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The information you bring back: The hulking shapes do indeed match the stories of ogres told to every youngster in Snyderholm. In the sun, their skin gleams a rough off-white, and it is possible that the headwraps they wear hide the small horns that they are rumored to possess. Their great strength is apparent: you watch them toss crates that could hold something the size of an elephant while laughing with each other in the beating desert sun. All of the elements of the local myths seem to be in place (save the horns, but you are too far away to glimpse them anyway). The only thing that seems out of place is their eyes. Ogres are said to have murderous, glowing red eyes. But perhaps that is a bit of fiction told to youngsters as the icing on a scary bedtime story. Ogres only appear in such stories, but some children are scared so thoroughly that they remember the stories well as grown-up merchants. For this reason, Third Continent travel guides always make sure to advertise that they are "anti-ogre" in large red letters, and "ogres" are always high on the list of excuses for missing cargo delivery (although now Xazt ponders whether or not they were all telling the truth).
As you round the corner, you see three large figures moving about at some distance, obscured by a small cloud of sand. They are speaking some kind of gruff language as they shuffle back and forth. The dust clears briefly, and you make out that they are very large, much larger than an average human. They seem to be moving huge crates with relative ease, packing them onto some kind of wheeled contraption from a large pile on the ground, which is kicking up quite a bit of dust at regular intervals. Nothing else seems to be around in the immediate area, save a bit of rocky outcropping that is providing a bit of shade for their entire endeavor, not unlike your earlier camping spot. They don't act as though they've seen you.
The wind masks most of the sound as you make your way toward the bend in the road. As you near the dune which blocks the path from view, the wind seems to be dying down, but you still can't seem to make anything out, until...yes...you just heard some kind of deep voice, but the words are unintelligible. You are currently about twenty feet from rounding the corner.
You all rise in the hot morning air and find yourselves much better rested than you've been in quite some time. You leave the shelter of the outcropping rock and begin to trudge north again, feet beating a solid gait against the packed sand of the roadway. After about an hour, you notice that the rocky lining has started to slowly disappear, but the road is still there, winding through the low parts of dunes and across huge flats.
After three hours of walking, you notice that the road is trampled, as though many, many feet were hurriedly using this section of it not that long ago. The road stretches ahead like this and turns a corner, where it disappears behind a dune.
Okay, cool.
Thanks for this bump, Isaac! It seems that the RSS mechanic on the "gameplay" tab got messed up for me, so I haven't seen any posts in a while! I'll get things back on track today! Sorry all!
Your passing knowledge with exploring new places gives you a bit of insight, but you aren't familiar with the half-circle-moon mark. You do know, however, that a half circle is usually used to denote a shelter of some sort.
As for the map, you notice a small marking that you don't recognize. Perhaps it is uniquely cartographic. It is a small red half-circle with something like a moon inside it, lying on the torn edge of the map. Slightly above it is a skull marking, and far to the left are several hastily hand-drawn "X" and "?" marks.
You notice a few things scrawled along the walls in a strange mixture of human and goblin. As you peer closer, you read: "Gavin the merchant was here."
...it just continues like this for a while. Near the end, you notice an arrow pointing North and the words "ogres." It isn't a fresh carving, but it has been done in the common tongue. There is also a little carved drawing below it in the shape of a skull. In a few of the more dank corners you find more than a few bones and some scrap pieces of iron. There is a bit of vellum caught between a bone and the cave wall, as well, which appears to have been from some sort of map of the area. It is crudely torn. You find little else until you discover a few loose rocks near the back of the cave, hiding what appears to be someone's stash of naughty books. Most of the copies have been here unused for years and have rotted away. However, the copy of "The Troll Lover" is still intact, and although it is missing its cover, the first few pages of "A Dwarven Delve" prove to be entirely unconcerned with actual mining.
BAHAHHA poor Ariana and her fire.
After nearly half an hour of coaxing, the remnants of old campfires catch and begin to burn, but this is no roaring fire. The flames are barely visible, but it seems to be sustaining itself at the moment. You aren't sure how long it will last.
It truly is. Nothing helps you realize that more than making knowledge rolls in RPGs, I think.
...night passes into daybreak... You all awaken at dawn to find the air inside the cave still relatively cool (apart from Eli who wakes baking in the early morning sun). The sand outside is radiating heat already, and the sun in the sky tells you it's nearly 6:00AM or thereabouts. Laying on the stone, just barely in shade, is what appears to be a carcass of some sort, bulging unnaturally and missing several key things...like a head.
So this is another reason why I love tabletop RPGs: I just spent a good fifteen minutes reading about ideal venison takeaway from a hunting kill of a specific type of doe.
You are able to harvest around forty pounds of viable venison from the creature, skillfully cutting away for over an hour. You pause to consider whether or not any of the other things you can clean from the carcass will come in handy...
