Of Gods and Dragons: Session Eight

Last time, the party headed towards Torga, stopped on their way by highwaymen who they intimidated, immobilized, and frightened without any harm or incident. They headed into town, leaving the leader of the highwaymen with the guards, and went to the Mortar and Pestle, the shop Aurora's mother Heather owns and operates. Brokk and Lethanin made introductions with Heather, and as Aurora made a nice dinner for everyone, the party discussed their notions of what family is and should/could be--Aurora was positive and upbeat about her relationship with Heather, Lethanin was dubious of any beneficial familial relationship in light of his relationship with his parents, and Brokk was confused by any understanding of family, having his background as a constructed war machine without proper family. Brokk suggested that upon killing Thomas, the red dragon who they suspected was plotting against them, that he be instated as the new red dragon in order to fill the position of power rather than allow someone evil to take Thomas's place. Meanwhile, downstairs, a man named Hromar asked to speak to Aurora, saying he knew her in the past and wanted to speak about her forgotten memories. Aurora and the others assembled in the backyard and heard Hromar out--he said he had worked with Aurora in the camps of Pelor's Mercy, where they had kept troublemakers in line and punished those who dared test them; he also said that Aurora was not some confused girl deep down. This enraged Aurora, and in the combat that followed (despite Lethanin's attempt to cool the situation), Aurora disintegrated Hromar. In a moment, she saw memories she had locked away, seeing herself working with Hromar as he said and beating chained prisoners. Rocked by the realization that she had been one of the community now tracking her, she asked Brokk and Lethanin's help in destroying the town as the faerie who had granted her a new life asked her to. They agreed, and they sent Heather to stay in Drumchapel (Brokk's home) until things were safer. 

This time, the session began on a strange note. Aurora was still distraught after her revelation about her old identity, and she looked on the statue of herself and Heather that had been broken in the fight with Hromar, saying it was best left destroyed. But Brokk questioned this, asking why that would be the case. Aurora changed her mind and fixed the statue. Brokk insisted that Aurora take a few moments to relax and calm down after the tension of the encounter, which she did after apologizing that Brokk and Lethanin had to see her kill Hromar. Lethanin was understanding, saying, "Sometimes you have to disintegrate a dude." Aurora mourned the fact that she couldn't seem to escape from her past, something that everyone agreed was troubling to them too. 

After the tension of the fight subsided, they agreed to go to the bookshop called Library of the Ages, where Lethanin had ventured during his intro session, in order to speak to Tasselman, the curious academic who lives there, on the grounds that he had strange knowledge and theories about the world and that he had mentioned being blessed by Boccob. At the shop, they met with Tasselman and began to question him about Boccob and the strange jeweled globe he had. Tasselman was incredibly apologetic about the fact that he had very little concrete information to share. He explained that Boccob as a deity was very removed from the affairs of people, and that part of what marveled him about the globe is that he had never heard of Boccob answering a prayer before. He offered to perform research on Boccob, which would take a few days, and suggested praying to Boccob for guidance as he had, specifically by appealing to Boccob's sense of identity--a focus on knowledge and meaning. Tasselman also mentioned his genealogical work, which claims that all races in the known world are fundamentally related; he told Brokk that as an elf and an orc, they were basically siblings, and knowledge of this might have prevented the War of Kraal that Brokk was born to fight in. Brokk acknowledged this and gave respect to Tasselman, then excused himself downstairs. 

Brokk went to the center of the bookstore, which Tasselman had claimed was one of the largest repositories of knowledge anywhere, and knelt to pray. Brokk asked Boccob, addressing the deity as the "Keeper of Knowledge," to grant the group a chance to prove the purpose of humanoid life unimpeded by the interference of gods, asking for the restoration of the barrier between mundane and divine worlds for the sake of freedom of choice and the safety of millions of lives, asking too for guidance and promising to pursue seeing Boccob regardless of the outcome of the prayer. In response, Brokk felt the air in his lungs grow brisk and cold, then saw a spinning flame of all colors, and then heard Boccob's voice explain that now was not yet the time, but that Boccob understood what Brokk was saying, and promised that they would indeed speak when the time was right. Content with the answer, the group perused the bookstore, purchasing a number of romance novels that Priggin, the shopkeeper, suggested based on various requests (the bestselling book, the most recommended book, and the most awful but nonetheless enjoyable book). With their new information and their novels, the group returned to the Mortar and Pestle. 

