A Time Traveling Seed Sprouts

Back on December 29th of last year we played a session where the PCs had traveled back in time 4 million years before the current timeline to confront a time traveling sorcerer in a hummingbird mask and bright feathered cloak from creating a set of dark artifacts.  During this encounter Tilia ended up entering a shared dreamspace with the sorcerer.  The hummingbird man acted like he had already met Tilia, and when pressed shared the story of how he first met Tilia (none of which had happened as far as Tilia's player knew).  He said that he had been trapped inside a dream after eating a black lotus flower as a young man, during which time he had many visions which ultimately led him to travel to the past to create these artifacts.  During his dream vision at one point he encountered a great dream demon boar which was consuming the dreams of the people of the jungle with a greed and a hunger that could not be filled.  He was attacked by the dream demon boar, but a great white horned beast (Tilia) intruded and said many confusing things that he did not understand but which later he took to mean that he must travel back in time to make a set of artifacts that could be used to manipulate waking reality while in dreamland.  He said that Tilia had shown him one of the artifacts and told him of the others.  This was all very confusing for for Tilia's player who had no idea what I was talking about.  In the end though they wound up trusting the sorceror and allowed him to create the artifacts.

Well fast forward almost a full year of real life and Tilia finds herself back in the present timeline and in a shared dream within a massive collective consciousness known as MotherMind.  A dream demon boar has invaded the dreams of MotherMind and is causing greed and hunger where Tilia had tried to create a peaceful dream of the happy hunting grounds to calm down MotherMind.  Tilia suspects that the young man version of the hummingbird sorceror is also inside this shared dream.  At the end of last session Tilia was about to track down the young sorcerer and interrupt his encounter with the dream demon boar.  It will be up to Tilia if she wants to tell the young man to create the artifacts or not, but the present version of Tilia does possess one of the artifacts so if she doesn't I guess there will be changes to the present timeline :)

Of course, this isn't the first time the PCs have messed around with timelines.  The first was a journey back in time to prevent the birth of Slotek, the twisted son of Akili (Old Man Gootie's wife) and the great river spirit of the Zamonas River.  They did this hoping that if they prevented Old Man Gootie from corrupting Akili and creating Slotek that the great spirit of the river would instead be reborn in the form of a river dragon as the river dolphins had told them was supposed to be the natural order of things.  Of course, I used this event as a great excuse to make all kinds of crazy changes to the present timeline of the 4e game, although the players didn't find out about them for a while.  Ultimately this led to the river spirit being fractured into multiple deities each with an avatar in the river basin. 

The second time they messed around with time was a trip to the future, which is much less problematic in terms of not disrupting the present.  They traveled into the far future of the 4e world in pursuit of a time travelling vampire (emerging into an alien spacecraft on the surface of a dead world in the process of being consumed by an expanding dying sun).  After they killed the vampire and took his stuff, they became very intrigued by a magical artifact he was carrying.  Using a ritual to look into the artifact's past, they observed its creation by a strange sorcerer in a hummingbird mask and colorful feathered cape... ultimately proving to be irresistible to the party, so they time traveled to the past to begin this post :)

Near TPK in my 4e game

Last Tuesday's installment of my 4e game ended with our heroes in very perilous straits.  We ended the session with Beautiful Bob the half-gibbering mouther psychic (Ardent) and Hammer the warforged barbarian both below 0 HP and surrounded by snakemindflayers, presumably about to have their intelligences consumed.  The party's other member, Tilia the albino minotaur warden, had previously merged her body into the giant honeycomb mushroom brain that the snakemindflayers worshiped and called MotherMind.   At the end of the session Tilia had entered a lucid dreamstate to attempt some psychic healing on MotherMind.  Tilia was trying to sooth the nightmares of MotherMind and she called upon the energy of Bob and Hammer (with whom she shares a permanent telepathic link that was forged with alien energy technology some time back) to help her.  Bob and Hammer had both just dropped below 0 HP that round and lost consciousness so I gave them the option of joining Tilia in the shared dream when she called upon their energy.  They both took me up on that, so we will start next session with all three PCs in a shared dreamscape with MotherMind.

A few notes on how we got into this predicament:

*  The party allowed themselves to be led to the caverns of the snakemindflayers by a guide, knowing the entire time that the snakemindflayers wanted Tilia to merge with the MotherMind to fulfill an ancient prophecy about a white cow that featured prominently in the snakemindflayer religion.  The party had also gleaned that the snakemindflayers intended to kill the rest of the party and consume their intellects.

* The previous session, the party had initially parlayed with the first few snakemindflayers that they ran into... until suddenly jumping them and massacring them in one round.  For some reason the party decided to take a five minute rest in the same cavern that they just fought in, apparently deciding that no alarm had been raised despite knowing that the snakemindflayers and the mushroom men thralls that they had just killed had a psychic connection with MotherMind.

*  When the party's five minute rest was interrupted by a legion of approaching snakemindflayers and thralls, they decided to confront them rather than attempt to flee (although to be fair the only obvious direction to flee would have been deeper into the caverns of the snakemindflayers and toward MotherMind).

*  Faced with overwhelming numbers the party willingly marched with the snakemindflayers deep into their living mycelial city and Tilia willingly merged herself with MotherMind.  At that point the rest of the snakemindflayers politely asked Hammer and Bob to accompany them back to the ritual sacrifice chambers so they could fulfill their destiny of being consumed.  Hammer and Bob didn't want to comply.

*  The party soon learned that the metallic rods that the snakemindflayers all carried were some kind of technological laser weapon.  Hammer learned that getting shot with lots of lasers hurts.

Nur-Kubi and Zaninum the Cambions

This is a post for the benefit of my players, so they have the stats of the two cambion NPCs they now control.  I based these off the Cambion Wrathborn and Chained Cambion, but I bumped up the HP, defenses and damage expressions because my players are 23rd level at this point.  These cambion were meant to be an annoyance in combat with the PCs while their sorcerer master flew around above them and caused problems; of course when it came down to it the party thrashed the sorcerer pretty quickly while Beautiful Bob rolled a natural 30 on his once nightly roll on  the d30 in an attempt to dominate the two surviving cambions (he has an ability to attempt to permanently dominate bloodied opponents, I believe he gained this ability by consuming the soul of an inquisitor devil that he had trapped in a malevolent nut a while ago).  I usually wouldn't have let him dominate the cambions because they were sired by the sorcerer the PCs were fighting, but if you roll a natural 30 on a d30 you succeed in whatever you are trying to do.  That is why Beautiful Bob is half-gibbering mouther as well, he rolled a natural 30 in attempting to psychically befriend a gibbering mouther in his very first session and then he later combined his own form with the mouther in a dark ritual.

So anyway, Beautiful Bob now has two cambion NPCs, Nur-Kubi and Zaninum (both fathered by Mezizi Al-Bado, member of the royal sorcerer's Order of the Phoenix and secret member of the order of the Horned Skull - their mothers are two different succubus devils).

Nur-Kubi is a shifty sort who prefers to assume human guise and dislikes it when he loses control and must assume his natural, fiery winged form.  He wishes he were human. He despises devils and his half-brother Zaninum

HP: 200       Bloodied 100                          Initiative: +15   Perception: +12  Darkvision
AC:33  Fortitude:31  Reflex: 34  Will: 30
Speed: 6, Fly 8 (clumsy)
Resist 10 fire

Traits:  Burning Anger (fire): Aura 1 - while Nur-Kubi is bloodied, any enemy that ends its turn within the aura takes 10 fire damage.

