There is an old maxim in D&D: Never split the party. You usually hear this from the player perspective, in the context of survival advice. Just like a horror movie, as soon as you wander away from the party you are going to be the first corpse. United we stand, divided we are strangled by measles whilst taking a shit. Keep the magic users in the middle. Hi diddle diddle.
Of course there is a meta game reason to not split the party as well - the game runs smoothly when all the PCs are in one location, but as soon as they separate, the DM has to run each group through its actions separately and track time for each group. Temporal anomalies are a very real problem that you run into when you split the party - Bill and Ted spent eight excellent hours sleeping in the inn before going to the future, but in the meantime Beavis lit Butthead's fart on fire and burned down the inn. Usually a handwave back in time is enough to fix these sort of problems (umm, actually Bill and Ted, you guys didn't sleep through the night, you were awakened in the middle of the night to panicked commotion in the hallway and the smell of smoke, so what would you have done then?). If all the party members are each doing their own thing, at a certain point it would make more sense to stop playing as a group and start playing a bunch of interconnected one on one campaigns. Which actually sounds pretty cool, but it isn't really D&D as most of us understand it to be - a group experience.
I personally have no problem with splitting the party as a player or DM. The players in my new world campaign have made a lot of the traditional problems with party splitting obsolete anyway. All the PCs have a permanent telepathic link of unlimited range (this was created about two years real time into the campaign using the telepathic energy technology of the alien spacecraft that Tilia found on the moon) and can teleport to each other's side or back to the hovercraft as a minor action (they found a bunch of matched teleportal coins, pairs of matched gold coins that when activated open a portal between the two coins - each PC carries a coin linked to a coin carried by another PC, and each PC has a coin linked to a coin on the hovercraft, as well as coins to some other locations that the PCs have sprinkled around the campaign landscape).
While this solves many of the traditional problems of splitting the party, we have found ways to split the party into a more psychedelic fractal gamescape than I could have possibly imagined when this campaign began. For starters, we have been exploring the idea of splitting your consciousness into multiple copies for quite some time. I actually first introduced the concept in my (now defunct) Mutant Future game* when the PCs learned that a recurring villain, Julius Corple, had made multiple copies of his consciousness that inhabited a "space" called shadow, the "place" that energy "goes" when it flickers in and out of existence (although shadow is not a space or a place, and exists outside of time as perceived in the PCs universe, and energy particles don't so much travel through shadow as become it). Julius Corples' shadow consciousnesses could create seemingly magical effects by manipulating the way energy was structured in the Mutant Future reality, changing its form in shadow, outside of time. I have a unified theory of magical physics that I use in all my games regardless of system, and I allow exploration into and manipulation of magical physics outside of the normal D&D structure of spells, ritual magic and powers. My new world campaign is run using 4e rules, but of course shadow lies outside of the realm of 4e rules.
Fast forward to the present, four years into the campaign, and the last few sessions have been a "never split the party" purist's nightmare. One of the three main PCs did not even play at all last session, even though his player was in attendance and running two NPCs! Here is an outline of how the party was split up going into the beginning of last Tuesday's session:
Tilia A: Underneath the ruins of lost Eridu, between the first dungeon level of the temple of the moon complex and the surface, earthswimming with Hammer back toward the sacred lake to get a badly needed full heal from the holy waters (*not* psychically connected to the party's healer Beautiful Bob, who intentionally severed the link before going to sleep) .
Tilia B: [not active this session] surfing through deep shadow, retaining sanity because she is merged with a shadow dragon, in the middle of a subjectively centuries long mindfuck of a trip through the multiverses as the shadow dragon rides potential energy connections [note - Tilia split herself in two and Tilia B has already rejoined with Tilia A in Tilia A's timeline, but Tilia B is still an active game PC that we will revisit in future sessions to explore more about the nature of deep shadow and the way that energy is connected through the multiverses]
Hammer: Earthswimming with Tilia back toward the sacred lake to get a badly needed full heal from the holy waters (*not* psychically connected to Beautiful Bob, who intentionally severed the link before going to sleep). Hammer is a barbarian. He doesn't split himself up. Can he split something else up with his axe?
Beautiful Bob A: [not active this session] Hundreds of miles away in a cave in the swamp north of Siss Anor, in the middle of the horrific nightmares that are a withdrawal symptom of the psychotropic plants he consumed to aid in a ritual several sessions earlier. A Nur-Kubi shaman (kind of like a reptilian praying mantis anteater psychic vampire, the first sentient race released into the world by the snake man scientists) is siphoning off and feeding on the negative energy. Bob A intentionally severed his psychic link with Tilia, Hammer, Nur-Kubi, Zanninum, Beautiful Bob ∞ Beautiful Bob C before going to sleep, worried that the psychic energy that might be released in his nightmares could damage them (Bob A was supercharged with nightmare energy, having taken on the nightmares of the four million plus souls trapped in Mother Mind three sessions back). The session before last we advanced Bob A through several nightmare skill challenges, representing two full REM cycles of sleep, so we began last session needing to advance Tilia A and Hammer about 3-4 hours through game time before Bob woke up from his nightmares and re-established his psychic link with Hammer and Tilia.
Nur-Kubi the Cambion/FAKE Beautiful Bob [NPC controlled by Beautiful Bob's player, no psychic link to Tilia or Hammer] Guest bedroom in Lady Mirriam's compound, the old temple of the moon in the ruins of old Eridu. Nur-Kubi is assuming the appearance and demeanor of Beatiful Bob per Bob's commands. Nur-Kubi begins the session fifteen minutes in time behind Tilia A, Hammer and Zaninum. Lady Mirriam made a show of dismissing her handmaidens to the courtyard to watch out for any soldiers still angered by the party's actions of the day before (another story) and has shown Nur-Kubi/FAKE Beautiful Bob where her bedroom was and made it known that she would like him to visit her. Nur-Kubi is waiting a few minutes after his companions have settled into their adjoining rooms before strolling down the hallway. Nur-Kubi is behind Tilia and Hammer in time because the session before last, Tilia earthwalked through the floor of her bedroom and encountered some cultists of the Nameless One in the first dungeon level below and got in a fight. Hammer teleported to her side and they eventually killed the three lower level weretoad cultists and their higher level vampire leader, but not before sustaining serious wounds, expending a lot of powers and advancing their timeline past Nur-Kubi's.
Zaninum the Cambion [NPC controlled by Beautiful Bob's player , no psychic link to Tilia or Hammer] Just been spotted by the guards stationed around Lady Mirriam's compound (the old temple of the moon), was trying to stealthily make his way toward the sacred lake for a badly needed full heal after nearly being killed by an intelligent talking mace that could transform into a winged lion that he found last time while skulking around the ruins of old Eridu.
Curious George the hovercaft [NPC intelligent magical item hovercraft created by the party in dimension X using materials from that dimension] Circling high above the jungle, keeping an eye on things. Psychically connected to Tilia and Hammer (and usually to Beautiful Bob but not currently until Bob wakes up from his nightmares).
Beautiful Bob B [not active this session] surfing through deep shadow, retaining sanity because he is merged with a shadow dragon, in the middle of a subjectively centuries long mindfuck of a trip through the multiverses as the shadow dragon rides potential energy connections [note - Bob split himself in two and Bob B has already rejoined with Bob A in Bob A's timeline, but Bob B is still an active game PC that we will revisit in future sessions to explore more about the nature of deep shadow and the way that energy is connected through the multiverses - also Bob B is connected to Beautiful Bob ∞ and Beautiful Bob C]
Beautiful Bob ∞ [not active this session] Beautiful Bob split his consciousness up into a near infinite number four sessions ago in a shared dream with Maricanchi, an NPC dreamer from the future. Maricanchi will be an extraordinarily powerful dreamer and split into a near infinite number to show Bob the dreams of the past, present and future inhabitants of the campaign world simultaneously. [note - I gave Beautiful Bob's player an at will power called The Eternal Moment which allows Beautiful Bob A to connect with the infinite dreaming consciousnesses and learn more about the dreams shown to him by Maricanchi whenever he wants during play. The only answers that he can get are what the people in the past and future are dreaming, not necessarily the reality of what is happening in the waking world in the past or future]
Beautiful Bob C [not active this session] In the far future of the campaign world. One of the many Beautiful Bob ∞ dream consciousnesses has traveled inside the Dream Machine that Maricanchi and his triplet brothers are hooked up to in the future. The Dream Machine is a complicated piece of magic future technology that is somehow using the dreams of the three triplets to alter reality. Beautiful Bob C has managed to retain his consciousness while leaving the dream world and taking the form of a single particle of energy inside the dream machine. Two sessions ago Beautiful Bob C managed to break free of the regular energy routing inside the machine and did not go where the machine was sending his particle, instead choosing to explore the circuitry of the machine on his own terms [note - we will definitely come back to what Beautiful Bob C is up to inside the dream machine because the dream machine is directly connected to the mind of Manu Jablitu, the technomancer lich who the party would probably consider to be the main bad guy of the campaign at this point over the snake men]
* all three of the current players in my new world campaign were also players in my Mutant Future game. Those two games ran concurrently for quite some time and PCs from the Mutant Future game even briefly looked through a portal into my new world campaign but did not choose to go through it.
Showing posts sorted by date for query manu. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query manu. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Friday, April 4, 2014
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Snake Man Biology Pt. 1 - Introduction
I introduced the Snake Men in my 4e campaign in Session Numero Uno through the wild tales of a swamp trapper who told of a "city made of gold" that he and his friends had discovered, which he claimed was inhabited by snake men.
A handful of sessions later the party was in an alien spacecraft made of pure energy and they were accessing the data logs of several linked satellites in stable planetary orbit. In the course of observing several billion years of planetary formation they also caught a relative blink-of-the-eye in time highlighted by a meteorite slamming into the exact center of the formation of alien spacecraft, forming the depression now filled by the swamp. Yes, the many minareted and domed city which stood on the meteorite was made of gold. A circular rocky ridge in the center of the swamp, thrown up by the impact, conceals the city of gold. Mushroom life sprouted across the meteorite shortly after the crash, and from the mushrooms sprang tadpoles which metamorphosized into snake men. To the party's horror they discovered that all of the humanoid races of the planet had their origin as experiments released by the snake men scientists into the swamp.
When the party thought to look for the visual evidence of the swamp trampers finding the city, they observed two snake men meet the three trappers on the top of this ring. A snake man held up its hand and two of the trappers disintegrated into dust. The third trapper soiled himself as the other snake man grasped him solidly for a moment before releasing him. The party's informant fled promptly.
Curious, the party kept investigating that moment in time through satellite footage and discovered that the outbreak of the white death plague could be reliably dated to shortly after the return of this swamp trapper to the settlement.
Several sessions later, the party had crossed the mountains and was exploring the verdant rainforest beyond. They found an artifact of the snake man, a flying laser shield meant to be worn by a snake man warrior. This shield revealed that the snake men had four small organs that could interact with four circular depressions on the inside of the shield, like four sensitive finger-tentacles that stick out of the snake man torso.
Using ritual magic to look into the shield's past, they watched its creation by snake man scientists, all of whom had four arms. The scientists tended to mats of mycelial tissue which they grew in molds in the shape of the shield and many other items (I just realized that the use of the word "mold" in the sense of a 3-dimensional negative shape that you pour or push a substance into to form a sculpture could be confusing when the substance that fills the mold is mycelium!). When the molds were full of mature mycelium the snake man scientists activated a complex arrangement of pearls and gemstones that transferred energy through shadow and turned the mycelium into many different substances, gold in the case of the enchanted flying shield. The discovery of this shield was the first step in the party's current understanding of how to manipulate energy through shadow, the foundation of a true understanding of magic.
When the party began to piece together the history of the city states of the great human civilization on the other side of the mountains they realized that the influence of the snake men had crossed that great natural barrier long ago. They discovered the fingerprints of the snake men in the blood tattoo magic that raised their hackles.