It's worth noting here that this session was one I didn't prepare anything for, largely due to the fact that I couldn't. Now that the campaign is really in the thick of exploring and trying plans, I don't want to railroad at all, and that motivated me to leave things open. But at the same time, the players gave me very little to plan for. I knew they intended to go to the bookstore to see Tasselman, but I didn't know what they would ask about. In previous sessions, I've come to the table with a few vague notes and suggested events that might occur, but this session had absolutely nothing in the way of ideas like that. And by that note, this encounter at the bookstore was very impossible to anticipate. Tasselman is a fairly well-defined character--he was a notable NPC in Listen Check, my old D&D podcast--so I was able to basically just play him like I used to, although that was now nearly fifteen years ago, and my exact memory of him was a little fuzzy. But the information about Boccob was different. I've always played the game such that Boccob is so removed from reality that no one really knows anything about them, so I had to improvise. That's a big theme on this site and in this session in particular, especially when you consider that I had to have a ten-minute conversation about fictional books that I hadn't prepared for and had to come up with titles and plot descriptions and literary analyses for on the spot. 

So let's talk about improvisation in a new way. There's a moment later in this session that will drive this point home again, but let's talk about something valuable here and now. Whether you're running combat, hijinks, or roleplaying, you need to be able to improvise. If you're homebrewing rather than running a module, and even then at times, you have to be able to respond to your players in a meaningful way. After all, the players are improvising, and responding in kind is vital. But how do you get good at improvising? As with most all things, it's practice. You can practice by running TTRPGs or playing them, and this is a good route for most of us. But there's something else you can do to double down on improving at improvising. Learning improv, be it comedy or drama, though most available training for improv is for comedy. I am by no means an expert-level improviser; if you put me on stage and asked me to act out a complex story or make people laugh, I would be good enough to get some reactions, but I'm also not about to be cast in an improv troupe or tapped for Saturday Night Live. (My players often tell me I'm very good at improvising, though, so factor some humility into the calculation.) However, I am very familiar with improv via my time working in radio. 

I started my radio career doing a simple "morning show"-style program where I would chat and joke with some friends. Once I was confident and comfortable with this, I started a storytelling show with a friend, and we would trade long-form stories back and forth. And then I started a true improv comedy show in which me and a friend would pretend to be characters and just try to make each other (and hopefully, the audience) laugh. I had spent hundreds of hours on the air filling time with nothing but improvised commentary and humor by the time I started Listen Check, an almost entirely improvised show (just a bit of planning big character moments between episodes). I convey all of this to say that I practiced improv pretty heavily for several years in order to get comfortable with it. 

My ultimate point here is not to go out and get a radio job and intensely condition yourself to the point of being able to fill two-hour slots with improv comedy. What I'm saying is that improv helps you to be a better improviser (as you would imagine), and that in and of itself is actually attainable. Most bigger cities will have a theater or recreation center that offers improv classes. They are traditionally very affordable. The basis of the classes is teaching a few methods for improvising and giving lots of practice for honing your developing skills. By all means, if you want to practice improv via TTRPGs, please do. But if you're looking for a way to provide compelling plots and interesting titles and insightful-sounding analyses of a handful of books that only exist because you're currently talking about them and have your players say that they wish those books existed so they could actually read them and do all of that without missing a beat--practicing improv is a good way to bolster your skills so that you can pull that off. Truly, pick the approach that feels most comfortable--improv classes and practice are not the only way to improve--but know that one way to get there is practicing improv, and it's done wonders for my ability to DM in a way that's polished and satisfying to me and my players.

Anyway, when the party returned to the Mortar and Pestle, they encountered Aurix in his human form waiting for them. He spoke urgently of getting to business, so the group stepped inside and began to prepare to leave Torga. Aurora locked the shop up, looking over the house sentimentally as she went (fearing she would never see it again), and cast a spell that called on Yondalla, the goddess of halflings who her mother worships, to protect the shop while everyone was gone. Meanwhile, Brokk told Aurix that he was happy to see them, which caused Aurix to suspect that Brokk was playing a joke; Brokk insisted that he meant it, which confounded Aurix, who still believed that they were too bad with people to get that reaction from someone. With the group reassembled, Brokk shared what Boccob had said, which they concluded meant that they had time to pursue reuniting the dragons and were likely on the right path--they should keep doing what they were doing. Lethanin spoke of following "the Song," leading Aurix to speculate that Aurora manipulates reality through her magic, Lethanin hears reality via "the Song," and Brokk is (as a half-demon) of a different reality, suggesting that perhaps there is something special about the group that makes them inclined to be designated by the prophecy about the rift. Unable to make further progress by discussing things, the group agreed to go to Kallett City where the copper dragon was suspected to be, and Aurix teleported them to outside the city gates. 

