When the fires of GodForge finally die, the League sees the world with new eyes: everything feels deceptively normal, but what they see seems sharper, clearer. Like if you had lived your whole life with sunglasses on, which were then suddenly removed.
They are not alone, an old man is waiting for them:
“Took you long enough!” Iri-khan says, “we finally meet and I think you owe me at least two drinks.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Iri-Khan! Master of the Mystic Arts! But that is not important!”, the old wizard expositions, “For many years have passed since you stepped into the fires of the GodForge. The world has been desolated by the Duvan’ku and they are on the cusp of their victory! Indeed, they will be victorious in barely four sessions of time.”
“Four sessions, what the hell does that mean?” asks Wilbur.
“That sounds like a mystic and godly measure of time. I think it means we do not have much time”, Reggie says.
“Now go and be the hero the world needs!” Iri-khan exclaims and hides behind a rock, when the party is not looking.
A word or two on how I handled demigodness:
The players got to exchange their regular class levels to demigod levels for 2:1 basis. Players took turns giving their levels up and when one refused, the turn finished and ended. There was also some risk involved: the more levels you sacrificed, the higher was your chance of losing the levels and gaining nothing. Thus mos characters got a comfortable amount of three to four Godlevels.
Each demigod got to choose a domain for themselves. Then the Referee assigned them an ironic weakness (for example, the demigod of Magic was vulnerable to his own magic). The newly born god became immune to death except for three conditions: If slain by their weakness, they would stay dead. Similarly, if their death was considered Just or Heroic (determined by the Referee and other players via vote), they would stay dead. Otherwise they would regenerate or be reborn some time after being slain.
For each of their divine levels, the demigods got to invent a divine power that suited their domain. For example, the demipantheon of Music could rouse inspiration with their music or force everyone in the room act like they were in a musical. As a rule of thumb, the more weirdly specific the power was, the more powerful it was allowed to be. If the table considered a particular power boringly powerful, they were permitted to retroactively add some kind of embarrassing clause or weakness to the power.
The full writeup has a little more meat to it, but I’m saving it for a later blogpost or something.
The League decides that the best way back to the surface is through the Deep Carbon Observatory. They don’t bother planning the route, as the new demigod of Stone simply has the bedrock flow around them and mold into a neat passageway.
There they are surprised to find a bustling trading post waiting them. They ascend the Great lift and go through customs. And it seems that quite many underpeople are also heading upwards. “We go to eat the carrion, before it rots through”, one traveler tells.
Up at the observatory the League is greeted by the Great Kyriarch By Frosen. When he recognises the party, he gives them a lavish welcome, while being almost deferential:
“I am so sorry about the psychopatic dwarf and all the zombies. I thought you were after the Observatory too - instead you killed the guards and left its doors open, leaving me free to take control. This is all thanks to you.”
The party decides to humour him, especially as he’s very open with the present situation:
“Some years after I took control here, Sweden just vanished. It’s like it got torn away, there’s nothing there anymore. Then the horror began. Armies of the Dead began rounding everyone and everything up. Some are tortured, some merely killed. That’s when I decided to open my empire to refugees: those who can fight, do. The rest I sell to dark elves.”
“But they are just zombies, do you really need to enslave everyone?”
“Oh by all means no, the zombies aren’t even the worst of it. Around the same time, Portugal collapsed into the ground. Under it there was this big… tentacly… thing that now tries to subvert everyone it can, especially the magic users. They have to wear buttplugs, when they fight. Oh, also Italy is now called New Histepratepland, except the one part that is under the Hell’s Baronies’ control. Someone named Boris rules Russia and at some point a warparty of vampires emerged from a great mirror or something.
“Well, it sounds like the world’s truly fucked”, Wilbur says.
“Tell me about it. I haven’t even told you about the Deep Ones rising from the sea or the dinosaur-rising fascist down in Africa. Oh, and the British Isles too! The Northern island has practically become cancer, while the southern areas are surrounded by an impenetrable magic barrier.
The Duvan’ku are practically harmless. They only take those who cannot defend themselves and waste most of their resources in some big tower in the Alps.”
“A tower?” Wilbur asks.
“Yes, I think they’re aiming for the moon or something.”
“Sounds ominous. But lets act! We have a lot to do!”
First they scry their holdings: their manor has been replaced by a large golden pyramid. Luckily their employees have taken the Greater Ecstacy of Gold and are sailing it towards Australia.
“Fools! I said NOT the Australia! Not, TO Australia!” Reggie curses.
They go to their mansion (or the pyramid replacing it) and find Histeprateplands soldiers guarding it. A quick fight later the guards flee and one tells that the pyramid was built to imprison a fearsome beast.
Soon they hear a rumble and now fully grown Smög, their pet dragon, takes flight. At first Smög does not recognise its caretakers and the League is almost roasted by dragonfire. But then something clicks inside the reptilians brain and it instead decides to make the adventurers part of its hoard.
