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View Full Version : Here we are: Born to be Pirate Kings! [Campaign Journal]



Morph Bark
2011-03-23, 07:32 AM
Hold that, Playground!

Half a year ago and more I wanted to create a campaign journal. But the day came when my memory kept failing, and I forsook the idea. I could have created a campaign journal detailing two campaigns at once, one where I taught 4E players about 3.5 and one where they taught me about 4E, detailing the many near-death experiences of a half-elf warlock who kept adopting kidnapped children he saved in order to make up for burning down his old orphanage. Sadly, he passed away, telling his paladin cousin with his dying breath to take care of the children.

The paladin died 3 seconds later.

Now that I have started a new campaign with the players from back then, I could once again forsake the idea of making a campaign journal. But not on this day! An hour of unfinished sentences and shattered memories, but it is not this day! This day, I write! So by all that I hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you read, Men of the Net! (Women and Children are also more than welcome. :smallwink:)


Campaign Notes!
The world is slightly more technologically advanced than the standard DnD setting, rather like Eberron. Pistols and renaissance-era firearms are not completely uncommon, though many still prefer medieval weaponry. Besides that, development of airships, trains and similar is well underway, mainly in the elven lands.

Why so? It is because the elves are prettymuch a race of maniacal scientists who love to cackle and create stuff. They're not nice. They're wanderful, marvelous, fantastic, glamorous, enchanting, terrific, the works. But not generally nice, no. Might have to do with the fact they live right between the Sea of Morning Mist and a large desert - that'd wreck a mind after years. Hence it should be no wonder that they are suspected of wiping out the gnome races, leaving them near extinction, causing the kobolds to rise up from the depths of their homes, causing real kobold plagues in some areas.

Trade is plentiful between continents, which has also attracted many of questionable or poor background to venture out to sea and make their fortune, be it fairly or unfairly - through piracy or otherwise. At one of the centers of the setting is Iratown, a town filled with - a boatload or a score or so - pirates. Built into the side of a mountain, it has several layers stacked on top of one another, all which look out over a large bay. The man in charge there is the Pirate King, but mostly the pirates do as pirates do. In Iratown, a pirate's worth and how much respect he gets is typically measured by how high the bounty on his head is. However, due to the Pirate King having forced a truce (mostly symbolical) between them and the nearby human kingdom of Acia, the kingdom will not attack Iratown directly. Hunting bounty hunters is considered a national sport.

Aside from elves, humans, kobolds and the near-extinct gnomes, the world is mainly populated with goblins, catfolk and human-descended races. Goblins are almost able to claim monopoly on piracy and trade in a way - there is always at least one goblin involved. And where one goblin is, there are more. They have a fierce rivalry with the catfolk though, in spite of them being allies. As for the rest - well, get a human drunk enough and he'll mind not what kind of kids he gets.

Notes given to the players prior to the campaign's start
Quarterport: A port town by the sea, Quarterport is a relatively quiet town. It is known for being quick to receive news, partially thanks to its local newspaper.
Population: 1500. Government Aligment: Lawful Neutral. Races: humans.

Iratown: A multi-layer city built into the side of a mountain on an island, Iratown has a great view over a bay where many pirate ships are docked. It is a free city-state ruled over by the Pirate King. It has a truce with the human kingdom of Acia, protecting pirates while within the city -- but not outside of it. The citizens of Iratown have a kind of “ranking system” based on how high the bounty is that is put on your head. Hunting bounty hunters is seen as a national sport.
Population: 5000 (estimated). Government Aligment: Chaotic Good. Races: mainly humans and goblins.

Stormport: A port town close to the elven border, it is home to a black market dealing in looted elven items. Ships have reported being attacked by elven pirates in the waters surrounded Stormport.
Population: 2000. Government Aligment: Chaotic Neutral. Races: humans.

Acia: The human kingdom. Has small population of planetouched in the capital.

Elven lands: The make-up of the elven lands is largely unknown to the people of Acia, other than that it borders on the desert. The elves are known for their experimentation with magic and for wiping out almost all of the gnome races.

Goblins: The language of the goblins is used as the primary language among pirates, such is the prevalence of this race in that profession. Goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears commonly live on islands and near the coast.

Catfolk: Few members of this race have found their way to Acia, so all they know of them is that they live across the sea to the west. Goblin traders occasionally bring in catfolk goodies.

Kobolds: Often called a plague by many humans, kobolds live mostly underground, preferably under mountains. They used to be the nemesis of the gnome race until practically all gnomekind was wiped out. Nowadays they’re mostly known for calling other people’s mothers ugly things.

Continent Map
The left half belongs to Nadia, who got that map from her mother, who was a PC in an earlier campaign in the same setting. The right half they found on the ship Nadia arrived on in the second session.

http://i53.tinypic.com/28u49yp.png

Introducing: The PCs!
Vido Swiftriver, LE Chaos Gnome Beguiler 7/Mindbender 1: The player sneakily took his last name and town of origin from the very 4E adventure we had been playing not too long before starting on this campaign. He appears to love messing with others and has a hatred for kobolds.

Atrox, NE Kobold Dread Necromancer 8: With a name I can barely remember the correct spelling of, here is the antithesis to Vido. Being born in a tribe revering black dragons and being led by dragonwroughts (which are born from special eggs), his egg was an in-betweener, which caused the other kobolds to allow him to remain in the tribe even after he started necromancing all around. Eventually though, he practically got kicked out and has been wandering ever since.

Nadia Stormclaw, CN Catfolk Warblade 4/Swordsage 1/Warblade +1 {MISSING IN ACTION}: The daughter of this player's previous catfolk warblade character in the same setting, causing her to prettymuch have a ready-made background. Harbours the desire to be the captain of a massive pirate crew one day, just like her mother.

Aaron, NG Whisper Gnome Swordsage 2/Dragonfire Adept 1/Swordsage +2/Shadow Sun Ninja 1 {DECEASED}: This one has the same name as the player's previous character that he played in the same setting, but that one was an aasimar. Aaron is reserved, but deep down has a love for the awesome. Player plans on going Shadow Sun Ninja and do some infinite healing for the entire party in combo with the kobold. However, their alignments may quite clash.

Annie the Pineapple Knight, LE Tiefling Swordsage 8: With yellow skin, green hooves and hair and a barbed spiny tail, Annie does somewhat resemble a very humanized pineapple. Named after "ananas", the Dutch word for pineapple. Secretly royalty.

Boagetash, CG Half-Fey Elf Scout 6/Beastmaster 2: The one name I couldn't bother to remember, the character was the final one done so the concept isn't quite so solid yet. Plans on being skillmonkey mainly and previously considered going for Mounted Combat. He is of a tribe of elves from the forests, so he has little knowledge of his city-bound maniacal cousins (though I may inform him before they get there).


- - - Newcomers:

Tharion, LN Draconic Dragonborn Warforged Crusader 8: Servant of his human necromancer master, now bodyguard to Zetsu under his master's orders. Tank. Replaced Aaron.

Zetsu, Necropolitan Evolved Undead Star Elf Binder 1/Warmage 4/Anima Mage 2: Half-Brother to Boagetash from their father's side, this eye-less old bag of bones is a master of boom who binds forgotten gods and demons to the remnants of his soul. Is curious how his human master has survived for over two hundred years without dying of old age, even after turning him into an undead. Replaced Nadia.

Jim: Jim. Jim has been occassionally used as a fill-in character for players who did not have their sheets with them (primarily Nadia's/Zetsu's player). Jim loves hugs and food and will wrestle anyone to the ground if they resist, resulting in Jim shouting "JIM WIN!" Jim has recently gained the ability to turn Jimself into a bear and throw Jimself at people like a thrown rock. Jim does not like Atrox. Jim likes Boagetash.


Now to see what effect this first-ever-written campaign journal intro will have...

Grendus
2011-03-23, 11:44 AM
Subscribed. Looking forward to reading this as it develops.

Morph Bark
2011-03-24, 02:34 PM
Slight update: the scout's player told me his name today (he had to look it up due to it being the most complicated), so that has been put in now. The account of the short first session's happenings should be coming soon. :smallsmile:


EDIT: Also, miss-remembered the kobold's name. It's Atrox, not Atraxas.

Tyndmyr
2011-03-24, 02:46 PM
You had me at "Pirate Kings".

I'm picturing a crazed adventuring party, consisting solely of guys with pirate hats and eyepatches(obviously), storming onto a ship. And then queen will play.

Morph Bark
2011-04-06, 08:50 AM
Took perhaps a while, but here is the results of the first session! (The second session has also been had, but I've been both procrastinating and been too busy to finish that entirely yet, and perhaps the first session is too long a read anyhoo.)


The First Session
Our story starts off in a small and dark room aboard a pirate ship, where five figures sit slumped on the ground, chained to the walls. As Nadia’s player is absent for this session due to a LARP weekend, there is only five players present. Vido, Atrox and Boagetash are chained together decided by random rolling with a d6, to great chagrin of them all - the dormant racial hatred between Vido and Atrox is immediately established. Aaron silently thanks the gods for not being chained any closer to them. Annie doesn’t care much.

They’ve been held prisoner on the ship for at least three days now, with Boagetash being occasionally brought to the deck to help with rowing as they lack one man. He therefore knows there are thirteen crewmembers (the ship’s main sail is even emblazoned with a bloody red “13”) plus a passenger: a bard who seems decently armed.

After the group next receives their meal, Annie decides that she’s bored with being on this ship and picks the locks on her cuffs and attempts to free the others as well. Boagetash immediately falls to the floor and begins to search for a way out, away from the kobold and gnome who drive him so mad with their bickering. He finds that in a corner of the room some of the planks have rotted and there is a small hole. He breaks it further open and crawls down to the lowest part of the ship. There he moves around trying to find more holes to get out, but instead finds some slits between the wood where light falls through and he can see the captain of the ship talking to the bard. He makes note of the captain’s particularly fancy hat and chair and the fact that his eagle wild cohort is locked and chained by the leg in a cage. Boa silently swears revenge on the captain for doing that to his birdy buddy.

He sneaks back and they all formulate a plan to break out when suddenly there is noise at the door. They all hurriedly put back on their shackles and pretend nothing has happened. The bard opens up the door and sends down Jim, an orc who is the ship’s strongarm. He frees up Boagetash and takes him up to shackle him to his rowing position and the other four are left behind. They quickly get out of their shackles again and go down the hole, go further to the back of the ship and punch a hole in the ceiling there. Crawling up through it, they find their gear, along with the hammocks of the crew and the cargo. They proceed to go up the stairs and enter the kitchen, easily subduing the cook and tying him up. Atrox takes a sniff of the meal the cook was preparing, but considers it too be un-kobold for his tastes.

Meanwhile, Boagetash talks to Jim in a friendly tone and asks him politely to release him from being chained to the rowing block so that he has more freedom to move. An easy Diplomacy check later, Jim complies, gullible that he is. Boa still has his hands in chains together, but is no longer chained to something else.

They sneak down and back to their cell again where they start making some noise, causing the bard to come over and check what’s going on. Looking down from the top of the stairs into the dark room, he sees little, so he descends the stairs and is promptly assaulted by a zombie that Atrox had summoned (“Summon Undead I, yeah!”) along with the others, who had pretended to still be in chains. Before he is killed, he manages to shout a warning to the others, which Boa hears and immediately he tries to escape. Jim hears the warning as well and immediately drops on top of Boa, keeping him down with his weight - shame for Boa his grapple modifier isn’t high enough to escape! However, his Diplomacy modifier is and by the time the others arrive on deck, Boa has been freed from the sweaty shirtless orc.

It is at this point that we ended the first session, which had been rather short, mostly due to needing to still stat up Annie and Boa for the most part. Hopefully it wasn’t that long to read, considering the session was about 2 hours of actual play!

dsmiles
2011-04-07, 10:06 AM
I...I...think I'm in love.

Very well-written, Morph Bark. I''ll be watching this thread.
http://tvrecappersanonymous.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/im-watching-you.jpg

Morph Bark
2011-04-08, 05:16 AM
:smallbiggrin:

Glad you enjoyed the read! I'm on my way to finishing the write-up for the second session, so that should be up later today after I get done cleaning hell.

dsmiles
2011-04-08, 07:15 AM
:smallbiggrin:

Glad you enjoyed the read! I'm on my way to finishing the write-up for the second session, so that should be up later today after I get done cleaning hell.All Nine Hells, or just one? :smalltongue:

EDIT: I kind of wish I was in this campaign. I've been waiting for someone to want to run a pirate campaign. FOR. EVAR. :smallsigh:

E to the D to the IT: Are your pirates the singing and dancing version?

