A Homebrew Dungeons & Dragons Adventure

Adventures in a homebrewed 5th Edition game of D&D, hosted by a novice Dungeon Master. The current heroes are Maude, the Wood-Elf Moon Druid; Phillepé, the Firbolg Celestial Warlock, and Branch of the Miko Clan, the Tabaxi Battle-Master. To find a session, search for "session #"

[thegodthronechronicles]

Session 24 - Children of Lolth

The 2nd of Calistral

It has been six months since a band of adventurers rose up and defeated the Demoness Vixalial and her undead Warlock King, Krathux the Undying. They had gone their separate ways on their own personal journeys, with the promise that should another threat arise or should one of their party come into danger, they would band together again. This is not that story, nor a tale that features the heroes you’ve come to love. This is a story of new heroes and a new threat that has familiar ties to certain happenings in the world.

In the deep woods of the Tāne Forest, laying hidden for centuries in isolation is the great city of Dubbinsturm, home to the industrious and technologically advanced Gnomes. For the first time in several hundred years it has been opened up to outsiders and trade routes have sprouted forth. It was here that this story began, in a humble, old tavern like many others; and like the start of a bad joke, a Firbolg, a Wood-Elf, and a Tabaxi walk into a Gnomish Tavern. As they are enjoying their food and drink, a renowned trader known as Feliks Trot-Gumble entered the building and boldly proclaimed he was looking for help to escort his caravan north to the the Thorngage Confederacy, the northernmost nation of Ebios. The trio had all accepted the job, and so the caravan had set off, guided by Phillepé the Firbolg, Maude the Wood-Elf, and the Tabaxi known as ‘Branch’.

They had been travelling with little intrusions down the main road that ran from the continent of Qodas down to the kingdom of Tilinyth when up ahead on the road, Maude saw a roadblock. Telling the gnomes to stay back, Phillepé snuck forwards to inspect what he found to be three individuals wrapped in tight web cocoons, one of which was still moving. He called Maude and Branch over and they cut open the moving cocoon to reveal one of their own scouts. Phillepé revealed he had no idea they even had scouts and the scout told him it’s because they just that good at scouting, or at least until now. The scout told them that the fourth scout, Mibo, had been carried off by giant spiders. And at that moment, like a very common ambush trope, they were attacked by three giant wolf spiders.

One spider leapt onto Phillepé, knocking him to the ground as another scurried out of the forest and began chewing on Maude’s leg. The third spider came charging towards Branch, but Branch’s feline agility was faster and he counter-attacked with his glaive for a critical hit. After a few more lucky strikes and parries, Branch slayed his foe just as Phillepé got to his feet.

Maude cast a poison spray into the spider’s face, causing it to back away briefly as Phillepé enchanted some stones and began throwing them at the spider he was fighting. He missed all of the shots. Branch came into Phillepé’s rescue and chopped one of the legs off the spider. As Maude finished off her spider, Branch was knocked unconscious through a venomous bite. As the spider leapt towards Branch for a final kill, Moade ran underneath the spider and sliced it’s abdomen clean open with her scimitar.

Phillipé ran over to Branch to see if he was okay and determined that Branch was sick from the spider venom; Maude concluded that he was indeed sick. After a brief ten minutes, Branch awoke with a heavy, hung-over feeling. Feliks Trot-Gumble caught up to them and asked if they could rescue the captured scout; the party agreed, but decided to take a rest beforehand.

Phillipé decided to scout ahead in the direction the scout was taken and found a large section of forest choked with massive spider webs, ahead there was a faint light like a torch burning. He returned to the caravan and then set off again with Maude and Branch behind him.

After cutting and burning away a trail through the thick webs they found themselves at the entrance to a cave. A single torch burned at the entrance, but the inside was pitch black. Picking up the torch to light the way, Phillipé took three steps into the cave before walking directly into a large, furry grey creature with four arms and ten beady eyes. The chitine growled and attacked with two roughly made, rusty stone knives, but Phillipé was able to dodge in time. As the creature moved past him to attack the others, Phillipé threw the torch at it and set it on fire. The chitine flailed around before dying an agonizingly slow death. They continued into the cave where they found bones of every kind of species. They came to a locked wooden door and smashed it inwards. Inside the room a purple, spider-esque creature stood over a stone altar, holding a strange wand over the very scout they were looking for.

Branch charged towards it but missed his attack, allowing the ettercap to respond with a net of webs that knocked the Tabaxi prone. Phillipé threw some enchanted stones at the creature, but they bounced off as it clicked with glee; they did serve as distraction enough though that Branch was able to break free. The ettercap dodged several other attacks before knocking Moade unconscious. Phillipé aimed his unicorn horn focus and shot it with a radiant flame as Branch came in from behind and stabbed it to death with a rapier.

After saving the scout and healing Moade, they barricaded the two entrances to the room and took a short rest where the scout introduced himself as Mibo Cooperdil. He also revealed that the ettercap was using the wand to change elves into chitines. Phillipé broke the wand in half accidentally as he began to inspect it. Mibo found his longbow and quiver of arrows.

Their rest was interrupted as something began clawing at one of the doors; holding their breath, they waited until it ceased, but the creature only began again at the second door. Deciding to face it head on, Phillipé dragged the bloated ettercap corpse away from the door as Maude and Branch readied to attack. Another chitine broke into the room and was caught in a poison spray as Branch dove in with his rapier. The chitine began waving its duel knives around wildly, slicing a deep gouge across Mibo’s stomach and stabbing Branch through the shoulder. Nonetheless, it was quickly defeated and the group decided to rid the rest of the cave of the creatures.

They explored a little further and came upon a massive chamber filled with wriggling pink cocoons that littered the floor and hung from the ceiling. Maude stabbed a knife into one of the cocoons and millions of tiny spiders burst forth, climbing up her arm and across the floor and walls before disappearing into the hidden crooks of the cave. Disgusted, they burned everything in the room: lighting every single cocoon on fire before they continued on. After that they came to a hallway with webs covering the floor and rising up past their ankles. They lit the floor on fire. Illuminated by the flames, two giant wolf spiders came charging towards them across the ceiling. The first one leapt towards Branch but tripped over its eight legs and fell flat on the ground, Mibo shot the second one in the head with an arrow, but it continued on and successfully leapt onto Phillipé, biting down onto his arm. Maude and Branch dispatched the first spider before it could get off the ground as Phillipé threw the second one to the ground and hammered the arrow further into the creature’s brain, killing it.

Continuing on they came to an area full of sleeping mats and books written in Undercommon, taking a few they continued on to a locked door which they broke through and found a small room with another ettercap and a chitine that was chained to the wall. Mibo shot an arrow at the thing as Maude and Branch charged in towards it. On Branch’s first attack, however, he missed and sliced Maude with a glaive attack. The Ettercap knocked Branch into a wall and bit Maude with enough venom to put her unconscious before running towards Phillipé and Mibo.

Phillipé tried to throw some enchanted stones, and though they did do damage this time, the ettercap was able to knock Mibo to the ground. The ettercap and Phillipé danced in a circle exchanging blows as Branch got readied his weapon. Too late to join the fray, Phillipé was knocked unconscious as well and the ettercap charged towards Branch while screaming in a series of clicks that probably made sense to others of its kind. Mibo crawled to Phillipé and began tending his wounds as Branch prepared to strike. However, as the ettercap drew close, the chitine that was chained to the wall reached out its leg and tripped the creature, allowing Branch to quickly finish it off. Phillipé ran over to Maude, who was on the verge of death due to the venom and prayed to his celestial patron. Raising the unicorn horn above his head, a celestial light illuminated the focus, granting Phillipé a temporary boon that restored his power to heal Maude. They built the best barricade that has ever been built and took a short rest as they discussed what to do with the chitine.

Phillipé awoke with eyes of Rune Keeper and began to translate the books they found. They were a Common/Undercommon For Dummies book; a History of Cats on the Material Realm; a Travel Guide to the Overworld; and  book of prayers and hymms to Lolth. Using the translation guide, they were able to discover that the Chitine used to be a Dark Elf, but was transformed into the hideous creature against his will. He asks them to bring his insignia to his Theresa as he cannot bear to live like this. Volunteering rather quickly, Branch says he doesn’t mind killing him to end his misery. He insists that he really doesn’t mind and indeed kills the Dark Elf. Before he was able to inform them of who or wear this Theresa was.

Searching the rest of the room, they found his insignia of rank, a pot of somewhat fresh stew (which Phillipé devoured), and a dried herb that was identified to be Cannabis (everyone cheered.

They left the cave and made their way back to the caravan, which they found to be on fire. Branch and Maude snuck forward to investigate and found several guards dead and all of the gnomes captured in cocoons of webs. Maude shapeshifted into a tiger and began to stalk one of the ettercaps, but as Branch moved out onto the road he tripped and stepped on a very thorny branch. Hopping into sight and swearing quite loudly, all of the ettercaps looked at him in hunger and began charging towards him. This distraction gave Maude enough time to leap on top of one of the creatures and rip both its arms off in a clean motion.

Phillipé came out onto the road and began attacking one of the ettercaps, casting his Armor of Celestia. The radiant light blinded the ettercap, allowing Phillipé to get the upper hand on it. Branch began fighting off two ettercaps at once, but Maude came to his rescue as she pounced onto one of them and bit down hard on its throat. She went to pounce on another of the ettercaps, but it used her momentum against her and she flew into the burning caravan.

Mibo caught up to the group and shot an arrow at the ettercap as it tried to finish off Maude, distracting it enough for Maude to crawl out of the fire. One of the cocoons split open as Feliks cut his way out with a large dagger. Landing on his feet, he broke into a run and finished off the ettercap. Phillipé tried to catapult a flaming torch at the one he was fighting, but it dodged out of the way and retaliated, knocking Phillipé to the ground. As he crawled backwards, he grabbed a stone and enchanted it before launching it right through the ettercap’s skull.

With the battle finished, Feliks thanked the group as they began cutting the gnomes free. The caravan began to move once again, heading to the Thorngage Confederacy of northern Ebios. Bonus Fact: This Session ran for nearly 7 hours straight and consisted of a lot of drinking and smoking of herbs. 

[thegodthronechronicles]

Did davith and forza get married

Eventually Forza and Davith had met up again quite by accident, which was fortunate for Davith as his training with Gulthias put him on the verge of losing his humanity. On a mission, Davith stopped by a tavern where he heard a familiar voice singing an all-too-familiar story. Forza followed Davith along on his mission and still thereafter, much to the annoyance of Gulthias.Forza and Davith maintain a romantic relationship, though Davith refuses to make it anything more until he is under control of his Vampiric nature

[thegodthronechronicles]

Blog name change

As I plan a second season, I have changed the name from Dungeonsandcats-theadventure to TheGodthroneChronicles

[thegodthronechronicles]

Season 1 Epilogue - Council of Sin

Grim Dundragon had received the summons almost instantly after he had been discharged from the castle and exiled from Tilinyth. He was dragged through the streets and roughly thrown through gates where a black carriage awaited him. He had taken this trip many times before, but still the sight of that ghastly driver sent chills down his spine. As was custom, he could not see where he was headed, nor was he able to tell even the direction as he felt an absurd amount of turns that seemed like he was simply going in circles; perhaps he was, for it was in his suspicion that the Council did not gather on Midgard. He feared to think of which realm the chamber did reside on. It was a long time before the carriage came to a stop-- a final one, as the carriage seemed to stop and go so many times that it seemed, well, absurd. The doors opened, and Grim stepped out into a cobblestone hallway lit by faerie fire.

He walked for what seemed like an hour before he came to the only door. Not a decoration hung in the hall, nor any other sign to determine distance. When he finally came to the door, and a rather plain one it was, he knocked thrice in a pattern and the door swung open to reveal a room bathed in darkness. The only thing visible was a circular table that seemed to float on the darkness, and four chairs with three of them already containing occupants. As he sat down, Grim Dundragon made eye contact with each of them.

First there was Veitr Jademace, a dwarven prince of Khulgaruhm and servant to the Godthrone often by those called ‘chaotic neutral.’ Next, there was Zaagg Skullcleaver, the brutal Orcish Warlord of Qodas and servant to the Chaotic Evil Godthrone. Then, the mysterious Tiefling, Inidani of the Lawful Evil Godthrone. Grim Dundragon represented the Neutral Evil Godthrone and together they made up the Council of Sin.

“We’ve heard of your failure.” Veitr laughed as he took a swing of a light Dwarven mead, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were replaced within the week!”

“A set back, yes, but not a failure.” Grim replied. “My plan did not work out exactly, but it has had some fruitions. Selise Ravenire may be on the throne once more, but Tilinyth will soon find war on their doorsteps. You see, she recently honoured the very criminals that attacked the Camcosian docks, and Lao Mei is none too happy about it.”

“Do not be too fond of her, Dundragon. She will be the first to fall when I march my armies south” Zaagg growled.

“And what am I doing but making your job easier? If Camcosia declares war on Tilinyth, they will be distracted fighting each other and you will find their armies greatly depleted.”

“But what is in it for you?” Veitr asked.

“The same as for all of you, chaos. And what of your plans?”

Veitr laughed again. “I will have my wedding in a matter of weeks, and then a funeral for my father-in-law the very next day. I’ll be rid of my brothers too and be king of two Dwarven Strongholds.

“So you’ve located the Axe then? The fabled “Axe of Dwarven Kind?”

“And how do you think to hold both castles when your supporters are so… minimal?”

“The axe is still out of my grasp,” Veitr admitted, “and the number of supporters is none-to-important when you have fear at your disposal.”

“A man of my own taste!” Zaagg clapped Veitr on the back with a ferocity that knocked his mead flying.

“I enjoy my fine things, Zaagg, such as that brand of drink. Ruin another and I’ll have your hand.”

“Dwarven tools can’t cut through an ochre jelly, let alone Orcish bones.”

Grim sat back in his chair, amused by the two. They were just words, so he hoped-- the had important work to do and that was next to impossible when they are at each other’s throats as much as they were. He did believe that each person there respected the others to some degree, it was not so easy to get on the Council. And if a god personally chose you? You were chosen for a reason.

