Continue please. Inquiring minds wish to know.

storytime?

inb4 followers mine shit ton of salt

>>12733046
Like you're the only one who sees it coming. We want HIM to tell us.

Continuing...

The idea was to have them craft stuff, meet up with their families, get the chance to set up a proper base of operations in the city, etc. Also, one of the character was getting married to an important NPC who later I got kidnaped by denizens of Leng, but that's another story).

But before he does, he and his followers go on a pretty odd shopping spree, buying large amounts of wood, iron, smithing material, shovels, carts, weights, et cetera. I began suspecting the kind of thing he was after (I've been playing with these guys for about 15 years, so I know when they are up to something), but I wasn't sure until he had his character visit a local moneylender.

He arrives at the Honest Abdul's House of Wealth Facilitation (the party had conducted some business with Honest Abdul in the past, when they helped him rig a gladiatorial fight and score some big earnings, so he charged them less abusive interests and his stealing margins were lower), and starts working on a deal to secure a warehouse in the port distric and shipping permits (he knew Abdul had some contacts there from a previous mission they were involved with), for which he requests a rather substantial loan, which would be "promplty paid back with an offer for a business joint-venture". Abdul was not quite convinced, so the Rogue had to steal some stuff from a Temple of Desna to serve as collateral (same temple which had served the party as safehouse for most of the initial part of the campaign. He swore he would pay it back with donations, one day).

Continues...

>>12733081
don't flood the market, bro, you'll kill your price.

then when he got there I said the rift was closed cause if not the game would have been broken.


>200 replies arguing over mechanics of pc's plan dealing with minor details such as wight of salt, likelihood of his minions betraying him, decrease price of salt to do influx in market ect

>>12733100
>>12733126
HAHAHAHAHAH

>>12733126
you make it sound like we shouldn't be enjoying that sort of thing. it's kinda what we do around here.

>>12733126
You know, there's other kinds of salt besides table salt. You could have gotten back at your player by having him and his followers accidentally hit a vein of hydrogen cyanide.

>>12733169
please tell me you don't actually think that's OP.

Continuing...

So he and his followers set up to travel. Keep in mind that while now it seems rather obvious what he had in mind, it had been about 8 months of real time and many sessions between that moment and the time they originally found the elemental rift.

However, when the Rogue asks the Priest (who among his many oddities is a cartographer -both in real life and in character-, and kept maps of everything) for "The map of that abandoned Osirian temple we stumbled upon when we were chasing that lamia that sliced off Vorgok's left hand" (Vorgok is the party's Barbarian and resident killing machine. He actually killed that Lamia by taking his sliced hand, putting it inside a spiked glove and shoving it through the Lamia's throat until it died of suffocation. Then cooked the Lamia. He got his hand some sessions later after striking a deal with a necromancer. The Priest and the Sonk got the hand from the local Necropolis, and the necromancer got it "installed". Sometimes it tries to choke him, other times it slaps women in the butt, but as Vorgok says "Hand holds sword. Sword kills people. Vorgok pleased with arrangement"), I recalled his keen interest for salt.

Continuing...

>>12733169

>>12733185
I don't care if it's OP or not. I just want a DM to use chemistry for evil.

>Sometimes it tries to choke him, other times it slaps women in the butt, but as Vorgok says "Hand holds sword. Sword kills people. Vorgok pleased with arrangement")

I love this.

>>12733169
My bad, I meant sodium cyanide or potassium cyanide. They look just like table salt but fuck you up if you put them on a pretzel.

Continuing...

The Rogue and his followers take about 4 days to arrive at their destination, and he quickly starts setting up quite an impressive layout of the stuff he wanted done. He clearly had put a lot of thought into it and it was actually quite reasonable, so I allowed it to go through (with a few accidents here and there, of course. I'm a DM, after all).

After making sure the operation in the surface was up and running (set plans for building living quarters for the overseers, started digging a pit where the slaves he would rather get would be locked, sent off a mage initiate with a dowsing rod to find some water, organized a patroll to guard againts the gnoll tribes that inhabit the region, among other things), he went into the dungeon with his strongest followers. While they did encounter some creatures (mostly gnolls who had taken residense in the now-open temple ruins), they made it easily to the room with the rift, where they had to fight yet another Salt Paraelemental. But they finished it and got to work on securing the site, so the workers could come in and start digging out the dungeon.

Continues...

>>12733194
>He actually killed that Lamia by taking his sliced hand, putting it inside a spiked glove and shoving it through the Lamia's throat until it died of suffocation.

ALPHA AS FUCK

F5f5f5f5f5f5f5f5f5f5f5f5f5f5

Continuing...

Let's move forward in time three weeks in-game, when the rest of the party, now done with their own businesses (which among other things resulted in the Priest becoming permanently infertile and bald for manipulating something that could be best described as "solid doom farts". At least that's how the party's Warrior/Minstrel-Ohgodwhydoeshekeepsigning described it when they first found them), made their way to their friend the Rogue.

The salt-extracting operation was now in full swing. The first caravan of salt had been sent to Katapesh a week ago and the sacks were quickly sold among the various merchants. Abdul had spoken with the Rogue and felt the operation was potentially profitable, and agreed to gather some investors, so money started pouring in.

The next sessions were dedicated mostly to planning it out. Since most of the money the Rogue originally used to buy the materials he started with was borrowed from the party (and because they were the only ones he trusted), he had them join him, and our campaign took a momentary halt from the main story arch (which involved a bunch of doomsday factions fighting each other over how the world had to end and the characters accidentally caught carrying the object central to said dispute and everyone trying to have them working for their cause) to focus on the salt.

During those sessions, the operation grew from the initial prospecting and odd caravan to a much bigger thing, which employs around 100 people (half of which are actually slaves. I had the Rogue suffer an EXP penalty due to letting 25 of them die after orderding them to "Pile up over that loose elemental! Don't let the merchandise escape, you gnats!". He's supposed to be Chaotic-Neutral, but I thought that was borderline evil. Fun, indeed, but evil nonetheless)...

Continues...

>>12733484
PROPER IN GAME USE OF SALT
starts at 19:30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FpaMERCbro

Continuing...

guards, caravans, traders, a sea ship between Katapesh and Absalom (called "The Really Salty Sailor", go figure), hired scribes in each city that handle all the paperwork and port issues, and a host of other minor individuals.

Suddenly, the whole place got caught in a series of earthquakes. Tremours had been common since the operation got big, mostly thanks to the absolutely careless use of an explosive concoction deemed by the group as "Orcus' Toilet During Taco Night" (which they originally got very early in the campaign from a beduin alchemist. The guy was a quack and I never expected the characters to try and replicate his formula, which involved rather worrisome amounts of cammel depositions), which has turned what once was a beautiful and very sacred Osirian temple into a gapping hole the size of a stadium in the middle of the desert, with the elemental rift standing at its centre (they had the miners dig underneath the rift, so salt falls out through the portal and accumulated in a massive pile from which it is then loaded onto one of the dozens of leather conveyors powered by slaves inside hamster wheels), but now they were getting particularly powerful.

Continues...

more please.

Continues...

As the Priest was quick to guess (he's the party's expert on Cosmological stuff), the rift had become dangerous and potentially unstable. His succesful Knowledge [The Planes] rolls allowed him to guess what was going on: The rift had been pouring such massive amounts of material from the Paraelemental Plane of Salt that the native elementals were becoming restless (Elemental Planes in the Planescape conception -which is the one I use, even though we are playing in Golarion- are sort of sentient by themselves, with Elementals being manifestations of said planar awareness).

Long story short, elementals started pouring out of the rift, first a few (1d4 Small Elementals) per day, until growing to chaotic proportions (1d100 Small Elementals, plus random amounts of bigger ones, per day).

Workers, guards and overseers were now getting killed by the dozens each day...

Continues...

I must know what happens!

protip, in the future write out the whole story in MS word and copy-paste into the thread. saves a lot of time on our end.

>>12733752
Yes. Please, please do this in the future.It would be VERY much appreciated

Continuing...

, but there was enough people to spare at first, since by then a whole village had started to form in the area surrounding the operation, with all kinds of people settling there either to work in the mines and refinery, to serve somehow in the related services or to make money off the people working there, setting up taverns, brothels (lots and lots of brothels with very, very ugly women. Still, Vorgok managed to institute his own version of the "Prima Nocte", and it became mandatory for every new harlot in Saltspit -that's how they named the incipient town- to spend her first night of service with Vorgok. Some of them don't get to survive past that night), shops and the like.

Keep we are talking about 5 months in-game down the road. Since the campaign had become more focused in long term events, we sped up the time rate.

So this elemental outbreak quickly turns into a big threat, and the Rogue hurries back to Katapesh to get support from his main associate, Prince Osman Bin Hassir, who sends him back with his personal Mage-Vizier and a host of soldiers from the Zephyr Guard (Katapesh's finests soldiers. The Prince was right enough to pull those kinds of strings). They manage to battle the elementals, but one thing catches the Rogue's attention: The Mage-Vizier had somehow commanded the elementals with a rod (I gave him a Rod of Elemental Compelling, which allowed him to force elemental of lesser power to perform certain actions. The idea was to have him push the elementals back into the borehole so the guards would surround them. Purely for stylish reasons. Foolish me. I should have seen what would come afterward).

Continues...

inb4 salt elementals mining salt

Continuing...

Let's move one week into the future. The situation has been controlled and the mines are being repaired. But wait. Elementals keep pouring out at a regular rate! Ah, but the Rogue had noticed how the Rod managed to force small elementals into moving in a particular direction, so he figured "So far we have been collecting the salt, processing it here, loading it on camels and sending it to Katapesh. What if the salt went there... by itself?"

And so he managed to convince the Prince to have his Mage-Vizier craft a few more Rods of Elemental Compelling (the components had to be taken from an obscure location in the Mwangi Jungles, which served as the pretext to get these nascent capitalists back into adventuring for a couple of sessions), which were then given to hired Mage Overseers so they would command the salt elementals from the mines to Katapesh.

A special processing facility was built in Katapesh, where the elementals would be lead into a large funnel-like structure linned with metal rings enchanted with Dismissal spells, thus sending them back to their plane and allowing the remaining salt to be refined (the rings weren't too powerful, so it was common for elementals to go through unharmed and cause havoc in the ovens underneath. But they pay was good, so workhands were aplenty). This, combined with the regular caravans that still went back and forth day and night (as a lot of the salt was just regular sand without a CR), skyrocketted profit, to the point that the party could finally start building their much-desired fortress near the mines (which included hiring a Conjuration specialist to make them their own oasis, which led to some other business oportunities. But more on that later).

