Make a Wish Foundation - Epilogue (SPOILERS)
It was my pleasure to run the game to run for 18 months in real life. In game, it was four months of time. They played from level one to level thirteen. They recovered every relic of St. Vitruvio, every Seal of Drakkenheim, and one player was crowned the King of Westemaar.
It was important to me that our last session be an epilogue where we discussed how the characters would shape the world that they fought for, and how their character would continue to grow and live beyond the campaign. I wanted this to be largely a discussion, but also wanted to have some game elements involved that directly tied to their successes. I came up with a system that felt elegant enough to keep chance involved but allow the players plenty of agency. I gave the party a story token for every major victory. One for each of their personal quests, allied factions, defeated factions, major story events, etc. If they wanted to accomplish a goal in the epilogue, I would roll 1 to 5 d6's depending on the difficulty to set the DC. The party rolled 2d6 and just needed to meet my number to achieve the goal. They could spend a story token to add a d6 to their roll, and could keep spending them. Something simple was 1d6 for the DC, most things were 2d6. Hunting down the Queen of Thieves who had fled the country was 5d6 and the most difficult challenge. The system worked really well and would be thrilled to discuss it further if anyone is interested.
They allied with Falling Fire and Amethyst Academy, managing to forge an alliance between them despite their initially opposite goals. In the epilogue both factions shared the duty of shepherding the city. The Academy built a dome over the city using the technology of Ryan Greymere that contained the Haze. The Falling Fire operated safely within the city to grow their faith and their ranks. With information the party collected from the various elements within the city, they learned that their dome could concentrate the haze and accelerate the grow of delerium to the benefit of both factions.
The Silver Order was destroyed after a siege on the Cathedral of St Vitruvio. The Silver Order assembled an army and a host of angels to take the Cathedral, but Lucretia Mathias sacrificed herself to hold them back. The siege was broken when the party managed to assemble all of the Relics and awaken Argonath the great golden dragon. Many Silver Order members dropped their weapons and joined the Falling Fire, and those who did not perished or fled. Theodore Marshal was slain within the Cathedral. The Silver Order did not recover from this defeat, both militarily and theologically. Elyria and the central Sacred Flame church lost a large amount of political power and the Edicts of Lumen lost much of it's teeth.
The Queen's Men were defeated not long after. With the help of the Amethyst Academy and the Hooded Lanterns, Buckledown Row was sealed off by snipers and walls of stone and burned to ash by Argonath. During that battle, the Queen of Thieves lured the party away into an ambush and final showdown within Slaughterstone Square. The party fought her AND the Executioner at the same time, actually defeating both of them (as much as one can defeat the Executioner). The Queen had scattered five hundred rings across the square, letting the party know that one of them was the Spymaster's Signet. She escaped and the party was able to locate the correct ring (by using reverse gravity in the square and then flying around scooping them all into a bag of holding while the Executioner was regenerating). The Queen fled the country to return to her homeland of Caspia.
The party's true victory over the Queen of Thieves came earlier when they learned her actual identity. They had come to suspect that she was Katarina Von Kessel. She had intimate knowledge of the Von Kessel Family, bore a striking resemblance to the images of her that they had found in the Queens Garden, and the she had taken an active interest in helping the party rescue and restore Queen Lenore. The Queen of Thieves even personally assisted the party when they fought the Pale Man within the Inscrutable Tower and helped them steal his research on reversing the contamination process.
When the factions leaders gathered at St. Vitruvio's Cathedral, the Queen attended and the party used the opportunity to "reveal" her true identity to all attended. Her carefully laid trap had been sprung. "Thank you. No one would trust this information if it came from me, but with the evidence you've gathered, you've proven to everyone that I am the rightful heir to the Throne of Drakkenheim." ---- The party began to backtrack quickly but the QoT turned to the restored Queen Lenore and described in some detail the events of the evening that the meteor struck. Lenore broke down crying and declared that this must be Katarina.
What stung the party the most was that they held Ignatius, the sword of burning truth. It's divine powers allow it to discern anytime someone lies.. and the QoT had told no lies during the entire encounter... except one. An offhanded comment that she was half Caspian when the party was discussing diplomacy with other countries.