The one person he could not figure out was Inidani. She rarely spoke at the meetings, only long enough to dictate her location, and by then she’d already be on her way elsewhere in the world. Last week she was in Qatubia fancying herself up to the Empress Azeema Zain for one reason or another. She sat to his left watching the Orc and the Dwarf bicker beneath her demon-faced mask carved intricately out of black iron.

“And you, Zaagg?” Asked Grim. “You talk so much of your army coming south, but do you even hold Qodas? You cannot conquer another continent if you’re own is still so full of threats.”

“Ebios belongs to the Orcs! It has long before your kind came across the Neposei. I will raze your human cities to the ground and salt the earth, it’s tainted already with your stink.”

“And I will aid you, but Tilinyth will be mine and it will stand.”

“Nothing will stand for long if those portals go unchecked.” spoke Inidani, for the first time. “I heard a rumor, your god is responsible.”

“That he is. Tharizdun has a plan for the multiverse, and I will see it done.”

“Where will the Orcs raid then if there are no places left to raid?” Grim asked smugly.

“The Githyanki do well in the Astral Sea and I wouldn’t even feed one to a goat.”

“Reality is literally unravelling. Perhaps a concept your primitive brain cannot comprehend. The elemental planes bleed into this realm, and once this land is gone, so too will the Outer Realms. Even the gods are terrifi--” the sound of Grim’s voice cut off as his head departed his body with one swipe from Zaagg’s greatsword. Nobody batted an eye as they knew it wasn’t actually him. As the body of the doppelganger hit the floor, Zaagg stalked over to the door.

“The elemental chaos was and will be again, but not before all of you fall to the might of Zaagg and the Unchained One.” He growled before exiting.

“Well, I suppose this concludes the meeting. I look forward to still not hearing of your exploits at the next one, in the meantime I have a wedding and an assassination to plan.” Veitr left as well, leaving Inidani alone with the corpse. Tendrils of shadows hungrily crept from the darkness for the expected feast and Inidani sat for a long while contemplating how to turn the portals to her own agenda.

[thegodthronechronicles]

Session 23 - She Who Pulls The Strings

23rd of Mirtul

After retrieving the magical scepter that can switch souls between bloodbound bodies and locating Krathux’s secret daughter, our adventures journeyed back into the realm of Myrkrheim for the final confrontation. There, in the heart of the Lich’s castle, they found themselves betrayed by the Queen, who was not actually Selise Ravenire at all but the fiendish devil, Vixalial. As luck has it, however, the adventures have found the real Selise Ravenire who was trapped in Krathux’s dungeons.

Selise Ravenire stood in a room that appeared built to keep someone alive and--strangely, rather comfortable-- for years if not decades. Books of well-read quality filled the shelves that lined the walls and stood in piles on the small writing desk in a corner; in another corner was a full storage of fresh food. Other than the level of comfort, the only other oddity was a large glass screen on the wall that showed not a reflection of the room, but the vision through someone’s eyes.

Selise stood up from the bed, confused and anxious, rather than relieved, and without a hint of recognition to even Acacia (or the body of, since she and Mara Moonwhisper still had switched bodies) who had been a loyal servant for while. Deducing the confusion, the party realized that they had been interacting with Vixalial the entire time and had never actually met the real Queen until this moment. They inquired just how long she has been captive, and Selise revealed that it had been just after her children were born, only several months since she thought she had defeated Krathux. The birth of her children had been tough on her, and whilst bedridden, Vixalial had trapped her; it was only at Krathux’s request that she had not been killed outright.

Distracted by the revelations, the party had not noticed what slithered towards them in the shadows. Four beings that suffered and longed for vengeance and revenge to the point where they gave up their own bodies in the pursuit; four beings that were once the elders of a darkling village-- now burned to the ground-- and now were nothing more than an ooze, a Slithering Tracker. The trackers revealed their identities and allegiance with Vixalial before moving in for the kill.

One of the trackers slithered and tightened around Forza’s throat where it began leaching his life’s essence while another caused a grossed out Lia to trip over Rock and nearly get a concussion. Avyssos searched the general area and raised a skeleton thrall to do her bidding, while Forza threw his attacker to the ground and stomped on it with little effect. Rock, the Dwayne tried to rip one of the creatures in half, but as a being of pure fluid, it simply reformed and slithered up his arm where it began digging into the large crack in his stone skin. The tracker nearly caused a fracture to run through Rock’s body, but Lia regained ground fast enough to summon a flame blade that seared and boiled the creature enough for Rock to permanently splatter it. Davith grabbed one of the things and sank his new fangs into it, but Forza told him that was disgusting; so instead, he threw it in Forza’s direction and Forza hit it through a wall with his double-bass. The last two trackers fused into one larger one and dove towards who it thought was Acacia, spouting words of vengeance nearly nonsensical with the madness that took toll in their transformation. Acacia and Mara fought off the creature long enough for Rock to come barreling down with a rolling charge and splatter them back into two creatures. They were easily taken down by the combined efforts of the team.

Afterwards, they returned to the chamber where Selise was watching the magical mirror. Seeing from someone’s vision, they saw the person enter into a grand throne room where the skull of a raven with a flaming white eye-- of actual fire-- hung over the cloaked figure that sat on the throne. The figure identified the viewpoint as that of Vixalial’s when he asked what happened to the adventures. Vixalial quelled the anxiety in his voice by telling him how they were indisposed; she answered his other question too, about how the crystal heart was shattered by telling him she had an army of souls to replace the ones lost. The code word “Canada” was called out and the Tritan soldiers raced into the throne room where Vixalial turned on them in a massacre.

Seraphina was going to ambush the Queen Selise Ravenire and take the scepter when Vixalial revealed her true form; which made the Dragonborn less inclined to do so, so openly. The devilish fiend talked to the cloaked figure on the throne and Seraphina realized the party of adventures mentioned must be those she recently travelled with. After a short while, Vixalial called out a strange evocation, “Canada”, and an army of strange aquatic humanoids, Tritans, charged nobly into the room where they found a powerful fiend waiting for them.

Vixalial began slaughtering the Tritans as Krathux was harnessing their souls into gem fragments; the soulless bodies of the Tritans rose as undead thralls and only added to the confusion. Seraphina used this chance and dove forward into the room, sidestepping vicious swipes from the zombies and dealing several killing blows herself as she made her way towards Vixalail. She began to sneak up behind the fiend, but was frozen in place by Krathux’s life drain. Vixalial turned around to face her would-be assassin and smiled devilishly as she picked Seraphina up by the throat. Just before Seraphina had the last ounce of life choked from her body, a loud crash rang through the hall as Gulthias and his newfound vampire army came smashing through the windows. Vixalial tossed Seraphina aside and charged towards Gulthias, asking how he ever escaped the realm of Barovia, and Guthias revealed that Strahd was once a student of his, one who owed him a debt. Aiding the surviving Tritans, Gulthias and his army, as well as Seraphina fought back against the undead and Vixalial and Krathux were forced to flee the room. As they fled, Krathux told Vixalial they retrieved enough souls.

The party escaped from the dungeons and ran straight towards the throne room. They were surprised, when they entered, to see Seraphina and Gulthias inspecting something behind the throne. A large red curtain covered the entire wall, and when Gulthias threw it open they saw a newly charged crystal heart with futuristic wires and cables that connected the thing to a large brain of strange technology. Following the cables, their eyes were drawn to a figure at the center of the construct: Anya Ion. Her eyes snapped open as a large amount of power suddenly surged through her and as she set her eyes on her old friends, she uttered a single word, “help.” Before the adventurers could do anything however, the whole castle shook as a brilliant light flared outside from the courtyard. Some ran over to the window to investigate and found Krathux and Seraphina opening a massive portal, big enough for the entire castle to move through; and it did. The castle shook again as Anya screamed in agony. The heart glowed furiously and a mixture of magic and science brought the castle to a mechanized life.

Forza asked Anya what was happening as Lia quickly caught up with Seraphina. Anya revealed that she travelled far back in time to the midst of a great battle where she and the gearforged army were captured by Vixalial, experimented on, and turned into a massive weapon of war: a castle that can walk into any battlefield and deploy thousands upon thousands of troops instantly.

The castle moved through the portal with Krathux and Vixalial just behind, and the adventurers found themselves back on the material plane of Midgard with Tietelon, the capital city of the Tilinyth Kingdom within sight. Just then, a circular door that covered the span of the throne room's floor began opening up and they saw the largest army of undead creatures ever collected since Orcus himself ran afoul during the rage of demons. They sat in hibernation, but began to wake as the doors came to a stop and the army of the dead started to climb up the walls with a thirst for nothing but the need to kill.

The party readied themselves for a fight as the undead flooded the room. Lia shapeshifted into her armored bear form, Forza used his double-bass to knock the creatures back into the hole, Avyssos created her own undead thralls, Seraphina cast scorching ray, Acacia and Mara used a combination of their powers-- still unused to the body change-- while Davith and Gulthias gave orders to the vampires and tritons, and-- the real-- Selise Ravenire cast toll the dead. As they fought, the main chamber doors slammed open and in walked Vixalial and Krathux.

As the battle raged on, Lia and Rock viciously ripped through the unending army as Forza cast a vicious mockery on Vixalial which saved Seraphina from a near-fatal blow. Returning the favour, Seraphina threw an explosive fireball at a zombie ogre that was about to strike down Forza. Davith charged towards Vixalial with an oath of vengeance for her betrayal and recklessly attacked her in his rage, she easily took care of him with a simple power word: stun. Davith fell to the floor in crippling pain, not dead, but unable to gain a footing in constant agony. Acacia and Mara began attacking Krathux, and though Krathux did not know the relation he did show a sign of some recognition to Mara’s face. Shaking his head in disbelief, he attacked with another life drain, but was cut short as Selise knocked him to the ground. His cloak came off, slightly, revealing not the form of a powerful lich, but that of the wraith who killed Almeria Oti.

Selise Ravenire confronted Krathux, exclaiming she knew he could not be as powerful as everyone thought, for it was her who destroyed his phylactery all those years ago. The conversation was cut short as Vixalial cast a powerful psychic scream that caused all of the adventures to stand stunned by the mental barrage and even caused some of the tritons’ heads to explode completely. She confirmed Krathux’s suspicions when she revealed that Mara was his daughter by the love of his old life, and that he need not fear for Mara and Acacia’s bodies were switched so he could still have a relation with her when he gets his new body. As Vixalial reached for the scepter, telling Acacia that she needs not her consent for the dark magic to work, she found that the scepter was gone. Seraphina revealed she swiped it just before Gulthias came to her rescue and used the scepter to change Mara and Acacia back to their original bodies before tossing it into the hole. Vixalial screamed that she would just kill them all and find a new plan, but Krathux came to Mara’s rescue, he had stopped the archdevil from killing his daughter but had died in the process. His form burned up in fiendish damnation as it was pulled into the Abyss by Vixalial’s spell.

While all of this was going on, Anya had established a telepathic link with Lia and the two of them came up with a plan. As Vixalial attacked Mara, Lia threw the last of her beads of force at her companions as Anya triggered a self destruct sequence. Anya Ion gave her life as the entire castle blew up in a fiery explosion that destroyed nearly the entirety of the undead army. When the dust cleared, the party stood protected in small bubbles of force that dissipated after that threat was gone, but one threat still remained. As the last remnants of the undead began to scatter out into the wilderness, Vixalial stood up and inspected the destruction. Furious, she tried to attack the adventurers, but was easily countered with her drained strength. The party attacked all at once with powerful and explosive magic, but it was Rock, the Dwayne who got the final hit as he used his rolling charge to speed towards Forza, who then hit him towards Vixalial with his double-bass; Rock hit Vixalial with enough force that her demonic essence left her physical body and returned to the Nine Hells.

What happened next was that the party had their final celebration before splitting up at the city of Tietelon, where the Queen Selise Ravenire gave them medals of honour and pledged to build a guild house for adventures and heroes alike to gather and seek out glory and honour. Avyssos had set out to hunt down the remainder of the undead army, to turn them to her will. Acacia set out to Myrkrheim to try and repair the aspects that were still the Feywild. Mara returned home to the elven island of Nimethemarin to heal the blight affecting the trees. Seraphina set out to hunt down Grim Dundragon, who was exiled at Selise Ravenire’s command, to get revenge for the murder of Garus and the assassination attempt on her own life the night of the celebration. Forza wrote down the events and spun an epic tale and set out to tell it to the world. Davith set out with Gulthias to learn how to control his vampiric urges. And Lia set out with Rock to find the man who had been communicating with her via the sending stone she took from future Jeflen’s body.

[thegodthronechronicles]

Session 22 - Truth And Betrayal

22nd of Mirtul

They have the magical sceptre, and someone to wield it-- though their life would be forfeit. Now our heroes stand at the gates of the Lich lord, Krathux, the Undying’s, castle with the help of an army of recently freed Triton, an ancient Vampire lord whose off on a secret mission, and the Queen Selise Ravenire-- the only one to have previously defeated him.

The castle reached high above them, the tallest point of the tower drew a silhouette against the full moon. A flock of skeletal ravens flew overhead and settled along the black stone walls, watching the party as they approached the portcullis leading into the courtyard. It was rusted shut, but Forza mustered his strength to pull it open-- even though that is not how a portcullis works. A new idea sprang into Forza’s mind and he summoned the Rope of Climbing, commanding it to tie around the top so he could climb and jump over the twenty foot gate; as he reached the top a half hour later, he looked down to realize that some of the party had already gotten to the other side and were struggling to pull the lever that opened the gate. After climbing down to help, he realized again-- to his dismay-- that the portcullis stood open and the party was moving on into the courtyard.

Within the courtyard, they found a well kept garden, a black carriage house with nothing of interest inside and a servant’s entrance to the castle that was stuck shut due to lack of use. It took them several tries, but eventually they broke in and found themselves in a dimly lit room where broken furniture and torn cloth was strewn about. In one corner sat a skeleton that did not move no matter how many times the party checked to see if it had some sort of life left-- until, that is, Avyssos rose it as a thrall.

