Worldship

We're looking for a fifth player. Worldship has one Leader (Cleric), one Striker (Melee Ranger), one Controller (Invoker), and one Defender (Swordmage). You'll be starting at level 6, with the default rules for starting wealth: A level 5, 6, and 7 item and 1000 gold.

Since very near the beginning, creation has sat on the gaping wound that is the Abyss. Corruption and destruction oozed like malign pus, spreading across the planes for so long that even the gods resigned themselves to its presence. It was barred from them, and no exarch or hero that entered ever emerged. And so as they kept the Primordials pinned, contested with each other, and held the Far Realm at bay, they stemmed the tide of the Abyss and focused on other matters.

But Far-Seeing Ioun knew the gods would face the Abyss, and began to prepare. To Arch-King Asmodeus she spoke of power hidden in the Abyss’ bloody depths. To Erathis Nation-Maker, she spoke of untamed wilderness, and she spoke of the Game of Making. Together they built the impossible Worldship, an enormous spelljammer of spell and stone and soul. They filled it with the faithful, the hardy and adventurous, and cast it into the scab that barred entry into the Abyss.

For three hundred years, the citizen-crew of Worldship has maintained the powerful magics holding their home together. Three thousand strong, they have survived mutiny, plague, and demonic incursion, slowly carving a path into the mysterious, deadly Abyss. And as the spelljammer-city inches through the last layers of the scab, its crew holds its breath in preparation for what waits on the other side.

It doesn’t occur to many that they might not make it that far.

Setting:
Pretty standard Points of Light cosmology with one exception*: nobody can enter or see into the Abyss. For whatever reason, divination magic fails to pierce into it, and only demons make it through portals leaving it. Physical entry via the Elemental Chaos is barred by the “scab” mentioned in that fluff up top. Worldship’s purpose is to blaze a trail through that otherwise-impregnable seal, giving the gods a way into the Abyss.

Though every god has a stake in Worldship’s success and survival, Ioun, Erathis, and Asmodeus are its Patrons; other gods are worshipped and respected, but none have a following approaching the numbers of any of the Patrons. Keep that in mind, Divine characters.

There are primal spirits floating around Worldship, though they seem to have been born along with the spelljammer and don’t seem to know of or care much about the ones of the mortal world. The Patrons officially consider them a curious, but happy accident.

There are portals on Worldship to Hestavar, the Nine Hells and a few other places it’s nice to have a portal to. Adventurers, scholars and trade come and go through them, and anyone is welcome to settle permanently so long as they can make themselves useful. The Abyss is everyone’s enemy.

*There are a few more big ones, but we’ll talk about those if they come up in the game.

The story so far:

The Spell of Sanity, a powerful warding cast by the Patron gods of Worldship to protect its people’s minds from the corrupting power of the Abyss, was in danger of being transformed into a terrible curse. The great tree that served as its Anchor had been animated and made violent, but the party subdued and captured it, imprisoning it rather than destroying it and risking destroying the Spell as well.
Seeking a solution, the party sought out Worldship’s elusive druids. The party found a deva, locked within a duidic ritual circle, who told them he could help, but that they had interrupted a ritual that trapped him within its lines. Assured that the ritual could be easily resumed later, the party freed him and took him to the imprisoned tree. Transferring the mental poison in the tree into a member of the party, the deva saved the tree and the Spell of Sanity with it.

That problem solved, the party turned to a building they had found, covered in thick webbing. As they slew the spider, its elven keeper fled into a disguised portal that led to a great black pit. Within and beyond the pit they found an entrance to a massive temple, a church to Lolth, and the border to her divine domain. Within they rescued an acolyte from Worldship, captured for the crime of investigating rumors associating Lolth with the Abyss. The party retreated with her, a demongate opening at the bottom of the pit as they climbed out, and sealing the portal to the Underdark behind them.

The acolyte introduced the party to another deva, this one a shopkeeper, and caught him mid-argument with a third, a warrior. After a bit of trade, the party left to check on the first deva, but found the ritual site profaned with blood. They had been told that it was the deva’s place of rebirth, and so returned to the shopkeeper to make him aware of what they found. When they saw through his feigned surprise and realized he was holding something back, they became aggressive. Feeling threatened, the deva activated the shop’s security spells and fled. The party retreated from the shop to track the shopkeeper down. (The ranger would soon return, and the shop would burn down as he climbed out a window with some new equipment.)