Morph Bark
2011-04-09, 11:34 AM
E to the D to the IT: Are your pirates the singing and dancing version?

The bard was. :smalltongue: Sadly didn't last long though, and I've only once had a DMPC tag along with a party of two that was a bard. They ended up accidentally killing him with a botched spell that collapsed a cave on top of him and a friendly NPC.


By the way, at the start of the second session Annie's player told me she hadn't really figured anything out backstory-wise, so Annie prettymuch functionally has amnesia with regards to her past. Still need to work out how far back she can remember things, but this means I got stuff to play with. Any ideas? :smallamused:

Otherworld Odd
2011-04-09, 12:29 PM
Ah, this brings me back to a small sidequest I did once that involved an abandoned ship and going down into the water-filled hull to combat zombies and a vicious half-orc druid/necromancer... thing. Alas, that one ended with me sacrificing myself to Gorum via crossbow bolt through the brain. >.>

Morph Bark
2011-04-10, 08:18 AM
I lost two-thirds of my typings for the second session due to not having saved that when my computer decided to "hey, let's restart for some updates!" So for now here's just Part 1 of Session 2.

The Second Session - Part I
We begin where we left off, starting right with combat! Atrox going first he summons another zombie, which frightens the crew, who immediately leave their rowing positions and move closer to the back of the ship (where Jim and Boa also are). Atrox notices that Jim has his 10 gp sunglasses on his head, which he needs to protect his pretty vulnerable kobold eyes from the sun. Obviously, this means that Jim is now Atrox’ prime target.

The crewmembers are pretty easy to dispatch, but slowly mist begins to gather and get thicker, so that by round 3 very few attacks still hit. Aaron is surrounded by crew members at this point with his back against the main mast. Boa has flown upwards to the crow’s nest to take out the crew member there with the idea of sitting there until the fight is over it seems. By the way, have I mentioned yet how Boa’s wings are butterfly wings with a flaming skull pattern on them? In hindsight, I almost feel like there should have been some pirate making threats to pull his wings out and use them as wall decorations.

By the time the mists are thickest, a shadow comes to loom over them and with a loud CRASHING NOISE THE LIKES OF WHICH THOR WOULD BE PROUD OF a second ship rams the one the PCs are on from the right! Splinters of wooden wreckage fly around, killing the remaining crew members on the deck and throwing around a lot of rubble, instantly changing the battlefield. In the misty shadows the party members look about in confusion, most of them hurt by flying wood as well. With a thud following almost immediately after the crash, they find a catfolk woman in their midst, half-conscious. As Atrox goes below deck to search for any sign of Jim or his sunglasses, Aaron and Vido help the newcomer get up and clear-headed again, explaining the situation when asked. Boa flies to the other ship and Annie attempts to use the Mighty Throw maneuver to throw herself onto it, but fails.

NADIA has joined the party!

dsmiles
2011-04-10, 08:41 AM
Awww...I was hoping you'd "pirate up" the narrative a bit.

Morph Bark
2011-04-15, 11:39 AM
I'm not going for a silly feel all that much in this campaign, to be honest. Some pirates the players encounter might have a... "speech impediment" though. :smalltongue:

Anyhoo, I wrote up the rest, this shows that the second session was considerably longer and more active in play than the first...



The Second Session - Part II
Whilst most the party tries to climb onto the new ship (Annie gets the tied-up cook and Mighty Throws him on board) and Atrox is still below deck, Boagetash enters the captain’s quarters in search for his bird, going down a stairs. He finds the cage and lifts it up, but right when he does so, he is stabbed in the back! With a YAAAARRGHH! the captain launches himself on top of Boa and stabs him rapidly with his rapier, dealing heavy damage and causing Boa to flee as fast as he can, dragging the cage with him. On the stairs the captain catches up with him and trips him with his whip, making him and the cage drop to the steps. In the meantime, Annie and Nadia have heard the commotion and come rushing back and into the ship, confronting the captain.

It is at this point that I look at Annie’s player and ask her if she is wearing pants.

Nadia’s player voices that he really wants to try tripping the captain with Nadia’s spiked chain, but Annie is in the way. Disgruntled, he instead decides to have Nadia voice admiration for the captain’s fancy hat and a desire to loot it from his corpse. Boagetash crawls between the legs of Annie and Nadia to safety, dragging the cage with him and setting his eagle free once outside. The captain sees he is facing trained opponents who outnumber him, so he retreats and hides in his quarters. Nadia tells Annie the hat is not worth taking as the ship they’re on is rapidly sinking by now due to the crash, so they climb back on the new ship.

Atrox comes back up and - not having found his shades, nor Jim - and shouts down through the captain’s door: “Hey captain, where is Jim?!” No answer. “Well F you too, captain! Your mom’s ugly!” (At this point I should mention it is a staple of our campaigns that kobolds have a habit of insulting the mothers of their enemies.)

Atrox fervently continues to search for his shades, so Vido decides to mess with him by casting a Silent Image version of them. Atrox makes his Will save and the two exchange insults. At this point, Atrox is the only one left on the deck of the sinking ship, whilst Nadia is below deck on the other ship, investigating it.

Then the captain returns.

As the DM, I dramatically hold up my hands to my side as if I am holding something heavy sideways.

The look on all my player’s faces is well worth it as Nadia’s player utters: “You’re shatting me, he has a gatling gun?”

He has a gatling gun, or more accurately, a gatling crossbow, handcranked, firing 1d4 bolts per round that deal 1d10 damage each.

And Atrox is right in front of it.

His hero instinct kicking in, our resident Whisper Gnome Swordsage leaps from the other ship and attempts to Mighty Throw the captain into the ocean, but fails at this attempt. The two ships then break apart and drift from one another as the ship starts sinking more and more rapidly. Aaron is amazingly lucky as I keep rolling 1s for the captain’s amount of attacks per round. As Atrox flies to safety, Aaron leaps from the ship and Nadia throws him a grappling hook. The captain manages to shoot down both Nadia and Vido, who were reeling Aaron in, as the ship goes down. Aaron manages to climb on board anyway and immediately stabilizes them both. Together, the three watch the other ship go down. The captain has gone back into his quarters. Boagetash curses because he had hoped to put the captain’s head inside the bird cage.

Being in safety now, Annie looks for clues on the new ship’s maps to see where they are. She finds a fancy new hat, a red tricorne with small green feathers and a bear and a unicorn stitching on the inside. Then she checks the cargo: barrels of rice and soy milk. A Knowledge check later the players come to know that the elves in this world are vegetarians (which I made up on the spot because Annie’s player is also a vegetarian), because they find animals and such too valuable as subjects for experimentation (which fits with the idea for elves I already had); this second part has Annie’s player join Aaron and Nadia on the “elves are bad” side.

Boagetash repairs the ship with Aaron’s help while it is sinking due to the damage it has sustained - luckily not as much as the ship they were on before though. He hangs from the grappling hook outside because he would otherwise be claustrophobic (one of his Flaws). Vido and Nadia just lie on deck healing. Atrox tries scouting around in flight, but finds nothing.

We skip to the next morning. Nadia’s player immediately exclaims “I CAME FROM THE RIGHT!” Vido’s player jokingly asks for a Knowledge check on marine traffic laws. The characters introduce themselves to each other and the party is officially established. Woot! I still can’t believe I came up on the spot so easily with a way to get them all to trust one another and want to stick together as a party for IC reasons, especially since none of them have any background story connections to one another. They discuss their options and look at the maps Annie found and see that the ship was headed to a city in the east of which the name has been smudged out. They also see a city on the map that is in the middle of a desert. All players immediately want to go to Vegas.

Considering the ship isn’t suited for desert travel though, they set sail for the nearest port town. Nadia frees the cook and uses Diplomacy to concince him to stay with them and be their cook. We lose a few minutes of play time as Nadia’s player relays to the other players a story of our last pirate campaign in this setting where they drifted around on wreckage with an übercook before.

On the way to the port town Boa spots a small chest on some floating wreckage that they pick from the water. In it they find a bag of 50 gp, a right handed hand of the mage and a journal, which turns out to include a non-hatted version of the captain they saw going down with his ship. They make note that the last few entries are in a different handwriting and signed with a different name, but none of them asks further about that.

When they arrive at the city, most of them head out to find some info or go shopping. Annie talks to the shipyard master about repairs, but they all find that repairs are too expensive for their tastes (and current funds). Nadia tries to find out if anyone knows of her here, because she wants to become a fearsome and well-known pirate after all. Atrox goes to buy some new shades and finds a decent shop. The problem is, the owner is a flamboyantly gay elf with huge ears (Atrox’ player compares him to Dumbo) and most shades don’t fit his wishes. However, eventually he gets the elf to admit to having something even better than he thought of: silver shades shaped like gnome skulls.

Realizing that they don’t have enough people to really be able to sail, the players try to find out how many NPCs they’d have to hire and how much they’d cost. I tell them they’d need 8 people for their ship and each NPC hired would cost 3 sp per day. Nadia’s player considers this and decides that with the whole party together, discounting the cook, they should at least make up for two all together and he recalls that 5 would be the bare minimum. I refrain from comment at this point, trying to see where this is going, and the players decide to hire 5 NPCs, which is perfectly fine by me. Vido and Nadia go out to hire some, still completely oblivious to the fact this is an elven town due to the fact that they all wear turbans. After hiring five, they are approached by a wealthy-looking elf in a heavy coat and Nadia instantly gets suspicious. The elf tries to find out what they are doing in the town and attempt to convince them to work for him, putting down a heavy bag clinking with coin in front of them. Nadia wants to refuse as they don’t have time for this, but the elf simply says “Oh, I will simply contact you later for your services. Consider this a… gift.” and then leaves. Investigating the bag, Vido finds out that it is filled with roughly a hundred onyx black coins that he Appraises and determines to be about 100 gp worth each. This makes Nadia interested, but all the more suspicious as the two return to the ship as night begins to fall…

Greenish
2011-04-15, 01:25 PM
Black onyx? That doesn't bode well.

Oh, and just for the record… http://www.buzzhunt.co.uk/wp-content/2011/04/the-word-pineapple-in-different-languages.jpg

Lookin' forward for more piratey action, yarr!

Morph Bark
2011-04-28, 04:50 AM
The Third Session
Vido and Nadia return to the ship, bringing along their phat lewt new bag o’ black coins they got from the suspicious elf. (All elves are suspicious, it goes without saying.)

Guess what the first thing everyone else does is? Appraise, appraise, appraise! Fine by me. I give them all some differing values, ranging from 30 gp per coin to 150. I don’t think any of their results beat Vido’s from the previous session though. The players think on what to do with this, squabble for a bit, but ultimately decide its best to sleep on it and in the morning go look for stuff to fix the ship.

The following day, Atrox is sent to go buy nails and the two gnomes go to buy wood, all materials for fixing the ship. They manage to find a good store called Delta Carpentarrs that sells them and they buy so much they’re 1500 gp lighter by the time they walk out. Sad faces around the table, now they are poor! Atrox wants to use Diplomacy to get extra nails and, fair enough, he gets three extra slipped to him by a store clerk for being such a nice kobold.

Boagetash meanwhile has wandered off to the junkyard, where he finds… *drumroll* magic items! “Lolwut?” is prettymuch the exact reaction I get from the players, but hey, what do you expect from elves who probably make sure to put all the useable stuff in that fancy Delta Carpentarr store? They probably have too many magic items (read: crazy inventions) stuffed underneath their beds already. Rolling on a random table, he picks up a bag of holding (Type II) and a pale blue ioun stone.

Nadia and Annie stay behind to guard the ship. Annie, because her player is sadly absent this session (she wanted to fix her Link costume for the fantasy fair we attended the Sunday after that). Nadia because she has nothing better to do than petting Boa’s eagle, which purrs like a kitten.

Note to other DMs: never make your players’ eagles purr like kittens. They will write this down as an important fact.

When the players gather back again, they focus on the black coins again. Nadia and Atrox are sent out to go find a pawn shop to see if they can sell them. Vido follows behind them, but is ultimately caught in the act and brought along. Sadly, their search proves fruitless, so they head on home again as the sun starts to set.

