In the distance, Solemnity burns.
The dragons conquest did not last long. When Sanarm arrived to the city his breath of molten chaos leveled entire districts. Set fire to the fragile wooden homes of the poor. His rage has been a hundred years building. The northern half of Solemnity was levelled over a campaign of fire only a few days long.
Though understated during the game, Sanarm had the power to summon demons from the abyss, a chaos plane. His army of demons is what did most of the actual destruction, though Sanarm did do a lot of burning. Instead, the dragon was busy creating a gigantic ball of fire from which to reign over the city. Like a miniature sun.
The ball of fire is what The Friends of Orthos and the divine army see when their weeks trek is over and Solemnity is finally in sight.
The characters do not think charging in is a good idea. Devils roam the streets, and it’s clear that the best course of action is for the army to hold the devils off while The Friends fight Sanarm. If they can convert him to the side of Law, Balthazar will be able to use it to clean up the demons. All that remains is their approach.
Icoriol has been concocting a plan over the past week. He can ritual cast Water Breathing, and though it risks corruption, he says the dragon will never expect a surprise assault from the sea.
A continual problem this game had was the lack of any sort of mass-combat rules that I liked and new well enough to adjuticate on the fly. Because this plan merited mechanical bonuses. Instead, with time running short, I knew that the fight against the demons probably wasn’t going to matter. It would have been nice if it did though, so the effects of this plan were concrete.
During the casting of the spells, Icoriol gets several corruptions (as one does when casting spells over and over). One of these permanently affixes turtle shells to the backs of some of the soldiers (which would have been interesting to explore if the campaign had gone for longer). Another summons a cloud from across the sky. As it came closer it became obvious that a bone-white castle stood atop the cloud. Some of The Friends recall hearing legend of giants that live in sky-castles. While the water breathing spells are being cast, Balthazar flies up to the castle to beseech the giants for aid.
There is some back and forth, because the giants aren’t sure what to make of the humans. The giants have just arrived here apparently of their own volition (I really love when magic can be confused with happenstance) and it seems for a moment like they may attack, but a deal is struck between Balthazar and the giants that if they should help attack the demonic army, then they will get one of the Baronies of Orthos to rule.
At last, all the soldiers are able to breath underwater, they journey north around the city and then make their way to the beach for an underwater march. A few hours later, The Battle for Solemnity begins.
The soldiers make it far past the docks before the demons catch on to whats happening and begin mounting a counterattack. Great bolts of iron, and even the occaisional lightning strike, rain down from the cloud giant fortress (It occurs to me now that it would have been way cool if the dragon went and attacked it and the arena was a cloud giants castle, but I didn’t happen to have one of those around). While the fight bellows below, The Friends make their way to the great orb of fire.
The top of the orb has a great hole, revealing that it’s actually hollow. In it’s exact center, Sanarms long metal body is cradled. The Friends enter the orb, knowing that here they will either take Sanarm or die.
I lament that I lost my notes on the orb fight. The inside of a sphere is somewhat tough to layout onto a flat 2d battlemap, but I had this neat system with concentric rings and rough distance calculations. It ended up not mattering much, but I think it gave legitimacy to a cool visual.
At the start of the fight, Monkey used one of his wishes from The Deck of Red Things to summon a powerful psionic dragon that is mentioned in MCDMs The Talent class (which Monkey is playing). It was cool, and as it fought bits of it would turn red and slough off the dragons body as The Red Realm consumed it. It did a number of Sanarm and, maybe more importantly, gave The Friends somewhere to stand.
Friend, having been powered up by the revelation of his swords divine origin, brandishes The Whispering Greatsword to rend the dragons duality, summoning a hostile dunamo. It was awesome to see Sanarms double fight against him, even if it was brief.
Pulling out all the stops, The Friends even use the Instant Tree Seed, an item they’ve had since near the start of the game, to grow a giant oak inside Sanarms mouth. Being that Sanarms native element is chaos, which is kind of synonymous with nature (his breath weapon grows plants) this doesn’t outright explode his head, but it does instantly destroy the mouth section of armor and the wood sticks to his jaw, making his refined fangs into more of a jagged savage maw.