They followed a narrow staircase that ascended into what appeared to be an old bedroom. Dirt caked windows allowed little light, but the area was in much the same state as the room prior. A tall, black wardrobe shaped roughly like a coffin and engraved with fey creatures sat between two full length mirrors. Avyssos opened the wardrobe and out flew a plain white dress that began to dance around in tune with the music of the billowing storm outside. As Avyssos reached out to touch it, the dress collapsed to the floor in a heap. She decided to order her skeleton thrall to put the dress on and they continued to investigate the room. Inside the wardrobe sat a few servants uniforms, one being worn by yet another skeleton that Avyssos rose as another thrall. One of the party members, while fixing their hair in the mirror noticed something was off and smashed the mirror to reveal a secret door. Behind the door was a closet choked with dust and cobwebs and a secret, wooden ladder that lead 20 feet upwards into a tower hallway.

They stepped out into a small room with a mosaic floor that added a touch of colour to the otherwise dark and cold tower where a spiral staircase ran along the circular walls upwards towards darkness. Another staircase ran downwards, but they decided to move to up to the tower for a full view of the area from such a height. As they began to ascend, however, a reddish light flared overhead and settled into a pulsing glow that illuminated the full immensity of the tower. Sixty feet wide at it’s base, the tower grew narrower as it climbed; and at the pinnacle of the otherwise hollow tower, a large crystal heart pulsated with red light to an almost sorrowful beat, as if sick with disease.. Above the heart, the tower reached up a short distance to a locked room.

The party ran up the staircase, but as they neared the heart, several spears and naginatas that were fastened to the wall sprung to life and attacked the party. To make the matter worse, the tower seemed to lurch as the staircase wormed about; Queen Selise, Acacia, Mara Moonwhisper, and Rock, the Dwayne all fell back to the tiled floor as the others held on tightly. As soon as the tower’s rumbling softened, the party members shot out their attacks at both the heart and the sentient weapons. One blast of magical energy shot a hole right through the heart, causing the tower to react again-- which knocked Lia flying to the floor; but it was a string of arrows piercing simultaneously and in great force the cracked the crystal heart enough to shatter the thing. Shards of bleeding glass fell down upon those who were tossed as a loud wail echoed throughout the castle, hitting them as they were beginning to stir and sit up. They collected a few shards and began the climb again.

The stairs ended at a dark and dreary room with manacles attached to the walls. In the middle of the room sat a wood-framed bed fitted with leather restraints. At the foot of the bed rested a closed iron chest engraved with the raven skull sigil of Krathux. Inside, they found the golden crown of House Ravenire of Tilinyth. A wooden ladder lead up to a trap door in the ceiling where thin streams of water dripped through the rotting wood and formed a puddle at the ladder’s base. Avyssos climbed up and was greeted by a cold wind and the terrible visage of Krathux-- with his dead skin drawn back and a flaming white eye-- coalescing in the thunderclouds. The face uttered a ghastly moan as thousands of skeletal birds flew from its gaping maw and descended upon the tower. Avyssos slammed the door shut and answered with a simple “nothing” as Forza asked what was the cause of the sound of hard objects intersecting with the door. They bolted down the tower stairs and the second set as well as the birds broke through the rotted door and chased them; at the second staircase, however they flew off into another area of the castle.

Within the next room, the party was pleased to find casks of old wine lining the walls, though most were cracked and long emptied onto the floor, they did find and enjoy some. The next two rooms they found were a kitchen filled with the horrible odor of decay and a butler’s quarters that sat in the same disarray as every other room. Next, they came upon a long hall where oak tables lay scattered about the room with wood crushed and splintered.

The more interesting thing about the room was that was nearly decorated in entirety with humans bones. The furnishings and bones tied tightly with a sickly coloured leather and the walls and ceiling were adorned in the morbid decoration, giving the room a cathedral feeling. Four enormous piles of bones sat in each corner and garlands of skulls extended to a lit chandelier that gave off a haunting glow. Across the room was another door that had the skull of a dragon mounted above it. Forza eagerly asked Acacia if she could shrink it down to a wearable size and put it on like a mask.

Out of the shadows stepped not one, but three Grim Dundragons asking for the scepter to be handed over. In the ensuing battle, Lia shapeshifted into her armored bear form and brutally swatted at one of the trio while Forza used his ice breath on the second-- which, while still effective, froze the dragon skull to his face. Avyssos and Rock, the Dwayne worked together to take on the third, while the Queen Selise Ravenire whispered into Acacia’s ear and the two began sneaking through the door. Lia chomped down on her target’s neck and used her claws to rip the Grim Dundragon in half; but when the pieces of body hit the floor, it was the tall, grey form of a Doppelganger. Forza took out his double bass and swung it at his target, and though the creature in Grim’s form was fast and got a few stabs in, he was no match for Forza’s might. The last of the doppelgangers was knocked off his feet by Rock’s rolling charge, and shouted out that they must not let the Queen get her hands on the sceptre as Avyssos dealt the killing blow.

The party turned to see that the Queen and Acacia had left the room, as they pursued their friends into the hallway, Lia used one of the beads of force that she obtained from the Tower of Raxivort and captured the Queen in a transparent sphere. Before they were able to question her actions, the Queen called out “Davith, now!” and none other than Cyber-Davith from the apocalyptic future came forward and immediately stabbed current-Davith through the chest with a killing blow. Acting quickly, Avyssos ripped the smoky black gem from Cyber-Davith’s cracked casing and the technological creature was shut down; the Queen only laughed. Forza took out his Canaith mandolin for the first time and cast a string of spells, protecting Acacia from the forces of evil which freed her mind of the Queen whose true form was revealed with a dispel magic spell. Acacia turned in horror towards the Queen, seeing her master in the fiend’s true form. What stood within the bead of force was a devil with long curved horns, and spiked wings. At Forza’s pleading, the party used their combined strength to resurrect Davith, but he was returned to them in the full form of a vampire as his death triggered the curse from the bite he suffered from Gulthias’ novice.

The fiend laughed as the bubble popped and reached over to take Acacia, but Forza threw the rope of entanglement around her while casting a stinking cloud. None of these stopped the fiend, however as the rope of entanglement explodes, igniting the stinking cloud into a fiery blaze. The group struggled to get away and found themselves falling into a subspace of the castle’s basement. They realized that there was no sign of the fiend, nor the sceptre. The fiend’s voice echoed loudly throughout the halls, claiming no mortal can escape the wrath of Vixalial.”

After a rest in which Forza accidentally convinced Davith to bite Avyssos while trying to convince him the opposite point, they wandered around basement area which was deeply filled with dank, black water. Forza lifted Rock up onto his shoulders, which proved near fatal as they stepped onto a hidden pressure plate and the two were teleported into a jail cell full of water; while Rock simply dropped to the bottom, Forza struggled for air. The rest of the party rushed through the sunken hallway and came to a gate stuck shut with rust. After several failed tries, Davith used his newfound strength to rip the door from it’s hinges and they waded into a room with the lower half full of water. Seeing Forza’s motionless body floating trapped in a cage at the bottom of the stairs, the party swam down and pulled him out. Luckily, they made it just in time and he quickly regained consciousness after throwing up a bucket’s worth of grimy water.

Exploring more of the dungeons, they came to a door that was heavily warded and trapped, but not near enough to stop the party. They opened the door and found the real Selise Ravenire within a room built to keep someone alive for at least a decade.

[thegodthronechronicles]

Session 21 - Under The Sea

The 21st of Mirtul

After retrieving the sceptre from Myrkrheim, and fighting their way back from an apocalyptic future, our adventurers journeyed to save the one person who could properly wield the weapon-- Mara Moonwhisper, Krathux’s daughter and closest blood relative. But Acacia switched bodies with Mara to give up her own life instead, as Queen Selise Ravenire plans to trap the Lich’s soul in a mortal body so they may destroy him permanently. As they journeyed back to Myrkrheim for the final showdown, they got sidetracked when Forza was captured by an ancient Aboleth.

As Avyssos fired an arrow at the eldritch creature, it pulled the charmed Dragonborn into a small tunnel that lead into the ruins of Neritesh, the undersea city. The group decided to split up in order to save Forza; while Acacia (in Mara’s body), Davith, Gulthias, Selise, and Mara (in Acacia’s body) swam off to find another entrance, Avyssos, Lia, and Rock, the Dwayne chased after the most direct route. Lia shapeshifted into the form of a giant octopus and the pursuit began.

Once the Aboleth thought it was safe it stopped and demanded to know what Forza was up to. Forza successfully convinced it that he wasn’t with them and was quite as surprised as it was. The Aboleth introduced itself as Ozolp, the last of the Aboleths in this realm as Krathux had hunted and transformed all the others into undead thralls. Ozolp pledged that it would gladly help Forza, but that they had to defeat this party of intruders first. At that moment, Lia in her octopus form broke through and attacked instantly with her tentacles as Avyssos shot another arrow.

Setting off a trap that caused bursts of flame that boiled the water around it to shoot up from the hallway floor, Ozolp escaped through a small hole in the wall that lead to another passage; but now before Lia followed. The two tentacled creatures battered each other, one physically and the mentally, but neither was winning over the other when Avyssos shot a large burst of lightning through the hole that struck them both. Ozolp established a mental link upon Avyssos that charmed the high elf just as Forza seduced the otherworldly aberration and told it to run. Ozolp let go of Lia, but left a toxic ooze on her that biologically changed her skin to be translucent and slimy.

Once Ozolp had run off to figure out a plan, Forza swam up and slapped the charm out of Avyssos. They decided to split up and explore the dungeon. Avyssos stumbled upon a room containing a large emerald securely fasted to an alter by golden claws. Inspecting it and trying to steal it, she set off a trap that unleashed a burst of electricity throughout the room. She survived, though barely, and had to play dead when Ozolp came to inspect the room. Just as the Aboleth began to mentally nudge Avyssos, a loud explosion rang off from a distant room, followed by Davith’s voice calling out that he has come to save Forza. Ozolp ran off to fight the intruders, but Avyssos remained feigning death.

Meanwhile, Lia and Forza came upon a room full of Tritons, the aquatic humanoids who originally built the city. All of them seemed to be standing at attention, dazed and waiting for an order. Forza walked up to some and slapped them so hard that they broke out of the charm. Thanking Forza, they ran off to fight the Aboleth. Lia and Forza followed after and the group stumbled across the room containing Avyssos and the emerald. Fearing their ally’s state, they tried to break into the room through the large iron bars that blocked the way but inevitably could not-- until, that is, one of the Tritons unlocked the door with a quick swipe of a keycard.

Rock comes stumbling through the room and launches himself with a rolling charge at one of the newly allied Tritons, knocking it unconcious. Just then, Avyssos woke up from the fake death yelling “oh no, the waffles!” to the party’s confusion. At this exact same moment, as well, Ozolp comes rushing back into the room to warn Forza they have to escape, but Forza casts a silent image of Avyssos stealing the emerald and the Aboleth chases after it as the real Avyssos shapeshifted into Lia and stole the real emerald. After only a minute, Ozolp realized he had been duped and turned to see Lia still as an octopus, wrap her tentacles around Forza and Avyssos and swim at the speed of light with a haste spell out of the city.

The three of them rocketed out of the water and onto the beach of a small island containing a large, quite evil looking castle. Forza began walking back into the water and made it only waist-deep as Lia tried to grapple him. Failing to match Forza’s strength and determination, Lia was flung far off into the distance. Avyssos began inspecting the large emerald and realized that it served to focus psychic energy and enhance it; she realized too that the Aboleth had been using the gem to maintain it’s mind control aura on the Tritons of the city. After battling Ozopl’s mind over control of the gem, she released the Tritons from the Aboleth’s control.

Avyssos rode on the back of a phantom steed back down towards the undersea city, followed by Forza and Lia. They arrived to see the Tritons completely wrecking the place. Several of the pillars that held the city up over the volcanic vents broke into pieces and caused the city to shift sideways. Being under water though, the state of the city’s direction did not at all affect the ensuing battle.

Lia swam over to attack Ozopl, but the enraged Aboleth viciously beat her back into her Elf form. Lia realized with disgust that her skin was still slimy and transparent-- seeing this, Forza threw up in a corner. Lia shapeshifted back into an octopus and she and Avyssos continued to battle the creature. Seeing Forza, Ozopl cried out for help, admitting that it believed it had fallen in love with the Dragonborn and perhaps has never known love until now. At that moment, Davith came bursting into the room to save Forza, causing Forza to carefully choose his next course of action. Forza threw a vicious mockery at Ozopl, quietly saying that Davith must never know, and followed up with powerful dissonant whispers that killed the millennia-old, heartbroken aberration from the mysterious and oft-confusing Far Realm.

Avyssos stuffed the dead Aboleth into her bag of holding, claiming that such a creature would fetch a high price on the black market, and somehow secretly contacted her contact who deals with such affairs.. The freed Tritons offered their assistance in defeating Krathux as a way to pay their debt. They swim back up to the surface and find themselves at the island where Krathux’s castle sits.

Lia used a dose of her Keoghtom’s ointment to cure her disease, but found to her dismay that she still remained semi-translucent as if her skin were fogged glass that you could only just barely see through, though at least no longer slimy. Forza and the Queen decided to have the Tritons wait for the signal before coming to their assistance; Forza suggesting the ‘safeword’ be “Canada.” Gulthias asked the Queen to send him to the nearest city or town and promised he would be back as fast as he could, and then the group of heroes made their way towards the Lich’s castle.

[thegodthronechronicles]

The Thing That Was All

“I’ll begin in the Aboleth city of Neritesh where I remained as a guest of honour for a fortnight; though conquerors with a god complex and love for enslavement, the amphibious race is quite into the beauties of music and dance, and thus it was a pleasure to play for them. At the beginning of my stay-- I must admit-- I was a little uneasy over my situation with the heavy chains and constant barrage of psychic torture, but after I slayed the traitorous Zu’kthal, they allowed me to leave. You see, Zu’kthal did not like sharing the city, nor the enslaved Tritons, with the four other Aboleths and wished to kill them. He had me framed in the attempt, but due to my ‘weak mind’ as they called it, I easily gave way to their interrogation and they descended upon the traitor in a bloodbath. Since we were underwater, it seemed more of a blood cloud.

“From there I journeyed along the old Grirt Pass, nicknamed properly ‘The Hungry Passage’ as I soon found out the small mountains through which the road zigzagged were actually large teeth for an even larger creature. I played a song for the thing, but none of my instruments seemed to please it and I was forced to run. Whilst running, I came across another Darkling bard, if you would believe it: I did, and nearly died as it was a simple hallucinatory trick meant to lure me into one of the massive creature’s many throats.

