RQ Meeting Summary #9 – Spring of 2009


Our group consisted of:

Baclane - Mark's master of horses
Arre, Thad's Melnibonean alchemist archer
Aurelius, Rich O's graeco-egyptian sorceror charioteer
Grumfar, Rich F's minotaur, who is sworn to the service of the Morrigan
Theleos, Bob F's knight of Gondor who wears the Scales of Bairanax
Mogar the White - Tony's Argan Argar troll arkati sorcerer servant of the Valar in Earth
Palanar - Leon's Maat/Humakti arkati sorceror
Scott - Byzantine catacphract (disciplined, well armored horse archer)
Carl’s Zorak Zoran troll
Kelvin - Varangian skald mercenary (a Rus or viking who can use song to invoke the power of Bragi, one of the Norse deities)
Harry – Alais - Frankish knight from the court of Charlemagne, who is currently one of Paladin Oliver’s bodyguards (read: Red Shirts)
Keith’s Argan Argar Troll, who is minding the store in Constantinople

NPCs of Note:
The Paladin Roland, wielder of the sword Durandal, nephew to Charlemagne, champion of the Frankish realm and one heck of a dancer.
The Paladin Oliver, blood brother and faithful companion to Roland, utterly loyal to Charlemagne and (like all paladins) pretty dangerous in his own right.
The Emperor Michael Rangabe, ruler of the Byzantine Empire and the party’s patron, buddy and front man.


It is now August, 811 AD


It’s WAR!!!!!!

No, not with the Bulgars, with the OTHER riff raff in your section of the city.  Lucy’s return and demand for tribute has triggered a resumption of hostilities, and Lucy and Keith’s Argan Argar consiguliere are busy planning the war against the collegiums of north central Constantinople.
The rest of the party gathers together and enters the imperial cemetery, and immediately notice the presence of some pretty impressive magic.   Outside, it is early afternoon on a sunny day; inside, it is midnight, and the cemetery is more like an ancient necropolis, much bigger on the inside than it appears on the outside.  There are ghostly guards present in front of every tomb and strange flowers bloom under a gibbous moon.  Arre has never seen or heard of flowers such as these, and is able to gather some of their pollen.

The tomb of Heraclius, greatest of the soldier-emperors of the Byzantine Empire, has more guards than any of the other tombs because his is a family structure and his children (by two different wives) carry on the discord that disrupted the empire while they lived.  Two groups of guards face each other and the party must walk between them to reach the tomb entrance.  They are given permission to enter and face the ghost of Heraclius.  He has been waiting for them.

The old emperor’s ghost greets the party and is willing to give them what they have come looking for, they don’t have to search for it, it is right on his arm.  It is a band of some unusual green metal or stone with some unusual symbols on it, and it is a source of power in its own right, unlike any other in the world.  Heraclius will give it to one of the party on the condition that it is taken from the empire as soon as possible.  He knows that it is the cause of many of the threats Constantinople faces and he wants it gone.    Palanar volunteers to take it, and the Ring of the Green King of Alkoth passes from the ghost of an emperor to a living servant of Humakt and Ma’at.  Click.

The party leaves the imperial cemetery (and the instant they do, magical detection systems go off from Greenland to Madagascar) and make preparations to leave the city; Palanar promised to get the Ring out of the empire and the party decides to head for the world gate you discovered in the Crimea, on the north coast  of the Black Sea.  The emperor Michael is busy trying to reorder the empire in the face of the Bulgar threat and agrees.  But as the party is heading for the docks to take ship, the collegiums launch their attack and gang warfare breaks out.  The northern slums explode in open war, and the emperor orders in imperial troops to restore order;  everything pretty much goes to hell in short order.  Lucky/Lucy,  Scott’s cataphract, Carl and Keith’s trolls lead the counter attack against the collegiums; Carl passes the belt of Blood and Woe to Roland (who is still with the party).
And to top things off, Asshurbanipal launches an attack on the city; a swirling funnel of magic opens in the city and a flock of the Dread Mage of Arabia’s demonic servants pour out and begin wreaking havoc and doing their best to burn the city to the ground.  But when the demons have flown out, the funnel remains, and the party can see sun-lit dunes at the other end and smell the scents of the desert in the wind blowing from the funnel mouth.  (Unbeknownst to all, the magic of the Green Ring has awakened to defend the city and wreck Asshurbanipal’s plans: he loses control of the  funnel, instead of closing or allowing more of his servants to come through, this magical tunnel has become anchored to Constantinople and now only runs from the city to the mage’s stronghold in Arabia).  This is the perfect opportunity for the party to get the Green Ring out of the empire and go and do something nasty to Asshurbanipal; but instead, you decided to walk to the world gate, and eventually, the magic tunnel cloud dissipates.

