[AE, Finality] Campaign Session Notes

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My players hope they can beat their campaign record and hit level 15 and 23 sessions with these characters. This doesn't count the games where they started at high level.

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Session XVIII

They arrive in a tunnel, the aroma of dirt and the tell-tale scent of force magic filling the air. Dean whips out magic detection and picks up the lingering aura of time travel magic, and with that, two temporal filchers appear in a flanking position to the party, each holding four ruminatives. One side is wearing blue, the other red. They each declare the additional party members as a trap to give the opponents' side an advantage, so they all blast the party. The party eviscerates the reds and tells the blues they're just passing through, who decide to time hop again to give them a running start if they actually mean it.

On the surface is a trench warfare nightmare, magic mortar falling from both sides. Turning invisible and still using the flight magic from the earlier fight, they ascend about a mile up while telling Nigliktok to do likewise in hopes of spotting him with the Eye. They do so, meet up in an isolated locale and rest up for the next jump to New Rashon. They can skip Mersi VII thanks to the Eye increasing the range of their plane shift.

On New Rashon, they're greeted to a mountain peak surrounded by lightning and thunder as a naked wizard (large enough beard to keep it PG-13) named Throon Boltrider prepares them for the oncoming storm, who promptly turns off the charade after the burning sensation of anti-human laser sears into him. Him and the other shine brights leave, and after about nine hours, they go racing past the party in utter terror.

Three dread wraiths rise up and begin their assault. I'm using Tome of Necromancy, so they're vulnerable to Jorgen's mind blast, which negates two while the third drains him to death. After the fight, they load up the corpse to pay for the resurrection in Finality and skip straight to the gatetown with the shrimp and walk back to Finality.

It takes a month of preparation for Guy to set up the presentation and the new exhibit showing off his findings on the origins of humanity, which includes key revelations of humanity's genome/truename. The rest of the party starts selling off most of their less useful loot for upgrades, increasing all of their vanilla bonus gear to +4, getting Grimlock a definitive harness (also +4), convincing a mad-scientist on Eir's homeworld to assemble that antimatter rifle and then pay for it to be enchanted (+2 keen seeking), etc.

The presentation is a hit, though Guy earns a spit in the face from one of the high priests of Zarus. They get invited to a party at the Blood Manse.

Guy puts on a good enough show to be inducted into the higher memberships and offered to become embraced as a vampire, which he accepts. He has earlier cast cloak of darkness on himself a few sessions ago, which is enough to protect him from direct sunlight, and the ring of sustenance makes it so drinking is optional most of the time.

As the party's winding down, Aksehm comes to tell them that the priest of Zarus is more angry than anyone realized, and had managed to pull some dire strings. A dream vestige has been made their predator, and is heading toward at all due haste, its danger significant and even more so near populated areas.

Dreamland and the Plane of Shadow are ultimately the same thing, coexistent while not being as easy to attack from each side as the Ethereal (mainly due to lack of interest), and it doesn't invoke the Planar Standard Day when crossing over.

The Dream Vestige's spawn ability is pseudo-temporary. Any spawn it makes will die in a Planar Standard Day.

With the party's knowledge, they know they can potentially kill the Dream Vestige by travelling into Deep Dream and finding the dream of the oldest 'person' in the vestige and killing it. They decided to hoof it to a hermit planet in the direction of one of the treasure maps to fight the thing head on.


They chose not to sleep on it.

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As of right now, the party's preparations for the oncoming Dream Visage is the two magisters deciding that all they can hope to contribute is survival and buffing Eir; the combat workhorse. Mainly because her stealth, AC, and damage is top-notch; I'm using a house-rule that essentially permits people to have the darkstalker feat if they take a Stealth penalty, which is still fairly competent.

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Session IXX

They have returned to the Beholder's old hideout, where they originally obtained the White Orb of Dragonkind. Dean closes the front door with a Heightened Greater Seal Door, and they set up 'camp' in the underground facility. Their plan is to scout the surrounding terrain for potential venues for entry over the next couple days.

That first night, Guy is troubled with a dream of dire portent (Dream Casting), only to awaken to a scrying sensor over him. Both magisters begin using up their magic to layer the hallways with anti-incorporeal/teleportation/divination magic. Grimlock, Eir, & Jorgen head to the surface to find settlements within a couple dozen miles that need to be removed; the closest being a goblin camp to the North. As they approach, they notice the goblins are being attacked by flumph, which Eir promptly disintegrates with her antimatter rifle until they flee in terror of their own. The goblins are told to leave as far North as they can.

