PREVIOUS EXCERPT: #17

Excerpt #18

After being rebuffed by the Celestials (because Balcoth refused to be suckered into a binding Geas to keep Omit out of trouble, something even Omit advised against), the players found themselves back in the streets of Sigil. Really stumped for options now, they reluctantly opt for wasting more of the Dom's valuable time - the Dom had refunded their 2000 gp bribe to the functionary (explaining this was simply a measure to prevent Dom Arod from being spammed dozens of times per day with requests that were clearly beneath him - the price of being famous), and had been as helpful as possible, but they saw little choice but to get his help in transporting them through some other means. Since that was the only convenient way he knew to get them to the Prime, so the players changed their destination: they decided to head to the Elemental Plane of Earth to return the Stone of Elemental Summoning to Garom-arush-arush-arom-arush, the Elemental Lord. He had told them that he would be very greatful when they did, and they had gotten the impression that once they reached his home plane, they could simply call his name and he would find them. So Dom Arod graciously cast Planeshift and took them to the Elemental Plane of Earth (only the Prime Material Plane was barred to all extradimensional teleportation).

The Elemental Plane of Earth has no sky. It is an endless underground - something difficult to understand for individuals inexperienced in planar transits. Amidst the Platonic "prototypes" for every kind of natural dirt and rock formation that exists elsewhere in the many planes, there were of course many networks of caverns and tunnels that could be navigated by those who knew the way. We of course, did not, and inconveniently, calling the name of the Elemental Lord drew no response that we could tell. Somewhat daunted, we used the powerful magic Stone to summon a local Earth Elemental of moderate stature, who warned that we were very far from our destination, but who knew of, and was able to describe our contact's home in sufficient detail for the unduly patient Dom Arod to teleport us there. Once we arrived in the colossal cavern and were assured that it was the right place, we gave the Dom our leave, assuring him that if we needed to get to another plane, Rhaek's deity could grant him the appropriate clerical spell (once again, we would have tried this right away, were the Prime Material Plane not protected from such modes of transportation).

We were in an EXTREMELY large underground space, but after walking for a few minutes we found the opening of a smaller very-large-cavern which was notable in that the walls were composed entirely of diamond. A mass of white diamond, not carved but simply grown in the desired form. And as the characters entered, feeling already very tiny, a form with two arms and a head (or at least a vertical protuberance featuring a mouthlike aperture) arose from the floor, 75 feet tall and with a voice the rumbled with even more jet-engine-like force and volume than when we had previously encountered the Earth Elemental Garom-arush-arom-arom-arush, which is of course who this massive being of diamond was.

We did spend a little time explaining our journey to the Elemental Lord (who it turned out was a being of local deity status, with extremely wide ranging powers on its home plane). That was actually the end of the week which I started at Excerpt #16. And so a new week dawned:

There is a sharp disagreement about this factoid, drawn down very predictable lines. GM feels that the players have too much wealth relative to the Dungeon Masters' Guide's suggested guidelines for characters of this level, and that he is teetering on the brink of turning into "Monty Haul" campaign, where the profluence of treasure makes it too easy for players to max-out their defenses or blow away challenging encounters with expensive charge-based items. On the other hand, the players see it as very few of their fights dropping treasure, including surprising amounts of Demons, whose equipment all disappears unless, like Bizmatorak's [now Balcoth's] Ring, it was procured here on the prime material plane, as well as treasureless undead and large monsters, and dragons which always carefully fight us far from their treasure hordes, and even retreating (in 100% unpreventable ways) before we can finish them off, allowing them to return and prevent us from resting later. Further, the players complain of the increased cost of various items that are considered essentials in most games (Cloak of Resistance), and the reduced sell values of items (50% of book value for most items, 80% for items for which there is a stronger market, such as ability-score-enhancements and enchanted weapons and armor), even though the book clearly states that masterwork and magic weapons sell for full value, and we have certainly never found any "Used Magic" shops selling discounted gear. Regardless, nobody was happy about the mummy's attempts to destroy Aaron Crash's gear (GM, because the players stopped it from reaching the furnace, which was the only plausible way for it to destroy the magic gear; and the players, because the mummy succeeded in destroying 2000 gp worth of the NON-magic gear, and also for the principle of the thing).

Moving on - albeit, not very far...

Honestly, there was probably much more argument than that, but by now even you readers must be polarized and growing tired of it, so I'll move this report along.

