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<blockquote data-quote="Worldres" data-source="post: 8547649" data-attributes="member: 7029564"><p>Hello! Over one year of Zeitgeist and still going strong!!! We just finished Adventure 7, so that means I should probably get around to the Adventure 6 write-up. Fortunately, one of my players was a former court-reporter, so I can just re-visit the transcripts, hah. I was putting it off doing my write-up, but then one of my players said she would play one of my favourite “edgy philosophical indie games” if I posted it, soooo…</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]151944[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>Adventure 4, Revelations from the Mouth of a Madman: "Catfolk Thinks of Nothing But Murder All Day"</strong></p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]151962[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Remember how I said that Adventure 5 was far and away the favourite of the game so far? That was until Adventure 6 happened. The players unanimously agreed it was the best one. It helped considerably that they had been hunting the Steel Lord for three adventures, that Gatria was an ex-cult soldier, and that Hoya was once Tinker's foster daughter.</p><p></p><p>Between adventures, Cleone was starting to get her memories back from her past lives, and confessed to Delft that she was an ex-member of the Obscurati. She requested that she be given a poison pill in the case that the Obscurati retrieved her. Later, she told Gatria and Marcel to put her down if she ever became an Ob turncoat.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]151945[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>The party still suspected that Catherine had been the one to tip off Leone, so they interrogated her. Someone had the bright idea to interrogate her cat, Kelland, who I have decided looks like <a href="https://64.media.tumblr.com/5af0c33782d79e97936f4d9e7a315ea8/586a266f27b3222a-60/s500x750/f8658536e4329eab5f1ac51765e20eadc035e06c.png" target="_blank">famous internet noodle Pangur</a>. Catherine bluffed and said the king humiliated himself on an international scale by neglecting his relationship with the Unseen Court, which caused Asrabey to disrupt the peace conference, and suggested that the country would be better off with a different ruler in his place - and tried to court their favor. The party didn’t buy it. Kelland was also a condescending little jerk. The party was unable to pry what they were looking for out of them.</p><p></p><p>Gatria led her own hilariously well-timed investigation into what Pemberton was up to, only to find that his factories had been cleaned out. With a good diplomacy roll, she discovered that she wasn’t the first to check into his whereabouts, as they had been stalked on their way out by a hooded old man (Harkover, making sure Gradiax was successfully intimidated out of town). Then, without actually suspecting that that was Harkover, she separately used her Prestige with the Family to spend the adventure looking into Harkover’s origins. Morgan confirmed that any details about his life and background had been sealed by the state, which instantly made the whole party suspicious. Delightful!!!</p><p></p><p>Oh, and Hoya and Xambria started a romance inside of Hoya’s head. It makes sense in context! My players don’t like romance much at all, but by Adventure 8, all of their characters are paired up with assorted NPCs and some of them are married. It’s very funny, I’ll explain when we get there.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]151946[/ATTACH]</p><p><em><span style="font-size: 12px">Hoya and Xambria.</span></em></p><p></p><p>By the way, the crew asked me if they got a change of uniform now that they were Knights, such as a cool sash or a wayfinder. I told them that could be the case if they just believed hard enough, so yeah, I gave everyone except for Mona a wayfinder with their choice of ioun stone, as well as a brand new sash. Gatria made a point of showing it off at every opportunity.</p><p></p><p>On to Ber! After the briefing in Slate, the party went to meet with Brakken and was extremely upset to find that he had been charged with abuse of power. The party met Glaucia at the courthouse – Glaucia had been the judge at Gatria’s sentencing when she was a child soldier for the Steel Lord; back then, Glaucia had sentenced her to get an education at the Martial Academy, but Gatria flaked on her thesis and jumped the border. Glaucia made a comment that Gatria would be entitled to a severe beating if not for her new Knighthood in Risur.