Previous

Friends & Fates

Last week, Mammon tried to convince the party that she was willing to work with them after her defeat. The party was not entirely convinced, but they allowed her to lead them to the core ritual in the heart of Prax's Labyrinth - with Andreth verifying the directions, of course. She showed them the ritual and waited to see if she could exert influence over them in some way in exchange for dismantling the ritual. However, the party was able to disable it without any help thanks to the seven surviving Cultists of the Aboleth. The process would take a 24 hour ritual, however, so Mammon just disabled it herself as a gesture of goodwill. With that action, the direct threat of the high magic zones to Praxis was finally ended.

Praxis was not yet restored to full health, however. The massive shield-dome over it was still opaque, shrouding the whole city in darkness. Mammon revealed that she had taken detailed notes about how the dome was originally rendered invisible, and it was a ritual now within the party's copious collective magical capacity. However, the ritual would be useless without connecting it to a powerful magical artifact that Prax had constructed within the Labyrinth. The party agreed to follow her to it, and she led them to another hidden chamber. The room contained a strange floating sphere intricately carved with powerful runic sigils. Mikolash and Millie investigated it and discovered that it was an immense source of magical power that was designed very carefully to only be accessible in small amounts at a time. It was ideal as a source of power to make rituals stronger and last longer than they normally would, and definitely could not be used as a gigantic magical death bomb. Based on Mammon's instructions, the Cultists of the Aboleth began performing a ritual to turn the entire shield-dome of Praxis invisible.

The invisibility ritual took 24 hours, and during that time the party and their army of minions camped out in Prax's Labyrinth and talked with Mammon. Ayala tried to persuade her to join the forces of righteousness and stop trying to commit magical genocide, and Mammon explained some things that had been previously hinted at or were unclear. Mammon was a golem created in the last days of the pre-apocalypse world by Prax, a powerful and wise wizard. Prax foresaw the inevitability of a coming magical apocalypse because he found signs that his own world had also been virtually annihilated by magic in its own history. He predicted that the cycles of magical destruction were a repeating cycle, and feared that one day the nature of the destruction would be too devastating for life to return. Based on his prediction, he spent decades creating the shield dome over Praxis, creating Mammon, and generally preparing for the end times. Before he had finished his preparations, the Apocalypse Storm came.

The Apocalypse Storm was the accidental byproduct of two highly advanced magical nations that were locked in a brutal war. One nation created a ritual to summon an immense thunderstorm that was designed to be unstoppable once unleashed. The storm had the unusual property that it would feed on any magical energy nearby, which made it impossible to stop by magic and helped it sustain its immense power. They created the storm and sent it at the enemy nation. The rival nation was unable to come up with a way to stop or redirect the storm as it approached them, but they used espionage to steal the secrets of the ritual. They found no weakness in its design, but they had the desperate idea to perform the ritual themselves in the hopes that the two storms would cancel each other out - or at least might redirect each other away from their civilization. However, when the two storms clashed, they fed on each other and grew without limit, threatening to engulf the entire world in a dual assault that would drain the life from every spell and magical entity in the world while simultaneously bombarding it with endless hail, lightning, and tornadoes. With the Apocalypse Storm rapidly approaching, Praxis gathered as many brave and powerful non-magical warriors as he could find and ushered them into Praxis to wait out the storm. He buried Mammon deep in the Labyrinth in an inactive state near a passive collector of magical energy so she could be automatically reactivated once the level of background magic in the world rose to a high enough level. Then, as far as anyone knows, he perished in the storm along with virtually every other living magical entity in the world.

