Weekly reports clearly went by the wayside. So by various group and individual communications and contributions, this post was group-sourced to produce a massive, multi-session update that takes you through to the end of the campaign.
Finishing the Caves of Chaos At the Caves of Chaos, the group and their new allies -- the goblinoids and the forces of FT. VIGILANCE (= KEEP ON THE BORDERLANDS) mustered for invasion. A pact drake shows up to oversee the formal ratification of the alliance. Holly almost gives it the piece of the ROD she has, but she can’t find it. Entrances are divvied up among the various groups for a simultaneous assault. The party chose the temple complex to invade and defeated the aforementioned undead horde and entered the largest shrine area. After resting from the previously reported shrine encounter, they proceeded to mop up resistance in the Cult of Apophis complex. The final section is reported below. Grey the Elf Assassin, Hazel the Half-Elf Druid, Holly the Cleric, Severian the Figher, and Thora the Dark Elf Bard led their group into the prision area of the complex. There they found Evryale the Medusa. Grey and Thora were immediately taken with Evryale's stunning beauty. A bargaining match ensued between the three, with Evryale attempting to convince them of her innocence and get release, and the two crushing PCs attempting to get her to put on the helmet of alignment change (they had figured out what it was from relief sculptures on the helmet). The two decide to get Evryale to put on the helmet of alignment change before they let her out, but they fail at convincing her to do so. Thora starts to cast charm and Evryale reacts to the spell casting by turning her to stone. Grey finally convinces her to put on the helmet, and Evryale finally does so when it is clear she won't escape otherwise. Evryale is immediately struck by grief that she petrified Thora. No longer a threat, she is released. Going to what the party had dubbed The Sex Room, Evryale is reunited with her powerful DECK OF MANY THINGS. She offers to change the character's fates, and three players take her up on the offer. They draw as follows. Severian: Sword, Knight, and Rogue. Hazel: Gem, Vizier, and Wizard Grey: Skull, Evryale, and Void At the Sign of the Green Tusk With Grey in coma and Thora in stone, the party prepares for expedition into the LOST PROVINCE. In the tavern, they meet a new NPC Knight: Douglen, who is from Severian's past. Because of an act in that past that saved the rest of the family of a man that Severian executed, Douglas swears service to Sevrian. (Note: this is actually my interpretation of a draw from Evryale's Deck of Many Things, which caused all sorts of shenanigans in the game. Grey's player was miffed that she was the only PC that drew nothing but negative cards. Hey, she survived!) Meena is an new PC: an Eastern monk wanting to accompany the party into the Lost Province to find brother who proceeded her. (This is a new PC for Thora's player.) Souless Grey is left with Fr. Gammo and Now Good Evryale and Thora statue and Ahenobarbus. Into the Lost Province Party stops in a wetland and Hazel catches a disease. As the party makes their way through the Lost Province, they face a choice between the road to the THUNDER MOUNTAINS and the more northerly road. The party chose to head into the mountains, which made for a couple of months of traveling time. (In travel, I generally skip a month of game time in between game sessions for big travel like this.) In forest before the foothills, they wander into a wereboar's territory and end up encountering a man who had earlier earned them off the area. The man is actually the wereboar and they have found his lair. Meena becomes unacccountably bloodthristy and leads a raid into the lair. The party goes along. Afterwards she is embarassed, and the following session sees her leave money behind in the damaged lair of the wounded and cornered were boar. She apologizes and the party leaves. Back the right way, Hazel is recovered and questions the party's decisions during her absence. There are a couple of sessions dominated by travel and wildness encounters. A gryphon attack kills Sugar, Thora's mountain pony, who was still with the party. The gryphon is driven off, and some members of the party roast and eat what the gryphon left behind. There was a giant scorpion attack in the foothills of the Lost Province. The party prevailed (I believe they lost a mercenary.) Further into the hill country, they enter deeper woods, where they encounter a ghost of a witch in her grove. During the fight, Meena is possessed by ghost and never fully regains consciousness after the experience. (The player leaves the group.) During the witch fight, Severian was not there because he had plugged his ears against a thunderstorm and so did not hear the unearthly siren's call of the witch's ghost. However, he does have uneasy dreams about witches and a young woman whom he thinks is perhaps his lost daughter. They journey on into the THUNDER MOUNTAINS. Remember that the party has suffered some casualties, in particular PC casualties: the bard Thora is still turned to stone and the assassin Grey was left by the Deck of Many Things with a sundered soul and a comatose body. The monk Meena is comatose due to the encounter in the haunted grove and her possession by the maddened spirit of a witch, and the party is caring for as best as they can -- in particular the cleric Holly, the half-orc cleric of Circe Glaukion (NPC), and the trollkin Baliera. Solstice Celebration in the Thunder Mountains On the winter solstice, which is also the first day of the new year, at the top of a mountain pass, they encounter Inn Convenience, which returns Grey and Ahenobarbus to the party. The party also is briefly reunited with Evryale, who is on Grey's arm.) Grey has meanwhile been entrusted with another piece of the ROD OF NINE PARTS by the proprietor, which she gives to Holly in private. Holly then has another vision, this time teaching her more about the ROD and its abilities. Publican Fitzlawrence tells the group that there is a city of vampires and gives them garlic which they request in response to this unsettling news. The party spends another happy night in the Inn after months outdoors, just in time for the holiday. On the morrow, the party leaves the Inn to explore the Thunder Mountains. From there, they can see two locations in the distance (one to the West one to the NW) that are bathed in lightening strikes. They chose to go NW. They find a stopping point on the way in a nice, large cave that has been inhabited many times. The cave still has old anti-witch charms in the entrance curtain. A foraging party, led by Severian, leaves the majority of the party in the cave. In the meantime, a juvenile wyvern tries to return to its nest in the cave and fights the party. It is slain and barbequed. The foragers are caught in an avalanche. Severian is severly injured and then comes down with debilitating pneumonia for the rest of the campaign. (The player missed most sessions from this point out, due to unfortunate developments they had to deal with in real life.) Tavli Zimbaba's Hut of the Dancing Lightning About a week's travel further, following the lightning strikes to the NW, the party climbs higher into the mountains. They