So, this was a problem session from a logistical standpoint. I had a good idea what I wanted to do but...

Sir Needelbaum's player couldn't make it to the regular Sunday night game (yeah, we went back to Sunday...), but I was supposed to meet some other friends for Axis & Allies on Monday afternoon... but I wouldn't get a hard time until Monday morning.  So I planned on a 9 am game, harsh for everyone.

We wound up starting closer to ten, the A&A game was cancelled that morning, and Sir Needlebaum had to leave at noon, because he'd expected me to be leaving for an afternoon game...which had just been cancelled.

Two hours of gaming in two hours, righto!

So, we picked up where we left off last week, the noble human in the bottom of a pit looking at a tiny tunnel.... which he entered without waiting for the others.... though eventually they followed.

Sir Needelbaum could see somewhat, thanks to his darkness rune giving him night vision, but the others were blind.  They found a sort of half a room with a solid wooden door at the end of the tunnel.  They got a torch lit and Kitara walked through the door...

... and just barely avoided a trap of spikes that dropped across the open doorway.

The players ignored the trap and checked out the bigger room beyond the door. It was obviously some sort of atrium area, with a skylight/pool area that was flooded with old mudflows. There were some bas relief carvings that had once been painted mosaics, there was an open door way across the room.

The party set about trying to decipher the the ancient mosaics, so the goblins were able to move a barricade across the doorway without being noticed. Their shaman lit off with a Darkwall spell that blinded the party. Sir Needelbaum was best off, though the magical darkness was a bit too much even for his magically enhanced sight, though not for the troglodytic goblins.

Crossing the room in darkness meant a chance to trip, which stopped half the party. Kitara's gnome form had earth sense, so she could fight fairly well.

The lizard tripped running to the fight, then tripped again when he charged through the smashed barricade, falling flat on his face among the goblins. Since they'd taken half their number in casualties, they snatched him and ran, capturing him.  Teh party waited a few rounds for the darkness to wear off, retrieved their torch and followed, barely avoiding setting off yet another spike trap at the hall corner.

The hall, for the record, is a square ring shape, leading back to the doorway they entered from. Each corner was trapped (the traps were mounted to the walls and easily set by the fleeing goblins), and there was, originally, a room off each corner, thought only two remained intact.  The players found their lizard companion (with 0 HP in the head) in the first intact room, but no sign of goblins, so they started searching the obviously abandoned den and doing magical healing. Sir Needelbaum decided to patrol the room, and when he passed the doorway he failed the difficult perception check to notice... in time, that the goblins were set up half way down the hall facing the door. He took five arrows from the reinforced band, included to crits to the same leg, but made his check to stay concious. Still, he was out of the fight.

The goblins had reinforced their numbers from the den and set up another barricade in the mid-hallway. Kitara 'tanked', as her gnome form was virtually immune to goblin arrows (even with 'firearrow' she rarely took damage. 10 pts armor), but the elf mage and the lizard just followed her (slowly) down the hallway. Only when the mage started using firebolts from around the gnome's bulk did they start trying to shoot her. The Goblins used every third action to fall back to keep the gnome at bay.

At mid hallway, kitara smashed the barricade (now abandoned) and her earth sense allowed her to detect the secret room (clever of me, no?), while a firebolt targeted at the goblin shaman took him out of the fight, but the return fire took the mages' arms (both of them). Bereft of their leader/firepower, and unable to harm the gnome, the rest fled.

And that was the end of the session.  Kitara's gnome form is a game breaker. She can keep it up for a long time, and can cast it up to three times. Between it's armor (added to her armor based on the spell description) and the bonus HP, she is virtually immune to harm.  THus the nasty, but effective, tactics.

Yar. Another week, another game.  

Originally I had planned for the players, having fought off Goblins with bows (phear the cute wonz!) would simply enter the secret chamber they had found and potentially retrieve the goody I had placed there, and hilarity would ensue.

However, since they broke the game before actually entering the room I had to re-instituite challenge so it didn't feel like a cop out. Like killing the dragon but not looting his lair until the next week (though... honestly, if Goblins are this much trouble what the hell would they do against a dragon? godlike power in clay bowls...)

Anyway: We also had another 'new gamer' at my table, who I shall now dub Bear to reflect both his self and his character. Bear was mostly familiar with WoW and Diablo and the like but not so much with D&D, so I used repeated references to Lord of the Rings and so forth as I guided him through character creation while the players worked out the logistics of how to heal themselves without burning through their non-reknewable potions. Yes, virginia, even Blood Alchemy is a bit hard to do while wandering a toxic mud flat populated by horrific bug monsters.  I swear that simple call made a huge difference in the way the players approached the game sessions... bwahahaha!!!

Anyway: With our explorer/shaman from the Bear Men of hte north (human arctic nomads who worship bears, not some ursinoids. Geez!) created and equipped, I put him on hiatus while I nudged the party into doing something other than bunkering in the room they'd occupied. I had already determined that the surviving Goblins had fled after their leader/shaman was killed, so I didn't want to waste time waiting for ambushes that weren't coming (Traps... now those DID exist... but ironically, the players didn't go that way. Sad panda.)

Eventually they pulled open the rest of the wall and entered the secret chamber, lit only by their single torch.

There, suspended in mid air they saw large hairy man frozen in time, Bear, our new player.

Oh, I described the rest of the room, how it was a burial chamber for some beloved hero of old, on a raised bier in the back half of the room, beyond a barely visible blue shimmery barrier, complete with a vague demony figure inside it (just as 'barely visible' as the barrier it was a part of.)

After one of hte players bounced off the barrier (successful Persistance skill check, to avoid becoming trapped in it), the Demon 'spoke', as these things are won't to do.

"Only One may Pass."

which it repeated a few times, followed by a variation of 'He who holds the Key." sort of clue.

From their side of the barrier, however, Sir Needlebaum could see a familiar looking gauntlet of black iron on the right arm of the dusty corpse.  As he is one of the more thoughtful players, the chances of him trying the barrier without prompting was exactly zero, which is why I described it and... well... prompted it.

As he approached I had him roll Resiliance, which he failed and felt nasuea, eventually puking up blood and some fluid that looked remarkably like Amorphia, until he wound up with a strange, almost lacy/airy ring of black iron several feet in diameter suspended from his mouth by the tedril of blood, doing some damage to him in the process.

He pushed it through the barrier, following it through. Luckily, the ring and the tendril disappeared as they passed through the barrier, leaving him only slightly worse for wear.

The skeleton on the bier was too decayed (along with weapons and armor) to tell much about it, even race, though it was on the large size, only the gauntlet remained intact. When he picked it up, no bones were inside it, only shards and dust. So he put it in his pack.

But found himself unable to cross the barrier back.

So he put the gauntlet on.

Bwahahahaha!!!!

False delimma. The gauntlet would work to get through the barrier wether or not it was on a person. It just needed to touch the barrier.

Putting the gauntlet on was incredibly painful, as it immedeatly and forcefully began merging with his flesh.  He failed another Resiliance check and passed out from the pain.

Cue the rest of the party trying to negotiate with the barrier/demon. Which, of course, was just a dumb spell that looked pretty, but whatever.  Eventually Sir Needelbaum woke up, though with zero health in his arm (Again, I has plan...), and touches the barrier with his new iron hand... destroying it more or less instantly, freeing, incidentally, Bear.

Introductions and so forth are made, powerful (divine) healing magic is tried on the arm... which fails the moment the spell hits the guantlet. First aid is resorted to again, which helps, and bear joins these strange people (refusing to accept the 'drug offering' of a chaos rune from Kitara in one of the more curious moments.  Strangely, the players did not divvy up the runes they'd salvaged from the Goblin shaman, merely taking them with them... )

Bear spoke poor Hru'than, but that was better than the rest of the party, so he had some fun talking to their guide at the expense of their pride, all unknowing of course, and the players continued on.

Only to be ambushed a day later, as they entered the mountains, by the local Dwarves, who had no desire to let these interlopers interfer with their trade relationship. The dwarves, in good armor and with crossbows, had hunkered down behind some rocks just a bit outside of easy running distance.

Fun moments; The crossbows (2d8 damage) failed to do much of anything but cripple the Lizard's tail.  Sir Needelbaum finally remembered to light up his Electro-sword spell... only to learn his new guantlet would kill any spell it touched, even his. The elf mage got the first kill (as Kitara's first arrow bounced off of a good dwarven helmet), then blew her own armor off with a fumble'd spell ( I use the ranged fumble chart for inspiration, she lost her abdominal armor in this case).  Sir Needelbaum took a 9 point hit to his newly armored right arm, causing only a bruising 1 hp of damage... and the death horse stomped a bunch of dwarves while only taking a little damage. Now the party has a bunch of fairly heavily armored dwarven zombies on their side (short one who died outside the range of the 'raise dead' effect, and a couple others who were crippled and otherwise forgotten) but the did gain nice (if slightly damaged) dwarven steel helmets out of the deal.... well except for the lizard. His head is the wrong shape, you know.  

I figured the dwarves would do more damage, but the crossbows failed to deliver and Kitara's Legendary ability with a bow (meaning almost all head shots, bonus damage and ignoring cover) meant lots of ranged death.  Also: MRQ hates axes. A battle axe seriously does 1d6+1 damage or +2 damage if weilded two handed, while a boring old warsword does a d8 one handed and a two handed sword does d10 or d12. Once the Deathhorse reached the dwarves, forcing melee combat, the sheildless bastards were doomed. And with average damage rolls of 7 with the crossbows they couldn't get through it's hide.

