With the last battlemap made in Inkarnate and set up in Roll 20, with the final dungeon outlined and written, and with all the steps they need to (or are likely) to take to get there, I have got everything I have left for my players to level up to 17, marking a shift in the campaign and, of course, a big step up in power. Level 17 means 9th level spells for full casters, fully-empowered cantrips, 5th level spells for half-casters, and admittedly less of a profound shift for pure martial classes.
Hey, if you're in this campaign and read this blog, first of all: I didn't know you read this blog! Second, stop reading! Spoilers!
Ok, so the...
Really, guys. If you're in my campaign and reading this, stop right now. There are massive, enormous spoilers in this post. Stuff you'll want to experience in-game.
Brit, I'm talking specifically to you.
For real.
Spoilers after the cut.
Granted, with the amount of stuff I've had the players go through, if we were using XP they would probably have hit tier 4 a while ago - I set myself up to have a full several-session adventure for every guild, tracking down and fighting the "Praetor" in the guild who has sold out to the Phyrexians, and while tier 2 was dedicated to taking down the one in the Simic Combine, levels 11-16 have seen them take down seven others already, the Rakdos, Izzet, Azorius, Golgari, Gruul, Selesnya, and Boros (admittedly the Selesnya Praetor actually turned state's witness and they took down the hideous amalgamation of people fused together in her Vernadi, while she was quietly assassinated by the rest of the conspiracy while they were working on this).
The last few have been pretty rapid-fire, not to mention their efforts to redeem the planeswalker who had been convinced by Elesh Norn to bring glistening oil to Ravnica in a bargain to get her husband resurrected (the party went and killed the demon lord who had captured said husband's soul and did the job the old fashioned way, earning her defection and an insanely powerful artifact weapon).
Now, all that's left are the Orzhov Praetor and the Dimir one.
The Orzhov one has had a close relationship with the party, presenting himself as an ally when the party's Grave Cleric became a target of the Obzedat's pet death knight. And he's going to be the final boss of Tier 3. (A former member of House Dimir, he's been pretty effective at misleading the party, even having them take out an Archdevil secretly working for the Orzhov by using the devil's old pseudonym in meetings with the other conspirators in case someone got his name.)
Now, I had told the players that they would level up when they defeated all the praetors in the various guilds, but as you can tell, there are more praetors than levels in tier 3. Initially, I had them level up each time they took one down, but with 9 to get through and only 5 level-ups within tier 3 (as in, you go from a tier 3 level to another tier 3 level) I've had to tweak it a little - especially because I also leveled them up when they redeemed the fallen Dominarian Paladin who had previously been their antagonist.
In truth, this is part of why I've had the last few praetors come in such quick succession - trying to get through them so that my players aren't sitting at level 16 for a year.
But it also makes sense story-wise. They've been knocking down praetors left and right, and the Praetors are getting anxious to move forward with their plan. In a sense, for most of the campaign, the conspiracy (The "Circle of Yawgmoth" is the official name for the bad guys) has been kind of experimenting with Phyrexia, trying to see what they can make of it, tied into their guild philosophies. Adrovan, the Devkarin Lich from the Golgari (who actually wound up using Zuggtmoy's stat block) for example, wanted to create a virulent plague that could be spread with zombies, while Rivella, a Boros Angel, wanted to be able to create super soldiers.
(I've also justified why the corruption hasn't been moving as fast as it might otherwise be - the oil they've gotten was damaged by its close proximity to the planeswalker's spark, and so it's not as potent as it would otherwise be.)
But my justification for the more rapid, urgent need to take down the last few is that they've been building to an all-out attack on Ravnica. The Selesnya cultists intended to unleash the "Blissful Amalgamation" on Vitu-Ghazi the same day that Rivella sent her enhanced Inquisitors into Sunhome to assassinate Aurelia (which they succeeded at doing) while hijacking the massive skyship Parhelion II and crashing it into New Prahv (which the party stopped them from doing) all on the same day that the Orzhov Praetor unleashed a Meteor Swarm to strike Orzhova, Nivix, the Chamber of the Guildpact, and the party's primary headquarters, an old Rakdos cabaret called The Rumble Room.
While the magical defenses on Nivix and the Chamber held (if just barely,) the Rumble Room was blown up (though I had a PC whose player hasn't been available for a while show up and warn the characters staying there moments ahead of time so they could escape) and the Orzhov Praetor, who is, outside of the conspiracy, also the head of Vizkopa Bank (the Orzhov's main financial insitution, which stands next to Orzhova,) used his position to steal all the money in the bank to finance the cult and then packed the whole thing with arcane explosives that could overwhelm Orzhova Cathedral's magical wards and flatten it.