find a small plateau on which rests a neat little cottage, topped by a tower with a lightning rod that attracts strikes that get near the house. Strikes to the plateau and the rod are unnaturally frequent. The party ascend to the level top by means of a staircase cut into the natural wall that separates the winding path from the top. On either side is the frozen carcass of large white dragon. (Hey, I like using my minis some times!) Heaped in a semi-circle around the back and sides of the cottage is the skeleton of a blue dragon. Lots of telegraphing here, party -- heads up!) The party splits (yay!) into those who want to go the cottage, and those who are cautious. The latter camp and wait at the edge of the plateau. As the part ascends to the cottage porch, Holly looks up at the lightning rod and sees that it is clearly topped by another piece of the ROD. The front porch has a pull cord for a bell and an elaborate glass fixture that seems to lead back into the house. In the bell of the glass at the bottom is some kind of a being of blue flame (I'm pretty sure that's how I described it!) that tries to warn them away, tell them that the occupant of the house, one Zimbaba, is capricious, dangerous, and possessed of powerful magic. If they don't want to be stuck here like he is -- or worse -- the should leave! The venturesome party members, now led by a motivated Holly, proceeds anyway. The cottager answers the door and greets them (I think I was pulling off a pretty decent voice for her, as they seemed to pick up on my channelling this character and perhaps her sister.) I present the players with this illustration for reference. She introduces herself as "Old Mother Talvi" and invites them in for tea and freshly baked biscuits/cookies. Though radiating an aura of danger, Mother Talvi seems taken by the female druid and the female cleric who was once servant of a sybil. Highly observant, she tries to get Holly to give her the pieces of the ROD that she has collected. Holly counters with a proposal to obtain the piece Mother Talvi has. Talvi agrees to give her the piece if they successfully complete unnamed three tasks for her. The implication that they and the ROD pieces will remain with her if they do not succeed hangs ominously in the air... Tower of the Stargazer The first task the party is given is to go back to the W location bathed in lightening that they by-passed. For collectors of Old School gaming materials, this is James Raggi's Tower of the Stargazer. (Good, strange stuff, but man those tiny maps are terrible to GM by.) They are to report back on what has happened to her rival magic-user, who has gone strangely silent for some time, and take for her the Star Crystal that he possesses and any supporting material for it that they can find. Exploring the Tower of the Stargazer was nice and eventful: The party leaves comatose Meena and bed-ridden Severian under guard by a large fireplace in the tower's kitchen. Role-playing Uravulon Calcidius was fun for me and got good reactions from the players. As they searched the tower, Hazel was burned by the acid star fish, Grey stole some test tubes of frozen outer-space blood that broke when she fell asleep drunk and later frustrated her in an attack, and Hazel was hit by a blinding light in the basement. Over all, the party did well and came out with the requisite items to return to Mother Talvi, who was delighted to hear of Uravulon's predicament and after she takes possession of the Star Crystal, she quickly assigns her next task before she gleefully heads out to unleash torments on Urvulon and take possession of the rest of his domain. Quick introductions are made, she pats one of the ox on the head and gives it an apple before she magicks herself away. The Fortress of the Unknown, Interrupted The second task is for the party to go to the lost fastness of Quasqueton and take possession of the Cauldron of Heka. (Source material: B1- In Search of the Unknown). The party are led on their journey to Quasqueton by a pair of traveling tinkers, that I turned into Trollkin. (Lamdomon and his daughter Zipporah. There were a great sources of rumors of varying accuracy.) We've done plenty of travel stuff in this campaign, so I skip over most of it with a little narration and we are now from the south of the province to the north -- across the plains to the Moorfowl mountains. When they are approaching the stronghold, the tinkers pull the party away from the gate that leads to the pass that the fortress guards and call the caravan to halt, rather than pass through the gate. Holly, on the cart that is hauling the sick Severian, suddenly seems to be pulled by an ox possessed. It goes shooting directly for the gate, not heeding Holly's attempts at Whoa! Douglen, along with two of the men-at-arms, sees what is happening and rushes to the cart, trying to assist. They are all pulled in with a magical shimmer and THWOP! The gateway had itself been ensorcelled! This session took Holly's player and Severian's player on their own adventure without the other two players. They are accompanied by the Knight Douglen, Farlocks, and Schwartulf (the later two generated long ago when the party was hiring the Green Tusk using Meat Shields!). The cart reemerges from the magical portal in another stone gateway, faraway. Behind them is a palace, and before them, wilderness. A member of Zimbaba's witchy network (I think I described her as a human witch and no particular demi-human race, though I guess she might have been a Trollkin. Players feel free to jog my memory here) comes out of the brush with a vial for Severian to drink and a message from the winter witch: the third quest is to recover the heart of the silver princess (yes, source material is B3 Palace of the Silver Princess) from her palace and bring it back for Zimbaba. She also warns them of mutant trolls which have overrun the palace since the fall of the province. Severian is immediately restored to great health and the two of them enter through the garden, while Douglen guards the ox and cart. The party has great luck navigating the palace thanks to their back entry, and they quickly find the secret door to a passageway which leads to the chamber that has the heart (I throw in some kind of little puzzle for them to figure things out with symbols, and drew out the suspense over whether this was a preserved human heart or not.) They get the jewel, but taking it awakens spirits of the dead. The chamber with the heart is haunted by two unquiet spirits. Holly turns one and they then defeat the other, but not before Holly is made to roll insanity dice when the character fails its save against one of the shade's attacks. Long-term, she picks up a tic, but the short term is to be stricken with psychogenic amnesia. On the way out, they run into more trouble: the Ubu (an obscure, controversial monster of B3 that I am interpreting as some kind mutant of troll kind). They fight one and flee the arrival of others on their way back out. Running to the cart, they race back to the gateway hoping the magic will work again. As the party passes through the magic portal, Holly sees her spirit companion, Owl (usually not visible to the party, though occasionally as a mundane owl) remain behind as a sign that there is some important reason that she must return. That