A campaign in my own campaign world using my own compositions and existing modules adapted to fit into my campaign world. Base notes for my campaign currently at www.mconner.0catch.com (popup heavy site). Weekly sessions on tuesday nights, using Fantasy Grounds to play. Six players, four attending the first session. Player characters: Bo'rak (Jeff), Orc Rager (optional class from another source, hoping to multiclass with Orc Brawler, from same source.); Bellergal (Mike), Human Wizard; Mordante (Jose), Human Warmage (Complete Arcane); Wulf (Bo), Half-elf (Passing for human) Barbarian (hoping to multiclass with cleric), and not appearing in first session Umbra (Jonathan), Human Rogue (hoping to multi-class with Slayer of Domiel prestige class ((Book of Exalted Deeds)) ); and Durgan (James) Dwarven Monk.
(Initial dungeon a modification of 'dark and stormy knight' from Wizards of the Coast web page adventures)
The four joining in first session met under an overhang, seeking shelter from a storm. In the back of the overhang, they found the opening to a recently uncovered and partially disturbed tomb. The foursome enter the tomb and explore it. They find one room with a giant spider, the body entombed, and a vargouille hiding in another room. During the exploration, they are briefly joined by two hobgoblins, who become agitated when they learn this is not the legendary tomb their band had hoped it would be. The hobgoblins left in a huff, dropping a map to their lair in their agitation. A sword and ring were taken from the body by the party.
The party broke the session with one room in the tomb still unexplored and the aftermath of their looting the tomb still unresolved as they continue to ride out the storm.
The campaign's second session began with five players. Durgan (James) was unable to join this time, a connection problem (which will be addressed between he and i during the intervening week before next session). Umbra joined the other characters as they consulted one another in the front room of the tomb. After a brief round of introductions (Umbra and Bo'rak were prior acquaintances, so the introductions went fairly smoothly). Once they were out of the way, the party went to explore the remaining empty room. Umbra, the rogue, found a trap in the stone chest in this room, and managed to disarm the chest, albeit barely. While the party sorted through these items, the undead resident of the tomb caught up to the party and attacked. Effectively a coffer corpse (for those of you remembering this first edition fiend folio monster), he charged, unaffected by anything other than magic weapons, only one of which was in the party. Eventually, he was brought down by the very weapon that had rested on his chest as he slumbered in his uneasy death. The party then decided to try to find the hobgoblin's lair from the map they had left behind.
They arrived there shortly before dawn, and managed to take down the two guards at the entry with almost disturbing ease. Because the rogue did not have darkvision, she reluctantly let the orc take the lead as they moved in to explore the cave, she right behind the orc, the rest of the party not much behind them.
Sadly, the orc had no chance to detect the trap and triggered it. A deadfall that drops a cieling block down to four foot height left Borak barely standing and Umbra dying at his feet. A quick application of the healing skill stabilized her, but with no healing magic, they were forced to withdraw and made for the nearest trade road to try to find healing.
They found a waystation shortly after finding the trade road, and bought the services of a cleric who was travelling with a merchant and staying there. The cleric agreed to travel with them, just as one of the mages parted company with the others (Mordante the warmage opted to start a new character to aid the party's balance). The game stopped at this point as the party identified the magic items over the next few days and rested up. The game will resume at this waystation in the next game session, and the players will find themselves confronting the complications of the waystation.
(Good thing i already had something planned here, so the party has something to do here before they go back to the hobgoblins' lair, assuming that is their course of action.)
Third session begins with five players (the one with connection problems still can't connect to my Fantasty Grounds for some reason). The one character who switched his Warmage for a cleric introduces his new character at the waystation that the last session ended at, and the players begin to strategize. While they do so, all of the residents at the tavern begin to take ill, including the player characters. As what begins as panic gives way to frantic investigation, the players find that all of the food in the waystation has been poisoned by the survivors of a band of cranium rats (yes, the old planescape adventure summary 'Arsenic' reworked).
An antidote is found and applied, saving even a small grouping of the rats, who are at a small enough number that their overall intelligence is barely 'verbal' and the party manages to obtain a truce with the surviving rats, smuggling them away from the residents of the waystation and finding them a place somewhat removed from civilization to establish a new nest with hopes of more peaceful coexistance.
In the process, the PCs take custody of the poisoned food, planning to use it to try to take down some of the hobgoblins back at the lair the PCs had fled earlier. Using a rented wagon, they linger near where the goblins and hobgoblins had been lairing, and 'fled' when a small raiding party attacked them. The small raiding party took some of the food and began heading back to their lair, with the PCs trailing them, which became the break point for the game this week.
the fourth gaming session was a pretty straightforward 'take the fortress' run for the players, with some excellent rolls on their part. They re entered the goblinoid's lair, dealing with the new guards at the entryway, fighting past two groups of goblins and hobgoblins, finding a gnoll prisoner and freeing him...negotiating a truce.
From there, they made a charge for the leader, finding him with two hobgoblins, two bugbears. The leader, Haglar the Mighty, an Ogre with two levels of Sorcerer, joined the battle, and the party managed to take him down after a rather involved battle. The game concluded immediately following that battle, with plans to begin with searching for spoils of battle at the next session.
The party began their search of the lair, and gathered the loot they could find. Before they finished this search, however, they noticed three goblins trying to flee the lair. Catching up to them, the party found themselves in combat with two of the three, and the third surrendered. He quickly gave what limited information he had on humanoid tribes and clans in the area, as well as information on some mysterious figure that met with Haglar the Ogre on a few occasions.
En route to the nearest city, the party encountered a family who live near a ring of standing stones, and apparently have been affected by it to some extent. Some of the family seem to be living their lives with a backwards perception of time, seeing this 'first meeting' as their goodbye, and hinting to the player characters at their futures. In typical oracular fashion, these hints were more teasing than helpful, but tied into the characters' origins and helped set up plotlines for the future.
