Feuding Gods in the Portal City of Xaos

I grabbed my tables and rolled some dice.

Water

Huh, Limbo.

Feuding Gods…now we’re talking.

I wrote down Water, Chaos of Limbo, Feuding Deities. I wrote down Lake Monastery and crossed it out. Then I thought about it a while and got excited about Xaos, the Portal City between the Outlands and Limbo. In the process of thinking about that, I forgot about the water aspect of this roll, which is just fine.

In the end, the players had to head to Xaos, a Portal City on the edge of the Outlands to end a God-Feud that was ripping the town apart.

Feuding Gods
Elemental Chaos
Githzerai Monks
Chaos Worshippers on Pilgrimage to look upon Limbo

Alright, let’s put these pieces together.

Taking a cue from Trophy Gold Incursions I’m going to break the Portal Town into sets. This is helpful to me because structure is helpful, especially with an idea as big as Gods Feuding in a Portal Town between the Outlands and the Elemental Plane of Chaos.

Front Gate, Portal Platform, Bell-Tower, Shrine-Town

Front Gate is built under a cyclopean statue of the ancient hero-saint Gith, cross-legged, meditating upon a sword, a broken chain and the elements.

Crow’s Cages
Githzerai Guards

Portal Platform has Githzerai with long polearms to keep out any chaos monsters that might spill forth from the gate. They are milling about but always with one eye on the portal, ready to spring into action.

Chaos Pilgrims
Githzerai Monks

The Bell-Tower is where the Abbot of the monastery lives and studies. The bell is only rung when something comes through the gate.

The Abbot’s Library – lots of planar theory about law and chaos, meditations on hierarchy, why the fist is more potent to the sword, martial arts manuals
The Bell of Chains – yes, it is made of melted chains from their days as Illithid Thralls.

Shrine-town is a ramshackle town where the chaos pilgrims stay.

The Eight-Pointed Star is the lone inn with shrines to Arioch and other Chaos Saints.
Squats – none really own land here, folks stay in the shacks here for as long as they need to and move on when they are ready.

One of my favorite parts of Trophy Gold adventure’s format is moments. Little things for the players to see, little things for the GM to say when there is a lull.

Front Gate Moments

Crow caged prisoner asks for water (Githyanki, Illithid and one other. to be determined at the moment or randomly..)

Monk meditates on four elements rotating around his head, changing the nature of each; she will talk about nature of the planes if folks want to chat about philosophy

Portal Platform Moments

Guards tell anyone coming too close to be careful but don’t hold anyone back CHAOS REIGNS

Chaos Pilgrims look upon the Chaos of Limbo, weeping on their knees

Fallen Paladin looking upon chaos; he came here to throw his broken sword into Limbo itself

The Bell-Tower Moments

The Abbot meditating upon the nature of lava.

The room, silent and inviting, only a sleeping crystal bat and Limbo’s portal lighting your way.

Shrine-town Moments

Chaos pilgrims debating hierarchies and their place in Law and Chaos…

But what do they DO?

They track down gods.

During the first session I had 3 player characters, so I based the gods roughly and loosely on them.

The Bandit God, The Hanged Man, the Road Agent

Escape, Ambush, Criminal Recruitment

The Sorcerer God, the Wizard-Toad, The Blesser of Towers

Spells, Lore, Towers

The Elder Ring, Dryad Crone, The Holy Willow

Roots, Seeds, Secrets

The first game was travel and getting used to the area. The second game I started with a bang. The Bandit God mugged one of the players at knifepoint while the kids of the town were watching a puppet show about Gith liberating her people from the cruel Illithid.

I decided the gods were weak and had trouble healing. They’d have 4d10 hit points and powers that went with their spheres of influences.

The Toad-Wizard-God tossed an acidic mist spell into the plaza, trying to kill the Bandit God and a brutal battle followed. I liked it. I haven’t run a good D&D combat in a long while and this one was fun.

At the end of the game, the players were gathered around Trundle as he tried to destroy the stone that had done the first murder in the gods’ dead world. It was a brutal death artifact. The Elder Ring approached. I rolled an encounter table and rolled a 10 – considers offers/leaves. She was not willing to jump them; they were right in front of the portal to Limbo. She asked them to give the stone to her. They refused.

She nodded and walked away.

On the Bingo XP table, I covered, Players make an enemy and told them I did so. There’s an angry tree goddess from a dead world pissed at them.

Cool.

Next game the players are heading to a party in Faery. Dark Powers are afoot. I won’t tell you what I rolled but I’ll post the notes just like this once I’m done.

Should be fun.