While the doe was in brief shock, she is now fully alert to your presence. It's too bad for her that your second arrow deeply pierces her left shoulder. As the buck and other doe bound almost soundlessly across the desert floor in the light of the rising moon, the wounded doe takes one bound and crumples only five feet away.
You are able to easily pad across the sand to within about 60 feet of the target doe. The deer don't sense your presence as you approach. They all continue to graze as you loose an arrow at the doe. The arrow flies through the night air, cutting through it almost soundlessly. The doe doesn't even look up as it solidly hits her flank.
Your senses seem heightened by the crisp air as the sun sets. As you set out from the cave, your immediate thoughts go to small game like desert hares. You decide to make a circuit and keep an eye out for tracks. After some time, you come across a pair of large tracks. While someone not versed to your level in the arts of tracking might not know what to make of them, you know them to be the hoofprints of the rare Stotting Deer. Stotting Deer are able to survive well in desert climates, remarkably well in fact. You decide to track the deer, and after about an hour on foot, you come across a large buck (a bit larger than a donkey) and two does. You are clever/lucky enough to approach them from upwind, and they haven't yet noticed you. You are 50 meters away. How will you proceed?
You continue on until dusk, when you all notice that the rocks along the road are growing bigger. As you round a corner, the wind blows the sand into a flurry. When it settles a moment later, you are standing in front of a rocky outcropping. The surrounding area is still a sea of sand, but dotted here and there with smooth rocks jutting from the surface. The one nearest you is surely the source of rock for lining the road, as it is chipped away into a man-made shelter, nearly fifteen feet deep. What seems to be many years' accumulation of old, charred firewood is piled up in one corner, and a rough bronze sconce, lacking a torch, is crudely bolted to one wall.
I just want everyone to know that I straight-up used Circle of Protection from Evil last night in a dream. It worked rather well.
Your knowledge of the surrounding area tells you little except that you only know of one route through the desert, and you were headed in its direction. This is most likely that road, although you are far from 100% satisfied with that assumption. As for the road's surface, it is hard-packed earth, compressed by many weary travelers over time. The road's edged are occasionally dotted by rocks which have assuredly been placed by design to keep travelers from losing their way in a sandstorm. The area of the road is itself more dirt than loose sand, and you are sure that a little digging could provide some shelter, if not much. You also consider the fact that those rocks had to come from somewhere...
Hey everyone! Just wanted to say thanks for going along with this desert system. I know it is difficult to do something like this with so many saves, but the desert needs teeth, you know! Bear with me!
Eli, Carys, Xazt, Ariana only:
You stare at the river a bit longer. What had appeared to be your watery salvation is instead just a small pathway or indentation that snakes through the sand. Lucas:
WHOA, that is definitely a RIVER! You're saved!! Okay, for the approach to the river, everyone toss 3 fort saves or drink accordingly.
The group shuffles across the sands and up into the new dunes. By the time you arrive at the top of one of them, you are able to see a small river winding through the heat down below, probably no more than a mile distant. Beyond that, stretching to the horizon, lies an endless sea of gritty brown sand.
The cacti all seem to contain water. You are able to sheer off enough needles to access the innards of the plant, but you accidentally spill some several times. You are able to obtain 5 "drinks" worth of water, as well as enough flesh to make a passable meal for 2 persons from the few you carve up (this takes little time).
The dunes on this side of the salt flats rise above you, but not to the extent of the ones you left behind. They are a much more manageable size, and the group will be able to make better time through them. They are also a golden color, instead of the white before. Besides these things, however, you see something that looks large and artificial. It does not match the sand. Eli only:
As you gain a bit of ground for a better look (knowing the kinds of things that desert and sun can do to a man), you shake your head and look again. It must have only been a mirage, making a few cacti appear to be a building of sorts. No other obvious shelter presents itself to your sight.
The group journeys on throughout the night, and arrives near the middle of the salt flats at daybreak. The heat is instantaneous, and begins to sap their strength from around 7pm onward. Another 3 hours will let them reach the dunes at the far end of the flats. Perhaps there is shelter to be found among them?
Survival inspiration: The flats offer no natural shelter. Of course, a tent would offer a little help for the sunlight, but the air temperature of the flats is bound to be nearly unbearable, and very dangerous, even if one were to stand in the shade. It's possible that below the salty crust the layers of carbon-based sludge could remain cool. Many animals, such as hippos, coat themselves in mud to remain cool. Muck has the ability to keep them from overheating, so it might do the same thing for you, if you tried to burrow into it. However, it is likely to simply slip back into the hole once you've dug into it. The sludge is also only a few feet deep. You've heard of people burrowing to avoid the desert sun, but never on salt flats. That doesn't mean it can't be done.