Between the goblin and the family, the PCs learned of someone referred to as 'the silver elf' that Haglar's allies had been seeking, and that the family warned needs the PCs help. The party concluded the adventure preparing to go to Sryth, the nearest city, as this is the place where they expect to either find the silver elf, or those who hunt her.
The party made their way to Sryth without further incident. The party managed to level up and a fair bit of this session was taken up with the party taking care of that and then selling unneeded equipment and buying new items. A few cautious inquiries didn't give any immediate results, but the party did meet one of the merchants from the waystation earlier, who introduced the party to a captain of the City Guard, who took some of the party aside to discuss a possible commision regarding the silver elf. The coincidence that the party was aware of her and asking about her at the time that the captain was needing help in seeking her out was not lost on the captain, who seems to be only trusting the party partway.
The party's rogue parted from the rest of the company to spend time talking with an individual who was clearly keeping an eye on all entering the tavern and leaving it, who openly admitted that he was gathering information. His evasiveness as to who exactly he served, however, did not endear him to anyone. The fact that he seemed on good terms with the captain of the guard did not soothe these anxieties, and the rogue decided to try to see what, if anything, she could gather from him.
The captain of the guard decided to trust the party to some extent and extended an offer to them to help in paying the ransom for the silver elf, who had been kidnapped. The captain admits that she expects a double cross by the kidnappers, and wants a party untainted by any local politics, who is also capable of taking care of themselves if things do go sour; planning to use the party to make the ransom exchange while her people watch from hiding, ready to jump in when and if things go wrong.
The gaming session broke up at this point, but the negotiations are ongoing in a group email that will continue until the next session.
The players, uncertain who they can trust and how much, took the approximate day and a half they had until the drop point and scouted out every bit of information they could, including trying to learn about the captain who is getting them involved in the ransom drop.
eventually the time for the drop came, and half of the party waited at the drop point, while the rest lurked in a nearby abandoned building (except for Umbra, the rogue, who was hiding in shadows nearer) Couriers came to the drop point without the elf. The couriers took the ransom and were followed by Umbra. The couriers made it to a building, and just as Umbra was getting ready to get word back to the rest of the party, explosive runes that had been placed in the bag went off, and the building it was in caught fire readily. The party arrived as quickly as they could, and began to make their way in. Several bodies were visible on the ground floor, and part of the floor had collapsed into the basement. Several figures were visible moving into the basement, so the party followed.
In the basement, the party began to close on the fleeing figures, one of whom was carrying a bound and apparently unconsscious form. The others began to close with the party when the one holding the bound figure dropped her and revealed himself to be a half dragon, breathing a cone of fire that included his own allies. The battle was quick and ended with the half dragon and all but one of the opponents killed, the one in question having fled into a sub basement, and from there into the rain sewers of Sryth. half the party followed him, while the rest took the silver elf out of the building and turned her over to the Captain. The elf was drugged but apparently otherwise unharmed.
The party took the remaining member of the foes captive in the sewers and brought their prisoner to an abandoned building near the ransom drop. At this point, a potential problem in how to deal with him arose, as the orc in the party expressed an interest in using torture to acquire information, while the rest of the party expressed reservations about doing so. The campaign took a break at this point, and the debate has shifted to emails during the interim until next gaming session.
Our eighth session began on two high points that had nothing to do with the game, one player's absence because he and his wife are having a child this week (We had been advised that if the little one wasn't coming out on her own, they were planning on inducing tuesday or wednsday, here's hoping.); and the player who had not been able to join to this point due to some connection problems finally got through.
The session itself began with the party in two groups, one group overseeing the recovery of the silver elf (and meeting the new player who had been helping coordinate the safehouse with the female captain of the guard.). The other group had a lot less fun as they continued trying to deal with their prisoner, who rapidly was proving himself as intractable a villain as any of them would have hoped to be as heroes in his position. He refused to cooperate, refused to recant his position, and insisted that even if his death was iminent, that he agreed with the goals of the Shadow Court.
The party found themselves arguing (perfectly in character) about what to do with the prisoner, some wanting to turn him over to the captain of the guard, some wanting to just turn him over to the general city guard (this distinction is because there is a perception that the prisoner and captain both stressed, that there's enough corruption in the guard that they both believed that the prisoner would be killed before he had the chance to talk if he were taken by the guard) and turning him over to the silver elf, since she was the 'injured' party as far as they were determined.
This argument grew until one of the characters stalked off rather than continue talking with the other characters (the player was fine with it, but kept in character). The silver elf was consulted, but she felt it was a criminal matter for the city of Sryth to deal with, either the City Guard or the captain.
The captain eventually gave the prisoner a sword, had him untied, and met him in a fair duel. It wasn't a lengthy fight, but the rest of the party watched in an almost stunned silence. The captain stalked off in sullen silence after dispatching the prisoner.
The silver elf offered to hire the party to escort her out of the Vale, something she had been preparing to do when she had been kidnapped. Iniital plans to do so, and discussions on how to do so concluded the session.
Overall, i, as dm, had mixed feelings about this session. The players were unhappy with this prisoner's actions, they were floored by being confronted with his fanaticism. I was, however, determined that he was not going to be an 'in' to the group of villians, the Shadow Court, they are to remain a background threat for much of the campaign if the PCs do base out of Sryth. He was a way for the PCs to learn of the Shadow Court and nothing more, so i had to make sure that informationally he was pretty much a dead end at this point. The players responded with surprising emotion to his resolve, and i think they admired his determination to a point, and hated the necessity of his passing. (The ones who were most upset by it seemed concerned about it falling under the heading of vigilante justice). Afterwards, player responses seemed favorable, but still somewhat guarded, the characters didn't enjoy it much, but the players seemed fine with it.
Average player level now 3....
[Delay in posting this entry, not in playing the session]
The party managed to get all of the members back together, and with some further discussion, began discussing exactly how to try to get Fanira, the 'silver elf' out of the Vale. Passage was booked on a ship going from Sryth to Orlinama, a city that actually is in almost the opposite direction to Hadrach City, the point that Fanira would like to use to exit the Vale. The players are working on the assumption at this point that FAnira may be under some level of observation, so they are trying to lead something of a false trail.