Sanarm begins to lose steam, but he is still a match for The Friends, who are dwindling in their own right. Unsure of how successful he may be, Balthazar wields The Sceptre of Languard and spends a good bit of time strategizing. He needs this attack to land, which means he needs to strike at just the right moment. This was a really tense part of the game and it was really cool when Balthazar rolled high enough to hit.
There is a flash of white light, blinding everyone in the sphere. Instantly the heat dies, and when the friends open their eyes, they find themselves in a black void. Above them, there is a thrashing, contorting ball of multicolored flame. Sanarms essence of being, corrupted by chaos.
Looking up the the flame is a tall figure with green skin and angelic wings. This is Balthazars patron. He explains that, in order for The Sceptre of Languard to seize control of the dragon, Balthazar must consign his friends to oblivion. What this means is that, though they will not die immediately, when they do happen to die on the earth, their souls will be trapped in purgatory forever.
It seems charmingly like me that the game should slip up in its final moments. In my head this moment was meant to be a tense discussion about the future of Orthos. The Friends could probably beat the dragon, and free the world of its threat. Icoriol wants to dismantle the dragons chaos runes and let it be it’s own free creature. There was meant to be a debate here with the sides: keep the dragon, solve our problems, go to oblivion VS take a risk and beat the dragon, deal with the aftermath of Orthos on our terms, but don’t go to oblivion. I had thought the players would probably not want to go to oblivion, and knew they could realistically beat the dragon, so maybe it would result in a fight between Balthazar and his patron and the rest of The Friends (something Balthazar’s player told me would be really cool)
To make it seem scary, the way you pledge your alliegence to Balthazar is by dying in this metaphysical realm. As it happens, Monkey and Friend were way on board with this, and their characters let themselves be killed by The Angel. This broke the scenario, because now Siriel and Icoriol were too small a force to adequately argue with two literal angels.
The discussion quickly but subtly leapt out of character and my players started sniping at each other a bit. People said Icoriol’s character was ruining the climax of the campaign by refusing to accept it. On the other hand, Siriel and Icoriol’s players were frustrated because they suddenly had no real recourse.
It made me realise why people say to get your players permission before initiating PVP. In real life, this scenario would be tense, and emotions would be high, and this would be a tragic, frustrating experience. The drama of the situation was extremely interesting, but not when it spilled out of the game into real life. And I can’t blame my players for doing this, because they didn’t know they were suddenly going to feel betrayed and angry at each other. Facilitating that kind of experience is bad form on my part.
Siriel managed to get the last laugh by pulling out the red sapling she acquired from The Spiked Keep and feeding it with her blood. Though she died, the tendrils of the tree found the dragons essence. In the end, Sanarm was converted to Law, its mind under the dominion of Heaven, specifically Balthazar. But The Red Realm exists now within its mind. And The Red Realm grows.
The silver lining is that consequences were delayed. It would have been terrible if the characters had to actually die for this. That would have been a failure of the game, not dramatic. But letting everyone’s character live and just be forced to sign up for long term consequences meant there was a way to recapture the scenario. After the fiasco in the dragons head, The Friends wake up alive, but depart before celebrations can be shared.
Orthos was saved by The Friends. And it cost The Friends their very souls - the bond they had forged on the road together. The PVP was not good, but as an ending, I think this is a suitable one.
After Balthazar became the controller of the dragon, he dropped any and all playing at government. It is his ally Monkey, an ajira-ni, who is crowned Divine King of Orthos. The new council is put to work cleaning up the city in a new era of cooperation and prosperity.
In the coming years…
As for The Friends of Orthos…
There are many visions of Orthos. Warmongerer tyrants. Valiant kings. Bastions of law and art. Wealthy beyond belief. Faithful beyond interrogation. Hypocritical in its rules. Unrivaled in its arcane power. In the slips and streams of time, The Friends decided on and seized their own vision. But the nation of law is never at rest. When the past resurfaces, and the ideals of the day are challenged, may there always be Friends to guide it to a golden future.
Ruby Crown - The End