So one the long term campaigns my group has been playing for the last 3 or so years off an on just hit 21st level, and with it a new arc in the saga of the game. With this new arc arrives some drastically new challenges for the group.
A little background of the overarching story of the campaign up to this point. In originally started out as a one shot sense one of the players in the DMs then main campaign was going to be gone for a while do to missionary work. The rules were pretty simple too, make a monstrous character with at least +1 LA and no classes that require any infrastucture or civilization to exist, such as wizards. Sense it was supposed to be a one shot, I made a White Dragonspawn Dragonwrought Desert Kobold Dragonfire Adept/Dragon Shaman abusing True Dragon cheese which some may or may not say is not valid, but whatever it was supposed to be a fun one shot.
I even gave my character a bit of background so that the DM had something to work off of. My character was to be the apprentice of a Green Dragon (to which he became a Dragon Shaman of) in the Great Game of Xorvintaal, as a means to get fight against the Great Wyrm White Dragon that enslaved his people, transformed them into white Dragonspawn, and froze over his home desert with a Fimbulwinter/Eternal Winter like effect. Nice and simple vengeance story.
We started mainly as a group of monsters going around and fighting dragons and/or stealing seed hoards, big hack'in'slash kind of deal. We slowly made are way to the frozen desert to fight the White Dragon, gathering a few more characters along the way (some as loot even). When we finally got to the desert, we had an epic battle against a group of white dragons then a big white dragon, and freed the people of the desert.
But then we decided not to end the campaign.
The game took a pretty sharp turn there from what was supposed to be a short term hack an slash kind of game to a strategic nation building game. My character set himself up as the leader of his new nation, the Kobold Sovereignty. The White Dragons we fought were basically retconed to be the sons of the White Dragon, so he remained to be a potential threat to the nation, as did many other new faces. Of the many threats we dealt with were Desperate attempts to gather resources to feed and supply the nation, Gnoll Drug Dealers attempting to corrupt the nation, the desert itself thawing off and effectively melting into the ocean, with the help of a sahuagin empire off the coast, Shenanigans of a want to be Xorvintaal faerie dragon, Dragon Lizardfolk summoning Fire Demigods vs our invading force of allied lizardfolk and bat people, Psycho Dragonrage inflicting all the dragons in the world do to the existence of a former party member, and oh yeah, Humans falling from the sky in giant metal cylinders.
But we did pretty well. We managed to prevent the complete melting into the ocean and became a archipelago, which wasn't too much of an issue sense the large majority of the nation could fly. We went from being enemies of the sahuagin, to interdependent rivals, and then after coming to their aid against an invading force of goblins and giant lamprey creatures, the nations were even combined into one (and my character married the Warrior Empress of the Sahuagin). We scooped up some of the Humans from their crash sight while everyone else wanted to slaughter and/or eat them, and integrated them and their technology into our society. All the surrounding regions largely fell under the influence of the Sovereignty.
We largely avoided dealing with the White Dragon though. There was so many problems happening in the nation that it was feared that if we left to go south and finish him off that we would come home to ruins. From time to time he sent over some of his adgents to harass up or make some kind of move against us, but otherwise he was largely ignored for the sake of the nation. But when we finally managed to bring in the sahuagin into the nation, whom were the closest and largest threat, we finally decided to head south to finish the white off. He ended up having quite a few powerful allies, such as tribes of Bear people, lamprey people, white dragon monks, a contigent of winterwights (with many more sleeping around), and even a elder evil, but we were just in the final steps before the final confrontation...
... Then I got a memo popped into my head saying that the current round of the Great Game and that the final point tally was to take place. I was ordered by my characters mentor to come meet with him at once, which was noted as being unusual sense he never made a direct order of him. When we got there, it was explained that the round was ending, and that a new game was going to begin on a whole new field of engagement.
The Green Dragon Mentor revealed himself to not be a Green Dragon at all, but a Timber Dragon, right out of the Immortals Handbook no less. He explained that he was a player from one of the higher tiers of the Great Game, and that sometimes such players participated in the lower tiers to train new apprentices to bring into the upper tiers, my character being one such apprentice. He also explained that he had no plans to move up to the next round yet, but that he wanted my character to do so. He knew that I would stay behind as long as the White Dragon remained behind though, so just before the end of the round he transferred all his holding and points to the white dragon, giving him victory in the round.
When the final point Talley was counted and the round ended, we were greeted with a projection of thousands of dots atop an empty void, which turned out to be stars in a vast galaxy, and hundreds of images of all the players in the game encircling it. Above it was the image of a Nexus Dragon, whom turned out to be the referee over the Great Game.
