>>44241640
First of all, the party.

-The Good Guy (we'll call him GG) - a kind, beta dude that presented the other players to me. Likes surfing weird shit and memes but remains a good-hearted fellow.
Decided to play Odric of Hoberia, a human paladin of the goddess Azah, a poor orphan taken in by the Church-State of Hoberia and, not knowing any better, trained as a soldier of the holy order of the Hospitaliers. Despite not knowing, he was always the heart of the group he hanged out with, and so it became the same for the party.
His character was one of the toughest guys, and also the kindest, yet stern and strong as a rock. His entire group of fellow soldiers was slaughtered in the woods by an unknown force, and the higher-ups didn't allow him back in the ranks, believing he had murdered them or otherwise lied about their deaths.

-The Meme Master (we'll call him MM) - if GG was into memes, he WAS the meme. He was always making TF2 and MLG references, sometimes too often.
Actual fedoraguy, from hat to gangster suit. He wasn't exactly the handsomest guy in town.

His character was Baskor Blackforge, dwarven fighter on saddle, axe-crazy jewish master of trade, and prodigal son of a dwarven noble family. His unadherence to the clan customs after his father's death made him run away from his home.
His main ability was being ugly. Unfortunately for me, he often forgot the rules as soon as I explained them to him.

>>44241662
-The TryHard (we'll call him TH) - a fit dude that plays lots of vidya, enjoys The Walking Dead and always tries too, too hard. Like, really too hard. Everytime someone said anything in or out of the game, he had to come up with a retort, a pun, anything to look cool. It was rarely funny, and even more rarely cool.

All he wanted was to make an expy of Geralt of Rivia, namely Garrett of Etorian, and he always struggled with all the rules not going the way he had imagined by playing vidya. I tried to arrange something to make his character blend all that mishmash he had in mind together (ranger-alchemist-witch-eldritch knight), but he still wouldn't be happy and diverted from my advice guidelines whenever he leveled up. I denied him a 'mutant' monster archetype from the beginning, telling him that since he had problems even using base classes he would have to earn that through the game.
Still, I gladly accepted his request to make witchers a thing in my setting. After all, I didn't plan anything ahead, so a bit of input from the players would help me make the setting as I went on. His character backstory was a simple one: his parents sent him to the first monster-slaying mutant hunter they could find to get rid of him, and he would follow his master wherever the dude would go, until he would abandon him without making a full witcher out of him. He was bitter, cold and gloomy towards most people (but would gladly fuck any wench) and despite 'scorning the thing he was going to become', he would look for traces of his master in every city he passed through. He also had medium scores which he would deem not enough to do everything he needed, but hey, he was expecting to be the ace at everything just like an experienced monster-hunter from a single-character game.

>>44241709
-The Nerd Girl (we'll call her NG) - an actual nerd, not really charming or quirky like many attention whores I had at the gaming table. Actually it was quite the opposite, as she had trouble doing anything during the first sessions and whenever her character spoke, it sounded like he was reciting the grocery list. This problem eventually disappeared as her more emotional side kicked in.
Since she was a big fan of the Silmarillion and could actually remember every fucking name in it, she decided to make a male elven fighter named Aegnor, but after rolling a fuckton of good rolls in physical stats, she changed her mind and made him a silent, gruff, STRONK human, a woodcutter enlisted in a war between nearby counties and soon MIA.
She eventually leveled up as barbarian and ranger to get the right mix of brutality for what her character would eventually turn into.

-The Outsider (we'll call him OP2, since I'm obviously the faggot who opens threads, and he was, sort of, my good companion in this adventure) - this dude was a friend of mine, who had started playing rpgs only a year before, showing amazing natural skills in roleplaying, and, as we went ahead, a mind for powerplaying.
He was at first just a spectator and a counselor, but after some time it was clear that he was craving a place at the table with the others, and so I allowed him to have it... but not immediately. I had told him the ways I was going to shape the campaign and the plot hooks I had in mind, so first I let him be a half-NPC and, as we reached the end of the story, a full-fledged character.
If you are wondering which one of the characters in the picture he was, I'll tell you he wasn't there. I drew all illustrations of the campaign as we proceeded, and sometimes even before we got there, but he wasn't on the team yet, just an interference in their story. The goblin near the paladin and the elf in the background are DMPCs that I added by my choice and sometimes by theirs. We'll get there.

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>>44241725
Now, the story. It was meant to be a boring, simple, generalistic fantasy realm. In fact, it was plainly unoriginal: a long-shattered kingdom whose feuds were independent from each other, with autonomous rulers sometimes at odds. In the lands three gods are revered, but the main one is Azah, goddess of beauty, portraited as an ugly, old woman, whose face becomes more beautiful the more her faith reaches the hearts of the people. Her priests gather money to make her churches and buildings the most beautiful in the world so that they deliver her message of beauty to everyone. The other two gods are Mazari, ugly but funny god of pleasure, hedonistic brother of Azah, and their handsome evil brother, Nevari, whose evil is necessary as he's the warden of death's gates. His cult is against undead and loves to receive tithes for those that wish to be better in death than what they were in life. Those who live happily in Azah's faith are welcomed in her Palace of Light after death, and those who die in bliss are welcomed in the Halls of Mazari to feast eternally. Elves and dwarves have their own, insular groups of deities based on FR-like pantheons.
(the map is in italian, if anyone wonders.)

The story begins in the southern town of Quasis, in the Quala Province, near the borders, where Odric's friends were killed.

>>44241759
It all started with Odric, whose mission was to find proof of his innocence and return to Hoberia once again as an Hospitalier, cleared of all charges, and Garrett, monster hunter recently arrived in town to earn some gold. The two met at the local quest board and arranged a price for hunting down the monster together, then reached the woods where the paladin's fellow soldiers had been slaughtered.
His friends had been torn apart, lacerated and mauled, so the thing had to be big. A few minutes later, instead of finding a huge monster, they are ambushed by a group of goblins. Despite their superior equipment, the two were outnumbered, but a screaming dwarf charged into the battlefield, cleaving goblins as he passed and restoring balance. When only one goblin was left, the two kindly asked the newcomer who he was and why was he trying to cleave the only prisoner who could give them informations on the wilderness around.

>>44241770
Baskor ceased to bother the goblin, and the other two proceeded to interrogate him. I pulled a stupid pun on his name and his speech, and apparently this made it irresistibly charming and adorable to the party, to the point they decided to bring him with them.
>So, what's your name, puny goblin?
>Me!
>Yeah, your name.
>Me!
>Ok, I am talking to YOU. Now tell me your name and I won't kill you.
>Not You, Me! You won't kill Me? Oh, that be good, cause Me is Me! That what you did wanted? Me name? Me tell you! Me's name is Me!
>...This is going to take forever.
The fact that the goblin repeated his name at every first-person sentence he said didn't really help the conversation.

>>44241785
And so, after making acquaintance with the little dude, they politely coerced him to spit informations on the location of the monster who ruled the area. Baskor, not having much to do, followed the group to the shed of Gug, local ogre thug, tyrant of the goblin village, and owlbear owner. Once coup-de-graced the fat bastard in his sleep, Garrett faced the owlbear in his cage and killed him before the raging beast could rip it open in its death throes and make its last dinner.
After a meticulous search in the owlbear's shit, Odric found the half-digested rests of his companions' paraphernalia, and vowed to bring them back to a sacred ground. He went back to speak to the local enforcers of the Church of Azah, and showed them the proof of the murder. He was eventually given a letter to bring to the higher-ups in Hoberia, the city-state ruled by Azah's councils of priests and hospitaliers.
The wannabe witcher was still searching for his master, so he took the liberty of following the paladin, and so did the dwarf, who sensed adventures were lying ahead. Looking back at the goblin they had just freed, however, the players decided of their own free will to make him the party mascot. The goblin, not truly liked at the village and amazed by the display of strength of the team, decided to join the party, despite being bad-eyed by the dwarf.

>>44241796
As the group travelled peacefully north to reach Hoberia, they crossed the border to Torma, which was ruled by a Marquis. The nobleman had thrown a celebration for all citizens as he had finally sired a daughter; however, during the party, the infant was taken away by mysterious means. As soon as Garrett and Odric had stopped fucking young maidens in the stables, they got up and accepted the job of finding the baby. The Marquess confessed to them that they had made a deal with a witch of the woods to have the baby, and apparently the witch had wanted her part of deal by kidnapping the child she had helped to conceive.
Long story short, when the group finally reached the bitch in her swamp, they found more than they could chew: the witch had a troll lover who emerged from the waters as they approached the lair. The fight was going badly for the party, not to mention TH's tendency to voice out all of his bad rolls as if misfortune had targeted him and him only. As for Me, he didn't contribute much to anything, as he was a mere little rogue whose sneak attacks were probably not enough to tip the scales of the fight. He was more of a joke character, who was trying hard to get strong like his newfound friends.
As they knocked out the troll, the witch went berserk, and started clawing out everything in reach, and would have probably killed someone, was not for the timely arrival of the new party member.

>>44241810
Raining down arrows with his composite bow, Aegnor entered the fight, killed the witch and answered briefly, explaining he was a deserter of the battle between Syntelburg and Syntelford, two neighboring baronies in the north. He was fighting with the 'fords, which were slaughtered by the invading 'burgs, and without a home to come back to, he was wandering south, still broken inside.
Odric suggested he came back with them in the direction of Hoberia, where he could talk about his tragedy with a priest of Azah, who could perhaps ease his pain. The party brought back the baby unharmed, and Garrett took the spellbook of the witch for himself, hoping to find formulas and spells to become a witcher. As he came back to the town his master, Lambert, showed up, promising to make him one if he managed to hunt down a few chokers in a hidden cave in the forest. TH, desperate to act cool under the spotlight, immediately accepted and Garrett went head-on, alone, to the cave, where he was soundly beaten by a single choker. Hadn't it been for his master secretly looking after him, his character would have died there, so I just made him wake up outside with a message from Lambert, sternly saying he wasn't ready at all for anything. Beaten, Garrett came back to the party, which then departed for Hoberia.
The Hoberia Province was a rural countryside with a single, great state-city in the middle, heavily guarded by three defensive lines and filled with Hospitaliers and town guards. As Odric walked in, however, he was asked to attend a meeting and, despite some doubtful councilmen, he was accepted back into the order, and given a new suit of armor.

>>44241825
Meanwhile, desperate again to make up for the previous shameful combat, Garrett went around, begging for a hunting job. The only thing he found was a dire rat infestation in a big wheat-storing warehouse. This time, he brought his friends along, and they soon discovered that the rats were more than mere dire rats: there were some wererats in the area controlling the smaller rodents.
The following skirmish was handled quite well by the party, with one particular exception: NG wasn't there at the time due to homework or other shit. OP2, who was around at the time, asked to control her character for the fight and, since Aegnor hadn't spoken much and was merely expected to shoot arrows and swing his sword around, I gladly obliged.
I was amused to discover his dangerous plan to climb the crates to the wood beams under the roof and then freefall on a wererat, impaling him with his sword and breaking both his legs. At the time the players fought with a rather bland style, and this helped them understand how they could spice it up, since all of them were using fighter classes.
The only exception was actually TH, who, after dabbling with the witch's book of potions had started leveling up as alchemist and couldn't understand shit about how to prepare extracts and what the difference from a potion was. He never got past that problem, up to the end of the game, and this was also the reason behind his choice of multiclassing as different casters, but never actually using any fucking spell outside of basic buffs.

>>44241848
However, back to the wererats. Further investigation revealed that perhaps even more wererats were crawling under the city through the complex sewer system, and made the only sound decision: they went and informed the city guard. The warehouse was safe now, so they took their reward and went to the city market to spend it. Even Me was strolling around and adding stuff ot his equipment, and, inspired by Garrett's studies, was trying to get past his atavic aversion for written stuff and even learning to read.
Soon Garrett decided it was time to go back to the choker's cave to demonstrate how strong he now was, with the help of mutagens and shit. As he walked in, he killed a few chokers and found the ingredients Lambert had left there. Upon exiting the cave, he found his master waiting for him, and he soon explained what he needed to do to create the potion who would make him a true witcher.
Meanwhile Odric was meditating with his old masters in the wing of the Hospitaliers inside the Great Temple, but occasionally went to pay a visit to his old spiritual mentor, Father Colbert, whose vote had been important in his status restoration and who was like an adoptive father to him. As he told him goodbye, Odric came back to the tavern his friends were staying at, and found that Baskor had contracted filth fever in the fight, so he assisted the poor dwarf and brought him to the infirmary of the Great Temple, vouching for him.
As night fell, the only one nobody was caring about was Aegnor, controlled by OP2. The dude had collected loot from the wererat, including one of their filthy daggers and rapiers. NG wasn't around to stop him. OP2 unveiled a shitgrin only he could pull at the table. Then, he described 'how inaccurately he handled the weapons while cleaning them' and how 'accidentally' he cut himself with one of them.

>>44241862
Nobody at the table had any familiarity with the ability of wererats to pass their curse through piercing weapons and bite, so when I explained that to the party, they freaked out.
Especially NG when she came back the next session. And that's the story of how Aegnor became a wererat, and, despite all, managed to remain still less ugly than Baskor and Garrett.
On a sidenote, it was a constant issue of TH that his character had to have more charisma despite not being cool at all, 'just because Geralt was'. Jeez.
However, by the evening he had finally finished his concoction, and Lambert administered it to him after tying him up in the back alley of the tavern to avoid risks of convulsions. His night proceeded in a nightmarish charade of visions, but with his troubled senses he could perceive that something was occurring to his master, having a fight with some creatures and then following them. When they all woke up the next day, Aegnor was oddly more gruff than usual, Baskor was healthy again, Garrett was a white-haired gary-stu like he had always wanted and Lambert was missing, blood spilled in the alley where he used to be. And, as Odric shockingly found out, Father Colbert had been murdered by unknown forces.
It's at this point that I looked at OP2 and told him to make a character of his own. Any other way he'd just kill the others pulling another cool stunt.