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]151947[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>The party did their best to put up a strong defense for Brakken, but stopped just short of figuring out his accusers were Obscurati plants. He was let off the hook with a light beating. The party, while very irritated that Glaucia spent much of the trial fishing for information, still invited her to accompany them to see the Bruse. Glaucia took the opportunity to ask Mona to prophecy about her future – Mona saw a pampered young girl in a room of steel whose neck was suddenly slit by Glaucia. Glaucia and Mona had an interesting philosophical debate about fate; Mona, who is fated to die, said that if she had the choice, she would remove the entire world’s ability to see the future…</p><p></p><p><em>…Tee hee.</em></p><p></p><p>The party absolutely annihilated Rush and his squad at Melissa’s, who activated his continency charm on Turn 2. I’m starting to be afraid of my party, who consistently do damage in the hundreds every turn, even though we only have a single full-BAB character. The party argued with Melissa about the tone of her article, but fortunately for them, she’s the kind of person that doesn’t really care if they like her or not, and vice versa. In the end, they spoke at the worker’s rally, and won her respect.</p><p></p><p>Thing progressed as normal up until the Cantabrilla Railroad challenge. The party was insulted by the Bruse’s game, and when Lya appeared after dinner to ask them to concede, they considered it, for a moment. Lya tried to convert the party to the Ob, and made it clear she thought they would be more useful on their side. She gave the “What do you believe is right? What would the world be like if everyone agreed with you?” speech, and told them that she would give them unfettered access to Nicodemus in exchange for letting her win. The party eventually told her to leave, decided not to concede, and the challenge began.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]151955[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Working at a breakneck pace, the party managed to solve Citadel Cavallo’s various crises before Lya could intervene, including rescuing Wolfgang and brokering peace. Fun Fact! I used to be a field epidemiologist until the pandemic made me work from home (yeah, figure that one out). One of my players said that parasites were a no-go for her, so I converted the dragon worm into the literal, actual cholera pandemic that defined modern epidemiology. None of my friends are in the same field as me, so everyone was amused that they got to pretend to be me for a day.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]151948[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Three out of four of my players loved the Kell minigame last adventure, but one of them strongly disliked the record keeping. For her sake, I decided to split the railroad minigame into a series of story vignettes, which the players really enjoyed. The party gave Risur’s secret teleportation beacon tech to Liss as leverage over the Ob, and encouraged him to reject Pemberton's help. Hoya tried to convince Pemberton to give up on selling to the Grientos and just leave the country – in response he ground his cigar into the grass in front of her very slowly, stared at her, then cracked into a laugh and told her he sure would think about it! At one point, the party decided to sic the undead lizardfolk on the Griento team before the Ob could do it – they were going for Rush, who they found poking the hornet’s nest, but they didn’t sufficiently make sure that civilians wouldn’t be caught in the crossfire, so, um. Damata is long dead, but I’m going to make his daughter grow up to be the Beran viligante from Act III, who might come for them for this. Maybe they’ll even forget what they’ve done by then…</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]151952[/ATTACH]</p><p><em><span style="font-size: 12px">New discord sticker inspired by this section!</span></em></p><p></p><p>The party narrowly won the vote by impressing Glaucia (who didn’t know the undead lizardfolk thing was their fault), who vouched for them to Zarkava. They met with Tinker, who was very upset when he saw Hoya with the party. Pemberton took over (though they failed a check to identify him), and began his attack. The party decided to work together with Lya to save the Bruse. After this, the Risuri and Danoran groups teamed up into a single party to attack Isla Dola Focas. I let them have some time to connect with Lya, who they made promise would not stand against them until the Steel Lord was defeated. I made a point of intimidating them by having Lya swordfight Marcel, who has now taken several levels in swashbuckler– of course, he’s still mostly a bard, so she freaking wrecked him. The party was inspired to make her like them so she wouldn’t become their enemy. They didn’t realize that friendship isn’t enough.