Weekend Workshop 5/27/18

With Sev’rence’s body still cooling in the drow ruins behind them, and terrors beyond reckoning ahead, our heroes can only fight to survive now. The horde of skeletons pouring from the bone pit beneath the demon preacher’s platform, presses constantly towards them as Fox splits her form to finish her sigil as swiftly as possible.

From armies of skeletons, the Demon Preacher graduates to a interlaced bone worm. In place of a head it has a jagged mass of spines.

Beyond the waves of skeletons, the fetid, wet-rotting, flesh of zombies began to rise from the pit. Two of heroes were knocked unconscious as they were run through by the huge lashing bone serpent.

While his star-twin was run through and dying overhead, Guinea smashed the back of a giant skeleton’s skull in, sending shards flying out through it’s eye sockets as it fell forwards.

By the skin of their teeth our heroes managed to keep the mass of bones from pressing forwards enough to reach and disrupt Fox’s spell. With the Sigil complete, the Demon Preacher’s possession begins to leave the Bishop’s body. (Thus revealing the ghost bishop from Act 2, who thanked them for helping to purify his temple and his people’s graves, whose body had been missing from his sepulcher)

Alias and Adrara (our rogue and tank) are run clean through and dangling limp against the serrated mass of the bone serpent’s spine.	After smashing the giant skeleton’s skull in, Guinea leaps high into the air, what’s left of the head beneath his feet exploding as he sails aloft. Just befoe hitting the ground, he shadow steped above the bone serpent. (We had decided in a previous session that one maintains momentum through teleports)
With all his allies down, Guinea fights desperately to save who he can.	The force of the gnomish monk’s fury struck the bone serpent, setting the whole thing to clattering as it shuddered with the impact. The spine broke free as Guinea’s blade swung down and finished the job.
The huge spine spun on it’s way to the ritual chamber floor, decapitating the last of the giant skeleton’s on its way. The heroes still pinned to it, of course automatically failed death saves…	The spine landed with a thunderous crunching of bones as the last of the skeletons’ right flank literally collapsed under the impact. Again with the automatic death saves fails…

With the armies of skeleton’s crushed and Fox’s Sigil nearly complete, the survivors cling desperately to the hope that Canar and Fox can tame the Demon before the next wave of the undead hits. The stench of rot and spoiled meat pours up from the pit as the zombies pile atop one another in their desperation to reach the living.

Her Sigil fully formed, Fox refracts into two sets of twins, one Fox, one Woman, while her spirit body holds the golden glyph steady. Her energy seems to be focused on the Demon Preacher, who has show growing doubt in light of Canars arguments against the logic of his goals.

His demon skin shed, his stolen body reunited with his lost spirit, the Bishop of Oolloon is unleashed. He healed our heroes and brought them under his protection as the back wall broke to reveal at last, the true star thieves and Xetric himself, the third fragment of the divine essence once trapped therein. (This being the back story of two of the players)

These crystalline beings are the closest I could get to the personal plot line created by the players of Guinea and Alias in their art and writing. These beings inhabit a cosmic realm, not unlike an actualization of the concept of a ‘crystal sphere’ (to use the D&D parlance anyway). They have the feel of archonic angels in the writing, which required something beautiful and terrifying. I’ve had these figs hidden for the last six months waiting for this reveal. The last of the three star fragments they’ve been hunting this year stands before them. The three could merge, with Guinea argued passionately. When Xetric argued that they should join with him, to be so much more than they might in equality.

Beneath the fallen star, the fractured shards of the crystalline realm sing to raise the star again by their power, but it is lacking. The samurai who had escorted the Demon Preacher in the very first session have their loyalties revealed at last! (if only someone had translated the scrolls they carry)

At the peek of his individual power, Xetric cannot imagine being lessened by the parts of his full self that fell away with Guinea and Alias. With power gathered by the manipulated faithful, he stand prepared to absorb our heroes and rise as a true god, a living star, and master of the world.

(Pay no attention to the tool pile in the corner!) Xetric’s fragmented essence shards are elemental horrors and divine spell casters ready to beat our heroes senseless to drag them before their soon-to-be-god, if necessary.

and then it all went sideways… because: players are silly and the dice are cruel.

Xetric burns from within, taking his lesser forms with him.

Skaren, our halfling sorcerer, is impulsive as ever, and with the first utterance of tyrannical tendancies, or a desire for dominance, he summoned a being for fire from the elemental realms. It smothered Xetric, who stands paralyzed by the streams of power flowing into him. Sacred flames poured back through those links, however, cracking the gemstone body of one of the three priestesses standing on the long stone dais before him.

Next week: Our Penultimate Session!At the last moment, the Spider Goddess, grown even more powerful since she abandoned our heroes to die in the caverns beyond the drow ruins, arrives to claim the third stone for herself. Will our heroes be able to defeat both their greatest enemy and the divine gem extrusions of an erstwhile god?

We’ll let the dice decide.