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<blockquote data-quote="Worldres" data-source="post: 8418686" data-attributes="member: 7029564"><p>I return! My cancelled surgery got un-cancelled, and then I needed a second surgery to correct the first one, and then one of my players also needed surgery, which is a statistically improbable amount of surgery in five months. So, anyway, this adventure took a little extra time to write up than usual. Which is still fast by most standards, granted, but. We're almost done Adventure 6, so I'd better write 5!!!</p><p></p><p>And before we get into it, let's just say that we took some... artistic liberties with this adventure. It's my game, and I am wont to make stuff up if I feel like it.</p><p></p><p><strong>Adventure 3, Cauldron Born: I hope my baby doesn't come out all ****** up and ****</strong></p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]144917[/ATTACH]</p><p><span style="font-size: 12px">Fake Zeitgeist Portrait of Morgan's daughter, Antonia Cippiano, and the "Smug Gatria" server emote. All of the PCs have emotes in our group discord.</span></p><p></p><p>Between adventures, we had a mini-session where the players were introduced to Alexander Grappa. Cleone had requisitioned the golem and re-assembled him in her workshop; because the players were still suspicious of the King, they decided to keep his re-activation a secret. The party loved Alexander and befriended him; they enjoyed trying to work around the Geas to get as much information from him as possible, and assumed Alexander was cooperating to the full extent of his abilities. In reality, I purposely had Alexander mislead them about Borne and his brothers, out of fear that his sons would be destroyed if the RHC knew the truth. This was delicious, because they felt like they had been betrayed by a close friend, later, when they finally got to the facility.</p><p></p><p>During the March of Kings Festival, the party and Thames Grimsley attended a play written by Gideon Ambrose, my little homebrew addition to the docker plot. He was Catherine's brother who defected from the Obscurati and was rescued by a docker playwright in Flint. He became that docker's apprentice in order to spread secret anti-Obscurati sentiment in Flint under Roland Stanfield's nose. The Macbeth-esque play detailed the deception the early Danoran government utilized during the historic smallpox epidemic, and how they misinformed and manipulated their people to consolidate power.</p><p></p><p>Ironically, the two dullest party members (both in INT and WIS), Gatria and Marcel, were the only ones to pass the wisdom save to notice the play's implication that corruption and misinformation is not specific to Danor, and happens everywhere. The other characters more or less assumed it was anti-Danoran propoganda.</p><p></p><p>My players enjoyed these little "cooldown" episodes and asked if we could have them in between every adventure. Stay tuned for more random shenanigans.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]144919[/ATTACH]</p><p><span style="font-size: 12px">Enjoy this art of Hoya and Delft one of our players drew. Even though he won't be their boss for much longer, the players still love him.</span></p><p></p><p>On to the actual adventure! It is safe to say that Adventure 5 was far and away the biggest hit so far, in a line of three already huge hits.</p><p></p><p>I let the players make their own B-Team and they ran away with it. The B-Team Constables were:</p><p></p><p><strong>Diana</strong>, a former "Chosen One" Paladin who denounced her holy power after the trauma of the last Yerasol war. She is constantly harassed by her former familiar to get back on track.</p><p><strong>Maeve</strong>, a kind old skyseer farmer with a sassy chicken familiar named Ruby. Diana's mom.</p><p><strong>Nozomi </strong>("Zo") , a spirit medium and secret Kell plant who leaks RHC activities to the Thieves Guild.</p><p><strong>Alais</strong>, an Eladrin and secret Vekeshi Mystic who was placed in town to watch over the Eladrin baby who lives at an A-Team PC's orphanage.</p><p>No party NPC this time for B-Team, unless you count Diana's annoying familiar.</p><p></p><p>The opening of Adventure 5 didn't diverge too much from the book. The players fought the Guild in the Carriage Race, narrowly missing a bomb detonation when the only party member with more than a +1 to strength rolled a Nat 20 to remove it, and then fumbled the start of the terrorist plot investigation, resulting in the Flint Tribune getting blown up.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]144920[/ATTACH]</p><p><span style="font-size: 12px">So, it turned out Ruby was immune to bombs.