Perpetually tired

We're back in the middle of combat but take the time to check in with everyone.

Paul is afraid, both from unnatural causes (he's under 2 different effects) but also because he would be afraid in this situation. He's still functioning, however, because he's in survival mode. He has a job to do and he has to survive to get out and do it.

The Tigress is a bit panicked and a lot angry. Her player summed it up as "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH."

Cadmus has gone into battle mode. He's focused and analytical, checking to see who needs what kind of help and where best to attack.

Ronnie is in a similar mindset to Cadmus but it's coming from her lack of experience with combat that she wants to analyse the situation before she does anything. She doesn't have brainspace to worry about anyhting else, because she needs to focus on getting out of here.

Combat commences at the top of round 2 (not counting the surprise) round and the gang manages to take out all the obyriths over the next two rounds.

At some point, Ronnie got stung by a Ekolid drone and thus infected with parasites which, if someone (I forget who) hadn't taken out the Ekolid Carnifex, would've meant that new monsters would've burst from her body in the next round, dealing her damage and also adding more monsters to the map.

Cadmus takes advantage of the fact that the Golothoma's attack on him missed and glimpses its weak spot. He drives his sword in to deal a fatal blow, taking it down in one turn. He used a smite and he notices that the radiance off of that feels different now than it used to do when he was alive. It used to be a white hot flame and now it's different. Still fiery but different.

The effects on Paul disappear mostly because the creatures who affected him die, but he is under Cadmus' spell Protection from Evil and Good and got to make saves with advantage.

The Tigress shoots the Draudnu in the eye - or at least she tries to. Luckily, she still manages to hit it in its hairy body and kills it instantly.

In the next turn, Cadmus also takes out the Sibirex. He stabbed it at first, but that wasn't enough so he uses some of his magic and is so angry with the Sibirex' malevolence, that he channels what he describes as the opposite of healing magic and turns it on the obyrith.

At the end of the fight, Cadmus and Paul bond over a fight well-fought.

Cadmus: You have a lot of courage.
Paul: (unsure of how to feel about this just nods, looks at the ground, and then walks away to check in with the other two)

Their seedy "friend" who lured them here has disappeared, but the group decides to investigate the cave before they go in search of him.

They find 2 chests: One holds a charm in the shape of a deck of cards, and the other one holds... a deck of cards! It's a Deck Of All The Things.

The Deck Of All The Things is a modified Deck of Many Things. I've taken out cards that I do not like and would not wish to have to deal with as a GM, and instead I've sourced ideas from all over the web to add other cards to the deck instead. The rules to draw cards are largely the same as for a Deck of Many Things.

I'm happy to say that the gang seemed delighted with this item.

Unfortunately for them, me, and anyone else reading these recaps, we won't get to use it for a good long while.

Because of my real life commitments, I simply don't have enough time to prepare sessions for this campaign to the standard to which I aspire. I'm no Brennan Lee Mulligan who can wing it (and even he does extensive prep work, he's just also good at improvising in a pinch). And as my bff said: You don't like to half-ass it. In fact, you like to one-and-a-half-ass it.
And they're right.

So, onto ice the campaign goes until I feel like I can breathe again and not drown myself in more work than I can handle.

The recap for Monday's session is a little late but I've had a busy week, so please forgive me.

Last we left off, everyone was taking a long rest at the end of the ice tunnel to recover their precious few hit points. At the start of the rest, Aether was still with the group, but at some point while everyone was drifting off or simply resting, they disappeared quietly into thin air - quite literally disappeared. Given that something is wrong with Lucifer, and that Aether was a warlock with Lucifer as their patron, maybe the two things are connected? (On a meta-gaming level, Aether's player dropped out of the campaign.)

During the rest, we checked in with all the characters to see how they're doing at the moment.

Ronnie is still anxious and of two minds. If what's behind the door defeats them, Steve (from Admin) was wrong, which means that Ronnie is not destined to do the thing she's worried about being destined to do. If they win, they win, but then it's also more likely that she's as fucked (existentially) as she worries she is. It's both a win/win and a lose/lose situation (Schrödinger's existentialism). She takes 1 point of psychic damage from the stress that she won't be able to recover during this long rest.