Even Manu Jablitu, the ancient technomancer lich who has become number one on the party's most wanted list for quite a few sessions in a row now, was first encountered because his services were procured by the snake men to solve a dimensional instability. A while back the players in my Mutant Future campaign discovered an alien installation in a strange dimension that had a machine in it containing the entire 4e probaverse in a controlled singularity. A player running PCs in both campaigns looked at the machine and infamously said "I'll flip some switches". I asked him to roll d100 and he rolled a critical failure "01". As a result, the machine began powering down and the stars started going out in my 4e campaign and many monumental constructions of the ancients that drew their power from the stars no longer worked. The snake men were pissed and Manu Jablitu was brought in to fix things, but interestingly the 4e party managed to stabilize the probaverse without resorting to reprogramming the machine like Manu Jablitu intended to do. All Manu Jablitu has done since is rise to near mythological status as the party keeps encountering more evidence of the crap he has done in the past. Much of which was done under the patronage of the snake men, evidently.
I bring all this up because last session Beautiful Bob used the psychic enhancing module in the radiant energy vortex that he was accessing from the energy bath of the lich Pay-Gon to split his consciousness into 16,000 pieces to simultaneously accept a telepathic information feed from the 16,000 intellect-equivalent crystal gas mind the party encountered. It may take him a while to process, but Beautiful Bob actually received the entire genome of both the warrior or "snake man prime" caste and the four-armed scientist caste in this telepathic transmission from the crystal gas mind.
I plan to write several posts about the biology of the snake man now that the party would definitely know the ins and outs.
A handful of sessions later the party was in an alien spacecraft made of pure energy and they were accessing the data logs of several linked satellites in stable planetary orbit. In the course of observing several billion years of planetary formation they also caught a relative blink-of-the-eye in time highlighted by a meteorite slamming into the exact center of the formation of alien spacecraft, forming the depression now filled by the swamp. Yes, the many minareted and domed city which stood on the meteorite was made of gold. A circular rocky ridge in the center of the swamp, thrown up by the impact, conceals the city of gold. Mushroom life sprouted across the meteorite shortly after the crash, and from the mushrooms sprang tadpoles which metamorphosized into snake men. To the party's horror they discovered that all of the humanoid races of the planet had their origin as experiments released by the snake men scientists into the swamp.
When the party thought to look for the visual evidence of the swamp trampers finding the city, they observed two snake men meet the three trappers on the top of this ring. A snake man held up its hand and two of the trappers disintegrated into dust. The third trapper soiled himself as the other snake man grasped him solidly for a moment before releasing him. The party's informant fled promptly.
Curious, the party kept investigating that moment in time through satellite footage and discovered that the outbreak of the white death plague could be reliably dated to shortly after the return of this swamp trapper to the settlement.
Several sessions later, the party had crossed the mountains and was exploring the verdant rainforest beyond. They found an artifact of the snake man, a flying laser shield meant to be worn by a snake man warrior. This shield revealed that the snake men had four small organs that could interact with four circular depressions on the inside of the shield, like four sensitive finger-tentacles that stick out of the snake man torso.
Using ritual magic to look into the shield's past, they watched its creation by snake man scientists, all of whom had four arms. The scientists tended to mats of mycelial tissue which they grew in molds in the shape of the shield and many other items (I just realized that the use of the word "mold" in the sense of a 3-dimensional negative shape that you pour or push a substance into to form a sculpture could be confusing when the substance that fills the mold is mycelium!). When the molds were full of mature mycelium the snake man scientists activated a complex arrangement of pearls and gemstones that transferred energy through shadow and turned the mycelium into many different substances, gold in the case of the enchanted flying shield. The discovery of this shield was the first step in the party's current understanding of how to manipulate energy through shadow, the foundation of a true understanding of magic.
When the party began to piece together the history of the city states of the great human civilization on the other side of the mountains they realized that the influence of the snake men had crossed that great natural barrier long ago. They discovered the fingerprints of the snake men in the blood tattoo magic that raised their hackles.
Even Manu Jablitu, the ancient technomancer lich who has become number one on the party's most wanted list for quite a few sessions in a row now, was first encountered because his services were procured by the snake men to solve a dimensional instability. A while back the players in my Mutant Future campaign discovered an alien installation in a strange dimension that had a machine in it containing the entire 4e probaverse in a controlled singularity. A player running PCs in both campaigns looked at the machine and infamously said "I'll flip some switches". I asked him to roll d100 and he rolled a critical failure "01". As a result, the machine began powering down and the stars started going out in my 4e campaign and many monumental constructions of the ancients that drew their power from the stars no longer worked. The snake men were pissed and Manu Jablitu was brought in to fix things, but interestingly the 4e party managed to stabilize the probaverse without resorting to reprogramming the machine like Manu Jablitu intended to do. All Manu Jablitu has done since is rise to near mythological status as the party keeps encountering more evidence of the crap he has done in the past. Much of which was done under the patronage of the snake men, evidently.
I bring all this up because last session Beautiful Bob used the psychic enhancing module in the radiant energy vortex that he was accessing from the energy bath of the lich Pay-Gon to split his consciousness into 16,000 pieces to simultaneously accept a telepathic information feed from the 16,000 intellect-equivalent crystal gas mind the party encountered. It may take him a while to process, but Beautiful Bob actually received the entire genome of both the warrior or "snake man prime" caste and the four-armed scientist caste in this telepathic transmission from the crystal gas mind.
I plan to write several posts about the biology of the snake man now that the party would definitely know the ins and outs.
Monday, November 19, 2012
The Library of the Bati-Bati Temple
The players in my 4e game recently looted a temple's library. Most of the literature was inscribed on clay tablets and stacked on massive stone shelves, with a few smaller wood shelves of papyrus and vellum scrolls in bone tubes. The party webbed all the contents of the shelves securely and then put shelves and all in pocket dimensions that they created for that purpose. Showing uncommon foresight, they recorded the relative positioning of the shelves before they stowed them in hyperspace. They literally looted the library, which made my mental jaw drop and led to some very fun DM's prepwork as I told them I would have to get back to them on the exact contents of the library.
Before the party jumped into the future to fight a vampire, they left an NPC (Wa' Halia, an escaped slave from the Temple of the Bull in Siss-Anor who had been trained as a scribe and librarian for the temple library, picked up by the party a few sessions earlier) with the task of cataloging the contents of the library. Luckily, Wa' Halia was a ritual caster who actually had both the ability to read the various languages of the collection and experience as a librarian, so she is going to have a detailed report for the party... which I told the players I would just post on my blog for them between sessions.
