Oh, and I forgot

The M&M session was preceded by a D&D session.

The rescue process continued. Unfortunately, a guard poked his head into the building, saw us, and raised the alarm before being killed. Furthermore, the building apparently had shoddy construction, as Garcin's telekinetic slams sent him flying through the roof, further advertising our presence. Everyone summoned the shuttlecraft, packed aboard (except for the saboteur, who was tunneling to the other detainment buildings), and started making runs back to the Calisa.

At this point, we decided that there was no point in being subtle anymore, as what looked like the city's whole army was descending upon our breakout attempt, so we called in the rest of the fleet and began shelling the city. In the meantime the PCs had been located a half-mile beneath a large tower, so Meteledes ordered the Calisa to fly over the tower and focus all of its weaponry straight down until we had cracked the prison wide open. Koslov reappeared on the scene, having somehow escaped, and joined in the attack with a brutality never previously displayed.

Seismic rumblings began across the map. Seconds later, the tower broke open to make way for the ascent of a demon ship. Like the one we discovered in the first session, but fully operational. The Calisa was impaled and destroyed, and demon hearts swarmed into the wreckage. The engineers rushed for the smaller escape vessels while the marines covered their retreat, and Meteledes held off the demon hearts from an engineer who was retrieving the fragments of the intelligent scrying orb/weather eye, ordering what remained of the Calisa and any intelligence therein to self-destruct as soon as all personnel were clear of the blast radius

Current status:

The PCs: Split between imprisonment and a massive air battle.

The fleet as a whole: Declaring war via heavy artillery.

The Calisa: Wrecked.

The city: Bombarded and releasing demon ships.

Situation: Dire.

Campaign catch-up

I missed updating for the last couple of sessions, so now I'll attempt to recap what happened since we teleported away from the doomed elven town.

• Given the choice between extracting an orb from the dwarves and pursuing another, we chose to pursue another.
• We ran into a long-wandering ambassador (new PC) from the dragon-ruled continent, to which we were flying.
• Upon arrival, a "cleansing" appeared to be going on. Interrogation of the not-Nazis-I-swear led us to a Temple of Doom, which we investigated.
• Inside, we passed many, many deactivated traps until we reached a room with a large, ominous book on a pedestal. After debating what to do with it, we decided that the rest of us would vacate the temple and then Gerrard would attempt to take the book.
• Gerrard, not having learned from touching the explosive crystal way back when, snatched the book immediately and ran (using his blinking tunic) back through the wall through which we had entered. Everybody else sensed that something terribly bad had happened. Koslov and Garcin (Aleistair's replacement) decided to throw up a wall of force separating them from the rest of the party and knock a hole in the stone wall to find out what was beyond. Cue clouds of acidic, disintegrating, soul-trapping dust that annihilated them instantly. The rest of us, knowing the wall of force would not last long, began desperately strategizing and casting spells to help us survive. I had one idea involving my most recently-acquired binder powers, but just before the wall ran out, I was visited by Sethos, who offered the tools for all of us to escape in exchange for my soul. Not seeing much other choice (and not planning to die soon anyway), I agreed, promptly receiving several scrolls of Time Stop and a cube of force.
• Back to normal time. I used my last Miracle for the day to compress the fog into a 2-ft sphere, around which I summoned a Sphere of Annihilation (a rare and powerful artifact, and exactly what it says on the tin. Do Not Touch). Those of us still alive managed to use Sethos' toys (I didn't tell them where I got them) to get past the rest of the traps (all of which had been activated my moving the book) on the way out. We then sent in trap-disabling specialists to clear out the temple and revived Garcin, Koslov, and Gerrard. The first two immediately attempted to slaughter the latter again, but they were restrained. Gerrard, having proved himself dangerously unstable yet again, was carted off to the loony bin and out of the campaign. (His replacement character is Not-The-Doctor-I-Swear, who flies around in Not-The-TARDIS-I-Swear)
• Further exploration orb-wise took us to the regent of the nation: a bratty young man with an overinflated ego. At one point, some of us accepted his invitation to join him in hunting dire eagles (illusions created for his benefit, actually). During the "hunt," an assassination attempt was made on him (foiled by the party, albeit with some reluctance). Kosliv, Ulgrath (an illusionist PC in the employ of the Athertons), and I investigated this further (not all of the party was with us), eventually leading to us becoming trapped and powerless in a mind-screwy interrogation room. Ulgrath disappeared through a mysterious door, and Koslov was drenched in modified demon blood, providing the final clue to him that we were within an Abaci Macabre.
• Cue to outside the palace, where the others have gotten wind of trouble on the inside. It was also discovered that the Calisa had been seized. Everyone switched over to playing various Atherton marines (I got Meteledes, who has progressed from merely dying and getting hurt a lot to actually being a masochist) for the retaking of the ship. Given the marines' sneaking and dispatching capabilities as a team, this part was a success. Regaining access to the scrying orb, we found where the rest of the crew and specialists (read: PCs) were being held.
• Currently, we are halfway through rescuing the crew (and absolutely massacring their captors in the process), after which we will come after the PCs.

When we finally confront Sethos, I have figured out how Hakh'net will sort through his Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and pick a side. The DM really wants to know, but I think he can find out with the rest of the group. And I know you might be reading this now, so I won't say it here, either! :P

Mitigating factors

Today, I passed on an honest warning to the crew to defend against aerial attacks and divinations.

BUT I made a deal with Graz'zt's buddy to do a couple of chores for him in exchange for money and goods.

BUT I still plan to double-cross Graz'zt in the end.

BUT I destroyed the enchantment protecting a peaceful elven city from a horde of slavering demons under Graz'zt's friend's command.

BUT I used my magic to wipe out over six thousand of said slavering demons while the rest of the party wiped out another nine or ten thousand.

BUT I used particularly vile magic to do so and lied to the party about my spell choices.

BUT I fully resurrected Gerrard after he was decapitated.

BUT I also made a promise to kill Koslov.

BUT I joined the party in attacking Graz'zt's friend when he appeared on the field, and he is now rather miffed at me, apparently withholding the rest of my payment.

BUT I am still the most able entity to clear off the rest of his to-do list and reagin his good graces enough to obtain the rest of my reward.

BUT I may have a method of killing Graz'zt right now.

BUT the party's employer may have discovered the true nature of the magic I wield.

BUT I have never directly hurt the party and can provide benefits no other party member can.

At the end of the session, the DM said that he had rather expected me to show my true colors. Good luck deciphering that: the only colors I wear are my own.

A sticky situation

My second character (the secretly-a-walking-blasphemy one) has entered the airship campaign. So far the others have no idea what I am, and even their guesses as to what I can do are rather off-base. This is good, as there will be much subterfuge and deception in my future.

Long-term goal recap: Thanks to the meddlings of the wizard Sethos, the Material Plane has been cut off from the rest of the cosmos. This in turn, is causing creator deity Vateo to sicken and, if nothing is done, die. I couldn't give a damn about him personally (my Start of Darkness has given me a hatred of all gods and their devout), but if he dies, he will probably take the cosmos with him, and that puts a far more bitter taste in my mouth. Most everyone else is motivated to save Vateo by the goodness of their hearts, but I suppose the means justify the ends. Doing so requires us to retrieve the three orbs Sethos used to create the planar barrier. I have a nasty feeling that killing Sethos himself would also work and be faster; see below for why this feeling is nasty.

In the meantime, before the party picked me up from the tower where I had been asleep/in stasis for the last 500 years (starting just before Great Cataclysm), I had been researching vestiges (Vestiges are enigmatic beings who exist beyond the gods, and yet are near-powerless. they grant abilities to those who bind them in exchange for being able to re-experience existence vicariously. I make pacts with these vestiges and then cheat them out of their experience in order to enhance the spells I steal from the gods.) and had just discovered a new one by the name of Graz'zt. This piqued my curiosity: as far as I knew, Graz'zt was a powerful demon lord and not at all inconvenienced with vestige-dom. Summoning him up for a conversation before making the usual pact, I learned that he was now in this state due to a curse placed on him by Sethos, and he wanted me to join an expedition to find Sethos in order to convince him to lift the curse on him; in return, I would be given dominion over a layer of the Abyss (naturally, I knew better than to take Graz'zt at face value!). If Sethos could not be convinced to lift the curse voluntarily, killing him would also work.

