Act III

Session XVI (16/04/2026)

Wha Happen:

• The party collected their reward for clearing out the asteroid, then immediately used almost all of it up travelling to the elves' location, a planet called New Sylvia. This took a month or so and everyone trained up.
• Upon arrival at the elven homeworld, they are greeted by Eivor, a friendly young space dragon (normal dragon shape but the same size as the storm chaser and their body looks like this)
• He informs them that his partner, Rose, is planetside talking with an old friend, and offers to lead them to the city (though he's a bit big to land there himself)
• The storm chaser passes by a super star destroyer-sized abandoned ship in orbit of the planet, and it appears to be made of remnant crystal
• The party land in the elves' city, and discover that it's a mishmash of landed, converted ships and a few new buildings, some floating on the many, many rivers and canals criscrossing the whole city, some landed on solid ground.
• Eivor has informed Rose of the party's arrival and they are greeted by her and her friend, an elderly-looking elf in a military uniform with lots of badges. She's called Hermia and she immedately invites the party to a military outpost of some kind to discuss Plot Stuff™. Turns out the rumours about one of the alliance's planets getting swallowed are true. The elven navy's bureaucracy is running too slowly and Hermia needs the party's help to get around them and get something done.
• Said something is to raid the abandoned ship in orbit for a unique material which can be fitted to the storm chaser to let it survive inside the blacksphere by acting as a powerful conduit for weave energy.
• Rose starts trying to resurrect Graves, but runs into some hitches and can't finish it in time for the raid.
• The raid begins with securing the chosen docking location (notably the ship is in zero gravity).
• To be continued!

Session XVII (23/04/2026)

• The PCs need to find the magical material to refit the ship with; it's inside the engine core of the ship (along with a shitload of glitter - like 'enormous treasure vault pile of gold' amounts of glitter).
• The engine core is an enormous and horrendous mass of pipework. It's also got a corrupted kraken inside it. The PCs need to fight the kraken inside the pipework. Gameplay-wise, it's still zero-g, but the close proximity to the core has made it such that there are fluctuating gravity fields around the place which'll slam you up or down if you're not careful.
• After that, retreival of the macgiffinite (it's the very center of the engine - the reason it's such a good conduit is because it needs to channel the entire ship's energy).
• Then, they're after Xiaojin, probably. Hermia's eager for them to depart as soon as they're upgraded. The upgrade also improves the storm chaser's speed as the engineers gave the ship something of a tune-up in the process.
• At Xiaojin, there's a massive shardship fleet in orbit, scrapping with the Alliance navy around the moon.
• As soon as he notices the players, Darius fast-forwards the blacksphere a bit, immediately causing Xiaojin and everything in remotely close proximity to get swallowed.
• What precisely happens here is a little unclear - Kira compares it to getting a bit too deep in the psycrystal and almost getting lost, Ember compares it to almost getting sucked into an Astral whirlpool.
• Darius reveals his true identity, smash cut to the final bossfight.

Session XVIII (01/05/2026)

So what went down last session is basically as planned up to extracting the macguffinite from the core and getting it down to New Sylvia; then we stopped on Hermia taking the party to an armoury/vault in order to gear up for the next session, basically. Also level nine.

General plans for the session:

• The PCs travel via hell to get to Xiaojin posthaste - it takes a few hours instead of a month (corollary: you could cross the galaxy in like a few days and the blacksphere would be pretty tiny by comparison)
• The party blows up the ship Darius is on in order to aid the evacuation, which kicks off the fight with Darius proper in the ruins of the ship
  • This is facilitated by the fact that the PCs have already done this (though not on an operational ship)
• Phase one of the Darius fight
• Darius then jumpstarts the blacksphere, forcefully pulling Xiaojin into the sphere.
• Phase two: They fight Darius inside the blacksphere.

Now this boss fight is gonna need some real sauce in order for it to live up to expectations. Some ideas:

• Darius is constantly shit-talking
• He's not just constantly throwing around two high-level spells a turn
• I want this to feel like a good raid boss, so some mechanics would be ideal.
  • For the sake of time, this'll have to be fairly simple. Make it dead obvious in phase one and switch it up in phase two.
  • Perhaps reuse the zero-g mechanics; they're pretty fun. Force engagement by (for instance) having four switches which all need to be thrown in different corners of the arena.
    • they can't really be destructible crystals or anything else you can just snipe; this would provide no challenge
    • or perhaps destructible crystals which have a shield around them, crown of sorrow crystal style
    • this, once per phase; all crystals must be destroyed within two turns to disable invulnerability
  • If the fight needs to be in zero g, then perhaps make it in the wreckage of Darius's ship?
    • perhaps single-use pieces of terrain? i.e., you can stop/push off once only.
    • actual gravity fluctuations
  • Highly telegraphed but wide area attacks;
    • some shapes: cone, line, circle
      • he plants three shapes, each with a different effect, and players must navigate to the spaces between them
      • some effects: damage (fire, lightning, thunder, physical), stun, DoT, damage vuln
    • some CC (but not too much, no more than once every other turn and preferably not on the same player twice in a row)
    • mix of physical and magical damage attacks
    • first phase is 'normal' Daruis, i.e. the shit-talking archmage, and phase two is a ridiculously fast remnant beast with lots of close-range attacks.
      • in this phase, he can plant bombs, whack, grab (ranged), push, pull, detonate bombs, roar (deafen + attack/ac debuff)
      • he's got the charger mechanic (five crystals, once charge per action, beeg super attack on five charges)
    • can summon illusory copies which dissipate upon being hit (either phase)
• three actions per turn
• A health bar would be cool
• Darius slowly becomes more and more corrupted over the course of the fight
  • perhaps phase two is 'remnant darius' and he's more or less completely consumed?

Final plans for the fight:

• Location: inside the wreckage of Darius's captial ship in orbit of Xiaojin. In zero gravity.
  • There are loads of wreckage fragments around the arena to use as solid objects, but they dissapear when used. If more are needed, I can make the fluctuating gravity bring more in.
  • There are gravity fluctuations - small areas with enough gravity to push you in a certain direction. There are four, and they move at the beginning of each round.
• Darius himself:
  • Always:
    • Three actions per turn
    • At the beginning of each phase, summons four crystals, one in each corner of the arena. He is invlunerable until all are destroyed; they must be destroyed within two turns of each other or they will be resummoned. Each crystal has a 5ft radius protective sphere which blocks any and all ranged attacks and spells.
  • Phase one - Archmage:
    • Places three areas each turn, and at the start of his next turn, their stated effect will happen in the given areas.
    • Areas can be cones, lines, circles, or squares.
    • Areas can do damage of any elemental type (5d10, DEX 18/half), inflict stun (save CON 18), or inflict vulnearbility to all damage.
    • Normal stats: 300HP (subject to change) 20AC, 30 SPD (fly)
  • Phase two - Remnant:
    • Moves much faster; SPD increased to the entire arena. Otherwise regenerates back to full HP and retains the same AC.
    • The remnant form has five crystals going up the spine. One lights up for each action taken; when all five are lit up, the beeg super attack can be used.
    • Does three actions from the following:
      • Sword slice: +9; 5d10
      • Grab (ranged): DEX 18 or grappled and restrained. (you get impaled with a kusarigama)
      • Swing (grappled PCs only): swings around and throws a grappled player; thrown players are moving at 60ft/turn and on collision both entities take 3d10 bludgeoning. (you get swung around on a kusarigama)
      • Push: +9; 3d10 + 20ft back. (you get smacked with a quarterstaff)
      • Pull: +9; 3d10 + 20ft towards. 20ft range. (you get impaled with a javelin on a string and dragged back)
      • Plant bomb: sticks a bomb on player. no save or attack; player may use action to remove bomb and throw it; DC 20 sleight of hand.
      • Detonate bomb: detonates a stuck bomb; 10ft radius, 5d10 fire, DEX 18/half.
      • Roar: 30? ft radius, CON 18 or half speed, -5 attack and AC
      • beeg super attack: costs all three actions. goes unlimited blade works on your asses. 15d10 piercing, DEX 18/half.

How the PCs fight:

• CB: battle master, uses a spear. Has fancy moves. Exclusively physical and almost exclusively piercing damage.
• Eeta: ancestral barbarian, also uses polearms. Tanky. Exclusively physical and almost exclusively piercing damage.
• Graves: rougue of some kind. Prefers ranged, has a couple of pistols and a hand crossbow. Also almost exclusively piercing damage. Also has a bunch of tricks and random bullshit.
• Azeglio: artificer. Has a cannon, by default deals piercing damage but can also deal a good amount of radiant and force. Some random spells n shit going on as well.
• Olem: gunslinger. Crit sniper. Deals extremely high damage if he hits a crit. Can deal piercing, fire, lightining, or thunder damage depending on which rune he uses.

All in all, heavy weighting towards piercing. Normal amount of damage is ~10-20 per turn, and ~30-40 if they're critting (perhaps more for olem.)