The flock of demons followed you (actually, they were following the Ring), and it was about this time that Malachi and the Emir of N. Africa detected the Ring as well.  When you left the area controlled by the empire, you were spotted by a bulgar patrol, who pass the word along to Krum.  The Khan begins massing the best cavalry the bulgars can muster, but orders his men to avoid contact with you.  You guys are the ones who always show up just when the byzantines pull something out of their Greco-Roman butts, and he’s not taking any chances.  Krum is going to gather every resource he has, both magical and physical, and when the time is right, crush you.  His magical advisors (ie The Lunar Empire) agree and suggest that he allow you to continue your journey north and east unmolested, and for the bulgars to follow and observe the party closely.  By the time you turn east along the north coast of the Black Sea, you are being followed by 50,000 bulgar horsemen, and both the bulgars and the lunars know exactly who is in the party and have a good idea what you are and what you can do.
As you near your goal, you see the sails of ships off to the SE, which disappear to the east; they may have been byzantine ships.  As you approach the ruined city where the world gate is located, those of you with powers high enough or of high rank in your cult could feel the magical pressures building.  You can see the ruins ahead of you when the sky is hidden by a crimson overcast that is light by fiery lights.  Mogar casts one of the Sunbrights given to him by the Valar and it shields you from the power of the Crater Makers; the Lunars wanted the Bulgars to bring all the horsemen they could to the ceremony because they needed the fuel and wanted to remove the inconvenient bulgars from the playing field.  Lunar treachery strikes from the sky in the form of a fiery hail of destruction and more than 38,000 bulgar men AND HORSES are slain, and the bulk of their magic points go to power the lunar ceremony.  The survivors and Krum flee to the west, screaming in terror.

I pretty much wrote the party off at this point.


At this moment,  a wave of dread washes over the party, Baclane especially.  You feel that something terribly WRONG has happened, that something has been torn out of the world and something else has been brought into the world to take its place.  You hear screaming; mindless, agonizing screams of fear, pain and madness, and you see the figures of a dozen or so men staggering and running towards you; they are Turkish shamans, and they have all been struck mad.  Some have clawed their eyes out and howl like mad dogs; others are sobbing uncontrollably and they all die raving in minutes.

When the sky has cleared, the party moves forward and encounters the first layer of lunar defenses: a line of wyvern riders launch an attack.  In an impressive display of power and skill, the party pretty much just spanks the wyvern riders, wiping them out in 2 or 3 melee rounds.  The power of Baclane’s sword begins to awaken against the wyverns, and he displays an interesting ability to do just enough damage to disable an opponent.  The party moves on and encounters the 2nd line of defense: a wave of lunes, lunar elementals that are made of magic and attack with madness.  The lunes are wiped out as well, but not before some party members are stricken with madness and must wait until it passes before they can go on; this means that some of the party’s magical defenses lapse.

The party then presses on and hits the 3rd line of defense: a Hero of the Full Moon Corp in command of half a dozen Lunar Boundary demons, chaotic monsters in service to the Red Moon.  It is an ugly fight, but Roland helps by charging 3 of the demons himself,  cutting the first out of mid-air when it leaps 30 meters at him.  He is able to keep the other 2 busy while the party manages to kill the other demons and then drag the Full Moon Hero down.