is all that she remembers of the adventure as the amnesia takes hold. Of course, that is because there is another piece of the ROD there. The party back at Quasqueton had camped and then started poking around a stone table that appears to offer a key to the magic of the portal. But before they had made any real progress, with a flash the cart and occupants come shooting out of the gateway they had earlier disappeared into. Holly grips the heart but can tell them little (it was fun seeing the player role-play the amnesia and the players respond to it. As that was Severian's player's last session, I have Severian sink back into his weak, uncommunicative state as the magic potion wears off. Douglen filld them in (I assumed he'd picked some things up from Severian before reentry so that I can control the flow if information.) All Things Must End Remember when Severian drew from the Deck of Many Things? One card hadn't come to pass yet: betrayal. I decided that the most natural person to betray Severian was Ahenobarbus, when word got back to him from one or more hirelings about the discussion over whether to euthanize him after the near-death experience with the gelatinous cube. If Severian had still been a PC, I'd have worked this in at some interesting and dramatic point for the player to be surprised and to have a chance to overcome, but since Severian was now an NPC, I decided that he would have naturally been looking for some opportunity to murder him during his illness, and he just hadn't been lucky yet. When the party was camping in front of the stronghold Quasqueton the night after Holly and Severian's return, Ahenobarbus struck. He found an opportunity in the night when he was on guard duty and no one else was able to observe and he slit Severian's throat. The three remaining PCs, Holly, Hazel, and Grey went detective and pretty quickly figured it out the next day. Let me say a bit about the feel of the fortress. I had taken inspiration from B1, but there were things about it that never quite made sense to me, and to make it fit into this campaign and setting, I decided that the keep was not unpopulated -- it has held out down through the last couple of centuries by family and a skeleton staff and force that the founders left behind. Furthermore, the wizard had been experimenting with automatons (I was inspired by reading Delving Deeper and the androids that Simon Bull found in OD&D) and so there are androids and gynoids that continue to work in his magical labs. When the PCs met the heirs of ZELLIGAR and ROGHAN, they discover that the fortress is dearly in need of certain things: especially a fresh infusion of people as their numbers have dwindled, attempting all those years to continue to hold the fortress after their forbears marched off with an army to try to hold off the troll invasion that led to the fall of the Lost Province. So though there is caution, there is a mood of celebration that perhaps the days of the fortress being utterly cut-off and unknown may be coming to an end. There is dismay, however, when the day they were planning holding a feast in the courtyard before the fortress brings forth the news that the party has had a murder in its midst. When they learn the full story of the murder, they offer to take Ahenobarbus as an exile to be rehabilitated. They also discover that the sign of the heirs' authority over the fortress is piece of the ROD. The PCs were initially for executing the murderer, but they settled on exiling him to the stronghold as part of their trading to get the Cauldron of Heka and complete the tasks imposed by the witch. (Heka was the goddess of witches and witchery before Glaukion's goddess Circe took her place.) The deal includes Glaukion and two hirelings* to accompany Ahenobarbus, along with various other acquisitions that they traded. Glaukion had made friends with half-orcs that have joined the force of the fortress, but had no spiritual leadership among them (all orcs and half-orcs being bound by the magic of Circe as a part of their origin story.) [*A morale roll to see which hirelings were done with all this dangerous gallivanting around the LP. They were not the two mercenaries loyal to Severian.] During the feast thrown by the stronghold in honor of the party in which all of this was settled, a young witch showed up, looking for Severian. Yep. His long-lost daughter (Sky) was also looking for him, but had arrived too late. The reason, though, is a bit dark: seems she also is indebted to the witch Talvi Zimbaba, and the witch had agreed to forgive her, if she found her father and brought her to him in her stead. (What uses did she have in mind for him!? Alas, due to Severian's illness, Zimbaba never met Severian and thus never learned that he was practically in her clutches more than once!) However, the witch had not specified that Severian must be alive, and so even in death he set his daughter free. Douglen transferred his allegiance to Sky, and left the party to protect her and help her bring Severian's body to the winter witch to secure her release. If the campaign had lasted long enough, Severian would have had to seek Sky on the Island of the Unknown -- a place sacred to Circe to which Sky had fled when she ran away from Zimbaba and her coven. The party has recovered everything the witch wanted to trade for her piece of the ROD, know the location of another, and have unconsciously discovered one other piece's location (Holly's compulsion to return to the silver palace.) Everybody had a good time, but Holly (and Holly’s player) was keenly feeling the loss of Severian and the other party members. Not a completed campaign, but one that did a lot and found a stopping point. We can imagine what the diminished party might have done next! The Final Disposition of the PCs
I wish I had kept the records of the NPCs who belonged or worked for the party with me, but these are in storage. The members of the Scarbarrow Society will always have a special place in my heart! Bon voyage and laissez les bon temps rouler to you all! Dr. Obscure
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Grey is the party's elven assassin, played by Little Ugly Peach. Here are a couple of illustrations she made of him.
The players of Hazel and Grey are having a little fun here with Grey's romance with the NPC medusa, Evryale. There's no way this can end badly, right?
The party has been exploring the annex to the Temple of Evil Chaos in the Caves of Chaos. I don't remember if I mentioned Grey's amazing assassination of the torturer from the previous session or not, but it was poetic murderation in motion. They continued their exploration, but that was interrupted by the magical coma caused by rejoining two magical cylinders for Grey and Holly. The party split to investigate, and a Gelatinous Cube, having been attracted to the unsealing of the Templar's tomb, got a sneak attack in on Milo, one of the two men-at-arms they saved elsewhere in the CoC. The party defeated the cube, but not before it had burned Milo down through all his HPs to 1 point of Constitution (you can see some of my house rules hinted at, here). Grey and Holly got to read accounts of their mystic visions during their short comas while the other players rushed their characters back to the scene of combat echoing down the halls.