Naturally, I see Graz'zt's potential freedom as detrimental to my well-being, but beyond that, he is rather more potent than most vestiges accessible to me (nearly all of them) due to the fact that I can conjure any one of three agents of his, all of whom are potent magic-users in their own right. Thus I have two reasons, one more selfish than the other, to keep Graz'zt confined. 

Complication #1. If, as I suspect, killing Sethos will lift the planar barrier, the party may well attempt that instead of chasing down three MacGuffins.

Complication #2. If I explain to the party that killing Sethos will free Graz'zt, I risk revealing that I willingly maintain correspondence with a demon lord (as the cherry on the top of my hot fudge sundae of evil and lies).

Complication #3. When I bind Graz'zt, he still gets to experience the world through me, which includes hitching a ride on my senses (though not, most fortunately, my thoughts, which are nigh-impenetrable anyway). Thus, any actions toward ensuring that he never is freed must be undertaken when I do not have an ex-demon lord bound to me, and if I simply neglect him after our first two conversations, I will look very suspicious (sure, he can't do anything about it now, but if my betrayal falls through or is later undone, I will have a very angry Graz'zt coming after me). Fortunately, I have a means of kicking him out in a hurry, should I need to.

In short, while the rest of the party has to save the world, I have to save the world without letting the man responsible die, without alerting one of my greatest sources of power to the fact that I intend to stab it in the back, and without altering the party to the facts that I correspond with a demon lord, steal godly power on a regular basis, and am undead.

I will deceive the party while simultaneously assisting them, betray a demon lord while simultaneously exploiting him, and save a would-be deicide while simultaneously thwarting him, all on top of my daily routine of cheating half the individuals from whom I derive power and stealing my power outright from the other half, or I will die trying.

Airship campaign resumes

Finally.

Since my backup character is not yet scheduled to make an appearance (probably next session), today I helped the DM run things. This included handling party splits, calculating ship damage and the effects thereof, rules adjudications, and running most of the fights (especially as the monsters involved had all been written up by me as part of my Legend of Zelda Bestiary).

If the previous session was The War, this session was The Siege. After the party got back to the ship, they were commanded by the captain to investigate a number of disturbances detected on board. While they weren't looking, Zerin (who had the orb), believing the party couldn't be trusted, teleported out of there, taking the orb with him. At the same time, a disoriented swordsman appeared on this ship (his backup character; Zerin ain't coming back). Shrugging, the party roped him into helping them out.

They headed toward the engine room first: it had been at 30% power when they returned, having sustained damage from last session, but as they watched the gauge it had fallen to 20%. Belowdecks their progress was immediately obstructed by a quarter of flying skulls, which they dispatched very easily. Not so easy to dispatch, however, were a pair of bat-shrouded, scythe-wielding foes and a giant, shadowy eyeball with tentacles. The bat enemies were defeated without overmuch trouble, but the dark eye proved impervious to both swords and spells. Aleistair's spear* was rather effective, but the real fight-ender was Koslov's discovery that bludgeoning attacks were its greatest vulnerability. During the fight, the ship's last engines went offline and it stalled.

*At the player's request, the DM and I helped re-stat Aleistair as a spear-wielding magic-user. We did, however, mess with him a bit: annoyed at the difficulty of actually getting the player's input beyond "make him good," we, while still adhering to what he wanted, turned the character into an extended (har!) penis joke and collection of double entendres. Real mature, I know, but everyone has been highly amused by the fact that he hasn't caught on yet.

Back to the session: When the party reached the engine room, it had been completely wrecked. The engineers stationed there were incapable of working to fix the engines on account of having been cut in half. Some party members stayed behind to try to get at least one engine up and running again while others began scouting the ship. Gerrard, one of the latter, was ambushed multiple times by robed, masked assassins, though he managed to fight them off. Eventually, Gerrard and Aleistair separately reached the heater room (the ship was held aloft by magically heated helium sacs). By the time they did, the heaters too had been destroyed, and five more eye monsters were waiting in the room. Aleistair's magic remained ineffective, and he quickly withdrew. Gerrard got in some lucky hits with his tentacles (don't ask) and managed to kill the beasts.

While Obelix and Koslov continued laboring to get an engine back online, contact had been completely lost with Missinget, who had dealing with troubles at the front of the ship this whole time, and Gerrard used his psionic powers to attempt to repair the heater. Eventually and with great effort, he succeeded. Meanwhile, the ship began to lose altitude at a gradually-increasing rate, a sign that the gas bags were being destroyed. After some 30 (of 50 total) had been lost, the not-Zerin swordsman found the cause: three axe-wielding golems, the same ones who had smashed up the engine and heater, were wading through the helium envelope, destroying sacs as they went. He managed to distract them for a full minute before taking a mortal chop and being left for dead while the constructs went back to work. Gerrard, luckily, reached the scene at this point and still had enough of a psionic reserve to overcome the golems.

This did not, however, mean victory. Of the 50 helium sacs, only 5 remained, and the ship was plummeting toward the ocean at great speed. Exhausting the Air and Fire elemental cores retrieved from the demon ship way back when would be able to restore the envelope if it weren't for the fact that a gigantic hole had been smashed in the side of the ship. Obelix mimicked a shadow conjuration to duplicate a Web spell and beat the 80% odds of failure to plug the whole. Aleistair then (with Obelix's consent) pulled the water from his body (fatally) to create a water elemental which would shield the web from the incoming rush of fire when the elemental cores were blown. They cleared the area, the cores were blown, and the envelope was successfully refilled (not-Zerin, however, was killed in the blast). One engine had been successfully restores by now, and the ship began to pull up. 

All this had been occurring in the rear and mid-ship. Other magical battles between the crew and various fiends had been taking place at the prow, which now sported a massive and weighty tree. The party managed to smash through and dislodge it, relieving the ship of much weight.

The ship had been at 10,000 ft when it began to sink. Less than 1,000 feet from the water, it finally leveled out.

The party then swept the ship for survivors. Less than a quarter of all marines and engineers had survived, and only 3 high-ranking crew members could be found. They went looking for Missinget, starting in the library, where they last had contact with her.

DM: Under one of the bookcases--

Me: *starts playing the theme of Aeris*

Aleistair: Oh, fuck no.

Missinget was found dead, her wounds matching weapons such as Aleistar (or his duplicates) might carry. Another Aleistar doppel was found dead nearby with similar wounds, and the seemingly good doppel sported a wound that would match a drow-made dagger, when questioned too closely about it, however, he said, "too clever," and vanished.

An attempt to scry upon Zerin revealed him walking with a man of unfamiliar appearance who quickly noticed and canceled the scrying.

Recap:

Obelix is dead.

Missinget is dead.

Zerin is AWOL, and he took the orb with him.

Zerin's replacement is dead.

The ship is horribly damaged, currently with 10% engine capacity. (Gerrard's private ship is in better condition)

Well over half the crew is dead.

The party's resources are quite drained.

Hopefully they'll find a spot of civilization before long.

Season Finale

This was the last meeting of the airship campaign until January, and WOW was it big.

I'll post a more comprehensive rundown after I get some sleep, but here are a few sound bites.

Lots of epic background music, courtesy of my laptop.

Interrogation and release of Gerrard, lucky resurrection of the dead from before.

20,000 gold riding on a three-way drinking contest between me, Meteledes, and the captain. We all passed out and the bartender swiped the pot.

Investigation of an ancient elven library with obscene defense and authorization systems.

Encountering a band of elves who helped us repair the ship (taking about a month).

Zerin being forced to, due to Vateo's deterioration, strike a deal with Missinget's drow-pantheon patron.

Me cutting off Gerrard's arm (it was regenerated) to stop him from being sucked into a Pillar of Vile Darkness.

Obelix and Koslov putting so much work into pretending to be high-ranking elves that they're probably developing alternate personalities.

And then...

Let me see if I can do this justice.

When we were still in the process of interrogating Gerrard about his actions last session, aleistair noticed that his luck has taken a significant downturn: doors would smack his head when he left a room, books would slip out of his hands, when he landed in the ship he would clip hismself on the railings, the deck would splinter terribly under his feet, and so forth. Trying to frigure out the cause of all of this, he turned to Zerin, Missinget (the two of them to figure out if Vateo were targeting him personally for some reason), and me (as I worship the god of luck) for answers. I can't recreate it, but the verbal smackdown Missinget laid on Aleistair was one of the most hilarious and applause-inspiring things I've heard in a long time.

