BSSS - Session 14

Summary

The campaign goes on pause and the Hedgehogs of Mercy settle in after the big battle. 

• Shimsusa the Archer - 3rd Level Fighter
• Enlil - 1st Level Elementalist Sorceress
• Alorus - 1st Level Vivimancer Sorcerer
• Maru the Witch - 4th Level Diabolist Sorcerer
• Athra - 4th Level Fighter

Session Recap

After the battle produced a relatively clear victor the party got to have some Downtime in order to handle everything that happened. The first thing they did was to go inspect the Pale Portal housed in the previously unvisited section of the city, beyond the Temple District. 

Said district was itself being in the process of being utterly demolished. The Great Temple dedicated to the Pale Stillness of Justice, the Law-aligned patron of the city, had shattered by itself upon the death of the Voice of Stillness during the battle, and the subsequent magical energies released from the disrupted ritual. However, the powers of the Decomposition didn't feel like leaving things half-done, and so employed their forces to systematically level and desecrate all the temples there, permanently severing the city's connection to it's patron.

The Hedgehogs of Mercy were offered a selection of various magical items the chaos priests had found as they were doing their work, allowed to pick one as gratitude for their assistance in the battle. After some deliberation the party picked a masked iron helmet in the shape of a wolf's head. Once they walked past the new gutted gatehouse, they found themselves in the part of town unseen by most. 

The party of the city where the Pale Portal is located.

The entire section of the city was just a field, with no houses or buildings, and from wall to wall covered in the bleached bones of countless dead, along with some more recent corpses. In the middle of it all stood the Pale Portal itself, a 4ish meter tall structure of stone and bones, in the middle of which was a silvery glittering substance which seemed to block the view of anything behind it.

The Pale Portal itself.

After some experimenting and going back and forth through it, Alorus the Vivimancer decided to just go right in. First he stepped through into a dark room, and once he went back and got a lamp, stepping through a second time resulted in him falling through the portal and out into a clear sky. He was, for all intents and purposes, gone. 

Meanwhile the rest of the city was in lower c chaos too. Bel of the Lotus, the vampire noble and friend of the party, had gathered the remaining nobles of the Undying City and went on a killing spree of his own - finishing off as many of the old priests of the Pale Stillness that they could find, along with their retinues and, of course, a bunch of just random people standing by because why not? In the end he declared himself the new ruler of the Undying City, his claim backed by surviving noble houses ( who were eager to actually get back to having any real power) the Golden Fraternity (who were quite happy to have an actual noble from the actual old Empire in power) and the priests of the Decomposition (who were willing to allow him to do that since he seemed uninterested in reestablishing the city's connection with the forces of Law). 

The characters were invited to the talks, and Bel offered to essentially have the entire company of the Hedgehogs join him as his personal bodyguards and advisors. Everyone agreed, with Athra the fighter even being arranged a marriage into one of the noble houses, as an opportunity to get him into the Noble caste and from there allow him to achieve what he wanted in the long term - control over the armies of the city. 

Shimsusa the Archer, while thankful for the offer, decided to instead travel back south to the Bastion of the Raging Bull with intentions of joining the Bull Guards and Utu. When she arrived, awaiting for her at the inn the party had stayed at was an ominous threat, clearly from the invisible assassin that had slain Esho a few months ago. 

Observations

Well, this is it for now. I was planning on keeping the campaign going for another 3-4 sessions, before I have to leave for a few months and thus will be unable to run it. However, the next month and a half is shaping up to be rather busy and the situation in the campaign has gotten rather complex, with multiple factions and different elements all requiring more attention than I have available. 

My players seem to be generally okay with ending it here, especially after the high note of the big battle last session. It just makes for a natural break point. I have some plans on running Between the Serpents of Smoke & Steel for other people while I am in the US, and if that happens I will be posting recaps of that as well, however the in-person game is now on hold. Will I come back to it? I have no idea. 

I do plan on writing up some overall campaign impressions for this in the coming month or so, similar to the ones I posted about the Greylands, my previous campaign. I also have plenty of broader observations about the game - from system to setting and simple GM organizational stuff, which will hopefully be interesting for at least someone else to read!  

And this is it. The Hedgehogs of Mercy (god what a ridiculous name!) are, for now, in retirement.