With the party having accidentally put her in the lead for the throne, they began digging even harder. My players actually did the work of putting together a conspiracy web to visualize all of the clues that they had found and their relationships to each other. The last clue came a heavy price. One of the characters sold their soul to for her true name... Andromeda John. This last puzzle piece allowed them to all connect. They checked the records at the Inscrutable tower. Andromeda John was the roomate of Katarina Von Kessel in the tower. Andromeda was a princess of Caspia, but being mageborn she could not rule. House John had had to adopt a patron from outside the family since her entire generation had been mageborn. She and Katarina became friends, sharing a similar fate. They both had very similar interests, and Katarina was half caspian from her mother. Andromeda even spent a great deal of time with Katarina in Castle Drakkenheim. When the meteor struck the city, Andromeda was having dinner with Katarina and her sister Eliza. Lenore had left early to sulk over a fight with her husband the King. Katarina tried to teleport out of the castle with her sister, but they both died in the attempt. Andromeda witnessed this and fled on foot, and the rest is history.
Having unraveled the mystery of her identity, the players were no longer susceptible to her charming aura in their final fight, and the Queen of Thieves fled to Caspia to rebuild her criminal empire again. The unstoppable force had met the immovable object and she was smart enough to know that she could not overpower them. In the epilogue, the players hunted her down and defeated her for good before she was able to rebuild her network, but they were never free from her. Her agents, Lies and Deceit stayed behind to be a thorn in their side for decades. The players never learned that the tiefling twins were actually a trio of dopplegangers. Lies, Deceit, and Misdirection.
The Hooded Lanterns never rose to power within the city. They provided help when the could, but they were always on the back foot. The last conversation the party had with Elias Drexel was a fight between them. The party returned time and time again to ask for help, and refused to pay their gate tolls every time. They asked for much and offered little in return, and had strained the goodwill they had bought by saving Queen Lenore, and embarassed Drexel at the Cathedral Meeting when they established the QoT as an heir to the throne. Drexel was assasinated by the QoT when he began to investigate her background himself, along with Aansom Lang. Drexel was one of the few living people who would have crossed paths with Andromeda when she visited the castle. Petra Lang became the new leader of the Hooded Lanterns but it was all she could do to keep the faction from falling apart.
Once Levi Desomau the Paladin of Conquest was crowned King of Westemaar, his first wish was void his contract with Asomdeus and regain ownership of his soul. His second wish was to close all planar rifts within the city to staunch the flow of the haze into drakkenheim. The party had considered wishing away all delerium, but decided it would be very risky. They had learned that raw delerium does not interract well with magic and that using the strongest spell against the most delerium could have consequences. The settled on saving the last wish for a rainy day; the leading plan would be to restore the soul of the other party member who had sold theirs for the information on the Queen of Thieves.
The party wizard Adriel spent a great amount of time studying forbidden spells and was able to learn how to clone everyone in the party, allowing them to govern Westemaar for centuries and guiding it's growth under the Falling Fire and Amethyst Academy. Adriel also learned simulacrum and was able to perform as the Castle Steward and the Assistant Director of the Academy's moon base. His chronomancy studies and experiences with time loops and the timeless place between places gave him great insights. He developed methods to slow AND accelerate the growth of delerium, to the benefit of the city and the falling fire.
Felix Price the apothecary began his adventure on a mission of revenge, having been rejected from the Amethyst Academy. He planned to eventually slay Elrick Runeweaver, but his efforts to restore the city earned him the trust of Runeweaver who offered him the position of Assistant Director of the Inscrutable Tower. River was promoted to headmistress of the school and Felix took her place at his side. Felix's personal quest was completed when Runeweaver admitted he had made a mistake denying his entry to the school, and gave him Academy Robes and a set of Six Academy Rings. (my academy has 10 rings instead of 9, you get the first for cantrips so there's a whole 10 set.) It appears that the old grudge did not die entirely because many years after the Crowning of Levi, Felix made his move and attacked Runeweaver in a bid to take his position. The battle was epic and in my epilogue system the roll was a tie, which would be a success but Felix's player thought it would be interesting if we took that as a tie where they both slew each other. Thankfully, Felix's friends only had to wait less than a decade to wish him back to life.