Continues...

Continuing...

However, it came with a cost: With the rift churning out elementals day and night at progressively higher rates, alarms began ringing among some leaderheads of Katapesh (how much was envy for the profits and how much was actual concern is another matter altogether), who cited issues like the ludicrous increase of travelers reporting being attacked by rogue salt elementals (which had increased to 0 to Way More Than 0 in less than a year). Prince Osman managed to calm things down a bit by setting a series of permanent guard outposts along the Salt Route to make sure all the elementals that escaped the caravans were slain (which led to an entertaining session where the characters were now the ones hiring adventurers just like them to do the job), but trouble was starting to brew.

No better way to make enemies than success.

Continues Tomorrow...

bumpin'

OP here:

>>12733777
>>12733752

Aye, I know. Please accept my apologies. I hadn't noticed I would be writing down so much when I started (got carried away with the details, but I guess they help understand the campaign better).

It's getting really late here (4 am, got to work in like 3 hours), but there is still a lot of story to cover, so I'll try continuing tomorrow (technically today), or remaking the thread if it's deleted by when I get back. I'll make sure to write stuff down before I get posting.

See you lads tomorrow with the rest of the story. And thanks for watching.

>>12733988

> tomorrow

>>12734051
Aw, dude! Fuck!

safety bump

FUSHIGI

bumping

bumping on the hour, every hour

This is so fucking Win, can't wait for more tomorrow

Skipped an hour, bumping 15 minutes ahead of the next hour

safety bump

pmub

I would really like it if more DMs or even players posted their games, even if they aren't that exciting at parts.

Needless to say this gives you a lot of great opportunities. And while I'm sure you'll figure out something, what I'd do is introduce the nobles of elemental salt (similar to the old elemental princes and prince of evil elements). They like power and influence as well, so there's no reason why they wouldnt' try to make an arrangement (you get their salt, they don't send heavies after you, and they get a foothold in the world in the form of an embassy or something).

OP here:

Sorry for the delay. Had to meet up with the teacher guiding my thesis, which doesn't involve salt in any way.

Let's continue:

The issues with the salt operation and the related incidents managed their way into the Merchant Court of Katapesh, in order to be brought to the ears of the Pactmasters (mysterious masked fellows that have been running the city for the last thousand years or so). Even though Prince Osman is the Grand Vizier of the Merchant Guild, the rest of the katapeshi nobles were pretty upset about the whole thing, especially those whose businesses were somehow being affected. One particular man, Sheik Hossain Ibn Shappur, who owned the largest spice trading company in the city -salt being among his main trade goods-, pulled strings to get this brought to the court.
This part of the campaign was mostly political, with the party negotiating with various groups of interests and individuals (though what “negotiating” means changes from character to character).

Continues…

Continuing...

At a certain point, things went awry. A negotiation with the Sheik's advisor ended in a fisticuff exchange followed by a chace on the back of a couple of elephants, although the characters managed to avoid getting identified as responsible.

However, the Sheik took his interest in shutting down the salt operation by any means, and the party quickly found out how, when reports came back that the portal had exploded and the whole mine was now under a literal mountain of salt.

When the characters made their way back (they made a mental note of hiring a wizard next time to see the possibility of constructing a permanent portal between Katapesh and the mine), they found out dozens of workers were dead, over a hundred missing underneath the salt and many of the slaves had escaped during the explosion, pillaging the town and causing even more havoc.

Through witnesses they discovered that the rift had been sabotaged somehow (the Sonk perceived a pretty strong Conjuration aura lingering, though he had troubles telling it appart from the aura generated by the rift itself), and ultimately found the responsibles after seeing a burst of light far into the desert (it was night, and the sabouteurs had encountered a group of gnoll raiders. The burst was the Fireball spell that terminated said gnolls), which a bit later led to a pretty heart-stopping battle against the wizard sent by the Sheik and his escorts.

Continues...

Continuing...

After beating the wizard, they tried using some rudimentary Divination scrolls they had bought in the past, but the man was powerful enough to resist them. So they decided to cast Vorgok.

The Barbarian starts by chewing off every single one of the wizard's toes, without even removing his shoes first (early in his career, Vorgok took "Animal Fury" as his first Rage Power, which gives him a bite attack while enraged. Then around level 5, I think, he took off all his teeth with a clamp and went to see a blacksmith in order to have steel teeth installed, which had to be bolted to his jaw. Vorgok passed all the Fortitude tests to avoid extreme blood loss, but he had a critical fail in the one to handle the pain. Remembering how dangerous was Vorgok the last time he felt actual pain -killed a gladiator that cheated a friend, cut of his head, nailed his hand through the throat and used the severed head as a bludgeoing glove to kill the other gladiator. He still keeps the head, called Wilson, and uses it like some kind of very grotesque puppet when he gets "philosophical", as he says [in Vorgok terms, "getting philosophical" is anything from "did I take a dump today?" onward]. Once he attempted to earn money by using Perform in a square to set up a ventriloquist show with Wilson. He didn't have Perform trained, he didn't know how to do ventriloquism, and he was using a SEVERED HEAD TO TELL JOKES. Didn't work out- Valanar -the Priest- gave him copious amounts of Pesh Liquor -a strong narcotic distilled from local cacti- to control him, but...

Continues...

bump

>in before elemental rift expands to the point where it's a threat to the world, and the other world-ending cults get involved trying to stop the PCs from accidentally destroying the world before they can

>>12739185
Now that would be outright hilarious. Especially if the PC's won and then destroyed the world just to spite the other cults.

>>12739185
it would be pretty bad

salt is closer to the negative plane than the positive
so liches, mummies and dried zombies n shit
easy to point out that the dudes letting undead into the world for the sake of money are not on the side of Light

>>12739185

That's actually an interesting angle I hadn't considered. I'll ponder about it. Thanks for the idea.

Continuing...

but trying to drug up a 2,2 metres tall Ulfen is no easy task, so the party had to chain him down before he killed the blacksmith (who was hammering the red-hot teeth into his jaw over an anvil. The Ulfen had Damage Reduction thanks to his National Feat. He's from Irrisen), and force-feed him every bit of Pesh -or any kind of narcotic, for that matter- they could find. After the blacksmith was done, Vorgok enraged and ran out, and they found him the next day, dancing naked on a fountain while singing "I'm a Little Teapot").

So there's Vorgok with the toes (and half the boot), which he then proceeds to ram into the wizard's mouth and prepares to do the same with the rest of his fingers, when his massively bonified Intimidate roll breaks down the man and he explains what's going on: The Sheik cashed in some favours with an old associate, Emir Kassan Bin Fashar, an extremely wealthy man owner if a jewel trading company who had ties to a Dao (genies from the Elemental Plane of Earth. In fact, Bin Fashar's mines never produced a single gem, instead all of them come from his Dao associate).

Continues...

>>12738862

Your Vorgok player is the best roleplayer I have heard of in a long time.
Seriously the guy is awsome.

Pic somewhat related.

>>12739367

Well, I'm sure that by now everyone is aware that this isn't exactly a party composed of paragons of good. As a detail, this is what the party is composed of:

Hassan ibn Jaffar: Human Rogue, though he prefers to be deemed as an "Entrepreneuring Explorer and Archaeologist". Chaotic-Neutral. Native of Katapesh.

Valanar of Noravia: Human Priest of Sivanah (Goddess of Secrets), scammed his own father and got his entire family sold as slaves later on. Lawful-Evil. Native of Cheliax. Pic related; it's his character.

Vorgok "The Merciful": Human Barbarian. Got his nickname after forgiving the life of a gladiator (yes, in a recreation of Gladiator, even including the "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!"), though he has been turning increasingly insane since then. Chaotic-Neutral (started as Chaotic-Good). Native of Irrisen.

Jack Sandweaver: Human Warrior/Bard/Duelist. Former pirate, travels along with a goblin minstrel he somehow conned into comming along with him. The player actually writes down the songs he sings in the game (and they are all about him). Chaotic-Good. Native of Taldor.

Rakhim Apravarnasi: Human Monk/Sorcerer. The voice of reason in the party, but had the really bad idea of getting romantically involved with an NPC (an elf priestess that helped them early in the campaign), as the Priest (who's a manipulative bastard. I love that character) keeps using it against him (remember I mentioned having the wife kidnapped by denizens of Leng? Well, guess who contacted the kidnappers and used the elf as bargaining chip).

Continuing with the story in the next post...

Is this thread archived yet? Because if not, it should be.

>>12739374

Aye, he's a great roleplayer, and quite versatile too (this is his first "ME SMASH" character. He often plays quieter, less destructive roles). Though speaks little, he has a way of nailing the precise phrase at the precise moment that has made his character so memorable (like the time they had to camouflage him to avoid the authorities -a two-metre viking in a middle eastern city is hard to miss-, which involved shaving his beard and dying his hair black. He then kept acting like a model from a Head and Shoulders commercial. It was hilarious. Later he hired the services of a witch to have his beard grow back to the length it was, but the witch botched the spell and he got the most epic neckbeard ever. He had to shave his tongue too, though).

Continuing...

Apparently, he managed to have the Dao send elemental servants to the Paraelemental Plane of Salt (which is coterminous with the Elemental Plane of Water and the Negative Energy Plane, so getting his own elementals there actually required a bit of extradimensional political games with the Marids. That is part of a side-plot that's brewing for further down the campaign, though) and find the other side of the rift, which by then had become a massive cavernous region deep in the plane (to make an estimate, about 1 metric ton of salt pours through the rift every minute, and the operation has been going for about a year almost non-stop. While the rift is much older, now that the salt is consantly removed it doesn't clog, so it keeps pouring. Since the elementals began churning out en masse, the rate practically tripled). The Dao's servants set some kind of magical apparatus that, when combined with a similar artifact placed by the wizard on the other side of the rift, caused it to become unstable and "break in half". As Valanar found out, "breaking in half" is slang for "transitive split", which occurs when a portal has its points of entry severed and both ends instead open to the transitive plane that
exists coterminously to both ends (or a random one if the portal connects planes that are not coterminous to the same transitive planes).

In this case, the rift became a portal into the Ethereal Plane. Valanar, who had made his homework and knew a thing or two about this, explained that this could prove rather dangerous.

Continues...

>>12739655
>portal into the Ethereal Plane
Ghosts. Ghosts everywhere.

Go on OP, this is the best thing I've read in a while.

>>12739655
And then OP died of a fatal heart attack.

