Arc 3: Gonna Raise Hell

Official illustration for Arc 3 Episode 1

Arc 3 is a superhero style arc DMed by Haley that focuses specifically on the PCs. The base concept with which Haley approached this arc was "This time, we're gonna save the world". It is the first high-level arc in the podcast, and actually the first game Haley DMed that was above level 8. The exact level was decided on in a poll on Patreon from a few choices she gave, second place was level 12.

The connection to the previous arc is made by the character Fey Moss being Richard Lovejoy's daughter. Additionally, many faces and places that already appeared before appear again. In the episode 6 Verbal Component, Haley informs the audience that the connection she was originally going off of for this arc was the teleportation circles.

The arc generally is a "step back" from the very local, zoomed in adventures of the first two arcs, that focused on smaller scale problems, while the players in Arc 3 actually try to save the whole world. In the episode 6 Verbal Component, Haley informs the audience that the last connection to the previous arc is not just the Lovejoys, but also the teleportation circles.

Another important aspect of this specific arc is that it follows the Reunion trope, meaning the characters have previously gone on adventures and now reunite to save the world once again. Not many details are known about these previous adventures, and that is a thing Haley expected the players to work with: they can, at any point, just reference something that has never been mentioned on podcast or between them before, and go with it. It is a "yes, and"-playing style, where the players tell her why they would know things, and improvise a lot of backstory between them.

As a homerule for this specific arc, Haley let every player pick one expertise and a feat in addition to what they already got via the usual rules.

Check out stats here.

## Arc 3 Characters and Players

Characters and Players in order of introduction in Episode 0:

**DM** (Haley - She/Her\*)

**Diarmad** (He/Him) (played by Owen - He/Him) is a Scourge Aasimar Circle of Wildfire Druid. He only recently became an Aasimar, after being reincarnated, for the second time already. He is the founder of a druid enclave, and on his shoulder sits a little snake named Snakespeare that can write spellscrolls for him.

**Fey Moss** (She/Her) (played by Sedona - She/Her) is a Half-Elf College of Valour Bard. She knows her way around the rich and powerful people in Tyle, and is the self-proclaimed PR guy of the party, singing songs, writing poems, and painting posters of them to get them and their heroic adventures known.

**Aldrum** (He/Him) (played by Josh - He/Him) is a Firbolg Runeknight Fighter. He is incredibly tall, which can make him intimidating from time to time, but actually, he is a very kind soul who tries to help people out wherever he goes.

**Bombyx Mori** (She/They) (played by Amelia - She/They\*) is a Reborn Swarmkeeper Ranger who has lived many, many lives, most of which she cannot remember. They are a skilled silk maker and building a business from that. While she is a bit forgetful and can sometimes seem thoughtless, they are actually very caring and understanding of other people.

**Annie Wintersummer** (She/Her) (played by Gus - He/Him) is a Halfling with 1 level Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer and 14 levels Evocation Wizard. While she used to be a happy adventurer, after the party's last big adventure, which in her eyes, was a failure, she lost a lot of that happiness, and is often annoyed by her happy-go-lucky familiar, an owl named Charles.

The icebreaker question for this arc was: "If you could have a single spell from Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition to use in your Day to Day life, what's your one spell you're picking?", with the additional rule that nobody could pick a spell somebody else had already chosen before.

* Haley decided for *Prestidigitation* ("it is the best spell").
* Gus decided for *Fly* as a practical spell that would mean he would not require transportation anymore (He did seem to regret that choice, though, and jokingly said that he had no time to prepare and was pushed towards a rash decision).
* Owen answered that he would choose *Simulacrum*, a spell which basically creates a clone of the spellcaster.
* Amelia chose *Wish* and said they would use it to "fuck around and do whatever", in the worst case scenario she would rip apart the universe ("fun and sexy"), or she would just get her magic taken away again and be at the same point they are now.
* Sedona chose *Teleport* so that she would never have to wake up early to go somewhere again.
* Josh went for *Suggestion*, but only to do very lazy things ("hey roommate, you should go mow the lawn").

\*Amelia has since changed their pronouns to Any/None. Haley has since changed their pronouns to She/Any.

## Arc 3 Plot (Full Arc Spoilers)

### Episode 1

The arc starts with the party still split, but Annie has sent letters to her friends Fey and Bombyx to get the others and meet in Tyle. Bombyx makes their way to Diarmad's Enclave, where they find him and continue their way together with him. Fey searches for Aldrum and finds him in the town of Summerview, where he is helping a cat.

