2 players vs: Second Darkness


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So a friend of mine and i decided to attempt to dual-tackle Second Darkness.
I thought it be fun to share our venture (and maybe eventual epic death) with those who've done it with a full party.

Our adjustments: Full HD upon lvl, 30pt buy and 1 extra feat on lvl 1.

I suggested to go evil alignment, why should the Drow have the claim for world domination?
It aught to be us.
Us:
(Me)Human Cleric (Undead lord, AP hold on tight). Goal: world order through force, in Urgathoa's name.
(Friend)Human Bloodrager, dip into haunted oracle. Goal: to forcefully create a world where cats are held sacred. (Also has a cat familiar)

Note: this is done by memory so possibility of small details missing.
Note 2: Spoiler alert to those yet to play this.

Session 1:

So we start off, both entering the Golden Goblin casino.
I decided to be cheap and spend only 5cp on chips. The bloodrager, being a bit "screws loose", decided to spend a bit more.
I made a small profit, my friend lost it. (pun unintended)

The evening went okay, until the ruckuss started. We came to discover intruders have entered the complex.
Fair enough, we took our boredom and loss out on these chumps. We moved in while the bouncers had their fists at the thieves.
Some hits and misses from both sides, the bloodrager goes in to smack the enemies with a hobby horse. To clarify: this counts as a 2 handed blunt weapon.
Ahem...back to the fight, i threw a murderous command upon the wizard, barely making it. He turned his attention upon the female intruder as it was suggested to kill your girlfriend.
He ran at her, but she was out of his range.
2 rounds later & 2 bouncers less, the thieves were down, leaving us to chase after the duo. The wizard was clubbered to death, more thanks to the hobby horse than the bouncers. The woman was grabbed by the city guards.

Saul, the casino owner, thanked us for our help and offered us a job. Sure, we'd take it, make some money while having an live-in place to crash.
Things went fine, he even asked us for ideas how to raise the income and popularity.

Hmm, let's see, what could we do.

My cleric, not being the most charismatic, did have a modest diplomacy bonus. She suggested handing out tickets to a lottery that night, the winner would get to go out with her for 1 night.
A successful diplomacy roll later, he found the idea fine.

*Facepalm, winner was a wallflower*,
so despite my evil being, acting nice = gaining influence > profit.
She complimented him into a raised self-esteem, which made him promote the casino positively. *Saul was rejoicing much*

The second time we were asked this, the bloodrager came with the idea to show the casino's animal friendly policy, by donating part of the profit to establish an animal shelter.

A bit later, an apprentice cypher mage girl needed a place and a job. Saul (trusting enough fellow) put us in charge of the job interview. Cue a few questions later, we deemed her fit for work.
Now the next time Saul wanted something special...Hmm, what shall we do this time?
The big spenders in the VIP lounge would get their drinks served by the newbie who'd be wearing a maid outfit.
A big success too., despite my cleric having to jump in from time to time.

Rolls eyes> the girl had low self confidence :)

Some time (and money) later, we hear a messenger from Saul had gone missing. He'd been carrying discrete payments and disappeared. We went along to investigate it, so we ended up at an adress.
Knocking the front door was the logical thing to do......but we didn't do that and went around the back. The bloodrager started knocking the other door so firmly, that the house's occupant opened up out of frustration.
"What do you want?".., ended up with a hobby-horse to the face, nearly sending him down, which he did the next round.
Now my friend was GM'ing this, and normally one would enter the obvious door and fight the guy & his ape. The ape didn't last longer than 1 round either.

We had some more time working, getting a promotion even & getting to make some rolls for extra pay. Pretty good deal so far.
All rewards and loot is naturally devided between the two of us, we were making some profit indeed.
A while later, being busy and all, our job was rudely interrupted by a raid. Humans & half-orcs crashed into the casino, numbering the current bouncers and ourselves a good 3 to 1.
The dice gods were mocking the bouncers, who dropped easily. The two of us were bottlenecking the stairway, smacking anything daring to come up to us. It took some time, but the cleaning staff had their work cut out for them.

Work, work work.

The one we healed up for questioning refused to talk. That was to say, until we threatened his manhood, he was very willing to talk then.

There was a quick skirmish on the docks, involving attempted theft of Saul's goods, nothing we couldn't handle.
End of 1st session.

2nd session:

Resuming our rise in wealth and standing, we find ourselves waking up.
Hiring new bouncers to replace the dead from the raid was left to us. If they answered questions properly and didn't freak out at the bloodrager's outburst, they'd be hired.
Achievement unlocked: new staff aquired (6)

Cleaning had been done properly and Saul had a lead. We were sent to a watery place named "The boneyard". As we arrived, we stuck to the sides and head north.
"EEP, we nasty!"...

Ah, were-rats. Plus a swarm of cockroaches to boot.

As we drew our weapons, an elf with a bird appeared, telling us "not to worry, he'd help us."
"Helping" in his case meant his bird dropped within the round. The two of us engaged 1 were-rat while two at the south were taking pot shots at us, missing.
The were-rats threw a tanglebag at our newfound friend. The cockraoch-swarm now saw the elf as tasty, as they went. He tried to get the upper ratman involved, but that one 5ft stepped to safety.

Not so much rejoicing for our newfound friend..

Some hobby-horse & heavy mace smacks later, only the swarm was left attacking. The bloodrager had purchased quite an amount of flasks of acid and alchemist's fire, which made short work of the critters.
With the elf drinking his potion of CLW and us being invited for lunch, we were told Saul had set us up. Not a good move, Saul.. Like any good or evil.. character, we head back to the casino for an explanation. We, however, found the windows barred shut and a sentry near the door.
Now badass heroes would storm the front door.

