Our seventh session, 17 September 2011:
The Protagonists, as in the last session:
Gilles: Seppo The Protagonist
Eric: Balto The Warrior-Scholar
Beau: Aldan The Righteous Deliverer
Hector: Foliage The Warped
Tulia The Librarian
Today joined by:
Tony: Rast The Amazing Spellcaster
Gorbo The Apprentice, loyally at his side
The session began with the first five heroes resting at the mouth of the tomb of Naxim the Mountain Man; Rast and Gorbo conveniently met up with the group on the trail back to the Outer Hold. Nature, perhaps resulting from the offenses against the Tomb despite the efforts of the Demented Druid, rallied against the party, grasping at ankles, swooping from above, and otherwise making for a wary return hike.
As it happened, on a winding ridgetop path through unwelcome trees the party was met with two feral boars, mad and charging, supported by pairs of mysterious sylvan spirits. Aldan, in the spirit of protecting Tulia, the charge he is forbidden to embrace, nobly took a boar-gore in the back, before crafting a lethal pig-sticker by strapping Back Talker to a branch. Rast entangled one beast with a web and lifted an obscuring mist upon the sylvan assassins as Balto rushed into the fray to chase down the spirits which had struck him with an arrow (a rare chance for Balto to feel the sting of injury so often enjoyed by his comrades). Seppo proved the mortality of the tree-spirits with a crossbow bolt and was then gored and flipped into the air by the boar which had escaped Rast's webs. Foliage brought the boar to heel and as Balto arrested one unlucky spirit he translated the creature's tongue to learn they sought to cleanse the woods from "defilers" who did not properly respect the memory of The Mountain Man.
As the sylvan creature faded from existence and with Foliage barking like a schoolteacher to his unruly fellow travelers, adolescent Seppo, regaining consciousness as he rested in the lap of Tulia, declared an end to his childish antics. She patted him on the head and laughed off the silly words of her adopted younger brother.
Back in Fortress Town, in the Outer Hold, the people were shaken up and on guard. Foliage, ever blunt, demanded to know who had defiled the Tomb and taken the Iron-Shafted Spear. The heroes learned of a group of "adventurers" who marched in from the Tomb's direction, brandishing the Spear, roughed up the place, apparently assaulted a crazed woodsman, and left hooting off for Gar.
Aldan, true to his original duty, broached pacifying the "rebellious" Fortress Town and tried to reason to a solution with the town's elders. The independent-minded folk wouldn't play, so they agreed the Town would make a donation (or tribute, as The Paladin justified) to the rulers of Gar of local goat cheese, beer, and the very rye bread which Tulia, ever the loyal citizen of Gar, had warned the visitors against sampling. After loading a wagon full of the town's finest, the heroes set out for Gar.
Back at The Beetle, the heroes set off in their own directions: Aldan was grilled by the priests at the Temple of the Searing Light as to the success or failure of his impossible one-man mission; Foliage got drunk and shared the tribute with the owners of the Beetle; Rast went to the Red Veil exclusive club for the city's power players, meeting up with the wealthy and foolish theoretical thaumaturgian Otto, who funded the joint research of a spell to detect such artifacts as the heroes had been seeking; Balto and Seppo learned of Ekk The Fence, a fatherly type running one of the more savory businesses in Gar's lawless Canal Town...
Ah, Canal Town: A bilge-soaked den of thieves, deal-makers, drunks, and unsavory shellfish tenders. As Balto cased the area, it turned out Ekk, out of his dank and debris-filled lair, had a job for young Seppo, which put him in touch with Reinhart, who it turned out was one of the very adventurers who held The Iron-Shafted Spear.
He agreed to meet with the heroes, where he sheepishly admitted to having fallen out with the other two, over the terms of their deal with the client who paid them to retrieve the spear. He knew of the heroes and was hoping not to have run in with them.
Upon learning from Reinhart that the adventurers' once-comrades were frequent patrons of the Canal Town's Broken Cup, a drinking hall not for the faint of heart, lungs, or liver, they marched the poor hostage into the place, barricaded the exits, and stationed their number hunching under the low ceilings in disguise, obscured by the impenetrable smoke, tar, and ill-humor of the Cup. Aldan, wisely thinking of his honor, set up guard outside the "secret" rear door identified earlier by Balto's investigations.
Sure enough, the two remaining adventurers recognized Reinhart, and were immediately set upon by the heroes. A chase ensued over the narrow planks and slippery canal edges, with Foliage transforming into hawk form to guide the pursuit. As the outnumbered "adventurers" were bravely cornered by the heroes on a rain-soaked jetty between two canals, the pair was met with a massacre of combined heroic fury, but not before Foliage, in an un-replicable twist of Fate, re-formed into human shape and fell, Branch Cutter in hand, upon the Spear-wielder, who thrust the Spear right through the heart of the Demented Druid. The two falling to the ground together in a heap.
And so, thus ended the session with a taint; in the rain, dark, and damp on another late winter night, the Iron-Shafted Spear was recovered but at the cost of its protector and inheritor.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Legends and Quests of Forgotten Artifacts; or, Into the Outer Hold
Our magnificent sixth session, 4 September 2011:
Gilles: Seppo the Protagonist
Hector: Foliage the Warped
Eric: Balto the Warrior-Scholar
Beau: Aldan the Righteous Deliverer
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The heroes had left the backwater port city of Poori as hired ship hands, and now have been in Gar for about a week as late February shows hope of fading into spring. Balto and Aldan are more or less at home in this more civilized but still cold and windswept city, while Seppo was trying to get established in the local pickpocket community, and Foliage mostly spent his time on day-trips to the outskirts and getting drunk in the alleys. Rast busied himself in the library and hobnobbing with the elite, while Gurgrock disappeared to some of the seedier parts for a spell. The heroes made a deal to meet soon at The Beetle, a strange inn in the heart of an urban farmer's vines and wild fields, set aside in perpetuity as an untamed bed in the city and a hub of bizarre types of all stripes.
Making Inquiries
Seppo, ever youthful and naive in the big city, set about making inquiries about jobs and tracking down his friend Nikko, of course still ignorant of his childhood friend's unfortunate fate at his companions' hands. To learn more, Seppo played as if Nikko owed him money, which sat well with other thieves and ne'er-do-wells with the same sentiment. Several of the thieves suggested Seppo "check in" with master thief "The Skull", but all were short on details except that Seppo best stick to small work if he is to freelance. At one point he made a (fake) deal with one Ekrar about tracking down and fencing the Crystal, which Seppo had secreted from Rast on the voyage and which at one avaricious Gar cutpurse had made a go for on the sly (he had been allowed to grip the Crystal, which momentarily stopped his heart and left him gasping on the ground).
Meanwhile, Aldan headed for the Temple of the Searing Light, the local hub of The Faith and bastion of honorable discomfort and self-discipline. Aldan had an appointment with the Priest Valcan, who haughtily and without small talk sent Aldan on a one-man mission to pacify the unjustly independence-minded people of the Outer Hold, rebellious from rule from distant Gar. One Paladin, Arius, had been sent two months prior on the same mission, and was not heard from again. Aldan, for his part, inquired about loosening some of the burdensome strictures of his faith, to which the Priest Valcan issued another to test Aldan's faith: No longer can he touch any unclean persons or those wearing dark clothing, for fear of tainting his purity.
During all of this, Foliage, in the spirit of protest, was drunk outside the Temple, heckling the lowly acolytes dutifully earning their karma by cleaning up mud thrown by the angry Druid. Foliage even winged a mud pie at Valcan, who righteously sought no retribution at such a lowly, hirsute, unclean, wild unbeliever.
At the Library of the Towering Spires, Balto was researching the Crystal and its purported companion artifacts. Using an assumed name, he was directed to speak to Axel the Blind Sage, interrupting the latter's being read aloud a book on mountain ferns. Axel, chatty, distracted, and needlessly informative, settled in to discuss the legends of the Crystal, the Bronze Armband, the Glass Eye of All-Seeing (which Axel was interested in), as well as a ring and a cloth on unknown provenance. The artifacts, when combined, would amplify their power and grant much strength to their possessors.
According to Axel's wandering stories, the Bronze Armband in particular was told to belong to the long-dead hero Naxim The Mountain Man, who served the people of the purportedly lawless and fear-inducing Outer Hold. Before he died, Naxim had bound the Armband on the Elder Vulture, a semi-mythical beast who roosts in the mountains of the Outer Hold. Balto gently suggested he might take a look, despite warnings of the curse upon those who defile Naxim's Tomb. The Elder Vulture was invulnerable to all but the Iron-Shafted Spear wielded by Naxim himself. Perhaps the Spear was still there to be discovered for the benefit of historical knowledge.
On his way out, Balto checked out a few tomes with Tulia, a bespectacled young bookworm librarian whose eye caught that of the passing Aldan the Righteous Deliverer, ever-burdened with the Curse of Venus, on his way from the Temple. She confronted him and asked about his destination; Aldan, forbidden to lie, ended up inviting her to join the party at the inn of The Beetle.
At the Beetle, the PCs share their stories and pack up to set out the following morning, Tulia the Librarian in tow. Foliage both escalated and defused a fight, set off by a sailor patron crushing a rare insect with his boot. By the time the dust cleared, he'd warped the branches and vines of the table to bind the nature-defilers and smoldered one of their beards.
Into the Outer Hold
Several missions in hand, it was a six-day walk on the road-turned-trail-turned rain-muddy track to the northeast from the Gar coast, through mountains and rolling craggy, tall-grass-covered hills and ravines to the Outer Hold. They were to start at Fortress Town, a small outpost and entrypoint into the Hold.
On the journey, a coy triangle developed with Tulia trying to cozy up to the broad-shouldered Aldan; Seppo smitten by Tulia as his first love (she only saw him as a younger brother, excruciatingly); and Balto striving to protect Aldan from Tulia's subtle advances. After all, a Paladin must always stay true and never make excuses for lapses, even if it requires concocting rituals to distract and distance him from womankind.
The Fortress Town was just a collection of stand-alone houses at the craggy base of a lonely Gar-built keep on an outcropping. Aldan, representing the outside controlling force of Gar, made no friends and encountered simmering hostility by the free-minded cattle and goat-herders and rye growers, including a guffy one-legged old man resting in front of his house. Despite this, they learned that Arius, the Paladin who had arrived on a mission of pacification two months back and won no local love, had set out to the Fortress Keep and did not return. The people of the town had no curiosity as to his fate, and the fact that there had been not a peep from the Fortress since caused nary a stir. This is to be a quest for another day.
Foliage as a wild man himself, had more luck, leading the PCs to the house of Modi, a raspy-voiced carpenter who nodded at Foliage's desire to pay his respects at the Tomb of Naxim the Mountain Man. Modi, treating the PCs to goat milk and local rye bread (only Foliage partook in the latter, as Tulia had once heard and dutifully warned the PCs not to eat bread from the local crop), offered to lead them over the hills of Fortress Town to the head of the trail to the Tomb in the mountains.
The Ambush at the Ravine
Two days march in the mountains, with that familiar feeling of being tracked on their journey, led by Foliage in his spirit forms of hawk and fox, led the party to through a forested stretch to a ridge and riverbed ravine housing Naxim's Tomb in a shallow cave on the far side.
As they approached, Foliage the Fox smelled predators; notably three wolves barreling through the trees right toward them. Indeed, as his instincts led him to panic and flee up a tree, Balto followed suit, Aldan bravely stood near (not too near) his charge Tulia, and Seppo took cover behind some rocks and at the edge of the ravine. And then the arrows started raining in.