Coming back to the ship they find that the others are talking with five men that are familiar to Nadia and Vido because they hired them the day before. Nadia asks if they know anyone who could fix their ship and is told by one of the elves that “Kyle can do it.” Who is Kyle? Kyle turns out to be one of the elves. When asked for their names, I brainfart and grab back on our 4E campaign with the names of the children my half-elf “adopted”. So what are their names? Kyle, Keanan, Kel, Kasper and Ferinox. Atrox asks of them what they think of gnomes, making Ferinox immediately fall down on one knee before Vido once he realizes what he is. Atrox also almost falls to his knees, but with more of a reaction of “NOOOOOO!!” rather than reverence. This is also the point where Nadia finds out she has recruited elves, which causes her great annoyance. They talk a bit, discussing the men’s duties and after that they go into the ship to pick out a spot.

Vido takes first guard duty, being a spellcaster he needs to sleep in one go, so Atrox goes last. When it is Boa’s turn, he spots a hooded figure watching them from the shore. He flies off the ship towards the figure and begins to question him on why he is there. The conversation basically goes something like this:

“Why are you watching us?”
Silence.
“Who are you?”
Silence.
“I said ‘who a--’ ”
“Pylon.”
Half the players: “Pylons! Must construct additional pylons!” (Don’t ask me, I wouldn’t know why they’d want to build these (http://www.rijschoolservice.nl/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/5e06319eda06f020e43594a9c230972d/p/y/pylon_small_1.jpg). :smalltongue:)
Boa: “What?”
“Pylon.”
“I don’t understand.”
The stranger looks up. “My name is Pylon.” He then walks away towards the back of the ship as he keeps looking at it. Boa, confused, follows him.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m on a mission.”
“A mission?”
“A mission.”
“What kind of mission?”
“My mission was given to me by my master. It is a secret mission.”
“Awww…”
“…my mission…” Pylon turns to Boa, “was to give you a mission.”
“…I thought it was a secret mission?”
“It was, until just now.” I glance at my wrist. No watch.
“Who is your master? Why would he give us a mission?”
“My master… I cannot tell you his name, but he desires the destruction of all the elves.”
“What?! I’m an elf!”
“…erm, well, all city elves.”
“Oh, then it’s fine.”
DM note: Boagetash is not strictly speaking Chaotic Good.
“What is your master’s name?”
“I cannot tell you his name! Though… I could tell you his title. Maybe you have heard of it. ‘The Dark King’.”
“That doesn’t sound very nice…”
“He is on the side of good, as you are.”
“Hmmm… do I trust you?”
It is at this point we all take a moment’s pause and look at Boa’s player. Nadia’s player immediately reaches for Boa’s character sheet to check his Intelligence and Wisdom scores, which are 18 and 19 respectively. “‘Do I trust you?’ Seriously?” “Erm, yeah?” “Okay…”
Pylon takes a moment’s pause as well before answering “Yes.”
SENSE MOTIVE IS ROLLED! Actually, no, but this would have been the perfect time! I don’t tell my players when to make those though, they’ll have to decide for themselves if they want to make some.
Boagetash decides that now would be a good time to wake the others up and see what they think of it. Pulling Nadia, Aaron and Atrox out of their sleep - with Atrox going immediately back, grumbling about non-spellcasters waking up those who cherish their death-like sleep - they find Pylon to have come on board once they come back from their quarters. Nadia questions Pylon to find out more, and Pylon explains that he works for the Dark King, wishing to destroy all elves (“All city elves!” Boa pitches in) and that he wishes to employ them to work in that direction by hiring them for an assassination on an elven noble. This piques their interest as they are by far no lovers of elves. Pylon tells them that his master would like them to steal something for him first however, as a kind of ‘test’ to see if they’d be ready for an assassination. He gives them the details, then leaves.

My notes on the session tell me that at some point Pylon also mentioned living castles to them, but I’ve forgotten the details about that particular happening.

The next day the five of them go to the place Pylon told them about and sneak in. A few stairs down they come across a door, at which point most of them hide while two of them listen at the door and try find out what’s on the other side. Of course, the answer is “guards”. Nadia and Vido try the charismatic approach and simply knock while the others hide. Chairs fall over and the door is opened, showing two guards with a table behind them covered in hastily put down poker cards. They tell them they have an appointment with their master and are told that the master is gone for a few hours. When the guards ask for a password, Nadia tells them “We weren’t told there was a password.” The reply? “Good, there is no password anyway.” The guards ask them for their names and apparently are talking to a Nidalee Windrider and Vido Crosschord. Charming. Actually, that is quite true, as Vido succeeds in charming one of the guards while using Cloaked Casting, meaning the other guard has no clue. The guards talk a bit and agree to letting them inside. Sure enough, the rest comes rushing in and they beat down the guards and tie them up.

Going through the only other door in the room, they enter a kind of steam-machine-driven factory and find a crafty workshop at the other end. They search it and find what seems to be a kind of raygun (which the characters of course don’t know, but hey), as well as paper, red ink, some universal solvent and uh… this thing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass_(drafting)). When they turn to leave, suddenly, monks fall! Everyone dies!

Actually, no, sadly all of the monks’ surprise attacks miss, but they roll high on initiative anyway, so they go first and Atrox is immediately killed. WHAT?! That can’t be right. Checking, he’s hit EXACTLY -10. He asks if his Damage Reduction applies. The other players tell him that fists deal bludgeoning damage, which is the only thing that gets through it. I tell him that he is still alive because the monk chopped rather than punched, thus dealing slashing damage, leaving the kobold just barely alive and bleeding out. Of course, he is quickly stabilized by Nadia, who proceeds to unleash some martial strikes upon their foes, which in turn heal Atrox. (I allowed Nadia to take Devoted Spirit in turn for giving up Tiger Claw and White Raven, hence allowing her to be the party healer in a sense.)

It turns out that one of the three monks is crazy strong compared to them, attack- and damage-wise, so I have him turn to using a greatsword he had on him instead. (The monk had this greatsword with him as an in-joke for myself, which I won’t reveal due to it revealing sensitive information to my players. The greatsword could be ‘activated’ to gain a lightsaber-like edge.) Nadia ended up fighting a blindfolded Halfling monk, who kept dodging her attacks. Meanwhile, the only female monk of the three that attacked them (and the only one with a hat) keeps the spellcasters in check - though Vido still tries to use his spellcasting on her without her noticing thanks to his class features. Atrox, now at positive hp, flies to the top of a nearby 15 ft tall bookcase where Boa already is at and starts to heal himself back up. Boa meanwhile keeps firing arrows down, but misses a lot. Luckily he shoots none of his teammates though - thank you Precise Shot feat!

Eventually, they manage to bring down the greatsword monk, causing the female monk to pick him up (“Attack of Opportunity!”) and move away from the rest. She heals him, but Atrox hits her with some spells and practically halves her Strength. Seeing as how this effect will last a while, she makes a break for it and climbs on top of the bookcase, intending to climb to the ceiling and disappear between the pipes and cables up there in the next round. The greatsword monk meanwhile gets back up, but is slain quickly afterwards. The blindfolded Halfling monk leaps from wall to wall and disappears, just like the female monk. The players subsequently loot the monk’s corpse, finding a ring and a necklace, but little else.

Soon after they get into trouble though, as one of the containment tanks in the factory explodes, spilling puke-like stuff all over the floor! The cause? The Halfling monk hanging upside-down from a pipe at the ceiling with a crossbow. He quickly disappears again. Atrox simply flies to the exit, but the rest needs to climb. Aaron lends Nadia her climbing gear to give him a boost and they and Aaron climb towards to first tank, where the spilling is coming from. They stand atop the tank for a bit before moving on, but have to roll Reflex saves because… the tank collapses! Like they didn’t see that one coming.

Nadia quickly clings to the wall, but Vido falls in and is unable to come out. Nadia and Boagetash help him out by tying a rope to a ceiling pipe and tying the other end to Vido. Both end up being nicely splashed with factory-puke, requiring Fortitude saves! Aaron has none of this trouble though, he automatically succeeds on the Climb checks all the way. Nothing bad happens and they all get to the exit safely, where they find the guards still tied up and the factory-puke slowly spilling into the room! Boa cuts them free, earning bad looks from Nadia for wasting perfectly good rope, and they all leave. The guards quickly flee and the rest return to the ship, feeling like they’ve deserved some rest.

dsmiles
2011-04-28, 06:16 AM
I've been waiting sooooooooooooo long for an update...:smallwink:

Greenish
2011-04-28, 06:45 AM
Kill all the elves, yeah!

Morph Bark
2011-04-28, 10:43 AM
Well, you're in luck! There was some time between the second and third, but after that things have gone a little faster, so now I can also immediately post the

Fourth Session!
This session was planned on rather short notice (as in, a mere two hours prior) and sadly Annie’s player couldn’t be present again and Boagetash’ player couldn’t be present until halfway in. We quickly handled the level ups for those who weren’t finished yet, which was easy enough.

So what do we do first? Bathing of course! Nadia, Vido and Boagetash, the three characters covered in factory-puke last session sorely need some hygiene. So where are they gonna get water? Do they just want to go jump in the salty sea? They consider this and Nadia decides it might be wiser to get some water from a well in town. Afterwards the day is up and they go to sleep.

The next day Nadia gets up first and goes to find the cook to make breakfast. He wants to try something new, so he asks if they could supply him with some new ingredients. The players talk a bit and assign the task to Vido, who now has to buy enough food for a week for them and their crew (minus Atrox, who just wants to eats larvae and it’s not like Vido would love buying the kobold fellow some healthy noms). Three meals a day makes it come down to quite a cost, so he leaves with 100 gp in his pocket. He also takes along a black coin because he is adamant in finding someone to sell it to.

Meanwhile, Aaron, Atrox and Nadia go find someone to identify the ring and necklace they looted off the monk’s corpse last session. Praise Gather Information! They find a good place filled with mechanical stuff and curtains, making it look like a mixture between a steampunk clank workshop and a fortune teller’s abode. They find a 4 foot tall person inside (not a gnome, to Atrox’ relief) with a fancy hat and too-large robes. They tell him that they’d like for him to identify the ring and necklace for them and in turn they’ll give him the sword. After inspecting the sword, he heartily agrees to it.

The players lean back suspiciously and discuss whether this is such a good idea, so they try to calculate how much the sword might be worth and decide that it’s prolly around 2000 gp and the identifying cost would have been 1500 for the ring alone (I told them the latter outright, the sword wasn’t 2000 gp, hence why I overlooked their metagaming here). They are told the ring grants glibness 1/day and the necklace grants a +5 competence bonus on Jump 4/day (stackable).

In the meantime, Vido has kept going around in circles trying to find someone to sell his black coin to, even asking for directions. It is only an hour later that he realizes that the black coin has been stolen, right when the others come back from the item identifier. The others don’t believe him to have been stolen from and Nadia trips Vido to the ground as a sort of warning, getting support from Atrox.

Of course, Vido responds by shouting “Guards! Guards!” and immediately a bunch show up to arrest them all. They let Aaron go because he didn’t do anything, but Atrox, Nadia and Vido are grabbed a hold of (yay Grapple!). This doesn’t really help though, as Atrox is wearing spiked armour. It deals the guard so much damage that he drops straight to the negatives so that he is dying. Hope that won’t count on Atrox’ criminal record! The kobold remarks that “He’s gonna pay for my armour ‘n’ stuff. It’s all dirty.”

The other guards immediately draw their weapons and urge him to come with, planning to drag their companion along. Nadia tries to convince them she can heal him by punching one of them (actually wouldn’t completely work since the guards at this point would all count as enemies), but the guards do not buy it. (We tried rolling Bluff versus Sense Motive in a kind of “reverse Bluff” scheme, but we got confused on how to exactly work that, so I figured “eh, the guards wouldn’t normally buy that kinda stuff”.)

Of course, Nadia punches one anyway and the fallen guard rises up. Confused looks on the NPCs’ faces, but they are still taken in for questioning. Aaron follows behind and waits outside the guard station for the others to come out. Nadia and Atrox are chained together and when questioned, Nadia tells them the gnome was robbed and is a friend of theirs. Atrox instead pulls up a story about how Vido conned them or somesuch. When the guard leaves to question Vido in another room, Nadia begins swinging Atrox around by the chain through the air, causing him to be sick (Fort save yeah!). Because Vido relays the same story as Nadia, both are let go off the hook. Atrox though? For replying to the guard with a “Ever met a gnome who wasn’t a liar?” he is put on death row for “insulting the great ancestors”.