>>44241882
Soon, investigations occurred, and an inquisitor from nearby province of Demodacia was summoned to help solve the case. Soon it became clear that Garrett was a suspect, the innkeeper having denounced him 'because he was a witcher' (true reason was the innekeeper didn't like him and Garrett responded by pissing him off even more). When Inquisitor Tarkus arrived, he immediately became suspicious of the too convenient arrest, and questioned Garrett. After finding him only guilty of being a witcher, he released him, summoned the rest of the party on Odric's behalf, and started investigating the newly appointed Father Temessis, who had immediately organized a secretive council meeting. Once again the inquisitor, trusting Freghieri, his faithful cat companion, decided something was fishy and interrupted the meeting.
Upon entering the room, they found all other clergymen slaughtered and a secret staircase leading into a special relic room, housing the fabled Mask of Azah. However, the assassin was lurking in the shadows of the secret room and ambushed the party, only to be brutally defeated and forced to confess all his deeds in a thorough interrogation. He was part of a team that had contacted Colbert for infos on the location of some ancient magic items, but when the priest denied his help, the group killed him, took his notes, then killed Temessis, who had barged in, and the assassin used his little magic skills to impersonate him and gather some secret treasures for himself, having been left behind by the evil team. As he had described them, they counted in a strong, violent woman in armor, a sinister black man completely dressed in black robes, and an old man they all referred to as 'the Professor'. They had received help from inside to get past the walls, and through magic they had climbed to Colbert's study in the night to force him to collaborate or to steal his documents and maps from his dead hands.

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>>44241892
As Tarkus took the place of the Superior Father, the highest seat of the new spiritual council, hellbent on purging Hoberia of the traitors and wererats who had let the killers in, he asked the party to go and find the bastards wherever they were, counting on the tracking skills of the witcher. Odric, now really personally involved, asked the others to join his cause, and so they ventured west.
While crossing the lands, they came across a small village and a lone, old desecrated church of Azah. The place was filled with people caring for the old man named Orthos, a senile, friendly fool who seemed to spend his time cleaning the church of weeds and drinking tea. While searching for informations, they stumbled upon a lonely, nameless gravestone in the grassfields, and Baskor started digging to look for stuff, or, at least, a hint to the passage of the killers, since it seemed that at least one of them, the professor, had set foot there. What they found was an empty tomb and a few small objects, including an engagement ring engraved with the name 'Feulin'. The party took the ring to the villagers and were immediately scorned for digging up the only known remains of the poor old Orthos' lost girlfriend. They soon made amends for that and went to ask Orthos for forgiveness, but the dude was quite not there in his head and simply offered them some tea and befriended them. In particular, he gave a few books for Me to study, and implied that Aegnor was becoming a wererat, so he sent him with a message to the reclusive villager who lived in the windmill, who appeared to be a construct named Figure Five. The mechanical man read the message, knocked out Aegnor before the moon could rise, and tied him up to avoid further problems, and then the old dude gave him a recipe for a sleeping potion to keep him down during 'those nights'. And his apologies for his blunt manners.

>>44241905
Meanwhile, during the night, Baskor got laid, despite his ugly face, with Madame Brune, the owner of the inn they were staying at. Garrett fucked a hot girl who worked in the farms that was requested to be quite similar to the girl TH was trying to date at the time, and Odric slept with the innkeeper's daughter, Brianna, who told him of how many of the people of the village were actually related to Orthos. The group spent some more time with him, and actually nursed him, which I didn't expect them to do. During his troubled sleep or his uncoherent recollectings, he would mention how Feulin initially hated him, but once they bonded and became friends, they also became bethrothed; how he had lived in the village under the tutelage of the local priest of Azah, who let him learn arcane magic in a secret laboratory under the church, because at the time the council of Hoberia saw the arcane arts as a taboo; and how he had lost Feulin to a man who plotted from the shadows behind the throne of many local rulers, a man he couldn't quite remember. He would dismiss any question about his unconscious speeches as nonsense.
Eventually, since the rest of the group couldn't find any trace of the professor, they simply ventured north, which brought them closer to the border to Syntelburg, the barony that destroyed Aegnor's home. Through the forests of the borders, they heard sounds of battle, and Garrett went out to scout the situation.

>>44241924
After seeing a small number of soldiers with black uniforms slaughtering innocent elves of a small village of vagrants, he went and started attacking them on his own. This caused the ire of the liutenants, two warriors clad in black armor that started hacking to pieces the witcher. As the others arrived to save their reckless companion and defeat the two liutenants, their master, a similarly equipped knight, who was killing the elven druid master of the village and his two bodyguards, stopped and turned to them. This dude had a panoplia of evil icons on his armor, and his blade was filled with black smoke. The first to engage in combat with him was Baskor, who soon regretted it as the evil dude, after cleaving in two the druid and one of his bodyguards, simply turned to him and patted him on the head, channelling his black smoke into baskor and heavily damaging him. Meanwhile the last bodyguard, a young elven warrior, was trying to land a blow on the black knight, but couldn't do shit. Odric guessed the bastard was some sort of evil warrior-priest (in fact, an antipaladin) and soon challenged him to duel. The black knight, presenting himself as Sir Gondral, raised his blade and activated his good-smiting powers on him for interfering with his mission. Having buffed all his way there, Odric striked once, miraculously critted, and instakilled the dude, liberating the forest of his black smokey aura.
After helping the only surviving bodyguard back to her feet, they helped the poor crying girl to bury her brother, the other bodyguard, and the druid. From him, Vari took a thing similar to a rod of potency, which, she claimed, was the treasure that her master was protecting from those evil men.
Odric found a kindred spirit in Vari, who had lost her mentor and foster father to evildoers, and spent a few kind words for her.

>>44241938
Upon inspecting the bodies of the enemies, they found the foot soldiers were wearing Syntelburg city guard uniforms, and Aegnor took one of the liutenants' greataxe to chop them to pieces when burying them, and decided to keep it. Sir Gondral had a letter and a map with him, that apparently demonstrated the involvement of Syntelburg's higher-up in the massacre and that someone, residing in a fortress called Fort Perdition, was orchestrating the whole thing. The group gathered the survivors and helped them, then departed for Syntelburg, but Vari, leaving the caravan of elves, decided to come with them to better protect the thing she called 'the Key of the Elves'. The group accepted her into the group and tried to make her feel better, but to no avail, as she was almost always gloomy or failing to pretend not to be. The party nonetheless went on, and arrived to Syntelburg Frontier, the first fortified city before arriving to the Capital. There, Odric almost spilled the beans by nonchalantly telling the first barkeeper that they were investigating evil connections between the city guard and a conspiracy group situated in some fort in the wastelands in the northwest. The dude happened to be one of the few good guys in town, and told them that perhaps they were referring to the fortress in Grey Valley, a dead wasteland once known for its commerce of gems and quartz crystals, but abandoned over the years. The straightest path was through Sourmist Marshes, where many years before a war between the once-rich Barony of Grey Valley (once known as Amber Valley) ended in a terrible massacre when both armies got lost in the swamps and were never heard of again.

>>44241938
Meanwhile, Garrett was job-hunting once again, and found that a few children had bullied another one into going to Sourmist Marshes to prove he was brave... and that he had never come back. After listening to his crying mother, Garrett decided to accept the job of rescuing the boy (or at least, bringing back his corpse) free of charge. The party then reunited and decided to go to Fort Perdition through the dreaded swamps.
What awaited them was obviously a creepy scenario, and soon enough they heard sounds of bones and rusty metal rattling in the background. Skeletons of soldiers rose to attack them, led by two spectres of the leaders of the two armies. The party, scared, split up. Garrett, helped by Aegnor and Me, ran through the forest to find the kid, but they were ambushed by one spectral leader, totally incorporeal but for his ghost-touch greatsword. The other, wielding a ghostly longbow, picked the rest of the group on the main road, but was soon dispatched by Odric's holy touch. On the other hand, most of the others had no way to actually harm the sword-wielding undead, save for disarming him and using his sword against him. The only support they were able to gather was Me's early studies of alchemy, that resulted in only a few magic bombs thrown at the spectre. After running out of bombs, Me ran away in fear through the forest, leaving Garrett and Aegnor to be defeated by the ghost, and they blacked out.
When the rest of the team went looking for them, they found them lying in a pool of blood, but still breathing, Me nowhere to be seen, and no ghosts whatsoever. The spectre's sword, however, was firmly planted in the ground nearby.

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>>44241969
They assisted them, healed them, and Garrett, harmed by a negative level, ran immediately out of the forest to go see a priest in town that could restore his precious levels. Not having enough money with him, he had to pledge his silver sword, come back, and join the team with only one of his bastard swords in the inventory. By the time he had come back, Me had gotten out of the forest and had rejoined the team.
The party had no more time to spend, and they finally reached Grey Valley, where they found the desolation of the plateau and not a single soul to be seen in miles. However, they could see Fort Perdition in the distance, close to the mountain range.
The travel to the castle was interrupted a few times by nocturnal appearances of a strange bulky, mutant goblin who went around the campsite when everyone was sleeping, and that tried to steal pieces of Me's equipment. Upon waking up, the camp followed him, but most of the times the group was baffled to find Me crying in the bushes as he 'gone face-first into tree while Me going after him.' Me was angry that 'him be stealing Me's stuff', and the party soon became suspicious enough to learn that while sleeping outside they had to organize guard shift.

>>44241640
sure why not i like a good storytime

>>44242040
The strange goblin, whose true anatomy was shrouded by mystery, slightly resembled a muscled hunchback, and they soon were ambushed in the night time and time again up until they reached Fort Perdition. The noble family still living there, the Van Graam bloodline, had been struck with bad luck since transferring to the site of extraction of the gems: years after settling in Grey Valley, the veins of ore were almost empty, and only a small village of miners remained at the mountain's feet, scavenging what they could from the almost-abandoned mines. The Van Graam family had a cadet daughter, who could perhaps be the strong woman of the team of bad guys the party was following, so Odric and Garrett went to the fortress gates to organize an appointment with the Van Graams. Having an ugly dwarf, a goblin, an elf (whose culture in this world resembled in some aspect that of wandering gypsies) at lunch in the castle was absolutely out of discussion, so they went in, while the rest of the group rode through the wastelands in hopes of finding monsters to slay in their free time.
Paladin and witcher were greeted by this freakish thirty-something opulent idiot who was, apparently, the secondborn of Orlund Van Graam, old head of the family. This little fashion faggot named Marsh gladly obliged to the request of showing his whole family at dinner, but warned them that his sister Burgunda, the cadet daughter, had a very bad temper and was having another guest at the time, a certain Mr. Qensi.

>>44242049
Thank you anon. I typed all in advance before posting it to let everyone wait the smallest time possible. If anyone wants to comment I'll be glad. However,

>>44242055
They sensed that person could be another of the bad guys' team, they prepared themselves, and so they all went together to the dinner room, where they found this mountain of the woman - think of Gregor Clegane from GoT but 7/10 redhead cunt constantly on her period - and an old man dressed in robes with an ice-cold stare. Breaking the world record for instant beanspilling, the bitch recognized Garrett as the student of the witcher that had stalked her party in Hoberia, and without further deceptions, she flipped the table, unsheathed her bastard sword, and vowed to kill the two intruders for having followed her to her lair. The ensuing battle was already hard enough by facing Burgunda alone, who had quite the swing on her side, but to make it worse, the mysterious Professor Qensi was wall-climbing the dining room and shooting with his magic icicle-charged crossbow and pissing the two off.
At a certain point, sure of having the upper hand in the battle, Burgunda revealed to Garrett (who had been shouting 'where's my master, bitch?') that Lambert had followed them to Syntelburg Capital, where he had been captured and tortured. This didn't help, however, and soon she landed a critical on Odric, sending him deep into the negatives. Too deep, actually. He was dead. Silence fell on the table.

>>44242077
I wasn't sure the players were ready for witnessing their first player death. Had they not grown attached to their characters, I would have left Odric to die and asked GG to roll a new character. But the look on their faces was really bad, and they had learned so much in that time, that I instantly added an extra rule for them. they would have one 'strike' each: the strike was supposed to be spent upon character death to turn the fatal blow into something scarring, but not deadly enough. It would still require some effort to cancel out the penalties, and so I ruled that Odric was horribly wounded, his heart pierced, but the light of his Goddess was upon him at the time, and brought him back by a hair's breadth. Still horribly under the negatives, but stabilized, and with a horrible penalty to his charisma, due to his powers sucking his natural magnetism to saving his life rather than empowering him like before. GG accepted the penalty, Garrett vowed revenge, and struck Burgunda like nothing before, sending her in the negatives too. Qensi was on the point of casting something awful, but Orlund Van Graam, furious, arrived on the scene. The old man was quite the mage, and, despite being not as strong as Qensi, he elettrocuted him twice while Garrett picked him with his own crossbow. The mysterious professor, silent as ever, jumped out of a window, counting on his slow fall spell to land on a horse in the nearby stables and escape before the furious lord of the castle ordered the gates to be closed.