A boat passage was secured for an overnight trip to the other city. As the party huddled around Fanira in the boat, a dragon passed overhead. Since only the Dragon of Hadrach Vale is supposed to be inside the Vale, this was a sight of some concern, and Fanira's reaction was one of stark terror, though she relaxed a little and expressed some concern since even in the darkness, she said that she could see it looked wrong. The Dragon of the Vale is a red, and it looked like a blue flying overhead.
The party arrived at Orlinama, finding a city somewhat unique in that almost half of its 'area' is a floating city, docks and floating platforms linked by a flexible network of bridges with various anchor points. The party followed a recommendation of the captain of the Sryth guard and found an Inn called Arlevad's Blessing, and managed to communicate their special needs to the owner, Julian, who put out feelers to arrange transportation to Hadrach City as well as to help arrange a 'blind' booking on a caraven headed in another direction.
Umbra asked for Borak to buy her ingredients she could use for a disguise kit, so he and Bellergal the mage went out to shop for items. Shortly after acquiring the last item, Borak was momentarily distracted by an orc priest haranguing the crowd, stating that it was the will of Gruumsh that orcs take their place as the rightful masters and that humans could save themselves a lot of trouble by accepting their lot and simply letting the orcs take over (momentary sidebar. Yes, Gruumsh, the 'prime diety' of the orcs is in my campaign, as are most of the racial dieties. And this incident stands out also in that Borak is trying to find a means whereby which he can help make an optional co-existence for orcs and humans. This priest's vision of a non-violent 'transition of power' is at odds with Borak's vision as much as the normal violent clashes that occur frequently.)Borak argued openly with the priest, to the overall amusement of the crowd...well, except for those who were standing next to either of them. Bellergal, who was watching the exchange, noticed that there was a person who was watching Borak and Bellergal, and not paying any attention to the priest or the rest of the crowd. Then he realized that this person had been watching them before the argument started, and had been following them for a while. With an extremely good result on a hide roll, Bellergal slipped into the crowd and managed to sneak up on this person and put a modicum of threat against the man. This person agreed to come quietly with Bellergal and Borak, though the two player characters viewed it as a 'taking him prisoner' situation.
The game broke at this point.
The session for this week began with Borak and Bellergal escorting their 'prisoner' back to their room. He was cooperative, and clearly uneasy around Borak's gruff style, but he was willing to talk with the party. Wulf (using the alias Arima at this time) was way from the rest of the party at this point, seeking out a sailor he had overheard during the passage across the lake to Orlinama, wanting to ask questions that would resolve his curiosity about an issue that may deal with his own heritage.
The rest of the party gathered in one of the rooms they were taking, and secured their 'prisoner' and began talking with him. The man, clearly afraid, still was willing to talk and communicate and it was gradually discerned that he was assessing the party as a potential threat. This man, Elerren, was revealed to be an Urban Druid (per the Dragon Compemdium, and therefore Dragon Magazine), and he had heard of the party through his information network (Elerren currently has four cities as 'his', Hadrach, Sryth, Orlinama and Thavor). He could see that the party was disruptive to some extent, but he had to find out if the man was disruptive in a negative sense or a positive one. It was with some difficulty that Elerren and the party managed to reach an area of tenative trust, and essentially, they parted company on some good notes, with each giving the other the chance to prove themselves. Umbra seemed a bit impressed with and possibly taken by Elerren, and Elerren seemed very appreciative of the attention.
A tenative arrangement to book transport was made on a ship to go from the lake downriver at least to Shamarr if not all the way to Hadrach. The ship they will be taking is the Lerena Aru, captained by Akadar Edeka. 'Arima' had met with the captain shortly after dawn on the day between their arrival and the scheduled departure to check out the ship, the captain, and as much of the crew as he could see. This inspection, however, was interrupted by a commotion just outside the city walls on the land side, that managed to draw attention from most of the city's populace. A longboat from the ship joined several other smaller boats going towards the commotion, and the rest of the party, hearing of the disturbance from the tavern, joined the crowd in the streets trying to get a view.
The Dragon of the Vale stood on the corpse of the blue dragon, tearing parts of it away from other parts, throwing the head into the lake. It made a rather imperious pronouncement about how this is how it would respond to every dragon that entered the Vale. It flew off in the general direction of its lair, and Borak and Bellergal joined the townsfolk moving to claim parts of the blue's body. Wulf/Arima made it to shore from this point, and taking advantage of the general confusion, slipped into the water, exploiting his selkie heritage and finding the head underwater and marking its location.
The party regrouped, taking their rather grim trophies, and then arranging for a cleric to hire out for them and cast a speak with dead with the head of the blue dragon.
The session broke with the party discussing that three questions they can ask (7th level cleric) and renting a boat to get the head to a place where they can ask the questions without interference. The party will be talking through emails to decide on the final questions.
This session was unusual in some of its overall flow, the first reason being that half of the regular players were unable to attend for various reasons, the second that for part of the session we had an observer logged in who is learning Fantasy Grounds and D and D at the same time. The three players not appearing were relegated to DM run NPCs for the evening.
The session began with the hired cleric helping ask the dismembered head of the blue dragon the three questions they had prepared. Their first question, what had the blue dragon learned of the Dragon of Hadrach Vale, gave them an answer that told them basically that the blue dragon had entered the Vale with the goal of carving out its own territory in the Vale or possibly seeking a weakness in the Dragon's power. The party didn't trust this answer, and considered it evasive, but persevered.
Their next question was "what are the secrets of the Dragon of Hadrach Vale?" The answer they recieved they found even more irritating; "I don't know. That was one of the things I was seeking. In those secrets lie great power."