Luckily, the Dwarves are smart opponents. They learn.  Of course, the poor guide (who has not participated in a fight yet) will probably not survive, but that's another story...

Next week: We pull out the map and mini's again, as the players have to deal with a larger, more determined foe... then the 'big boss' fight in the cave!

I work this weekend, and have been putting in 12 hour days for the last two weeks, so I won't be running my RQ game this week.

However, I do owe y'all an update from LAST weekend...which seems like a lifetime ago... so long that I'm not entirely certain I recall what happened exactly...


As our story goes:

Having encountered an apparently random ambush by heavily armed dwarves, and gained several somewhat heavily armored zombies, the party continued on. I made a note to tell the Lizard that he was slowly loosing the dwarf zombies every night, but this was missed until after the big fight.

See: The players encountered a much bigger, more organized, mini army of dwarves (roughly 25, with two ballistas set up in the back). I set up a map for them, using Khadorian Winter Guard for most of it, then I put the players at the far end so they could see how many rounds of crossbow fire they'd take trying to get to butchery range...

... lets say it was an effective psychological tactic and leave it at that.


Luckily the leader of the dwarves was willing to parlay. In fact, he was set up in his lovely little pavilion right smack dab in the middle of my battlemat, between the players and the rest of the dwarves.

Strangely enough it was Kitara who decided to be the one to negotiate. I suspected a trick.  She (the player) doesn't LIKE the talky parts of the game and is the weakest social character as well.  She took the Death horse with her, which I allowed only to avoid long arguments.

Sum up: The dwarf offered two options before I was cut off (he offered three... it took the players about 15 minutes to hear the third one...)

The first option was to call the whole thing off, take a pile of gold and accept the use of Dwarves for Prince Toorop's 'show of force'.

The second was lots and lots of bloodshed.

Strangely, the players assumed they were morally bound to kill the beast in the cave (which was maybe an hour or two's travel past the dwarves) for many reasons. Cue the decision to take on the dwarves!!!

Oh...wait, there was that third option...

Curiously, they also decided they needed to use their magic scrying bowl to talk to Prince Toorop FIRST.  My notes (memory) recalled they'd left the bowl with the Hru'ga, but much arguing was had by all before I threw up my hands and let them have the stupid thing.

Prince Toorop, of course, more or less told them that they were the people on the ground, so THEY had to make up their own minds. Politicians....

So Kitara advanced again to hear the third option.

See, the fellow here was the Clan Father, and his clan's duty was to stop the players. He didn't agree with the King, but his orders were orders. So he offered an honor duel, to the death, one on one, the winner got the 'prize'... advancing to the cave or not advancing.

Naturally Kitara said 'yes', and despite being an awesome archer and a middling fighter and all that.  They backed the death horse off (this is a duel, lassy, not a knights tourney...).

Kitara's plan was to bop into gnome form and 'I win'.

Sadly, the Clan Father had the arguably weaker, but still damned impressive 'Myrmidon's Brutal Armor' spell... a three magnitude divine spell of the war domain. He was also a 'legendary' duellist.

The numbers?: Kitara had higher overall armor (ten), because the reading of Gnome form suggested it covered her (and her armor) like.... well... armor, while the Myrmidon's brutal armor turns the caster into a giant mobile suit of armor... replacement armor for seven. Kitara was stronger too, but they were essentially on par for Hit Points.

However: The first time Kitara got wacked for 'real damage'... and had magical flaily chains of garaunteed hits (for 2d6, pansy damage for her)... she decided to 'earthmeld, run to archery range and 'outlast' him...)... sadly, Myrmidon's brutal armor outlasts Gnome form by a good five rounds.

Also sadly: As the Gnome Form (as described by the spell and used by the player) works like summoned armor, it was also subject to the 'disarm' spell ALSO under the war domain.  The dwarf blasted off her leg armor (rolled randomly), which meant her leg couldn't be earth melded, and first whacked it (and because I wanted to be 'fair' not tactical) then proceeded to attempt to pull her out of the ground.

The fight ended with the dice: Kitara, desperate, takes a whack at him, rolling a crit (I will never cease to be suspicious of these 'on call' crits...).

In teh MRQ ruleset a crit is automatically max damage. In her case 4d6 + weapon damage (d10+2 I believe...). A defense against a crit reduces it to 'rolled damage', while a defensive crit reduces it to 'minimum... or worthless' damage.

The Dwarf had a 100%+ chance to defend... and I rolled the dice and failed by 1% (96% on the dice, my automatic fail threshold).  7 points of magical armor and 10+ bonus HP does not, in any way, absorb a 37 point hit.. cue the sudden severing of a leg and the failure of a decent, but not superb Resiliance test and the fight was essentially over.

Kitara, of course, wanted to heal the old bastard, but eventually settled for dragging his dying carcass AWAY from the Avatar of Death towards the waiting army... while he was still dying and weakly begging her to finish him off.

Missed highlight; The party discovers that, yes, the Word of Blasphemy power IS effective if you are fighting a Runelord. Also: the death horse is probably tired of having his face melted off by the chaos elf... (he was exactly 10m away from a 10m power...).

Satisfied that they'd had an epic duel, the party moved on to the cave.

However, I must now travel the woods and find small children to eat, so the beast in the cave must await a later post.

Toodles.

I have returned, happy and sated for the nonce... and in a mood to continue my tale of epic battles.

The players advanced past the sullen dwarves, victorious but not unbloodied by the encounter, and before the day was done they had found the cavern that marked the mouth of the river, the lair of the beast they had heard so much of, but knew so little about.

In truth I had very little prepped beyond ideas at this point. Not to say that I didn't expect the players to get here, far from it.  Indeed, I had planned to 'flip' my battlemat over and have the 'cavern' drawn out for them... but as I hadn't actually drawn anything on the 'Dwarf' side, and the models hadn't moved... and that the fact was that I'd left the old dungeons on the rolled up map for nigh on five years and they JUST WOULDN"T WASH OFF... well...

As they advanced into the cavern I described how it got darker deeper in, how even the nobleman with his magical night vision could only see so far. There was a roar, causing a 'fear check'...the fail mechanics were completely lifted from the fatigue mechanics... then another when Sir Needelbaum, and the other characters as they got close enough, saw the beast.

I told them it was massive, misshappen, ugly in ways that defied conventional discussion.  And it was massive.  I described the huge chains around its limbs, holding it in the cavern, and the way its right arm was a massive festering, rotten sore, dripping pus and toxins into the waters flowing through its prison/lair.

And when they got close enough, it noticed them and charged...

... and they ran like scared little girls!

Then they interrogated their guide, who could only tell them that no warrior had ever returned from the cave (he did not follow them in....), and that the waters had grown toxic generations ago.

And they waited a day and called up Prince Toorop, who promised to have his sages do some research for them.

So they waited another day and called him back.  

The prince could not tell them much. Not about some cave in the far distant south, far beyond the lands of Tenebria, and not in a single day. But he did have two tiny rumors of ancient legends he could pass on, though the 'relevance' was debatable.

The first was a truly ancient legend dating back to, at the latest, the earliest days of the last age... possibly even older (we are talking more than ten thousand years here more or less) of some horrible beast stalking the land that was fought by great heros or Gods to put an end to it reign of terror... in a battle that lasted days or weeks and devestated all the lands... and finally imprisoned it in a cave.

The Second was only a mere few centuries old...though again, not precisely clear on how many... of some exiled and fallen servant of the Gods who disappeared while wandering the mortal realm in 'that region'.

Sir Needelbaum liked what he heard, but he was the only one. Everyone else was upset because they hadn't learned any weaknesses or 'real clues'.  Bah.

They were also upset because they figured that the length of the chains (quite long, actually) were longer than they could actually SEE, so they couldn't stand safely out of reach to shoot it.  

Cue many weird ideas on how to approach this. The most popular seemed to be 'gnome/earth meld and spread torches around from inside the ground'... again, to stand back and shoot it.

Man, this nameless gribbly scared them good! Maybe they were still stinging from finally fighting an opponent worthy of their stature?

Anyway: Eventually they used the Ring of Tyrannicus (the big Iremi thing) to cast a divine Light spell with a decently long duration (which, to be honest, they probably violated... you'll see)... on the Death Horse... which they then sent forward, lighting up the entire cavern, to die nobly for the cause.

Of course a big stallion glowing to light up a football field is hard to miss and the Big Bad immedeatly charged forwards. OMG!!! Fight!!!

So? What was the Gribbly?  Nothing more than a Brithindum (Chaos Goat) with the size and HP of an URgan the Slime Snake and some heavy duty regeneration/immunity to Death.  At least statistically.

So these two great engines of battle slam into eachother like colliding freight trains. The Death Horse hit harder but the Gribbly was tougher... the moment they realized the DH was seriously jacked up by the 'Trample?!?!?' they started panicking again (despite being personally out of range...and the DH has died a few times so far...)

With only two real archers and no skybolting the contents of caverns, the 'peppering' went slowly. Of course, Kitara's arrows are Legendary now, and she head hits nine out of ten shots.  Round after round of the Death Horse getting mauled (and with some spectacularly bad rolls from the Lizard meant the Gribbly was actually fairly well off...)... and a few perception rolls revealed that the Gribbly was HEALING. To whit: One HP PER INJURY per round.

Oh yeah... so after virtually decapitating it, the stupid thing (Now blinded!) was STILL FIGHTING. Not so well, but...

The rule was simple: It could not die for reasons unspecified to the players, but it could pass out from its injuries... if it failed a resiliance test. It had a 50%.  I never rolled higher than a 44%.  So... more arrows. LOTS AND LOTS of more arrows.

