DM Chronicles, Session 11: When the stars are right… Planar Awesomeness! Part 2.

See part 1 here.

Also, please note that while the adventure is technically Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, about 90% of what happened last session was homegrown. Do not think of being able to replay this without some serious work!

Seeing an overwhelming horde of arachnids attack the Elven compound of Iritidil’s House, all characters deemed that going through the portal to Yggdrasil was smarter than staying and fighting.

So they started climbing the tree really fast…

Of course, that where I described that 4 Driders and one of the Huge Harpoon spiders were breaking off the assault and moving toward the climbing heroes.

Cixi shot one arrow to cover their retreat and stopped a drider in its track with a well placed critical hit (you could probably set your watch to that!) leaving it too wounded to follow.

Then the PCs found themselves on a gigantic branch at least 10 foot wide with the driders and harpoon spider 1 round behind, welcome to Yggdrasil… the Planescaping finally starts!.

Battlemap aside: I used the King’s Road map, from the Field of Ruins Fantastic Location pack to represent the Tree. The branch was the map’s road and everything around was considered Dense Underbrush that one had to make climb checks (DC 15) to move within. It worked perfectly!

The fight was hard for the PCs but it was fast-paced and action-packed. The Drider trio alternated with Webs and Lightning bolt spells while the Huge spiders slowly made it’s way on the battle map.

The characters spent 2 rounds getting out of the Web and moving in on the driders.

The high points of the fights was when Yan unveiled Inigo Firenze’s Serpent of Flame maneuver which is a 60′ X 5′ shapable line of fire. He had it go hit all monsters and end it in the square where Cruguer was, stuck in the web.

As I described the burning web falling off and freeing him, Eric pointed out to the picture I had posted on the blog (and again here) and saying how cool it was. We all agreed that it fit the scene perfectly! That was soooo Rule of Cool!

After the last monster fell, the characters made a hasty retreat toward the tree’s trunk, many miles away (having read in the library that the Tree’s guardians always investigated fires).

At that point I added more descriptions of the tree and how stars were found suspended from its branches almost within reach. This was met with a near universal dismissal of the my rather scientifically-trained players who couldn’t conceive that balls of thermonuclear fire could grow on trees and be within a hand’s reach. (Why can’t I have arts majors in my group?)

I tried to insist, to no avail… oh well their loss!

On the lookout for the tree’s guardians, Inigo scouted ahead of the group. He rapidly spotted a bipedal squirrel (I kid you not!) that was watching the group warily. When approached with food, the Ratatosk (that’s how the creatures are called) initiated discussions in Sylvan.

It was one of the Fireholders of one of the tree’s main tribes. It was on a week-long pilgrimage to go and gather a fire source to bring back to the tribe. Not an easy task considering that the Tree is basically fireproof. It had sensed Don Firenze’s pyrotechnical antics and was investigating rapidly before the bigger guardians came.

It brought the players back to it’s village (and away from the nasty evil guardians) and provided a guide to bring the heroes to the portal leading to the Beastlands.

When they got close to the portal, the guide started smelling something unatural.

Inigo, taking his scouting duties very seriously, explored further away and saw yet another Huge Spider thing, a Bebilith demon sitting close to the portal (a pair of branches forming an arch right. Right beside it rested 2 heaps, one made of broken, burnt bodies and another made of a pile of various objects.

The fight was short and fun. Inigo got stuck in web (again). I swear Yan hates that spell/ability more than anything else right now and will spurge for a freedom of movement effect as soon as possible.

Cruguer and Nogard tackled the Demon spider in melee and it managed to score one good armour-rending hit on Nogard’s precious Full Plate armour. Fortunately, I was using the variant rule Graham had proposed, so he just lost a bit of protection.

Once the fiend was killed, the heroes investigated the bodies (apparently planar refugees fleeing the Beastlands) and the pile of objects (refugee’s belongings). In the pile, they found some loot (yay!) and another orb. This one featured a forest of spruce trees under a full moon.

The party sent Inigo to investigate the portal, only to realize a few moments after he left that the portal was supposedly one-way. Way to go people!

The other side of the portal opened into the hollowed out interior of a gigantic spruce. Within that structure were a group of dead-scared, burnt and tired planars and pilgrims that were cowering against the walls of the ‘room’. .

Sitting between the PC and the terrorized refugees was a wolf calmly looking at Inigo. It asked, quite nonchalantly, if ‘it’ had been killed on the other side? When Inigo managed to answer, it said ‘As it should be’ and it made a sign at the refugees.

Pandemonium broke as all refugees converged on poor Inigo, crying for the key to open the portal the other way and allow them to leave.

That’s when the rest of the party arrived, giving the frenzied party another scare that sent them all back to the walls.

Cruger started discussing with the wolf. I was trying to play the wolf as a reluctant guardian creature that was yet undecided if the players were allied predators or, hopefully, inconsequential prey.

Eric somehow caught on and started having his Cruguer act noble and respectful of the creature, getting its instant respect and becoming the de-facto leader of the party’s “wolfpack” so to speak.

The heroes activated the moon orb and the portal opened, letting all the refugees ‘out’.

The wolf then started explaining that the first level of the plane was under the assault of a demonic Horde and all the Celestial defenders were ‘up’ there fighting. Recently a group of demons also appeared on this layer (Kharasutra, the land of eternal night and nocturnal predators) and started rampaging the region, looking for something.

The wolf and a few other animal lords were the only leaders left to organize a defense against the intrusion and help the layer’s few non-animal denizens get away. The demons were obviously after the Eclipsed Sun resting on this layer in the ‘risen’ hero’s tomb, but they hadn’t found it yet.

The players agreed to help the Animal lords in their fight against the demons in exchange for info on how to get to the tomb.

At that point, I started saying that Cruguer could hear something whispering to him, something strangely familiar calling him and pulling him slightly somewhere deeper in the forest. He was soooo hooked!

That’s where I made a mistake.

You see, Franky’s character is an Iron Hero, a being whose powers, abilities, lack of alignment and relation to magic (they have no inherent magic and can’t interact with it) is the opposite of other “standard” D&D races, including planars.

So different in fact that I had this huge plot building up around how Cixi’s presence in the outer plane would cause ripples that brought back an ancient pact that had seen all Iron heroes sealed in a prison world.

My mistake was that I had, semi-unconsciously, made all planars automatically hostile to Cixi on first contact. As if they all had an Iron hero detector and remembered why they were imprisoned in the 1st place.

So when I had the wolf sniff her and make a flippant remark about her chance of survival here… I know that was the last straw for Franky’s already shaky night.

He didn’t go hostile but he did clamp up for the rest of the evening.

Retcon Aside:

For the record I spoke with him shortly after the game and I confessed that I had mistakenly painted her character in a corner with my planned plot. We agreed that the fact that some Iron Heroes broke up was completely unknown to Planars.

We also agreed that no planar save the Powers and very few scholars knew anything about Iron heroes (and thus no more ‘wanted’ posters). Thus, Cixi’s ‘special powers’ wouldn’t be seen as a threat but more as an opportunity to planars. That greatly opened up Franky’s playing field and he told me he was quite happy with that.

Which goes to show how important it is to talk it out, away from the table if necessary, when something comes up with a player?

Once the players agreed to help the animal lords, the Wolf lead them to meet with Kharasutra’s General…

(The conclusion tomorrow night, I’m sorry this is taking so long but this session was so awesome I need to tell it all).