Planescape Campaign - "The Spiral Touch" Officially Kicks Off

Our new Planescape campaign "The Spiral Touch" finally kicked off on Saturday, and our group of players was introduced to the oddity and wonder of the planes. The party was broken up into three groups - an adventuring party from the prime material, an incorporeal ghost Guvner who is lawfully bound to attempt to fulfill the wishes of anyone holding his magic ring, and one blank slate character with no knowledge of his past or abilities.

The game started off with the group of primes on the world of Golarion from the Pathfinder campaign setting. Each member is a misfit or outcast in some way. Megan is playing a bariaur unaware of her planar heritage, Crystal is playing a human fighter who worships the dead god Aroden, and Matt is playing a menacing lizardfolk barbarian who has left his tribe behind. The group started the game as mercenaries hired by the people of Ustalav to investigate the whereabouts of the wizard who rules their land. It seems the wizard, and more importantly his tax collectors, haven't come down from his castle for quite some time, and the people need to know if their lord still resides in the manor.

I wanted to make this game a lot more immersive than others, so I spent a lot more time planning the descriptions of specific locations and objects, and also found music appropriate to the mood of any scene. While investigating the abandoned gothic castle I used music from the "Vampire Hunter D" anime movies, along with the "Midnight Syndicate" D&D album. To drive home the oddity of Planescape right away, I created a sort of mini-puzzle where the characters had to use a giant pulsating black brain and a quivering pile of black entrails instead of keys.

To make the game a little more interesting, I created a quest board that mimics the quest journal of a computer game. While investigating the castle, the group came up on their first sub-quest involving the ghost of a giant being bound to the castle. It wasn't long before the group discovered the apparent reason for the wizards disappearance - a portal to Avernus, the first layer of Baator (otherwise known as the Nine Hells). Recently arrived in the blasted landscape of hell, we switched over to Jacob's nameless character.

Originally I had planned to just read some text about how his character woke up and started to recognize his surroundings, but I needed to take it up a notch. I put together a Power Point presentation, using various odd fonts and colors, to make it a little more fun. Here's how Jacob's character came into being:












Over the course of the adventure, and throughout the entire campaign, we'll be cooperatively figuring out the statistics, class, abilities, and history of Jacob's character during each situation. Jacob's first reaction was to try to parley with the approaching fiend, so we may end up with a class other than fighter. As negotiations broke down he brought his new sword to bear - and discovered that it seems to have some strange properties. The nameless half elf ran to the end of the alley to discover he seemed to have some sort of portal key, as a portal sent him flying over to the market ward of Sigil near the brewery of the fey brothers Tim, Tam, and Tell.

We then switched to Glen's character, who has recently been bonded to a group of githzerai and tieflings who found his ring. Glen's character is only bound to assist the current owner of the ring however, so his first action was to possess one of the tiefling's bodies and begin harassing a passing vrock tanar'ri. After the messy devouring was over he returned to the other two, only to find they strangely didn't seem to mind the death of their companion, and oddly demanded to experience the most epic drunkenness ever imaginable. The group headed off to the brewery of Tim, Tam, and Tell to sample a new brew made from the essence of a dead chaos god, and much chaotic nonsense ensued. Glen's character soon figured out why the group was in such a hurry to get drunk, and didn't mind the death of their companion. A demodand showed up to reclaim the group, which had escaped from the prison plane of Carceri, and the creature had no compunctions about killing anyone else in the way. Comic mishaps occurred as the chaos brew had characters changing back and forth from dragon to human to kitten form throughout the battle.

We returned to our poor lost primes, trapped in Baator. After a swim through a river of blood, a meeting with a crazed witch named Mebbeth, the discovery of a new ally named Brink, and a trip to the talking pillar of skulls, the group finally discovered that the portal key to get to Sigil could be found in a nearby encampment of devils recently returned from a trek to the prime material.

This was one of my favorite segments of the adventure, as I got to come up with my own video game style quest in which the characters had to go back and forth between two parties attempting to get to the heart of a story. An amnizu devil and an eryines devil were both part of a group of baatezu sent to a prime world to corrupt the souls of a nation of dwarves. Both of the devils claim that they were ultimately responsible for the corruption of the great dwarven hero Teverak, and neither is willing to concede the point. Who corrupted the soul is important to the devils, as it is a potent enough soul that however wins the contest gets to be promoted in the ranks of devil kind. The party had to hear each side's reasons for why they feel they corrupted the soul, and even got a quick crash course in signing contracts with devils and taking bribes. Eventually they sided with the eryines, who didn't lay the initial groundwork for the dwarf hero's damnation, but did the most direct action to bring about the soul's eventual transformation to the lawful evil alignment. The party was gifted with the location of a portal and the portal key to take them to Sigil.

The group was also given a bonus gift for siding with the eryines - a fragile devil horn curiously named "Deal Breaker." This is one of my favorite aspects of putting together this campaign. I've spent a good deal of time coming up with strange items and giving them interesting backgrounds. "Deal Breaker" is a segment of horn from the baatezu justice Ashkult, who hears arguments from souls who feel they shouldn't have ended up in hell after they died. When crumbled over a weapon, Deal Breaker makes the item into a +5 magic weapon that deals an extra 2d6 hellfire damage, however the weapon will shatter into a million pieces after striking one successful blow.

There's more Planescape insanity in the coming weeks as our campaign progresses!