And so, eventually, we got down to the serious business of roleplaying. It was difficult to determine why, but Balcoth had noticed that both Dom Arod and now the Elemental Lord, Garom-arush-arush-arom eyed his hammer (the one he acquired from the tomb in the dwarven kingdom), and this seemed to be the time to learn why.

SCENE MISSING (something about all attackers focusing on Azheron, and allegations of malicious design behind the "Gauth room" where Verian's last character bought it)...

And so, GM took Balcoth aside into another room to privately discuss the old magic hammer and its secret important purpose. In this case, GM had drastically underestimated the impact that his warnings (about the risky nature of the knowledge) would have on Balcoth. Intended to be little more than flavor text - simply a small point the players could chose either to build upon (by roleplaying a little) or to ignore, depending on their mood, it unfortunately played upon Balcoth's concerns (which had been building for some time as a cumulative response to many small combat adjustments, annoying NPCs and other stimuli). After a relatively long period (where the other players entertained themselves by sitting around and rehashing old complaints without having to contend with GM's "guidance"), they returned.

Nothing happens.

Nothing happens.

And so, after MUCH argument and near-ZERO progress, we broke off for the week. Balcoth kept his information a carefully guarded secret (MUCH more carefully guarded than GM had hoped or in any way anticipated). In any case, GM strongly encouraged the players to decide where they want to go, or what they want to do now, reminding them again that he is open to all sorts of different things - he'll provide encounters and adventure hooks, all we have to do is TAKE one, or choose and objective of our own... as long as we decide to do SOMETHING.

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Excerpt #19

This was a thrilling week where we accomplished so much! ...So much... Let's jump right into it: we left off in the parlor of Elemental Lord Garom-arush-arom-arom-arush, on the Elemental Plane of Earth.

Though nobody saw anything particularly wrong with this idea, neither were they too enthusiastic about it. The lack of a really concrete objective may have contributed, but the biggest hurdle was probably the fact that in order to gather information on such unsavory individuals, and to track them down, the party would likely have to operate out of Sigil. And dealing with NPCs in Sigil had (somehow) become about as popular as syphilis, as far as the players were concerned. After reminding Balcoth that Dom Arod had sworn to take care of any dwarves remaining in the old mines, there were no further specific agendas proposed, so the talk moved instead to destinations. The players all preferred to return to the Prime Material Plane (the M-class planet from which they originated), but could not agree on the destination.

With the note completed, and entrusted to the Elemental Lord to transmit, we were finally free of the last vestiges of our old obligations. Free to do whatever we wanted. To simply choose where we want to go, or what we want to do, whereupon GM would construct adventures in that direction.

Nothing happens.

Balcoth recounted a brief history of our campaign. In truth, we have done so much over time, and been accosted by SO MANY bounty hunters from across the universe that nobody (except probably GM) can pinpoint exactly when we pissed off whatever powerful demon placed the bounty on our party (and has been increasing it to the point that Balcoth's head alone is worth 25000 gold). In fact, Balcoth is the only remaining party member from that time, since Omit's (the player's) character from the time of the bounty retired, to be replaced by Omit (the character, except that his pre-nerf, pre-respecification abilities, numbers and even base stats were completely different from the way he is now).

Obviously, GM was doing a fine job at encouraging trust amongst the party. Meanwhile, Balcoth had no intention of sharing any more than whatever he had already shared with Omit.

Having finally given out this one piece of information, Balcoth clammed up about it, but at least now his insistance on brevity regarding the note made far more sense. Since we were STILL lacking in direction, with nobody willing to suggest any course of action (or at least, not seriously enough to try and convince or coerce the others into going along with it) we packed up for this week, with GM again beseeching us to put thought into where we would go, so as not to waste ANOTHER week sitting around and talking (or not talking, as far as in-character dialogue was concerned).

But before we left, Azheron made reference to an old comic or story, reminding us that we were at least trying to roleplay such concepts as in-character knowledge and trust.

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Excerpt #20

The usual moans from all around. The same reception GM gets everytime he announces a new idea for, or actually anything about the Interrogation phase.

While GM doesn't really have an answer for that (he probably hates those Spell-Reflection buffs as much as or more than anybody else), he also feels that he doesn't need an answer; after all, it was a level 18 module, in the not-so-balanced 3.0 D&D rules, and he is sure that the players were far too reliant on magic spells and magic equipment, despite the fact that NO character of that level with their equipment dispelled had a chance against ORDINARY encounters of that level, and the compounding factor that half the encounters in those modules were utterly ludicrous by normal standards of difficulty.

