When I proposed DMing Death’s Reach to my group, I gave them complete liberty to decide their character’s background. I tried a lot to say yes and in the end it wasn’t that difficult.

This lead to the group being composed of two sovereigns, the lover of a Fey Queen, an exiled Deva who lived for 700 years alone in a desert, a wandering Drow whose life was always marked by strife and finally a Genasi who is a Professor at the White Lotus Academy and seeks to unravel the mysteries of the Far Realm.

Very cool backgrounds, but they were not a group. Thus, I couldn’t use the first encounter of Death’s Reach as written, and had to come up with a way of uniting the gang. Let’s see how I chose to do so:

Theron, the Dragonborn, happened to be King of New Arkhosia, a kingdom forged a few years before. He was responsible for uniting the Dragonborn clans, as well as a few Dwarven Houses and some Dragons under the banner of cleaning the territory from the underground menace of both Illithids and Drow. After doing so he claimed the land for his people, welcoming both Dwarves and Dragons on his council.

Therefore, he was very distrusting of Drow (and there are two on the group). The one thing that helped, though, was that he is very religious and a firm devote of Bahamut. What better then than have Drisdhaun appear out of thin air, walking through through the everburning flame at the Shrine of the Platinum Dragon and, what’s more, bearing with him an ancestral relic from the Last Emperor of Arkhosia?

He did so because his handler, a shady figure I intend to expand on afterward and that always appears as a different humanoid, gave him the relic and the portal key from Sigil to the Shrine. If you remember, Drisdhaun is a Punisher of the Gods, and The Handler is the person who gives him his assignments, without revealing the Deity whose interests he will be serving. He was also told to follow King Theron wherever he went and wait for more instructions.

This sign, coupled with a few words of wisdom from the Voice of Bahamut (the high priest) and a vision of dead Dragonborn warriors, was all I needed to glue the two together. Not before some fun cat-and-mouse game between the rogue and the palace guards…

Now is a good point to mention that every one of the characters suddenly began to see a beacon on the horizon. A very bright silver shaft of light going up to infinity, that only they could see.

Queen Tari of Vodacce (I know, stealing is bad, but the player wanted a realm that was too similar to Vodacce of 7th Sea to let the opportunity go) was easier to motivate, as she is also High Priestess of the Raven Queen. Her realm is a mix of Venice and a flooded version of Mirkwood, full of spiders. More about that in a later post.

The important thing is that she had just recently reclaimed the throne from her evil uncle, who was secretly a cultist of Orcus. In the guerrilla warfare to rid Vodacce of her uncle’s influence she ended up facing and killing him, but his son, Eoric, escaped while vowing to get his revenge on Tari.

Isengrim, the other Drow, was easy to lure. Having decided that life as a Consort to the Gilded Queen wasn’t enough for his ambitions, he took up the idea of searching for a path to Apotheosis. He started asking his good friend Yaz (a raavastra) for books and info on the subject. All it took was a portent sent to him in a dream by the Raven Queen showing that she could free him from the metaphysical chains that bound his soul to Adreena (the Gilded Queen).  After all, a God’s destiny must belong to no one but himself…

Eranah was attracted to the beacon after his very elaborate Orrery of the Fates showed him a confluence of mystical energy linking the Shadowfell, the Abyss and a specific point in the world, where the old capital of Nerath once stood. He flew there immediately, since his research indicated that in order to become one with the stars he would have to absorb massive quantities of the emanations let off by legendary events, so that he could attach himself to the fabric of Fate as a star himself.

Finally we have poor Osiris. Having been sent to watch over the ruins of Nerath for 700 years by Pelor, as a way to begin his atonement for crimes committed on his past life, the Deva received the visit of an Angel of Pelor, one that had been his companion Eons ago, although the Deva did not remember that yet.

The Angel told him that it was time for the atonement to start and ordered that a certain ritual be performed at the pinnacle of the only tower left standing in the old capital. It was him, thus, that lit the beacon and summoned the world’s greatest.

Shortly upon arriving they received the summons of the Raven Queen, as scripted on Book One of Death’s Reach. Moments after the Concordant left them, they were ambushed by the Ebon Riders, who left the Shadowfell and were lead by none other than Eoric, Dark Paladin of Orcus.

Combat ensued as expected and they were victorious without much trouble at all. My impressions on combat will follow on a separate post.

Cousin Eoric’s face melted like Belloq‘s from Raiders of the Lost Ark (and will be returning on Kingdom of the Ghouls, as a Death Knight). Ghovran died vowing to return and destroy them all (in a very Kel-Thuzad-ish way).

After discussing a bit more about the nature of their attackers and gathering some information from their very extensive knowledge, they departed to Zvomarana.

This is it for the moment. See you all next time!

I live in Brazil and am currently DMing Death’s Reach, the first part of the Epic Level trilogy written by Bruce Cordell and Chris Sims. It has a very interesting plot, that spills over to Kingdom of the Ghouls (E2 adventure) and Prince of Undeath (E3, yet unpublished).

The PCs were created using the character creation rules for characters above 1st level (alas, not organically grown from ground up). I allowed use of every published material, so here is our crew roster (listed in no particular order but that of my memory) along with their respective race, class, paragon path and epic destiny:

• Theron Moonscale – Dragonborn Fighter, Polearm Master, Undying Warrior
• Tari Lothmor – Elf Cleric, Divine Oracle, Demigod
• Osiris Tvastar – Deva Invoker, Angelic Aspect, Exalted Angel
• Isengrim Naïlo aep Rylint’tar – Drow Warlock (dual pact: Fey and Dark), Feytouched, Demigod
• Drisdhaun – Drow Rogue, Daggermaster, Punisher of the Gods
• Eranah Zan-kyri – Earthsoul Genasi Hybrid Swordmage/Wizard, War Wizard of Cormyr, Radiant One

I will dedicate a post to each of them later on, especially to Eranah, since he is a hybrid and I feel that system needs a lot of feedback. There will also be a post dedicated to each game session. We have currently played three, so some details of those will be a bit sketchy, relying on my log of each session (my notes).

One of my motivations in doing this is that I feel the Epic Tier is a bit of an unexplored territory. Some things that work on Heroic and Paragon simply don’t make much sense on epic (to my experience, at least) and I think there should be active discussion about that.

This is all for the moment. See you all next time!