So my character got in 2nd place in his round, but luckily for him the top 3 players from a round move up to the next tier of play. The White Dragon wanted to get away from my character as much as he can and so gladly moved on to the next tier of play. After he was ensured that his nation and people would be safe from harm, and that if he did not progress forward then the White Dragon had the potential to gather the resources that would make him a near impossible threat to defeat for his nation, my character too decided to move on to the next round. Also a Fang Dragon which played for fun and had to be rezed also moved up because we was basically the only other player left that had not backed out or died, but he is generally a bro.
One we leave our current planet, we wont be able to return, so everything we want to bring we have to bring now.
Our current resources consist of the following:
Party
Xorvintaal Wyrm of War White Dragonspawn Desert Kobold Dragonfire Adept 15 /
Wyrm Warrior 5 / Crusader 1
Character SheetCohort PF Gnoll Binder 10 / Knight of the Sacred Seal (Zceryll) 5 / Warblade 1 / Warlord 1
Character SheetBlue Dragonspawn Exarch Human Sorcerer Incantrix
Cohort Human [ur=http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/Pokemon_d20_%283.5e_Sourcebook%29/The_Pokemaster#Pokemaster_Classl]Pokemaster [/url]Homebrew class, aka mad scientist that can make monsters or something
??? Race 3rd party Beguiler like magic-sneak class
Weird Dragon Earth Elemental guy ???
2 or 3 others that will be new.
A near Epic White Dragonspawn Kobold Cleric of Tiamat
A variety of White Dragonspawn Kobolds
Humans, mainly Scientists, possibly some soldiers if we can convince them
A variety of Sahaugin
Poisondusk Lizardfolk Warlocks
Gnolls
Possibly Bear People
Possibly Mole people
Possibly a former Xorvintaal Oceanic Dragon, if we can convince her
Large amounts of gold (about 500,000gp each main party member, plus some of the nations treasury)
Access to the ability to craft any preepic magic items
Access to some advanced technology, though probably not as advanced as that on the core world in the solar system we are going to.
A literal forest of psionic anti divination crystal trees
"probably other stuff I forgot"
The next round is going to take place on a interplanetary scale. My character had the option to leave immediately or wait one week, and choose the latter so he could organize resources to bring and to tie up any lose ends and say his goodbyes. Those that left first got first pick on their starting points, and with that we are facing off against at least 2 other players, but probably more.
For the remaining starting zones, we have the following options:
Pierrot's Terrace (closest to sun, lava seas and ash clouds).
Jormungand (small, thick atmosphere and lots of greens).
Auldrist (core world, lots of development along certain areas, two carved moons).
Gordium (water planet).
Tatreros (tide-locked, half frozen world at the edge).
Kuiper Belt (asteroid ring).
Right now we are heavily leaning on the asteroid Ring, as it is very easy to hide in and resistant to any devastating planetary attacks, should such occur. The only issue with that however is the obvious lack of breathable air and food. For most of the party, it is a pretty simple matter to pick up a Necklace of Adaptation and a Ring of Substance, but those options can become quite expensive for us if we bring a lot of people with us.
With the scale of the game zone being the size of a solar system, travel is also a concern. Mundane movement in not very viable, a creature needing a movement speed of ~24270ft to travel 1 AU in a year, assuming full run for that year, which is not very effective. I believe I was told I can at least Teleport/Greater Teleport around the asteroid belt, but those will otherwise not work for planetary travel. Neither will using Planeshift or similar to hop to different locations. PF has a Interplanetary Teleport spell, but it is 9th level, so it may be a costly option, and a very expensive one for those of us that dont have spells. Auldrist was described to have thousands of ships around it, so we can always steal/buy one but the issue is getting there, or getting them to come to us.
We will also need a base of operations. We are told that if we set up a demiplane that it will radiate a lot of magic and stick out like a sorethumb, so we want to avoid doing so, at least once we are setup. We have access to spells and technology to make a suitable stronghold in a asteroid, and we have the spells and psionic crystals we can use to block divination, but we might need more then just that.
We also want a stand in for my character to act as our Xorvintaal Dragon. Sense my character is a Kobold most wont even consider him possibly being a Xorvintaal, making it easier to have a stand in. We are betting on a Oceanic Dragon that was a player in the last round we played in, being probably one of the better players, though she stepped out of game when she was inflicted with Dragonrage. She is Good aligned and probably owes a favor, so she is considered trust worthy enough to potentially bring, though the DM indicated it would take quite a bit of convincing to get her to come along. If she doesnt, the pokemon trainer/scientist cohort guy we have can get us a dragon slave too, though we would prefer to not have to do that.
There are probably some other contigencies and things I need to consider, but there is so much going on that I am sure a lot of stuff is flying over my head on this one. Does anyone have any suggestions to help out a simple Kobold play Dragon chess in space?