Nadia does not like. When outside and told to Vido and Aaron, Aaron does not like either. Vido does not dislike, but voices no specific liking. It is at this point Boa’s player enters the room after a night out, so the three are joined by a concerned Boagetash because he was just wandering around wondering why they were taking so long. The four of them decide to go bust Atrox out of jail to save him from execution. They simply walk into the station and up to the receptionist and ask if they could visit their friend in jail. She tells them flat-out “no”, so of course Vido charms her and - on Nadia’s instructions - makes her sign a paper that they have been authorized to go into the jail. Twenty feet down the hall later they run into a guard who asks them why they are there since they shouldn’t be allowed in there. Nadia shows the paper, which is torn up by the guard as the receptionist doesn’t have the authority to grant access. The players look at one another… and jump the guard full force, stuffing him in one of the interrogation rooms, all tied up.

They proceed onwards until they come across a reinforced door, which Boa lockpicks (he picked up a rank at the level up). An alarm goes off when they go through and they proceed to storm down the stairs quickly. Vido, being the slowest, is caught up by the guards and he cries for his allies to help him. He succeeds in stunning a guard with a spell before Aaron manages to get back to him. (I had the stairs count as difficult terrain, which a stance allowed him to easily bypass. An easy Climb check coulda been called for too, but remember that Aaron would easily have made it, just as in the previous session.)

It takes Boagetash and Nadia a bit longer to get back, Boa drawing his bow along the way and shooting down one of the front guards from a stairs below them. Nadia proceeds to unleash more strikes to heal up the wounded, downing another guard. The stunned guard is taken out third and the last tries to make a break for it, but he is chased up the stairs by Aaron, who punched him down to the steps.

Vido meanwhile has run away further down and away from the fight and comes across a door. Atrox player was told he was taken through this door, down a hallway and thrown into a jail cell by an elven guard and a large armoured knight with an executioner’s axe on his back. For making some snide remarks, the knight throws him hard into the cell, causing enough damage to drop him quite a bit, but not into the negatives. “Haha!” Victorious! Except then the knight comes into the cell to take off the shackles and smacks Atrox another time for good measure. “Awww.” Vido sneaks through the door after casting invisibility on himself and spots the large knight. Pressing himself against the wall, he lets the knight pass and he starts to look into the cells to find Atrox.

The others follow soon after, but they run into the large knight, who proceeds to deliver a smackdown on Nadia, reducing her to half her hp in one hit (another attack missed her barely). Boagetash makes a move down the hallway, being perceptive enough to notice Vido and he searches the cells as well, finding Atrox just in time to make a Heal check and stabilize him at -9. (Vido actually found him in time and got him out of the cell, but dragging Atrox across the floor caused 1 damage while the kobold was at -8, even though he had stabilized already then.) Hurriedly, Nadia tries to heal herself back up, but the knight doesn’t manage to hit her again and together with Aaron they lay enough smackdown on him to cause him to flee, opening a secret door in the wall, which shuts behind him.

Boagetash proceeds to release the rest of the prisoners and convinces them through Diplomacy to come along with them. And thus, they are now joined by 14 Mongrelfolk… oy vey iz mir.

Boa also finds one familiar face amongst the prisoners, namely... Jim! “Little rowy man!” The orc is still as shirtless as ever and appears to still be wearing Atrox' shades on his forehead. He hugs Boa heartily and easily agrees to come along.

We leave our intrepid heroes on the stairs as they face down a barricade by the guards who demand their surrender…


Also, my players are reading these entries too and find them enjoyable just like you. Say hi. :smalltongue:

LOTRfan
2011-04-28, 04:15 PM
Hello, players. :smalltongue:

dsmiles
2011-04-28, 05:32 PM
Hiiiiiiii players! :smallsmile:

KotserB
2011-04-28, 06:00 PM
Hey readers,
This is Vido Swiftriver.
I'd like you to tell everyone that you hate Kobolds.
greetings,
Vido

Operation Alpha: "the past strikes back": phase 2.

dsmiles
2011-04-28, 06:16 PM
I'd like you to tell everyone that you hate Kobolds.So do I. I loathe the little scaly barstards. Now, Gobbers, on the other hand...:smalltongue:

Greenish
2011-04-28, 06:27 PM
Kobolds are made of seven different kinds of awesome, unlike some other small races I could mention… :smallwink:

The-Mage-King
2011-04-28, 06:58 PM
Kobolds are made of seven different kinds of awesome, unlike some other small races I could mention… :smallwink:

This.


Also, hi players. Be sure to steal some hats.

Omeganaut
2011-04-29, 01:04 PM
Never trust a scaleskin. Them Kobolds is bad news.

Morph Bark
2011-04-29, 07:24 PM
The fifth session came quickly after the fourth, as in I just came back from it! The players have, in fact, read your replies, and Atrox heartily agrees with both Greenish and The-Mage-King. Aaron refrains from comment so far. Vido was sadly absent from tonight's game due to other responsibilities involving a different game. (They probably could tell you this better themselves, though. :smalltongue:)

The fifth session won't be up soon (as in, not today). Tomorrow is a national holiday, so chances are I will be quite preoccupied. I could, however, post some additional setting info I gave my players at the start of the campaign. I just found it again on a different laptop.

Chief
2011-04-30, 09:31 AM
Hey there,

I'm Atrox Morbus the one and only flying Necromancer Kobold.
It's no wonder that Vido was nowhere to be seen when i got back on my feet after that big bully threw me against a wall and punched me into a deep sleep (during the 4th session). I bet Vido ran off to tell the others that i was already death or something. (Gnomes are not to be trusted!) It's his fault I was taken to prison in the first place.

Anyway I'm glad to see that there are at least some guys out there that understand the true potential of a kobold. Greenish and The-Mage-King you guys are gonna make it to the end. the others however will all fall for the lies of the gnomes, I'm warning you!

Yours truly,

Atrox Morbus

Greenish
2011-04-30, 11:33 AM
And I, for one, welcome our new reptilian overlords.

Shyftir
2011-04-30, 05:00 PM
Pssht! Some of us (the ones with brains) are totally joining the Gnomish Resistance. (What? They got better explosives.)

Greenish
2011-04-30, 05:39 PM
Pssht! Some of us (the ones with brains)My free +3 int begs to disagree with that statement. Due to my free sorcerer levels, I express this disagreement in the form of Fireball.

Shyftir
2011-04-30, 05:51 PM
I counter with meta-game shenanigans including not being broken while all your ridiculously overpowered options get ban-hammered by the GM.

lol.

Greenish
2011-04-30, 06:17 PM
I counter with meta-game shenanigans including not being broken while all your ridiculously overpowered options get ban-hammered by the GM.Over-powered? Kiddo, I haven't even started.

I'm a kobold, screw the rules!

[Edit]: I will also point to RoS to disprove your claim of gnomes not being overpowered. :smalltongue:

The-Mage-King
2011-05-01, 12:21 AM
And I will point to Races of the Dragon to say "We have better boom than gnomes".

Morph Bark
2011-05-01, 05:53 PM
For good measure and to keep the wait time a bit shorter until the next entry: the campaign notes I gave the players prior to the start of the campaign!

Quarterport: A port town by the sea, Quarterport is a relatively quiet town. It is known for being quick to receive news, partially thanks to its local newspaper.
Population: 1500. Government Aligment: Lawful Neutral. Races: humans.

Iratown: A multi-layer city built into the side of a mountain on an island, Iratown has a great view over a bay where many pirate ships are docked. It is a free city-state ruled over by the Pirate King. It has a truce with the human kingdom of Acia, protecting pirates while within the city -- but not outside of it. The citizens of Iratown have a kind of “ranking system” based on how high the bounty is that is put on your head. Hunting bounty hunters is seen as a national sport.
Population: 5000 (estimated). Government Aligment: Chaotic Good. Races: mainly humans and goblins.

Stormport: A port town close to the elven border, it is home to a black market dealing in looted elven items. Ships have reported being attacked by elven pirates in the waters surrounded Stormport.
Population: 2000. Government Aligment: Chaotic Neutral. Races: humans.

Acia: The human kingdom. Has small population of planetouched in the capital.

Elven lands: The make-up of the elven lands is largely unknown to the people of Acia, other than that it borders on the desert. The elves are known for their experimentation with magic and for wiping out almost all of the gnome races.

Goblins: The language of the goblins is used as the primary language among pirates, such is the prevalence of this race in that profession. Goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears commonly live on islands and near the coast.

Catfolk: Few members of this race have found their way to Acia, so all they know of them is that they live across the sea to the west. Goblin traders occasionally bring in catfolk goodies.

Kobolds: Often called a plague by many humans, kobolds live mostly underground, preferably under mountains. They used to be the nemesis of the gnome race until practically all gnomekind was wiped out. Nowadays they’re mostly known for calling other people’s mothers ugly things.

Now also in the first post! :smallwink:

Furthermore, the first post has now been updated to include the player's current level and class build.

LOTRfan
2011-05-01, 05:57 PM
What kind of planetouched inhabit the capital? Is the capital a hub for extraplanar travel?

Morph Bark
2011-05-01, 06:07 PM
What kind of planetouched inhabit the capital? Is the capital a hub for extraplanar travel?

This information I specifically left out as it is unknown to the characters. Atrox came from a race typically living underground, Nadia lived across the sea and only recieved some information from her mother's stories (plus a map and the knife of the first bounty she hunted), the gnomes came from places distant of large cities, Boagetash grew up in the wild and Annie has amnesia.

If any of them had been human or human-descended, then this would have been known to them, most likely. As is, they are going to have to find out on their own. :smallwink:

Maybe it will be their next stop after "Las Vegas"?

KotserB
2011-05-02, 05:40 AM
I'm just posting this thread to see if my avatar is a Gnome Pirate.
If it is not it is obviously the fault of that stupid selfish Kobold flapping in the air.

Chief
2011-05-02, 11:16 AM
Sure blame the kobold again,

Anyway this is how you do it <--

Morph Bark
2011-05-03, 11:52 AM
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present: my players learning the ways of the Playground.

The fifth session details will be up tomorrow once I figure out how to scan in a picture on our scanning machine, so that I can put in a drawing of the battlefield layout.

Morph Bark
2011-05-05, 04:31 PM
I just noticed that I omitted a small paragraph at the end of the last session description. It has now been added as the second-to-last paragraph. It is only a small one, but knowledge of it may be considered vital. :smallwink:

Also, I had a very basic drawing of the battlefield made for this battle to better show what it looked like lay-out-wise and where everyone was at, but I couldn't get it scanned, so I decided to just go ahead and post the fifth session without that included.

The Fifth Session - The Break Out!
We start the session the same way we started session 2: by rolling initiative! As this occurs, one of my players reminds me of a crucial thing I missed in the last session (which of course has been edited in by now).

The players are now facing down a group of six elite elven guards who have barricaded the stairs. The front two have tower shields and spears and three spears are stuck within the barricade. Three archers stand behind them, as well as their commander. Their initiative roll goes badly, so they go last – not like it matters much though, they have the advantage as long as they stay where they are. Would make for a rather lackluster encounter though.

Boa and Nadia are up first, standing in front of the barricade. Boa misses with an arrow, with Nadia looking at the situation and deciding that getting up or over the barricade isn’t a smart idea. Instead, she attempts to sunder a spear so that she doesn’t need to move within threat range of the spearmen behind the barricade, and she successfully severs the spear’s head. Aaron can’t do a whole lot, especially while carrying Atrox. As Vido’s player was absent due to being needed at a DnD club’s special weekend, Vido was ruled to be staying invisible (re-casting invisibility when needed or using Hide checks otherwise). However, Annie’s player makes her return! Sadly, Annie is nowhere near the action at all… To fix this, I slip her a note with instructions not to let anyone else read it.

Boa next hears people coming up the stairs from the jail below and he moves down two stairs where he finds a hole in the stairs big enough to look through, and the round after that he notices elves coming up the stairs, followed by the executioner. Nadia follows Boa, seeing little use in staying in front of the barricade where the archers are at. Aaron puts down the kobold he was carrying on the stairs and moves up the stairs to grab the spearhead, upon which he casts darkness.

Next round Nadia and Boa are facing down the upcoming force of elves, readying their Total Defense actions. As the elves come up in front of them, Boa spots a spellcaster among them, which casts a spell and… turns the front elf into a duplicate of the executioner! Panic nearly breaks out because of how easily the executioner nearly killed Nadia in the previous encounter, and Nadia is the one with the most hit points and after Aaron the one with the best AC!

