As Above So Below Event Plan Request

[bonafidenubbin]

his is my first event so I'd love feedback! Just let me know if I need to change anything.

As Above, So Below – Event Plan

CAST:
·      Paraskevi – Sand/Fortuna/Earth
·      Syne – Ice/Light/Armed
·      Freed – Energy/Unarmed
·      La’Kesh – Fire/Plasma/Fortuna
·      Cade – Ice/Cosmic/Absorption

Injury Rules:
Borrowing/editing from Chance’s event I attended since I liked this a lot-

Injury checks include traps/obstacles that incur damage, not just from battle. Multiple permanent injuries are not given; instead, the current injury stacks.
IF UNHARMED: /roll - 1 is a 24-day temp, 2-4 is 12-day temp, 5-6 is uninjured
IF 1 INJURY ROLL: 1 is a -10 vit perm, 2-3 is a 24-day temp, 4-6 is a 12-day temp
IF 2 INJURY ROLLS: 1 is a -20 vit perm, 2-3 is a -10 vit perm, 4-6 is a 24-day temp
IF 3 INJURY ROLLS: 1 is a -40 vit perm, 2-3 = -20 perm, 4-5 = -10 perm, 6 = 24-day temp
IF 4 INJURY ROLLS: 1 is death; 2 is -40 perm; 3 is a -20 perm; 4-5 is a -10 perm; 6 is a -4 perm.
If 5+ ROLLS somehow: 1-2 = death; 3-4 = -40 perm; 5 = -20 perm; 6 = -10 perm

BACKGROUND:
Centuries ago, the faithful followers of Memoria centralized their worship around a space called the Well of Records. A library of unparalleled splendor, the Well served as a repository for a great deal of arcane knowledge that might otherwise be lost, from the history of ancient lands to the secrets of rare magics.

But any collection of knowledge invites scholars, and scholars pursue mysteries, and mysteries lead to dangerous places.

Four hundred years ago, a Nephilim of Memoria grew too bold in his belief that he had mastered chronomancy. He wished to create a space where multiple times could exist simultaneously – essentially a gateway to allow for genuine time travel, but only for him. He believed that a true understanding of history could only arise from witnessing events as they had happened.

This was far too ambitious a goal for a mortal mage, even a Nephilim – and perhaps unsurprisingly, it backfired. The timestream itself shattered within the Well, leaving it caught in a chaotic vortex of fragmented timelines, knotted and looped back on themselves.

The only constant in all of these timelines is the man who activated them – the Nephilim, trapped forever in his glitching, repetitive hell of an existence. All he wants now is an escape, whether it comes as death or freedom.

When adventurers come seeking the well, he has utilized the alternative possibilities they bring with them to fracture time further – hunting for an escape in any of their possible alternative lives.

NOTES/MECHANICS:
Each character has a hourglass with 3 portions of sand in it. The grains are time magic crystallized, intended to keep them stabilized in a single timeline. The sand is usable to force an event onto a better timeline (i.e, reroll and keep the higher result), but players who exhaust their sand completely at any point will be forced to roll as if they achieved 4 injury rolls at the end of the event.

A bare minimum of about 10/15 portions of sand is required to get through the event, if players do things perfectly, so too many rerolls will indeed run a risk of exhausting the sand, especially for individual players.

CHALLENGE 1: ARRIVAL

The players arrive at the Well, guided by a survivor of a past expedition. We give people a couple rounds to ask questions for basic information about the setup.
As soon as they step inside, they all manifest dark markings related to how they might die (along with a brief flash of a vision).

·      Paraskevi: Black markings around her eyes and her stomach. [Eyes torn out, disemboweled, a sense of it having to do with her visions.)
·      Syne: Death by a thousand cuts – visions of talons, fangs, sliced/devoured
·      Freed: Cracks all over his skin, like shattered glass (devoured by the timestream)
·      La’Kesh: A horrific slash across his throat. (Drakanite claw in combat).
·      Cade: stars all over the skin, a frigid voidic emptiness (ego death from embracing his inner emptiness).

After a couple steps forward, the spiral stair beneath them glitches out of existence and everyone starts to fall. This is going to be a very minor kind of challenge, as really everybody’s got some way to handle something like this; they just describe their approach, roll a d20. Rolling below 10 = you’re falling, but. You can use 1 unit of sand to fix your botch or someone else’s. Anyone who rolls 15+ can automatically rescue one <10 roll without sand being necessary.

CHALLENGE 2: REFLECTIONS
Land in a stone labyrinth, corridors of many sorts. PCs go through a couple of rooms, described as eerie and supernatural. They’re given the choice to make a few turns, but it will soon become clear that they’re trapped in the same exact corridors again and again, unable to escape.

They’ll start seeing odd flashes in the corner of their eyes, signs of the Nephilim haunting them – reflections of his existence in multiple different timelines.

There’ll be a vortex in time like a window in mid-air showing a glimpse of an alternative timeline, where a door in the wall that’s currently blocked is still wide open… but the picture is weak and ‘staticky’, and will require an infusion of 1 unit of sand from SOMEONE’s hourglass.