>>12739782
HAUNTED SALT. HAUNTED SALT EVERYWHERE!

Got home and refreshed to see this thread was still alive.

Too bad the op has left again.

My apologies. Had a severe case of OP is a Fag and had to go out to handle some issues.

Continuing...

At first nothing seemed wrong. Sure, the accident had destroyed most of the facility, but as Hassan put it "At least there is still a lot of salt to sell. Get back to work!". Saltspit was mostly unharmed (the village, which by now was basically a middle-eastern version of Deadwood by all accounts. There's even a Mahmud Al'Sherengen NPC who's conducting pretty big business there), so there was people to draw from to get the operation back to work. They hired a band of gnoll mercenaries to hunt down the escaped slaves (or to get them new ones if the original ones couldn't be found) and slowly built the thing back up.

A couple of weeks down the line salt was once again being hauled to Katapesh and beyond, although the elemental processing facility in the city had to be closed and rented to the meat packers (with the rift severed, there were no more elementals to process) to make some margin.
Still, the investors were worried that, even though the rift explosion released a huge amount of salt, the fact remained that no new material was pouring through, and so the operation was now less attractive in the long run.

Continues...

Continuing...

This hit hard with some of the more fancy projects, such as the group of engineers brought from Alkenstar specifically to work on the design of a cargo zeppelin (they were asked to halt their work and return to Alkenstar until further notice. The ship was barely in the initial stages of construction), the plans to send an enslaver expedition to the Mwangi Jungles to capture a large host of ape-men (intelligent gorillas who live in the jungles there, which would make excellent slaves as they are very strong and can operate tools with all four extremities), and even the grand opening of the Katapeshi Salt Exchange, which Prince Osman proposed as a mean to calm down the competing merchants who were feeling far too threatened by the ever-growing operation in Saltspit.

Needless to say, Hassan was baffled, seeing how his incredibly intricate and thoroughly detailed plans were on the verge of failing.

That's when additional excrement smashed the fan.

Continues...

Continuing...

Reports started comming up from the Brass Legion (the party had hired a band of soldiers of fortune to institute some kind of order in the town. It was mostly a bunch of abusive bullies, but better to have the bullies on your side), that Saltspiterians -or Saltspitians, or Salspitooners. We haven't managed to agree which one should be. I like Saltspitooners- were being found dead on their beds by the numbers.

Initially this was attributed to disease, which in the festering pit of brothels and alehouses that Salspit had turned into (countil almost 3,000 inhabitants), but at these became more and more regular, Rakhim and Valanar decided to make further investigations.

As it turned out, people found dead didn't appear to show any signs of fatal diseases, murder or anything like that, except for the fact their hair, eyes and skin were white as milk. This, in conjunction with the fact every single people died while screaming horribly, led to the widespread rumours of ghosts and other malign entities haunting Saltspit.

Continues...

Continuing...

As if things weren't bad already, Imam Salim Al'Salam, caretaker of the local Temple of Sarenrae (as people began flocking into Saltspit, religion came along. Sarenrae, the Sun Orchid, is the main goddess in the region. A few other cults have also set foot here, but only that of Sarenrae has a temple already built), began preaching that these deaths were the cause of the excessive greed and avarice with which the owners of the mine had been chasing material wealth, sacrificing countless lives in the process.

The preaching became more and more incendiary as deaths multiplied, and by the end of the month, the makeshift cemetery outside the town counted over 80 dead bodies from what came to be known as the "The White Woes".

Dealing with a progressively more scared workforce (several workers had stopped going to the mines altogether. That's the problem with paid employees), a string of inexplicable deaths, and a very likely outbreak of religious fury, the party decided to take things more seriously.

Continuing...

Continuing...

Using their contacts within the Church of Desna (Hassan still hadn't repaid what he stole from them, by the way), the party hired a couple of exorcists to find out what was going on. As some of the previous coments have indicated, Valanar was suspecting some kind of ghost or spirit that came from the Ethereal Plane. Yet the exorcists found nothing of sorts, even after covering the settlement with all kinds of "ghost-sensitive holy water vials" and other items of dubious effectiveness.

Still, during that night, they heard the same horrible screams reported earlier, and rushed to see what was going on. As it turned out, a homeless was the one screaming, and they found him literally trying to gouge out his own eyes, while his hair and skin turned pale. Moments later he was dead. Quickly, they broke out every kind of Divination spell they had at hand, and managed to detect an evil aura lingering in the area, as well as a strong leftover of Conjuration.

Conjuration? That meant some kind of force -or creature- had been brought here from another location. Rakhim quickly pointed out something else: When they found the screaming hobo, he was yelling about worms and bugs, and actually he looked extremely terrified.

Knowledge roll. Something is lingering at the back of his head, but he can't take a hold of it. He announced he needs to take a trip back to Katapesh to consult the libraries there (the player actually has a pretty good idea of what is going on, but he kept the metagame out. Still, when things like these happen, I tend to allow a Knowledge check with a hard DC to allow the character to get a "moment of inspiration", letting the player use a bit of metaknowledge, but only if I notice the party is stuck and the character actually has a chance of having heard something related).

Continues...

OP, is this a premade setting or did you homebrew it?

OP here:

Dinner time. I'll be back in a bit with more.

>>12740522

Nay. We're playing in Golarion, which is Pathfinder's baseline setting (pretty much your typical kitchensink setting, similar to Forgotten Realms in the early days. It has some pretty nice touches, though), although I've added some modifications here and there (for instance, while Katapesh exists in the setting, I practically remade the city to better fit the campaign. And I replaced the setting's cosmology with the traditional Planescape one, which I like much more).

>>12740573
Alright, thanks. I was quite impressed by how set-up it was, and I was about ready to ask you for advice on how to make my own setting so elaborate. I'll take a look at it for ideas.

Archiving this thread for great justice!

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/12732988/

>>12741215
sup/tg/ doesn't count as legitimate archiving, it archives anything regardless of quality.

It only counts if it is actually 4chanarchive.

>>12741251
Sup/tg/ does purge and is far less laggy than the 4chanarchive site, maybe you are thinking of the Easymodo auto-archive?

>>12741270
It doesn't purge based on quality but interest.

>>12741270
half of its archives are quest threads...

it's basically a quest thread archive

Long fucking dinner OP is having.

>>12742268
maybe he's writing the rest of the story before he starts posting it.

bamp

Seriously what is that man doing

God damn it OP.

>>12741251
It preserves the thread after 404, that's what really counts.

>>12743822
With the way things are going we'll just be saving some good story and alot of bump

OP here:

Critical emergency thesis correction, literally no time for anything else.

Will continue delivering tomorrow. I implore forgiveness for now.

>>12744131
Good luck with that, not like were going anywhere anyway

keepin this shit alive

Good Man

Oh good this thread is still alive, I was worried it'll vanish by the time I came back home.

Nope still here, eternal it stands

bump

>faintest whabeed

OP here (tripfagging in case the topic gets deleted and I have to reopen it. We have a lot of campaign still to cover). Time to resume the tale. Thanks for your patience, fellow fa/tg/uys.

Continuing...

So Rakhim the Sonk takes a leave of absence from Saltspit to visit Katapesh, where he meets up with a fellow vudrani (Rakhim was born in Jalmeray, one of the Impossible Kingdoms of Vudra), who helps him gain entry to the Old Archives of the Grand Lodge of the Golden Peacock, one of the oldest civil organizations in the city, and keeper of quite a vast collection of books and scrolls, most of which were donated by the many members of this tea-and-crumpets (or coffee-and-dates) society of well-off gentlemen with large turbans.

Searching the archives, he finally stumbles on the kind of information he was after. Long story short, Rakhim clears up his suspicions: It isn't ghosts what came through the portal, but Night Hags, denizens of the Deep Ethereal that hunt the souls and dreams of mortals to barter them with nameless entities or engorge them themselves.

He gets back to Saltspit, and as it turns out (he came prepared this time and bought a lamp that emited an effect of Dimensional Anchor in the infamous Dark Stalls of Katapesh), the party stumbles upon a group of Night Hags.

Continues...

Continuing...

Battle ensues for a while, until they manage to subdue and capture one of the hags. Zone of Truth in place, they get the old lady talking and she reveals what's going on: The splitting of the rift resulted in an interminent portal opening between the salt mine and the Deep Ethereal, which quickly drove the attention of the Night Hags wandering there. After "smelling" mortals on the other end (most importantly, mortals that could have dreams), they went through and began hunting the sleepers for their dreams.

But dreams themselves are not as in high demand in the Great Beyond as nightmares are (since the later can be used to brew quite nasty things, while the former will mostly net you unicorns and candy rainbows), and so the Night Hags have been planting motes of fear and horror in the heads of their victims, waiting them to grow into full-fledged nightmares, and later returning to quite literally harvest them.

At first, the party was troubled. Night Hags are not stuff you often play along with, and truth be told there were some concerns on, you know, people having such horrible nightmares that they died in their sleeps. But as I have come to expect from these guys, where there is a problem, there is an oportunity.

And for these guys, oportunities mean business (and also usually shifts toward Evil alignments. I swear these guys are good people in real life).

Continues...

Continues...

So there they are, when Hassan looks at Valanar, and I notice both are thinking the same thing. "My good... err, lady. We have a proposition" goes the Rogue with his eyes looking like money signs.

What came out of the resulting conversation (which at first was met with hostility, but after they -rather foolishly, but served the purpose- allowed the Night Hag to read their thoughts and realise they were being honest) was the following:

Saltspit would provide "plenty of fertile ground" for the Hags to plant their nightmares, and harvesting would be then allowed to proceed at certain designated locations to minimize exposure to fear by the general population, for which the Hags would pay monetary compensations.

Hassan took the issue to Prince Osman (he knew the guy was extremely flexible on his morals when it came to money), and while at first he was a bit troubled, when the Rogue began explaining his plan (which basically consisted of "we'll make money, lots of it"), the katapeshi noble was quick to jump in.

Continues...

I <3 OP

Continues...

The rest of that session was spent working on the operational aspects.

First, the "pots" (term used to refer to the people they'd be renting out to the Hags to plant their nightmares) would be taken from the Prison of Khandassar. The Prince had family connections to one of the most important judges in the city, which in turn had a sway over the prison's overseer. In exchange for payment, prisoners would be regularly hauled from Khandassar to Saltspit, under the pretext that the city was being paid for sending prisoners as slave force to the mines in exchange for funds that would be, of course, spent in stuff like orphanages and metropolitan beautification (if we consider hookers for the overseer as "orphans" and a new palace as "beautification").