“I journeyed southwards as I wished to avoid the Northlands-- I am not in good favour there, I admit. Something about failing at seducing the Snow Queen, though if my memories serve, I did quite well. The Grirt Pass became a regular cobblestone road that which I travelled and came upon a small town named Taazzus Kas. As I walked into the town, I noticed a large pest problem. Large pests being the key words as the town literally had giant rats running rampant. Being the kind soul that I am, I took out my flute and played a little magical tune that had charmed the disgusting things; from there I lead them to the nearby river, the name of which I did not catch, and drowned them. Upon returning to the town, I found an angry mob of furious Wererats who were weeping for their lost children who I had made the honest mistake of mass murdering. You could probably guess that I was run out of town.

“It was a long road full of sufferable inconveniences. A town of innocent zombies overruled by a cruel old hag; a town of Darklings where a man named Hatael Valemin tried to buy a body part or two-- after insisting many times that I wanted all my original body parts, he left me alone and the town became my favourite place to revisit-- I had even stumbled across the travelling Circus of Values where I bought a color-shifting cloak; and a ruined city of cats. It was in that town, Ulthar, where I caught wind of a team of adventurers who were on their way to investigate a large explosion in the west. Not wanting to stay any longer, as the cats were starting to look hungrily in my direction, I left to join the adventurers.

“This brought me into the company of Yort, the Changeling Rogue; a Genasi Sorcerer named Dewdrop; A Werewolf named Alfred Ilin, and a Wilden named Grinneresh. We travelled west into an overgrown jungleland where we were immediately captured by some rather intelligent Ghouls. If anyone tells you that Ghouls and Ghasts are nothing more than carrion slurping, rot grub filled sons of gnolls who smell like a century old wheel of blue cheese, than tell’em I say different. These ghouls bound us hands and feet and led us to an ancient city filled with varying degrees of Ghoulish intelligence. Unluckily for us, we were tossed in a chamber with ten or so of the less intelligent kind that I described and Grinneresh had the very bark of her skin flayed. It was a gruesome sight, but I still tell the tale everytime I come across a Wilden.

“We escaped by using Yort’s shape-changing abilities, and tricked the guards into thinking he was one of them, but Alfred lost his life giving us time to leave the city. We were lost out there in the jungle, but determined to find out what had caused the initial explosion. We did find out, actually, as we stumbled across a hole where a meteorite had struck the ground. Upon further inspection, the meteorite seemed to have a door. I opened it of course, but did not check for traps. It was a good thing that I am a very flexible person as I bent out of the way just in time; sadly though for Yort, who was instantly disintegrated. The door broke open and I stepped inside.

“That was where we met. I pressed a big red button that sat smack-dab in the center of a large dashboard and an entity composed of kaleidoscope-coloured smoke shot forth from a prism prison and melded into me. We fused and I knew the entity instantly as Elotlin, for he was me and I was him. We were neither Elotlin, nor Melos Demortis, from that point on, but a combination of the two and something separate all at once. He had my memories, but I also had his.

“I remembered breaking the alliance that trapped my twin-brother, Tharizdun, in a prison outside of reality, and causing them to wage war against each other. I remembered Asmodean falling from holy grace at the hands of the Archdevil Vixalial. I remembered the Spawning Stone Primus set in Limbo backfiring. I remembered the entirety of the Outerplanar Wars and it’s conclusion when I, Elotlin was trapped within a shard within a meteorite and launched into the Far Realm-- or so they thought-- and I remembered floating across the Astral Sea and into the Ethereal Plane where I crashed into the Feywild just before it fused with Shadowfell, and I remembered when I, Melos Demortis found myself and the fusion that took place.

“Now I don’t remember how I got here, but there was clearly something involving Juiblex, the Demon Lord of oozes as I now seem to be fused with one the pieces that flew off when I smashed him. Oh, let’s get on with it, I have somewhere to be.”

The thing that was Melos Demortis, a simple Darkling Bard; the thing that was Elotlin, god of chaos and brother to the other god of chaos; the thing that had been an orb that splattered off when Juiblex was killed by Elotlin; the three things that were now one finished killing the entirety of the city and absorbed them into his body and his mind. The thing that has been several thousand people then activated the amulet and opened a portal back to the Astral Sea.

[thegodthronechronicles]

Session 20 - The Gulthias Tree

The 21st of Mirtul

After retrieving the scepter from Myrkrheim and fighting their way through an apocalyptic future to return home, our adventurers were split up. Lia, Forza and Acacia drove to the Elven island of Nimethemarin in search of Queen Selise Ravenire; there, they were given their next objective to journey into a ruined temple to save Davith Dundrag and a half-elf named Mara Moonwhisper.

They descended the stairs and turned into a long hallway; the thorny vines grew only thicker as they walked along. Eventually they came upon a door that was heavily sealed by the vines; Davith confirmed that he saw Mara be dragged through and was unable to save her. Acacia ordered her zombie thrall to eat the vines off the door as the group took a short rest. During their rest, Rock, the Dwayne taught his animated boulders some fighting stances and how to throw punches. After the zombie finished eating the vines, Forza slammed the door halfway open and they eventually broke into what appeared to be a study.

Several bookshelves lined the walls full of tomes: books on various topics that ranged from Drow history to botany dotted the shelves. Forza and Lia each took a book, Forza swapping one out with the captain’s log he took from the Githyanki vessel they used to cross the Astral Sea and Lia taking a book titled “Druidic Theories on the Cycle of Life and Death.” A large desk sat in the middle of the room with an iron-banded wooden door directly behind it. They opened the door slightly and Acacia ordered her zombie thrall to scout, but the zombie was immediately grasped and disposed of by quick-striking vines. They began searching for another passage and found a secret door activated by a displaced book on a nearby shelf. Someone tossed something into the passage and they heard a loud clamp as a spring-loaded trap went off; so Acacia decided to fly in to inspect the tunnel. She found a long line of bear traps that rounded a number of corners in the thin tunnel and ended in a dead end with a large lever on the wall. Unable to pull the lever, she set off a series of cantrips that caused the bear traps to active, allowing the rest of the party to come through safely. Forza pulled the lever eagerly and the stone wall slid aside to reveal a large open room full of skeletal black saplings that reached upwards to the glowing fungus-covered ceiling. Strangely, not a single vine was in sight. Almost immediately, they heard some voices talking.

Sneaking further in, they found a massive courtyard where ancient Drow architecture had been overtaken by the nature of the Underdark. The skeletal saplings grew everywhere, but across from the secret passage sat the original from which the saplings were grown from. The large tree seemed to seep evil into the atmosphere as it grew upwards from a throne. Around the trunk laid the withered bodies of the archaeological team, their essence being sucked out through the roots that grew around them. A crude face seemed to have been carved into the tree, but at the same time it looked naturally grown. Their eyes were drawn downwards to a young Drow who was kneeling before the tree, talking to it; Mara Moonwhisper sat in a corner, chained to the ground.

The Drow was dressed in black leather armor with the sigil of Krathux-- a raven’s skull with a flaming white eye-- on a band around his arm. He was asking the tree to join him in serving the Undying Lord, but seemingly to no effect. The tree responded that he couldn’t help anyone while trapped down here, not even his great grandson. While the Drow confronted his ancestor’s soul, Acacia snuck forward and violently caressed the back of his head with Inflict Wounds-- Forza’s scar tingled as it always did in the presence of the necromantic spell.

Hearing its master’s cry of distress, a large skeletal hound covered in thick purple flames leapt into the clearing and attacked Acacia. The rest of the party came out to help her; Lia struck at the Lich Hound while Forza stepped towards the tree. As Forza said “Hail and well met!”, Davith snuck over to Mara and began working on the chains. The tree responded to Forza, introducing itself as the once powerful vampire lord, Gulthias Khivrei. The tree asked if Forza was also here with an offer, and Forza asked him to aid them in their quest. Repeating what he told his grandson, Gulthias explained he could not help anyone whilst trapped in the tree, but would not interfere in the fight. Acacia knocked the Drow unconscious, leaving the party to face only the Hound.

However, they soon noticed a series of vines spreading into the clearing, followed by the lumbering shapes of various Elves turned into the Tendril Puppets of the Vine Lord that followed after. The vine-covered soldiers surrounded the clearing, coming through both the secret passage and the regular entrance, followed by a tall man composed entirely of thick vines and a crown of thorns atop his head. Rock, the Dwayne and his two animated boulders began defending them from the secret door as Gulthias caused large roots to shoot up from the ground and defend the main entrance. Both of Rock’s elementals were crushed under the weight of the pursuing vines, causing Rock to retreat over to Davith and Mara, where he helped Davith break the chains. The Vine Lord asked the party to help him kill Gulthias so he could be free from his prison.

The party finished off the Lich Hound and confronted Gulthias and the Vine Lord. On one side, Gulthias-- the ancient and dreaded vampire lord-- promised to aid them if they freed him from the tree; while on the other side, the Vine Lord-- the embodiment of nature’s fury-- promised to give them a gift if they destroyed the tree to free him. The Vine Lord explained that Gulthias had stolen its root and used it to command him, but when Gulthias was impaled with the wooden stake that grew into the tree, the root was solidified in the center, leaving the Vine Lord unable to retrieve it. The adventurers asked what would happen if they freed the Vine Lord, and he told them that he would return to aid nature against the plague that is mortal beings.

At this moment, Selise Ravenire entered the room and asked them to halt any decision as she wanted to test her theory. She explained that since the Drow, who she introduced as Laulkiir Nirar-- one of Krathux’s Dark Priests-- was the great grandson of Gulthias, and therefor bloodkin, he would be able to wield the scepter against Gulthias. Agreeing to her plan, the party decided to test the scepter and Selise magically ordered Laulkiir to activate it. They watched quite visibly as Laulkiir and Gulthias’ souls were transferred. With Laulkiir within the tree, the Vine Lord would still be trapped and Gulthias would help them to pay off his debt. Selise created a small portal to escape from the Vine Lord’s wrath and they reappeared in front of the Otimobile.

As they drove out of the Underdark, Selise explained the reason that Mara was the only one who could safely use the scepter against Krathux. Long ago, near the end of the War of the Warlock King, as it was dubbed, King Luthar Ravenire had sired a daughter before his demise and resurrection as a Lich, and that daughter was hidden away in the Moon Elf city of Yllmenora where she grew up to become none other than the half-elf druid, Mara Moonwhisper. Mara was reasonably shocked at the news of her parentage, as was everyone else, and Acacia offered to take her place. With much convincing, mostly on the part of Lia’s surprising persuasiveness, they decided to try the scepter on Acacia and Mara. Since Acacia was Feykind, and Mara had Elven lineage, the possibility that it would work was slim but present. Miraculously, it worked. Acacia’s soul left her body, but instead of going to Mara, it flickered onto the Astral Sea where Brunar’s lifeless body passed by; pouring all of her energy into the scepter, she travelled back to the plane of Midgard and entered Mara’s body as Mara switched into Acacia’s. Acacia explained that she would gladly give her life to defeat Krathux in service to the Queen.

They drove back up to the surface and told the archaeologists about the danger in the ruins before driving off to an Inn by the name of ‘The Pathetic Lily’. There, Forza fell instantly asleep for a long rest after walking past a sign signalling 50 silver pieces and tossing the barkeeper over twice the amount, as Lia studied her new book in a corner. Acacia, Mara, Gulthias, and Selise were sitting at a table discussing the next order of business: travelling to Myrkrheim to defeat Krathux once and for all.

Outside of the inn, a High Elf by the name of Avyssos Rotfell snuck over to the Otimobile to try and rob it. Finding many difficulties, she dispelled all magic from the vehicle, forcing Almeria Oti into the afterlife. Still finding difficulty, however, she walked into the inn where she immediately caught sight of the Queen. Strolling over, she asked Selise for a game of cards. Selise won, and when they doubled the wager she won again. Floating some coins over to the counter and a bottle of vintage wine back, she asked Avyssos if she would like to be richer than she could ever dream of.

They all left the inn where Selise opened up a portal directly to Myrkrheim. They began filing through, but Forza noticed the Otimobile had not moved an inch; when he knocked called out and knocked on the door, only Rock, the Dwayne answered-- Rock wearing a bathrobe stolen from Forza’s costume collection. Forza decided to try something else: he dropped his wallet and walked out of view, Avyssos took the wallet, but seeing it gone Forza decided Oti had taken it and was still present. They finished walking through the portal and as it winked out behind them they found themselves in a rather similar forest to that of Nimethemarin. The wind blew and pollen fell from the trees making them feel content and happy. Selise explained that some areas in Myrkrheim stayed the Feywild and others the Shadowfell, though most were an amalgamation of the two.

They walked to the edge of the island where they were confronted with an ocean of pitch black water. A boat came speeding around the corner and Forza shouted out to them to stop; when they did, however, a large tentacle grasped the boat and instantly destroyed it. At that moment the island began to shake and rise out of the water, revealing they were actually on the back of a giant turtle. It swam forward, trampling the tentacled creature, and continued moving towards shore. Forza began to play some bagpipes to try and get the turtle’s attention, but it began sinking back into the ocean; when Forza called out for it to stop, he accidentally insulted the creature’s entire family with every derogatory remark in the species’ history, and the turtle dove down, sending everyone flying into the depths of the ocean.

Avyssos cast a spell that allowed them to breathe underwater for a short time, and they found a glowing aquatic city. When Forza swam over to get a closer look, he was approached by an aboleth that immediately cast a charm on him and opened a telepathic communication. The aboleth seemed to know Krathux and had no love for the man, but during his diplomatic talk, Avyssos shot a rather undiplomatic arrow that caused the Aboleth to spit out a cloud of opaque mucous, wrap a tentacle around Forza, and swim off into a tiny cavern at the speed of light.

[thegodthronechronicles]

Session 19 - Bloodthirsty Thorns

The 21st of Mirtul

After retrieving a magical scepter from the realm of Myrkrheim, our adventurers found themselves thrown into an apocalyptic future; as they made it back to their original timestream, they were scattered. Anya Ion, Cyber-Davith and the rest of the Clockwork army were captured by Krathux; Garus and Seraphina had a deathly encounter with the Lord-Regent Grim Dundragon; and Lia, Forza and Acacia made their way North in search of Queen Selise Ravenire.