Arriving in Kallett City, the group found a festival in full swing. They obtained drinks for a catered table, and Lethanin suggested heading to a rowdy bar to ask after Rupert, who Aurix said was the copper dragon. They headed to just such a bar (which I named "The Complete Works of Montgomery Ward" as a jokey name only to find out that the name "Montgomery Ward" is a real life retail store--it was a silly accident, but it got a laugh). Inside, Lethanin gravitated towards a stage where a trio of musicians played a medley of folk tunes; Aurora set up to people-watch, trying to spot drunken old human men (the description they'd gotten of Rupert), and Brokk unexpectedly cast Eldritch Blast into the ceiling to get everyone's attention. It worked. He asked if anyone knew Rupert, and the bar patrons all said that Rupert was the mayor. Brokk paid for the next round to apologize for his commotion, and the group headed outside to find the mayor. Brokk flagged down the first person who he saw, which happened to be Moira, the dwarven smith he'd bought an ax from earlier in Talon Gorge. Spooked by her appearance again (he had already been disturbed by her upon first meeting), he listened as she said she was on a vacation inspired by their last conversation, gave some details about the festival (a celebration of the anniversary of the founding of the town), said the mayor would be giving a speech soon, and heartily wishing that Brokk do whatever the right thing for him would be as they had discussed. Brokk was even more perturbed by the conversation with Moira, and the group discussed the likelihood that she was in fact a god of some sort. 

Meanwhile, the mayor, a young halfling named Rupert Millhoe took the stage to speak to the festival-goers. He spoke about the legacy of Kallett City and toasted to its future. Out of game, I spoke as Mayor Rupert for about three to five minutes about Kallett City. This is worth noting because I had literally zero information about Kallett City planned or written anywhere. I had improvised that the mayor was named Rupert as something of a misdirect to keep the party from immediately finding the copper dragon, so I also had no sense of who Mayor Rupert was. The festival was also an improvised touch to make the city a little more interesting and colorful and add some chaos to the group's arrival. What I'm saying is, I had nothing to go on for Rupert's speech in any way, shape, or form. But I just started talking about Kallett City as though it were a real place and let whatever I said last guide the next thing I said. I described the urging not to build a city on the spine of a mountain; I talked about the sense of work ethic and community among the people who lived there; I talked about Mayor Rupert's pride in leading the city and how this was his first time as mayor during the celebration since his inauguration; I offered a toast to the past, present, and future of the city; I said that the festival was technically over with his speech delivered but suggested that there was no problem with the celebration continuing. All of this came out of my mouth as I said it. I do not hesitate to say that such a speech (which was later complimented by the players, some of whom were surprised it was all improvised) would not have been possible as a purely improvised product had I not had a healthy background in improvisation. Again, reader, practicing improv is a very vital thing in TTRPGs, and you'll be surprised at how confident a GM it makes you to be able to just start talking and have coherent, even interesting, things come out of your mouth. 

The group was confounded. Mayor Rupert was a young halfling who'd been serving as mayor for nearly a year--there was basically no way that he could be the copper dragon they'd been searching for. So Lethanin cast a spell to detect creatures to try to find the copper dragon. After sorting past the various wildlife living on the mountain, Lethanin saw a human-shaped target which the spell designated as a creature outside of town and up the mountainside. Aurora jumped on this opportunity and cast a spell to follow the dragon's location out of town and up the mountain. After some navigation and climbing, the group found a human man who appeared to be about thirty years old sitting with a keg of ale and drinking quite furiously. The group tried to talk with him, but he insisted that he was here to drink alone, mournfully and silently. For a while, no matter what the group said, he argued that they were violating the alone, mournful, and silent elements of his plan. Eventually, he said his name was Eric and asked them to leave him alone. 

