Path to Godhood Session 29: Ascension

Characters:

Ajax Karo   -   Gregarious Hunter and Aspiring Kostis, God of Death and Plagues
Neilos   -   Aspiring God of The Sun and Plants
Steidis   -   Aspiring God of Fire and Smiths

Reunification

Having completed his work, Steidis gave Ajax his weapon: a finely-wrought stylus.  The others were stashed away for now, and they teleported back to the God Galley with their powers.  From there, the gods split up: Steidis wanted to wait for Neilos at the meeting point in the Antominian Swamp, while Ajax was anxious to finish his prophecies, and teleported to Susae.  From there, he headed out at night into the hinterlands to the fort of Pirus' Rest and the Lionesses.  The next morning, Neilos arrived by boat at the docks of Susae, where he resolved to wait for the others.  During his stay, ge would notice that the city seemed even more ill-managed than during their last visit.

During their last meeting, the gods had said they would go deal with the princes, but they had gone back on their word (in a sense they had kept it, because they ended the civil war in a roundabout way) and were last seen walking in an entirely different direction.  Once at the fort, Ajax turned into a rat to and infiltrated it through a crack in the wooden walls.  The Lionesses had been hit by his plague, with a trail that had seen obvious use out the north end towards a series of burial mounds.  Ajax spent the next day or so observing the fort, and was able to figure out the local political situation.

• The people with influence all wanted to achieve full independence from the Susaean royalty, though they disagreed about the means to use
• Calypso, the matriarch they'd met with last time, wanted to use diplomacy
• Themis, a huge older woman and stern traditionalist, suggested they strike while Susae was weak from plague and the civil war, burning any noble holdings in the region to ash
• Sophia, the Eniadnan woman with a pet monkey on her shoulder, sided with whatever suggestion would result in the most glorious battle
• Marietta, the other young Eniadnan woman with a back tattoo of a lion, wanted to recover the artifact known as the Fleece of the Lion (which, according to legend, made the bearer invincible) to strengthen their position before negotiations
• Theodora, who was far more richly dressed than the others and had the weakest support base, had taken on the role of a mediator, siding with one group and then the other as necessary to keep things from escalating

After having waited for an entire day, Steidis grew bored, burned a rude message to Neilos into the ground, then teleported to Susae, where he almost immediately found Neilos waiting at the docks.  Steidis insisted Neilos apologize, but he refused, so he didn't hand over the special shepard's crook he'd made in Eniad.  Reunited, the two headed out to Pirus' Rest, where they reunited with Ajax, who had been planning his next move outside of the fort.

Steidis finally informed the others that the last Kostis had killed the last Neilos.  Ajax tried to shrug this off as not a big deal because they had been different people, but Neilos couldn't feel emotions so he didn't care anyway.  That night, the gods finalized their plan.  Ajax placed a bone in a cup of water which pointed him to the burial site of a revered ancestor of Theodora, then dug into the burial mound, where he spoke with the ancestor's spirit to learn what it had done in life.

A False Ancestor

The ancestor turned out to also be named Theodora, and Ajax learned that she had been famous for fighting in a great rebellion against the Susaean king of old.  Next, he turned into a ghost and floated through the walls of the fort into Theodora's room, getting spotted by the guards on the ramparts on the way.  Her chambers were far more richly appointed than the rest of the camp he had observed, full of gold, jewels, and silk in a similar style to the royals of Susae.

Using the story of fighting in a rebellion that he'd learned to pose as Theodora's ancestor, he told her that she had been chosen to lead another uprising with two of her fellow Lionnesses.  A spear made for Pirus was waiting at Mt. Kniumeas, and would grant her an army of ancestral warriors against which the King's army could not stand.  With a glimmer in her eye, Theodora knelt and swore that she would do this for her ancestors and her patron.

Ajax retreated out of the walls and changed back into corporeal form, then the gods set out on an overnight march to Mt. Kniumeas to get there first.  Along the way, Steidis forged a spear with a bone haft of the highest quality, and inscribed it with icons of a lion (for Pirus) and a vulture (for Kostis).  At the foot of the mountain, the positioned the spear to be obvious to someone approaching from the same direction they'd come, and Ajax reached out with his powers to confirm that there were still a lot of intact-enough bodies in the field from a battle in the earlier civil war.

The next day, they spotted Theodora, who had brought with her Marietta and Sophia, and all went into hiding.  Upon seeing the spear, Marietta admitted she hadn't thought it would be real, and Theodora jokingly chastised her.  When the women picked up the spear, however, Ajax was frozen in terror of his fear of the outdoors.  They stood there awkwardly, Sophia wondering if something was supposed to happen, then Marietta questioning what the deal was with the vulture symbol and the bone handle.  Finally, Ajax regained his composure and animated over one hundred of the dead in the field.

Neilos' powers had finally recovered, so he and Steidis teleported back to Susae to sow discord.  In order to follow them without being seen, Ajax shapeshifted back into a rat and tailed the women from a few feet away.  Theodora announced that with such an obvious sign of Pirus' favour, the other Lionesses would fall in line, and Marietta and Sophia agreed.  They returned to the fort, where, sure enough, the deliberations were swift, now that they had a sign from their patron god, and their armies, both mortal and undead, marched for Susae.