Standard Actions:
Pain Blade (weapon) at will: melee 1; +30 vs. AC  4d8+16 damage and the target grants combat advantage until the end of Nur-Kubi's next turn.

Path of Pain (weapon) at-will: Nur-Kubi shifts 4 squares and uses pain blade at any point during the shift.

Fire Bolt (fire, implement) at will: Ranged 5 +28 vs Reflex 4d6+10 fire damage

Burst Skyward (fire, implement) Encounter: Requirement: Nur-Kubi must be bloodied. Close Burst 2 (enemies in burst); +30 vs Reflex 4d10+10 fire damage and Nur-Kubi flies 8 squares without provoking opportunity attacks.

Minor Actions: Wicked Guise (illusion) at will - Requirement: Nur-Kubi must not be bloodied.  Nur-Kubi can assume the appearance of a specific Medium humanoid.


Zaninum  is an angry sort, full of hatred and wrath.  He loves killing things.  He hates humans.  He thinks his half-brother Nur-Kubi is weak but envies his ability to fly.  He wraps himself in chains that he can control telekinetically.

HP: 220       Bloodied: 110                             Initiative: +15  Perception:+15   Darkvision
AC:34  Fortitude:32  Reflex:30  Will:30
Speed:6

Traits:
Binding Chains: Aura 3  Squares within the aura are difficult terrain for enemies

Child of Chains: While immobilized or restrained, Zaninum gains +2 to attack and +2 to escape a grab or to savings throws against immobilization or restrain.

Standard Actions
Chain Lash (weapon) at-will: melee 3 +32 vs. AC  6d6+16 damage and a dazed target is immobilized (save ends)

Vile Fetters (psychic) at will: melee 5 +30 vs. will  4d6+12 psychic damage and if the target ends its next turn closer to Zaninum it is dazed (save ends)

Unfettered Scream (psychic) recharge 5,6: Close blast 3 (creatures in blast) +30 vs. Fortitude 4d6+12 Psychic Damage and the target is pushed 2 squares and dazed (save ends)

Minor Actions
Mind Shackles (psychic) Recharge when first bloodied:  Two enemies adjacent to each other in a close burst 5 are psychically shackled (save ends; each enemy makes a separate saving throw against this effect).  While psychically shackled, an enemy takes 20 psychic damage at the start and the end of its turn if it isn't adjacent to the other creature that was affected by this power.  Aftereffect: the effect persists, and the damage decreases to 10 (save ends).

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.

Huwawa Complex

The players in my 4e game are mucking around in a loose analog of Tikal (see this text and image dump post for some Tikal flavor) I am referring to as the Huwawa complex after the imprisoned godlike force that is bound below the lowest dungeon level.

 I used the central structures of Tikal for the surface layer, with a 3 level dungeon underneath.  I sketched the dungeon maps free hand in isomorphic view.  I added the graph lines by hand.  I was a little drunk when I laid down the original perspective lines and in many cases they vary wildly from true.

I scanned in the maps and messed around with them for a minute in Photoshop.  This first one is color coded by level depth: Blue = Level 1; Green= Level 2; Red=Level 3; and Yellow=Level 4 (the very surface layer of the imprisoned entity below the dungeon levels).

Now here is a map color coded by connections to the surface structures: Red = vertical connections with the Central Acropolis; Green = vertical connections with Temple II; Purple = vertical connections with the North Acropolis; Yellow = vertical connections with Temple I and Blue = vertical connections with the structures to the east of Temple I, which in my analog is another temple pyramid similar to Temple I and II.

The awesome thing is the party actually has architectural plans of the complex from the library they looted a few sessions back, so this post isn't even technically a spoiler!  Of course, the party managed to figure out a way to use the solid jade portals that only allow the dead to pass through them, so they have been teleporting all over the dungeon using the lich doors and they probably won't even end up seeing most of the place before they get the loot they came for or die trying.

Pterosaurs

I have always been fascinated by pterosaurs.  I loved all manner of dino-critters when I was a wee lad, memorizing the names of several bookfulls before I was in kindergarten.  It's probably no surprise that I like to stick dinosaurs into the RPGs that I preside over even if genre and convention would dictate otherwise.  As soon as the PCs in my 4e game crossed the great mountain range and descended into the seemingly endless jungle beyond, they ran into a group of allosaurus.  When they first encountered the volcanic island  at the confluence of the of the major tributary rivers of the Zamonas, they saw winged dinosaurs soaring on the thermals overhead (yes, I know that pterosaurs are not actually dinosaurs, but come on).

I get to geek out on dinosaurs this week in my prep work for my 4e game, because the players time jumped into the past at the end of last session.  As far as I am concerned, if your PCs time travel into the past, there better be some dinosaurs on the other side.  Conveniently I just bought myself a cool book on dinosaurs which I am going to spend the evening looking through, but first I did some internet searches on pterosaurs.

Often Google image searches of real life monsters like pterosaurs or deep sea critters yield some incredible results.  Feast your eyes on this awesomeness (image lifted from this website about pterosaur flight).  It is a dimorphodon.

I ended up sketching the dimorphodon picture in my game notes, along with a Quetzalcoatlus (the largest pterosaur ever discovered, with a wingspan that may have stretched greater than 30').  Then my wife got home from work and colored my pen and ink sketches, so I figured I should upload the end result.

Quetzalcoatlus 

Fire Breathing Pterosaur

I added a bit of a Pelican like pouch to the beak, because this is the ancestor of the dragons of my world.  A colony of chemosynthetic, heat-resistant bacteria live in and coat the inside of the beak, digesting minerals that the Quetzalcoatlus scoops into the beak-pouch and emitting a flammable gas as a by-product which is stored in special sacks along the neck.  The heat-resistant bacteria also coat the gizzard, and the fire-breathing pterosaur swallows live embers and keeps them in the gizzard until blowing them out mixed with the gas to form a fiery blast. 

Dimorphodon

Killer Toothed Pterosaur

My wife thinks her version is colored "much more realistically" than the original artist's.  She does have a lot of experience handling raptors so maybe I will believe her. 

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).

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:

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) 

Dreamscape

I still intend to write another post about the conclusion of Tilia's journey through a constructed dreamland to wake up six slumbering liches, but for now I am just going to post a page out of my session notes.  This is the "wicked awesome drawing" Tilia's player Mike referred to in his guest post about the first dream session.  It gave me a loose structure for my prep work for the dream and helped set the mood nicely at the table.  I intend to post more of my session notes because a lot of them are crazy artifacts in their own rights.

