D&D "Season Finale"

For those of you who read my D&D escapades, I have just gotten home from my most recent session, which I and all of my players are declaring as the end of a major Arc. A "season finale" if you will, which will continue onto season two next week. I have titled this session "The Darkening Skies" in my usual literary format, and it started as thus...

This week, we had three players at the beginning of the session.
Greg as The Knight with his cohort The Hood
Dave as Nicolas Cage the Summoner
and Adam returning as Bartholomew the Barbarian.
about halfway into the session Bryan as Domino the Summoner walked in.

Something to remember about last session is that when Domino the Summoner died temporarily by Deathclaw Attack, I delivered unto him a Vision of the Future. It is far too long to post here, but I will put it on a google doc and provide the link to you. This Link right here. I would just like to take a moment and say that I wrote this in the Second Person for the benefit of it's intended reader; I personally despise second person and every moment writing this was painful. You'll see a lot of changes between past and present tense in there, I don't know which one to use when doing second person stories.

This session started out with the cast of the previous inside the sewers, quickly leaving to relax for a few days having found the next terminal for IC-1101 and knowing the location of the next one, but not quite ready to head out yet. Bryan's Summoner goes off to make magic items, Ryan's Warrior leaves to upgrade his robotic companion, and Conor's Oracle and cohort shove off on a mini-pilgrimage. The party has a couple of days of rest, and then we get to the fun stuff.

Nicolas Cage goes off to perform at a bar, where he encounters Bartholomew, whose been looking for them ever since they last split up. They hang out for a while, and Bartholomew talks about how he's trying to go find his father, who he never knew but always sent child support money. At the same time, Bartholomew is also trying to get off of the drugs he's become so dependent upon.

Meanwhile, The Knight wanders about the slums, looking for trouble. He beats up a group of gangsters and attracts the attention of some other blokes, who pull him aside and say that they're looking for some tough new members for one final job they got going on. They take The Knight to their leader, who is in fact currently talking to a reaper who will be leading them. Who is the reaper? None other than The Jester, The Knights arch-nemesis. An expy of The Joker, the Jester is just as insane but scarily more competent, and much more cocky. The Jester recognizes the Knight in his disguise, and 'invites' him to meet him at somewhere at midnight. The Knight informs Nicolas Cage that he will be off stopping a villainous gangster plot tonight, and leaves important MacGuffin IC-1101 in his care.

The Knight and his cohort scope out the building that the Jester wants to meet them at; a twenty-story relic of the old world that can be seen from most of the city. The Jester arrive five minutes before midnight, and begins animatedly talking with The Knight about how he and so many others have been following them around the continent to get their hands on IC-1101, and that he brought him up here to "the best seats in the house for when the show begins!". The Knight attempts to grapple him and force him to divulge what he is planning, but The Jester slips out of his grasp and runs to a corner of a building, where he strikes a flare and waves it.

Immediately, explosions go off underneath many parts of the city, the flare being a signal for several raider groups that had been waiting underneath key government buildings. After the explosions, Raiders jump out into the streets, burning and pillaging all that they see. The Knight and The Hood attack The Jester, who pulls out his Reaper Emblem and drops it on the floor, saying "If you can beat me, it's yours." The Knight has been collecting these emblems from reapers that he has killed. The Knight demands to know where Deus is, the mechanical monstrosity that has been chasing them since day one. The Jester let's him know that Deus is on his way up, and will probably be there quite soon (10 rounds), and that if they want to kill him they should do it quickly, because "I would so love to fight you now, and spill your blood onto the city, and Deus wants to do that himself."

It's a hard fight for The Knight, who takes a good deal of damage before the Jester falls. The Hood warns The Knight not to kill a defenseless man, but The Knight reaches down and snaps The Jester's neck. (This was all character development on Greg's part, since he plays both characters present here.) The Hood abandons ship before Deus arrives, but The Knight quickly takes anything that he can use to fight Deus from The Jester's body and turns to face the door.

Back to Nicolas and Bartholomew. The explosions have blown in the front wall of the inn they were at, revealing an awakening and terrified city. The two of them run out and help, becoming embroiled in a street fight with several raiders who prove to be a tough challenge for them (I'm getting better at this balancing thing!). After the fight, they continue on, dousing fires and battling against raiders (offscreen, of course. far too much to do in so little time.)