This is the third library I have tossed hints of to the party, but the first that they had physically encountered (let alone looted). They had previously heard about the sunken temple city of Adamaskas with its great library maintained by monks preserving the early records of the seven city states and the library of the Temple of the Bull in Siss-Anor (the temple they heard about a long time ago but it was not until a few sessions ago when I introduced Wa'Halia that they learned about the library at the temple, the second largest library of the coastal city-states).
Not entirely what I would expect from a library from the late temple era (12,000-10,000 YA), the bulk of the collection is written in an ancestral form of the modern tongue and inscribed in clay in the temple style of the old river god civilizations. One peculiarity of the temple collection is that nearly all the tablets are circular. Some of the subject matter is unusual in general but perfectly in keeping with the dedication of the temple to the Bati-Bati and the worship of the dark gods of death and transformation. The collections of astronomy might even exceed those held in Adamaskas, long believed by most knowledgeable sages to be the greatest collection of celestial knowledge ever assembled. Very unusual for a late temple era library are what appear to be archaeological collections of the earliest languages preserved in clay in the region (~40,000-35,000 YA), even including tablets dedicated to gods ideologically opposed to the death and transformation gods. One set of tablets appear to be alien in origin, the composition of the materials is unknown to me and the engravings change as the tablets are rearranged.
Works Concerning the Gods of Death and Transformation: Huana-Hatle, god of were animals and death; Supay, ruler of the underworld and horned demons; and Ilamatecuhtli, aged goddess of earth, death and the galaxy whose roar signaled war. Each god is represented in the collection by several different epic histories, some of which appear to have been collected from earlier inhabitants of the region judging by language differences and inscribing style; prayers and hymns; and detailed instructions concerning every aspect of all associated ceremonies and sacrifices.
History of the Bati-Bati: Known incursions of the Bati-Bati into this reality; a record of every lunar eclipse related to Bati-Bati activity; descriptions of the mind-warping abilities of the Bati-Bati; various legends linking the Bati-Bati to the gods of death and transformation; symbology of the Bati-Bati; descriptions of several journeys into Bati-Bati reality by the priesthood over the years; detailed anatomical notes of the physiology of the Bati-Bati.
Histories of the Priesthood and Temple: (1/4 of the collection by volume) Dates of birth and death of the priests; calendar roll of all ceremonies and sacrifices, major and minor, through the years; individual biography tablets detailing major life events of important priests, updated throughout their lifetime; ranks of the undead priests (dating the beginning of the undead priesthood tradition at this temple to 11,130 YA); and genealogies of the troll breeding programs (which interestingly begin in the earliest days of the temple and continued uninterrupted until the collapse of the island civilization). Notable individual biography tablets include: Epunamun, great statesman and warrior who entered the church after a career in the army commanded by the kings of the island; Anhanga, who came to fame as a necromancer and instituted the tradition of the head priest joining his predecessors upon death in an undead council that shared power with the living head priest; Maricanchi, who rose from obscurity with a series of prophetic dream revelations and ended up being sponsored first by Epunamun and later by Anhanga while creating the star chamber, dream tablet and the dimension shifting properties of the temple from instructions he received while dreaming; Trumak the Keeper of the Chamber, an outsider to the temple who succeeded Maricanchi as master of the star chamber and dream tablet and created the ritual separation of all star chamber operations from the temple proper; and Mamagal, an otherwise seemingly minor figure from the early priesthood whose prophesies were uncommonly accurate, who I had previously identified as being the same author as Maricanchi because of a very unusual and characteristic way of inscribing date characters that marked the prophesies of both men (this stood out enough to me while I was looking through the collection of prophesies that I am now puzzled to note that Mamagal and Maricanchi apparently lived nearly 800 years apart but wrote in an identical style).
Astrological and Astronomical Collections: (1/2 of the collection by volume) Celestial observations and predictions of the early priesthood from 12,000-11,130 YA, reflecting a two dimensional understanding of constellations as seen from a surface perspective but a very accurate understanding of the motions of the planets, eclipses, comets and meteor showers; and the staggering output of the newly founded college of astronomy after the introduction of the shadow table and the star chamber paved the way for a three dimensional understanding of every star's relative position to each other and the world (11,130 YA - 10,000 YA).
Epunamun's Edicts: A series of broad sweeping reforms authored by Epunamun, these edicts centralized power within the church into the hands of a head priest, set limits on the powers of the council of elders, specified allowable uses of tithe received by the temple and mandated certain portions be set aside for a variety of purposes; mandated early childhood education within the priesthood, established several colleges, raised an army, established protocols for training officers, and authorized the church to aggressively convert neighboring tribes into tribute paying worshipers of the temple.
Anhanga's Necromantic and Animating Collections: Copies pressed from originals in the Adamaskas collection, easily identifiable by the characteristic angular Adamaskan characters, reproducing the necromantic and animating knowledge of the early (25,000 - 20,000 YA) and middle temple period (20,000 - 12,000 YA, prior to the last meander of the Zamonas river); papyrus copies of several notable dissertations submitted by sorcerers to the council of the lich kings including Manu Jablitu's famous treatise arguing that certain metals found on alien planets in alternate realities could enable animation of far larger structures with far less expenditure of power than held possible by the lich kings (these dissertations and many others are often referenced in texts held at the Temple of the Bull but all known copies outside of Adamaskas were destroyed 10,000 YA after the collapse of the old temple system); three studies commissioned by Anhanga on the monumental architecture of the middle temple period, focusing on the temple complex surrounding Kariki-Kalos and two other temple complexes built around imprisoned godbeasts in the jungle; and a collection of advanced necromantic rites authored by Anhanga himself.
Prophesies: A collection of predictions and dates, on subjects ranging from rainfall and propitious times to conceive a child to the ultimate collapse of the universe. The priests did not foresee the calamitous downfall of the island civilization. Early prophesies are inscribed on two sides of a tablet, with two possible date readings. Prophesies made with the aid of the star chamber (11,130 YA - 10,000 YA) have only one possible date reading.
Nightmares: A collection of recurring nightmares endured by leading undead priests.