The Tigress is not happy, but she's glad that they're doing something; they're moving. You gotta keep moving, and they've been stuck doing the same thing for so long, and it's good to be doing something else that wields actual results. And she's cold. She's trying to stay away from all of them, but she would like to steal some heat so she's, much like a kitty cat, halfway across the room - in your presence but not *with* you.

Paul is, on one hand, also relieved to be doing something else than repetitive tasks. He feels like the weak link because he was losing hit points and needed help from Ronnie in the last session, and he doesn't think he deserves that help. He's not deliberately avoiding anyone but keeping Ronnie between him and Cadmus because Cadmus is made of fire and Paul doesn't like fire. I made Paul's player roll a stress die - have I explained this mechanic yet? Get in the comments! . The stress die roll was a nat 1, so Paul drops down to a d4, takes psychic damage (he won't be able to recover it during this long rest), and has disadvantage on wisdom saves and initiative rolls until his next long rest.

Finally, Cadmus is not feeling particularly anxious or stressed, but is getting into battle headspace, thinking that this might be a long haul and this will be doable. He's done it before, he can do it again. He's trying to let things wash over himself, trying to analyse the previous fight in the tunnel to figure out who's good at what for future strategies.. Prepared to do this as long as it takes to get it done. He gets to help one (1) character with their disadvantages because he's watching all of them as he thinks about this, and he chooses to help Ronnie because he's had the most interactions with her so far. This means that Ronnie gets to restore all of her hit points after all.

The way he helps her do this is by teaching her how to meditate. Paul heard some of that conversation, too, and might try meditating at a later point in time, but he's too keyed up right now to manage it.

Incidentally, being taught how to meditate, appears to be a huge turn-on for Ronnie. Unfortunately for Ria, the dice really want her characters to be perceived, so she rolled a 9 on deception while James rolled a 17 on insight, which means that Cadmus did notice Ronnie checking him out but he's decided not to act on it now.

Beyond the great gates, Mr I was waiting, appearance slightly different than before, but still as condescending as earlier. He's quite far away from the group and their non-magical attacks don't deal that much damage, but he, in turn is dealing out Strangulations, and little kisses on cheeks that stun people. Some of those little kisses failed, and the PCs got attacks of opportunity in - in the Tigress' case those even dealt full damage because that Pirate's cutlass is magic!

At some point, Paul, our good catholic boy, finally realised that they're fighting Judas Iscariot, and he promptly insults him and calls him a traitor.


Ronnie also succeeds on a religion check and figures it out as well. She rolled a nat 20, actually, and therefore got the inkling that calling him a traitor would only fuel him instead of hurt him. She tried a different tactic and tried to get him to let them go by telling him that she hasn't even done anything yet, she's trying to actually do the thing for which she's been condemned to hell. (Here's a little nugget for the other characters!) Judas is willing to let her go - but only her. All the others are traitors just like him.

Paul tries a second time and yells "He loved you!" and Judas smiles back, and says "And I loved him. That's why I'm here."

The Tigress deals a good bit of damage and almost gets him down, but he stands back up again, bloodied and still smirking.

Cadmus has no idea of Christianity, doesn't know anything about Judas or Jesus, but gathers enough insight from what's being said around him that he can make a little speech on his turn. "You say we're like you. You know us. Then you know that what we did we had to do. We had no other choice. I for my part would do it again if I had to, because it needed to be done."