After healing Roland and sorting themselves out, the party presses on to the ruined plaza where the world gate is located and the next line of lunar defenses is starting to form.  Lucky for you, you are not alone in facing them.  The Paladin Oliver reached the emperor with Alais after you left the city, and informed him of what Oliver had learned about the turks and the lunars.  The emperor gathered 1000 of the best cataphracts and loaded them onto whatever ships were available and headed NE.  Those were his sails you saw earlier, and he has met up with 500 Ayrudzi (elite heavy cavalry), volunteers from Armenia, and they are going to attack the lunars from the east.  Michael has gotten here just in time, because there are more Full Moon corp heroes stepping out of the world gate.  He will deal with them; you must deal with the others.

The world gate you saw empty before is now open and humming with magic; it is night, and there is a full moon rising in the east, but there is something wrong: the moon is indistinct and is dimmer than it should be. It is the other full moon, the Red Moon you can see through the world gate that is glowing ever more brightly, as if it were coming closer.
In front of the world gate, facing you, is an altar made of skulls and glowing stones; on it is a girl in the clothing of the turks, painted with red runes.  Next to the altar is a priestess of the Red Moon, armed with a glowing sickle and dagger.  In between your party and the altar there towers something else, some One else.  At her feet is a bloody ruin of meat that has been savaged by blade and tooth.  Around her waist is the flayed skin of a giant white wolf, still bleeding.  There is blood on her hands and on her lips, and Yara Aranis, Dreadful Daughter, Eater of Horses raises all 4 of her arms and roars out
 “Kneel before me and become the first of my servants in this world!!!”

The party answers with a defiant  “Never!”  (there may have been some profane comments added to that), and unfurl Hector’s banner, the White Horse on a Green Field, just as Roland unsheathes Durandal and roars his war cry, and the powers of Durandal begin to awaken for the first time since the Fall of Troy.  Durandal was the sword of Hector, the people of the Horse were allies of Troy in the war with the Greeks.  Hector swore an oath to aid his allies and now his sword and his banner have been raised aloft in defense of lands that were under the protection of Troy, against evil that has been summoned with magic and the blood of horses .  Everyone in your party and all allies within 5 kilometers receive
Priam’s Blessing: +40 to general hit points, + 50 to attacks and parries, and many weapons do magical damage.  This applies to all of the men and horses in the Emperor’s force as well.
You needed this.

A note on the Lunar Empire and Heroquesting: no one since the fall of the God Learners are better than the Lunars at Heroquesting and related ceremonies.   Arguably, no one else is as good as the Lunars in the art of screwing up Other People’s Heroquests; the prime example being the slaying of the Pharoah by getting into the heroquest he designed himself and diverting him to a Lunar hell.  So there are very few people as good as the Lunars in defending AGAINST interference with their own heroquests.  And they know exactly when you guys were coming and have a very good idea what you can do.  And they have managed to succeed at taking the place of the White Wolf, the spirit followed by the Turkish shamans, by bringing a manifestation of Yara Aranis into earth and luring the White Wolf here so she could vanquish and then eat him, allowing her to take his place in this world.  This means that a lunar goddess now has an existence in this world separate from the Red Moon and Glorantha, although she is still linked to them.  And remember that the Lunar empire has vast resources to put into this kind of thing, and that while the slaying of the bulgars and their mounts  channeled 100,000s of magic points into the gate ceremony, there is at least that many magic points being put into the ceremony from the Gloranthan side as well.

It was at this point that a number of desperation passes were thrown.
Kelvin attempted to interfere with the gate ceremony with a song.  He got a critical success.  Unfortunately, Yara Aranis is a goddess, not a monster, and she reached out with one hand and caught the song with a critical success of her own; she then tore the ability to sing out of Kelvin and pulled his soul into the vortex of power surrounding the gate.  Just so you know, her lowest skills were at 700%; her magical and physical skills and attacks (bite, kick, fist, enslave…) were all higher.  If Yara Aranis had not  stopped Kelvin’s song, he would have died.  Imagine a bowling ball the size of a large truck rolling down a ramp.  Kelvin has a sugar cube with which to stop it.  He places the sugar cube perfectly… to what effect?  If Kelvin had succeeded in interfering with the ceremony that is being powered by more than 600,000 magic points, he would have diverted 10,000 magic points with his song, and then taken 5000 points of general hit point damage.  Bug + Bug Zapper = phfft.