Alchemical Collection: Recipes for potions and poisons; instructions for the transmutation of metals and the creation of alloys, reflecting what appears to be a more advanced understanding of metallurgy than presently found in the empire. This collection is etched on gold plated copper tablets.
Anatomical and Herbal Notes and Drawings: A rather extensive illustrated herbal of jungle plants and anatomical drawings of humans and animals. The organs and vital points are given names that clearly place the origin of these works with the Gadoro Temple. These are the only vellum scrolls in the collection and great care was taken in their creation. Epunamun's seal was unbroken on the ivory tubes.
Archaeological Collections: A collection of what appear to be artifacts from the ancestral populations of the jungle lowlands, including: Clay tablets; ceramic pottery; wood, stone and bone tools and weapons; beads of many materials; masks; feathered headresses; feathered capes; and penis gourds.
The Library of the Bati-Bati Temple
Wa'Halia's report:
Not entirely what I would expect from a library from the late temple era (12,000-10,000 YA), the bulk of the collection is written in an ancestral form of the modern tongue and inscribed in clay in the temple style of the old river god civilizations. One peculiarity of the temple collection is that nearly all the tablets are circular. Some of the subject matter is unusual in general but perfectly in keeping with the dedication of the temple to the Bati-Bati and the worship of the dark gods of death and transformation. The collections of astronomy might even exceed those held in Adamaskas, long believed by most knowledgeable sages to be the greatest collection of celestial knowledge ever assembled. Very unusual for a late temple era library are what appear to be archaeological collections of the earliest languages preserved in clay in the region (~40,000-35,000 YA), even including tablets dedicated to gods ideologically opposed to the death and transformation gods. One set of tablets appear to be alien in origin, the composition of the materials is unknown to me and the engravings change as the tablets are rearranged.
Works Concerning the Gods of Death and Transformation: Huana-Hatle, god of were animals and death; Supay, ruler of the underworld and horned demons; and Ilamatecuhtli, aged goddess of earth, death and the galaxy whose roar signaled war. Each god is represented in the collection by several different epic histories, some of which appear to have been collected from earlier inhabitants of the region judging by language differences and inscribing style; prayers and hymns; and detailed instructions concerning every aspect of all associated ceremonies and sacrifices.
History of the Bati-Bati: Known incursions of the Bati-Bati into this reality; a record of every lunar eclipse related to Bati-Bati activity; descriptions of the mind-warping abilities of the Bati-Bati; various legends linking the Bati-Bati to the gods of death and transformation; symbology of the Bati-Bati; descriptions of several journeys into Bati-Bati reality by the priesthood over the years; detailed anatomical notes of the physiology of the Bati-Bati.
Histories of the Priesthood and Temple: (1/4 of the collection by volume) Dates of birth and death of the priests; calendar roll of all ceremonies and sacrifices, major and minor, through the years; individual biography tablets detailing major life events of important priests, updated throughout their lifetime; ranks of the undead priests (dating the beginning of the undead priesthood tradition at this temple to 11,130 YA); and genealogies of the troll breeding programs (which interestingly begin in the earliest days of the temple and continued uninterrupted until the collapse of the island civilization). Notable individual biography tablets include: Epunamun, great statesman and warrior who entered the church after a career in the army commanded by the kings of the island; Anhanga, who came to fame as a necromancer and instituted the tradition of the head priest joining his predecessors upon death in an undead council that shared power with the living head priest; Maricanchi, who rose from obscurity with a series of prophetic dream revelations and ended up being sponsored first by Epunamun and later by Anhanga while creating the star chamber, dream tablet and the dimension shifting properties of the temple from instructions he received while dreaming; Trumak the Keeper of the Chamber, an outsider to the temple who succeeded Maricanchi as master of the star chamber and dream tablet and created the ritual separation of all star chamber operations from the temple proper; and Mamagal, an otherwise seemingly minor figure from the early priesthood whose prophesies were uncommonly accurate, who I had previously identified as being the same author as Maricanchi because of a very unusual and characteristic way of inscribing date characters that marked the prophesies of both men (this stood out enough to me while I was looking through the collection of prophesies that I am now puzzled to note that Mamagal and Maricanchi apparently lived nearly 800 years apart but wrote in an identical style).
Astrological and Astronomical Collections: (1/2 of the collection by volume) Celestial observations and predictions of the early priesthood from 12,000-11,130 YA, reflecting a two dimensional understanding of constellations as seen from a surface perspective but a very accurate understanding of the motions of the planets, eclipses, comets and meteor showers; and the staggering output of the newly founded college of astronomy after the introduction of the shadow table and the star chamber paved the way for a three dimensional understanding of every star's relative position to each other and the world (11,130 YA - 10,000 YA).
Epunamun's Edicts: A series of broad sweeping reforms authored by Epunamun, these edicts centralized power within the church into the hands of a head priest, set limits on the powers of the council of elders, specified allowable uses of tithe received by the temple and mandated certain portions be set aside for a variety of purposes; mandated early childhood education within the priesthood, established several colleges, raised an army, established protocols for training officers, and authorized the church to aggressively convert neighboring tribes into tribute paying worshipers of the temple.
Anhanga's Necromantic and Animating Collections: Copies pressed from originals in the Adamaskas collection, easily identifiable by the characteristic angular Adamaskan characters, reproducing the necromantic and animating knowledge of the early (25,000 - 20,000 YA) and middle temple period (20,000 - 12,000 YA, prior to the last meander of the Zamonas river); papyrus copies of several notable dissertations submitted by sorcerers to the council of the lich kings including Manu Jablitu's famous treatise arguing that certain metals found on alien planets in alternate realities could enable animation of far larger structures with far less expenditure of power than held possible by the lich kings (these dissertations and many others are often referenced in texts held at the Temple of the Bull but all known copies outside of Adamaskas were destroyed 10,000 YA after the collapse of the old temple system); three studies commissioned by Anhanga on the monumental architecture of the middle temple period, focusing on the temple complex surrounding Kariki-Kalos and two other temple complexes built around imprisoned godbeasts in the jungle; and a collection of advanced necromantic rites authored by Anhanga himself.
