Legendary

May 27, 2018May 31, 2018

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.

May 25, 2018May 27, 2018

Frozen Kings 5/24/18

Today’s exercise was about editing at the sentence level. Each student contributed an element of the scene and we wrote and edited sentences with the goal of making the Action of the scene really pop: with short, declarative sentences.

In a campaign with 14 players, just rolling initiative can be a laborious process if the players want to make it one. These guys had a rough start this year, but have really come to be champs, managing three to five turns depending on how engaged they are during the topical and workshop time, which has also been really nice. I always love workshop time, and working with elementary age writers is a both a joy an a great responsibility. At this point in the year a lot of kids who were there just to play in the first place have had enough of me pushing them to turn in art and writing, so this kind of exercise helps to exercise those creative muscles before we get going. It always pays off in the focus department.

Dr. Bear takes hold of the rift with her bare hands, grasping an the shredding threads of reality to hold the broken fragments together long enough for the students to force the Hydra beasts into it. As she begins to heave, the grasslands begin to shrink, twisted away from the rift by brute force.

The upper right hand corner holds the grassy plains outside Valencia, where minotaurs and hydresques rush to escape the collapsing landscape as Dr. Bear twists the world back into place from the Rift.

Our heroes broke into teams to face Goblin King, to negotiate with the alliance nobility, the frost giants, and the minotaurs, before Dr. Bear is overwhelmed the world collapses in around them. Two players managed to make their way past the scattered courtiers and guards left behind as their ‘noble’ hosts teleport away. At the back of the tent they found it was easy to climb into the cage with the statue-gate, but that the inside was another place entirely. An eternity of swirling orange light and Deamon Chord (from the Wednesday game) waiting for them. “You’ve come here earlier than your class was meant to.” I told them, layering metagame over the dialogue. “Impressive. Persistent. What would you have of me?”

You’ll have to wait for next week to find out how they respond.

In the abandoned tent of the nobles, the recently rescued civilians (in solid blue and gray) are shocked when their savior vanishes into the cage at the back of the tent. Goblin Prince smirked knowingly at the strangers, while offering them a seat and perhaps a nip of wine for their nerves…	While the Huge Hydresque fails on it’s back, a rogue and a bard fight the beast from inside it’s belly. It’s gut is lined with thousands of tiny versions of it’s own head, which spit acid at our heroes as they try to cut their way free.
Enemies of the goblin court pouring from all sides, while their mechanoman siege armors wrestle with minotaurs and the hydresque. The queen has so far, slept through the whole affair. Seriously. The players who made friends with her before have almost convinced her minions not to kill them.	In the shard of tundra where this whole mess began, Bjoldgud Cynfldoon is being ritually deposed. Two of our heroes work to distract the giants and help them see that maybe it’s kingship itself that’s the crux of breaking this terrible curse..

May 23, 2018May 25, 2018

Ratcatcher’s Revenge 5/23/18

We had a delightfully huge amount of material to workshop this week! At the top is a student’s outline built up into a larger story. We talked through his outline and I was able to leverage a few passages to talk about this week’s topic: streamlining language. We focused on how to increase the intensity of action scenes with short sentences. What read’s fast, moves fast, so: tight descriptions, well chosen verbs and multi-purpose metaphors are what makes a final draft final.

Meanwhile, in Deamon Chord’s fortress academy, our heroes fight on to escape the tiny laboratory in which they have been trapped. With the dragon bursting down the wall and puppet-armor pouring in from all sides, they made for the yellow portal, hoping to create a bottle neck in the relative safety of the dormitory wing, or at least a way to reach the statue-gate…

Deamon’s Meta-Mechanic ability ‘Distort’ came into play this session, allowing him to collapse the yellow portal’s ley lines, folding the intervene space away so that the dragon left behind in the hallway is now looming through the door.

Our heroes have only just begun to fight their way free of the laboratory and into the hallway where the portal leading to the only escape lies.

