#like 'oh do a home base campaign and every session is a different mission they go out on!' ok yes right

[pagesofkenna]

anyone wanna bounce around ideas for an episodic campaign i could run

[sapphim]

please tell us about the kirkwall campaign and warden hexcrawl too!

the warden hexcrawl is this massive game that's been running in vigil's keep for over a decade now. with a west marches campaign you don't need to get a consistent group together, you can just collect anyone who's available to play at a given time and throw together an adventuring party. at this point the map is enormous, spanning multiple planes of existence. they've cleared entire megadungeons. everyone ends up collecting a stable of characters they can choose from based on party comp and desired level of play. dm-ing your first session is something of a rite of passage. it spun off from whatever informal game they played around the campfire during the blight but since then it's evolved into what is essentially an institution.

the kirkwall campaign is. something else entirely lmfao. varric's a really well-practiced and flexible dm now but booooy did they get off to a rough start because he built an entire campaign around the party behaving essentially as he expected them to, and that plan was ruined the moment they rolled their characters.

I’m cutting this for length here bc christ it’s so much. if it’s too much then blame @sandayuoda

anders. ruins everything immediately because varric was expecting him to play a healer and instead he turns up with this extremely chaotic revenge-motivated edgelord of a character. he's tired of being nice and sometimes he just wants to go apeshit, you know? this is the only outlet he has for stress release these days. he shows up to session one and shows varric his character sheet and varric's like "what the fuck" and then he hands varric his 20 pages of tragic character backstory (he read the campaign document and tied his character's backstory into the setting) and varric's like "what the everloving fuck blondie." varric had littered that thing with red herring villains and clever misdirection (he thought) and anders immediately pinpointed the intended bbeg of the campaign (not!Meredith) and made his tragic backstory revolve heavily around her. who actually reads the campaign document??? well that was lucky for him, since eventually leaning on this backstory becomes one of the only ways he can keep the campaign moving forward. also, anders outs himself as a closet furry by playing catfolk, to the surprise of absolutely no one.

aveline. predictable human paladin type. claims to be LG but ultimately plays more like LN. at the start she's one of the only things keeping the party on the rails but eventually just ends up following them around and tutting disapproval (much like in real life). she's that player who writes a completely normal character with a completely normal backstory and family waiting for them back home so the dm has to continually jump through hoops to provide them with character motivation to continue adventuring.

bethany. absolutely does not want to play a spellcaster. plays instead a sort of martial ranger/hunter build and dumps everything into animal handling. essentially plays a pretty disney princess except everywhere she goes she’s followed by a small army of feral animals she's befriended and trained to fight.

carver. plays some sort of magus/gish type, because yeah ok magic is cool, but swords are cooler. crossplays as a female character and it's no big deal but it's also really, really hard for the party to keep the pronouns straight because she's a hot-headed veteran so he's essentially just playing himself.

fenris. just a fighter guy. (varric: "really, broody? an elf with a big sword?" fenris: "I was told I could be what I want. is that not allowed.") his character has no backstory and needs no backstory. he is here to roll dice and his character is a single child and an orphan with no ties to anyone or anything so stop asking. deals the highest dpr in the party as he eventually gets sucked into reading charop guides and thus becomes the only one among them who is even a little bit optimized.

isabela. every party needs a chaotic neutral rogue and she is happy to oblige. something fun and sexy and chaotic like a tiefling. (isabela: "what? I'm optimized. I put all my skill ranks into seduce and fuck" varric: "those aren't things and you haven't found a single trap since the game started") on a mission to get loot, start bar fights, and flirt with every npc she encounters. (she always asks to touch their chest hair. she may just be flirting with varric. it becomes a running gag that every barmaid in varric's world has a lustrous carpet of chest hair.) tbh isabela is one of the only players behaving exactly as chaotically as varric expected, he just hoped she'd be outvoted.

merrill. plays a chaotic good barbarian type, some massive dude. she does the best deep growly voice she can manage. she just wants to try something fun and different! her barbarian is also a real sweetheart and probably the most unoptimized character, with the highest intelligence of anyone in the party.

sebastian. also ruins everything immediately with his character. (varric: "choir boy, you can't play a fiendpact warlock, you're... you know... you!" seb: "...but this is a roleplaying game, right? I was told this was a roleplaying game.") also plays a tiefling, which is his repressed slutty side coming out. he and isabela didn’t plan this out but she finds it hilarious and they get together after the session and plot out a joint backstory in which they do crimes. after he makes one too many off-handed jokes about his dark patron being "basically [his] evil grandmother" varric starts playing her like elthina but he'll never admit it.