But we're villains, so we weren't going to do that.

We went around the back, to find a wimpy sentry upon the perch near the door. What followed was amazing, the cat familiar (by that time over double the hp of the guy), got up there and started swiping its claws at him.
We were just watching, the cat slew the guy.

Great job man, slain by a housecat, your mother would be so proud...

We entered the casino and immediately headed upstairs. Preparing for the obvious, the bloodrager took point and opened the door. Saul and his imp were waiting, along with 4 bouncers we'd hired.
I channeled a few times, hitting but not downing them outright, despite their low HP. Nothing a bit of mace & hobby-horse couldn't fix. The imp was a bit of a bugger, fast healing.
Though when he was at -1 and KO, it was over with a Coup from the hobby-horse. Once again the floor was painted red.
Saul had bailed through a hatch in the back at half speed, taking along as much hoard as he could. Needless to say, he had alerted some more goons who surrounded us.

Sorry guys, my last channel

Surely enough, 1 channel KO on 5 goons, after which we high tailed after Saul. We followed him down the stairs into an underground passage. The bloodrager caught up with him eventually, smacking him down.
We decided to heal him up just enough for interrogation, after which we killed him.

Why not? We're being wronged and we don't like it.

By this time, my cleric was able to animate 12 HD worth of undead. Neat, zombies, skeletons. My very first servant would now be, PRESENTING....SAUL THE SKELETON.

We met the animal-handler, who oversaw the pit with wild animals. The bloodrager, adoring kitties, presented him the choice to stop the animal fights and come work for us or die. Well that's an easy choice to make, considering we showed him what we did with Saul.
Over the next two weeks, we rebuilt, rehired...and i filled the 8 remaining HD of minion potential with raising 6 skeletal bouncers and 2 thieves.

Broken here? This is fun.,
we put those 9 minions in the pit until we'd have need of them. We noticed later the faded footprints to and from the wine stocks. It seemed that was quite some time ago.

Remember i said my friend GM'ed this, he told me troglodytes would come here on occasion. Though the game didn't count on 9 skeletons being ready for them.

Our last venture for the session would be the exploration of the catacombs underneath. Far below was alot of water. We shrugged and, since we had minions, shoved our skeletal posse down into the water.
They had a quick fight with 2 barracudas, which ended up sushi, with just 1 loss on our posse's side. We decided to head south, with my minions taking point. A wight that stood up quickly found itself more dead than it had already been.
Another skeletal thief went down.

End of session 2


During session 1, Alessandra and I were walking through Riddleport when a storm started. We were near the harbor at that moment, and the wind had thrown two men into the water. We figured we'd help them, to better the Gold Goblin's reputation.

I threw a rope around the first, and was able to pull him out of the water in no time.

Alessandra decided to to jump into the water, and pull the man out. However, this didn't go as planned. While grabbing hold of the man, Alessandra and the man went under. They surfaced, and went under again. They then surfaced, and... Well, long story short, the man drowned.

At least saving one of the men, and having bystanders witness how Alessandra tried to save the other, helped to improve our (and thus the Gold Goblin's) image in Riddleport!


Mrow!


So, back to where we left off.

This session went quite in a simple fashion. We've had my skeletal minions, save for Saul, take point. While they headed further north, they encountered troglodytes.

Neat, new enemies to kill. There were some bones to pick with them.

Now here's why we broke the natural flow, since the skeletons have DR/blunt and the first troglodytes only used bite attacks, the skeletons clawed them down. The next group of troglodytes were using clubs, which could actually hurt. A series of rolls and a skeleton or 2 down, we proceeded north, repeating pretty much in the same fashion. I used 2 channels by the time all the troglodytes in the cavern were slain. But also much of our skeletons save Saul were beaten.

By Urgathao, the stench, i failed my fort.

So we came to a body of water, glowing.

Wonder what's down there?

Gricks, ugly things. They took down our remaining skeletons, but the bloodrager bottlenecked and slew them one at a time. Out of minions, i used my unholy powers to restock from the bodies of dead troglodytes before we proceeded towards the last area.

Hey, what's this? A makeshift luxury bed and a beautiful chest.

With us wondering and debating what to do with it, i sent the skeletons down the last passage way. Down there were 2 dretches and the boss, a female drow fighter. Here's again a situation why this was a joke. The dretches do get 3 attacks on a full round, but they would only deal dmg to our undead minions on a critical hit...which they didn't. But it was a stale mate, since the skeletons' claws couldn't breach a dretch DR. So came the need to actually get close up ourselves, or rather the bloodrager. She slew the dretches, taking decent dmg in the process, but survived with a healing or 2. The drow had been walking up the wall with slippers of spider climbing and taking decent potshots at the bloodrager. When she was out of bolts, i devided the skeletons to block the southern exit, so no epic showdown on an archeway.

The drow made a quick ceilingwalk towards where we were, but we figured she'd be within our own striking range and some rounds fighting later she dropped. We took the key and loot she had and opened the fancy treasure chest.

But, dismissing some skeletons, i created my next trophy by raising her as my next NPC enforcer. We aim to equip her and Saul with basic gear lateron.

Afterwards is the generic epilogue with the falling ball of light and a tsunami onto Riddleport, but to aid the city and gain more reputation (and influence through that), we organized a benefit with an all sushi banquet for the strucken.

Book 1 finished.

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