Once in Saltspit, the prisoners would be put to work on the salt operation (estimates had it that with the remaining salt, the mine should remain functional for about 4 more months). The Hags would plant the fear motes during the night, when the prisoners are sent to sleep in bunkhouses kept a mile away from the town to avoid anyone noticing anything (the excuse was that the prisoners were dangerous, and the administration was worried about the safety of the Saltspitooners. The people bought it quickly, particularly now that "The White Woes" had stopped and they could get back to their normal lives).

Continues...

>>12746851
>he's back
OH MY GAH

Continues...

Now, the party requested the Hags to prepare a "control test", which consisted of 5 poor sods that were chained to a rock far away from the town and implanted with fear motes of differing magnitudes (as the Hags explained during one of the meetings, the fear motes were produced from horrible "patchwork memories" they fished off the waters of the River Styx -the river steals away the memories of those that touch it, and these memories linger there for endless years, sometimes mixing up and resulting in thoughts and ideas that would give an oinoloth the chills-, and could potentially make extremely powerful ones. However, for a nightmare to be worth in the far off markets of the planes, they had to be properly cultivated and grow as naturally as possible. Thus, they often used fear motes of lower magnitude on humans, to avoid the risk of sudden death before the nightmare is ripe for harvesting). These tests subjects would help properly appreciate the rates of degeneration, which was important since, as Valanar pointed out, the prisoners should be put to work on the salt operation while the nightmares grew, which in turn would let them cut down the costs on hired labour and slave purchases (the price they agreed to pay for each prisoner was substantially less than the average price for a strong slave in the flesh markets of Katapesh). However, they also wanted to know how quickly would the subjects begin to show signs of madness that could endanger the operation or blow the cover.

Continues...

>almost 30minutes between posts when OP is here
Dammit OP why do you hurt so good?

You are a god among DMs, OP.

>>12747241

Nay, I'm just a DM with a helluva good group. Almost everything in this topic happened because they think out of the box. It's the boon of being able to keep your roleplaying group intact for over 15 years.

Continuing...

Second, there was the matter of an "extradimensional consultant". Even though the Hags had shown a lot of interest in the deal, they were still Nigh Hags, and you don't trust Night Hags. Recalling the events that led to this whole thing in the first place (the severing of the rift), the party sought to contact Emir Kassan Bin Fashar (the jewel trader who Sheik Ibn Shappur used as a contact to get the Dao to send his elementals to the other side of the rift).

Their idea was to get the Emir on their side (with money, of course. Works better than any Enchantment spell. Valanar prepared a few of those just in case, though), in order to use his contacts with the Dao and find someone "outside" that could serve as a middleman with the Hags.

As it turns out, the Emir himself was a Dao, long ago banished from the Elemental Plane of Earth, and after a pretty fun encounter (the Emir is supposed to be extremely quirky and quaint, and the players went along with it to create a scene that would better fit a Terry Gilliam movie) they got him on his side (he never really had an issue with them to begin with, since he had no interests in the salt business. He was just repaying favours to Sheik Ibn Shappur).

Continues...

Good god OP your players are magnificently greedy bastards, this is brilliant.

OP, will you ever run an internet game? This is incredible, and I want to have you as DM of my next game.

>>12747360
Seconding this. I mostly play 3.5e but I'd love to have you as my DM

Continuing...

The Emir agreed to pull strings within the Great Dismal Delve (the main Dao settlement in the Elemental Plane of Earth, pretty much a continent-sized maze of mines and palaces carved out from rubies as big as mountains), and got working on organizing a formal meeting between the characters, the Hags and his advisors, which took place the following week (the Hag called Irisna became the official representative of the nightmare snatchers).

During the meeting, the party got to set down more concrete rules regarding payment: Since the Hags didn't usually handle actual money (stolen souls and dreams being their coinage instead), they would exchange those for gems through one of the Emir's contacts in the Great Dismal Delve. The gems would be then smuggled into Katapesh through the Emir's mines (which as mentioned before produce absolutely nothing, instead being a coverup for a portal into the Elemental Plane of Earth through which he gets his goods) and traded at the Magnifiscent Pavillon (the most important jewelry shop in the city, owned by the Emir), where they would get converted into hard cash by selling the gems as usual.

Continues...

>>12747360
>>12747387
tbh i wouldnt want to wait 30 minutes for every character action in combat

>>12747293

Indeed they are. And this playing style goes back a long time. For instance, the player behind Hassan used to have a warrior in another campaign that stole the carpets from a dungeon and then set up a store where he sold it as "thick capes for the winter". Then in a 7th Sea campaign he managed to scam an entire city with a fake swordsman championship.

>>12747360

I'm afraid my current time constrains make it impossible for me to run more than I currently do (this Pathfinder campaign and steampunk one with a homemade game. We play once per week). Thanks for the compliment, though.

>>12747387

Well, truth be told, this campaign actually began as a D&D 4e test run (which lasted for 3 sessions), then we decided to go back to 3.5 (for 2 more sessions. We had to remake the characters from the ground up, though, but kept their central concepts intact), until I got my Pathfinder books, after which we retouched the characters to include the changes and have been playing since (I still use a lot of my D&D 3.5 splattbooks in this campaign, though).

Continuing...

That way, everyone got what they wanted: The Hags got the nightmares they traded with dark entities from beyond reality, the Emir got the income resulting from soul trade (which are in great demand by both the Nine Hells and the Abyss in their endless Blood War) and the party got the money from the gem sell. The Prince would in turn earn his participation from the gold income from the gems, and handle the bribes to his cousin the judge. The prison overseer would be getting paid directly by the Saltspit Trading Company (they had to find a proper name for it when they started the coverup for the prisoner-for-cash), disguised as "administrative facilitations", while the money that was being paid to the "city" as part of the deal was used to bribe the various tax collectors, bureaucrats and guards involved in keeping the whole thing quiet.

Continues...

>>12747474
But why would the hags accept to trade, where they could just go a little further on the material to get their nightmares for free ?

Also, nice triple 74.

Dude. I really appreciate you posting this, it's great to see a realplay.

But you were severely underexaggerating when you said 'Several sessions ago.'

Continuing...

Let's move about a month forward in time. The salt operation is still generating cash (though the party decided to do some undersizing to reduce costs, as it was clear salt would be running out soon), and the deal with the Hags has already generated two batches of gems, most of which were sold at the Magnifiscent Pavillion for handsome amounts of cash. About 20 prisoners are being sent per week from Khandassar to Saltspit, and so far no one seems to be suspecting. There was some digging a while ago by a few merchants with big noses, but they were shut off when the Saltspit Trading Company (STC from now on) agreed to buy their entire stock supply (they were food merchants).

During week four, a message from Prince Osman (the party had finally managed to get a couple of Crystal Balls installed for quick communications with the noble) arrives saying that the prison's Overseer is requesting a meeting. Apparently, there was some issues with the last group of prisoners.

The party meets with the Overseer and the Prince at the later's palace. The issue relates to the fact that six of the prisoners sent last week were actually not convicted for life (they were only sending those who were never going to get out of jail), and their families had somehow managed to convice a magistrate to investigate the case. The Overseer explained that they were running out of jailed-for-life prisoners, and had to sent those they thought no one would miss, but failed to check properly.

Jack inadvertedly gave them a possible solution while singing "Prisons get empty when booze ain't aplenty" (the actual rhyme was another. We speak Castillian, so had to find the closest English version).

Continues...

Your PCs are going to generate a fucking crime wave and turn the entire damn city into a den of vice just to facilitate their nightmare harvesting operation, aren't they?

How have you not shifted every single one of them's alignment to Evil at this point?

>>12747493

Because it was much safer and easier, and most importanly, it provided a dependable and regular source of fresh heads (and since they were using criminals, there was much more "fuel" for potent nightmares in their heads. While inducing nightmare on addorable children might sound more perverse, the Hags were after horrible nightmares, and for that you need people who have seen horrible things). The rift served as a direct portal to the Deep Ethereal (it was still buried under the salt, but the Hags had no trouble going past it), which greatly facilitated things for them.

Furthermore, as the party found out later, the Hags work in covenants that compete with each other, and this deal allowed that particular covenant -the "Hooked Fathom Covenant"- an undisputed workplace (as I will detail later, a competing Hag covenant attempted to seize control of the prisoners, but the characters beat them off. This served to further enforce the point that it was a benefitial deal to the Hags).

>>12747499

Aye, I might have. As I mentioned in my early posts, it was roughly 8 months of real time between the time they first stumbled upon what I innocently thought was just a creative trap with a Salt Paraelemental (which must have been like our 3rd or 4th session, since we had just made the jump back to 3.5) and the session they decided to start the operation.

Considering the game began shortly after D&D 4e's release (in 2008), the latest events must have happened somewhere during mid-to-late 2009 (as mentioned, several sessions have been using a fast time frame in order for the more overarching plans to be able to take place. So far, this mixture of strategic and tactical sessions has worked great to weave a mighty huge plot with dozens of secondary storylines).

That is why so much stuff happens.

>>12747530
Can I have that phrase in Castillian?
Now, forgive my lack of knowledge but Castillian=Castellano right?

>>12747558

Well, Katapesh was already a den of vice like none other in Golarion. In that respect, the characters simply went along with the fashion!

As for the Alignment: I did turn Hassan from Chaotic-Neutral into Lawful-Evil eventually (the Evil part is pretty self-evident, while the Chaotic-to-Lawful shift happened slowly as he got more and more involved in legal fisticuffs, bureaucratic exploits, business management and the like).

Valanar was already Lawful-Evil at the start, so this whole thing fit like a glove for him.

Vorgok went insane at one point, so just remained Chaotic-Neutral (he now gets to enter Rage at random or upon encountering "triggers" that throw him into madness fits, such as blacksmiths, which for Vorgok are the equivalent of evil dentists).

Rakhim turned Lawful-Neutral from Lawful-Good, since although he didn't set up the more evil plans, he didn't do anything to stop them. It compensated with his good actions to avoid him going straight Evil (spending a Wish to save his wife was an important factor. You can't imagine the face of Hassan and Valanar when he did that, though).

Jack is the only one who so far hasn't fallen from Good, but he cheated for that (and overall is a good fellow). I'll will explain how later on, but it involves semi-intoxication with mercurial waters taken from Celestia.

>>12747569

The original phrase was "Calabozos baldios cuan tragos vacios. Sin vino y algarabia no hay muerte ni alegria", which translates into "Dungeons as barren as drinks are empty. Without wine and disorder there's no death nor joy".