Army of the Dead

News of the army on the march made it to Susae well in advance of the army itself, and spread through the city like wildfire.  As mortals begged Neilos and Steidis for aid, Neilos spread a narrative that quickly took hold: the old king had been the rightful ruler, and this was a sign from the gods that the new king was unfit for the throne!  A riot broke out, and the king was taken prisoner by the common folk, and sent out in chains to meet the army of the dead when it arrived.

The remaining nobility were left with little choice but to welcome Theodora, Marietta, and Sophia as their new rulers, and all three were crowned in a thrown-together ceremony almost immediately.  His prophecy fulfilled, Ajax glowed with a golden light, and then Ajax was no more, leaving only Kostis.  While grappling with the memories of his new powers, Kostis dismissed the army of the dead out to a field, where they lay down their weapons and returned to rest.

Killing the Lion

The gods teleported to Urbos, where they discovered that Kostis' plague had been cured; Neilos spread a rumour that Kostis had been the one to cure it.  Kostis went and partied for a day in celebration before they headed out to the highlands to finally deal with Soldier Pirus once and for all.  In preparation of a possible battle, Steidis finally handed Neilos the masterwork shepard's crook he'd made in Eniad.  They arrived at Pirus' camp without being caught by scouts, and Kostis once again transformed into a rat to infiltrate.

He found that Pirus neither ate nor slept, but it was impossible to tell if he'd advanced to the point where he would be nearly immune to disease.  Now that the plague was over, it seemed like they were getting ready to move out, presumably for a pitched battle with Lady Pirus.  The next day, while Pirus was out overseeing the preparations, Kostis returned to human form out of sight behind a tent, far enough away that he'd be able to escape if noticed, then used his new power to inflict a terminal disease on Pirus, but he was too hearty and was fine.

Frustrated, Kostis assumed a ghostly form and returned back to the others, and after informing the others of his failure, they decided to ambush Pirus and his army when they went on the march.  Unfortunately, Neilos' weight slowed them down, and so they were unable to ambush the troops, engaging in broad daylight.  Even so, between Ajax corroding their armour and weapons then firing off death rays, Steidis turning into a living flame that threw flaming disks, and Neilos blinding them, entangling them with grass, and shooting them with lasers, they trivially defeated the 100-man army and Pirus.

With the battle concluded, Ajax strolled up to the unconscious Pirus and infected him with terminal cancer.  He was filled with a final golden light, and ascended to full godhood.  The gods had all finally completed their goals, which left them wondering.  So far, they'd been given concrete goals to accomplish, but suddenly they would havew to choose their own path.  What would happen next, in the coming golden age?

The Age of the Gods

Noble Doros, whom the trio had helped repeatedly, achieved full godhood next, followed by Lady Pirus, the only survivor of her candidates.  The Nephele that Steidis had married ascended after that, then the Keti that followed Evenia around.  Curiously, it was after this that Punished Evenia herself become a full goddess.  Ursula gave up on godhood, and the Man of Iron, whom the trio had tried to assassinate, became the new Chelak.

With the return of the sun and moon, and game flourishing in the wilderness and sea, the great cities slowly recovered to their former glory.  At the start of this golden age, the gods assembled, rather fittingly, in front of the great stone gates of the Golden City, high in the mountains.

Notes:

We now move into the "post-game content".  It's going to be a lot more abstract, with only a few rolls necessary to accomplish great and terrible things over a span of years.

Everybody got to ask one question again.

Neilos: Are there any sacred artifacts of Neilos that already existed out in the world?
A: No (other than the Tome of the Sun, which he made himself and already has)

Ajax: What "Catastrophe" are the Circle's End trying to prevent?

A: The organization now known as Circle's End has existed in some form for many cycles, and their "Catastrophe" refers to the collapse of society and removal from the world of many positive things that occurs at the end of the cycle with the death of the gods.  This is a sort of balancing act, where they want to act late enough that some things are restored (the sun being back, for instance), but not so late that the gods can no longer be murdered.  As of yet, they have not succeeded to any degree (as far as he knows from his past lives).

Steidis: How did Nephele die in his past life?

A: Suicide.

I should not have allowed Neilos to split the party at the end of the last session; he didn't accomplish anything anyway.  I pretty forcibly regrouped them.

Theodoroa, Marietta, and Sophia all failed the IQ roll to understand that Kostis was supposed to be involved.  You'd think that the vulture symbol, the bone spear, and the army of the dead would have tipped them off.

Ajax maintained his mortal name right up until the last session!

While Neilos' story about the old king got the outcome they wanted, it did make himself, Ajax, and Steidis out to be the bad guys, because they all openly helped overthrow him, including openly killing him on the field of battle.

Steidis got some spicy secret information about the situation in Susae.

Pirus needed to roll a 6 to resist the terminal disease and rolled exactly a 6.  The odds of him making all of these rolls without ever failing are around 1:500.  He was simply too powerful.

The effective skills of the two sides in their battle with Pirus:
The PCs: 49
Pirus + Army: 32

Ajax has put forth the theory that they are currently on track for the "Linking the Flame" ending from Dark Souls.

An interesting lore tidbit as a result of the new pantheon: the disfigured are viewed as holy, as the goddess of beauty herself is missing one eye