Their third question was one that gave them more useful information, though it was information whose usefullness was indeterminate because it was limited to the blue dragon's point of view. "Other than the red dragon himself, what are the best three sources we seek to learn the most of the red dragon's plans and secrets?" the answer to that, "Callaraxiar, the gold dragon who lives near Meharr, Shenikara, the elven mage who heads the Hadrach City Adventurer's Guild, and Thuramuta, the only dragon known to have fought the dragon and lived. "
Fanira, the silver elf, advised that Thuramuta was believed to be dead, and while the blue dragon claimed it had survived, Fanira pointed out that Thuramuta had never been seen by any other dragon following its fight with the Dragon of the Vale.
The party then boarded the ship they were hoping to use to go downstream to Hadrach City. They noticed a rather unusual character having several large crates loaded into the ship, who withdrew to a cot belowdecks. He was accompanied by an ogre bodyguard.
Borak took the chance to try to see if he could communicate with the man and his bodyguard, while Arima tried to spy on the cargo the man had loaded. Their suspicions were confirmed to some extent in that he is carrying items of a non magical nature, that are confirmed to be connected to worship of one of the evil dieties of the Mehari Campaign. Since some of this entities worshippers do so in a desire to placate the evil, such worship is not illegal as such, but it is something watched with some suspicion by the general populace. The man, Kharuu by name, openly admitted that he was a worshipper of Kahura, the evil diety in question.
Arima took the chance to speak with the captain of the ship during a shift change and the captain spoke with several of the party members on the main deck while they watched the ship make way through the river. The conversation drifted to the topic of the river pirates, and the captain admitted to some concern, but that it was a risk that was a part of how the trade of river travel worked...every trip had some risk.
The game broke at this point, with the players half-expecting a pirate attack, and the characters trying to be alert but at the same time, not having anything concrete to base such apprehensions on.
This session had a second party sitting in, considering joining in. It looks like two new players will be in the campaign beginning next week.
The party had been primed for a pirate attack, so they got one. It did not go in any normal sense, however, river pirates attacked from flanking positions in two boats, which were effectively repelled by spellcasting before the ship could be boarded, so as far as regular combat goes, the pirate attack was a non-event. The spellcasting on one boat came from the ship's mage and Kharuu, the evil passenger the party had seen before. a few well placed spells caused the one boat to founder badly, and Kharuu began casting horribly devastating spells at any pirates swimming towards the boat from that side. The other boat was damaged by Arima casting a web spell on the boarding party, and Bellergal casting scorching ray on one of the closer members of the boarding party, which set the web afire, effectively changing that ship from attacker to crazed fleeing party. The PCs noticed two trolls in that ship, so they were grateful to have avoided the combat to a point.
This attack occured very blatantly, in broad daylight, so the strategy of these pirates was very atypical. so much so that the captain seemed upset by it, but he didn't elaborate on this tot he party.
Arima went overboard and examined the hull of the ship they were on, and investigated some of the bodies of the victims of Kharuu's magic, confirming that his magic was either evil in nature or at the least in application.
The ship travelled without further incident to the city of Shamarr. This is the last river port before the Dragonwash river, and Umbra, the rogue, had been tasked to check on the temple of Hurahr there. Reports from that church to others in the Vale had stopped abruptly about a month ago, spurring some concerns.
The ship docked at Shamarr, advising that they would stay here for one day only. The party began exploring the town, Umbra travelling with Fanira the silver elf, the rest of the party travelling with them to a point, but expressing interest in exploring more of the town.
The session ended at this point, it was a short session. Next week is slated to be a more involved session, and play is scheduled to begin with the party locating the temple.
The party had not split up for the usual varied purposes yet when they made it to the temple. As they stood outside it, they noticed dome activity,and were approached by a small woman (Kenzie, a rogue, the newest PC in the party, joining as a player tonight), who had been in the city for a few days, and had been puzzling over a phenomenon about the temple. She called the party's attention to this phenomenon, notably that the locals seem to not only be ignoring the temple, but actually unable to see it or interact with it in any way. They will approach the building as if skirting across an empty lot, turning at the last moment to avoid hitting the building, but otherwise not seeming aware of it in any way.
The full party began exploring the temple, finding the first level abandoned, except for a large bowl apparently containing a bound fire elemental. Exercizing caution, they did not interfere with the binding holding this creature in place, and in further searching of the temple's empty ground floor, they found a summoning circle imbedded in the floor, and a series of rituals designed for summoning of good outsiders. Using the circle and the instructions left, they summoned an archon, who looked into the matter, and gave the party the backstory about what had happened to the temple.
A spirit naga had charmed several humans into servitutde, one of whom had a ring of wishes. The last wish was used for the benefit of the naga, but was phrased badly, removing all knowledge of the temple's existence from the local residents. The locals then abandoned the building as, for them, it no longer existed for all intents and purposes. This wasn't the perfect match for the naga's desires, but gave it a lair where it could lurk uninterrupted for the most part. It gathered its servants as a buffer against any possible intrusion and began to gather resources for its own purposes.
The party found the naga and its guardians in the basement of the temple, clearing out the opponents in a series of intense battles that took up the rest of the session. The next session is scheduled to begin with examination of the loot.
This session was sidetracked by a major discussion over the items in the naga's treasure, and an effort to get all the items identified. This was a major gift of magic items, partly to prepare for the upcoming developments in the campaign, and partly to make up for approximately one full level's worth of advancement in just roleplaying xp that didn't give any items at all.
The party also spent a fair bit of time interrogating one of the naga's surviving victims, who had been charmed into servitude. They spent the rest of the game session examining the temple and making sure they hadn't overlooked any potential problems. They were careful not to take anything other than the treasure of the naga itself, and one of the players, the rogue Umbra, read the teachings of this particular deity and felt a tug....Her lawful good alignment hit a chord with this deity, and the first step towards a planned shift towards the Slayer of Domiel Prestige class was taken (Book of Exalted Deeds for those keeping track)
The party returned to their ship to find the mage Kharuu and his equipment being offloaded. The captain had discovered that Kharuu had actually arranged for the oddly staged pirate raid himself, telling the pirates that the ship's mage was particularly vulnerable to daylight, for the sole purpose of using the deaths of the pirates attacking to charge one of his magic items.