To Dream

Greetings,
It’s Mike here, coming to write a post on some of the most recent happenings in our 4e campaign. I play Antillia (Tillia) the albino minotaur warden. I wanted to start off by summarizing some of the recent events that will have a bit of a role in some of the events that happen here.
If you’ve been keeping up to date you’ve probably read this post here, which details how Tillia is currently in a dream state with a bunch of liches. They are all asleep in a long-sealed circular catacomb, each lich in its own niche’. There are 6 liches and 7 places along the walls, dominating the center of the chamber is a giant pearl-like black sphere. This sphere I will refer to as the Dream Sphere. Each of the liches has projected themselves, via dream, into the artifact in order to become deities in the world. You will also realize that Tillia managed to wake up one of these liches in the last session, who happened to be the God of Lightning and Thunder. He wasn’t very happy to be awoken. He was confused and to make things worse he discovered that the priests that had built their temple around the sleeping chamber were harnessing the liches for their magical energy. This was causing damage and corrupting their original setup and being as I was the only other thing in the chamber, he turned his wrath upon me. Tillia still being hopped up on all kinds of psychotropic drugs to increase her arcane skill managed to relay that it wasn’t her, she just opened the door and stepped in. The lich immediately realized that Tillia didn’t have the skill to form such a complex network, and let her go. After dealing a wicked amount of lightning damage by grasping her throat and holding her aloft. I felt pretty good about opening the door until he dismissed me so easily! He then released Tillia and began trying to undo some of what had been done. Tillia offered to help and this sealed the deal that she wasn’t an enemy, but an ally of circumstance. This came about when the lich tried to do an arcane check to get a better view of all the shadow circuitry that had been used to drain energy from the liches. He wasn’t doing so hot Carl rolled a 1 and groaned from behind his screen. and so Tillia jumped in using her song hekura which allows her to perform rituals via song, and make them take less time by increasing the DC and allowed him to make another arcane check, with a +20 bonus from the ritual. Needless to say, he didn’t fail this one, and was grateful, if still not pleased. He at least stopped trying to kill her.
At this point Tillia also realized that the Nightmare Beast we had found behind a different iron door much newer than the one to this chamber was sealed in by energy from this room. To top it off, its nightmare powers were being used to cause the dreaming liches massive problems inside the dream and as the temple was closing, it was being unleashed into their dream to the point of causing them to release more power from the increased suffering. This was being siphoned off to power the sealing temple, the reanimation of the skeletons, and the opening/domination of the bati-batis. The lich, obviously, wanted to jump right in and sever all the ties to the liches, thus unleashing this VERY powerful and VERY angry Nightmare Beast. Tillia managed to talk him into letting her release it and she ran to the dark crystal chamber that allows projecting rituals and used it to put her drugs to good use, sealing the beast in a circle of protection and then sending it back from whence it came. The lich then jumped back into the dream world to set things right, and managed to fail miserably Carl rolled another 1 at releasing any of the shadow ties to the liches.
You may ask, why is any of this important? Well, because this drove Tillia to want to help the liches. It also made the dream landscape a little less…painful by removing the Nightmare Beast from the equation. However, this still wasn’t a light decision for Tillia. Nor was it a light decision for me, the player, because Carl made it a point to let Tillia know that entering the dream wasn’t easy and IF I returned, it would change me. This put a lot of pressure and stress on me, because failure could be catastrophic and not acting could be just as bad.
One other thing I should point out that makes an impact later on, is that after defeating the intestine/boar heart beast in the ritual projection chamber Bob sacrificed it to link Gootie and Tillia, so that Tillia could see through Gootie’s eyes without Gootie knowing. After having forced him to go into deep shadow during their last encounter, having an early warning system would be helpful.

