Main > Compendia > History > Campaigns > The New Gods

Details

Time Played: 2005-2008
Historical Era: Shattered Age
System: Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition
GM: Jason
Players: Alex (Suentius), Eric (Xenon), Rob (His Excellency), Steve (Warbeast), and many cameos

Summary

The epic-levelled party was recruited by the Lords of Necessity to deal with numerous apocalyptic threats that escaped from the prison realm of Carceri. The reward for their services was ascension to godhood. This game was an excuse to play epic level characters against epic level enemies. The party included:

Hargaran, male human barbarian juggernaut, warrior-king
His Excellency, male death knight warrior, undead king of Obscuris in Malocia
Suentius, a male orc wizard, merchant-king of Mercatia in the Pirate Isles
Warbeast, male mongrel warrior, creation of an ancient soul-crafting demon
Xenox, male Vashar vampire order of one monk, leader of the Vashar slave tribes in the Abyss

Their accomplishments included defeating a Genius Loci, a Xixecal (that had consumed the icy prison of an Arch Devil), a Gibbering Orb, and more. By the end of their mission, there was a tremendous change in the divine realms. The tower of the gods in the center of the plane of concordant opposition was being replaced by a massive crystalline structure, and the gods had been displaced. These were the circumstances of the apotheosis of the party, performed by the existing gods each contributing some of their divine power to the new gods.

Once inducted into the oath of gods, they learned that the gods had once served a secret society of entities called Immortals. However, the Immortals had suddenly disappeared after the breach in Carceri. All-powerful beings calling themselves the Lords of Necessity had appeared to the gods and explained that the gods would now serve these Lords instead of the Immortals. The gods found themselves unable to disobey and unable to mention any details, even to their incredibly confused servitors.

To learn more about what was going on, the new gods decided to search for a fabled Realm of History, which myth suggested held all time in its records. The Lich Pendulum aided them with the ritual that would allow them to find the Realm of History, which included a forgotten memory (they chose a Tear of Umbrus), a dream of the future (they used a spell-absorbing magic item, cast nightmare on a mortal, caught the spell in the item, made the dream come true with shapechanging making the spell a dream of the future), the oldest mortal man (they found the lair of a medusan and reversed the petrification), the youngest child (they chose to take a pregnant woman, taken last, and use her child upon birth), feather of a phoenix (simple matter), and elder demi-lich dust (they destroyed the Lich Queen Salara of Kalazara). Once gathered, they reached the Realm of History, deep with the Astral, to discover it being systematically dismantled by truemetal constructs. Unable to stop the constructs, the new gods and Pendulum scoured the realm's remaining lore through an entity called the Archivist and discovered many secrets of history, as well as a strange device labeled The Anomaly. But they became trapped, and it looked like they would be dismantled with the rest of the realm.

This is when the god Cambion rescued the party as the Realm of History was finally destroyed. He explained, in the deep astral, that their ascension to godhood was part of his plan. His real name was Xevanezrel, and he revealed that he was a stellar dragon from the Primordial Age, and his goal was to destroy the Lords of Necessity. The party was skeptical at first, but as they interacted with the cold and calculating Lords, they began to come around to Xevanezrel's way of thinking. Xevanezrel explained his history and his plan (which provided a spine to the narrative of most prior campaigns in The Apparatus, and created the canonical history of the campaign world).

He had been a powerful dragon in the Primordial Age. As a powerful creature, he had opportunity to be aware of the heroes that rose to the ranks of Immortals, and seemed to rule all creation. One of his own artifacts, called the Deck of Many Things by later scholars, had accidentally caused him to slip into the Void beyond the world. When he returned, the world he knew had been destroyed, replaced by the world of the Gilded Age. He insinuated himself into this world as the god Loki in the gods of the Gilded Age. Through this position he became aware of the Lords of Necessity, and learned that these secretive Lords and the Immortals had casually destroyed everything he knew. That was when he began plotting his revenge.

First, Xevanezrel decided he must kill Aeon, to prevent the Lords for simply undoing any of his achievements. To this end, he claims to have built a device called The Anomaly, though the truth of this claim is not verified. The Anomaly did exist, however. It was a Truemetal construct, made with the same kind of power and components as The Apparatus that operates the entire world. This Anomaly was delivered to Grim, the Immortal of Time. When Grim summoned Aeon to interface with the device, its activation set Xevanezrel's plan in motion. Aeon went mad, and began to randomly make and unmake history during a span called the Time Storm. Xevanezrel studied carefully how the Immortals recruited heroes to help create the Oathbound, and how the Oathbound destroyed Aeon. The Lords of Necessity had to flee the world briefly to avoid their own destruction by the Oathbound, and when he went dormant, they sealed him away. Xevanezrel went to the bottom of the Abyss, the tomb of Aeon, and discovered his shattered crystalline heart, and noticed its remarkable similarity to divine foci. He collected the shards of Aeon's heart before the swarms of Tanari rose from the Abyss.