Meanwhile, on the rooftop, Deus bursts through the door to the rooftop where the Knight is waiting for him. the Knight taunts him, and makes Deus think that he has IC-1101 on him. They battle, and Deus beats The Knight. Soundly. He falls unconscious, and we switch back to Nicolas and Bartholomew. They are still fighting raiders sporadically, and are joined by The Hood, signing that The Knight is most surely dead. Domino/Caduceus the Rock Golem smacks down an enemy that was just about to ambush them, and joins the party (He finally got to the session at this time.)

At this point, they are debating about what to do; whether they should go try to save The Knight or to escape while they can with IC-1101. Deus' voice booms out across the city, demanding to 'The Knight's friends' that if they do not bring IC-1101 as a trade, he will kill the Knight within five minutes. Nicolas Cage, being an all-around good guy, immediately heads off to confront Deus and save The Knight, with no intention of handing over IC-1101 (despite the fact that he's the one holding it even though he's the squishy caster). Bartholomew follows loyally, Domino cautiously, and The Hood reluctantly. When they reach the building that Deus is in, he is holding The Knight unconscious over the edge, but he sees them and will not drop him yet.

They go up the stairs and buff, ready for a fight. Bryan, cautious from the dream that he had of the future, is fully prepared to talk with Deus and find out why he needs IC-1101 so badly, but The Hood immediately fires a storm of arrows as soon as they arrive (stupid flat-footed rules.) Deus drops The Knight off of the side of the building, and Nicolas Cage immediately jumps after him, trying to save him.

This entire session has plenty of highlights, but this is definitely within my top three. Dave, having jumped off the building and caught the Knight, doesn't have any way to save himself (completely lacking a little spell known as feather fall). So what does he decide to do? He decides to punch the ground as he lands.

Bryan: Why would you do that!?!
Me: Well, he readied an action so that he could do this and save The Knight. Besides, I'm running on No Take Back Theater rules now. It's said, it's done. Now, Dave, you've just jumped off of a 200 ft tall building. Do you have any idea how you're going to survive this?
Adam: You're dead dude. (He proceeds to start turning this into an actual physics problem for him to solve on paper)
Dave: Well, how far is it to the next building across the street?
Me: 30 feet. If you angle yourself, you could probably still make it.
Dave: Hmm... Well. What if I punch the ground?
Me: Lolwut?
Dave: Force Punch, that spell you gave me. Could I use it to negate some of the falling damage?
Adam: NO I JUST DID THE MATH GUYS AND HE TOTALLY WOULDN'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO-
Me: YOUR PHYSICS HAVE NO PLACE HERE IN FANTASY LAND! Punch the ground, Dave!
(Adam and Greg still go on about physics while Dave and I are discussing Force Punches)
Dave: Okay, so that's 10d4. 24 damage.
Greg: Not a lot; but what's the conversion between a point of force damage and an amount of energy? I certainly don't know, do you know? You don't know.
Me: Hold on, lemme hypothesize things here. (Greg and Adam continue arguing loudly)
Me: Okay, so, Dave, you meant to jump and are prepared to land, so that's some dice off, you force punched and did damage and made a fort save that I threw at you so that's some more dice off... How much HP do you have?
Dave: 41.
Me: Alright, so that's going to be 10d6 damage, you're getting awfully lucky here, but Greg might not, since he's already at -4. He'll be landing on top of you, so some of his damage will be negated and some of it will be transferred to you, but he'll still take one-quarter of the total amount.
(I roll damage dice, and deal 28, below average. Greg takes 7 damage and Dave takes 35.)
Me: Alright Dave, as you reaches the ground you throws your fist forward and casts force punch, decimating the concrete around your impact point. All of the bones in your right arm are completely shattered to oblivion, and you fall to the ground with The Knight on top of you, but you are alive.