At this, Judas teleports right in front of Cadmus, crying tears of blood. What Cadmus said sounded just enough like forgiveness that he feels absolved. Everyone has hated him for milennia and all he ever wanted was for someone to understand that he did what he did because he loved Jesus and was afraid for him. He never meant for it to go this far but it was the divine plan and Jesus trusted him - and only him - to do this. Finally a person, a single person, who doesn't know anything about him, doesn't know what he did, just that he's here in this deepest circle of hell, the one reserved for traitors of the worst kind, and that he, much like this group, probably doesn't deserve this punishment. He gives Cadmus another kiss on the cheek, and this one doesn't stun, it's cool in a pleasant way even to a fire genasi, and he whispers "thank you", before dropping to his knees, and freezing over completely. A small, shimmering object falls to the ground in front of him - a charm for the bracelet, shaped like a sack of coins.

On the other side of the cave, a door opens into a staircase and there's a glittering curtain of icy mist but it doesn't look harmful - just like a curtain that marks the exit from the 9th circle of hell.

This is where I ended the session. The players get to use their level 5 character sheets next time as we ascend into the 8th circle of hell :D

Previous sessions can be found here.

We were missing Aether's player for session 3, but started with a nother round of check-ins to see how the characters were doing.

( A little more bureacracy but a lot more character bonding. )

Today was the first session of the campaign titled "Give Heaven Some Hell".

There's a recap of Session Zero here. (friends locked)

As we hadn't yet met the 5th party member in session Zero due to her player being absent, here's a quick introduction to The Tigress.


We started with mail delivery. It was like every day, except that there were two stacks of mail that had post-it notes stuck to them. The Tigress couldn't read what was on them, which aggravated her. She delivered the first one to Pauly, who also couldn't read his. The Tigress was not amused by this. Once she had left and was far enough away, Paul, however, *was* able to read his post-it note.

Next she delivered mail to Ronnie at reception, because she, too, had a post-it note on hers. Again, unable to read it right away, Ronnie did an Arcana check and figured out that something prevented her from reading this while other people were around. Even though The Tigress backed up a little bit, it wasn't enough to trick the magic on the note, so Ronnie just asked her to come back later. After The Tigress had left, Ronnie could read the note. Ronnie went back to typing all of Lorem Ipsum into her MS DOS computer. Unkebknownst to her, this is how Lorem Ipsum got into the mortal plane.

Aether has been stuck in hell for a week longer than normal, and they're tired of it. They tried communicating with their Warlock patron, Lucifer, but couldn't reach them - and in fact haven't been able to reach them in two weeks. Their elevator key isn't working anymore, and their magic is waning. They're determined to talk to someone from admin, and intend to set out to find Steve. They grab their clipboard on their way out, and that's when they notice a bright post-it note stuck to it.

Cadmus is carrying in the new stock, which was almost on time today, which is also highly unusual. He has to shift everything by himself down a flight of stairs which is honestly just giving him a good workout. Stuck to one of the boxes, today, is a bright post-it note.

After everythig except for that one parcel has been delivered, The Tigress sees that there's another post-it note stuck to the bottom of her cart. She's by herself in the mailroom, ad can easily read the post-it.

All of the post-its say the exact same thing: Don't forget! Birthday party for Steve at 3PM in the break room.

Cadmus, once he's done shifting things, goes in search for other people who've received this invitation - because normally people don't write invitations or reminders for office birthday parties. They happen almost every day anyway, the cake is always awful (black liquorice flavour) and the coffee worse (one pot is way, way too strong, the other is so thin you can see the bottom of the cup through it - there's never any good milk, creamer or sugar around), but not one of them has been for Steve before even though Steve is the single most likeable person in the entire office.

Cadmus' player rolled a Nat 20 on this, and found everyone else who received one of these notes. He talked to Ronnie for a few minutes to find out if she wrote them. Everyone in the party was then thinking about who could've written the note. Aether's and The Tigress' players each rolled a Nat 20 on this, and where certain that the note was written by Steve himself. Cadmus' and Ronnie's players each just suspected it strongly but couldn't be sure.

Cadmus then stuck his own post-it to his arm and walked around the office to search for the others, and in an attempt to be noticed by others. Aether did notice him and talked to him about the note. They confirmed for Cadmus that Steve wrote the note.

Cadmus: That's sad.
Aether: Right?