To Dream a Little Dream…

So began the dream session. Carl started the session off by asking me some questions about Tillia’s background. I hadn’t discussed her back-story much from the time I had first made the character, and I was honestly surprised that Carl even remembered most of it. It was just a concept I had come up with when creating the character and giving them life. I always like to have something to draw on when making my characters, to flesh them out, even if I do enjoy pouring over feats/abilities for hours finding cool and interesting ones to use. To fill the rest of you in, Tillia came from a tribal culture. Her father was Chief of the tribe and her mother was a Shaman of the tribe. Tillia is one half of a pair of identical twin albino minotaurs. She was named after her father Antilles who was a previous minotaur character of mine a LONG time ago in another campaign and followed in his footsteps. Both Tillia and her sister were highly spiritual, but upon growing older Tillia spent more time training with her father, while her sister trained with her mother. As she aged the weight of responsibility came down upon her shoulders and she realized that only one of the siblings would be chosen to lead the tribe, and that their husband would be Chief after their father. So with the blessing of her family she handed leadership over to her sister to avoid fracturing the tribe loyalties and causing a bitter rivalry. Her father had two great axes he fought with and when he stepped down as a warrior he handed one to each sibling. Upon declaring her faith in her sister, she gave up her family axe to her sister. By giving up her rights, she also gave up her place in the tribe, so this left Tillia in a very awkward situation. Her family would have gladly had her stay, but there was little left for her in the tribe. With that in mind Tillia set off on her own, prepared to travel and find her place in the greater world around her. A lot like her father before her. Her mother cried, her father put on a proud face, and her sister hugged her. Those are the last memories Tillia has of her tribe and family.
Carl then asked me various questions about Tillia’s fears. Would I fear losing my health or sanity, strength of body or strength of personality, my intellect or my reflexes. This of course did nothing for the anxiety that this could have been a very, very, very bad idea for Tillia. After that quick fleshing out, we sat down to the most amazing D&D session I’ve ever been a part of.
Unable to lucid dream right out of the gates, Carl narrated what I perceived and then allowed me to make a check to do things in the dream that I wanted to do. This did a few things: For the first it made me really think about what I wanted to do before I asked to do it and for the second thing, it took away all my normal skill bonuses. This is a lot more stressful than it sounds, when you’re used to skills you’ve come to rely on and worked to master. I have also grown used to the luxury of being able to roll twice on some of my major rolls due to a feat and my nature hekura. The only bonuses I had on any rolls in the dream were my Wisdom modifier (+6), a focus if I had one (which I did with the artifact black orb +6), and half my level (+8). I also got a sliding bonus depending on how much I stayed with the dream (up to +4), or fought against it (-4). Carl also informed me that besides trying to do things, I was also in a large multi-tiered skill challenge. He then showed me a wicked awesome drawing I hope he posts some version of, and pointed out where I was on the path. On my right I had the “Sea of Dreams” no matter where I went, it was always directly to my right. I could jump into it and try to navigate my way and skip ahead at a very high failure rate or return to the shore I left if I got washed into it a relatively lower DC, failure meant being lost in the endless “Sea of Dreams”. On my left was Deep Shadow, of which, I knew a little… but seeing the effects it had on Old Man Gootie, I was not exactly too thrilled to try out. I also felt a current pulling me in the direction of a castle I could see in the distance. I felt the liches were in this castle and following the stream was the lowest DC, and also where the skill-challenge came into play. In the beginning I had the leeway to fail twice a third fail meaning I’m done, but must make three successes to move forward. As I progressed along the “path” towards the castle, the leeway got smaller with one failure and two successes to move on. Anything I did outside of moving forward, didn’t count as a success or failure for the skill challenge itself, but might help me succeed overall.
In the first stage of the dream I was standing in a swamp as a young girl, the only visible structure being a hut on some very tall stilts. It was surrounded by mist otherwise and all beyond it was shrouded in mist as well. As I approached the hut I made a “dream check” for my perception and noticed that the stilts were moving and squirming like snakes. I continued my approach and some abomination emerged from the inside of the hut like a hermit crab emerging from its shell. Four snake heads moved towards me and opened their mouths wide, their throats and the inside of their mouths inflating out to make four identical faces. The faces looked like the pale, waterlogged faces of an old woman. She had milky white eyes and spoke with a watery voice. “Umsala, is that you? Come closer so I can feel your face.” Needless to say, Antillia has been around and in Carl’s universe that is saying something. To her this was more every day, frightening as it may be, than a rarity. As a player this was some chilling imagery, but I had to decide how Tillia would see it. She has stared a gods in the face, studied giant sentient plants, and come toe-to-toe with the end of the world.
As she stepped beyond the house she began drifting into the mist. She felt herself becoming light, but the first step still gave her a bit of a shock as she stepped out into nothingness. This gave me the first chance to become more lucid, but I rolled terribly and did not succeed Feeling so light and weightless like she was flying, she started to zoom down the path excitedly. I felt that this was probably one of the times she felt safest in a long time and carefree. I’ve also felt quite happy and carefree while flying in my own dreams This was until I rolled a 1 on my second check to move along the dream path. Suddenly something swooped out of the mist and took a bite out of Tillia, draining her sanity and willpower and leaving her hurting. Carl rolled a nat 20 on the dice and the creature drained 4 Wisdom from me, one of my greatest fears and also the stat that helped me navigate the dream. Now, minotaurs in 4e are constantly waging a battle against their bestial side and their more humane side. This loss of willpower, this sudden fear that the pristine and careless mist is full of predators, and the shock of it all cause Tillia to give in to her bestial side. She stomped her hoof, her horns twisted and grew in wickedness, and she bellowed out a challenging cry to the Dream Hunter. Charging forward she felt the mist coalesce and tore through an image of Old Man Gootie that seemed made of paper, and burst forth from the mist. I had succeeded on my third check and passed on
I would also like to point out that at no time did Carl ever tell me what form Antillia was in unless she looked around or took notice, and even then she had the greatest influence on herself by expecting to see herself as something in specific when she looked. As Tillia plummeted through the edge of the mist she found herself falling over the edge of a cliff. Having been in a few dreams over the years where I’m falling, I had a pretty good idea how this would go down, but Tillia isn’t me. This also gave me my second chance at lucidity… I failed. She started to panic at first, but long ago Tillia had learned how to shapeshift into a Gadoro. A Gadoro is a four-armed white ape, highly spiritual and hanging out on the sacred island at the confluence of all the rivers. The major benefit being that the form is immune to falling damage. She had done this before on an occasion when falling from the air ship, so it came naturally to her. This also took her mind off of falling and allowed her to calm down, making the fall go much slower. During the fall she was passing backwards through her life, seeing the most recent things she had done, then middle years, then childhood. This coincided with making the 3 checks to pass through this area. Because Tillia had managed to calm down, she had the option to influence an event in each stage of her life. This may not have a direct affect on her current reality outside of dream, but it would increase/decrease the multiple realities that follow in a similar choice. Basically, she could choose one terrible thing to reverse, or one good thing to enforce upon the multiple realities that exist. This was amusing because thinking back, I had a hard time thinking of anything GOOD Tillia had done. She always TRIED to do good things, but they often seemed to backfire in some way. I mentioned this and all had a good laugh about it. I did eventually think of a few things. Needless to say there were a few things that weighed heavily on Antillia’s conscience. The first was when she unleashed Kariki-Kalos the jellyfish god and it sank the continent she and her party came from, presumably killing millions of people. The second was when she trapped Old Man Gootie in the shadow realm for the first time, sucking the energy out of the whirlpool he had created in the confluence of the rivers.
In the grand scheme of things, she had mostly come to terms with having trapped Old Man Gootie. She felt terrible about his insanity derived from his stay in deep shadow, but she had corrected a large disturbance in nature that he had originally created there. She also went on to help Akili and keep Slotek, the abomination of a river god, from being born out of the corrupted union. Given the chance she would have saved Old Man Gootie from being trapped, but she wouldn’t have reversed removing the unnatural whirlpool. She chose to do her best in the dream world to reverse releasing Kariki-Kalos. This hit her harder because it meant the deaths of her family, tribe, Beautiful Bob’s past, and millions of others for no reason. Simple destruction. This pained her the most of the two. She then slowly drifted downward into her adolescence and began seeing flashes of the time before she left her tribe. She latched on to a particular point in her life when her father first bestowed his axes upon Antillia and her sister. She reached into the dream, drawing out the axe, remembering happier times. Remembering her family and what she had left behind. Feeling happiness and sadness at the same time, but she did not regret her actions. At this point Carl said that by drawing out the axe I had a sort of dream “wild card” that I could use at any point. At this point Hammer and Bob piped up about how it was kind of like a game show. Presumably the wild card would grant me a boon in the dream at a later time. With visions of her life flying by, Tillia slowly drifted down into her childhood. Here she spent a lot more time with her sister and chose to strengthen that feeling of the bond between twins. Both children spent a lot of time with their mother at this point in life and so it was filled with time spent outside, playing, exploring, and generally enjoying exploration of the world.
Thus Tillia touched down and entered stage four of the dream sequence down the path to the castle. When she looked around she realized she was standing in a clearing that looked like home, but things were unsettled. Her father and tribesmen faded into view and a battlefield unfolded before her. It wasn’t a battlefield she had ever really fought on, but it was one she had encountered in her dreams before her first real battle ever took place. Her nerves were on edge and fear gripped at her heart. She looked down making sure she was equipped in her traditional war gear and paint. At this point I made a check, Carl pointed out that had I not, it probably would have been brought to my attention that I was naked in the middle of battle at some point. I think everyone has had a version of this dream at some point in his or her life. She wielded a large two-handed warhammer in a fashion mimicking her father’s preference for large weapons, having trained under him up until this point. She fell into line with her comrades and prepared to face the enemy tribe. With a battle shout they all charged into the oncoming enemies, Tillia swung her hammer and was failing. She seemed weak, scared, and her courage dwindled. She was forced back into a corner and surrounded. They disarmed her, and she let out a scream of rage and fear. Suddenly a wall of water from the “Sea of Dreams” rose up over the battlefield and Antillia gazed on in horror, as it was full of the waterlogged dead of her tribe. They screamed out her name and moaned in anguish, their bloated bodies and pale, lifeless eyes gazing into her soul. The washed over the field and consumed all of those in the dream, her father looking to her with fear in his eyes as he was washed away, his axes falling to the ground. Antillia broke free of her paralysis as the wave was closing in on her, arms of her dead loved ones stretching out to pull her down. She charged forward and picked up one of her father’s axes, using both hands to slam it into the ground and anchor herself from being washed away. As she swung the axe downwards it split the wave and it passed on either side of her and faded.I used my nightly d30 roll here to give me the best shot at success, rolling a 27! She turned to the oncoming army, alone. She reached down and picked up a shield and one-handed warhammer from the field, strapping them on. She gazed into the eyes of her enemies on the field and let out a roar, “YOU WILL NOT HAVE MY FAMILY!” and charged… the seemingly solid forms evaporating before her onslaught and the scene fading. Antillia was left panting heavily as she moved on into stage five of this landscape. Just some notes. This was changed to a 2 success 1 failure skill challenge and the DC had increased. I rolled a 5 on the first roll resulting in a failure, and then proceeded to roll a 1, so I was about to be washed away into the Sea of Dreams. I used the axe wild card I had been given earlier to buy myself a chance to re-roll with a +4 bonus. I succeeded and finished up the skill challenge to move on to the next phase. At the point where Tillia stood up to the army by herself I, as a player, was tearing up a bit. I’ll admit I get emotional at the sappy scenes in movies, but this was a lot more personal. We’re only level 18 now, but we’ve been at it for 3 or so years and I’ve grown attached to the character as a whole. Hammer’s player even admitted to feeling a little teary eyed at parts. It just goes to show you how emotionally invested we all were at the table, that’s how much this whole event gripped us. Not to mention the fact my heart was racing and my nerves were on edge with every roll of the dice to make a check.
Antillia emerged from the fading battlefield to find herself in a more recently familiar clearing. This clearing was full of trees and plants that had their roots weaved into the shadow realm by Old Man Gootie. All of the trees had large burls that made up the majority of the tree. These burls were hollow and full of Old Man Gootie’s shadow gardens, where he grew crazy herbs and plants to use in his magic and to feed Akili. This was our first meeting with Old Man Gootie and I believe is somewhat outlined here. She was afraid at first that he was there to come back into the world, but soon realized something wasn’t right because the link Bob had created to Old Man Gootie’s vision wasn’t showing him as being there. This just goes to show you that even when we’re split, the party is still there backing each other up. Bob’s earlier sacrifice of the boar intestine creature gave Antillia the chance to make a lucidity check with a high bonus, which she made with flying colors. Thanks Bob! At this point Antillia fought off some of the dream state and was better able to get her mind around things. She pictured herself in adult form and looked down. She gasped out loud as she realized she was pregnant! At this point everyone around the table groaned, I believe there was some cursing, and throwing up of arms in disgust. The reason being that Gootie often revives himself by impregnating someone and birthing himself through them, with some of their powerful traits, in turn making him more powerful each time. As a player I was wracking my mind as to how Antillia would handle this, having previously stopped Gootie from impregnating her and even trapping one of his “children” in a field. Antillia at this point could hear Gootie approaching, but she used her lucid will to ensure that a young Gootie came forward. He turned out to be even younger than she had ever met, and she smiled at him. Rubbing her belly as she also used her influence to make the child in her womb a normal baby, half minotaur and half human. She embraced Gootie and stepped back, her waters breaking as she went into labor. Thinking to herself, “This isn’t so bad… it’s kind of nice.” Then realizing, “Oh ya, it’s a dream.” She pushed out out of some fanciful shinning light came a clean and healthy satyr looking child. She held him in her arms and kissed him, handing him over to his father, Gootie, who smiled and took the child as that section of the dream began to fade. More notes! This is one of the points where your character manages to surprise even the player. I mean, at the risk of sounding crazy, Antillia did something that even I had a bit of trouble realizing before I had said it and it was done. Everyone at the table was shocked, and I think I even surprised Carl. Carl let me know that I would be seeing my child in my dreams and that I had given Gootie a hook point to return, without so much of the hatred and craziness if he chose it. He said by no means would this alleviate everything, but it was certainly a good start. This whole event and how it unfolded actually left me feeling pretty great for Antillia, and very happy. Hopeful for Gootie even.
So Antillia moved on to stage six of the dream walk. At this point my hands were shaking, I had come so far and come SO close to failure before this. Things were only going to get harder. Luckily I was now lucid, so that gave me a leg up, but it only allowed me to be more creative with my choices. It wasn’t a guarantee of anything. This portion of the dream was just before the “Gate House” to the castle. Immediately after entering this phase, Kariki-Kalos loomed before me, maw agape, heading right at me! He was enraged and ready to swallow me whole, I could see little more than his maw and the shadow eyes surrounding it. At this point I made a check to bring a dream version of Bob and Hammer on either side of me. I also summoned up the liches that had imprisoned Kariki-Kalos to begin with. I think put a Horn of Kariki-Kalos in Bob’s, Hammer’s, and my own hands. We all blew them at once and the deep bellowing sound reverberated throughout the dream. Kariki-Kalos represented all the doubt, regret, and pain that Antillia had been feeling over the years and she called upon her friends for help in that moment of need to overcome all of it. The horn mesmerized Kariki-Kalos and Tillia took advantage. Rather than proceed on she chose to mount Kariki-Kalos with her friends, now family, and the liches to ride him through the “Sea of Dreams” to the base of the castle. She envisioned him being re-imprisoned below the castle, much like he was below the original temple we found him in. She then dismounted as the dream faded and the session ended with Antillia inside the Castle of Dreams, which was crowned with the golden sphere where all the liches were. I think the move of riding Kariki-Kalos caught people at the table by surprise as well. I know Hammer said something along the lines of, “I wasn’t thinking that, but once you said it, it was like… Yeah, that’s totally the way it should be.” I made a strong success to navigate Kariki-Kalos and thus next session will bring the hardest challenges to date!