While in the library, we discovered that Sethos had entrusted something to a bank on the main island. We went to the island and infiltrated the (long-abandoned) bank. We were unable to bypass security and open Sethos' vault, which meant that it would be necessary to break in through an adjoining wall. While we worked (with the help of our elven hosts) on repairing the ship, Gerrard and the artificers spent the month draining off the magical wards and burrowing through the wall. 

Near the end, Aleistair spotted a blue-clad elf monitoring us from the trees. He (with no small help from some elven archers) subdued the elf and brought him in for questioning. This elf was of a band that had apparently terrorized our elven hosts for centuries, striking out of nowhere and vanishing. We began the questioning process, but all we got was, "You're making a terrible--" before another elf lost composure and killed the captive.

On the last day, Gerrard and the artificers finally broke into the vault of Sethos. The others descended (I was topside running drills with the Marines), and retrieved a black, highly magical orb matching the description of the orbs keeping the trans-planar block in place. As the party retrieved their prize, they heard a shout of, "MURDERERS!" from upstairs. They dashed back up the stair to where the artificers had stayed, preparing for battle on the way.

When the party reached the landing, they found the artificers dead of broken necks and me locked in combat with twenty to thirty of our elven hosts...whose faces were now cut and mutilated in the same manner as the elves who had ambushed us in the previous session. When we engaged, three of the elves' disguises flaked off, revealing them to be the three hostile Aleistairs created by the Mirror of Opposition. The battle that followed was the most over-the-top I have ever seen in a D&D session. I showed of the full potential of my fighting style, repaying every swing at me with two far more lethal strokes, and Koslov killed around a dozen enemies by turningh is familiar into an elder dragon and dropping it on them, but the finishing sequence was a true demonstration of just how powerful high-level characters really are. Zerin and Missinget crushed all of our remaining adversaries between two tsunamis, Obelix sent chain lightning down the entire line of foes, who were still trapped between the now-electrified tsunamis, and Aleistair, who had used a scroll to grow to seventy feet in height, unleashed a flaming whirlwind strike that explosively wiped out everybody still standing.

As this battle died down, we heard more sounds of conflict coming from the just-repaired ships (Gerrard still had his own). We all jumped onto the back of Koslov's familiar, still in dragon form, to get there as quickly as possible. On the way, Zerin cast a set of extremely powerful enhancement spells on me, rendering me nigh-unstoppable. When we arrived, the ships were beset by all manner of airborne enemies, and thousands more swarmed toward them on the ground. I threw Zerin aboard, ordered all marines not on the ship to get out, and jumped off the dragon to face the hordes. Aleistair and Koslov followed, and immediately afterward an airborne spellcaster stole the familiar's draconic form. The horde promptly fired a sun-blotting quantity of arrows at the three of us, but between Aleistair's unmatched agility, Koslov's golem-like body, and my wall of wards, it was to no avail.

Round 1: I lept into the horde and rolled my first critical hit of the campaign, utterly destroying the elf-velociraptor hybrid in front of me, and carved a ten-foot swath in all directions with counterattacks to the others. Koslov pulled a very devious stunt, casting a polymorph spell on himself, which another spellcaster in the horde intercepted...turning into a gigantic bacg of gunpowder and metal shards. Aleistair wasted no time in flinging several flasks of alchemist's fire, causing an explosion that wiped out some thousand more enemies. Everyone on the ships so far either turned their ballistae on the dragon (severely damaging it) or labored furiously to get the engines up and running.

Round 2: I stepped in front of Koslov to shield him and held position, continuing to channel Sauron in the Fellowship of the Ring prologue scene. Captain Dariel ordered Koslov and Aleistair back to the main ship to aid it. They retreated. Koslov catapulted one of the many enemy corpses at me in an attempt to send me flying shipward as well (my buffs did not include flight), but at this point I was about as easy to knock about as a monolith. The crew continued to fight off the airborne assault while trying to get the ships flying.

Seeing this, I charged back to the ship, grabbed the hull, and heaved. Thanks to Zerin, my strength had been boosted to such a level that this effort propelled the ship into the air and well away from our foes. At the same time, the crew finally managed to get the engines back online. As they sailed away, the party saw me completely swarmed by our enemies. Shortly thereafter, the last of Zerin's enhancements made itself clear: when my greatest protective spell expired, with me following suit shortly, the death throes triggered. The resulting explosion vaporized everything within it, permanently altering the island's geography. Some seconds later, Aleistair just barely dodged out of the way as my smoking pick thudded into the deck.

We now have have the first of the orbs required to lift the planar barrier and save Vateo.

Ka-boom!

The airship campaign finally had another meeting tonight.

We reached a rather large group of islands today, and a scouting group (the party plus ten marines) were sent onto one of the larger islands. Koslov stayed behind, as he was putting the finishing touches on a new, golem-like body for himself. As soon as we headed inland we encountered a score of elf-raised dogs. They were rather growly around Zerin (demon heritage, even though he's good-aligned) and Lady Missinget (drow upbringing, and her alignment is less clear), but they were jumping all over half-elf Obelix. We found a kennel and a nearby long-abandoned house. A quick sweep of the house turned up some magical hound-training equipment and an elven skeleton holding a small vial. I surmised suicide by poison.

Venturing further inland, we found a massive, ancient tower of marble and mithril. There was a door outline at the base of the tower which proved quite resistant to unwanted entry (no, "Mellon" did not work). Obelix impersonated an elven officer to the door, which rendered it transparent, but still firmly shut. I, however, found that my helmet of blinking was now effective on it (the helmet allows me to, among other things, walk through walls). Inside was a staircase leading up to a similar wall-door at the second floor. I couldn't bluff this one on my own, but the rest of the party and the marines followed into the tower as soon as Zerin used a miracle to provide everyone with a similar blink effect. When he did so, his arms became withered and blighted, although nothing some healing spells from Missinget couldn't fix. This appeared to be a result of Vateo's condition deteriorating. Upon reaching the higher-up floors, we found two things. The first was a control panel of sorts, with some panels providing magnified views of the surrounding region and others activating a defense mechanism: the mithril winding about the tower animated, uncurled, and whipped around very destructively until we turned it off. The second object of note was a floating, silver orb in the center of the room. Gerrard's reaction? "Ooh! I touch it!" My reaction! "NO!" I tripped him and dragged him back just before he reached it. When we attempted it analyze it, it registered overwhelming magic of every type except illusion and necromancy. Yeah. No Touchy.

We then spotted a small, airborne figure approaching rapidly on one of the viewscreens. This was Koslov how inhabiting his new body, but he appeared as a particularly nasty construct, and Obelix (immense construct-hater that he is) went a little berserk and activated the tower defenses, which gave Koslov a nasty pummeling until Missinget laid down a magical field designed to severely punish anyone who took hostile actions within it. Gerrard then re-declared his decision to touch the orb. I accepted the magical consequences and tripped him again, but he directed his psicrystal to the orb anyway. *touch* KA-BOOM! A burst of magical electricity exploded his psicrystal, gave the party nasty wounds, and instantly killed all of the marines. As we picked ourselves up off the floor and healed our burns, I gathered the corpses and declared that we were to return to the ship posthaste. Gerrard displayed a rather...nonchalant attitude toward the deaths of the marines. Upon our return, charred corpses in tow, the captain confronted Obelix, Zerin, and me and asked what happened. I explained, finishing with an urging that Gerrard be arrested for manslaughter. The captain agreed, but we found that Gerrard had taken off to another island in his own ship. As we prepared for the manhunt, Obelix and Koslov reconciled.

We began sweeping the island chain, and as sunset neared, Obelix spotted fresh footprints on one of the smaller islands. Reuniting and taking the scout ship to the island, we disembarked (no marines this time) and began a closer search. After going a few hundred feet, we heard a voice behind us cry, "Look over here!" We turned just in time to see a trio of imps next to the scout ship...touching torches to barrels. KA-BOOM! The ship was blown to smithereens, killing the commander and wizard aboard. WE retreieved the bodies and gave them a funeral pyre. As this happened, elves sprang up from everywhere and began pelting us with arrows. We recognized their garb as that of the Atherton society from 500 years ago.