At this point, Brokk leapt into action. He asked the others for some time to talk to Eric and asked Eric what his thoughts on free will were. Eric sourly said that free will does not exist. He told a story about his "friend," Rupert. Eric said that Rupert was a farmer whose life was destroyed by things outside his control. So Rupert learned magic and went to Torga, and one day, he went to a ghostly town and encountered a talking statue which was actually an incarnation of Gruumsh. Gruumsh told Rupert to kill a few people as payback for a massacre of orcs hundreds of years before. But Rupert felt that punishing people who had nothing to do with the massacre was unjust and refused. Enraged, Gruumsh tortured Rupert with nightmares and opposition until Rupert began to cooperate. Looking for a way out, Rupert sought to kill Gruumsh, which he managed to do with help from a few friends. But Rupert was rewarded with dragonhood, making him more alone than ever, functionally immortal, and absolutely without choices because of the divine magic. Eric said free will could not exist if choices only make things worse in ways we cannot predict.

Brokk nodded along and told his own story about a "friend" who was created for war, who changed his mind and became a force of good and peace. Brokk argued that free will does exist because his "friend" managed to make meaningful choices that changed things. Eric said that if things are said to exist for other people but don't exist to you, then they are not truly real to you. They debated back and forth for a while, and eventually, Brokk broke through to Eric, who admitted that he was in fact Rupert, and he had only posed as Eric because he was on the run from the law in Torga. Brokk explained the prophecy (Rupert, subject of his own prophecy, was sympathetic to Brokk's frustrations) and the group's goals: repairing the rift and killing Thomas to set things right. Rupert chuckled. He said he had a counter-proposal. The problem, Rupert said, was that the dragons and gods hold too much power over common people. Repairing the rift would not solve that problem. What would solve the problem, suggested Rupert, was removing the powerful beings altogether, and he said that destroying the rift to kill both the dragons and gods would allow true balance for everyday people. 

It was at this pivotal moment that we stopped. Our normal time for gaming had run out, and I felt that stopping at such a shocking moment would be exciting. My players agreed--Brokk's player was flabbergasted by Rupert's proposal, Lethanin's player was only able to say "What a cliffhanger," and Aurora's player was silent and wide-eyed. It was more impactful than I had imagined, which is always nice as a DM. But ending here also served a tactical purpose. The only other dragon to suggest destroying the veil was Thomas, who was incredibly evil. Rupert was a metallic dragon, one who the group more or less needs to have on their side in order to fight Thomas. Convincing Rupert to repair the rift will take a lot, and I thought it was kind to the players to allow them the customary two weeks between our sessions to plan how to approach the rest of the conversation. With Jarvia, Wing, and Niela, the party agreed--talking about plans just meant collaborating. Working with Aurix to adopt the repairing plan meant talking about how to understand similar ideals and was more a philosophical difference of opinion than outright opposition. But Rupert, who again is vital to their plan, has radically different ideas. To get through to him, they'll need something big to convince him of their perspective. So ending there allows the players to plan out of game, and that gives them a chance to really consider what to do in terms of moving forward. 

Looking ahead, I again have little to go on. Next session will once again be largely (if not entirely) improvised. But this campaign has really helped me to cement a theory that I have about campaign design. There are largely three phases to a campaign: the beginning (or exposition), the middle (or development), and the end (or wrap-up). Each phase calls for different levels of preparation. The beginning is something that benefits from a fair (but not excessively) amount of planning. Having a good idea of what will kick off the adventure and give most of the required information to understand the stakes is good. In this campaign, the first session where Thomas and Aurix give information about the prophesy and the rift was important so that the players could know what they were doing, and having Jarvia explain further stakes later on was also important, especially since that's what the players have settled on as their goal. In these early sessions, I really leaned on a healthy amount of prepared ideas (what they would learn, but not how they learn it) to get them up to speed. 

Then we transitioned in the middle, where things develop. We've been in this phase for several sessions now. Starting with talking to Wing and moving into talking with Niela, we transitioned from basic information to the group taking a more active role. Faithful readers will note that my prep work started to drop off in these sessions, and we're now at a point where I've had either a few bullet points or literally nothing prepared for the last three sessions, which is appropriate for how the party is handling things. They're taking the reins and making choices, and I want that to be the focus--the middle of the story is where the players should be guiding basically everything. 

We're not exactly near the ending, but things will shift again as we get there. The basic chart of a story would look like a loosening and then tightening spiral. It starts out tight (the beginning where I need to get certain information dispensed), then loosens (the middle where they can do pretty much anything), then tightens again (the ending where there are only so many things that will bring about a real resolution). As the story wraps up, I'll be preparing a little more again. It will be time to decide what kinds of things the gods do after the party had made contact with them and what Boccob may do in response to the players' actions. It will be time to start thinking about how to offer a satisfying ending to the player characters. It will be time to draw the focus back towards the main story about the rift, and that will mean I can plan some things without interfering with the players' free will (a centerpiece of this campaign) and give endings that are more carefully considered than improvised. 