eventually the party's rolling up into town followed by a pack of wolves, an owlbear, an alligator, and a murder of ravens

isabela and hawke ask simultaneously where the nearest tavern is

seb's like "oh varric remember it's getting time I need to appease my dark patron again"

aveline sighs and says "I'll be making donations at the temple I guess"

varric just holds up his stack of notes for the town and tears them into pieces in front of them

"I may as well just rip these up right now and get it out of the way because we all know how this is going to end"

"how is it going to--"

"in disaster, merrill, that's how it's going to end. that's how it always ends."

anyway that was then. they've been playing the same characters for years (as varric has pulled increasingly absurd threats for them to face off against out of his ass) so now they're prestige classed epic level abominations of characters. hawke highkey prestiged into dragon disciple and later found a way to permanently polymorph into a full dragon at some point, I'm sure.

[jon-astronaut]

Hey friend! Your Skam content has been a gift! So, I have a really random question (I don't know if you've answered a similar one)... But I know that Skam Turkey would probably not be good (especially because of RTÜK)... but if you had the free time and all the creative power, what would you like to see of Skam Turkey?

Helloooo! First of all, thank you for liking my Skam conteeent! I just do things I wish existed ahahah

And, thank you for this question but get ready for a loooong answer! I didn’t answer anything like this before. I only explained why a Skam Turkey wouldn’t work - as you said because of RTÜK (the government institution that regulates television, radio, online content).

I actually thought a lot about this before!

I would base it in İstanbul because it’s where I am living. I know the show would be so different placed in somewhere else but İstanbul feels nice and feels diverse enough.

so season 1, i guess would be pretty similar. I don’t think I would change much of the plot points. except the parties if happening would be smaller in scale. and instead of parties mostly they would hang at bars in kadıköy, beşiktaş, taksim a lot.

they would be studying in one of the ‘good highschools’ (not a private one).

Since Turkish shows are filled with a lot of romance I think it would be important to show a close female friend group!!! they would have sleepovers and braid each other’s hair and get each other coffee every morning from the canteen! sit together in classes! have big breakfasts in kadıköy!

I knew people that smoke weed in high school but I kinda had a niche high school experience so Eva would be against smoking and Jonas could just be smoking cigarettes. Jonas would be quite political. Maybe going to protests in Kadıköy and getting tear gased! Using his twitter a lot!

I would change William's character a lot in s1. Instead of the whole sleeping with Vilde etc. it could be just flirting and giving her hope and him being a kind of a jerk because he would think he was so cool. In the end, he wouldn’t be that toxic. (we don’t need that message! but he doesn’t need to be perfect either)

we would see the stress of the university entrance exam creeping up! eva would feel insecure and have fights with her parents about her grades  and about her perfomance in dershane (private courses)! jonas doing so well wouldn’t help either

The girl squad would be the same. Turkish Sana would be a hijabi Muslim and maybe Chris would be a little conservative. Then, Noora and Eva and Vilde would be more relaxed in terms of drinking etc. Vilde could still make her ignorant comments on Islam.

(i think that part’s important because even if Turkey is known as a muslim country there are a lot of people who live the religion in their own terms. as someone who doesn’t have anybody hijabi in her immediate family i had a lot of ignorant questions too)

so s2,

Noora would be the person to keep up with the news of all the murdered women! She would constantly bring that up in hopes to educate others! And her article in the end would be about that. (she would defend #istanbulsözleşmesi #istanbulagreement)

the season would open up with noora and the girls at an 8th of march parade where the police would be there and they would run away!

Vilde would have moved on and there wouldn’t be the whole William forcing Noora to go on a date. Instead Noora would be hesitant because his action’s last year would clash with her feminist ideals. they would get together earlier!

the auction penetrators does could be for some women organization!

the sexual assault storyline would happen mid season and we would see noora go to the police etc. and the whole process!

william wouldn’t leave after finding out...we don’t need to see smt like that on Turkish tv anymore. instead in a teaching moment for the viewers he wouldn’t judge her. and not ask anything like her clothing, the drinking even if noora expected him to

(seeing her legal process is important because it takes a long time in Turkey and most of the time people don’t get punished. jonas and others would help with a twitter campaign)

in s3, william would be studying abroad and him and noora would be doing long-distance successfully!

s3 is the trickiest one and i am changing a lot, (since this the ideal world let’s imagine i can actually put in a gay character)

isak’s mother would accept him immediately but his father could have issues. i feel like the homophobia needs to be shown someway.

