We picked up the session right where we left off, at the end of the big
fight against the slaad and the beholders. Still reeling from their hard-fought
victory, the party returned with Bov to the High Keeper. There, he explained
that the wards had returned but there was still an enemy force besieging them
and it was only a matter of time before they got in. Suddenly, the party’s
quest to retrieve the remaining staves had a time limit.
The High Keeper also explained that the party needed not just the staves,
but a representative for each of them in order to complete the ritual.
Obviously, each member of the party would do – as would Mallard, should they
find him unharmed – but they needed to find appropriate stand-ins for the
others. He then gave them a magical cube that could teleport them to specific
planes of existence – including the Dream and the Plane of Air, the two where
they believed they would find two of the staves – before the party returned to
their comfortable, pillow-filled room to rest and recover from their fight.
Once they were fully rested, the party activated the cube and without any
further ado travelled to the Dream. Brakken was the one to actually press the
button, so it was he who suddenly began to sense some sort of beacon like a
lighthouse in foggy darkness as the spell was cast. Focusing on it, the party
were drawn to the Dream.
As the party arrived, they found themselves on bright green grass in a
clearing in a lush forest. It took them a moment to realise the trees around
them were not actually trees but flowers, the size of trees, with emerald –
literally, not just in colour – stalks and amethyst – again, literally –
petals. But they didn’t have long to admire their surroundings before something tackled into Brakken and wrapped around him tight.
As Brakken looked down to see what it was, he recognised it – or, rather,
her. Slightly taller, slightly older, Poppy was hugging him tightly around his
waste. Needless to say, Brakken and Monk’s reunion with her was swift to follow and joyous to behold.
The party also met Amethyst, who was also there. He explained a few
important things about the Dream that will help what came next make a little
more sense. Basically, he explained that the Dream is effectively a staging
point for the dead and all those that die pass through it on their way to the
afterlife. Some few of those, the ones particularly connected to the Dream –
like himself or Poppy – are able to stay in the Dream, and some few more are
taken (not always willingly) to the Nightmare, which exists as a separate place
yet also a part of the Dream, like a parasite.
This helped to explain the presence of Adamantine, Ruby and Amber, who also
appeared nearby. As the party later learned, the three of them had died during
the first war against Oldfather and now only existed within the party members
themselves, except for here in the Dream, where they could walk freely on
account of it following slightly different rules about the living and the dead.
This allowed the earlier part of this session to be, in essence, one big family
reunion.
And what’s a family reunion without a bit of fighting? The party were
obviously still focused on their quest for the staves and quickly learned that
Poppy was in possession of the Amethyst Staff and would be able to lend it to
them for their purposes of completing the ritual. But when Brakken then asked
Adamantine how to get his staff, he was met with a challenge: if Brakken could
win in a fair fight between them, he would be told where the staff was.
So, the two of them fought – or, in reality, Brakken fought himself, which
he was unaware of at the time – and Brakken managed to come out on top, mostly because he won the initiative roll-off and with the exception of massively skewed dice that’s always going to be the real decider between two identical fighters. He also managed, at least to some degree, to settle some of the bad blood between him and Adamantine. After the fight, Adamantine bade Brakken close his eyes and imagine himself holding the staff. As everyone else watched, Brakken’s adamantine armour melted and flowed down his arms to form the staff, thus revealing that Brakken has unknowingly been in possession of it for some time now.
After this, Brakken did some scrying and confirmed that Mallard was in the
Nightmare (as a prisoner in Ma-Ma’s lair itself along with an emerald-scaled
dragon that Amethyst revealed was his partner before she was kidnapped from the Dream millenia ago) and getting an idea of where Mithral was as well (with
eight members of the Council of Fifteen chained to the walls beneath a
mountain) before Amethyst mentioned that somebody of note was about to die and enter the Dream and he needed to attend to them. As he left, a portal opened and a bronze construct familiar to Brakken and Monk stepped through carrying a crate. The construct approached the two of them, set down the crate, and waited.
Reading a note on the crate, the party realised it was from Mortimer, who
revealed that he had been assisting the Resistance since the beginning but
Oldfather had finally discovered and sent minions to kill him. He had included
a few gifts for the party in the crate, including Monk’s belt, as well as an
incredibly potent bomb and a brick from the city he explained Oldfather was
currently located (along with an army) in. And he wished them luck.
