Br Warming’s Philosphy

Our DM is asking us to kinda distil down the essence of what our characters are about. As in: if your character was a D&D god, what would he or she be the god of?

Brother Warming-Light-Of-Saranrae has a couple of things going on, character-development-wise. We have the “half drow who has repudiated his drow-ness” thing. We have the “dude who was very keen to keep out character who was a vampire from going full-on bad” thing.

But really, the thing he does more than anything else is charge into battle. However, we have a priest of Iomedae, goddess of valour, and a paladin of Gorrum, god of getting into bar fights. Aren’t we just doubling up?

Iomedae’s code is here. There are a couple of points in it that aren’t really Br Warming’s thing:

• I will learn the weight of my sword. Without my heart to guide it, it is worthless-my strength is not is my sword, but in my heart. If I lose my sword, I have lost a tool. If I betray my heart, I have died.
• I will guard the honor of my fellows, both thought and deed, and I will have faith in them
• I will never refuse a challenge from an equal
• I will give honor to worthy enemies, and contempt to the rest
• I will suffer death before dishonor
• I will be temperate in my actions and moderate in my behavior

Br Warming is maybe about valour, but he isn’t really about honour. He certainly isn’t about “I will never refuse a challenge from an equal”. His attitude to that is “Meh”. There’s a diffidence about him. Shame isn’t a big motivator for him, which isn’t to say he’s immune from it. He was rebuked, once, by Iomedae herself for lack of clarity of purpose, and he accepted and learned from it.

Gorum’s described here and . here.

The Lord in Iron is considered brash and impulsive; he takes what he wants, by force if necessary, and answers any direct opposition to his will with violence. His priests and followers tend to follow the god’s example, which means that there are more ruthless and exploitative members of his faith than those who espouse altruism.

(This passage would be better if the weasel-words “is considered brash and impulsive” was just made “is brash and impulsive”).

Br Warming is not really about fighting for the sake of it. He isn’t trying to prove something, he’s trying to accomplish something. Furthermore, he is good. Gorum isn’t. He isn’t going to get all offended by stuff and respond with violence – that is a part of the drow character that he has refused.

So, what is he about?

---

Choose your purpose. Choose your destiny. Choose your cause. Choose right. Choose redemption and rescue. Choose to stand against evil, great and small. Choose to protect the good. Choose to make a difference.

Do not fight for a cause for which you would not die. Do not hazard your life or the lives of others in mean, or ephemeral, or selfish causes; do not hazard your life for no gain. Act wisely as you may.

But then, fight! Fight extravagantly; fight without fear. Strike, and disdain to count the cost. Then strike again. If your life will win your purpose, spend it.

Have faith, and remember your reward in paradise. But first and last, remember the your goal here on earth. It must be worthy of you, so strive to be worthy of it.

“Fight extravagantly. Fight without fear.”

St Warming’s worshippers number a various orders of fanatical suicide monks. Humble as all get out, and prone to directly attacking the command tent or the heavily defended siege equipment. Whatever is going to win the day. It’s also quite common for battlefield medics and unarmoured sappers to venerate him.

They also number some people you wouldn’t expect – Andorran rogue/bards running the underground rail out of Cheliax. Spies infiltrating Red Mantis cults – sure to get caught sooner or later. Even some engineers building bridges in mountain passes find comfort in his teachings. Firemen, or the fantasy equivalent.

Anyone doing something they see as good, that’s probably going to get them killed doing it, whether or not it directly involves fighting, whether or not anyone ever knows about it.

Phoenix rising

Ra, climbing the horizon!
Rising up the mountain, lighting up the valley below
Ra, giver without measure!
Beacon of compassion, shining through the spectrum of life

Day is born, night is gone
One in all, all is one
Communion with the sun

Ra, ruler of all nature!
Burning on forever, melting all together in one
Ra, holy synthesizer!
Inspiration showers green and growing gardens of love

Voices rise to the song
One in all, all is one
Communion with the sun, with the sun!

What a great game night! What a fine end to a plot arc!

Our investigator/alchemist had frozen the fallen Phoenix in place, locked in time. And, in a fit of impatience, our DM brought out the BBEG – the maralith general of the armies of Deskari, architect of the worldwound. Fight, fight, fight. Her extremely nasty friend was killed, and with his ability to redirect spells neutralized our Arcanist could deploy the big gun on the Maralith herself: Suffocation – save or die. The spell dropped her unconscious, and we cut her head off. (coup-de-gras).

Then another BBEG game through the portal, briefly foiled by a Wall of Force. Another Suffocation rendered him staggered – without his spring attack (a full-round action), his main trick was cancelled and he, too, was killed. We had recovered the Sword of Valor.

But finally, the corrupted phoenix began to flicker with flame, began to re-enter normal time. She dropped a Wall of Flame but our magics were more than enough to permit us to deal with the damage. She directed a Meteor Storm at our cleric. But we had been discussing – surely, with the general dead, this phoenix’s corruption might be undone?

We each in our own way attempted to reach it. Our investigator, by reason; our paladin, by charisma; our cleric, by an offer of Atonement; and Brother Warming, by the morning prayer to Saranrae – and a little Inexplicable Luck.