>>44242092
Still furious at all the presents, even the heroes, for causing such a ruckus, he demanded explainations, and then Odric, brought back with a few potions, realized that as a Hoberian Hospitalier he had attacked nobility of another feud, which could have caused very bad consequences. The old mage let them get away with this since he already suspected Burgunda to be involved in another diplomatic incident by allying herself with Syntelburg forces to conduct pogroms and killings, so he let them stay for the time of questioning her, but voed to kick them out afterwards and threatened to denounce them publicly if they ever came back. Garrett took the liberty of severing Burgunda's spine while she was out cold and her father and brother weren't in sight and, for good measure, to do so with the heartseeker bastard sword he stole from her still body. When she woke up, paralyzed up to her neck, she cursed them and swore not to tell them anything, but then they blackmailed them unto showing the letters of Sir Gondral to her father, which could prove beyond doubt her collusion with the slaughters and completely destroying any chance that her father could ever forgive her. Still horribly tainted with antipaladin indoctrination, the bitch still cared for her status and was forced to tell the truth and describe the location of Lambert and her part in the conspiracy that was trying to recover ancient keys with great powers hidden in the kingdom, given to guardians to ever keep them separated. Once gathered they serve as actual keys for a place hidden in the caves, a place called Perdition Dungeon. Whatever is inside, Burgunda will definitely not tell, but she will grin.
But let's cut to the others.

>>44242116
Upon arriving in an abandoned village in the wastelands on horseback, they realized they were put in a Tremors-like encounter with their first bulette - the look on their faces when I described the size of the beast was worth the suspence I used for the beast to emerge. They lost a horse to the monster, but once they cleaved his belly in half with a well-placed axe critical, they found the beast had swallowed some sort of lead-covered treasure chest, well-guarded by an excellent lock. Baskor, having multiclassed as a rogue recently, decided that he would spend a few skillpoints on disabling devices to get the chest open once they were back in the village, so they set back to the inn they were staying, and on the way they saw this cold-staring man, burnt to a crisp, riding a horse at full speed and going away from Fort Perdition. They didn't know the man, they didn't even know he had fought with their friends, so they looked at each other, and let him go on his way.
It was quite awkward when they reunited and found Odric with his breastplate pierced and his aura of authority gone, left a man with constantly short breath and fear in his eyes.
The next session, since I had given them a few second chances, I expected them to man up and do stuff properly. For example, I hadn't received any fucking background from MM or NG in the beginning - Baskor and Aegnor were simply a dwarf who left home for teh lulz and a gruff hairy ex-soldier with no homeland to go back to. I received some standard background and decided to keep it low, and let MM and NG reveal their motives when the right time arose.

>>44242132
Meanwhile, TH had leveled up both as a witch and a ranger, and now needed an animal companion and a familiar. He only wanted a wolf, so I had to houserule his wolf companion would get extra abilities liked to the familiar. Storywise, I had put a matron in the Van Graam household that used to be a witch, Marsh's nurse and Orlund's arcane teacher. The old lady also had fucked Lambert in her younger days and acconsented to teaching magic to the witcher, so that he would finally find his other self in the animal world. Before leaving, he took a wolf cub that ritually transformed into a dire wolf.
So, they went to Syntelburg Capital. The characters had finally bound and had stories and memories together and were bound by common vengeance. Vari, despite being one of the weakest members of the team, was deeply respected, always offered to use her personal cash to improve the party's situation (she had payed for taking Garrett's sword back with her own money) and had finally managed to activate the Key of the Elves for some basic Rod of Potency effects, like summoning a sword and such. Something foul was afoot and when they arrived, and they decided to stay low for a bit and go to a filthy tavern in the outskirts. However, none of them noticed some manifests with Odric and Garrett's faces, so they didn't quite catch the motives when a swashbuckling, charming man casually stumbled upon them in the inn. The dude told them his name was Osric, and using that as an ice-breaker ('Odric? A letter away from my name! This coincidence must be a sign of the gods!') he invited them to join him in celebration, telling them he had just come back from some travels and was a real party animal, and needed people as charming as them to gather quite the crowd for the wildest party ever seen in Syntelburg. Despite being a bit suspicious, some of them agreed, and so Odric, Garrett and Baskor followed the man through the streets, while Me, Vari and Aegnor stayed at the inn.

>>44242146
The roguish fellow brought our heroes from tavern to tavern to gather some odd-looking guys who looked more like cut-throats than average drinkers. When they finally reached the place he intended to 'wreck with this party', as they entered, the mob jumped on them, and Osric kept them by the point of his rapier, revealing his full name: Osric Quintin, son of Baron Moldar Quintin of Syntelburg.
The whole noble family was involved, and, as Osric explained, some guards were going to the inn to capture the others as he spoke. Unfortunately for him, the rest of them hadn't botched their perception rolls, and sensed the trap before the trap could come to their room. Quickly gathering all they had, they escaped and hid in the streets, eventually finding a small abandoned house where they dumped all unnecessary equipment for their rescue mission.
The baron's castle was sitting on top of a hill, bathed on one side by a river. They passed the river and got to the point where the sewers from the castle fell into the river, and once into the sewers, Aegnor, finally tapping into the horrible powers of his newfound heritage, started shapeshifting into a dire rat. He commanded the other sewer rats to guide him to the prisons, and Me and Vari quickly followed him into the depths of the hill.

>>44242159
Soon they found their way to the prisons, and, without a single scream, Aegnor put to good use his 20 in strength and killed all the guards. Next, they had to free Baskor, kept in a cell nearby, but while they were looking for Odric and Garrett, the mutant goblin came up again, setting fire to the prisons. The fucker disappeared seconds later, while they finally found the torture chamber. Inside, Garrett and Odric were being punched in the guts by Bagug, ogre thug, torture master and, unbeknownst to them, long-distant cousin-uncle-father of the owlbear-owning ogre back in the forests of the south. In a cage was Lambert, horribly disfigured by Bagug's mother, a mute hag that had been on the Quintin family paycheck for generations. The ugly bitch had molded Lambert's flesh like molten wax, leaving him weakened and broken.
The fight with mother and son was so harsh, that both Garrett and Baskor lost both their death strikes, causing one to be completely face-scarred and burned with alchemist fire, and the other to lose his armor as it was ripped into shreds together with his belly. With little armor, the fire closing in, they only slightly managed to kill them, and soon decided to run for their lives back to the sewers.
It would have been an easy task, hadn't it been for a silent figure quenching the flames as he walked down the steps to the prison dungeons. Now refilled, Qensi was on the hunt for the party.

>>44242168
They were worn out, damaged, with hardly anything to counterattack him.
And then, Vari raised the Key of Elves. Qensi stepped forward, and Vari planted the Key to the ground. Immediately the goddamn thing expanded and sprouted roots and branches, so fast that it actually impaled the ice wizard, who had failed his reflex save. It was an extra effect of the rod that it could be used like an instant fortress, shaped like a tree. The thing was also fucking hard, so it literally tore through the sewers' ceiling, compromising the entire castle's integrity. Qensi wasn't dead, so he tried shooting a few icicles, but Aegnor aimed better, and literally took out an eye of the guy, who finally started swearing and cursing for the first time. He also dropped the crossbow, and TH, a crossbow enthusiast, took dibs on the newest loot. Qensi vowed to return and, since that day he had prepared one such spell, teleported away. As soon as Vari retracted the rod into its usual form, the castle started crashing down, and our heroes jumped into the river of filth underneath to save themselves. Happy to have brought everyone back, they soon reached the abandoned house to gather their things... and there was the hobo, his throat slit, his blood on the boots of the Baron Moldar Quintin and his retinue. With the corpulent, elegant noble were his son Osric, who appeared less annoyed than the father by the constant rumbling of the castle falling down, a few guards, and a strange, slick figure, a man whose creepy yet odd and charismatic antics constantly amazed and baffled the party.

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>>44242175
This man, who quite casually claimed to be Amrion The Mad, counselor of the Baron, seemed to have even more authority than the baron himself, and was followed by a silent, full-plate armored bodyguard. The baron was furious for the destruction of his castle and ordered the guards to seize the enemies and kill them on the spot, but Amrion literally dismissed his words as 'bullshit' and told him to 'shut up and let me chat with these fine people'. The dude was indeed mad, but remarkably menacing despite his humorous and easy attitude. He was happy to have found people like the PCs, he said, and wanted to let them out of the Barony to fight again, when the time was right. Garrett sheated his sword and asked 'why not now, idiot?' and was subsequently caught by a paralysis spell. Amrion expected the characters to put up a resistance, because he was absolutely certain of his future successes but wanted to have fun while achieving world domination for his liege. Of course, he couldn't just let them go away without some sort of reparation for the small damage they had done, and so, after casually mentioning all the Keys (Elves, Dwarves, Possibility, Witches, Hunt, Faith, Reign, Dragon and Roads) he claimed he already had obtained the Key of Kings, which the Baron now sported as a weapon. He added that it had been obtained with the blitzkrieg military operation against Syntelford, where the Key had been hidden. Aegnor was furious because this meant the whole war and massacre had been done only for uncovering the artifact.
After revealing this information, Amrion asked them to give him some equally interesting information, or otherwise they wouldn't walk out of the room.

A correction, Reign = Kings
>>44242190
Of course, Odric&friends didn't know shit, so Odric simply bluffed and told him that he knew that the Key of Faith was hidden in Hoberia. Instead of blurting 'thanks, Captain Obvious', Amrion congratulated himself with the paladin, exclamating that of all the most logical places, he never considered Hoberia because it would be so obvious that one would put it there only for reverse psychology. Thanking Odric, he dismissed them, infuriating Moldar to the point that the fatass personally walked up to the paladin and slapped him with a glove, challenging him to a jousting duel; he intended to get at least some blood out of them, Amrion willing or not. Odric obliged, and at dawn, surrounded by the guards and with Amrion magically amplifying his voice to sound like a sports commentator, the two rode to their battle.
The fatass was a seasoned warrior and knight who dabbled in magic to buff himself, so he ruled that before jousting, both knights would be allowed some time to prepare themselves. The baron buffed himself believing to be strong enough to take the paladin alone, but odric cast on himself saddle surge to boost the shit out of himself for every step taken during the charge. He conducted a spirited charge for an astonishing 143 damage, flipping the old fart off his saddle and forcing him to use some illegal help from outside. Aegnor, still furious, barged in and hit him a few times, but the Baron flew away hoping to escape a humiliating death. He didn't know that Odric had a bow, too, and hit by a few evil-smiting arrows, he fell down in a liquid sound of fat and blood.

>>44242210
Instead of ordering a new attack, Osric walked to his father's corpse, took his mantle and the Key of Reign, and walked away with Amrion, strangely satisfacted. The group didn't stay there to wonder the implications, and rode away as fast as they could.
One stop before going south was in Syntelford. The group rode east, to the forest now empty, to Aegnor's old house. In front of it, a grave for his dead wife Almia. I took the opportunity, and showed how a tiger, once a proud beast of the nearby demodacian lands, that had stalked the forests in the last years and had quarreled with Aegnor in his younger days, had now decided to find the common enemy who had sucked all life out of the woods. Naming the tiger after his dead wife, Aegnor took his levels in ranger and his animal companion.
Their next step was, again, Orthos' Village. The place was the same as they had left, with the same girls waiting for them and the same tea-drinking, bumbling old man. As the group spoke to the old wizard, mentioning Amrion and the Keys, something made him frown for the first time in years. Almost lucid, he explained the Keys were not to be found and used, because an old evil was lying deep under the mountains in the Perdition Dungeon he had created with the King.

>>44242220
Players were a bit confused both IC and OOC, because I never actually mentioned a King or any other central leader of the country; in fact, Orthos explained in a long plot exposition, the feuds were part of an actual kingdom, united by the great King Beyond the Hills 800 years before. The neighboring empire of Demodacia (basically a bunch of tough Riddick cosplayers with real dire tiger companions living in harsh places and claiming shit for their lion-themed emperor) was conquering the known world piece by piece until Hoberia and the faith of Azah rose to power, finally forcing them to a peace treaty after stopping their invasion. The King Beyond the Hills was a mysterious man who rose to power, much like the WH40K Emperor, but who in comparison didn't choose to lead directly his subjects, but to protect them from the otherwordly threats coming from beyond the Hills. The Hills were a mountain range in the north that led to a vast plateau inhabited by giants and monsters. In the northest reaches, even giants used to fear walking, for a greater evil was looming. A demon lord, a terrible devourer of worlds, that was atavically revered as the actual fear of the dark and fire. The demon, which I named Yssarille after the Demon King in Eisenhorn Trilogy Hereticus, wished to destroy this world. The King, together with Orthos and a group of other heroes, helped to kill his physical form and, not being capable of banishing him for good at the time, bound his remains to his evil sword, the Key of the Abyss, which was then sealed in the Perdition Dungeon 700 years ago or so.

>>44242245
The sudden realization of the true age of Orthos struck the party like I didn't expect. Perhaps it was the recitation, perhaps it was the fact that we roleplayed six hours straight from 2 AM to 8 on New Year's Eve in a hot, cramped room, perhaps it was the fact that the plot was good. The players decided they had to gather the keys before Amrion, but Orthos told them it was not necessary, as the Key of Faith of definitely out of Amrion's reach.
Silence fell on the table once again. Odric mentioned that he had bluffed his way out of a fight by claiming that that exact key was in Hoberia, to which the old wizard replied, angry for the first time in centuries, that if Amrion were to march against Hoberia, Hoberia would fall, even though the Key's not really there.
The group, realizing their biggest fuck-up so far, rushed to Hoberia to inform Inquisitor Tarkus. OP2 was happy to role the dude once again and show even less remorse for the stakes he had been lighting up in the last months. Tarkus was a cunning, ruthless man and was close to burning the center of the epidemically spreading heresy of the demonic cult of the were-rats in the sewer system. However, he needed a help only the heroes could deliver. When he saw Aegnor and received the news that he had become a barely controllable wererat, he sent him down to speak with his kin and try to blend in. After a few exchanges, however, Aegnor was discovered and had to kill all the wererats around and stalk the remaining ones to the secret lair under the Great Temple.