The trees of Nimethemarin were the tallest in the world. The golden hued trunks reached over three hundred and fifty feet high where large trefoil leaves blocked out the sun; the foliage was dotted with the famous golden apples that grew all year round. They approached the island at a quick pace, the sails of the boat still hadn’t caught any wind and it was up to the Otimobile to pull them along. Standing on the dock was none other than the Queen of Tilinyth, waiting patiently for the party. Oti pulled the ship directly onto the sandy beach just as Forza attempted to frontflip off the bow; the heavy landing caused Forza to stumble, but he succeeded in the flip anyhow. Acacia locked her zombie pirate thrall on the boat and joined the party.

Acacia unshrunk the glass cabinet containing the scepter to show the Queen, whose eyes beamed with delight. Forza asked where Sir Davith was, and the Queen told them that Davith had gone ahead into the excavation site in search of the only one who could use the scepter against Krathux: a young Half-Elf named Mara Moonwhisper. They then made their way across the island towards a large archaeological dig site; along the way they noticed that the closer they got to the site, the more sickly the trees looked. When someone pointed it out to the Queen, she told them that as soon as the doors to this ruined temple were opened a plague had taken the trees, which is why Mara Moonwhisper had been called in. But she had disappeared, and it was up to them to rescue her. Acacia asked her Patron Deity, the Raven Queen, for an omen dictating the outcome of going into the temple and she was given an omen of death and despair.

They drove down a long road that only seemed to stretch further and further into the dark depths beneath the island. As the sun’s light faded out of view behind them Oti turned on her high beams to light their way, but immediately a baboon had come into sight; it shaded it’s eyes, stunned from the sudden brightness and the next thing it knew it had become roadkill. No one in the Otimobile noticed, except for a large bump on an otherwise slightly bumpy road. Acacia had cast a spell that made Forza’s double base shine brilliantly and Oti drew a rough sketch to capture the moment.

A long while later, they came upon some overturned carriages that were full with ancient relics, jewelry and coins. Further inspection revealed everything to have been carved with a spider-esque design reminiscent of the Drow demon-goddess of Spiders, Lolth, but with the added symbolism of long fangs and blood draining. They noticed there were no bodies around the wreckage but instead pathways leading further down as if large objects were dragged. In the distance Forza noticed faint lights that seemed to hover and shine in a multitude of colours.

The lights were hovering orbs of Faerie Fire illuminating a doorway to a large castle that seemed to have been carved from the very stone of the Underdark. Forza knocked on the rotted wooden door with such strength that it flew off the one hinge it was attached to. Inside, they found more fanged-spider paraphernalia in the form of tattered flags, plates and goblets, and a mural depicting a fanged and rather pale Drow leading an army of spiders upwards from the Underdark in the dead of night. The Otimobile drove down the rest of the way to join the party and opened its doors directly onto a group of spiders passing by; Rock, the Dwayne stepped out to join the adventures as they delved deeper into the dungeon.

In the second room they found a sickly Duergar, a Gray Dwarf, laying against a wall with quite visible grievous wounds along his abdomen. At the sight of the party, he gathered his strength to warn them about the dangers further on before dying from blood loss. Wanting more information, however, Acacia brought him back from death before his spirit had wandered too far away. The Duergar introduced himself as Dellid and explained how his scavenging party came across these ruins; they found signs of battle but curiously no bodies and began to inspect further when vines attacked from the hole. Forza asked if a human male by the name of Davith came through here and Dellid confirmed the stupid human jumped into the hole. At this point, Acacia and Lia asked Dellid to show them this hole and he reluctantly led them further on.

They came upon an antechamber that had large thorny vines covering every inch of the floor, walls and ceiling; the vines even grew around and through several bodies that Dellid identified as his friends. The vines grew through a doorway that looked to lead into a throne room. But before they could progress any further, the vine-covered Duergar leapt to life and attacked.

Lia summoned a flame blade and Forza shouted for her to fuck them up, which she began to do. Forza also jumped in to attack with his double bass which was still glowing, though faintly now. Rock, the Dwayne pummeled one of the creatures to death and Acacia animated the corpse and commanded it to attack the others. Acacia’s thrall used the large thorn that grew from its palm to smash and pierce the brains of another one just as Lia’s flame blade incinerated another to ashes. After the battle, they stepped into the throne room and gazed down into a large pit; even with darkvision, no end seemed to be in sight.

Forza decided to play music in order to test how far down the hole went by the number of echoes, but Rock leapt in with little thought; not wanting Rock to be alone, Forza swan dived after and commanded the rope of climbing to draw a path behind him-- the whiplash from the rope suddenly stopping him from falling caused Forza to dislocate his shoulder, but he easily popped it back into place. The others followed after except for Dellid, so Acacia commanded her thrall to push the duergar and jump after. Dellid landed on his face and barely had time to catch a breath as Forza lifted him up and interrogated him on what he knew of the place.

‘The place’ being a large series of caverns of carved stonework with glowing fungus and thorny vines covering the walls while damp soil and saplings grew from the ground. Upset with his inability to answer, Forza lightly tossed him aside but accidentally threw him with so much force he smashed through an iron-banded wooden door and died instantly. Acacia’s undead thrall began to munch on Dellid’s splinter-filled face.

They moved along through a different door, leaving the dead Duergar behind, and found themselves in a laboratory. Glowing fungus and moss fed light to a number of saplings and various underdark flora, while thick vines grew up and around the walls. As the party looked over a table covered in alchemy supplies, Rock took a chunk of glowing fungus and popped it into his mouth at Forza’s dismay; it was at that moment too that several lumbering masses of vines attacked.

Rock, the Dwayne saw a large rock in the corner and put his hand on it, chanting lowly in a foreign tongue as Lia summoned her flame blade right over Acacia-- searing one of her wings. One of the Vine blights used the momentary distraction to punch Lia in the face, knocking her backwards into a pile of slithering vines. Forza smashed his double bass around, but the vines grew up around his legs and pulled him prone. The vines began to reach out to Acacia, but she flew up and clung to the ceiling, watching as they pulled Rock away from the rock; though Rock finished his chant and the rock sprung to life. They began smashing the vines, but were not strong enough and soon everyone in the room except for Acacia was stuck.

Acacia moved to help them, but turned to see a Drow on the ceiling beside her. It licked the blood off it’s lips, showing large fangs, and said that though the human it just tasted was good, it had never tried Faerie before. Acacia moved to run away but the vampire chomped down, catching her. She watched as her friends were pulled along into the next room, unable to help; Forza shouted some bardic inspiration from the next room and the room’s beyond that, his voice slowly fading from the distance.

Lia eventually broke free and ran to help Forza. She brought down her flame blade hoping to cut the vines off of him, but hit him instead, knocking him unconscious and into the throes of death. Rock, the Dwayne animated another rock and the three earth elementals battled their plant counterparts as they were dragged from room to room. Acacia fought off the Drow vampire by launching an endless volley of Guiding Bolts into its face. It crawled along the ceiling to a wall and launched itself for one last strike at Acacia before retreating from the room after the vines. Acacia followed in pursuit and cast one last Guiding Bolt that felled the undead creature. She hurried after the others and found Lia healing Forza from a distance. Suddenly, Davith burst into the room, rugged and weary with torn armor and a bite mark on his neck. He rushed over to Forza and cut the vines off him in one quick motion.

Davith told them he located Mara Moonwhisper, but she had been captured further along. He led them through a ritual room with a secret door to a library where Acacia picked up a scroll for Melf’s Acid Arrow. They found a staircase leading down and began their descent.

[thegodthronechronicles]

Session 18 Part 2 - Intermission

Nearing the end of the War of the Warlock King,

Anya Ion heard someone shout out the word “run”, so she ran; she blasted the hulking gearforged creature that was once a man named Davith Dundrag and ripped the red soul gem from the broken glass casing and ran further into the portal that suddenly opened up as a rip in the fabric of reality. She ran past the rest of the clockwork gearforged army and kept running until she ended up in a field of tall grass. The plains stretched on forever in every direction and she could see in the distance a gathering of tents and flags. She began to walk towards them but suddenly found herself surrounded by the clockwork army. The cybernetic Davith fell down as his energy source was no longer present and the rest of the soldiers aimed their guns at Anya.

Before they could attack, the sound of thundering hooves broke the silence as thousands of horsemen descended upon them. The flags of House Ravenire, Tovalar, Highcrest, Sunaryn and Buckman were most noticeable, but the flags of many lesser houses also caught the air. The horsemen surrounded Anya and the clockwork soldiers, reigning them in with long spears and naginatas. A withered looking Luthar Ravenire road forward with the beautiful Vixalial sitting behind him. Vixalial stepped down and casually walked towards Anya as if she were not a strange sight in the slightest. Luthar asked what they were, and Vixalial responded “a gift from the future for your holiness, my dear Krathux.” Luthar smiled devilishly as he removed his eyepatch to reveal a flaming white eye.

Th 20th of Mirtul, currently,

Forza, Lia, and Acacia sat back as Oti drove them northwards at a speed of hundred miles per hour, never once slowing for twists, turns, and people jumping out of the way. They made incredible progress travelling several weeks worth in only a day, and soon found themselves at a grande wall outlining the border of the Camcosian Empire. The wall stood ten metres and cut directly through the Tāne forest; as they passed through to the other side, not a single tree was in sight, but instead perfectly symmetrical farms stretching towards a city with massive walls about three quarters the size of the outer wall. As they drove through, every farmer on every farm stopped working to blankly or angrily stare at the Otimobile.

They passed through into what was know as the Tunao Disrict, a haven for merchants of every type. If you want to sell, you can sell it here-- unless it was an object relating to magic, in which case it would be completely outlawed and you would find yourself arrested. The party realized this after they got further into the city-- after several gnomes tried to buy the Otimobile or offered to build a better one-- they came across some people whose style of dress was nearly identical to some of those who came after Brunar many weeks back, except instead of a sigil of ‘a sword cleaving darkness’ or ‘a question mark wrapped around a dagger’, these people wore that of ‘a tower shining brilliant light’. They were the Sentinels, members of Lao’s Fist dedicated to staying within Camcosia’s borders to fight enemies of Lao Mei; enemies being those who practiced magic. The group watched from the safety of the Otimobile as the Sentinels beat an old man and carried him off on the suspicion of magic use.

After the sentinels passed out of view, they stepped out of the Otimobile to explore the vast marketplace. They made their way towards the docks and found a collection of every kind of sea-faring ship imaginable. Acacia checked again to see the location of the Queen’s magic focus and found her towards a distant island. A nearby merchant noted Acacia’s use of magic and warned them that they may not want to flaunt those abilities around these parts since most people aren’t friendly to magic users; he made sure to remark several times that he was okay with it since he was a liberal.

As the party watched several ships unloading, they came up with a plan to steal a ship: they were going to sneak onboard after the cargo was taken off and the employees gone to the taverns and take off towards the island. The plan did not go according to how they hoped.

They made their way to a small, thin cargo ship and watched a group of people in colourful clothing unload crates full of strange yellow fruit. In the distance they could see another ship unloading a number of goliaths chained together in a line and marched up to a stand where richly dressed humans began placing offers. As the ship was finished being unloaded, Lia and Oti drove out onto the water with help of a water-walking spell, where Oti hooked chains up from the Otimobile to the boat. As Forza and Acacia walked up the plank, someone in the crowd noticed them and called out for some guards. In a panic, Forza unleashed a stinking cloud that covered a large part of the docks. Acacia cast a card from the deck of illusions and summoned the image of a bugbear; she commanded the illusion to walk through the stinking cloud and cause havoc, making sure it also told everyone it saw that it’s name was Klarg. They kicked off the boat in the chaos, signalling for Oti to pull it as there seemed to be a lack of wind, and they sailed off while Oti shot magical fireworks and lasers into the sky.

It wasn’t long before three pirates came up from below deck and attacked Forza and Acacia; Lia and Rock, the Dwayne sat in the Otimobile completely unaware as their friends fought for their lives on the ship.

One of the swashbuckling pirates started to climb up the ropes as Acacia flew out of reach while the other two danced blades with Forza. They leapt and rolled about, lunging and flourishing with their rapiers until Acacia threw down another card from her deck of illusions, creating the image of an Erinyes devil. The pirates grew frightened, allowing Forza enough time to cast a thunder wave which knocked one of the pirates completely off of the speeding ship. Acacia flew over to the pirates who was climbing up after her and cast an inflict wounds with such severity that he died instantly and crashed to the deck-- Forza’s scar tingled at the use of the necromantic spell. The last pirate ran below, locking the door behind him.

After raising the dead pirate, Acacia picked the locked door by diving through the keyhole, and convinced the pirate to go back on deck where he was killed and eaten by his zombified friend. With the battle done and the ship theirs, they took a long rest as the Otimobile pulled the boat across the ocean’s waters to the Elven island of Nimethemarin.

Garus and Seraphina had arrived in the capital city of Tietelon only to find out that their friends had already left. They were allowed entrance into the palace’s courtyard as they waited for a meeting to finish. All of the nobles in the city had been suddenly gathered at the request of Grim Dundragon. Not wanting to wait any longer, they snuck through the doors and stood in the back room where they watched Grim tell a tale about how he found the Queen Selise Ravenire’s body in the nearby Kingswood; he talked about how she had been murdered by her very own servant, Acacia Oni, who was accompanied by a wood elf and a dragonborn, and showed her tattered clothing and jewelry as proof. Grim told the nobles not to fear, however as the Dundragon family would take care of Selise’s orphaned children and hold the throne until they came of age.

After the nobles left, the Lord-- and now Regent-- Malark Dundragon approached Garus and Seraphina. He told them that though he didn’t recognize either, he knew they were asking about Acacia, Lia, and Forza and therefor a friend of the Queen. Malark told them that the Queen was alive, for she had never gone on a hunting trip and instead left to find a half-elf named Mara Moonwhisper. A sudden knife in the back prevented him from telling more, and Grim Dundragon emerged from the darkness.

