Cycle of Millennia 2023 Session 68: Nihilinn
Here is week 68 of my 2022 Dungeons and Dragons Campaign Cycle of Millennia. The party faces Nihilinn God of Nihilism and Death.
Don’t forget that this campaign has been ongoing for over four years. There is a lot of story to cover and I’m writing a book series to document it all. I am adapting this adventure into a book series. The first three are on Amazon.
!!!Trigger Warnings Abound!!!
This campaign takes place in an incredibly unpleasant setting. The party has dealt with Human Traffickers, Sex Slavery, Child Sacrifice, The Apocalypse, Genocide, Wicked Cults, and other related topics.
There is a God of Madness that is fond of causing auditory and visual hallucinations, makes use of psychic gaslighting, commands the literal legions of hell, and all around causes untold suffering in the setting.
Essentially, nothing is off the table in this campaign. If the above ideas are not ones you want to think about, I do not think this blog series is for you. That is not a problem and does not indicate any failings on your part. I am a storyteller that does not shy away from the darkest topics. It would be horrible for me to not warn my audiences of this in advance.
!!!Final Trigger Warning. Past this point there be dark topics!!!
On one side of a magical wall stood an angry party of God Slayers. On the other stood an annoying and dangerous politician who served the God of Death. Notably for the group and their allies to beat the crap out of him, they needed to break through said wall. But this was no issue since the party had dealt with Prismatic Wall before.
When confronted, the Lich split into multiple clones. This was yet another trick that the party had dealt with several times. In fact, Thea had done the same thing. And Moshe wasn’t casting some massive explosion spell like she had.
Naturally in melee range against a group like this one, even several Lich Clones, each with very tangible and breakable bodies could do little to survive. But that was when it became clear that as usual, this adversary not only had a plan, but had the upper hand too.
He cast one final spell and revealed that every single clone was a decoy. The real Lich had vanished and hid. Said spell did something that even Velkoara as prepared as ever for anything was not ready to deal with. Moshe might not be able to kill them easily right now, but by aging them so that they only had a month to live, he put Velkoara specifically on the backfoot.
Death Appears:
And with that final stroke, he started to vanish. The Lich was quite content with how things had played out. Even should the party prevail here, he would still be the true leader of Innovia. Once again Moshe had won. And so there was no reason for him to stay here.
But while Moshe was done with the party, turned out his master was not. The party had finally gotten the God of Nihilism to react to their actions personally. And like Orabaras before, it took control of its disciple so that said God could directly interact with the world.
The world faded to darkness around the party as their allies vanished. And soon after the little pocket dimension that they had been pulled into filled with deadly gas that started to make their bodies rot. A single gemstone floated in the middle of this place. And without saying a word, Nihilinn told them through other means that they had only one chance to escape.
The gemstone was the key, but it could only be damaged by an attack that ignored and twisted fate. It took several such attacks to shatter the gemstone, and Caic almost died before they broke free. Wylf needed them all alive and it was frightening how close he had come to failure in that dark place. And after everything else they had been through.
Still, they had defeated not one God, but two now. And they knew that it would take beating the third of them before the group could finally bring peace to the world.
Aftermath:
Lone, Jay, and Antoinette came with some forces to keep any stragglers from hurting the party as they rested for a moment. But Moshe had not been able to flee, and Hadron didn’t care about resting.
No, what he wanted was to kill this Lich. While the Charice Faithful had done the deed, the wicked creature had helped them with their plan. Really it was because of him that Hadron had been forced to kill his cousin and watched the orphanage he had been raised in get destroyed.
Naturally Moshe sociopath that he was denied any responsibility for those actions. And that only enraged Hadron more. But Antoinette intervened. She reminded Hadron that as an arch Lich killing him was no simple matter. Worse, any action he took now was what Moshe wanted. How that made sense, the Barbarian didn’t know, but the Vampire was more an ally than enemy at this point, so he listened to her advise.
He could deal with Moshe later. First, they needed to defeat Lune and whatever other tricks Kranaak might pull. And considering his history with the party, they didn’t even know what to prepare for.
On the way to where Lune waited, the group came across some of the worst Demons possible. Grez even took a direct hit from one of their spells and for a moment was reduced to a fool. But Caic had healing magic ready, and these Demons which had once been a threat, were only a roadblock at best.
Wrap Up:
The real danger waits ahead. Lune is an extremely dangerous enemy that puts everyone else they have faced to shame. To make matters worse, three other extremely dangerous Demons are probably lurking nearby and waiting for the perfect moment to cause some chaos of their own.
This story is racing towards its conclusion. Its crazy to think that the adventure is near its final end.