>>44242256
There, a strange hooded creature, walking on two feet with a grace no wererat could possibly achieve, made its appearance. The other wererats were calling him the Teacher, for he would teach them how to be freed of their curse, and given new power under Yssarille.
Unbeknownst to Aegnor, Tarkus had gone full Orwell, and had cast a few spells to witness whatever Aegnor would see and hear under there. The moment he heard the name of the Demon King that had only ever been ushered in fear during his theological studies, he summoned immediately a full SWAT team of evil-smiting paladins with Odric as their new sergeant. The paladins descended into the sewers and destroyed everything that pinged as evil on their radar, while the Teacher himself ran through a tunnel escavated under the Hospitaliers' barracks, with Odric, Aegnor and Tarkus himself hot on his trail.

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>>44242264
The agile hooded bastard emerged from the high-ranking cavaliers' rooms, climbed the highest towers, and turned to his pursuers with a devilish grin, revealing himself as one of the teachers of the Hospitaliers, a holy man who had lived and taught Odric for years in Hoberia. But to Tarkus, he is something entirely different. Now that he's not shaved and bald like he used to, his hair and beard show stripes similar to that of a tiger. And Tarkus, hailing from the biggest prison of the kingdom, knows what it means. He's not Master Odun, chief of the trainers in the Citadel of Hospitaliers: he's Asheran, son of the Demodacian Emperor, sole heir to the empire that now is part of the Kingdom, and the only motherfucker who ever got out of the Prison of Demodacia, a complex which once served as the Demodacian Emperor's Fortress and that is quite impenetrable, making it the fantasy version of Alcatraz. And, due to strange shenanigans done in the royal family, he's a weretiger, explaining the fear and charisma he had over the wererats. And he's a skilled warrior, a trained master of the martial arts and a zealot of the dark gods. He's the man who got the evil team inside Hoberia to get Colbert, and he's the one who spreaded the curse of wererats in the first place: his training as antipaladin allowed him to gather the rarest diseases and grant them with his claws. I initially tried to make him some sort of Riddick-like assassin, but in the end he turned out as an expy of Lucci from One Piece.

>>44242283
However, the evil weretiger announced the time was right for the gathering of the Keys and, despite his efforts didn't allow him to snatch the Mask of Azah or the Key of Faith, he had undermined the Church of Azah, killing in the shadows many good knights that could have become great heralds of Azah, and the only reason he never attempted anything on Odric was because he deemed him unworthy.
After these words, he jumped off the tower, escaping once again. Tarkus was furious and demanded immediately all the old documents they could find related to Colbert, hoping to find the ancient location of the Keys, not in hope of snatching them, but to kill Asheran if he ever showed up to steal one. They didn't find shit, so they thought that perhaps they could ask Orthos, so they explained the identity of the old wizard to Tarkus, who demanded an audience with him. Odric went to the stables to get his horse and found this strange white horse who didn't shit or stain anything, leaving almost no sign of its passage. Finally understanding that the horse was to be his holy mount, he named him Bardus, the Antiseptic Horse and rode him to Orthos' Village with the others.

>>44242294
Back to the village, Orthos was reclusive and ignored all direct questions regarding the location of the Keys, so Tarkus tried something more indirect, and tried going for the guardians. He asked the wizard to mention his old companions, so gathering informations on them would be easier. Apparently, many of them are in the west: the Key of Dwarves is held by Baskor's King, King Blungen Thunderdrums, the lord of Mt. Anvil; the Key of Roads is apparently in the hands of a thief named Johan Widejaw, living in the cosmopolitan city of Prospero; the Key of the Dragon is in the hoard of Besperlungen, the old red dragon that rules the Forest of Redleaf; the Key of Witches is in the hands of the Witch-Queens in the fabled city of Covenaria, the lair of all the kingdom's witches, and the Key of the Hunt is kept by the Master Witcher in the Witcher Pass in the Hills of the north-east. The Key of Possibility is left on her own, it's hard to track it down, and Orthos doesn't dwell on the topic. The mutant goblin comes to sow trouble once again, but still escapes a few minutes later.

>>44242307
Meanwhile, Odric, still not-so-charismatic and weakened from his past death strike, met Brianna again. I wanted to get emotional and roleplayed the scene. They had a beautiful conversation which sums up to:
Odric: 'I like you very much, but I'm ashamed to show up like this.'
Brianna: 'You silly idiot, I don't like you because of your cute face, it's because you are a kind person and you're out there to stop whatever's happening. You've been kind to Grandpa Orthos, you made him smile despite everything. He likes you being around. Now come here and kiss me.'
It was nice and cemented his relationship, also giving some sort of boost (and many feels) to GG.
After I did this, TH immediately asked for some screentime with his hot farmer girl. He played it sort of well, tried to add some cool one-liners about wanting a family with her, and she responded that they were both young and free so he better go out and have fun before talking about this serious stuff.
While everyone was worried about romantic relationships or the impending second coming of a demon king, Baskor managed to create some cool sets of bulette armor to sell to the Hoberian Knights, making a fortune, and Me made clear that he wanted to learn how to read and write properly in order to get better at studying the alchemy notes for magic. His inusual intelligence (relatively speaking) allowed him to start doing so once back to Hoberia, where he spends his share of the loot to pay for some grammar lessons. His teammates approve of this, leave him with his teacher and go to an emergency meeting in Hoberia.

>>44242320
Odric is summoned by the reformed High Council and questioned about his faith. His answers are all too pure, so they send him a vision of a future where the apocalypse happened and Azah is forgotten by the survivors crawling amidst the rubble of the once glorious Hoberia. He has a glimpse of his goddess, and then receives the approval of the council, that give him the Mask of Azah. When worn, the artifact allows him to see through disguises and cures him of his stigma, making him the same usual smiting paladin he was. Hailed as the Chosen One of Azah, he prepares to depart as soon as the team finally unlocks the lead chest of the bulette. Inside, in a bed of precious jewels, lies another Key, the Key of Possibility. Suddenly, one of the council's bishops reveals himself as Amrion, who cackles, grabs the Key mentioning how improbable it was that it came out now of all times and places, and teleports away after paralyzing Garrett again.
The characters, pissed off but not hopeless, departed for Mt. Anvil, passing by the Green Marches first. They manage to kill a few monsters along the way, get some provisions, and spot the mysterious black man, named Za'Sett, in a town along the way. Odric challenges him right there and then. The edgy nigga laughs a big LOLNOPE and plunges himself into magical darkness to hide his escape.

>>44242326
The group goes on to reach the great metropolis of Prospero, where street gangs, thugs and thieves lurk in plain sight and justice is corrupted by the guilds. After facing a few thugs with no effort (even managing to partially avoid shedding blood) they are approached by a heavily-escorted caravan with a cool, armored carriage that blocks their way as they leave. 'Invited' inside, they meet Johan Widejaw, the self-titled Prince of Merchants (and, never spoken out loud, the King of Thieves). The guy reveals himself as a tough, eloquent halfling rogue impersonating the ninth or so iteration of Johan Widejaw, the very first rogue to achieve the title of leader of the Thieves' Guild. It's part of the tradition, in order to appear seemingly immortal. Another part of the tradition is sending some respectful birthday congratulations to a certain man named Orthos, something that puts in contact the group with the initially hostile rogue. The guy doesn't know the origins of the story so asks for an explanation in exchange for the players' lives and, after they get to see the Key of Roads, a deal to keep all the keys they find in a safe place on the carriage, shielded against magic in a few ways. The party agrees to the first part, tells the story, then peacefully leaves for Mt. Anvil. However, Widejaw IX has one last deal for them: in exchange for gold and items, the guildmaster asks them to either kill Besperlungen, the tyrannical red dragon who often comes from his forest to pillage the city for tributes; or to steal a certain object from the chest hidden in the King's Vault in Fort Nanox, the bank of the dwarves of Mt. Anvil. Widejaw insists on the secrecy, implying that he just wants the object to increase his lifespan a bit and outlive most other Widejaws so far in the record by a large margin. The group leaves, promising nothing.

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>>44242339
When they are close to Mt. Anvil, they finally start to witness the great statues in the woods before getting to the great eastern gate. On their way they intercept bulette hunter (an activity equivalent to firefighters in dwarven culture), musket-using sniper, and beekeeper extraordinaire Burt Guntherhold. The guy recognizes old Baskor as a friend and escorts the lot inside, allowing even Me and Vari in despite their heritage.
As they explore the city, divided in levels circling around a common pit that opens up to the original volcano's throat and pipe down to the magma lake below. Burt explains that Fort Nanox is down there, on a small, guarded island filled with traps.

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>>44242371
They go at Baskor's ancestral home, a mansion where his brothers live. It's revealed that the king has no living sons and is so fucking old that he'll kick the bucket soon so every other noble family is licking his ass to be appointed new king before he dies. Baskor's father was a suitable candidate and beloved by most, but he died in a strange accident and the family lost most of its power and wealth to Redstone family, their rivals, soon after. Baskor, afraid of responsibilities and of political intrigue, left Mt.Anvil, hiding his grief and his fears. Once back, his brothers tell him that their sister was arranged to wed a Redstone to cover some debts, to which Baskor simply replied by immediately using his own wealth obtained by selling the bulette armors and getting his sister back. The head of the Redstone family, a capital A asshole named Kashpar, is said to have had something to do with the death of Baskor's father, but nothing could be proven. Before going to meet the king, however, Baskor's two brothers, Ormund (the current family head and a major trap enthusiast, the 'fap to locks' kind) and Barry (a mad alchemist who looks like a drunken dwarven Einstein) ask him to follow King Blungen in battle tomorrow to bring honor back to the family. Ormund explains the situation of the city-state as they go to the great mead hall: recent attacks from the hobs (hobgoblins as I fluffed them are an empire of simil-samurai led by an order of mummy monks) destroyed the watchtowers from the borders and prelude to a full-scale attack of the Hob Empire's army from the Western reaches. This means a siege or a full-scale frontal battle to defend the mountain range, so any help is welcome.

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>>44242377
The party agrees to join forces after obtaining an audience by King Thunderdrums himself, a half-red dragon dwarf bard who kicks asses even to the astounding age of 900 years. This goat-riding ragebard is one of the original members of Orthos'party that, joining the King Beyond the Hills, managed to seal Yssarille's Key of the Abyss in the Perdition Dungeon. For the sessions in the Dwarven Kingdom, I prepared a huge dwarf-themed OST, with Tankard Basher as Mt.Anvil's anthem, composed by Blungen himself in his younger years.
But I digress. The team asks to see if the Key of the Dwarves is still in its place and the King himself, followed by Kashpar, who is his right-hand man at the moment, shows them the huge, multi-layered dungeon that guards the king's vault. Molds, stone golems, pools of magma and multiple-shot crossbow-filled corridors before reaching an elevator that reaches a pit filled with spikes over which hovers the adamantium-covered vault, reachable only by a small plank extended from the vault's guards. As he explains, the vault is unattackable and heavily guarded. However, someone notices that Kashparr is followed by a second shadow, that quickly detaches when noticed and hides away. Kashparr defends himself from accusations and implies it's someone else shadowing him without his consent.
Still convinced that a shadow can't touch shit in the vault because incorporeal, Blungen dismisses the threat, and prepares for battle. The party prepares as a honor guard following the king on the battle field, where heavy artillery defense, rolling exploding alchemical boulders and a garrison of bulette hunters led by Burt are stationed with axes and muskets to guard the narrow rock steps of the stairway that leads to the great eastern gate. Locked in a typical bottleneck, the hobs will have heavy losses just to get to the higher ground.

>>44242393
However, what changes the battletide is the appearance of the Twins, two great Hob generals leading the army with a surprise attack from unseen flanking positions. As Aegnor and Odric block the Twins, a group of monks is catapulted to the dwarven back rows from where the king was casting storm spells, and these assassins bring with them a huge sarcophagus, that breaks to reveal the Hob emperor himself, a mummified monk who reveals to have been taught techniques by his ally Asheran. The very bastard is revealed to have helped eliminate the watchguards and to have infiltrated the city to sabotage the efforts of the dwarves. This forces the party to gang up on the emperor, collectively smiting his ass with Azah's light. The emperor is disintegrated but manages to connect a hit on Garret's silver sword, breaking it, while his assassins and zealots give Blungen a good beating. Kashparr does little to defend him, and it's only thanks to the party that the surprise back attack resolves in a victorious boss kill. The empire's army loses power, and is pushed back to a bombing point where it's utterly decimated and eventually scattered. The dwarves win, but a few losses are recorded, and even the party is heavily wounded: Aegnor loses his strike and, to compensate a slash by the Twins, also loses one eye. Blungen is hardly beaten and returns to the city immediately, and receives news that guards in the city have been killed by two intruders, a black man and a tiger-striped monk aiming for Fort Nanox.

