OttD Session 42: Negotiating with Penguin

General Summary

Voting picks up from where it left off in Session 41: Game of Boats, Part 3 - A Kraken Good Time. Adoven Verdonnet abstains. The rest of the party votes to render her mortal. The vast majority of the assembled crowd agrees, and she is put to the spear and rendered mortal. See the updated list at Mortality of the Gods.
After this, the crowd filters out of the arena. Most head straight to The Tavern, but Penguin pulls them aside, along with Aria, to begin negotiations. Penguin explains that he wanted to be ruled not a god so that he could have more flexibility to force the others into agreeing with his proposed amendments. The party came incredibly close to coming up with Penguin's plan all on their own during Session 38: Intermission I, What the hell is tornac doing?. He wants to add just one sentence: "Creatures must be immortal to be considered a god". This would immediately cause the nine gods already rendered mortal to no longer be considered gods, and they could easily take down Iapetus if they worked together.
Zerrof asks if it is possible to solve this without bloodshed, but Penguin is noncommittal and dodges the question by talking about Iapetus instead. Vun Roade complains that the party has little agency, but Penguin ignores this and moves on to discussing the music box.
Penguin demands to know that none of them will use their wish to take the time traveling music box away from him. Adoven Verdonnet, Vun Roade, and Mazu agree not to do this. Aria says she absolutely will get someone to do that unless Sigil can be protected. Penguin concedes that he will make a best effort to keep at least one portal open at all times. He thinks this can be achieved even if the Forms interfere because The Traveler "owes him a favor" and between the two of them they could work something out. Aria looks to Adoven Verdonnet, who supports Penguin on the grounds that this path is new, and therefore might be the solution she is looking for.
Aria expresses concerns about giving Penguin too much power. The party agrees, but none present have a better answer and so they decide to move forward. First, though, they make some small talk. Barry the Airship is missing. They discuss plans for after they are done saving the world. Penguin also explains that Pestle had ended his own life. The party tells Adoven Verdonnet about that time they sold his blood to some vampires in exchange for food.
After this, they make sure to take care of important business: going off to The Tavern to get drunk. Penguin goes along with them, and gives them the short version of Izar's adventures in the Elemental Plane of Air. Penguin, Istus, Olidammara and Mazu faced off against Dukes of Air. Bhaal appeared partway through the conflict, attacking both sides and accidentally releasing the Kraken, which apparently the Dukes of Air had held captive. This was a war crime, and as such Bhaal was swiftly destroyed for violating the Preservation Proclamation. There is a much longer version of this story available at The Unicorn's Plea.
After all of this, the party goes to talk to Aria and Nihilo, who are having some sort of awkward discussion near the lighthouse. Aria is clearly thrilled to have anything else to talk about, but Nihilo is irritated by the interruption. Zerrof gets right to business, explaining the plan, and Tornac steps in to persuade Nihilo to their side. He initially tries to avoid committing unless everyone else is also on board, but with an excellent persuasion roll from Tornac the party convinces Nihilo to assist unconditionally.
Next the party travels to the Church of Ascension to negotiate with Kiri, Little Sparkle, and Zarc. They start off talking to Kiri, but Little Sparkle quickly takes over the conversation. Adoven Verdonnet describes the plan and manages to solicit their aid from an excellent persuasion check. There is one catch, however: they are highly distrusting of the gods and therefore strongly urge the party to make some demands of Penguin to prevent him from abusing his power too much.
Their proposal is remarkably similar to something Zerrof proposed in Session 38: Intermission I, What the hell is tornac doing?.  They want to remain in Vigrid with the other residents and maintain control of the spears for themselves.   They want to serve as a neutral organization that watches over the gods for all eternity, ready to step in and save the world again or to dish out punishment to the gods as might prove necessary.  This triggers a considerable amount of philosophical debate, but ultimately the party is in agreement that this is an excellent idea, if it can be executed properly.  Adoven Verdonnet insists on a council of sorts so that no individual may, on a whim, take the spears and do something disastrous with them.  Zerrof, meanwhile, insists that new souls be brought to Vigrid on a regular basis to ensure that there are always guardians present even after the current ones grow old and die.
Little Sparkle, Zarc, and Adoven Verdonnet clearly have something they want to say about this last point, but are incapable of doing so due to some contract.  In essence, though, while those three are all in agreement that a regular influx of souls would be an excellent idea, they also claim that it is not required for the plan to work.  Zerrof and Vun Roade do not understand this at all, but the others have nothing they can really say except to ask for his trust.  Zerrof is not unsympathetic but nonetheless stands by his demands for an ongoing influx of new souls.
A consensus having been reached, Zerrof summons Penguin to negotiate properly and make their demands.  Before Zerrof launches into his explanation, Adoven Verdonnet tries to get Penguin to explain the secret that the others are prevented from speaking about, but Penguin is also forbidden to speak of it.  Penguin is startled by the demands, but is willing to negotiate anyway.
His first point is that dead people technically qualify as being immortals.  As a result, that means there is little risk of angels, demons, devils, fiends, or other "outsiders" from abusing the weapons directly.  Adoven Verdonnet quickly points out that nothing prevents such creatures from convincing or tricking mortals into misusing the weapons in their stead, and so the party explains the plan to make the residents of Vigrid form a neutral governing party.  Adoven Verdonnet has on uncharacteristically low persuasion roll of "only" 23, so Penguin pushes back.  After the party rebuffs his skepticism for a few minutes, he eventually makes a counter-proposal: mortals can keep one spear, and the other is destroyed.  The party quickly agrees to this compromise.
After that, they discuss who will be going.  Penguin wants to go with as few people as possible, to give himself as much control over the proceedings as possible, but the party is very insistent on their involvement.  Penguin eventually agrees to this and the session ends.

Notes

Pre-Game:

Report Date

26 Mar 2020