Our tactician decided to reach the phoenix another way – positioning himself to attack, should that be the way of it.

However if might be, whether by dice or by fiat (perhaps your chronicler’s age has made him cynical), the phoenix heard us. She offered her neck to our tactician – who had been made a vampire months ago, and who had lived struggling against his undead urges. The rest of us recoiled in horror – and then realised: phoenix! Gavren drained the life from the Phoenix, but did not grant it undeath – simply death. And, as they do, the Phoenix crumbled to ash and we watched it reborn. A rare sight, witnessed only by a few.

We spoke. We repaired to the scrying chamber of the general and, by its magics, our paladin exhibited the head of the general to the battle outside Drezzen. The demons, in accord with their chaotic nature, broke and fled; and the troops of the righteous, reinvigorated with courage, slew the few that remained to fight.

We looted the general’s armoury and recovering a quantity of magic weapons for Her Majesty’s armies … and one or two which we retained for ourselves. We found also a Rod of Lordly Might, and not just any such (not that there are “just any” of these), but one bearing the crest of house Hawthorne.

We returned thought the portal to the world. We joined what was left of the battle on the other side. When all was done, Gavren Hawthorne – tactician, vampire, last lord of his house – told us: “I am done with this undeath. Iomedae herself refused me, to restore me to a human – offering me only permanent destruction. But now, I am full of the blood of the phoenix. I will shed my cloak of shadows and see the sun – perhaps I may be reborn.”

We remonstrated, pointing out the risk, which was a bit out of character for Br Warming. But Gavren’s mind was set. We returned to the altar to Sarenrae (?) where Brother Warming-Light-Of-Saranrae – who had kind of taken on Gavren’s vampirism as a bit of a pet project – laid him and stood vigil the night he changed months ago, a lifetime ago, several levels ago.

But the sun was blocked by cloud, part of Deskari’s war: many of his troops preferring darkness. There on the altar, Gavren called: “Iomedae! Remember your promise! Part these clouds, and grant me to stand beneath the sun!”

In the flat grey from horizon to horizon, a grey set in place by the will of the demon lord, above the altar a rift appeared and the full light of the sun shone down on the vampire. He blistered, he smoked, he burned – screaming in pain – to charcoal, to a small pile of ash.

But the blood of the great phoenix was in him. And in that ash, a lick of flame appeared, then a circle, then a hot flame too bright to look at, and then lord Gavren himself, human reborn from flame, naked on the altar.

A miracle. We covered him, and Father Cleophethus performed the ritual of atonement. Our investigator simply said “Lord Hawthorne”, and offered him his rod of office. We were greatly joyed, but subdued – perhaps numbed by the great events of the day, and daunted by the task ahead of us.

As we walked back down the hill, Br Warming quietly reached into his handy haversack and retrieved a small sack containing a mallet and a half-dozen wooden stakes. He discarded it by the side of the road. He would not be needing it now.

Seeing is believing

I haven’t been blogging RotW, but tonight’s little bit of ingenuity deserves a mention.

So, we are in the Ivory Labyrinth  – part of The Abyss. The Ivory Labyrinth has several … places. Connected in strange ways. All are mazelike – a simple maze of bones, a swamp of mazelike streams, a lightless maze of caverns. You get the idea.

We were in the slums of Blackburg – a maze of twisy, winding alleyways. A sprawling favella. We needed to get to The Breathless Mountains – a maze of treacherous mountain passes (avalanches, rope bridges, gales – you get the idea). But how?

We dealt with an inhabitant of the Labyrinth. After speaking to it, it descended into a pit. We determined that the pit led to The Lightless Maze. We put some light down there, but on doing so discovered that as soon as we did, the pit no longer connected to that place. Why?

Because we had lit it. Affinity – that was the key. To get to the Breathless Mountains, all we had to do was to create a little piece of those mountains here in the favella. A big ask – the mountains are cold, snowy, mountainous, and uninhabited.

We hatched a plan, and it was awesome. I don’t know if the module permitted it specifically, or if the DM invoked the Rule of Cool.

First, we needed an open area without so many buildings. Our cleric refused to earthquake the slums, but we located a battle in progress – the slums were on fire. We wandered over and earthquaked that whole area. The demons that could fly, scattered. The ones that couldn’t died in the rubble.

While one of us put the nearby fires out with Create Water, our cleric proceeded to use Wall of Stone and Stoneshape to make a mini-mountain, maybe 20 ft high. Craggy. Treacherous.

We then used Obscuring Mist and Sleet Storm to turn it into a cold, sleety, foggy mountainside.

And then – this is the cool bit – we used a Limited Wish to reproduce the effect of an epic Mass Reduce Person. A Limited Wish is more than enough to reduce a party of six by two size categories for a few minutes or so, which is all we needed.

We then proceeded to climb our sleety, foggy, dangerous mountainside. Roped together, hands and feet crawling up the slope. We didn’t know whether it would work or not. We crested a ridge, and found a twisty, dangerous track on the mountainside. The fog cleared a little, and it seemed the maze had obliged us. The air was thin, our breting laboured, and we saw a range of peaks, separated by impossibly deep ravines.

The Breathless Mountains. We are not going to be able to survive for long here. We must find or create a portal to somewhere even worse.