>>44242399
The party follows Blungen back to the vault, but after getting inside they see there's no one. But after extending the plank to get in the vault, Za'Sett and Asheran appear from under the elevator and crawl inside, stealing the King of Dwarves and escape. Blungen sounds a special alarm whistle and forces all doors and gates of Mt.Anvil to seal shut and start a quarantine to find the intruders and kill them. He also explains that Asheran is as old as him but due to being raised by the King Beyond the Hills, he's partially immortal and vowed to avenge his suicidal honor-bound father and basically wants to see him die painfully.
After a many days of research, the party finds out Kashparr's suspicious attitude and his errands at a mysterious flat in a higher level of the city. They follow him and find out he houses Za'Sett and Asheran, who promised him to give him the crown after killing Blungen and getting the key, but after the quarantine they are summoning rats to dig a tunnel to escape to the surface. A battle ensues, and while they manage to destroy Za'Sett's body, retrieve the Key and disable and capture Kashparr, Asheran escapes with Za'Sett's coffin, revealing the nigger's nature as a black vampire shadow sorcerer. Kashparr confesses his crimes, even the ones against Baskor's father, and is sentenced to death for tax evasion by Blungen, who then, battered and old beyond belief, finally appoints the new king in the Blackforge family. Not the serious and responsible big brother Ormund, not the younger and powerful warrior Baskor, but Barry, the mad scientist, because he brewed a very tasty and powerful brand of beer using explosive ingredients. He then sings one last time the anthem, then, in spite of asheran's old threat, he kills himself by stopping breathing on his own and then falling backwards into the magma pit.

>>44242405
Barry throws a last party and grants the king's last wishes and presents to the party, grafting powerful equipment to Baskor and Garrett, who saved him on the battlefield: to Baskor, an armor powerup to dig through earth and become a full-fledged bulette hunter, and the Key of Dwarves to be kept safe, as Fort Nanox could actually be breached. The key doubled as a cool rod of dwarven might, so could turned into a battleaxe or a returning hammer. Barry also just gives them the object that Widejaw wanted them to steal from the vault, so no law is broken. It's revealed that it's a philosopher's stone, that can be created in many ways, but one of the most widespread known ones is to bathe a great diamond in arch-demon's blood.
The stone is brought to Widejaw, that approves and points them to the Redleaf Forest, where the great red dragon Besperlungen made his lair.
During the travels through the forest, a tribe of powerful zealot kobolds, who worship Besperlungen as a god, ambush the party. The fight is hard, but eventually Vari kills the kobold priestess that rained fire on the team, and they all reach the cavern. Besperlungen comes forth, breathing fire, kicking asses and all, but Baskor reveals that Blungen's last wish was to see the dragon, who was his half-brother, dead and his threat ended. Then he springs from under the earth and decapitates him. Before they can enter the lair and claim the hoard and the Key of Dragons for themselves, they notice Vari is gone, and in her place a joke about explosive runes embedded on the rocks.

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>>44242426
Me runs out of the lair, the Key of Dragons in his hands, screaming that Amrion was inside and 'he and him, the mutant, to have talked and Me escaped before they get Me'. Believing the enemy to be in the lair, they enter, only to find Amrion alone who fucks around and collects some trinkets. The Mask of Azah reveals him as the undead he truly is, and Odric tells the others that Amrion is a lich. Vari is nowhere to be seen, but Amrion gleefully informs them that his student Qensi wanted revenge, so they better get out and search for him before he kills their friend.
They immediately come to the rescue, chasing the enemy up the hills to the snow-covered plateau above, where, near a chasm, two wizards await. One stays silent, a magic eyepatch to cover his lost eye, a magic icicle-powered crossbow and an elven hostage in his hands. The other cackles madly and watches the scene unfold with amusement before leaving with the Key of Elves. As the team approaches to stop him, he truly shows why a lone prepared wizard is still a force to behold. He tricks them into glyphs, explosive runes and wind walls to stop Aegnor's powerful arrows, kills off Odric's mount and almost roasts Baskor's newly appointed goat mount, then, before being finally struck, applies a powerful flesh-eating slime that the heroes don't know how to remove from Vari's wracked body. As she dies in their arms with unsettling sounds and screams, she asks them to be brought back to her ancestral homeland in the northeast, and that they were her only friends and that she'd gladly give her life for the cause they followed.

>>44242436
The party was shattered by their friend's death. I voiced her as painfully as I could, and apparently some of them were on the verge of crying. This was the first real sad moment in the campaign, they couldn't stop an enemy from killing one of their friends. This shifted the entire story in a different direction, and the atmosphere became dark. Now it was personal. They were determined to stop the enemy once and for all. They soon departed for the northwest, and the easiest way was passing through the Land Beyond the Hills.
Before going, they gathered the dragon's hoard, and found among the piles of money the skeleton remains of a great hero of the Hoberian paladin order, crashed under the might of Besperlungen in a battle lost in the mists of past. Driven by an unusual instinct, Odric put the Mask of Azah on the skull, which quickly revived the paladin's spirit to talk with them. He expressed kinship for Odric and his team, and offered two gifts to the young Chosen One: his mount would come back from the halls of Azah to serve Odric, and he would usher a prophecy for him. The prophecy was for him to seek a small wooden house, a mere hut, on the Land Beyond the Hills 'when the darkest hour comes roaring'. Given the new mount, a greyish mare named Illius, the group goes back to give a part of the hoard to the villagers of the nearby settlement who was frequently raided by the dragon, and then kept the other half by themselves, using it to buy magical equipment from Widejaw at a low price, and a waystone, a one-time mass teleport gem to use in the direst of consequences as it worked erratically. Then the team finally faced Enigma Pass, the closest way to pass through the troll-infested Hills.

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>>44242448
The pass was obviously named after the pack of sphynxes that guarded the place. Either facing one in single combat, giving them a riddle they hadn't heard yet, or solving one of theirs were the only ways one could pass without angering the entire pack. None of the players had any experience with riddles, so the session was painstackingly long and only half of 'em made it through without resorting to combat. I had however quite a bit of fun inventing the riddles myself. I had experience with stuff from the Dark Tower so it wasn't that hard to assess a level and some rhymes.
However, they made it through. Beyond the mountain range the plateau was home to huge, green plains, a sea of mountain grass filled with otherworldly-colored flowers, huge menhirs and cold, calm lakes. They ventured on a simple road in the middle of nowhere for many uneventful days, until they managed to see something in the distance.
It was a huge alabaster palace. And by huge I mean that it was big enough to be visible from many leagues and still big enough to engulf the scenery up to the very sky. It was even beyond giant size. Comparing it to one's own hand for proportions, it was still many times larger. Its garden was still somewhat human-sized, yet extending for miles in every direction with magical electric blue bellflowers telepathically calling visitors to the 'Palace of Endworld'.

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>>44242456
The party was amazed, a bit scared, and the ominous presentation made them think the King Beyond the Hills must have been living there, if a man so great was able to vanquish a demon lord. They proceeded for a bit in that direction, under a star-filled sky, until they reached the first crossroad in the plateau. One way turned east, going back to the regions of men, and another pointed at the Palace. Before being able to choose, a group of stone giants emerged from the menhirs and attacked them, but after dispatching a few of them, the rest were punched to death by a mysterious huge man, towering before the party but still smaller than the huge brutes. The man, sporting a blond mane and beard and a bare chest full of muscles, faced them with a kind smile, telling them the plateau was dangerous and so was the Palace, if one was not of strong mind. Then, getting off the road, offered them to spend the night at his house, in order to replenish their strength and continue their journey. The man lived in the ruins of a small castle, completely taken over by a number of plants the man tended to. After showing them his gardens and offering them the same tea as Orthos, the party started discussing the man's identity, until he plainly stated that he was the King Beyond the Hills. He was immortal due to a combination of his giant blood and his oath, a deal he made with Azah centuries ago to protect the kingdom from his wretched kind, that threatened to pillage the lower races and rekindle war and conflict. Facing Yssarille was just another one of the many threats of the plateau, just a more dangerous one, because he hailed from beyond Endworld.

>>44242483
The King stated that the Palace was a dimensional crossroad to all world, realms, planes and godly domains, and that Yssarille had set his plans to conquer this world and had just set foot in it when they managed to seal him before he called his kind to start the invasion.
So, year after year, century after century, he faced threats on a daily basis, until the giants decided to recede. He stayed there to patrol the plains, but occasionally came back in disguise to buy stuff or have a beer with some old friends, and ensure they wouldn't try to attack the feuds again. He just didn't want to be pulled into a net of intrigue by establishing a court or a nobility to control himself: he simply chose good leaders from every feud he had founded, and gave them control over that territory. To his favourite he entrusted the Key of Kings, that was eventually inherited by the Count of Syntelford, which led to the attack by the Baron of Syntelburg, which in turn set the events of the story in motion.

>>44242492
The party told him about the theft of the Keys, Orthos'dementia and Asheran's and Amrion's role in this. The King was filled with grief and explained that Orthos had put his mind inside the Perdition Dungeon in order to better protect it, that his old wizard rival Amrion was just a bored sociopath with no apparent motive to his misdeeds, and that Asheran's upbringing was his fault. Hoping to turn him good, the King took him by his side after his father's suicide, and brought him up as his son, teaching him the ways of power through religious martial arts and all that shit. Asheran took all that the old dude taught him and decided to strike an oath with Azah's evil brother Nevari to stay alive until he finally brought down the King and his friends, and brought destruction to the world. The god of death accepted and he became an eternally young and edgy antipaladin-monk assassin hellbent on destroying the world because his stupid daddy died hating peace and peace wasn't metal enough.
Cue to Asheran's entrance to the King's castle. The dude was trembling with overflowing daddy issues and now wasn't so cool anymore in front of the party, that looked down on him, full of pity. Asheran challenged the King to a match to show him his will was stronger and his motivation greater. Garrett barged in once again even though the party was against this, was pummeled in his face, got back into the ranks, the match began.

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>>44242502
I didn't roll for shit. I just described how the King pulled a full Hokuto-style combo on him to leave him barely standing, his body overheated by the outrageous speed of the punches. Then he sighed to Asheran that if he ever wanted, he could have killed the young weretiger in an instant, yet he was choosing to let Asheran go on with his stupid plan to prove not only that it was useless, but that he wouldn't benefit from his stupid vengeance oath. He then pulled an obi-wan, letting Asheran strike him to the heart and warning him that he would come back. The King vanished in a vortex of golden leaves without a single bone or drop of blood. Asheran, wounded in his body, conscience and pride, ran away in a fit of eternal teen angst. The party left without a word.
After leaving the Hills, the party noticed how outside the mountain range volcanic fumes immediately replaced the fresh mountain air. They were entering one of the shittiest places in all the Kingdom: the Espan Wastes. A remote province of the Demodacian reaches, the rock deserts below were inside a polar region that nevertheless housed a certain number of active volcanoes, and in this place forgotten by the gods, on a relatively safe peek, was Witcher Pass, the house and headquarters of all monster hunters from the kingdom, and many witchers were gathering for an unusual event: the match to determine the new grandmaster of the order. The challenger is no other than Lambert himself, apparently now crooked and covered in creepy bandages.

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>>44242510
TH was giggling with enthusiasm. Garrett, only one to enter the halls of the castle, heard with surprise the news about his old master, and was shocked when he himself announced that upon becoming grandmaster he would declare a Great Hunt of all active witchers against Hoberia. It was absurd, Lambert had been pardoned upon getting back to Hoberia and was too weak after the hag's torture in Syntelburg Castle. But the old master assured Hoberians had started mocking and slurring him once again shortly after the party had left for their adventures, and with his burning hatred alone he had ventured the northeast to go and challenge the current grandmaster, Quoran of Antaria, who was neutral on the whole situation, but at least wasn't hellbent on killing every priest of azah and destroying the church.
The situation was dire. After trying unsuccessfully to make Lambert reason, Garrett told his friends the news. The party simply accepted the situation, hoping that Quoran would be able to win without killing Lambert. The day of the match, however, in a typical witcher duel (like Odric vs Baron Quintin, both fighters had one minute to prepare and cast as many buffs they could), Quoran cleaved Lambert deep into the chest, and Lambert didn't even flinch. Instead, he somehow paralyzed him with a single spell, leaving him dead-like. The judge named him the winner of the match, but, bursting with anger, Garrett accused his master of cheating with some forbidden sorcery and of holding a grudge against Hoberia and its innocent people, so he challenged him to another duel for the title of grandmaster. After a night of doubts, he decided to go to the guests' lounge where Odric and the others were resting, and asked the paladin to bless an entire cask of water.

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>>44242519
The following day, he started the match by buffing himself up to large size, and simply dunked the cask into Lambert to confirm his suspects. To his horror, in a burst of steam and screams, Amrion the Mad revealed himself as the fake Lambert. Before the audience could seize him, he somewhat joyfully cast a dome of force on the ring to encompass Garrett and himself in the chance of punishing him for ruining his plan of taking the Key of Hunt from the grandmaster's panoplia of war. Garrett had buffed himself well, however, and after surviving Amrion's dreadful paralyzing touch, hit him with a full attack of both his magic swords. Amrion was shredded to bits, and dissolved into fine dust, leaving behind some magic items he used to implement in his clever disguises. Quoran, restored to his title, accepted Garrett's advice of creating a council of masters to avoid letting the power end in only one crazed maniac ever again, to which Quoran replied making him part of the council and giving him a special contract for a Hunt: anyone could summon the witchers, all witchers, through the contract, but only once, and they would receive the common target and move towards it as a single, powerful army. It wasn't a real summoning magic, but a special communication for a war call to which all witchers had to answer, just like for the Great Hunt. Planning to use it in the direst circumstances, he accepted the contract AND the Key of the Hunt. The weapon doubled as an all-bane bastard sword, so to complement his fighting style and add some damage. TH was really satisfied with the result, and was also really happy that, to his knowledge, Amrion was dead. Being newbies, the party didn't know shit about phylacteries.

