Storytime!

Alright, so a little backstory. D&D 4e, no I don't remember the year, we were playing over Skype. This was what we considered our first "real" campaign; our VERY first one was GM'd by an idiot, the second one was GM'd by someone who simultaneously had a hard on for AD&D and also was of the "GM vs PC" mentality; he didn't want us to have fun, he specifically wanted to try to kill us all. Our new GM threw lethal stuff at us, but it was at least fair, and he was hysterical more often than not.

Our campaign took place in, and I quote, "Forgotten Realms but not really." It was mostly homebrew, but with some of the "cool" names taken from FR. This includes the Sea of Fallen Stars, where our adventure starts.

The Sea of Fallen Stars in this particular game was full of just all kinds of supernatural bullshit. Elemental calamities, Astral shanigans, pirates, monsters. And those people who actually explored the sea itself during the calm times, using underwater breathing and various other things, discovered ruins that were "kind of halfway between Egyptian and Mayan, that was covered in runic inscriptions that don't match any known civilization from any plane."

My exact reaction was, "oh we got some Lovecraftian shit going on here now." The GM just said "Heh!" I was not thrilled for where this was going to take us...

Well, time went on, and though we ventured to the towns AROUND this alternate Sea of Fallen Stars, we didn't do much ON it. It was always just kind of there... Taunting us. But in the low teen-levels, our GM was getting a bit tired of GMing, so he handed it off to another guy.

Now, our new GM was actually a pretty cool dude. Did funny things, had awesome ideas. But the very second he took over, oh dear god. His rogue, who up until this point had been a general thief and assassin but not been a dick to *us*, was all of a sudden possessed by her mask.

Why? Well because her mask was her primary magical item. It was her link to her god. Mask. Who, in 4e, was dead as a fucking doornail... but there were slivers out there which could be use to revive him. GUESS WHAT WAS IN HER MASK AND WAS NOW POSSESSING HER!!!

So there we are. A group of five hearty adventurers, with one of our old companions now gone from "unaligned" to "chaotic evil", and going around attacking places from our characters' pasts. My storm sorcerer's retired adventurer parents? Their town is attacked and razed by Gnoll marauders. Our cleric's home temple? Blasted with hellfire. Our monk's mountain temple monastery, of which he had worked out an AMAZING storyline with the old GM? Overrun by orcs, with the should-be-level-30 grand master one-shotted... By the rogue.

Oh yeah. By the way, the character wasn't just being evil and crazy now; she was ultra mega-fuck powered. Able to teleport wherever she wanted, gathering great armies seemingly from nowhere, and just generally being a DICK.

All of this MIGHT be forgiven, if the GM wasn't also intentionally screwing us over OOCly at every possibility. Doing things like throwing us up against literally impossible numbers of enemies, where we HAVE to run away. We're rushing in our airship to get somewhere; oh, look, she sabotaged it, and now we need to all make acrobatics checks to try to save it. DC is 50! No, nobody had an acrobatics of 30 or more. Oh, but DC 45 to not be horribly mangled in the crash! No, nobody had acrobatics of 25 or more, either. But "it was okay" because "magical healing would fix us up in a few days."

Well, we're eventually lead back to the lake, because incidents like FUCKING EARTHQUAKES and horrible nightmares are on the rise. I'm curled up in a corner sobbing because I know *precisely* what is coming.

Okay, almost.

Shortly after we get there, the island in the center of the lake just explodes everywhere. From within it, rises a gigantic ziggurat, that begins floating in the air and traveling around. Each of the four sides of the ziggurat turn into portals.

To the Far Realm.

OH HI GIGANTIC INVASION OF ABOLETHS.