Missinget took two shots to the chest right away and beat a hasty magical retreat. I performed a leaping charge into the trees and engaged one of the archers, Meteledes attempted to demoralize our attackers (doing rather well, for once), Koslov directed his pet constructs into melee, where they wrought havoc), Obelix engaged enemies in the shallow water just offshore, and Zerin wrought a firestorm to torch the trees and their dwellers (avoiding me). Oh, and Gerrard also appeared in the trees, hurling a blast of cold Obelix's way. We had previously planned to arrest him, reverting to deadly force if necessary, but now there was nobody who intended to do less than kill him.

As the battle unfolded, I smashed the bows of a few archers, which caused their bodies to corrode, Koslov and Zerin focused their efforts on neutralizing Gerrard, who hit me with a not-very-effective fire blast and Zerin with a much-more-effective burst of constricting ectoplasm, and the elves continued firing high-knockback arrows at us. Eventually the elves were decimated, and Gerrard was caught immobile between me and a grapple-happy construct. It was clear all around that, despite displaying an amazing capacity to absorbing punishment, he was moments away from execution. Obelix then showed the flexibility of his class by emulating a powerful dispel effect on Gerrard to get rid of his protections...which also peeled away the magical effect that had been driving him to try to kill us. As this happened, a rather large demon appeared on the field and an unusual adamantine staff appeared in Koslv's hand. We also noticed that commander campion (not the blown-up one) had snuck onto the battlefield...just in time for the demon to impale him on a large spine. Our attention promptly switched from the now-helpless-and-in-massive-pain Gerrard to the demon...and to the late Campion, who has undergone a couple of surprising changes. First, the lower half of his body has degenerated into ice slush. Second, part of his face had slid off to reveal a different face: that of Sethos. Koslov, using the suddenly-appeared staff to trap the demon in a telekinetic sphere, deduced that Campion had, in fact, been a magical creation sent by Sethos this whole time. The demon hissed that the staff's owner (determined to be Sethos again) would want it back and vanished. We then returned to the writhing Gerrard...as the captain stepped forward and executed him with a dagger to the back of the skull.

As the party and captain talked to determine everything that had just happened (during which Sethos' staff vanished), I began piling the corpses. As I dumped Gerrard on the pile he began screaming. Huh. Alive again. Turned out that Gerrard, having crossed the line from Chaotic Neutral to Evil after killing the marines and showing no remorse, had been sent to the Nine Hells in death (not the Abyss, as he had made some very specific enemies among devilkind) before Vateo dragged his soul out of hell and hurled him back to the Material Plane. Apparently it was not a pleasant experience. The captain, feeling that Gerrard had still not paid the price of his actions, took Gerrard's left eye.

When we returned to the ship, we found it in grave disrepair. During our fight the ship had been assaulted by a formidable force of demons, who had been pyrrhically beaten back.

Scoreboard: 10 marines dead, commander Callebe dead, wizard Helliot dead, our scout ship destroyed, our main ship quite battered, Gerrard under arrest, the captain in favor of returning home, and Obelix in possession of an elf-hound puppy. The DM said afterward that we had departed from expectation a lot. Gerrard had not been expected to touch the orb, and we as a whole were expected to reach...some other vents, which will almost certainly happen at tomorrow's--er, today's meeting.

I'll swallow your soul!

The evil campaign had its first session today. The rest of the party was imprisoned on Carceri (and I had been there for several years but only just escaped captivity) for various crimes back on Earth (ranging from killing an orphanage to causing an entire island to die via drug addiction and overdose), but they were otherwise given relative freedom to wander the plane. Their first thought: find a way off! They found one of the long-term inhabitants and press-ganged him into serving as a guide. On the way to one of the few cities around, they noticed a group of mutated, long-legged humanoids approaching from a distance (these were abyssal ghouls, with me following them). The "ranger" fired a pair of arrows at the one with slightly different skin coloration. That was me. Since I wanted to help Mommy (the elf child beguiler), who was in the party, I promptly went into stealth mode, as did the ghouls. We eventually closed on the party, and combat ensued. The warlock's ooze companion killed several ghouls, the beguiler turned another against it companions, I slashed at one of the ghouls rather ineffectively (my powers are only very effective against the living) while screaming, "DON'T HURT MOMMY!", the warlord and druid teamed up to do a lot of smashing and slashing of undead, and the "ranger" used some hideously powered-up arrows to kill the big ghoul instantly.

Aside: I should probably explain my backstory. Eight years ago I was kidnapped by a few of the fiends who live on this plane as a test subject to see how much stress and alteration a mortal's essence could undergo without becomeing something fundamentally different (or dying). These experiments ultimately gave me my soul-eating powers as well as a strong affinity for shadow, but they also gave me massive amounts of brain damage. I escaped from the lab and wandered the plane for some time. Just before the campaign started I saw the others being escorted to prison and, in my insane, brain-damaged state, imprinted to a slavish degree on the elf (hence the whole Mommy thing).

Anyhoo. Battle over. During the fight, the "ranger" had read my thoughts and gotten a good sense of me in general. Sensing that I was not immediately hostile, he took me aside and (we started at a rather high level) cast a spell to heal my insanity and put a circlet on me to counteract the mental retardation. In-character reaction: "Gods below, THANK YOU." Out-of-character reaction: "So much for how I was planning to roleplay him." (Interestingly, due to how I wrote up my backstory I am now the least evil of the party by a significant margin.) The other said they were looking for a way off the plane. I did too (eight year of cross-planar torture is no fun), so I joined them. When we reached the city, we found it totally deserted, with the exception of two people. The first was an old man who in formed us that if were wanted off, the mayor of the city (his employer: he was tasked with watching over the city in general) would be the best person to talk to. The second was the mayor himself, who happened to be a very powerful barbarian. He told us of a wizard who lived on the plane, would be our best bet for getting off-plane, and was not a nice person to deal with at all. Before we left, the elf, wanting a lackey now that my loyalty was skewed toward the "ranger," hit the mayor with a dominate person and used several class abilities to make it even harder to resist. The mayor's save? Natural 20. The elf tried a few more spells but was thwarted by consistently high rolls.

Aside #2. When we had a moment, the "ranger" took me aside and explained a few things: he was not a ranger in the service of Her Elven Majesty, he was a part-doppelganger with a very well-established base on the Astral Plane (in fact, the one in the party was a magical duplicate of him; the real guy was at his base), and he was working to prevent an elder evil called The Not from reaching and devouring our world. I could work with/for him and be compensated nicely, or I could say "no" and remain in the party with a few mental modifications. My response: "How could I refuse?"

Also, the DMs were pleased that we were not all trying to kill each other yet.

On a non-D&D-related note, I just saw Serenity.

Beware of psycho swords from beyond the veil.

We had a short meeting last night focusing on the two weeks of downtime before we reach Beluria. Missinget and the other casters spent a few days studying some onyx blocks we had extracted from the titan king's brain. As suspected, they contained memories. The memories focused of the destruction of 90% of the Atherton fleet some 500 years ago, the king's relations with a group of powerful elven spellcasters (whom we recognized as the liches we destroyed, and you can guess how the last memory was cut off), and the king talking with one Sethos. Sethos is an extremely powerful wizard known to the older party members who has not been seen in some centuries and has some rather nasty plans in store involving...I'm getting ahead of myself.

A couple of days after leaving the lich caverns, a screaming comet was spotted crossing the sky. Some time later we spotted a massive stone hand rising out of the ocean, smoke billowing from its palm. Aleistair flew over to investigate while the ship remained at a safe distance, and he discovered the very-unconscious-yet-alive body of Zerin! While ferrying him back to the ship, Zerin's sword demonstrated a mind of its own by making some rather threatening "keep going" motions. That is new. Also, along with Zerin was found an infant griffon, which Missinget found highly adorable.

Once he had come round, Zerin informed us that Vateo (his god) had personally hurled him across the planes back to earth (which hurt. A lot.) for a certain, very important task. Do you rmeember when I talked about the transplanar block? We learned that said block is being caused by a set of magical orbs which Sethos is after, and these orbs are causing Vateo to weaken and, if nothing is done, eventually die, which would have nasty repercussions of its own. Who cares about spellslinging undead, now we have to save the world!