Prophesies: A collection of predictions and dates, on subjects ranging from rainfall and propitious times to conceive a child to the ultimate collapse of the universe. The priests did not foresee the calamitous downfall of the island civilization. Early prophesies are inscribed on two sides of a tablet, with two possible date readings. Prophesies made with the aid of the star chamber (11,130 YA - 10,000 YA) have only one possible date reading.
Nightmares: A collection of recurring nightmares endured by leading undead priests.
Alchemical Collection: Recipes for potions and poisons; instructions for the transmutation of metals and the creation of alloys, reflecting what appears to be a more advanced understanding of metallurgy than presently found in the empire. This collection is etched on gold plated copper tablets.
Anatomical and Herbal Notes and Drawings: A rather extensive illustrated herbal of jungle plants and anatomical drawings of humans and animals. The organs and vital points are given names that clearly place the origin of these works with the Gadoro Temple. These are the only vellum scrolls in the collection and great care was taken in their creation. Epunamun's seal was unbroken on the ivory tubes.
Archaeological Collections: A collection of what appear to be artifacts from the ancestral populations of the jungle lowlands, including: Clay tablets; ceramic pottery; wood, stone and bone tools and weapons; beads of many materials; masks; feathered headresses; feathered capes; and penis gourds.
Gaming Artifact for submission to the D&D Library of the Future:
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| My original page of notes about this library (this page also contains some gameplay notes in the right margin from the session the players looted the library) |
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Guachimines "Guacamole" Left Hand of the Keeper and the Jump to the Future
The players in my 4e game surprised me last session by deciding to track a fleeing vampire into the jungle rather than deal with any number of what I had figured would be seen as more pressing matters. They had ended the previous session at one of those crossroads moments when they had just wrapped up one little mission and had a wide open decision about what to do next. I try not to over prepare as a DM in these situations because you never know what the party is going to do, but I figured they were most likely to either cash in on the offer to be introduced to Ruskus and his band of River Dragons that was made by the defeated slaver a few sessions ago (and learn more about another aspect of the fractured river deity), visit their connections in the city of Siss-Anor (to learn more about the activities of the snake men) or investigate the ruined dungeons left behind when Manu Jibleetu blasted off into space in his twisted tower.
So of course they decide to chase after a vampire that they didn't even know about until two sessions ago and who has really never done anything to the party, or even done anything to make himself a logical target. He just existed, and he was a vampire, and he ran away, and apparently that was enough to make the party chase him. His name is Guachimines and his title is Left Hand of the Keeper, but the party has been calling him "Guacamole" and I even found myself calling him Guacamole a few times last session when I wasn't being careful. Guachimines was created by Trumak, the Keeper of the Chamber, who was defeated by the party two sessions ago and his consciousness trapped in a blood gem.
The party knew Guachimines was originally from the head-hunting tribes that lived in the foothills of one of the Zamonas' major tributary rivers, and figured he might be heading back to his old homeland. At first they were just going to fly the hovercraft over to the hills and find his home village and poke around there before he showed up, but eventually they figured out that they could track him directly through his connection to his master Trumak, even though Trumak was mostly destroyed and what remained was bound inside the gem.
The party eventually caught up to Guachimines and his group (Guachimines had several vampire thralls and 18 abducted river worshipers with him that he had transformed into a flock of bats and flown off with) about 50 miles from the confluence and discovered that they had arrived about a half hour too late to keep Guachimines from jumping into the future. An uneasy standoff with the vampire thralls ended surprisingly with a decision to parlay with Ibi Shadowhands, the leader of the thralls. Most of the vampire thralls had one arm that ended in a large metal flamethrower, but both of Ibi's arms ended in shadow appendages intended to make him a more formidable ritual caster. When Guachimines jumped into the future the vampire thralls suddenly found themselves free willed and masterless for the first time. Ibi turned out to be a somewhat sympathetic character and the party, after much debating, decided to spare the lives of the thralls and task them with rebuilding the Badi-Badi temple that the party had just destroyed, minus the complex shadow circuitry. This pleased the thralls, who had been members of the temple in life and then had spent thousands of years of undeath assisting in the rites of the chamber. I think this also helped appease Tilia a little bit about the decision to spare their lives, because Tilia had been upset that the rest of the party destroyed the temple while she was lucid dreaming on the shadow table trying to figure out more about the temple's past and purposes.
After investigating the bloody ritual sacrifice of the 18 worshipers and the intricate pattern of entrails left behind by the time jumping vampire, Beautiful Bob called on the restless spirits of the recently slaughtered to help the party follow the vampire into the future. He succeeded wildly and the session ended a little early with me saying that I wanted to make sure I was fully prepared for the awesome encounter that was sure to follow.
You see, even though the party was almost an hour behind Guachimines when they too jumped into the future, they are going to arrive at the exact same instant of time as Guachimines does... and he will have no idea they are coming. Guachimines will have the advantage of terrain, having jumped into his secret future lair, but the party will have the element of surprise.
This is going to be fun.
There was some amusing back and forth before the jump as the party instructed Curious George (their sentient magical hovercraft) to "meet them in the future" but not tell them about anything their past selves said after they came back from the future. That way, they told me, Curious George wouldn't influence the events in the future present and they could come back to the proper past.
Ah, I love time travel.
So of course they decide to chase after a vampire that they didn't even know about until two sessions ago and who has really never done anything to the party, or even done anything to make himself a logical target. He just existed, and he was a vampire, and he ran away, and apparently that was enough to make the party chase him. His name is Guachimines and his title is Left Hand of the Keeper, but the party has been calling him "Guacamole" and I even found myself calling him Guacamole a few times last session when I wasn't being careful. Guachimines was created by Trumak, the Keeper of the Chamber, who was defeated by the party two sessions ago and his consciousness trapped in a blood gem.
The party knew Guachimines was originally from the head-hunting tribes that lived in the foothills of one of the Zamonas' major tributary rivers, and figured he might be heading back to his old homeland. At first they were just going to fly the hovercraft over to the hills and find his home village and poke around there before he showed up, but eventually they figured out that they could track him directly through his connection to his master Trumak, even though Trumak was mostly destroyed and what remained was bound inside the gem.