And sorry, yes, Castillian = Castellano = Spanish. We are used to call it that way around here (we're from Chile).

Continuing...

Jack's tune gave Hassan an idea: "Overseer, how many people got sent to jail during last year's Carnival of the Setting Sun?" (he made the carnival up, but I liked where he was going, so I went along with it), to which the Overseer said "A lot. Why?"

Hassan then planned it out: They would organize a festival and get as many people as drunk as possible in order to have them commiting all sorts of disorderly conducts (and hopefully crimes). By using Prince Osman's contacts with the judges, they would push to have as many of those convicted for life (bribing the guards and making up some witnesses would help), sent to Khandassar and ultimately to Saltspit.

They had the means, so the Festival of Wonders was organized. They hired acrobats from far away Tian Xia, sword eaters from Qadira, taldoran wrestlers, spinning gypsies from Varisia and exotic animals. They rented several alehouses and taverns to give out ludicrous amounts of really bad alcohol (cheaper and really strong. Taste doesn't really matter once people get drunk enough). While expensive, at the end of the celebration the courts were overflowing and Khandassar was getting filled up again.

Continues...

Time for nutrient acquisition.

I'll be back in a while.

>>12747779
Lmao. Wow. I can imagine one guy in this city talking to his friends, starting a newsletter, saying "Its all a big conspiracy by the Saltspit Trading Company! They made a huge party so a bunch of people would go to jail and then they could have the prisoners work on the salt mines and eventually get their souls stolen by hags from the ethreal plane for a price they paid to the owners of the company! And the Prince of the city's in on it too!" and all his friends go "psssh Dave thats fucking stupid and insane. That would never happen."

Oh my sweet lord. Your party are now the BBEGs of my next campaign.

>>12747799
inb4 you'll be back tomorrow.

>Kestrefe despairing
This does make me despair.

>>12747883

Yeah, it would be like some sort of Erin Brockovich-style campaign, where the players are investigating what the real business of the STC is.

>>12748051
>>Yeah, it would be like some sort of Erin Brockovich-style campaign, where the players are investigating what the real business of the STC is.

Which they do for purely financial reasons, using shady tactics, then pocket a ton of money and get called heroes for doing so?

... Holy shit, Erin Brockovich was your standard D&D PC!

>>12748069
And suddenly, I have newfound respect for her.

MORE.

MORE!

MOOORE!

I demand moar OP!!!!

we need more

>this campaign

YES. MORE.

This is an Evil Campaign done right.

>>12747853
>I can imagine one guy in this city talking to his friends, starting a newsletter, saying "Its all a big conspiracy by the Saltspit Trading Company! They made a huge party so a bunch of people would go to jail and then they could have the prisoners work on the salt mines and eventually get their souls stolen by hags from the ethreal plane for a price they paid to the owners of the company! And the Prince of the city's in on it too!" and all his friends go "psssh Dave thats fucking stupid and insane. That would never happen."

>>12747883
>Oh my sweet lord. Your party are now the BBEGs of my next campaign.
Good God. Your guys have actually become villians. You need to send some adventurers after them, it'll be hiliarious when they realize that they've become a bunch of BBEGs.

>>12750731
Nonono, have one of the hags offer the Sorceror - or rogue - a transformation more 'appropriate to their soul' (with an evil cackle) and grant them immunity to age and a mild regeneration ability - say, as long as they're in contact with soil they'll eventually heal. That should drive it home. Make them pay, say.. their laughter. That's it. Not much. Have the character laugh, then pass them a note saying they're never able to laugh or see the humor in anything again.

>>12750731

YES

Fellow DM here, having a party of adventurers set out on a quest to bring your PC's to justice/having an evil party go on a quest to bring down your do gooder PC's is the best way to remind them what the hell they are.
In OP's case, greedy, cunning bastards.

>>12751592
or what they've become

bump

How the hell does this thread never die.

Goddammit, all this bumping made me think the OP was back.

Now I'm just disappointed.

>>12753774
It's the Curse of the Thread That Never Died.

It rises once more!

Mother of God. You and your players are epic. Have they undertaken such endeavours in the past?

Must know...

bamp

this thread

bump

Cockbump.

When this is done this shit needs to be archived

bump

bump for the great justice

bumpity bump !

STAYIN' ALIIIIIIIVE

From the darkest depths, the thread rises once more!

>>12759276
dude dont bump it every half hour, the board does not move that fast. once every hour or hour and a half should be plenty to keep the thread from 404ing

Hello again, lads. Thanks for waiting and bumping. Time to continue:

Continuing…

With Khandassar hauling fresh loads of prisoners once per week again (after the Festival of Wonders, the party bought three taverns in bad neighbourhoods of Katapesh in order to keep a regular supply of not-so-good people being turned criminals through various activities, and then laid out the chart for the influx of prisoners. During the first month, Khandassar would send 10 prisoners per week –about 180 people were jailed for life after the Festival. While the bribed judges did their best, truth is that katapeshi law is extremely lax, and it’s hard to get a life sentence on someone. Most cases were a stretch, anyway, so the party kept having to bribe more people to avoid issues-, and then decrease the rate to 5, with the approximate rate of life sentences being nailed on people from the Crime Makers –term used to refer to the taverns they bought- at 1d4 per week, plus another 1d4 from the standard rate of life sentences being dispensed by regular justice.

That way, they could get a reliable source of materials that should last until the next Festival (the global estimates indicated that with the current supply and rate of imprisonment, they should have enough people for the next 5 months, so they decided to announce the Festival of Wonders would be happening twice per year. This allowed them to strike some pretty convenient deals with the performers, by asking lower prices in exchange for secure future hirings).

Continues…

Continuing…

Although the new rate of prisoners was lower than initially, they talked it out with the Hags. Their designated negotiator, Twice-Cursed Irina, explained that they could have a mean to retain the same level of income, if the party managed to improve the quality of each nightmare (they never really explained what exactly they were doing with the nightmares, but at one point the party had reasons to suspect they were being sold to yugoloths who were using them to further their investigations on the true nature of evil. Even this party was weary of having anything to do with yugoloths, but as Hassan pointed out “We are just providing a service, which helps people satisfy needs otherwise hard to come by. If the bad guys also get them, well, it is a worthy price to pay!”, to which my response was “Yeah, how selfless of you. Add yourself another experience penalty. At this point, all you have to do is step on a flower to turn Evil”, and his answer “Okay. I still get the money, right?” Bastard).

Continues…

Continuing…

Valanar picked it up from there. He had some ideas that involved some pretty nasty things, but he wouldn’t say what until they managed to secure a psion. Psionics are not usually featured in my campaigns (I don’t allow it as a playable class), but Golarion has a few of them so I allowed them to try an find one. Upon doing some research, they found two relatively feasible sources of psionics: Jalmeray, where vudrani monks engaged in self-perfection sometimes develop the capacity to control matter with their minds, and the unexplored depths underneath the Third Realm of Orv, the deepest of the known cave networks that compose the Darklands (Golarion’s equivalent of the Underdark. I really dislike the name “Darklands”, which reminds me of Penny Arcade’s “Darkbad”). There, apparently, aboleths and other creatures had minds powerful enough to develop psionic powers.
However, getting a vudrani was out of question, since Rakhim –also a vudrani from Jalmeray, himself having attended the Schools of Perfection where the psions allegedly could be found- overheard him and he would never allow such a thing, so the only option would be to travel into the Third Realm of Orv and see how the hell they would capture an aboleth and manage to get it back to Saltspit.

Continues…

Continues…

The next session-and-a-half (we often play on Saturdays from 4 pm to 12 pm, so we get a lot of gaming done) was dedicated to the adventure leading into the Third Realm of Orv, how the party got a mad explorer to show them an entry through a dormant volcanoe in eastern Mwangi, the chance they had to massacre a bunch of hostile drows (my party is well aware of my dislike for elves in general and drows in particular), getting lost for a while and having Vorgok be snatched by a roof-crawling kind of ooze (we almost lost him that time thanks to a series of horrible rolls. He tried to eat away through the ooze, which almost had him killed later on as the ooze began multiplying inside his stomach. Wasn’t his proudest moment, but he made it all good when he asked me for a Fortitude roll in order to vomit his entire stomach over an enemy in order to have the ooze still there attack it) and a bunch of other Ohmygoditssodarkinherewhythehelldidnoonebuytorchesorpreparealightspell.

Ultimately, they found what they wanted on an extremely remote cave who knows how deep: An aboleth. Specifically, a really pissed off aboleth surrounded by half-turned-into-slime humanoids that made for quite a distasteful (yet entertaining) battle. They beat it and captured Slimy (that’s how they named him. Considering aboleths are supposed to be unspeakable superior intellects, I almost had to roll for a Dignity saving throw).

Continues…

Continuing…

Now, capturing the aboleth was the easy part; it was getting back to Saltspit what I really wanted to see done. Aboleths are, after all, 25 feet long and weight over 6,000 pounds. It began bad, since Valanar mistakenly thought Rakhim knew teleportation spells, but for some reason he had completely forgotten that he was a Monk 6/Sorcerer 4, in no way capable of teleporting anything. Frustrated, he attempted going back to where they defeated the drows in order to see if there was any kind of wizard, treasure or scroll that could help, but of course there wasn’t. They would be gone for two days (they were really deep underground), so we fast forwarded.

While Valanar left with Vorgok and Rakhim, Hassan and Jack took a while to explore around, when they stumbled upon a gargantuan cave filled with what appeared to be an underground sea, illuminated by incandescent spherical plants that floated high above thanks to gas pockets, volcanic vents making the whole place warm and sustaining a lush jungle. Long story short, Vogaye to the Centre of the Earth, dinousaurs included. The idea was to have them attacked by a tyrannosaur or something, but little did I know. Hassan’s player stood there for a moment, thinking. I wasn’t sure if he was going to make a joke about Cadillacs & Dinosaurs or something, but instead turned to me and said “We go back to the aboleth site and wait for the rest to return. I have a plan to get this get Slimy out of here”.

Continues…

Slimey the Aboleth, it's got a ring to it alright

I'm guessing he's going to either use the sea to carry the Aboleth out, or the gas currents.

