Our tenth session, in the driving early spring rains in Gar.
Tony: Rast The Amazing Spellcaster
Dave: Aldan The Righteous Deliverer
Giovanni: Gurgrock The Assassin
Gareth: Foliage The Warped (arrived later)
The day had been a long one. Just back from their journey back from the Outer Hold, triumphant with the Bronze Armband around the bicep of the restored Foliage, and the heroes had nary a night's sleep. This session began right where the last one ended:
From Sin, A Clue
Amidst the simmering human chaos in The Beetle, where the hallucinogenic effects of the Outer Hold rye bread and beer, potent and shameless, were gradually being replaced by long-term madness and symptoms of withdrawal, Aldan pounded his gauntlets on the table, in front of him the tiny chest with a lock of Tulia The Librarienne's red hair and a note scratched onto a shred of her coat ("we have the girl, now bring us the Armband"), demanding they act to find the kidnapper of his romantic charge (if one never to be consummated by even a kiss). Foliage rested, recovering from his inexplicable resurrection; Rast, always the anatomist and student of strange happenings, probed the open-but-miraculously-healed Spear wound in the Druid's chest; and Gurgrock mused how he got into this situation.
The comedy of the narcotics occasionally surging from the background into the faces of the herous, a drunk and fat merchant, on his first visit to The Beetle, a young starlet on his arm, rudely shoved past Aldan, simmering. The Paladin, angry, challenged the merchant, who pointed out the life-giving recently-hard-won Bronze Armband on Foliage's arm, laughing at how foolish it would be to display such an artifact in public. Certainly there were many parties who would covet it. No less than other people of means, or perhaps worse, the Skull.
Perhaps it was his rudeness, perhaps his implications through his interest in the Armband that he knew of the whereabouts of Tulia, the torment began. On their own turf and four against one (as the starlet was a totteringly tipsy as he), the heroes interrogated. Gurgrock as always intimidating, Rast conjured a heated spoon which he used to ensure only the Magician would be asking the questions. They learned from the merchant, clearly a customer of sinful exchanges, that there was talk of a tall redhead in the vile whorehouse the Oyster Shack, deep in the Canal Town slums; indeed, he had seen her.
Infuriated, and satisfied only when the fat merchant lost his continence, they shoved him on his way, limping and defeated, into the night. Foliage, in hawk-beast form, trailed overhead.
A Plead From The Rain
As Aldan was about to set out from The Beetle (the door off its hinges from some fit of madness) into the driving spring rain to seek out the girl, he nearly crashed right into the most petite lady, dressed impeccably in a coat despite the rain, giant spectacles on her nose, staring up from the entryway, stature barely reaching the towering Paladin's sternum.
In the doorway was tiny Beanie, another Librarienne, worried sick about her colleague Tulia. They brought her to the table, an invisible field of order around her repelling the late-night chaos, where she animatedly recounted that Tulia had not been seen for three days, missing from her desk at the Tome-Hall of the Towering Spires, last with a few dalliances with a plump dapper lad whose description, sketched by Markk The Seeker (having become a regular after his earlier mission with Gurgrock) on the inn's table, resembling none other than friendly Otto The Theoretician, one of Rast's indoors-inclined fellow students of the Arcane and deep-pocketed regular at the Red Veil Club in town.
Thaumaturgic Incantations
Rast entered the main room of the Red Veil, a party for an academic fraternity of some sort plying deep into the night, was passed a bottle of brandy at random, and found dear Otto resting on the upstairs balcony, a giant tome of Remote Thaumaturgy and Interfaces With the Lunar Cycle open on a table, his diagrams to one side. The Spellcaster and his patron chatted about scribe-rates, research, potential greedy rivals looking to steal the Armband, the Skull and his possible reasons for such interest; Rast eventually concluded aloud that his friend Otto was a friend of Tulia, indeed, as most learned men were, but did not seem to be able to have taken her, despite being the last to see her. He had heard of the Oyster Shack, to be sure, but only as a daredevil gourmand trying the latest varieties. Instead, with the very help of Otto and his tome, the two concocted an impromptu thaumaturgic incantation, with the Arcane Connection of Tulia's lock and coat-shred, which Rast read aloud (after correcting for Otto's imperfect grasp of middle-late Old Tongue), and determined that the girl was in fact still alive, in the direction of the filthy slums of Canal Town. The story did not entirely add up, but they had a destination.
Ritual Cleansing, Others' Transgressions
Meanwhile, Aldan, in need of a deep atonement from the past two weeks' transgressions, stopped by the Temple of the Searing Light for absolution. After dismissing demands from Valcan the Head Priest how he had returned from the Outer Hold, where he had been ordered to suppress a rebellion by himself, by lying and claiming success, he was blessed with the addition of another religious stricture, that he must offer his enemies one chance to repent and join the New Faith, before drawing his Back Talker and unleashing righteous damage. With this, the vein on Aldan's temple popped and throbbed, ever so slightly more.
With this, Aldan set out to receive ritual cleaning. As he was washed in the wooden tub by the alcolyte, the lad mentioned that he had "heard from a fellow disciple who knew someone" who saw that a certain platinum-haired Lars, a young disciple of the infamous Chamber of the Burning Sun sect, known for its even more strident ways and obsession with self-destructive missions and impeccable purity, had been just nights prior seen in the Canal Town, in the vicinity of the Oyster Shack and other places. The poor disciple, red-faced from even recounting the tale of a friend of a fellow friend, could hardly fathom why a Follower would visit such a vile place without burning it to the ground in cleansing flame.