With some coaxing, Wilbur reminds Smög of the good old times, the dragon flies towards the horizon, but the League knows it will be back by the final battle.
Then they fly to Venice- I mean, the Histepratepland and confront the evil pharaoh, Histep-ratep. On their way they learn from the populace that people have tried - and succeeded - to assassinate the pharaoh, but the would-be assassin always dons the deceased pharaoh’s crown and proclaims himself to be Histep-ratep - so nothing much changes.
Still, they confront the ruler hovering beside his balcony:
“You are evil! Why did you imprison Smög and ruin our mansion?”
“Fools! You haven’t paid taxes in years! That was a wholly lawful repossession. And your pet kept pestering the neighbours, we had to leash it!”
“Excuses!” the mages proclaim and cast combined Disintegrate or some other immediately lethal spell. The spell easily pulverizes Histep-ratep’s physical form, but his spirit tries to possess Petrus and fails. Petrus tries to magic jar it, but the spirit resists and manages to flee muttering “Fuck this, I’m outta here…”
Then they fly towards Khirima and the Temple of Old Miner. The dwarves there have worked and finally finished the golem mecha. No one has been able to control it, but appropriately Boris has an innate understanding with the creation and controls is easily.
They use it to fly to Australia, just so they can wait for their henchmen and give them a good chewing off.
While waiting, Reggie and Petrus channel the continents lost potential and the dreams of its dead inhabitants into Ayers Rock, making it a powerful Dreamstone, which is made to power the Greater Ecstacy of Gold. The ship thus turns into a flying ship.
Before they leave, Reggie, the demigod of MAGIC, makes his greatest work yet: He takes a dead seed from the dead ground and breathes magic into it. Then he plants the first Mojito tree in the coast of Australia.
He’s expecting a forest the next time he’s back.
Then the League makes a grand tour around the area formerly-known-as-Europe. They talk to the Looking Glass offensive and the Deep ones and manage to recruit some of them against Duvan’ku. The Baronies of Hell also pitch in their help, which isn’t much as they can only manifest on the material plane through mortal stomachs.
They then visit the Boris Eternity, where everything and everyone is Boris. (Boris-3 from back in session 2 had used the amulet intended for accessing the Word of Creation to create infinite clones of himself.)
The sheer dwarfiness almost overwhelms the party, but when the original Boris yells “You’re all under arrest!”, his sheer Borishness overwhelms the lesser clones. Thus an army of Borises joins the assault.
Finally, with one session to spare, they assault the Tower of the Duvan’ku.
Endless undead armies stand in the way, but the mountain golem easily wades through them, while the United Armies of Extraordinary Opportunity prevent the enemy from toppling the golem. When they reach the cabin where all of this started, they ultimately realise the League needs to go in alone.
They enter and find… the same cabin they visited the last time. Only one thing has changed: the bedrooms have been replaced by a grand staircase that leads to the tower.
“Wait a moment, I’ll check just one thing”, Reggie says, opens the trapdoor and climbs down to the Crypt.
The place looks abandoned, just the way they left it. Reggie heads straight towards the secret tunnel in the kitchen area.
“You see the tunnel floor and walls have been lined with glass shrapnel”, I tell Reggie.
“Damn that’s nasty. But no problem, I’ll shrink myself and weave through them”, he replies.
“You do so, only to notice that the shrapnel has been covered by even smaller shrapnel.”
“Really? Well, I can just fly through and avoid it all.”
“You reach the end of the tunnel and find the exit bricked shut.”
“One word: Disintegrate.”
“Aigh, the brick wall is destroyed, you see a clear space where your spell did its work and packed dirt everywhere else.”
“Alright, alright, I get the point. I’ll go back.”
“Yeah, Tower is the new thing, so the adventure is probably there”, Petrus says.
And, secretly, I wipe the sweat off my brow. That was too close.
The League begins ascending the Tower: it’s absolutely immense and it takes one day to climb to a floor and the floors have all been stacked with different devious traps from the campaigns history. It’s air is suffused with aakom, making the adventurers sicker and sicker with every passing day.
They encounter a hungering curse and have a rematch with the Lucksucker. They free a famished Joop van Ooms, whose tongue and hands have been amputated. They find a room with a mirror in the middle.
Other obstacles they bypass with little to no difficulty, but it took them half an hour in real life to get past this ordinary, absolutely non-magic mirror.
Finally they reach the top of the Tower, which resembles a gigantic moon-grasping claw. There the Praetor-Pontifex awaits them:
“You are too late, heroes! See the desolation we’ve made! We have won! The Ritual is complete! Muahahahahaa!” the Overlord of the armies of the Duvan’ku monologues and attacks.
The players roll their eyes, but they know I don’t really like battles and they know I’ve been trying to end this campaign for some time, so they forgive me for using cliched tropes and hammying up the villain.