Nadia targets the new executioner while Boa targets the spellcaster as Aaron moves back down with his globe of darkness surrounding him, providing everyone within with concealment – including the new executioner (referred to as ‘Axe Guy’), but excluding the spellcaster. That particular elf turns out to become a target of PC hatred as he casts another spell… and turns another elf into an Axe Guy! Boagetash decides he can’t risk the spellcaster continuing this and begins to make use of Rapid Shot.

Nadia manages to bring down the front Axe Guy surprisingly easily after disarming him (the axe is caught by the Axe Guy way in the back, who is standing on the stairs below) and the players conclude that either these Axe Guys are just weak, or the spellcaster is casting illusion spells on the elves. A reasonable enough assumption, especially when you take into account that they travel with a Beguiler. Aaron moves forward to take on the other Axe Guys, motivated by this revelation. The Axe Guy way in the back appears to disagree with the slaughter of a comrade though, and leaps up and bursts through the stairs, widening the small hole Boa had looked through into a massive one and he hits Nadia for massive damage. He also remarks “Remember me?” to her, showing it is the executioner from before. (“Of course I remember you, you left us like just a minute ago!”) While this all goes on, of course, things haven’t been quiet a little higher up.

Oh no, I am not talking about the elves at the barricade…

WITH A THUNDEROUS CRASH THE LIKES OF WHICH THOR WOULD BE PROUD OF the stairwell suddenly experiences a breakdown! Rocks and rubble fall all around and stairs collapse, crushing the elven barricade and those upholding it as a giant adamantine anchor falls from above! Shame for Atrox he is unconscious, he’d be in for a treat for the eyes! I look to my left at Annie’s player. I look to my right at the rest. Laughter on one side, ‘What the…?!’-faces on the other. Down from the heavens ground level descends our resident pineapple-resembling Tiefling! She tumbles down the stairs to quickly join the others, surveying the situation fast. When standing on the stairs right above Nadia, she calls out “I came from the left!” OH YOU SLY THING.

Gotta admit though, that one was golden.

Boa continues to fire at the spellcaster in the following rounds, getting him down a little later, but not before three more executioners have appeared (two of which came in the same round). Annie has no wish to go further down and get as intimately acquainted with her enemies as the rest of the crew so instead she attempts to use Burning Brand to reach the front Axe Guy, intending to use Mighty Throw to throw him into the hole he created in the stairs.

The d20 rolls.

Tension builds.

All twelve eyes in the room are focused on the tumbling die.

Then, a 1 comes up…

“WHAT?! NOOOO!” Annie’s player decries dramatically. The other players agree. If she had hit, Annie would have no doubt instantly gotten a full-party agreement on getting a level in Badass.

Another round passes, during which the spellcaster is slain (as stated earlier, due thanks given to Boa’s arrows) and Nadia and the executioner exchange blows, all missing (partly due to miss chance, which works in Nadia’s favour here). Aaron jumps back across the hole and tumbles past the executioner, ending up in front of Nadia. Annie thinks about trying to trip the executioner and make him fall into the hole, but that is not how trip works by the rules, so I tell her that if she tries to trip him that way, there’s a 50% chance he’ll fall into the hole, and a 50% chance he’ll fall Nadia’s way, on top of the catwoman (“Oh HELL no!”). I tell them the 20% miss chance will also apply in that case, making for a 40% chance in total of him falling on top of Nadia, which would deal roughly 1d8 damage. Annie foregoes the plan and instead uses Hatchling’s Flame, frying all the other Axe Guys and most of the remaining elven warriors save for the last two in the back of the row, as they stand too far down the stairs below.

Next round, Annie lifts Atrox up and puts him closer to the rest so that Nadia can heal him with Crusader Strike and Martial Spirit stance, getting him back to the positives, allowing him to stand up and heal himself for the rest of his hp. “Fing gnomes!” He calls out. “Hey!” Is Aaron’s response. “I carried you up the stairs!” Silence for a bit. “…Fing elves!”

The two last remaining elves come further up the stairs and cheer on the executioner. Boa proceeds to shoot them, dropping them both. The helmet of one of them falls off, revealing it is an elven child underneath.

“What.” “Those minions were all children?!” In fact, no, just those last two. Why? Well they won’t find out NOW, will they! (>:D)

Especially since the executioner takes note, picks up the two younglings. “This won’t be the last time.” He growls, before leaping off and dropping straight through three sets of stairs, landing at the bottom and leaving.

The party then proceeds to follow their freed protégés up the stairs and climb up the anchor. Atrox tries to fly through, but fails – the hole is not big enough. Sad Atrox follows the rest by the anchorchain like a common, ground-bound kobold man. On the ship, the mongrelfolk are quickly persuaded to help them as their crew, seeing as how they’ve freed them and could easily take them all out if they wanted to. The mongrelfolk lift up the anchor and the players take a look around, noticing that the ship they are on appears to be a catamaran-like ship made for sand-sailing! That’s right folks, we’re going for ride in the desert.

The second thing they – or rather, Atrox – notice(s) is that “Oh my god! You’re that orc who stole my shades!” *ORCHUG*

The second/third thing they notice is that they’re “docked” at the end of a street, with a deep trench dug out by the ship as there isn’t any proper sand to sail here. Also, the little houses on one side of the street have all been crushed by one of the ends of the catamaran. The party manages to turn the ship around with the aid of their crew (now consisting of 5 elves, 14 mongrelfolk and 1 orc - and a human cook) and proceed to sail the heck out of there, crushing the houses on the other side of the street in their path. An alarm bell starts ringing loudly from the top of the guard station to alert the entire city as they leave behind destruction and death.

“Onwards to Vegas!” One of the players cries out.

KotserB
2011-05-05, 06:04 PM
Typically...
The first thing the Kobold does when he gets back up is insulting the gnome...

Operation Alpha: "the past strikes back": phase 2

Chief
2011-05-05, 06:41 PM
And where were you when I woke up :smallconfused:

Need I say more...

KotserB
2011-05-06, 04:35 AM
I was in Sint-Oedenrode (for our followers, its a little town in Holland).
That our DM couldnt think of a way that would fit my character more is not my fault.

Operation Alpha: "The past strikes back": phase 2

KotserB
2011-05-10, 08:41 AM
UPDATE

Operation Alpha: "The past strikes back": phase 3

UPDATE

Grendus
2011-05-11, 01:48 PM
Hah, so he wasn't arrested, he just decided to hire a ships crew of the innocence-impaired persuasion. But then, they're bloody pirates as is, hiring criminals as crew just makes sense.

DracoDei
2011-05-11, 10:23 PM
Are KotserB's posts supposed to have links to gameplay descriptions in them or something? Seems like they should, but I see no such links (let alone such content in the posts themselves).

Morph Bark
2011-05-12, 12:03 AM
Hah, so he wasn't arrested, he just decided to hire a ships crew of the innocence-impaired persuasion. But then, they're bloody pirates as is, hiring criminals as crew just makes sense.

Heh. You shoulda seen the last game in the same setting. Two players, took over an elven warship, killed the elves and convinced the crew to join them. By that time they had been drifting around on another ship for days, so they had to split up the ships.


Are KotserB's posts supposed to have links to gameplay descriptions in them or something? Seems like they should, but I see no such links (let alone such content in the posts themselves).

KotserB and Chief are operating seperately from me, so I cannot tell you.
Shhh, they do. Don't tell! :P

KotserB
2011-05-14, 04:18 AM
About that operation alpha, a lot will be clear after the next session.

DracoDei
2011-05-14, 09:18 PM
About when will the Journal for today's (yesterday's?) session be up?

KotserB
2011-05-16, 03:14 PM
One thing: operation alpha will not be in the next part (awww...), due to a misscommunication i guess.

Morph Bark
2011-05-17, 09:15 AM
Here it is then, the Sixth Session! We couldn't start until late because Atrox' player (who usually brings Annie's, Boa's and Vido's to my house) was suddenly not allowed to leave home, so me and Aaron's and Nadia's players had to move to a different house so we could still play. Atrox' player joined us later on however, which the others ended up grateful for... for reasons you will now read about!

The Sixth Session - Desert Doldrums
We begin the session with Atrox below deck still preparing his spells for the day, as his player isn’t present. The others have been sailing through the desert for a day now and finally Boa points out to the others that there is a guy in the distance in the direction they are going. They think it is Pylon, so they stop 25 ft away from him to get their reward. Vido: “Pylon, is that you?” Out comes a crossbow from under his cloak, two other people popping up on either side of the ship, coming up from the sand. “Alright people, keep calm, we just want your weapons and you can keep half of your food.”

So what do our intrepid heroes do? They roll for initiative of course. Aaron and Nadia immediately move for the guy at the front. Nadia engages him, but is quickly downed by a full attack as the man pulls away his hood and reveals he is a shifter, shifting it up. Aaron stabilizes her while Boa Rapid-shoots their attacker, getting him bloodied up. He shouts for Atrox, who comes onto the deck (the player had just arrived at the house we were playing at), who casts blindness on the same guy and succeeds. The other two attackers drop their crossbows and run towards Aaron to attack him, shouting “Leave our brother alone!” as the female pulls out a rapier and the male wails on him with BURNING FISTS OF RAGE (courtesy of Burning Brand from Tome of BattleTM).

Aaron finds himself therefore in quite a predicament, with Nadia still unconscious at his feet. Annie and Boa continue to attack them, nearly downing the shifter swordsage. The female one becomes shaken thanks to Atrox’ cause fear. Vido throws his familiar at Aaron, which touches him to bestow entropic shield – a pretty ingenious move. However, after another round (in which the swordsage strikes Aaron for nonlethal, bringing him down to 1 useable hp - but being brought down to 3 hp himself) the shifters then proceed to surrender and beg for food and to be let off easy. Atrox demands their magic items, threatening to blind them all FOREVER. However, the female manages to barter it down to trading +2 Gloves of Dexterity and a +1 rapier for most of the rice they had left and some soy milk. They pull out a sled from under the sand onto which they load the food and their blind brother and proceed to pull it away.

LEVEL UP!
Aaron went up to level 5!
Annie went up to level 5!
Atrox went up to level 5!
Boa went up to level 5!
Nadia went up to level 5!*
Vido went up to level 5!

*Most players went up a level in their usual class. Nadia however chose to go for a level in Swordsage.

The players pull out the map again to see in which direction they need to go to get to Las Vegas and they see it is roughly in the direction the Shifters left, so they decide to stick to a speed that keeps them right next to the shifters pulling the sled. Soon enough Boa notices an oasis in the distance. The others soon follow, with Vido’s player rolling a Will save, figuring it might be a fata morgana. (It wasn’t.)

When they arrive at the oasis, they notice that there is a camp set up amongst the palm trees, tents and campfires and other shifters moving about. Boa sees there is a small pond of water, with beside it, sleeping on a rock, a dragon the size of a pony, with a colour between white and brown. Vido draws nearer to the dragon and makes a Knowledge (arcana) check to figure out what it is.

Monsterdex entry
Beige dragon, estimated 5 years old
Size: like a pony
Weight: content with it
Beige dragons are lazy creatures who resemble something in-between white and brown dragons, but are only distantly related to the former, closer to the latter, yet sharing few of their personality traits. They enjoy collecting not gold like other dragons, but copper coins, which they store in old socks.

Nadia rolls a barrel off the ship and towards the pond, but because the pond is small and she doesn’t want to get too close to the dragon, so she goes the hard way, making Strength checks (and failing several times at first) to roll the barrel through the brush to the opposite side, before filling it with water. The barrel now is too heavy for her to successfully roll back through the brush however, as her Strength checks accomplish nothing. Aaron meanwhile also fills up a barrel, using Shadow Jaunt to get there and then back again, since he is the only one whose carrying capacity is high enough to enable him to carry full barrels. Nadia, having taken a level in Swordsage now, sees this and mimics the maneuver, having learned it herself at the level-up.

They fill up all but two of the empty barrels, after which the beige dragon looks at the pond, where the water has gone down a bit (it’s a small pond after all), sticks his tail into it and fills it back up.

“Oh my god!” Aaron’s player exclaims. “IT’S MOTHERLOVING SLOWPOKE!”
“Thanks Slowpoke mister dragon!” Nadia shouts, thumbs-upping.