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]151954[/ATTACH]</p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><em>We call this discord emote "Smug Lya"</em></span></p><p></p><p>On Isla Dola Focas, Gatria dueled with some of her old warren mates, who were other animalfolk captured at birth and raised in Gradiax’s army. One of them parroted some thinly-veiled threats Gradiax had made about her in private, which was a fun way to characterize his darker aspects. They were all scared into silence when Pemberton gave his spiel in the minecart, but refused to ally themselves with him – so they fought Tinker and Terakalir in the volcano lair. I let Lya and her team fight alongside them, because they had put in a lot of hard work to connect with Lya.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]151956[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Realizing Tera was outnumbered, Pemberton appeared with Tinker at knifepoint and demanded that the party leave and let her go free. Now, my party is full of a bunch of goodie-two-shoes, and I was, like, <strong>100% </strong>confident that they would drop their weapons and leave. There was absolutely no way that they would 1) risk Tinker’s life and 2) kill an innocent baby dragon. Not a gosh darn way.</p><p></p><p>Well, Gatria’s player asked for a five minute break. During that time, she secretly consulted with Hoya’s player to ask if she would be upset if Tinker died. We then reconvened.</p><p></p><p>Gatria asked Pemberton what gave him the right to decide if Tinker lived or died. Pemberton laughed at the idea, and told her that this wasn’t a matter of right - what he had was power, and a knife to someone’s throat. Gatria answered “so do I,” and used a ranged attack to throw her dagger into Terakalir’s neck. She hit, brought her to negative CON in a single strike, and killed her instantly. ...I'm starting to think my party are the bad guys.</p><p></p><p>Someone pointed out that Mona had foreseen Glaucia- who was the one who sentenced Gatria to be trained at the Martial Academy- use a knife to slit Terakalir’s throat, and their little minds were blown by my foresight. Um, I didn’t plan for that, but I’ll let them believe it…</p><p></p><p>Pemberton made good on his promise to knife Tinker, gave his mournful villain speech, and disconnected from his duplicant. I gave the party one turn to save Tinker from death, as is written, and since they were hasted, they were successful.</p><p></p><p>Well, Lya didn’t like that. She told them it had been an honour working with them to destroy the last of the Dragon Tyrants, but now it was time to settle this – she would be leaving with Tinker cold in his grave. Mona, shocked that Lya would heel turn after becoming their ““”friend”””, begged her not to do this. Lya told them that they were long past the time for dialogue, and drew her sword. I played some <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlnVHfdcXN0" target="_blank">sufficiently dramatic background music </a>for the group, and they began their duel.</p><p></p><p>Lya was doing very well for awhile, but Hoya managed to knock her prone. It turns out you can still full attack from prone (I described her as being up on one knee just to keep the dramatic tension), but this worked to the party’s advantage, and in a fun callback, Marcel was able to use his swashbuckler abilities to parry Lya.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]151957[/ATTACH]</p><p><em><span style="font-size: 12px">I hate my players for making this meme!</span></em></p><p></p><p>That was pretty much it for her. The party killed Rush without a second thought, and Merton died from the elements. Gatria used Lya’s own martial ability against her to sever her sword arm on the last possible strike. Her mirror image contingency activated, but Gatria has scent, so it was to no avail. Lya asked them to let her die with honour. The party refused, and would drag her back to Risur to rot in prison, where she was eventually found dead. She had come to be their favourite NPC, so everyone was <em>very </em>upset.</p><p></p><p>Now that Tinker was secure, the party consulted him. Hoya noticed that Tinker was quite a bit more addled than he had been in the past – he had always been a weird guy, but some of this was unusual even for him. He showed her the godmind urn, and told her he was using it to advance tech faster than anyone in history. The party had a philosophical debate on the nature of genius-level work at the expense of mental health, and decided to cast the urn into the fires of mount doom. I warned them that they would no longer benefit from Tinker’s expertise (or at least, it would go very slowly), and they were fine with this. They also threw the Lost Eye in the fire while they were at it.