But that's looking ahead. Right now, we're in the middle of things. It's time for the players to have free reign. Talking to Rupert will be a huge challenge unlike anything they've encountered, and they could handle it in any number of ways. I have to leave it to them. Whether they try to reason with Rupert, force him into compliance, or abandon his support altogether--or likely some other fourth thing that I could never anticipate--it's their story, and I'm here for them to tell it. That's the real strength of improvising, by the way: it's cool to make up a little speech for a scene, but it's even more important to actually let your players guide the story, and you can only do that by improvising. I don't have any idea what will happen next time, but I'm eager to find out. 

That's all for now. Until next time, happy gaming!

Of Gods and Dragons: Session Seven

Last time, the party took an easy morning with Jarvia to get started. While Aurora went to town to get alchemical supplies and some food for breakfast, Brokk and Jarvia chatted over coffee, and Lethanin slept in before starting on some hashbrowns. Aurora returned with supplies to help her gender transition, and Jarvia offered to magically complete Aurora's biological transition; Aurora was hesitant but eventually agreed, and Jarvia played a song to transform Aurora. The party gathered for breakfast and discussed next steps, agreeing to seek out the copper dragon in the mountains, but before they could leave, Wing sent communication that Aurix wasn't entirely convinced of the rightness of repairing the rift, so the party agreed to speak to Aurix first. Aurora teleported them to Aurix's home, and Aurix came to speak with them. Aurix was initially uncomfortable with the idea of closing the rift on the grounds that the world is broken and the leaking magic would make it less broken, but they were convinced by the notion that change must come from within and agreed to help with both the rift and killing Thomas. The party agreed to spend some time in Torga and meet with Aurix again that evening to be sent to the mountains to find the copper dragon, who Aurix explained was a man named Rupert who they had helped fight an incarnation of Gruumsh. The party appeared just outside of Torga's gates. 

This time, I went in with a simple plan. First, following Aurora's player's suggestion, I decided to throw some basic low-level enemies at the party in the form of some highwaymen on the way into town. I also knew that since the party was in Torga, where Aurora was based before the campaign began, I could send a mercenary from her original home in Pelor's Mercy to further the plotline that people from that place were still looking for her. With that in mind, this session began with five highwaymen interposing themselves between the party and Torga on the road. Brokk intimidated the highwaymen, and a few of them were so fearful that they started to back down, but one brave highwayman emboldened the others by insisting he would fight Brokk personally. At this, Aurora cast the same spell on the highwaymen that she cast on Hyrum the bounty hunter in her intro session, leaving three of them writhing helplessly on the ground. Lethanin played a song played a disturbing song to unnerve the remaining two highwaymen, who ran off into the woods. Brokk grabbed the leader of the highwaymen and dragged him to the city gates to leave him with the guards posted there; the guards anxiously agreed to collect the other two downed highwaymen. Aurora pretended that Brokk was a noble of sorts, calling him "Lord Muscles" and pretending to be a courtier of his, and Lethanin played minstrel music as they entered town. 

It may seem like this encounter was quite a breeze in terms of difficulty. The highwaymen never got off a an attack, and they all fell or fled very quickly. But that was actually the aim. Last time, I wrote this: 

I was chatting about the campaign with Aurora's player, and I asked if she felt like things were going well, if she was having fun. And she said that yes, she is having fun, but also, Aurora is level 13 and yet feels very underpowered. Dealing with dragons who are more than twice Aurora's level and gods who are even more advanced makes Aurora feel somewhat weak. And this was not my intention as the DM. I wanted to make combat solutions to dragon problems difficult and complicated to encourage roleplaying, but I never wanted the party to feel useless. So I asked Aurora's player what might help. She said that a combat encounter with average people (who would of course be well below the party's level) would be really interesting as a way to flex the party's abilities and remind them that they're actually quite powerful.

