Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the world of Oerth. It's a world many you will know in one form or another, but this one is quite different. It is a land scarred by the wars of both men and gods. Most of the old gods are dead and new ones are slowly rising to take their place. It is still world of great heroes, whose power is immense. Unfortunately for our group of "adventurers".
Not all those who adventure are good a heart. In fact our intrepid little band is work on being as far from good as possible. They intend to slaughter, massacre, steal and destroy their way to riches and glory. Few of them are truly evil yet, but they are slipping at great speed. Let's hope they manage to stay away from those great and powerful good two-shoes. So lets introduce out little band:
The Dragon is the daughter of a former adventurer and now goddess on the side of good. Her father was a Fang Dragon that her mother befriended and dallied with. A spell of her father’s granted her full dragon status, and the ability to age quickly as she grows in experience. The spell also granted her the ability to assume human form. She could be a great force of evil, assuming that her mother doesn’t find out.
Pandora is a beautiful lady, if you can get over the fact that her heart no longer beats. Once she was a young paladin in the service of good, but during a traumatic battle she was driven too far and snapped. She killed many before her former friends slew her, but Nerull offered her a second chance. She arose as a Death Knight to server her new god in the cause of death and slaughter.
The Assassin is a suspicious, vicious and paranoid man. He excels at his job and is well respected in his guild for his ability, but not for his personality. It’s quite possible that he may soon be in more danger from his irritated comrades than his future victims.
The Puppet master is a skilled manipulator. He can talk and lie his way out of many situations. Quite a few of which his companions got him into. He has some magic at his disposal, most of which focus on clouding and manipulating the minds of those around him. Hopefully his abilities will be able to keep him and his compatriots from being hoisted by their own petard.
Sucky was once and loyal soldier in the service of a temple of Ehlonna. Unfortunately a rare and powerful poison that the Assassin managed to get a hold of turned her into a succubus. She has come to rather enjoy her new form and is beginning to explore its abilities. She is also beginning to study arcane magics; she may someday be a wielder of great power.
Wannabe is many things. He is an anthropomorphic panther. He is a half-dragon. He is a fighter and a warmage. Unfortunately he is so many things that he is not especially good at anything. Still he can be useful from time to time.
Mister Kitty on the other hand is a very different proposition. He is the child of two very powerful former adventurers. From his mother he inherited grace and a penchant for sneaking around. From his father he inherited the abilities of a weretiger along with a habit of ripping out his enemy’s hearts and eating them.
Recently this brave band of villains slaughtered an entire temple of Ehlonna to retrieve a scroll. They delivered it to the man that they occasionally look for, but not before noticing that was written in an ancient form of Abyssal. After getting paid they await a new quest in which to practice their villainy.
This is the GM's campaign journal for one of the two D&D campaigns I am running on alternating Saturdays. It starts in rough 15 hours at this point. This group decided that they would play evil characters, which makes a nice contrast to the other group.
Both groups are playing in a version of Oerth that has been modified by previous campaigns that I and others have run. I've changed the rules slightly to make things more fun. Basically slightly more feats, few more skill points, nice stats, occational rerolls. I also don't run ECL adjustments by WOTC's moronic system. Generally the ecl adjustment is the CR, and can be bought off.
For those of you who follow Turin's STAP campaigns, two of the players in this group are in crew 2 and one is in crew 1. Hopefully you all will enjoy both my GM journals and the player's journals (which I will be encouraging).
It will be interesting to see how the campaign I have planned plays out. The previous D&D campaign I ran went from level 3 to level 24-29 over the course of more than 2 1/2 years. This may or may not go on as long, but I hope it does. Currently everyone is in the level 8-10 range, although I am trying to slow down the creap a little since it has been about six months since the game started. We are now in the really fun levels.
As for the characters....wow...interesting. This one definately bears watching, oh Captain, my Captain. Permission to come aboard, sir!
Ahoy Cap'n and fear not for the Valiant Hero of your Counter-tale is at hand. I come bearing news of the greatest import, for yourself and those that would deign to peruse your script. Though I do daresay that attracting the nessecary attention to have them read the full length, you lack. It is a matter of style that Bards and myself possess.
