Rise of the Runelords Recap # 122 [RPG]

 [13 Gozran 4708 continued]

Following the battle against the massive shemhazian demon, Kang and the angel Ayruzi work together quickly to heal Erik.  A search of the chamber shows that the twenty-foot-long sarcophagus is empty.  The adventurers turn their attention to the magical screen of golden energies that bar further progress.  Various options are considered, but sometimes the simplest is best—Jinkatsyu’s runeforged blade disrupts the force field entirely!

Beyond lies the chamber of a powerful magical artefact called the anima focus.  The slowly rotating, thirty-foot-diameter sphere of gold is the magical link between the Material Plane and the runewell in Karzoug’s personal demiplane.  Through the anima focus, soul energies from those slain bearing the Runelord’s mark are transmitted directly to him.  This chamber, crucial to Karzoug’s successful return, is not unguarded, however: standing in the air about thirty feet off the ground is a creature whose upper torso is that of a comely woman, while her lower half is that of a lion; and  flanking her are a pair of cloud giants!  The leonine creature doesn’t expect victory, but instead works to weaken the Heroes of Varisia so that her master will prevail in the battle to come.  When Jinkatsyu rushes into battle, he’s quickly overwhelmed with magic and the giants shatter as much of his equipment as they can.  But just before the foes can decapitate him, Erik saves the kitsune’s life with a perfectly placed fusillade of bullets.  As the last guardians fall, the angel Ayruzi uses more divine energies to heal Jinkatsyu while Ava prepares more spells to repair the kitsune’s broken gear.  Kang analyses the anima focus and determines how it can be used to travel to the place where its energies are being sent.

The time has come.  Having made their final preparations, the adventurers enter the portal in unison and arrive in the Eye of Avarice.  They find themselves standing on a stone platform barely a hundred feet above a sea of pure fire.  Behind them, a rippling window overlooks the city of Xin-Shalast, while before them, at the very center of the demiplane, is a circular pool of molten gold: Karzoug’s runewell, through which the power of the souls slain under his mark have collected for the past five years. It appears to be fully charged.  Mounted above the runewell on an articulated adamantine frame is a large lens of green crystal with the Thassilonian runes for transmutation and greed inscribed upon its surface: the soul lens through which the greed in souls who were marked with the Sihedron was extracted and pooled into the runewell below.  

On each of the chamber’s side balconies is a storm giant, poised for battle, while opposite the runewell and soul lens stands a gargantuan rune giant!  At the far end of the chamber is an extravagant throne, surrounded by walls with countless books and workspaces.  A blue dragon has its tail looped around the throne and is sitting before the throne’s inhabitant like a loyal pet.  And relaxing on the throne itself, casually holding a wand with a flaming glaive leaning nearby, is the ultimate target of the adventurers’ quest: Karzoug the Claimer himself.  He nods, and says matter-of-factly: “I have waited 10,000 years for this, and now the time for words has passed.  Let the current age test its mettle against the greatest wizard of Thassilon.  Victory and annihilation await—but which, to whom?”

The adventurers barely have time to blink before Karzoug is suddenly surrounded with multiple layers of magical protections, including a sphere of prismatic force.  The living relic of ancient Thassilon stopped time itself to ensure his defences would be in place!  The battle begins in earnest, with the heroes’ angelic ally engaging the closest storm giant, Jinkatsyu charging the rune giant that bars the path to Karzoug, Kang hurling bombs left and right, and Erik defending Ava as the cleric attempts to shatter some of the Runelord’s abjurations while avoiding the blue dragon that launches into the air with instructions to kill her specifically!  The adventurers withstand the Runelord’s initial onslaught of destructive magicks and strike back.  Jinkatsyu and Kang work together to topple the rune giant, and then the alchemist hurls his bombs to deadly effect, along with Erik’s pistol, to send the blue dragon plummeting to its death!