The goal was actually to remind the players that they are powerful even if they're surrounded by people more powerful than them. In this encounter, Brokk got to scare the pants off several of the highwaymen, Aurora got to show her spellcasting prowess (something she had only done outside of combat up to this point, since this was the whole campaign's first glimpse of combat), and Lethanin got to show off his spellcasting in a fun way. In the space of a five-minute encounter, the party was quickly and firmly reminded that they were all powerful beings and do a little good by making the road safer. This was accomplished without a slog through dense combat that lasted half the session, and it accomplished what a player specifically asked for. Each of the players got to shine in their respective ways, and we got to preserve our most roleplaying style. In fact, I would argue that the players got chances to roleplay through the combat given that all of them chose unique ways to non-lethally dispatch the highwaymen. I wouldn't have done this on my own, so the suggestion from Aurora's player was really invaluable, and listening to it made this moment possible. 

Once in town, Aurora led the party to the Mortar and Pestle, the alchemy shop where her adoptive mother Heather works. Heather and Aurora had an emotional reunion, and Aurora introduced her to Brokk and Lethanin as friends. Aurora decided to get to making dinner for the party and Heather, and on the way upstairs to the kitchen, Brokk and Lethanin spotted the backyard of the shop/home through a window at the top of the stairs. In the backyard, they saw a highly realistic statue of Aurora and Heather hugging. Lethanin was, in a phrase, weirded out, saying that families tend not to be so close that they memorialize their relationships. Brokk was more confused than anything; since he didn't have a traditional family, the idea of such a close relationship was odd to him--he only knew family dynamics through the many books he read. Lethanin pointed out that something seemed off given that Heather was a halfling and Aurora a human, meaning that it was unlikely Aurora was Heather's offspring. 

This moment was really beautiful to me. I think it really reveals the potential for roleplaying as a style of gaming. Aurora gets to reunite with her mother, which is emotional and sweet, and then we get to see Lethanin struggle with his own complicated family relationships and see Brokk in a new light--not the hardened wisdom we're used to, but pure and genuine lostness in the face of not understanding something very simple and almost universal. It was a showcase for everyone to get to display a part of their character that hadn't really been addressed yet, and everyone was different and profound in their own way. Aurora's close relationship with Heather shows part of why Aurora is so hopeful and sweet; Lethanin's distance and occasional bitterness is spoken to as informed by his distance from his own family; and Brokk's lack of understanding of the situation shows that his pain is not just from being forced to fight in a gruesome war--he also lacked even the opportunity to be meaningfully loved in his childhood. This is what I live for as a DM, and you'll notice that I had essentially no part in it--this was just the players expressing their characters in a way that felt true to them. This is the beauty of a quiet moment in the game. You never know what character moments will come out of it. 

While Aurora cooked, Brokk asked about her family, and he was confused by what the notion of adoption really meant. Aurora tried to explain, and Lethanin poked around in the home as Aurora said that Heather was there for her when she was lost and confused, which made more sense to Brokk. The discussion of adoption led to a discussion of how Aurora's magic works--the adoption papers had been drawn up through Aurora's glyphs, and Aurora explained the sort of grammar required to make a spell make sense; to illustrate, she cast a spell that made a mug frosty on the condition that Brokk picked it up. Brokk was surprised and somewhat pleased when the spell worked as intended, and he discussed the family in his life--the demon "father" he was born of as a combination of an orc and a demon, though he didn't exactly know his father in any meaningful sense. Brokk also described the man who raised him, who Brokk said treated him as more a tool than a child. 

Aurora explained that a Daltoner called Hyrum had come looking for her after she found a life with Heather, and that upon being confronted by Hyrum, she had peered into his memories to determine how he knew her. [This was covered in Aurora's intro session.] This caused Brokk to realize suddenly that Hyrum had known Aurora before her memories disappeared, before she had any knowledge of who she was and had to start over. As a DM, this moment was hard to read. Brokk and even his player were very reserved about this, but I detected a kind of discomfort, as though it was really hitting Brokk that Aurora had lived a whole life before she became who she was now. This suggested that Brokk and perhaps also Lethanin were unsure of what to do with Aurora, this young person who had only a vague idea of what came before her memories. But Aurora seemed oblivious to this and described her knowledge of where she believed she had come from, a place to a river diverged into two. She summoned a map of Evanoch and looked for places this occurred, specifically looking for Daltoner territory--she found three likely candidates and two other outside chances. Lethanin mentioned the globe he'd witnessed during his intro session, which very much vexed the others, though they all voiced interest in visiting the owner of the globe for more information. 

