Beyond the Tomb of Annihilation - Episode 2

In the previous session, our heroes were introduced to the city of Sigil and were given a direction: find a way back home to Toril. The presence of the Ring of Winter is on the radar of the city's governance and the de facto police, the Harmonium, dictated that the group needed to head to the Lady's Ward in the morning to register the magic item. Unfortunately for our heroes, the ring was stolen by a Githyanki gish in the final moments of the last episode just as Reggie was preparing for bed.

The Party
Reggie (Joe T.) - An over-eager human paladin of Torm who in the events of ToA had acquired the Ring of Winter. It had tried on multiple occasions to corrupt him, but his heart of gold has remained pure.

Klaus (Tom) - Half-elf fighter who had been hand-chosen to bear the Ring of Winter by Artus Cimber and Syndra Silvane. He has struggled with the fact that the ring found its way to Reggie, but is determined to help him safeguard it.

Dino (Cliff) - Human bard; Ubtao's chosen to return to Chult to renew faith in the exiled god. He wears a leather dino suit in reverence of his patron.

Azod (Joe E.) - A githyanki ranger who is a member of Sigil's Planeswalker Guild. He has been hired at the outset of the adventure to help the party navigate their way back home to Toril.

Reggie ran to the back alleyway of the Bottle and Jug and saw no trace of the Githyanki thieves. A bramble of vines began to speak to him, not unlike Audrey 2 from Little Shop of Horrors, and said that it could tell them where the thieves went if they would feed it blood. After some contemplation, Reggie had moral reservations against this and decided to find another way.

The party came together to try to come up with a plan. Azod cast locate creature and picked up the signal of the bandits in a seedy part of town known as the Slags. The group traveled there and took notice of a crowd lining up near a door in a cramped alley. After some investigation they learned that an auction was taking place. Several failed attempts to get in revealed to the group that they weren't getting in without a proper amount of money to prove they were serious about buying. Reggie managed to get into the nondescript warehouse by bluffing that he was interested in selling his Dawnbringer sword. 

As Reggie made his way into the auctionhall who else should he take notice of making a bid on a magical crown but ACERERAK! No one in the hall wanted to upbid the lich and he made his way to a back room to finalize his purchase. Reggie made a number of bids on the next item with no possible way to bid, and went to the back room next to confront his adversary. Acererak warned Reggie against his temptation to strike (Acererak had no patience to deal with the aftermath of Sigil's legal system for killing him). Reggie and Acererak traded some words, and Acererak advised Reggie to find his home soon so he would have a chance to see it once more. An ominous warning...

Reggie found that this was a deadend. The object he bid on was a ring, but it was not the Ring of Winter he was seeking. He quickly grabbed it from the clerk whom he was dealing with and ran out the warehouse. Out in the alleyway, Klaus was tailing Acererak whom he recognized. He took notice as Acererak maneuvered down another alleyway and produced a key for a portal which he stepped through. The party had lost Acererak.

Empty handed, the party returned back to the Bottle and Jug. Barl Hoxun, the sour-faced bartender and proprietor, listened to their bad luck over the course of the evening. He offered, for a price, that he could give them a lead where they could meet with a known agent that worked with the Githyanki gang (known as the Red Seals). Barl said that a human man named Hulester was known to work out of a tavern known as the Ubiquitous Wayfarer. He has heard that Hulester worked as a middleman for the gang, arranging many of the deals with interested parties for their stolen goods.

Conclusion
The party ended the session empty handed. The next order of business that the party was dreading is that the Harmonium had bid that they make a meeting with the Fraternity of Order in the morning at the city's halls of justice to register the Ring of Winter (which they no longer have). They concocted a hasty plan to try to pass off the ring that Reggie had stolen from the auction as the Ring of Winter (which turned out to be a Ring of Earth Elemental Control). We shall see what the next session brings...

Quote of the Night
"Klaus...do you know who Ass-Crack is?" -Dino, in reference to Acererak

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Beyond the Tomb of Annihilation: Episode 1

The ending to our Tomb of Annihilation campaign ended in spectacular fashion with a final battle pitting the PCs against the lich Acererak. A bold sacrifice from one of the characters using the Eye of Zaltec brought forth the elven warlock known as the Starfallen to aid them in the battle and turn the tide. As Acererak was beginning to see that he could not win the battle, he maneuvered his sphere of annihilation towards the misty portal causing a rift that consumed everyone present and deposited them on the streets of Sigil.