The next day as they scout, they come upon a Nightmare Lord Hill Giant wielding a stormbrand, along with a dozen Advanced (6HD) Nightmare Quasits. The fight goes relatively quickly, but then drawn out when they realize that they've been imbued with the ability to not need to breathe and none of them have sources of damage to overcome their regeneration. They shovel their bodies into a bucket, stir violently, and cart them back to camp for the magisters to handle; though Jorgen pulls out the hill giant for mind raping. It will take them a bit over two days for the hill giant to regain consciousness.

The next day on their way out, they approach a slowly moving merchant caravan just as it gets ambushed by a vessel. It's a 60' long, black, metal cuttlefish that appears about 20' in the air and descends onto the ground slowly as the front opens up for half a dozen xill to pour out of and begin paralyzing people. Feeling magnanimous, Grimlock descends upon the xill while Eir & Jorgen sneak aboard the ship, running into a Denizen of Leng. They knock him unconscious, kill the xill, and interrogate the Lengite; they're raiding the planet as much as they can before the Dream Vestige arrives and annihilate civilization in the vague vicinity. Their awareness is such that they know it will arrive in one day.

They kill off the Lengite, tie the ship to a rope, and have Grimlock carry it to the base like a balloon.

Spelljamming Helm
A single item with the Share Spells and Deliver Touch Spell abilities of a familiar for any who sit at the main chair, permits one to see out the front eyes while seated, and will sync-up with any who cast teleport or planeshift to arrive together in a single massive transit. It has no forms of locomotion, requiring the 'pilot' to cast stuff like fly & levitate on it to move around. The cost of the Helm is notable, but less than 15k; the ship itself is worth more (still less than 15kgp) because it's environmentally sealed enough to permit the crew to survive in space.

They cast the last of their magic before resting, Dean resists a third dream casting from the BBEG, and they wait for the oncoming storm. There is first an arrival of incorporeal nightmare monsters that flail uselessly against the warding, only to be freed by a moonbeast that had snuck in invisible and started dispelling the wards. The fight's a bit harrowing, but ultimately they survive just in time for the arrival of the Dream Vestige in all its horror...which then dies in a full attack from the fully buffed Eir. The arrival of the second incarnation (spawn from a passing kobold party) dies in much the same way, but this time it manages to damage the mind flayer a bit before exploding in a hail of antimatter.

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There was some concern brought up (identities kept secret) over Eir killing the Dream Vestige in a full-attack. It needs to be brought up that it had 110hp (CR 16, relying on the incorporeal + DR 10/- + SR 28), and Eir doesn't worry about any of its primary defenses. In addition, it had a real chance of failing the save from Jorgen's mind blast (using Tome of Necromancy, which means it's Dark Minded and thus open to mind-affecting) which would be another SoD in this instance. Hell, it was actually incapable of getting through that anti-incorporeal ward, and had to rely on the moon-beast to take it down to have the option of attacking.

It's a general assumption that now that everyone's in the solid double-digits, lone boss fights are going to be like my sex life; over in six seconds & leaving everyone notable unfulfilled.

Most notably, from here on out, fights are only going to get more grandiose.

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Session XX

In the blur of their radioactive success, the two magisters realize they have major creation and wall of iron. So they travel back to Finality, unload a week's worth of iron, and arrange for a half million gold trade deal with the Mad Wizard's Guild. They got an everful larder, a quarter million gold's worth of gold-economy magic items to equip their party, and supplies for a few hundred people to be delivered. Dean threw around enough bling to attract a gaggle of adept & warforged followers and a vampiric Champion of Undeath, Triana (Leadership feat, based on ranks in Knowledge: Arcana).

After escorting the followers to the underground base, they load themselves up into the spelljamming ship for the unified planar travel, and start the trek to the Pyramid of Blood and Souls. A monument/tomb of a powerful necromancer who ruled over his world with an iron fist, instating an immense cultural network of sacrifices in his name. He was slain several goblin generations ago when a plucky band of heroes managed to focus the power of the pyramid toward the wish of killing him.

To this day, a rift in space (right where the master used to be) at the apex of the pyramid continues to spew soul energy.


They land about 10 miles away from the pyramid and walk toward the edifice. On the way, they check with a local tribe of goblins, and verify that the pyramid is always hungry for souls. The edifice emits a continual consumptive field, and will consume any at 0hp or less instantly, and directs such energy toward the current master. That master, a generation after the original's death, is a barghest by the name of Polom.

They bash their way through the traps (Grimlock is immune to so much of it, it's easy to disable), let the vampires chug some of the literal river of blood, fight a team of stone golems and dao, and more. At the final chamber, they get ambushed by a team of eight bugbears slathered in buffs from the barghest and potions as well as Polom himself (mummified, covered in gold-economy gear, boosted by the prior deaths thanks to consumptive field, etc). It's a tough fight, but sufficient explosions and antimatter prevail.