Continuing…

Fast-forward a bit through meetup with the rest of the party, dinosaur fights, exploring, checking of the gas-filled plants, etc. The group had just killed a pair of tyrannosaurs when Hassan turns to Valanar “Priest, do you still have the plans we helped design with the engineers of Alkenstar for the cargo zeppelin?”, to which the man –who as previously mentioned always keeps record of everything, and probably carries more weight in maps, scrolls and documents than anything else, his own weight included- said “Yes, I must have the schematics here somewhere. Why?”. Hassan hurried to climb one of the dinosaurs and extended his arms around “Because Slimy is going to fly”
His plan (which got assistance from some mean Knowledge and Craft checks) was as follows: They would skin the tyrannosaurs in order to build a large zeppeling balloon, erecting the structure out of wood from the jungle and bone from the creatures (ended using wood since the bones were too heavy). They would then fill the balloon with the gas plants (getting those plants was a challenge all by itself, which they ended up doing by building improvise delta wings and using the volcanic vents to get the push upward), and then tie Slimy to it, using the wind currents in the caves to propel forward, as well as a few extremely long sticks in order to push the zeppelig similarly to a gondola (Vorgok would be in charge of that, since he had the strength to do so).

So they built the thing, saw it worked, went back to Slimy (who was trapped under a pile of rocks they used in lieu for chains) and tied him up. They did have to fight again, but the aboleth desisted when they reduced him to near death. He kept trying to control their minds the whole trip, though, and almost got Hassan jumping off the ship after a failed Will saving throw. Vorgok then poked one of Slimy’s eyes with the gondola stick, and he stopped with his mindfucks.

Continues…

>>12759992
my money is on prehistoric packmules(aka dinosaurs)

if they could arrange easy access to this lost world they might be able to start breeding dinosaurs. if anough feed could ba arranged they could make alot of cash

>>12760052
>>12759992

Well, technically speaking, you both guessed half of it!

Continuing…

The trip to the outside takes a while, which gives them time to talk about a point somehow everyone forgot about: Why on earth did they need the aboleth for? After granting some extra experience to Valanar for getting everyone to visit the bottom of the world and almost die a few times without even having told them why exactly, he explained.

The idea was to use a powerful psionic creature to feed the minds of the prisoners with information and emotions that would make the nightmares much more powerful, thus getting a bigger bang for the buck. Now, remember when several posts ago I explained that in order to craft the Rods of Elemental Compelling they used to control the salt paraelementals the party had to get the components (a special kind of gems) from ruins in the Mwangi Jungles? Well, the ruins they visited had later been identified by Valaran as remnants of the ancient Shori civilization, which built amazing flying cities far in the past. Now, in that place, the party had stumbled upon a faulty device that once long ago was responsible for keeping one of the cities aloft, by using raw energy taken from the very fabric of the cosmos. When they approeached said device, they kept getting thrown back by extremely unsettling feelings that made no sense at all, and Valanar’s Knowledge [The Planes] check gave him a hint that the device was actually a hole in reality that somehow led into the Far Realms, that place beyond the Multiverse itself where reason ceases to exist altogether.

“Having this zeppelin actually makes things much easier” he said, and once they flew out through the dormant volcanoe, they steered toward the Mwangi Jungles, back into the ruins of the crashed flying city of the Shori.

Slimy wasn’t going to have a good time.

Continues…

>>12760032
Aboleth Zeppelin.
ABOLETH.
ZEPPELIN.

You're players are Gods among men.

>this whole party/adventure/thread

Continuing…

So they get to the ruins, make quick work of a pack of intelligent gorillas, travel down to the device and set Slimy down. Valanar asks me about using a spell in a different way than usual: He wants to use Dimensional Anchor, but instead of it blocking all kinds of planar travel, he wants it to be “hooked and delayed”, in order to have it cast on Slimy, throw him through the hole into the Far Realm, and then pull him back. I said it was a stretch, but he offered me to spend two spell slots one level higher to prepare it, and I agreed as long as he succeeded at a DC 30 Spellcraft check, plus another DC 30 Spellcraft check when using the spell or risk having himself sucked into the portal, Slimy being teleported into the same spatial coordinates as him or some other effect like that selected entirely at my whim, since he would be playing with a spell that is ultimately derived to him by his goddess. He agreed, so we do the rolls, on which he gets a 33 (he still has to wait one day to properly prepare it).

Continues…

Continuing…

They wake up Slimy, heal him up a bit, Valanar casts the modified Dimensional Anchor and asks Vorgok to push the aboleth through the portal. Slimy gets a sudden panick attack when he understands where said portal ends up, but doesn’t get time to react when he’s falling. The party runs back before going mad by the imagery being spewn by the portal, and after 10 seconds, Valanar pulls the aboleth out. “Will saves, everyone!” Whatever Slimy saw on the other side of that portal, he’s now psionically broadcasting it some of the most horrible, incomprehensible and twisted thoughts they had never imagined, shaking like a fish out of the water and oozing foam from every pore. They succeed at the saves, tie the aboleth up back to the zeppelin, and hurry up to get back (I told them the gas plants would only remain buoyant for 2d6 days, and the result was 9. They had already spent 5 of those days, and they were looking at a similar amount back to Saltspit, so they had no moment to spare).

Continues…

>Dinosaur Zeppelins to carry an Aboleth
>Aboleth sent to the Far Realms
>Aboleth will induce maddening nightmares to guys sentenced for pissing on the streets

Hey, why even bother sentencing the guys to death now? Aboleth makes people crazy, people get committed to an asylum, hags get their nightmares.

Hellz to the yeah

>>12760383

That is an interesting idea. However, the point of getting people jailed for life and then using them as nightmare pots was that it allowed them to keep the operation secret. Throwing Slimy in the middle of Katapesh and then hunting down those who go mad would have presented some security problems (and, more importantly, wouldn't have sat well with the Pactmasters, who shun on anything that disrupts business in the city, and have a legion of overpimped golems at their disposal for such events).

>>12760383
I'm more thinking they expose any prisoners to the Aboleth's thought projections so their nightmares are truly ghastly.

>>12760427
Not to mention that the horrible nightmares could very well target the Pactmasters.

>>12760427
is this campign still going or is it complete?

>>12760457

Aye, that's exactly what they had in mind.

Continuing...

The party barely makes it back to Saltspit before running out of gas plants, and in fact travelled the last day so low on it that Slimy get bumping on rocks. They had to make Will saves twice per day to avoid going mad over Slimy's mental ravages, so they had to use everything at their disposal to get save/wisdom bonuses, except Vorgok, who kept enraging to cancel off the effects (since Vorgok began going mad and having his enrage happen at random, I gave him the benefit of being immune to confusion and maddening effects while enrage). They landed about two miles north-west of Saltspit.

Jack and Vorgok ran back to the town in order to get some assistance. They contacted the Hags, and Twice-Cursed Irina herself offered help, using magic to lighten up Slimy, while Valanar created water constantly to rehidrate it (aboleths are water creatures, and although Slimy's high Constitution score and the Priests healing spells had kept him alive so far, he was on the verge of death. The constant seizures and oozing weren't helping, either).

With Irina's help, they got Slimy to the bunkhouses used to keep the prisoners being used as nightmare pots. Some other Hags were working on the 15 prisoners that were currently being used (as the control test subjects showed, prisoners with a planted fear mote would remain functional for about four days, time during which they could work at the salt mines. After that, they kept having nightmares during all times of the day, and that's when they were sent to the bunkhouses, until about a week later they died during their sleeps and the Hags pried the nightmares out just moments before they passed away). They built an improvised pool using some shovels, leftover wood and Valanar's Create Water spells.

Continues...

>>12760533

Still going. Can't tell you where exactly it is or I'll be spoiling the remaining story, I'm afraid.

these guys went from neutral, to money driven, to just plain evil

>>12760467

Aye, good point. Probably the Pactmasters would be able to resist them (I see them as a sort of mini version of The Lady of Pain from Planescape, more like a plot element than NPCs), but I'm sure they wouldn't like getting in their heads the mixture of an aboleth's wet dream and snuff movies from outside reality.

>>12760650

Even though they fall under the Evil alignment, I see them more like "ruthlessly practical". They want to make money and are willing to do anything in their powers to get it.

It isn't really Evil for Evil's sake, though. It all has a purpose (often a very deeply thought and far-reaching purpose). It justs happens that it is way easier to make money the bad way than the good way.

I have been skipping some of the parts where they've done good actions, however, for the sake of the story (I'm not too sure that reading about how they saved a merchant caravan from fire-spewing lions or about the time Jack exchanged himself for a group of hostages of a dead eater).

They still are, deep down, heroic adventurers. They just got carried out by money and decided that the end justifies the means.

what are they useing all this money for anyway?

>>12760792

The end of making money isn't some noble effort. There is no justifying their means with such an base goal. They are straight evil. Just not stupid evil.


judgments vanelives

Astute as always captcha

>>12760854

>>12760792
>>They want to make money and are willing to do anything in their powers to get it.

Yeah, dude, that's one of the exact definitions of evil.

>>12760792
>They still are, deep down, heroic adventurers. They just got carried out by money and decided that the end justifies the means.

I disagree...no matter how many grannies they help crossing the street, this party has gone to full-fledged Evil.

You mentioned that you made the Rogue go from Chaotic Neutral to Lawful Evil. I think I'd have settled with Neutral Evil. I don't see the Lawful aspect from what you've described. That he plays with the system and hangs out with the big dogs doesn't make him Lawful, he's not bending rules, he's outright breaking them and corrupting the justice system for his own gain.

>>12760854

Power and wealth, mostly, as well as indulging their character's desires (money and magic items are often hard to come by in my campaigns, so I also think a big part of the whole thing was a way of getting all the stuff their previous characters never did).

At some point they just started making the money-making plans simply because they enjoyed it. They spend surprisingly little money on stuff like magic items (except when they need them to carry out one of their plans), instead focusing in trying new business ventures, building their fortress, acquiring ridiculously expensive luxuries (Vorgok actually has hookers imported all the way from Irrisen -his native land-, which is thousands of miles to the north across the sea. Not to mention said country is controlled by paranoid witches who let no one in nor out) or stuff their characters want donde (like Valanar financing the creation of a Cult of Sivanah in Katapesh -which is a tricky task since followers of said goddess are not supposed to know each other- or Jack becoming a patron of the arts in the city. Hassan, on the other hand, has been buying lots of osirian relics -his character began the campaign as a sort of arab version of Indiana Jones- and even funding expeditions to uncover lost temples and the like).

The campaign is currently involved in pretty deep planar politics, where their fortunes have been of a lot of use, but they can't buy their way through everything once you start dealing with demons and angels on a regular basis. But we'll get to that eventually.