The characters had been ambushed by a pack of some twenty dog-men kobolds (identified by Balto, an expert in humanoid physiology; and Foliage, endlessly pissed at the depredations of evil humanoids) and their trained wolf companions.
At the outset, Aldan took a primitive arrow in the backside as he shielded Tulia, and as he met the beast-men's charge, took a second arrow in the shield-shoulder and another in the knee, plus a rusty shortsword cut to the hip (Paladins are immune to tetanus, we are reminded). One of the wolves, lucky to score a nip on his calf, met the Back Talker blade, a month of intolerable abstinence since tasting the glory of battle, and fell to earth in three parts, to Foliage's chagrin.
Meanwhile, Balto and Foliage led a tree-mounted sneak attack to the rear of the main pack of beast-men, heads cracking and the druid's Branch Cutter spreading vorpal fury among the violators of Nature's Path. Neither would feel a scratch from their victims' rusty blades.
From cover, Seppo had first noticed on the other side of the ravine a human figure lurking and then disappearing into the tree cover as the battle started. No matter -- the thief launched black powder-tipped bolts from his crossbow, the first shattering a tree (also irritating the Druid) and second scattering the attackers. One wolf, wounded by fire but vicious, wrestled with him on the precipice. But when a stray kobold threatened Tulia by the trail, Seppo heroically hurled his short sword into the slathering beast's eye, just as the wolf tore into Seppo's shoulder and incapacitated the love-smitten lad.
The kobold attackers slain and the last wolf charmed into friendship by Foliage, the party cleaned themselves up and approached the Tomb. Seppo made no mention to his fellows of the man watching them from the other side of the ravine.
The Tomb of the Mountain Man
The tomb was a shallow cave over a river, an entrance only four feet high and half-blocked by a pile of stacked stones. With Seppo and Aldan recovering from their injuries thanks to the assistance of Tulia's caring hands (one was in heaven, the other in hell), Balto and Foliage entered the Tomb. Indeed, this was a place to lay a curse on the head of anyone not respectful of the natural way to enter. Balto, having no fear of grim portents and such silliness, examined a painted depiction on the wall of a twin-mountain spire surrounded by a ring of stones in the nearby mountains; the roost of the Elder Vulture and presumed possessor of the Bronze Armband.
Foliage paid the proper respects at the sarcophagus itself, a cairn of stones on which was laid two slabs, unmoved. With much persuasion, he convinced Balto not to disturb the resting place of the hero Naxim, Iron-Shafted Spear or otherwise.
The party, exhausted, spent the night in the ravine. But in the morning, they returned to the Tomb and realized one of the slabs on the sarcophagus had been slid aside, opening the coffin. As Foliage and Balto bickered, Seppo entered the Tomb (incurring the curse), and without notice peeped inside the sarcophagus. Although there was no Spear to be found, Seppo secreted a gold ring off the gray-dusty bones of the dead Naxim, perhaps doubling the curse over his soul.
Denouement
As the curtain fell for the evening, Balto howled in regret for not looting the Tomb at first chance; Aldan ritually bathed repeatedly in the river after an unwelcome thankful embrace by Tulia; Seppo rocked on cloud nine before the dark clouds of the curse were to gather overhead; and Foliage (befriended wolf in tow), in a fury, demanded to the uncaring trees vengeance against those unknown forces which had defiled Naxim's Tomb and stolen the Hero's weapon for mysterious ends.
Gilles: Seppo the Protagonist
Hector: Foliage the Warped
Eric: Balto the Warrior-Scholar
Beau: Aldan the Righteous Deliverer
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The heroes had left the backwater port city of Poori as hired ship hands, and now have been in Gar for about a week as late February shows hope of fading into spring. Balto and Aldan are more or less at home in this more civilized but still cold and windswept city, while Seppo was trying to get established in the local pickpocket community, and Foliage mostly spent his time on day-trips to the outskirts and getting drunk in the alleys. Rast busied himself in the library and hobnobbing with the elite, while Gurgrock disappeared to some of the seedier parts for a spell. The heroes made a deal to meet soon at The Beetle, a strange inn in the heart of an urban farmer's vines and wild fields, set aside in perpetuity as an untamed bed in the city and a hub of bizarre types of all stripes.
Making Inquiries
Seppo, ever youthful and naive in the big city, set about making inquiries about jobs and tracking down his friend Nikko, of course still ignorant of his childhood friend's unfortunate fate at his companions' hands. To learn more, Seppo played as if Nikko owed him money, which sat well with other thieves and ne'er-do-wells with the same sentiment. Several of the thieves suggested Seppo "check in" with master thief "The Skull", but all were short on details except that Seppo best stick to small work if he is to freelance. At one point he made a (fake) deal with one Ekrar about tracking down and fencing the Crystal, which Seppo had secreted from Rast on the voyage and which at one avaricious Gar cutpurse had made a go for on the sly (he had been allowed to grip the Crystal, which momentarily stopped his heart and left him gasping on the ground).
Meanwhile, Aldan headed for the Temple of the Searing Light, the local hub of The Faith and bastion of honorable discomfort and self-discipline. Aldan had an appointment with the Priest Valcan, who haughtily and without small talk sent Aldan on a one-man mission to pacify the unjustly independence-minded people of the Outer Hold, rebellious from rule from distant Gar. One Paladin, Arius, had been sent two months prior on the same mission, and was not heard from again. Aldan, for his part, inquired about loosening some of the burdensome strictures of his faith, to which the Priest Valcan issued another to test Aldan's faith: No longer can he touch any unclean persons or those wearing dark clothing, for fear of tainting his purity.
During all of this, Foliage, in the spirit of protest, was drunk outside the Temple, heckling the lowly acolytes dutifully earning their karma by cleaning up mud thrown by the angry Druid. Foliage even winged a mud pie at Valcan, who righteously sought no retribution at such a lowly, hirsute, unclean, wild unbeliever.
At the Library of the Towering Spires, Balto was researching the Crystal and its purported companion artifacts. Using an assumed name, he was directed to speak to Axel the Blind Sage, interrupting the latter's being read aloud a book on mountain ferns. Axel, chatty, distracted, and needlessly informative, settled in to discuss the legends of the Crystal, the Bronze Armband, the Glass Eye of All-Seeing (which Axel was interested in), as well as a ring and a cloth on unknown provenance. The artifacts, when combined, would amplify their power and grant much strength to their possessors.
According to Axel's wandering stories, the Bronze Armband in particular was told to belong to the long-dead hero Naxim The Mountain Man, who served the people of the purportedly lawless and fear-inducing Outer Hold. Before he died, Naxim had bound the Armband on the Elder Vulture, a semi-mythical beast who roosts in the mountains of the Outer Hold. Balto gently suggested he might take a look, despite warnings of the curse upon those who defile Naxim's Tomb. The Elder Vulture was invulnerable to all but the Iron-Shafted Spear wielded by Naxim himself. Perhaps the Spear was still there to be discovered for the benefit of historical knowledge.
On his way out, Balto checked out a few tomes with Tulia, a bespectacled young bookworm librarian whose eye caught that of the passing Aldan the Righteous Deliverer, ever-burdened with the Curse of Venus, on his way from the Temple. She confronted him and asked about his destination; Aldan, forbidden to lie, ended up inviting her to join the party at the inn of The Beetle.
At the Beetle, the PCs share their stories and pack up to set out the following morning, Tulia the Librarian in tow. Foliage both escalated and defused a fight, set off by a sailor patron crushing a rare insect with his boot. By the time the dust cleared, he'd warped the branches and vines of the table to bind the nature-defilers and smoldered one of their beards.
Into the Outer Hold
Several missions in hand, it was a six-day walk on the road-turned-trail-turned rain-muddy track to the northeast from the Gar coast, through mountains and rolling craggy, tall-grass-covered hills and ravines to the Outer Hold. They were to start at Fortress Town, a small outpost and entrypoint into the Hold.
On the journey, a coy triangle developed with Tulia trying to cozy up to the broad-shouldered Aldan; Seppo smitten by Tulia as his first love (she only saw him as a younger brother, excruciatingly); and Balto striving to protect Aldan from Tulia's subtle advances. After all, a Paladin must always stay true and never make excuses for lapses, even if it requires concocting rituals to distract and distance him from womankind.
The Fortress Town was just a collection of stand-alone houses at the craggy base of a lonely Gar-built keep on an outcropping. Aldan, representing the outside controlling force of Gar, made no friends and encountered simmering hostility by the free-minded cattle and goat-herders and rye growers, including a guffy one-legged old man resting in front of his house. Despite this, they learned that Arius, the Paladin who had arrived on a mission of pacification two months back and won no local love, had set out to the Fortress Keep and did not return. The people of the town had no curiosity as to his fate, and the fact that there had been not a peep from the Fortress since caused nary a stir. This is to be a quest for another day.
Foliage as a wild man himself, had more luck, leading the PCs to the house of Modi, a raspy-voiced carpenter who nodded at Foliage's desire to pay his respects at the Tomb of Naxim the Mountain Man. Modi, treating the PCs to goat milk and local rye bread (only Foliage partook in the latter, as Tulia had once heard and dutifully warned the PCs not to eat bread from the local crop), offered to lead them over the hills of Fortress Town to the head of the trail to the Tomb in the mountains.
The Ambush at the Ravine
Two days march in the mountains, with that familiar feeling of being tracked on their journey, led by Foliage in his spirit forms of hawk and fox, led the party to through a forested stretch to a ridge and riverbed ravine housing Naxim's Tomb in a shallow cave on the far side.
As they approached, Foliage the Fox smelled predators; notably three wolves barreling through the trees right toward them. Indeed, as his instincts led him to panic and flee up a tree, Balto followed suit, Aldan bravely stood near (not too near) his charge Tulia, and Seppo took cover behind some rocks and at the edge of the ravine. And then the arrows started raining in.
The characters had been ambushed by a pack of some twenty dog-men kobolds (identified by Balto, an expert in humanoid physiology; and Foliage, endlessly pissed at the depredations of evil humanoids) and their trained wolf companions.
At the outset, Aldan took a primitive arrow in the backside as he shielded Tulia, and as he met the beast-men's charge, took a second arrow in the shield-shoulder and another in the knee, plus a rusty shortsword cut to the hip (Paladins are immune to tetanus, we are reminded). One of the wolves, lucky to score a nip on his calf, met the Back Talker blade, a month of intolerable abstinence since tasting the glory of battle, and fell to earth in three parts, to Foliage's chagrin.
Meanwhile, Balto and Foliage led a tree-mounted sneak attack to the rear of the main pack of beast-men, heads cracking and the druid's Branch Cutter spreading vorpal fury among the violators of Nature's Path. Neither would feel a scratch from their victims' rusty blades.
From cover, Seppo had first noticed on the other side of the ravine a human figure lurking and then disappearing into the tree cover as the battle started. No matter -- the thief launched black powder-tipped bolts from his crossbow, the first shattering a tree (also irritating the Druid) and second scattering the attackers. One wolf, wounded by fire but vicious, wrestled with him on the precipice. But when a stray kobold threatened Tulia by the trail, Seppo heroically hurled his short sword into the slathering beast's eye, just as the wolf tore into Seppo's shoulder and incapacitated the love-smitten lad.
The kobold attackers slain and the last wolf charmed into friendship by Foliage, the party cleaned themselves up and approached the Tomb. Seppo made no mention to his fellows of the man watching them from the other side of the ravine.