Holly's player is still working through the content of her vision and deciding how and when to share parts or all of it. But Grey's player is ready to share Grey's experience: link to doc. Holly and Grey return, shakily, to the party to find a horribly burned Milo who has just barely been saved from death by Fr. Gammo's (the chaplain) healing. They enter a debate about euthanasia between Severian and Thora, with other players taking sides. Milo is eventually taken back to the bedroom that locks (dubbed by players as the "sex dungeon") to convalesce, watched over by Fr. Gammo. The proceed into the unsealed chamber, to fight the wight. (I toughened him up a little, but the wight still does not seem tough enough to me in S&W -- at least he is beyond Holly's turning except on a 19). The wight drains Grey of a point of dexterity and a point of constitution, but otherwise dies ineffectively. Now, they would have had some trouble killing it, I guess, if Hazel had not cleverly used Heat Metal to burn the wight in its suit of armor. (Few of them have any magical weapons.) The party gleefully loots the room, getting the potions that they got Paizo equipment cards for in their Halloween treat bag. Grey gets a mithril dagger, Severian gets a +2 sword. I carefully describe the wight's helmet has being covered with relief sculpture, and from the scenes I described, I think they have some clue as to the nature of the helm and its role in turning a Templar into a wight in this CE complex of unholiness. They took the helmet with them, and we ran out of time. The party is chomping at the bit to be 3rd level and also on their way, so I let them know that there is only one major encounter left in the annex to the temple complex. Thanksgiving break and some traveling this month messes up the rest of the month for this campaign, so we're going to finish the last three Fridays of the month with one off and two on, and the two on well not be the regular campaign -- nor the alternative campaign! We're to a point where there likely to be lots of wilderness adventuring in the near future for the Lost Province campaign, and so the alt campaign would just be more of the same right now. I'm in the mood to do some urban adventuring, and a couple of the players really want to try 5e. So I am converting the PF Occult Iconics to 5e since the players have the minis, and we will go to ... nah, I'm going to surprise them. Let's just say it's a 5e urban location. That's a lot of prep for only two sessions, but I'm really looking forward to an interlude with something different. We have had three weeks off. The week after my last post was the long-planned-for visit of my daughter who was going to play her magical gnome baker character. I had worked to figure out how to knock-out the characters of the two players who couldn't make it, and that worked really well. Unfortunately, the party was not finished with their Caves of Chaos adventure, so my plan was already in trouble for moving the timeline and geography along to the point where they could naturally encounter the character and pick up there. When the day came, we had a player come down sick, and so the whole thing fell apart. (Daughter was very sad she didn't get to play a game with my group -- she's had a gaming hiatus of over a year!) The next week was a planned absence and the session before Halloween, so we played Betrayal at House on the Hill. It doesn't need my endorsement, but it deserves its excellent reputation! The next week we had another player out, so the session after Halloween we played the Castle Ravenloft board game -- a good game plagued by badly written rules. Seriously WotC or anybody -- clean those things up and give it a rewrite! So, here we are three weeks off of our S&W campaign. One of my players has bought the 5e books and is already looking to spend Xmas vacation planning her first campaign as a DM. (You're welcome, gaming world.) I've written up visionary experiences for the cleric and the assassin who got separated from the party and knocked out by the mysterious cylinders. I'm really looking forward to them wrapping up the Caves of Chaos (Temple of Evil Chaos) and seeing how things turn out, thus pushing them into the next stage of their adventures! The party awakens well-rested, but with lungs aching for fresh air. After checking on the guards and the magic-user who sealed the passages used by the undead mob and seeing their work was done, they start to head back outside. On the way, an arrow seemingly stuck in the wall alerts them to search for and find the secret door, giving way to an alternative passage into Sabius' chambers. Outside, the party enjoys breakfast, sun, and air amongst the comradery of the keep's forces. They spy the pavilions of the hobgoblin daimyo and of Ft. Vigilance's castellan, on either side of a bare, forked tree that appears to have something perching on it. They approach to see a pact drake perching over a table that has copies of the treaty between the hobgoblins and Ft. Vigilance. A few of the party members venture to speak to the drake. Thanks, Mike Welham! The party returned to exploring the rest of the complex. First, they discovered a guest bed chamber that seemed to have been designed with erotic pastimes in mind. Second, they found the torture chamber, and the torturer had not yet fled. Grey tumbled past him and got in position to assassinate him. The player rolled a 20, ensuring that the deed was done -- a potentially tough opponent taken right down. Next, the party discovered a sealed door with a corroding Templar shield on the door. The door was barred and straps locked the bar in place with padlocks. Busting the locks, the party was determining how to proceed when they noticed two of their number were missing. The party splits to look for their missing members with an unsealed door now at their back! The party doesn't know why Holly, later followed by Grey, wandered off. All they know is that they found them both, comatose on the floor in the middle of a side passage. Clutched in Holly's hand they recognize the missing metallic cylinder, only know it appears to be twice it's former length, now at 18 inches. Our stalwart band had turned back (clerically speaking) the skeletons and sealed their entrance. This allowed them to concentrate on the slower but tougher zombies. It was a slugfest, but the zombies were not prepared to deal with intelligent tactics, nor the fact that a couple of the PC+followers party had been able to improve their AC. One man-at arms went down, but ten more zombies went down. Even the bard got into melee, striking with the snake staff she took from Sabius, the infiltrator and one of the two ranking priests of the temple.
A magic-user and his followers was sent by the Castellan to check on the party's progress. The zombies were turned back and the magic-user cast hold portal on the remaining entrance to the undead army holding tank. The doors were then spiked shut. To recuperate from the battle, the party searched for a less ominous place than the large, blood-stained shrine to Apophis. They found the high priest's (Sabius) two chamber rooms behind an arras. There is a large bed in each room. In the first room, there is a large idol of Apophis over the bed (a prime piece of Gygaxian magical trappery). When Grey attempted to pry the gems from its eyes, it fell over on top of him, knocking him out (zero HPs on failed save). Hazel the Druid healed him. The second room also contains a piece of furniture like a dresser or chest-of-drawers with a large mirror. The mirror is covered with a fine, thick cloth. The party orders matters for a few to stand guard in rotation, and then bed down for a good night's sleep. When the reverberations of the bell echoed in the party's ears, the chanters started to come out of their mesmerism. Severian looked to the niche where the mysterious cylinder had laid only moments before--empty! The sounds of creaking and shuffling filled the chamber, as doors were heard to slam open in the near distance. The party had time to ready themselves before the pincers of 20 skeletons and 20 zombies began to flood the room through the tapestries which cover the walls and their entries.