The Death Horse was finally pulverized, and the dumb blind beast... knowing it couldn't eat a glowy pile of dust... started to blindly stagger back into the darkness... so the players were getting desperate.

The Lizard summoned a new DH (10 MP, no joke but not prohibitive. The thing doesn't go away unless unsummoned or 'killed'...) and sent it forward to die gloriously for the cause...

and the damn thing finally collapsed, giving the party a few precious moments to figure out what to do next... since it wasn't dying.

One suggestion, taken seriously by most of the players, was to simply free the fucking thing. No joke, they wouldn't betray the orcs for big piles of dwarf gold and a thumbs up from the boss, but they'd certainly release a deathless monster from pre-history upon them....

And doing it wouldn't really be hard: They could seriously just cut its limbs off and let them regrow...

But Sir Needlebaum, he of the permanent guantleted arm, was curious about the festering wound that was causing the poisoning of the waters. So he rolled his Healing skill (a first for this game. I think his actually succeeding on a skill check was also a first... I kid, I kid...) The festering wound was toxic and pus-y and nasty, and even the protection of his new magic arm was not enough to prevent him from feeling the acidic, poison attacking his hand as he pulled out of the wound...

... a strange ring of some corroded (and currently very nasty...) of metal, flat and razor sharp (metal hand, awesome sauce for this!).   I specifically described it, after they washed it off (and fled the cave before the beast woke... but not before they noticed the wound healing... finally)... as heavily verdigrised.

Sir Needelbaum could feel the throb of power through his hand, and inspired by its apparent sharpness they struck some rocks with it. No rock cutting action, sadly, but also no damage to the ring in question.

Two guesses?

The players needed some prompting and about half an hour before they figured out it was a halo, and probably got stuck in the beast's hand when it tore the head off the previous owner. A sound theory, but not really testable, so....

They DID learn that they could 'set' the Halo down in mid air and it would mostly stay... and that it was too sharp to really be put in a pouch of any sort, at least not without some serious pre-planning, so Sir Needelbuam continued to carry it in hand...

That night, as he slept he let go... and woke up with it hovering over his head. Oops.

He promptly took it off.

Aw.


Anyway. Camping outside the cave for a couple of days (to... verify that the water was getting cleaner?   Weirdos. The quest was done, you don't hang around afterwards... whatever, man...)
they realized the last Zombie Dwarf was gone!

YEah, by the way: The corpses do rot and break down, so every so often we 'reset' the zombie count to zero. Just cleaner that way...

They did a notional search (seriously... they were actually disturbed by the disappearing zombies, but they never actually DID anything about them.  Treated the whole thing like you and I would treat mysterious lights in the Sky... 'wonder what that is, jeb?' ....'I dunno, ralf, but it cain't be any good.'... seriously)

Anyway: Just to not 'waste' it, I had their very bored guide lead them to the body of the headless Zombie Dwarf (we just tend to assume most of the Zombies are headless due to the high number of corpses that are 'raisable' died to head shots of one sort or another... the rest are too abused to actually do anything and are 'released'), which had been stripped naked and NAILED to the ground by a big ass iron spike through the chest. It was, of course, no longer moving.. the animating spirit having fled.

Again. 'Wonder what them thair lights are up there?'... 'Dunno jeb, but my ass is sore.'...'shit, your's too? Guess Ain't nothin' to be done about 'em. See ya tommorah.'

Like: Totally interested and baffled but acting as if nothing could be done.

And so they wandered back to Hru'tha, totally bad ass heroes. There was a sky ship waiting for them, a greatful Hru'ga (which our time lost bearman totally recognized from thirty years earlier, as a much younger Hru'ga... much impressing him with the old warriors ability to hold power. Of course, the bearman also remembered when Hru'tha was a few mud huts around a few stone ruins poking out of the ground...)

The Hru'ga was so impressed he was sending his oldest son to negotiate great treaties with the soft skins from up north...

The players, still unsure about their new toy and the success of their quest in general debated leaving right away or sticking around to solve the Cults of the Hound problem for the Hru'ga. Kitara continued to demand audiences with Verra, the (very smug) Demon Goddess... but no one listened to her...

the mysterious light in the sky thing is so typical.

I hate it when the players totally ignore the things that should make them wonder.  You feel like doing some negative reinforcement....

I must admit that my lazy habit of not doing heavily detailed plans, and sticking to 'clever ideas I'll flush out as I go' is partly a response to just this sort of thing.

Sure. I know WHY they were losing Zombies but the fact that they were not going to do anything with that was only a minor loss, and I can suppose they really didn't care to get distracted... I mean they've got literally dozens of plot threads to follow up on as it is...

In something approximating 'reverse' order of introduction:

There is the Halo. Admittedly a minor thread, but they've long  since learned that there is ALWAYS more they could be doing with any given 'toy' I hand them.  There are NO generic magic items.

They could always do more with the mysterious beast in the Cave once they've learned more.

They are probably not done with the dwarves, though they aren't really tracking that ATM...

Sir Needelbaum still has to sort out that talk of destinies and the long term repercussions of ingesting 'Amorphia' at the hands of Verra.

And the lizard REALLY resents her trying to manipulate his loyalties like that..

.. and Kitara just wants to beat her down at some point

And they have to deliver a message to the Siti Elves that will shake the political situation up north for generations to come...

There is the Cults of the Hound in Hru'tha..

And of course: Finishing their business with Prince Toorop and the Empress of Tenebria (whom they have yet to meet...), and the rivals of the prince who tried to murder them...

Oh, and yes: Three ancient wrongs to be undone from the First of the Elves

And Sir Needelbaum's return to his family in Renbluve...

... which also coinsides with the resumption of their Irem based subplots (The murder of the Factor, for example)...

THey have hard 'places' to check out...

The Wastes of Irem, the ruins in the Far north, the Hydenimoi forest, the Godslayer, finding a Dealyreath, possibly in Paravail....



And that was the 'short version'.


I guess I can't fault them too much for cutting their losses on this minor mystery.

And the culmination of roughly a year of fairly solid playing is: The Sky Ship, which gives them a LOT more freedom to actually follow up on those leads. Now I can wrangle in a 'traveller' style sub-plot about paying to keep that thing up and running! bwahahahahaha!!!!


Oh... wait... my players would HATE that.

Sigh.

And the fucking scrying bowl was back in the hands of the Hru'ga all along, whiny maggots.

So the last couple of weeks have been neglected a bit, but I should be able to cover them in a single post with an interesting degree of accuracy as they've all been, essentially, Kabuki Theatre, with a minimum of dice rolling.

So: The players decided to leave the Hru'tha and head back to the Imperial City without getting too deeply involved with the internal politics of the local orcs. Probably a wise decision, actually... besides I rarely hand easy answers to the players and they hate the level of work required to solve these sorts of problems.

The first session of Kabuki Theatre was essentially watching Prince Toorop finally present the Empress the sword of her ancestors, which meant they, the players could finally be rewarded properly by the new Imperial Consort.

The Empress decided to allow the creation of a new layer of 'elite knightly motherfuckers' for those who had survived a trip to the Underworld, calling them the Deathless. The two 'demigods' were treated as guest 'equals' to the Empress, thus were only given simple gifts,while the two mortal heroes were feted and given the equivilence in baronies in the Empire... much to their dismay. Naturally those barony's were located at the fringe of the Empire in a long neglected fief which was to be re-annexed by the Imperial Armies right away.

Compounding this was the demand that both new barons, due to their nomadic lifestyles, marry immedeately into the Imperial family and produce heirs (Cue the two-day-pregnancy spell that the female players had found and giggled over repeatedly...) before they moved on.

Sir Needelbaum was horrified by this turn of events, and mostly retreated from his new, somewhat frightningly compenent, wife to continue his research into the Dealyreath and ancient history in general.  

During a brief airship only tour of their distant manors' Kitara's player was rather horrified to learn that her body was 'changing' as a result of her bond with the Greater Rune of Chaos... she got lucky and wound up with a mouthful of shark's teeth rather than something unpleasant... from her point of view.

THe local sages couldn't really help her but they did know of a powerful, ancient wizard who lived in Paravail who might no more...

Mind you, Kitara has been living with this rune for six months or so in game, maybe longer, and this is the first side effect... naturally she's horrified that she'll mutate again in the next couple of days, so the players took off immedeatly for Paravail, leaving behind a new generation of Tenebrian Heroes to do 'awesome shit'... not that I was done with that angle, mind you.

Paravail was the second week of Kabuki theatre. There are very few airship docks in Paravail, all along the walls of the city.  They learned a bit about the only 'free city' in the world, including how it could possibly run without some form of organized government, and they met "Stinkfist", the improptu name for the canonically established 'FIrst Goblin Citizen', who agreed to be their guide if they a: paid him a lot, and b: put up with his ramblings about his own cleverness and plans for a 'Goblin Invasion' of the city. THe players were quite ready to look for contracts on his life despite his bodyguard of stern half orcs and dwarves from the Clan Paravail dwarves.

The arch-wizard's tower wasn't hard to find, being just off the main plaza in Old Town, in sight of the Stone of Citizenship. The trouble was he wasn't particularly interested in entertaining visitors, and was adamant about not seeing non-citizens.

Magical and mundane lock picking got the players no where and four of the six players decided to swear citizenship, which got them into the tower. Sir Needelbaum, however, refused and when he tried to push open the door with his anti-magic hand he set off a powerful backlash of magic energy that sent him sprawling in agony, and the door half missing where he'd touched it.

