#this recap is many times more gigantic than i thought it'd be

[mmoxie]

im just really falling in love with my d&d campaign as it’s shaping up and i wanna talk about it

first: i invented a race called the Arcillans for this campaign- they’re long gone in the formal sense, leaving behind only a few “claymen” who have lost touch with the original Arcillan culture- these people have clay pots with animated faces on them for heads, and their bodies are hard clay on the outside, soft clay on the inside

with that in mind: i built this campaign around the idea that the players would climb up a mountain and meet a dragon and his horde

very, very classical stuff, based on hoard of the dragon queen, greenrest is a physical location in the world, but the similarities fall off fast

what’s coming next is for the benefit of my players, who i’ll be sharing this post with, but also please enjoy a rundown of the story if you’re just reading casually

this gets more detailed as we approach the end, because we’re approaching our first real climax in the story, and also because the session was literally last night and i remember all the cool shit my players did a lot better

here is a bulleted list of every major beat of the campaign so far:

exorcised a haunted house belonging to a ghost called Jean Jacques Francois Jackques-Jean, helped a mad scientist murder his colleague, murdered and resurrected a Grue using a cursed mace found in the attic

murdered a libertarian sorcerer named Cuke Caskins for trying to sell them magic wishes

nearly started a war with the dwarves in the name of liberating a big frog with a big ass (Bufotocks Bufotocken)

met and grew to loathe a prince (High Prince Groalde Apatosaurus Weedteen of the Grand Kingdom of Falconwreath) who was also questing up the mountain and raising all kinds of hell

met and grew to love an ancient djinn (Kludge Mansmoke) whose vessel was shattered and whose options were running thin

climbed to the dragon’s peak only to find the dragon (Bronze Broden) asleep

arranged a deal with its steward (Veil Guardian Atrix) to take some loot on loan

one piece of loot was a strange-looking baby dragon

descended to carry out the steward’s quest and got in trouble at a quarry

met a claymen pirate (Captain Potricia) with a lich (Terrigax the Nightbringer) in her fishtank

nearly freed that lich the moment they met it

descended into the quarry to meet the oldest living Arcillan (Quaestor)

turns out they share a consciousness with the steward on the peak

turns out the baby dragon is actually made of clay like they are!

the mountain abruptly collapses, causing the party to instantly die

they awaken in the afterlife to find a very handsome cowboy (Penn Ultimate) trying to help

he asks them some important questions and opens a door to the past

everything can change if they handle the idiot libertarian differently

turns out he has an insight into a phoenix conspiracy and our sorcerer, Tav’as, has a magical phoenix feather gifted to them from Kludge

he shows them how to make a phoenix compass and sends them away

one of the first people they met (Khoris Mosscloak) has slain a forest god and taken over

she likes the party, but they must pass her trial to continue following the compass

they pass, and are knocked into a shared dream upon passing

the owner of the phoenix feather in the compass seems to have a job, IN the dream, and offers further directions in exchange for getting her feather back

everyone finds some sort of insight or tool in the dream, and when it ends, they wake up in the subterranean chamber where they’d died

our paladin, Gumbo Tuggins, finds she no longer has the dragon like she expected to- somehow when the timeline reset it stayed with Quaestor

turns out the baby dragon serves as the command core for a hundred foot tall clay robot, called Quaestor’s Opus, which he helpfully uses to give everyone a ride to the surface

Opus sets the party outside the quarry and then Quaestor starts telling the claymen inside that it’s time to start making weapons!

unnerved but unable to address a giant robot, the party decides to seek the help of someone who’s been on the map from the very beginning- the Psychology Giant

the Psychology Giant turns out to be a living fortress from the ancient Arcillan era, who has seen it all and is very good about advice

in the middle of trying to talk with him, the Dwarves attack, seeking to satisfy an ancient grudge with the PG, who they think collapsed the mountain on their ancestors

breaking off one of the Wishing Horns he was granted from the libertarian’s goat in the first timeline, our druid Aloro casts a massive spell that causes the army to flee- all but their commanding officer (Qorporal Quaebo Qrang), who they turn on and shoot when he tries to order them to stay

Gumbo can’t allow Quaebo die despite everything, and rushes over to stabilize him- where it’s discovered that he has an astral skull biting his wrist, and that all dwarves are “half-astral” due to something terrible that happened in the past

they rush Quaebo to the hospital inside the mountain, getting their first taste of how the dwarves live- it’s pretty modern! there’s sports! there’s a restaurant full of oiled-up muscly dwarf men called Hunkers!