</p><p></p><p>Very stressed out by everything that had involved Tinker thus far, the player who plays Hoya joked that she would like to start a support group with the guy from the other campaign who plays Tinker’s brother.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]151953[/ATTACH]</p><p><em><span style="font-size: 12px">Joke T-Shirt design</span></em></p><p></p><p>Oh, the party did ask Tinker to use his experience make Xambria a robot body. I told them he could do this, but they’d still have to find a way to move her soul. Hmmm, I wonder what adventure is just on the horizon…</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]151958[/ATTACH]</p><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><em>I couldn't fit this in anywhere, so enjoy a doodle someone drew of Liss during the session.</em></span></p><p></p><p>--</p><p></p><p>Can’t believe it has been a whole year with this group! We’re all still committed to seeing this darn thing through to the end! I will literally, actually, spontaneously set on fire in real life if I don’t find out what planar arrangements the players pick in Adventure 12.</p><p></p><p>In all seriousness, Zeitgeist has been excellent to me. I’m having a blast DMing it and seeing where things go. I’m going to stop short of saying that it changed my life so I don’t embarrass myself, but it did help me reconnect with a childhood friend – we met when we were 11 at a junior art school, went to a fine arts high together, and then sort of went our separate ways when she went to theatre school and I pivoted hard to medicine. We kept in touch, but didn’t see each other as much as we had when we were kids. In late 2019, she invited me to play Zeitgeist with some of her coworkers, and even though that game only lasted several months, hanging out and having fun felt like we had picked up right where we left off – except that we were in our late twenties, now, I guess. Because of how well we gelled, she asked if she could move in with me. To make a long story short, I proposed to her this Christmas. (Becky, when you eventually read this a year and a half from now, I love you!)</p><p></p><p>She gets no special game privileges from me, though. I’m still killing Mona off at the end.</p><p></p><p>--</p><p></p><p>Thanks so much for reading! If you got this far, I need to know if your party saved or killed Terakalir. I also need to know what random NPC your player characters married. I know someone out there married Gale because I have the hardcover books and saw the fan art, and I heard whispers of someone marrying Kasavarina, so please inform me if I am missing anyone.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Worldres, post: 8547649, member: 7029564"] Hello! Over one year of Zeitgeist and still going strong!!! We just finished Adventure 7, so that means I should probably get around to the Adventure 6 write-up. Fortunately, one of my players was a former court-reporter, so I can just re-visit the transcripts, hah. I was putting it off doing my write-up, but then one of my players said she would play one of my favourite “edgy philosophical indie games” if I posted it, soooo… [ATTACH type="full" alt="processing adv 5.jpg"]151944[/ATTACH] [B]Adventure 4, Revelations from the Mouth of a Madman: "Catfolk Thinks of Nothing But Murder All Day"[/B] [ATTACH type="full"]151962[/ATTACH] Remember how I said that Adventure 5 was far and away the favourite of the game so far? That was until Adventure 6 happened. The players unanimously agreed it was the best one. It helped considerably that they had been hunting the Steel Lord for three adventures, that Gatria was an ex-cult soldier, and that Hoya was once Tinker's foster daughter. Between adventures, Cleone was starting to get her memories back from her past lives, and confessed to Delft that she was an ex-member of the Obscurati. She requested that she be given a poison pill in the case that the Obscurati retrieved her. Later, she told Gatria and Marcel to put her down if she ever became an Ob turncoat. [ATTACH type="full" alt="i got better.png"]151945[/ATTACH] The party still suspected that Catherine had been the one to tip off Leone, so they interrogated her. Someone had the bright idea to interrogate her cat, Kelland, who I have decided looks like [URL='https://64.media.tumblr.com/5af0c33782d79e97936f4d9e7a315ea8/586a266f27b3222a-60/s500x750/f8658536e4329eab5f1ac51765e20eadc035e06c.png']famous internet noodle Pangur[/URL]. Catherine