Ironically, having broken the Wards on the door (incidental, compared to the damage done to the irreplaceable artifact from the Golden Age that was the magically conjured door...), he could have entered at that point as well, but he decided not to bother and joined a research library/gentleman's club and began researching legends of a dealyreath living in the city with no success.

The archwizard was a hunched figure hidden under voluminous robes. He was crusty, contemptous and arrogant, and according to his own words immortal and more or less trapped in Paravail for reasons he wouldn't clearly explain. He mocked the party for their troubles, suggesting death was a great way to stop the mutations.

Barring that, however: he could 'cap' the stone, but eventually the cap would be blown off and the rush of Amorphia would probably dissolve Kitara, body and soul.  Other than that he could only recommend 'experts' in Chaos... the madmen living on the rim of the lesser sea of chaos or the great witch of the north, who turned her lovers to Stone.  

Sir Needelbaum's player, meanwhile, had figured out that the archwizard was probably the very dealyreath he was looking for but he's a good chap and kept it to himself in his research library/gentleman's club.

Week three of Kabuki theatre: Sir Needelbaum decided to ask the archwizard some probing questions after I gave him the clue his character needed to look into it. Despite a strange magical reaction between the ward and his anti-magic hand, he was able to enter with no difficultly, going up to the top of the tower where windows looked out on alien vistas.

The Archwizard referred to him as a brother and explained some of the history of the Dealyreath, including the inevitable fate of their souls should they die... and why they have some special dispensation from Death to make it that much harder for them to die. Of course, they started out as elves, not 'mortal' humans... leaving Sir Needelbaum looking forward to a short path to oblivion if he didn't get some immortality 'stat'!  He was also asked to deliver a letter to 'their sister'... the 'queen of the north', and learned of the physical corruption the Dealyreath had brought upon themselves over the millenia... and more of how the Archmage had come to be trapped in Paravail (by swearing an oath to the God of Paravail (whomever it is was unknown, even to the archmage... leading to an animated discussion at the table that included several cries of 'fuck Verra!'...), he was no longer able to enter the Demon Realm where most of his kin lived in relative safety and comfort.

After four days in Paravail they were ready to leave when a Nornsan airship arrived, docking right next to theirs. A messanger delivered a letter to Sir Needelbaum (who, ironically, did not have a name prior to that moment...) from the King of Nornsa, summoning him to take the place of all his slain kin. Oops!

On the way they swung by Ysithyderi to convince Death to make Sir Needelbaum immortal. Yup, just like that.

I hadn't considered the players would be that direct, so I scrambled a bit to come up with some good ideas, figuring I could end the night while they were there giving me time to come up with more good ideas.

THe long and short of it: Only Kitara (a demigoddess now), Sir Needelbaum, and Bear man went in, being the only ones who felt reasonably confident that Death would not kill them on sight for having the termity to drop in on them a second time.

Long story short: The bear man gave death his shield (interesting choice, sayeth the God) and in return learned the exact time and manner of his death, and was rendered immune to Fear as a result.  Sir Needelbaum drank another draught of Amorphia, handed over his cool 'legacy sword' as a gift and was given a 'chance' at coolness by being allowed to take the sword from within the Sepulchure of the Warlord.  If he could claim the sword all was well, if the sword claimed him...well...

Pretty much the bulk of the dice rolls came from the scene in the sepulchure where Sir Needelbaum claimed the nigh on mythic 'sword of three souls' from the body of the Warlord, and resisted (with some of his best rolls evah!) possession by the 'soul' of the Warlord.  This partially played out as a duel and partly as mentally resisting the effect of the sword. When it was done Sir Needelbaum had the sword, only slightly tainted, and the giant armored corpse was still on its slab...

Only the gauntlet fell off (left handed... hint hint...) before he left, so he took it with him!  

Death commented very briefly on this but did not seem overly concerned. Instead he offered, as promised, a drink of his tea.  He remarked how the tribe of the Dealyreath had taken but a single sip, and how they'd encountered the only being to dare the entire cup (referring to the unkillable creature in the cave...).

THinking on it, SIr Needelbaum took half a cup full and promptly made the roll to survive!. He passed out for six days, meaning that our earstwhile looters only carried enough dragon bone out of Ysithideri to make a single suit of armor.  

ANd STILL the players pressed on, despite the lateness of the hour. The entire Ducal House of Sir Needelbaum's extended noble family had been butchered by means most foul over the last year, most of the bodies were missing, and the Duke himself had been slaughtered along with his entire retinue while on a boar hunt.  Obviously a fuedal society could not ignore a member of noble blood, regardless of how inappropriate he might have been for the task, and so Sir Needelbaum was more or less ordered to put his new fief in order, and quickly... and also, naturally, to discover exacty WHO was committing the murders.... which was a matter of basic survival at that.

Oh, yes... I has terrible plans, I does...

Meanwhile: Kitara took the halo for herself, and the party figured out only SIr Needelbaum could 'fit' the vastly oversized gauntlet... which allowed him access to SOME of War's powers without giving him the full realm of power a la Death's Rune. OF course that also made him the best armored member of the party, which combined with the power of the Sword of Three Souls, made him arguably the best melee combatant in the party. His Deal with Death made him nearly impossible to kill anyway (though no where NEAR as powerful as the beast from the Cave. More like the Highlander...)

Sir Needelbaum has been 'fleeing' his noble origins pretty much since character creation, which makes this a fun dilemma to put him into. I know I can't put him in the position of forcibly taking the kingdom, but events are already in motion in the campaign. His ducal fief (one of six in Nornsa) lies closest to the Hydenimoi Forest, and borders the March lords (meaning he shares a border with the Avante to the north, the Marches being the lands between the red hills and swamps of Avante and the rolling grasslands of the Helthdanes (the local ethnic group, covering the Nornsans, the Kerkeshi and the Heltdanes to the East... who also border the same ducal fief we've been talking about... )

But first the party will have to move to accomplish a few other lingering quests that have been distracting them.

Speaking of: THe players have been seeing the invisible hand of Verra in more and more actions going on around them. I've seriously made them paranoid about being manipulated. Cue Evil Laughter.

Of course, they've been reminded a few times that Fate lies outside the purview of the Gods, that free will is what makes mortals so valuable, and that Fate is never fixed.  The Archmage more or less bitchslapped Sir Needelbaum with the idea that Verra could no more force a Fate (regarding teh anti-magic hand) on Sir Needelbaum than she could compel him to worship her, or remove the Greater Rune of Chaos from Kitara (which: the gods would LOVE to do, if only to keep it out of unpredictable, mortal, hands...)

My God! A timely POST!!!

We had a reasonably short session. Sir Needelbaum showed up almost an hour late and I managed to end the game short of ten PM (9 PM is our stated goal, but we NEVER make that...)

They spent a day, in game, running around Renbluve following leads on the murders of Sir Needelbaum's entire family.  The Alchemists Guild revealed that the 'gold' coins they'd gained (a year ago?) were Orichalcum, from Irem. The Archmagus Academy (more or less the same thing as the Guild from an outsider's point of view... occasional loud explosions and escaped gribblies...) revealed that many of the murders had various arcane signatures, rune magic on one, socery on another... a few that had unknown arcane signatures, and the big one, the murder of the Duke and his hunting party, involved no apparent magic at all, other than that they knew little or nothing.

Given the Orichalcum is reactive in Sunlight (and the Alchemists Guild suggested that it involved Divine solar magic to create), they checked out Renbluve's very prominant Sun Cult, even giving them one of their few coins.

The Sun cult were very happy to recieve the gift of the Orichalcum coin.  The metal was very precious and impossible to recreate. Coins from Irem had shown up throughout the years and were considered profaned items that could be 'reclaimed', though a cache of 100 of them (the coins the players had not accepted) was almost unheard of in recent years.  Sir Needelbaum earned a little political coup by handing over a total of three of the coins to the temple (leaving the players with two, the rest of their original ten being in the hands of the Alchemists Guild for instructive purposes).

THe players spent the night in the Ducal Manor. This only involved a tiny amount of underhanded 'leading'.

That night, Sir Needelbaum dreamt of war and battle.  The Lizard,however, dreamt of glowing golden coins. He dreamt of a simple pattern of five coins, precisely placed and carefully aligned symbols until they began to glow so brightly that it woke him from the dream...

He almost immedeatly ran out the door of the manor to retrieve the coins they'd been giving away like useless candy.  THe other players slowed him down and agreed to go 'get' enough coins to test the dream. On their way out the door however, they got the news that in the night their ship had been sabotaged.

Specifically something in the night had shorn off the various control vanes and fins from the hull, on both sides of the airship.  THe crewman reporting in also suggested that someone had intruded into the ship itself, though nothing untoward had appeared to happen.

THe players headed to their ship straight away. Due to the uncontrolled drifting, they had to climb mooring ropes to get aboard. THere was some fun rolling, and one character refused to try (technically the player fumbled her roll and decided she wasn't going to even attempt it. SHe was saved in the fact that the previous character failed his climb check and got stuck at midrope, 100's of feet above the ocean, and needed a rescue.)

The captain's cabin, complete with a giant statue of verra was the first stop. THe statue had obviously moved, including claw marks on the floor in front of the altar.  Kitara shouted and pleaded to the statue until Verra granted her an audience (the statue's arm moved downward, presenting a conch shell filled with some dark liquid...).