Inside the rift itself floats an iron gauntlet that looks like it's made of Damascus steel, only the black veins are blood red, with a large onyx on the back of the hand; surviving the raging damage of soul-made energy blast. With the use of resilient sphere to indirectly grab it without touching the rift, they pull it out and discover it to be...

Iron Gauntlet of Supremacy
Grants +8 enhancement to Strength, +8 to leadership, +2 damage per die of all spells cast, and casts implosion 1/day as a 21st level caster with a casting mod of +10.

Not quite as bling, but you get the picture

Dean calls dibs.

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Session XXI

This session is without Grimlock due to missing player and the standard response is for them to be absorbed into the Mist of Obscurity(tm) when not present.

And so, our party shovels a few more bits of treasure into their pockets and returns to Finality to commission a few more items (mainly Type IV bags). They also spend about a month checking on their base and doing some basic plans. Guy has a few conversations with a child named Maabel that seems to have gotten ahold of an Orb of Dragonkind. From what he can glean from the sheltered kid, their father is a major necromancer in a little traveled Core World, and keeps the Orb elsewhere much of the time (permitting the kid to sneak in and use it to call Guy).

They load up the ship and check the coordinates for the Cloud Castle of the Storm King, which is due to stay on one world for about a month before shifting to a more inhospitable world. There were rumours of military-scale piracy surrounding the areas where the castle had been previously. They shift awhile until they get to the planet about two hundred miles away; where they see it hovering over an evil fortress, lightning shooting down. Rocs with cloud giants descend from the castle, fighting shadesteel golems and blue dragons in loose chains. They eventually see blasts of dark energy from one of the more ominous towers taking out a giant and a roc, then see a Gargantuan yrthak with an angry storm giant astride it descending down.

Taking this as the opportunity to find the control room of the castle while they're occupied, the party teleports to just outside of the wind wall sphere (castle makes teleportation difficult) and try to fly in. Just as they cross the barrier, they discover that the tower cannons were unmanned because they're actually golems in disguise (tranformers!); the volley of cannons begins. Round 1 destroys the ship. Round 2, as the party falls, we see the death of Niglitok & Jada. Round 3, the wall of ice barrier Dean creates is destroyed and Eir is hurt. Round 4, they land in the courtyard and the cannon golems stop firing. They will later figure out that the attack heuristic for the golems is to fire at anything airborne that isn't on the list of approved fliers, with priority of targets being largest to smallest unless attacked.

Once inside, they go into full stealth, which especially easy now that they aren't burdened with giant dragons, walking statues, and such. They kill a couple cloud giants that accidentally see them, then start exploring the central tower. They run into a marid who spots them, close the portal he made to bring in a swarm of elementals, and kill him before much of a ruckus is made. The battle is spotted by several of the harpy archers flying about, and only a couple are killed before they get out of reach. Near the apex is the control room, which has numerous open platforms and a scrying pool for the area around the castle. Before they can do much, the female storm giant (boss of the castle) and her yrthak arrive, and she jumps in to reveal herself as a 15th level monk (3.5 Monk). A tough battle, as she punches Triana into oblivion and Guy into unconsciousness, but they pull through and implode her.

The heart of the castle isn't here, so they can't take control. They make a distraction with some programmed illusions, and stealthily head into the lower levels of the castle. They run into a cloud giant ninja, who is pissed at her lover and boss being killed, and her posse of harpy ninjas. Then they run into the general (fighter cloud giant in full plate), and kill him. By this point, enough of the higher ups have been killed that the giants just leave. The castle is without a lord, and control is only accepted by a giant with the leadership feat, and nobody has UMD. Even then, none since the original Storm King has been able to control the randomized plane shift feature of the castle; semi-random, as it does follow an algorithm that their map indicates, and the giants had figured out with help from the marid.

The harpies (all 148 of them) seek a truce to retain living in the side towers and will provide low-effort protection so long as they're either fed or given an itinerary for the castle's movements so they can hunt on their own without fear of being left behind.

The party has now reached level 13! Dean is going to acquire a new cohort to replace Triana, who will have sufficient UMD to be able to take control of the castle.

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This is a list for quick reference in regards to eye-balling challenges to throw at the party. I'm unsure as to whether I've given them too much in regards to numbers against monsters that they'd be expected to fight.