bluffed and said the king humiliated himself on an international scale by neglecting his relationship with the Unseen Court, which caused Asrabey to disrupt the peace conference, and suggested that the country would be better off with a different ruler in his place - and tried to court their favor. The party didn’t buy it. Kelland was also a condescending little jerk. The party was unable to pry what they were looking for out of them. Gatria led her own hilariously well-timed investigation into what Pemberton was up to, only to find that his factories had been cleaned out. With a good diplomacy roll, she discovered that she wasn’t the first to check into his whereabouts, as they had been stalked on their way out by a hooded old man (Harkover, making sure Gradiax was successfully intimidated out of town). Then, without actually suspecting that that was Harkover, she separately used her Prestige with the Family to spend the adventure looking into Harkover’s origins. Morgan confirmed that any details about his life and background had been sealed by the state, which instantly made the whole party suspicious. Delightful!!! Oh, and Hoya and Xambria started a romance inside of Hoya’s head. It makes sense in context! My players don’t like romance much at all, but by Adventure 8, all of their characters are paired up with assorted NPCs and some of them are married. It’s very funny, I’ll explain when we get there. [ATTACH type="full" alt="just_to_hold_you.png"]151946[/ATTACH] [I][SIZE=3]Hoya and Xambria.[/SIZE][/I] By the way, the crew asked me if they got a change of uniform now that they were Knights, such as a cool sash or a wayfinder. I told them that could be the case if they just believed hard enough, so yeah, I gave everyone except for Mona a wayfinder with their choice of ioun stone, as well as a brand new sash. Gatria made a point of showing it off at every opportunity. On to Ber! After the briefing in Slate, the party went to meet with Brakken and was extremely upset to find that he had been charged with abuse of power. The party met Glaucia at the courthouse – Glaucia had been the judge at Gatria’s sentencing when she was a child soldier for the Steel Lord; back then, Glaucia had sentenced her to get an education at the Martial Academy, but Gatria flaked on her thesis and jumped the border. Glaucia made a comment that Gatria would be entitled to a severe beating if not for her new Knighthood in Risur. [ATTACH type="full" alt="glaucia and pardo.png"]151947[/ATTACH] The party did their best to put up a strong defense for Brakken, but stopped just short of figuring out his accusers were Obscurati plants. He was let off the hook with a light beating. The party, while very irritated that Glaucia spent much of the trial fishing for information, still invited her to accompany them to see the Bruse. Glaucia took the opportunity to ask Mona to prophecy about her future – Mona saw a pampered young girl in a room of steel whose neck was suddenly slit by Glaucia. Glaucia and Mona had an interesting philosophical debate about fate; Mona, who is fated to die, said that if she had the choice, she would remove the entire world’s ability to see the future… [I]…Tee hee.[/I] The party absolutely annihilated Rush and his squad at Melissa’s, who activated his continency charm on Turn 2. I’m starting to be afraid of my party, who consistently do damage in the hundreds every turn, even though we only have a single full-BAB character. The party argued with Melissa about the tone of her article, but fortunately for them, she’s the kind of person that doesn’t really care if they like her or not, and vice versa. In the end, they spoke at the worker’s rally, and won her respect. Thing progressed as normal up until the Cantabrilla Railroad challenge. The party was insulted by the Bruse’s game, and when Lya appeared after dinner to ask them to concede, they considered it, for a moment. Lya tried to convert the party to the Ob, and made it clear she thought they would be more useful on their side. She gave the “What do you believe is right? What would the world be like if everyone agreed with you?” speech, and told them that she would give them unfettered access to Nicodemus in exchange for letting her win. The party eventually told her to leave, decided not to concede, and the challenge began. [ATTACH type="full" alt="stupid hot lya.png"]151955[/ATTACH] Working at a breakneck pace, the party managed to solve Citadel Cavallo’s various crises before Lya could intervene, including rescuing Wolfgang and brokering peace. Fun Fact! I used to be a field epidemiologist until the pandemic made me work from home (yeah, figure that one out). One of my players said that parasites were a no-go