OttD Session 30: The Miracle of Marketing

General Summary

Zerrof finishes watching Tyr's funeral. He sees Penguin and Mazu talking, and the two shake hands. Penguin then flies away. Zerrof talks with Mazu briefly, then leaves to meet up with the party in The Drunken Mongoose and rests.
After this, Penguin comes and tells the party that he wants their help with something. For legal reasons, he needs them to agree to help him before he explains what the task is. The party agrees, and are taken to Vecna's private demiplane for a briefing. Zerrof immediately casts Zone of Truth on the whole room. Only Pestle attempts to resist. He fails.
Penguin explains that The Shattering was not caused by any god. It was caused by a being from beyond the boundaries of the known multiverse, the "form of rebellion". He does not go into detail on what forms are, but it seems the gods were unaware of their existence when the Preservation Proclamation was written, so at the time of the signing the gods all thought one of their own had betrayed them. Because of this, the contract was written in such a way that forbade the gods from fighting the forms as well. When another form came to The multiverse in the form of Iapetus, the avatar of mortality, the gods found themselves unable to fight back. To violate the Preservation Proclamation would mean death, and dead gods cannot fight.
When Iapetus is mentioned, Penguin interrogates Pestle at length regarding his ties to Iapetus. After tricking Pestle into thinking he already knows the secret, he gets Pestle to reveal his new religious ties.
Going back to his explanation, Penguin says that when Iapetus first came to this world, he rendered Bahamut mortal. After this happened the gods were able to banish him to a new plane created precisely for that purpose, named Vigrid. They then summoned a lot of mortals to Vigrid and force them to train in order to defeat the new threat. Unfortunately, this has not stopped the carnage. Periodically Iapetus will summon a god into The Arena and ask if anyone will attempt to defend them. If someone steps forward, and survives, then the god in question is allowed to remain mortal. Penguin says that five gods have been allowed to keep their mortality, and eight have had it removed from them.
Penguin's plan, therefore, is to not sign the Preservation Proclamation. If he did sign he would be just as helpless as all of the others. However, by not signing, he will bring the wrath of the other gods down upon himself. Therefore, his only option to keep himself alive is to exploit another rule in the Preservation Proclamation: the Preservation Proclamation mandates that the gods do not fight each other interfere in each others domains, which means that if he, purely as a marketing ploy, were to try and tell the entire multiverse about what was happening in Vigrid. The party, having already agreed to participate in his scheme, shall serve as marketers.
While Penguin can easily enough get his own followers to most places, there are a few that remain troublesome. Deep Sashelas, ruler of Elemental Plane of Water, has refused to negotiate with anyone except for Mazu. Carceri is a literal captive audience, but leaving afterwards would be exceedingly difficult. Penguin and his followers are still not welcome in the Elemental Plane of Air, and would be attacked on sight. Acheron, meanwhile, is just a very unpleasant and violent place.
With some deliberation, the party decides to start with the Elemental Plane of Water. Half of the party needs air to breathe, so they go shopping at Warehouse 19. Pestle purchases four potions of water breathing and a scroll of true polymorph for 9200 gold.
They meet Dolphin and Hawk on the way to Neprius, and all decide to travel together. After asking a local octopus for directions, they opt to take a faster route through the corals. This results in a long, but ultimately successful battle with a dragon turtle. The party levels up.

Report Date

02 Jan 2020