The Tomb of the Mountain Man
The tomb was a shallow cave over a river, an entrance only four feet high and half-blocked by a pile of stacked stones. With Seppo and Aldan recovering from their injuries thanks to the assistance of Tulia's caring hands (one was in heaven, the other in hell), Balto and Foliage entered the Tomb. Indeed, this was a place to lay a curse on the head of anyone not respectful of the natural way to enter. Balto, having no fear of grim portents and such silliness, examined a painted depiction on the wall of a twin-mountain spire surrounded by a ring of stones in the nearby mountains; the roost of the Elder Vulture and presumed possessor of the Bronze Armband.
Foliage paid the proper respects at the sarcophagus itself, a cairn of stones on which was laid two slabs, unmoved. With much persuasion, he convinced Balto not to disturb the resting place of the hero Naxim, Iron-Shafted Spear or otherwise.
The party, exhausted, spent the night in the ravine. But in the morning, they returned to the Tomb and realized one of the slabs on the sarcophagus had been slid aside, opening the coffin. As Foliage and Balto bickered, Seppo entered the Tomb (incurring the curse), and without notice peeped inside the sarcophagus. Although there was no Spear to be found, Seppo secreted a gold ring off the gray-dusty bones of the dead Naxim, perhaps doubling the curse over his soul.
Denouement
As the curtain fell for the evening, Balto howled in regret for not looting the Tomb at first chance; Aldan ritually bathed repeatedly in the river after an unwelcome thankful embrace by Tulia; Seppo rocked on cloud nine before the dark clouds of the curse were to gather overhead; and Foliage (befriended wolf in tow), in a fury, demanded to the uncaring trees vengeance against those unknown forces which had defiled Naxim's Tomb and stolen the Hero's weapon for mysterious ends.
Gar
Gar is a smallish city on the western coast of a wide peninsula in the northern areas of the inland sea. Although larger than Poori a week's sail to the north, it is still not far from the wilderness of the hills and mountains to the east, and is the next-to-last stop on the merchant lines. The cool climate is moderated from the sea, but with a constant wind blowing in salty sea air and lending a weather-worn look to even the newest structures.
The city is firmly in the hands of the New Faith, at least on the surface. Several temples, including The Searing Light, The Nine-Pointed Star, The Blistering Sun, The Just And The Bloody, and others collectively administer some degree of rule and justice to a city of traders and the thieves who prey upon them.
The wealth in Gar, relatively speaking, is concentrated in the hands of the powerfully-named Alliance of Merchants, who have acted as secular patrons of sorts, funding the impressive-by-any-standard Tome-Hall of the Towering Spires library and its concomitant sages and men of letters; subsidizing a society of collectors and master craftsmen; a number of specialized schools and academies for a fortunate minority of literate folks to expand their minds; and the Red Veil club for the entertainment of the well-off and their hangers-on, some who prefer their identities go unmentioned.
Meanwhile, the rivers, natural and engineered, bearing barges of lumber and stone from the hills to the sea, border the Canal Town, a self-governing district of porters, miscreants, drunks, and shellfish cultivators, under the shadowy influence of "the Skull", a master manipulator and schemer whom has not been seen by any reputable soul.
Into the hinterlands, the control of the Temples is inconsistent. Some areas, sharing a common history with Gar, provide it with food, manpower, and metal enough to buttress its continued existence. Other areas, like the Outer Hold nestled in the mountains, retain a strong regional spirit and bristle at Gar's dominance. Here, too, among the farms, herds, and mines, the Old Ways remain able to color lives and dictate attitudes, to the disgrace and anger of the Temples.
The city is firmly in the hands of the New Faith, at least on the surface. Several temples, including The Searing Light, The Nine-Pointed Star, The Blistering Sun, The Just And The Bloody, and others collectively administer some degree of rule and justice to a city of traders and the thieves who prey upon them.
The wealth in Gar, relatively speaking, is concentrated in the hands of the powerfully-named Alliance of Merchants, who have acted as secular patrons of sorts, funding the impressive-by-any-standard Tome-Hall of the Towering Spires library and its concomitant sages and men of letters; subsidizing a society of collectors and master craftsmen; a number of specialized schools and academies for a fortunate minority of literate folks to expand their minds; and the Red Veil club for the entertainment of the well-off and their hangers-on, some who prefer their identities go unmentioned.
Meanwhile, the rivers, natural and engineered, bearing barges of lumber and stone from the hills to the sea, border the Canal Town, a self-governing district of porters, miscreants, drunks, and shellfish cultivators, under the shadowy influence of "the Skull", a master manipulator and schemer whom has not been seen by any reputable soul.
Into the hinterlands, the control of the Temples is inconsistent. Some areas, sharing a common history with Gar, provide it with food, manpower, and metal enough to buttress its continued existence. Other areas, like the Outer Hold nestled in the mountains, retain a strong regional spirit and bristle at Gar's dominance. Here, too, among the farms, herds, and mines, the Old Ways remain able to color lives and dictate attitudes, to the disgrace and anger of the Temples.
The Mysterious Merchant Hans; or, Poori Fades Over the Horizon
Our bizarre fifth session, 7 August 2011:
Giovanni: Rast the Amazing Spellcaster
Beau: Aldan the Righteous Deliverer
Eric: Balto the Warrior-Scholar
Dave: Gurgrock the Assassin
Hector: Seppo the Protagonist
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
After a Quiet Month, A Ship
Now February, it has been a month since the players all rallied around Rast on Evil Island in the harbor of their backwater port town, where he finished the two-part Spell of Control which abjured the countless ghosts and spirits conjured by the late Magister Hienimi back to the nether word from which they came. Aldan had been busying himself with helping rebuild the houses burnt down in the struggle. Balto and Rast had been enjoying the Magister's house in his absence, making a home of it and studying from his library. I'd like to think that Gurgrock and his old mate Seppo made sure their late friend Nikko's mother was comfortable waiting for her son to come home.
And then, drinking at the Old Oak Inn, the players joined the crowd rushing to the docks at the announcement of a ship coming in. It has been a long and rainy winter, and the lumber, hides, and other trade goods have been languishing in the harbor waiting for a merchant ship to sail this far. Indeed, a merchant ship from the week-distant port city of Gar approached the port to the glee of the townsfolk.
Alcohol flowed freely and the sailors of the visiting one-masted ship hit the docks as the women hoped for more exciting lives on foreign shores, and the men hoped to win some honest work and maybe word from the outside world.
Mayhem on the Docks
Indeed, one of the towns' ladies, waiting on the dock for her long-at-sea lover, recognized Aldan, as always in his resplendent and gleaming glory, just as her lover emerged from a week at sea and longer from his lover's embrace. Jealousy ensued, as it does, and as the cuckolded man pushed through the dock to the Paladin now uncomfortably embracing his beloved, he was tripped by a quick-thinking Seppo (avoiding real labor) and was pitched into the embrace. A struggle, and the two original lovers were over the edge and into the drink, along with an unfortunate mother and child.
Meanwhile, Balto and Gurgrock infiltrated the ship by their respective means of acrobatic ropework and fast-talking aided by light disguise work and an accent cultivated from working the docks and servicing Gar ships, and learned that the person in charge was not the captain, but a mysterious and learned man named Hans who chartered the vessel, not for trade but for his personal reasons to visit this backwater.
Gurgrock, in desperation, clocked out a young seaman stealing food from the hold who'd once been the brother of the victim of the half-orc's teenage abuses a decade and a half ago in the streets of this very town, and now threatened to call him out.
Back on the docks with innocents unable to tread water, Gorbo the Apprentice (Rast's newest minion), now bedecked in the Trell-Beast's hide, tasted heroism by leaping into the water and swimming, as a wild animal might, and rescuing the child.
Two of the jealous man's mates rushed Aldan, who, impelled by the bloodthirsty Back Talker sword, in an incredible swing cleaved them in two, sating the blade but ensuring a messy outcome. Aldan risked further spiritual contamination as a price to pay for jumping in after his babe-in-arms, hoping that the bilge-stained water would be pure enough to cleanse his transgressions.
He, predictably, sank like a stone.
By the time the adventurers were all safe and sound and the belligerents were sated or defeated, Rast too was soaking wet from a pitch in the drink, Gurgrock snagged a sailor with a poisoned dagger in the fray, and the mysterious Hans, observed only briefly as a portly, well-dressed aristocratic type, had escaped the chaos and
absconded into the town.
The Antagonizing of the "Merchant" Hans
Wisely, the players surmised Hans might be looking for the Magister Hienimi, so they retreated to the House and waited.
Before long, four townsman approached and passed word that Hans, now in the Old Oak Inn, requested a meeting. They said to tell Hans to come back tomorrow. They promptly followed the men back to town to the Inn, observed the finely-attired Hans and two hired valets at a crooked table (along with the lad now twice abused by Gurgrock's crueler impulses), and, in true style, had the innkeeper drug Hans' drink. The mysterious man passed out halfway up the stairs and they proceeded to steal his chest of clothes, rob him blind, step on his fingers; later bringing out the unnoticed Seppo to put on his innocent look and garner sympathy from the woozy and rotund traveler, woozy from his run-in with petty thieves in this dangerous backwater.
The next morning at the House as planned, Hans squeezed to discomfort by overnight-tailored suits cut a size too small, met with Rast, acting as if he were the magistrate all along. Hans was here for the Crystal (the one which Gurgrock, Foliage, and Rast all realized saps one's very life energy away as it boosts one's mystic potential), and ready to pay well for it. The deal: mundane for arcane. Hans' "master", whom he did not describe, was very interested in the Crystal's power when combined with other artifacts of lore. The Master has been watching all along, and has eyes in many places. A bag of gold emerged from Hans' coat (it had not been observed by the band of thieves beforehand) and dropped onto the table. Rast (er, "the Magister") tantalized with the Crystal as Hans waited patiently.
Predictably in retrospect, the players, having learned that Hans was an adept of divination and other magics and thus clearly a threat, decided to ambush him while in the house. Surely a diviner would not have seen such coming. One hired hand ran for the kitchen, pursued by Gorbo, egged on and uncharacteristically animalistic under the Trell-Beast's impulses, while the other hired hand hit the ground fast from a handful of marbles and a crossbow bolt from Seppo to the back. As Balto, as is his way, burst from the outside through a window at Hans, the target, in that irritating way that wizards, good, evil or neutral, are known to do, snapped his fingers and disappeared. This would not be the last of Hans.
Passage to the Wider World
Fortunately, Aldan had made arrangements with the ship's captain, no fan of Hans or of this sudden chartering which left him will little in the way of trade goods, and had booked passage on it for all the players, to return to the city of Gar forthwith, as hired hands to replace the very hands Aldan had cut down in his fury.
That very night, with only a brief goodbye to Nikko's mother, without explanation of the crimes committed against her only son but a half-bag of gold left to rebuild her life, they set sail for Gar in the driving rain and wind. That the town was not left a smoking ruin was perhaps a testament to the characters' desire to leave at once.
A week later the ship arrived, and the players, in their respective roles, scattered gleefully to their respective roles, immediately seeking out the library, temple, and dens of thieves, fences, and dealmakers.
Thoughts
This was not a session of great heroism, climactic battles, or deep intrigue. But the passage to Gar nonetheless opens a new chapter to the players. This Crystal, and those who seek it out, will be sure to bring new troubles and challenges, hopefully ones to bring out the players' more valiant colors and test their calling as great men. So many open roads ahead.
