendonron resurrected her at Arckuarot with a portion of his power. Sekja is actually a ragomoffyn at this point, her soul a part of the gown she wears that manipulates her corpse as a living-dead puppet. Mix in some divinity/worship and it passes off as real but sinister. Sekja fight involves some building mind control mechanic and puppeteered corpses of former mortals of note that wouldn't play the Royal Game.

also since Sekja is a font of Shedendonron's power he's actually been out of the continent's history the entire time and she reaped the mortal populations in Ye King's Anger after the tiefling revolt. Everything on the continent is just a continuing game where the bullywog divines try to build up their favorite armies, fae and mortal, to solidify their power and play political chicken with the Eastern Isles.

Arc's origin is as an air elemental that Dr Borre forcefully imprisons to cheat his way to a functional AI. After a thousand+ years of this Arc is simultaneously scared to leave Arckuarot and desperate to do so. The fights against him go from the introductory "Butler" models to massive Clockwork Horror Matriarch models. As an elemental Arc doesn't have gender, so he'd find it amusing to mock mortals by hoping between them based on the body he inhabits as his power source. Arc is also doubly insane and his actions and personality are conflicted because he has absolute boundaries(like laws of robotics) that prevent him from not killing in many cases, put in by Borre. All of his expansion and examinations of the outside world revolve around long term degradation and creative interpretation as part of the imperfect process.

I think the gimmick of a recurring, relentless foe would have worked better if I made it clear that easy or hard, each defeat zaps Arc's strength, since he is the power source of the inhabited body and there in a meta-physical sense. He experiences the destruction, loses a bit of strength and travels back to his core to recharge/reboot in a new body. Dawdling in Arckuarot causes death because he has many bodies to spare, but a limit on his consciousness in occupying the more complicated ones.

The final fight with Arc at the core involves him using a unique body of one of the Inevitable type of creatures from the monster manual, the nearly deific creatures that show up when a Wizard starts to royally gently caress up time or something, when the universe itself says "Woah, knock that off, here's a CR 30 creature to ruin you." Arc sincerely hates the party for forcing him to put his entire essence into the body to defend himself, finally leaving the core of Arckuarot(and becoming vulnerable.)

Defeating Arc leaves the choice of whether or not to try to redeem or free him(it? w/e), or maybe to put him back inside the core and use him. I also would've liked the idea of using Arckuarot but with another one of Borre's not-so-crazy elemental "children", like Aquifus(a force/psionics elemental/fae being, a shard mind ascended basically) or even Sister(an ascended dryad, ultimately.) I think if I used this setting again I'd go with the assumption that Sister is peacefully integrated into Arckuarot, becoming a kind of Tree of Life Computer AI(but finding the state peaceful and natural vs Arc's air elemental nature and memory of his prior life.)

Ultimately Bael'waag just doesn't like mortals, but he only cuts down the ones that interfere with old secrets, mostly Borre's stuff on the continent. Or Tieflings. The bullywogs hate Tieflings because they can challenge them, and they are the ancestral enemy of Neogi, who they keep in check. The Neogi fear Bael'waag as though he wear the grim reaper himself. Once you guys leave Arckuarot you get attacked by one of the neogi high priests, but Bael'waag interrupts the battle to just devour the guy like he's nothing. Bael lost his arm to you guys but now he's covered in volcanic machinery and has a giant robotic cleaver in place there. His time-warped shadows drop automated bolters and one of the fight gimmicks is that if he gets too many bolters going at once he starts carpet bombing the battlefield with rains of arrows. So it's a big elite that's hard to control and the need to cut down spawning minions. He'd also have a death threatening devour mechanic where he tries to swallow squishier characters(probably Will first, he hates that kid, heh) and they can hack their way out(bonus damage from innards) but are in danger of dying rapidly(digestion!) Reminds me of the terror of certain big monsters in 3rd edition where swallowing PCs was a regular mechanic. Being a squishy wizard and having no melee option or back up spell just for that situation was bad news.