On another note, Koslov's player is thinking of DMing a separate, evil-aligned campaign. I must go find out the details.

On yet another note, I have some things to figure out back in the real world. Various life aspects may be getting complicated again. Maybe not. I'll elaborate when I know more.

Edit: Never mind.

Did he just go crazy and...?

Well. This was a very eventful session.

We retreated to the ship just long enough to re-prepare spells, resurrect Meteledes and Koslov, and form a plan. We then headed back in on a phylactery-raiding mission.

At the first room, it immediately became evident that the liches had also spent their respite preparing for our return. First sign? The room holding the phylactery was sealed off by a wall. Aleistair could recognize it as an illusion, and he is the fastest of us all, so we gave him a couple of extra buffs and sent him to collect the phylactery. The instant he passed through the wall, he saw--and therefore triggered--around fifty hostile warding symbols. A few minutes of rolling saving throws later, he was stunned, drained to zero strength (becoming as floppy as a sock puppet), and rendered permanently insane. "Did he just go crazy and fall asleep?" Oh, and none of us were capable of monitoring him, as the illusionary wall had lead dust suspended in it. After a minute passed and no sign of Aleistair, we had Obeliz sneak his way in. He managed to avoid the symbols, pull a set of tongs out of his utility belt--I mean, cloak--and retrieve the phylactery and helpless, crazy Aleistair. We had brought a vat of magical acid for the specific purpose of destroying these things, and we promptly dumped it in. A contingent fireball went off, but everyone but Meteledes avoided the worst. A telekinetic pulse also went off, but everyone but Meteledes managed to keep their feet. One down, three to go.

As we got back on the Reach (our smaller, scouting airship), a pair of shadow tentacle lunged out of the chasm and grabbed the ship. At the same time, a completely new airship swept into the cavern. Its ballistae blasted off one of the tentacles, and I killed the other. The occupant (singular) of the other airship hailed us and introduced himself as Gerrard. This, by the way, is the new party psion. He explained that he was searching for a titan king, but we convinced him to help us finish off these liches in the meantime. Oh, and we also healed and de-insanitied Aleistair.

It turned out that, while scouting the first room, Obelix found clues to the locations of the other phylacteries (no, he wouldn't tell us how). The next room we searched was a very icy place, with many bodies entombed under our feet. At the far end of the room was a stage with a welcome-mat-type-thing. Gerrard sent his psicrystal to investigate. When it peeked under the rug, it was promptly sucked under. Obelix went to investigate. The rug animated and grabbed him. Combat! Weathering (though not well) a barrage of steel and magic, the rug, grabbed some nearby Loadstones (magic items that weight you down a lot) and Sovereign Glued itself (permanent, unbreakable glue) to Obelix. Koslov turned the rug into a mouse and Meteledes cut the mouse off of Obelix--along with a layer of skin, which Missinget healed. Unfortunately, the Loadstone-covered mouse fell down the hole underneath the rug, making a terrific bang when it hit bottom. "Fool of a Took!" Right on cue, the frozen bodies in the ground animated and grabbed the casters. We killed one and wounded several others, and then the dice finally hit us with their worst-placed roll yet: the solar, attempting to melee one of the undead, rolled a Natural 1. With its vorpal sword. Who was withing reach? Meteledes. Yep, our celestial ally, allegedly more powerful than any one of us, decapitated the sergeant, making his third death in two sessions, and his second death caused by an ally. The solar, apparently overwhelmed with shame, used some spell that made it self-destruct. "Did he just go crazy and explode?" This killed off all of the undead and blew a large enough hole in the ice to expose the room below. We found two more phylacteries here and threw them into the acid. One left.

At this time, the one lich who was still alive contacted us magically and basically said, "come and get me," complete with coordinates. We returned to the Reach and spotted the lich at the far end of the complex. In front of the lich rose up...a draconic skull with gems for eyes. All of us thought the same thing: Dracodemilich, a.k.a. Walking Total Party Kill Only It Flies Instead of Walks. I promptly ordered the Reach to flee--no objections were voiced--when Zerin suddenly took off in the direction of the skull and threw up a Wall of Force behind him. Heroic Sacrifice? Yes, but not quite in the manner we expected. It turned out that Zerin had cast a spell that lest him identify the beastie, and it was not a dracodemilich, but an animated dragon skull with gems in the eyes...and stuffed to bursting with explosive powder. One sword thrust to the eye later, the skull exploded, the wall shielded the Reach, and the cleric was utterly obliterated. The DM then called for a group Spot check, and, as if to make up for all the Natural 1s, four of us rolled Natural 20s on that check. Through the smoke we could make out the lich running like hell...until Gerrard rooted him in place with an Ectoplasmic Cocoon. A couple of deadly rays later, the lich was dust. Now to find its phylactery in peace.

Examining the room to which it was running, we found a heavily trepanned, petrified titan, whom Gerrard identified as the king he sought. Searching the expansive room turned up a metric ton of lich loot and a series of rune-covered papers that fit the descriptions of the lich's phylactery. Aleistair cautiously examined the pieces of paper one by one. Next...next...next...you've reached the bottom? Guess what: Mirror of Opposition. A second, third, fourth, and fifth Aleistair appeared and threw up an illusionary-but-very-opaque wall around the five of them. 

Sidebar: This is how a Mirror of Opposition works: if you look in it, the clone/s that emerge will try to kill you. They are duplicates of the poor sap in every way except for intent. If either the original or the clones die, and clones and their equipment vanish. End sidebar.

Examining his sheet for the benefit of how the clones would act, Aleistair saw the he was either resistant or immune to most of what he could do to himself, so the most effective way to get rid of them would be for us to kill him and try to resurrect him later (tough, as he is not native to the plane). Two Aleistairs (one real, one fake) walked into view with weapons sheathed and necks bared. The other three had run off. Missinget cast a spell that disabled both of them. Then we came up with a gorgeous-but-sickening plan: We had Koslov use wish spells to duplicate programmed amnesia (total mental rewrite) on both Aleistairs. When they woke up, neither one was interested in attacking the other any more. Indefinitely Duplicated PC! That complication out of the way, we destroyed the final phylactery (the papers). Examining the titan-turned-statue, all of us agreed that the mutilation its brain had suffered and how long it had spent in this state--450 years, give or take--meant that the best course of action would most likely be a mercy kill. So we dealt such.

Now that we had destroyed evil, it was time for the other half of adventuring: taking its stuff. We ended up carting several magical tomes (mainly of varieties that permanently increased mental ability scores: Koslov and Obelix took the Intelligence books, as Int rules their class abilities, Missinget and Aleistar took the Charisma books, and I took one of the Wisdom books so that my Wisdom could meet actual human standards) and spellbooks, some large magical onyx blocks that I had pulled out of the titan's brain, and a FILTHY RICH FORTUNE in random magical items and components back to the ship. The Atherton society claimed most of it, but we were very generously compensated. On the way out, Koslov left a message for the ghost to read when it rejuvenated, telling it that it lich buddies were kaput and that if it decided to pursue us, we would find a way to make it permanently dead. Afterward, we briefly debated on whether or not to send a ship home to report back our discoveries or to continue onward without delay. We decided on the latter, as next land was two weeks away and that backtracking, due to various factors geographical and political, could set us months behind schedule.

In the aftermath, the duplicate Aleistair made it clear that he would strike out on his own soon (and there are still the three renegades to worry about), we resurrected Meteledes again (which we learned would, due to escalating interference with connections to the afterlife, be the last resurrection we could manage--sorry, cleric!), and the DM let us invest our newly-acquired funds as we pleased, due to the plethora of crafters aboard the ship and the effective two weeks of downtime. Koslov set to creating an adamantine body for himself. Obelix boosted his Intelligence even more and got various other magical enhancements, especially pertaining to mobility and melee (I will take this moment to mention that Aleistair, Obelix, and I, due to the acronym of or real-life names and common competency in melee, are known as the IMP Squad.). I massively (due to having been the one to loot the onyx blocks, I got an extra kickback from our employers) upgraded most of my combat-oriented gear, putting my Strength on par with many giants and making me considerably more agile than anyone in full plate has a right to be. Not sure how the other party members are investing their money yet.

