Inglethom's Rise, Part 6

Organizing a team for a grand adventure can be difficult, especially if the characters in question have no good reasons to go. That's why it's always nice to have a wizard who shows, tells everyone where they're going to go, and significantly downplays all the inherent risks and dangers of their future escapades.

Putterdale learns from the Chancellor of the University that waking up Inglethom was, in fact, a terrible thing that isn't going to produce many acolades. In fact, if Putterdale doesn't get it solved in due time, there could be serious penalties the likes of which no professor wants to suffer. If anything would motivate Putterdale to adventure, it's the fear of losing his job and being forced to adventure for a living.

In a system where the players can mechanially force a villain to answer hard questions, like, "what are you trying to achieve, actually," it's important for a GM to remember that your villains don't always have to be rational. Sometimes it's just as good to say something deranged and then laugh like a lunatic.

The dreaded Inglethom is revealed, but Sid finds that the real reveal are the dread and arcane powers of his own player characters. In a system where anyone can be or do anything they feel like, the risk of introducing a "high level" demigod, completed unsupported and undefended, is a risky idea indeed.

The party manages the simplest part of their adventure! Finding the ancient tomb of Inglethom - a figure shrouded in mystery possibly if only because Paul didn't do any actual research on him. The tomb isn't empty, however.

Mayson enlists the help of one of his co-workers, Sid, to run a new campaign! However, Sid isn't used to a highly proactive play group, and is used to needing to move all his players around like static pieces on a board. The group swiftly gets out of his hands, and blows something up.

Those who lose will at first go to battle, then seek a way to win afterward. All of Kimon's successes are owed largely to him choosing and shaping his own battlegrounds, but now the battleground has been chosen for him, and the odds of success are so dim that it would take superhuman feats to manage it. Feats perhaps more superhuman than Kimon's own average.

Kimon has made almost all the plans and has had most of the ambition so far, and in many ways this has given him the control to see through his schemes. Men who'd otherwise coast and rely on others to succeed have had to rely on Kimon. It can continue just so far.

The trap at Luna Island has been placed and set, but now the jaws have to be closed around Mercury. Every super hero and every villain must have his weakness.

It's time to close the snare on Phil and do the Luna Island job, but for this to work, absolutely everything has to go the right way. Everyone is equal on Luna Island, and even the Great Kimon becomes as mortal as anyone else.