Perception: You give the creatures plenty of room, and soon they fall far into the distance behind you, but dawn is only an hour away, and you have only come to what you judge to be the middle of the salt flats. There are small "islands" of sand here and there now, but that and the distant mountains of sand across the flats is all you spy.
Perception & Kno:Nature:
The heaps are gleaming in the moonlight. They are shiny to some extent, and buried at least partially in the dirt. As you near, you see that they are even a bit glossy. (I'll assume you partially take Lucas' advice and don't get too close) As you get as near as the others let you, you see a large crack in the things running lengthwise down them. It seems to be the separation of two large plates. Suddenly, it strikes you, and you can't believe it, but you recognize them as the outer armor of several gigantic insects. Beetles, you'd guess, but can't completely tell as all but their shells is hidden beneath the salty crust.
Several feet of muck lies below a salty dry crust, and you would be hard-pressed to "dig" much of anything out. Also, the muck is carbon-based, the remains of animals and plants, and smells foul. If you were to dig a shelter, you might be sick from the smell, and that is assuming that the muck wouldn't just seep back into fill up the hole.
You set out East. As night truly falls and the moonlight illuminates the ghostly white sands, you begin to traverse the first valley between two mountain-sized dunes. Two hours under the cover of night, you crest a decent-sized dune and see nothing but sand until the horizon. It takes much effort to keep trudging ahead, and your pace is slowed by the deep sand. Around 2:00am, it becomes quite cold. Before you lie salt flats, a long stretch of nothing. The salty crust is treacherous to tread, and has formed thinly over a deep muck. Most likely, this place was once a lake. To the east, across the flats, lie more white, mountainous dunes. It is an hour into crossing these perilous flats (3:00am) that you notice some strange formations, about the size of a horse, appearing to be embedded into the ground nearly a half mile in the distance. The moonlight is fading, so they are difficult to make out. You aren't sure, but it seemed that one of them moved just now.
As the group moves closer to the shade, the lizard wakes from what appears to have been a brief slumber. It watches them, seemingly exhausted. As dusk settles, the lizard rises and begins to move back toward the cave entrance, slowly.
Eli's waterskin contains 25 drinks of water when full. Heat Exhaustion clarification: Some clarification: the heat exhaustion should be the following: -1 Normal
You must pass a fortitude save of 5 every hour (including one right now to start). Rolling a 1 IS an automatic fail in this case. You may forego the save if you have a drink of water instead that hour. Feel free to post your saves (if you are not drinking water) to your character sheet for tracking. You can also use the discussion forum or a spoiler on here. Same for keeping track of water stores. This will be too tedious if we try to post everything on here, but I want this desert to be difficult for you :)
Okay, sorry for the confusion. The fort save you must pass is a 5, otherwise you lose it for now. You all start at normal. I really messed up that explanation. Oh well. Fixing it. You'll be rolling a lot of saves, so I thought it would be easier to roll to yourself. But you can totally post them in a spoiler or here on discussion. You could also post them on your character sheet for reference. It's up to you.
Everyone must now make a fortitude save against the extreme desert heat. Each of you has five levels of heat exhaustion: 1- Healthy (all is as normal)
You start at 5 right now. You must pass a fortitude of 5 every hour that you are in the desert from 10a.m. to 7p.m. You may forego the fortitude save if you have a drink of water. Whatever you choose to store water in, tell me and I will calculate the amount of "drinks" it contains. Ask me in discussion for any clarifications :) You may take multiple drinks and multiple rolls privately, as long as you keep track with the others somehow if you are using a shared container. You only need to post status changes of your heat exhaustion level here.
You can easily determine North as a bit of time passes. The spring where the lizard lay underneath an outcropping of rock is nearly directly north from the cave entrance. The road is most likely to be due East, as it runs a bit off-center North-to-South through the huge desert, and Keller's Basin is said to be in the center or near center of the huge dunes. If you keep heading East, you're likely to find it.
All that you can see is sand and sky, but you know that the tales of Keller's Basin place it somewhere near Baronrun. It's a guess, but you are more likely to be near Baronrun than Snyderholm if this is indeed Keller's Basin. You squint into the bright sunlight, trying to spy something beyond sand...sand...endless sand...and you fail.
This is all common knowledge, yes. Your characters will know all of this, for sure. Good question.
Our story begins in the middle of nowhere. A group of escaped prisoners find themselves sprawled out across a small expanse of smooth alabaster rock, amid multi-colored dunes the size of large mountains that stretch into the sky. A gushing spring is nearby, clearly the only source of hydration for miles, if not farther, spilling down into a dark cave entrance. A giant lizard cools itself under an outcropping of rock. The sun is descending in the sky, and soon drops behind one of the larger dunes, affording all some respite from the intense heat. It is 7:00pm, or thereabouts, and the small group ponders what to do next.
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