Edu, the ogre bodyguard, travelled with the party to Hadrach, announcing his intention to join the Adventurer's Guild. Fanira, the silver elf, bought rooms at a high quality inn for the entire party before she leaves Hadrach City, and the Vale on the following day.
The party then went to the Adventurer's Guild and registered their group, and themselves as individuals. The party met two members of the Adventurer's Guild and learned some of the basic rules.
Most of the game's session was caught up in discussions on these matters. One of the two nonattending player characters left the party to stay in Hadrach city, to rejoin if the player returns to the campaign, the other nonattending player character becoming an attached npc for clerical benefit (party imbalance has no active cleric with this player's dropping out), and introducing another active player character, who the party met in the city, a paladin named Kelson Rhys.
The game resumed from the point of the last session, beginning with the party exiting the Adventurer's Guild, and escorting Fanira to a small island just outside of Hadrach City, south and west of it, generally seen as the border of the Vale. Fanira, standing on this small piece of rock, turned to the party, thanked them for the escort and their protection, and changed to her true form, that of a fairly young gold dragon. She flew away as quickly as she could, not daring to linger inside the Vale in her true form. Her exact age and size was undetermined by the party. The more seasoned players had deduced from comments and behaviors that she was a metallic dragon of some kind, but the characters were at least somewhat caught by surprise, and returned to the city with at least some wistfulness, already missing the friend they had grown used to.
The next few days were taken up with a shopping spree, and the party concluded this batch of purchases with a perusal of the Adventurer's Guild "Threat board", where situations that may appeal to adventurers are posted. The party settled on four adventures that seemed to lead to three 'dungeons' not too far from the city. They discussed which to go to, and decided to go to the one furthest from the city first. This one involved a small town's constable, who has been missing for some time, having disappeared shortly after the elimination of a local bandit gang. The party rode an overland route that avoided the other two dungeoneering areas, planning on investigating them on the way back. They arrived at the small town of Bad Axe after three days' ride, in late afternoon.
The town looked completely abandoned, and the first few buildings that the party looked into gave evidence that great violence had occurred recently, several of the buildings barricaded from inside, but the barricades breached, bloodstains about. No bodies, not of human or animal inside the village. The party was on one side of the river, with only about a third of the town's buildings on the same side of the river as them. A ferry was available, running on a cable that spans the river, but the ferry raft was on the other side of the river. They rang the bell, and heard voices coming from inside one of the buildings on the far shore. this was shortly followed by the sound of barricades being dismantled.
A single person came out of the building, ran the ferry across and escorted the party and their mounts back to the same side that he was from. He warned the party that the attackers would return at sunset, and that time was short. The party talked with the man briefly, only able to get limited information, and it was decided by the party that they would take occupancy of one of the other buildings nearby and barricade themselves to a point in it, keeping themselves available to charge out and enter combat. The man returned inside his building and began putting his barricades up. It was determined that this man also had six other survivors inside the building with him, the others of whom could be heard, but did not come out during the brief period.
The only things the party knows at this point is that the attackers are some kind of undead and that they are not seen at all during daylight hours. The party took a break at this point, preparing for next week to begin at sunset. (Gotta love a good cliffhanger)
Your website is pretty much impossible to get to. Everytime I try to open it, one of the pop-ups takes over and I never see it.
Is there another way?
that web host has recently changed its behavior, and i'm very unhappy with that. My apologies. I will see if i can find a free place to host the page so that you can see the background for the campaign, i will update that in this listing.
Short term fix, i have moved the page to
http://www.geocities.com/liath22/
This is the page in pretty much the same state as it was in at the time of the start of the campaign. The only addition at this time are two pages that dealt with extensive additional mapping i had done to the city of Sryth. I hope in the near future to add an additional page showing some of the map conversions I had made from CC2 to the new CC3 format.
In addition, I am considering including maps of the dungeons after the party has completed them. If there is an interest in this, please post here, and I will begin such an addition accordingly.
As a geocities site, it does have a narrow bandwidth capacity, so i do apologize if anyone has difficulty getting through. But much better than 0catch.com at this point.
Back to the Campaign----
This week's session began just a few minutes after last week's session concluded, the party finished their hurried preparations, two members of the party inside the house behind a hastily constructed barricade, three on the roof, and the paladin mounted on his steed, in the middle of the road in front of the house. The NPC cleric (formerly a PC cleric)was also behind the barricade. The sun set, and six of the unknown undead seemed to materialize out of the darkness. in a matter of moments, however, they were able to determine that these were not incorporeal undead, as they began to close to combat with the PCs quickly.
A turning attempt by the NPC cleric and the PC paladin produced no results, and left the NPC cleric as exposed to attack as the paladin, which caused the players to suddenly re-evaluate that course of action.
A well placed web removed two of them from active combat almost immediately, and while these two struggled, they did not free themselves during the course of the session. A staff of fire was triggered with a fireball that caught three others in a blast that rocked them, and clearly caused damage, but the creatures did not fall. The remaining undead closed to melee with the paladin. The first exchange of blows hurt the creature, but also reduced the paladin to almost half of his hit points, making it clear to the players that these were not standard undead by any means.