Also Bael is unaware of it but is stunted in power because of Sekja siphoning off so much from Shedendonron. But as part of Bael's character, he ignores that and just strives to be terrifying on his own.

I think one of the biggest mistakes I made in the game was personal character arcs. When the game started I wanted to use Victe and maybe Lerissa as a vehicle for the Il'matyr sub plot, but they left. I wanted to use Alena as a vehicle for fae/mortal relations and how they can be beneficial and negative and parasitical, but she left. I guess one thing I like this game for is that I'm pretty sure Alena left because the goblin fire mountain fight was so bad and boring, which pushed me to step up how I did combats and big fights. I guess if I messed everything else up, at least I learned something there.

And Plutonis left too, before I could explain anything about the village pact and Marco. I guess the idea is that a thousand years ago, Dr Borre gets a tip off that the world is approaching an unavoidable disaster. So he constructs Arckuarot to cheat it. He will "merge" realms together to banish the fate of the material realm. He chooses the Faewild because he's most familiar with it and thinks there are similarities. Things go bad, bad enough for an Inevitable to step in, the merge goes through anyway, the god of martyrs gives up a hand to try to avert some of the damage. Something like that. It's why you end up with Tieflings that are spawned by Il'matyr's divine blood, the living shard thing Lerissa found, etc. This'd be more developed I guess if I had ran with it longer or was a better DM. So that's a brief summary of how The Green happened.

Since I never followed through, I guess I'll just settle on Marco/his ancestors being former faithful of Sekja and Nellen being founded to escape the Royal Games.

Ikora, the tiefling woman in the gobbo village, was actually the original tiefling revolt ringleader. I wanted to do a sub plot with Hope where it's revealed Hope was formerly the real Ikora, but after the revolt and everybody was dead or otherwise incapacitated, the current Ikora just stole the name to hide herself a bit. Never really went anywhere with this either. Whoops.

I guess if I had focused on Sully and William subplots from the start I might've actually pulled something off. Hindsight and all. Whoops. I kinda wanted to run some sub plots where each PC finds inspiration in an old deity that is usually absent or forgotten in the world, like Sully gets loving pumped as gently caress because he is blessed by KORD!!!!!!! but I hosed up the pacing and never even got to any of it I'm pretty sure.

Then I wanted to try to show more of the world and offer viewpoints that weren't "Shen sure does suck and is in a state of fae tyranny and hey doesn't the faewild have a bunch of existing factions" and introduced the NPC clusterfuck that followed you guys to Arckuarot. Actually running the mechanics of big or multiple parties doesn't bug me, but I guess I hosed up everything that wasn't related to that one big neogi + umber hulk swarm battle. Whoops. Well, there's an explanation of my motivations for that gently caress up.

Well my stream of consciousness is running a bit dry here, I hope I hit everything that anyone might've cared about. If not ask, I can probably remember it or find the note. oh yeah sorry for inviting two people to a game in a coma

So I guess in summary you guys kill Arc, kill Bael'waag and kill Sekja and Shen can find it's own destiny maybe even under your leadership. Also Sister becomes a God Computer but not the insane bad kind Arc was.

Doomykins fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Nov 3, 2016

ArkInBlack
Mar 22, 2013
For the record, Sully totally would have told Kord to take his blessing and stuff it because he doesn't need some blessing to be/get stronger.
As the end of it all Sully leaves to find something he can't describe (satisfaction???) and probably dies somewhere far away when he finally meets something stronger and more stubborn than him, like divinity of some sort or these Inevitable things.



And he doesn't even remember to make Sister visit that big treant he uppercut'd at the start of the adventure before doing so, whatta dingus.

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Doomykins
Jun 28, 2008

Didn't you mean to ask about flowers?

quote:

For the record, Sully totally would have told Kord to take his blessing and stuff it because he doesn't need some blessing to be/get stronger.

That's a pretty Kord way to think so of course Kord would respectfully acknowledge it.

quote:

And he doesn't even remember to make Sister visit that big treant he uppercut'd at the start of the adventure before doing so, whatta dingus.

He'll visit her when he wakes up. He is also a dingus.

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