</span></p><p></p><p>Because we have a Family Goon as an A-team PC (Gatria), this adventure was very Family-focused. The players met with Morgan Cippiano to listen to his demands, and they immediately agreed to all of them. Though the players struggled to succeed at the Kell Hunt mini-game due to Zo's interference, they did at least think to root out all of the police moles once they started getting weird results. But they never expected the call would be coming from inside the house...</p><p></p><p>The players connected with Brakken and he instantly became the players' second favourite NPC, with Finona still at first place in spite of her absence for two adventures.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]144924[/ATTACH]</p><p><span style="font-size: 12px">Finona "not appearing in this adventure" Duvall. The version of Zeitgeist I have doesn't have a portrait for her, so a player made one. Yes, they like her <em>that much</em>.</span></p><p></p><p>I also regret to inform you all that someone came up with the following tongue twister about Brakken and Feroz: [SPOILER="Bad wordplay"]Beran bears getting barred from barren bars deliberately bereaves Berans of the liberty of bears in bars and putting Beran bars at risk of unnumbered berserk sober bear backstabbers.[/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>I hate my players. (Kidding, kidding)</p><p></p><p>Brakken caught on to Zo's affiliation with the Guild, and tried to warn the RHC as much as he could without tipping her off or giving away his abilities, but the clues fell on deaf ears, as the other players trusted fellow RHC members implicitly. This led to Quentin Augst no-showing at the Opera after Zo warned him that the constables were coming to trap him.</p><p></p><p>Amusingly, the fight with Lorcan Kell occurred virtually simultaneously to the final Eschatologist Terrorist plot. I told the players to divide their characters into Kell Team and Bomb Team. If Zo had been on Kell Team, Kell would have successfully escaped to the Bleak Gate, but by some stroke of luck, she was assigned to Bomb Team at the last minute.</p><p></p><p>The players assembled a proper army to take down Lorcan Kell once he was within Morgan's sights. They brought in most of A-Team and some B-Team, hiring Kvarti to fill the gap in Bomb Team. Other NPCs the players asked to rope in included the old Party NPC from when I was still a player, and... of all <em>freaking </em>people, Gideon Ambrose. Thames would have made way more sense, but I blame the play. Hoya's player had said she was friends with Gideon in her backstory, but knowing the party wouldn't approve of inviting him to the fight, she had him hide in the shadows and provide support if someone needed urgent rescue. She believed he was just a bard like her and had no idea he was, y'know, actually a witch.</p><p></p><p>The party's plan was to have Marcel disguise himself as Norm, the Guild's Ob liaison, and approach Kell at the meeting point, using Caius Bergeron's Obscurati Ring to "prove" his identity, with hopes that Kell was too stupid to notice the difference in ring color (he was). The party used the distraction Marcel provided to assassinate his Cleric and flank everyone else. Kell instantly rolled two crits right out the gate on poor Gatria, which would have made her very, very dead in a single turn if he had confirmed either of them (he didn't). Thankfully, the players brought the entire wrath of Flint down upon him so quickly and thoroughly that he didn't roll another crit for the rest of the encounter. Gatria tore out Kell's eyes and brought his half-dead corpse to Morgan, who used, ah, <em>gentle persuasion</em> to draw everything he could out of him before killing him. The RHC looked the other way.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]144921[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Unfortunately, the RHC looked the other way so hard that Zo, after hearing Kell Team had succeeded, quietly used her authority to break Ottavia Sacradote (an old friend of hers) out of jail and fled the country. Whoopsie doodle!</p><p></p><p>To add fuel to the fire, since the party had used Caius Bergeron's Ring to convince Kell that they were legit, Gideon suspected the party of being Ob-backed. He confronted Hoya after the mission; the two then engaged in an extremely tense "battle of wits" in which the two friends, mutually affected by Zone of Truth and working against Gideon's geas, knew they would be forced to kill each other at the end of it if it turned out they were on opposite sides. Thankfully, after FOUR REAL LIFE HOURS of one-on-one debate (I promise you that everyone at the table had fun), Hoya uncovered Gideon's identity. They realized they were both working to bring down the Ob, and Gideon revealed that he had taken Margaret Saxby prisoner in the Witch-hunting-tunnels (of course Witches know about them, now!) after Saxby had shown up in Bosum Strand with an Ob ring on. The players went nuts. After interrogating Saxby, Hoya decided to leave her under Gideon's care, worried that she would be executed if they took her back to the King.