the NPC cleric ran back and began to try to scramble to the roof rather than try to get over the barricade, while a second fireball was launched. The undead rode out this blast as well, and one of the three caught in the blast closed with the paladin while the other two followed the NPC cleric, trailing by the difference in movement rates. This had the side effect of leaving these two immediately in front of the house. Attempts to fire flaming arrow at the undead were only intermittently successful with some amazingly varied to hit rolls, though the undead were hit every so often, and while the creatures were being hurt, they were not falling. The players who were well versed in the existing undead entries and had studied the Monster manuals over the previous week were frantically trying to figure out what was going wrong or what they were dealing with, while the characters kept plugging away. The orc fighter type crawled out of the house and joined melee, the NPC cleric and one of the PCs from the roof returned to the ground to try to add healing support for the paladin (the PC protecting the NPC while the NPC cast healing on the paladin). The combat continued for several rounds, and the PCs were feeling quite frustrated at how tough their opponents were when finally one of the foes fell. The others in melee combat had been brought low in hp, and began to fall in short order after that. The PCs all began to gather in the road and debate what to do with the two in the web (the entire combat only lasted about five rounds, maintaining that strange five round combat duration that seems to crop up in mid level combats at least) A few more fire spells were cast from the staff of fire at the web, weakening the web but starting to damage these creatures, when one of the player characters noticed that they were being watched by something insubstantial, a figure seemingly formed of deep shadow, with an indistinct outline. It looked at first glance a bit like an extremely large wraith. The paladin tried to detect evil and was stunned with the strength of the reading of evil from this form. He and the orc (talk about an ironic pairing) charged the figure, and at the first blow to land on it, the figure seemed to explode into a harmless wisp of smoke that drifted up and away, leaving a message in all of their minds that this was not over, and that they had earned this entities hatred. As it dissipated, the creatures in the web collapsed, as did one of the townsfolk barricated in the other dwelling, that person having succumbed to a conversion into one of the creatures.
Still clueless over what the undead that they faced were, nor what this apparent leader of them was, they began asking the survivors of the townsfolk for more details about what had happened lately in the area. The PCs had arrived to the town to try to join a search party for a local lawman gone missing. The constable had formed a posse and gone looking for a local bandit named Dekar, who had bragged in the past about having sold his soul for some limited immortality. The PCs are assuming at this point that the strange figure they fought may be the manifestation of Dekar's odd deal, and that the constable is still among the missing. The session closed with the PCs planning to search the constable's office, then go into the Shiku Forest (the large forest that the village abuts, where Dekar had kept his hideout, apparently), and to also begin looking into one of the other postings from the Adventurer's Guild, which is in the southern reaches of this forest.
This session began the morning following last session's combat, the party began to search the town and the surrounding area for any other survivors (finding none) and scouting out for information and possible salvage. Two of the party members snuck into the forest, looking for Fey contacts, both of them having some fey blood themselves (not going into more details at the moment) and taking a moment to bond themselves (one male character, Arima, and one female, Kenzie, the details of their bonding are private at the moment, but were apparently the first step in something intimate) They realized that they were being watched by a unicorn of unusual coloration (black body with silver mane and tail) that left them shortly after it realized they were aware of it.
Umbra kept in contact with the survivors in the one house, while Borak searched the constable's house. He found a journal, some maps, and a small collection of wanted posters and the like, and was able to piece together some information as to the circumstances that led to the constable's disappearance, which was what they were coming to Bad Axe to investigate in the first place.
Apparently, a local bandit, who called himself Dekar the Undying, had provoked the law a few too many times, and the constable gathered a posse and chased after him. The constable had included a theory that perhaps the bandit was hiding in Shumeharr, a ghost town possibly located within the large area of the Shiku forest. The party escorted the survivors to a small fishing village downriver...then prepared to double back and go to the druids of Shiku, who were the contacts for another adventure posted with the Adventurer's Guild, to see if they can confirm more about what may have happened with the undead, and at the least, the location of Shumeharr.
The game ended at this point
This week's session began with the party immediately striking out to find the druids of Shiku. They entered the southern half of the Shiku forest, and by mid morning were greeted by a representative of the druids, who escorted them to the ruling body of the druids of Shiku Forest, the Green Council.
On the way, this person, Shayenna, explained what she knew of the problem that the druids themselves were facing. This information will be added to the information from the council below. Then Shayenna introduced the party to the Green Council, specifically the ArchDruid of this sect, who was ill because of the taint from the threat that was damaging the woords. En route to this meeting, the party had encountered one stream that had been contaminated by this threat, the water having the smell of soaked ashes and mildly staining anything that came into contact with the water.
The ArchDruid bargained with the PCs to give them all of the information she had about Shumeharr, the PCs' current goal because of the undead they had faced in Bad Axe, in exchange for which, the PCs would help with the threat that the druids themselves were facing. The PCs agreed, admitting that they had hoped to deal with that threat already, but had confronted the problem in Bad Axe first.
The threat was known to have been in Shiku Forest for about five years, and no one who confronted it survived, or if anyone had, they hadn't talked of it. Druids and fey creatures were stalked and destroyed as encountered. Whatever it was seemed a single creature, and it moved through the forest. In its wake, plants were left sickened and water sources were contaminated for a time following its passing. Victims were beaten, crushed, and often burned. nothing was ever taken from the bodies of victims, they were not looted. Attempts to sense it were met with limited success as it seemed somehow to belong to the forest, even while it was clearly alien to the woods, and no druid but the ArchDruid could detect it at all. The ArchDruid could only sense it in how she was sickening because of the presence of the creature in the forest.
The clearing where the Council met the PCs included a ring of standing stones that were of old fey work, but had been to some extent 'depowered'. Arima, one of the fey in the party, was particularly intrigued by and concerned about this.
Pressing for more information, trying to determine if there were any possible links between past actions of the druids themselves and this creature, the party, specifically Arima and Kenzie, found themselves confronting a taboo about the druids of Shiku forest, who would not discuss their past activities regarding justice or its dispersal within the forest at the hands of the druids. The party pressed until they had all of the information the druids could give, and the druids began reacting with clear discomfort at the pressing for more information.
At least some of the party was agitated with the druids at this point, and the party searched for the creature, striking for its last known location. The party found the creature, an undead treant born from a forest fire in another nearby forest (For creature stats, go to Rich Burlew's page, and look for the Charred Horror). The creature lashed out at the party, who fought back. a quick but intense battle followed, with the creature collapsing on itself in a shower of sparks and ash at its demise. Shayenna arrived, obviously having trailed the party and observed the battle, handed healing spells to the PCs as needed, and returning to report to the Council.
The party broke at this point with the plan of returning to the Council to claim their reward, information and monetary.