Arre attempted to shoot Yara Aranis with a magical arrow; she caught the arrow with one hand and with the other three hands blasted the foolhardy Melnibonean with 3 spells.  Her power was so high that I had to roll 100 to fail; I did so with 2 out of the 3 spells, and Arre escaped with a heavy duty mindblast, when he could have become a cloud of sparkling red dust.  Rats.

Then the melee started.

The Party worked out a plan, which kind of went to hell when Yara Aranis decided to charge the party, but any plan is better than NO plan.  Basically:

1.The Emperor, Oliver and 1500 heavy cavalry attacked the 5 Heroes of the Full Moon Corp, who responded with waves of lunes and blasts of lunar magic.  Leveled lances and volleys of bow fire from the best mounted archers in the Empire were pitted against the magic and heroes of the Red Moon.  It was costly for the Emperor’s forces but having the banner and Durandal awake made a big difference.
2. Theleos and Grumfar charge the priestess (both to meet the terms of their oath and to screw with the ceremony); the priestess stabs the girl on the altar and turns to meet them.  This should have killed the girl and begun the process of embodying the Red Goddess in this world, but because the girl was a turk (a horse people) she had 51 hit points instead of 11, and the 25 points of damage done by the priestess didn’t finish her off.  This gave the party the time they needed.   The priestess hacks up the bear and the minotaur (both berserk), but they throw themselves at her and all three of them go full-tilt into the world gate.  The priestess is wide open to the power of the ceremony and is actually part of it, as a result, she is absorbed instantly.  Theleos and Grumfar are not, but would have been destroyed anyway except for…
3. The rest of the party (sans the mindless Arre) wind up engaged with Yara Aranis.  She ignores the berserk bear and minotaur and instead strikes at the 3 sorcerors in the party.  She knows what sorcerous magic is, she can see it on Leon, Rich O and Tony’s characters and she attacks them.  Also, Palanar is wearing the Green Ring of Alkoth and might be an existential threat to the Empire, so she exerts Power and strikes at him with the Flail of the Blue Moon.  She strikes once at Aurelius and twice at Mogar the White.  She knows that Mogar is dangerous, but she doesn’t know exactly what he is, so she just tries to kill him.
Yara Aranis’s blow at Aurelius knocks him down .
Yara Aranis’s blow at Palanar: “Die, False King!”; the flail smashes Palanar to the ground and permanently destroys most of his presence, crippling him as a sorcerer.  Yara Aranis absorbes Palanar’s sorcerous power and establishes a link to his soul, in 3 rounds, she will bring her Enslave ability to bear upon the hapless servant of Ma’at and Humakt and only a die roll of 100 by me will save Palanar from eternal slavery in the service of the Eater of Horses.  Or so I thought.
Yara Aranis’s strikes at Mogar the White axe:sever an arm and cave in his ribs and sickle: sever his head.
This removes Mogar from the physical battlefield, but he is a servant of the Valar and bound to earth by Tulkas until either he or the Red Goddess is completely defeated.  As a result, his ghost is able to manifest on the border of worlds right where the gate is, and because of his experience in manipulating magic as a sorcerer and his status as  a servant of the Valar, Mogar is able to keep Kelvin, Theleos and Grumfar from being absorbed by the ceremony, and focuses your will and magic on destroying the world gate itself, which is already under a great strain due to the power of the ceremony.   The problem is; you all take damage to your character’s stats for every round until either you or the gate is destroyed.  Every round, Mogar does 3d10 points of damage to the Gate; also, Theleos and Grumfar do some damage by attacking the Gate, but it is minimal unless they critical, and even that is greatly reduced.  In the mean time, the power of the Red Moon is being forced through the Gate and literally blasting away at your characters’ INT, CHA and POW,(Mogar used a different total to reflect his status as Servant of the Valar) and it gets worse as the Red Goddess gets closer and closer to the Gate, and to entering Earth.  For each round of combat in the Gate, I rolled the following:
1st round: 1d10,   2nd round: 2d10 and so forth.  By the time the combat ended, I was rolling 8D10 points of damage.  Mogar threw Kelvin back out of the Gate after one round of conflict; Grumfar was thrown out by Mogar just before the end of the conflict.  Theleos never made it out.