Giovanni: Rast the Amazing Spellcaster
Beau: Aldan the Righteous Deliverer
Eric: Balto the Warrior-Scholar
Dave: Gurgrock the Assassin
Hector: Seppo the Protagonist
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
After a Quiet Month, A Ship
Now February, it has been a month since the players all rallied around Rast on Evil Island in the harbor of their backwater port town, where he finished the two-part Spell of Control which abjured the countless ghosts and spirits conjured by the late Magister Hienimi back to the nether word from which they came. Aldan had been busying himself with helping rebuild the houses burnt down in the struggle. Balto and Rast had been enjoying the Magister's house in his absence, making a home of it and studying from his library. I'd like to think that Gurgrock and his old mate Seppo made sure their late friend Nikko's mother was comfortable waiting for her son to come home.
And then, drinking at the Old Oak Inn, the players joined the crowd rushing to the docks at the announcement of a ship coming in. It has been a long and rainy winter, and the lumber, hides, and other trade goods have been languishing in the harbor waiting for a merchant ship to sail this far. Indeed, a merchant ship from the week-distant port city of Gar approached the port to the glee of the townsfolk.
Alcohol flowed freely and the sailors of the visiting one-masted ship hit the docks as the women hoped for more exciting lives on foreign shores, and the men hoped to win some honest work and maybe word from the outside world.
Mayhem on the Docks
Indeed, one of the towns' ladies, waiting on the dock for her long-at-sea lover, recognized Aldan, as always in his resplendent and gleaming glory, just as her lover emerged from a week at sea and longer from his lover's embrace. Jealousy ensued, as it does, and as the cuckolded man pushed through the dock to the Paladin now uncomfortably embracing his beloved, he was tripped by a quick-thinking Seppo (avoiding real labor) and was pitched into the embrace. A struggle, and the two original lovers were over the edge and into the drink, along with an unfortunate mother and child.
Meanwhile, Balto and Gurgrock infiltrated the ship by their respective means of acrobatic ropework and fast-talking aided by light disguise work and an accent cultivated from working the docks and servicing Gar ships, and learned that the person in charge was not the captain, but a mysterious and learned man named Hans who chartered the vessel, not for trade but for his personal reasons to visit this backwater.
Gurgrock, in desperation, clocked out a young seaman stealing food from the hold who'd once been the brother of the victim of the half-orc's teenage abuses a decade and a half ago in the streets of this very town, and now threatened to call him out.
Back on the docks with innocents unable to tread water, Gorbo the Apprentice (Rast's newest minion), now bedecked in the Trell-Beast's hide, tasted heroism by leaping into the water and swimming, as a wild animal might, and rescuing the child.
Two of the jealous man's mates rushed Aldan, who, impelled by the bloodthirsty Back Talker sword, in an incredible swing cleaved them in two, sating the blade but ensuring a messy outcome. Aldan risked further spiritual contamination as a price to pay for jumping in after his babe-in-arms, hoping that the bilge-stained water would be pure enough to cleanse his transgressions.
He, predictably, sank like a stone.
By the time the adventurers were all safe and sound and the belligerents were sated or defeated, Rast too was soaking wet from a pitch in the drink, Gurgrock snagged a sailor with a poisoned dagger in the fray, and the mysterious Hans, observed only briefly as a portly, well-dressed aristocratic type, had escaped the chaos and
absconded into the town.
The Antagonizing of the "Merchant" Hans
Wisely, the players surmised Hans might be looking for the Magister Hienimi, so they retreated to the House and waited.
Before long, four townsman approached and passed word that Hans, now in the Old Oak Inn, requested a meeting. They said to tell Hans to come back tomorrow. They promptly followed the men back to town to the Inn, observed the finely-attired Hans and two hired valets at a crooked table (along with the lad now twice abused by Gurgrock's crueler impulses), and, in true style, had the innkeeper drug Hans' drink. The mysterious man passed out halfway up the stairs and they proceeded to steal his chest of clothes, rob him blind, step on his fingers; later bringing out the unnoticed Seppo to put on his innocent look and garner sympathy from the woozy and rotund traveler, woozy from his run-in with petty thieves in this dangerous backwater.
The next morning at the House as planned, Hans squeezed to discomfort by overnight-tailored suits cut a size too small, met with Rast, acting as if he were the magistrate all along. Hans was here for the Crystal (the one which Gurgrock, Foliage, and Rast all realized saps one's very life energy away as it boosts one's mystic potential), and ready to pay well for it. The deal: mundane for arcane. Hans' "master", whom he did not describe, was very interested in the Crystal's power when combined with other artifacts of lore. The Master has been watching all along, and has eyes in many places. A bag of gold emerged from Hans' coat (it had not been observed by the band of thieves beforehand) and dropped onto the table. Rast (er, "the Magister") tantalized with the Crystal as Hans waited patiently.
Predictably in retrospect, the players, having learned that Hans was an adept of divination and other magics and thus clearly a threat, decided to ambush him while in the house. Surely a diviner would not have seen such coming. One hired hand ran for the kitchen, pursued by Gorbo, egged on and uncharacteristically animalistic under the Trell-Beast's impulses, while the other hired hand hit the ground fast from a handful of marbles and a crossbow bolt from Seppo to the back. As Balto, as is his way, burst from the outside through a window at Hans, the target, in that irritating way that wizards, good, evil or neutral, are known to do, snapped his fingers and disappeared. This would not be the last of Hans.
Passage to the Wider World
Fortunately, Aldan had made arrangements with the ship's captain, no fan of Hans or of this sudden chartering which left him will little in the way of trade goods, and had booked passage on it for all the players, to return to the city of Gar forthwith, as hired hands to replace the very hands Aldan had cut down in his fury.
That very night, with only a brief goodbye to Nikko's mother, without explanation of the crimes committed against her only son but a half-bag of gold left to rebuild her life, they set sail for Gar in the driving rain and wind. That the town was not left a smoking ruin was perhaps a testament to the characters' desire to leave at once.
A week later the ship arrived, and the players, in their respective roles, scattered gleefully to their respective roles, immediately seeking out the library, temple, and dens of thieves, fences, and dealmakers.
Thoughts
This was not a session of great heroism, climactic battles, or deep intrigue. But the passage to Gar nonetheless opens a new chapter to the players. This Crystal, and those who seek it out, will be sure to bring new troubles and challenges, hopefully ones to bring out the players' more valiant colors and test their calling as great men. So many open roads ahead.
Poori Under Siege; or, The Astral Portal Closed
Our epic fourth session, 31 July 2011:
Tony: Rast the Amazing Spellcaster
Eric: Foliage the Warped
Hector: Gurgrock the Assassin
Hiro: Balto the Warrior-Scholar
Michie: Seppo the Thief
Sam: Aldan the Righteous
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
City of Madness
The session began a week after the characters killed the Magister Hienimi. During this time, the atmosphere in Poori had devolved into a combination of madness and fear, as reports and rumors flowed daily of ghosts, crazed animals, townsfolk driven insane, apparitions, and disappearances. Of course this desperation gave the PCs a chance to lay low, as their role in the murder of an ostensibly respectable citizen would not be welcomed by most.
Indeed, while resting at the Old Oak Inn after reclaiming their welcome there, screams from the street outside led to their investigating a giant blue ghost terrorizing the people. An ox had been driven mad and broke loose, charging the PCs and leading them to both roast it with magical fire and chop it up with swords.
Aldan, forbidden from contact with both meat and female flesh, found himself with a damsel in his arms (resulting in a mandatory ritual hand-washing). In the process of the struggle with the mad ox, though, the ghostly spirit flew right into the mouth of poor Balto, possessing him, leaving his skin with a blue pallor and flickering blue flames in his eyes, but otherwise apparently normal and no worse for the wear.
The Magister's House, Revisited
The PCs pretty much determined that the death of Hienimi was connected to this, so they trapsed back to his now-vacant house, which they'd left in a hurry after the fateful encounter and the noble sacrifice of their beloved companion Samaras the Unlucky in the humble greatroom fireplace.
After charming the lone Baron's guard to allow them entrance, they poked around the house, finding a library with books on spirit conjuring and binding magics, various arcane devices, and a half-fist-sized deep blue Crystal. The last of these radiated strong magic and inspired covetousness of all who witnessed it: Upon grasping it, Rast felt his chest suck in and heart stop, then start again. Truly this was a thing of great power at the cost of one's physical strength. In turn, Foliage tried it and feigned his own death to release it; Gurgrock snatched it in an argument as Aldan threatened to destroy it and its concomitant evil (instead he settled for wrecking the library), but in the end it landed back in Rast's possession, with clear side effects but unclear powers.
During the house call, Aldan discovered in the kitchen Gorbo, a rail-thin teenage apprentice of Hienimi, hiding when he heard their approach. He confirmed that the Magister had used his very life essence to bind the spirits he had conjured and controlled over the decades. But the binding power of the Magister's soul now gone, the evil of these otherworldly apparitions was roam free and wreak havoc in Poori.
Foliage discovered a trap door to a tiny basement room, where Gurgrock was completely sure not to disturb a chalk magic circle on the floor and the Wizard summoned an unseen servant to fetch the mystical Book of Control without leaving a trace.
Flames in the Distance
At this time the charmed guard called out to the PCs as a mob of angry townsfolk was marching on the house to track down the PCs, now suspect of having a hand in the recent unfortunate events. Rast, with a glamour and a booming voice, turned them back to town, where they marched with pitchforks and torches and turned their fury on themselves, perhaps aided a little bit by demonic intervention.
Despite the wind and light rain, in the distance from the hill every few minutes the heroes witnessed a thatched-roof house go up in flames. Although the town's guards had been dispatched to fetch help and calm the mob, all hell was breaking loose in town.
Thinking quickly, local boys and childhood friends Gurgrock and Seppo, Balto in tow, rushed to town to save the mother of unfortunate Nikko (whose son was melted by Rast when he tried to heist the Pelt from the Spellcaster's curse-greedy hands, but they'll never tell her, or Seppo for that matter). In the chaos, they repelled a handful of crazed fire-wielding townsfolk and rescued their foster mother, although her hovel would go up in smoke.
While the others were rescuing innocents, the remaining Foliage, Rast, Aldan, and the weakling Gorbo (now deputized as Rast's apprentice) cast what was the the first half of the Spell of Control. They were fairly sure not to have broken the chalk circle or mispronounced any of the spell's arcane phrases. Indeed, a miniature image of the countless conjured wicked specters emerged in the circle's boundaries, hopefully in anticipation of the Spell's completion.
Assault on Evil Island
Gorbo said that the second half of the spell would need to be cast from the magical power point on the just-offshore Evil Island, once a lookout post in the bay but now an abandoned stone and wood tower.
Now midnight, with the town fires no longer raging and exhaustion slowing the spread of the riot and madness, the six heroes commandeered a rowboat meant for five; Foliage taking fox form ensured only the higher swells from the bay lapped over the sides.
Most of the way to the Island they were nearly boarded by two aquatic lizard-man beasts (who were discovered to have taken over the abandoned fort) from below the waves. The assaulting beasts nearly foundered the vessel; the heroes, were it not for good teamwork, sea legs, creative uses of oars, and a couple well-placed crossbow bolts and magic arrows, to witness some of their number dragged into the water, just deeper than a man's head. Indeed, Rast's phantasmal impersonation of his impression of their primitive reptilian deity cowed the opposition and gave the PCs the chance to land the boat and counterattack on land.