END

Words from the player…
I didn’t expect this recap to be so long, but once I got going… it was hard to stop. My notes throughout pretty much cover everything, but this entire night was a supremely fun night. I don’t think I’ve had a better session. Emotions were high and everyone was locked into every detail of the events unfolding before us. I think one thing that made this night a smashing success was that we kept swapping back from what I was doing with Antillia, and what Hammer and Bob were doing. It gave us all time to think in the interim without detracting from the ongoing stories. I was as much enthralled with what they were doing, as they were with what was going on with me. Plus it gave me a chance to wipe off the sweat from my palms and take a breath.
I am also amazed at how well the whole dream walk unfolded. Carl took the little he knew of my background, with my input as we went along, and made a very intriguing dreamscape. I felt that we both worked together to flesh out my character beyond anything I had previously done with her. It was like a brainstorming session that was enacting our ideas, as we had them. Roleplay at its best! I think basing Antillia’s father on my previous minotaur character from back in the day, also helped me quickly think of what Antillia might see in her past.
Bob and Hammer’s players did an amazing job keeping quiet when I was in the dream, not shouting out advice and giving me tips. Usually we are very discussion heavy when we are doing things as a group and I’m sure it was hard on both of them to keep their lips sealed and just listen. I know I probably would have done a much less fabulous job of keeping my trap shut.
I knew I was stepping into a dreamscape at the beginning of this session, but I had no idea it would turn out so crazy, and so defining for my albino minotaur. I’m probably just gushing now, but this goes to show what a creative DM can accomplish. It’s not an easy role to fill and even harder to fill well.
-Mike P.

Dream Session

Last night's 4e game was a dream session for two reasons.  One, it was probably the most challenging and fun session I have ever run; a dream session.  Two, one of the PCs (Tilia the albino minotaur) spent the entire session in a dream state navigating a dream landscape.

As explained here, the party is currently split up with Hammer the warforged barbarian and Beautiful Bob the half-elf/half-gibbering mouther in the upper levels of a temple looting a chamber of its sacrificial trappings and sacred treasures while Tilia is having fun with a bunch of dreaming liches down below.

Dreaming Lich

There were many challenging aspects to running this session.  The awake PCs were dealing with a ticking clock.  In 2 1/2 minutes the re-animated skeletons of the old temple priests and faithful would finish the trek up from the catacombs, and in 5 minutes the temple would finish being completely sealed away from the 4e dimension and the portal to the bati-bati world would be fully opened.  Tilia's body, sleeping, was in a chamber at the end of a long tunnel that would take almost 2 minutes to run down.

