300

My House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign reached another milestone yesterday: 300 sessions! The pace of our (theoretically) weekly meetings has admittedly slackened a bit over the past year, owing to a variety of real-world considerations, but the seven players and I continue to enjoy ourselves and our exploration of the world of Tékumel. 

Of course, the campaign has been "off the map" of known Tékumel for a very long time now, with the player characters located on the Achgé Peninsula of the mysterious Southern Continent since mid to late 2016 (about a year into the campaign). During that time, they've been interacting with a couple of non-Tsolyáni cultures that are largely or wholly of my own invention and dealing with problems that are only tangentially related to those of the Five Empires. 

Yesterday, the campaign (unintentionally) reached an important crossroads. For the past several weeks, the characters had been exploring a strange tower located within a béthorm (pocket universe), trying to determine to whom it belonged. As it turned out, the tower was the dwelling place of a sorceress who called herself Tomorónore and claimed to be the wife of an old frenemy of theirs, the wizard Getúkmetèk. Like her husband, she didn't think much of the extraplanar entities that had set themselves up as the gods of Tékumel, feeling that they were deliberately retarding the development of mankind and the other intelligent species of the planet. She was thus a member of the cabal of Undying Wizards known as the Accelerators, who sought to challenge the power of Tékumel's so-called deities.

Unlike her husband, though, Tomorónore prefers subtle action against the gods rather than the more direct methods favored by Getúkmetèk. That's why she offered the characters a deal: abandon their current alliance with her husband's younger self – time travel and parallel Tékumels are involved and it's best not to worry about the details – and she would see to it that they were initiated into the Accelerators and given the knowledge they craved about the True Nature of Things™. 

At the end of yesterday's session, it seemed as if the characters might take her up on her offer. After eight years, I think the players are keen for a change of pace – "epic level play," as one of them described it. Truth be told, I think I am ready for a change, too, which is why I had Tomorónore make the offer in the first place. Change always brings with it a degree of risk; the ever-present fear that, by indulging in change, I may inadvertently destroy what we've built over the course of the years. Having the characters leave behind the mundane aspects of Tékumel for the rarefied heights of interaction with demons and gods and the great mysteries of the setting will be very different from what we've done thus far. 

Wish us luck!