Back in the mundane world, Yara Aranis is locked in combat with the rest of the party.  It should have been a wipe, except for 3 things: Roland and Durandal, my pathetic die rolls and Baclane’s legendary stand (among horses) against the Eater of Horses.  On at least 2 occasions, Baclane was defending against 2 or 3 of YA’s attacks (she knocked Roland down a couple of times) and I couldn’t finish him off.  And to top things off, because of the effect of Priam’s Blessing, the presence of Yara Aranis and the properties of some weapons, different weapons in the party were doing damage based on the Magic, Holy and Slaying damage tables from Arms Law.
On the 3rd round after Yara Aranis wounds Palanar, right before she could use her Enslave ability on him, Baclane manages to deal her a wound that breaks her concentration on Palanar, and he is saved.  Only 3 things could have done this: a killing blow (heh, right), a wound that severed a limb, or a blow that opened a blood vessel.  Because this was Yara Aranis, it had to be a 5 point per melee round bleeding wound or worse.  And that is exactly what he got.  And he was splashed with her blood and he absorbed some of her power.  Right in front of her eyes.

The party members outside the gate manages to hold Yara Aranis off without everyone dying, while the party members inside the Gate barely managed to succeed in damaging the Gate so badly it explodes from the stress.  It was a near thing, guys; at the end of the turn that Mogar and Theleos succeeded, they had 6 points left between them.  At the end of that turn, I would have rolled 9D10 points of damage: they would have been destroyed and the Red Moon would have entered Earth.
The destruction of the Gate coincides with the defeat of the last Full Moon Corp heroes by the Emperor’s forces and he and Oliver charge with lances lowered just in time.  With the destruction of the Gate, Yara Aranis is greatly weakened: her hit points were reduced to 200, and she could no longer use damage that she did to party members to heal herself. Ignoring the party, she turns and charges the altar in an attempt to kill the wounded and helpless girl who lies bound upon it.  Party member hack at her, but it is the lance attacks by Oliver and the Emperor that stop her from reaching the girl.  The manifestation of Yara Aranis in Earth was slain and destroyed, and the Red Moon forever barred from Earth.  You have won a great victory.
You have no idea how lucky you were.

Among the loot were the axe, shortword and sickle of Yara Aranis.
The world gate has been destroyed.
The party takes ship with the Emperor and heads back to Constantinople.


Epilogue
Emperor Michael is strangely taken with the turk girl he helped to rescue; she is about 16 or 17 and very attractive, and seems to be the daughter of a powerful Turkic chief, and more importantly, the descendant of many powerful shamans.  It’s just as well, bachelor emperors are not really encouraged, and Michael’s due for some good luck in his personal life.  You managed to heal her before Priam’s Blessing wore off and she’s doing well, although a little disoriented.  It might have something to do with those glowing red runes painted on her face and body, which are slowly fading, as if she were absorbing them.  And word is coming in from the eastern side of the Black Sea and Anatolia: dozens of turk clans are entering the Empire, indeed, it looks like ALL of the turk clans are coming into the empire, from the lands around the Caspian Sea on down into the northern mountains of Persia.  And they are all coming peacefully, with their herds and flocks, and they are all apparently headed for Constantinople.  On the advice of the lords of Armenia and of Oliver, the Emperor gives orders that the turks are not to be attacked.   They are gathering on the eastern side of the Bosphurus, strangely silent, and all of them, men, women and children, are looking at the City.