In the meantime, Annie cleaned up her apartment and managed to use her good contacts to Professor Rustcap to get a classroom she could use for her presentation on the current affairs. While she prepares her notes, her friends arrive at her apartment and let themselves in. When she gets back, she leads them to the classroom and explains her fears that the surviving lieutenants of Kalazar, the devil they had killed two years prior, might try again to open a portal to hell.

The party decides to split up again to follow three different leads: Annie and Bombyx decide to visit a store called the Gilded Quill, where two feathers that are needed for the ritual were stolen just a few days ago. Fey goes to the King of Hyranor to make sure the Infinite Garnet, a powerful gemstone, and also needed for the ritual, is still safe where the party left it two years ago. And Aldrum and Diarmad decide to follow up on reports of imps spotted in the south of the city. Before they do that, they first take a rest and sleep.

#### The Elements required for reopening the Gates of Hell

* 10,000 captive souls
* A powerful gem for those souls (Like the Infinite Garnet)
* The Blood of Royalty (For drawing Infernal Symbols)
* The *Gate* Spell (Either cast regularly or by spell scroll)
* Seven feathers from Celestials
* Witnesses to the act opening, who will be pushed through the portal as it opens as a final sacrifice to establish connection

### Episode 2

The episode follows the split groups to their destinations.

First, Bombyx and Annie head to the component shop The Gilded Quill, where the owner and good friend of Annie, Cherry Worth, tells them what she knows about the break-in. Two celestial feathers were stolen, and nothing else, and everything points towards a Gnome named Tom, who used to work in the Gilded Quill until a few months prior and who, apart from Annie and Cherry, was the only one who knew about the feather.

Next, the episode follows Fey visiting the Royal Palace, the Ember Keep. There, she meets her good friend, the teenage princess Isadora. Instead of waiting for Isadora to get her mother, Fey follows her to the private chambers of the Royal Family by charming a guard. There, she disrupts an argument between the Queen and the oldest daughter, and has to learn that the Infinite Garnet is not in the palace, but at the estate of Count Michael.

Lastly, the episode follows Diarmad and Aldrum, who ask a local guard for information about the imp sightings. He directs them towards an alley, where they find some disguised imps. After the imp they catch does not reveal any useful information, they decide to follow the other imps into the sewers to find out more.

### Episode 3

Following the trails of the imps, Diarmad and Aldrum get to a fight with Justicar, one of the lieutenants of Kalazar, which they can barely flee from.

Annie and Bombyx head back to Annie's apartment, where they reunite with Fey, who is very distressed about upsetting the Queen and has a brief breakdown over her fear of having ruined her reputation.

Soon after, Aldrum and Diarmad show up bloodied and bruised. Annie, scared about her friends' safety, freaks out and has a breakdown, before they reveal that Justicar turned into a gnome, and the party figures out that she disguised herself as Tom, the gnome man who worked at the Gilded Quill, to steal the feathers. The group realizes that they need a rest, and Bombyx opens the door to their demiplane garden, where the party has a short rest.

### Episode 4

The party discusses their next steps, and finally settles for going back into the sewers to follow Justicar's trace. Down in the sewers, they only find her couch left behind, and destroy it as a moral victory, after Fey, Bombyx and Annie took a moment for themselves to paint Fey's nails and braid Annie's hair. Apart from that, they go through the sewers undisturbed, and finally follow the trails to an exit, where they lead up out of the sewers and into the sky. The exit is in the part of Tyle where the expensive estates are located, and Fey realises that they are near Count Michaels estate.

They decide to visit the count and ask him about the Infinite Garnet. There, they have to find out that his vault is being robbed at the very moment by Justicar and a few imps, but when the party arrives, they both flee, and Bombyx can put the Infinite Garnet into her bag. She and Annie steal a few things from the count on their way out, as suddenly a messenger from the King arrives at the door, urging Count Michael to accompany him to the Ember Keep, because Princess Sybilla has been attacked and is badly wounded.