The evening was dominated by half-a-dozen or so rounds of combat. Two skeletons and four zombies were destroyed. The skeletons were turned back through their passage and then the portal magically held. For a party of second-levels and their retainers, plus the help of Fr. Gammo the Chaplain, the encounter is a slog fest. They have only destroyed two skeletons and four zombies so far, but have suffered no losses -- the link boys staying well away at the front of the temple. Thora the Bard bemoans having no magic left to contribute, as well as what she feels is surely her impending death. I look forward to tomorrow night to see what they have thought about their situation! Last week only 3/5 players could make it to the Mecklenburg dungeon, so I pulled out Dungeon! (linked picture above), which none of them had played. We had a good time. Now, however, as I have been working late into the night on the setting's numina and on house-rules revision, I have been struck by a new idea to make counter-spelling a simple and fun mechanic for magic-users. Oh, how I wish I'd have the idea before so that we could have had a four-way Wizard Battle to test these rules in play! With the undead turned, the party now faced Fr. Savius and one of his adepts (he and the other high-ranking priest [now deceased -- see session 8 below] were generously accoutered with acolytes and adepts). Once again, the bard's Charm messes up their assault on the party: Savius is removed from combat, and Thora gets Savius to hand over many of his belongings before someone in the party renews his and soon the party is chasing Fr. Savius down the halls of the complex. During the chase, Grey is distracted by one of the doors and opens it to find an acolyte in a room studying a scroll. She kills him and loots the room. Thora brings up the rear to make sure Grey doesn't get in over her head. He makes it to the main temple, where Gary went to such great links to describe the stone reredos with the mirror-like surface. I had decided this was a magical means of communication and transportation for the cult leaders, and Savius manages to use it to escape.
By the way, are most of the players hearing me say "Savius" or "Sabius"? I seem to be writing it differently in different places! The party begins exploring the chaotic evil shrine. (Yeah, though Chaos-Neutrality-Law gets the emphasis in my game as the setting's cosmic struggle, I still think in the nine-alignment system and teach others to do so as well.) Two party members had seen Savius glance with regret at a spot on the wall before making good his escape. They explore the area, find the hidden tabernacle set in the wall, and with no key, break it open with a crowbar. Inside is an upward snake head, it's jaws extended to the sides of the niche to hold a somewhat thick, nine-inch long metallic cylinder. Severian had meant to grab the cylinder after using Grey's crowbar to get the tabernacle open, but he and most of the rest of the party members' attention is suddenly compelled to the weird, colorful shadows cast on the walls by the giant candelabra. Everyone except Fr. Gammo and Sis. Holly are momentarily captivated, and begin in unison an evil chant. While the party was chanting, Fr. Gammo and Holly were free to act. From his position, Gammo couldn't clearly see what Holly was up to. Holly noted with alarm that her friends were mesmerized by some sort of evil, and she heard Fr. Gammo begin uttering a prayer to one or more of his gods. Before she decided her own reaction, her attention turned to the niche in the wall that had just been broken open. The nine-inch metal cylinder remained in place as Severian’s hand fell away from it, his face slack as he mouthed the words to some infernal chant in unison with most of the party... The end of the chant seemed to trigger the knelling of the large bell in the vault, breaking the mesmerism, so that the party regains awareness to the distant thunder of an approaching storm of troops of skeletons and zombies! The Castellan decided to accept the characters' proposal that he meet with the hobgoblins, so the PCs broker a meeting. Out of that meeting comes an alliance: it is in the interest of the lawful keep denizens and the lawful hobgoblins to put an end to the gnolls and the cultists in the Caves of Chaos. Once they have come to terms, the Castellan asks the party to join the attack force.
The players decide to go for it: they want Fr. Sabius' blood. (The name I gave the traitorous cleric that Gary put in keep.) Forces muster, and the party along with its hirelings and followers gather outside the entrance to the caves that contain the Temple of Evil Chaos (general knowledge of the cave system being a benefit of the alliance with the goblinoids). The party enters in exploration mode, with the assassin attempting to reconnoiter. The zombies attack. This fight probes to be rather drawn out compared to previous fights: Holly keeps failing to turn the zombies due to those nefarious amulets that have been put on them. Two retainers fall and the PCs are feeling it after a minute of fighting. Thora yells as the half-orc Glaukion (a freed prisoner of the hobgoblins) to go get help. He runs outside and finds Fr. Gammo the Chaplain waiting outside. (I had previously decided he would send his acolytes with the keep's troops to wait to see where he was needed.) Fr. Gammo returns at the end of the round where skeletons have joined the zombies and Holly finally turns the undead! Next week: Will the party go up or down the passage? The mercenary company of the Archmage of the West swings into action whenever we play S&W with a player missing. This alternative campaign draws heavily from Frog God Games' The Sword of Air. West across the continent, on the other side of the inner sea, their current mission is to collect specimens from various magical creatures. I'm not sure I can remember everything that's on his list, but manticore poison and roc parts are definitely high on them. Tracking the roc, they are closing in on his territory, but when I rolled to see what they found (The Dice Never Lie), it was not the roc but a pair of perytons nesting nearby. So the short evening of gaming ended up being dominated by peryton attack. One of the hirelings died, and one of the PC magic-users was rendered unconscious. The other magic-user, B'lakë the gnome (Based on this gift from Gothridge Manor's Tim Shorts), decided that the antlers and spleen were the parts of the perytons that needed harvesting for the Archmage.
You know, there's something hilarious about the silhouette of the peryton (above) from Telecanter's Receding Rules...think about it. We had a travel break interrupt our game, along with a couple of cancellations, but the game HAS GONE ON!
