Highway to Heaven, Part Two
Hello, all!
A momentous weekend was had by all, as our demigod characters played through the final (for now) session of Scion: To Every God His Day. Though we may take up the mantles of Cathy, Wendel, Lexie, Hector, Maria, and T.S. again some day to see them through the final stages of their journey to divinity, for now that story is over. More on the events of the last session below the cut. On Saturday, my evening was all about Skyrim after The Kid went to bed and The Wife left for Vampiric hijinks. I cannot express my love for that game adequately... which, considering that I wasn't even going to buy it initially thanks to my lackluster reaction to Oblivion, is saying something. Alyssa the dual-wielding Redguard warrior/smith is carrying me through that game nicely, while still taking time to enjoy the gorgeous scenery and explore the nooks and crannies. On Sunday, I played some more Skyrim, our microwave broke, and then we enjoyed a relatively quiet evening of role-playing with Mutants & Masterminds. Looks like the Vanguard is about to take the "Justice League Unlimited" route and open up the ranks...
Scion: To Every God His Day
Volume Two: Demigod
Book Four: Bonds
Story Four: Highway to Heaven
This session began with a conversation between our heroes and the gods Bast and Thoth, which quickly turned into a large-scale planning session. Bast told the group that she had an idea on how to revive Cathy, though Thoth told her that she would be significantly weakening herself at the worst possible time for a plan that was by no means certain to succeed. Bast insisted that she would do whatever she must to ensure her daughter's survival, and the others backed her up. Bast temporarily donated a level of permanent legend to create a body for Cathy out of ichor, allowing her Ren, Ba, and Ka to re-combine (minus only the now-destroyed Khaibit), and bringing her back to her old self... albeit with softly glowing golden skin. This would not have worked had she not already been on the very cusp of becoming a full-fledged goddess in her own right, and by doing so transcending her mortal body.
Next, the group discussed possible methods for trapping Adder, which would then in turn hobble the Serpent itself. Thoth confessed that he had nothing that would be powerful enough to contain the essence of a titan avatar, but suggested that the group speak with members of the Pesedjet who were more traditionally associated with the battle against Apophis: Amon-Ra and Set. Thoth created a map of Iteru, and pointed out the last known location of these deities, which was the barque of Osiris and Isis. Without further ado, the group set off to find these gods. They came across several roving patrols of Ophidians, but with Maria's Divine Threnody power in effect, they easily slipped by the searching serpents.
Arriving at the barque, they were surprised at the door by Bes, a household deity taking the form of a phenomenally ugly dwarf. After having a bit of fun with the party, Bes agreed to usher them into the presence of the most powerful gods of the Pesedjet. Amon-Ra was indeed there, as were Osiris, Isis, Ptah, and Geb. Apparently, Set had gone off with Sobek earlier to harrass the avatar itself. The group presented their case to the assembled Egyptian deities, and asked if any of them had anything that might be used to contain Adder. Ra, Osiris, and Isis shook their heads regretfully at this question. Ptah asked for a moment to think about the problem. Geb postured outrageously, attempting to leverage such an artifact into a bit more respect from his fellow gods... but was eventually revealed to have been bluffing all along. Maria picked the god's pocket (successfully!) and retrieved a golden goose pendant that produced limitless wealth, hoping to placate Zeus with this offereing of "coup."
Ptah eventually began to get excited, and told the band that with their assistance, he might be able to make such an artifact. After examining Cathy to determine how the Serpent's presence had affected her soul and asking several pointed questions of Wendel and Hector regarding the occult nature of the connection, he recruited T.S., and the two of them began forging a metal scroll-case to contain the serpent. T.S. did a stellar job, accumulating about 60 successes on the crafting roll, allowing the party to trap Adder once they had worn his body down to 12 or less health levels. The elder Pesedjet wished the party luck, but informed them in no uncertain terms that this was their story, and that they could not offer any help.
The group approached Adder openly, and banter ensued. After this became tiresome, a battle began. Adder started the fight by using Crawling Chaos on Maria, who thankfully had the presence of mind to channel both a virtue and a use of Legend to avoid its effects, thus saving the entire group from being taken out of the fight immediately. Cathy, Hector, and Lexie all piled onto Adder in the first tick of the fight, adding three layers of Untouchable Opponent onto his massive serpentine form. Adder was unable to devote his full avatar resources to fighting the group due to Set and Sobek's distracting tactics. Maria, Wendel, and T.S. all poured in using aggravated damage, which still amounted to very little damage from each strike thanks to Adder's high AGG soak. Consequently, Adder did not use his Skin-Shedding power on any of these strikes, reasoning that he would use it against a single large damage roll later in the fight.
Thanks in large part to Hector's use of the Stars purview, the entire party moved again before Adder (his use of a Boon was a 5-tick action). Wendel, Hector, Maria, T.S., and Cathy all moved one tick before the serpent, and poured the damage on as thick as they could. Adder, believing he knew the weak link, chose to expose his back to Cathy, reasoning that she couldn't significantly hurt him in any case. He skin-shed the damage from Wendel's spear attack, while taking significant damage from Maria (who whispered that this strike was "for Tess. Even she deserved better than you."). T.S. put the snake in a clinch, doing significant damage in the process... and lowering Adder's total remaining health to 9. Cathy didn't even have to roll to hit the snake with the scroll case since it effectively had a DV of 0 against her; she just took a single unrolled miscellaneous action to activate its power.
Adder was contained within the tiny scroll case, and the Serpent was effectively neutered for the time being. The armies of Ophidians began to withdraw (though a shockingly small number of them actually made it out of Iteru alive). Our heroes dusted themselves off, congratulated themselves on a job well done, and went home to receive the accolades of the pantheons... and to finally take their places among the gods.
Thus ended the session.
Well, sort of... there was a humerous, non-canon epilogue in which Brent Dankmeyer wandered into a store-room, took the scroll case off the shelf, and began to open it, exclaiming "Ooh! Beer nuts!" as he did so.
Confessing Honestly,
Mike