The Story So Far Redux

Our crew has had many adventures over the past few months to get to this point. Accidentally killing Dingiri nobility on an escort mission across the Lower Sun Sea, they found themselves flung across the globe by the wrath of the water dragon god of Trade and Seafaring, Matsya, landing in the outer crust of the Upper Sun Sea. The caravan they were escorting lost, they set out into a confusing network of crystal caves. Gathering an exorbitant amount of riverine crystals as they escaped a horde of rust monsters, they set out into the calm waters towards Chelonia, the mithral city carved into the back of the dragon turtle god of Protection, Kurma. Readily breaking the economy with a truckload of rare materials, the party took a few odd jobs wiping out pirates before heading deeper into the Sun Sea to petition Matsya for atonement.

                Upon arriving at the lighthouse city, they were faced with earning citizenship to freely take in the sights, and did so readily. They took up many quests and successfully captured a dragon hoard in the game of Xorvintaal, losing the venerable monk Asheed in the process. Evi’jien used the earnings to undergo experimental Illithid surgery, gaining the monstrous features of a minotaur. The cleric-knight Levin convinced the party to follow up a lead on the local church of his god, Rune, the god of Destruction. This path led them deep into the abyss, through the fungal forest, where the first vestiges of demonic presence were felt. Finding the massive corpse of a young thunder behemoth, Levin bartered with a mad druid they found in the forest, obtaining enough black onyx to raise the beast from the dead.

The cult’s trail led through a segment of the desert of glass, where a chuck of the Old World had emerged, settled by Carracan humans, who named it Century. It was here that Cabella joined the Paragnostic Assembly and Sneaky Pete got his hands on a functioning Abrams tank. The party found the cult at war with a small group of Old World humans attempting to recover an ancient weapon with the power to demolish a city, deep inside a salt mine. Ever ready to obtain power, the party delved deep within, obtaining many Old World relics. Their tag-along cleric of Rune discharged the force of a nuclear warhead into a specially prepared relic staff, dying in the process. They were confronted by an avatar of Rune thereafter, who traded a powerful staff of destruction for the unwieldable weapon the cleric made.

                Back in Century, the party picked up a quest to do away with a dry lich and his men, who had been harassing supply lines on their way through the desert. Pete went undercover and investigated the cult of Phyrtha surrounding the lich. While preparing for the impending fight, the party picked up a new member, Melchizdek the warforged alchemist. After fighting their way to the lich, he presented them with a non-hostile solution to free him and his cult from the temple where he was trapped. Going through with the mind-spinning request, they retrieved his canopic jars from their respective dreamlands. However, before returning the jars to the lich, Melchizdek demanded he give up the men who killed so many caravaneers. Eternally faithful to his followers, the lich took umbridge and a fight broke out. As the battle ended, the absence of Sneaky Pete was noticed. He must have snuck off somewhere. Several loud explosions went off outside, and the behemoth zombie Levin left to guard the tank made short work of leveling the cultist’s makeshift town.

                As the party raced out the door to fight the remaining cultists, they saw the  auto-piloted tank finish blowing apart a massive weirdstone that had anchored the temple onto the material plane. As the stone broke apart, the form of a human was revealed, bellowing forth an evil aura. Cabella identified him as the devil lord of Stygia, Levistus. Evi’jien dumped a full magazine of holy bullets from his bible-thumping rifle into him and the fight was on. As the temple grounds spiraled through many layers of the abyss, the crew did battle with the newly awakened devil, culminating with him wiping Levin’s memory and plane shifting away, leaving the party with a boon for freeing him and putting up a good fight. The group now found themselves smaller, a paltry three in the center of a rusted desert, deep within an abyss of gnashing gears, Mechanus.

                Resting a full week, they grabbed the attention of a beholder surveying the newly arrived temple. He told them of an axial dragon who’d gone mad after reading from the books he found from their sacred archive. Vowing to return the books, the party set out to free the dragon of the chaos that gripped him. They delved into the raw chaos which changed them in severe ways. Evi’jien’s lawful power grew to define him, Cabella’s flesh withered off the bone, and Melchizdek’s form became as elemental stone. Rescuing the true form of the mad dragon, they force-fed him to himself, breaking the curse as well as freeing the warforged slaves he’d taken in his madness. One of them, a hulking juggernaut named Oldren, joined the party in their travels.

                They returned the books to the beholder, who allowed Cabella a glimpse into the forbidden knowledge within. Great insight was given into the origins of the Nebulim and Devils, as well as leads on powerful artifacts deeper into the Abyss. Taking their leave of the temple, the party traveled up the face of a neighboring gear, where they destroyed a lesser Devil to gain the trust of the ant-centaur folk (Formians), who gave them safe passage through their hive. Nearing the edge of the gear, they found a gnome-run tavern near a portal to Fruschia. A tough-looking woman there beseeched them to help steer a law-bringer construct off the trail of her friend. They did so by coincidence, starting a race with him in the morning and disabling his motorcycle before trapping him in the air and dousing him in glue. The girl thanked them and took off on his cycle, her actions in repairing the totaled vehicle in a single gesture hinting at some hidden power. Leaving the law-bringer to his sticky fate, the crew took off for the next gear; the vaunted land of Xen’drik.

                Xen’drik is an infamous destination for experienced adventurers. Once a secretive island full of danger, it now holds a central position in Mechanus and draws heavy traffic due to its bevy of ancient ruins full of material and mineral wealth. As the innkeeper said, crews from all over the Nexus have been pouring in, most notably a contingent of Dingiri dragon-ilk and a full clergy led by a man shining with holy light. (Cabella’s insight into forbidden things led him to believe this was an avatar of the god of the Sun, Hanu). Arriving at a temple, the party had to clear out a bramble beast and reactivate the poral within. Their first foray into the portal brought them face to face with a stone colossus guarding a minor creation forge. The enormous golem proved to be no match for a hastily arranged ballista full of tree-sized splitting arrows manned by Evi’jien. His falling mass crushed Oldren flat. Melchizdek and his aides worked tirelessly for hours to piece him back together. MVP of the mission, the warforged alchemist bypassed the hostile constructs within the facility. The crew repaired a wrecked warforged there, who claimed to be over a thousand years old. He had the hardware to prove it, as well. Taking over the creation forge’s production, Shear the ancient machine man joined the party, offering support in the way of a place to call home. When they returned to the temple, Shear began reconstruction immediately, establishing the temple as an forward operating base for any enterprising adventurers. He even went so far as to repair the unfortunate side-effects the raw chaos reaped on Evi’jien. Through the ingestion of a trance-inducing brew of primordial ooze mixed with a bit of chaos, he conducted a séance with his old draconic form and rebuilt himself anew. Shear then sat the party down for a long info-dump, explaining how the dark god Rune is responsible for the warped state of the Abyss, having killed the pantheon of three worlds before angering the overgod and being smote into his current form, his portfolios and divinity scattered across the land. With an all-too-serious plot hook look in his robo-eye, Shear explained that Rune was on his way to resurrecting an ancient dragon of destruction that is his true form, Tinjin. He then went on to plot dump about all the playable races that have unlocked up to this point, which will be featured in my next post. Enjoy!