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.
Showing posts with label Seppo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seppo. Show all posts
Monday, September 26, 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.
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
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