The party returned to the druids, and were greeted warmly. As far as the druids were concerned, the previous tensions were forgiven, and while certain topics of conversation were still taboo, they were more than willing to deal with the party.
The party received the money that had been promised to the Adventurer's Guild, and the Archdruid sat with the party and gave them a great deal of the background on Shumeharr, the city that the party was looking for.
Shumeharr had been abruptly emptied approximately a hundred and fifty years prior, literally in the space of one day, no one inside the city ever being heard from again. A few theories were advanced, and all of the available background on the lost town/city was given.
The party spent a night in preparation, stocking up on supplies, preparing spells and making sure all equipment was in good condition. Kelson, the paladin, having reached adequate level, tested his ability to summon his mount, and was pleased and honored to meet the steed that responded to his call.
The party set out for the city, finding it early in the morning of the second day of explorations.
The party found the city in remarkably good condition, none of the buildings exhibiting the decay one would expect to find in a city unattended or untenanted for more than a century. They found one vacant lot with an empty foundation, but no wreckage of any kind. (an adjacent block to this was showing some signs of violent collapse) As the party explored the vacant lot, they found a doorway to a tower that fit the empty foundation. The party walked through the empty foundation location, the tower apparently not existing in this plane except when accessed through the open doorway. The rogue checked for traps, and the party began slowly entering the tower. This was decided as the break point for this session, partly due to a late start and partly because the clear transition made a good 'anchor point' for the next session's beginning.
Side note: this was the party's twentieth session, regular weekly meetings, the party is at fifth level, starting at first.
The party explored a temple near the vacant lot before starting to explore the tower, wondering about the strange sense of lingering wrongness hovering over the town, and to what extent the temple was able to avoid or resist this. They were unablet o make much headway in such, the npc cleric travelling with the party tried to resanctify the grounds, but in the end, gained only some temporary peace in the temple grounds, knowing that it wouldn't last.
The party left the temple, discovering that more time had passed than they had thought, literally having lost about seven hours to their best estimate. In the night, the town's sense of being 'wrong' increased, the wells no longer had clear water in them, but something that smelled like blood. The party entered the tower, hoping to get to the source of the problem. One of the first things the party saw inside was a huge statue of a demonic figure standing on the broken body of a female warrior. Close inspection of the first level (and an excellent spot check) determined that the female figure of the statue, at least, was not a statue after all.
Realizing she had been discovered, the female fled into the depths of the tower, and ran upstairs. The party began to explore, rogues to the fore, searching. Traps on the first staircase were found and jammed (The trigger was located elsewhere and has not been found yet). The second level uncovered a pool of black water that rippled as they approached, but the party did not explore this further. They also found the aftermath of a prior adventuring party's last battle, from the look of it, though it appeared that the heroes had at least one survivor, from the attention the bodies of the previous adventurers had been given. going further upstairs, the party found the body of the survivor, who had succumbed to her wounds after barring herself in a room with holy symbols. A fallen paladin, she bore an item in her hands that gave a private message to the paladin in the current party. He took up the item to continue the first paladin's mission.
The party went up one more floor, and encountered a bar-lgura demon, who took on the primary combat mode of the party (and they hit hard, taking the beast down disturbingly fast). While they were doing this, however, the female figure who had fled earlier struck from hiding, wounding and draining some levels from the npc cleric, revealing herself as a succubus. The party killed her, with some difficulty, and tried to assist the cleric as they could. This was the break point for the group this week.
The party resumed their press up the floors of the tower. They found a grim 'larder' consisting of several of the bodies presumably from the time that the city of Shumeharr fell. They found and jammed a trap on another staircase, and then moved up one more floor, finding themselves confronting the wraithlike form of Dekar, the strange figure that had been behind the undead who were attacking the town of Bad Axe. A mystic circle of some kind took up a large part of the floor, and on the symbol was what appeared to be the flayed skin of a person. Five wights began moving forward as Dekar taunted the party. Following intuition, two of the party charged and physically attacked the skin. Dekar's reactions confirmed a connection between it and himself. The rest of the party kept an eye on the wights and dealt with them as they closed. Before full combat could be engaged, the skin was destroyed, and Dekar vanished, the wights going inanimate.
The three who had been dealing with the circle and the skin began to fade from view as the symbol began glowing brightly. Before the others could react, the three had vanished. The rest of the party, determined to keep together, followed.
The entire party found itself in a larger room, surrounded by statues facing inward, statues of something that blended the more horrifying aspects of a marilith and a retriever demon. beyond the ring of statues, they found the form of Tharan Starlight, the mage who caused the fall of Shumeharr. Not quite a lich, not a free entity, it hovered between life and death, mutilated and bound to its throne, powering a persistent link between Shumeharr and the abyss with its life force. Tharan explained how it had found a way to kill all of the residents of Shumeharr in one instant, and the resulting taint of evil left the city's remains a prime tool for a link to the abyss. In exchange for this action, Tharan had been promised power and eternal life. As often is the case in such bargains, the mortal lost more than he gained, gaining a life of imprisonment and agony, and becoming a conduit for power without being able to use it at all.
Tharan confirmed that the form of the statues outside was the form of the demon with which he had bargained, Thekerenna by name. The staff that Kelson had been carrying insisted that it be used to strike Tharan, that in so doing, both it and Tharan would be destroyed, which would close the breach between the Prime Material and the Abyss. The stain of evil on the city would likely remain, but the greater impact would be lessened.
The paladin struck, and the party made their way back to the symbol, which sent them back to the prior level. The party fled the tower, noting that it was beginning to collapse at this point. The party made it back to the outside of the tower before it collapsed, the tower now being fully back in the prime material plane, and it and the rest of the city began to catch up the time that it had lost, most of the buildings collapsing within a few minutes.
(if the description of the floor layouts seem vaguely familiar to old time gamers, that's because the wizard's tower floorplan is the same as the Dark Tower from the old Judge's Guild module of the same name. Changes in most of the contents and manifestations, but the floorplan is a good one.)