even would be a transfer student in their last year. and in 12th grade there would be a big background story of the university entrance exam. isak and even could meet at a study session designed by the school

in early parts of the season, we could see a lot of ‘i don’t have a problem with gay people as long as they are away from me, they don’t shove their sexuality in my face’ type of thinking from the people around. maybe some class discussions.

the boy squad would be wholesome!  they would still make some weird jokes but they will learn better! they wouldn’t be skaters but they would hang out at places like kadıköy, beşiktaş a lot! maybe they could do like a little band of their own!

the internalized homophobia would be strong (but never using slurs kind of) and isak would really force himself to be with emma.

when they finally kiss instead of going for more isak would run away. and then when they see each other at school they would talk and isak would say smt like ‘let’s forget about that’

him and eva would be close friends and while talking with her about relationships he would realize it was unfair to emma and break up with her.

here comes eskild! it would be noora’s older brother who is studying in a well known university and who is openly gay! they would run into each other somehow and isak would see that he could be himself. that there are people like him. (later on the boy squad gets like lectures, lessons from him to educate themselves on different sexualities)

then, he would go to a bar even is in and they talk and pinky touches and go back to even’s. make out, spend time etc. there is no sonja storyline. instead it’s them getting together.

the mental ilness storyline stays! and isak would see even’s episode instead of waking up with him gone. he would dial his parents’ numbers and learn everything!

then, even would talk a lot about himself and explain how he feels and how is everything for him!

WAITJONAS! jonas would be such a good friend and i think the whole carelessness of skam wouldn’t work. instead he would be careless about it at first like ‘oh he is good looking’ then he would apologize for the old jokes and swears he would be better! GIVES ISAK A BIG HUG THE PHYSICAL CONTACT IS IMPORTANT! then jonas makes his mission the end homophobes on twitter and irl!

(this convo would happen either at moda sahil or in beşiktaş while eating balık ekmek which fish and bread)

(i would change a lot because i think a more positive and a more distilled portrayal is important and isak and even navigating their relationship should be seen more.)

sadly, at school in the street etc. they would never be seen kissing, holding hands. but eskild would take everybody to his university for a tour one day (there is still the university entrance exam) and isak and even would be themselves there.

s4 is also tricky and actually somehow some part of og skam works, 

sana would feel isolated because the others are not practicing like her and some are not even believing. she would feel weird when fasting because vilde and noora would suggest getting coffee after school without second thinking.

let’s get political! she would have a hard time convincing people she wasn’t supporting the government. maybe some political debates in class and people would stare at her thinking she would say something old fashioned etc. (this would come up in s3 with isak first. isak would see her hanging with turkish eskild and it would click for him that it doesn’t matter for sana)

sana and jonas would bond over politics!

yousef’s story always felt familiar for me so he would be a non-believer  (or if i felt brave enough he would be Kurdish and there would be a whole conversation about it) so that whole storyline happens without the noora kiss.

i would have even be exes with one of sana’s brother’s friends - much like skamit! we need some muslim gay represantation!

and instead of the fight between the boys there would be this coldness because of jealousy from isak. a fight almost breaks but even and jonas stops it while the other two boys are ready to jump the others. the episode would end with isak and even arguing sana hearing it.

next, isak and sana would have the bench talk. the whole answering the ignorant questions would be said and then they would ask each other that. in a respectful way of course. stuff like isak asking about ‘can a muslim be gay?’ and sana asking about ‘how did you realized you liked boys?’ etc.

(i am trying to teach people here)

about now sana realizes he could be with yousef regardless. and they talk.

the girls would plan an afterparty with the others in their year for after the prom! sana wouldn’t feel welcome there - it’s a club. and the fights etc.

the girls would come to sana’s home and apologize saying they want to do better learn more!

also a convo with maybe chris and eva - sana being a hijabi muslim who fasts and prays, chris being maybe loosely fasting and praying in her own way and eva who doesn’t do anything but still believes in God and considers herself Muslim and how they all feel!

then the farewell stuff would happen with banners and slogans! and they would dress up in their school’s colors!

after this sana would meet up with yousef and they would go on an official date. and it would be like they would hold hands while walking and hug but not kissess (at least not in public)

one of the final clips would be a long table in one of the characters’s home where they are having iftar! everybody made the foods, william comes back, jonas and eva gets together!

and the graduation ceremony! everybody crying! and finally a few shots of isak and even in the pride where it gets cancelled/tear gased every year! eskild would be there too! and even some other friends supporting them!

oh wow! i guess you didn’t expect this when you asked! i was halfway into this when i realized you just asked what i would like to see and i was here giving you an outline...

anyway, basically i would love to see the female friendship part being emphasized, seeing noora’s sexual asault plot in a bigger way and seeing the results, the homophobia of turkey and the hope regardless and the coming together of different ways of Islam!!!!!

if you want to bounce off ideas i am always opeeeen! and hope you liked this little turkish skam versiooon!