Right now, the party is delving into the crypts of Orzhova, because its destruction has broken the planar boundaries with Agryem - Ravnica's "Ghost Quarter," where the spirits of the dead go after they die.
As they'll discover, the church held within it something called the Agryem Key, which allowed the Orzhov great control over the souls of the dead, keeping their spirits in debt and allowing the Obzedat to remain on the mortal plane. And with it disrupted, this is all in turmoil, with murderous spirits spilling out into the street, but the Obzedat trapped in Agryem.
(Did I mention that we had a Grave Cleric who had a beef with the Obzedat? I'm super curious to see if the party realizes that they can, sure, repair the key to stop new rifts from forming and let the plane heal, or they can super-charge the key and keep all those Orzhov ghosts trapped in the land of the dead indefinitely. The Death Knights who guard the key might have something to say about that if they try something, but this is a party of usually 6 level 16 characters - and also, only one of them is a true Death Knight, the others being admittedly scary Skeletal Knights.)
Now, there are hints in Orzhova where the Orzhov Praetor has gone, but they're generally hidden behind dangerous traps and magical wards and a lot of flavorful but unimportant information. What I think is more likely is that the players will head to the Shademist District (a part of the world I invented, technically The Thirteenth District, but it's basically where black mana is very strong and is where the Grave Cleric grew up and formed a cult around a former member of the Obzedat who, it turned out, was actually the Cleric's previous incarnation... the plot has gotten a little convoluted, I'll confess).
The Orzhov Praetor has wormed his way into the cleric's cult, and has used the network to recruit Phyrexian cultists, and a party ally (technically a player's back-up character) went to investigate only to be stabbed with cursed dagger.
So, there's a wing of this adventure that might wind up getting skipped if the party finds the hints that they need (I'm probably going to adjust how dire the back-up character's curse is based on whether the players actually go do this stuff - if they find the hints they can speed ahead, even if there's a moment in this optional middle chapter that I've wanted to do for years). The party will have to defend the character as the dead spirits attack the orphanage where he's hiding out (remember how the dead were pouring out of Agryem? That hasn't stopped, even if new rifts aren't being formed, the existing ones need to be dealt with, and the Shademist has very few people who have any interest in risking their necks to do so).
Ultimately, this chapter concludes with the party going to the old church where the Cleric centered his cult, and where the Orzhov Praetor has brought them new, pure Glistening Oil, unlike the stuff that had been damaged and diluted by being carried by the Planeswalker that was originally working with the conspiracy. Many of the Cleric's former cultists have now become Phyrexians, and the cult is now distributing this pure stuff.
(As a note, the party has also overseen the production of Halo, which the Izzet League and Simic Combine are now pumping into the drinking water and hopefully prevent the kind of virulence seen on Mirrodin. Aurelia's death actually plays into this - her power as a Guildmaster and heir of Razia makes her essence produce far more potent Halo and in far greater volume.)
The cultists are planning to return to the Sundawn District - another original part of Ravnica created by me, which in this case is very heavy on White Mana. And it's here that the Orzhov Praetor has a giant, floating, upside-down tower.
The Sundawn is basically meant to be my Ravnica equivalent of Los Angeles (where I live,) with the bright sunlight and also wide sprawl (appropriate for Ravnica's take on "Plains.") And since our Orzhov Praetor is super-rich, it seemed appropriate that he basically has the equivalent of an enormous mansion up in the Hollywood Hills, where he can have parties for the rich and famous and beautiful.
So, our final dungeon actually starts with a party on top of this inverted tower where, in addition to the cultists, there are also just tons of rich, attractive, and famous people (I have a Bard NPC there who is basically Matt Damon) who have nothing to do with the cult. Sprinkled among them, of course, are cultists who are eager to dose the whole world with this pure Glistening Oil, but are playing it cool as just part of "Mr. Nazar's staff." (The Praetor is named Traven Nazar, though that's really a pseudonym.)
The party can thus infiltrate the party, and while I have a lot of cultists ready to attack them if they don't pull things off cleverly (they'll need to be disguised, because the cultists absolutely know what they look like - Ravnica has newspapers and they've basically been the superheroes of the plane for years now).
But beneath the surface - the base of the inverted tower - things get a little more traditionally dungeon-y. In the entry room to the "Castle," which is really just a structure on the base that leads down into the tower, there are barrels and crates filled with newly-acquired glistening oil, but more than that, there's a Demilich that Nazar helped the party clear out of a chapel months ago so that the Cleric could be rid of the Obzedat's Death Knight hound. Nazar offered to "dispose" of the Demilich's phylactery, but he did so by turning the floating skull into his own personal guard dog. (Incidentally, if the party finds a way to restore the Demilich to full Lich status, she can be a friendly NPC, albeit one whose spellcasting is temporarily diminished and won't help in that particular dungeon).