Verra provided very little information to her 'most annoying follower', other than suggesting that Kitara learn a bit about 'theatre'... specifically addressing her 'decapitation complaint' from their initiation into the cult.  The animating spirit of the Statue responded to the presence of a magically cloaked figure on its own, but the figure did not stick around to fight.

The players eventually determined that the intruder had gone through everyone's quarters, along with undetermined 'other areas' of the ship.

Due to political constraints the players decided they did not want to pester the Sun Cult for the coins they'd given them and instead used the coins on load to the Alchemists Guild, along with the Guild Master assisting them.

I had the players roll various magical and alchemical skills to put the clues together from the dreams. Each coin was graven with various alchemical symbols on both sides (established when they got the coins), and they realized that the position of the coins was not even half the problem, the alignment of the symbols (and the facing of the coins) was just as important and harder to work out.  

Eventually they began making progress, the alignment of the coins had to be mathematically precise (The guild helped here by measuring the placement before they continued...) and they could feel the power resonating from the coins as they worked.

It was nearly, but not quite, dark when they finally completed it... and the sun went out breifly as the coins flaired to life! Luckily the pattern was unstable and the coins flew apart, and the sun returned in time for the Sundown Rituals of the Sun Cult.

THe Guild Master suggested, somewhat timidly, that a larger pattern with additional coins would be more stable and more powerful, and perhaps foolishly gave them a parchment scroll with the pattern and notes laid out upon it. THen everyone agreed that keeping or leaving five coins at either location was a bad idea, so they once more divided their store of orichalcum coins with the alchemists.

That night the players dreampt again:  Sir Needelbaum dreamt of a cannibalistic dinner (Dealyreath flesh) served to him by Verra in a chef's outfit in the middle of a battlefield.

The Lizard Dreampt of the same pattern, this time using strange black marbles instead of coins, glowing a deep purple.

The Elf Mage dreampt of guilt and failure and tragedy.

Kitara dreampt of... um... I don't recall actually.

Bear Dreampt of Large Women: Extra Arms at the players discretion.
And that was the game.


Quick note: The Players have decided for themselves that their enemy is a powerful wizard, perhaps a survivor from Irem.

They are wrong, of course. If we'd had another hour or so they would have learned that.  We may miss a session in another couple weeks so next week I really want to give them a big 'end of season' blowout 'boss fight'.    

The players really want to go back and loot the hell out of Ysithideri, for Dragonbone.  Well, the Lizard wants to test the boss's patience and ask Death for a better weapon or something.  Imagine their shock when they find out that Death isn't maintaining his Vigil any longer...

Mwuahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

I be ebil.

Rocks Fall, Nobody Dies

I planned a short session, essentially a run up to an epic, chapter ender of a fight.  

We went overtime and a half.

Things went south quickly, however. The Elf Mage, one of the 'core four' of my group called on Saturday with a case of Strep Throat, confirmed by doctor no less. Combine this with too many chores and the loss of an hour to daylight saving time, I was willing to postpone for a week. Didn't happen.

I planned the boss fight reasonably well. Figured they'd go to bed, get the night's sleep, be attacked by a dragon, yadda yadda.  I stacked my 'big bad' with plenty of sorcerous and runic firepower and thought of a decently cool 'set peice' battle as the beast rampaged at full size through the ducal manor.

Players, not to put too fine a point on it, do not cooperate with the GMs plans.

A note: Dragons are not innate shape changers in Runequest. This particular beast used magic to accomplish this feat. They are, however, veritable engines of destruction.

THe players all knew that something big was going down in tonight's session. The plot had been moving briskly enough, though I 'wound back' to the end of their alchemical experimentation, when they blotted out the sun.  They acquired a few samples of the alchemically prepared vials that could hold amorphia (total of five), and used the seriously absent player of the witch to 'fill them' using the ring.  Given how I'd been pushing them to this most simple of uses I didn't feel like giving them grief over safety concerns... given that amorphia acts like the worlds funkiest acid... and just let them fill them by hand.

THen the players camped out on board the airship!  I swear they roll randomly to determine where they are going to sleep on any given night!  

Off screen: On pissed off dragon killing a random guard at the ducal manor on her way to kill the players.

On Screen: the player sleeping in shifts hoping the statue of Verra is wickedly bad as in a fight.

THe two meet when they hear a sound described as 'like a cannon ball striking a stone tower'.  They can't see anything in the dark, so the lizard shimmies down the rope and runs into town to check it out.  Following the crowds he makes his way to the Alchemist's guild. He still can't see anything (he's on the wrong side of the building), and he doesn't feel like going inside, so he turns back to the ship...

... and makes an awesome perception check to hear a distant scream as someone discovers the headless corpse of the guard in the Needelbaum ducal manor. He doesn't check it out alone.

THe Players hit up the manor first, realizing their enemy has been there, and asuming it was hit second (wrong assumption, but I don't correct them). The Death Avatar FINALLY gets to use his divine spell to see the murder: A robed figure walking through the locked door, stirring the drowsing guard, then crushing his head into the wall before he can sound the alarm).

THey use their titled priviledge to enter the alchemists guild: Two guesses as to what they find and the first one doesn't count: That's right, something big broke through the outer wall of the guild, killed the two acolytes on watch and stole the orichalcum coins stored there. No bodies (eaten!).

Determining that the orichalcum is a target, the players rush to the sun temple to inform the high priest that their little gift may make them a target.

OF course, that implies their enemy knows where they've been salting these things away. If the Dragon knew that much the fight would have happened three weeks ago.

THe Sun Cult guys tell them they are powerless at night, and that the moon priestesses who usually use the temple at night are off 'somewhere else' doing mysterious 'new moon' rituals.  The High priest evacuates the acolytes and remains in the 'purification room' under the alter to pray as the players set up watch.

An hour passes before a robed figure walks through the temple doors and demands 'my ring'.  THe players shout a few garbled threats and demands, and I allow a few sidebar comments between them before the figure advances a few more steps to promise them a quick death if they hand it over.

FIGHT ON!

First a note from our sponsor: I planned for a casualty or two, feared a TPK. I pulled no punches and gave no quarter.  Sadly, I rolled like ass, the players rolled exceptionally well (too well, but I've given up on that part of the table ever playing fair) and they FINALLY took my advice on countermagics.  Both sides of the fight used heavy counter magics throughout the fight.

The figure lead with a 'Fiendish CHains' spell, that was dispelled by kitara. The death horse did nothing, but Sir Needelbaum's sword cut deep into the figure's right arm.  In fact almost every damaging attack hit that arm.

After a round or two of this exchange, including a 'minimal damage' hit that clued them into the potential if not the actual capabilities, the beast revealed itself while casting 'lion's roar', causing Sir Needelbaum to run away!

Kitara eventually dispelled his fear, after they realized just how heavily armored the beast was.

The Death Avatar used DIvine Intervention but didn't get an 'I win' button. Given that this was like the third round of the fight I was mildly peeved that he was abusing that rule just then. Of course the Dragon breathing fire on the entire party (knockign just about everyone down to 'near death', despite fire runes etc...) only helped.

Instead he got a massively boosted 'Sever the spirit' divine spell.. then spent two rounds just hanging out drinking potions before trying to pull the dragon's soul out.

Despite the disgusting Persistance of the dragon (180!!!), he won the opposed check. Again: No instant win, dragons have a powerful enough will to live that I ruled that it would take several rounds of struggling with the soul to fully pull it out... end results uncertain.

This was to the player's advantage, however: THe elf mage (In NPC mode, controlled by Kitara's player) had a ghostly powered bow that could hit the spirit (with no armor), and the dragon couldn't fight back as Sir Needelbaum began hacking it's neck, along with Bear, who did next to nothing.

However, the Ghostly Dragon used its spirit magic to attack the death avatar's magic pool, almost killing him from magic loss after a few shots (Doing temporary POW damage). Kitara rushed over after copying his spell with the ring to help out, but had to shield him first.

OF course ghosts can hit people for one point of damge: So the dragon did that. Having 0 health in all locations after the fire breath, the lizard passes out, releasing the soul the same round Kitara failed to keep hold of it.

Meanwhile: Sir Needelbaum absolutely miserably failed his alchemy check to figure out what raw amorphia would do if poured into an open wound on a dragon, so he did it anyway.  If thrown randomly its a potent acid. But he's drunk the stuff a couple of times and Dragons are 'special'. I rolled for inspiration (obesity on the chaos mutation chart), and the wound started closing as the dragon's body began to grow bigger!

The dragon was now realing from soul damage and stunned from the spiritual battle, and thrashed around blindly, breaking Sir Needelbaum's arm after shattering his shield with a tail slap.  It wasn't defending itself for a couple of rounds, allowign the players to get some extra shots in.  Kitara took a shot that (after her True Dragon Scale spell) only did two points of damage (weak ass rolls!), but knocked her sprawling...

Realizing just how badly fucked up it was, the dragon tried to break out of the temple. More bad damage rolls meant it took several rounds, but as it pulled itself through the hole and the temple began the slow process of collapsing, it grew harder to kill as its realtively uninjured rear half was the only valid target.  Kitara gnomed Bear, who finally was able to participate in the fight meaningfully, as she shot at it, losing her 'arcing fire' ability under the circumstances.

Rocks falling for several rounds, knocking the partially healed lizard to death's door, shattering on Sir Needelbaum's magically buffed plate armor (war god's bonus), and apparently knocking the Elf Mage out the last round she fled the temple.

Bear managed a critical, and in gnome form this was enough to take the dragon's hindquarters Previously uninjured) deep into the negatives! Holy Batshit that was a lot of damage. He was too tough to pay much attention to the falling rocks, so he stuck it out as Kitara ran outside to shot the dragon in the head some more.  That legendary archery ability really alters the dynamics of battles...