The moment they do this, however, shades of the Nephilim from many different timelines will erupt, for a ‘horde mode’ sort of fight with many small enemies. The PCs will have to stay up for 3 minutes – anybody who goes down will get an injury roll. If the whole party goes down, it’ll be 2 injury rolls for everyone.

But the portal will open at that point, allowing them to flee either way. When the portal opens, it will stabilize time there so things stop glitching – a hint about the way to proceed in the future.

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CHALLENGE 3: ATRIUM

Rushing through the door, the party finds themselves in a huge open atrium. [Atmospheric description ensues.]

Much of the floor is missing, full of deep holes downward to a seemingly endless abyss, and it’s dangerously unsteady and glitchy. 
However, six different timelines are fluctuating in and out of place here, overlaid on each other, and it’s clear where the floor is intact vs. not...

The players can look into each timeline and see the floor has been deleted in somewhat predictable chunks across the six timelines, with roughly five ‘squares’ of room to cross.


A horizontal jump = using 1 unit of time sand to shift timelines; a vertical jump – simply walking forward in the timeline you’re in, no cost.
After they get to the seeming end, they’ll discover that it repeats, like a second copy… except this time they won’t be able to clearly glimpse the exact spaces that are missing.
In reality, they continue the patterns, so they are NOT exact mirrors of the first half (except for some of them).

A maximally efficient solution involves about 9 units of time. 



Jumping into an empty square WILL cost you either 1 injury roll or 1 use of sand.


CHALLENGE 4: THE WOUND

Beyond the atrium, the players will finally emerge into the shattered laboratory where the Nephilim is trapped. He will immediately attempt to hurl them into their worst timeline (i.e., each person will be transported to their own individual corners of a map, unable to see/hear each other.)

Individually, each person will face reliving their worst fears, RP out how they handle it, and get a willpower check (1d20, which I will penalize or bonus secretly based on the RP.). The result of this willpower check will then be used to either give them bonuses or nerfs in the fight that follows.

The worst fears are based off information submitted in a player form:
·      Paraskevi – growing old abandoned and alone as one by one the people she cares the most about reject her, unable to deal with the things she sees. She’s unable to protect herself when someone comes for her eyes…
·      Syne – Losing Ysayl in war and becoming so vicious and carnivorous in vengeance Elizabeth runs from her, and she catches up to find her being torn apart by her enemies.
·      Freed – being too weak to help the others as they face challenge after challenge and his simple powers are not good enough, so he risks exhausting himself completely to save them.
·      La’Kesh – his control over fate deserting him as he fails to foresee a blow in a fight against a fellow Drakanite, one that will break his back beyond repair.
·      Cade – Aphros is falling and he gets one ‘intervention’ to stop a ritual; he gives into the emptiness to save them but still fails, forced to watch his friends and fellow Knights perish one by one – the final blow to his sense of self and conscious existence.

CHALLENGE 5: THE END


Time collapses into a single timeline, and everyone is reunited.

Any player who failed the d20 above gets an injury roll, though others can use sand to change it. Failure on this roll will result in partial wounds appearing like their worst-case death scenario. Success will result in protection against those wounds. The magnitude of vit nerf/buff depends on the roll result.

If any player has run out of sand completely at this point, they must do a level 4 injury roll, regardless of prior injuries. Should they fail it, wounds will appear on their person that correspond to their feared death/their worst-case scenario.

The Nephilim will then materialize, more spirit than person at this point, a corrupted mess of Memoria aether. Paraskevi and La’Kesh will be able to sense its torment and its confusion as it glitches through time, and it will desperately want to consume Paraskevi in particular, seeing her tie to Memoria as a way to escape.

This will be a seriously difficult fight, one I will endeavor to work out myself (but if I can’t I’ll borrow a friend who’s more familiar to combat to EC it). I'll probably include a couple phases with fun gimmicks to make it last.

If the group goes DOWN in its entirety, the Nephilim will possess/inhabit Paraskevi, and she will be left with a -20 perm that cannot be treated until she has been exorcised by either a spirit seer or a holy authority.

If they succeed in slaying the Nephilim, he will more or less dissolve into nothingness, though time will continue to glitch – there are too many other timelines in which he remains alive, and his hell is far from over.

But the party will have the time and chance to search the laboratory…
 
REWARDS:

(This is my biggest uncertainty, feedback welcome.)