The players then discuss what to do. They don’t have a lot of food left, but enough to at least last most of them until the next town - not too sure about that with their large crew now! “Whose smart idea was it anyway to get all those Mongrelfolk along?” Annie asks, and glares at Boa when all fingers point at him. At least they now have plenty of water. They decide to perhaps ask the dragon for help and the yawning beast addresses them in a friendly, but bored manner while a little shifter girl fans him with a large leaf like he is King Louie from Jungle Book. He tells her to go get Griffe, the shifter swordsage that was part of the ambush earlier.

While they wait, the dragon tells them that he saved the shifters from their old elven master, who treated them like slaves. Because they are now wanted by the elves, they have nowhere else to go. However, there is another group of people living up north nearby the Tunnel of Doom, who constantly raid them and have killed several of the shifters and the dragon requests them to put a stop to this. The group doesn’t really feel like doing this, but they quickly change their minds at the mention of a chest full of magic items owned by the raiders. When Griffe arrives, he gets out a wand on his master’s orders and casts cure light wounds on the party several times, draining 7 charges from the wand as he makes them ready to go get their enemies.

They briefly discuss how to handle this and who should take care of the chest, whether it is locked or not, as Boa and Vido both have a rank in Open Lock. Annie voices her disagreement. “I was the first with Open Lock, before it was cool.”

Annie: thieving kung fu hipster extraordinaire.

As the trip to the raider’s camp (located in a small grove by a cliffside in the mountains up north) takes a little over 8 hours, Atrox and Vido rest and get their spells ready again. They stop the sandship close to the trees, from where they can see smoke rising up a little to the right of a path that goes straight through and up to the cliffside where they can see a tunnel entrance. Boa and Aaron sneak closer, with Nadia following distantly behind them. They can see a human in well-polished armour, another who dresses like a forest elf, one with a ruffled hat and crow’s feet hanging from a rope by his neck and one man with a bow, the four of them discussing something with a duo of goblins. The rest of the camp’s occupants are made up of roughly ten warriors, busy cooking or on the lookout, a few of them playing cards.

The two roll badly on their Hide and Move Silently checks however, allowing Aaron a result of 31 (dang Whisper Gnome!) and Boa a result of 17. One of the warriors from the camp notices Boa and goes into the brush to drag him out. Nadia shouts for the rest as the players prepare for battle.

Initiative:
Annie 25, Nadia 23, Vido 23, Boa 21, enemies, Atrox 17, Aaron 10.

Lord Loss
2011-05-22, 08:43 AM
This is awesome. Subscribed. That is all.

Morph Bark
2011-06-16, 07:32 PM
I'm in the middle of a long period of exams, retakes and papers to write, so I completely skipped on writing the 7th session. Good news is though that I managed to pass a positive amount of exams so far.


The Seventh Session - Timmy Fell Down A Wall!
The seventh session we started out without Annie’s and Atrox’ players, but both arrived later during the session. We left off last session having rolled initiative, so of course, we start out right off with the battle. The man dressed in green (forest elf style) leaves for the tunnel, commanding the others to make the battle a swift one and then join him.

We have our initiatives from the previous encounter still, but most of the party is still too far away to do anything. With Atrox and Annie not present, Nadia goes first, disposing of the man threatening Boa. Aaron puts up a cloud of darkness, after which Boa starts to pick off the other grunts with his bow, their scream echoing off the cliffside. The knight in shining armour charges into the darkness fearlessly, managing to hold off Nadia and Aaron for a moment while the hatted man goes up to the chest and picks some magic items out of it and then goes into the tunnel as well; he passes by the two goblins who hide behind a tree, unwilling to interfere with the battle. The bowman gets in a couple good shots, but after the knight goes down he flees, taking the last two grunts with him into the tunnel.

It is at this point Annie’s player arrives, and she argues not, nor any of the other party members, about their preferred course for action now: looting! They go up to the chest, collecting an ioun stone that grants Alertness, bracers of armour and an amulet of mighty fists quickly passed along to Aaron. They then barter with the goblins, knowing they are traders. They are offered a shirt that allows one to ‘steal’ a healing effect from someone else within 30 ft, three times per day. The PCs consider the uses for this (Boa especially, since Nadia snagged the newly found ioun stone everyone else wants him to have since he is the scout, whilst Nadia is the de facto healer). They decide to go for it, paying a hefty price for the shirt, which they dub the shirt of Ahole healing.

Then comes along another item which the goblins cannot use themselves and they therefore find pretty useless, as it is specifically tailored to Medium creatures. It is a cloak with capabilities similar to a bag of holding, except that it can only hold mundane items and living creatures from Diminutive to Small size, but an infinite supply of these. Something that gets put into the cloak doesn’t enter an extradimensional space however - it becomes nonexistent. Once it is taken out again, it is as if no time has passed between it being put in there and it being taken out, so for living creatures it would be like stepping through a time portal - thus making it useless for crafting. Another thing is that you have to put things into it one by one (you cannot just scoop up a bunch of rocks) and once you take something out, all of it comes out at once.
As might have been expected, the amount of talk this cloak’s possibilities generates takes up about as much time of the session as these paragraphs take up of this journal entry. Annie practically lunges for it and instantly dubs it her cloak of awesome storing! about around the time Atrox’ player walks in, starting up another explanation about the cloak, which generates some ideas in Atrox’ player’s head that might come into working later on.

After that, they go into the tunnel, merrily walking along until ANNIE FALLS TO HER IMMINENT DEATH! …or not. She and Nadia walk at the front and suddenly end up falling towards the wall they are walking towards, as if gravity suddenly changes direction to a horizontal position. Nadia makes her Reflex save to quickly catch herself and get out of the effect, but Annie falls a good 160 feet into the tunnel, down the distance, hitting the wall at the end and takes… 14 falling damage. Huh. The others search for clues while I sneak Annie’s player note and they note that right where the gravity changes the walls, ceiling and floor have a slit in them and around that slit some intricate decorative carvings. Boa finds a button he presses that opens a hatch with slime that flows down the ‘floor’ (a wall from Annie’s new perspective on life) that hardens a bit and provides stickiness and some hand- and footholds. With a rope and some tumbling and shadow jaunting on Nadia’s and Aaron’s parts they all come down safely, touching down next to Annie.

Our friendly neighbourhood pineapple-lookalike devil-descendant reveals that while the rest was bumbling down, she overheard voices on the other side of a door in the room they now find themselves in. One of them was the green-dressed man who orders another man to take care of ‘the prisoner’ while he handles ‘the generators’. The party opens the door, discovering a larger room with three other exits. They pick the right one for simplicity and end up in a long hall with a water-filled pit halfway down it that Nadia leaps over, promptly being hit in the face by a hammer THE LIKES OF WHICH… well, let’s just say its hammerhead is as large as she is. A splash later we got a wet kitty.

Boa and Vido are then charged with searching for traps, periodically paranoid as the party is (or my players! WINK). They round a corner and end up in a hallway with statues on both sides… UH-OH. The pair goes ahead, but finds no traps (except for a note given to Boa’s player). Rounding another corner they end up standing in front of a large golden gate with a half-ball-shaped hollow in the middle to insert something. The door has no locks or anything, but they cannot open it. Going back to the room with the two unchosen doors, they go for the one opposite their first entry. Cue a hallway filled with PITS HARBOURING THE SCREAMS OF A THOUSAND DAMNED (easily bypassed with Reflex saves, though since they cover large areas, subsequent passersby need to make Balance checks).

They end up at a split-way again, with what appear to be prison cells down one hall. They enter a large door and find themselves in a room clearly made for guards, where the bowman appears and fires away at Nadia from behind an overturned table. He had little in the way of escape routes however, so he is trapped! Nadia turns invisible and moves in for a strike, Boa shoots two arrows and Aaron comes up and hits the man in the head, striking him dead, ending him and thereby the seventh session.

Morph Bark
2011-06-27, 08:57 PM
Finally my exams are over and sessions have come and gone, now leaving me enough time to finally bring another update!


The Eighth Session - Sparkling Mentor Lava Pits, Batman!
The archer was now dead. Yes, we checked, he’s as dead as a doornail, despite that saying not making any sense because something cannot be dead if it never was alive, so doornails cannot be dead.

At any rate, Boa and Vido investigate the hallway leading to the prison cells whilst the bowman’s corpse is looted, finding that the hallway is trapped and learning enough that there is a trap that launches a wall up from the ground with spikes attached to it. However, they do not know what triggers the trap and so Nadia uses Mighty Throw to throw the bowman’s corpse towards Aaron, who Mighty Throws it towards Annie, who Mighty Throws it over the line where the wall would shoot up from the floor.

Nothing happens.

Vido casts light on a small rock he finds and one of the other levitates it into the hallway using the Hand of the Mage’s free mage hand. This reveals that in the furthest cell at the end of the hallway, larger than the others, sits an aged man with silver hair, moustache and goatee, his eyes gleaming golden. Aaron recognizes the man: it’s his old mentor, who taught him the Sublime Way!

The mentor is also named Aaron. It’s a long story.

Aaron tries to leap and then Shadow Jaunt into the cell, but bumps into an invisible wall, taking 21 points of damage and falling just short of the cell. Aaron Senior points behind the rest of the party, who turn around to see a kobold standing a-tip-toe with a claw on a lever. With quick reflexes Boa pulls out an arrow and shoots the creature down before it can pull the lever, killing it swiftly. Figuring out that the trap wall would be triggered by the lever, Boa, Nadia and Annie remain behind while the others go to Aaron Senior to see what they can do. However, a casting of knock by Vido proves useless, so they search around for keys. They find a loop with four keys, but these are made for the other cells, meaning they are out of options.

They promise to return and go the other way, into a hallway with doors on either side, just like how the cells were on either side, with a big room at the end instead of a big cell. In the small rooms they find empty desks, so they make a move for the doors at the end, entering the big room where they find the man dressed in green, who is indeed an elf (with sparkly skin even), who is promptly named Vlad by Annie. He is apparently in conversation with one of the monks the party encountered before in the workshop they were told to rob, the hatted female.

Initiating combat, Nadia starts off with a duel of wills against the hatted female that she loses. She does it again on Vlad, who simply submits, not bothering with it. She attacks Vlad, who flees to a corner of the room, pushes a button and disappears through the wall. As the rest gets ready to team up against the solo monk, a crossbow bolt flies out of nowhere and strikes the desk! Whirling around, Boa spots the other monk who escaped that time, the blindfolded Halfling, hanging upside down from a wooden beam halfway down the hallway. Boa returns fire, Aaron drops his signature darkness and hides, a tactic copied by Vido, with Annie helping Nadia out by flanking the female monk and opening with a Shadow Blade Technique.

As the rounds turn things slowly turn sour for the female monk as basically everyone but Boagetash aim their sights on her. (Atrox’ player was not present and as such was decided to be put inside Annie’s cloak of awesome storing for this session.) She’s lucky enough to succeed all the saves against Vido’s spells, but gets worn down by the continuous attacks of Nadia, Aaron and Annie. The players are surprised by a sudden laserbeam that shoots through their midst and strikes the female monk, who immediately shrinks to a mere fourth of her height thanks to wandsmanship on part of the Halfling. She makes a run for it into the hallway, provoking many attacks of opportunity, which all miss. Aaron’s Hatchling’s Chill deals minimal damage, Annie’s Fan The Flames misses and Vido’s whelm fails. Nadia attempts to Mighty Throw the monk back into their midst, but fails, after which the Tiny woman runs out of sight, the Halfling disappearing mysteriously.

The group decides to follow Vlad, discovering a hidden passage that splits up into two ways. They take a left and end up in the hallway where they were before, past the statues. They go up to the large gate again and take note of something to the side, where they look up and find a tunnel going up, with Vlad walking on the wall in the distance! Appears to be something similar to the way they entered, doesn’t it? They attempt to chase him, but Climb checks fail, Nadia’s idea of “Shadow Jaunting upwards and then climbing or hoping I end up in a different gravity field” does not pan out the way she hopes and Boa does not manage to hit him from this distance with his bow.

They turn back to the first room and open the third set of doors they had not tried out yet, as well as a set of doors behind those, discovering a large room spanning 60 feet high, 30 wide and over 100 long, a platform on either end and stone pillars scattered around, rising up from a large pool of lava below. A group of archers stands ready on the other side and start firing at them, turning up the heat. Boa makes gratuitous use of Rapid Shot to take down the archers pretty quickly while Nadia and Aaron Shadow Jaunt to the opposite end. Annie, not proficient with a bow, gets one handed to her by Boa, knocks an arrow as well as she can and crits the living bajeezus out of an elite soldier, instantly killing him.

