#and thinking of the way the dusk elven madness impacts this old ass character has been interesting

[palidoozy-art]

Session Summary

it was our 69th session, nice. Though technically this summarizes the 67th and 68th session as well, just because that’s pretty much the entirety of the Twilight Lord’s excavation arc.

Note: post is extremely long but I at least throw pictures and the battlemaps I made/used in at places.

The party attempted to descend into the Twilight Lord’s lair, only to discover the only way to access was through traveling in a river of corpses. Having seen Goran disappear into it earlier, they took the plunge, fighting off two giant bone worms while within. Though disgusted at, y’know -- being pinned to corpses with bone shards, they successfully killed them and traveled through the grotesque pile.

Thankfully, the party had a friend on the other side! Goran helped pull them out of the pile. Though he said nothing, seemed he was thankful for the food they gave him earlier. As the party moved forward, he decided to lurk behind him and follow them the whole way. The party kept feeding him, after all!

The group fought the Collector first, the creature responsible for crafting all of the cadaver collectors the party has been running into throughout the entire campaign. After killing him, it was then that they realized he wasn’t undead or a construct -- he was a giant, a living creature, and the last of his kind. Here, Kelogul got a legendary weapon -- taking the creature’s former weapon, a giant fucking log (that deals strength mod * d8 damage).

(note: battle map made with assets from Inkarnate)

They headed in further, saw some spooky ominous shit in the ruins, and found what had happened to all the corpses the collectors were collecting. They were reanimated and... digging. They weren’t sure to what end. An ominous mural showed a giant “worm-like creature” destroying a world. Ellerian successfully managed to intuit that the creature was none other than an astral dreadnought. They fed Goran every opportunity (Kelogul kept giving him rum. Rahadin started making fun of Kelogul, telling him the real reason for giving Goran rum was to see how much the elf would drink before puking).

They came into a room with a bunch of faceless steel mannequins, and discovered the crown of the queen that had gone missing, as well as a few, uh. Suspicious bloodstains. Players connected the dots here. Into the next room, they encountered a room full of urns, as well as an ornate one set up in the middle with a bunch of cards. When Ellerian approached to try to draw one, it sprung to life and attacked as the Prophet.

(battle map made with assets from Inkarnate)

It was a pretty cool fight which I had to buy an actual tarot deck for (the fight mechanics involve its powers being increased depending on the draw), but it was fun, and it terrified the piss out of my players because the thing dealt 383 damage in one round. Mercifully, Ellerian was polymorphed into a dragon at the time. Kelogul missed a whole bunch, blink never worked for Ellerian (an ongoing trend in our campaign), and Yoli got the killshot with a bunch of scorching rays.

They took a rest in the tomb. Goran picked up the cards dropped by the being and taught the party a method of seeing the future -- not with magic, but with the mundane. The end result was the party learning a new skill, Prognostication (they can divine objects and try to see their future or their past as an epic skill). He also gave the deck of cards to Yoli, which wound up being yet another legendary item (5 charges, can use a bonus action to spend as many charges as you want. Each charge either deals 35 damage or heals 35 hp).

(Note: this has also resulted in me having to learn how the fuck tarot cards work, because Yoli now uses prognostication constantly with the deck lol).

They finally pressed on deeper, finding evidence of the Twilight Lord along the way. Blood trails, old ruins. They found a huge old tablet that was purposely damaged and destroyed, and managed to conclude that it was some kind of giant spell scroll. They couldn’t make sense of what it was. Pressing in deeper, they found another one... but this one was blank. Suggesting it had been used. Evidence of the corpses showed that they were former heroes and adventurers who had tried to stop something awful, and failed. The party came to the conclusion it was the Eclipse. Yoli found the corpse of the legendary lizardfolk hero, Ixtzal, and packed the body away to return to her people. The party continued to feed Goran. Kelogul gave him two bottles of rum to double-fist at one point.

(Side lore note: The Eclipse was considered a huge event in the world, where the sun went out for an entire year about 176 years ago and chaos ensued. It set the world back tremendously and is the reason a lot of the nations operate the way they do. I’m not really doing a good job encapsulating how big the Eclipse was in term of campaign events here, but the party finally got closure on it and it was exciting).

Finally, they reached the bottom, heading into a long, stretching hallway leading forward. The party tried to feed Goran... but he refused to eat, instead taking the rations and walking forward. He placed them by a painting of the Three Kings -- one in front of each of the other ones -- before disappearing into the darkness, and it was then that the party connected the dots and realized “aw, shit, this guy’s the final boss huh.”

They finally confronted him in front of one of the giant wall spell tablets, and it was then that the “final battle” started. “Goran” wound up actually being Serafim -- the Lord of Twilight Woods and the last king of the dusk elves. I started initiative and told them that they could either talk to him through RP, use a skill, attack him, or pass their turn. They spent every round trying to talk to him, lol. Nobody attacked and nobody passed. Some generalized notes:

- Yoli was the MVP of the “fight”, being the only one to talk him down successfully without provoking his self hatred every single turn.

- Rahadin existed pretty much just to piss him off throughout the “fight”. He quickly realized that the party was much better at solving... disputes than him and shut the fuck up.

- Kelogul was I think the one that inadvertently convinced him to kill himself every single turn, lmao. His last turn was even spent offering one last bottle of rum out to him so he could drink before he went.

- Ellerian pissed him off before he adapted and learned what worked and what didn’t.

It took 5 rounds, and each round I had a description of how the guy was doing so they could get a gauge on their actions. I went into it not knowing what the fuck they would do, and assuming that the default plan (guy uses the giant spell behind him, then boss battle starts) would go through. I had a final boss fight written and planned. Even had his true form token!

(battle map quickly drawn by me)

They actually almost ended the fight with him simply killing himself, but Yoli swooped in on literally the last round before he took action to crawl up to him, give him a hug, and offer him three of her “best rations.”

So that was how the fight ended. He dropped the staff and the party was able to speak to him further afterwards, asking him his motivations. When he revealed to them that the spell behind him was simply an extremely powerful wish, Ellerian lost his shit. He gifted Ellerian his spellbook with his notes (a legendary item that not only teaches Ellerian Wish and a number of other cool spells, but is also gonna operate basically identical to the Tome of Stilled Tongue. We use gritty realism, so the player is EXTREMELY excited about it, lol).

The group of them realized that since they pretty much had access to a free wish spell, they could make one right there... and with it, instead of empowering themselves, or reviving their dead friends...

... they chose to break the curse of hunger on the Lord of Twilight Woods.

It was definitely an ‘anime is real and friendship is magic’ ending lol, but all my players are extremely excited. They want to try to go find the goddess that trapped him in the woods (the Queen of Air and Darkness -- the three kings made a bargain with her to escape their former master) next. Unsure if this will be the lead in for the epic campaign or what. Next few sessions will probably be wrap-up and figuring out what they want to do.

Oh also because they released two of the kings (their spirits moved on when they wished to break the curse), said Queen of Air and Darkness is EXTREMELY pissed at them. It will be my in-game way of awarding them their first epic “boon” -- immortality! While technically a boon the entire last half of the campaign has been pretty much about how immortality sucks, lmao.

So we’ll see what happens. I’m gonna leave it up to my players if they want to time skip jump into the epic campaign or play their children for a bit of an intermission. :D