They all sat down to dinner, and Brokk suggested a plan: after killing Thomas, he wanted Aurix to bestow the red dragonhood on Brokk, who would then remove himself from society and keep a more evil person from taking the mantle. He reasoned that he could make up for the wrong he did during the War of Kraal and prevent more evil from happening. Neither Aurora nor Lethanin was enthusiastic about this plan. Lethanin didn't disagree, calling it "not the stupidest plan I've ever heard," but he also wouldn't offer more support than that. Aurora said it was a good plan but found it very sacrificial, saying Brokk deserved better than sentencing himself to immortal exile. Brokk accepted their tentative agreements and said he wanted to speak to Niela again since she likely had more insight on how to go about the plan. Brokk also noted that he was uncomfortable with Niela having dragonhood--she was not distinctly evil but also certainly not good; at the same time, he highly respected the care and perspective she had as someone willing to vulnerably restrain herself to protect them, which a truly evil person would not do. 

Just then, Heather called from downstairs that a stranger said he had business with Aurora. This caused the party, especially Aurora, to grow very tense. Brokk crept halfway downstairs and asked what business the man, a haggard bearded human in fine armor who called himself Hromar, had with Aurora. Hromar said he specifically wanted to talk with Aurora about business related to her past. A very intense exchange ensued: Aurora wanted to know his business before coming to speak to him; Hromar suggested that Heather accompany them for the conversation; Brokk grew uneasy and forcefully suggested Hromar come clean; Aurora said to talk in the garden out back without Heather. Eventually, Hromar and the party assembled outside, and Aurora insisted that Heather lock herself inside until they were done talking. 

When pressed, Hromar said he had come from Pelor's Mercy to bring Aurora home. He said that before she'd lost her memory, they had been friends who worked together in the "north camp." He said Aurora had helped to keep "misbehavers" in line. Aurora panicked and launched into combat, starting the first real fight of the campaign. Brokk acted first, striking Hromar with eldritch blasts that shot through Hromar's armor and knocked him back into the state of Aurora and Heather with so much force that it split the statue in two. (This was a fun symbolic moment--Aurora's dangerous past coming to Heather's doorstep literally put some separation between them.) Lethanin acted next, playing a song to calm Hromar and Aurora, and the spell did give them pause even if it didn't stop combat entirely. Hromar tried one more time to plead his case as he poised to throw his sword at Aurora, saying he and Hyrum had worked with Aurora, that they'd shared old days together and spit on nonbelievers, that he knew Aurora wasn't a confused girl and that somewhere deep down, she remembered her past. At the notion that Aurora was not "a confused girl," she grew enraged and cast a spell at him. A rippling blast of blackish purple light tore into Hromar, disintegrating his armor and furs and turning his entire body into a pile of ash and dust. While Lethanin and Brokk marveled and were repulsed by Aurora's spell, Aurora began to panic knowing that the people in her past knew where Heather was. Brokk said that his home in Drumchapel was far, far away, and that Heather could hide out there until the coast was clear. Aurora agreed but then was suddenly gripped by new visions. 

In Aurora's mind, she saw herself hanging out with Hromar and Hyrum, patrolling prison camps and menacing prisoners. She saw Hromar and Hyrum beating prisoners, and then to her horror, she saw herself beating prisoners too. Suddenly, she saw where the bloodstains on her wooden sword had come from--a victim who she'd beaten badly enough to draw blood. She struggled to breathe and panicked more before seeing the mysterious man with the crimson sun pendant calling to her with a name she couldn't comprehend. The visions ended, and she panted and heaved on the ground, horrified by what she had seen. As she tried to collect herself, she heard ABC's voice in her mind: "I told you you would want to do me a favor. Destroy Pelor's Mercy." 

Aurora continued to panic, saying she was a member of the Daltoner cult and that she had done terrible, terrible things. Brokk tried to calm her, telling her she was a good person now and that she could leave that past behind. At Aurora's asking, Brokk and Lethanin agreed to help destroy Pelor's Mercy and save the prisoners there, saying that once the rift had been closed, they would begin preparing to destroy the camps and town. Aurora left her wooden sword at the broken statue and went to speak with Heather, struggling to confront that fact that her mother had seen her disintegrate a man from the window above and asking her to go to safety in Drumchapel. Heather agreed and packed some clothes, books, and holy items of Yondalla. Meanwhile, outside, Lethanin and Brokk expressed shock that Aurora was capable of such things given her apparent sweetness and the implications of what Hromar and Aurora had said. Lethanin remarked that Brokk was surprisingly good with the "touchy-feely stuff"--Brokk shrugged and said he'd merely told Aurora what he needed to hear himself. Heather came outside, and while Aurora summoned a portal to Brokk's house, her wooden sword again at her hip, Heather thanked Brokk for his help. She gave Aurora one more hug and told her nothing had changed--she would always love Aurora, who would always be sweet and kind--then stepped through the portal into Brokk's home, where she petted Brokk's dog, Dog. The group agreed to go to investigate the globe Lethanin mentioned and decided to rest for a moment. 