The party eventually caught up to Guachimines and his group (Guachimines had several vampire thralls and 18 abducted river worshipers with him that he had transformed into a flock of bats and flown off with) about 50 miles from the confluence and discovered that they had arrived about a half hour too late to keep Guachimines from jumping into the future. An uneasy standoff with the vampire thralls ended surprisingly with a decision to parlay with Ibi Shadowhands, the leader of the thralls. Most of the vampire thralls had one arm that ended in a large metal flamethrower, but both of Ibi's arms ended in shadow appendages intended to make him a more formidable ritual caster. When Guachimines jumped into the future the vampire thralls suddenly found themselves free willed and masterless for the first time. Ibi turned out to be a somewhat sympathetic character and the party, after much debating, decided to spare the lives of the thralls and task them with rebuilding the Badi-Badi temple that the party had just destroyed, minus the complex shadow circuitry. This pleased the thralls, who had been members of the temple in life and then had spent thousands of years of undeath assisting in the rites of the chamber. I think this also helped appease Tilia a little bit about the decision to spare their lives, because Tilia had been upset that the rest of the party destroyed the temple while she was lucid dreaming on the shadow table trying to figure out more about the temple's past and purposes.
After investigating the bloody ritual sacrifice of the 18 worshipers and the intricate pattern of entrails left behind by the time jumping vampire, Beautiful Bob called on the restless spirits of the recently slaughtered to help the party follow the vampire into the future. He succeeded wildly and the session ended a little early with me saying that I wanted to make sure I was fully prepared for the awesome encounter that was sure to follow.
You see, even though the party was almost an hour behind Guachimines when they too jumped into the future, they are going to arrive at the exact same instant of time as Guachimines does... and he will have no idea they are coming. Guachimines will have the advantage of terrain, having jumped into his secret future lair, but the party will have the element of surprise.
This is going to be fun.
There was some amusing back and forth before the jump as the party instructed Curious George (their sentient magical hovercraft) to "meet them in the future" but not tell them about anything their past selves said after they came back from the future. That way, they told me, Curious George wouldn't influence the events in the future present and they could come back to the proper past.
Ah, I love time travel.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Alien Dimension
The players in my 4e campaign are exploring an alien dimension, in hopes of righting a wrong that is more or less attributable to them and which is in all likelihood completely un-rightable.
I sketched pictures and took brief notes on four alien ecosystems the party was likely to cross through while looking for Tshuin the tree jumper. Tshuin, his brother Yerush and a young warrior named Anank had first encountered the party while tracking a large hord of alien locust-scorpions being driven by Minotaur vampires under the sway of Manu Jibleetu (the lich technomancer). Yerush and Anank currently lie unconscious, kept magically subdued in the hold of the hovercraft back in 4e dimension while the party tries to track down Tshuin to explain that they had not listened to him when Tshuin had told them to just kill the pair.
You see, my players are having a moral dilemma. Tilia and Beautiful Bob pretty much are the reason that the cross-dimensional instabilities have ceased and the borderlands between the jungle and the alien dimension no longer exist. Tshuin, Yerush and Anank were on the 4e side when the dimensions separated, and their village and families were on the alien side.
The party has also learned that the villagers are at least as much alien as they are "normal", with a secondary insubstantial nervous system (ghost nervous system) attached to two very real mycelial tissue masses in the lungs and lower digestive system.
One of the effects of this ghost nervous system is that all the villagers are bound together with a telepathic link; when the dimensions parted, this link was severed for Yerush and Anank. Tshuin still felt something... somewhere... but the others would not listen to him. "Our families are dead! Our children are dead! The elders are dead! The mother plant will go unpropagated and the pitcher-flowers will be undrunk! Let us do the ritual of the black mask and welcome those who have wronged us to the same fate!"
Tshuin watched as his older brother and the arrogant warrior Anank anointed themselves and drank the sacred drink. He watched as they burned their own blood and smeared the ashes into the raw flesh revealed after they flayed their own faces. Tshuin said the ritual words that are said to free the soul, and watched as the eyes of the two glazed over... and became black... and the black spread across the face, a featureless black mask with two slits for eyes.
Tshuin hailed the party from a treetop as the hovercraft flew over the jungle. He told them that his brother and Anank were coming to kill them. The ritual of the black mask had revealed Beautiful Bob and Tilia as the reason the family had been lost. Tshuin asked the party to kill the pair, because their souls had already been lost. There is no reasoning with them, he said. They are already gone.
But did the party listen?
I sketched pictures and took brief notes on four alien ecosystems the party was likely to cross through while looking for Tshuin the tree jumper. Tshuin, his brother Yerush and a young warrior named Anank had first encountered the party while tracking a large hord of alien locust-scorpions being driven by Minotaur vampires under the sway of Manu Jibleetu (the lich technomancer). Yerush and Anank currently lie unconscious, kept magically subdued in the hold of the hovercraft back in 4e dimension while the party tries to track down Tshuin to explain that they had not listened to him when Tshuin had told them to just kill the pair.
You see, my players are having a moral dilemma. Tilia and Beautiful Bob pretty much are the reason that the cross-dimensional instabilities have ceased and the borderlands between the jungle and the alien dimension no longer exist. Tshuin, Yerush and Anank were on the 4e side when the dimensions separated, and their village and families were on the alien side.
The party has also learned that the villagers are at least as much alien as they are "normal", with a secondary insubstantial nervous system (ghost nervous system) attached to two very real mycelial tissue masses in the lungs and lower digestive system.
One of the effects of this ghost nervous system is that all the villagers are bound together with a telepathic link; when the dimensions parted, this link was severed for Yerush and Anank. Tshuin still felt something... somewhere... but the others would not listen to him. "Our families are dead! Our children are dead! The elders are dead! The mother plant will go unpropagated and the pitcher-flowers will be undrunk! Let us do the ritual of the black mask and welcome those who have wronged us to the same fate!"
Tshuin watched as his older brother and the arrogant warrior Anank anointed themselves and drank the sacred drink. He watched as they burned their own blood and smeared the ashes into the raw flesh revealed after they flayed their own faces. Tshuin said the ritual words that are said to free the soul, and watched as the eyes of the two glazed over... and became black... and the black spread across the face, a featureless black mask with two slits for eyes.