Willhelm Ironwood the wooden Weschelkind boy, turned wooden man by his patron, and weilder of Ignatious - the sword of burning truth - continued his role as the guardian of the country. He came to the city to find his mother who had been contaminated by a monster that escaped the city. He dedicated much of his time to building an order of Knights, assembled from the anti-magic witch hunters who left the Silver Order, and made sure that no more contaminated creatures would escape the environs of drakkenheim to cause the pain that he had suffered. Eventually, he directed his efforts towards the future. The party had learned the source of the meteor, spaaaace! and even that there were other worlds out there. They also knew that it was all but inevitable that the world would one day succumb to delerium, thanks to certain visions they had had. Willhelm was able to push forward a project to create ships that were able to leave the planet. These "SpaceJammers" would allow future generations to leave the planet and avoid total destruction. Willhelms SpaceJammmer Project was very successful and brought on a new era of exploration.
Alyx Styx the Warlock served as chancellor for the king for a while but quietly left his station and vanished into the world. He had spent fifteen years trapped in stasis within the Inscrutable Tower as part of a senior summoning project. In the darkness of his stasis he was contacted by the spirit of Argonath who became his patron. When freed from the tower he was able to help Argonath be ressurrected. Now freed from his duties, he left to live his life in the world he was cut off from for so long. He was able to break the curse of his brother Pyxis and reunite with his mother Fyddle and Father Drummond, and even his pet parrot Yerd who was still alive after all of this time.
Del, the Delerium Monk was the only member of the party to fully accept the teachings of the Falling Fire, and the only one to take the Sacrament. Lucretia Mathias became his mentor and when she died protecting the Cathedral of St. Vitruvio, it was his honor to carry her soul shard. Del also had a minor gift of foresight which became stronger after her passing. He spent his life in meditation in the crater, guarding the Delerium Heart and gazing into it's shifting surface looking into the future. He used his visions to guide the king away from disaster and towards prosperity for the city. As Emberwood grew, as new followers joined, so did the pile of golden crystals at the foot of the crater. Years, Decades, Centuries passed while Del meditated within the haze. Dozens, hundreds, thousand, tens of thousands of golden soul shards were enshrined around the Delerium Heart. The purple haze and violent lightning eventually became a glowing golden aura. The thunder was replaced with harmonic crystal chords, like a divine windchime, soothing and comforting.
Over a thousand years after Coronation of Levi, the containment dome failed spectacularly. Del and the others knew that this was inevitable, but they had managed to spare the world from the slow and painful spread of the haze and bring about centuries of prosperity. Drakkenehim was the center of the world. Around the ruins of the city was an even larger city built outside the dome, completely surrounding it. A place of magical learning and a center of pilgrimage for the falling fire.
Del was at the center of the explosion. Everything went white and then gold, and he was not alone. He and a million other souls were connected within the incalculable amount of magical energy released from the exploding planet. All of these souls dedicated their lives to the protecting others, and together they formed a singular consciousness of unlimited power... something pure and divine. Something that could only be described as a god, The Sacred Flame. Within the chorus of souls, separate and singular, and in the presence of a brand new diety, Del became aware that this event was observed from afar by a fleet of SpaceJammers. On the deck of the lead ship was Willhelm Ironwood, Felix Price, Adriel Coal, Alyx Styx, Levi Desomau, and even Gretchen Pennywhistle (who had left the campaign around level four.)
The End.... ??
If you made it this far, thank you for your time. This campaign has been the highlight of my tabletop RPG lifetime. I spent hundreds of hours scheming and plotting and getting my shit summarily rocked by my group of experienced players. I hope that everyone has the chance to experience their own Drakkenheim at some point. It's been a wild experience for this world to be real within my mind for so long. I'd say that I will miss being the thing with the writing tail, but I don't think that I will ever stop being the thing with the writing tail for the rest of my life. <3 later