Finishing off his father, Grim turned a bloody blade towards Seraphina. “You failed me.” he told her, and then stabbed Garus repeatedly in the chest. As Garus fell backwards, he turned back to Seraphina and told her he would give her one last chance to retrieve the sceptre, as it must not fall into the Queen’s hands. Garus used the last of his strength to lunge forward with his greatsword and impaled Grim through the chest, but as the body hit the floor it changed to the grey form of a doppelganger.

A second Grim Dundragon stepped out of the darkness and slit Garus’ throat, saying he won’t be so easy to kill; a third stepped forward and told Seraphina the plan.

[thegodthronechronicles]

Session 18 Part 1 - Intermission

The 19th/20th of Mirtul

Our adventurers successfully retrieved a magical sceptre from the perilous fusion realm of Myrkrheim, but on their way home they were sent hurtling 20 years into the future. There, they discovered the fate of the world if Krathux, the Undying succeeded in his plan. After saving Acacia from the Brothers Three and their city of gears, they were forced to fight an army of clockwork soldiers powered by strange gems that trapped the souls of the fallen; including none other than future Davith Dundrag. During the battle, a tear in the fabric of space and time ripped open, luckily bringing the party back to their original time stream, a few days ahead.

They drove into Tilinyth’s border town of Santijo, where they stopped for supplies. As the party-- all but Seraphina, who was taking a nap-- left the Otimobile they realized that Oti had attached a chain to the albino black bear’s corpse and had been dragging it along since they left the future. They pulled the bear off the chain and set to work mending the armor so it would fit Lia in her bear form. They sold a number of things that had been collected in their adventures at the only store in the town; a store so big it sold close to most things an adventurer would need. They began climbing back into the Otimobile to leave, making room as Oti gently lifted the sleeping Seraphina out of the vehicle and roughly dropped her to the ground, and left the town. Garus walked out of the store with a handful of ostrich eggs to see Oti speeding away in a trail of dust; he walked over to Seraphina and kicked her awake and the two of them slowly made their way towards the capital.

Everybody stopped and stared as Oti drove full speed down the cobblestone road that connected the Northwest and Southeast parts of the continent of Ebios. A trip that previously took several days took a single, and on the 19th day of Mirtul they entered the capital city of the Tilinyth Kingdom: Tietelon. The last time they had been here, both a few days and a few weeks earlier, they fought off an invasion of the undead lead by Eleanor Marsh: one of Krathux’s dark priests and Almeria Oti was killed and raised again as a poltergeist. They drove straight towards the palace, built of elven design out of glass and marble for Aenrilith Miawaren, Lewys I Ravenire’s dear friend who died during the founding of Tilinyth hundreds of years ago. At the gates of palace, however, they found that the Queen was on a hunting trip and hadn’t been back in a couple days; remembering what the future elves said about Queen Selise Ravenire’s disappearance, they feared the worst and set out for the Kingswood where royalty often hunts. On their way out, they noticed a man dressed in black with a scowl on his face watching them from a distance in the palace’s courtyard.

The Kingswood was an old forest that was once connected to the Tāne forest in northern Ebios, but this was before the dragons laid siege and conquered and burned the land; now it was owned by the royal Ravenire family. The forest had been given to Lewys Ravenire by the original human inhabitants of Tilinyth after he and Aenrilith freed them from the dragon Wiinkoldu’s reign. The road they drove on wasn’t as grand as the main highway across Ebios, being built simply of pressed dirt and sparse cobblestone.

Oti pulled to a sudden stop as they drove around a corner and came upon an overturned carriage that held a tattered flag of the Ravenire family. Inspecting the carriage, Lia, Forza, and Acacia found two pairs of faint footprints that lead off into the forest. Following them, they came upon an old cabin in the woods made of logs and stone. Acacia flew up through a window and found several empty rooms, each with a dresser and a cot, and one large room that held a large bed and contained chests of clothing and jewelry. Inspecting it, Acacia realized the jewelery definitely belonged to the Queen. She flew back down to tell Lia and Forza, but found Forza had already started knocking on the front door.

An old lady answered after the second knock. She invited the three of them to come in for some hot soup and cup of tea, calling them various other stereotypically spoken by an elderly grandmother who everyone loves dearly. She told them that a noble woman and her guard had stopped in and rented a room, but that they had gone out for a walk. Acacia and Lia decided to search the woods, while Forza stayed behind and as given a nice bowl of carrot soup.

Searching the woods, Lia and Acacia came upon a well; as Acacia flew down into it, she realized there was a large body floating. She tied the rope and bucket around the body and pulled it up to reveal a guard who Acacia recognized as having been suspended several times for petty thievery; as they inspected the several day old corpse that had been sitting in stagnant water, it broke in half and fell back into the well with a two large splooshes. They continue searching the woods and found another body closeby to the strange cabin where Forza was currently sitting on a quite comfortable sofa waiting for his carrot soup to cool. As Forza sniffed the soup and asked what the strange smell was, Acacia and Lia searched the second body and found it belonged to one of the Queen’s handmaidens who had been known to steal clothes and jewelry from the Queen’s room when she left the palace. As the kind old lady told Forza the only ingredient in the soup was carrots because the rabbits had eaten everything else, Acacia searched for the Queen’s magical focus and found it’s faint presence far to the Northeast. Acacia and Lia headed back to the cabin and arrived just in time to see Forza start to take a spoonful of the strange smelling carrot only soup.

Acacia cast a zone of truth around the cabin and demanded to know what the kind old lady knew, but realized she had no idea who the handmaiden and guard were. Forza asked again what was in the soup and the kind old lady revealed there was some sleeping powder. The old lady, who was seemingly so kind, then threw powder into the air and blew it at the party, causing Forza to fall asleep instantly, as she transformed into a tall and hideous night hag.

Forza woke up on an old bed with a yellow stained mattress. He looked around and found nothing but a single door on a barren wall; before walking over to the door, however, he decided to look under the bed and found several severed hands crawling around. He ran to the door and opened quickly, barely noticing the rot grubs covering the handle. As he entered through the door he found himself crawling through the dirt and emerging out of a grave in a graveyard full of skeletons walking in the distance. He followed a torchlit path towards an old tomb and as he approached, the stone door swung open with a loud creak. He walked down the descending stairs into a darkness that lead him into a strange hallway with four wooden doors and carpet. The hallway also had electrical lights hanging from the ceiling that seemed to operate from the same technology Anya Ion had been made from. Opening the doors, Forza found a dead forest with lumbering shapes moving around, an arctic wasteland, a lake of fire with a wooden plank bridge that lead across to a large temple, and a room full of thick smoke; hailing from the northern continent of Qodas, Forza chose the arctic wasteland. He walked through and the door was gone behind him, a shape came lumbering towards him at full speed with its three legs, three arms , three red eyes, and a salivating mouth that split down the centre of the creatures fiendish body. The Maw Demon leapt at Forza, opening its mouth wide and Forza saw a silver key stuck in its throat. Just as it’s mouth closed around him, Forza woke up with a jump.

Acacia called out for Oti, who came crashing through the front door, and together they pulled an unconscious Forza into the Otimobile. As they drove quickly behind, leaving the night hag standing in her broken doorway laughing maniacally, Acacia cast some antimagic magic that forced Forza out of the living nightmare. They drove over to the dead handmaiden where Acacia cast speak with dead; the handmaiden revealed that her and the guard stole them items after the queen had left and planned to sell them to live off the fortune, but they were murdered by a man they never saw coming. They left the handmaiden’s corpse and drove through the forest and came barreling out onto the road where they found three horseman waiting patiently.

One of them, they recognized as the creepy man who watched them from the courtyard earlier: Grim Dundragon, the eldest son of lord Malark Dundragon. Grim approached the group, remarking the absence of Seraphina and how she must have failed, and announced that if they did not give him the scepter then he would be forced to kill them as traitors to the throne. Not taking his bullshit, however, the party forced him prone and left him there shouting about the Lord of Murder. The two guards he was with looked back and forth between their prone and mad-sounding master and the strange party of adventurers who stepped into the futuristic vehicle and drove northwards at a speed of one hundred miles per hour.

[thegodthronechronicles]

Session 17 - The Clockwork Army

20 Years In The Future…

After retrieving an artifact from the perilous fusion realm of Myrkrheim, our adventurers ended up 20 years into the future after a psychic storm rendered Brunar brain dead and sent them crashing through a portal to an apocalyptic version of the material realm of Midgard where an evil god named Tharizdun rules supreme. Before finding a way back home, they had to first find Acacia who was captured in a city of gears.

They sped out of the city of gears as fast as Oti could drive, but the cacophony of sirens that blared behind them was still echoing in their ears. They crashed through the gates just before they came to a close and barrelled down the desert road; but as they could see, the city wasn’t done with them yet. Two mechanical vehicles shot out of the city’s metal walls and quickly caught up, on each of them sat mechanical beings with empty eyes and glowing red gems encrusted with a hard glass casing sat in the centers of their chests. Forza shot out a heat metal spell at one of the vehicles, causing a biological being to burst into flames and fall off into the sand. Unluckily for Forza, the rest of the enemies were made from metal and wouldn’t be felled from simple heat.

The two wheeled mechanical vehicles shot out large chains that wrapped around Oti’s wheels and pulled her to an instant stop, causing Anya to fly off the roof. Three metal riders got off of the two vehicles which shapeshifted into mechanical hounds; riders and hounds alike all seemed to have a clockwork style to their mechanisms. They launched into battle.

Anya fired successive shots from her rifle as Garus leapt about with his sword. While Forza and Seraphina took on two of the clockwork huntsman, the third shot a net out of its arm at Lia and started pulling her towards it as she chewed her way out. Free, Lia summoned lightning from the firestorm hovering over the city and directed it towards the two clockwork hounds. Garus slid over to one of the hounds, dodging it’s long metallic tongue, and lifted it upwards to stab it’s gem; his sword pierced through the glass casing, leaving the gem fully exposed.

Suddenly the sky cracked and erupted with thunder as the firestorm jumped several kilometres towards them; an aura of abyssal corruption emanated from the mingled portals that covered the sky and began to affect the adventurers. Though most were able to fight it off, Garus left to watch his friends fight as he was filled with a mischievous sense and Forza gained an insatiable bloodlust that made him hack a clockwork huntsman to pieces; Oti decided she should be the ruler of the Nine Hells and Rock, the Dwayne was possessed by a demonic entity.

Rock, in his possession, summoned a flaming whip which he used to kill a clockwork hound before attacking Oti. Anya managed to steal one of the strange soul gems from a huntsman, effectively shutting him down. The second hound tripped Lia and leapt on top of her, but as it bit down with its metal jaws the bloodthirsty Forza hacked it to pieces, causing it to explode and render Lia unconscious. All while this was going on, Seraphina fought the same clockwork huntsman with constant blasts of pure lightning while it fought back with fists of steel; finally, Seraphina slaughtered the huntsman with a powerful blast and as it exploded, one of its many gears flew off and hit Anya in the head, causing her too to fall unconscious.

Luckily, Acacia was there to mass heal the adventures; but unluckily, as they fought a large army of clockwork soldiers surrounded them. An old man with a long beard that brushed the ground stepped off of a vehicle that had a large cage being towed behind it. The man introduced himself as Balthazar Ilidin, twin brother to Elkar who ran the coliseum and Kilimar who ran the fairy food-processing factory, and was here to arrest the party for his brothers’ murders. Balthazar also demanded the return of Acacia so she could be turned into food as is proper for her kind; Balthazar walked over to the large cage and let out an armored albino black bear which he introduced as his ‘fairy-sniffing bear’. As the bear began sniffing around, Acacia snuck over to Lia and melded into the Sending Stone Lia stole off of Jeflen’s corpse; as the bear sniffed closer and closer to Lia, Forza grew anxious for a fight and unleashed a stinking cloud.

A massive green cloud filled the area with a stench so bad that everyone began throwing up. The bear ran in circles and violently threw up  all over the place as Seraphina directed hers into her ogre skull. Everyone was affected pretty badly-- except for Garus who held his breath the entire time, beating the previous world record-- but Balthazar was affected the worst as he suffered a heart attack and died from the stench, but not before shouting one last word: “Davith.”

A large clockwork soldier, twice as large as all the others, stepped forward. Forza threw his arms wide open for a hug but was greeted with a javelin in the chest. The clockwork Davith Dundrag reached for another javelin, but the sky split again with a thunderous crack and fire rained down all around them. Simultaneously, a thin line appeared behind Davith and quickly grew outwards to engulf half the army; they appeared to still be in their locations, but as a fuzzy reflection with a strange depth to it.

Someone yelled to run and Anya ran straight into the portal, punching a hole into Davith’s chest and stealing his soul gem as she continued running through the crack in reality. Oti leapt into motion as the rest of the party unchained her from the ground. Oti drove away from the crack before making a fast u-turn and drove directly in after Anya; using the chains still attached, Oti pulled everyone in after her. They drove past the clockwork army and kept driving until they pulled out into the exact same place they left, but a healthier version where tall grass covered the plains instead of sand. As the crack in reality closed behind them, they realized that neither Anya nor the clockwork army was anywhere to be found.

Forza looked around for any sign of civilization and found the sign they wrote warning people away from the City of Ooze. As Forza turned back to the others, he saw Rock, the Dwayne ready to smite them all, so he ran as quickly as he could and hugged Rock. With the power of love, Rock expelled the Balor demon that possessed him and the party watched it’s spirit fly off into the distance.

They decided to head towards the kingdom of Tilinyth and see how far back they traveled.

[thegodthronechronicles]

A History of Magical Artifacts, The Silver Axe

The axe was an ancient thing, and powerful. It was designed for one simple thing only: to kill. Druac of a house long forgotten forged the axe with the heat of his anger, poured his very soul and vengeance into the fine silver blade, and cooled it to perfection with the blood of his last surviving child. You see, Druac had lost his family when Solmon, King of the Polodoq took control of the land-- the present day Krouhl Prairies-- from the Rohamani in the Dawning Years of Human civilization. King Solmon began his invasion in a small hamlet whose name was lost to the passing of millennia; Druac and his family resisted and as a result all but him and his newborn babe were lined up and killed. In the early era of Polodoq civilization, the nature of their execution consisted of the subject being mounted alive upon a stake and left until the next Planesmeeting. As you can see, Druac would have had ample reason to hate King Solmon.