The laboratory itself is nearly deserted as a result, with puppet armor marching out towards the blue portal in hopes of cutting our heroes off…

Even after the last of our band escaped through the portal, Deamon’s forces pressed on. The folded space of Chord’s Distort effect transformed the door leading out of his office into the one leaving the laboratory. Alhoon, their celestial beetle ally, desperately tries to slow the dragon while the rest fight their way from the portal room.

The cleric tries to roll under the shield armor. Natural 1. He sails towards the dragonborn warlock, who rolls a dexterity save! Natural 1. They hit the huge ophidiman fighter and the ranger just as the later cast the spell jump. Neither of them make the save…

The force of the spell propelled the lot of them into the air. This was my favorite thing that happened this session (and for awhile in this campaign). This is what makes letting the dice and the players lead the narrative creates.

The ball of heroes flying through the air gave me an excuse to drop them into the yellow portal, rather than getting bogged down fighting the army pouring into the hallway behind them. And so our band is reunited, with their foes still hot on their heels…

The distorted school halls now have the dragon and puppet armor riddled laboratory feeding directly into the dormitories. Those who came tumbling out of the yellow portal were only just saved thanks to the Distort effect bringing Alhoon and his swarms of celestial beetles back to the front.

The whole scene is at last revealed as the barbarian (armored orc fig) saunters away, betraying the rest by taking advantage of earlier roleplaying. On his way out he spies one of the infamous displacer behemoths outside patrolling the grounds…

Once again half the group is unconscious or captured, but this time their teacher is dead, and their other allies held at bay.

As the treacherous barbarian follows, a huge puppet armor drags two of his erstwhile allies by their heads.

Though he saved his classmates by distracting Chord, the sorcerer paid dearly as the upperclassfolk knocked him unconscious and carried him away.

The traitor looks into the main office of the dean, where the statue-gate stands imprisoned. He fully expects it will be opened for him on request.

The battle rages on as our heroes try to fight their way to, and find a way through, the statue gate. With only two sessions left, can they escape the army at their backs, force the cage around the statue and escape?

In the isolated parts of the school, trapped within Deamon’s folded Distort displacement, the remaining forces try to find a way to reactivate the yellow portal.

Alhoon’s beetle masses take the brunt of the dragon’s breath-weapon, though the surrounding library fared far worse…

These warriors never slow down, not even to aid an ally, or secure a rear guard.

May 22, 2018May 25, 2018

Accursed Currents 5/22/18

Somewhere in the shattered remains of the Megamegaladon, our heroes cling to life. The Contagion spell that finished last session was cast on one of “beasts” that were actually parts of the vast sharks immune system. It’s hundred leagues long spirit body evaporated into ectoplasmic mists that mingled with the waters. The white board map shows where the “tiny” shark in the combat below was linked into the larger body (at the center). The cross hatched sections are in the distance. The dot just above the eyes is the size of the ship they were in when the Megamegaladon swallowed them.

There were only two players in class today due to a class trip, or other reasons, which meant we had time to really talk tactics, and for me to dig down on the writing each of them had been working on throughout the year.

The Elder shark summons his brood, forming them from the still healthy parts of the spirit flesh all around.

From above we can see the wave of frenzy pouring down to where our heroes have only just freed the heart of the sea from the Elder Shark’s control

Yes. That’s a player’s figurine directly in front of the Elder. He thought he’d be swallowed, but The Shark summoned his brood and had a bit of cleric for lunch instead.

We took a break from the more narrative form of action the tiny group required, to discuss Gorvinahth’s fate, and go over their individual stories.

Gorvinahth is pinned beneath the fallen promethean arcs, star in hand, but the sacred circle of the Heart is sliding quickly away from the viscera towards the gloomy abyss…

This student has a great mind for details, but gets bogged down when looking for momentum. Having time to build a full outline got him focused though. Im excited to see the results!

A student who will be missing his characters big RP moment in the Weekend Workshop game had the chance to work through what he would say to purge the being inhabited by the Demon Preacher

Meanwhile in a thousand leagues of viscera and wreckage, the frenzy of sharks bears down on our heroes, crushing teeth through armor and spreading havoc as our heroes struggle to prevent Gorvinahth and the remains of the Deep One’s rite from vanishing into the crushing depths.