Through his disguise as Loki, Xevanezrel took this opportunity to begin Ragnarok, to cause the Lords to lose faith in the Immortals and their servitor gods. Xevanezrel survived Ragnarok (though everyone believed Loki to be dead), in a new disguise: Hagal, the Changemaker. Hagal eventually became the god Cambion, his current disguise. He studied the tomb of the Oathbound, and discovered that the Lords had crafted it such that only Aeon could open it, in an effort to prevent the tomb from ever being opened again.

Xevanezrel then delivered the shards of Aeon's heart to the soul-forging demon that helped him craft Hel. That demon took the shards, and used them to house the souls of a twisted species called the Vashar. The Vashar were gifted to the Tanari of the Abyss as slaves. When one of those Vashar, Xenox, had become infused with divine power, Xevanezrel believed that the tomb could be opened. And that by so doing, the Lords would be destroyed. So Xevanezrel opened Carceri, killing to final birds with one stone: creating a vital mission that would earn mortals (including a Vashar) with divine power and also remove the last scraps of faith that the Lords had in the Immortals and gods ability to govern the world. The prior resulted in the new gods of Acrolon discovering the plan, deep in the Astral. The latter resulted in the disappearance of the Immortals and the necessary presence of the Lords of Necessity openly and physically in the divine realms. Everything had been set up perfectly. All that remained was for the new gods to help Xenox open the tomb of the Oathbound.

This proved to be no small feat, as an entire city of Nexia's most powerful servitors had built a fortress over the tomb. The final battle with the servitors was played as a chess match. The new gods were each a chess piece (queen, king, and rook), against an full complement of chess pieces with special powers. For each blessing of the other gods that the new gods could get, they would obtain more pieces on the chessboard, gain special powers on the chess board, or remove powers of their adversaries. Their choices had enormous ramifications:

They chose to ally with Excrucius, giving their army terrifying weapons that caused enemies pieces to retreat from the battlefield when they saw an ally piece fall. However this caused them to greatly harm Lucidus in the process.
They chose to ally with Lascivia, giving their queen the ability to convert enemy pieces to their side, instead of capturing them. However, this caused the Emperor of Acrolon, Kraekus, to fall under the sway of the Demon Queen of Lust, and also greatly harmed the god Umbrus, by stealing a vital artifact, the Talisman of Tears from his sanctum.
They chose to ally with the Emperor of Acrolon, Kraekus, which gave them a full complement of pawns, representing a large number of mortal elite warriors.
They chose to ally with Pellex, getting soul stones from Nexia's realm for his constructs, which gave them a full complement of powerfully upgraded rooks, and would have angered Nexia if they had not also:
They chose to ally with Nexia, by hedging the divine power of Anastasia somewhat, which removed the enemies ability to return pieces to play and gave that ability to the party's side.

Even after all this effort, the battle was pitched and difficult. However the new gods prevailed, and opened the tomb. The new gods followed the Oathbound to the plane of concordant opposition. Immediately, the Lords attempted to escape the world through the infinitely crystal tower they had created, but Xevanezrel, in his true dragon form, flew up the tower and opened his gaping maw, revealing a void-like vortex of pure destruction. He bit through the tower, and suddenly vanished as if into the distance and into nothingness at the same time. The Lords were trapped on the plane of concordant opposition and the Oathbound destroyed them as he was constructed to.

In the resulting chaos, the Dark Age began.

Canon

The events of this campaign canonized the plot of the Astral Dragon, the plot of a surviving dragon of the Lost Age to destroy the Lords of Necessity.

Suentius is canonized as the Primarch of Pattern. His Excellency, who abandoned the quest, is canonized as the dark lord of Malocia. Xenox is canonized as a Vashar god who was sacrificed by Lascivia to resurrect Aeon. Warbeast is canonized as the Shen of Summer in Tonwei Unchained. Xevanezrel is canonized as the Astral Dragon, whose plot (Xevanezral's Gambit) is the basis for most of the setting's history.