The dragon tried one last spell and kitara managed one last counterspell before it took to the sky, only to fall as its wings were too crippled to keep it up (by literally one point of damage).  I had to do a little bit of shuffling to get the cinematic death as teh dragon fell onto the lower city, crushing some peasant hovels... just as the temple finished collapsing on Bear one round before Gnome form wore off.

ANd: End of session.


I was a bit disappointed with the dragon's lethality,though NOT its potential. I am absolutely certain Kitara threw more magic than she could fuel, even tapping the power crystal they've been lugging around. Sorry: THose are 6 point dispels she uses, a nine point dragon scale spell and Gnome form is also a 6. Even thirty points doesn't stretch THAT far! She's also earned another chaos mutation from overly abusing the ring in the fight, but that's for next session.  I have to be careful: The wrong mutations (Extra limbs or pinhead) will cause her to have a tantrum and rage-quit the game and I don't want to reward her with moar powerz!... random rolls until something we can both live with I guess.

Also: Of the TEN runes the dragon had, the players were able to recover nine... at a 50% chance. DAMN!  THen there is the mystery of the Dragon's Heart...

Stay tuned.

After the big boss fight against the Dragon, this week's session was a great dull mess.  

A good hour and a half was spent doing character administrative stuff and 'kabuki' being feted and feasted etc, not to mention carving the body up into fat loot.  Everyone got a dragon rune for partaking of the Dragon's heart.

Eventually they flew north and dropped off the crystal feather.  I was not on my game (lots of distractions in my personal/professional life, sadly) and the scene was short, flat and uncomfortable. They were chased out of the home of hte elves at arrowpoint, then eventually landed to enter the Tundrid plateau.

So. Progress of a sort, but a short, ugly session that I don't think anyone really enjoyed.

Things had gotten a little Rut-ish lately in Runequest. The GM (Me!) was always tired by the time game started, no matter how well rested, players were missing frequently...

... all in all it seemed as if the RQ game would need to take a hiatus or end poorly despite some decent highs not all that long ago.

Really, the Dragon Fight seemed to have been the Last Great Gamesession.

So... last week the three players who were there trudged dutifully into the tundra and fought some Penguins the size of Polar Bears... and almost died. Well, it was their fault (they WANTED the fight and they more or less ASKED for the GM to come up with something wonky and stupid... thus Penguins with Polar Bear stats...)

Despite having all the good player this last weekend, it didn't start out much better.  At least I had the inklings of a plan this time: the ruins of Morkath, which had been hinted at in half a handful of subplots was, if not their destination at least in their way.  I wasn't entirely certain what I was going to DO in Morkath, but at least I had an adventure location with built in ties to 'stuff going on'... and a built in bad guy.

Morkath, as you may recall was the first city of the Orcs built after the Titan's Fall, to protect them from 'Ice Demons' and destroyed by the elves, who raised the very ground under them (why its the tundra plateau and not just some vaguely cold land up north).

So the players take refuge from a Blizzard in a cave mouth... which turns out to be a tunnel into a more sheltered valley which seems preturnaturally 'dead'.  They can see the grey stone ruins of a cyclopean city, towers fallen over and so forth and great stone walls with only a few gaps where the massive slabs had fallen over, and even from this distance they could see the deep claw marks marring the walls.

Despite being freaked out (again!) by the utter stillness of the valley... I've only used that description on them a half dozen times and its never 'instant death feild' like they seem to expect... they eventually crossed the valley floor and entered a narrow gap in the walls.  I described the interior as being vaguely like DC in Fallout 3, a maze of rubble and fallen buildings.

The players vaguely debated things and seemed determined to leave the ruins for later... so I introduced the 'Ice Demons'.  Giant animated ice monsters with huge clawed hands that pulled themselves from the snow and ice outside the city (the city, btw, was almost entirely ice free...more creepy descriptive than meaningful but it worked).   Dozens of the beasts were milling around outside the city making their weird moaning sound (like a hungry angry wind).  Naturally the players got their attention and seemed determined to fight it out.  

An hour later, after the death horse had been torn to peices bodily and the players had downed a total of ONE of the fuckers, they retreated BACK into the city and made their way through the rubble.  

I introduced an ancient skeleton knowing the players could (and would) touch it and see through its old eyes to the moment of its death...and they promptly ignored it.

One of the less known secrets of Morkath (a ruins largely forgotten and ignored by everyone as ruins go) was that there was where the Warlord of Melitior (the very embodiment of War in the Mortal realm) first stepped forth to begin his march across the world centuries ago. Thus, when freed from his (relatively short!) imprisonment by Death, that was where the remanents of his power 'fled'.   Following his ancient burnt footprints to the center of the city (fighting a stray Ice Demon who had gotten into the city through a bigger gap... a clue that they were not entirely safe here), they eventually came to the birthplace of War. There they encountered the 'War Horse' and saw scattered about the pieces of War's Armor (one guantlet, of course, in the hands of Sir Needelbaum, who was sort of the 'lesser avatar of war'.).

Things were moving almost of their own accord now.  The players started debating, had a democratic meeting to leave the war shit in place (three to two)... then Kitara frisbee lobbed the breastplate of War at Sir Needelbaum's head.  

Remember: The power of War is that he instantly bonds with armor and weapons that touch him, absorbing them for later (boosted) use.  Aside from being knocked out by the blow, Sir Needelbaum absorbed the breastplate in an instant... and Kitara then DUMPED the rest on him before he woke up.

In the annals of Gaming this is a Very Bad Thing.

Having fully taken on the Mantle of Horseman of War, the party now had TWO of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding with them. Both immedeatly failed their rolls and rode out of the city towards the (thankfully distant) horseman of Pestilence with the rest of the party sort of 'tagging along'.  Meanwhile my brain went into overdrive on how to 'deal' with two of my best players suddenly not being able to control themselves... ever (-50% persistance roll, they could never succeed. This done daily).

Luckily for me, I had elements waiting in the wings that were perfect.

So far we had three seperate divine plots working at cross purposes within the party.  Most obviously was Verra the Demon Goddess, who had been overtly maneuvering the players around the board for her own purposes...which seemed mostly 'anti-elf' and not much else.  She was effective and obvious.

Less obvious was Death, who had been playing a very long game as the 'Ender of All' to bring about... well... the apocalypse.  He'd given the Lizard the power of his Avatar, the Horseman of Death at the start of the game... seemingly on a whim. He'd later given Sir Needelbaum a fraction of War's power... then promptly abandoned his ancient watch on the Sepulchur of the Warlord after three centuries of guarding it for no reasons given.  We had some great discussion after game about the nature of the Gods and Death, how he was unable to see beyond his inherent nature of Death to see the nihilistic nature of his pending Apocalypse.

Then we had the mysterious and virtually unknown Reptile, whom most gods failed to even acknowledge existed.  Arguably Reptile hadn't even done much of anything at all (beyond creating at the dawn of time all the scaled races) ever. Well, except for very tantalizingly showing himself in dreams to the Avatar of Death ( a lizard after all...).

That night, the lizard dreampt once more of a crossroads where he had to make a choice. This time he could see the nature of the choice: Follow the path of bones or the path of scales. He chose to follow his nature (scales) and walked himself into the desert and out of the job of horseman of Death.  Reptile somehow did the impossible and severed his connection to Death.

Mind you, way back in the Day, Verra showed the lizard his fate and offered him a chance to avert it by slaying Death and taking his place.  

Sir Needelbaum, however, dreamed of war, seeing all the conflicts around the world current or in the near future, and of himself (in the War Armor) on a throne above it all, laughing.  He promptly stabbed himself with the sword of three souls, and woke up in agony, but able to resist that days compulsion.

Why the compulsion? Because Death, realizing he'd somehow lost his Horseman promptly offered the job to the Northman, Bear, who happily took it on.  

Physically, the party traveled across the tundra, seeing signs of the apocalypse as they traveled alternatly north or south on their quest/compulsion cycle.

THe real 'game' took place in the dreams of the characters. Kitara was bitch slapped routinely by Verra for several nights, though it became clear that Verra didn't know what was happening, she just knew it was something very bad and Kitara MUST have started it.  Death had retreated for the first time EVER to the underworld and all the Gods were in crisis Mode, but only a few knew where to look for causes.

The elf mage just dreamed of going back to Morkath for unknown reasons. Bear had a couple of 'sit downs' with Death as Death convinced him to keep War (sir needelbaum) from fucking up the apocalypse with his whole 'free will' kick.  The Lizard dreamt mostly of hanging out in a vast desert, seeing Reptile in the distance but unable to reach him. He DID however, get some scales that were with him when he woke up.

Sir Needelbaum dreamed of fighting himself night after night, looking for some way to 'beat' himself.  Well, they didn't start fighting until the second or third night, after he'd sacrificed a point of POW to rip off a piece of the armor (which destroyed it as an artifact of War...).

See: Sir Needelbaum was merely supposed to be an incubator of sorts for a reborn War, who was parastitically riding his soul through their shared connection to War's power.  As long as Sir Needelbaum kept winning the fights (by acting in unpredictably, human, ways) he was free from compulsion and could attempt to remove the armor, slowly. In five days he got two pieces off (a measure of how hard that was).  Meanwhile Bear kept trying to convince him or force him to travel south and the elf mage decided she ReALLY wanted to be Pestilence.