Long story short: Liches are dead for good (but the ghost is not), Meteledes continues to be the tagalong Chew Toy of Fate (but he's sure fun to play), Zerin is dead and not returning any time soon (most likely the DM will find a way to introduce the knight that is his backup character), solar exploded himself after a nasty, brutish, and short life as the other Chew Toy of Fate, Aleistair has one friendly clone aboard the ship (for now) and three homicidal clones of whereabouts unknown, and we all have obscene amounts of loot. We're also approaching the Epic threshold.

Welcome to the fold

...Gods below! I just realized I missed the spring play proposal meeting!

Anyhoo, we now have a 7th member of the party, Mishra* the psion. So now we have a third squishy-genius-caster. He's starting out a level behind the rest of us, but that's still enough to manifest 9th-level powers at this point. Clairsentience (divination-like) is his specialty, with some buffs and save-or-lose powers thrown in. Next meeting will be in a week and a half.

*Mishra is his name for the time being, but the DM wants him to come up with a name NOT ripped off from The Brothers' War.

The dice are broken!

My god, where to begin?

Friday's Session: We successfully resurrected the captain before returning to the ruins to check out what the lich wanted. In the gigantic room the lich was to enter were two iron colossi (golems on epic steroids). We found the control amulets to the colossi, but one was broken and we didn't want to risk trying to work the other. The flash of light when the lich died had, however, revealed something much nastier: an (unsure of spelling) Abucai Macabre, an ancient and very evil artifact-warship crewed by Demon Hearts and capable of taking down entire fleets of airships. This one however, has been disabled long ago by an airship that had been lucky enough to get in a crippling ramming attack with its mithril prow. Those in the party knowledgeable about such things insisted that we destroy it entirely. So we infiltrated it (not too hard, as the Demon Hearts appeared nonfunctional) until we reached the doors surrounding the core. The first one was heavily warded, but there was a stone tube leading through the wall which proved rather easy to destroy. Koslov (our wizard) sent another one of his constructs to pick the lock on the extremely heavily-warded inner door, and it was promptly fried by electricity (this happens a lot with hi constructs, which are growing more and more fearful of assignments). Obelix (our factotum--a skill-oriented do-anything type) managed to disarm the traps and open the door (dodging one last trap with a backflip that, due to being underwater, was in enforced slow motion) to the core of the ship. We placed a delayed shatter bomb on the elemental cores and beat a hasty retreat. One explosion and massive collapse later, the Abucai was destroyed. I brought the remaining colossus amulet to the captain, and that was destroyed too. We then agreed to his request to finish scouring the region of this undead plague.

Today's Session Prelude: The DM had informed me that we would be making greater use of our crew and that I, as their commanding officer, may want to stat them (to his guidelines, of course). I have officially become the go-to guy for rules and stat blocks, but I like the statting process. The marines were built to be absolutely vicious with the proper teamwork, and sergeant Meteledes, despite ranking below me, is more competent than I am in every way except killing stuff. Go figure.

Today's Session: Five main sources of necromantic energy were identified. Exploration of the first was rather uneventful. We found four evil-radiating vases in a shipwreck, which were placed in stasis chests, and we recovered a magical, food-spawning cabinet. The second required a trek into snowy mountains, and we brought the marines and Meteledes with us. Partway along, we were attacked by a half-dozen trolls, three of which were unusually large. Between the marines doing their job well and our archivist blasting them with a fire storm, we killed all the trolls without suffering a scratch. farther along, we came to three massive statues, where we were confronted by...a second lich. The lich wasted little time in dispelling the flesh to stone on the statues, revealing them to be three (weakened) titans. Koslov managed to put two of them to sleep immediately, and Aleistair took the fight to the lich, discovering the hard way that it was wearing a retributive amulet (reflecting half of Aleistair's damage). A mix of grappling from Koslovs constructs and his telekinesis and Aleistair's efforts brought the lich down to a more convenient range than atop a titan's head, and he and Obelix destroyed the amulet before resuming full attack on the lich. In the meantime, the marines and I saw signs of latent necrotic bombs in the sleeping titans and dispatched them while Meteledes (played by me) tried to convince the last titan (still recovering) to aid us against the lich. Long story short, we destroyed it without any deaths...except one: Zerin's (our cleric's) griffon. That poor thing was killed by a lich spell, incinerated by a flame strike, animated as a hellfire-covered zombie that attacked and carried Koslov into the air, turned into a live cat by Koslov, incinerated by its own hellfire, turned back into a griffon upon death, and dropped 80 feet to splatter on the ground. The two titans we killed were zombified along with the griffon, but they were easily re-killed. We saved the last titan and got some information about what had happened to it. We also found a similar box as the last one among the lich's remains. This time the commander promptly doused it with holy acid. 

Upon returning to the ship (and leveling up some more), we were informed that the necromantic auras in the region were starting to converge on site #3. Cue the lock and load montage, with lich loot being identified and distributed, and the casters preparing a new round of spells for the upcoming conflict. Archivist Missinget, having access to more and higher-level divine spells than our cleric, blanketed the party in enchantments to protect against and aid in the destruction of legions of undead of all shapes and sizes (as well as some area nukes), Koslov loaded up on various destructive and debilitating spells, and Zerin managed to cast a miracle to summon a solar, the most powerful class of angel there is and theoretically more powerful than any of us by a considerable margin. Once prepared, we flew to the mouth of the cave we were to besiege, the party, marines, and golems loaded into the scout ship (as the main ship couldn't get inside). The welcoming party of some four dozen zombie windghosts was wiped out by the solar's storm of vengeance. Just outside the cave we saw another giant statue (and knew of more inside, as well as the general layout). The solar insisted that all the giants be freed and restored this one. It promptly proved to be an eldritch giant (an evil) kind which blasted the party and crew with a powerful necromantic energy attack. The DM's cackling was cut short, however, when he realized that Missinget's spells absorbed the spell completely. The solar then shot the giant with an arrow of slaying, but it survived. This is where the dice started to break: the crew of the main ship unloaded their ballistas at the giant, and I swear every single attack was either a Natural 1 or a Natural 20. Our own scout ship was shot twice and the giant took three ballista bolts to the head. That killed it. Entering the cave complex proper, we found two more statues. Now wary, we asked the solar to use some divinations, and it determined one of the petrified giants to be evil. The golems smashed it. 

The party and Meteledes the entered the side cave near which the now-smashed giant stood. One of Koslov's iron ants, scouting ahead, uncovered yet another box like the ones we had found on the liches. Koslov put an antimagic field on his ant to suppress its wards, and I used my pick to break apart the box. The instant it was destroyed, four colossal tentacles shot out of an adjacent chasm, two of which grabbed me. Another grabbed Aleistar until he teleported away, and the last one grabbed the solar, which rolled unbelievably badly on its grapple check and was pinned. The party managed to damage the tentacles rather nastily, and Zerin sealed off the chasm with a blade barrier. Unfortunately, the blades barrier started dicing the solar as well as the tentacles. The solar tried to get off a disintegrate on a tentacle, but rolled a Natural 1 and hit Aleistair. Fortunately, Aleistair resisted the worst of it. Once it got to my turn, I finally got to show off what I could do with my pick in this campaign and rolled some berserk totals for attack and damage despite being grappled. Missinget blew apart the tentacle holding me with a destruction, and Koslove rendered the whole beast catatonic with a ray of stupidity. As it slid back into the chasm, Aleistair made it explode with fire...waking up those still below. Cue eight more tentacles shooting out of the chasm, although I managed to intercept and destroy three of them as they emerged, and the blades sliced the others considerably. The tentacles? Grabbed the solar again and dragged him down through the blades. Koslov used a limited wish to retrieve the solar, and when the tentacles pursued they finally shredded themselves against the blades. The solar's reaction? "I hate this world."