Instantly, the session loses all direction for half-an-hour as the players crack open arcane tomes and start selling off what little loot they had attained and converting it into loot that is useful, losing 20-50% of the value of each item they sell, whilst all equipment of any dead character has already vaporized (unless somebody wanted a specific item enough to trade their own stuff for it, in which case their old stuff would poof instead). One comment did stand out, towards the end of the marketeering when, trying to get us back on track, GM asked Balcoth a question and got an altogether unexpected answer:

That particular statement strikes pretty much everyone as oddly funny. What Balcoth meant, of course, was that he needed the money to finance a series of equipment upgrades. He had made the judgement that he couldn't make himself any tougher (or that any further increase in armor class would be exponentially more expensive, and that there was no way to further improve his damage reduction via equipment), and thus he had changed directions and invested in rounding out his character with improved killing ability. With his new Strength enhancing gear and after increasing the power of his magic Adamantine dwarven waraxe, enemies were no less likely to run away from him and attack the weaker party members, but at least it would be harder for them to ignore him completely. A LOT harder. Anyhow, the elephant-related laughter soon died down.

Azheron had zipped out to the kitchen to get something to drink, and GM had surreptitiously followed along while the others debated the politics of revenge. Nobody liked the guards in the port city of Fang (who all acquainted Balcoth with the local custom of calling all Dwarves, Gnomes and Halflings "shorties", and two of whom tried to extort the party for illegal bribes), and on top of that, a local crime-boss who was supposed to help us in our investigations had BUTT USELESS moron goons who tried to charge us retarded fees to enter his club to meet with him. And when stupid bouncer tried to PHYSICALLY stop us (particularly the "shorty" in full Adamantine Plate armor and armed to the teeth), Balcoth generously knocked him out with non-lethal damage instead of flaying him. Well, asshole crime-boss actually sided with his moron minion, withdrew his help (even though he knew we were there at the behest of King Grandular, whom he had many dealings with), and we ended up having to leave town. For all that, some might still think Omit's diabolical schemes and machinations were a little extreme. Anyhow, Azheron returned to his seat (and GM soon after).

Since Omit's plan to overthrow the rulers of Fang (and to exact retribution on some dicks who annoyed us about a year ago in real time) was somewhat far-fetched, and more importantly, would require a fundamental shift in campaign style towards more of a political intrigue, serious roleplaying (and thus less demon-smashing), and since Balcoth deemed the information he had received to be too dangerous to share, the only other option that had been put forward was Verian's suggestion to hunt down some of the many bounty hunters which were after Balcoth. We still wanted to return to the Prime Material Plane, but we decided that on our way, we should set our sights on the only famous evil bounty hunter we knew of: Redbeard.

The penetent Djinn transported us to the Astral Plane, where we stood in the subjective gravity of a three-dimensional field of nothingness, the others on lookout as Verian's character, Rhaek, worked his magic. Sadly, being a Mystic Theurge, Rhaek was a very flexible but not very potent spellcaster, and his lack of focus on any single casting stat meant that his save DCs were not very tough, and not having detailed knowledge of Redbeard, let alone any personal item of his, the Scrying attempts both failed. He cast Divination once more to determine where Redbeard would be the next day, but the answer was still the Astral Plane, so the players gave up the search and commanded the Dao to take them to the City of Doors: Sigil. Everybody's favorite extraplanar metropolis. Now, it should be noted that Planeshift is... well, it is not the most accurate of spells. In fact, it may literally be the least accurate spell in the PHB, since it always misses the target area of a given plane of existence by a random distance ranging from a few miles to some 300 miles away. This time, however, it caused a somewhat heated debate on planar geography (and yes, there is actually a Planar Handbook which describes (in varying degrees of detail the "standard" D&D cosmos.)

After a lot of puzzling over a rather bizarre artist's conception of the plane, then abandoning that in favor of the text description (which was thankfully far more precise), it was decided that the disk was in fact infinite in area, and although we had no way to determine the thickness of the infinite platter atop the infinite pillar, and thus whether or not it fell within the error radius of the Planeshift spell, GM agreed that it was a little TOO asinine (in other words, a vastly larger inconvenience even than that he had originally intended) to be able to arrive beneath the disk via Planeshift, and that if such a thing were possible, Sigil would probably be a far less popular nexus for interplanar trade. And so a mild retraction occured, and we instead arrived in a much more convenient location and were able to reach the city.