That's where we ended this session. When this moment wrapped up, we had half an hour of remaining time before the time we normally wrapped up, but given the heaviness of the session's second half and the general low energy of the players, I asked if we wanted to call it a night early or do just a bit more, tackling the globe. They all responded they'd rather call it a night for a collection of reasons: out of game, we were all a bit demoralized by real-life situations (check the date of this session's notes), we were worn out by the weight of Aurora's situation in-game, and we know that a short moment often becomes a long one given how we roleplay. I recommend checking with your players in situations like this rather than making an executive decision without consulting them. As always, treat the game like a collaboration rather than a DM-led project. 

Looking ahead, I once again have very little to project. I know they'll be going to talk to Tasselman about his globe (this was a thing from Listen Check, my D&D podcast, that got revisited in Lethanin's intro session), but I don't really know what they mean to learn or do there. I generally suspect that they'll afterwards rejoin with Aurix and head to find the copper dragon, but of course a million things could happen before they get there--a simple dinner at Heather's ended up very dramatic and took up about two hours of the session. So once again, I don't have much to plan with at all. And that's a good thing! If I had a plan every session, it would mean I was taking the reins instead of letting the players guide it. Having no plan means the players are completely in charge of the story, which is what I want. So huzzah for having no plan!

One thing that I want to draw into focus here is how Aurora's very focused story in this session actually didn't dominate the other players or characters. Brokk and Lethanin as characters were not nearly as fleshed out as Aurora going into the campaign--Brokk was a tired old war veteran trying to live a quiet life, and Lethanin was a mischievous musician who loved to travel. Beyond that, only some basic attitudes existed for them, and their pasts were not entirely defined. This was not a problem, though. The emphasis of this campaign has been on moving forward, so those outlines were enough to go on. Aurora, on the other hand, was pretty detailed before even her intro session. Aurora's player knows how to guide her in almost any given situation from references to her past. In some situations, especially selfish roleplaying, that could monopolize the game. 

But in this case, it doesn't. Aurora's carefully-defined backstory and personality isn't pushed into center stage repeatedly by either me or Aurora's player. And as we saw with this session, Brokk and Lethanin came more into focus with the prompting of Aurora's. Think about the family conversations. Brokk never really talked about family before this session. Lethanin exhibited discomfort around his mother, but didn't say anything about family beyond that interaction. But when Aurora and Heather were shown being emotionally close, it prompted Brokk to confront his issues and Lethanin to discuss family beyond his own troubled relationships. This means that now, we all know Brokk is more isolated and alone than he'd admitted, and Lethanin doesn't just struggle with his family but also doubts the closeness of any family. That's huge! Brokk and Lethanin became more defined because they had Aurora's experience to bounce off of, and that's not a reflection for better or worse on any of the players--it's a way that the collaboration benefits everyone. Aurora has more complete party mates to talk to, Brokk and Lethanin are more fleshed out, and I as DM have more to work with in terms of how people feel and interact in the game. This is the spirit of collaboration--any one contribution can become more and more and more as long as we all add to it. So kudos to all three players for adding something very cool to the game. 

Next time, I don't know what will happen. We play with two weeks between sessions, and all kinds of ideas and brainstorming can happen in those two weeks that might bring up a new plan or player/character interest. It's impossible to say what next session might hold. What I know for sure is that things are changing. The party has spoken to all the dragons who are likely to agree with them, they need to start looking to the gods (which will be quite a different task), Aurora's backstory is pretty much entirely restored to her (meaning Aurora's player will be relatively off-script for the rest of the campaign, which will be a new challenge for her), Brokk and Lethanin are getting more complex every session, and they all have broad and far-reaching plans to prepare for and execute. The context-building phase has been fading away in favor of the meat of the campaign, and I think from here out, there's not going to be really anything in the way of establishing a foundation--it's full steam ahead from here out. With that in mind, I'm eager to see what happens as my players decide how to navigate the many big tasks ahead. 

Until next time, happy gaming!