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]144922[/ATTACH]</p><p><span style="font-size: 12px">Approximately five seconds after discovering Saxby in the Witch Basement, someone dropped this in chat. She looks surprisingly good with longer hair.</span></p><p></p><p>Man, I don't even know what to tell you about Ekossigan. The players completely speed-ran that entire section and finished it in two sessions. They were indeed very stressed out by imperiled orphans, but saved the day in the end. But they were also inclined to believe Ekossigan's insane ramblings, and started to slowly turn on Alexander as a result.</p><p></p><p>The players returned to Alexander to ask him about what Ekossigan said. Alexander admitted that there were mechanical children he had created with Kasavarina inside the Bleak Gate, but that they were brought up with moral rigor and raised to think rationally and intelligently. He promised they were good children at heart, and said nothing about Borne being a 300 foot tall super weapon, nor their purpose. He asked the party to bring him with them so he could safely extract them from the Ob's hands, to which they agreed.</p><p></p><p>As for the bomb plot, Mona's player had written into her backstory that her fiancé, Vihan, had infiltrated a death cult in order to extract Mona's younger brother Leo, but Vihan decided to defect to the cult as well. Of course, I couldn't resist the cult being the radical eschatologists. So, Vihan was working with Zubov to set up the bomb. The party captured them, and Vihan warned Mona that the end of the world was fast approaching - and told her that if she asked the stars to confirm his beliefs, he would tell her where her brother was. Mona asked the stars whether the end was near, and saw Flint turning to ice. Terrified that the radical eschatologists were right all along, she decided to hide this from the party. Another secret Mona refuses to share!!!</p><p></p><p>While the party knew how to enter the bleak gate, they still decided to go through with the Peace Summit, partly under some naïve hope that Danor attended with some shred of sincerity. Burned by several friendly NPCs and now a PC, everyone was (quietly) at eachother's throats the whole time.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]144923[/ATTACH]</p><p><span style="font-size: 12px">Artistic reconstruction. Of course, only A-Team was actually there.</span></p><p></p><p>When Asrabey interrupted the summit, he was demoted to Least Favourite NPC Ever, eclipsing even Rock. The party dragged him by the ear into the Bleak Gate.</p><p></p><p>Inside the Bleak Gate, the players took the vents and by sheer dumb luck, deposited themselves directly into the room with Borne. The players were literally speechless, and immediately took their anger out on Alexander. Leone Quital coaxed them out of their hiding place with a Cheesy Villain Speech, boasting that "one of their own" had turned tipped him off. Of course, this was Roland Stanfield, but the players assumed it was Catherine (who I also let come to the summit), because... they literally forgot to do anything about her after Asrabey interrupted, and only took care of Han's messenger. Nice going, guys. Oh well, works for me!</p><p></p><p>Now came a point where I'm glad my players aren't the brightest bunch. Again, by sheer dumb luck, Gatria crit against Leone's shield and took it out in a single turn. Before I could have Borne react, SOMEONE (Cleone) did a statistically improbable 150 damage on Leone Quital in the very next move. Pretending I wasn't freaking out internally, I bluffed and asked if she was shooting to kill - thankfully, she said no. They took Leone prisoner, but forgot him when the facility began falling apart. Phew. Close call.</p><p></p><p>Waking to Kasavarina's frightened screams, Borne accidentally crushed Alexander and tore a rift in the Bleak Gate. We then had a montage where we cut to the remaining B-Team members witnessing Borne emerging from the Hill, which tied everything together nicely.</p><p></p><p>I tried to move the Borne encounter out to sea to complete the Skyseer Vision Nevard had, but my players kept rules-lawyering my suggestions, resulting in, um, what happened next.