>>44242533
Garrett had made a few friends among the other witchers to his retinue, that gave him a few pointers not to cross immediately the Espan Wastes. It was in fact the beginning of the Worm Season. This meant that huge worms of all kinds would erupt from the ground, the ashes and the snow to kill everything in sight.
Of course, waiting wasn't an option. The party departed immediately for the east, to travel the other way round Demodacia down to the south and then back to Hoberia. Along the way, I decided to cast Summon Bigger Fish repeatedly to spice things up, so they had to endure the attack of a few remorhaz, some frost worms, and eventually, awoken by a sudden eruption, a colossal purple worm, which almost swallowed Aegnor before being killed by none other than Me. The goblin kept getting better at his job of coming out of nowhere and dealing the killing blow with some explosive concoction or with a few sneak attacks with his knives.
They escaped the eruption and the worms and reached the rocky hills of the Antarian reach, and finally started going south, across the Blood Forests of Rapga, patrolled by the Green Garrisons of the Elves, armored troops of the gypsy elves of the kingdom. Finally close to the ancestral elven home, they buried the bones of Vari, even though they weren't ready to just let go.

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>>44242553
They met her cousin Imadri, a soldier of the Garrison that told them of the Shrine of Stone Terror they had just passed by during their journey in the Blood Forests. It was a place where once a terrible gorgon monk lived, terrorizing the elves who had mistakenly released her from a deep slumber, before she fell in love with a demon tiger and followed him to spread death outside the forests. This, as they discovered, was one of the many evil, earth-shattering bitches that Asheran had slept with, and apparently was, to this day, kept prisoner in the demodacian fortress now named the Prison. With a capital P. I want to stress out how much this place was supposed to be safe by common knowledge: the lake it stood in the middle of was very, very deep, and filled with horrible monsters fighting each other in the underground abysses; the high-security cells were in the highest peaks of the stone-carved spires, or in the dungeons under the level of the lake; it was patrolled by a cadre of inquisitors and by an indigenous, civilized tribe of gargoyles who loved to fling shit at prisoners and beat them to death; and, on top of it all, Tarkus used to work there before he went to Hoberia and turned it into a police state. And his father was still working there.
And yet, just as I introduced the horrors of the Prison, a messenger came to address the members of the Garrison resting in the ancestral home of the elves. The guy claimed that there had been an uprising in the Prison and that some super-criminals of the kingdom broke out of their cells. One of them, apparently, was En-Ssandre, the gorgon bitch.

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>>44242562
The party rushed to the rugged heart of Demodacia to help stop the uprising before the prisoners could get out, but upon getting on the island Lady-Judge Novus, new leader of the inquisitors and head warden, informed them that En-Ssandre had escaped, just like Asheran mysteriously did many years before, and that five dangerous criminals were roaming across the prison to get their band together and escape too. On top of it all, Novus informed them that Tarkus' father, Lord-Judge Ronus, had been petrified while trying to stop En-Ssandre in the old Throne Room. The party attempted to restore his body thanks to Odric's divine powers, and discovered that this time, Za'Sett had helped the gorgon escape with shadow magic and rat-carved tunnels, but that they had planned something behind with the other five prisoners. Asked to help, the party reluctantly agreed to stop the five menaces, even though they were worried they could reunite with Asheran and increase their chances of finding the Keys. Ronus assured he would send help to Hoberia if the situation was dire, and briefed the party about the five miscreants: Barku, a retarded half-giant half-hag mutant shaman; Axar the Prisoner, a scarred orc berserker with immense strength, named after the tons of chains used to keep him subdued at all time; Dramora, a renegade elven swordmaster and another psycho bitch Asheran had an affair with, now in denial about the fact that En-Ssandre was freed instead of her; Ka-Boom, the greatest hero of goblin culture, a pyromaniac with a wacky crossbow armed with explosive bolts; and the man with the less serious but longest criminal record of all times: Quinlian Petralor, a thief, tavern-brawler, other's wives'womanizer and overall party-thrasher known for having held the title and name of Johan Widejaw for just one week before squandering the thieves' guild's treasures and getting kicked out of Prospero's every single tavern for life.

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>>44242604
The party hasn't gotten the hang of this yet, but once they ambush the enemy just outside of Barku's cell, they realize the enemy is quite the hard one. Quinlian promises immediately to surrender if his sentence is lifted by a few years (enough to get him immediately free) and subsequently stabs odric in the guts for a surprise attack when his attempt at diplomacy fails against the stern duty of the paladin of Azah. The rest of the evil party attacks, with Barku regenerating even the most gruesome wounds at an astonishing speed, while throwing rocks, turning into a killer tree and, shockingly, throwing Me out of a window and into the void below for having set him on fire. The party retaliates with a fury never seen before: they have already lost the quiet Vari, they can't lose the little weird goblin that looks up to them for becoming strong. First Aegnor rolls in with his greataxe and literally cleaves Ka-Bum into two perfect halves, then they finish the giant manchild, and move to kick Petralor in the nuts a few times since his tricks only have moderate effect without the benefit of trickery and surprise. The rogue even attempts to steal the Mask of Azah from Odric, only to receive the curse of the goddess by thrashing his charisma score to zero. Dramora can attack like a thousand times with her blades, but since the beginning of the game TH has maxed his AC against most attacks and when buffed he reaches such a level that Dramora spends her entire time onscreen failing all her attacks and eventually getting chopped up. The last, most resilient enemy is Axar, who literally ignores some of the horrible crits confirmed against him ans just whips the floor with the party using his huge chains to flail them into confetti.

>>44242615
Then something rubbery jumps into the room from outside. The red-eyed mutant goblin, now with long, gangly, multi-jointed arms and a form even more twisted, entered the frame... and snapped the orc's neck after dodging his attacks and bouncing off the walls like a fucking ball. The monster then tried to escape from the same window before being questioned, but failed to climb the spires down and was apprehended by the gargoyles, who brought him to the party for interrogation. It was then that it revealed himself as 'Him', just before starting a complex two-voices monologue and reverting to Me. Awfully red with shame, the little monstrosity explained crying that he was sorry for reading Garrett's formula book in secret while he slept to learn stuff, and that he had tried making some extracts before eventually trying to make mutagens. This, together with a few mistakes in copying the formulas, led to the creation of a split personality with the mind of a rapidly growing newborn goblinoid who at first stole stuff from people and played around, until they finally mastered speech and conversation with the original owner of the body. Worried about this secret, but finally calming down, the party accepted this little change in the goblin. They had spurred him to follow his dreams and to become strong like them just because he looked so joyful and innocent, and this somehow broke their hearts. Him, however, tried to assure them he wouldn't do anything bad anymore, and would just try to find a way to adapt to life and, perhaps, find a way to coexist with Me.

>>44242627
Back to Ronus, the inquisitor tells them he finally discovered that in the throne room a special reagent has been released into the fountain stream to be dissolved and dispersed into the waters of the lake below... perhaps, to create a luring scent. Cut to a roaring entrance of a lake linnorm, who starts killing the prison wardens at the entrance. As he roars his challenge and invokes the emperors of demodacia who sealed a pact with him to defend the prison, everyone understands that Asheran knew how to awaken the beast and gave the luring scent to Za'Sett to make a diversion while he escaped with the gorgon. The team decides they won't have any of this shit and walk out to the shores of the Prison, shining with Azah's light channeled by Odric's voice. And proceed to kill the beast in one round. The primordial dragon dies once again by the cutest killstealer in the team, Me, who manages to throw off the curse of the monster by teaming up with Him for a huge 'NOPE'. Ronus acknowledges the party's resolve and faith, and sends them on their way, giving them his magical hammer to deliver to his son, who will need it to protect them in the struggles ahead. The party crosses the demodacian border to the feud of Hoberia, finds Tarkus and delivers the news. Tarkus obliges, then uncerimoniously delivers bad news and good news.

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>>44242641
The bad news are that Grey Valley is now off-limits due to high proliferation of syntelburg soldiers and hordes of undead warriors summoned from the bones of the people died there in the past centuries. For the first time in years, the entire kingdom is threatened by a force gathering around the Perdition Dungeon, perhaps in hope of opening it with force or, if that fails, to kill everyone with necromancy until the keys are gathered. Despite being disgusted by witches and witchers, Tarkus will acknowledge their freedom and authority if they will ally themselves with the Church of Hoberia against this common threat. That is, if he manages to reach the fabled plateau of Covenaria and meet the Coven of the Witch-Queens to negotiate a truce. Without being flayed first. The party is forced to accompany him, but to reward their help, he lets them know the good news first. So Odric receives a letter from Brianna of Orthos' Village, detailing how she's pregnant with his baby and how much she wishes to see him again once he's back to Hoberia. This was quite the event for the party so far, and for me too: my characters never managed to hook up with npc before. GG himself was having a thousand-yard stare and was still trying to come to terms with the fact that, even if only in a fantasy world, he was to become a father. It was one of the many things that struck GG in a good way about rpgs. He was happy in general to see his character thrive and find a place in the world I had generated. He roleplayed it very well and sometime the emotion he expressed for his character was genuine.

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>>44242659
So, back to the awful job of escorting the witch-hunting inquisitor to the city of the witches hidden in the mountains. At this point OP2 has entered the party for good, and helps them venture the depths of Blackaxe clan's dwarven underground roads, to the monster-filled stairways that led to the plateau. It was then that they discovered that Covenaria was a hub for witches and giants alike. The party managed to keep everything under control (despite all the giants wanting a piece of them) up to the city, where they were welcomed as ambassadors by the three Witch-Queens: Mogragainn, a redhead valkyrie with lightning in her eyes and armaments, Magdalan, a hooded monstrosity whose fungus-ridden tongue writhes out of her hood only to whisper shit, and Belinda the Beautiful, a human witch who was originally in the King's team to seal Yssarille and somehow to this day is still a hot 11/10 qt3.14. Despite the etiquette, the queens are quite blunt on the question 'will you stop burning us if we fight with you'. Tarkus replies that perhaps the situation will change if they stop kidnapping and eating infants to achieve power and all that shit and the queens admit that perhaps something can be arranged on both sides to achieve some sort of peaceful cooperation, if only they can make a good offer to beat the one from their enemies, who have arrived just before them and are offering 'something valuable' in return for their help in the upcoming war.

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>>44242674
Refusing to share the information about who of their enemies (Za'Sett, Asheran or anyone else) is currently staying in Covenaria and threatening to unleash hell on those who will disrupt the negotiations, the Witches acknowledge that there are things they might want from the party, if they agree to do so. Next thing they know, Belinda the Beautiful shamelessly asks Odric for a private meeting and then asks him to smite her ass so bad and give her babies. Not the kind to eat, she just wants to bear his child. Odric stoically refuses and asks the reason for this behaviour, because refusing the witch-queen brutally would perhaps mean the end of all chances to negotiate a treaty. Belinda moans that she has plans, but then realizes she won't get Odric's holy avenger and spills the beans: she holds a very ancient relic, a stone embedded with a prophecy carved by the first priest of azah, hailing the coming of the Chosen One of Azah as the father of the True King. She believes that by becoming the mother of the new King Beyond the Hills, she will be able to influence him and obtain power for herself. And, of course, get to be Odric's new mount for a bit, but Odric assures there will be no horizontal waltz between witchcraft and paladindom, so she better ask him something that won't taint him. She agrees to another deal, one that includes fetching some rare ingredients, found only in another world: the Tetrapartite Court of Faerie. The alternative was convincing Magdalan that her son Barku wasn't killed by the party, or crafting a ton of weapons for Mogragainn in a very small time. The party immediately decided to accept.

>>44242691
The quest was to get to the Court of Summer, one of the four realms of Faerie, the one aligned to sun and wind, and get half a pint of blood from the Stag King of the Summer Court, a lock of hair from his Nymph Queen, and a chain of a mighty beast imprisoned at the Court. Belinda brought them to the secret portal to the lands of Summer, and before letting them go he instructed them never to eat anything from Faerie, never to accept a deal without being sure of what would be given and taken, and to be careful about the time they spent there, as 'time flows different in Faerie'.
The party, believing this to mean that a few hours in the other world would equal to a much greater amount when back into their own, decided to hurry up and settle this as fast as they could. They got in, and crossed the forests to get to the court, but after hiring a dryad guide by selling Garrett's cock for a fast fuck half of the party got lost in the woods, while Baskor, Garrett himself and the unrelenting inquisitor Tarkus arrived to the gardens of the Stag King unharmed. The rest of the team, wandering the everchanging weird woods, found a strange iron-bearded dwarf chained to an oak stump, attempting to break the chains with a twig.

>>44242705
After a small discussion, they discovered the dwarf was the original Johan Widejaw, who disappeared from the world seven centuries ago to attempt and steal the Nymph Queen's virginity. Judging by his ageless imprisonment, he had gotten what he wanted, or perhaps got close to it. Still, once freed, he promised to help the team gather the ingredients if they helped him leave Faerie after the whole deal. The problem was he had eaten Faerie food during his long prison time and would have to ask the Stag King for forgiveness to leave, something he highly doubted.
Back to the Court, Tarkus went to the guy himself, a fairy lord with great wood armor, leaf-wings, and a huge stick up his ass. Despite wanting to crush the skulls of all those heathen abominations, the inquisitor knew that facing the entire Court's fury would be as good as signing his own death, so he acted obsequious and, against all odds, managed to convince the Stag King to let them have the ingredients without fighting, provided that they killed a monster of iron in the Summer Wastes and brought back proof of their deed. Once the rest of the party reached the gardens by slaying an avatar of wilderness guarding the way, the Stag King, truly impressed, added the pardon for Widejaw I as an extra.

