Editing Sword, Sorcery, Chaos (section)

== 17. Finale pt. III: Hay in a Needlestack ==
'''Saturday, August 5<sup>th</sup>, 2023'''

'''Summary (Lvl 20)'''

Beginning of Session: ~7:00 PM, Sunday, March 23<sup>rd</sup>, 1986

The players embark to Gilgamesh’s palace after leaving the speakeasy. The owner gifts them a Fortune Cookie as thanks for saving everyone. Afterward, they head out for Gilgamesh’s palace. Once Gilgamesh is defeated, the players have to figure out a way to get back to the past.

In Agartha, the players destroy the remaining copies of Viggo, including the factory.

They make it back to the capitol just in time for the attack. Göl brings legions of his top men to the final battle and Salamalin brings dozens of his top hired mercenaries. 

An army of Nephilim, two Hecatoncheires, and several chromatic dragons converge with the heroes' forces in the Agarthan capitol.

After Gilgamesh’s forces are decimated in the Agarthan capitol, Vinnie arrives and fittingly decides to True Polymorph Gilgamesh into a grain of sand after he is weakened by the players. Everyone holds their breath as the final grain of sand passes through the doomsday hourglass, and finally, nothing happens. 

'''The Palace'''

After making whatever other preparations necessary, they head out for Gilgamesh’s palace. As they approach, it is a bewilderingly-huge stone statue with a diagonal cube head that came out from the ground at the waist. The head is a giant cube rotated at a 45-degree angle with two dull, glowing yellow eyes that were shaped like rhombuses. The palace, or statue, is mainly composed of scalecrete, which is impervious to explosions, piercing damage, and cannot be seen through using X-ray or infrared vision. By observing the scale of it, they figure it would be at least 10 miles tall if it were to come out of the ground and stand up. The Glove of Power can be seen chiseled into his left hand, a closed fist raised to his upper chest. His right rested nearby, inside of which is the entrance.

The whole dungeon is scaled for Nephilim, and it’s surrounded by a lava moat a mile thick. Unless the players sneak through, Royal Sentries positioned on the smaller watchtowers surrounding the place will fire upon them with energy rifles, dealing 5d10 Force damage if they fail a DC 27 Dexterity saving throw. Several shots will be taken at all of them. 

'''Right Arm'''

There are seven Royal Sentries spread throughout the Right Arm. The players begin their journey traveling up the right arm, which is a series of three short elevator encounters as it stops from floor to floor. The sentries will try to stop them or summon more help. On the second floor, a giant on the other side of the room will shut down the elevator if the players let him, which will render it inoperable. They can attempt to fix it (which they learn would take too long), or go through the elevator shaft and skip the third floor. The third floor has more enemies on it. 

After the third floor, they make it to the right shoulder. The players observe a group of bad guys utilize a special keycard that only officers carry. Each keycard is specialized for certain rooms, and not every guard possesses a card to get into every door.

Ahead, there are two paths. Path 1 is a long, beige, marbled spiral staircase that leads upwards in a broad, exaggerated angle. This is inside the neck of the statue. At the top of the neck below the chin is a viewing area with large, glass windows that allowed viewers to observe the entire surrounding countryside. An impenetrable, locked forcefield prevents them to enter the elevator to the head. All throughout the neck, viewing area, and head are Agarthan shock troops. 

'''Upper Chest'''

In the Upper Chest with a group of civilians are three Royal Sentries and two Enforcers. Upon closer inspection, these Enforcer droids are inferior to Viggo. They only have 150 hit points, no healing factor, they do not share a hivemind, and they do not have free will.

Path 2 leads them through the museum, which is at the top of the chest and leads through to the left shoulder. They observe a lot of historical artifacts from history on display in the museum, including the Liberty Bell and Declaration of Independence. If they search the museum or any of the slain Royal Sentries in here, they find a map of the palace. 

'''Left Arm'''

A bridge nested inside the left arm leads them to the chamber inside of the giant, stone Glove of Power. It housed a massive sparring field and gym that was eerily abandoned, except for a group of five enforcers. While they investigate the place, a keycard is found in an office area that grants them access to the storage facilities located in the legs under the museum. When they find the keycard, Night Owl has a premonition of a lich and three undead Nephilim approaching from the left arm. The premonition ends up being real. Illeth appears flanked by three Storm Giant Skeletons to try and kill the players preemptively. 

'''Lower Chest'''

By traveling downwards from the museum using the key obtained in the left arm, the players arrive at the storage hold located in the stomach. It is a convoluted system of teleporters connected to computers that dictated payloads. It also utilized lots of demiplanes to store larger and higher quantity items. Guarding it are several low-level Nephilim. 

'''Legs'''

They obtain another keycard from one of the storage personnel that leads to the legs, which is the prison floor. There are a dozen Enforcers spread out in each leg, and the prisoners inside tell the players to free “the special one.” The key to this one’s cell is in whichever leg they travel down first, and waiting for them at the bottom of the latter is the Wise, Mystical Tree, surrounded by a forcefield and rendered helpless. If they search the prison holds, they will find a key to the '''Head'''.

The tree tells them that Gilgamesh spared him because of the obvious advantage of omniscience, but eventually locked him up after the tree kept feeding him false and misleading information. After torturing and flaying the tree with the Glove of Power, Gilgamesh still decided to keep him alive because of his extraordinary power and relative vulnerability. The giants’ current endeavor has involved contact with alien civilizations to try and develop a method to force the tree to talk. If they ask how to return to the past, the tree tells them that Gilgamesh uses a device called the Grantetratoth, which uses a GAGG processor augmented by this timeline’s Cosmololocon. If they take the device from him, they can proceed to the city of Atlantis, where the processor can be used to create a one-way backwards time machine. It bids them good luck and sends them off, hoping that they can change destiny.