for her, so I converted the dragon worm into the literal, actual cholera pandemic that defined modern epidemiology. None of my friends are in the same field as me, so everyone was amused that they got to pretend to be me for a day. [ATTACH type="full" alt="hoya meme.png"]151948[/ATTACH] Three out of four of my players loved the Kell minigame last adventure, but one of them strongly disliked the record keeping. For her sake, I decided to split the railroad minigame into a series of story vignettes, which the players really enjoyed. The party gave Risur’s secret teleportation beacon tech to Liss as leverage over the Ob, and encouraged him to reject Pemberton's help. Hoya tried to convince Pemberton to give up on selling to the Grientos and just leave the country – in response he ground his cigar into the grass in front of her very slowly, stared at her, then cracked into a laugh and told her he sure would think about it! At one point, the party decided to sic the undead lizardfolk on the Griento team before the Ob could do it – they were going for Rush, who they found poking the hornet’s nest, but they didn’t sufficiently make sure that civilians wouldn’t be caught in the crossfire, so, um. Damata is long dead, but I’m going to make his daughter grow up to be the Beran viligante from Act III, who might come for them for this. Maybe they’ll even forget what they’ve done by then… [ATTACH type="full" alt="Stop_for_Lore.png"]151952[/ATTACH] [I][SIZE=3]New discord sticker inspired by this section![/SIZE][/I] The party narrowly won the vote by impressing Glaucia (who didn’t know the undead lizardfolk thing was their fault), who vouched for them to Zarkava. They met with Tinker, who was very upset when he saw Hoya with the party. Pemberton took over (though they failed a check to identify him), and began his attack. The party decided to work together with Lya to save the Bruse. After this, the Risuri and Danoran groups teamed up into a single party to attack Isla Dola Focas. I let them have some time to connect with Lya, who they made promise would not stand against them until the Steel Lord was defeated. I made a point of intimidating them by having Lya swordfight Marcel, who has now taken several levels in swashbuckler– of course, he’s still mostly a bard, so she freaking wrecked him. The party was inspired to make her like them so she wouldn’t become their enemy. They didn’t realize that friendship isn’t enough. [ATTACH type="full" alt="smuglya.png"]151954[/ATTACH] [SIZE=3][I]We call this discord emote "Smug Lya"[/I][/SIZE] On Isla Dola Focas, Gatria dueled with some of her old warren mates, who were other animalfolk captured at birth and raised in Gradiax’s army. One of them parroted some thinly-veiled threats Gradiax had made about her in private, which was a fun way to characterize his darker aspects. They were all scared into silence when Pemberton gave his spiel in the minecart, but refused to ally themselves with him – so they fought Tinker and Terakalir in the volcano lair. I let Lya and her team fight alongside them, because they had put in a lot of hard work to connect with Lya. [ATTACH type="full" alt="ive_had_enough_of_this_dude_pemberton.png"]151956[/ATTACH] Realizing Tera was outnumbered, Pemberton appeared with Tinker at knifepoint and demanded that the party leave and let her go free. Now, my party is full of a bunch of goodie-two-shoes, and I was, like, [B]100% [/B]confident that they would drop their weapons and leave. There was absolutely no way that they would 1) risk Tinker’s life and 2) kill an innocent baby dragon. Not a gosh darn way. Well, Gatria’s player asked for a five minute break. During that time, she secretly consulted with Hoya’s player to ask if she would be upset if Tinker died. We then reconvened. Gatria asked Pemberton what gave him the right to decide if Tinker lived or died. Pemberton laughed at the idea, and told her that this wasn’t a matter of right - what he had was power, and a knife to someone’s throat. Gatria answered “so do I,” and used a ranged attack to throw her dagger into Terakalir’s neck. She hit, brought her to negative CON in a single strike, and killed her instantly. ...I'm starting to think my party are the bad guys. Someone pointed out that Mona had foreseen Glaucia- who was the one who sentenced Gatria to be trained at the Martial Academy- use a knife to slit Terakalir’s throat, and their little minds were blown by my foresight. Um, I didn’t plan for that, but I’ll let them believe it… Pemberton made good on his promise to knife Tinker, gave his mournful villain speech, and disconnected from his duplicant. I gave the party one turn to save Tinker from death, as is written, and since they were hasted, they