Still, the battle takes some time, as the new demigods are not quite as overpowered as they were before their ascension. At last they manage to whittle down the Overlord’s HP, capped by Wilbur firing the Holocaust arrow into the monsters chest.
The undead falls and… nothing happens. It’s over, but why does it feel so empty?
Wilbur and the others gather around the corpse to search it for a clue.
AND THAT’S WHEN THE ANGLERLICH LEAPS FROM THE FLOOR AND TRIES TO EAT THE HEROES!
SIKE! THIS WAS ALL A RUSE! THE REAL PRAETOR-PONTIFEX WAS BACK IN HIS TOMB ALL ALONG!
The Anglerlich dies quickly, because the League’s aakom-infected touch slows it down and makes it easy to slay.
“What do we do now?” Siegfried (who had joined the League for the final assault) asks.
“We go down”, says Reggie and jumps down.
The others are exasperated, but follow.
They fall for a long time, epic music begins playing in the background.
"This is one for the history books. The worlds first halo jump", Boris says.
They go back the way Reggie went in the beginning of the session and find out his Disintegration only missed a couple of feet of dirt. Only the Testifiers tomb had been filled, while the hallway was as it were.
And in the back, they find Praetor-Pontifex Cyris Carnithrax Maximus poring over a map and directing the Duvan’Ku war effort. He raises his eyes and notices the party.
“Oh, you came here.”
“Yes, we’re here to end your tyranny!”
“Do we have to go through this? I gave you your epic final showdown. Take your victory and leave. I won’t bother you and surely you will find a peaceful dimension to wreck.”
“Nah, we cannot let you go free. You’re Evil with a capital E. We know we’re not the good guys, but we’re mostly greedy and irresponsible, not evil”, Wilbur says.
“If you kill me, you will die too.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Reggie asks.
“This world exists only to facilitate our conflict. If I am slain, the world ends. But if you stop here, the world will remain as long as the possibility exists that we will finish our battle.”
“Enough of that metaphysical bullshit!” Siegfried and the others say.
“Alright, I think we have an agreement. We’ll kill this fucker.”
“Before you do so, please look at the back wall”, Cyris says.
They look.
On the back wall, Joop van Ooms’ final painting, the one depicting him dead and the world burning is hung. In front of the unfinished spot, hangs Van Ooms’ amputated hand, with a paintbrush affixed to it.
“Even the smallest stirring of air is enough to move the hand and finish the painting”, Cyris tells the League.
Which is when Wilbur reveals his ace in the hole: the Lost Dweomer spell.
“Ha, good luck, when I erase that rule from the book!” he yells and casts the spell.
And fails his save.
In my game the Lost Dweomer can be used to erase any one page from the game. If the caster succeeds a save vs Magic, they may pick the page. If not, the page is chosen randomly.
So, I stack all my LotFP books and we roll the die.
7.
The Magnificent Joop van Ooms. The table holds its breath, when Wilbur rolls the die.
3. The Index page. You can taste the disappointment.
“I use this magic item from an earlier adventure to choose the number on the die”, Wilbur says with a smug look.
“What item? Oh, that one. Yeah sure”, I stutter.
And the painting vanishes from reality.
“Very well. I have tried to best you with the force of arms, the force of reason and the force of manipulation. I am thrice and truly defeated. Let me just sit back on my throne and assume a pose worthy of my cadaver”, Cyris says and sits down on his throne.
“Yeah, like we’d let that happen”, Reggie quips while transmuting his arrows into baseball bats and sticks.
Every member of the League gets a stick. Then they collectively whack Cyris Carnithrax into small bits of bone. Finally they sweep the bits into a pile and Wilbur sticks the Holocaust arrow in the middle.
“That should do it”, Wilbur states.
And thus end the Tales of Greed.
---
Epilogue:
Duvan’ku was defeated, but the characters emerge into a broken world. But the League’s part is now over. They only know how to destroy, so they have no place in the rebuilding process.
Siegfried intends to retire (again) and finish his book of monsters and sword techniques.
Reggie invites everyone into Australia, where he intends to drink mojitoes and re-establish civilization. Some take his offer, some don’t.
Boris reveals he’s been keeping a journal for the whole of the campaign. He’s been periodically sending its chapters to his brother, who has bound it into a book. A book titled the Tales of Greed.
Lorenzo walks the earth on his throne of beasts. He intends to revive the Cult of Tittivilla. And then eat their god.
Petrus returns to the Veins. Surface no longer has anything for him.
The Filibusters spread the joy of music to the war torn land.
Wilbur leaves to see his sister and family.
Everyone wonders what happened to Hildi, the League’s child ward who disappeared some time after they went to Khirima. That’s when Siegfried’s player reveals a used character sheet: he rolled Hildi as an Alice, so Hildi’s been on her own FLAILSNAILS adventures all along.
So if you’ve ever met a girl adventurer with a pragmatic streak, you might have shared an adventure with her.