>>44242717
Along the way the party managed to discover a few things about the whole Key schtick from Widejaw, and told him all the changes of over 800 years of absence. Widejaw seemed to appreciate the company of the team and helped them reach the Summer Wastes, where they had to kill the Mother of the Stymphalides. Picture the horrorchild of skarmory and zapdos and you'll get the powerlevel of the bitch.
Before reaching the nest they were ambushed by a scouting team of the Palace of Winter, the obvious fairy rival of the Stag King, sent to kill the King's emissaries and let the Stymphalides ravage the Summer realm. A bunch of ice-horse riding fucks and a fuckton of redcaps attacked the party, but were soundly beaten. The players were now clearly at a good power level to stop the Demon King, said Widejaw, perhaps not strong enough yet, but very close to making a difference. If they made it in time, they could stop the reopening of the Dungeon by force. The team was finding out high levels better than most parties I DMed in the past. Most of them were using fighting classes and hadn't broken through the levels with increased powerbuilds or stuff like that. They were powerful without excess. I was happy about that, because by then most parties would have stopped playing and made new characters for a new campaign, leaving the previous one for dead. This time, I wanted to finish the campaign with style.

>>44242723
The team reached the nest, a number of rock formations holed in many points, surrounding a huge tangle of iron barbs. The surrounding area was filled with thousands of small, sharp metal slivers.
Then the stymphalides swarms got out and everything turned to Pitch Black. The mother emerged soon after, leading one diving charge after another and ravaging most members of the party. The battle was hard, every swarm could split into many more units if needed, and distraction, constant bleed damage, deafening noises only contributed to fuck everything up. Occasionally, one of the secondary members like Tarkus, Me or Widejaw managed to create explosions, blasts or other shits to deal area damage to the swarms to help control the flow of battle, but the little metalbirds were clearly holding the edge of battle. Only with heavy damage losses, at the last drop of everyone's hp, the swarms were disperded, and the mother tackledin midair by Him, extending huge rubbery arms into the air and pinning the bitch's beak into the sand. When the party killed the iron monster, her chest opened to reveal a magic beak axe, a valuable ancient relic of the past that Baskor took for himself, despite still using the Key of Dwarves as multipurpose weapon.
Back to the Summer Court with no food rations left and a groveling hunger, the team received the prizes and got back to the portal. They were away for weeks of travel and all their rations were gone in order to carefully avoid Faerie food, so they were worried of what would await them across the swirling gate of leaves floating in front of them.

>>44242747
One by one, they crossed the portal. In front of them was Belinda, waiting for them in the same position they had left her. A midly surprised face welcomed them: she wasn't really expecting them to bring back all that stuff and survive without losses, and on top of it all, to make it in just a few minutes.
They turned horrified to Widejaw. He had been there for much, much more than 800 years. If a week passed as a minute, how long had the old thieves' king been chained to his stump? The dwarf passed the portal while, now free from Faerie's spell, suddenly aging by the second into a wizened, rotting carcass only barely breathing. He fell in Belinda's kind arms, who smiled at seeing him and welcomed him back with a fake-flirting tone. With his last breath, Widejaw attempted to steal a kiss from the Witch-Queen, securing his eternal record as the most successful thief in history, then dissolved into dust.
Belinda accepted the ingredients and declared the treaty official. In the next weeks, Hoberia would attack Grey Valley to reclaim the position of the Perdition Dungeon and the witches of Covenaria would help them.

>>44242753
Belinda still had to guarantee safe-conduct to the enemy emissaries who had come to Covenaria, and explained they would depart the next day to avoid confrontation. When the party agreed to leave on the same terms, they managed to catch up with the mysterious couple of cloaked emissaries, who turned to reveal... Amrion and his still masked bodyguard. The party immediately attempted to fight the lich, but this time, Baskor and Garrett weren't able to use their Keys in battle. As they turned to look to Amrion, he revealed the real keys, he had exchanged with copies last night. He also stole the Key of Witches and the Key of Roads, with which further swept the floor with the party. Before the team could attack him and his bodyguard with other weapons, he added he couldn't have done so without his accomplices... and pointed to the little goblin. The team turned to Me, trembling with rage, as he was crying and babbling rivers of words to excuse himself. Bored of all that crying drama, Amrion exiled him away with a spell, and explained he had convinced Him and Me in Besperlungen's lair and convinced both to cooperate and steal the keys at the opportune moment: he didn't really want to summon Yssarille, he said, but he wanted a proper confrontation in the darkest hour and the worst situation, just before freeing the demon king. He wanted to go out as a true, famous villain, against true heroes in the hour of doom. He actually cared enough about the party to make them heroes by becoming their nemesis.

>>44242774
They accused him of utter madness. He replied it was part of his schtick, he was named Amrion the Mad for no other reason; then he revealed he was tired of his unlife and wanted to be hated, to fuel enough hatred to finally motivate a group of heroes to seek him and destroy his phylactery, as his long-lost rival Orthos had died centuries ago, before they could have a proper last battle. Garrett cursed him while attacking him, and revealed, laughing with scorn, that Orthos was still alive in his village.
At this point, I had completely roleplayed the entire discussion down to facial expression. When TH delivered the news, I started grinning. Amrion was supposedly stretching his mouth into a hellish maw of creepy laughter. The lich suddenly changed his attitude, from jolly to scary determined, and literally said 'fuck everything, I can have my last battle! You fools go fight your stupid war for the world, I couldn't care less! I will now destroy everything until I find Orthos! See you in hell!' and teleported away.
The team was scared. Like, really scared. There was no other priority now, they had to save the elderly wizard from the psycho lich hellbent on killing him. They used the waystone they had obtained from Widejaw the Halfling, carefully conserved for a time like this, and managed to teleport barely a kilometer away from the village.

>>44242787
They ran like hell, and found Amrion standing before the old Orthos, who apparently didn't recognize his old nemesis and placidly invited him on his porch to have some tea. All of Amrion's killing intent crumbled and vanished into nothing. Reduced to a shell, a human-sized husk, the lich sheepishly joined Orthos on a seat and talked with him while holding back tears he could no longer shed. The bodyguard stepped forward, removed her helm, and revealed herself as the zombified corpse of Feulin. Once a great fighter, Amrion had revived his rival's fiancée to motivate him to fighting him to the bitter end, but it hadn't worked, so he just used her as a bodyguard since then. Feulin caressed the amnesiac Orthos, finding some solace after centuries of necromantic slavery.
After some time, Amrion and Feulin left Orthos' side and turned to the PCs. Amrion was now more calm, no more jokes. He simply asked Odric 'I have this entire village hostage if I so want. Bring me the Key of Faith. after this, I promise you a fair fight at the Dungeon. Will you please grant me death then?'
Odric was forced to agree. In the old sconsacrated church was the ghost of the chaplain who had raised Orthos. The Mask of Azah showed a secret dimensional door in the middle of the churchyard, hiding the Key. He handed it to the lich, who teleported away with Feulin without a word. On the other hand, the ghost silently led the party to Figure Five's mill, under which was Orthos' secret laboratory, built around a well of celestial fire sprouting from the depths of the world. Each character was asked to bathe one item in the fire to power it with the world's will to survive, so most of the characters obtained their last powerups before the great battle.

>>44242796
Back to Hoberia, the organization of the invasion force was a huge hassle, but having all those support troops, the battle to get to Fort Perdition was supposed to be easy, a blitzkrieg to the heart of the enemy lines.
It wasn't. The amount of undead was staggeringly high because Amrion hadn't just cast huge curses on the earth, animating every corpse and ghost into an army of mindless killers, he had also made a pact with a cabal of antipaladins, the same to which Burgunda, Gondral and Asheran belonged to, to bring back their high-ranking knights as vampire lieutenants to control the mindless undead. There were also voices of a terrible lady knight leading the defences. The war was hell, and by the time they arrived to the fort, housing a magic device to enforce extended night time in grey valley, they had lost most of their forces and war machines, while Mt. Anvil dwarves fought on the western front to avoid an attack from the back. In the end, at only a day of march from the fort, the dwarves mobilized a huge artillery named Barry's Cock, a huge cannon with a single, superpowered rocket-bullet coated in adamantium of the caliber of several metres. The damn thing could only be fired once, so they had to decide between destroying Fort Perdition and put an end fo the everlasting darkness, securing a better position on the territory, or fire it at the mountain next to it, destroying a lot of defenses in front of it by sheer avalanche and burying the entrance to the Perdition Dungeon. They chose the latter, and so had to secure the castle by might and courage alone: the front gate was opened, and a cadre of armored undead on nightmares appeared in front of the party.

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>>44242833
To lead this group of wretched bastards, two of the original members of the Van Graam family: Burgunda, riding her steed, had regained the gift of moving by dying first and being revived as a vampire by Za'Sett afterwards. Her bloodthirsty rage was fueling her use of a huge greatsword she claimed was the sign of the coming of their lord Yssarille. The other leader was a devourer, floating over the battlefield and feeding off Burgunda's father, now a poor soul trapped in the monster's chest. The team was frightened. Burgunda was the first partykiller of their small player experience. They expected her to come back to haunt them, but now of all the times, was just a nuisance. She was blocking the way, as she said. Asheran and the others had prepared another way into the depths of the mountain just to be sure nothing would stop them, and had entrusted her with the defense of the valley and all of the vampires' coffins (and with his tigercock for good measure, the dude was still good as ever at convincing psychochicks to do his bidding).
However, this time the party had a fuckton of levels, those who had succumbed to her strong attacks before had learned to cover themselves with good armor and good magic items, and when Garrett plunged again his sword into her chest, she exploded in a fiery burst of light, and so did her entourage soon after. Baskor was the closest to death as the devourer tried to eat him like a burger, but then the crazy dwarf jew cracked his head with the black beak axe of the stymphalides.
Finally the team reached the end. The enemy had gathered the Keys, and had opened the Dungeon. Inside, many traps awaited. And so the players entered, following the enemy, into one of the last chapters of the story.

>>44242848
First of all, they discovered the reason behind the name: the quartz mines owned by the Van Graam were the surface level of a special vein of magical mnemonic quartz used to drain memories. The corridors between each traproom were filled with clusters of such crystals, to make the raiders forget what they came for and die along the way. However, strong minds were still able to resist and Amrion had ordered to destroy them from a distance as they proceeded. Then the team reached the first of the five traprooms, the Descent of Doom. A familiar voice warns them: it's Orthos' memory, trapped inside, that works as the entire dungeon's AI and tries to convince them at every turn that they can still leave and survive. They ignore him and go on, facing a series of rolling boulders and spikes to the next room, the Stairway to Perdition. A spiral staircase descends further down, with giant steps the players have to get off of fast if they want to avoid the scythes coming out of the walls. After one step is stepped on, it starts retracting in a round and can force people to fall down and get scythed along the way. Jumping to empty space at the center only activated a flying buzzsaw that went up and down. Only after a ton of time, with everyone losing a ton of blood and going down rather funnily for some time, Baskor realizes, after getting very close to the bottom, that he had been wearing a feather fall ring on his finger since the very beginning of the Syntelburg Castle rescue story arc. And never fucking mentioned it. Once he fell down and avoids the buzzsaw, he deactivated the trap from the bottom and finally gave a chance to breathe to his companions. Then, the true danger of this dungeon unfolded itself in front of them: the Perdition Tesseract.

>>44242867
I used the advice from some anons here on /tg/ to make a tesseract of my own. Every room had a special system that activated upon crossing the door in the same direction for three times in a row, leading to the final room, and then brought back to the first room if anyone crossed the same door a fourth time. To actually get out, one had to activate one of the strange greenish square gongs situated in every room's corner. Sounding one of these revealed they were made from a magical version of a radioactive material: if struck, it expelled a wave that changed the doors' destinations between a condition of switch on/off, but also released a huge amount of harmful radiation proportionately damaging to how close the PCs were to it. Only the last room's gong was helpful, but no hints were dropped until very late in the session. Obviously, without even attempting to use it, the players had sensed its danger, but not it's necessary usefulness, and were almost paralyzed by fear. In fact, they didn't know what to do and discussed for hours the way to solve the multidimensional maze without actually traversing it. They had just put their heads through it once and had discovered that every room spawned gelatinous cubes. They had slowed so much their advancement that they were actually locked there in terror. At this point, quite pissed off, OP2, angry, yelled at the party for suddenly becoming a herd of sheep, and proceeded to make some attempts at crossing the maze, starting with experimenting with the gong. He brutally stroke the gong with his heirloom hammer, failed his save, and was disintegrated by a staggering constitution loss down to the very bone. Only his hammer and his armored cat companion, Freghieri, survived.

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>>44242878
The party was speechless. OP2, despite dying uncerimoniously, was still convinced of what he had done and at this point the team had even less resolve than before. When they finally made it to a few chambers forward, I reluctantly added a concealed writing on the walls by Amrion, deeming them too stupid to solve a puzzle like this and giving them a cryptic hint to the solution. This eventually made them pass the maze, but with the loss of their friend. I however ruled that the cat himself spoke once to prophetize his master would still need his hammer one last time, and followed the party into the dungeon while one of them carried the weapon for him.
The next traproom was called Obsidian Inferno, a cathedral of glass golems near a pool of lava. A huge furnace golem blocked the path to the next room and poured lava into the pool as a waterfall covering the exit. The PCs simply resorted to using their superior speed to outflank the golems, and lured the bigger one out of his position, then sneaked out of the room in small time.
Then everything fell into the darkness.