Further exploring that particular section of cave, we found a room containing three larger tanks and some cabinets full of alchemical items, which pleased Aleistair. Cue us being attacked by three lightning-throwing brains in jars in the tanks. Koslov proposed filling the room with a fireball and that we clear out. We did so, although Missinget lingered to carry out some of the alchemical containers on Aleistair's request (he didn't have time to do so himself). Cut the three maximized empowered fireball traps going off. Aleistair, being a devil, was immune, and Koslov and Obelix managed to evade the blasts entirely, but Zerin, Missinget, and I took a lot of fire damage, the flasks and whatnot exploded, nearly killing Missinget, the solar was knocked unconscious, and Meteledes botched all of his Reflex saves and was reduced to a neat pile of ash. Seconds later, we learned whether or not the first box we had destroyed was, in fact, the lich's phylactery. The answer: No. The lich, surprisingly, didn't attack immediately, started questioning us about or motives and actions. Not wanting to provoke it, we gave safe answers while Missinget and Zerin surreptitiously healed themselves and the solar. We then learned why the lich was engaging in conversation: it was stalling for its buddies to arrive. Total arrivals: 2 liches and a ghost.

Allistair charged the first lich, discovering yet another retributive amulet. I tried to sunder the amulet and got my pick's enhancements temporarily dispelled. The solar revived Meteledes, Missignet and Koslov used spells to little effect, and Obelix asked the ghost if it was friendly. The ghost responded by waving jauntily and throwing a disintegrate at Lich 1, but rolled a Natural 1 and hit Aleistair, who again saved. Koslov took a critical hit from a disintegrate but was saved by a healing contingency (note: My bad on anticipating our foes. I advised Missinget's player on her spell selection, and I was envisioning that we would be taking on armies of zombies, wraiths, etcetera, not a few liches. Thus, no spells were prepared to stop disintegrates.) Over the next couple of rounds, the ghost vanished, Zerin tried and failed to turn the liches, Koslov tried to hit a lich with an antimagic ray and had it bounce back at him (he resisted it), and he was hit by two more disintegrates. The first one he survived outright. The second one did enough damage to kill him, but half of it was diverted to his primary construct (the one the blew up against the zombie army, now revived), which promptly disintegrated. The solar was wholly worthless, getting knocked out again, and I'm pretty sure we rolled another few Natural 1s in those rounds. Missignet used a miracle duplicating an extremely enhanced holy word, which paralyzed the liches. The one next to Aleistair and me threw up a reflexive cube of force, but we didn't mind being trapped in an enclosed space with a paralyzed creature not known for physical resilience...until both liches switched their bodies with random skeletons and vanished, leaving behind the cube (Aleistair teleported out, but I was stuck until Koslov dispelled it) and a blanket of magical silence. Now, with my character  struck mute and trapped behind an invisible wall, I could not resist the urge to do a mime impression. I got slapped for that.

Now the battle was over...until a ghost-possessed Meteledes blasted Koslov with a fourth disintegrate, finally turning him into a pile of dust (I'm rather surprised that it took this long to lose a PC, considering what we've been fighting). Aleistair attacked Meteledes, as due to Missinget's buffs he could simultaneously attack the ghost. The ghost failed against a disruption effect, and Meteledes suffered a crit: both were promptly killed. The solar revived Meteledes (again), but couldn't revive Koslov. I suppose we will learn why next time. Our characters reboarded the ship and decided to fall back and regroup, although I was strongly in favor of collapsing the whole complex with a miracle-enhanced earthquake. Back in the real world, we nearly killed the DM for hitting an 18th-level party with what was revealed upon interrogation to be a level 29 encounter (the solar was meant to even the odds, and then it ended up rolling so hideously we banned the DM from using his online dice roller). For some perspective, had he been playing the two liches and the ghost to their full lethal potential, they would likely have TPK'd (Total Party Kill) a party capable of taking on creatures likely to TPK us.

Lessons learned today:

1. Prepare spell immunity (disintegrate).
2. Invest in more divinations.
3. Kill first, talk later. 
4. Prepare resistances to all energy types, not just necromantic stuff.
5. Check enemies for amulets and destroy those first.
6. Trust nothing jaunty.
7. Trust nothing, period.

Erm...yikes.

I'm thinking that my character's mental ability scores (high Intelligence, low Wisdom) are a good match for my own.

This session started up right after we destroyed the lich. Being the crusaders for truth and justice that we are, our first thought was, "did it drop any loot?" Checking its remains turned up robes, a staff, a crown, a book (all of them registering as magical), and a mithril, runecarved box. Naturally, we all thought, "phylactery!*" The wizard tried to detect magic (got nothing) and then dispel magic (bounced back on him). At this point I rumbled, Gimli-esque, "well, what are we waiting for?" And had Allistair (the devil) not won initiative and tangled my pick in his rope, I would have indeed taken a swing at it (the DM later told me that I would probably have gotten the Gimli re-enactment in full). Someone else in the party (I forget who) tried opening it, but Allistair kicked the lid shut immediately. Good thing he did, because I (the player, not the character) correctly guessed what was on the inside: a Mirror of Opposition (magic item that creates a murderous clone of you). At this point we decided to take it back to the ship for analysis and destruction. Returning to the water's surface, we found the ship under attack by huge, flying zombie beasties (more of the windghosts we met in the first session). We finished them off (lost a few crew members in the process), and presented the box we suspected to be a phylactery to the captain, who agreed that it was certainly dangerous. The wizard crafted a timed disintegrate bomb, and we took it onto one of the icebergs to set it off. The spell bounced, and the box sprouted legs and started running away. The devil and the wizard quickly recovered it, the devil holding it on the way back. By the time they returned to the ship, Allistair had a bit/lot of a "my precious" mentality about the box. We tried to talk him into letting go of it. He repeatedly refused and tied it to his waist. Here's where my low wisdom kicks in (not counting the Gimli moment, which was intentionally so). I (via a telepathic conference with the officers and the rest of the party) decided that Allistair had to be restrained and the box forcibly removed from him. Cue the wizard hitting him with Otto's Irresistible Dance and the cleric and me trying to grapple him. Not only did we roll horribly, but a couple dozen clones of Allistair suddenly appeared on the deck, mimicking his movements. After a few rounds passed, during which I tried and failed to sunder his rope, the archivist was hit with some voice-wrecking effect, Allistair kept asking what in the Nine Hells was going on, and we had a flood of out-of-character debates about the rules and real-world naval law, we backed off and tried diplomacy again...until the discussion was cut off by one of the clones backhanding the captain overboard. Fatally. They then ordered us all to turn the ship around, head home, leave the box, and leave Allistair. In the ensuing quasi-schizophrenic conversation, Allistair began to warm up to the idea that the box wasn't so nice after all...until his clones possessed him en masse and forced him to flee with the box. The ship's commander and the archivist tagged him with wand blasts, but to little effect. Here's where my intelligence kicks in. I suggested the cleric (remember when I said we had a paladin? He's a cleric now) cast a small miracle to throw an antimagic field around the box. The result? *KA-BOOM* No more box, no more possession. Hopefully, that was the phylactery. The session ended with a very battered devil under arrest and attempts being made to resurrect the captain. The DM said that we had defied his expectations at every turn.

*If the word is foreign to you, it's basically a Horcrux. If you don't read Harry Potter, a phylactery is a lich's key to immortality. If you kill the lich but don't destroy the phylactery, the lich comes back.

Schemes

Our DM has recommended that we each stat a "backup" character in case of current character deaths (which, given the power of the lich we took out, are looking not unlikely). The second wave, as it were, consists of a tank-heavy knight, a rogue about whom we don't know much, as the DM has been helping stat it (this is the backup character of our new-to-the-game archivist), a warlock who uses hellfire for good ends, a paragon-of-virtue monk who excels at punching evil in the face, a doesn't-know-what-yet-but-will-probably-be-a-dragonfire-adept...and me. I have been extremely tight-lipped with the rest of the party about my next character; all they know is that I will be some sort of magic-user. What the DM knows is that I will be playing a binder/ur-priest (basically hanging a sign around my neck that reads, "Burn me as a heretic!") who is not only evil (no, I'm not planning to kill the others), but undead. Fortunately, all my robes are lead-lined (to block divinations), I'm good with disguises (and one of my abilities can make me even better with them), being undead makes me immune to most forms of domination (unless they target undead specifically), and I'm an excellent liar, so I should be able to keep my secrets for some time. In terms of what I bring to the table, I can cast spells both of the healing and painful death varieties (I'm very good at the latter), and my powers as a binder make me insanely versatile. The downside? I'm weak of arm, I'm easy to hit unless I fortify myself with spells, and I have the agility of a cow. It should be a fun character to play once my fighter keels over.