This is a lot better than Vido, who is out of spell range, and thus hides inside of Annie’s cloak in the meantime.

Not only that, she proceeds to down a few more in spite of her horrible archery skills, falling just one short of Boa’s amount of kills in this encounter at the end. The two of them even seem to like it when suddenly Vlad arrives with more archers! Wait, what? Vlad? How the heck did he… The players are dumbfounded, but there is little time to ponder this as the newcomers open fire. Luckily they don’t wear armour, making for easy targets.

In a combination of constant nonlethal damage from the heat and being the first across the room and thus a prime target, Nadia is downed right as only two of the archers remain standing. In a stroke of luck though, Vlad has already gone, finding things getting a little too heated for his tastes. While the kitten captain lies dying, one of the archers comes to stand over her with a knocked arrow, preparing a coup de grace and shouting over to the other side “Surrender, or she dies!”

This causes Annie to reach inside of her cloak and thus summon-dump everything inside of it to come out, including both Vido and Atrox. With Annie’s player RPing Atrox for just a round as his player is not present, the kobold flies across the room, casts cause fear on the threatening culprit standing over Nadia and cries out that “I WILL HAVE YOUR SOUL FOR BREAKFAST AND YOUR BODY SERVE ME IN ETERNITY IF YE RELEASE NOT THE CATWOMAN!”

For a moment I wonder if Annie’s player should not have been the one playing a tiny Evil necromancing reptile.

Then the man flees out of the room, leaving only one man behind who gets shot down by Annie, as Aaron gets just in time to stabilize Nadia and drag her out of the room, Boa following in flight as Annie puts the two Small casters back in her cloak and sits down to meditate in the smoldering heat she is immune to, to file this encounter of badassery in her memory and pray it won’t be the last time she gets to do this kind of stuff.

I think I should start handing out Star Power to my players based on who did most awesome during a session.


The next one of last Friday will follow soon enough once I find my notes, and will come equipped with a map of the dungeon and the continent this all takes place on!

Morph Bark
2011-06-29, 04:21 PM
As said, this one follows soon after. A map of the dungeon is included below, as well as a map of the continent.


The Ninth Session - MechDeath
We start the session with a recap of the previous one to catch Atrox’ player up to date whilst we wait for Nadia’s player to arrive. (We hadn’t expected the latter to be present do to prior engagements, but he texted that he was on his way, so we decided to wait with actually starting until he arrived.)

We left off where we were last time, with Aaron stuffing a potion of cure light wounds down Nadia’s throat, waking her up with positive hp. The two and Boa go down the stairs, after the feared guard, finding a large door at the end, which opens up into another huge room. They see the guard in a fetal position lying at the feet of Vlad, who is kicking him in a fit of rage. The two are close by a large machine in the middle of the room with a lot of pipes connected to it and spines sticking out aiming upwards, with a golden sphere locked into the side of it at the end of a ladder. Two pillars with fire tipping them stand on either side of the wall, and a large humanoid-shaped construct stands at the other end, inactive.

They quickly formulate a plan: Nadia will turn invisible using a Shadow Hand boost, go up to the guard and use her Devoted Spirit stuff to regain health, whilst Boa prepares an attack on Vlad should he cast a spell and Aaron readies himself to Shadow Jaunt into their midst and drop a rock with darkness cast on it.

The plan goes fairly smoothly, the guard is easily hit as he is unconscious, Vlad indeed attempts to hit off a spell, gets hit by an arrow, yet passes the Concentration check necessary and charms Nadia. Aaron throws in his rock and bam, darkness all around. Being charmed, Nadia prettymuch just stands around doing nothing, as all available targets are allies in her eyes now (aside from maybe the guard, of whom it is unknown if he is still alive at this point, but she’s healed up enough for now). Aaron Shadow Jaunts in and strikes Vlad, who proceeds to move out of Boa’s sight behind the machine. Moving to get a clear shot, Boa shoots and scores! Then, having the best Spot out of the whole party, has Vlad disappear out of sight again. Aaron, standing closer, points out that Vlad is not invisible, but simply lying on the floor, down and out.

Nadia then gets the clever idea of “hey, let’s destroy that golden orb!” completely forgetting that it might just be required to open another door in this very same dungeon. She leaps into action and throws all her might into it, pulling off a Mountain Hammer to bypass the hardness, deals quite a bit of damage, and proceeds to crack the golden orb.

The orb begins to glow. And crack. And glow and crack some more.

The room starts to shake vehemently and even Annie upstairs can feel it (Vido and Atrox still inside her cloak of awesome storing).

With incredible noise, shaking and flames spewing everywhere the machine explodes, damaging the walls, ceiling, pillars, inactive mech and dealing a great deal of damage to all present, causing the pillars to burst apart in fire as well a moment later, in turn causing Boa to drop to just 0 hp, Nadia to just 1 and Aaron 8 into the negatives with still some nonlethal to his name. With great luck, his stabilization roll succeeds and he is carried out of the room by his two teammates with haste as lava starts to spill from cracks in the ceiling. As Boa looks back, he sees a hand reaching up from behind the remains of the machine and Vlad pulling himself up by a mechanical arm, the flesh gone. The elf stumbles towards the mech, but is obscured from vision as the ceiling starts spilling more and more into the room and the duo get the hell out of there.

Reaching the top of the stairs, they see Annie sitting on the other side of the lava room, Vido and Atrox hiding behind the entrance in the cooler area, and the lava levels slowly receding. (Annie remarked earlier when she saw that “that can’t be good.”) Nadia shouts that they need healing, so Atrox comes their way, summons a zombie, which Nadia proceeds to beat up with healing strikes and stances.

Before Aaron can even reach consciousness, a pair of large hands breaks through the floor and the large mech bursts up from the lava and leaps atop a pillar, one of only two that remain steady as the rest are crumbling as a result of the explosion from below. Piloting it: Vlad! The elf’s face has one half molten away gruesomely by the fiery heat of the explosion, hair singed and mostly gone, staring at them with a bloodshot eye.

As Nadia brings back Aaron, Atrox flies closer to the mech to try and cast a fearing spell on Vlad. The singed elf passes the save and proceeds to shoot rock disks at Atrox, shaven off from the wall he stands next to, critting him, but not bypassing the Dread Necro’s damage reduction. He proceeds to steer the mech around, leap halfway across the room and land on the platform right in front of Annie’s and Vido’s noses, punching the ground and causing a shockwave that knocks them both back and to the ground, prone. From her low and disadvantageous position, Annie attempts a Mighty Throw to get Vlad on the ground as well and out of range of Vido, so the caster can stand up safely and get out. She then proceeds to stand up, provoking an attack of opportunity, which misses.

On the other end of the room, Boa remains firing from a safe position. Aaron hands Nadia his Ioun stone (granting +2 Strength) and a potion of enlarge person as Nadia is the only one of them both capable in melee and able to get to the other side the fastest. Atrox tries another spell, but the save is yet again passed, just as the mech starts to rise from the ground. Annie takes her attack of opportunity, which strikes true, but she gets another shockwave on her and is struck down, dying. Boa’s arrows miss, Nadia can’t get to the other side quickly enough and Aaron is sitting against a wall, barely in the positives himself.

Then the cowardly Vido, who had been running away the last round after standing up, suddenly remembers a spell he knows that might save them.

One.

Spell.

The boyish gnome turns around and makes his way back to the lava room, lifts up his arms and strings the spell together, throwing a whelm right in Vlad’s face, keeping all fingers crossed for a success on getting some nonlethal damage in.

And you know what? The little thing succeeds too. With 11 nonlethal damage, Vlad goes down, causing Boa’s player to mark this down in his notes of the session which I am using as a refresher of memory to write this journal:
VLAD GOES DOWN!!! OoOOOOOWWYEEEAAAA!!!
SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET VICTORY!

Game. Set. Match. Level up!


…what, you don’t think we actually stopped there, did you? Oh no, this dungeon was not yet over, in neither eyes of DM nor players! There was still that big door with the hollowing in it that a spherical object would fit in to open it, wasn’t there? Also, what about Aaron Senior?

The players move towards the cells, finding Aaron Senior still locked up, so they move on to the big door, investigate, then decide to camp out in front of it for a couple of hours so that the spellcasters got all their stuff back, whilst Nadia and Aaron take out their Mountain Hammer maneuvers and wail away on the door, chipping it away bit by bit, taking over six hours until a tiny ray of light shines through. When Nadia tries to get a look through, the light suddenly disappears, frightening the catwoman. Atrox moves into the hollowed-out door, sticks his finger through, and summons a zombie on the other side, which promptly gets incinerated by flame, of which a straight ray gets through the hole, hitting Atrox for a whole lot of dice, which he is lucky to see fall mostly on low numbers.

Annie takes Atrox’ place and tries to throw a Hatchling’s Flame through, which appears to have no effect. Nadia and Aron then proceed to cut away more of the door, when it suddenly starts to rise up from the ground. The party members make a run for it, rounding a corner and standing perfectly still, waiting… waiting…

Then a turtle shows up.

No seriously, a pony-sized turtle with grey crystals sticking out of its back walks by and stands still, after which it starts to generate a cloud of smoke. Nadia moves up to it, turns invisible and goes to town, using a combination of Mountain Hammer, Assassin’s Stance and Iaijutsu Focus to deal a hefty amount of damage that would have a man tilt his head and go “daaang”. Annie tries to feel if the turtle is hot first before attacking, but this investigative interest is noted by Boa to be “disturbing”. One by one the others come to stand around the poor turtle and start smacking it around. Except for Boagetash. Boa instead moves up to the door, now open, and tries to go and see what’s behind it. He finds himself still in the smoke cloud, which has become thicker because the turtle puts out more smoke now after it has been hit so harshly, but perceives a hot glow coming from the floor. Lava! “Lavaaa!” He shouts as he turns and runs past the others, who are now all required to pass Fort saves or get to smoke-choking.

Luckily for them, they all pass. Atrox summons a zombie and everyone but Aaron run out of the smoke cloud (Boa is already so far he’s at the end of the hallway, ready to round a corner). The lava streams into the hallway, over the feet of the zombie and Aaron, who receive nasty burns from it and signal to the Swordsage that it’s time to make haste and get the helldang outta there. They run through the twisting hallway as the lava comes after them faster and faster, halting only slightly at the water-filled pit where Aaron tries to use a Hatchling’s Frost to slow it down. They have to get up the gravity-changing tunnel and out quickly, but they almost start to panic. Nadia thinks of going to the room where they fought Vlad and the monks, go into the secret tunnel and go the way they hadn’t chosen before because it might lead them to somewhere safe. Oh, and that way is also Aaron Senior of course.

Opening the doors that open into the hallway that leads to the cells, Aaron Senior suddenly stands before them. “Let’s go.”

They all gather in the gravity-changing tunnel where the crusty slime still covers the wall and discuss the best ways to get out of there.

Swiftly.

Professionally.

Panicky.

“The little guys should go in my cloak!”
“I can Shadow Jaunt up and then Climb?!”
“I can’t fly in here, it’s too narrow! Plus I’m claustrophobic!”
“I suck at Climbing and don’t know how to Shadow Jaunt!”

These kids need a bone thrown at ‘em. “Shut up,” it suddenly is barked at them as the man with the silver ringbeard-goatee picks up Atrox, Aaron and Vido one by one and stuffs them into Annie’s cloak, then picks her up and flies straight upwards, out of the tunnel and to the ship.

Boa and Nadia are left behind, stunned for a moment, staring upwards slackjawed whilst their heels are about to be licked by the fires of hell.

“Wait for me darnit!” Nadia shouts, Shadow Jaunting and Climbing after them, followed by the poor Boa, who manages to get out of the tunnel and fly off just in time before lava starts spilling forth. They reach the ship and prepare it hastily, turning it around to sail away as behind them a volcano erupts. Boa looks back one last time and notices a crystal-shelled turtle stumbling out of the tunnel, its feet in the lava and the trees catching on fire around it. Behind him Annie remarks “okay, I got to admit, that was cool of that Aasimar. But don’t tell him that.”


Dungeon Map
The little squares are traps. The red-sprayed-floor rooms are cells.

http://i51.tinypic.com/2ufg7ig.png


Continent Map
The left half is in Nadia's possession, one she got from her mother, who was a PC in a previous campaign in the same setting.

http://i53.tinypic.com/28u49yp.png

DracoDei
2011-06-30, 11:13 AM
The map could use more labeling.