And then there was the dreaming PC.  Running an effective dream sequence in D&D is hard.  As a DM you don't want to just narrate what is happening, but you don't want to allow the player to have as much of a feeling of control as normal.  I want to write a whole post about just the dream sequence because it was probably the single coolest role-playing moment I have been a part of.  For now I am going to content myself with a few of the highlights from the entire session, dreaming and awake.

Hammer opened his portal coin to the hovercraft and charged around the treasure chamber scooping loot into the portal with his axe.  I made the Super Mario coin sound effect.

An unseen vampire sitting in a control room elsewhere in the temple dominated Hammer.  Beautiful Bob used his telepathic link with Hammer to force the barbarian into a rage, using his nightly d30 roll to do so... and rolled a 30.  Not only did Hammer's rage break the domination, the dominating vampire also flew into a rage and lost the ability to use the ritual throne to project his domination attack for 1d6 rounds.  I rolled a six.

Tilia managed to latch onto a talisman during a falling episode in her dream journey, her father's great axe.  I told her player to use the ax like a wild card, a dream symbol that could be conjured into another dream scene later.

Bob and Hammer moved the party into the dark crystal chamber near the treasure room, a chamber designed specifically to broadcast rituals out onto remote targets.  Bob offered up a sacrifice of his own blood and called upon the storm he had summoned earlier in the evening a few miles downriver before the party abruptly left the river cultists in the wake of an attack by slavers.  Bob painted a map of the temple in his own blood on the floor of the crystal chamber, centering it on the chamber that contained the raging vampire.  Hammer has a lightning hekura (spirit demon creature) living inside his dark crystal heart and has gained a powerful lightning strike ax attack.  Bob's dark ritual allowed Hammer to strike the map and a powerful twin strike of lightning shot from the storm and into the vampire's chamber.  The vampire was holding a steel scepter with a crazy power that opens a portal to the inside of a star and causes a column of star fusion to exist in this world for a few rounds, and a series of unlucky rolls made me decide the scepter's power went off in the strike and incinerated the vampire.

Tilia nearly was washed away into the sea of dreams while fighting alongside her father in a battle dream of her youth.  Tilia used the ax talisman to call the axe to her in the dream and sink it into the ground to prevent being washed away.  The sea of dreams is contiguous to all points in dream but it is easiest to return to the shore just left.  I gave her a +4 bonus to the check for the use of the talisman at a very appropriate time, and she just made her check to avoid slipping away from the liches' dream land.

The temple troll, unleashed several rounds earlier by the vampire, finally made it to Hammer and Bob and I lunged in with an encounter power that would have badly hurt Hammer and slowed him for the encounter.  I roll a 1.

Bob ends up opening a small portal to the raging inferno of star fire that is still going off in the vampire's chamber (the party's hovercraft Curious George was providing an attentive eye in the sky view of the temple's exterior and had been very much enjoying the fire show) and blasting the troll with it, keeping his regeneration from working for just long enough for Hammer to bash it into enough submission that Bob was able to dominate it.  Bob felt sorry for the troll after realizing that its living heart had been plucked from its body and kept magically sealed away under the floor of the treasure chamber, and its claws had been replaced with shadowy portals to necromantic realities that oozed necrotic poison.  Bob took several precious rounds to restore its heart, remove the enchantments on its claws and heal as much of the psychic damage it had suffered through years of domination at the hands of the temple priesthood as possible.  Bob then nervously released his domination of the troll.

I gave it a very slim chance of attacking the PCs and a much greater chance of running down after the oncoming skeletal priests who presided over all the denigrating rituals the troll had been forced to perform in.  The troll booked it down the twisting tunnel to the catacombs, buying the party more time as the skeletons were only about five rounds away at this point.

Tilia entered a grove in her dream of twisted trees that she recognized as being the work of her first master in the shadow arts, Old Man Gootie.  She also soon noticed that she was pregnant.  This elicited groans of horror from Bob and Hammer's players, who of course knew that Old Man Gootie was famous for his ability to procreate with anything and birth new incarnations of himself instead of creating true offspring.

Tilia has always harbored a deep guilt for unintentionally trapping Old Man Gootie in deep shadow and forcing him to lose his sanity over eons of journeying to return to this reality.  She used the dream as an opportunity to be glad that she had his child, but she tried to use her influence over the dream (at this point she had just become lucid for the first time in the dream, for reasons I won't get into now) to make her baby a normal offspring of the two and not the usual Gootie-abomination that kills its mother and takes none of her genetic makeup.

Tilia soon birthed a little curly haired satyr looking baby boy that I told her player would be visiting her dreams again in the future.

Tilia eventually ended up riding the god-jellyfish Kariki-Kalos into the sea of dreams and straight into the Dreamer's Castle.

I want to do a whole post on the dream journey because it was almost miraculous how well it worked.  I am also going to invite Tilia's player to share thoughts on the dream sequence.

Lichhanger

Our last 4e session ended on quite a cliffhanger.  The short story - the party split up.  One member of the party woke up a lich precisely as the other two party members were breaking into the temple treasure room and triggering its magical guardians to spring to life.  And that is when we called it a night :)

Earlier in the evening Beautiful Bob bathed in the pool of light at the base of the radiant energy waterfall manifest between two colossal stone statues guarding the entrances to two temples.  One temple contained a peaceful new cult of the river god, worshiping the party's old friend Akili as a new incarnation of the river's spirit.  The party's stay there was more or less uneventful, although Beautiful Bob did plant a few seeds in Akili's head about learning to control and harness her new-found godlike powers.

Exploring the other temple proved much more exciting.  Right after a tense encounter that used some of the party's daily powers the party split up.  I should not forget to mention that a giant stone disc was slowly closing the entrance to the temple (the party triggered a trap in the entrance hallway), coinciding with the slow opening of a portal to a nightmare dimension populated by the Bati-Bati (orb creatures from another reality that warp the minds of all who behold them until they pluck out their own eyes).  I told the party they estimated about 10 minutes until the temple was sealed in completely.  There was some discussion of whether the party was still going to be able to teleport out of the temple if it was sealed and the general consensus was that no one knew.  They forged on ahead.  Bob had made a couple of tiny clones of himself earlier that were keeping an eye out on the long tunnel to Bati-Bati world and exploring the labyrinthine crypts below the temple.

 Tilia went down to the magically sealed iron door at the end of the long hand carved tunnel to the south-east of the crystal ritual chamber where they fought the animated giant-boar heart and entrail-mouthed abomination just a few moments earlier and opened it on her own.  Hammer and Bob were checking out the rooms to the north-west when Bob figured out that the large wooden double doors at the end of the hallway were magically trapped and wanted to explode.  Bob then scried beyond the door and saw the temple treasury, gems and gold and residuum.  This was all that Hammer needed to hear and he charged headfirst at the door.  Which happily exploded in his face.  Right about then Tilia had walked into a room lined with seven niches carved into the walls, six of which contained mummified bodies quickly identified as slumbering arch-liches (although from a divine tradition).  Two large ceramic statues of horned spear wielding temple guardians sprung to life like drunken bottom-heavy tops in the treasure chamber above exactly as Tilia managed to wake up one of the sleeping arch-liches in the lower chamber.