Where was famine in all of this? That, my friends, is a very good question.  One that would require too long to explain (having to do with the nature of both pestilence and Famine in the setting... neither were creations of the Gods, lets leave it at that.)  Sir Needelbaum, meanwhile, was plotting the deaths of Kitara and Death if given the chance.

After several days travel the Sun showed up, darkening the Sky to meet in person with the party. This was sort of a let down moment as teh Sun, while awesomely powerful, is a rather limited sort when it comes to conversation. In essence he refused to acknowledge that there was any such thing as an Apocalypse, because it did not exist at Creation (which he oversaw).  He accused the characters of violating divine laws, but mostly just bitched for a bit then 'got back to work' being the Sun.  

Meanwhile: In dreams the Lizard took refuge from the hot desert in a cave, and wound up meeting Death in the cave who, after a few moments of conversation (and a half hearted attempt to re-hire him), tried to murder him with divine power. One of the five scales from Reptile took the blow... and the lizard promptly used that as an excuse to leap on death's face and try to claw it off.

Oh.. to have had that happen next week instead!  

Meanwhile: Sir Needelbaum tried to use the dreamscape Sea of Chaos to dissolve War, but War wasn't going in. Instead he actually drew on its power (finally! I've only been prompting that sort of action for a year or so now...) and blasted War with, well, Divine power.  he flubbed a dice roll or two, but it was all good, he made enough of them.  I used his number of bonded runes to compute his innate skill at controlling chaos.

It just so happened that the only sea of chaos he could visualize was on teh beach with the big stone wheel of fate.  Heh.  The start of his next dream he had a brief respite from War (whom he'd blasted) and could, with his borrowed divinity, read clearly from where he stood. He could see he was FATED to lose to War in the next few days. He promptly, and critically succeeded, at blasting the Wheel of Fate, destroying a huge wedge of it.

Note: The Lizard has the Fate Rune, Sir Needelbaum has the Luck rune. Mechanically they are pretty much identical, but thematically/metaphysically they are opposed. Note; The lizard is big on destiny and so forth, Sir Needelbaum's player (and thus character) HATES the idea of predestination and ordination of Fate, and has made a point of resisting the gods attempts to Fate him to do anything. This was a 'HUGE THING' in the game.  Ironically, the distribution of those two runes was ancient coincidence.

This actually happened the night before teh Sun showed up. In the dream, all the Gods immedeatly seperated Sir Needelbaum from the Wheel and forced him out of the Sea of Chaos where he was drawing his power from, forcing him to fight differently once more.  I kept expecting/hoping, he'd attempt to strip armor from War, giving him essentially two chances to remove a piece.

By now the game was about four hours past its normal end and two players could not contine, so we ended the game...

... and kept talking about what was going on 'behind the scenes' until 5:30 in the morning.

Death is, like the Sun, a First God sort of being. He can not work outside his own limited, if powerful, nature. Reptile was never a part of the Gods plan of creation, but has always worked to preserve it (just as the Gods do), thus created his own back up to The Great Engine (mortals and lesser gods) in the form of the various reptilian races of the world... he only acts because he has too. Death probably gave the Titans a trade, their immortality only worked because HE allowed it, in return they created (with his divine help) the two superweapons stolen by their slaves (teh Elves) that are Famine and Pestilence... only one of which was awakened (Pestilence) to drive the Dwarves underground.

Death is Powerful, but even He can't oppose all the Gods at once, thus the Apocalypse to undo reality from underneath them. He didn't plan on the PC's getting all of War's power, or at least not so directly, but once the end game started he was essentially forced to back his play or lose it. He probably did not expect War's armor to move from Ysithideri to Morkath, but either way eventually someone would have found it. Sir Needelbaum would have long since died, having 'sacrificed' his soul to bring War back to life, without risking the direct conflict (which, having already lost that once, Death and War both would have preferred to avoid.)

One deliberatly concealed detail is 'who writes Fate', as none of the Gods have taken credit for it, and Verra, at least, wants to avoid her inevitable end (at Death's hands).  Fate is not absolute, as the Luck aspect deliberatly opposes it, yet is treated by at least some of the Gods as Divine Law.

Pretty much everyone agrees that the Campaign is ending, but can you imagine a better way to go out than the Apocalypse?  Everyone is pretty stoked, even the players who are mostly sidelined.  Everyone wants to see how far Bear plans to go in helping Death, and his reasoning is sound: Better to serve the Apocalypse than be a victim, besides: His character is a man thirty years out of time. Everyone he knows is already dead.  

Outcomes I predict:

Sir Needelbaum, the Thrice Apostate, the Fatebreaker acheives Apotheosis, possibly through his 'stolen' connection to War, possibly at the End of the World, at the Sea of Chaos through his own will. In all likelihood he'll be something like a trickster god, opposed to the staid laws of the Divine, and directly opposed to Fate, though he could remain a War god depending on how things go.  He (the player) sees self sacrifice in the Sea of Chaos (particularly if he can take a 'bad guy' with him as the way to go. I keep pointing out that this is Bad.)

The Lizard may actually take Death's place: He eventually fled the fight (it was too soon, damnit!) but I may not be able to pull that off, having missed my opportunity earlier. He'll finally get his confrontation with his 'Maker' and we'll see how it goes from there.

Kitara: What? She is already a God waiting to become truly divine.  Maybe at the sea of chaos she'll learn how before she dies.  (note: the players essentially demanded she get another mutation roll for her part in the who Armor of War debacle, so she now has wings and cloven hooves. She rolled (and got the twice on result) so I don't trust it was entirely the dice, but then again, when pressed she DOES produce the rolls. Telling you, she should play the lottery.  

Teh Elf Mage: Hey, she's a tag-a-long, she gets nothing special just for showing up, but maybe I'll give her the Pestilence thing as a consolation prize. Yeah, I'm planning a big ass showdown at the End of the World (how's THAT for set pieces!).  I feel kinda bad, penalizing the weakest player like that (not that she hasn't had ideas of a sort, but her 'porn goddess' thing with the memory feather from Verra? weak sauce.), but I've never been able to get her sub-plots jumpstarted enough to actually DO anything with her.  

Bear: Dude, he voluntarily became the Horseman of Death to end the world...  He's had his end-game, he's playing on the GM's side of the table now, even if he doesn't realize it.


Yes: I am the referee of the Apocalypse.

So this is the last post in this thread until a new campaign in Haven starts up at some point.

So on to the highlights:

Sir Needelbaum: fell off a cliff on the way to the edge of the world, absolutely destroying all his limbs, but nothing else. Luckily he is sort of a highlander right now, so it merely inconvienenced him for a night.  He didn't sleep due to the agony of his bones reknitting all knight long, so he missed a night's sleep.  After the cliff the party was crossing a barren, dark wasteland of basalt, looking like an ancient lava flow. Naturally this made them more paranoid so they set watches for the first time in forever.  

Having missed a night, Sir Needelbaum had lost ground in the dream battle against War, but since he'd been on a long winning streak this wasn't super critical.

Bear, as the new Avatar of Death decided he was going to wait a couple of days before summoning the Pale Horse again (he'd pushed his off the cliff to see if it would survive. It didn't.... the War Horse, being a little more intelligent/agressive challenged Sir Needelbaum to try the same (before he fell, obviously) but no one felt up to the challenge.   Not because he was trying to avoid the compulsion, but because he wanted to avoid the Cliff again...  In the Dreams, however, he found himself sitting at the base of a tower in a field of Bones, with Death no where to be found, but a dagger sitting on the table next to him. He could see the Lizard struggling to cross the desert in the distance. He took the dagger and set off after him.


The Lizard, in the dream realm, finally reached Reptile. Unfortunately for him, his Maker was less than a stunning conversationalist. Reptile merely looked at him like he might be a pleasant Snack.  

Kitara found herself 'free' for the first night in a while and set out across her dreams trying to find the other characters. Unfortunately, she was looking for the Lizard, and he was 'unavailable'.  

The next night, while playing with the Orichalcum coins and the vials of Amorphia, Sir Needelbaum discovered, quite accidentally, that the Orichalcum sort of 'resonated' with the Amorphia, specifically one vial 'turned' into liquid orichalcum upon touching one of the coins. This keyed a ten-fifeteen minute 'effort' to figure out how to turn the liquid into new coins, solved eventually by the Avatar of Chaos sort of Willing them into state.  This netted two additional coins, but cost them one of the (now precious) vials.  Certainly they could produce more Amorphia, but had very limited storage.

NB: Sir Needelbaum's sudden decision to play with the Amorphia and coins was unexpected and a minor complication/distraction, so much of what followed from those actions was my on the spot effort to make it relevant.

Without further Ado, the players then went to sleep once more (with watches, yes):

Sir Needelbaum found himself on the receiving end of a beating. Thinking fast he drew upon the divine connection he'd 'built' by devouring the ghostly flesh of would be God Darsyltier Dealyreath and blasted War (Rolling a critical I believe). He could tell the blast was pretty much the same as the one's he'd done while standing in the Sea of Chaos last week, but weaker, filtered through the distant 'other' of another God.   Regardless, it worked and bought him some dream time to experiment.  First he tried to remove his Helmet in the Dream realm, but failed (despite a reroll), which was sad because I planned to go easier on him for doing it spiritually.  Of course: the intent was that he try to remove WAR'S!!! armor, saving himself a lot of pain, but he never did so.  

Lizard, meanwhile, started interrogating the more or less impassive Reptile, who responded at best with sort of 'instinctive empathy' sort of messages, directing Lizard to look to to himself to succeed, rather than asking for help and so forth.  Finally, Lizard looked out over the desert and saw at the edge of the rocky outcropping he'd climbed a single spider's web, a 'message' from his Maker.