It was only after reading this and realising that Mortimer had never really
been on Oldfather’s side that Amethyst returned with Mortimer himself, him
obviously having been the somebody of note that had just died. Mortimer looked older and worn down, with many scars, a missing hand and leg, and no tongue, but there was still fire in his eyes. Brakken and Monk only had a very brief amount of time to say a stoic goodbye before Amethyst laid a hand on Mortimer’s shoulder and he disappeared in a sparkle of light.
As Amethyst turned to the party to explain that Mortimer was now at peace,
he suddenly froze – as did everyone but Brakken, Monk and Kipth. Appearing
behind them, Piper the Piper, the servant of Ma-Ma that had once upon a time
attacked the party in the desert with a bunch of rats and then later given
Brakken the amethyst shard, revealed that he had done this and that it was now
time for Ma-Ma’s forces to finally conquer the Dream once and for all –
although, with the party there now, they would have to die first. When Brakken
made an aggressive move towards him, he backed off and explained that it wasn’t him but the trio of giants emerging from the treeline (flowerline?) that they had to worry about.
Of particularly important note is that the trio of giants were none other
than fog giants, led by Kong Bruud, an important enemy from Brakken’s past. He and Brakken called each other out, so the other two giants went for Monk
(because Kipth quickly retreated into cover). And… the giants were quickly
obliterated. On paper they had a lot of hit points and could cause massive
amounts of damage, but I could not roll to hit to save my life. Add to that the
party’s ability to dish out a lot of damage, not the least when Monk gets three
critical hits out of four attacks in a single round(!), and the giants never
stood a chance.
But everyone else was still frozen. Not seeing any other options, the party
followed the tracks that the giants had left, soon passing from the bright,
colourful Dream into the drab, grey, menacing, spiderweb-filled Nightmare, and a little further on, coming to a large, hotel-like building that the tracks led
directly from and guarded by a pair of wolfmen. Scouting ahead, Kipth found
that there was only one entrance to the building and nothing else of note,
including no other guards, so he silently took out the wolfmen with a single
arrow each, before either was ever aware they were dying. The party then
approached and entered.
Inside, Kipth realised he recognised the hallway they were in from his
nightmares – a hallway that stretched as far as the party could see, much
further than the building was long from the outside, with doors running along
each side. Brakken looked into one and saw a wolfman torturing a person who was fused to a rack with his torso open and half his organs missing – but still alive, to be sure, and in incredible pain. Brakken killed the wolfman, but when Kipth tried to end the victim’s suffering by, and I quote, ‘scrambling his brain with a needle’, all it did was cause a whole bunch more pain. Recognising there was nothing more they could do, the party (including a thoroughly-horrified-at-what-he-just-did Kipth) quickly left the room.
Back in the hallway, the party considered trying other doors before
discounting them. Planning instead to try heading down the seemingly endless hallway to see if they could find anything interesting, Brakken figured he would just check behind them to make sure the front door was still there. Unfortunately, this was exactly what the party needed to do (I was rather hoping they’d wander down the hallway for a while getting more and more frustrated before turning around, but nope).
Behind the party the hallway stretched equally far, but right behind them
was Piper the Piper. He greeted them, told them his mistress was expecting
them, and opened the exact same door they had just gone through moments before. The party passed through again, but this time found themselves in another hallway rather than a torture room as Piper closed the door behind them.
This hallway was much shorter, ending in the same spider web-filled chamber
that Brakken had seen when scrying for Mallard. He and Emerald were both in the same places, webbed to the wall/floor respectively, and Ma-Ma stood before
them, turning to greet the party with her grandmotherly face. She taunted the party for a bit, then tried bargaining for them to leave, but when negotiations
inevitably failed and it became clear the only solution was combat, she
transformed from a sweet old lady into a monstrous spider-creature.
And we ended the session there.
So, that was a bit of an emotional roller coaster. We had the reunion with
Poppy, Brakken’s fight and somewhat resolution of issues with Adamantine,
Brakken’s other fight and destruction of his longtime giant enemy (which also
happened to be the last loose end from any of the party’s backstories), and the
reveal that Mortimer had remained a good guy despite everything and was
instrumental in much of the Resistance’s current standing and possibly even
Brakken and Monk’s return before we witnessed his final moments and Brakken and Monk got to say goodbye. And then, on top of that, everyone but the party was frozen, Kipth accidentally tortured a guy, and now Brakken, Monk and Kipth are about to face off against Ma-Ma, the creature that has been screwing with the party since the very first session. And she’s a giant spider!
It almost feels like the campaign is beginning to wrap itself up. There
might not be too many sessions left before it’s all over – assuming the party
survives Spider-Ma, that is. But if you want to see how that goes, I guess
you’ll have to tune in next week.