A Sundered World: Episode 108

Cast

• Agron (level 5 scion psion)
• Katra "Crazy Gin" (level 5 kobold pirate)
• Waive (level 5 scion nomad)
• Warpath (level 5 tarchon battlemind)

Summary

Having beaten the key out of a stone guardian's hindquarters, Agron mentally hoisted it into the door and unlocked it. The walls of the room beyond were dominated by great dwarven statues. As with the rest of the vault, fire from their mouths and eyes provided flickering illumination.

Sitting within the center of the room was the anvil Waive sought. It was larger than expected. It didn't tower over them, but was still tall enough that he had to climb onto it in order to reach the top. It was made of a strange, unrecognizable material that was dark and glassy, and unblemished in any way.

He placed both of his swords on it and struck them once with the golden hammer. He felt a kind of consciousness flare from within them, as if they'd both been sleeping for some time and had been abruptly woken up. They thanked him, and when he hefted them was surprised as to how much lighter they were.

They returned to the Metal Dwarf. He nodded approvingly towards Waive, and this time shook his hand without burning it. Warpath gave him back his hammer and asked him to come with them, to help protect the world from the conflict that was surely coming. He declined: his time had long since passed, and they would need to stop whatever was about to happen on their own.

The devil was waiting outside. While he was waiting for them, it was not because he had any business with them. No, he was waiting for them to leave before he entered in search of a sword. Waive told him that their weren't any, and the devil said that he'd take a look anyway. Their patience exhausted, the party demanded to know what he was was doing, why was he was following them, and why he had the tarchons attack Spiral Harbor.

He told them that he had only given Panzer what he had wanted, and praised Panzer for, unlike Warpath, embracing his nature. He said that, also unlike Warpath, Panzer was always going to become a dragon, he only...hastened him down that path. Enraged, Warpath challenged him to a fight then and there. After the rest of the party agreed to stand down, the devil accepted.

Warpath charged him, but black chains erupted from the ground and held him fast. He struggled against them, but the chains tightened, cutting through his flesh and forced him to his knees. The devil calmly strode towards him, mocking him for not putting up more of a challenge. He then produced an iron sphere, saying that he'd give Warpath another chance, but before he could do anything with it, Waive folded it away.

Katra leaped onto the devil's back, shouting for Warpath to run. With the devil's concentration broken Warpath in turn broke free of the chains, but instead of fleeing drove his arm-turned-sword into the devil. The devil reacted by simply looking down and muttering something about his robes being ruined, before his body was suddenly wreathed in black flames.

Katra fell to the ground, screaming and rolling about. Warpath struck again, but was surprised to find that the fire not only burned through flesh and steel, he could feel it scorching his very soul. The devil stood his ground as the party fled, but they'd only taken a few steps towards Katra's ship when he told them that he would destroy it if they did not first return the sphere.

Waive did so, reluctantly. The devil said that he would remember this, then bowed, turned about, and entered the vault. They boarded the ship, but before they departed the devil's vessel opened fire on the island, blasting it apart with bolts of black fire.

Waive rushed inside and found the Metal Dwarf's bones scattered about, most reduced to slag. His skull was still intact, so he scooped it up and headed back out. He intended to forge it into some kind of weapon, but the eyes flickered to life and it thanked him in a shaky voice. When Waive made it out, he saw the devil floating back towards his ship, with the massive sword in tow.

At this point they were certain of two things.

The first was that the devil was likely gathering the parts of a dead god. They weren't sure why, or what his plan was. Was he going to revive an evil deity, or corrupt a good one? Maybe he was going to create one from scratch? Maybe he was going to construct a new body for himself.

The second was that he was somehow tracking their location, but none of them had any magical knowledge, or even the ability to sense magical effects. They figured angels could at least detect infernal magic, so returned to Spiral Harbor and had some angels examine their ship.

To Katra's despair, all of the platinum plates that the devil had traded for the cambion ship bore the taint of infernal magic. The angels confiscated and disintegrated them, and now significantly poorer they picked up a job transporting cargo to Agron's home island.

Behind the Scenes

Another brief (and late) summary, as I've been super busy with various A Sundered World things, other role-playing game projects, and art commissions.

Adam finally got to upgrade his swords to artifact status (which I mentioned in a post a ways back, and have even included one in The Swashbuckler). He started out using the scion race move to pick up the fighter's signature weapon move, flavoring it as a pair of swords with the +1 damage and 2 piercing tags.

Since they're inhabited by sister spirits, I'm trying to cook up ways on how they can work together, and even act independently. Some ideas I've come up with are giving them the near tag (they can fly out and stab people), warn him of impending danger, give him a bonus on defend, and even act of their own accord (treating them as hirelings with the warrior skill).

There was some concern on the player's side of things as to just how tough the devil was. I think they'd wanted to confront him for a while, but were afraid of getting, I dunno, instantly killed. I explained to the players how monsters in Dungeon World are made, that there's a limit to damage, hit points, armor and such. Really the only wild card are the moves.

I'm guessing that's why Shane decided to try and take him down. He did pretty well all things considered, managing to shave off about half of his hit points before they stopped. Probably because Melissa's character was almost dead, Shane's was about halfway, and there was still a devil-crewed ship floating above them.

They also have a very good idea as to what's going on: the devil is trying to assemble a new god, or at least a giant body. The trick is finding it and/or stopping him, though if they only kill him who's to say another devil won't just pick up where he left off? Such is the nature of campaign fronts.

Announcements

As of this post we hit our funding goal a few days ago, which is pretty exciting for us. Since there's about a week left, I wanted to reiterate a few things:

First, you can increase your pledge to get additional classes at a discount.

We're doing this because people have asked us to include additional classes that we've created, like The Bard, The Psion, and The Pirate. The problem is our classes are really popular, and we don't want people to pay for content they already own.

This way you can get exactly what you want at a discount. It should be noted that any classes you buy through the Kickstarter will be sent out at the campaign's conclusion: you won't have to wait for the rest of A Sundered World.

Second, per someone's suggestion, I'm going to write a kind of promo adventure for A Sundered World in time for GenCon. It will be about Lichfield in length (so that ideally you can wrap it up in a couple hours), and will feature pregen characters, one of which will be of a race I haven't talked about before. Everyone backing at the $3 level or higher will get this when it's ready.

Finally, there're going to be comics, short stories, maybe even novels (backers of any level can see the first page). The art is currently going to be done by Melissa and myself, and the writing will be by Brannon Hollingsworth. Everyone backing, even at the $1 level, will get the first comic when it is ready.

Non-Kickstarter News

• The Swashbuckler is out!
• The art for the Dungeon World GM Screen is done, and I've ordered some proofs. If they look good, expect it up in the next week or so.
• It looks like the next class we'll be doing is The Golem. Personally I was hoping for The Rakshasa or The Fighter, but the people have spoken.
• The crew from Mythoard have graciously allowed us to put up Lichfield for public consumption at the start of next month. So if you missed out on it, you won't have to wait until October to get it!