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>>44242892
Something lurking in the shadows was attacking them, every time a death attack barely avoided. Za'Sett remained behind to stop the heroes, and had a bone to pick with Odric and Garrett. It took a thousand years for TH to realize the reason behind this was that he, of all the members of the team, had two swords specifically designed to aim at the heart and to kill undead with sunlight bursts. When he had received all the hints I could drop, finally got the idea of stabbing the damn vampire in the heart after pinning him down. With no coffin to go back to (they had destroyed them in Fort Perdition), the vampire nigger cried his last shriek into the darkness and vanished while Garrett exulted 'Die, charcoal!'. Ahead, was the last room. The AI of the Dungeon announced: 'The End of the Road. You have been warned before. There's no salvation ahead. You can still turn back. You can still live.'
Inside, the remaining group. The Baron Osric Quintin, Asheran, En-Ssandre, Amrion and Feulin. The evil team turns to face the PCs. Amrion asks for a great death, the PCs tell him they'll do what they can. En-Ssandre is the first to strike. Everyone manages to survive her first gaze, and Aegnor makes sure there's no need to save again by striking her down with a single strike of his greataxe. The blow is so powerful she dies in the first turn.

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>>44242931
Asheran runs ahead to avenge his snakebitch and is met by both Odric and Garrett, who begin a dance of swords with the tiger monk, deflecting attacks with his claws. Soon the rain of attacks starts getting through, and eventually Asheran is cut across the chest and the scrotum, falling in a pool of his own blood and ichor. Amrion claims the party is not trying hard enough, the game is too easy. So he casts disjunction on the mindsphere that cages the Key of the Abyss, and Yssarille's corrupting thoughts flood the room as the room starts to crack and lava comes seeping through. Making movie references completely outside of the game universe, Amrion starts summoning swarms of locusts, mad monkeys, a t-rex and a thousand more creatures while riding his hellbred lizard out of the blue. On the ground, Feulin unwillingly defends him from Aegnor and Baskor, but soon Baskor turns to the Key: Osric Quintin isn't strong enough to resist the Key's whispers, and crawls across the wracked floortiles. The baron climbs the steps to the Key, forgetting himself in the process through the clusters of mnemonic crystals, and before Baskor can strike him down for good, he touches the huge sword, which turns, twists and starts eating him alive while he cries and laughs.
Rebuilding itself from the feast, the Demon King Yssarille rises with three words: 'I AM HUNGRY.'
He starts pulling Baskor, the first thing he sees, close to himself, to kill him and replenish himself completely, but while the team runs to help the dwarf and ignores Amrion, a flash of celestial light bursts against the demon king.
A figure clad in wizard clothes appears: it's Orthos.

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>>44242955
The mindbubble was the cornerstone of the Dungeon's control magic, and once dispelled, its energy source, Orthos's mind, went freely back to its owner. Orthos gathered his old spellbook and, since the dungeon isn't protected anymore from external interference, came back into the sealing room to help defeat the monster. Yssarille moves to strike down the old menace, but Amrion's horde of monkeys and dinosaurs blocks the path. The lich won't let anyone touch his precious rival. Yssarille decides that the party, Orthos, Amrion and Feulin are beyond his actual powers: he needs lifeforce to feed on and Baron Osric was too little a life to provide a full meal. He opens his wings, reaps his deceased minions' souls, and flashes out of the crumbling dungeon, headed for his home plane for calling his kind to invasion. Inside, Amrion finally catches Orthos' attention. The old saint wizard acknowledges his desire, and reveals the thing Amrion gave him at the village: a small frame with a picture of two young friends, two students of the arcane arts. The picture is Amrion's most precious treasure, and his phylactery. He destroys the picture, and they start exchanging blows so powerful the only thing left of the lich is a cracked skull and some dissolving bones who cackle one last laugh: 'The voices are gone.' And he dies.
Orthos turns to the party, gives them a waystone to escape, and explains it's up to them to stop the demon king once and for all. If killed in their world, he would just be banished for another century, but if they find him in his own realm, he will die for good. They ask him to join this last quest, but he explains that now that his immortal dweomer is broken, the years are suddenly catching up and there's nothing more he'd like to do.
They leave him with Feulin, and they hug while the Perdition Dungeon buries their dusty remains.

>>44242966
The party gets out. Yssarille is on the run, the road to Endworld a path of dead monsters. The team summons their mounts and starts the chase, but once back to the plateau, Odric must make a fated stop first. The darkest hour comes roaring, and he seeks a small wooden house. He finds it easily: a wretched house with an old wooden door, and a tree besides the house. Odric knocks, is invited inside by the old lame man who sits in the penumbra. The man bluntly asks him why he's there and Odric tells him his full title and his prophecy and all that jazz to which the old man calls him 'Your Majesty' and replies he doesn't give a shit. Odric is baffled. What does this man mean really? What's the big deal with this prophecy? How should this help save the world? Then the guy tells him that being the Chosen One is just hiding behind a stupid title: before those robed faggots in Hoberia recognized his deeds and set Azah's trial for him he still was himself. He urges Odric to think deeply about everything he has come through and everyone he's come across and to how little the title of paladin is worth in the face of the actual facts: there are many people with as much zeal as him, with as much faith as him, with as much power as him and with many other qualities he doesn't even have, even in his own Church. And yet he's the Chosen One. 'Why?' he keeps asking to motivate Odric to get to the heart of the question. GG was perplexed, but kept seeking the true answer. Was it because he was chosen by the people? By the high council? By his friends? By everyone he had saved? By everyone he didn't save?

>>44242979
The old man dismissed all as answers that were good and all, but weren't the right one. Odric thought it was because of what Father Colbert had seen in him when he was found by the Church, and then the old man agreed. Odric delved deeper into that revelation: what had his adoptive father see in him? He was just an orphan.
'That's where you're wrong' said the old man. 'You can save this world because Azah chose you from birth. Because she is inextricably bound to you.'
'Are you trying to imply that Azah is my mother?' said Odric. The man waved a big no. 'Of course not, your majesty.'
Then GG realized. His character was tough and strong, one of the best fighters. He had a kind approach, healed people, and packed quite the punch. He was prophesized to father the new King.
He had been the King's son all along.
He had met his father and didn't recognize him. Heck, he even saw him die. Father Colbert probably saw that in him, or the King himself entrusted him with baby Odric. The King admitted that he used to go down the mountains to have some fun, but he never explicitly stated what kind of fun he had. And it wasn't even the first time he did it: the old man had been a Chosen One before, and so many others. Chosen One was the title to determine the King's heirs who had, over the centuries, served Azah.
'And as such, Azah uses us as the vessel of her power, the enforcer of our father's oath. You are your father's son, but also yourself, with all your vices and virtues. Your title and your power you owe to your father, but your moral, your will to save the world and your true strength to accomplish this are yours and yours alone.'
I had intended to make it as a motivational speech not only for GG's character, but for him too. GG started crying because of the revelation and was truly moved. This was another of the best parts of playing with this group, and it's a cornerstone of my achievements as a GM.

>>44242987
The old man, in truth another Chosen One and the ghastly guidance to all the Chosen Ones to come, asked Odric to repair his door making a new one out of the tree. Not questioning the order, Odric started working on it with his high-leveled crafting skills, and every time, the old man told him the work wasn't good enough, and encouraged him to try again: every time, the tree grows back, and time stands still while he puts all his efforts into carving the wood. By the time he's finally done, he realizes the old broken door he removed from the threshold isn't a piece of broken wood, but a powerful magical tower shield. Adding this last part to his warrior's panoply, Odric promised to come back to visit the ghosts of his brothers soon and left to meet again with his friends.

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>>44242999
The travel to the Palace of Endworld was a quiet one. The only voice echoing in the wind was the whisper of the bellflowers, teaching the story of Endworld. They stated the Palace was a dimensional crossroad to all worlds, realms, planes and godly domains. Before the King's first coming, the world had faced many invasions from many different forces over the course of aeons of multidimensional war. Some stuff happened thousands of years before and some sort of treaty was signed by all higher powers not to interfere with other worlds by attacking them. Over the course of millenia, one infraction struck this world: Yssarille, Demon King of the Star Devourers, demonic pirates destroying star by star in the many dimensions connected by the Palace. After wasting their remaining resources on the plane they were on, they attempted to attack this one, only to be pushed back just after attempting to get in. Their commander and lord was sealed to prevent them from coming back, as he was the only one able to control the star-devouring ship they sailed on, and so centuries passed while the demons were forced to emigrate and leave the ship in the waning dimension they had destroyed.

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>>44243011
When they finally entered through one of the thousand doors of the Palace, they faced a multidimensional highway, crowded with refugees of many worlds, escaping before the wrath of Yssarille erupted again. They hired a guide, a hooded tiefling who had worked as ship's boy on Yssarille's vessel in the past, and ventured into the collapsing dimension where the ship was. The god of that place had died and his heart, a cold shell of a star that Yssarille had tried to melt and eat, was cracked by the hull of the nation-spanning barge of the demon lord. They eventually found their way to the black cathedral at the ship's incandescent bow, and entered. On the throne was Yssarille, ready to deal the finishing blow to the cold star, and prepared with some new additions to his crew.

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>>44243021
Bloodthirsty as ever, Burgunda came back one last time, now more twisted and monstrous than ever, dripping blood from her metal-clad beastly form. On the side, in a marilith's body, En-Ssandre had her gorgon eyes sewn open to stand in eternal watch. And, at the demon lord's feet, a beast more twisted than the other two: a huge demonic cat whose tortured cries of pain are too familiar. Asheran received his final reward, turning into a mindless monster asking for death.
The last fight begins like the last one: with Aegnor making sure there's no need for more than one saving throw. This time the rain of arrows he fires is so heavy he doesn't even need to get close to kill her in the first round. Burgunda reveals herself as a tougher foe, and absorbs quite a lot of punishment before getting serious and speaking words of doom that make the character stand paralyzed.

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>>44243028
However, something in the shadows of the cathedral undoes the magic, helping the unkowning warriors from behind the lines. Yssarille hasn't risen yet from his obsidian throne, using the magic diamonds on his armrests to command the ship's final onslaught. It's only when Asheran's mercifully killed by Garrett and Burgunda is bound to the ground by grey chains of faith, that the demon king decapitates her for her sheer incompetence and replenishes what health Aegnor and Baskor took away. Then rises, and his flames turn pitch black. With a rain of wrathful strikes, he captures and decapitates Baskor, regenerating his own life.
Everyone gasps.
And even then, when everything seems lost, a new help comes from the shadows.

File: Tarkus.jpg (276 KB, 2265x1593) Image search: [Google]

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>>44243053
Something big and burly moves about, and a ghastly figure comes forth, his cat by his side, his father's hammer in his hands, and a broken ring of a halo behind his eternally frowning face. Tarkus was banned from Azah's halls into Endworld, until he redeemed himself for all the exaggerated zeal he used in Hoberia. So he ventured Yssarille's ship with only another lost soul, one who still needed to be forgiven for its deeds.

File: WE.jpg (694 KB, 2464x1624) Image search: [Google]

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>>44243065
As the party corners and puts the demon on his knees to avenge the dwarf, a shambling abomination runs into it with big arms wide open and two cacophonic voices out of its mouths. Me/Him, struggling with their mutating form, lock the demon into the ground, and as Odric and Garrett strike him with their swords, they push their friends away before the demon spasms into its last death throes. With one last cry in unison they shout 'Me... Him... WE loved you all!' before taking the full blast of the demon. Before the party can mourn their lost mascot, Tarkus points to the diamonds on the throne, now turned to two philosophers' stones, and then to the crumbling systems of the infernal ship, that is now on the verge of collapsing completely inside the star. They escape barely with both the stones and their friends' corpses, getting back to the gate, but Tarkus stops. He has done his part, and now has to stay behind. He is already a waning spirit, so he will come back to Azah's Halls eventually. The inquisitor tells his cat to be a good pet for Odric's son, and then activates the celestial fire ability of his hammer: it can strike once with all its might to destroy something irredemably. With his last energies, Tarkus pushes the others through and strikes the portal. When they emerge back in the Palace of Endworld, behind them is a white wall without a door.
The journey back home is long and silent. Thanks to his paladin's powers, Odric manages to revive Baskor and Aegnor's tiger, killed in the last battle, and uses one philosopher's stone to revive the goblin who now calls himself We. Once they come back to the feuds and to Hoberia, the last philosopher's stone is used to resurrect Father Colbert, the one who was killed at the beginning of the whole story, to guide Hoberia in the future.

File: Yssarille (end battle).jpg (707 KB, 2552x1576) Image search: [Google]

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>>44243085
Odric and Brianna move together in Orthos'Village and name their child after the wizard who protected the world for so long. Orthos Jr. is eerily wise and it seems that the King lives on through him, with all his past memories in the new, kind frame. Garrett moves in the village too, and after trafficking for years with a cure for his sterility, finally has a daughter with the girl he met before. Baskor deposes his weapons, starts working as a merchant and eventually becomes the next Johan Widejaw. When everybody starts lamenting Aegnor's absence, Garrett tells them he heard from other witchers that the the wererat hunter used all the money from his adventures to pay for the recovery of a rare item. Aegnor himself is seen years later with two half-elf kids, and his new wife Vari, brought back with another philosopher's stone. They now live on the Land Beyond the Hills, and patrol it with We, new goblin hero and giantslayer extraordinaire.

And so it ends.

Thanks for reading, /tg/. Tell me what you think of it, if you will.