The party decided at this time to make their way back to Hadrach City and take a month of 'game time' off, which will be covered in the next session, and the party will begin to look forward and make their plans.
this week's session was something of a non-event, the party mainly spending time in-town between adventures, setting a tenative adventuring schedule when they resume adventuring and wrapping up some loose ends regarding training and the like. Further complicated by DM illness, little was accomplished. Hopefully next week can pick up more.
*dusting off the cobwebs* due to illness and a new job, we had to go on hiatus. the game is scheduled to resume on sunday nights, the first sunday in november will be the first session back. most of the players are eager to get the campaing going again, which i take as a good sign
back in the saddle, so to speak. I haven't posted while the first few sessions went by. we are three sessions into the 'restart' and the game is flowing smoothly. For a 'behind the scenes' look at the restart, i'm going to go into how the 'restart' adventure came to be. During the hiatus, i had picked up a few more books (now own 49 rulebooks, including a few non WotC ones, but i'm trying to be picky as to which ones stay 'in the stack' one of the books i picked up during the interim was one of the Gary Gygax series from Troll games, specifically, "Insidiae" by Dan Cross, edited by Gygax. Some may have mixed feelings bout Mr. G, but i will recommend this book. it's not an easy read, but it's a very powerful one, and you can use it to tighten module construction, and there are means present to randomly build a plot. now everyone who knows d and d, especially in its current incarnation, knows that anything randomly determined still needs fleshing out. But i picked a simple basic structure, one main plot, not trying to generate any subplots, and i used the charts to build a series of encounters and plot structure to make a complete module. Now this doesn't bring up monster lists or something like that, but builds the personalities and motivations of all npcs involved in the storyline (obviously, one can browse this book and use it without randomization, but this was a test).
I built the outline, the npcs motivations the encounters, and ended up with an adventure of ten base encounters, some of them combat, some non-combat, some that may be negotiated out of combat status (though i don't expect them to be). In a moment's perversity, rather than randomly roll the numbers of each, decided on 5 major npcs, 5 minor ones, and 5 monster types, and populated the various encounters accordingly. Now, keeping with the theme of randomization, i actually improvised a few charts of the various core classes i currently use in my campaign, and assigned character classes to the npc's. i picked a few monsters of appropriate CR for the party (okay, a few are a bit high, but the way this adventure was looking to shape, there was going to be recovery time between several of the enconters.) one of the NPCs rolled up randomly was 'enemy as ally' and i realized that here was an opportunity to use this adventure to help build a bridge between the 'pre break' campaign and the 'restart' campaign. And so, Kharuu, the enigmatic, not hostile but clearly evil mage that the party had travelled with approaches them as they reunite, and offers them the story hook.
We lost the paladin, he was not able to adjust to the new campaign schedule, so we are now down to five player characters, Borak the orc (two regular classes and a prestige class, all from an 'orc focused' web page), Umbra the human rogue (about to shoot for Slayer of Domiel prestige class, from the book of exalted deeds), Bellergal the human mage, Arima the selkie barbarian/fey mage who is seeking to try to do two prestige classes (the man wants to give me ulcers, i swear it) both of which are nonstandard, and kenzie the nymph rogue who is just about to earn off her nymph levels (variant savage species rules) and hopes to go to shadowdancer prestige class once she qualifies.
I'll put in another entry later this week dealing with more of the specifics of what's been played these three sessions.
(I highly recommend insidiae, IF you're willing to put in the effort to flesh out a plot after you roll it)
the game has been going okay, i hadn't put in entries until i was sure that things were progressing.
The remaining characters reunited, and were met by Kharuu, an individual they had known briefly, long enough to know they dont' like him or trust him. Kharuu is a worshipper of the dark beast of Mehari religion, a source of demons and devils alike, a foul creature that seeks only destruction. Kharuu sought out the pcs because he had learned that another worshipper of this deity is seeking out an artifact that can be used to hasten, if not initiate, an apocalyptic event.
The party has an average level of 6, so an actual apocalyptic type battle is beyond their scope, but trying to prevent it before the fact is within their scope. Kharuu wants their aid because he has no desire to see the end of the world, or at least the local world, any time soon, and he does not trust himself not to be subverted or tempted by the device.
The players researched the information and were able to determine that, even if they can't normally trust this person, and maybe shouldnt' trust him totally, that he is being upfront at this point, as far as the information has been given.
Kharuu has some means to track this other person, but exactly what this means is, he won't, or can't explain to the pcs.
The PCs have started out, trying to catch up to this individual. The artifact in question, the Obsidian Veil, is something with limited, if any, applications other than those serving the dark beast. It is being kept in a mythic location called the Vault of the Blue Hydra, a place that has always had some mystic guardians, and is a storehouse of items of great power, according to legend. However, the legends they have been able to access have only been through mystic research, there are no documents about the Vault, and its location is totally unknown. They have found a lillendi who was defending herself against a squad of neogi and an umber hulk, who explained that she too is seeking the Vault for a different item, something she calls The Deva's Secret. She states that her sister was killed over simply seeking knowledge of the location of this item. Auguries had told her that she would encounter individuals seeking the vault for other reasons if she waited there, and was attacked while waiting for the party. The party has eagerly allowed her to join, knowing her for a Good aligned Outsider and not against their own goals. (Side note: only those with knowledge of the planes know about lilendi, so her presence would attract a lot of attention from any civilized locations. also, the neogi are not native to Shukar, nor are they known, so their presence was a total confusion to the player characters, if not the players.)
While camping to regain spells and the like, agents of the other dark beast's worshipper attacked, and while they were repulsed, it further delayed the heroes. The lillendi has clear knowledge of the location of the Vault and can lead the party on a more direct route to it than the other worshipper had been following, but it's clearly a race now to the Vault and its secrets....this was the break point for the last session, which was just before the holidays, we will be resuming tomorrow night as the party continues trying to race the other villain to the Vault, defend against Kharuu inside their own party, and uncover the mysteries of the items, their allies, and the location. (all this from a randomly generated plot, not bad, imho)