Tshuin hailed the party from a treetop as the hovercraft flew over the jungle. He told them that his brother and Anank were coming to kill them. The ritual of the black mask had revealed Beautiful Bob and Tilia as the reason the family had been lost. Tshuin asked the party to kill the pair, because their souls had already been lost. There is no reasoning with them, he said. They are already gone.
But did the party listen?
Monday, August 8, 2011
Saving the Universe as a side mission
I was browsing the blogs this afternoon and stopped by Grognardia to see how a rereading of Tolkien was treating James.
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2011/08/brief-gaming-thoughts-on-re-reading.html
In the comments, from Aos: "I do, however, very much prefer to avoid world saving as a campaign emphasis. I've done it in the past and while it has an inherent charm, it also tends to deflate any further interest I might have in the setting."
I am dancing around this issue with my 4e campaign. My entire 4e universe has been "ending" in a slow protracted process that started with the stars going out in response to events in my Mutant Future campaign. The mutant future players, while exploring a strange chamber that evidently had been created by snakemen, activated a subprocess in a controlled singularity device on the planet of Celestia in the Mutant Future universe.
Like a bathtub draining, all the energy of the 4e universe is being sucked into the Mutant Future universe. The particular planet the 4e campaign is played on will succumb in just under two months game time, which of course can be an eternity or just a couple of sessions.
There are many powerful NPC actors in the 4e universe, none of the them (with the possible exception of the royal inquisitor from the city state of Siss Anor) friendly to the PCs, but all of them with a vested interest in seeing the universe persevere.
The party is currently fighting tooth and nail to survive against the minions of Manu Jibleetu, pinned down into a sphere of protection against shadow in the middle of a rain storm in the jungle and taking mortar fire from two artillery positions. Manu Jibleetu is an ancient lich technomancer who may or may not be allied with the snake men... and if the party thwarts Manu's plans, they may accidentally and unwittingly prevent him from stopping the destruction of the world personally (Manu just showed up last week after a centuries long absence from the region, and is up to all kinds of shit, including being commissioned by the snakemen to repair the malfunctioning sentient computer that controls the singularity, thereby saving the 4e universe for the time being).
What I have been enjoying is that the saving of the universe from impending doom is FAR from the top priority of the campaign, and it will not be a campaign ending event when it happens, regardless of if an NPC actor or the party succeeds. The party is currently trying to collect samples of each of five alien elements that do not occur in the 4e universe but which are necessary to activate the gate in the grandmother and grandfather tree at the confluence of the river to prevent all the energy in the 4e universe from flowing into the Mutant Future universe (this course of action having been arrived at through consultation with the gadoro, the race of spirit monkeys that guard the confluence of the river and the grandmother and grandfather tree, and after lengthy research among the tribes of the area). This is a short term goal, and they are ready to get back to the REAL task of trying to figure out what the heck the snake men are up to, and who were the race of tiny aliens who abandoned powerful energy vessels below the surface of the planet and on the moon.
Last session Tilia had a breakthrough (natural 20 on an arcana check) while trying to gain entrance into a sacred metal pod. She realized that the metal was an alloy composed of the five alien elements, at least theoretically opening up the possibility of breaking down the metal into its composite elements. As one of the areas of dimensional instability where the alien elements appear is hidden underneath Manu Jibleetu's twisted tower, the party welcomed at least the possibility of obtaining the shadow element without having to brave the dead hills and enter the tower.
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2011/08/brief-gaming-thoughts-on-re-reading.html
In the comments, from Aos: "I do, however, very much prefer to avoid world saving as a campaign emphasis. I've done it in the past and while it has an inherent charm, it also tends to deflate any further interest I might have in the setting."
I am dancing around this issue with my 4e campaign. My entire 4e universe has been "ending" in a slow protracted process that started with the stars going out in response to events in my Mutant Future campaign. The mutant future players, while exploring a strange chamber that evidently had been created by snakemen, activated a subprocess in a controlled singularity device on the planet of Celestia in the Mutant Future universe.
Like a bathtub draining, all the energy of the 4e universe is being sucked into the Mutant Future universe. The particular planet the 4e campaign is played on will succumb in just under two months game time, which of course can be an eternity or just a couple of sessions.
There are many powerful NPC actors in the 4e universe, none of the them (with the possible exception of the royal inquisitor from the city state of Siss Anor) friendly to the PCs, but all of them with a vested interest in seeing the universe persevere.
The party is currently fighting tooth and nail to survive against the minions of Manu Jibleetu, pinned down into a sphere of protection against shadow in the middle of a rain storm in the jungle and taking mortar fire from two artillery positions. Manu Jibleetu is an ancient lich technomancer who may or may not be allied with the snake men... and if the party thwarts Manu's plans, they may accidentally and unwittingly prevent him from stopping the destruction of the world personally (Manu just showed up last week after a centuries long absence from the region, and is up to all kinds of shit, including being commissioned by the snakemen to repair the malfunctioning sentient computer that controls the singularity, thereby saving the 4e universe for the time being).
What I have been enjoying is that the saving of the universe from impending doom is FAR from the top priority of the campaign, and it will not be a campaign ending event when it happens, regardless of if an NPC actor or the party succeeds. The party is currently trying to collect samples of each of five alien elements that do not occur in the 4e universe but which are necessary to activate the gate in the grandmother and grandfather tree at the confluence of the river to prevent all the energy in the 4e universe from flowing into the Mutant Future universe (this course of action having been arrived at through consultation with the gadoro, the race of spirit monkeys that guard the confluence of the river and the grandmother and grandfather tree, and after lengthy research among the tribes of the area). This is a short term goal, and they are ready to get back to the REAL task of trying to figure out what the heck the snake men are up to, and who were the race of tiny aliens who abandoned powerful energy vessels below the surface of the planet and on the moon.
Last session Tilia had a breakthrough (natural 20 on an arcana check) while trying to gain entrance into a sacred metal pod. She realized that the metal was an alloy composed of the five alien elements, at least theoretically opening up the possibility of breaking down the metal into its composite elements. As one of the areas of dimensional instability where the alien elements appear is hidden underneath Manu Jibleetu's twisted tower, the party welcomed at least the possibility of obtaining the shadow element without having to brave the dead hills and enter the tower.
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