### Episode 5

The count and the party make their way to the castle. There, at first, only Count Michael is allowed into Sybilla's room, but Bombyx turns into mist and follows him. Alarmed by the terrible state Sybilla is in, she informs the others that Diarmad, an incredibly skilled healer, should see her, and Fey can convince Isadora to let them in and to Sybilla. The princess has lost her arm in the battle, and Diarmad casts Regenerate to heal her. The party realizes that with the arm, the lieutenants of Kalazar have another component necessary for the ritual - royal blood. Tired, they take a rest in the palace.

### Episode 6

After Sybilla wakes up again, they visit her and try to find out more about the attack. Since she cannot remember much, she allows Annie to get into her thoughts and find out what she needs. There, Annie learns that the devil Lars was behind the attack, that he probably fled to Glaceria, that the Lovejoys are involved somehow, and that Jim, Bombyx's fertilizer guy, might be in danger.

The Queen leads them to a teleportation circle that brings them to Glaceria. There, Fey wants to visit her mother to be able to get a connection to the Lovejoys and visit them, but she finds the apartment of her mother trashed and empty. But at Lovejoy manor, they are already being expected, because Gem Lovejoy has vanished, and her bodyguard fell victim to a Feeblemind spell and is unresponsive. Using letters between Gem and a contact that never gave his name, Annie finds out that Gem unknowingly made a deal with the devils that allowed them to use the portal to the plane of fire below Glaceria to open a portal to hell instead. Distressed, Penny Lovejoy, oldest daughter and heir to the Lovejoy name, leads them to the teleportation circle that can bring them to the portal. When they arrive there, the three lieutenants of Kalazar, Justicar, Tybyrone, and Lars, are already expecting them, with the components they collected and six innocents: Jim, Fey's mother Verum, Fey's friend Sher'il, Diarmad's friend Ialius, and two people Aldrum once helped.

### Episode 7

The fight begins. Gem Lovejoy is being used as a conduit for the souls necessary to open hell. The portal to the plane of fire closes, and then tries to open again, but this time to hell. Diarmad puts Lars into a *Force Cage*, and Annie banishes Gem Lovejoy, disrupting the ritual at least momentarily. To protect the innocent witnesses, Diarmad casts *Wall of Stone* around them. Annie puts Justicar into a *Force Cage*, too, so that only Tybyrone is left. He uses a moment where the party has no *Counterspells* left and casts *Fireball* from the top into the Wall of Stone, killing most of the innocent witnesses instantly - only Ialius survives, but is unconscious. Annie kills Tybyrone with a mote from her *Crown of Stars*.

The party runs towards the innocents, after Diarmad dropped the *Wall of Stone*. He heals Ialius, and Aldrum and Bombyx open the chains chackling him and the others. Diarmad can *Revivify* Fey's mother with the only diamond he has, and Bombyx hands him the Infinite Gem to do the same with Jim. Gem Lovejoy reappears, and Aldrum brings the bodies of the deceased as well as the survivors to safety back to Lovejoy manor. There, he makes Penny get the authorities on her mother, so that she can be held accountable for her crimes, before getting back to the portal.

About an hour later, first the *Force Cage* around Lars drops, and after a short fight, Aldrum kills him with his hammer. Shortly afterwards, Justicar's *Force Cage* breaks, and Annie kills her with *Chain of Lightning*.

The world is saved again, and the party gets back to clean up the loose ends and celebrate their success.

## Trivia

* Amelia is the first player neither Haley nor Gus knew casually before playing with them.
	+ Gus and Haley had both played games with them, but not together.
* Arc 3 is the first arc that does not have six episodes. Instead, it breaks the original idea of 4-6 episode long arcs, having 7 episodes.
* The short rest in episode 3 is the first short rest on the podcast.
* At the beginning of episode 7, Amelia noted that DM inspiration has never been given on the podcast thus far and asked for it because it hadn't happened so far; Haley granted it simply as a reward for Amelia being bold enough to ask.
	+ The inspiration was used to roll a Nat 1, Amelia herself claimed that that felt only natural considering how she got it.

## Fan Additions

* https://uquiz.com/jXQHoX Which Arc 3 Character are you? Uquiz made by Petall
* https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1izFLd7HSAyvTd4W2OLths?si=2c69cdd7291a4c40 Arc Playlist made by Petall.
* https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QB8hjodOFytxY8CZdJXALYZTZ\_cZWbwzGfwnLE69mRc/edit?usp=sharing Petall's explanation for the playlist she made
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSLxQv1CGaE Animatic done by Seashellvids