Whyyy?

Tonight's session was very eventful. While exploring the underwater laboratories, we found a large group of iron golems, complete with control amulets. Right on cue, we get news from the surface of an impending army of underwater zombies. After a brief scuffle while retreating into the siege vaults, sacrificing the wizard's construct companion to blow up an undead aboleth, and having the iron golems seal the doors to buy us some time, we retreated deeper toward the vaults. I would like to note that I wasn't rolling too well, getting a natural 1 on a pick attack and clipping myself, and doing fairly poorly with some saving throws. After getting some distance, the doors were smashed open and we were surrounded by zombified sharks and their commander: a lich. The lich declared its intent to retrieve something from the vaults and started walking that way, stopping only to respond to an ineffective disintegrate spell with a blast that killed most of the men accompanying us and nearly took out the wizard. After slaughtering the sharks and quickly healing, we determined that risking death to destroy the lich was preferable to letting it get away with...whatever it wanted. Shortly thereafter, a lucky roll from the archivist stunned the lich long enough for our melee specialists to surround it and the wizard to give them all a mass bull's strength spell. At this point, I launched a series of attacks against the lich, each packing about as much damage as could be expected from all but the most dangerous spells in the party's arsenal. I rolled...two Natural Ones in a row. The lich escaped unharmed and I cleaved off nearly a third of my own health. Fortunately, the rest of the party did quite well in the following turn, the devil hitting with every single attack, the paladin smiting evil, and the archivist hitting with a bolt of glory for over 100 damage. The lich blew back the melee-ers, but one more bolt of glory (the archivist's last high-level spell) just barely connected, and the lich was destroyed. Thus ended the session.

The DM, after informing us that he did not expect us to chase the lich or to survive if we did chase it. He also told us all to go up three levels, which means that my character is leveling up three times for hitting himself three times. On the plus side, I did get to massacre some zombie in the first half.

The plot thickens

Today started out as the ranger and paladin getting some help from me in terms of stat-tweaking their characters, and then we shifted back to the actual game. Things were...interesting, to say the least. The paladin brought to the attention of the party news of a possible mole on board. Sharing of backstories turned up nothing suspicious among us. Investigations of the crew turned up suspicions on an ensign whose father opposed the society that sent us on this expedition and the head doctor. After interrogating the ensign to no result, I was struck by a mysterious hunch to search the doctor's room, which turned up evidence that she was a worshipper of a drow goddess. One thing led to another until we had the wizard's spider construct shadowing her and at one point attempting to charm her in preparation for questioning. When the commander got wind of all this, he was...not happy with me, although he wasn't aware of my full involvement (rolled surprisingly well with my Bluff check), and ordered all investigations against the doctor to cease. The wizard was summoned to speak with the captain alone, and when he returned, he brought an unexpected guest: the doctor under the effect of dominate person. We questioned her until a contingency spell of hers rendered her comatose, at which point the wizard returned her to her room and erased all incriminating memories. The devil missed out on most of this, as he was off succumbing to his hedonistic tendencies.

note: The DM stated that this escapade was not very alignment-healthy, although nobody actually got nailed.

In terms of the underwater exploration mission, we have found a some sealed siege laboratories which the crew is working on peeling open. In the meantime, we have discovered considerable amounts of loot in the armory and war museum, most of which goes to the Atherton Society, and I am becoming a veritable wall of weapons: I had part of my magical (and enchanted to be invisible) mithril supply forged into weapons following the design of those found on the corpses of soldiers aboard the demon heart ship. My arsenal consists of a pick (my weapon of choice), a spiked shield, armor spikes, a longbow, a blackjack, a silver dagger, and now a wrist-mounted repeating mini-crossbow and a retractable, wrist-mounted, invisible short sword. Life is good. Also, the devil has expressed an interest in getting some of that mithril for similar weapons. We have yet to come to an arrangement. *signs off*

*signs back on as Columbo* One more thing: as of next session we will have one more player. Fortunately, she will be playing a divine spellcaster, a nice that isn't really filled yet. Somewhat...less fortunate is the identity of her character: the doctor and archivist we stalked, dominated,  interrogated, and hit with amnesia. Things will be very interesting.

A true D&D experience

We started the meeting at 4 and ended at 1. That is how you play Dungeons and Dragons.

The skyberg we smashed open last session turned out to be leaking a potentially endless supply of demon blood, resulting in us PCs having to trek inside the skyberg and destroy the Demon Heart generating it. We did so, in the process retrieving several magical artifacts (not with a capital Artifacts, just items of considerable interest and probably value) and nearly getting pulverized by a demon-tainted elder omni-elemental. Having a heavily-armed airship allowed us to fight it off in a battle peppered both by events such as the crew nailing an air elemental to an iceberg with a ballista, an earth elemental giving a water elemental a Fastball Special to our airship, me cleaving said water elemental in half on its arrival, and the devil teleporting into a fire elemental to kill it from the inside, and by a string of such hideous rolls (resulting in multiple cannons nearly blowing open other potentially demon-containing skybergs, our ranger shooting the devil for maximum damage, and a ballista clipping me) that the others want to get dice that are not mine as soon as possible. Also, the crew was almost as good at taking orders as the two guards in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Long story short, we destroyed the demon heart, killed the elementals, lost several crew members, had so put the scouting ship in for repairs, and made off with some interesting relics. My quarters, for example, now contain a demon-tainted, transparent mithril door. The wizard dispelled most of the taint, but it still has a tendency to curse me out.

After stopping to repair the scout ship and mine some coldfire orbs, we arrived at the submerged city we were sent to explore. So far the scientists are conducting their research and nothing has leapt out of the ruins to eat us. There were some things tracking us for a few days, but then they vanished. We discovered some interesting magical devices clearly used for combat training purposes, and we appropriated some of this magic to allow the paladin and me to have a no-holds-barred duel for the benefit of the crew. It is a good thing that we had non-lethal duplicates of our weapons for this duel, as I tore the paladin apart in two rounds.

Now that we've had a couple sessions to see how everything works, here is what the party members bring to the table:

• Allistair (the devil): Knowledge on matters old and arcane, mobility, being FREAKING UNTOUCHABLE (very high saves, and Armor Class is a 39!). The downside? He has the lowest hp and attack bonus of the melee specialists.
  
• Kosov (the wizard): Crafting constructs, weapons, and armor, enchantments, generally being a genius. The downside? He's squishy (naturally: he's a wizard) and can't do much against foes immune to mind-affecting attacks.
  
• "Batman" (the ranger): Archery, scouting, generally being a skill monkey. The downside? His damage output is low and he is probably the second most fragile overall.
  
• I-forgot-his-name (the paladin): Healing and buffs, a griffon companion, ability to inflict lots of damage against evil (and absolutely hideous damage against fiends (glances at Allistair, who I might remind you is not personally evil)). The downside? Doesn't excel in any area of combat the way the others do, and not much in skills.
  
• Hornethand (me, the fighter): Knowledge on matters war- and tactics-related, holding rank on the ship, and being an absolute beast in melee (second-highest Armor Class, highest attack, damage, and HP). The downside? I'm pretty lame at whatever I didn't list as a strength, and I need a wisdom transplant (Intelligence is actually fine).
  

All in all, the campaign is off to a good start. Now I need to catch up on sleep.

The D&D campaign has begun

At last!

It's a 10th-level campaign. The party consists of a griffon-riding paladin, a chaotic good erinyes devil (with some modifications to fit the ECL*), an enchanter who sounds like Sean Connery, a low-wisdom-but-very-tankish fighter serving as a lieutenant commander (that's me), and an archery-focused Batman (or as close to Batman as one will get in D&D). We are currently on an airship reconnaissance mission (upon which I am said lieutenant commander), and in the first session we have had to fight off a pair of zombified windghosts, one of which ate the erinyes, who proceeded to cut and burn his way out. Unfortunately, one of the cannons on the airship has blasted open a skyberg containing a Demon Heart-powered construct. We'll find out how that goes next session.

*The devil was initially obscenely powerful, but then I explained the ECL rules to the guy helping to stat this character, resulting in considerable nerfs and my title of "Rules Lawyer Bitch Bitch Bitch Nazi Bitch."