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]144929[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Hoya, the purest bean to ever live, felt sorry for Borne and his circumstances, and treated him as though he were her child - she begged Harkover and the King not to let anyone hurt or scare him, and arranged for Kasavarina to sing an Eladrin lullaby to calm him down; even if Kasavarina couldn't remember anything important, surely she could at least remember her own mother's lullabies. But memory-scrambled Kasavarina was frightened, so they had her teach the lullaby to the bards, all of whom can speak elvish. Since most of the party can play an instrument, at least two of them rolled perform checks >30 twice to put on a thirty-minute concert so Aodhan, who was on a boat nearby, could complete the ritual and save the day. Sure, it's not what was intended at all, but the players <em>loved it</em>.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]144925[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, Cleone saved Alexander's other three boys from the collapsing facility. We call them the "Adamanteens." They now live at Maeve's house, out of sight of the general public, and are learning how to farm.</p><p></p><p>Now came the part where the party had to decide who to blame the construction of the Colossus on. They had Rosalind Taylor help with evacuating civilians out of Parity Lake, and were less than impressed when the King suggested blaming Danor (and not the Obscurati) for the attack, especially considering Cleone is Danoran herself. A-Team asked for some time to think. The players took ANOTHER FOUR REAL LIFE HOURS (we <em>still </em>had fun!) to decide whether or not to tell their country the truth, or to perpetuate government lies to maintain their advantage over the Obscurati. A player literally cried in real life. Eventually, they decided to lie and pin the blame on the Eschatologist Movement, sacrificing their relationship with the Eschatologist-sympathetic members of Drakyr in order to salvage things with Danor.</p><p></p><p>The players returned to the King with their answer, who arranged to meet them on the roof of the Hotel Aurum. He agreed to do as they suggested. Then he took them to the edge of the roof, overlooking a crowd he had summoned as witnesses, and asked them to kneel - to which Mona immediately refused, and left in disgust. The rest of the party was made Knights, witnessed by the people of Flint below.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]144926[/ATTACH]</p><p><span style="font-size: 12px">The overwhelmingly unlikely Knights of Risur, plus Mona, who bounced. She's still a Constable, though.</span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px">If you managed to get this far, thanks so much for reading! Looking forward to writing up Adventure 6 soon, which has also been a scream. I had read that some players didn't like it (relative to other Zeitgeist adventures, anyway - which are all so much better than the typical AP), but my players love it. Hopefully that one won't be a beast to report, aha.</span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Worldres, post: 8418686, member: 7029564"] I return! My cancelled surgery got un-cancelled, and then I needed a second surgery to correct the first one, and then one of my players also needed surgery, which is a statistically improbable amount of surgery in five months. So, anyway, this adventure took a little extra time to write up than usual. Which is still fast by most standards, granted, but. We're almost done Adventure 6, so I'd better write 5!!! And before we get into it, let's just say that we took some... artistic liberties with this adventure. It's my game, and I am wont to make stuff up if I feel like it. [B]Adventure 3, Cauldron Born: I hope my baby doesn't come out all ****** up and ****[/B] [ATTACH type="full" alt="shady stuff.png"]144917[/ATTACH] [SIZE=3]Fake Zeitgeist Portrait of Morgan's daughter, Antonia Cippiano, and the "Smug Gatria" server emote. All of the PCs have emotes in our group discord.[/SIZE] Between adventures, we had a mini-session where the players were introduced to Alexander Grappa. Cleone had requisitioned the golem and re-assembled him in her workshop; because the players were still suspicious of the King, they decided to keep his re-activation a secret. The party loved Alexander and befriended him; they enjoyed trying to work around the Geas to get as much information from him as possible, and assumed Alexander was cooperating to the full extent of his abilities. In reality, I purposely had Alexander mislead them about Borne and his brothers, out of fear that his sons would be destroyed if the RHC knew the truth. This was delicious, because they felt like they had been betrayed by a close friend, later, when they finally got to the facility. During the March of Kings Festival, the party and Thames Grimsley attended a play written by Gideon Ambrose, my little homebrew addition to the docker plot. He