·      Paraskevi: Paraskevi will receive a -10 permanent wound that is infused with Memoria’s aether from the Nephilim’s attempts to possess her for escape. This is for the purpose of some future plotlines she might want to do around potentially having a child to be a Nephilim of Memoria.
·      Syne: Syne will receive a tome detailing rituals of spirits and gods – information on how someone might hope to transcend their mortal flesh and become a spirit. This would be a prop that could be used to assist future rituals or plans to achieve a spirit’s form, but not sufficient on its own.
·      Freed: A memory crystal embedded in him (probably as a perm) that would allow him to transfer his knowledge to someone else at the cost of his life. This was a special request from the player and I frankly do not know what exactly he’s planning with it, so feel free to put any limits on it you think appropriate.
·      La’Kesh: La’Kesh is particularly interested in fate manipulation; would it be over the top to give him a wearable item that boosts power and has a one-time use single charge +1 to a roll in an RPB he is in? Using up the charge will nuke the item.
·      Cade: Cade is interested in knowledge about the Cold Star Acrux – I’d like to reward him with some relevant piece of information. Failing that, I would make him a dev material that is infused with Acrux’s energy to be used for future plans down the road.

[Chance]

Looks great! Though you should write out the items and include it, but the plans for the items are fine.

You also need to include your DM key, which is granted DM via a ticket on the day of the event.

[bonafidenubbin]

Written-out items with some edits as the cast changed!

And a question:

What grade is appropriate for event rewards typically at this level of danger?

REWARD SPECIFICS -

• Paraskevi: Paraskevi will receive a -10 permanent wound that is infused with Memoria’s aether from the Nephilim’s attempts to possess her for escape. This is for the purpose of some future plotlines she might want to do around potentially having a child to be a Nephilim of Memoria.

• Syne: The Mortification of the Flesh (dev-mat)
This ancient tome is a tattered, time-worn thing, its leather cover softened by the years to a nearly-crumbling mess of indiscriminate brown. The pages that remain intact, however, are crammed with writing – mostly in the form of ancient glyphs and runes, sandwiched in with tiny rows of more legible text. Careful study will allow a reader to realize this book’s true purpose – information on different theoretical ritual preparations that might allow an individual to shed the shackles of flesh and ascend into the realm of the spiritual. To make use of any of these rituals would require a great deal of power, as well as the intelligence to fill in the gaps stolen by time. With enough dedication, however, these instructions might pave the way to a fundamental metamorphosis.

• La’Kesh: Fatedancer (custom ring)

Power thrums in this twisted circlet of viridium, forged to resemble a crown of thorns in exquisite miniature. Tiny spikes of the dark metal dig into the wearer’s finger, extracting their toll in a minute quantity of blood – just enough to fuel the magic that glimmers green across its surface with the eerie phosphorescence of faerie fire. The nascent ghost of an alternative timeline, preserved in a surface dusting of fine, crystalline sand. It awaits the wearer’s call to awaken, to stir and spend its brilliant strength to master fate itself. Only for a split second, of course – but kingdoms have risen and fallen on a single throw of the dice.

[The wearer of this ring may trade it to staff for a +1 on either an injury or captivity role in any RPB they participate in.]


• Cade: Opalescent Pearl (dev-mat; a neries’ gem)
This lovely pearl is curious in more than one way. It’s distinctly egg-shaped, rather than round, though its contours are perfectly smooth and regular. Its surface glimmers with a strangely vibrant iridescence, reflecting colors with a rainbow sheen more similar to an opal than any natural pearl. But what is strangest about it, perhaps, is the hunger curled within it – a void that longs to devour any foreign mana brought nearby. That desire is too inchoate to be leveraged in this raw form, a mouth without a mind, yet the frayed and tattered remnants of some spiritual tie suggest it might have once known a higher power…

• Regalus: Ouroborus of the Zephyr (dev-mat)
Legend says that the very air in Memoria’s obelisk-library carries the weight of time itself, compressed to the strength required to bear the burden of all that ever was, or is, or shall someday be. That the sheer density of time requires that the breeze winds back on itself in permanent circuits, like eternal dust-devils, where no breath of new possibility can find a way forward through the immutability of fate.

Perhaps that is the source of this mystery: a fixed, whirling breeze that blows in a perfect circle, as if eternally chasing its own tail. Though it is languid and gentle in speed, its air thrums with the suppressed power of uncounted years. Many secrets might lie hidden within its current, absorbed from the hallways it once orbited.

• Elizabeth: Memoria’s Tarot (dev-mat)
Seventy-eight fortune-telling cards, smooth and perpetually cool under the hand, black backs glimmering with incomprehensible glyphs in the emerald radiance of time magic. Familiar symbols – cups and wands, pentacles and swords, the twenty-two familiar steps of the Fool’s journey to completion.
But this is no ordinary fortuneteller’s deck. The artwork looks as if every card has been assembled from a different set: soft pastel watercolors alongside vibrant, bold inks alongside incredibly detailed blackwork sketches. Each is recognizable, depicting familiar symbology, and each is lavish, ravishing, with the beauty and artistic sensibility infused into the image. Nonetheless, each is unique.

And to one blessed to see beyond the surface of things – the muted radiance of chronomancy shimmers across these cards like the subtlest of rainbows. They have been summoned from across the uncountable stretch of centuries, perhaps even millennia, and then bound together as one. Yet a hint of the distant places and times from whence each card came still lingers, buried in its heart. A potent tool for one who seeks to steal a glimpse of fate… or a banquet of possibilities to unlock.