The battle continued from the tiny shore to the damaged watchtower, stone on the first story and wood on the second. They scrambled and struggled their way up, at last climbing a ladder onto the precarious wooden platform and nexus of magic energy. As the ghosts and spirits began to congregate and spiral around the site, the heroes were attacked by flying hawk-women of a more corporeal form, in a mad melee leaving Aldan falling twice from the perch, Foliage battling in the skies as an outmatched druid-hawk, and Gurgrock and Seppo struggling in close quarters with oversized lizard-men at the base of the tower, ground gained through expert crossbow shots and a poisoned dagger in the vitals.
The Spell Completed
Balto, now actively possessed by the ghost that entered his body at the beginning, suddenly turned on Rast as he prepared to cast the Latter Spell of Control, and nearly stopped the wizard's heart with an expertly timed Death Fist. As he was being pitched off the wooden platform, Rast let loose a gout of flame from his fingers, scorching his friend-turned-mad to nearly the end of his thread of life.
Rast recovered his ground, and was able to cast the Spell, despite near-distractions from flying claws and dismembered hawk-woman drumsticks (from Aldan's perfectly-timed swing of the bloodthirsty Back Talker) which would have ruined the spell and made for an eventful evening, as the gathered evil spirits knew who to focus their vengeance on.
But in the end, the spell was complete, at which point the soaring spirits (plus the one inhabiting Balto's body), furious but drawn to the charcoal circle on the wooden platform, were bound into its midst and flushed, as it were, into the circle and abjured to the world beyond.
This would be a long row home; few were left unbruised, between lizard-maw bites, hawk-gashes, near drownings, broken ankles and other falls, and ally-inflicted third-degree burns; the town will take a while to recover but it is hoped that the party's heroics would not go unnoticed. The matter of the cursed deep-blue Crystal is yet to be resolved completely -- perhaps it is from its life-force-drawing effects that Rast was able to finish the Spell of Control at all.
Tony: Rast the Amazing Spellcaster
Eric: Foliage the Warped
Hector: Gurgrock the Assassin
Hiro: Balto the Warrior-Scholar
Michie: Seppo the Thief
Sam: Aldan the Righteous
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
City of Madness
The session began a week after the characters killed the Magister Hienimi. During this time, the atmosphere in Poori had devolved into a combination of madness and fear, as reports and rumors flowed daily of ghosts, crazed animals, townsfolk driven insane, apparitions, and disappearances. Of course this desperation gave the PCs a chance to lay low, as their role in the murder of an ostensibly respectable citizen would not be welcomed by most.
Indeed, while resting at the Old Oak Inn after reclaiming their welcome there, screams from the street outside led to their investigating a giant blue ghost terrorizing the people. An ox had been driven mad and broke loose, charging the PCs and leading them to both roast it with magical fire and chop it up with swords.
Aldan, forbidden from contact with both meat and female flesh, found himself with a damsel in his arms (resulting in a mandatory ritual hand-washing). In the process of the struggle with the mad ox, though, the ghostly spirit flew right into the mouth of poor Balto, possessing him, leaving his skin with a blue pallor and flickering blue flames in his eyes, but otherwise apparently normal and no worse for the wear.
The Magister's House, Revisited
The PCs pretty much determined that the death of Hienimi was connected to this, so they trapsed back to his now-vacant house, which they'd left in a hurry after the fateful encounter and the noble sacrifice of their beloved companion Samaras the Unlucky in the humble greatroom fireplace.
After charming the lone Baron's guard to allow them entrance, they poked around the house, finding a library with books on spirit conjuring and binding magics, various arcane devices, and a half-fist-sized deep blue Crystal. The last of these radiated strong magic and inspired covetousness of all who witnessed it: Upon grasping it, Rast felt his chest suck in and heart stop, then start again. Truly this was a thing of great power at the cost of one's physical strength. In turn, Foliage tried it and feigned his own death to release it; Gurgrock snatched it in an argument as Aldan threatened to destroy it and its concomitant evil (instead he settled for wrecking the library), but in the end it landed back in Rast's possession, with clear side effects but unclear powers.
During the house call, Aldan discovered in the kitchen Gorbo, a rail-thin teenage apprentice of Hienimi, hiding when he heard their approach. He confirmed that the Magister had used his very life essence to bind the spirits he had conjured and controlled over the decades. But the binding power of the Magister's soul now gone, the evil of these otherworldly apparitions was roam free and wreak havoc in Poori.
Foliage discovered a trap door to a tiny basement room, where Gurgrock was completely sure not to disturb a chalk magic circle on the floor and the Wizard summoned an unseen servant to fetch the mystical Book of Control without leaving a trace.
Flames in the Distance
At this time the charmed guard called out to the PCs as a mob of angry townsfolk was marching on the house to track down the PCs, now suspect of having a hand in the recent unfortunate events. Rast, with a glamour and a booming voice, turned them back to town, where they marched with pitchforks and torches and turned their fury on themselves, perhaps aided a little bit by demonic intervention.
Despite the wind and light rain, in the distance from the hill every few minutes the heroes witnessed a thatched-roof house go up in flames. Although the town's guards had been dispatched to fetch help and calm the mob, all hell was breaking loose in town.
Thinking quickly, local boys and childhood friends Gurgrock and Seppo, Balto in tow, rushed to town to save the mother of unfortunate Nikko (whose son was melted by Rast when he tried to heist the Pelt from the Spellcaster's curse-greedy hands, but they'll never tell her, or Seppo for that matter). In the chaos, they repelled a handful of crazed fire-wielding townsfolk and rescued their foster mother, although her hovel would go up in smoke.
While the others were rescuing innocents, the remaining Foliage, Rast, Aldan, and the weakling Gorbo (now deputized as Rast's apprentice) cast what was the the first half of the Spell of Control. They were fairly sure not to have broken the chalk circle or mispronounced any of the spell's arcane phrases. Indeed, a miniature image of the countless conjured wicked specters emerged in the circle's boundaries, hopefully in anticipation of the Spell's completion.
Assault on Evil Island
Gorbo said that the second half of the spell would need to be cast from the magical power point on the just-offshore Evil Island, once a lookout post in the bay but now an abandoned stone and wood tower.
Now midnight, with the town fires no longer raging and exhaustion slowing the spread of the riot and madness, the six heroes commandeered a rowboat meant for five; Foliage taking fox form ensured only the higher swells from the bay lapped over the sides.
Most of the way to the Island they were nearly boarded by two aquatic lizard-man beasts (who were discovered to have taken over the abandoned fort) from below the waves. The assaulting beasts nearly foundered the vessel; the heroes, were it not for good teamwork, sea legs, creative uses of oars, and a couple well-placed crossbow bolts and magic arrows, to witness some of their number dragged into the water, just deeper than a man's head. Indeed, Rast's phantasmal impersonation of his impression of their primitive reptilian deity cowed the opposition and gave the PCs the chance to land the boat and counterattack on land.
The battle continued from the tiny shore to the damaged watchtower, stone on the first story and wood on the second. They scrambled and struggled their way up, at last climbing a ladder onto the precarious wooden platform and nexus of magic energy. As the ghosts and spirits began to congregate and spiral around the site, the heroes were attacked by flying hawk-women of a more corporeal form, in a mad melee leaving Aldan falling twice from the perch, Foliage battling in the skies as an outmatched druid-hawk, and Gurgrock and Seppo struggling in close quarters with oversized lizard-men at the base of the tower, ground gained through expert crossbow shots and a poisoned dagger in the vitals.
The Spell Completed
Balto, now actively possessed by the ghost that entered his body at the beginning, suddenly turned on Rast as he prepared to cast the Latter Spell of Control, and nearly stopped the wizard's heart with an expertly timed Death Fist. As he was being pitched off the wooden platform, Rast let loose a gout of flame from his fingers, scorching his friend-turned-mad to nearly the end of his thread of life.
Rast recovered his ground, and was able to cast the Spell, despite near-distractions from flying claws and dismembered hawk-woman drumsticks (from Aldan's perfectly-timed swing of the bloodthirsty Back Talker) which would have ruined the spell and made for an eventful evening, as the gathered evil spirits knew who to focus their vengeance on.
But in the end, the spell was complete, at which point the soaring spirits (plus the one inhabiting Balto's body), furious but drawn to the charcoal circle on the wooden platform, were bound into its midst and flushed, as it were, into the circle and abjured to the world beyond.
This would be a long row home; few were left unbruised, between lizard-maw bites, hawk-gashes, near drownings, broken ankles and other falls, and ally-inflicted third-degree burns; the town will take a while to recover but it is hoped that the party's heroics would not go unnoticed. The matter of the cursed deep-blue Crystal is yet to be resolved completely -- perhaps it is from its life-force-drawing effects that Rast was able to finish the Spell of Control at all.
Heroes: Seppo, Foliage
Below are two more heroes which joined the madness and mayhem in Poori:
Seppo The Protagonist
At only fifteen, Seppo was the youngest and slightest of Gurgrock and unfortunate Nikko, three best friends from the docks of Poori whose lives turned out just as fate and fortune would dictate but differently than their mothers had hoped.
Seppo's small frame and naivete to the wider world is tempered by his good heart, nimble hands, and creative mind. A compulsive fast-talker and easily distracted, he has served many jobs, including as a fletcher, apprentice carpenter, and cutpurse. He prides himself on his handiwork, including a crossbow he uses for hunting, trick-shooting for coin, and sometimes to less legal (but never dishonorable) ends.
After he learned of the violent death of Nikko, Seppo set himself to joining with Gurgrock's trustworthy-enough gang of heroes to track down his friend's killer, while at the same time seeing the world for the first time.
Motivations: Be the local boy done good in the wide world; find Nikko's killer
Heroic Flaws: Naivete; focus
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Foliage The Warped
Foliage is a Druid from the wilds north of Poori, long ago driven mad from a scourge of evil humanoids who burned down his sacred grove. Now without a home to bind him, he has been thrust into a wandering life of vengeance, vigilantism, and prolonged alcoholism. Often he sees himself as an aggravated foster uncle of sorts to his young and often-wayward traveling companions.
With the appearance of an unkempt wild man, Foliage wears untanned furs; a wide-brimmed hat; a brace of liquors, moonshines, and narcotic roots; and bears a giant beard which is home to a host of critters and plants. At his waist is the Branch Cutter, a giant bronze knife often bloodied in joyless revenge against the enemies of nature. Around his neck is the feather-and-bone Amulet of the Three Sylvan Brothers, a relic of his faith and more peaceful times, which allows him to channel his inner spirit by transforming into the form of fox, deer, or hawk, although at the cost of quickly draining his human nature.
Motivations: Vengeance against those who ravaged his sacred grove and groves all over
Heroic Flaw: Aggression, hotheadedness
Seppo The Protagonist
At only fifteen, Seppo was the youngest and slightest of Gurgrock and unfortunate Nikko, three best friends from the docks of Poori whose lives turned out just as fate and fortune would dictate but differently than their mothers had hoped.
Seppo's small frame and naivete to the wider world is tempered by his good heart, nimble hands, and creative mind. A compulsive fast-talker and easily distracted, he has served many jobs, including as a fletcher, apprentice carpenter, and cutpurse. He prides himself on his handiwork, including a crossbow he uses for hunting, trick-shooting for coin, and sometimes to less legal (but never dishonorable) ends.
After he learned of the violent death of Nikko, Seppo set himself to joining with Gurgrock's trustworthy-enough gang of heroes to track down his friend's killer, while at the same time seeing the world for the first time.