was Catherine's brother who defected from the Obscurati and was rescued by a docker playwright in Flint. He became that docker's apprentice in order to spread secret anti-Obscurati sentiment in Flint under Roland Stanfield's nose. The Macbeth-esque play detailed the deception the early Danoran government utilized during the historic smallpox epidemic, and how they misinformed and manipulated their people to consolidate power. Ironically, the two dullest party members (both in INT and WIS), Gatria and Marcel, were the only ones to pass the wisdom save to notice the play's implication that corruption and misinformation is not specific to Danor, and happens everywhere. The other characters more or less assumed it was anti-Danoran propoganda. My players enjoyed these little "cooldown" episodes and asked if we could have them in between every adventure. Stay tuned for more random shenanigans. [ATTACH type="full" alt="flowers for delft wip.png"]144919[/ATTACH] [SIZE=3]Enjoy this art of Hoya and Delft one of our players drew. Even though he won't be their boss for much longer, the players still love him.[/SIZE] On to the actual adventure! It is safe to say that Adventure 5 was far and away the biggest hit so far, in a line of three already huge hits. I let the players make their own B-Team and they ran away with it. The B-Team Constables were: [B]Diana[/B], a former "Chosen One" Paladin who denounced her holy power after the trauma of the last Yerasol war. She is constantly harassed by her former familiar to get back on track. [B]Maeve[/B], a kind old skyseer farmer with a sassy chicken familiar named Ruby. Diana's mom. [B]Nozomi [/B]("Zo") , a spirit medium and secret Kell plant who leaks RHC activities to the Thieves Guild. [B]Alais[/B], an Eladrin and secret Vekeshi Mystic who was placed in town to watch over the Eladrin baby who lives at an A-Team PC's orphanage. No party NPC this time for B-Team, unless you count Diana's annoying familiar. The opening of Adventure 5 didn't diverge too much from the book. The players fought the Guild in the Carriage Race, narrowly missing a bomb detonation when the only party member with more than a +1 to strength rolled a Nat 20 to remove it, and then fumbled the start of the terrorist plot investigation, resulting in the Flint Tribune getting blown up. [ATTACH type="full" alt="ruby.png"]144920[/ATTACH] [SIZE=3]So, it turned out Ruby was immune to bombs.[/SIZE] Because we have a Family Goon as an A-team PC (Gatria), this adventure was very Family-focused. The players met with Morgan Cippiano to listen to his demands, and they immediately agreed to all of them. Though the players struggled to succeed at the Kell Hunt mini-game due to Zo's interference, they did at least think to root out all of the police moles once they started getting weird results. But they never expected the call would be coming from inside the house... The players connected with Brakken and he instantly became the players' second favourite NPC, with Finona still at first place in spite of her absence for two adventures. [ATTACH type="full" alt="Finona portrait.png"]144924[/ATTACH] [SIZE=3]Finona "not appearing in this adventure" Duvall. The version of Zeitgeist I have doesn't have a portrait for her, so a player made one. Yes, they like her [I]that much[/I].[/SIZE] I also regret to inform you all that someone came up with the following tongue twister about Brakken and Feroz: [SPOILER="Bad wordplay"]Beran bears getting barred from barren bars deliberately bereaves Berans of the liberty of bears in bars and putting Beran bars at risk of unnumbered berserk sober bear backstabbers.[/SPOILER] I hate my players. (Kidding, kidding) Brakken caught on to Zo's affiliation with the Guild, and tried to warn the RHC as much as he could without tipping her off or giving away his abilities, but the clues fell on deaf ears, as the other players trusted fellow RHC members implicitly. This led to Quentin Augst no-showing at the Opera after Zo warned him that the constables were coming to trap him. Amusingly, the fight with Lorcan Kell occurred virtually simultaneously to the final Eschatologist Terrorist plot. I told the players to divide their characters into Kell Team and Bomb Team. If Zo had been on Kell Team, Kell would have successfully escaped to the Bleak Gate, but by some stroke of luck, she was assigned to Bomb Team at the last minute. The players assembled a proper army to take down Lorcan Kell once he was within Morgan's sights. They brought in most of A-Team and some B-Team, hiring Kvarti to fill the gap in Bomb Team. Other NPCs the players asked to rope in included the old Party NPC from when I was still a player, and... of all [I]freaking [/I]people, Gideon Ambrose. Thames would have made way more sense, but