My works have found a publisher, the great deeds that I have been apart of in my never-ending quest to rid the world of Oearth of evil and Tyranny will finally find their lasting resting place in volumes of illuminated text... for children of all ages to enjoy. And more importantly to emulate.
Though for the concern of all my many many readers, adult and child alike, I must confess of a crime. Yes, indeed some lackwit half-talent Bard has deemed his pen worthy to inscribe an Introduction to my tales sometime between my first penning and the printing of the tomes. A fair warning now is placed that though the initial work is not mine own, the rest shall bare the full flavor of my many talents.
The complied tomes of my (and some other people's, I feel compelled to add) adventures shall be found upon the shelf with the label.. "Heroic Epochs of an Epic (and Dashing) Hero."
Fare thee well, Cap'n.
-The Great
"Greetings Peasant, my name is Bryn Farshot... you may call me THE Great"
Oh I see, I get the name of "The Dragon". And here I thought I would get some neat nickname for my many heroic deeds but nooooooo, get labeled as "The dragon".
Bah. I'll get you and your little dog too......
Well good lords and ladies, our dastardly group of villains has not been idle. Having but recently returned from a quest and being well rewarded the decided to take their ease for a short time. The company makes it home in the vile and lawless city of Mormung in the kingdom of the Sea Princes. It’s easily bribable guards; openly evil temples and slave market all make our adventurers feel quite at home.
Pandora met with the leaders of her temple to report on her recent adventures and exploits. They were most impressed with the group’s activities, but concerned over what their employer could have up his sleeve. They asked her to keep an eye on him, but to continue to work for him. She then went off to her own devices.
Sucky on the other hand found herself rapidly drawn to the slave market. She decided to take a portion of her hard earned money and purchase herself some companionship. She eventually settled on an untrained young girl around the age of 15 to be her slave. She set about using her innate abilities to wrap the poor terrified young thing around her little finger. Her process of turning the girl into a willing slave seemed to be going quite well. Surprisingly the poor young thing seemed to have an innate resistance to pain. When Sucky decided to tattoo her name on the girl she dubbed Alpha B*tch the young thing did not even whimper.
In the mean time the Assassin returned to his guild and kept his ears out for any opportunities that might have surfaced. His patience was rewarded when in a week the guild received a request from a temple of Erythnul. It seemed that a local temple of Pelor had learned of their hidden existence in the city of Gyrax and had summoned a Sword Archon to hunt down the evil temple. A sum of 40,000 gold was offered if anyone in the guild could bring the head of the Archon to the temple of Erythnul, minus a body of course.
Pandora, The Dragon, Wannabe and Sucky were all only too happy to assist in this mission, for a share of the profits of course. When they arrived in the city and quietly made their way to the hidden temple of Erythnul they discovered that the temple had already concocted a plan to lead the Archon into a trap. They had spent a great deal of time to brainwash one of their lower ranking followers to believe that an empty cavern underneath the city was where the church held their meetings. Hearing this our band of villains were only too happy to take over the ambush.
Most of the party decided to hide, but Sucky wanted to play the part of the hapless tied up victim. The Dragon also elected not to hide, instead she sat around reading and pretending to be oblivious to her surroundings. Unfortunately for our band the Sword Archon was not alone. Upon hearing that the location of the temple had been discovered he summoned help in the form of an Asura. Among the possessions of the Asura were several potion of invisibility that she and the Archon used to sneak up on the group unawares.
The fight was short and brutal, but the two angels were quite outmatched in the end. The quickly rendered unconscious the kobold minion that served the Dragon, which almost proved disastrous for the party. The temple of Erythnul had provided a scroll of dimensional lock, which the kobold favored soul carried around since he was most likely to be able to cast it. This gift was to ensure that the Archon’s ability to teleport away was negated. Fortunately mere seconds before the Archon would have fled to find more help the Assassin intervened. Slipping down the stalactite he had been using to hide he slipped his dagger into a chink in the Archons armor and ended the Angel’s life. With the Archon dispatched the Asura quickly went down as well.
The party took the time to remove a number of the body parts of both celestials before they departed to collect their reward. That reward combined with the sale of the treasure that their two victims carried proved to be most, most generous. They took this reward and returned to Mormung to spend their ill-gotten loot.
Upon returning to his guild the Assassin found some very interesting news circulating. Apparently a patron of the guild was offering to sell one of the 6 legendary assassins blades. These blades are famed throughout all the assassin guilds as blades of awesome power and vile evil. As it should be expected, the blade is far from free. The money cost was a mere 150,000 gp, extraordinarily cheap for such a powerful item, but those who wish to wield it must also complete a few tasks to prove they are worth of such a powerful relic.
A week after returning Lord Ansolm, their employer, revealed to The Puppet Master that he had another mission for them. He wished them to journey to the tomb of an ancient good king and retrieve a certain item for him. He them to find a small four sided bronze pyramid, with no markings on it.
They decided to take the mission, but not foolishly rush off into the unknown. A few days checking with sources and finding information told them that legends held that the king had been friends with various angels, some of which may have agreed to serve as guardians after he passed on. Of even more importance he hired a number of wizards and adventurers to craft traps and golems for his tomb. Our adventurers wisely decided to purchase themselves several scarabs of golem’s bane.
The kingdom containing the tomb is known to be going through many economic hardships. It is now quite possible to buy your way out of most forms of legal trouble, among other doors that money can open. Sucky decided not to leave her slave in a slave kennel as she had for their last trip. Instead she paid a sanitarium to keep her secretly in solitary confinement. For reasons only know to himself the Puppetmaster attempted to hire someone to liberate Sucky’s slave. The results of that remain to be seen.
They estimated that it would take them three days to reach the tomb. The first day brought only one interesting encounter. The party was surprised and worried when a Sun Wyrm swooped down and announced that they would have to pay a toll to cross his territory. After some clever negotiations and the Dragon revealing her true form, the party was forced to pay a mere 700 gold. When a few of the group balked their more generous members made up for it in an effort to avoid trouble. The party has finally stopped to rest after a hard days travels. Who knows what the night will bring?
I plan to double post like this every time. the first post is an account of what happened in a character like narration. The second post explains variou points where people may need more background info, rules explanations or gm comments. Feel free to respond to either one.
An important note about how the party is traveling. In the campaign prior to this one one of the characters bacame a very, very high level sorcerer. He was originally a psion, but I banned the class and he switched to sorcerer, but not before he was up to 9th level powers. One I let him keep was the Genesis spell, which he used to create his own Demi-Plain. Between the experience he was willing to pay, and an item he recieved for his part in the adventure, he was able to cast the spell somewhere between 10 and 15 times, resulting in a huge plane.
To have a way to get there he create a permanent gate that could open to the city of Gorna and an island ruled by one of his adventuring friends. Seeing the value of this some merchant agreed to help him with the gold piece cost of creating more. His plane now has gates that are free to use for anyone that open to almost all capital cities and a few other trading cities. The party can use these to quickly get to major cities, but once there they have to travel to more remote destinations on foot.
He is also the Dragon's step-father.
I do also use random encounters that the players get to roll for. If they roll low enough, anywhere from 10-40 depending on the location, they have an encounter. If they roll 96-100, they have an unusual weather or terrain encounter. Once they get an encounter they get two more rolls, one for power level and one for hostility factor. What they need for those rolls changes on a whim, sometimes high is good, sometimes not. This goes for both creature and terrain/weather encounters.
Creature encounters can range anywhere from something trying to eat them, to merchant caravans, to escaped slaves and so on. Terrain/weather encounters can be large storms, ley lines, random naturally occuring gates and anything else my feverish little mind can come up with. I think it's more fun for the players when they get to help roll to determine their fate. You should see how fast they reach for those dice sometimes.
Well, I must say, this path is a different one them I'm used to. As Pandora, I shall try my darndest to be evil, but sometimes common sense gets in the way. I wish it got in the way for more then just myself however. Much has yet to be done however, like finding out what this "employer" is truly looking for, for something that valuable, may or may not be recovered for him, but for myself...
Learn from the lessons of alternative lives oh Journalist, mayhap valuable information can be gleaned from such ... tutelage.