The aftermath of this exchange brought the Knight within two hitpoints of death, and Nicolas Cage is going to need to have his arm amputated and replaced with a prosthetic limb (his bones aren't going to repair themselves in the right way anytime soon, even with magical healing.) Now, back on the rooftop, Bryan manages to calm Deus down long enough to have a semi-reasonable conversation, in which some names are dropped, including Sanguine, who is who Deus wants to collect IC-1101 for because Sanguine will help Deus achieve his full transformation. It looks like Deus might even surrender and help them until he realizes that he doesn't want to share the power of IC-1101 with anyone. The Hood unleashes another flurry of arrows and the combat begins anew. Deus manages to take out a good chunk of Domino and Bartholomew's HP before Bartholomew succeeds at a critical hit, prompting Deus to detonate all of the munitions in his body before he dies.

So now The Hood, Domino, and Bartholomew are on a rooftop with an exploding Deus. The Hood uses his grappling hook plus his monk slow-fall ability to get to the ground swiftly, Domino uses his Dimension Door class ability to get to the ground (Really I can't take it away from him without him bitching goddamn it I really need to kill his character off for real next arc), so that just leaves the barbarian, who doesn't have any fancy teleporting or slow-fall abilities. So what does he do? He grabs Deus, and throws him off of the roof instead. Deus explodes in midair, taking out a good chunk of the building with him, and it begins to collapse. Bartholomew grabs the door that used to be attached to the roof access and boards down the building as it collapses. He doesn't roll well though, and still takes a lot of damage from the fall. He saves against massive damage though, and doesn't die. So now all of the party is alive and relatively intact. Bartholomew has a broken leg, Nicolas Cage needs to have his arm amputated, and The Knight will need several weeks of bed rest even with magical healing (he caught a grenade with his chest during his fight with Deus.) A good end to the first plot arc, right?

Not quite. Domino is still paranoid from the dream that he had. So the next night, while the Hood is guarding The Knight in the hospital, Domino teleports in as his eidolon, and swiftly knocks out The Hood. He then has one final conversation with The Knight, and then smothers him, hoping that this will keep the horrible future that he saw in his vision from coming to pass. (Negative Karma! Greg totally didn't see this coming, either)

The Hood wakes up the next morning, and finds that his best friend is now dead. With John nowhere to be found, the only person left that The hood can really trust is Nicolas Cage. The Hood warns him that Domino may have turned evil and murdered The Knight. Nicolas Cage, still in possession of IC-1101, leaves the city before he even has a chance to get his prosthetic arm, not telling any of his companions. Both of them are worried, because while Nicolas has the Silver Bullet, Domino still has Krauss' Folly, and there are at least seven more bullets left unaccounted for. No one wants to leave Folly in the hands of someone possibly evil, but Nicolas is in no shape to fight him. The Hood departs the city as well, to retreat into meditation.

...
...
...

And that ended the session. My god. I was impressed. I knew that Bryan had thought about killing Greg's character, but I didn't actually think that he would go through with it. Let's recap.

At the end of the session, two of the major recurring villains are down; one of them taking an entire building with him while he was at it.
One of my players is dead; and I didn't even do it. (Not from lack of trying. I did throw him off of a building.)
One of my OTHER players may be making a slide towards evil having murdered one of his teammates. (The coin is still up in the air on this one.)
The party has effectively disintegrated; with Nicholas Cage taking the MacGuffin and leaving, and half of the party is missing.

Honestly, I couldn't be more proud. This is a brilliant story after this session, and all of my players agree with me on this. Now over the course of the next week I'll be speaking with them all over skype individually so that I can discuss with them what their characters will be doing over the course of this "time skip" that it looks like we'll have, lasting from anywhere from six months to a year. They should be careful, for they are now alone in a world where ancient things that once slumbered are now waking, and the peace of the realm balances on the edge of a knife.

EDIT: Dungeon Master's note: You know that you run an engaging campaign when you make your players so caught up in the plot that they forget to loot the bodies of their fallen foes. Loot is one of the player's sole reasons for existing, and if they forget to do that then you know you've done something right.

Comments

[Bronze Statue]

The campaign I'm in is so intense we don't even stop to loot usually. It's a little railroad-ey, but the DM is trying to experiment with some new stuff. It's fun. The wizard decided to open the magically-trapped chest and read the magic plane shift scroll inside instead of letting me (the rogue who couldn't have read the spell, therefore preventing it from being activated) get the first crack at the loot. Now we're in the plane of Shadow, and I'm the only character not severely threatened (and then, only because my race gets power from the shadows. We're all level 5.)