>>12760931

Exactly, these guys aren't shining heroes who just got a tad greedy and slipped down to evil on a technicality.

They have planned out and carried out something that, if even the basic, non-magical parts of it were being carried out in the real world, would be called one of the biggest human rights abuses of all time. We know this because the people who are the biggest human rights abusers of all time DO SHIT JUST LIKE THIS.

OP's players are basically just small-scale Castros or Mao Tsu Tsungs or Kim Jong Ils. (Hell, the only thing that's keeping them from being little Hitlers is a lack of racial blamemaking and that they haven't just tried to conquer nearby operations.)

The fact that the occasionally save a caravan or rescue a hostage doesn't make them heroes who just have a little bit of a weakness for money. It makes them villains with soft spots.

>>12760915
>>12760867

Hm, you lads make a good point.

>>12760931

Well, I turned him Lawful as a way to represent his shift from his "rogue that always breaks the rules" concept at the start of the game to the "corporate businessman that plays the system and makes the rules".

He spends a lot of time working with politicians, aristocrats and merchants, planing complex plots and trying to use the rules to do his dirty business while keeping a semblance of goodness. Hassan is actually well known in Katapesh by now as an "exemplar citizen", which I think speaks a lot on his behalf of someone who learned how to use the rules to his benefit.

>>12760792
>deep down
Yeah the lowest layer of Baator deep

Wait, let me get this straight. They have encountered a PORTAL TO THE FAR REALM, correct? And somehow it HASN'T SPEWED UP/SUMMONED A WORLD ENDING HORROR?

>>12761030

Might have. In all honesty, I just put the portal there as a scenic detail that wasn't supposed to play a role later on (one could say I should have learned the lesson from the elemental rift, but oh well), a quick improvisation to explain why the characters were feeling so uneasy when close to the city-sustaining device.

I honestly wasn't expecting them to throw an aboleth through it and then use it to plant nightmares on prisoners being harvested by Night Hags. At that point they were still just salt merchants.

Darn it, I have to run back to the campus.

I'll be back later with more.

>captcha: are pornncock

Not now, Captcha.

>I honestly wasn't expecting them to throw an aboleth through it
I love this statment more then you know.

I think the thing is, while this is an interesting story and we want to keep hearing it... it's become a story about villains. And most people, though they will quietly cheer for the villains just to see what new stuff they can do, still want to see good win out at the end of the day.

It's like... if Saruman just got away with all his shit at the end of Lord of the Rings, and spent the rest of the Third Age sitting around smoking cigars and having his remaining Uruk'hai dancing boys entertain him. That would suck. "Clear-cut the great forests, visit violence and death upon all the peoples of Rohan and beyond, conspire with the dark forces of the world... retire in luxury." Tolkien would be considered a hack!

I mean you can already see it up there in the comments about how some adventurers need to show up to stop your main party... that's what we want to see! We're enjoying the diabolical show, but we're also hoping that before the end some -real- heroes show up and slap their shit!

We want them to -lose-! Sure, we're enjoying the ride, but at the end we're hoping there's a righteous curb-stomping!

... Well, some of us are. The ones that refuse to play any non-evil alignment are probably like "Shut up moralfags this is the way you SHOULD play tabletop games! Now let me get back to figuring out how many dice of damage mustard gas does when administered through a shower head."

>>12761001
>He spends a lot of time working with politicians, aristocrats and merchants, planing complex plots and trying to use the rules to do his dirty business while keeping a semblance of goodness.

Yes, I detected that that was one of latent reasons for which you pushed the Lawful part. But that just assumes that complex planning and business entrepreneurship is something exclusive of Lawful people.

He doesn't give a shit about freedom or liberties, he is not an anti-government anarchist or slave-freeing rebel; he is not Chaotic.

He doesn't care about a community, traditions, laws or order, he is no would-be tyrant looking to dominate the land or a disciplined magistrate bent on fighting corruption; he is not Lawful.

He is a scheming, bastard that has been looking for the best way to make a buck by violating human life sanctity, common law and even natural laws, endangering tens of thousands of human lives in the process. All the while not giving a single fuck about it. He is Neutral Evil.

>>12761150
I dont prefer any alignment and even I want you to shut up

>>12761192

Well I'm not gonna.

>>12761073
>I honestly wasn't expecting them to throw an aboleth through it and then use it to plant nightmares on prisoners being harvested by Night Hags. At that point they were still just salt merchants.

>>12761191

I suppose you could see him as pushing a kind of law on his slaves/employees, though. I mean he is actually running this business, making plans, carefully conducting tests to maximize his profitability...

He's basically got an Emperor Palpatine thing going here. Rigidly organized evil in the pursuit of greater power and riches. I really think Lawful Evil works pretty well for what he's described this guy doing.

If violating human rights and the sanctity of good disqualified you from being Lawful, then there wouldn't -be- a Lawful Evil alignment.

This is the best Gaming experience I've ever heard.
I love you, OP.
And your group.
I wish my group did smart things.

>>12761150
Sum (n=0, ∞) nd4, no saving throw, unhealable.

>>12761239
pic related is lawful, even when breaking the law would be in his favor he still follows it because he has great respect for the law and one of his men trys to ignore a court ruling that is not in his favor mr.chain shreds his face.

http://www.mangareader.net/125-6176-6/vinland-saga/chapter-4.html

the PCs bend and break the law as it suits them, they bribe judges and have arranged for many mostly innocent people to be inprisioned. they are neutrals who exploit the law for their own gain

I bet none of this actually happened and the guy kept going afk/disappearing to think up more.

>>12761445

But that's assuming that Lawful is not only limited to actual laws, but to the laws of whatever region you are currently residing in.

This is generally acknowledged as a rather foolish interpretation, since if a Paladin were to enter some demon lord's land where the law was "You shall kill and murder indiscriminately", it would kind of fuck him up.

Thus the Lawful part of the alignment is more often taken to mean the following/establishment of specific behaviors, rules, and systems. The fact that he's a businessman who doesn't just take an approach of "Sit back, do whatever comes up at the moment to keep the place running" already puts him towards this interpretation of Lawful. The fact that he's very careful about managing the logistics of his business, including how to grow it, how to manage it, what to do when it could be coming to an end (that isn't just "FULL STEAM AHEAD!"), these are all carefully considered decisions.

The fact that he works with the system at all, even if it's to game it, also points towards this interpretation of Lawful. If someone was really just Chaotic or Neutral, they'd have come up with a way that was much less trouble and involved much less bureaucracy. Chaotic probably would have snatched random people they thought wouldn't be missed off the streets, Neutral probably would have gone with the gorilla plan or something. The fact that he chose to get the city's government working for and with him is really a pretty Lawful thing to do, even if it was a perversion of the legal system.

Really, the "Lawful means having respect for laws and traditions" would be a more personal interpretation, which would be fine if it was your game or your character concept. But ultimately it's this dude's game, his reasoning makes sense, the villain is Lawful Evil.

>>12761583
>even if it was a perversion of the legal system
I believe that's where the Evil part comes in.

>>12761645

Exactly. He's clearly Evil, whatever the prefix to that part of his alignment is.

Thing is, that's an easy way to show he's Lawful, if you think about it. If a Paladin was in a city with a corrupt set of judges and aristocrats and whatnot, he could still be Lawful Good by working within the system, trying to steer it towards more fair behaviors and outcomes, and overall change it. That's a fairly well-established character trope.

The fact that the rogue chose to work within the system to make it -worse- for his own purposes, rather than just cutting through the system to do whatever he wanted, makes him Lawful Evil. The "work within the system" is the important part for the first part of the alignment.

Agreed, he's Lawful Evil because he clearly doesn't ignore the laws, but purposefully bends the entire system to his whims.

Who the fuck cares if he's neutral or lawful evil.

OP continue your story when you come back from the abyss.

>>12761192
I concur
.
.
.
so...are we just bumping to keep the thread goin' or...

bamp

Don't die, thread!

badump

Bumpe

bumb

>>12762424
>>12762836
>>12762852
Stop that, a thread isnt going to disappear in 10 minutes like on faster boards. Wait at least an hour or two. And post something more than just "hurp derp bump"

>>12761150

Personally, I don't want to see it all come tumbling down (although with these kinds of things, SOMETHING will give) because it's more entertaining to see how crazy things can get before it all falls apart. It's like Tetris, if the blocks were made of Evil, crazy ideas and political manoeuvring: sure, the initial idea was simple (profit from the Paraelemental Plane of Salt), but one thing leads to another and another and now there's have criminals being used semi-illegally to mine the salt and Night Hags profiteering from their nightmares and you think it can't get weirder and then the insane aboleth comes into play!

I've been reading this thread for the past day and a half, and I have to say this is some of the best shit I have ever seen on /tg/.

I mean what's up guys? We had the Kromgol thread not that long ago and now this?

It's glorious.

>>12763248
Yes, /tg/ truly is King of Boards.

>>12763248
>Kromgol thread

Hmm?

This thread...
Mother of God

>>12763326

I'm pretty sure it got archived, go look for Son of Kromgol or something. I personally haven't looked for it on the archive yet.

MOAAAAAAAAAR!

>>12763562
dont see it on sup/tg/

>>12764101
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/12591647/

someone archive this now, please.
No, not the next guy, YOU. Obviously, we've all passed it on (and I honestly don't know how)
Oh noez, duplicates? FINE. SORT IT OUT LATER, THIS SHIT IS WORTH IT

Thank you.

>>12764101

Hmm I don't know then. OP's name wasn't Son of Kromgol at first. It was just a thread about him finding his dads old character sheet from 2e when he was looking through his dads stuff after he died.

Shit was full of manly tears and win.

>>12764132

bleh, that will teach me to refresh again before I post.

>>12764139
Already archived.
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/12732988/

>>12764132
oh ty, looks interesting

Just finished reading the whole thing, fucking A.

Have a Bielsa my good chilean sir.

>>12764132
Why did you make me read that...

This shit is so fucking epic I can't even handle. This is the sort of game that I want to run for the end of time.
Keep on, OP. Please return!

>>12764649

Well you were warned when I said manly tears were involved.

>>12765783
Please tell me the character portrait turned up... I'm going to cry even more if it hasn't.

>>12764649

PUSSY!

OP here:

Stopping by to say that I will continue tomorrow (probably late, though, since I have thesis review in the afternoon). Today was my former school's 150th year anniversary celebration, which took my whole afternoon and night.

I write this stuff out of both my notes and memory, which is why it takes so long. This campaign has been running for around three years, so sometimes I have to rewrite stuff when I stumble one a note that contradicts something I thought I remembered, hence the delays.