Combat Summary, Level 13
Dean: AC 29 (Touch 24, FF 20), HP 139, Fort +18/Ref +20/Will +23, Spell DC 21+SL

• -2 saves vs non-spells
  Commonly uses mirror image at max image number
  Deals +2 damage/die

Eir: AC 46 (Touch 26, FF 23), HP 149, Fort +19/Ref +27/Will +19, +27/+27/+27/+22/+22/+22 (6d6+4/18-20)

• -4 saves when flat-footed
  -4 AC vs ranged attacks
  3d6 sneak attack
  assumed use of Haste
  Deals nonmagical force damage with 110' range increment

Guy: AC 38 (Touch 8, FF 38), HP 129, Fort +25/Ref +18/Will +23, Spell DC 22+SL

• Ancient blue dragon breath weapon 3/day

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[align]Session XXII[/align]The party has achieved a new record. This is now the longest running campaign in terms of sessions played. Today is the usual Eir, Dean, and Guy as well as a return of Grimlock.

In response to the loss of Jada, Eir's cyborg raptor companion, they use raise dead on it. Nigliktok and Triana are unceremoniously dumped off the side of the flying castle, and we narratively have an orc rogue appear to become Dean's new cohort. It is sufficiently trained in Use Magic Device to fool the Cloud Castle into thinking that he's the true Storm King, so now the party is in possession of a fully functional and operational flying castle atop an eternal storm cloud.

The process takes a bit of time, obtaining more research on the Ice Lotus Palace, which is atop a thin mountain peak in the middle of the stratosphere of a little traveled Core World. Legends hold that it is the home of a magician that drank so greedily from the spellfountain within that they became the herald of the dark side of Boccob. It is also rumoured to be the home of the dark queen of unicorns and pegasi

This doesn't even count the other creatures according to their research, such as rainbows (colour out of space, as encountered earlier). The mountain range is a known habitat for the jubjub bird and other threats.

They arrive about four hundred feet from the palace, it being awash in a vibrant red glow. Three rainbows breech the wind wall to investigate, and Eir blows them out of the sky. They stealthily arrive onto the courtyard, seeming to be unaffected by the red-orange barrier surrounding the palace as a whole, where numerous jubjub birds seem to be hanging about. A few are startled by Grimlock's presence, and he attempts to pet the largest one (gets a 4 on his Handle Animal). Eir wins initiative, and uses her own Handle Animal (35) to calm it down and not attack the party along with the rest of the flock, then reenters stealth.

They slather Grimlock in magic to help him not get seen or heard until he attacks, sneak by some unicorns and fire ponies, and come upon a series of circular chambers separated by monocolor prismatic walls. They either grit through the damage, ward against the damage, or negate the wall with the appropriate spell as they slowly work their way into the center of the chamber. They are ambushed by a jubjub bird with a rider and a rainbow, but relatively easily take them out.

The indigo wall gives them trouble, as they don't have the appropriate spell to handle the side-effect, and the Fort saves to resist them have been DC 25 so far. They ultimately decide to have Grimlock go in first because he's immune to the effects, as well as Guy because his Will save from the Orbs is so high (natural 1s are not auto-failure in this game). Eir and Dean are lucky on their rolls, and they choose not to risk the cohort or the animal companion and have them stay behind.

The other side is the heart of the palace, with an empty spellfountain, a dessicated halfling corpse, and an upset alicorn queen. Oh, and what is ultimately a static sphere of annihilation, but more of a column. Parlay is ultimately useless, mainly due to the party not wanting to bother since they know they're the aggressors from the start and their goal is just to ransack the place.

Combat is a over quickly enough because Eir guessed the correct mirror image at the start. The herald appears in response, and provides a hell of a start to the fight.

This, but more feminine

She opens with quickened TK to disarms and throw the antimatter rifle into the destruction pillar, shrugs off the chains of vengeance, disarms and destroys Guy's staff just as he was about to finish making a new rifle for Eir to use (the Orbs survive, being major artifacts), destroys Dean's staff, and mazes Grimlock. Dean negates the earlier wall with an AMF to permit the cohort to enter the fray (and later an avenue for escape). Guy burns all sorts of spell slots, limited use abilities, and a bucket of gems to throw enough magic at the herald to physically paralyze her and then encase her in a heightened greater resilient sphere. This spell is dangerous, as it's like forcecage, but with a Reflex save and any damage done to the sphere is equally done to the victim trapped within as force damage (no save). Before she has a chance to mentally activate planar escape, Grimlock pops out of the maze and wails on the broad side of a barn to kill her.

They search the place, and find a set of gloves that grant a +6 Dex and the ability to use sleight of hand so well that it leaves behind a full sense illusion for five minutes (disbelief DC = 22).

Forgot this one piece of info: in the fight with the herald, she gave a prophecy to Guy. He is the owner of the final two Orbs, and They are coming for him.