Sigil, City of Doors

I felt anxious about bringing a party into the Planescape setting as my knowledge of the planes is quite lacking and there are no official 5e resources for it as of now. But in continuing a campaign of 13th level characters, I wanted something new that would stretch the characters outside of their comfort zone. They had just successfully dealt with one of the major antagonists of D&D canon, and I just didn't know what I could do with them in their home world that would live up to the quest they had just completed in destroying the Soulmonger. The next conflict had to be bigger and the stakes needed to be higher.

The Party
Reggie (Joe T.) - An over-eager human paladin of Torm who in the events of ToA had acquired the Ring of Winter. It had tried on multiple occasions to corrupt him, but his heart of gold has remained pure.

Klaus (Tom) - Half-elf fighter who had been hand-chosen to bear the Ring of Winter by Artus Cimber and Syndra Silvane. He has struggled with the fact that the ring found its way to Reggie, but is determined to help him safeguard it.

Dino (Cliff) - Human bard; Ubtao's chosen to return to Chult to renew faith in the exiled god. He wears a leather dino suit in reverence of his patron.

Azod (Joe E.) - A githyanki ranger who is a member of Sigil's Planeswalker Guild. He has been hired at the outset of the adventure to help the party navigate their way back home to Toril.

In the Cage
Klaus and Reggie wake up on the streets of Sigil, the hub of the multiverse, and quickly realize that they are not in Kansas anymore. Gazing around they took in the sight of buildings crowding down upon them from up above and took notice of creatures that seemed straight from the heavens and hells seemingly walking past each other on the street without a care. The bodies of their comrades Sindri and Mogh were lying nearby and a gigantic construct with spears sticking out of its back was picking them up and skewering them upon its iron spokes. A humanoid body collector seemed to be its owner and it was in possession of the Ring of Winter.

Corpse Collector

Reggie attempted to reason with the individual. She seemed surprised to see Reggie talking, commenting that he "was not as dead as she thought." She seemed to be a fan of death as she spoke in veiled jealousy of Sindri and Mogh for experiencing the "true death." Reggie was physically and emotionally exhausted and had no patience for such talk - the Ring was important and dangerous and he tried to take it away from her. The construct (a cadaver collector) intervened and a battle ensued.

Just as the clash of battle began, Dino and Azod who had been sent to find Klaus and Reggie by the absent god Ubtao. They helped to intervene in the battle which had quickly spiraled out of control with the construct summoning the spirits of the deceased corpses it carried. A well placed polymorph spell on the construct by Dino gave the party freedom to flee.

They made their way to the Bottle and Jug where an audience had been requested by Ubtao. The tavern's bouncers were trolls and the marquee promised patrons an opportunity to get into a boxing match with a cyclops. Our heroes were much to battle weary to be interested and just wanted to see Ubtao. In a private room at the tavern, Ubtao explained that he had been watching them and their heroics in Chult. With the taint of Acererak gone and the absence of the Trickster Gods, Ubtao wished to return to Chult and reaffirm the faith of the people in him. He also wants to help the PCs to return home, so he has hired the planeswalker Azod and wants them all to return to Chult with his petitioner Dino who will act as the voice of Ubtao to reinvigorate faith in him again. He worries that the waning faith of his people will deprive him of strength that he will need when he one day confronts Dendar the Night Serpent.

Evening falls and the party decides to take up rooms at the Bottle and Jug. As Reggie is going to bed he studies the Ring of Winter and decides to slip it back on his finger, deciding that it will be safest upon his finger. Just as he is putting it on, it telepathically was pulled away from him and into the hands of a Githyanki gish. She took the ring and quickly walked and passed right through a wall. The session ended with Reggie rushing out into the alleyway adjacent to his room to find no trace of the thief.

The Ring of Winter

Where Do We Go From Here?
In preparing this campaign, I decided I would borrow heavily from the Monte Cook book Dead Gods. I have done a thorough reading of that book and supplemented it with a read through of PowerScoreRPG's session breakdowns of the book (a fantastic resource for many other official campaign products - I reviewed their Tomb of Annihilation guide heavily to prepare the first season of the campaign).

I have also decided that I would try to not force my ideas on the players and to keep this campaign open. Borrowing heavily from a mechanic from Dreamchaser I asked all the players to write three milestones that they felt their character needed to complete. The intention here is to gather from the players the story beats that they want to see happen to help me design encounters and drive home certain themes that will help them play in a story that they want to see. Sometimes as a DM its difficult to predict what will be engaging for the players so this process will help the players signal to me in a non-obtrusive way what they want to see in future sessions. We shall see how it turns out when we return on September 13th, 2018 at 7pm cst!

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