Our primed adventures took the significant loot they recovered from the ogre cave (significant even when split with the hobgoblins, and of course converted to the silver standard) and the prisoners whose freedom they obtained from their hobgoblin allies and returned to Ft. Vigilance to deliver their captives, reap their rewards, secure their fortune, and -- it goes without saying -- spend and carouse! They can't drink in the Guild House (thanks, Uncle Gary), and so they caroused in the Green Tusk and outdoors for their new friends who can't enter the keep before retiring to a sweet, free night of rest at the Guild House. (Holly the cleric general opts for all-night vigils at the Chapel of All Lawful Protectors. They also got an audience with the Castellan, who learned of their intention to mount an expedition into the Lost Province. Unable to dissuade them, the Castellan offered them his support in exchange for intelligence if they survive. The Chaplain agreed to check in on Mother Glenroe from time-to-time. Happily, the party had returned in time for the feast of Lughnasadh. Gathering in cultivated fields the keep maintains on the other side of the river waiting for the new-horned moon to rise, the party was focusing on the religious pageant that was blooming when gnoll slavers attacked the crowd. The party drove the gnolls off while the soldiers were cut off from the gnolls by the stampeding crowd, minimizing the number of innocent humans the beast men were able to kidnap. The night saw a chastened observance of the rest of the feast, safely within the walls of the keep. At least the BBQ was good. Fr. Sabius, the visiting ecumenical cleric started openly preaching a crusade against the Caves of Chaos after the attack. The party, whose perspective has been changed due to their friendships with the comical goblins, no longer trust Sabius. The party prepares for their trek by hiring retainers and bulk and transportation purchases. They decide to head out into the Lost Province, making the passage past the Caves of Chaos with amazing rolls that trigger no attacks. They camp out along the rode a day's ride from the keep. Were they observed from the caves? Was there some sort of communication from the keep? During the second watch, an evil priest, two acolytes, and twenty skeletons attack the party. More luck: the guards are not surprised, and the PC of the guard team is Holly, the party's cleric. The distance of the attackers allows her to get one turn off before they close. It is successful and greatly thins the skeleton ranks. The party proves too much for the ambushers. Skeletons and destroyed and turned. Evil clerics are cut down and two are captured -- greatly aided by the bard trying out Charm for the first time to get the leader to unwisely risk his life trying to stop his attacking acolytes. The clerics are treated and bound securely for questioning the next morning. Turned skeletons passing the camp pass down the road back towards the caves. The next morning, the clerics are discovered dead, with blackened arteries running from the fingers where they wear serpent rings. Their magical amulets mark them as cultists of the current avatar of the destroyer: Apophis. The snake staff of the leader triggers the memories of Hazel and Severian -- Fr. Sabaius also has such a staff. They return to raise the alarm at the keep. Characters go up to second level. By the way, I gave the clerics saving throws on those suicide rings. They both failed. Returning to the keep, the party meets with Fr. Gammo the chaplain who immediately sends for the Castellan. Fr. Sabius' room across from the chapel is surrounded. He and his acolytes have gone. The keep is now left to ponder what they should do against the threat of an evil, chaotic cult of Apophis hiding in the nearby caves who have clearly been spying on the keep. We have settled on moving game night from Tuesdays to Fridays. Meeting in the library is not going to work with everyone's schedule, but it remains our birthplace and spiritual second home. My home game den is coming along. The question now is, what is the party's next move? Pressing on into the Lost Province as planned, or detouring back into the Caves of Chaos? At top: My variation on the calendar of the City State, which is the common calendar in this part of the world. Here is an update on last week's game. The game has a two-week summer hiatus for travel and holidays.
Last week, the group finally met the Castellan and traded some information. In spite of the Castellan discouraging them from crossing into the dangerous Lost Province, he asked them to report back to him if they survived. When they went to the provisioner to purchase their final supplies, they also discovered that the Castellan had donated some money to support their expedition. The Castellan also closely questioned the party about their search for the "Mad Hermit," the cleric Holly entrusted him with information about the Oracle of the Salt Spring to pass on to the chaplain, Fr. Gammo. Rendez-vousing with their new goblin friends, they may a night journey to their preferred entrance into the Caves without triggering any wandering monster encounters. Handing out the free sweets, booze, and "castle-food," while the bard performed, and successfully winning over the goblin chieftain triggered an epic goblin party. The next day, they also negotiated a successful meeting with the daimyo of the "shoe-bullies" (hobgoblins), who proposed an alliance marked by the party leading an attack on the ogre who'd taken up residence in one of the caves in the goblinoid network. With somewhat minimal hobgoblin support (two hobgoblin crossbowmen) and crucial hobgoblin intelligence (a secret door and knowledge of the ogre's nocturnal lifestyle), the party got lucky and entered undetected, the ogre only rousing in time to get hit by the bard's magical lullaby. In its sleep, it was surrounded by the party who all hit but one, and also got in a crazy number of critical hits (another house-rule feature I'm experimenting with. I think fighters and fighter sub-classes will automatically get critical hits, while non-fighters may have to confirm them from now on), the ogre was thoroughly murderized. Uncle Gary thoroughly supplied the ogre with treasure, the nature of which the party has only partially discovered at this point. The game ended with the players and PCs in high spirits. What will be their next move after dividing up the loot with the hobgoblins? Heading back to Ft. Vigilance? Getting deeper enmeshed in the Caves of Chaos? Striking out into the Lost Province? Thora, the runaway princess drow/dwerrow* princess & bard is shown here in the wooded hill above the Keep on the Borderlands. Thanks to a wandering monster roll and a great reaction roll, three goblins (Ook, Kreefrak, and Dibble) love Thora more than David Bowie and paved the way for the party's alliance with the goblins living in the Caves of Chaos.
* There is controversy in Norse studies whether dwarves and dark elves are the same thing or not. In our version of Midgard, we went with them being the same thing. We also decided that "dwarf" is a racial slur. We also decided that females are taller than males, numerically rare and that their society is thus a matriarchy. Last week, one of our players got sick right before the session, so the long-awaited session where the PCs enter the Caves of Chaos had to be postponed, and instead we picked up with their secondary characters to the west of the Inland Sea.