Motivations: Be the local boy done good in the wide world; find Nikko's killer
Heroic Flaws: Naivete; focus
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Foliage The Warped
Foliage is a Druid from the wilds north of Poori, long ago driven mad from a scourge of evil humanoids who burned down his sacred grove. Now without a home to bind him, he has been thrust into a wandering life of vengeance, vigilantism, and prolonged alcoholism. Often he sees himself as an aggravated foster uncle of sorts to his young and often-wayward traveling companions.
With the appearance of an unkempt wild man, Foliage wears untanned furs; a wide-brimmed hat; a brace of liquors, moonshines, and narcotic roots; and bears a giant beard which is home to a host of critters and plants. At his waist is the Branch Cutter, a giant bronze knife often bloodied in joyless revenge against the enemies of nature. Around his neck is the feather-and-bone Amulet of the Three Sylvan Brothers, a relic of his faith and more peaceful times, which allows him to channel his inner spirit by transforming into the form of fox, deer, or hawk, although at the cost of quickly draining his human nature.
Motivations: Vengeance against those who ravaged his sacred grove and groves all over
Heroic Flaw: Aggression, hotheadedness
The Old Ways Seek To Reclaim What Is Theirs; or, The Valiant Death of Samaras
Our second and third sessions, 15 and 27 May 2011:
Giovanni: Gurgrock the Assassin
Eric: Balto the Warrior-Scholar
Dai: Samaras the Unlucky
Tony: Rast the Amazing Spellcaster (first session only)
Ziad: Vrannian the Gnome (first session only)
Dob: Aldan the Righteous Deliverer (second session only)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Hunters Hunted
After two weeks trudging through the mid-winter rain and wind back south from Akikorva village in the empty swampy forests, Samaras, Aldan, Rast, and Vrannian made it back to the port town of Poori, from whence they entered this backwater country. The whole walk back it was as if they were being followed, with campfires in the distance, the sounds of horses and voices, just that feeling you get from being watched.
In the relative civilization of Poori they arrived at the Old Oak Inn, named for the eponymous tree in the center of the main room, looking for a contact which would take them to the reclusive Magister Hienimi the Gray Wizard, in hopes of selling him the Pelt and Relics from the Trell-Beast.
Instead they met with Balto and Gurgrock, two lovable local losers drinking together at the Old Oak. After introductions trouble quickly ensued, as one would expect, when local toughs hired by unknown parties and probably tailing the party to the Inn, burst in, looking to take the Pelt.
Death and a Mother's Love
Rast made an illusion of grand power and all hell broke loose. The PCs trashed the place, escalated the violence to massacre levels, and cleared the room, including through a point-blank fire blast making a mortal casualty of Nikko, a childhood friend of Gurgrock and probably just a kid who made some bad choices in life, ending his days as a hired bully.
During the violence, the PCs noticed that they were indeed being followed by more than local hoodlums, as two men in capes and hoods with leather and wooden crow's-beak masks poked into the Inn, noticed the characters and the Pelt, and escaped again into the night.
The second session: The characters bravely fled into the night; the only place they could think to flee was to the one-room shack of Nikko's mother, in the slum areas by the port. It had been years since she'd seen young Gurgrock, all grown up, so on she gabbed and reminisced about old and better times, and how her boy Nikko had just got a new job (and would hopefully return come morning), and that one day her boy would grow up to be someone...
They couldn't bear to tell her the news.
In the shanty, Samaras detected danger outside and Balto, taking advantage of his Opal Headband (the one possession he hadn't pawned for drink) determined there were thugs outside. Balto wisely beat the poor woman upside the head to silence her, and they rushed into the filthy alley, only to be jumped by a bunch of the crow-beak-masked figures. No match for adventurers, the PCs knocked the masked goons senseless, although Gurgrock took a knife in the back from a masked woman and a stray arrow to the shoulder fired from Samaras' cursed bow.
The Old Ways, Underground
In the process of interrogating the attackers, the PCs learned they were local adherents to the same Old Faith cult which praised the Trell-Beast (the Pelt of which was gracing Samaras' back) as a deity; they sought to retake the relics of their god and return them to the holy swamps and their brothers and sisters to the north.
In tracking one of the cultists who fled the slum rumble, the PCs were led to a port-side booze-house The Goat and a local meeting place for the cultists, many of whom blended into the community in Poori of those who spoke the language of the northern peoples and labored in the shadows.
Gurgrock, wounded but able to take on the disguise as a deaf-mute, infiltrated The Goat and found more of their number; when questioned by a suspicious cultist enjoying a drink, he merely gestured to a purloined cultist mask and they backed off.
Meanwhile, waiting outside The Goat, Samaras and Balto were approached by a well-dressed agent of Magister Hienimi the Gray Wizard, whom they almost killed by reflex but still roughed up a little, before sending him on his way with an agreement to meet Hienimi's men by the big tree at the Poori fort's walls the next day at midnight.
After another scuffle with the cultists, Balto cleverly made the same arrangement with their leader to meet by the big tree at the same time.
Sure enough, the PCs set up for an ambush, with Gurgrock playing the pigeon, Balto high in the tree's boughs, and Samaras ready to shoot from a closed market stall. As planned, Hienimi's armed men showed up, led by a sergeant and, of all people, Aldan the Righteous, who had been recruited on the pretense of serving a morally just master. Sure enough, also came several cultists.
At the Magister's House
Each side, surprised a bit to see the other, demanded the Pelt and Relics but in the end no one got anything and an ambush was averted (it helped that the cultists were badly under-armed), and the PCs led the whole train to the Magister's house on the hill past the fort.
The cultists waited outside along with Hienimi's men while an aging manservant led Aldan and Gurgrock inside to meet with the reclusive Magister in the sitting room warmed by a great fire, while Balto and Samaras waited outside the windows, expecting trouble.
It wasn't long before Hienimi's cockiness and hubris showed forth, when he demanded the Pelt, not for noble reasons but to glean its power for his own wicked sorcerous ends, and tossed a bag of coins on the table.
Wisely, the characters realized the consequences were they to accept this filthy lucre, and when the cultists arrived en masse, overpowering the guards and swarming the place, the battle began. Balto preemptively slid through the window, across the table, and kicked down the frail and harmless manservant; while Samaras, outside, bravely took on a number of cultists, and Aldan, a servant only to justice, enjoyed close-quarters swordplay.
Hienimi, furious, let loose a gout of flame which badly scorched Gurgrock, just missed Balto and Aldan, and took down several cultists. The brawl continued, with Balto and Aldan bashing cultist skull while Gurgrock was kept from pounding Hienimi into oblivion by a second cut from the same female cultist who'd stabbed him in the back in the brawl at Nikko's mom's place.
The Departure of a Hero, in a Forgotten House Far From Home
Seizing an opportunity, Hienimi launched three magic missiles into the chest of Samaras, a mortal wound, as the latter attempted to snipe the Gray Wizard with the Splinter of the Fallen Hero. With his last energy as his life fast faded forever from his mortal shell, Samaras burst through the window, grappled a badly-bruised Magister Hienimi, and pulled them both into hearth and the roaring fire.
By the time Aldan pulled them from the fire, the Magister was nothing more than a charred husk, while Samaras (the Pelt merely scorched) mustered up just enough life to utter his final word before expiring:
"VICTORY"
Giovanni: Gurgrock the Assassin
Eric: Balto the Warrior-Scholar
Dai: Samaras the Unlucky
Tony: Rast the Amazing Spellcaster (first session only)
Ziad: Vrannian the Gnome (first session only)
Dob: Aldan the Righteous Deliverer (second session only)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Hunters Hunted
After two weeks trudging through the mid-winter rain and wind back south from Akikorva village in the empty swampy forests, Samaras, Aldan, Rast, and Vrannian made it back to the port town of Poori, from whence they entered this backwater country. The whole walk back it was as if they were being followed, with campfires in the distance, the sounds of horses and voices, just that feeling you get from being watched.
In the relative civilization of Poori they arrived at the Old Oak Inn, named for the eponymous tree in the center of the main room, looking for a contact which would take them to the reclusive Magister Hienimi the Gray Wizard, in hopes of selling him the Pelt and Relics from the Trell-Beast.
Instead they met with Balto and Gurgrock, two lovable local losers drinking together at the Old Oak. After introductions trouble quickly ensued, as one would expect, when local toughs hired by unknown parties and probably tailing the party to the Inn, burst in, looking to take the Pelt.
Death and a Mother's Love
Rast made an illusion of grand power and all hell broke loose. The PCs trashed the place, escalated the violence to massacre levels, and cleared the room, including through a point-blank fire blast making a mortal casualty of Nikko, a childhood friend of Gurgrock and probably just a kid who made some bad choices in life, ending his days as a hired bully.
During the violence, the PCs noticed that they were indeed being followed by more than local hoodlums, as two men in capes and hoods with leather and wooden crow's-beak masks poked into the Inn, noticed the characters and the Pelt, and escaped again into the night.
The second session: The characters bravely fled into the night; the only place they could think to flee was to the one-room shack of Nikko's mother, in the slum areas by the port. It had been years since she'd seen young Gurgrock, all grown up, so on she gabbed and reminisced about old and better times, and how her boy Nikko had just got a new job (and would hopefully return come morning), and that one day her boy would grow up to be someone...
They couldn't bear to tell her the news.
In the shanty, Samaras detected danger outside and Balto, taking advantage of his Opal Headband (the one possession he hadn't pawned for drink) determined there were thugs outside. Balto wisely beat the poor woman upside the head to silence her, and they rushed into the filthy alley, only to be jumped by a bunch of the crow-beak-masked figures. No match for adventurers, the PCs knocked the masked goons senseless, although Gurgrock took a knife in the back from a masked woman and a stray arrow to the shoulder fired from Samaras' cursed bow.
The Old Ways, Underground
In the process of interrogating the attackers, the PCs learned they were local adherents to the same Old Faith cult which praised the Trell-Beast (the Pelt of which was gracing Samaras' back) as a deity; they sought to retake the relics of their god and return them to the holy swamps and their brothers and sisters to the north.
In tracking one of the cultists who fled the slum rumble, the PCs were led to a port-side booze-house The Goat and a local meeting place for the cultists, many of whom blended into the community in Poori of those who spoke the language of the northern peoples and labored in the shadows.
Gurgrock, wounded but able to take on the disguise as a deaf-mute, infiltrated The Goat and found more of their number; when questioned by a suspicious cultist enjoying a drink, he merely gestured to a purloined cultist mask and they backed off.
Meanwhile, waiting outside The Goat, Samaras and Balto were approached by a well-dressed agent of Magister Hienimi the Gray Wizard, whom they almost killed by reflex but still roughed up a little, before sending him on his way with an agreement to meet Hienimi's men by the big tree at the Poori fort's walls the next day at midnight.
After another scuffle with the cultists, Balto cleverly made the same arrangement with their leader to meet by the big tree at the same time.
Sure enough, the PCs set up for an ambush, with Gurgrock playing the pigeon, Balto high in the tree's boughs, and Samaras ready to shoot from a closed market stall. As planned, Hienimi's armed men showed up, led by a sergeant and, of all people, Aldan the Righteous, who had been recruited on the pretense of serving a morally just master. Sure enough, also came several cultists.
At the Magister's House
Each side, surprised a bit to see the other, demanded the Pelt and Relics but in the end no one got anything and an ambush was averted (it helped that the cultists were badly under-armed), and the PCs led the whole train to the Magister's house on the hill past the fort.
