Primal/Within: Showdown at the Castle of the Overmind, Part 1

(This post covers my last two D&D 4e games)

Last Friday we concluded our longest D&D 4e campaign yet, clocking it somewhere between 16 and 20 game sessions (almost one year).

In order to make posts length easier to manage, here’s the ultra condensed story.

Campaign Finale: Redux

Using a mysterious 4 part key collected all over the city, the heroes entered the Castle by some sort of hidden escape tunnel.  They found themselves in an ancient Drow defensive vault where they discovered traces of the history of the Drow’s escape from this Castle 1000 years ago.

Usul the Elven Invoker found and released a ‘pocket’ of stored divine energies’ and used part of it to restore his whole group to a fully rested state.  While doing so, he accidentally re-opened a divine channel between the Castle and the exiled Spider Queen Goddess.  Her interest for Usul was great and he wisely let go of the power source until he needed it again.

The party proceeded to reach the Castle’s throne room.  On the way, they met the Overmind, the Castle’s  fragmented and quasi incoherent persona, speaking to the party in multiple voices wherever they went.  In the throne room, they saw the Mind Flayer they thought to be the Overmind only to find its head hooked to some strange arcane machine that controlled it and amplified its power tremendously.  The Overmind started using it to blast all players with psychic energy.

As soon as the fight started, Fangs, the Shifter Warden, exploded in a burst of gore and arcane glyphs, revealing a portal from which a Shifter Lich stepped out.  He introduced himself as the Master and revealed that Fangs had always been a clone of him, acting as a sleeper agent in the party. he said that now was the time to negotiate a triple truce to destroy the Dungeon once and for all.

The Lich went to fight the guards rushing to help the Overmind while the party dealt with the Illithid and the machine.  Eventually, Corwin the Halfling Sorcerer teleported the Mind Flayer out of the machine, putting an end to the fight.

The Lich, the Flayer and the heroes had a short council and agreed:

• Heroes would destroy the Castle’s Energy Focus, one of the Dungeons’ neuralgic points of consciousness, blinding it in a specific reagion.
• The Lich would bring an army of ‘stolen’ monsters to invade this blind region
• The Mind Flayer would provide all the Brainwashed troops it had stockpiled and hidden from the Dungeon over the years
• The Heroes would convince the City Within to raise an army and walk with the other 2 armies
• Once the Primordial’s Prison was reached, the Lich would use his portal Lore to power a massive teleporter to send the Primordial back into the elemental Chaos (Screw the Gods’ plans.  This is OUR world!)

(end of session 1)

The heroes proceeded to the area where the High Energy Focus lay, the tomb of the Spider Queen.  There they met an Avatar of the Dungeon (a gigantic Stone Titan) surrounded by Stone and Frost giants.  The Dungeon’s incomprehension for the heroes’ obsession in spoiling its escape plans is evident in the first few exchanges.  A fight erupts and grinds most adventures down to their last resources… except Corwin who manages to never get hit.

Throughout the fight, various heroes’ experience short “mind-encounters” with either the Dungeon or, in Usul’s case, his god Kord. Throught those meetings, they learn of the Dungeon’s wish to become a God by turning the world into his new body, they are mandated by Kord to muster the recently freed Overmind monsters into a divine army and Corwin learns that he is the Dungeon’s Scion, its plan B for survival should he be beaten.

As the party vanquishes the Dungeon’s Avatar, paving the way for a full victory against this global threat, Corwin, crying defiantly “I’m no one’s pawn!” and discharges one of his remaining powers through his brain.  The Heroes, their elation cut short,  stand around their fallen comrade in abject incomprehension…

(End of Campaign)

I have to say… I never saw that one coming… and as the shock of the last development wears off (and the feeling of annoyance caused by a 4 hour-long fight) , I can’t help but think that it was an awesomely heroic finale.

Up next in part 2: The DMing highlights of both sessions.