I blame the play. Hoya's player had said she was friends with Gideon in her backstory, but knowing the party wouldn't approve of inviting him to the fight, she had him hide in the shadows and provide support if someone needed urgent rescue. She believed he was just a bard like her and had no idea he was, y'know, actually a witch. The party's plan was to have Marcel disguise himself as Norm, the Guild's Ob liaison, and approach Kell at the meeting point, using Caius Bergeron's Obscurati Ring to "prove" his identity, with hopes that Kell was too stupid to notice the difference in ring color (he was). The party used the distraction Marcel provided to assassinate his Cleric and flank everyone else. Kell instantly rolled two crits right out the gate on poor Gatria, which would have made her very, very dead in a single turn if he had confirmed either of them (he didn't). Thankfully, the players brought the entire wrath of Flint down upon him so quickly and thoroughly that he didn't roll another crit for the rest of the encounter. Gatria tore out Kell's eyes and brought his half-dead corpse to Morgan, who used, ah, [I]gentle persuasion[/I] to draw everything he could out of him before killing him. The RHC looked the other way. [ATTACH type="full" alt="dead kell.png"]144921[/ATTACH] Unfortunately, the RHC looked the other way so hard that Zo, after hearing Kell Team had succeeded, quietly used her authority to break Ottavia Sacradote (an old friend of hers) out of jail and fled the country. Whoopsie doodle! To add fuel to the fire, since the party had used Caius Bergeron's Ring to convince Kell that they were legit, Gideon suspected the party of being Ob-backed. He confronted Hoya after the mission; the two then engaged in an extremely tense "battle of wits" in which the two friends, mutually affected by Zone of Truth and working against Gideon's geas, knew they would be forced to kill each other at the end of it if it turned out they were on opposite sides. Thankfully, after FOUR REAL LIFE HOURS of one-on-one debate (I promise you that everyone at the table had fun), Hoya uncovered Gideon's identity. They realized they were both working to bring down the Ob, and Gideon revealed that he had taken Margaret Saxby prisoner in the Witch-hunting-tunnels (of course Witches know about them, now!) after Saxby had shown up in Bosum Strand with an Ob ring on. The players went nuts. After interrogating Saxby, Hoya decided to leave her under Gideon's care, worried that she would be executed if they took her back to the King. [ATTACH type="full" alt="saxby long hair.png"]144922[/ATTACH] [SIZE=3]Approximately five seconds after discovering Saxby in the Witch Basement, someone dropped this in chat. She looks surprisingly good with longer hair.[/SIZE] Man, I don't even know what to tell you about Ekossigan. The players completely speed-ran that entire section and finished it in two sessions. They were indeed very stressed out by imperiled orphans, but saved the day in the end. But they were also inclined to believe Ekossigan's insane ramblings, and started to slowly turn on Alexander as a result. The players returned to Alexander to ask him about what Ekossigan said. Alexander admitted that there were mechanical children he had created with Kasavarina inside the Bleak Gate, but that they were brought up with moral rigor and raised to think rationally and intelligently. He promised they were good children at heart, and said nothing about Borne being a 300 foot tall super weapon, nor their purpose. He asked the party to bring him with them so he could safely extract them from the Ob's hands, to which they agreed. As for the bomb plot, Mona's player had written into her backstory that her fiancé, Vihan, had infiltrated a death cult in order to extract Mona's younger brother Leo, but Vihan decided to defect to the cult as well. Of course, I couldn't resist the cult being the radical eschatologists. So, Vihan was working with Zubov to set up the bomb. The party captured them, and Vihan warned Mona that the end of the world was fast approaching - and told her that if she asked the stars to confirm his beliefs, he would tell her where her brother was. Mona asked the stars whether the end was near, and saw Flint turning to ice. Terrified that the radical eschatologists were right all along, she decided to hide this from the party. Another secret Mona refuses to share!!! While the party knew how to enter the bleak gate, they still decided to go through with the Peace Summit, partly under some naïve hope that Danor attended with some shred of sincerity. Burned by several friendly NPCs and now a PC, everyone was (quietly) at eachother's throats the whole time. [ATTACH type="full" alt="The Gang Solves the Obscurati Crisis.png"]144923[/ATTACH] [SIZE=3]Artistic reconstruction. Of course, only A-Team was actually there.