The cultists waited outside along with Hienimi's men while an aging manservant led Aldan and Gurgrock inside to meet with the reclusive Magister in the sitting room warmed by a great fire, while Balto and Samaras waited outside the windows, expecting trouble.
It wasn't long before Hienimi's cockiness and hubris showed forth, when he demanded the Pelt, not for noble reasons but to glean its power for his own wicked sorcerous ends, and tossed a bag of coins on the table.
Wisely, the characters realized the consequences were they to accept this filthy lucre, and when the cultists arrived en masse, overpowering the guards and swarming the place, the battle began. Balto preemptively slid through the window, across the table, and kicked down the frail and harmless manservant; while Samaras, outside, bravely took on a number of cultists, and Aldan, a servant only to justice, enjoyed close-quarters swordplay.
Hienimi, furious, let loose a gout of flame which badly scorched Gurgrock, just missed Balto and Aldan, and took down several cultists. The brawl continued, with Balto and Aldan bashing cultist skull while Gurgrock was kept from pounding Hienimi into oblivion by a second cut from the same female cultist who'd stabbed him in the back in the brawl at Nikko's mom's place.
The Departure of a Hero, in a Forgotten House Far From Home
Seizing an opportunity, Hienimi launched three magic missiles into the chest of Samaras, a mortal wound, as the latter attempted to snipe the Gray Wizard with the Splinter of the Fallen Hero. With his last energy as his life fast faded forever from his mortal shell, Samaras burst through the window, grappled a badly-bruised Magister Hienimi, and pulled them both into hearth and the roaring fire.
By the time Aldan pulled them from the fire, the Magister was nothing more than a charred husk, while Samaras (the Pelt merely scorched) mustered up just enough life to utter his final word before expiring:
"VICTORY"
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Poori
Poori is the last town on the usual inland sea merchant routes as they ply their way along the Gulf and north through choppy waters and ship-flipping gusts. Its main goods are timber, furs, and meat collected from the vast swamps and forests stretching several weeks' hike further inland. The people are mostly too poor to buy much from the passing merchantmen. For these two reasons many vessels pass it by altogether, turning back south from Gar to more profitable ports.
Poori is one of the gateways to the Old Ways. It is at one time the last bastion of civilization which struggles to maintain its grip. The New Faith, based from its threshold here, tentatively reaches into the wilds, but as often as not these tendrils are swallowed up after thrashing around a while.
In this, two main elements mix in the muddy streets and low wooden houses: the city-builders, with family names from Gar to the south and long-ago migrants from warmer climes to the southwest; simple farmers, loggers, and hunters with their own language and ways, struggling to adapt to a more urban life.
Although officially outlawed by the passive rule of the Baron and by the more active efforts of the New Faith, the Old Ways are king in the inland reaches and simmer below the surface in town. Here they are expressed as a reverence for the wild, monstrous, and deadly legendary beasts and the mysteries of the swamps.
Overlooking the town, on a hill to the north, is the Baron's fort, mostly quiet and staffed by local boys, many of whom strain their muscle for work on the side. To the northwest, on another low hill, is the house of the Magister Hienimi, the Gray Wizard. Respected by the few who bother to concern themselves, he has long offered his occasional wisdom and intellect in exchange for being left alone to his studies. The docks are relatively rough and the hotbed of the strongest Old Ways sentiment, while the rest of the town quietly labors and struggles to stay warm and dry.
In the docks area stands the Old Oak Inn, the most welcoming establishment to outsiders. Inside the single room towers the eponymous giant tree, powering through the roof and with branches hanging over adjacent buildings.
Poori is one of the gateways to the Old Ways. It is at one time the last bastion of civilization which struggles to maintain its grip. The New Faith, based from its threshold here, tentatively reaches into the wilds, but as often as not these tendrils are swallowed up after thrashing around a while.
In this, two main elements mix in the muddy streets and low wooden houses: the city-builders, with family names from Gar to the south and long-ago migrants from warmer climes to the southwest; simple farmers, loggers, and hunters with their own language and ways, struggling to adapt to a more urban life.
Although officially outlawed by the passive rule of the Baron and by the more active efforts of the New Faith, the Old Ways are king in the inland reaches and simmer below the surface in town. Here they are expressed as a reverence for the wild, monstrous, and deadly legendary beasts and the mysteries of the swamps.
Overlooking the town, on a hill to the north, is the Baron's fort, mostly quiet and staffed by local boys, many of whom strain their muscle for work on the side. To the northwest, on another low hill, is the house of the Magister Hienimi, the Gray Wizard. Respected by the few who bother to concern themselves, he has long offered his occasional wisdom and intellect in exchange for being left alone to his studies. The docks are relatively rough and the hotbed of the strongest Old Ways sentiment, while the rest of the town quietly labors and struggles to stay warm and dry.
In the docks area stands the Old Oak Inn, the most welcoming establishment to outsiders. Inside the single room towers the eponymous giant tree, powering through the roof and with branches hanging over adjacent buildings.
Heroes: Balto, Gurgrock
Below are two more personalities who joined the group in the second session:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Balto The Warrior-Scholar
Wise and hardy, Balto is a strange character. Hailing from distant lands to the south and east and a onetime resident of many parts, he is an enigmatic and incomprehensible Monk who believes himself to be isolated from the earthly world, after he defied his fate and survived a climactic struggle which was destined to consume him and which he never speaks of.
Both a slave to but also free of earthly addictions of drink and debt, he serves his own ends but also has shown a human side to fight for what leftover causes he comes across in his wanderings.
His mastery of his own body and mind, unarmed brawling techniques, and troves of esoteric knowledge is aided by the powers of the Opal Headband, which allows him to project his hearing at the cost of his engagement with his immediate surroundings.
Motivations: Increase personal understanding and knowledge; also pay off a few debts
Heroic Flaws: Already fulfilled his role in Fate and now lost without a purpose
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Gurgrock The Assassin
Half adolescent human, half full-grown Orc, Gurgrock is the product of the constraints of and liberation from unfair birth. As a youth in the rough-and-tumble docks of Poori he quickly grew strong and tough, abandoning hope for a better life and settling into the role of a hired thug. Conflicted between an essentially good heart, his sometimes-violent humanoid impulses, and society's prejudices, he often ends up on the wrong side of right.
He, like childhood friends Seppo and Nikko, is well-connected with less-savory types in Poori and is wise to the ways of the streets wherever he travels. He has worked as an alchemist's assistant, fence of purloined shipments, truncheon-wielding heavy, and even a tailor and costumer, along the way learning skills often useful as he plies his unwilling trade.
Motivations: Wants to be understood and prove his true inner humanity
Heroic Flaws: Victimized by forces beyond his control, both of society and the green blood in his veins
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Balto The Warrior-Scholar
Wise and hardy, Balto is a strange character. Hailing from distant lands to the south and east and a onetime resident of many parts, he is an enigmatic and incomprehensible Monk who believes himself to be isolated from the earthly world, after he defied his fate and survived a climactic struggle which was destined to consume him and which he never speaks of.
Both a slave to but also free of earthly addictions of drink and debt, he serves his own ends but also has shown a human side to fight for what leftover causes he comes across in his wanderings.
His mastery of his own body and mind, unarmed brawling techniques, and troves of esoteric knowledge is aided by the powers of the Opal Headband, which allows him to project his hearing at the cost of his engagement with his immediate surroundings.
Motivations: Increase personal understanding and knowledge; also pay off a few debts
Heroic Flaws: Already fulfilled his role in Fate and now lost without a purpose
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Gurgrock The Assassin
Half adolescent human, half full-grown Orc, Gurgrock is the product of the constraints of and liberation from unfair birth. As a youth in the rough-and-tumble docks of Poori he quickly grew strong and tough, abandoning hope for a better life and settling into the role of a hired thug. Conflicted between an essentially good heart, his sometimes-violent humanoid impulses, and society's prejudices, he often ends up on the wrong side of right.
He, like childhood friends Seppo and Nikko, is well-connected with less-savory types in Poori and is wise to the ways of the streets wherever he travels. He has worked as an alchemist's assistant, fence of purloined shipments, truncheon-wielding heavy, and even a tailor and costumer, along the way learning skills often useful as he plies his unwilling trade.
Motivations: Wants to be understood and prove his true inner humanity
Heroic Flaws: Victimized by forces beyond his control, both of society and the green blood in his veins
Into the Swamp; or, The Trell-Beast's Knell
Our introductory session from 24 April 2011:
Dai: Aldan The Righteous Deliverer
Giovanni: Rast The Amazing Spellcaster
Dave: Samaras The Unlucky
Ziad: Vrannian Nimbus
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
After two weeks on the hunt through rain, wind, and discomfort in this late-fall march, they approached the tiny village of Akikorva, known to be close to the Beast's hunting grounds.
On the outskirts they discovered a burned and looted farmhouse with a deaf-mute farmer cowering inside, afraid dreaded goblin raiders would return. Indeed, they did, and the PCs defended against a brief siege, firing back from the windows and door and routing the vile humanoids.
Moving into the nearby village, they learned through mystic signs and conversations that some of the villagers appeared to stay fast to their worship of the very semi-mythical Trell-Beast the PCs were hunting, despite the second-best efforts of the Priest of the New Faith in converting the locals from their false beliefs.
They learned a fire festival to mark the start of winter was to be held, during which time the Trell-Beast was to be conjured in an outpouring of faith and tradition. Indeed, after the PCs prepared the unwitting village with traps, sentries, and even thoughts of improvising a giant ballista, they spiked the cauldron of ceremonial stew with intoxicating herbs, which only served to further whip the celebrating and half-nude pagan villagers into a frenzy.
Then the goblins arrived -- were they there to join in the worship or seek revenge for their fallen brothers?
Meanwhile, in the ensuing house-to-house melee, accentuated by pyrotechnics conjured from the festival bonfire, the piercing howls of the summoned Trell-Beast began to fill the night air.
And then the giant Trell-Beast, like a dire wolf with the beak of a hawk, tore into the fray, immediately seeking out the unfortunate Priest and making a sacrifice of him as a brief and fleeting victory for the Old Ways.
The Trell-Beast ended up having a splintered staff crammed into its jaw, which mercifully prevented it from inflicting more misery on the players, and eventually fell to an onslaught of fire, wood, and iron.
Upon its expiring, the corpse of the Beast, just like that, shriveled before the PCs' eyes, revealing the body of the village wise-woman and leader of the Beast cult, draped in a thick hide of fur and skin; the object which they sought to mine for its power.
Despite this ominous sign, the PCs quickly collected their hide and snuck out of the village before the festival died down and the worshippers sobered from their intoxication. Aldan briefly considering taking up the missionary role in place of the deceased Priest, but ended up joining his fellows as they slinked back toward Poori; this band of misfits was sure to bring with it better chances for greater heroism and service.
In the end -- they were heroes, perhaps, for ridding this nowhere land of a dangerous Beast; though at the cost of one more of the Old Ways' fading traditions. Certainly this act would not come without its due consequences.
Heroes: Aldan, Rast, Samaras, Vrannian
Below are the first of the personalities at the core of the Dark Journey. Over time, some will come, some will go; so rotates the wheel of fate.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Aldan The Righteous Deliverer
Charismatic and strong if intellectually inflexible, the young Paladin of the New Faith, most recently affiliated with the Temple of the Searing Light in Gar. Aldan represents the vanguard of the Faith; eager to enforce morally absolutist tenets with strong proclamations, cold steel, and the light of his gleaming Hero's Harness.