But Ayruzi finds single combat against one of the storm much harder than expected—the two trade blow after blow but surprisingly it’s the angel that falls first!  The inexplicable defeat is a sign of things to come.  Clearly, Karzoug has been watching the Heroes of Varisia, analysing their strengths and weaknesses, and has tailored a battle plan to emerge victorious.  Kang’s every-reliable bombs of magical force seem to have no effect on the Runelord, and Erik’s bullets veer away just before striking him.  When Jinkatsyu finally gets close enough to strike, a mere gesture from Karzoug teleports the runeforged-blade from the swashbuckler’s very hand!  The Runelord retreats back into his prismatic sphere with the sword, and Jinkatsyu—already badly hurt and lacking a replacement weapon—decides to follow!  For a moment the nearly-suicidal act appears like it might work, as the kitsune successfully survives the initial layers of the sphere.  But fate is not kind this day, and the heroic swordsman dies as poison wracks his body.

The Runelord draws upon his magical reserves to unleash more devastating magic with incredible speed.  Erik succumbs to a magically-created replica of the wail of the legendary banshee, and dies instantly.  Seeing her companions fall, Ava prays for a miracle and tries to disintegrate Karzoug where he stands, but the Runelord resists the spell!  Kang desperately tries to avoid the still-standing storm giants while thinking of a plan, but even his genius cannot stave off the coming defeat.  Karzoug teleports to Ava’s side, and says, almost wistfully, “Without you, the others would have fallen long before reaching Xin-Shalast.  You should feel no shame, and I take no pleasure, in this.”  And with those words, he first changes Ava into a small amphibian before locking her in a temporal stasis forever!  And then there was one.  Karzoug tells Kang that he has led the group well, and could find a place as a lieutenant in his armies—if he kneels and swear loyalty.  But Kang refuses, knowing that although the cause is lost, he still retains one thing: his freedom.  The master alchemist steps off the platform and embraces his fate as he falls into the lake of fire below.

And thus ends The Rise of the Runelords.  The Heroes of Varisia have failed.  Despite their valiant efforts, Karzoug emerges from the Eye of Avarice confident in his power.  Within months, his newly-gathered armies will take control of central Varisia.  And by year’s end, the independent city-states of Magnimar, Riddleport, and Korvosa must band together or fall to the might of the Empire of New Thassilon.  Yet the valor of the fallen heroes has not been in vain—word of their epic quest has spread, from stopping a goblin raid during Sandpoint’s Swallowtail Festival to slaying Xanesha atop a burning clocktower in Magnimar to launching a frontal attack on the Kreeg ogres at Fort Rannick to stopping a giant invasion at its source in Jorgenfist.  Others are inspired to take up the fight in their name.  The feats of the Heroes of Varisia may have passed into legend, but who can say what their shared sacrifice might bring?

Director's Commentary

Well, this was it--after 120+ sessions, three years of real-time, countless hours of preparation, a lot of highs and some real lows, the final battle with Karzoug the Claimer, Runelord of Greed.  My greatest hope was that the PCs would win but not without an epic, memorable battle.  If that didn't happen, I was hoping they would win even if it was in the almost-comical "one bad saving throw" like with Mokmurian.  I knew the most disappointing outcome for everyone at the table would be a defeat.  And that's what happened.

A post-mortem could identify a lot of things that went wrong for the group.  The angel should have been more than a match for a storm giant, but struggled a surprising amount and was defeated.  The PCs knew Karzoug had been watching and preparing for them, but they didn't adjust their favourite tactics or have good back-up plans when favored attacks didn't work.  A real chance to catch Karzoug outside his prismatic sphere and turn the tide occurred but unfortunately *just* slipped through their fingers.  It's one of those battles that you can replay in your head and see all sorts of plausible outcomes if a die roll here or there had gone a little different.  Alas, in the end, the PCs didn't really even come close.

I had had the players write out two sets of epilogues for their characters (one version if they won, and one version if they lost) and I read those out after the session.  I also read some nominated highlights from the campaign ("funniest moment" "most exciting battle", etc.) and gave out some mementoes like gaming bags, and, for the two players who had been in the campaign since the very beginning, sihedron amulets.  Still, it was a real downer and two of the players left after without saying a word.

As for me, I've now moved on to Curse of the Crimson Throne with a whole new crew (we're at the halfway point in the AP).  I've included the events from Rise of the Runelords into my campaign--Turtleback is still destroyed, Karzoug's armies of giants are taking over more and more territory, and the PCs are about to come into direct conflict with some advance scouting parties in the Cinderlands.

Overall, it was a great campaign and I'll always have a lot of great memories from it.  I do wish it had ended on a better note--but you can't have exhilarating victories without simultaneously having the risk of a disappointing defeat.