When they board the elevator on the storage hold’s floor, they ride it back up the museum only to find a full legion of Enforcers waiting for them outside. The players murder all of them as they make their way back up the spiral staircase into the viewing pavilion. When they get there, another boss is waiting for them. They enter the head, where a now-adult Gilgamesh, aware of the players’ arrival from the past timeline, waits for them.

The voice of king Gilgamesh echoed the entire chamber. “I’ve waited a long time for this.” His piercing, golden eyes sparkled on them as they ascended into the massive head of his palace. He had appeared before them first as an illusion. They were on a platform that was held up in the air; the head was mostly an open space filled with other similar scalecrete platforms and tall, ancient statues. Flows of lava on the walls illuminated the gargantuan room against the regal, bronze glow of the lanterns hanging on the ceiling, hundreds of feet high. 

Now an adult, Gilgamesh had a thick, full beard. His extremely long hair was tied up behind him now, and he wore a set of magical bronze armor. You do a double-take as you notice the Glove of Power on his left hand. Under his arm was a helmet belonging to the armor set, and in his right was the so-called ''Hammer''. Further inspection discovers a strange, flat, rectangular, white device with a glowing, reddish-pink aura coming from it strapped to his lower back.

“That wretched tree predicted your return many years ago. I always hoped he’d be wrong,” Gilgamesh said, producing an illusion of all of the destruction the players just caused in the lower floors.

“I’ll be the first in history to admit it your persistence,” he said, descending a platform onto the same ground as them. “But now it’s time to meet the biggest fish of the pond,” he said, softer.

He chuckled. “I ''OWN'' the world! What the hell do you think you’re gonna do!?”

He held up the Glove of Power, which was currently idling, spreading his left hand and then closing it into a fist. “You may have had the upper hand before... But I like mine better.”

Gilgamesh begins the fight by using the Glove of Power’s Cut command on the entire group. In the unlikely event where everyone fails the saving throw and gets transported into the glove, the party blacks out. If this happens, time skips ahead, and the Glove accidentally releases the players as Gilgamesh is trying to throw it into the sun from a spaceship.

Otherwise, the players continue their inspection of Gilgamesh. He has a wide variety of options. The Grantetratoth generates a force field around Gilgamesh on his first bonus action. The force field is a corresponding color to one of the ten damage types that aren’t bludgeoning/piercing/slashing. The type of damage he uses for his special attacks is determined randomly. While Gilgamesh has the force field, he is immune to all sources of damage (including the ''Revelation''), except for the type of damage he’s currently attacking with. He also absorbs one secret damage type. For example, if he attacks with Fire, then Fire damage will hurt him, but he might also now absorb Psychic damage.

After a lengthy battle, the players kill Gilgamesh and strip him of his artifacts, which they now have to make decisions as to what to do with. 

'''Atlantis'''

When they exit the palace, they begin asking around for methods to return to the past and come upon the city of Halhad, 50 miles northwest of which is a secret cave that leads down to the city of Atlantis. The fishing town nothing special to offer except the usual cruelty from Nephilim.

Afterwards, they locate and approach the cave. Waiting for them at its’ mouth is Göl, having anticipated their arrival. He greets the players in his usual monotone, stoic voice, and tells them he’s glad to see them once again.

Göl temporarily joins the party and leads them down the cave in its’ entirety. When they get to the deepest point, they continue straight on for about a mile before reaching a large gate manned by armed Atlanteans. He gives the guards an evil eye and they let all of them pass. After Gilgamesh’s conquest of the world, the Atlantean population exploded after taking in refugees from the surface.

Now in Atlantis, Göl tells the group he has a powerful friend here as he leads them to Binkles’ Temple. It’s a rather modest building that doesn’t appear too physically-imposing on the town, which doesn’t speak for Binkles’ huge frame. He comes out to greet Göl and the players when they approach.

The scientists are first immediately interested in the Glove of Power, and they inform the players that a one-way backwards time machine might be possible by using magical technology augmented by a Gadolinium-Aluminum-Gallium-Garnet processor. They think that disassembling the Glove of Power would be exceedingly dangerous, and one scientist remarks that it would basically just be playing Russian roulette with a nuke, followed by another quickly remarking out of context that nuclear weapons no longer exist.

They dissect the Grantetratoth, freeing the Cosmololocon. It thanks the players for saving it and asks to join them back to the past. If they do, Vinnie appears and collects it immediately. If anyone other than Gerome puts up a fight about surrendering it, an optional Vinnie boss fight will be prompted. Vinnie will do nonlethal damage to whoever he fights before taking the orb and leaving after wishing the players good luck.

Binkles summons the players once the time machine is finished. Trusting the players to change their timeline, he lets them keep the Belt of Immutable Strength, now completed once again.

Now back in New York City, 1986, Kronos tears open reality and sends the players from the prior session to the future. The rift closes, and exactly 3 seconds later, the players from the future re-enter 1986 through a gridline-patterned wormhole. They join forces and kill Kronos; with the Greek gods and their at their side, they dispel the waves of Titans and save what’s left of the city.

After the players kill Kronos, The Author appears and sentences him to Time Prison for creating an alternate timeline. He vanishes before anyone can question him.

Salamalin teleports the players from New York to Agartha. He says he needs their help