The New Faith tests its proudest adherents harshly -- bound by a litany of restrictions and requirements, Aldan's is a life of endlessly atoning for temptation and the whims of fate; he is sworn to 1) always undertake quests for the Faith, no matter how hopeless or impossible; 2) never touch meat or flesh; 3) remain ever clean and spotless; and 4) never come in contact with a woman. It is the last of these made most troublesome by his Curse of Venus, which draws the eyes of the most beautiful maidens and matrons and into an (unwilling and spiritually draining) embrace.
Aldan's Back Talker bastard sword grants him the power to smite those who have drawn his blood, but contains a sinister intelligence which increasingly compels him to violence the longer it stays unsheathed.
Motivations: Rescue humanity from evil through example, courage, and righteous combat
Heroic Flaws: Absolute moralistic righteousness; held to impossible standards
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Rast The Amazing Spellcaster
Rast is typically the most intelligent, most literate, and best-dressed in the room, and he wants you to know it. A dropout of The Academy in more civilized lands, he is both a student and rare active practitioner of magic, specializing in illusion and pyromancy. He seeks to make his mark on the world through plundering the ancient dweomers of legendary beasts and artifacts, while straying as little as possible from the easy life. His red cloak and wide-brimmed hat complement his multiple changes of fine clothes, even when talented tailors in these parts are few and far-between.
Motivations: Prove to his fellow magicians and mundanes his competence, heroism, and manliness
Heroic Flaws: Hubris; lacking compassion
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Samaras The Unlucky
Agile, lithe, and wise to the world, Samaras is a Ranger -- a hunter and man of the wilds. He is also a fatalist killjoy who seeks nothing more than to heroically throw his only life away in the service of others, knowing full well that he is doomed to die in vain, like water splashing off a stone. His fate is tied to the Splinter of the Fallen Hero, a relic from a dead and unmourned warrior -- a longbow which is fated to lead to its wielder's eventual demise.
Motivations: Die a forgotten hero
Heroic Flaws: Doomed and he knows it; martyr complex
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Vrannian Nimbus
Tiny, lithe, hyperactive, chatty, and wide-eyed, Vrannian is a Gnome, one of the last of his strange and ancient kind. He seeks little in the way of changing the world, but will always share his talents and treasures with those who need them more. After all, he can always find another gold coin or shiny jewel to add to his rucksack of finds. He is armed with the enchanted crossbow The Dart and a satchel of black powder bombs, along with a collection of yet-to-be-revealed tools and toys.
Motivations: Endlessly curious and generous with his abilities, kindness, and accumulated treasure
Heroic Flaw: Innocence
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Aldan The Righteous Deliverer
Charismatic and strong if intellectually inflexible, the young Paladin of the New Faith, most recently affiliated with the Temple of the Searing Light in Gar. Aldan represents the vanguard of the Faith; eager to enforce morally absolutist tenets with strong proclamations, cold steel, and the light of his gleaming Hero's Harness.
The New Faith tests its proudest adherents harshly -- bound by a litany of restrictions and requirements, Aldan's is a life of endlessly atoning for temptation and the whims of fate; he is sworn to 1) always undertake quests for the Faith, no matter how hopeless or impossible; 2) never touch meat or flesh; 3) remain ever clean and spotless; and 4) never come in contact with a woman. It is the last of these made most troublesome by his Curse of Venus, which draws the eyes of the most beautiful maidens and matrons and into an (unwilling and spiritually draining) embrace.
Aldan's Back Talker bastard sword grants him the power to smite those who have drawn his blood, but contains a sinister intelligence which increasingly compels him to violence the longer it stays unsheathed.
Motivations: Rescue humanity from evil through example, courage, and righteous combat
Heroic Flaws: Absolute moralistic righteousness; held to impossible standards
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Rast The Amazing Spellcaster
Rast is typically the most intelligent, most literate, and best-dressed in the room, and he wants you to know it. A dropout of The Academy in more civilized lands, he is both a student and rare active practitioner of magic, specializing in illusion and pyromancy. He seeks to make his mark on the world through plundering the ancient dweomers of legendary beasts and artifacts, while straying as little as possible from the easy life. His red cloak and wide-brimmed hat complement his multiple changes of fine clothes, even when talented tailors in these parts are few and far-between.
Motivations: Prove to his fellow magicians and mundanes his competence, heroism, and manliness
Heroic Flaws: Hubris; lacking compassion
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Samaras The Unlucky
Agile, lithe, and wise to the world, Samaras is a Ranger -- a hunter and man of the wilds. He is also a fatalist killjoy who seeks nothing more than to heroically throw his only life away in the service of others, knowing full well that he is doomed to die in vain, like water splashing off a stone. His fate is tied to the Splinter of the Fallen Hero, a relic from a dead and unmourned warrior -- a longbow which is fated to lead to its wielder's eventual demise.
Motivations: Die a forgotten hero
Heroic Flaws: Doomed and he knows it; martyr complex
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Vrannian Nimbus
Tiny, lithe, hyperactive, chatty, and wide-eyed, Vrannian is a Gnome, one of the last of his strange and ancient kind. He seeks little in the way of changing the world, but will always share his talents and treasures with those who need them more. After all, he can always find another gold coin or shiny jewel to add to his rucksack of finds. He is armed with the enchanted crossbow The Dart and a satchel of black powder bombs, along with a collection of yet-to-be-revealed tools and toys.
Motivations: Endlessly curious and generous with his abilities, kindness, and accumulated treasure
Heroic Flaw: Innocence
The Curtain Lifts, Moistened by the Mist
Welcome, Friends.
The sprout is now growing into a fine sapling. Our Labyrinth Lords game, started on Gio.'s first sessions and a whim with my attempt to wrangle a handful of mostly-strangers at a Tokyo community room rented out for wargamers, has become a campaign now worthy of the term.
Writing after our half-dozenth successful session, below are some thoughts as I attempt to grasp the essence of what we together are trying to create:
Our Approach
Old School: Labyrinth Lords is a recreation of the basic D&D and 1st Ed. AD&D rules. The system itself is older than half the players and simple enough for the GM to still have mostly-memorized from a childhood of collecting and reading the Classics of the genre.
Loose and Free: Dice are something to keep our fingers busy. Gio.'s painted miniatures are second-to-none, but mere props. Character sheets are mostly a fig leaf we use to cover our naked egos as we leave behind our adult lives to speak in funny voices across a table; also to help remember who has the cursed shortsword. The rules were designed for a game we are not playing. You systems-engineers speak up, but this flaw is in its own way liberating -- if you step outside wearing an out-of-style coat three sizes too small you have only your imagination and wits to rely on when greeting the world head-on.
A Collective Story: I take pride in assembling and executing a good session, but it is really the players who own the game. We play with who can make it, characters (made by me but shaped by you) sometimes swapped between players as we settle into our favorite roles. Every session you wrest control and take us all for a ride to test my preparations and ad-lib skills. Sure, the outcome can be messy, but it's our collective mess -- if any of us wanted to write a book or script by ourselves we wouldn't ride halfway across the biggest city in the world to do it.
Themes
A Banal World: We are creating a world, not just an underground dungeon or tableau for high fantasy gear-fetishism. This is a world full of normal people living normal lives interrupted by adventurers, the wrongs they right, and the chaos they leave in their wake. Wounds hurt and are not easily healed, and the dead cannot be raised, even by those who are not charlatans. Magic, when not the theoretical plaything of the literate few, is both rare and terrifying. Thieves are too busy scraping by to organize into guilds of merry miscreants. Magical artifacts too often bring grief upon their wielders (and envy upon their beholders) as much as they bring power.
Tragic Heroes: No one is without flaws. Like in real life, our foibles don't buy us "bonuses" elsewhere; they just make life harder but at the same time infinitely more rich. Heroism is much more heroic in contrast with smothering normalcy and human frailty.
The Core Remains: Despite this, there are still the tropes of the genre -- a party of misfit adventurers bound together for unknown reasons; lists of quests to uncover ancient power; cozy inns filled with big personalities and story hooks at every table; backwoods filled with filthy evil humanoids reflecting the dark side of our own psyches; often-surprisingly lethal battles in the swamps and streets, with or without consequence.
Motifs: Fate, mostly inescapable. The Old Ways, disappearing into memory and legend, but not without a fight. Provinciality, ignorance, and backwardness. Human weakness; emotional, spiritual, and physical. Wrenching ethical decisions amidst moral gray areas. Discomfort from cold, wind, and rain.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Let us get started, here, this record of our adventures!
-RK
24 September 2011
The sprout is now growing into a fine sapling. Our Labyrinth Lords game, started on Gio.'s first sessions and a whim with my attempt to wrangle a handful of mostly-strangers at a Tokyo community room rented out for wargamers, has become a campaign now worthy of the term.
Writing after our half-dozenth successful session, below are some thoughts as I attempt to grasp the essence of what we together are trying to create:
Our Approach
Old School: Labyrinth Lords is a recreation of the basic D&D and 1st Ed. AD&D rules. The system itself is older than half the players and simple enough for the GM to still have mostly-memorized from a childhood of collecting and reading the Classics of the genre.
Loose and Free: Dice are something to keep our fingers busy. Gio.'s painted miniatures are second-to-none, but mere props. Character sheets are mostly a fig leaf we use to cover our naked egos as we leave behind our adult lives to speak in funny voices across a table; also to help remember who has the cursed shortsword. The rules were designed for a game we are not playing. You systems-engineers speak up, but this flaw is in its own way liberating -- if you step outside wearing an out-of-style coat three sizes too small you have only your imagination and wits to rely on when greeting the world head-on.
A Collective Story: I take pride in assembling and executing a good session, but it is really the players who own the game. We play with who can make it, characters (made by me but shaped by you) sometimes swapped between players as we settle into our favorite roles. Every session you wrest control and take us all for a ride to test my preparations and ad-lib skills. Sure, the outcome can be messy, but it's our collective mess -- if any of us wanted to write a book or script by ourselves we wouldn't ride halfway across the biggest city in the world to do it.
Themes
A Banal World: We are creating a world, not just an underground dungeon or tableau for high fantasy gear-fetishism. This is a world full of normal people living normal lives interrupted by adventurers, the wrongs they right, and the chaos they leave in their wake. Wounds hurt and are not easily healed, and the dead cannot be raised, even by those who are not charlatans. Magic, when not the theoretical plaything of the literate few, is both rare and terrifying. Thieves are too busy scraping by to organize into guilds of merry miscreants. Magical artifacts too often bring grief upon their wielders (and envy upon their beholders) as much as they bring power.
Tragic Heroes: No one is without flaws. Like in real life, our foibles don't buy us "bonuses" elsewhere; they just make life harder but at the same time infinitely more rich. Heroism is much more heroic in contrast with smothering normalcy and human frailty.
The Core Remains: Despite this, there are still the tropes of the genre -- a party of misfit adventurers bound together for unknown reasons; lists of quests to uncover ancient power; cozy inns filled with big personalities and story hooks at every table; backwoods filled with filthy evil humanoids reflecting the dark side of our own psyches; often-surprisingly lethal battles in the swamps and streets, with or without consequence.
Motifs: Fate, mostly inescapable. The Old Ways, disappearing into memory and legend, but not without a fight. Provinciality, ignorance, and backwardness. Human weakness; emotional, spiritual, and physical. Wrenching ethical decisions amidst moral gray areas. Discomfort from cold, wind, and rain.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Let us get started, here, this record of our adventures!
-RK
24 September 2011
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