Whether intentionally or not, GM rapidly forgot to tell Verian the number of "buffs" and the highest level spell or spell-like ability available to each NPC who spoke, as he unleashed his usual "roleplaying" assaults, targetted, as always, on the most vulnerable target - Balcoth.

To make a short story of an interesting encounter that would be much less interesting to readers who don't know the full campaign history, we met a Hound Archon in the streets of Sigil who recognized Balcoth. It turned out that it was the same being that we rescued in one of our first adventures - then it had been a Lantern Archon, but it had since been "promoted" in the Celestial order, and was now much more capable of repaying us for the help. Unfortunately, there was one predictable stumbling block:

This question answers itself instantly in everyone's mind. Everyone sort of looks at GM... because is there's one person who Omit would try to screw over (in the game) it would be GM. And by extension, there is no possibility in anyone's mind that Omit would help GM in any way to screw over the rest of the party. That solves that problem pretty much.

Even the other players are in shock this time; the polite Celestial who owed his freedom to Balcoth had to be to best (and least likely to screw us) contact we were ever likely to find in Sigil, and apart from the usual anti-Omit biggotry, he wasn't even being an annoying ass. GM decided there was nothing else he could do to smooth this along, and so in the interest of us EVER getting back to our own world, the Hound Archon (who had at least seemed a little uncertain about his biggotry) relented, and led us to a portal. This was not the one in the Celestial-controlled part of the city, but another one, which he assured us led to the Kingdom of Grandular. Balcoth was on the verge of balking at this - he really didn't want to go to those lands for some reason, but the rest of the party prevailed upon him because they wanted so overwhelmingly to get out of this roleplaying hellhole and back to the Prime Material plane, where most NPCs could still be made to respect them out of fear, and where the inns weren't run by mentally retarded musically-inclined ogres.

We arrived in what turned out to be a major trading city (primarily because it featured a portal to Sigil). We were also confronted immediately by some guards (although they may have been tipped off by a lookout), who told us that we were needed for questioning, though we were assured that we were not accused of any crime. As you must expect by now we were EXTREMELY resistant to tis stupidity, and thus allowed Balcoth to do most of the talking while we looked for options, but eventually we went with them rather than start killing guards. We had just gotten back, and didn't want to start out by being kicked out of a city.

Apparently Balcoth has discovered a third category of comparison; the simile (using "like" or "as"), the metaphor, and now the accusation.

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Excerpt #21

Although Azheron had doubtless intended this question to have a bit of a punitive edge (forcing GM to do what he had forced us, and by us I mean mostly Balcoth, to do many many times), GM approached with great relish the opportunity to demonstrate a good retelling (with his own spin). The following is just the short version from my notes - his account was somewhat better and more detailed:

GM ran through some changes that Balcoth proposed the previous week which didn't make the last report. He had suggested that two new magic items be made available on the market: a Scabbard which bestowed the power to deal +1d3 fire or cold damage per strike on the weapon upon drawing for 10 rounds, and a Helm that would grant a +1 Insight Bonus to armor class. GM liked the Scabbard, though he'd have to consider what to price it at, but he did not like the Helm idea, because Insight bonuses are rare for non-psionic characters (which was sort of the point of it) and the "Head" magic item slot was not typically an location for Armor Class items. Balcoth's other suggestion was actually several possible ways of calculating the maximum extent to which a character could use the Power Attack feat. Somewhat confusingly, GM accepted the entire array of possibilities, even though it was somewhat contradictory and Balcoth had only intended for him to choose a single method. In essence, this lifted all restrictions that GM had placed on the use of Power Attack, without addressing the nerf to damage when Power Attacking with two-handed weapons.

As the traveller flags down the players, the rolling of their eyes is nearly audible. Verian's character, Rhaek (who, based on his prestige class is not only a wizard, but also a cleric worshipping the god Olidamara), carries in his backpack a box of different holy symbols so that he can pretend to be a priest of the most popular religion wherever he goes) is wearing a holy symbol of Pelor at the moment. Olidamara is God of Trickery, Mischief and Luck, and surely takes no offense at such good-hearted chicanery (in fact, the deity probably finds it amusing).