[zippdementia]

Part 90 Alignment May Vary: Pieces of the Past

There is an adventure for 4th Edition called something like The Return to the Tomb of Horrors. It is an adventure centered around the infamous lich Acererak and his various Tombs of death. One of the more fun parts of the adventure takes PCs to the Tomb of Horrors... only it’s decades after the Tomb’s first opening and the tomb has been raided and destroyed by the thousands of PCs that have come to it since that time.

I mention this, because ever since I read that module, I’ve wanted to do something similar: bring players back to a place that was familiar to them. The Tomb of Haggemoth, which featured so heavily in our campaign and plot, was the obvious choice and there was at least one loose end left in the Tomb that I felt would serve as a good hook: an ancient celestial being, trapped in a rock. Around the time of this session, I had finished working on a revival of Haggemoth, bringing it into 5th Edition with its original creator, Robert Kendzie (you can learn more about that here). As we updated a lot of the final dungeon, it felt like I now had an appropriately “changed” setting to bring the players back to.

So for this next section of the adventure, we return to the past. We return to Haggemoth. 

New Waterdhavians

The set up for this return begins in Waterdeep, with Imoaza and Milosh morose after the failure at Maakengorge and the sacrifice of Ruze. Milosh especially, has lost his entire sense of identity and nearly quits the group entirely. His only consolation is that armor has been left for him by Vraath Keep’s smith, who had promised to build him a new face. It is a wonderful piece of armor that gives him a humanoid looking face shield to cover up the damage done by Dragon fire back on the asteroid. But he also saw that smith dead in the Maakengorge temple. Everything reminds him of his failure at this point. Only one thing keeps him involved: Illrastayne. 

This is the blade he took from the Abyss, the blade which contains the soul of the bard-turned-warlock Bitterberry (and his Demonic patron) and which Milosh used extensively in the Abyss but has shunned since. He decides to rid himself of the blade, almost on a whim. He is aware that it has a demon inside of it and wishes to have no connection to anything which might impede his freedom, whether it be Surveyor, Primus, or this accursed sword. But when he tries to rid himself of it, he finds he cannot. The sword will not leave him. More than that, it taunts him, telling him in a demonic voice inside his head that in his despair, the blade has latched ever more deeply onto his heart and soul and that soon it will have him completely. Determined to find a way to destroy the blade, Milosh seeks out the Shaman from the ice tribe, who survived the events at the Maakengorge and is with the refugees in Waterdeep. The Shaman tells him there is a place called Rori Rama, where the first contract between the Demon was struck and that is the only place now where the blade can be destroyed.

It is around this time that Carrick returns to the party. Yes, Carrick! If you don’t recall him, he was the prior character that Ruze’s player had created and played for many many sessions, finally losing him in the Abyss during Esheballa’s insane game. But that was only the end of the original Carrick. Carrick’s backstory involved the inadvertent merging of his soul and personality with the energy of the final Surveyor, and so when Carrick died, his soul was borne back to Faerun to awaken in the last vessel the Surveyor had left there: a final body left safely in the ruins of the Fane, whose Yuan Ti temple had been reduced to rubble by the actions of Imoaza, Aldric, and the original Carrick during the final campaign of the Red Hand.

Carrick comes to Milosh and asks him to accompany him on a final task. You see, Carrick has worked out a good portion of the prophecy and its meaning. He believes that the players haven’t actually failed to stop the prophecy. Instead, he tells them that this is what HAD to happen in order to stop it: the three had to be one. Only when together could they be defeated. To recap, according to the prophecy, the PCs will need to bring together four objects to destroy the three and halt Chaos’ advance into the world. The pertinent lines are thus:

Four things must gather to alter fate’s course The Sword, The Shield, the The Stone, The Source Then upon the throne the three must be Before they can meet their destiny

Carrick says the sword is almost certainly Imoaza’s Black Razor. The Stone he believes is a piece of the Surveyor’s Jade stone that caused so much trouble early in the campaign, years ago. He went out on a mission of his own to retrieve it (one that wasn’t played in the course of our adventures, but was occurring while the players were at the Sea of Moving Ice). In speaking with Imoaza and learning what she found out from the library on the iceberg, Carrick now believes the Source is a piece of Primus himself. Karina, before her demise, had spoken to him at length of her past adventures and mentioned that Abenthy had begun calling himself an “Inevitability of Justice” after surviving Haggemoth’s tomb. Carrick, with the knowledge of the Surveyor living within his own memories, knows of the creations of Primus, and Abenthy’s wording stands out to him: “Inevitability.” Carrick believes an Inevitable is still in Haggemoth’s Tomb and that Abenthy encountered it. The Inevitables are celestial beings, created by the hands of Primus itself in the plane of Mechanus, where Law and Order is unquestionable. And there is one being, Carrick believes, who can channel the power of that Inevitable.