The shopkeeper sought protection from the Church of Asmodeous, and warned them of the party’s coming. The party was welcomed inside and then attacked. After a hard-fought battle, the party retreats from the church with a captured paladin, and take him to a discreet place Erathis’s enforcers use when they need to get mean. They meet a paladin of Bahamut on the way, and convince him to join them, albeit briefly.

They clear up some things with the paladin of Asmodeous and let him go.

The party again seeks out Worldship’s druids, only to find they are being slain by the first deva they had encountered, the one they freed. They lay a trap for him, using a surviving druid as bait, and capture the necromancer. They imprison him as well, and take the druid to the tree.

The necromancer had not saved the tree, but had turned it to a second dark purpose: free and the bound souls that hold Worldship together, and use them to construct an indestructible Demongate within Worldship’s heart. The process is quite far along, but the druid cannot tell when it will be complete. The party’s time to stop the creation of the gate, while saving the all-important Spell of Sanity, is limited.

They consider their options. They can find an angel, one able and willing to serve as Anchor. They can resurrect the angel that had volunteered for the task, Uorel, now incarnated as the four deva they had met: the necromancer, the shopkeeper, the warrior, and a librarian of Ioun the party had consulted early on. Finally, they could summon a devil, pay whatever price it set, and be garunteed it will serve in the role.

After much deliberation and investigation, they settle on a devil, and get the aid of the Church of Asmodeous, who apparently hold no grudges against them, in the summoning. But they are unprepared for what the Pit Fiend they summon asks for. But reluctantly, they agree: The Pit Fiend will serve as Anchor for the Spell of Sanity. While he does, the soul of any person that dies on Worldship, and is not already dedicated to one of Worldship’s patron gods, belongs to the Fiend.

After the Pit Fiend becomes the Anchor, the party gathers a crowd to inform them of the deal, so that people can at least choose to risk their souls on Worldship.

Early on, where the tree had initially been planted, the party encountered a Wilden Druid and a Marut. Though the druid was involved in the tree’s animation, they left him alone at the time, but now decided to track him down. They split, a bad habit of this team, one going to the Marut’s Tower of Judgment outside of Hestavar, Ioun and Erathis’s shared divine domain, and the other searching the park woods they had initially encountered him. The Tower team found the Marut accepting payment, in the form of an abyssal artifact held in a container marked by Erathis, from one of the deva, the Warrior.

When the Warrior left, the Tower team asked the marut some questions, then murdered him, taking the artifact for themselves.

Meanwhile, the Woods Team stepped into a trap set by the Wilden Druid, which applied a powerful curse to one of them, who killed the Wilden when he tried to flee without lifting it. Another member of the team was found by the druid that helped them trap the Necromancer, and was told that because of the deal with the Pit Fiend, she was leaving Worldship, and that someone must be found to calm the anxious Primal Spirits.

The Tower team returned, and together they went to the Church of Asmodeous to have the curse lifted. It was a surprisingly simple affair, but left party members drained, and they had been asked to surrender their weapons upon entry. So they were unprepared when three Marut charged through portals, demanding their artifact be returned.

Thom, the cleric of Ioun that had taken the artifact, refused to return it. However, his party, who had not been told about the artifact, refused to help him. He was ultimately captured, and taken through a portal, but the rest of the team present was unharmed. They went to get drunk.

Thom awoke imprisoned, but not alone. In a nearby cell was the Librarian, who told Thom about the artifact. It was a false artifact, but convincing enough to convince two gods, (Bane, the god of War, and Bahamut, the god of dragons,) that Ioun and Erathis were preparing some great betrayal. They were mustering a great fleet, which Thom and the Librarian saw with their own eyes, outside of Hestavar, preparing to attack. Hestavar was peaceful, however, and Thom and the Librarian parted as he returned to Worldship, both knowing they had little time to act.

But when Thom returned to the party, they did not want to act to save Hestavar. It was Worldship they were concerned about, not its distant gods. And on Worldship, there were Primal Spirits without a druid to calm them. Thom learned enough primal magic to speak with the spirits, who guided him back to the site the tree had been planted.

The party found a deep pit, filled with magical darkness, a red slime, and a large, strange stone drilling down. They pulled the stone out of the pit, and carried it to Hestavar, where they hoped Erathis’s exalted would be more prepared to study it safely.

Unable to convince the party to stay with him, Thom remained in Hestavar to find a way to help with its defense.

The rest of the team returned to Worldship, and quickly ran into Thania, Thom’s younger sister, who joined them. Curious about the strange slime that had gotten all over them in the pit with the stone, the party found an alchemist/grifter, and left as much of it as he could scrape off with him to study, with results promised the next day.