That, plus it's been a hellish end of semestre. But I will fullfill my duty and narrate this campaign to the end, so help me God.

>>12767224
Godspeed, OP.

>>12767224

Just gotta say something.
I saw this thread earlier this week and passed over it, as it was only 5 posts or so in.
And I kept seeing it throughout the week, and I assumed it was a shitspam, always with the same image.

I was wrong, and I am sorry.

Continue with your writing, good sir. You have my blessing.

just keeping the thread warm...
yeah, anyone who hasn't read this yet, feel free to do so. 'Tis a wonderful story, that...

>>12768197
thanks man. i just read the whole thing.
HO
LY
FUCK.
this thread is just... wow.
it IS archived, right?

>emotive journey
sometimes captcha, you know just what to say.

>>12768638
Don't think it's been archived yet

>>12768638
>>12768863

see>>12764215

Doing my civic duty and bumping this.

Bumpan before I sleep.

Here's to hoping this is here tomorrow

My Weaver detector is going out of control.

YAY! This is awesome. Im eagerly awaiting more!

the stars are right... this trhead shall arise from its slumber !

ARISEE please

another bump bites the dust ?

Bamp for the glorious resurrection of this tale, so wise are its characters, so merciful is its DM, may the great god POLYHEDRUS, god of random occurrence, smile upon you and grant you an eternity of truly epic rolls of your d20s.

please try to save the bumps for hour intervals as to avoid too many posts

BUMP FOR THE BUMP GOD!

Or would that be the salt god in this case?

In any case, 11/10 if he never posts the rest of it.

one hour later.... keeping the thread alive.

Archive if it isn't.

Bump, because I like this story.

It's still alive.

Mega-bump for supreme justice.

Waiting.

Pntrac subsequent

ablebas speare

>>12774702
>>12774984
Please don't bump more than once per hour; it's really not necessary, and we'd like to avoid hitting the bump limit before OP can come back.

Sage to avoid provoking replies.

Live!

I must say I am now inspired to run a campaign for the first time in a few years, now I just need to find some good players who can keep me on my toes.

One hour later...

---

This has been a most riveting tale, although we might need to continue it in another thread soon...

yarr

Gotta keep it up for the sake of all mankind

SALTAN, NIGHTMARAN, CAPITALISTAN!

op is still trapped in the abyss.

pre work bump

'Nother bump

this threas is awesome ! It shall live !

Wow.... this thread wins. Also, 6 AM and can't sleep *bump*

keepin it alive

Stop bumping the thread. It's not going to disappear after 1 hour and all you are accomplishing is moving it closer to the auto-sage limit.

bump

>>12781785

A smart troll could just bump this thread into oblivion.

>>12783781
He could but I saved entire OP story so far. If that happens give me a 10 minutes start to post all the goods.

One last *bump* before work

Oh dear no updates.

I just stumbled upon this thread while the sun was still up, and have just managed to come back to it enough times to read it all the way to this point; the moon rides high in the sky as I type this. I applaud OP and his group, and have shared this thread on facebook with a couple of friends who will get a kick out of it (and maybe even share it with others).

Wow, on one level I'm sorry I didn't notice this thread earlier this week, while on another level I'm glad I can read most of it at once.

For future reference, Aboleths don't die when they dry out. From Lords of Madness:
>An aboleth whose membranes remain dry does not die. It merely enters a state of suspended animation similar to sleep, except that the creature remains aware of its surroundings. It can hear and see, but cannot detect odors or feel tactile sensa- tions. The creature’s natural armor gains a bonus of +6 (which offsets the loss of Dexterity), and it gains damage reduction 5/adamantine. It retains the ability to think and observe, but it can take no actions, not even purely mental actions. Inside, it remains moist and functional; an aboleth in this state that is badly cut or pierced leaks and quickly bleeds to death. Left undisturbed, though, it can remain in this state forever. This is known to aboleths as the “long dreaming” and is considered a fate far worse than death.

Strike the rift!

bump?

...bump?
>please?

da-bump-tish!

Bump-et!

OP has forsaken us.

my last bump

bump

10/10 OP, perfect troll.

This has got to be the longest thread of /tg/'s history.

holy shit, this thread's still here?
Bumping, not because of the story, but because it's the oldest thread on 4chan. Has to be.
pic relates, it's us waiting for OP

>>12799426
fairly sure there was once a thread on /an/ that lasted near a month

>>12799426
Jesus Fucking Christ this.

pic related

>>12800173

I'm sure he meant on /tg/, cause this thread isn't even worth mentioning as far as the oldest 4chan post goes.

This thread's not that old yet even by /tg/'s standards. Silly newfags.

>>12801316

It's quite old actually. There have been older posts, but never when there were so many users on at a time.

This thread has done something I thought was impossible: made me feel sorry for an aboleth.

I'm also rather surprised that the PCs haven't expanded their operation by taking deliveries of criminals from other countries. Or purchasing the otherwise-useless good dreams off of the night hags, then distilling them into elixirs and selling them to people visiting the brothels and casinos. It would be like Vegas, only infinitely more evil.

Heck, they could even sell the prisoners to vampires as blood dolls once the night hags can't squeeze more nightmares out of them. And use dream fuckery to season the brains for sale to illithids.

barump bump bump

Op, I wait for you...

>>12801316
I assumed the hyperbole was obvious.

Making sure this gets bumbed before I sleep.

Hopefully OP didn't up and get shot or something. The world would never know the end to this fine tale.

OP is god-tier troll.

This thread is awesome :D
Reminds me of the crazy shit my mates and I used to get up to in our game.
But that is a story for another time.
Also, bump.

Keepin' the light on until OP returns.

Anyone want a snack

bap

Bump

Not quite dead yet, my good lads. Thanks for keeping this thread open. Let's continue:

Continuing…

Now they could focus on carrying out the second part of Valanar’s plan, which involved erecting a special facility where the prisoners could be exposed to Slimy’s mind-blasting psionic broadcast in order to feed the nighmares planted by the Hags, while at the same time avoiding anyone else from being affected (the Hags were informed of the dangers and would have to provide their own means of protection. Still, two Hags went mad and had to be put down). The price these new, higher quality nightmares would be fetching in the offworld soul markets increased by 3d100 –totalling 212% increase-, more than making up for the smaller amount of prisoners available. The business was now secured, money was pouring in, and life was good.

The party decided to set up monthly Directorate Meetings, which included themselves, Prince Osman, the Emir, Magistrate Belal bin Bassir (Prince Osman’s cousin, the judge that had the justice system working for them), and Twice-Cursed Irina. Here they presented status report on the operations, heard news of potential problems and in general made sure everyone was up to current.

I told the party things would be stable for the next two months, and asked if they had anything particular in mind for that period. Since they didn’t need to do anything that required direct adventuring, we fast forwarded two months.

Continues…

Continuing…

So the two months pass by, and in the Directorate Meeting of Erastus (the Golarion equivalent of July), Twice-Cursed Irina arrives with a demand: The Hooked Fathom Covenant is requesting an increase in their profit margin due to the regular difficulties they have to endure for using the unstable rift as means of transportation (they could perfectly teleport by themselves, but hey, business are business). The party said they would consider it.

Hassan and Valanar began discussing on how to avoid having to pay the Hags more; they were worried both about the decrease in their profit and about the fact that the Hags were starting to realize they had enough leverage to start pulling stuff like this (and truth be told, the STC had been getting the bigger part of the deal). Valanar proposed stabilizing the rift and turning it into a permanent portal into the Deep Ethereal, and so they travelled back to Katapesh to find someone capable of such a feat.

A lot of talking and money later, they were back in Saltspit with a team of magicians who assured them foolproof portal security. They closed the salt operations earlier to avoid having people sneaking and began working on the rift (which was now completely exposed as the extraction had depleted about 2/3rds of the remaining salt).

Continues…

Continuing…

According to the magicians, their “Infallible Interdimensional Sustaining Pylons” would solidify the cosmological nexus of any portal, thus making it permanent so long as the pylons were kept in place and filled with mercury once per year. Apparently, though, the system wasn’t tested on dissected rifts. “The rift starts humming as a thick, heavy fog pours through it, signaling the ethereal discharge to come. Reflex saving throws, everyone!”. Hassan: Success; Valanar: Success; Jack: Success; Rakhim: Success; Vorgok: Epic failure (the player behind Vorgok has a long tradition of critical failures in the worst possible moments. In fact, one of the reasons that had him picking up Animal Fury was the fact that he always had critical fumbles and ended up tossing his weapons into a friend or breaking them up somehow). Vorgok was fully exposed to the blast from the Deep Ethereal, and immediately began hearing voices, but he was already hearing voices prior to this (“Vorgok never pays attention to his head. If he did, he would be insane!” he often says), so he wasn’t really worried. The effects of this exposure would later play a bigger role. But for now, he just felt “lighter”.

Continues…

Continuing…

As the rift kept discharging ethereal fumes from the depths of the between-worlds, the party began noticing a lot of stuff that previously wasn’t there now was: Ghostly towers half-sunk in the ground, phantasmal creatures frolicking around, semi-transparent vistas… things were turning quite weird.

The event also attracted the interest of two other covenants of Night Hags, which scented the nightmares being brewn and went in a harvesting frenzy, which quickly evolved in an all-out battle between dozens of Hags and their servants literally made out of bad dreams, catching the characters in the middle, who used Slimy as a mean to turn many of them insane and thus were able to keep them at bay while support came from the Hooked Fathom Covenant.

They lost a lot of prisoners and valuable nightmares during this fight, but the treasures retrieved from the invading Hags (mostly souls and dreams, which while useless to them, were traded offworld through the Emir’s contacts in the Dismal Delve later on) made up for some of the expenses. Also, most of the warring took place in the bunkhouses away from the city, which helped keep the whole thing quiet (the party already had hired a band of vudrani illusionists to create diversions whenever trouble happened, so the populace –and, more importantly, the religious leaders that were always trying to find a way to screw with the STC- woulnd’t know what was really going on. This time they made it look like a bunch of chimaeras from the Brazen Peaks had attacked).

Continues…

We're in autosage, OP, and have been since before you posted, so we should probably move to a new thread. Apologize for the trouble, but you should probably repost today's installment from the beginning to make sure nobody misses it.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the headsup, and pleace accept my apologies for the delay. My schedule hasn't been working the way I thought it would.

I'll open a new thread later on. Should I repost the story there, or simply give a link to a text file with the whole thing so far?

>>12808345
worlds of YES