They then talked about how the note got to them and decided to go talk to The Tigress even though Cadmus had seen one stuck to Pauly's monitor. (Cadmus is also aware that Pauly is afraid of fire and therefore afraid of Cadmus, who's a Fire Genasi with literal lava running through his veins.)

The Tigress is chilling in her mail cart (What is a mail cart but a box on rolls), and The Tigress also confirms that Steve himself wrote the note.

The Tigress: Bit sad, really.
Aether: Right? That's what I said, it's suspicious.
Cadmus: You said it was sad.
Aether: Yeah, but it's also suspicious.

They speculate about what's going on, but eventually decide to just head to the breakroom once it's time. Cadmus also tries to figure out what connects all five of them but can't figure it out. He concentrates really hard and had this brief vision of 6 people sitting in their homes in front of computer screens, all talking to each other, before the vision disappears, leaving him just as clueless as before.

That's where they meet Steve.

Black man in his mid-twenties, mighty afro, blue eyes, dark skin, 180cm (5’9’’) tall, slim build, square jaw, lovely mouth*, smiles often.

He's very reliable, always polite and friendly, responsible to the last, has worked in admin for centuries, is universally liked by everyone.

*one of the players did make fun of me for this detail but here's the thing: It's important you know this man is beautiful.

The room isn't decorated at all, and there isn't any cake - not even bad one. Steve welcomes them in and immediately goes into an explanation.

Something's wrong. He hasn't been able to reach Lucifer in a while. Aether cuts in here and says that they'd like to borrow Steve's phone to try to call Lucifer. Steve has no issue with that, but they only get the busy signal.

Steve had been afraid of that, and tells that something must've happened to Lucifer but seemingly no-one else has noticed yet. However, that's a bad thing because if Lucifer is gone, then Hell will disintegrate bit by bit and disappear. That might sound desirable but it would mean that all the fiends and devils and all the trapped sould would be released into the mortal plane. That would throw the balance out of whack and that would lead to the end of the universe. Someone needs to go and find Lucifer, but Steve himself can't leave his post. He's picked the five of them because their abilities would complement each other well, and they should be able to take the long way round to the first circle of Hell.

Aether thought they would just have to climb a lot of stairs but what it means is that they take the stairs between levels but also have to go through each level because they need to find the keys to unlock the staircase doors. Steve can give them part of the key for this level but they need to get the missing piece by themselves. He gives them a Pandora bracelet with two charms already on it: A stamp (not the one that goes on letters), and an egg-shaped charm with vertical lines on it. (It's a representation of the campaign world map.)

They need 3 charms per level to open the door to the staircase. They're scattered around each level, and the bracelet will help them to know in what direction they need to move. To get the last one for this level, as well as access to all their gear, they're going to need the signature of the head of office on the permit A83. Ronnie has heard rumours of this form - it's notoriously hard to get. She thinks they should go and ask the office manager for help.

Steve has told them that he thinks that they're the best shot at figuring this out. They all deserve a chance to redeem themselves because, in his opinion, they shouldn't be here. Ronnie doesn't believe that he believes this but has no reason not to trust him. Somehow, that just makes it worse. The Tigress just needed to know that she'd get her gun back to be in. Ronnie also wanted to know if she'd be able to leave Hell, and Steve couldn't promise that, but said that there might be a chance that she would have to. Aether just wants to get back to his circle of Hell (Limbo), and Pauly and Cadmus are willing to take on the mission out of duty to the mortal plane.

Pauly had to roll one of his stress die to make sure he wouldn't be triggered by the pressure of making a hard decision, but he was doing okay.

Cadmus used his Divine Sense to ensure that Steve at least felt like he was himself, even though Cadmus knew fiends would ping all over, plus Ronnie as a Celestial. Steve felt like he always does but Cadmus could tell that the realm of this circle of Hell has weakened, and the fiends have become slightly more feral. That's supported by the evidence of Steve accidentally cursing earlier. Steve never cusses but he did then.

And that's where we left off this time. They're going to talk to the office manager in two weeks to see what they can learn from him about this elusive permit!