The party tied up lots of loose ends last session. They finished their visit with Mtr. Glenroe and left her with a nice care package. On the way back to the keep, they ran into a party of three goblins. Thanks to a great reaction roll, the goblins did not attack and were excited to see a princess (goblins are sometimes fae court groupies. Names: Ook, Kreefrak, and Dibble). Thora solidified their positive reaction with some bardic entertainment, and the goblins gave them intel on the caves and promised to meet them at the full moon and guide them to their caves. On their return, they procured the map they commissioned (and I gave the two graphic design people in the group the maps from B2 and B3 with explanation for how the maps went together to represent this) along with the final scroll they commissioned that the chaplain completed. They met again with Fr. Savius (the visiting priest) and because of their new friendship with the goblins, they decided to not take him up on his offer to accompany them as part of a holy crusade vs. Evil and Chaos. They met their hirelings and gave them the trust money on their wages and will meet them the next evening to keep their rendezvous with the goblins. So next session they'll have an opportunity to make a little cash (bard performing in the Green Tusk) and pick up some last minutes supplies (torches? lamp oil?) before they finally seize destiny by the scrawny neck and drag it into the Caves of Chaos!
(The previous post now looks rather sparse to me, so I went back and added a few details.)
Thora had fantastic success performing at the tavern, now named The Green Tusk (seriously, Uncle Gary, you named everything in Hommlet and nothing in the Keep on the Borderlands), so she is out of money problems. Holly traded an emerald in for more cash at the gem merchant, so the group as a whole is more liquid. This allowed Holly to commission some scrolls from the chaplain of the keep, Fr. Gamo. Severian has been trying to replace his sword, and got bit by the outrages pricing of the Keep (which I made worse in the case of swords, since they are a class as well as a martial item in my world). Reaction rolls were all over the place with all the haggling that was going on. I am now drawing a complete blank on Hazel, so hopefully she will comment and set me straight. Sorry, Hazel! Holly encouraged the group to go meet the visiting priest Fr. Savius of whom Fr. Gamo's acolytes spoke so highly. He spoke passionately of the need to crusade against the Evil and Chaos nesting in the caves in down the road from Ft. Vigilance. He and his acolytes (bound by vows of silence) are willing to accompany the party if they will go the caves. The party knows it is risky traveling past the caves. They put out the call for hirelings and Meatshields! provided, as it always does, a likely group who reported to the Greek Tusk for interviews. Now all the party is waiting on is the completion of the map and the scroll of Neutralize Poison before they can strike out from Ft. Vigilance. I wonder if that completes their business there, or if they will think up or stumble upon things to do before they leave for the open road through the Lost Provinces. Except...they almost didn't say anything about the so-called Mad Hermit. This ended up being the climatic end of the sessions. They ventured into the woods west of the keep (yes, I've reoriented the map for all the grognards out there.) There Holly finally found her mentor, Mtr. Glenroe, the now displaced Oracle of Salt Springs. Holly was shocked by her appearance and treated to the frenzy of a trance in which she carried on darkly and ominously. Yep, that's where I sprinkled hints and hooks. We were all pleased with the ending, and I was glad I got that scene in before we completely ran out of time. I am compiling a sayings document with fragments of the Glenroe's ejaculations, and may post them eventually. I was sure I had a post on session 1 that talked about session 1 in which the PCs arriving at my version of the Inn Between Worlds, Inn Convenience, but it is now nowhere in evidence. Not the first odd problem I've had with Weebly, but at least I fixed the fact that the Numina post doesn't appear in the title of the blog anymore. I'm learning.
In other learning news, GroupMe and Outlook Calendar join Gmail and the blog as the modes for communicating with players outside of the game. They seem to be received well. The summer has resulted in one of my players taking a summer job that takes up her every night, so we will be down to four players for the summer. They all found sufficient motivations to come together as a group to join together for travel safety and head to the borders of the Lost Province, lost sometime back in a war with (mostly) trolls. This was facilitated by an informative Adventures Bulletin Board and a letter that cleric's sister left for her with the publican. The cleric knows her mentor has left the site of where she has always served as oracle to live in the wilderness. The fighter discovered that said oracle with the recommendation the soothsayer gave him to discover the truth about a possible lost daughter he never knew he had, and the druid knows her parents came from a walled town overrun in the Lost Province. The dwarven bard princess? Ah, she's just looking to be scarce and have adventures. After leaving Inn Convenience, which conveniently drops them a day's travel away from Ft. Vigilance (AKA The Keep on the Borderlands), the party stops for a picnic and learns to deal with giant bees. (I always loved the killer bees from Moldvay, but tweaked them a little.) With a fighter puffed up to twice his normal size slung over the mountain pony, they party arrives in Ft. Vigilance. The last adventure was all social roleplay getting squared away in the keep. Holly got a private room in the Travelers' Inn, everyone else went cheap for the common room. Thora flirted her way through town, getting a couple of locals (a watchman and a groom) enamored with her. Hazel found a hiding place for her dire wolf pup, and Severian, later joined by Hazel, located the scrivener and commissioned a map to aid them on their journey. This map will show them the way past the Caves of Chaos, and on to other classic adventure locations lost in the Lost Province. Holly had a lengthy conversation with Fr. Gamo and his acolytes in the Chapel of All Holy Protectors. The past two weeks, we had two members unavailable: one of these weeks was planned ahead of time and the other one was a surprise — tough on DMs who like to plan. Happily, I had the plan for dealing with absences by running an inter sessional game concurrently with the campaign already in place.