This should be fun!  

Synergistic Effects and Contraindications in Herbal Magic

One of the things I wanted to do when I introduced a bunch of magical herbs in my 4e campaign was to eventually come up with some kind of mechanic to resolve the unintended consequences of mixing medicines.    I decided early on that I didn't want to try and make an exhaustive chart of every possible combination, because that would get ridiculous very quickly with the number of different magical herbs and elements we are talking about here.

This issue came to the fore again last session when Tilia was faced with a daunting magical challenge and she ate some vile smelling fungal growth and a wing of the staring moth to gain bonuses they would give to her arcana check (both items collected during the course of the campaign).

This is still tentative but I have a rough mechanic.  For each pair of herbs ingested, roll 1d20.  A result of 1 indicates a contraindication and a result of 20 indicates an unexpected beneficial effect.  When more than two herbs are ingested at once, roll for each individual pair and also once for the entire unique combination.

 I have a very rough start on contraindication and unexpected beneficial effect tables (these definitely need to be expanded to at least d20 tables - leave suggestions in the comments?):  EDIT:  Mike, player in my 4e campaign and sometimes poster on this blog, sent me an email with a bunch of great suggestions for this that I will be incorporating into these tables soon.

Contraindication Table: 1d12

Remember to tell your doctor about every magical herb you are currently taking when discussing a new prescription!

1. This combination of herbs severely strains the heart.  If strenuous physical activity is engaged in the next 2d6 hours there is a risk of heart attack (this could be a Fort attack in 4e with the potential to do enough damage to kill, or a Save vs. Death in earlier editions).

2.  This combination of herbs inhibits the body's ability to process alcohol for 1d4 days.  Not only will alcoholic beverages be dramatically more potent, the drunk will last for the entire duration and a number of drinks = 1/3 Constitution could result in death by alcohol poisoning. 

3. Combining these herbs interferes with the efficacy of magical healing.  -2 per die on all magical healing for 1d4 days.

4.  These herbs just don't work very well together.  1 (1-5 on d6) or both (6 on d6) of the herbs work at 1/2 normal effect (whatever that is) when combined.

5.  Severe light sensitivity results for 1d6 days, blinded in full daylight and -2 to hit in bright to moderately lit rooms.  If a 6 is rolled for duration, the light sensitivity continues for another 1d6 days.  If a 6 is rolled on 3 successive checks, the effect is permanent.

6.  A numbing of all physical sensations occurs, causing a -4 penalty to Dexterity and the inability to feel pain for 2d4 hours.  

7.  Do not combine these herbs when pregnant.  This could be as simple as a chance of miscarriage or as crazy as a chance of magical birth defects.  Alternatively this could pollute the semen of male characters for 3d10 days, either causing sterility or hyperfertility for the character and magical birth defects for any children conceived during that period.

8.  One of the herbs (randomly determined) does not function at all while the other functions at 150% normal efficacy.

9.  A severe drowsiness results, a fast and unavoidable sleep descending in 3d6 rounds and lasting 2d30 hours.  Although pain or sudden loud noise can wake the character, sleep will return in 3d6 rounds until the original duration has passed.

10.  A slow process of petrification starts.  This initially manifests as +2 to AC and -4 to REF.  Over the next 2d6 days, roll a save at -1 cumulative per day the petrification has progressed.  Each failed save results in an additional +2 to AC and -4 to REF.  Each successful save reverses one days effects (if the first save is made the petrification ceases).  When REF reaches 0, the body is turned completely into stone and can only be cured through magical means.
11.  Dehydration/nausea results (Thanks Mike!).  Rolling a 1 on any attack/skill check dazes you for 1d4 rounds. Rolling a 1 twice without stopping to rest and rehydrate causes dehydration to the point where you fall unconscious for 1d4 rounds and can not be roused by normal means. Falling unconscious twice in this manner causes you to fall into a coma for 1d4+1 days, where you must seek proper medical treatment via someone trained in the Heal skill. Failing to do so within 2 days means you make a Death saving throw, if successful you stabilize and remain in the coma for an additional 1d4+1 days (added on to the first roll) You may also suffer permanent Ability damage. After 2 more days without medical treatment you automatically perish. Receiving proper medical treatment within 2 days prevents the Death saving throw, but you will remain in your coma for the full duration of your total days rolled. (Min 4 - Max 10)
12.  Combining these herbs can be instantly fatal.  Saving throw or die in 4e (or savings throw vs. Death).

Unexpected Beneficial Side Effect Table: 1d10

1.  A random stat is increased by 1d4 for 1d6x10 minutes.  

2.  These herbs work great together.  1 (1-5 on d6) or both (6 on d6) work at 150% normal efficacy.

3.  This combination reduces fatigue and hunger.  No food or sleep needed for 24 hours.  No side effects.

4.  This combination of herbs restores 3d6 HP or grants 3d6 temporary HP that disappear if not used within 2d8 hours.

5.  Lucky combination: +1 to all rolls for 24 hours

6.  A metabolite of this combination is sweated out and is irresistible to a random species (25% chance of being the same species as the ingester), acting as a love potion upon first exposure and a charm person/monster for subsequent suggestions made by the ingester, for 1d4+1 hours.  Even species not affected will find the body odor of the ingester very appealing for the duration.

7.  Magically toughens the ingester, +2 to AC for 3d6 hours.

8.  Grants telepathy to 50'.  This requires concentration and can only be used on one subject at a time.  Does not require line of site.  All living minds within 50' can be detected and contacted with concentrated effort.

9. Moment of Zen.  Exact effect of this is up to the player and DM.  Suggestions of a mechanical nature would include temporary bonuses to Wisdom, initiative, diplomacy, reaction checks, perception; suggestions of a more flavorful nature would include giving the DM a blank card in the form a character "revelation" (the DM gets to either reveal a secret or make up some shit about the campaign world) or some kind of breakthrough on a personality or character flaw.  This effect can never be intentionally recreated, only occurring as a random side effect of different herbal mixtures.

10.  Restores youthful vigor - lose 1d4 years of age.  Each time this combination of herbs restores youth there is a 1% cumulative chance of developing an irrational and overriding fear of aging.

Standardizing Doses and Duplicating Results

Unless very exacting precautions were taken to both accurately measure the potency of each herbal specimen and the exact amount consumed, combining the same types of herbs will not necessarily yield the same result.  I think a good start would be to give a 25-75% chance of recreating a contraindication or beneficial side effect, with the care taken to measure dosage determining the exact chance.  This assumes the same batch of herbs was used - I would lower these chances if this was not the case.  The 25% chance of failure even given the same herbs and very careful measurement of dosage means that there was some other factor present the first time that is missing.  Perhaps a fly flew in the preparation, or it was a hotter or colder day and the reaction depends on a certain temperature, or it was mixed in a copper bowl the first time and a wooden bowl the second, etc.

Addiction 

Yes of course there should be addiction rules but I really haven't nailed that one down yet.  I am still kicking around what sort of mechanic I want to use for addiction.  I don't want it to be a record keeping game of tracking doses used per period of time, I know that much.