were successful. Well, Lya didn’t like that. She told them it had been an honour working with them to destroy the last of the Dragon Tyrants, but now it was time to settle this – she would be leaving with Tinker cold in his grave. Mona, shocked that Lya would heel turn after becoming their ““”friend”””, begged her not to do this. Lya told them that they were long past the time for dialogue, and drew her sword. I played some [URL='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlnVHfdcXN0']sufficiently dramatic background music [/URL]for the group, and they began their duel. Lya was doing very well for awhile, but Hoya managed to knock her prone. It turns out you can still full attack from prone (I described her as being up on one knee just to keep the dramatic tension), but this worked to the party’s advantage, and in a fun callback, Marcel was able to use his swashbuckler abilities to parry Lya. [ATTACH type="full" alt="chainsaw jedi lya.png"]151957[/ATTACH] [I][SIZE=3]I hate my players for making this meme![/SIZE][/I] That was pretty much it for her. The party killed Rush without a second thought, and Merton died from the elements. Gatria used Lya’s own martial ability against her to sever her sword arm on the last possible strike. Her mirror image contingency activated, but Gatria has scent, so it was to no avail. Lya asked them to let her die with honour. The party refused, and would drag her back to Risur to rot in prison, where she was eventually found dead. She had come to be their favourite NPC, so everyone was [I]very [/I]upset. Now that Tinker was secure, the party consulted him. Hoya noticed that Tinker was quite a bit more addled than he had been in the past – he had always been a weird guy, but some of this was unusual even for him. He showed her the godmind urn, and told her he was using it to advance tech faster than anyone in history. The party had a philosophical debate on the nature of genius-level work at the expense of mental health, and decided to cast the urn into the fires of mount doom. I warned them that they would no longer benefit from Tinker’s expertise (or at least, it would go very slowly), and they were fine with this. They also threw the Lost Eye in the fire while they were at it. Very stressed out by everything that had involved Tinker thus far, the player who plays Hoya joked that she would like to start a support group with the guy from the other campaign who plays Tinker’s brother. [ATTACH type="full" alt="sorry urn.png"]151953[/ATTACH] [I][SIZE=3]Joke T-Shirt design[/SIZE][/I] Oh, the party did ask Tinker to use his experience make Xambria a robot body. I told them he could do this, but they’d still have to find a way to move her soul. Hmmm, I wonder what adventure is just on the horizon… [ATTACH type="full" alt="Liss.png"]151958[/ATTACH] [SIZE=3][I]I couldn't fit this in anywhere, so enjoy a doodle someone drew of Liss during the session.[/I][/SIZE] -- Can’t believe it has been a whole year with this group! We’re all still committed to seeing this darn thing through to the end! I will literally, actually, spontaneously set on fire in real life if I don’t find out what planar arrangements the players pick in Adventure 12. In all seriousness, Zeitgeist has been excellent to me. I’m having a blast DMing it and seeing where things go. I’m going to stop short of saying that it changed my life so I don’t embarrass myself, but it did help me reconnect with a childhood friend – we met when we were 11 at a junior art school, went to a fine arts high together, and then sort of went our separate ways when she went to theatre school and I pivoted hard to medicine. We kept in touch, but didn’t see each other as much as we had when we were kids. In late 2019, she invited me to play Zeitgeist with some of her coworkers, and even though that game only lasted several months, hanging out and having fun felt like we had picked up right where we left off – except that we were in our late twenties, now, I guess. Because of how well we gelled, she asked if she could move in with me. To make a long story short, I proposed to her this Christmas. (Becky, when you eventually read this a year and a half from now, I love you!) She gets no special game privileges from me, though. I’m still killing Mona off at the end. -- Thanks so much for reading! If you got this far, I need to know if your party saved or killed Terakalir. I also need to know what random NPC your player characters married. I know someone out there married Gale because I have the hardcover books and saw the fan art, and I heard whispers of someone marrying Kasavarina, so please inform me if I am missing anyone. [/QUOTE]
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