What’s the plan? When players are absent, the remained players will pursue an adventure in the same world using the same system, to help them learn the game mechanics and also give them more of a feel for the setting. Beyond a gulf that splits the northern half of the continent in two, I placed the lands described in a The Sword of Air (no spoilers, please!). Frog God Games’ The Sword of Air fits well in the campaign I have homebrewed based around the old Judges Guild City-State of the Invincible Overlord. I generated a large party (20+) characters levels 1-3 of different races and classes, plus a mule-train, some ox-carts, and some Meatshields! (The Barrowmaze website is invaluable in this regard) and let the players pick some PCs to play. The small army of adventurers is employed by a certain wizard and are making their way through various woods on their way to foothills of the Starcrag mountains. The survived a forest fire, an attack by a lone wolf on the cleric of Njord, Frotgar during the night watch (the elf warden and halfling expert treasure recovery agent saved his life), and in IS2 they were attacked by a hunting group of six young grizzlies — young because I accidentally rolled their hitpoints with d6s instead of d8s. This together with the luck of surprising the grizzlies meant they survived with only the loss of one of their porters. Frotgar tried out some Kobold Press spells from their Midgard S&W Guidebook which added some excellent flavor to the character. All these adventures were the results of random encounter rolls front the tables of the areas they chose to explore. The players had a good time with it and so did I. There was plenty of suspense and tension, and playing pregenerated characters not only saved the time that character creation takes, but also takes off the pressure associated with playing their regular characters. I judge this a winning strategy. TSoA is a product that takes some work to use rightly, but I find that it is paid off the work I’ve put into preparation is is malleable enough to be adaptable to my world and purposes. What I’ve Learned Younger players may not be big email users, which may contribute to unplanned absences and sudden changes of plans for the evening. I’m going to try GroupMe as an alternative method for helping them plan and communicate about weekly sessions. A Philosophical Prescript In my own game writing, I often use the term numina (numen -- singular) to refer to what is popularly know as ‘the gods’ and discourage the projection of modern misunderstandings onto the concept. The problem is, most of us have been raised with some understanding colored by the concept God, and the assumption that ‘he’ (for lack of a better pronoun) must be a singular or superior version of those beings gods/goddesses, which must all fall together in the same category of being. This assumption misunderstands the revolutionary nature of the concept God as well as the nature of the beings that were called gods throughout the history of what we tend to call polytheism. That is why I like the term numina, however most people are not comfortable with this term in everyday speech (although they may have heard of the term ‘numinous’), and so perhaps I will often default to the term gods, but I want it understood that the powers-that-be are not smaller or more numerous versions of God. In fact, not dealing with the issue of God in the game world gives all sorts of freedom to players to think whatever they want and for me as the gamemaster to leave plenty of mystery in the game world -- all of which are good things for fantasy gaming. However, let it be understood at the beginning that these powers, no matter how powerful or long-lived they are, are beings that can be served (literally aided) and traded with. They can be soothed, bribed, cajoled, paid, and even on occasion deceived, threatened, or outwitted. They may generally be good. Or generally bad. Or a dangerous mix of both. It is up to the player to decide which gods their character will deal with and what positive or negative valuations they assign to them. The GM may know a deity’s ultimate character or temporary disposition, but he’s not going to come right out and tell you. Finally, modern ideas about devotion and the centrality of ethics/morality, formed primarily under the influence of monotheistic Christianity, are foreign to historical polytheism. Dealing with the gods for ancient polytheists was an issue of power transaction. What is the conflict? What is easier to know objectively than “Is deity X good or evil?” is the answer to the question, “Where does deity X align with regard to Law or Chaos?” The conflict that is at the heart of a lot of this campaign world is the forces of Law vs the forces of Chaos, and the gods have taken sides and call on all sentient creatures to line up for war -- actual and/or potential. Then there is the unpopular position that both Law and Chaos are necessary for the existence of the universe -- Balance or Neutrality. In this cosmic struggle, Good will join sides with Evil (and vice versa) if it helps their side in the Chaos vs. Law struggle. To further complicate matters, the champions of Balance will side on occasions with Law to maintain the balance and on other occasions with Chaos to keep one side from becoming too powerful which would, from the Neutral point-of-view, threaten the continuance of all things. The final battle that will end the cosmos as characters know it is Ragnarok. There are probably both Lawful and Chaotic powers that think the sooner the better, there are both that bide their time until they believe their side is ready to win. Balance sees every putting off of this final battle a victory and the twilight war of the gods to be one in which everyone will lose -- at least so far as most of us know. Who are the Numina? See the PNG to the right for a list of the numina currrently in use in this setting -- it may receive some future updates. Players: let me know if you have any questions. A final terminological note by way of complaint Modern game books sometimes refer to characters or cultures who worship a pantheon of gods as pantheists. This is far from the actual meaning of this technical term. People who have a pantheon could be called pantheonists, but they are almost certainly not pantheists. Polytheist is the more common term. Wikipedia can be your friend if you are not familiar with basic religious and philosophical reference works that discuss these differences. We scheduled an hour-and-a-half session to finish things up, which was definitely the way to go. We also added a new player to our group! The characters of the party are listed below in the order the players joined the gaming group:
Now I have some questions for our players to consider before official session #1: The Inn of Convenience.
I hope you will all comment below on these questions, to help me prepare. Thanks! It is taking a little longer to finish off character generation than I had hoped, and I don't want to lose momentum. I would really like to finish next session so that we can get this party on the road. IF I were able to extend next session by thirty minutes, would everyone be able to take advantage of that? I don't know if it is possible, but I will check.
Thora's spells will probably take longer than Holly's. I'll take care of Hazel's wolf. Was anyone going to buy a pack animal or hire a porter or a link boy? Has the party thought about hiring a man-at-arms? Thora: What is the name of your clan or tribe of dwarves? The five of us gathered last week in the library's finest conference room and started character generation. (It takes more than an hour to guide brand-new players through creating their first characters.) So far, we have a female elf assassin, a dwarf bard (see? house-ruled) of unknown gender, a half-elf druid, and a human cleric.
I think everyone is good with alignment? (Note: Go by my description of alignment, not what is in the S&WC rule book.) Questions: 1) Everybody have names? Do you need more resources other than this? And this for elves? 2) Why is the elf living outside of Elfhame (Álfheimr)? Why did she go into Midgard (the human realms), train with an assassin's guild, and then go rogue? Does she keep all this secret from her party as she pursues her goal? When will she trust them with the truth? Is this a redemption arc? 3) Dwarf Bard: Are all Dwarves Dudes? 4) Human Cleric: Have you thought any about your family background, since this is a manifestation of a character with many incarnations/aspects outside of this game? 5) Half-Elf Druid: No specific questions right now that I can think of, other than: are you the child of half-elves or a human-elf union? If the latter, which parent was which race? 6) I am pleased to hear that you are all thinking of back story without really being told to. Has your thinking included not merely your character's origin story, but how you might be connected to the rest of the characters? Please post your ideas in responses below, and feel free to give other's feedback as well! I'm excited to hear your ideas and begin tweaking them so that they can all fit together and get the adventure started! |
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February 2019
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