Quaebo- in a hospital bed recovering- focuses his attention on the party’s barbarian (Arkosa), who is haunted by a number of lingering spirits. the dwarves share that plight in a way- there’s a person on a lower level who’s known to help with separating the astral from the physical. go to him.

they descend and find Potzen Pans, an ancient Arcillan claiming to be the first Paladin, who is doing his duty diligently to separate necromantically-animated bones from astrally-entangled flesh, which essentially boils down to beating the piss out of dwarven undead with a big pike.

realizing he can’t just beat the ghosts out of the barbarian, Potzen leads the party down into The Sarcophagus, level 5 of the Dwarven city

it’s full of skeletons. they’re glowing with a radiance like the sun. it is revealed that years ago, a lich killed a great many people up and down the mountain to raise an army of “Sunlight Skeletons” and this was the great trauma that caused the boundary between astral and physical planes to run thin, and cause the dwarves to be “half-astral”

Potzen thinks that reuniting the physical remains (which have been made into sunlight skeletons) with the astral ghosts connected to Arkosa will give them peace and end Arkosa’s haunting

this process is interrupted by none other than Jean Jacques Francois Jackques-Jean, ol’ JJFJJ himself, checking on all the ruckus our party is making and revealing himself to be the supreme commander of the Sunlight Skeleton army

it is revealed that, rather gruesomely, he used to use the Bastard’s Bludgeon (an artifact Gumbo recovered from his mansion and later purified) to get the killing blow on people he was burning alive, so that their weak and sloppy flesh would wick away as ash and their sturdy skeleton could remain to serve in his army

he takes the purified Bludgeon back from Gumbo and casually curses it again

while he’s distracted with Gumbo, who has chosen to argue with him about the mace and get him monologuing, Arkosa is fixated on a single skeleton in the crowd

it’s injured in the same way as one of their ghosts, the one they call Scoops

following the moment of recognition, there’s an attempt for the astral and physical versions of Scoops to reconnect- but a JJFJJ-possessed Potzen smashes Scoops’s body with his pike and sends it flying into the crowd, which throws Astral Scoops into a screaming rage

very quickly, Arkosa starts learning things about these ghosts of theirs, and the ghosts seem to be learning things too- they’ve learned how to work as a team, and a rudimentary way of communicating with Arkosa

all of this proves very interesting and very distracting to JJFJJ, which allows Aloro- obsessed with JJFJJ’s identity as a lich- to focus on finding his phylactery

through some shenanigans involving a magic relic called the Cup of Context, Arkosa manages to “drink” a bit of JJFJJ, and for one minute of their life, understand literally everything about him

including the location of his phylactery, about 100 yards out, in the sea of skeletons

using this information, the party sets up a twofold distraction- Gumbo, Ash (our ranger), and Arkosa keep JJFJJ occupied, while Tav’as and Spyre, both Aaracokra, find different ways to fly into the crowd and cause the skeletons to freak out en masse and work themselves into an uproar

during this, Aloro wildshapes into a rat and rushes underfoot, using information passed to him from Arkosa by way of the spell Message

he approaches a strange building- the room is blindingly bright, but this little house with an open door seems completely black inside

it’s there he meets The Congruence, who is the true identity of all grues, the mind, heart, and soul that they all share

she is also, tragically, JJFJJ’s phylactery.

what follows is a Timed Under-Skeletons Escort Mission, as Aloro casts Darkness that The Congruence can latch onto, and the two slowly march through the army of skeletons, snuffing out the light of any they pass over

the confrontation with JJFJJ himself is getting intense, and as his curiosity grows about Arkosa, everything comes to a boil all at once

Arkosa’s spirits act as a chorus, unleashing a massive psychic scream from all ten of their mouths, causing an incredible 60 damage that utterly evaporates JJFJJ’s crisp, dapper-looking disguise

they’ve revealed a large, skull-faced lich full of shafts of sunlight, blinding to look upon and radiantly warm, draped in the traditional silks and sashes one would actually expect of a Fantasy Lich

they give him all they’ve got, but outside of inconveniencing him- and eventually breaking his hold on Potzen so that Potzen can smash 40 damage worth of pike into his ribcage- they simply aren’t doing damage that might kill him

but Aloro’s on the approach with the Congruence, and one last major attack- a grappling throw from Arkosa- sees JJFJJ thrown out over his army, where he hovers and- witnessing the chaos below- begins to panic as he realizes how much damage has been done to his skeletons and how much work he has to do

this buys the party time to escape the Sarcophagus together with Potzen and the Congruence, and plot their next move

somehow, some way, it’s time to go talk with Terrigax the Nightbringer.

this bulleted list wasn’t supposed to be over 60 bullets long but i guess we’ve done a lot in the name of dungeoning some dragons huh

anyway i’ve had a lot of fun and i love storytelling a lot and being a DM has been extremely rewarding

i look forward to my monday d&d sessions more than any other day of the week!