When Mammon was eventually activated, deep in the tunnels of Prax's Labyrinth, she knew the mission she had been programmed to complete: prevent the next apocalypse and safeguard the living creatures of the new world by any means necessary. After centuries of planning - and, she hinted at obliquely, some attempts to change her own programming - she had arrived at the Forced Fruition plan. Since that failed, her next objective was to work with the party to try to ensure that the world persisted for long enough that they all died. Then, hundreds of years later, she intended to eventually resume her plans to annihilate magic. She had no plans to reign over the new magic-less world as a nigh-immortal god, and apparently fully intended to deactivate her own magical abilities when the time came. The party had mixed feelings about her whole "wait for you all to die" strategy, but ultimately they decided that the threat that Mammon wanted to protect them against was plausible enough that killing her was not a good solution. They decided to try to use their new authority in the world as the Saviors of Praxis to push for changes that would avert the potential for a magical apocalypse through less drastic means, like good education systems, and allowed Mammon to persist as a sort of temporary ally of convenience. Mammon offered them another gesture of goodwill by showing them her hidden research library, including the notes she took on how to change her own programming. After this was revealed, Mikolash stayed in the library and could not be pried from it by any means.

After 24 hours of intensive reading, arduous magical ritualing, and a suspicious disappearance of Ayala and Gregory during the night, the party finally made their way out of Prax's Labyrinth to return to Praxis. There, they found a city reeling from the sudden return of daylight and celebrating wildly. The party let their various minions report back to their masters and/or sleep and made their way to the mayor's house, where Lilian Smith was surprised to see them - and even more surprised to see Mammon. She briefly worried that Mammon had won, but after that was sorted out, she promised to use her remaining power as mayor to help the party accomplish their goals for the city before she abdicated and left the city in the capable hands of the very boring and reasonable leader of the City Council. With that sorted out, the party went to the other power brokers in the city and got a similarly grateful reception, and they set about creating their new world.

Ayala created the new office of Minister of Magic and became its first occupant. She worked with Gregory to create a new set of proposals for magical education and training to strike a compromise between the Nullwardens' concerns for the danger that untrained or ill-intentioned magic users posed to themselves and others, Mammon's concerns for the unchecked power of magical development, and Ayala's concerns for the rights and agency of magical creatures and practitioners of magic. The resulting compromise helped to identify people with magical potential early and give them the training they needed to practice magic safely as necessary. Proper magical guilds were created in Praxis so that magic-users could responsibly govern themselves and prevent dangerously apocalyptic experimentation and general misbehavior. Two years later, Ayala proposed to Gregory and she and Gregory lived very happily together.

Gregory became an official member of the Nullwarden Council after Jeb was discovered as a traitor and removed. He used his influence to push the Nullwardens towards greater compromise with the existence of magic, and helped weed out its more dangerous elements that still wanted to return to a world with no magic at all. He came to terms with the fact that his and Ayala's kids might choose for themselves to either practice magic like their mother or be a Null like their father, and either one was okay.

Millie became a Grand Archduchess (along with Ayala, at Millie's insistence, since it would allow their kids to play together without worrying about titles). This gave her a higher title than her mother, which caused the rest of the Sables no end of amusement and/or infuriation. The Sables followed through on their promise to raise their children better, and there may yet be hope for their future generations... eventually. She spent a nice vacation in the Abyss with Andreth, Ayala, and Gregory, but probably wouldn't end up staying there indefinitely. Whatever her future holds, the choice lies in her hands.

Diplo was designated the Grand High Baker and up a nice cookie bakery, Diplo's Doll-ar Cookies (the hard part was inventing the dollar bill so the pun would work). It's really a front for a booming assassination business, especially of people who are getting in the way of the party's designs. He does make surprisingly good cookies, though.

Chort was designated the Grand Ambassador for Praxis, and spent his time performing outreach to the many other communities that had developed outside of Praxis. His unusual communication style was even more effective in that task than it typically had been within the more civilized confines of Praxis, and his relentless optimism played an effective counterpoint to Simon's intimidating presence.

Mikolash was named the Grand Researcher, though it's possible that he never noticed. He was completely devoured by the texts and historical documents that were unearthed in Mammon's library, and with them he made great advancements in understanding Praxis's past. He also discovered potential paths to modify Mammon's programming, and theories for to avert the catastrophe she fears. Only time will tell whether his research is sufficient for the world - but it seems to at least be more than sufficient for him.

As a whole, the world moved on, safer than even before. As they the grand events of Forced Fruition sunk into memory and myth, the party's legend grew, and they will live on as deities of future campaigns. I hope you all had fun!

Stupid Awards

Diplo: Chort: Millie: Ayala: Gregory: Andreth: Mammon:
Previous