“Oh great,” Milosh said, seeing the visage of the surveyor looking down at him from the alley’s entrance. “This again.”

Years ago, a surveyor had taken Milosh from the depths of failure and despair and built him a new identity. But now Milosh had remembered, remembered everything, and again he had failed. He didn’t want a third chance. He wanted to go away. He wanted the world to go away.

Carrick knelt beside him. “We’re not very different, you and I,” he said. “Both of us have experienced death. Each has had our own failures. And we’ve been brought back to do more. We have been brought back to save the world.”

Milosh scoffed. “I have no world.”

“No. You have a million. Every world is yours to protect. That was your mission. It is your mission.”

“I’ve lost a lot already.” Milosh paused. “You remember Aldric, right? Did you know Imoaza killed him? I found it out from a book we got, from this old elf in a frozen library. You trust this group to save a world? We can’t even trust each other.”

Carrick stopped and considered what Milosh had said. “We all have to answer for our past actions,” he said. “Some answer in different ways. I believe Imoaza is going through her own changes. And I... I am no longer exactly who I was before. I am not Carrick. But I am not the Surveyor, either. But I am both. Do you remember the sacrifice I made as Carrick? Sometimes sacrifices have to be made. Sometimes we can avoid them. But if you walk away here, you walk away from the sacrifices we have all made.”

“Maybe I don’t care.”

“You’ll also walk away from yourself. You want freedom? Then you need to face what it is that you are afraid of. Or else you’ll never be free from it.”

While Milosh is struggling to come to terms with what he should or should not do, Imoaza begins to investigate the politics of Waterdeep, concerned by the boast from Nazragul that he had agents in Waterdeep’s council, planted there to change the teleportation destination from Vraath Keep to the Maakengorge, which is how he trapped Karina. Her investigations, which involve her ingratiating herself to certain people in disguise and exploring the homes of certain nobles, reveals to her that Yuan Ti have infiltrated Waterdeep and are turning its citizens and lords against the cause for which Imoaza and the companions fight.

These discoveries will have importance for upcoming sessions, but for now they linger as unresolved hints of danger, for it is time for the group to head to the tomb.

Return to the Tomb

“The island was warded against dragons,” Argent explained, as the bronze dragon circled down towards the island of Rori Rama. “We knew where it was, we could practically taste the magic and gold Haggemoth had accumulated, but we couldn’t get close to the island. Like an itch you couldn’t scratch. Even now, this is as close as I can come.”

For three weeks, the companions (plus Breath Giver, Milosh’s personal healer from the ice tribe) had flown via dragonback away from Waterdeep, across the Moon Sea, and towards Rori Rama, to find the Inevitable trapped inside the old tomb. They had stopped at several locations which would have been familar to Karina. They had stopped to buy provision in Ottoman’s Docks, which had changed little in a hundred years, except that it had doubled in size. They had roosted one night on a beach of a deserted island with a huge spire rising out of its middle (the site of the LaCroix mansion, though they didn’t know it). They had flown to Celaenos and spent a night as guests of the Sisters, the Keepers of the Library, who had taken over the monastery after the Knights had been murdered decades earlier. They spent a night at the island of the Oracle, and though they lacked the money to see the ageless Oracle, the monks who protected her let them at least stay on the beach for free.

Eventually they reach Rori Rama, but the closest Argent can get them is at the base of the inactive volcano which contains Haggemoth’s tomb. Breath Giver stays with Argent while the three companions use fly spells to reach the volcano’s crater and there find a way down a mysterious shaft delved into the mountain itself. The shaft takes them directly into Haggemoth’s inner sanctum, skipping the first level of the tomb entirely (I intend this to be a revisit of this infamous area, not a full rerun of it).

This high ceiling of this long chamber is held up with stout columns and the floor is tiled in marble. The rotting remains of a pair of couches can be seen towards the center of the room, along with some long-dead potted plants. Several doors lead off of this room, though some are damaged. The space is lit by arcane-looking lanterns hung from the columns, but the far end of the hall is lost in shadow where part of the ceiling has collapsed and the lamps have failed. Strange sounds echo in the distance – sounds of movement and the occasional animal like cry.