[/SIZE] When Asrabey interrupted the summit, he was demoted to Least Favourite NPC Ever, eclipsing even Rock. The party dragged him by the ear into the Bleak Gate. Inside the Bleak Gate, the players took the vents and by sheer dumb luck, deposited themselves directly into the room with Borne. The players were literally speechless, and immediately took their anger out on Alexander. Leone Quital coaxed them out of their hiding place with a Cheesy Villain Speech, boasting that "one of their own" had turned tipped him off. Of course, this was Roland Stanfield, but the players assumed it was Catherine (who I also let come to the summit), because... they literally forgot to do anything about her after Asrabey interrupted, and only took care of Han's messenger. Nice going, guys. Oh well, works for me! Now came a point where I'm glad my players aren't the brightest bunch. Again, by sheer dumb luck, Gatria crit against Leone's shield and took it out in a single turn. Before I could have Borne react, SOMEONE (Cleone) did a statistically improbable 150 damage on Leone Quital in the very next move. Pretending I wasn't freaking out internally, I bluffed and asked if she was shooting to kill - thankfully, she said no. They took Leone prisoner, but forgot him when the facility began falling apart. Phew. Close call. Waking to Kasavarina's frightened screams, Borne accidentally crushed Alexander and tore a rift in the Bleak Gate. We then had a montage where we cut to the remaining B-Team members witnessing Borne emerging from the Hill, which tied everything together nicely. I tried to move the Borne encounter out to sea to complete the Skyseer Vision Nevard had, but my players kept rules-lawyering my suggestions, resulting in, um, what happened next. [ATTACH type="full"]144929[/ATTACH] Hoya, the purest bean to ever live, felt sorry for Borne and his circumstances, and treated him as though he were her child - she begged Harkover and the King not to let anyone hurt or scare him, and arranged for Kasavarina to sing an Eladrin lullaby to calm him down; even if Kasavarina couldn't remember anything important, surely she could at least remember her own mother's lullabies. But memory-scrambled Kasavarina was frightened, so they had her teach the lullaby to the bards, all of whom can speak elvish. Since most of the party can play an instrument, at least two of them rolled perform checks >30 twice to put on a thirty-minute concert so Aodhan, who was on a boat nearby, could complete the ritual and save the day. Sure, it's not what was intended at all, but the players [I]loved it[/I]. [ATTACH type="full" alt="west virginia.png"]144925[/ATTACH] Meanwhile, Cleone saved Alexander's other three boys from the collapsing facility. We call them the "Adamanteens." They now live at Maeve's house, out of sight of the general public, and are learning how to farm. Now came the part where the party had to decide who to blame the construction of the Colossus on. They had Rosalind Taylor help with evacuating civilians out of Parity Lake, and were less than impressed when the King suggested blaming Danor (and not the Obscurati) for the attack, especially considering Cleone is Danoran herself. A-Team asked for some time to think. The players took ANOTHER FOUR REAL LIFE HOURS (we [I]still [/I]had fun!) to decide whether or not to tell their country the truth, or to perpetuate government lies to maintain their advantage over the Obscurati. A player literally cried in real life. Eventually, they decided to lie and pin the blame on the Eschatologist Movement, sacrificing their relationship with the Eschatologist-sympathetic members of Drakyr in order to salvage things with Danor. The players returned to the King with their answer, who arranged to meet them on the roof of the Hotel Aurum. He agreed to do as they suggested. Then he took them to the edge of the roof, overlooking a crowd he had summoned as witnesses, and asked them to kneel - to which Mona immediately refused, and left in disgust. The rest of the party was made Knights, witnessed by the people of Flint below. [ATTACH type="full" alt="the whole party.png"]144926[/ATTACH] [SIZE=3]The overwhelmingly unlikely Knights of Risur, plus Mona, who bounced. She's still a Constable, though.[/SIZE] [SIZE=4]If you managed to get this far, thanks so much for reading! Looking forward to writing up Adventure 6 soon, which has also been a scream. I had read that some players didn't like it (relative to other Zeitgeist adventures, anyway - which are all so much better than the typical AP), but my players love it. Hopefully that one won't be a beast to report, aha.[/SIZE] [/QUOTE]
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