When rumor of revolution about a decade later came to Solmon’s ears, he called for a gathering of half the conquered villagers to his castle for a lesson. Reports say Druac admitted to Solmon that it was him who lead the revolution and begged mercy for the villagers, but as many who study Human history know, every one of them was impaled upon a spike. There was one survivor, however, as I came to realize: Druac. He was a blacksmith for the hamlet and forged a silver axe with the intention to kill King Solmon; and he did, but not in the way most would think.

As he begged mercy for his villagers, he offered the king a magical axe. When the king questioned why the axe was in two pieces, Druac explained that it bonded to whoever put the two pieces together and that it could kill any creature that draws breath. What he didn’t explain was that the axe was crafted with special instructions by a certain book: The Book of Vile Darkness. The axe was cursed. King Solmon put the two pieces together and then ordered the execution of Druac and the villagers. Druac did not die, however, as the axe’s nature transferred Solmon’s life force into Druac. As Solmon died during the Siege of Silence-- when Rohamani warlord Adalla Fen’s army snuck into the castle and killed everyone in their slumber-- Druac sprung back to life, pulled himself off the stake and went in search of the axe.

Druac never found it as it had been taken by Adalla Fen when he killed Solmon; Adalla found the axe in two parts and put the pieces together. What historians gathered from the revival of Rohamani culture after the fall of Polodoq, was that they had a custom in which the ruler only ruled until they were struck down by their successor. What I know now is that each successor would take the silver axe as a sign of their strength and be doomed to die. This cycle lasted until the Dragon Civil War resulted in the Draconic rule of Altanis where the Polodoqs were eventually wiped out and the Rohamani betrayed the rest of humanity and aided the Dragons in  their takeover. The silver axe was lost in a treasure horde collected by the ancient red dragon Viinrulkarin.

Generations later, a dwarven army under the leadership of Muirkyll Dragonbane lay siege against Viinrulkarin’s lair and killed the fierce dragon. Muirkyll found the axe and put the pieces together; he died a week later. Hjalnyl Bearheart took the axe and carved a kingdom out of Viinrulkarin’s lair; the kingdom becoming the modern day Mogh Dumedum in the heart of the Kuneteyas mountain range. Hjalnyl was killed by assassins shortly after and the axe sold along a black market where it made it’s way deep into the Underdark with famed adventurer Durgle Deepdelver where the axe became yet again lost after Durgle’s party met the Mindflayers.

In the depths of the Underdark, the axe sat for hundreds of years until a drow by the name of Miz’za Icharyd unfortunately stumbled across it. Miz’za was killed by the Deep Gnome Schnilshuck Opaleyes; who was killed by a Beholder named Iokoksh; who fell to a duergar raiding party led by Bromdrom Ironclast; who was killed by Mog the Kobald, who brought the axe out of the underdark to a mountain range called the Spine of Dunatis where he was killed by a human named Whittaker Crestwood; who was captured and killed by the Yuan’ti snake people of the Jungles of Yig in southwestern Ebios. Here, the axe remained for several hundred years until a wood elf adventurer named Qinnoren Liadon picked it up.

Qinnoren Liadon brought the silver axe on a journey to Arvander, or Arborea as many know it. It was here that Qinnoren met his doomed end when a raiding party from the Nine Hells attacked. The axe was brought back to the Nine Hells to be gifted to Valakis, brother of the demoness Vixalial and Archduke of Avernus, the First Layer of Hell; I believe this is what lead to Zariel’s rule as Valakis had been killed at the height of his power, when he was on the verge of gaining control over the third layer, Minauros. The axe was brought into Gehenna by a group of yugoloths, who were then overrun and killed by a pack of barghests.

There are many names that were taken by the axe: Cheda, Falimor, Dren, Balune, Krahj, Darmin, Vazenus, Taym, Maquilames, Elkela, Bar, Re’Or, Billowen, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I could fill pages with only the names of those unfortunate souls, but alas there is not much time. So I will tell you the end of what I know.

The axe came to a small town in the Shadowfell by the name of Ulthar. A blacksmith named Karius Von Dar found it on the body of a zombie that attacked the town. As you could guess by now, he put the two pieces together. Now, Karius was not a regular blacksmith, he worked specifically with magical items; the axe intrigued him and he began to study the object, keeping it secret and safe within his locked chest. He did not have long to study it as the Shadowfell and Feywild fused into one realm called Myrkrheim, as a result all of the cats in the town became sentient and violent.

Years later, a party of adventurers came to what was left of the town of Ulthar in search of an artifact that laid within the fiendish Raxivort’s treasure vault on the nearby island. Two of the adventurers, a goliath named Brunar and a faerie named Acacia Oni found the axe in two pieces right where Karius left it in his shop. It was Brunar who put the pieces together and bonded the axe; he did not last much longer as the psychic wind that traverses the Astral Sea rendered the poor man brain dead. Brunar floated in the Astral Sea for quite a while before a morkoth found him and added him to its collection. The morkoth was killed by a Githyanki raiding party lead by a woman named Drahneya; she found Brunar’s body and determined he had passed away only moments before. Drahneya also found the axe and put the pieces together, which lead to her death when the raiding party came to Crextind Academy, the most marvelous school of science and magic on the material plane of Midgard-- if I might say so myself. Several of the professors found the axe and-- sensing its magical energy-- gave it to me to study. I made the mistake of putting the axe together; a simple act of screwing the axe-head onto the handle until you hear a click that I presume enacts the bonding process, as it was then I could feel myself become bonded and sense every soul who had also become bonded since the axe’s initial creation.

I do not know how long exactly I have, but I fear I will die soon and that my death will only serve to revitalize the man who created the axe, Druac, as all others have.

-- From the final pages of the journal belonging to renowned magical artifact historian, Yhendorn Zyllamin, who was murdered in his sleep. The whereabouts of the silver axe are unknown.

[thegodthronechronicles]

Session 16 - In The City Of Gears

20 Years in the Future…

It was a long ride south. The tall grass plains of Ebio’s Riverlands had become nothing but dried earth and desert as far as the eyes could see. A faded path was all that was left of the grand road that once connected the South, East and North areas of the continent. The heavy amount of sand made it hard for Oti to travel too quickly, but they inched along as fast as they could with no sight of civilization or Acacia Oni.

Anya sat atop Oti’s vehicular shell, gazing out at the lack of life that redefined the area, while the others rested inside. Seraphina was fast asleep, but the others paid attention to Oti’s fine tales about her travels. She had driven across the ocean to Io’Esari where she stole the ancient elven tech that made up the bulk of the tank, and drove too to the human homeland of Altanis and then to the mysterious hidden continent of Orilis that was home to the tallest mountain in the world and the mysterious Firbolg race. After days of travel, they came to a sudden stop when large, magical chains burst from the sand and held Oti to the ground.

Anya barely held on as Oti drove at full speed against the magical chains, but it was to no avail as a figure stepped forward from invisibility. He pulled off the hood of his cloak, revealing himself as Jeflen Eliminatar and said “I finally found you, Oti the ‘Ghost Rider’. I’ve been looking for you for so long now. You once journeyed with a wood elf named Lia. Where is she? I’ve butchered all the rest of her kind looking for her.”

Oti responded by saying she had never heard of a Wood Elf before, but Anya admitted they did have a person name Lia travelling with them right at the moment. Jeflen laughed menacingly before calling his friends out to join them. Two Bearded Devils walked forward with glowing runes carved into their foreheads; Jeflen called for them to attack.

Forza and Garus leapt out of the dubbed Otimobile with weapons blazing. Garus charged towards Jeflen while Forza fought one of the Bearded Devils. The devil fought with both a glaive and the sharp barbs of its braided beard, hitting Forza several times but also taking significant damage itself. The other Bearded Devil forced its way into the Otimobile and stabbed Seraphina in her sleep before attacking Lia. Jeflen dodged around Garus’s attack and revealed that the hand he lost back in the city of ooze was replaced with a long tentacle as a cruel joke and punishment by Tharizdun. Lia dodged around the bearded devil as Seraphina hit it with a barrage of attacks and focused her energy into summoning a storm. A singular lightning bolt struck down from the sky, hitting the devil as it was distracted by Seraphina.

The devil that was fighting Forza and Anya tripped over its tail and flew headfirst into a sand dune, before becoming incapacitated. Lia called another bolt of lightning down where Jeflen and Garus stood; seeing the oncoming bolt, Garus jumped away and deflected the lightning with his sword directly into Jeflen’s face. Garus then charged over to the devil in the sand dune as Forza stabbed his great sword into it’s ass and put the infernal creature out of it’s misery. It exploded upon death. Seraphina knocked the devil she was fighting out of the Otimobile and killed it with scorching rays; realizing it too would explode, Garus decapitated the devil with enough force to send it’s exploding head a dozen feet into the air.

After searching Jeflen’s charred body, they found a ring of resistance, which was taken by Anya, and a sending stone; though the occupant of the stone’s twin was unknown, Lia pocketed it anyway.

They began travelling again. At one point in the distance they saw a city that seemed to be moving at the same speed as they were; they had no luck discovering what it was as it moved out of sight. Finally, they came to a large city with massive metal walls adorned with pulleys and gears. The gates swung wide open with loud grating metal sound and they drove through finding the city empty of life except for a chorus of joyful shouts near the epicentre.

Sneaking through, they found themselves at a large coliseum where the Sahuagin fish people and fire snake Salamanders stood in the stands cheering on a group of ragged humans and elves being pushed into the centre. Weapons, all shapes and sizes, were tossed into the ring and the slaves began viciously hacking at each other. As one died, their soul visibly left their body and floated upwards and into a large red gem being held above the coliseum by three chains. The gem glowed faintly as each soul became trapped within. Lia shapeshifted into a flying squirrel so as to not be recognized as an elf, and Forza walked over to a food vendor operated by a sahuagin and bought a salad filled with squirming larva. He picked out the worms, but enjoyed the seaweed.

As they began to move again through the city, a loud bang echoed in the air like a bubble bursting in the sky and tiny droplets of fire rained down. A feeling of vile corruption washed over them to no effect, but the people in the stands began slaughtering each other and then themselves. The party ran through the streets until they eventually came to sudden cliff overlooking a vast ocean of water where the kingdom of Tilinyth once stretched.

They soon found themselves surrounded by an angry mob of sahuagin and salamanders, but as the creatures went in for the kill a voice called for them to halt. A short man about 4’9” with a bald head and long white beard that brushed the ground walked through the crowd and waved the creatures away. He introduced himself as Elkar Ilidin, the one who ran the fights. Garus asked if he could fight their best warrior for their finest blade and Elkar agreed. Garus, Seraphina and Forza follow Elkar back to the coliseum where Garus moves into the fighting ring and the other two join Elkar in a glass room overlooking the pit.

A gate opened up, allowing a ragged man with a collar on his neck to enter the ring; as Garus asked where their best fighter was, Elkar pushed a button that sent a jolt of electricity through the collar, causing the man to double over and shapeshift into a were-tiger. The were-tiger leapt forward and tore into Garus with the savagery of tooth and claw, and Garus responded with the blinding speed of his slashing sword. The two fought back and forth across the ring, dealing just as much damage as they received; Forza and Seraphina watched from the VIP room as Garus dealt the killing blow.

Elkar asked Garus if he wanted to sign a contract, but all Garus wanted was the man’s finest sword. So, Elkar lead them towards his treasury at the top of a mechanized tower.

Meanwhile, Anya and Lia snuck through the city to try and find Acacia. They found a secret door underneath the coliseum; the door was locked but they broke through with brute force and entered into a sort of kitchen where a short man who appeared similar to Elkar sat at an automatic meat grinder. The man reached over to a shelf full of glass containers with faeries trapped inside and tossed a faerie into the grinder. Gears turned and the faerie remains were pushed along a complex conveyer belt that ended with a sealed container and a nutritional value sticker. They killed the man with a quick strike and he slumped into the grinder, causing a blockage; then they opened each and every glass container and let the faeries go free. They thanked Lia and Anya and flew off to pillage the city. All that remained as Acacia, and the three left to find their friends.

Elkar gave Garus a great sword named “Giant Slayer” and asked again if he would sign a contract of employment. As Garus, Forza and Seraphina began to leave, the man cackled and told them they wouldn’t be able to leave the city anyway. Garus turned back to ask what the man meant and saw an army of faeries destroy one of the chains that held the massive soul gem; the gem fell and swung into the room, killing Elkar and demolishing the tower.

Lia, Anya and Acacia watched as the tower crumbled and the gem smash against the ground. Thousands of souls flew out as the gem shattered to pieces. Forza, Seraphina, and Garus climbed out of the rubble, dazed and confused, but held steady enough to run towards their friends. Oti showed up and the group quickly climbed inside. As they barreled out of the city gates, Forza began to sing ‘On the Road Again’.

[thegodthronechronicles]

Session 15 - Stranded In The Future

20 Years In The Future…

After retrieving a sceptre from a mysterious tower in the realm of Myrkrheim, our adventurers travelled across the Astral Sea in search of a way home. They eventually found a portal to Midgard, but a sudden Psychic Wind rendered Brunar brain dead and caused the others to crash land at their desired location, but 20 years too late.

Seraphina offered Garus a well-kept ogre skull if he helped them find Acacia and the Tilinyth kingdom, but Garus declined the offer for the skull and agreed on the condition they help him kill the orcs he had been hunting. However, before they even had a chance to move out of the clearing where the remnants of their crashed ship lay, a loud, thunderous crack split across the portal-stricken sky as another rip in the fabric of reality opened up. Debris from many futuristic ships rained down upon them. The body of a human with metal enhancements landed several feet away as many more fell from the rip. One of them hit a couple branches on her way down, slowing her descent and thus not killing her upon impact.

The strange humanoid hybrid of flesh and metal calmly introduced herself as Anya before realizing what stood before her; two dragon(born)s out of legend, a half-orc out of legend, and an elf out of legend. Curiosity got the better of her, and she began inspecting the strange creatures she heard tales about, much to everyone’s annoyance. Garus coughed, hinting he would like to get moving, and so they set out to find the orcs, reluctantly letting Anya tag along.