I am not going to detail all of the explorations the players make of the old tomb. There are many little rooms and surprises the players encounter, but only a few are of key importance to the plot, and I want to focus on those, the things that have changed for the worse since the last time they were here.

First, there is a new character that makes his appearance in this ruined tomb. His original name is unknown, if in fact he ever had one, but the group comes to know him as “The Painted Mummer.” He lives in paintings left behind by Haggemoth, and takes multiple disguises, different for each painting, from a feasting king to a hunchbacked dwarf. He interacts with the PCs as they explore the Sanctum, sometimes giving them dubious advice, at other times leading them through interactions with some of Haggemoth’s left over magics. For instance, they try to make a potion of invulnerability in his old study, guided by the Mummer in the guise of a twitchy scholar in a painting in the room. This ends in disaster as the potion explodes, due to them not identifying the proper heart needed for the potion (they use a Grell heart instead of a Hook Horror heart). They do get some hints that not all is well, such as when they identify some dead bodies hidden in a painting of a snowy mountain, and occasionally even get a glimpse of the Mummer’s real persona, a gaunt, tall figure dressed in skin tight black and wearing a theatrical mask, one half of which is sobbing and the other half is giving a menacing and angry snarl. Eventually, they learn to be wary of the Mummer and start burning his paintings whenever they find him in them. This only angers him the more and he begins to stalk them from room to room, not always able to do anything to them, not always even seen by them. But he watches, and he waits.

Cliff notes: The Mummer was an idea Robert and I came up with for the 5th Edition version of Haggemoth. He wanted to do more with the Inner Sanctum and was interested in maybe using the paintings to have some effect on the environment. I was thinking of GladOS from Portal, and liked the idea of an insane groundskeeper, something which was initially built to be helpful but has become broken and corrupted by time.

Secondly, while they explore, the PCs are occasionally accosted by otherwordly purple tentacles, that seem to sprout from the air itself, or the floor. The Ethereal, they discover when Milosh tries to enter it, has been completely dominated and overtaken with these tentacles, and they attack the PCs on two major occasions, sucking out not only their life, but their spell power, draining their spell slots and destorying their magical shields and other effects. The most memorable fight against them takes place in the old dining hall, where an unnatural darkness forces the PCs to fight blind against the tentacles, all the while looking for a key to a special door in Haggemoth’s Sanctum. The PCs get very creative here, with Milosh destroying parts of the ceiling to drop on the tentacles, Imoaza using the Weave Sight to be able to locate the Tentacles, and Carrick using fire and ingenuity to set up a kind of napalm effect that he uses to keep the Tentacles away from him. The scariest part is when the Mummer causes dozens of animated knives and dishes to animate around the room and swarm the players, only to have the Tentacles latch on to this living magic and erupt from the cutlery and dishes, surrounding the players with swarms of essence draining tentacles!

Another scary room involves an illusion created by the Mummer with the aid of some hallucinigenic spores. This grabs Milosh especially, and he runs into what he thinks is a vision of his old life on Eberron, where he is at a ballroom dance. He happily joins in the merriment, and takes a bite out of a thick pastry of some kind, bursting with whipping cream and flavor.

Only, what’s really happening is that he’s surrounded by Rust Monsters, absolutely attracted to his metallic form, his addled mind showing them as laughing and dancing humans. Imoaza and Carrick see through the illusion before he does, and watch as he takes a bite of what he thinks is a pastry... it is actually a larval Rust Monster, its guts and ichor spraying across his face as he bites into it.

Suffice it to say, this is not an encounter that the PCs end up liking, but it is a memorable one. By the time it is over and they flee the room, Milosh has had half his face (just restored!) eaten off. 

They eventually discover a scrap of painting in a room which also contains the broken summoning circle Haggemoth used to summon the Inevitable of Justice, centuries ago. The painting shows a gnome, who swears he is not the Mummer, but seems terrified of the Mummer. He tells them his name is Lhu-Ee and he is the last surviving painter dweller, aside from the Mummer, who murdered all of the others. He explains that the paintings were created by Haggemoth to hold his knowledge and to keep him company. They are like phylacteries, holding the souls of creatures Haggemoth pulled from beyond the grave to shape to his purposes. When he prepared to depart this plane, he “turned off” the paintings, intending to let the souls rest forever. But something went wrong. Others (Karina, Abenthy, Xaviee, and Bitterberry) came into the Sanctum and their presence awoke the Paintings again. But with no Master to direct them, the Mummer went mad. Originally designed to entertain Haggemoth and be a companion for him, in his absence he declared that the paintings had failed their master and needed punishing. Only Lhu-Ee escaped his wrath, by hiding in a torn scrap of painting. He offers to go with the party in his scrap, if they’ll keep him safe from the Mummer. 