The dungeon isn't huge - and there's really only one other fight in there that can be avoided with cleverness and healthy skepticism of the DM and Nazar's notes he left there specifically for them to find with misleading hints - but the final fight is... I hope, going to be memorable.
First off, while I think there will be many chances for them to discover this, Traven Nazar is not, as he has presented himself, merely an Archmage. He's a full-on Lich who has been using Disguise Self and Nystul's Magic Aura to ensure that he's not detected (yes, Divine Sense and Eyes of the Grave will usually detect undead, but that's why any Lich worth his salt is running Nystul's).
Ultimately, Nazar's plot here required the damage to the Agryem Key to weaken Ravnica's planar borders. The Agryem Key is an eight-foot-tall spike of rune-inscribed stone. But Nazar has constructed the Planar Key, which is a thousand-foot-long spike of adamantium. Compare the power required to reach the Moon to the power required to reach Mars.
Now, Nazar is not exempt from the post-Mending problem for non-Planeswalkers - he can't travel the planes without being obliterated in the Blind Eternities. But non-living (and we're counting undead as sort of living) objects can get through just fine.
And Nazar has used his Key to open a gateway to New Phyrexia. Now, he's getting all the pure, right-from-the-source, full-potency Glistening Oil he wants. And he's making use of it.
And that's what the players are going to put a stop to by fighting him.
But, they won't be rid of him so easily - because a Phylactery is an object, not a creature. And he's sent his to New Phyrexia. When they reduce him to zero hit points, he's going to make a comment about how this should be a very exciting experiment.
(My plan is that he'll likely be encountered at level 19, when the party attacks New Phyrexia with a restored Golgothian Sylex they plan to plant at the deepest level - I promise I came up with this before WotC did their whole March of the Machine storyline. He'll use a different stat block.)
So, my plan is to use MCDM's Lich stat block from Flee, Mortals! with Lair Actions, along with three monsters fighting alongside him - homebrewed versions of the Phyrexian Negator and Phyrexian Obliterator, which are, respectively, Skirmishers and Brutes in their roles.
The thing that scares be about this is that I'm not going with the named, "Villain" from FM, High Mage Vairae, who has FM's version of Legendary Resistance and Legendary actions. (I'll likely use those stats for the actual final fight against him on New Phyrexia.)
Technically, the party could polymorph my lich. And that wouldn't feel great.
But, he does have Supernatural Resistance, and a +10 to wisdom saving throws. So, against a DC of 22 (the highest among my players,) he's got a 70% chance to succeed on Wisdom saves... But my homebrewed Phyrexian Negators also have an attack that removes the effect (or negates) of a spell on a target, and a creature can choose to fail the save against this (and the Negator can target a spell,) meaning that these henchmen are kind of his legendary resistances. And you know what, if the party takes out both Negators and then polymorphs him? That's fucking well played and fair.
In terms of encounter-balancing, this is a "hard" encounter, and given that the FM Lich is not fucking around, along with having three pretty nasty hench-monsters (the Negators are very mobile and can get in and strike, while the Obliterator hits hard and restrains targets with its "seeking spine" attacks) I think we're probably going to have a good, tough fight (I seriously hope that the party takes a short rest after the Demilich - the dungeon is for sure balanced around getting a short rest in there at some point).
The hope is that the fight is climactic and exciting. I built in an element where the party can destroy the console regulating the Planar Key, causing a massive explosion (that harms everyone, friend or foe) and also closes the portal (I even made a different version of the map where everything's on fire and charred, which I can switch to if they do this - if you're using Roll20, just layer two images on the Map Layer and you can cycle through them with the "To Back" option if you want to show two states of a battle area) that requires a big investment in damage, but could be worth it and is for sure fun (the Gruul Sorcerer who likes to use Earthquake could have some fun with that).
And so, with Nazar defeated, we'll close the book on tier 3.
Oh, what was that? You say that I forgot something? The tenth praetor? Did we not handle them all? Am I leveling them up too soon? What do you mean? That's all of them.
So, yes, I'll confess that House Dimir is by far my favorite guild in Ravnica. And I might have saved something special for them.
See, the "Praetor" of House Dimir isn't... really a Praetor. It's not really loyal to the Phyrexians at all. It has its own agenda. And that agenda involves planes outside of the Magic the Gathering multiverse.
But for it to move forward, it has calculated that Ravnica must settle back into its old patterns. Its very old patterns. The ones before the breaking of the original Guildpact. And for that to happen, most of Ravnica needs to forget that House Dimir exists.
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