Blood Tattoo Magic

Blood tattoo magic is practiced by the seven city-states of the Zamonas delta in my 4e campaign.  It was first encountered by the party when the royal tax collector from Siss-Anor showed up at the village of the song people far upstream in the jungle to collect the annual tribute in slaves.  The party had been meeting with the local big man Kore (the song people, like most of the jungle peoples, do not have an organized government per se but each village has a big man, the man able to marshal the most resources through calling in favors, threats, marrying off daughters, providing the most food for feasts, etc.) when the news of the tax collector's arrival spread through the village.  Accompanying Kore to the river's edge, the party marveled at the paddle-wheeler with the scorpion tail that had carried the tax collector and his men upstream.

The tax collector (also the sheriff, basically the lone extension of the laws of the city state this far upriver) and his two deputies  were both heavily tattooed, but the tax collector in particular was almost completely covered in large, colorful designs.  As he strode forward he raised his right hand and displayed a prominent eye tattoo on his palm.  Beautiful Bob's player did not skip a beat, and Beautiful Bob raised his hand up as well and caused an eye to manifest on his palm (Beautiful Bob fused his body with a gibbering mouther a while back in a dark ritual and can manifest eyes and mouths now).  The eye tattoo happened to be a mark of the sheriff's office and he took this as an insult at the least and a treasonous crime punishable by death more likely, and strode forward.  Blood flowed from a sack hanging at his waist up into a series of blotchy dark tattoos that covered his torso and he transformed into a giant jaguar.

A fun combat ensued, the paddlewheeler had a metal edged prow and keel and clawed hands on the wheels that allowed it churn away on dry land, and the fight ended when Beautiful Bob steered the ship's wheels over the sheriff as he was engaged in combat with Hammer.  The sheriff took several forms, the blood flowing from the tattoos back into the bag, and then out again into new tattoos as the fight progressed.  He was in the form of a giant scorpion when he was finally minced up by the magically powered paddle-wheeler.

This of course led to a lengthy investigation by the players into how this tattoo magic worked.  Here I present the fruits of their labor.

The blood that fuels the tattoos is the condensed essence of sacrificed humans.  One human sacrifice = 1 dose of tattoo blood = 100 drops of tattoo blood.  Even the most minor blood tattoo magic requires 1 dose to activate.  No tattoo has any magical properties unless activated by blood.  The jaguar form that the sheriff first took was a 2 dose form, while the scorpion was a 3 dose form.  Activating a tattoo does not consume the blood, so the number of doses of tattoo blood possessed determines the level of magic able to be activated rather than the number of times the magic could be used.

Tattoo blood can be ingested orally as a powerful stimulant and mood enhancer.  Small amounts (a "normal" dose, about 1 drop of blood or .01 dose per 100lbs body weight) grant a temporary magical bonus of +4 to all stats and the ability to "take 15" on any skill check.  Tattoo blood is highly addictive and those who succumb to its temptation are known as "juicers" (of course).  They soon waste away and become hollow shells of themselves unless they consume an ever increasing amount of tattoo blood each day to achieve normalcy.

Moving blood from the sack to a tattoo is a minor action, and moving blood from a tattoo back to the sack is a minor action.  Blood cannot be directly exchanged between tattoos.

Minor tattoos are the equivalent of at will, encounter or utility powers in D&D 4e and usually take 1 dose to activate.  When activated by blood, they give access to extra powers normally not available to a character.  I will give examples of minor blood tattoos later in the post.

Tattoo forms take 2 or more doses to activate and are beasts of another feather altogether.  Each tattoo form has HP and defenses that do not change relative to the character.  When the character takes a full rest, the HP of all her tattoo forms refresh.  Each tattoo form is basically a new monster, with its own movement and assortment of attacks and special abilities.  If reduced to 0 HP or fewer while in tattoo form, the blood flows back into the bag and the character is dazed until the end of her next turn.  Some tattoos are daily forms, which can only be activated once between extended rests.

Blood tattoo magic is highly regulated, and only specialized ritual priests have the tools needed to make the tattoos and the knowledge to prepare the sack that holds the precious blood.  The sack is made from the hide of the Ura-Tur (a swamp bogeyman that specializes in snatching victims and draining their fear from them while hiding them from nearby comrades), a leather as transparent as the clearest plastic and much stronger.  The needles used are ura-tur spines and the ink is the color-shifting blood of the ura-tur.  Certain tattoos denote royal lineage and every named house has a distinctive tattoo as well.  Some of the wealthier unnamed houses have donated handsomely to the temple coffers to procure their own tattoos for house members to sport (only 7 houses denoted by the pre-fix "al" before the house name are considered to be actual named houses.  3 of those seven are royal houses that trace lineage to the earliest kings of Siss-Anor.  There are several unnamed houses that command more actual power and wealth than any of the named houses, but they do not have the official prestige nor access to many proscribed tattoos).  Many occupational guilds also have their own tattoos that mark entrance into their membership.

Common soldiers, guildsmen, house members and the like never have more than 1 dose of blood.  The number of doses of blood in a person's bag is a direct correlation to status and influence.  It is considered an embarrassment of the worst sort to be unable to activate a tattoo because of excessive juicing.  Sul al-Tuz, the royal tax collector who got waxed by the party, was a well known juicer.  He could not even transform into the 5 dose phoenix form of the royal house of Tuz, his birthright, and died ingloriously in scorpion form as a result.  Nobody much liked Sul al-Tuz and his assignment of upstream tax-collector was a punishment, but he was still of noble blood and the party had to scramble to cover up their role in his death.

Here are a few examples of minor tattoos and tattoo forms:  I have made up quite a few more, which I hope to post barring my usual laziness.  These have worked really well in combat, giving me a lot of fun tactical options. Starting with several minor tattoos activated and then switching to different forms as the fight progresses makes a tattooed adversary very memorable.

Minor Tattoos:  

Open Eye of Justice 1 dose tattoo, official mark of an officer in the military who can act as judge in representation of the city state outside of the city proper.
Recharge 6
Close Blast 5
+15 vs. Will vs. all enemies in blast.  Those hit are blinded and slowed for 1d 4 rounds.  All allies in blast gain +2 to attack and damage for the same duration.

Soaring Hawk 1 dose tattoo, a military tattoo
at will power
minor: close burst 20, 1 target in burst.  +12 vs. Will, the target is slowed (save ends).  Effect: the target is marked until the end of your next turn.  If the target violates the mark they are knocked prone.

Shifting Panther 1 dose tattoo, a military tattoo
at will power
minor: shift 3 squares and gain combat advantage against one adjacent enemy until the end of your next turn.

Tattoo Forms:

Jaguar 2 dose tattoo form, special mark of the honor guard (military tattoo)

HP:250/

AC:22

REF:25

FORT:22

WILL: as tattoo wearer +5

Movement: 8  Swim: 4 Climb: 6 Jump:6

Basic Attacks:

Claw (+17 vs. AC, 2d8+4), bite (+17 vs. FORT, 3d8+8)

Standard:
Claw/Claw/Bite

Pounce: Jump 6 and make the following attack, +17 vs. REF, 6d8+36, must be at least 1 square away at the beginning of the action

Recharge 5,6: roar, close blast 3, +17 vs. FORT, push 3 squares and knock prone

Special:  If an enemy grants combat advantage, standard attack: Skull Bite, +17 vs. FORT, 6d8+36

I might come back to this post later and add the 3 dose giant scorpion form used by sheriff Sul al-Tuz.