Lhu-Ee knows more than just the history of Haggemoth. He is an expert on the Abyss and the Ethereal, filled with Haggemoth’s knowledge of those planes. He tells them that what’s happening to the Ethereal now is a sign of a being trying to weaken the boundaries between this plane and the Abyssal plane, with disastrous results.

“Why,” he says, pushing his oversized turban back up on his head, where it promptly falls down again. “It could be the end of the world!”

* * *

This is part one of a two part post. There’s a lot that needed to be set up this time, so I wanted to break the posts up to make it a little more manageable. And ya know, maybe also stretch this blog out just a little more. We are coming close to the end.

But not quite yet! Haggemoth’s final resting place still awaits the players, and more beyond that!

[theliterateape]

Ripe for Indoctrination and Thirsty for a Glass of Ice Cold Kool Aid

by Don Hall

It happened my Junior year in high school at a stadium concert in Western Samoa.

The conversion had been a long time coming. I was a bit of an intentional outcast among the more popular kids in my Where-the-Fuck-Are-We? Kansas high school and, being a typical teenager despite my ingrained belief that I was fully non-conforming and different than this cast of Heartland Rednecks, finding inroads to the cool crowd was definitely on my mind.

Krystal Good (name changed because I’m not a complete dick). She was the captain of the cheerleading squad and president of the school’s chapter of the FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes). Turned out one did not need to be an athlete but you had to be a Christian or at least be open to the relentless witnessing and Bible studies. The thing is I wanted to fuck Krystal. She was untouchable but hung out with that FCA crowd.

At one point, I randomly asked her how to join. Her reaction was effusive.

“Oh, Don. I’m so happy you’re asking. You would be such a powerful witness for Christ.” And she held my hand for a moment that, in my head, was instantly underscored by some awful Christopher Cross song. I was hooked.

Remarkably, as I started attending, I mostly listened and kept my built-in skepticism at bey. I wasn’t there to antagonize the Believers — I was there to get a finger into Krystal’s cheerleading panties. Once I understand the language and the right things to say, I went in for the facade.

I was a True Believer in Getting Laid Through Profession of Non-Existent Faith.

Meetings were almost always the same. Krystal would lead an opening prayer that was designed to remind us all of our supplication to the Lord followed by what could only be called vapid confessionals: each of us had to relate a couple of sins we committed during the week and how we repented for them.

“I cheated on my algebra test. I felt really guilty so I went out of my way to be nice to [INSERT ONE OF THE THREE BLACK KIDS IN SCHOOL].” “I lied to my mom about being at practice because I was playing Dig Dug at the Circle K. I promised God that I would be honest next time.” “I felt really angry at Mr. Telfer and wanted to kill him. I guess I didn’t kill him so that’s OK, right?”

At which point, once we had all told our stone-skipping sins (we rarely got into drug-taking, drinking, or sex because, hey, that’s personal and between me and Jesus...) it all devolved into a standard high school gossip session complete with Mountain Dew, Taco-flavored Doritos, and fudge brownies that one of the girls made in Home Ec.

Despite my efforts to cozy up to Krystal, it was never to be. She really was untouchable. On the other hand, my newfound faith became an entry point to many lesser desired vaginas so it wasn’t a total waste.

Close to the end of my Junior year, I was encouraged to audition for a touring mission group called The Continental Singers. Effectively a proselytizing show choir with a six-piece band, the bonus was summer travel. That summer the group was going to Fiji, Tonga, New Zealand, and the Samoan Islands. Plus, we got paid a stipend and had free housing and food.

I put on my best On Fire for the Lord attitude, answered all the questions right, played a few bars on my trumpet and I was in.

What I didn’t realize was that I was now going to spend my every waking hour for three months with True Believers. A few of them spectacularly hot young women. This was going to be a challenge to keep up the pretense and not expose myself for the poser I had become.

Early into the summer, my rooming partner, Steve, started to catch on. When my guard was down, I didn’t seem that Christian in his opinion. Sure, I had all the right answers but got quickly bored with too much dogma and talk of the Bible. Word sort of spread and the indoctrination became a bit heavy-handed.

The show we performed went like this:

Band played an overture

The ‘show’ was an originally written version of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat but with different music and some really terrible dialogue. Turned out a lot of it was verbatim from the Word of God so I’m assuming God can write a bestseller but not a musical.