They soon tracked the orcs through the dead forest to a small, lowered clearing where they found five of the large brutes sitting around a fire. Three of the orcs were bloated and covered in oozing sores while the other two seemed to be caretakers, or shepherds of the three. Trying to get a closer look at the orcs, part of the hill they stood on collapsed under them, and Garus, Lia and Seraphina fell into the clearing.

Everyone launched into combat. Anya and Forza got a surprise round of attacks in as the orcs focused on the other intruders. Anya fired a blast from her futuristic cannon as Forza charged in with his double bass and whacked one of the sickly orcs with enough force that it was knocked 30 feet into what is left of the surrounding forest. Garus placed a hunter’s mark on one of the caretaker orcs and focused his energy on fighting that one as Lia shapeshifted into a bear and fought whatever came close. Seraphina unleashed a volley of attacks that caused one of the sickly orcs to explode and shower the air with poisonous fumes.

The orcs reacted quickly. The two caretaker orcs attacked with their white gloved hands, causing immediate necrotic damage while the sickly orc that Forza attacked came rushing back. Forza once again hit it with his double bass and it flew off into the sky where it exploded and the wind carried the poisonous fumes away. The third of the sickly orcs wove its way through the battle, furiously striking at anyone who came close until it came face to face with Bear-Lia, who-- with the help of Seraphina and Anya-- quickly took it down. After Garus finished off the orc he was fighting, he moved the hunter’s mark to the final target and rushed in to slay the enemy with the brutality of his own orcish nature.

They looted the campsite, finding many humanoid bones and a few elven daggers. Lia realized the white gloves that the orcs wore were made from flesh, and with the elven items came to the conclusion she should avoid any other similar orcs. Anya gazed out at the sight from the hill she was on, and realized there was heavy breathing coming from directly behind her. Turning slowly, she found hundreds upon hundreds of ghouls staring hungrily at her; she not-so slowly ran through the camp, calling for the rest of the party to run too as the ghouls followed, leaping with joy at the thrill of a chase.

Everyone ran as fast as they possibly could as thousands of ghouls came bounding after. They threw quick spells behind them, but for every ghoul they took down several more took its place. Soon they found themselves flanked and surrounded as more ghouls showed up in front of them. They took out their weapons and stood back to back, not willing to go down without a fight; but as the first of the ghouls leapt forward, a loud noise hammered the air as a strange metal machine drove through the ghoul army, leaving a trail of fire and crushed carcasses in its wake. The tank came back around, running over as many ghouls as it could, and came to a stop directly in front of the party. A metal door fell to the ground and the voice of Almeria Oti said “Get in if you want to live.” Without question, Lia and Forza leapt inside the tank, followed by a questioning Seraphina and Anya, and a reluctant Garus. The tank drove forwards, crushing any ghoul in its path as it headed to the South-East.

Oti revealed that it had been about 20 years since they left to Myrkrheim and in that time everything had fallen. She also revealed that this was the very same carriage as when they left, but in the 20 years she had traveled the known world and added various technologies to and metalwork to her carriage. After a long rest, they arrived at their location.

The gates of elven design opened up to reveal a stronghold filled with a High Elf majority, human refugees stood in long lines waiting for their paperwork to be processed. The guards at the gate welcomed Oti back and asked how her patrol went. She told them the ghoul army was heading northwards and no longer a danger. As the adventurers left the carriage, all eyes were drawn to them.

One elf remarked on the “Half-orc who kills orcs” and another mentioned he said that about every half-orc. But the attention was mostly felt on everyone else. An elf came forward and told Lia it was good to see her as her kind was so few now. When Lia asked why, the elf questioningly told her about the Butcher: a man going around and killing every wood elf he comes across. Some other elves asked Forza and Seraphina how they escaped the plague, and seeing their confusion told them how there was a large fluctuation in magical energy that ended with every dragon and kin dropping dead at the same time. Noting that everyone seemed confused at the common news, the elves realized the adventurers were different.

After a lengthy discussion, the party learned that Krathux attacked and successfully took hold of a Godthrone, killing Queen Selise Ravenire in the process, which caused Sir Davith Dundrag to take an Oath of Vengeance that resulted in his disappearance. As all focus was on the new god of undeath, Krathux, and an invasion of orcs lead by the warlord Zaagg Skullcleaver, another god came to instant power. Tharizdun killed Krathux and used four portals to the elemental planes to throw the realm of Midgard into chaos. The chaos spread into the outer planes and soon all of reality was fractured. It was the apocalypse, and after so many years, the elves left their home continent of Io’Esari to return order and government to the world.

Lia, Rock and Anya went off into the captain’s tent to compare the notes Lia carried about those portals with new information. She learned each portal was operated by a different person, nicknamed together as the Four Princes of the Apocalypse, and that the portals were specifically put in a climate opposite to their Plane’s nature. A Fire portal in the arctic, a Water portal in the largest desert, an Air portal in the ocean and an Earth portal in the sky. The elf captain told Lia that the only reason Tharizdun came to power was because everyone’s focus was on Krathux. He told Lia that if they could stop Krathux, they would have a better chance at stopping the end of reality.

Seraphina learned that they did have a chance at returning to their own timeline as rips in time would randomly opened up; she also learned there was a mysterious man who lived on a mountain in the north who studied these portals and that he could probably send them through one to the correct time.

Forza and Garus noticed an excess of rats in the city, and when Forza picked one up to inspect it, they realized the rats had oversized brains that stuck out of their heads. One of the elven guards saw the rat and called out for battle stations as they had been infiltrated by the Mind Flayers. Suddenly, the ground shook below them and large umber hulks erupted upwards. The umber hulks began slaughtering the unsuspecting guards and refugees.

Garus, Seraphina, and Forza focused on one, while Lia, Anya and Rock focused on another. The massive hulks slashed at them with devastating strikes from their claws and mandibles, but the adventurers struck back with their own destructive attacks.

Garus got in several strikes with his sword, cutting off one of the hulk’s mandibles, as Forza and Seraphina launched magical attacks at it simultaneously. Rock punched and slammed the creature back as Anya shot it with her cannon and Lia called lighting down from the sky.

Another tremor shook the ground and Oti showed up telling them they had to leave immediately. As Oti drove through the gates, a gargantuan worm-- a neothelid-- broke through the ground, destroying the entire stronghold instantly. They decided quickly to head southwards in search of Acacia and drove quickly as rubble and bodies rained down. The neothelid dove back into the ground, leaving a large pit where the Elvin stronghold and beacon of hope was stood.

[thegodthronechronicles]

Session 14 - Voyage on the Astral Sea

The 16th of Mirtul

After journeying through the unnatural realm of Myrkrheim and climbing past the many traps and puzzles in a strange, multi-dimensional tower, our adventurers found themselves in an otherworldly room full of treasures and collections both alive and not. There they found the artifact they sought, a sceptre they believed could be the final undoing of the Lich Lord Krathux, the Undying. The artifact would trap his soul in a mortal vessel which would allow him to be killed, but at the cost of a person’s life in sacrifice. They narrowly escaped Krathux’s clutches as he tracked them to the tower and severely wounded Rock, The Dwayne.

They stood there on the boat, confused and stunned. One second, they were in a room face to face with Krathux himself, and then in a blink of an eye they were in a great silvery sea of nothingness with the only person who knew how to pilot the boat dead at their feet, killed by a simple, yet Powerful word. Forza held onto Rock, the Dwayne; he was unconscious, with a large crack splitting him from head to toe. They jumped quickly to his rescue, managing to bring him away from the brink of coma and sealing the crack-- leaving him with a large scar.

Forza and Melos decided to explore the ship. It wasn’t at all large and they made a quick trip of it, finding a locked door in the lower level. Lia decided to search the dead ship captain for a key but forgot she was still in bear form and accidentally ripped the corpse to shreds and swallowed the key completely. Brunar started sweeping the pieces of dead person into a pile as Forza and Melos went back to the locked room; Melos declared plan B and smashed the lock with one of his many musical instruments, to Forza’s dismay. Inside the room, they found two journals: one dictated events about overthrowing the Mindflayer empire so long ago, and the second told of how to pilot the boat and which color portal leads to where.

It was at this point, as Forza and Melos studied the navigation manual, that Melos began acting even stranger than he usually did: he began mumbling to himself about how much this place had changed since he’d last been here and how he can’t remember the last time he were there due to the confusion between which were his own memories and which were the vessel’s. This caused quite a stir as everyone could hear him loud and clear. Melos decided to go into the lower level for some alone time as Brunar finished sweeping the corpse into a single pile.

Melos had only been gone a mere second when he came back up in a hurry, singing a hypnotic pattern into existence in the middle of the ship, charming everyone except for Acacia-- who was in deep meditation-- and especially Lia-- who, as a bear, thought the hypnotic pattern was just so spectacular that she didn’t notice a single thing in the next minute.

Melos laughed, and then stood stoic, and then laughed again as he fought for control over his body. What used to be Melos Demortis, the Darkling Bard of Myrkrheim, asked Forza quite politely for the navigation manual. It claimed that its time has finally come to return to all the worlds and conquer as it once had so long ago, if only it could discern between its memories and the vile vessel it’s inhabiting. Acacia used the moment of confusion to break the others out of hypnosis as the ship moved without moving. Suddenly a large, flame red portal sat directly over the ship, seeming to pull them towards it. In the quickness of events, someone knocked Melos off the ship and towards the portal, but he stopped in midair and began floating back towards them until Rock found what he had been looking for in the sacks of loot and threw the grotesque orb at Melos. The orb latched onto Melos, fusing with him as the force knocked him through the portal.

Acacia realized the ship was piloted through force of intelligent will and piloted them away. The ship moved without moving and in the blink of an eye. Suddenly, the flame red portal that rippled across the silvery sea above them was replaced by magenta ripples to what may have been their North, South, or down as all directions were one and the same.

Suddenly, a legion of ships came barreling out of the portal like pirates returning with the spoils of war. In a blink, the ships surrounded them and four figures floated down towards them. All four were similar to the one who owned the ship, the Githyanki; raiders who travelled from Plane to Plane across the great Astral Sea. The leader seemed to recognize the ship and immediately began inquiring about its origin. It was soon discovered that this Githyanki ship was one of the direct cause to the Mindflayer’s downfall millennia ago and was revered as a holy object to both the Githyanki and Githzerai peoples. The Gith captain offered to bring the adventurers home so they could take the ship without any bloodshed, since they had just come from a siege against the war Plane of Acheron.

In this moment, the blue dragon wyrmling turned to Seraphina and remarked that she never specified in their deal whether or not the artifact should be placed in her hand while she was alive. The wyrmling turned to the main ship and unleashed a powerful burst of electricity that cut the ship in half. Acacia promptly killed the creature, but it was too late as the Githyanki called their deal off.

The fight began with Acacia and the Githyanki captain battling in the air as Lia shapeshifted into a giant frog and Forza, Seraphina and Brunar tackled the three Githyanki soldiers. Lia grappled one of the raiders with her tongue and tried to swallow him whole, but he was able to resist up until the moment Brunar chopped his legs off in one clean motion. Lia ate the githyanki and promptly threw up the remains at the realization she devoured a still living, intelligent creature; as frogs do, she threw up her entire stomach and began scraping the dead humanoid off, causing everyone else to throw up too.

As Acacia and the Githyanki captain continued to battle in the air, Forza caused the metal on another Gith raider’s armor to heat up while Seraphina unleashed some scorching rays; one of the rays shot right past her target and through the magenta portal. Somewhere, on the plane of Pandemonium, a child watched her parents be killed by a scorching ray from the sky; she declared then and there that she would hunt down the culprit to the ends of reality. Lia tried leaping towards her next target, but literally tripped over her tongue and flew off into the silvery sea towards the portal; luckily for her, Acacia’s reaction was quick and the boat appeared either vertical or horizontal, or both as all directions were one and the same, and Lia crashed back into the boat. Acacia moved the boat again as more raiders came down from their ships and the boat blinked away to a new location on the vast Astral Sea.

The Githyanki captain poured energy into his sword as he struck Acacia, dealing both physical and psychic damage; she responded with a series of attacks that inflicted necrotic wounds across the captain’s face. Forza burned his hand against the heated metal of his foe, but soon took him down as Seraphina and Brunar killed the last of the raiders. It wasn’t soon after, that the captain fell too.

The adventurers took a long rest as they travelled the Astral Sea, jumping from location to location without much luck finding their destination. As Acacia moved the boat from Pandemonium to Arborea to even the Outlands, the rest of the group searched their loot from the tower treasury. They found a cloak of Elvenkind (taken by Acacia, who gave Lia her six beads of force), a Canaith Mandolin (taken by Forza), a Wand of the Warmage (taken by Seraphina), several paintings, a bag of salt and another full of copper coins, holy water, and a sled and a severed head full of rot grubs (both of which taken by Rock, the Dwayne).

Finally they found the portal back to Midgard, the material realm, but covering the portal was a massive intangible cloud, the Psychic Wind. In a mere second it was battering the ship and their minds with the psychic energy of millions of lost souls. The portal to Midgard changed to a kaleidoscope of colours before them as Forza was struck with psychic energy and Acacia was driven mad. Acacia, the one piloting the ship, fell to the deck in fits of laughter, causing the ship to crash through the portal. In the last second, Brunar was struck with enough psychic energy to render him brain dead as the crashing ship launched him backwards into the depths of the Astral Sea; Forza commanded the rope of climbing to latch onto him, but it was too late as they appeared in the skies of Midgard and crashed down in a dead forest.

It was Lia who realized that though they were in Midgard, they still weren’t home as the forest she spent the last hundred years in stretched out around them, burned and charred against a sky where every Plane blended and leaked into each other.

An inhuman cry called out from the dead woods and was picked up by thousands of similar voices. A wood elf ran out into the clearing, calling for help as a ghoul leapt on top of him and tore him to pieces. Before anyone had a chance to register what was happening, a half-orc leapt out of the woods and took the ghoul’s head off in a single swipe of his sword.

The half-orc introduced himself as Garus and when questioned by Forza about the location of the nearest kingdom, revealed that none have existed in a very long time. As the adventurers took in the information, they realized Acacia had slipped away with the artifact.