By assuring the rider that Rhaek, a "humble servent of Pelor" was indeed tirelessly trying to convert his fellows to the "true faith", Verian got rid of him, making some unflattering comment about the sungod when the guy was out of earshot. After a day of travel, and not too many NPCs, all the rest being not too annoying, the party turned off the road, moved some distance from it and camped out. The area was a fairly barren flat plains, so there was no good cover available. We figured out the watch order, but an attack was quite inevitable, since we hadn't had a fight in weeks of real-time NOR had we had a fight since Verian's new character was introduced (normally GM baptises any new character with an immediate "random" encounter).

Everyone passes. But everyone but Balcoth (who was one guard, and is thus armed, armored and standing) was still prone after being so rudely awakened, and everyone but Omit (who has evasion and was thus unscathed by the breath-weapon attack) was already down a bunch of hit points from the blast of acid. Just, not down as many hit points as GM wanted... [Mean Avg. value for 12d6 = 42]

In actuality, there was some confusion relating to that last breath-weapon attack; originally GM thought he could target Azheron and still hit another character because he momentarily forgot to take Azheron's altitude into account. He had already determined the damage when we realized the error, and he was forced to decide who he wanted to hurt more. In the end, he chose Balcoth because then he could move wherever he wanted afterwards, whereas to hit Azheron the Dragon would have to use up its move action just to position itself for the attack.

Its a straightforward question; if the sturdy dwarf wishes to wield his +2 Adamantine Waraxe in both hands (allowing him to put his full strength into every blow), the shortsword (which he uses for two-weapon fighting to shred lower-AC foes, and for the Luckblade's reroll and saving throw bonuses) has to go somewhere... But something very subtle in the way GM had asked disquieted Balcoth.

Balcoth is really torn now, because as much as he is worried that GM will somehow try to F*** him over if he leaves his 22060 gp sword unprotected for a second, he knows for certain (from his point of view) that whatever he does GM will screw him over with the dragon's movement, kiting him like there's no tomorrow, and with the way he hears Azheron complaining about the Spell Resistance, and with Verian's new character having cast approximately ZERO damage spells (Balcoth notices things like that), he made the difficult choice that killing the dragon was the priority. Balcoth chose to move up to the dragon first, THEN dropped the sword and made ABSOLUTELY CLEAR that he was standing with his foot on the blade. By his math, his attack missed, but GM surprised him by notifying him that he had hit it; apparently all those "Oh SH**" earlier were some Armor Class buffs being Dispelled. That inflicted some damage, but then Azheron got another Scorching Ray spell past the SR.

Anyhow, after a lot of hard work, the players did enough damage that the dragon decided its hit points were too low, and escaped. It simply took off, flying away at top non-combat speed (which is about twice as fast as combat speed, but must be in a straight line and allows no dodge-based defenses), moving far faster than the party could hope to match. Now, when I say "the players" in this case, I mean mostly Azheron and Omit, although Balcoth had gotten in a couple of decent hits, and Verian had run around the entire fight like a chicken with his head cut off trying to keep everyone alive without, say, the ability to do any decent combat healing. Now Verian started casting slow-acting but very efficient Vigor-heals (from the Complete Divine handbook).

GM compares his noted with Omits on what single-use and charge-based items he used during the fight, which tends to annoy Omit a little, even though he keeps pretty good records. In this case, he used very little (except for those expensive Fire-arrows).

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Excerpt #22

GM made clear that he never intended his ruling (which we probably shouldn't be debating since he backed down in the face of protest... and yet the very fact that he contemplated it still bothers Omit) to affect those things - that it was intended more to counteract the speed-related benefits of various spells and magic items. After several rounds of the usual back-and-forth, comparing Hasted movement of players against the speed of high-level monsters, and in particular, debating the percentage of monsters the party might face which (under the ruling) could NEVER be escaped under any circumstances even in our current teleportation-free environment. One problem with this is that, apparently, this percentage varies greatly based on whether you are considering ALL enemies of appropriate Challenge Rating, or only the more effective ones, and is affected greatly by whether or not you accept the assumption that a GM (or more specifically our GM) would use anything other the most "effective" monsters - in other words, layer upon layer of subjectives and assumptions colliding.

[You will forgive a little *SNIP*]

There is general laughter, not shared by GM.

Anyhow, I can't record all the arguments we have, and though I often leave out the most petty of them, I do try to include a good cross-section to give the readers some insight into things. So however it happened, just before we really got down to business, GM "accidentally" referred to Azheron's small blue-skinned, winged female character as a faerie. Again.

Nobody rolls.

Regardless, Omit shoots off two images.