[I was asked on the chat to reprint this--so this is for all you who wondered.]
This whole thing started as a random comment on a family car trip. My wife was asking whether because everything in D20 follows the same stats, if it was meant to be used together. I balked, and my counterexample--which was about as far out as I could imagine--was to take the Star Wars Alien Races Compendium and to substitute that for the normal player races in a Forgotten Realms game, I mean you could do it, though it seemed you obviously shouldn't.
Only my wife and I ended up just looking at each other for a long moment. The next few miles became cool concept after cool concept hybriding the two ideas. The Gamorrean cleric of Gruumsh. The Quarren Red Wizard of Thay. The Jawa ratcatcher. The Anauroch tribes of rothe riding Tusken Raiders. The more we talked about it, the more convinced we became that we'd inadvertantly stumbled upon gold. I dreaded talking it over with my player group, but after a long awkward silence they started chipping in ideas too. It was contagious. It had to happen.
So we decided to try a one shot of it to see if it was worth anything. What we got was really interesting. To keep chargen simple we made it a first level game, but to allow people the kind of options they'd get in a higher level game we made it gestalt and offered prestige classes as classes. So yeah.
The Characters:
A kubaz rogue/beguiler, basically a travelling con-artist and confidence man who has conned a cleric of Kelemvor into taking him on as an acolyte...mostly so he can convince people to forsake the material world, in the form of giving him their stuff.
A yuzzem massive hurler/savage grappler (or something to that effect). A big furry yuzzem who has devoted himself to the hardcore god Baghtru, walking around naked as the day he was born, ripping stuff out of the ground to throw at people--or failing that, grappling and throwing people.
A scheming, Raistlin-like half-chiss, half-miraluka mage-blade/sorcerer from Thay, the son and heir to a mighty Red Wizard, but due to politics was forced to fake his death and go out into hiding until his power is such that he can return and take over his father's holdings.
A krish spellthief/shadowdancer from Skullport, having made enemies of her powerful Hutt mentor they have become involved in a deadly game to destroy one another.
So there's the characters. A rundown of the first session to come as soon as I get a chance. As always I'd love to hear any comments from anyone.
Hey thanks! Sometimes it's nice to just get some feedback to know people are actually reading this stuff. Anyway with Game Day behind me I've got time to fire off a little more info.
First off. Names! I had to track everyone down to get them to tell me them, but here they are. It'll make the story easier to follow then having to say "the big yuzzem guy" all the time.
Shogex- Scheming kubaz
Narr- Big yuzzem guy
Zemayan- Creepy half-chiss/miraluka
Tryselka- Hardcore krish gal
Anyway next I'll start posting the game sessions!
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Introduction:
Cormanthor, site of the fallen empire of Myth Drannor an ever unwinding disproof of the grand experiment--a utopian eden, the dream and life's work of the Ithorians, where the races could live in pacifist tranquility in harmony with nature. They were joined in this dream by the gentle races: the Cereans, the Krevaaki, the Caamasi, the Quermians and others. Now it has fallen into ruin, with just a few city states left--the holdfasts of the last handful of idealists. The rest has fallen to enemies. Yuuzhan Vong from the underdark boil forth by command of their alien gods, to subjugate all in their path--all flesh to be sacrificed horribly or melted down into the raw materials from which their weapons and armor are mutated. From the plane of shadow come the spiderlike Charon, servants of Shar seeking to bring eternal night and nonbeing to the writhing blasphemous fecundity of the world.
The town of Semberholm has been spending it's ancient stores of treasure to hire foreign mercenaries to come and protect what little of their dream still remains, knighting them in the defense of their realm in the hope to maintain a measure of control over them. Unfortunately as more rowdy surly sellswords are introduced into their quiet paradise, the greater the internal pressures begin to outstrip even the threat of horrible invaders.
And so arrive the PCs, Narr from the tangled forests of Tethyr, a bizarre Yuzzem mercenary and follower of the primal strength god Bahgtru. He comes seeking respite from the petty bickering between the druidic forest kingdoms and greedy logger merchants of his home, seduced by the lure of easy wealth and the opportunity to show off his divinely ordained arts of grappling and hurling, naked and furry as the day he was born. Zemayan has come to study the ancient archmagic of Parep Tiet, the quiet Ithorian leader of Semberholm's Council of Trees--abandoning his old mentor in the grasping search for ever greater power. Shogex, by contrast, has a very different scheme--manipulating an old cleric of Kelemvor to come to the area in order to minister to those in the daily face of death, to renounce their ties to their material possessions--hopefully with him catching some of the windfall. Tryselka comes following in the footsteps of an enemy, the hated favorite pupil of her old Hutt master, an albino Bothan shadowbender known as Rieska Mur'Feya.
Session One:
Parep Tiet discusses the volitile situation in Semberholm with his young protege, Zemayan. Violent invaders without hunting their people wherever they go. Within dangerous and untrustworthy mercenaries. He bids his young student to assist him as his eyes beyond the cloiser of the Council, to associate himself with the adventurers and notify him of possible trouble before it arises. The young gish readily agrees.
His tour of the city presents him with Narr, bounding through the branches of the tree city. Following him to introduce himself they come into conflict with some hostile Dugs. Hostilities ended abruptly when Narr uproots a half burried moss covered log and javelin tosses it end over end to obliterate their tree camp. On their way back, Zemayan notices an ancient ruin amid the scattered ground level holdfasts and storage areas. He excuses himself and investigates it briefly, but the supernatural dread emminating from it's pitch black interior, which seems to exhale a blast of dank air as he approaches its stair, is enough to convince him to to turn back.
Meanwhile the old Givin deathwarden of Kelemvor picks his way with Shogex through the underbrush toward Semberholm, when the two of them fall victim to a Yuuzhan Vong ambush. The ambushers release a web that entangles the cleric and young conman, while their trained monsterous hunting spiders clamber out to incapacitate them. Tryselka, who had been hidden in a nearby camp, overhears the fight and drops down to assist. They kill or drive off the Yuuzhan Vong, but the old deathwarden dies in the fight. After some talking it becomes clear that the two can be of great value to each other, since they both have some hidden agendas in town that the other can assist them with. Somewhere in the cosmos, Mask smiles cryptically.
Zemayan introduces Narr to the Knights of the Leaf, an order of institutionalized mercenaries granted a measure of authority within town as well as opportunity for training, board and lodging--in exchange for a measure of control and obedience. He takes advantage of the deal and meets a few of his fellow "knights" the dour captain, an Iotran named Dotag Rom as well as the tiny drillmaster, a lurid pink but grizzled Lannik soldier P'xarsi Queg.
Shogex begins to prostelyte in the streets, creating enough of a disruptive stir that word is sent back to the Council of Tress reguarding him. His teachings (seize the day without concern to consequences, for who knows when you will die) seems to stoke a vein of hostility against the placidity of life in Semberholm and draws some hearty approval from his mercenary crowd, some of whom even offer donations. Later that evening at a normally sedate teahouse called the Violet Pearl, a riot breaks out. Some of the sellswords, their courage bolstered by the kubaz's sermon, take over the place by force so they can enjoy themselves without the staff bothering them. Zemayan shows up and after calling for the thugs to depart, pulls his sword and a melee insues. Tryselka, attempting to stop the battle before it becomes a slaughter, discovers quickly that her melding with shadows does not work against an opponent who sees the Weave, and she gets kicked into a doorjam and knocked unconscious. By the time the guard arrives, several of the mercenaries have been killed or badly injured and everyone is forced to make an accounting for themselves--but things are cleared up without much trouble. The injured are taken to the temple and restored and everyone on both sides are chastened.
Later Tryselka and Shogex hook up with another of the mercenaries, a Dresselian, who had overheard his lecture on spontaneous living, and had become intrigued. Together they decend to the forest floor with the intent to explore some of the forbidden catacombs beneath the city. They encounter some ghouls and vermin down in the dank caves, but for the mostpart they discover larders of food and drink amid emergency tunnels. One tunnel they discover however, has the look of an ancient tomb--the design of which does not seem the same as the other Cormanthori architecture. It seems foreign, and portrays what looks to be a god surrounded by his worshippers, as well as a number of sealed sarcophagi. At the far end of the crypt is a large round heavy stone seal surrounded by pictogram symbols. Like a huge door. Excited they take rubbings and decide to leave Parshurnim, the Dresselian, to keep watch over the site, while the others go into town and see if they can figure out the meaning of the glyphs and try to get into the door.
On their way back, Tryselkais cornered by her rival in town. They have a vicious conversation that teeters back and forth on the brink of resorting to violence. Zemayan, passing by, notes that while the bothan woman appears to be boldly risking a confrontation in the open, that she's flanked on either side by a tall insectoid bodyguard, hidden in shadows precisely how Tryselka had attempted to do--bloodcarver assassins.
That night Zemayan recieves a visitation from two wraiths in the service of the being whose ruin he had visited. They inform him that their master could sense his burgeoning magical skill and invite him to the ruin. To everyone's suprise, his lips twist in a feral smile and he agrees...
Grimcleaver, any plans to incorporate Force users into your Forgotten Realms game? Yours is the only hybrid Star Wars/D&D game I've encountered other than my own. I think its interesting how you've switched out the regular races for Star Wars species. In the setting I'm developing, alot of the more well-known planets are represented by individual countries or regions. The tech level includes muskets and such, but also includes weapons from the D&D 3.5 handbook. I have non-magical airships, as the only "magic" is the Force. I'll be keeping up with your posts for possible inspiration. Nice job so far.