One of the new pieces to the game that opened up before this session was a planning stage by our party without the DM. Before the end of arc 1, there was a clear way to go, sure we’d do a little deviation here and there but our course was basically set, now with so many possibilities it seemed necessary to discuss our options at length outside of the game. I wanted to do this for two basic reasons: 1) to keep the game moving instead of us spending an entire session deciding what to do next, and 2) to keep things interesting for our DM. Since some of our party are playing via Google Hangouts, we don’t have a lot of time outside of the game to talk about it. The meeting ended up being super helpful and allowed us to brainstorm without the added pressure of being in session.

That being said, I could not have predicted the turn of events upon starting again. The party was generally able to go down the path we planned beforehand, but the results were very unexpected; nothing turned out how we imagined. After it was over, I realized that is probably the ideal scenario; planned up still surprising at every turn!

We sort of inadvertently stumbled into a super-evil-world-destroying plot thread in the Dead Lands. We definitely wanted to go to the Dead Lands, but we had plans of our own that have now been scattered to the wind. We were virtually powerless in the Dead Lands encounter so we had no choice but to acquiesce to the Dread Lord’s request just to survive. Now we’ve got a few new temporary party members, some books to deliver, and a world-ending plot to thwart for which we need help. Lots of help. Don’t forget we still have a secret princess, too!

After the session, Hisui confirmed that we really weren’t supposed to get ourselves mixed up with this Dead Lands plot in our current state.

How much more trouble could we get into? Famous last words.

For information about my character and other party members, check out Part 3 of my Letters from Atman posts. For more information about our adventures and the world of Atman, follow Hisui’s posts recounting the sessions.