Following the show (about 45 minutes in length) our director would come up and do a “Come to Jesus, Won’t You?” sermon followed by an opportunity for anyone in the audience to receive the call, embrace the love of Christ, and publicly commit themselves to God.

The last part was always eloquent and a bit relentless. 

“You know in your heart that you are a sinner in need of redemption.” “Man is born in sin and must accept the saving grace of our lord.” “Jesus died to fulfill the Law of the Old Testament. Confess your sin and it will be washed clean.” “How about a couple of bucks once you’ve joined?”

OK. That last line was more implied than stated but the last section of the night was a prayer and offering plates passed around by the cast while the band played inspiring tunes adagio. People came up in droves to publicly admit they were permanently stained with sin and receive the acceptance of the rest of the herd.

We were mostly free during the day and we would go out in teams to recruit audience members for that night. The teams shifted around and almost every day I was gently nudged toward the idea that, while I was a Christian (wink wink) it was a beautiful experience to re-affirm my faith publicly.

Every day for 45 days or so this message was pounded into my soft adolescent brain and often by these stellar looking women of Christ. The Kool Aid was looking mighty tasty and I began to question whether my resistance to the whole thing was merely my sinful ways fighting back. It was as if they’d heard my objections a thousand times and didn’t need me to say them out loud to pitch their liturgical woo.

Mind you, this was long before smartphones and I was thousands of miles from home. I felt isolated but only because I simply couldn’t intellectually buy into the party line. I missed American food, my car, my friends, television, movies, and books written by living authors without the agenda to convert me to religion. I missed masturbating and saying ‘fuck’. I missed being myself.

One night at a show in Western Samoa in August, as the director was making his emotional pitch, when he asked if there was anyone who wanted to commit themselves to Christ, he looked directly at me. Three or four of the cast members followed his gaze and looked at me with smiles that said “We understand. Take the leap. We approve.”

And I drank the Kool Aid. All of it. In one weepy gulp.

I was dubbed “Born Again.” And I believed it as firmly as I had previously disbelieved.

From that point, I was in the freaking club. Knowing that soon we’d all be back in various states around the country, the talk was that our friends wouldn’t understand but it was our responsibility to show them. I was told that anyone we couldn’t get to see the power of Christ was a poison that we should cut out of our lives. Friends, family, anyone. Either with us or against us with no wiggle room on it.

When I came home I had heard the pitch so many goddamned times it was like a script filled with buzzwords and catchphrases that I could recite with gusto.

Some five years later, the magic wore off. While my mom is the kind of Christian who truly tries to judge no one and feed the poor, too many I encountered were not. She and the people I’ve met through her are the kind of True Believers you read about and by whom you should be inspired (that’s not me being partial to my mom - she started a Food Bank in a closet of a church that has now grown to serve four counties in rural Kansas). Most were either wearing their Jesus Bowling Shirts each week or worse — the kind of Christians who teargas a group of peaceful protesters so they can walk across the street to pose with a Bible and then make a campaign video about it. You know, the pussy-grabbing kind of Christians.

What happened during those five years are stories for a different time but the result of this conversion and the later coming to my senses is this: I know cult-think when I hear it. When it rears its head, I’ve been there.

Faith is a very personal thing. Like watching a Marvel movie or reading the 1619 project, it requires a certain suspension of disbelief. It can be a salve in the human experience as we are creatures born to existential crisis. Turns out, we need something to hang onto beyond our own survival to thrive as a species. It can also be used as a bludgeon for power and cultural control and has often in history been exactly that.

I understand how easy it is, seeking the approval of others, to agree to a guilt that isn’t yours to bear out of a sense of belonging (or to get laid). Of confessing sins you don’t feel at all responsible for but do anyway because that Kool Aid is delicious, ain’t it? The reward of feeling like you’re accepted by the crowd, that you are, indeed, a voice for the word of...whomever is selling the most potent elixir, is comforting.

One of the hallmarks of a cult is that it tries to cut you off personally from anyone who sees the world differently than they do. When you see people urging others to completely cut off their friends and families over an issue, it's a cult. Anyone selling you the idea that you are “born in sin” based entirely upon inclusion in your race, gender, sexual preference is pitching a cult mindset. Any concept that creates a circular maze of proof (If you admit you’re a sinner, you’re a sinner. If you deny you’re a sinner, you’re a fragile sinner) is offering you an ice cold glass of Kool Aid.

Remember that there are, like, fifty different flavors of Kool Aid but they’re all just sugary water with food coloring.