The Bulgars
Although Khan Krum survived the attack of the Crater Makers, he lost 38,000 troops, and the best part of his most loyal followers; this, combined with the losses of the past 2 years of war means that the Bulgars and their Slav allies have lost well over 100,000 men; catastrophic losses for anyone.  It has been too much; the Slavs revolt and break off their alliance with the Bulgars.  The Bulgar Khanate that had covered eastern Europe for 2 year is no more and Krum himself is rumored to be in bad health, and that 3 of his surviving sons are jockeying for power.

Constantinople
Lucy, Carl’s ZZ troll, Keith’s AA troll and Scott’s cataphract stayed to fight off the collegiums and to keep the demonic servants of Asshurbanipal (the ones that didn’t follow the party north) from burning your section of the city to the ground.  They were aided in this by 5000 Isuarian spearmen sent in by the Emperor to keep things from getting out of control.  And it even worked, sorta.  Only 1/16th of the richest city in the known world has been wrecked.  Granted, your headquarters (built by Keith’s troll over the past 2 years) is underground, but all of the warehouses and docks above ground are smoking rubble.
Bad News/Good News:
Bad News: The pie you had a slice of is a lot smaller now.
Good News: It’s YOUR pie.  The collegiums are history and you can always rebuild.
The Lunar Empire
You’ve made them very unhappy.  Their problem is, however, that you have barred Earth to the Red Moon forever.  Well, maybe not forever, but for a heck of a long time.  Lunar divine magic no longer works in Earth; lunar sorcery is iffy and any enchantments created with lunar magic is starting to fade.

The Courts of Faerie  (look at the Meredith Gentry novels by Laurel K. Hamilton)
There is now a magical vacuum in eastern Europe, and the lords of Faerie are moving to fill it and restablish some of their power against these iron-wielding barbarians.  This means that the sidhe and their servants, both the Court of Light and the Court of Darkness are sending forces and emissaries east.  They look favorably on you and your allies for destroying the power of the Red Moon, who would have destroyed or enslaved them.   Two emissaries have come from the Unseelie Court to join you in your endeavors:
The first (Tony’s new character) is a servant of  Andais, The Queen of Air and Darkness, the most powerful acolyte of the Morrigan in the world.  She likes your style, and she has sent one of her brother’s warriors to aid you.  Her brother is her right hand, he is Essus, the Prince of Flesh and Flame.  Essus is a great warrior, and considered to be the most honorable lord of either the Seelie or Unseelie Courts.  He likes what you have done.
The second (Bob’s new character) is a follower of Lord Sholto, (called Shadowspawn) The Lord of that Which Passes Between, Master of the Sluagh (the High Hunt that seeks out traitors and oathbreakers).

The Rest of the World
You will have a breathing space of at least 4 weeks, more if you want.  Palanar is still bound by his oath to the Ghost of Heraclius to get the Green Ring out of the empire as soon as he can, but destroying the power of the Red Moon in Earth is considered to be a good faith attempt.  Keep in mind, however, that the three lords of the Muslim lands:
a. Asshurbanipal , Lord of the lands from Egypt to Persia
b. Malachi, Magical Overlord of Muslim Spain
c. The Emir of North Africa (has multiple names, wears Hector’s armor, wants Durandal)
They now know that you are alive and that you have possession of an immensely powerful artifact and you destroyed a world gate and you defeated the power of the followers of the Red Moon and banished her from this world.  Before, they just hated and despised you.
Now, they are afraid of you.
Oh, and one last thing about the Red Moon.
You did not harm the Red Goddess, you just kept her from manifesting any power in this world and slammed the door in her face.  You did, however, harm (ok, kill)the physical manifestation of the goddess Yara Aranis in this world.  This had a direct effect on Yara Aranis in Glorantha: all of her statues in Glorantha are missing one of her four hands; her powers against the horse nomads of Pent have been weakened and all of her followers of acolyte status or better had a bloody nightmare, where, if they failed an Power x 5 roll, their right hand withered and could not be regrown.
Both the Red Moon and Yara Aranis are going to remember you did this to them, and now they know you have the Ring of the Green King of Alkoth.  They don’t have any power here on Earth, but in Glorantha, other rules apply.

Nicely played.