Fragments of Tiamat

Spoilers ahead! Proceed at your own risk.

World

At the center of the world stands Auris, a great and holy city, center of the planes and dominion of the Church of the Seven Comets. None who are judged unworthy may enter, and sinful and forbidden magic will be punished with death.

It is surrounded by great industry and prosperous agriculture out many miles, but farther out, the sky cracks. Many aeons ago, a devil-worshipping magician made a pact with Tiamat, the world-eater, and great calamity followed. Now all planes are as one. Further from the protection of the holy city, the elemental planes begin to creep in, soon followed by Heaven and Hell, before all is absorbed into the endless fog of the Astral. The plane of air is to the north, earth to the east, fire to the south and water to the west.

There are some who dare venture into the remmnants of the Fracture. Those who brave the plane of fire are flamewalkers, those who conquer the plane of air are skyfarers, those who wander the plane of earth are nomads, and those who plunder the plane of water are divers.

The Church

The church of the seven comets worships seven deities:

  • Talandar, god of the sky (really big beefy guy with a big shield) (paladin)
  • Askrae, goddess of the sea (mermaid) (sorcerer)
  • Lucia, goddess of artistry and craftsmanship (large woman, blacksmith, has one mechanical arm and a big hammer) (artificer)
  • Agon, god of war (tiefling, master of all weaponry, but only 5'2) (fighter)
  • Oberon, god of love (twink, carries a banjo, still taller than agon. loads of statues of this guy) (bard)
  • Diana, goddess of hunting and exploring (no statues of her) (ranger)
  • Daphne, goddess of the home (long hair and sweeping robes) (cleric)

These are, in truth, the party of seven who defeated Xandar, the aforementioned warlock of Tiamat. The church was founded many years after the fracture and worships their legend.

A note on classes

Warlocks and sorcerers are banned by the church and hunted down as heretics. Druids and bards are all in hiding, and very rare. Organisations like druid circles are rarer still and can only be found far out in the fracture. Clerics and wizards are heavily regulated by the church, and while dissenters do exist, they are treated as heretics. Half-casters are as their 'parent' class (paladin -> cleric, ranger -> druid, eldritch knight -> wizard, etc.).

This is not to say that warlocks, sorcerers, rogue clerics or paladins, druids or bards don't exist, they do and you can play them. The more improbable your origin, the more interesting the story behind it - so a warlock coming from Auris, the church's greatest stronghold, would have to have a very good reason not to have been hanged.

Blacktooth Rock

This is where we start our story. A lonely town hanging precariously off the edge of a cliff before the endless seas, it is host to many a diver and more than a little vice and sin. Places this far out are some of the last refuges of the warlocks and sorcerers, those hunted by the church, and if you're lucky you might even catch a wandering druid or bard.

It is so named for the foreboding sight, far off in the waves, of a pitch-black rock shaped like a sharp tooth. None dare venture near. Well, almost none. Someone with too much incense and not enough candles has hired a couple of crews to retrieve an artefact rumoured to contain secrets from before the Fracture.

Session 1

The PCs are in search of an ancient ring from before the fracture. The first crew is retrieving the ring from deep down at the base of the blacktooth (which is in fact an ancient magus tower of unmatched height) and the second is carrying the heavy containment for the ring, which the PCs find out is actually a mechanical doll. Once the ring is placed on the doll, it's revealed that it contains the psyche of one of the comets.

Underwater combat

The rules are:

  • Speed is halved for creatures without a swimming speed.
  • Unless a creature has a swim speed, non-piercing melee weapons have disadvantage.
  • Ranged weapons miss outside their normal range and have disadvantage inside it.

There are two combats, both in library-style environments.

Combat 1

  • The first is inside a very large air pocket, but there's a fragile wall or three. It is against ~7 enemies.
  • the arena is full of very high bookshelves and is dark, like the rest of the tower.
  • It is, however, not underwater.
  • the walls are weak; they can be destroyed (AC 10, 20HP) and this will flood the area (DEX 16, 4d6 basic bludgeoning). Each wall floods the room by 1 meter before stopping, with two walls causing the players to have to swim or operate underwater, and four causing the room to be completely flooded. It stops by some self-repair spell kicking in, the same one responsible for the endurance of the tower as a whole, reassembling the wall.
  • The spiders do an ambush from the ceiling, unless spotted first.

Combat 2

  • The second has air plane fragments blipping in occasionally and is otherwise underwater.
  • It is against 2 darkweavers.
  • An air fragment cutting in causes all the water to dissapear. Everything in it falls to the floor, possibly taking fall damage, but it is not underwater any more.

Session 2

The PCs have to pick up the party from session 1 and ferry them and the ring back to the shore, contending with both a sea monster and a bunch of church ships showing up to ruin their day.

First they have to rescue the first crew, fighting the sea snake or distracting it.

Then they have to deal with the three church galleons (specifically of the Scythes of Talandar) which pull up, in whatever way they see fit. They approach in a triangle fashion, with one ship leading and two trailing. They are all guarded by: