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PairO'Dice Lost
2009-10-02, 01:39 PM
Chapter 0: Introduction

Hello, Playgrounders! I've mentioned my group's wacky hijinks in several threads, but it occurred to me recently that I'd never really written down all the cool stuff that goes on in my campaigns, so at the start of the campaign I'm running now I decided to keep a campaign journal. After seeing the proliferation of campaign journals here recently, I figured I'd post all the juicy details for you to read—though I can't promise that wacky hijinks will ensue. I know it's out of the ordinary for the DM to be the one posting the log, but (A) I'm the only group member with an account here and (B) I'm the group's best writer if I do say so myself, so there you go.

As the thread title says, I'm running a low-magic campaign, specifically a low-power-magic, high-prevalence-magic, low-items campaign; there are tons of people with one or two levels in a casting class of some sort, but the most powerful casters in the world top out at 5th-level spells. Just thought I'd explain that up front, since “low magic” means different things to different people. Oh, and it's gestalt as well, to make up the power difference. Without further ado...

The Premise
The setting is a pseudo-realistic Europe in a vaguely-Roman-Empire era; it's realistic in the sense that most of the historical nations (and stereotypes!) exist, but names have been changed around and society is obviously vastly different with access to bits of magic (such as the prevalence of newspapers, which I'll explain later). It's pretty much “totally-not-Europe,” as I explained it to my players: Eyre is totally-not-Ireland, Nubia is totally-not-Egypt, etc. The players are all Faeries (elves, dwarves, gnomes, red caps, etc.) from the Emerald Isles who have sworn allegiance to the Faerie Courts and are opposing the Evil EmpireTM: the Empire of Man, an empire ruled by humans and composed of demihumans and near-humans of all sorts (half-orcs, illumians, and so forth). Pseudo-Latin is all over the place for Imperial people and places and other nations get good-enough translations for their names. This isn't a rebels-against-the-monolithic-empire scenario, though—the good guys are winning the war for once.

For simplicity's sake, I'll just post the campaign intro document I sent to all my players to explain the rest:

Historical Context
You are all experienced soldiers in the armies of the Emerald Isles, Tir na Nog, the Realm of Faerie...essentially, mythological Ireland and Scotland. To the east across the sea lies the Empire of Man (a totally-not-Greco-Roman empire), a sprawling expanse of nation-states united under a human and demihuman government. Since humans breed like rabbits, they count many demihumans (half-orcs, half-giants, and so on) and near-humans (illumians, shifters, and so on) among their number and for this reason have managed to unite the tribes of reptilian humanoids, giants, and other monstrous creatures in their territory. Driven forward by their gods' commands of conquest and increasing population pressures, the Empire of Man annexed many lands, adding their inhabitants to their empire—forcibly, if necessary, and it usually was.

In its expansion, the Empire of Man came into contact with the Realms of Faerie. The magic of the fey waxes and wanes with the turning of the seasons and the centuries, and at the point of first contact their magic had waned to the point that there had been no contact with the Otherworld for several years. The Imperial armies put their cold iron to good use and almost obliterated the fey, but the Faerie alliance with the Norse nations of the frozen north allowed them to hold out for several months. Just as the Imperial assault reached a point of certain victory, the power of the fey rushed back and the gates to the Otherworld poured out massive armies of the fey. Caught by surprise, the invading armies were utterly crushed, and the conquests which had taken them a matter of weeks to accomplish were reversed in a matter of hours. The Northern armies struck back and reclaimed territory on the mainland while the Courts consolidated their control of the land the Empire had previously occupied.

Now, a few years later, tales and rumors from the heart of the Empire tell of the men and half-men turning to powers beyond the world for aid; their older gods, focused on expansion for the good of their creations, have been overturned by gods who revel in conquest and genocide for their own sakes and sermons of just wars and peaceful occupation have been replaced by those of expansion, magical and technological development, and extreme moral flexibility. The Faerie Courts have taken advantage of the surprise of their return to go on the offensive, and now they have a solid foothold in the Empire's land. The northern army, depleted in defense of the Emerald Isles, is regrouping and consolidating while the newly-returned fey aid them in thanks for their prior help; for all practical purposes, however, the Norse and the Empire's subject nations are mostly out of the fight.

Will the fey destroy the Empire's armies once and for all, returning the subject nation-states to their own rule and ending the threat? Or will the Empire regroup and add the Emerald Isles to their long list of conquered nations? Diviners on both sides have found the future difficult to see, but all agree that the fate of both the Empire and the Isles will be decided soon.

Current Situation
You are among the best-trained and most powerful of the mortal fey; your magic is potent even in lands where the youngest of folk can use a few cantrips, and your battle prowess is exceptional even in the armies of the Courts themselves. Rather than being promoted to command, you have been assigned to an expeditionary group composed of Faeries of all different Courts (one of only six such groups in all the realms) and tasked with infiltrating the enemy armies, striking surgical blows against Imperial leadership, and otherwise advance the cause of the fey above and beyond the battles fought by the rank-and-file troops.

You have mostly been granted autonomy, and are able to choose your own missions, but you are still answerable to the faerie nobility: Your direct superior is the Regent of Winds, a general in the fey armies and a minor noble in the court of the Queen of Air and Darkness. On occasion she may be willing to lend you aid in the form of loaned soldiers or materials, and on occasion she may call on you to perform urgent missions, but for the most part she is quite willing to let you go your own way. At the moment you have just returned from a mission to destroy temporary gnoll fortifications on the enemy shore and are planning your next missions.

The Setup
The way I chose to represent the Faeries' innate magic was simple: every character begins with two levels in an arcane casting class and two in a divine casting class at 2nd level (gestalt, remember), the exact combinations of which are determined by the Court to which a character declares allegiance. Spring Faeries, being gentle and subtle, start as beguiler//healers; Summer Faeries, being passionate and warlike, start as warmage//dragonfire adepts (DFA being suitably reflavored, of course); Autumn Faeries, being flighty and creative, start as bard//favored souls; Winter Faeries, being dour and dark, start as sorcerer//shugenja (with the option to specialize in any element but fire on the shugenja side). Everyone started at 3rd level, so they have 1 non-casting level on each side of their builds.

Other than these two starting levels, the Good Guys don't get any other full casting—other arcane and divine classes don't exist, psionic classes don't exist (though psionic feats and such are fine), and there are restrictions on variant magic systems (binders and shadowcasters are reserved for the Bad Guys, only enemy martial adepts can use Shadow Hand maneuvers, and you can only take ½ your levels in incarnum classes). Casting PrCs are available but all casting-related prereqs are waived and they don't advance casting, so everyone still has some interesting options on the PrC front.

The Empire and their allies aren't innately magical, but what few arcane and divine casters they have (all either wizards, clerics, or archivists) can take up to 5 levels and thus gain up to 3rd level spells; this is part of the reason why they were winning for so long, and only the Faeries' quantity was able to overcome the Empire's quality when it came to spellcasters.

Plot-critical and named NPCs are exempted from these restrictions to a degree, plot-critical foes being gestalted like the PCs and both types being able to take more levels in a casting class; there are fewer and fewer characters of each level up until you hit 9th; there are fewer than 40 divine casters and fewer than 15 arcane casters in the whole world who can cast 5th-level spells. The Good Guys' named NPCs can reach even higher, but they have the whole mythological fae restrictions theme going so (A) by the time they hit 6th level spells they're pretty much bound to the Emerald Isles and (B) the PCs can eventually be “promoted” in the courts to reach that level (details omitted because my players may be reading this).

The Rules
Other miscellaneous changes or bits of info that might be handy to know (and that were also in the campaign intro doc) are below; you don't have to read any of it, but if something's confusing you might want to look here for answers:

The Fey
The Faerie Nobility, unlike the mortal fey, are tightly bound to concepts of the natural world from which they draw life and power; a gnome is a gnome is a gnome, but a sylph is a wind fae or a cloud fae, a dryad is a cedar fae or an oak fae, etc.
Faerie nobility grant titles based on the extent of a particular fae's power, and the more specific a fae's source of power, the less powerful it is: the Queen of Mist is less powerful than the Queen of Winds is less powerful than the Queen of Air and Darkness, and so on, up to the four Queens and Kings of the seasons. Nobles have political power based on their station: Queens/Kings > Ladies/Lords > Duchesses/Dukes > Contessas/Counts > Earls > Baronets > Regents, so a Lady of the Lake has more political clout than a Duke of the Sea, even though in a straight-up duel the latter would probably defeat the former. (This means that your patron, the Regent of Winds, has been assigned to be your patroness because she is physically and magically powerful enough to guide and teach you if necessary, but is not politically powerful enough to warrant command of a portion of the full army. “Going over her head” politically is possible, but not advised.)
The magic giving life and power to the fey and the Faeries is wild and unpredictable, and so too are the fey themselves. The Faeries are bound by certain strictures of magic and their sources of power (most notably the restriction that they're much weaker outside of their home Realm), and fey have the free will and variance of all mortals, but there are certain Faeries known as Wyldfae who have some of the power and magical bindings of the Faeries but are otherwise free-willed—they are full-blooded Faeries but are native to the Material World. Monstrous-seeming creatures such as centaurs, satyrs, nymphs, dryads, weirds, and other similar beings fall into this category, and thus frequently fight in fey armies alongside full mortals both because they don't weaken when away from the Emerald Isles and just because they want to; if groups of Faeries are sent into Imperial lands, it's most likely these races.
Fey magic is bound up in the natural cycles of the world, racially on the order of seasons personally on the order of days. A fey doesn't need to do anything special to restore his magical energy once it has been used, but he does need to wait for the right time—all of a fey's spells are restored at moonrise if the fey is outdoors, or at midnight otherwise.
Fey who swear allegiance to one of the Faerie courts can learn the natural magic of the Otherworld once they are sufficiently skilled. At 6th level, you can multiclass into druid as if it were a prestige class; its class abilities function normally, but it uses the bard's spells per day table instead of the normal druid table.
Cosmology
The Otherworld is the home plane of the Faeries, and is a realm parallel to the Material World (replacing the Ethereal). It can be accessed by using any sort of magic that will rend a temporary hole in the aethereal curtain that separates it from the World, but as the innate magic of the mortal fey is quite weak, only the most powerful of Faeries or their relics are capable of forcing entrance or egress—of course, when the natural magic of the World weakens the curtain enough, even the least skilled fey can slip through in particular locations.
The aetherial curtain also separates five other parallel worlds from the Material World: the planes of Elemental Air, Cold, Water, Earth, and Wood. Life energy and elemental fire flow from the sun, the moon, and the stars. Two other worlds are not parallel to the Material World and are planes in and of themselves: the Heavenly Realms and the Underworld, both of which are the source of negative energy in the world.
Mechanically, the Ethereal substitutes for the Astral, so some game effects may chance (like force effects blocking teleportation because it goes through the Ethereal instead of the Astral). Cold, air, water, wood, and earth elemental creatures come from the elemental planes; celestials come from the Heavenly Realms; undead come from the Underworld. There are no fiends or fire elemental creatures, though magma and smoke elemental creatures can sometimes be found near volcanoes.
The Empire
The hierarchy of the Empire is strict, and is racially-based for the most part: Humans are on top, monstrous creatures are on the bottom, and demihumans are in the middle, with a creature's exact rights being based on the amount of human blood possessed or how human-seeming it is.
The ruler of the Empire of Man is human, as is to be expected: Emperor Maximilian Aurelius the Seventh has held the throne for 62 years, and is universally supported and loved by the human and demihuman population. His advisors, the Imperial Senate, consist of one Senator of every race governed by the Empire (usually the member of the race best aligned with the Empire's desires and most willing to cooperate), and so stands at 37 members and growing.
Where fey have their ruling Courts, the Empire has its religion. The Empire is a theocracy in all but name, and all but the highest ranks in the government are occupied currently with religious leaders of some sort. The main deities they worship promote expansionism and some form of humanity or demihumanity; the clergy of Wastri, the Hopping God, are the most vocal (for obvious reasons), but the individual gods and their clergy are for the most part on even footing.
The religious leadership of the Empire is fractured—the “old guard” believes in expanding their god-given power by tapping into the older gods and beings beyond the planes in order to draw on their experience, wisdom, and power; the “new guard” believes in the promise of alchemy, shadow-weaving (drawing magic from the Gloom, the Otherworld's dark reflection and the replacement for the Plane of Shadow), and elementally-power clockwork. The latter is in its infancy, but alchemy has been established for at least a decade and shadow-weaving (along with spirit-binding) has been practiced since before the new pantheon was adopted. Both, however, are united in their desire for expansion and growth; only on the methods of reaching these goals do they disagree.
Going purely out-of-character for a moment for an analogy, the Empire's army is essentially what Rome's would be if their priests of Jupiter could actually smite people with lightning and so forth. The army's structure is strictly divided into the hierarchies of Kenturius (martial troops), Okkultus (priests, soul-binders, necromancers, and shadow-weavers), Auxilius (monstrous troops, golems, and other non-human/non-demihuman troops), and Logistikus (support/supply units), and members of each hierarchy are readily identifiable as such.
Equipment and Materials
The main currency of the Realms and the Empire is copper, silver, gold, and platinum (as per usual), but in addition the Realms possesses electrum coins (1 ep = 5 sp) and mithral coins (1 mp = 5 pp) and the Empire mints adamantine coins (1 ap = 10 pp). You're unlikely to find these in day-to-day circulation, as they're mostly used like letters of credit to avoid carrying tons of currency, but you might find some as treasure occasionally. Gems and art are also prized highly.
All fey have a weakness (almost like a severe allergy) to ferrous metals; cold iron is the purest form of wrought iron and thus exceptionally harmful, but normal iron, steel, etc. are still dangerous. As long as a fey is holding a ferrous item or touching large quantities of ferrous metal (such as being bound with iron manacles or wielding a steel mace) he is fatigued; this fatigue disappears as soon as he lets go of it. If encased in large quantities of ferrous metal, such as steel full plate or an iron cage, his innate magic has a 50% chance to fail to function. Cold iron increases these penalties to exhaustion and 75% failure rate, respectively.
Because of their aversion to ferrous metals, pretty much any equipment made by the fey that would otherwise be crafted of these metals is instead made of either ironwood or glassteel. If you want to craft anything, details on creating these materials will be provided. Selling items of ferrous metals is thus generally frowned upon and won't get you much in exchange; finding a buyer outside of the Realms would be a better bet. Precious metals, bronze, and other non-ferrous metals are perfectly safe, so ceremonial weapons are often crafted of bronze and copper.

The Characters
I'm not going to put down the characters' names because firstly, several of them took my suggestion and used Gaelic names that are hard to spell and pronounce, and secondly, we have 8 people so it'll be easier to keep track of them via a description.

The Dragon LN Autumn dragonkin; swordsage//fighter; the tank of the party. He's your typical crush-first-question-never martial type and is the party's MVP in combat so far. His player is new to the group this year and isn't familiar with our style of play (we're all in college and he wasn't in the same dorm last year), so he's slowly developing a personality for his character as he figures out how much RP we do and what's acceptable.

The Changeling CG Summer changeling; rogue//ranger; the party face. This changeling is also a changeling in the traditional sense, a sort-of Faerie who doesn't know anything about his real parents or his name but has devoted himself to (and been adopted by) some royals in the Court of Air and Darkness. He's very sneaky and not very hardy, so in combat he prefers to disguise himself as a human or demihuman and sow confusion in the ranks rather than fight directly; out of combat, he's an excellent infiltrator and spy, as in this world there are few shapechanger detection measures in place and the Empire isn't familiar with all the kinds of Faeries there are.

The Captain LE Winter drow; fighter//rogue; the party leader. She's the captain of the ship the group has been assigned to, and being a drow is a loyal servant of Lolth (i.e. the Queen of Air and Darkness). She's a bit creepy and is a vocal advocate of the total war philosophy when it comes to the Empire, but doesn't adhere to many drow stereotypes, which is a nice change.

The Assassin LN Summer high elf; warblade//rogue; the party's go-for-the-important-looking-NPCs warrior. She mostly uses a combination of Iajutsu Focus and sneak attack to strike from the shadows during combat and is the party's conscience and planner outside of it. Her player is new to D&D, so she's basically the strong silent type for now.

The Maul CN Huge maul; the Tank's weapon of choice. Yes, someone's playing a weapon; the player wasn't sure how often he could make it to games, since he has a chemistry lab right before our Friday game, and he suggested that he play something or someone that would be easy to take over if he couldn't make it; he proposed being one of the very few legacy weapons in the world, a former Court agent who pissed off a few nobles and was transformed into a weapon as punishment, and I thought it could work out as a plot hook later. Being an intelligent legacy weapon, his two main tricks are making big illusions and taking over enemies who touch him with his ridiculous Ego score.

The Gunslinger NG Spring earth kobold; ranger//scout; the party's ranged support. The party's only small character, this guy usually serves as the party scout and general sneak. He dual-wields hand crossbows and is going the Swift Hunter route (particularly useful in gestalt), so he likes to run around a bit farther away from the party and snipe people (in and out of combat...).

The Bear LG Summer shifter; swordsage//barbarian; the odd man out. We call this guy the bear-bear-bear-[...]-bear because he's a werebear-ish shifter going for Bear Warrior and Emissary of Barachiel who's focusing on Tiger Claw maneuvers...basically, if there's something bear-related or -themed, he's trying to get it.

[B]The Tank LG Autumn earth dwarf; fighter//rogue; the party bruiser. He's not a tank in the sense of someone who soaks damage, but in the sense of a gigantic war machine encased in metal. He dual-wields Large spiked shields and wears a suit of full plate (all mithral, of course). He's essentially a very weird sort of ubercharger who's focusing more on the “I have a bazillion feats” and “I can squish you between my shields” aspects rather than going for high damage. He's the Captain's adopted son in-game; out of game, he's also a new player, so he has an excuse to follow the Captain's lead.

I made it clear early on that we'd be taking the mythological approach to Faerie morality: the fey are beyond mortal classifications, and if the alignment grid is a graph on a piece of paper, the Faeries are the ones who're trying to light the paper on fire. I do have a preference for party cohesion, so people can do whatever they want alignment-wise as long as they have a reason to stick together (supplied by me in this case) and no one tries to kill another party member. So far it's working out, but there have been some rough spots between the Captain and the Bear

We're already on the fourth session of the game—I've just been too busy with schoolwork to post session logs in a timely manner until now—so the next few posts will be the logs for the first three sessions, and you can expect an update on session 4 sometime soon after tonight's session.

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-10-02, 01:40 PM
Chapter 1: Ex Media Res

Ambush and Counter-Ambush
At the start of the session, the group was just returning from having destroyed an Imperial legion composed of gnolls and was preparing to return home after being on the mainland for several weeks (being 3rd-level gestalt characters, they've been around the block a few times and have completed many missions so far). As they were reaching the shore, an elf by the name of Valen Longstrider stepped out of a nearby tree and came over to see them—he's one of their patron's allies, an official courier/messenger for the Court of Air and Darkness, and the one who recruited them all to the team in the first place. He told them that he hated to delay their return, but that there was a unit from the Faerie army that had been ambushed and surrounded a few miles from here; they had been holding out for a week or so and had just managed to get word back to the Isles, and the party was the closest group available to send.

They agreed to help, and Valen thanked them and stepped back into a tree to continue his rounds. The party started off on a three-mile walk to the ambush site, and took the time to chat and joke around in-character to establish personality and relationships. When they arrived at the ambush site in the middle of a nearby forest, they found a depressing sight—there were just over 20 Faeries left in the center of a clearing, with barricades and bodies all over the place. Surrounding them were about 30 humans and 40 orcs and half-orcs, split evenly between archers/crossbowmen and heavy infantry, and with some Knowledge checks the party was able to identify them as the Iron Lions Legion, a somewhat-famous unit of the Empire that was quite skilled and had killed many Faeries...this wouldn't be an easy fight. As they were discussing plans, the party saw the legion's namesake: a dark-gray-skinned manticore swooped down through the trees and strafed the trapped unit with its tail spikes.

The PCs were torn on who to attack first, so they decided to split up. Half would distract and draw away the infantry, half would mess with the archers, and whoever got closest to the commander would take him out. The Changeling used a silent image to trick the nearest groups of infantry into believing that some elves had escaped from the barricades and were running for help. All of the orcs and half-orcs in the group (about half the infantry) fell for it and chased the “elves”...right into the Dragon, the Assassin, and the Bear, who made short work of them—they would kill a few, then some orcs would get close enough to hit the illusions and disbelieve them, and as soon as they stopped short to try to warn their comrades, they were slaughtered. Meanwhile, the Maul dropped a darkness on the arches and the Tank charged them, squishing a few of them between his shields before they could respond (he was dealing double their HP in damage on a charge, so I described it as crushing them on his shield spikes), while the Gunslinger shot them from behind and the Captain stabbed the ones in the middle.

The Captain, the Changeling, and the Assassin broke off to attack the commander across the clearing, but before they could get to him, two crossbowmen stepped out from behind some trees and started shooting them. While the rest of the group was taking out the soldiers, the three of them managed to dart from tree to tree during the crossbowmen's reload times, finally dropping the two of them. They hit the commander with some weapons coated in Dex poison, so he dropped to the ground paralyzed and they took off with his body. At this point, the manticore was coming back around for another strafing run, so the Captain and Assassin put up some obscuring mist to hide in and the Changeling disguised himself as the commander. Across the clearing, the Maul made a few skill checks and remembered that the Iron Lions' only defeat in the last year had been at the hands of a dragon, so he made a major image of an old red dragon to scare the manticore; after attacking the dragon seemed to have no effect, and after the “dragon” attacked the “commander” (the Changeling made himself look like he was toasted and dropped to the ground), the manticore turned and flew away with the “dragon” in hot pursuit.

At this point, the Iron Lions had basically been crushed, so they stuck the commander in manacles and began picking off the last remaining infantry who had begun to retreat. When they killed all but a handful of infantry, one of them yanked off his armor and cast a dancing lights spell into the sky (and yes, I've been using that tricks since before it showed up in OotS). The Changeling ran up and nailed him with a ray of frost (his last spell slot) which, combined with Warmage Edge, managed to drop the wizard. They started to head back when they realized that it didn't deal enough damage to drop him, and came back to find the wizard slowly inching away on his hands and knees. The Dragon, not being the nicest sort, made a leaping charge and (ignoring the young apprentice wizard's cry of “Nooo! I don't want to di—splat”) turned him into paste. Hearing some reinforcements in the distance, the party grabbed the commander's body and the Faerie wounded and high-tailed it back to the ship with the surviving Faeries in tow.

Murder on the High Seas
Back on the ship, the party talked to the highest-ranking surviving officer and discovered that the unit, the Golden Boughs, was composed of members of the Court of the Sun, one of the Kings of which (Corellon Larethian) was a rival of the Queen of Air and Darkness. The party figured that their court was trying to gain prestige by rescuing a rival's unit, and made a couple jabs at the survivors to that effect—not where they could be heard, of course. The Maul, having a bit of an impulsive streak and being able to completely control the Dragon, had the Dragon snag a few Golden Bough insignias from the wounded in case they would come in handy later.

As the ship reached open water, they spotted another ship coming up from a port near where the ambush had happened, so they swapped their colors out for an Imperial ship's flag (the Captain spent most of her starting gold on various Imperial flags, attire, etc. so they could sail the ship into Imperial ports). They slowed the ship and allowed the other ship—a merchant vessel—to pull up within hailing distance after the Captain disguised herself as a female human and those unable to disguise themselves headed belowdecks. The captain of the other ship, the Atlantic Maiden, called over asking if they knew anything about the Faeries in the area, since they'd just left in a ship a short while ago and might have passed this way. The Captain said they didn't know anything about it, but that they'd come across some bodies in a clearing and had been charged by the Imperial reinforcements to transport them back to their home port. This required a major Bluff check on the PCs' part, since they were sailing directly away from the continent at full speed, but they barely made it; the captain offered to take care of it, and sent a few sailors over to the Black Wind Princess (the PCs' ship, though not the name it was using at the moment) to take the bodies. The Princess has a crew of 15 1st-level expert NPCs in addition to the PCs, so while they were playing human crew, the other PCs were waiting in the hold; the Imperial sailors were led to the hold and killed, and the Changeling disguised himself as one of them and went up top, telling the Imperial captain that yes, everything checked out.

The disguised Changeling asked for more sailors to be sent over to help, who were also killed and impersonated by the crew. The Captain asked if she could come over and meet the other captain (making some Diplomacy checks and implying several things...), and he gladly accepted. The crew, disguised as humans, made up the more human-looking PCs as “corpses” and carried them across. When they got over, the Captain handed the other captain the Maul, saying she'd found it with the other bodies and meant it as a gift. As soon as he touched it, the Maul took him over (captain rolled a 1 on his Will save. Dammit.) and “he” invited the Captain to his room. When the rest of the crew broke up to relax now that the captain wasn't on deck, the PCs and the crew of the Princess dumped some poison into the beer when no one was looking, and attacked and slaughtered them after everyone was drunk and Str-damaged. Taking a tour of their new ship, they discovered some formerly-elven zombies in the hold; they found out from the compliant enemy captain that zombies were actually quite common in most Imperial cities inland, mostly criminals or non-citizens who'd been reanimated as a punishment. These particular zombies were made by a Lieutenant Darius, who was somewhat infamous for experimenting with reanimation of Faeries; the party made a note of this and swore to take him down at some point.

In retaliation, the Captain did one of her creepy things. She skinned the enemy captain, wove his skin into a chandelier, formed candles out of his fat and blood, lit them, and brought him to the Atlantic Maiden's home port; she sent the zombies to carry this grotesque creation into the local temple and ordered them to act like they were worshiping it until they were discovered (it was around midnight at this point). The party discovered two things at this point: First, the Captain was seriously weird (in-game; out of game, they applauded her player's creativity. He's a Call of Cthulhu GM, so....) and they weren't sure if they liked what was going on. Second, the zombies had some failsafes built in—only the Changeling and the Captain, disguised as humans, could give them orders, and they wouldn't attack any humans or do anything self-destructive.

Debriefing
The PCs returned to Eyre without any further delays, and were met at the docks by Valen Longstrider, who congratulated them on their success and led them to the dwelling of the Regent of Winds, which turned out to be a floating manor crafted entirely of crystal and glassteel. She also thanked them for what they did, and explained the situation with the rescued unit—as the party had guessed, it would be a major boost for their Court's prestige and by extension for the party's. Now that they had come to the attention of the realms as a whole, rather than just being another Faerie expeditionary group, they would be followed more closely and would need a name; since they were part of the Court of Air and Darkness, and had a ship called the Black Wind Princess, the party decided on the Black Wind Marauders.

She mentioned that of course they had complete autonomy, but that she'd appreciate if they might keep a few missions in mind for her: Some Imperial envoys had recently been sent to Nubia to negotiate an alliance (Nubia had stayed completely neutral in the war so far, and them joining the Empire would be bad), and her “associates” (read: spies) had discovered that the Empire was developing a new sort of undead that could impede divine powers near them—and given that all Faeries have a bit of natural divine power that they relied on, that could be a terrible blow to the Realms. With that, she sent them on their way, and the session ended for the night.

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-10-02, 01:41 PM
Interlude: All the News That's Fit to Write

To introduce the players to the world (and do the occasional infodump), I decided that between sessions I'd create some excerpts of in-game newspapers to give to the players. They'd get some feedback for their actions, I could throw in some plot hooks and hints, and it would be a nice use of props. I figured that newspapers would probably have been invented because on the Imperial side they're big on clockwork and alchemy and on the Faerie side at least half the population can cast amanuensis, making grabbing a copy of the morning paper for your family the work of a few seconds at the nearest newsstand. Below are the two newspapers I handed out after the first session, if you want to download them and take a look:

Fey newspaper (http://www.mediafire.com/?mynm4cmjemd)

Imperial newspaper (http://www.mediafire.com/?zyeqm1m3wju)

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-10-02, 01:42 PM
Chapter 2: Viva La Revolution!

We have a round-robin DM setup at the moment, so in order to ensure every DM gets a chance, we level up at the end of every session so we get in a low-to-high level progression by the end of the semester. From this point out, assume the PCs' level is [session #] + 2 unless otherwise noted.

Gathering Information
After hearing about the divine-magic-impeding undead and the widespread use of undead labor, the PCs got an idea: They could make it look as if the zombies were gaining sentience and shouldn't be used anymore, which would mean more people would be working rather than fighting, which would mean they could take out the Imperial army that much easier. Discussion about what to do next and where to do it took about half an hour (out of game, about 5 minutes in-game), but by the end of that half-hour they'd hashed out a basic plan and sailed to the mainland. After donating their captured ship to the Regent of Winds, they headed to a port in Britonnia (totally-not-Roman-occupied-England) and dropped off the Changeling, who disguised himself as a human and tried to get into the city while the rest of them took a shipping job and headed to Gaul (totally-not-Louis-XIV-era-France).

The Changeling made it in through the gates as a human; humans are Class One citizens and the orc guards are only Class Three, so if he didn't want to show them an ID they weren't going to press him. Because he might want to get into a city later disguised as something else, however, he made his first task finding somewhere to get some IDs. After a few hours spent tavern-hopping and some high Gather Information and Bluff checks, he found a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy and was eventually introduced to a master forger. He was a comical black marketeer who was fake-sympathetic and entirely unconcerned with why the Changeling wanted IDs—he asked for a human ID “for his wife” and the forger said “Oh, yeah, I had to do the same thing last year, bring my family in here;” he asked for a half-orc ID “for his servant” and the forger said “Oh, yeah, I hd to bring a few of those in myself, uh huh;” he asked for a half-elf ID “for his mistress;” and the forger said “Oh, yeah, I know how that is, had to sneak her in past the guards.” When the Changeling got fed up with this and asked him how he's selling IDs in a back alley if he has a huge family and servants, the forger's face broke out in a comical frown and he whispered “The missus found out about the mistress...” That was good for a laugh, and the Changeling walked away with three IDs at a discount.

The Changeling used the half-orc ID to get himself a job as a ship's scribe under an orc captain, and used the position to check out the prevalence of zombies and other races while ostensibly writing down the details of the shipping manifest. He discovered that during the day most of the dock workers are Class Three citizens (mostly half-orcs) and a few Class Four creatures like ogres and trolls for the heavy lifting, and the undead only really work at night because the citizens would rather not see a bunch of zombies working all day. After talking to the captain, he determined that this was the prevailing attitude at most of the port cities that used undead labor. He spent a few more days looking around and finding out what he could, then left as the same human he entered as.

That Took a Lot of Gaul
While the Changeling was doing his investigations, the rest of the party decided they'd mess with the Empire and get paid in the process, so they found a shipping job to the Imperial embassy in Gaul and headed out to deliver it. It was a cargo of spices, tobacco, and foodstuffs, so they made some Craft checks and created a poison that would cause explosive diarrhea (that was one of the more tame ideas, trust me) and sprinkled it throughout roughly 1/3 of the grains and spices. They arrived at the embassy docks without issue, but after all the goods were offloaded the officers there decided to search the ship because the workers offloading everything had noticed some signs of habitation in the hold.

The rest of the PCs, hiding in the rather cramped captain's cabin at this point, were understandably worried (there were several dozen skeletons on the dock looking imposing), but some timely 19s and 20s on Bluff and Diplomacy checks on the part of the Captain and the Gunslinger (disguised as a human woman and a small lizardfolk, respectively) were able to convince the guards that this was simply because they had transported cattle and other animals on their last voyage.

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Life!
After getting a clean inspection, they headed directly for the Britonnian city to pick up the Changeling and find out what he'd discovered. Once they heard what he had to say, they headed for a port city near Rema (totally-not-Rome) on the Adriatic Sea (totally-not-Mediterranean-Sea, named for the Emperor's brother; the actual Adriatic was renamed to something else). Exploring the layout there, the party found a port city in a small bay, with the city on one side of the bay, the undead holding areas on the other, and a warehouse complex at the far end. They spent most of their first day in the area buying supplies to create pro-zombie-independence propaganda posters (“What do we want? Life! When do we want it? Soon!” and so forth).

The Bear had the brilliant idea to find some of the city's homeless population to distribute some posters, and ended up feeding them and paying them to keep an eye on things for him instead. While he was thus distracted, the Captain found a half-yuan-ti hobo on the streets and persuaded him back to the ship (we flavored this as a snake-charming routine, complete with flute and Perform (bad music) checks). As soon as it was brought belowdecks, the Gunslinger shot and killed it, thinking it was an enemy officer. He was upset when it was explained to him that this was a random hobo, and went off to sulk while the Captain and the Dragon turned the hobo into another woven-strips-of-flesh masterpiece, this time a set of snakeskin wall hangings, and put him up in the zombies' quarters next to anti-humanoid graffiti. As they were leaving, some guards came to see what the commotion was in the undead area, so they were also killed and turned into more wall hangings and some carpets.

At this point, they're ready for the climax of the “zombie uprising”—they're going to burn down the warehouses and frame the zombies. They gave the zombies the posters and placards and brought them to the warehouses, then went in to take out the guards patrolling the area. I marked the routes on a map in various colors, so we'll call the groups of guards Red Group, Yellow Group, Green Group, and Brown Group, each composed of four people.

Yellow Group
They go for Yellow Group first, since they're the most isolated, and climb up a warehouse to get the drop on them (somewhat literally). The group comes around the corner: one caster-type, three crossbowmen. The Bear and the Dragon attack the caster, the first just barely missing and the second knocking him against a wall. The Tank crushes one crossbowman, and the others take out the other two. The combat seems fairly easy, and it's all going well...until the Bear tries to grapple and crush the caster. The caster makes the check to cast defensively and uses a metamagicked vampiric touch on the Bear, draining lots of health and dealing 2 Con. It takes the rest of the party another round to take him down, but fortunately he doesn't get a chance to call out for help because the Bear still has him pinned with his mouth covered. They take a few rounds to heal up and head for Red Group.

Red Group
They don't bother heading up to the rooftops against this group, and just charge out from between two buildings...and utterly slaughter the baddies in the surprise round. A bit nonplussed but thankful that no one took any damage, they get set up for Brown Group.

Brown Group
Unfortunately, Brown Group has heard something and is wary, so they've split up into two pairs and aren't surprised by the party. All of them are wearing thick cloaks, so the party just has to guess what they're up against. The Tank crushed one of them who was wielding a sword and the Bear took out an archer, but then one of the baddies removed his cloak to reveal a pair of ram horns. He charged the Tank and dealt some damage, which worried the party quite a bit. He didn't drop when the Dragon hit him, and no one else could get to him in the cramped space, so he'd get to act again. The PCs were confused as to why the humanocentric Empire would hire such an obviously-part-human for sensitive guard duty, until the last baddy hit the Assassin with a lightning bolt, and everyone groaned—“Binders! We ran into the good troops, we're screwed!” The rest of the group ganged up on the lightning guy and took him down after a round or two...at which point the other binder breathed a line of fire and hit all of them, severely wounding basically every PC but the Gunslinger (who was on rooftop sniper duty). The Gunslinger managed to take him down, and everyone healed up; they were doing pretty well, but the party was almost completely out of divine spells after recovering from this one.

Green Group
Green Group came upon the party before they could hide, so the first notice they got of Green Group was the entire roof of the warehouse the Gunslinger occupied going up in black flames. One Spellcraft check later, the group groaned again—“Shadowcasters! What the hells are they keeping in here to need this caliber of guards!?” The Bear picked one shadowy figure and charged blindly—and took 10 Wis for his trouble, as his shadow rose up and clawed through his head. The figure next to him dazed the Bear for a round with another mystery and then melted back to sound the alarm, but the Gunslinger (now off the roof) managed to block him. The third figure grabbed a fourth and practically disintegrated him, sucking the life out of him to power a spell (yay Heroes of Horror feats!), specifically an acid fireball that managed to hit the whole party. The Changeling went from full HP to exactly -9, and the rest of the group was down to single digits. Things were looking bad for our heroes, but a lucky crit from the dragon dropped the Bear's target to 1 HP; the Captain and the Gunslinger ganged up on the other caster and the Tank was able to remove the retreating one. After that, the Bear could act again and took out his attacker in a fit of rage. Right before the Changeling's turn came around, the Assassin got to him and used the group's last divine spell, a cure minor wounds, to stabilize him.

Are We Interrupting Something?
Desperate to find out why the security was so heavy around the warehouses, the party cracked the door open on the warehouse closest to the intersection of Green Group's and Brown Group's routes. Inside, they saw an interesting sight—most of the contents had been shoved to the side to make room for a conference table, and six well-dressed figures (all wearing holy symbols) were having a secret meeting in the middle. That's where we ended the session; I typed up everything the party overheard and gave them a transcript (http://www.mediafire.com/?lgnnnyiz5yo) of the conversation so they could plan their actions for the next time.

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-10-02, 01:44 PM
Chapter 3: Ado About Nothing Much

We knew ahead of time that we were going to break in the middle of the session to see a movie the campus cinema was showing, and two players were going to be heading home for the weekend before the session ended, so this session was a shorter-than-normal one where lots of RPing happened but nothing plot-significant really got done.

Suicidal Tendencies
When we last left off, the party came upon a group of people having a secret meeting in a warehouse, and from the transcript of their conversation were able to figure out that these people are 5 chief priests of various religions and one relative of the emperor (Cicero) with unknown power level and influence. The party is wounded and in no shape for a fight. Logically, then, the Assassin gets a brilliant idea: He's going to walk in and talk to these people! He slunk around the side of the warehouse and, when he was far enough away that the party couldn't stop him with a flying tackle, walked right into the room. At this point, every single other PC with the exception of the Gunslinger said something along the lines of “Screw him, I'm running back to the ship as fast as I can.” The Gunslinger climbed the nearest building so he could watch what was happening through a nearby window—and because he'd grabbed some corn and grain from the last shipment they did and could create fire, he made himself some popcorn for the occasion.

So the Assassin walks into the room and everything goes quiet. After glancing at each other for hints, the priests and Cicero still aren't sure what's going on, so Cicero asks who brought the elf with them, thinking it was a prank. When no on fessed up, he called them all back to the table and had the Assassin explain himself. He says he's there because he wants to stop the war and believes he can help Cicero; Cicero asks how. The Assassin explains that he could rig a few battles in the favor of Cicero's units in the field (making a stab in the dark and assuming that Cicero actually commands in the field) to improve his prestige; Cicero listens. The Assassin says that they'd be happy to...remove the Emperor and any other relatives in the line of succession; Cicero interrupts and asks how he got past the guards. The Assassin claims to have killed them all himself...and makes a ridiculous Bluff check, the first good skill check he's rolled this campaign, and then gets a natural 20 on the Will save to fool one of the priestess's discern lies spell. So now they're seriously listening to him.

The discussion goes on for a short while longer, and soon Cicero offers the Assassin a seat and a drink. The Assassin doesn't normally drink, but doesn't want to offend, so he takes the wine that Cicero conjured out of the air and has a sip...and botches a Fort save. He begins to feel a little woozy, and as he rises to try to leave, Cicero snaps his fingers and the priestess of Procan hits him with a binding winds. So the Assassin is now unconscious, bound with air, and in the tender care of the chief priests of the five most morally flexible of the Imperial religions, and as he's being carted away by some servants; the Gunslinger hops down, runs to the ship to find the rest of the PCs arming their zombies with torches to burn everything to the ground, and tells them that the Assassin has been captured and the bad guys will probably know about this whole fake-zombie-uprising plan in a few hours. Doesn't matter; they finish setting the place ablaze and get the hell out of there. As they're just leaving the harbor, they can barely see the fire dying down under rain and mist—the priests got out and are rendering the plan useless. If looks could kill, the Assassin's player would have been a smoking pile of disintegrated ash on the floor.

Go North, Young Pcs
The PCs spend the next week or two in-game stopping off at various ports in the Empire on their way to the Norse, spreading news of the zombie uprising—flying under different flags and using a different ship's name in every port, of course, so it isn't obvious what they're doing. When they make it to Norse territory, but before they get to their destination, the Tank decides that he wants to stop off at one port to get his shields enchanted, and the rest of the party agrees, so they dock their ship and head out. They're welcomed at the docks by a friend of their patron, Bjorn Jarlsson, thane of the Norse in the area; he brings them to the local tavern to relax and takes them on a tour of the area.

The Tank was introduced to a local svartalfar (half-drow/half-duergar) blacksmith who believed he could enchant the shields as desired; as the two are both dwarves (at least partially) and the PCs haven't been home in a while, the two chatted while the shields were being augmented. The Bear was absolutely overcome with joy to hear about the Lodge of the Moon right outside of town, a small settlement of werebears, awakened bears, and urskans that trained the most skilled bear warriors and berserkers in the Norselands. The Gunslinger decided to stick around the docks and the tavern—not that he didn't trust the Norse with their ship, of course, he just wanted to eat, drink, and be merry (read: out of game, his player was finishing some homework). The Captain and Changeling, both female characters, made a bet as to who could seduce the thane first. And this is where the sidetrack came in: the Maul decided, on a whim, to force the Dragon to join in, despite the fact that he's a dragonkin (and male) and the thane is a somewhat-uptight dwarf. That went on for a while, and just when it looked like the Changeling was winning, the Maul had the Dragon try to steal the Thane's crown. It wasn't a valuable crown at all, and being thane wasn't some sort of hugely powerful position (would he be giving them a tour if it were?), but he just had to have that crown.

He makes the appropriate checks, and no on sees him, but then the Maul makes him put the crown on his head—the Maul is Chaotic Neutral, but if there were a Chaotic Screw-with-wielder alignment for intelligent items, he'd be that. The Thane is pretty pissed at him, and at this point the session devolved for a short while into trying to grab the crown and blame everyone else for the theft. Finally, the remaining PCs (who haven't gone back to the tavern to prove it wasn't them) explain that the item is intelligent and a bit of a troublemaker, and the thane asks to see the weapon for himself. Now, this is exactly what the Maul wanted, so he could take over the thane and have fun with that...but he found the thane to not be susceptible to control, and before he could escape the thane sundered him (thank Odin for a magic crown with protection from evil and some Stone Dragon maneuvers). The maul is made of aurorum, so he can be put together and restored without too much difficulty, but while sundered he's kind of helpless and he doesn't like that. The thane gave one piece of the Maul to the Captain and one to the Changeling, and said that all would be forgiven now that the transgressor had been punished, as long as they found some way to make the Maul stay on the ship once put back together; both quickly agreed.

Everyone gets back to town and the Maul is restored and chained down on the boat. The Maul tries to intimidate the Norse by creating a major image of a kraken and then “summoning” a red dragon to defend the town against it; the Norse in the area start preparing for a battle until the Captain tells them that it's all illusionary, at which point they all go down to the docks to watch the show (“It's like a skald's epic, but better!”) and the PCs make some pocket change charging for admission. Three warriors riding young white dragons show up, not realizing the red dragon is an illusion; they're the only three white dragons within dozens of miles, as dragons are quite rare in the world, and they and their riders are kept in reserve for a surprise attack (like a kraken and red dragon showing up). They eventually figure out what happened and head back, but not before they give the Gunslinger a ride by grabbing his shirt in one dragon's mouth, performing some aerial maneuvers, and dropping him in a snow bank. (At this point, the Bear is kind of shocked to discover that there's snow; he didn't quite realize that the Norselands, complete with urskans and polar bears, might have some snow around. He was teased about that for the rest of the session.)

Checking In, Checking Out
As the PCs are finishing their business in the area (finally!) the Bear manages to make friends with an awakened polar bear cub. As the cub is about the right age to go out and see the world, and as the Bear speaks Bear (I decided that given the Norse warriors' major bear theme, they'd have come up with their own language to use in bear form and to teach awakened bears), the polar bear cub decided to tag along with him. The Tank picks up his shields from the smith, the Gunslinger picks up some glass oil-filled bolts he'd commissioned, and everyone else finishes their business.

Right before they'd planned to leave, the PCs discover that the monthly shipment of Faeries and trade goods will be coming in the next few days, so they wait around for that. The ship arrives, and while the Faeries and Norse haggle over prices one of the Faeries on board—a centaur sergeant—debriefs them about the whole zombie incident. After he's gotten all the information he wants, he offers to replace their MIA party member with someone from his command: a treant, a centaur, or a red cap (an inside joke: the Assasin's player has only played in three prior campaigns, and has been a human paladin, a treant rogue, and a centaur barbarian, in that order). They pick the red cap, who will still be referred to as the Assassin for obvious reasons; the player usually plays LG characters, but he's taken to playing a mischievous CE sneak with a certain psychopathic enthusiasm.

Oh, and they also received this newspaper (http://www.mediafire.com/?dhmmmfd4zwm) from some Norse returning from a trade mission in the Empire.

Piedmon_Sama
2009-10-02, 02:02 PM
This looks awesome, thread favorited. :D Also the parallels to my campaign, a low-magic mostly mundane-tech world loosely based in Ancient Rome, don't hurt.

DarkSetzer
2009-10-02, 02:07 PM
Amazing, I love low magic games, and the newspaper idea is simply brilliant (i may even steal it if you don't mind...>_>).

Reading about other people's campaigns is always fun, i look forward to reading more about this one.

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-10-02, 02:11 PM
This looks awesome, thread favorited. :D Also the parallels to my campaign, a low-magic mostly mundane-tech world loosely based in Ancient Rome, don't hurt.

Glad you like it. I've noticed that ancient Rome tends to be a favorite spot for pseudo-historical games, so I'm not surprised at the parallels.


Amazing, I love low magic games, and the newspaper idea is simply brilliant (i may even steal it if you don't mind...>_>).

Go right ahead.


Reading about other people's campaigns is always fun, i look forward to reading more about this one.

I should have sessions 2 and 3 up by the end of the afternoon; I have the notes down, it's just a question of writing everything out and making it presentable.

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-10-02, 03:56 PM
Second session log is up.

Starbuck_II
2009-10-02, 04:29 PM
the exact combinations of which are determined by the Court to which a character declares allegiance. Spring Faeries, being gentle and subtle, start as beguiler//healers; Summer Faeries, being passionate and warlike, start as warmage//dragonfire adepts (DFA being suitably reflavored, of course); Autumn Faeries, being flighty and creative, start as bard//favored souls; Winter Faeries, being dour and dark, start as sorcerer//shugenja (with the option to specialize in any element but fire on the shugenja side). Everyone started at 3rd level, so they have 1 non-casting level on each side of their builds.

You say this, but don't tell us which casting classes they took.


1) swordsage//fighter;
2) rogue//ranger- the only caster (assuming Rangers don't count vs 2 level rule)
3) fighter//rogue
4) warblade//rogue
5) ranger//scout (again Ranger doesn't count as a caster guess)
6) swordsage//barbarian
7) Fighter/rogue

But look good.

Elfin
2009-10-02, 04:42 PM
Very awesome. :smallbiggrin:
I'll be watching this thread.

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-10-02, 04:43 PM
You say this, but don't tell us which casting classes they took.
The Court is noted in the character descriptions--the Dragon is Autumn, for instance, so he started as a bard 2/swordsage 1//favored soul 2/fighter 1.

If you want the full class layout as of the end of session 2, here you go:

Dragon: bard 2/swordsage 2//favored soul 2/fighter 2.

Changeling: warmage 2/rogue 2//dragonfire adept 2/wildshape ranger 2

Captain: sorcerer 2/rogue 1/swashbuckler 1//water shugenja 2/fighter 2

Assassin: warmage 2/warblade 2//DFA 2/rogue 2

Gunslinger: beguiler 2/ranger 2//healer 2/scout 2

Bear: warmage 2/swordsage 2//DFA 2/barbarian 2

Tank: bard 2/fighter 2//favored soul 2/lion totem barbarian 1/feat rogue 1

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-10-02, 05:01 PM
Very awesome. :smallbiggrin:
I'll be watching this thread.

Yay, another admirer!

Just wanted to note that I probably won't get the third session log up tonight; I'm heading out to dinner in a few minutes and we're starting D&D right when we get back. I'll try to get session 3 and 4 logs up tomorrow.

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-10-06, 09:49 AM
Well, homework took up more time than I'd have hoped, but I managed to get the log for session 3 done, one paragraph at a time. It's posted; look for session 4 some time this week.

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-10-13, 01:28 PM
Chapter 4: In with a Bang, Out with a Bang

The Horror, The Horror
Getting back on track, the party decided to finally follow up on the rumors of those weird undead that can cut off divine power. They headed into the totally-not-Germanies, the economic hub of the Empire, to see if they could track down evidence of the hidden necromancy facility making them. After a drawn-out series of infiltrations, impersonations, and thefts that aren't really interesting enough to describe here, they managed to pull together enough maps, trade logs, and other documents and information to determine that the facility was somewhere near the Norse-Siberian border, and quite close to one of the larger Norse cities that they could probably use as a base for exploration.

It took about two weeks to sail from the Germanies to their destination (not stopping for a detour this time!) and they were in fairly good spirits...until they arrived at the port to find that all the docks were empty of ships and all the port buildings were deserted. They disembarked and headed up the trail towards the actual city, where they saw only smoke and lightning flashes through the trees, as well as a squadron of griffon riders coming in from the horizon. They ran faster when the saw this and came rushing into a combat. Good news: The buildings that were burning were not the city, but rather one of the way stations along the road from the city to its port. Bad news: there were tons of Norse corpses around the area. Only a handful of Norse warriors and their chief (a storm giant) remained in battle with their foes, who appeared to be large silver and gold mechanical spiders. Yep, that's right, the “revolutionary automata” referenced in the last Imperial newspaper were clockwork horrors! At this point, the party was really freaking out, but they thought they could handle it, so they quickly identified themselves as allies and took up defensive positions around the Norse.

The party soon discovered why the Norse had been faring so badly: The storm giant cleric had mostly lightning spell-like abilities and spells, and his warriors favored maneuvers from the Arctic Storm and Ocean Tempest disciplines (a lightning-substituted version of Desert Wind and a homebrew storm-themed discipline, respectively)...and clockwork horrors are immune to electricity, so they had to rely on normal melee attacks and suffer many AoOs from the clockwork horde. Fortunately, the PCs weren't so uniformly outfitted, and after a long hard slog (and plenty of damage taken) they managed to dispatch the horrors before the griffon riders came into range. However, before they could rest, two new constructs burst out of the ground nearby, two rather large mechanical snakes (cold-iron-plated versions of the MM2 bronze serpent with some shadow-related enhancements, for those of you keeping score at home). The serpents saw the damage to their clockwork brethren and attacked, utterly wrecking the Norse because not only are they immune to electricity, they heal from it. Once the Norse warriors died, the PCs managed to take down one of the serpents with focused attacks, but the other one escaped to report to its creators. And at this point the griffon riders came into range.

Griffons, fortunately, are not immune or resistant to electricity, so they had a healthy fear of the storm giant and stayed too far out of range to do anything more than plink away with arrows on their first strafing run. The PCs climbed some nearby buildings and managed to leap onto the griffons on their next pass, knocking their riders overboard. With flight capabilities, the party easily dispatched the rest of their griffons and riders, keeping two griffons for themselves, one for the Gunslinger to ride to get his skirmish damage and one to carry the Tank (with his 20 move speed and tons of gear) if they needed to get someplace fast. The storm giant introduced himself as Rurik Grimnir, chief priest of the city and the surrounding area, and thanked them profusely for the timely assistance. He brought them to the city, where they were once again thanked and given free accommodations for the duration of their stay. The PCs explained the reason for their visit, and the city's rulers promised them whatever help they needed—they'd been harassed by undead a few times, but didn't realize the source of the undead was so close, and would appreciate the zombie facility being removed.

The Temple of (Almost) Doom
After a day's rest and some healing by the handful of clergy in the city (of Thor and Loki, if you're wondering), they set out to find the facility with two volunteer hill giant warriors in tow. The site is supposed to be a day's walk away, but they take about a day and a half, hiding as much as possible and searching for wards or traps. They finally arrive at the designated spot to find an empty clearing; apparently secrecy was the complex's primary defense. No cavern entrance or other opening is in sight, so they carefully search the featureless snow-covered area, eventually finding the skeleton of a bear. Twisting the skull and arm bones a certain way caused the center of the clearing to descend into a pit of magical darkness. Feeling around the edges of the room, the party was able to find a hallway and head out of the elevator shaft. To their right was a small guard station, which they marked for looting later; to their left, a doorway. The Maul can detect thoughts, so he very carefully detected thoughts through the door and found a few minds. Disguising themselves as human cultists, the Captain and the Changeling opened the door to find a young half-elf novice arming and polishing two skeleton guards in front of a door at the end of the hall.

Both those PCs are spec'd for social skills, so they confused and intimidated the heck out of the poor novice and kept up the patter long enough to get him to hold the Maul, at which point his Cleric 3 self was crushed by the Maul's ego. The PCs managed to get the command words to the skeletons in the complex, a rough outline of the layout, and some information on the people who lived and worked there—including one Lieutenant Darius, the minor necromancer who created the elf zombies from Chapter 1, apparently not so minor after all. The party headed down the stairs and found themselves at a balcony overlooking a sea of cages, which held creatures in various stages of “undeadification”—a few undead grafts here, a torso being zombified there, a few half-ghouls in the corner, and so forth. Not wanting to attract too much attention from the creatures, in case they could remember the PCs to their master(s), the party headed back upstairs to try the last door at the end of the hallway. The Maul once again detected an intelligent creature, so they sent the dominated novice in to investigate.

Opening the door, the novice came face-to-back with a large, cloaked, four-armed figure walked down the hall lost in thought. The novice's thoughts were running along the lines of “WARNING! WARNING! LIEUTENANT DARIUS! HIGHLY IRRITABLE, RIDICULOUSLY POWERFUL NECROMANCER!!! STAY AWAY!!!!!” but the PCs figured that he'd only be powerful from the novice's perspective and had the Maul creep closer. Darius muttered something about how novices should be getting back to work and kept walking. The Maul wanted to try his usual trick—getting someone to hold the Maul and get taken over—and so had the novice mention this really cool weapon he found that the Lieutenant probably wanted to take a look at. Darius told him novices should be seen and not heard, or else. The novice started to ask again...and without even turning around, Darius lifted an arm—an undead arm of some sort—and blew the novice to pieces with a force orb.

Now, a short digression here. I'd told the PCs already that there were somewhere around 40 divine casters in the world able to cast up to 5th level spells (the max in this world) and about 6 arcane casters capable of same. I'd told them at the outset that any “named” NPCs would also be gestalt, and probably as badass as the PCs. I'd let them overhear a conversation where it was made clear that Darius' “lieutenant” rank was purely honorary, to let him order soldiers around, and that he was much more a badass wizard than a badass fighter. I'd hinted that one of the more powerful NPCs would be overseeing this complex. And I'd just shown that Darius, while preoccupied with something and not really paying attention to his surroundings, had blown a novice to pieces because it annoyed him. Yet, instead of doing the smart thing, the PCs decided to charge in and try to take him down. So before you say “You threw them an unwinnable fight!” keep this in mind.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled campaign log, where the PCs were in the process of bursting the door open and launching themselves at Darius. The Bear went for a grapple (and was thwarted by freedom of movement), the Captain threw a few daggers (which went wide thanks to some concealment), the Gunslinger fired as many bolts as he could (which also went wide), the Assassin managed to hit (but didn't do enough damage to really harm Darius), and the Changeling chucked an orb of fire (which splashed harmlessly against Darius' fire immunity). The PCs didn't know what buffs Darius had or why he wasn't going down, they just knew that he hadn't been inconvenienced in the least and was now aware of him. Darius, finally paying attention to his surroundings, spun around and slaps the Bear with 3 negative levels while knocking the rest of the party around the hall with telekinesis. The PCs beat a hasty retreat while Darius stalked after them. They rushed to the elevator and got the hell out of there, making it to the tree line before Darius poofed into existence next to the elevator. They watched as Darius looked around, roasted the hill giants, shrugged, and teleported back inside, and that's where we ended for the night.