With Glamour-Disguise, Into the Shack of Ill Repute
The next morning, early, barely rested but for Gurgrock passed out in a rain-gutter behind a brewery, the three heroes set out for the Oyster Shack. Right on two short boat landing into one of the canals, some outdoor tables and a huge clam cauldron, still steaming from the night before. A single building, one floor with tiny windows, loomed. Gurgrock worked the door and they were in. Snoring in one room and an interior door kicked in, they set upon an old tanned clamdigger, asleep with two rubenesque women. But thanks to a bodily illusion by Rast, when the clamdigger awoke there were three more women, one tall and broad (Aldan, also unaware of the enchantment), one green-tinted and ugly (Gurgrock), and one matronly and urbane (Rast).
Through rough treatment of a lusty but harmless old man (which would have made Balto proud), the learned that Tulia had in fact been through here, as a woman working against her will, and had duly been picked up by "the slavers" (spoken in whispered tones), who passed through once a week on a canal boat, stopping at the Oyster Shack to pick up the latest meat for insatiable but unknown customers.
With the sound of the inevitable beatings against the outnumbered frail clamdigger, the dragon lady madam of the house emerged, was charmed by Gurgrock's mincing, and offered him, still under the glamour of Rast's spell, work with a wink. He would start tonight, with five long nights of unspeakable labors before their mission would begin.
The Chamber Demands Absolution
But first, with hours to spare before the evening, the heroes paid a visit to the Chamber of the Burning Sun, on the other edge of Canal Town, facing down the looming filth and gloom with the lidless eye of holy light. In the streets in front, fifteen young alcolytes were whipped by two priests, all parties howling in the muck, in a ritual of raw endurance.
Avoiding this, the heroes were the audience of Zar, the head Priest and madder than any of Aldan's sect, and eventually learned that Lars had set off two weeks prior, to rid Gar of the vile Rat Cult, operating in the Tanners and Butchers' District in the foulest corners of Canal Town. Surely, Zar cackled, he would singlehandedly clean out the Cult and return triumphant. Perhaps Aldan thought a while about the mission in the Outer Hold, which he was still entrusted to complete, now abandoned.
The Rat Cult Strips Clean the Bones of the Righteous Fallen
The heroes, Foliage having returned from his mission (with little to report, alas) marched through the rain-washed sludge to the Tanners and Butchers' District, and had no trouble finding the lair of the Rat Cult. In a corner so wretched even the flesh-handlers avoided it, where the rats quickly seemed to multiply in number and brazen behavior, they stumbled upon an awful old lady, crazy and picking at bones. Through a half-conversation with her and a druidic commune with the rats themselves, they marched right into the abandoned abbatoir.
There confronting them was a pile of carcasses and bones, beast and human, picked clean but under piles of rats and their refuse, underneath poking out an untarnished Holy Symbol of the Chamber of the Burning Sun, on top of a pile of bones and stained white silk, not fresh, and strands of platinum blond hair. Clearly, Lars the Follower had fallen here, ineffectual and then nothing more than meat for a ravenous horde, much longer ago than the mere days as noted by Aldan's guilty-sounding washing-boy at the Temple.
At that point the Rat Cult King, a cult of one, appeared, attired in unspeakable raiments crafted from the bodies of his minions. He cackled crazily, but his feeble powers were not enough to drive the rats against Foliage and his animal mastery, and he was cut down in a single swing by Back Talker.
Gurgrock, Converted
The heroes, with the relics of Lars in hand, returned to the Chamber of the Burning Sun. The fallen Follower honored and Gurgrock briefly initiated into the first, painful, circle of the Chamber's oblique teachings, the heroes scratched their heads about the two incongruous sightings at the Oyster Shack.
Assault on the Canal's Edge
The rest of the week passed and the day arrived when the slavers and their canal boat were to stop silently in the night at the Oyster Shack to pick up the latest shipment of stolen women. They would certainly lead the heroes to poor Tulia, no doubt in the shackles of misery.
The hour came. Rast recreated the illusion of femininity, if imperfect considering his subjects. The heroes were marched, under guard of local thugs, with three other girls a passageway under the floorboards, just over the canal surface, under the planks to a hidden platform on the dock. As the slave boat pulled up to the dock and they were about to emerge from the passageway, the heroes let loose a fury of violence, weapons barely hidden under their illusory garments, against the boat-borne slavers and the thugs on the docks.
Rast, magic Crystal in hand to empower his magic at the cost of his life-force, entrapped a dock full of thugs; Gurgrock, last in line, rushed the rearmost thug and forced his way out of the passageway; Foliage, in hawk form, dropped onto the slave boat; Aldan charged forward, Back Talker thirsty for the blood of the wicked, especially after throbbing at his waist during a dry spell of over a week without tasting righteous combat.
Such Violence Strains a Paladin's Faith
After several frenzied and bloody seconds of overcoming the captors and rescuing innocents having fallen into the canal, it was Aldan who was the last hero still battling, on the edge of the canal as he roped in the slavers' boat, a crossbow bolt in his back and two awful bleeding gashes from a slaver's sword. He swung madly and without mercy, at both foes still daring to face him and those who had already surrendered. Was it Back Talker finally taking the upper hand in the battle for Aldan's will? Or was it the Paladin had finally been overcome by his own frustrations and demands for revenge, that he abandoned, if temporarily, his Faith's requirements of forbearance and fairness?
The answer, and with it the fate of a holy hero, would not yet be known.... the heroes had won the slave barge and prepared to set upon the lair of the slavers, past the fork in the canal by the lamp post in the lone warehouse there, in earnest.
Showing posts with label Gurgrock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gurgrock. Show all posts
Monday, December 5, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
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.
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
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
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