The Avatar of Death continued across the desert (and, for the record, also had the dagger in the real world, but it never came up there so...)

Kitara found the Tower of Death but no one was there.


In what turned out to be the last night of dreaming:

Sir Needelbaum decided to create the 'pattern' with teh coins and amorphia in the dream realm to blast War. This proved 'AWESOME' in a bad way: The nature of the blast was very much 'sun' like, and then the pattern exploded in everyone's dream realms, waking everyone.

Prior to that: The lizard, staring at the spiderweb, deeply seeking answers, saw the web overlaying, or underlaying, the entire world laid out beneath him, extending to the very edges of the world (where chaos lay). Attempting to expand the web by pushing the rocks farther apart caused a few strands to snap and the entire web to collapse. Reptile was gone, of course.

Bear began climbing the rocky outcropping where he'd last seen teh lizard go.

Kitara sought Verra and found her mustering a massive army of Demons, possibly in the demon realm.  She began pushing her way through the crowd towards Verra.

Then everyone woke up to flying shards of hot metal winging through the air.
They also noticed that the dim moon was, rather out of season, a New Moon.  

They found a few intensely hot coins, leaden and dark, melting into the basalt where they had landed, while Sir Needelbaum still had the real coins, glowing with slightly more luminosity than usual, but otherwise untouched by the event.  They also found a strange purple gem that glowed faintly from within that they eventually determined was a paradox: Chaos trapped in permanent stasis.  It matched the gems the Lizard had seen in his long ago dreams in Renbluve.

The Sun did not rise that morning.

Bear had finally decided it was time to summon the Pale Horse, and he and the Elf Mage rode off deliberately to find Pestilence. Luckily for them, the third Horseman of the Apocalypse had somehow gotten ahead of them, so he rode off only at a tangent to the route the party had been taking.

The rest of the party, not realizing he was serious about jumpstarting the apocalypse, decided to camp out and wait for his compulsion to end.

You might recall the elf mage wanted to become Pestilence for some reason (possibly because she was feeling left out?), which is why she left with Bear.

They reached the edge of the world, a sharp cliff edge over a massive, churning sea of Amorphia. Dotting the edge were statues of men, caught in various 'action' poses (walking, running, fighting, whatever...) made of the same basalt as the land, every 100 feet or so, extending in either direction as far as the eye could see. In the distance they could see a tower, and beyond that tower lay Pestilence...

The party, meanwhile, was accosted by a strangely familiar seeming woman, limping slightly as she accused them of horrible sins.. namely putting out the Sun. This was the Moon, unrecognizable now that her burned face had mythically healed.   She singled out Sir Needelbaum for the bulk of her wrath, and I must say this scene went MUCH better than the one last week with the Sun, though I lacked a good way to exit gracefully.  In trying to avert the apocalypse he may have caused a slightly less total, but more drastic one...

Realizing that Bear wasn't turnign around, and having a  sudden urge to fix what had been broken, they set off due north for the edge of the world on the War Horse.  100 feet from teh statues, the rune in Kitara's chest grew cold and still, causing her to panic and fly back from the horse.

At this point I merged the dream lines and the 'real world' stories.  The Lizard found himself staring from his rocky outcroppign in the desert at the sea of Chaos as Bear pulled himself up the edge and drew the dagger (which, as a former Avatar of Death he realized was certainly a match for the Armaggedon Scythe he'd been hunting for...) with a savage grin.

Sir Needelbaum, seeing War flying towards him out of the sky, and realizing that outside of the dream realm he was no match for War physically, spurred the War Horse to charge into the Sea of Chaos.

Kitara found herself facing Verra's growing army and flew towards the Goddess...

Bear made a Persistance test and attacked, but missed, while LIzard meditated on the scales he still had.  The next 'pass' he failed the persistance test and Death used him as a convienent vessel, transferring his essence from the dagger to it's wielder, destroying him.

This was, in divine terms, and Oops moment, however: Lizard then leapt on his face and, helped with the divine essence he had freshly absorbed, began clawing not just the physical form of Death, but his essence as well.

In the Sea of Chaos, Sir Needelbaum made a critical success (01 roll!) on his divine skill (the same he'd been using in dreams) to channel the sea to both Blast War, scattering him finally and totally *but not erasing him as that lay beyond his power* and then to 'recreate' the Sun. This effort was totally draining, and turned a massive quantity of the Sea, hundreds of feet, if not a few miles, of Amorphia in any direction into the same Basalt he'd walked or ridden across for the last few days.

Meanwhile the only character without a meaningful dreamscape saw the living Rune of Pestilence approaching quickly. It was vaguely centauriod, made of lines of energy and strange ceramic or plastic plates floating about that together vaguely held the shape of a rune.  She also felt the aura of Pestilence, and a series of bad damage rolls (a d4 to every location, she never rolled less than a 3...) left her near death in one 'round', leaving her alone with Pestilence and a single minute in which to finish it off before she'd have to roll again.  Sadly, as a living rune, it was virtually immune (but not entirely) to her Skybolts (only because it was the chaos rune), so she switched to arrows. Good rolls crippled its hindquarters, leaving it dragging itself across the blasted landscape on only its front legs.  She passed her second check, barely, adn realizing she couldn't hope to win with just arrows and what little magic she had left, she body checked it into the Sea of Chaos... sadly she failed her athletics check, and followed it over the cliff. Luckily a newly minted God was available to rescue her, and Sir Needelbaum gently deposited her back on the edge of the world...

The Lizard consumbed Death's heart, becoming Death.

Kitara, flying through teh demons found her flesh stripped from her as she confronted Verra as a minor God of Chaos (which was LONG established). Verra admitted she was about to take the very desperate measure of invading the mortal realm with her Demon Army in violation of the ancient treaties in order to restore stability to Haven at any cost.  But as a Goddess she was 'tuned in' enough to realize it wasn't necessary any more, somehow. Sadly, due to that same treaty, Kitara was now trapped in teh Demon Realm until she could learn (from Verra, whom she had an acrimonious relationship at best) how to cross over. Oops.

Sir Needelbaum got a very brief 'cutscene' with a kindly old man who looked like... everyone... who basically congratulated him on his apotheosis, and gently reminded him that fate was nothing more than the God's decrees and internal laws, and his purpose was very much in the line of reminding people that it was, in fact, not absolute. The Smith was very much in favor of the mortals he had created learning this lesson, if not all at once.

And THAT was the end of the campaign, one lowly mortal on the edge of the world, having destroyed Pestilence single handedly... ironically doing one of the three tasks set before her by the Ghost of an ancient elf (redeeming the ancient sin against the Dwarves...) without actually meaning too.

Everyone had a blast, even Bear, who got to die twice in as many minutes, who agreed his character had it coming, and teh Elf Mage who got her dice rolling moment of glory against Pestilence (She REALLY likes to roll dice apparently...).  Kitara was pissed to find out her character was trapped in the Demon realm and Sir Needelbaum seemed mildly peeved he didn't get to commit soul suicide as a final 'fuck you' to the gods... but was otherwise cool with the outcome, having dealt a 'deathblow' to War.

We spent a good hour or two after going over the various manipulations and behind the scenes goings on.  Ironically, Verra; who had the shallowest and most transparent manipulations of the Party got pretty much everything she wanted with the sole exception of a group of powerful heroes to 'destroy' the elves when they marched on Humanity.  She got the Lizard avatar of Death to kill Death and take his place before Death killed her, she had Kitara under her thumb for a few millenia, and she had engineered the war that the Elves could not hope to win.. thus destroying them finally.

Death, who had been planning the end of reality for a LONG time had been killed just before his incomplete apocalypse had come to fruition, losing permanently one of his horseman, less permanently his Brother, War, and HIS horseman, and naturally the NEW Death would probably NOT be putting out the whole 'Horseman' thing.  It was revealed in teh post game that the Pestilence and Famine 'horsemen' were created for Death by the Titans in return for their secrets of Immortality long ago. The Elves, when they destroyed their masters, had inherited these two 'superweapons', but had only activated one of them.  Death hadn't really planned the Apocalypse to start just then, he was playing the long game. he'd planned for War to have a bit more time to work on Sir Needelbaum's soul, and perhaps a more pliable mortal to pick up the pieces in Morkath some time after his death.  Kitara pushed his timeline up a good century or so, before he'd even had time to put the last piece (famine) on the table... expectign THAT to happen once the humans began winning against the Elves.  Death's ultimate goal was to destroy the Great Engine, killing every mortal, weakening the Gods enough to start to work on them, even while his power grew.  Eventually he'd kill everything, every god, every ghost... and reality would dissolve...killing him. Very singleminded.

Reptile was working, naturally enough, to preserve Reality which was his home as much as any other Gods.  He'd been clued in when Lizard became the Avatar of Death and had been working behind the scenes to undo the Apocalypse.  His entire plan, originally, was to pull the lynchpin holding the apocalypse together (the Avatar of Death) at a critical moment... delaying it long enough for the Gods or himself to take more drastic action while Death was distracted.  He hadn't counted on Death having a fall back Avatar in exactly the same place, but the added distraction allowed him to lure Death into a trap.   His nature wouldn't allow him to help his 'child' very much, so it was very much a gamble.

As for Sir Needelbaum? No one directed his actions. His role had been, for some time now, to FIGHT the manipulations, overt and subtle, of the Gods and find his own path.  Ever since he realized Verra was pushing him around with teh Fate thing he'd gone out of his way to tweak them, and had been seeking a way out for some time.