Morph Bark
2011-07-03, 09:33 AM
The map could use more labeling.

Do you mean the Dungeon Map or the Continent Map? In case of the former, I think it is pretty clear what areas are what to those who have read the Sessions 7-9. The Continent Map has three cities/towns unmarked (one of which on Nadia's mother's map) and one city name blurred out to the point of being unreadable. The unmarked cities/towns will have their names filled in by the PCs if they choose to do so. Try convince them to make that a prime task and to fill out the map more. :smallwink:

DracoDei
2011-07-03, 11:34 AM
Do you mean the Dungeon Map or the Continent Map? In case of the former, I think it is pretty clear what areas are what to those who have read the Sessions 7-9. The Continent Map has three cities/towns unmarked (one of which on Nadia's mother's map) and one city name blurred out to the point of being unreadable. The unmarked cities/towns will have their names filled in by the PCs if they choose to do so. Try convince them to make that a prime task and to fill out the map more. :smallwink:

I meant the dungeon map, especially since it is slightly difficult to look at the map at the same time as the logs (requires a separate window, or printing it out). Also, since it comes AFTER most of the relevant logs it makes it even harder, especially for people who are actually keeping up with the thread.

Morph Bark
2011-07-03, 01:58 PM
I meant the dungeon map, especially since it is slightly difficult to look at the map at the same time as the logs (requires a separate window, or printing it out).

The dungeon map was really meant more as an extra, so people who wanted to see the layout of a dungeon instead of trying to figure out what it was like from the description alone could do so. It is not labeled because I didn't need it to be labeled.

I have read only few other campaign journals, but I don't recall ever seeing one that also included dungeon maps. Should I take to mind that I shouldn't include them in the future?


Also, since it comes AFTER most of the relevant logs it makes it even harder, especially for people who are actually keeping up with the thread.

I specifically did not want to post the dungeon map at the same time as Session 6 because my players also keep up with this log and would therefore have gotten inside information that they should not know of yet.

DracoDei
2011-07-03, 03:06 PM
The dungeon map was really meant more as an extra, so people who wanted to see the layout of a dungeon instead of trying to figure out what it was like from the description alone could do so. It is not labeled because I didn't need it to be labeled.

I have read only few other campaign journals, but I don't recall ever seeing one that also included dungeon maps. Should I take to mind that I shouldn't include them in the future?
Nah... half a loaf is better than none.




I specifically did not want to post the dungeon map at the same time as Session 6 because my players also keep up with this log and would therefore have gotten inside information that they should not know of yet.
I figured.

Morph Bark
2011-08-18, 05:28 PM
It's been a while!

Mostly due to the holidays and all, many of us not being available at the same time and such, hence why I decided to hold out with posting the bare few sessions we've had since so I could just post up the little arc we've just finished. What follows is the first two sessions of this arc, the third will follow tomorrow hopefully, using a "special" format. :smallamused:


The Tenth Session - Take To The Town
We return your every-so-oftenly scheduled BORN TO BE PIRATE KINGS.

In the previous episode our intrepid not-really-heroes (no really) fled from an erupting volcano after slaying Vlad, the sparkling bandit lord mecha pilot, and returned to the camp of the shifters. In the meantime they have reported back to the beige dragon and learned his name is Bob (short for ‘Bobrazivanzevox’), Aaron Senior has talked to Annie in private and bestowed upon her a little gift and the party has voted to keep going onwards to the north, aiming straight for Las Sangas.

We now join them as they sail the beachy sands around the mountain range of the Lepryesz peninsula, where they make their Survival checks every day to feed themselves and their crew as they make the three-week trip necessary to reach their next stop: a town in the desert halfway towards Las Sangas.

Along the way very little happens, other than three of their freed Mongrelfolk criminal crew members falling ill from food poisoning and one of them dying from it. In the meantime, Nadia picks out three of the Mongrelfolk to train them to become warblades. (I had previously told my players that if they wanted to they were free to train them to gain a single level in one of their classes or a similar class.)

In the meantime some of the party members discuss possible names for their crew, figuring they require one, and they settle on The Flaming Blackskull Pirates, after the pattern on Boa’s butterfly-like wings (despite it not being black, I guess they figured it was more ‘piratey’).

When they spot the town in the distance, they park their ship on a sandy hill and venture out with the party to find some food and get some news. Nadia asks an elf passing by but receives no reply as the elf continues by walking briskly away from the strangers. Vido asks another elf for some food and is likewise ignored. Then Atrox decides to stick his scythe in front of the next person possible and shout “What the hark is going on!?”

It turns out the man is a human soldier, his cape and helmet designating him to be a lieutenant by Atrox’ knowledge, which instantly conveys his folley, though not as much as the lieutenant then proceeding to disarm Atrox and holding his own scythe by the kobold troat. Annie and Nadia immediately react with their spiked chains by lashing out simultaneously, their chains wrapping around the scythe’s haft and pulling it out of the lieutenant’s hands, disarming him. Nadia quickly tries to disarm the situation by hastily attempting some diplomacy and offer her apologies for their hasty friend. Vido asks the lieutenant what is going on, but the man refuses to answer, stating he has more important work to do than give strangers news.

Next, Aaron and Nadia (with Nadia’s three mongrelfolk students) split off from the rest of the party to go to the town’s marketplace while the other four enter an alleyway and hatch a plan to ambush an elf and question him. They manage to catch a rich-looking elf in a turban (common among the elves here) and ask him what is going on when they got him surrounded. Heavily intimidated and close to pissing his pants, the elf stutters that the human soldiers in the village are part of a mercenary company that suppress the elves since a few months now after helping them get rid of a problem with raids by desert pirates. Since then the humans have confiscated all weapons, citing that they need them in their fight against raiders and invaders. Some elves resisted in the beginning, but that has since been quelled.

Nadia and Aaron meanwhile chat up a goblin merchant at the marketplace, which is looking pretty desolate, having only three goblin merchants present and only a handful of elves occasionally coming by. They’re told that there are roughly 50 soldiers in total, that the elves are yearning for their freedom of the humans and that the soldiers have stolen all of the goblins’ explosives. Nadia makes a deal with the goblin that they can get 25% of the explosives if they get them back for the goblins. (After some haggling of course, goblins don’t go easy on a trade! “40%.” “15%.” “35%.” “20%.” “30%.” “25% and this piece of magical message rope.” “Deal.”) They fistbump to settle the deal as goblins do and then part.

Nadia and Aaron meet up with the others in the alleyway and discuss plans. They decide to take rooms in an inn and go out at night to kill some soldiers and question survivors. Quickly finding a local run-down inn, a young elven male leaning lazily on a broomstick leads them to their rooms and then leaves them for the night.

At night all six of them sneak out, leaving the mongrelfolk behind in their room. While sneaking around, Atrox is spotted by a group of three guards, at which point Aaron uses his silence spell-like ability and one of the soldiers drops dead by an arrow through the throat, courtesy of Boagetash. Aaron whacks down a second with Mountain Hammer and Nadia mimics the move on the third. The group then gets into an argument about what to do with the corpses, Atrox figuring he should let them be eaten by summoned zombies. In the end, Annie cuts up the guards’ clothes to just make it look like a zombie attack (how that is supposed to work, I dunno) and they erase their tracks and traces of a fight. Atrox coup de graces the guards that are still alive to question them with his speak with dead spell, learning barely more about the situation.

At that moment a second patrol passes by the alleyway they’re in, so they quickly hide and the patrol simply passes by. Nadia then uses her Shadow Jaunt maneuver to teleport with one of the corpses from rooftop to rooftop to dump it in the river that runs through the town. In the meantime, Atrox summons a large troll zombie that eats pieces of the remaining corpses to make them unrecognizable. After Nadia returns, they backtrack to the inn and go to sleep.

In the morning the innkeeper enters the room shared by Annie, Atrox and Boa and asks if they know anything about corpses found earlier and he warns them that the guards might find it suspicious that right at this time there are strangers in town while strange things are happening. Before the PCs can come far on a decision, there comes a knocking on the inn’s front door and a soldier’s voice shouts “Open the door! Inspection!”

Nadia and the mongrelfolk stay inside while the others sneak out of the window, as the mongrelfolk are neither stealthy nor great climbers, nor can they teleport or fly like most of the party members. Three guards enter along with their commander, who wears a plumed helmet and has more stripes on his cape than the lieutenant from before. Seeing trouble, Nadia activates her amulet of glibness to Bluff her way through.

Eventually though, the commanders orders his soldiers to take Nadia’s and the mongrelfolk’s weapons in “so we can protect the town”. Nadia instead tries to persuade the commander that she and her men could be hired to help, which the commander declines. Nadia refuses and instead disarms the guard holding her spiked chain and strikes the commander with it, moving around him to set up a flank with one of the mongrelfolk. The commander takes out his sword, which folds out into a large cleaver with glowing runes on the blade and strikes Nadia with it, causing a sick feeling in her gut, but nothing horrible. The mongrelfolk meanwhile engage the soldiers and Aaron finally sees something being wrong from a rooftop across the street.

And this is where we had to end the session due to lateness.


The Elventh Session - Take To The Town II
The eleventh session continues! THE FIGHT RAGES ON!

The commander spins around like a whirlwind and strikes Nadia and all three mongrelfolk at once, dealing most of the damage to Nadia. Nadia disarms the commander, but subsequently two mongrelfolk are struck down and killed while they lie unconscious on the floor. Dangerously low on health, two of them leave the room while the third grapples Nadia. At this point Aaron Shadow Jaunts into the room through the window. The commander, seeing another threat enter, then puts on a gauntlet with glowing purple gems, telekinetically pulls his sword towards him from the ground, casts one last look at Nadia and then disapparates, leaving the soldier on his own. Nadia easily breaks his hold and unleashes all of her anger on the poor man and slays him thoroughly.

After a quick looting of the corpse the party swiftly returns to the ship. Nadia tries to cheer up her single remaining student and tells him they are going to be training super hard to make the humans pay.

The next night, the party returns to the town to seek out another patrol and slay them in silence. One of the soldiers is knocked out by a sleep spell from Vido and is kept alive, dragged back to the ship for questioning. The guard tells them that there are 20 more men left now and they find out that the commander Nadia met previously is one of the three leaders, known as Darion. His brothers are the other two leaders, but they are rarely seen. When asked about specifics regarding their fighting style, he tells them that one of them is a melee combatant (Darion, obviously), one of them fights at a range with a crossbow-like device that sounds like thunder and one of them is a spellcaster.

The party proceeds to walk into the village the following day like they own the place. They discover the goblins to be gone, due to them having been imprisoned within the fortress’ dungeons. After discovering this, they start to lurk in the dark alleyways again, with the plan of using spiked chains and Mighty Throw a soldier passing by into the alleyway. After several hours of waiting however, no soldier has gotten close enough to the alleyway -- they’re on their guard more than before. Instead, Vido walks out into the open and tries to charm a guard to lure him into the alleyway.

Then, all of a sudden, the alleyway is filled with a darkness spell and Aaron and Nadia both take damage from slicing cuts that hit home dearly. Nadia, Annie, Atrox and Boa immediately flee further into the alley to escape, while Aaron remains behind and hides. He spots a figure rising up from the shadows, who then looks straight at him (note that Aaron is amazing at hiding), then points at the end of the alleyway where the others have run off to. Aaron proceeds to take this as a warning and get out while the figure walks out of the cloud of darkness, passing by Vido, who has since turned invisible for his own protection. While the figure passes by, he touches Vido on the shoulder, as if to notify him he knows he’s there. Seeing this as an opportunity, Nadia jumps up, runs across the rooftop, leaps off and Shadow Jaunts right in front of the figure, initiating a duel of wills that she wins and then proceeds to ask questions. The others join up and they surround the figure, who writes down his answers on a piece of paper in ornate writing, also in Elven, meaning only Boa can read it (and he sagely agrees with some writing making some unflattering commentary regarding Nadia and Atrox).

Then, all of a sudden, Nadia is hit by something at the sound of thunder and soon after Boa as well. With a quick Spot check he notes the shooter to be somewhere on the fortress’ walls, far out of their range, so the PCs flee, during which Nadia is hit another time. Back at their ship, they heal up and discuss what happened and Annie, Atrox and Boa think they should leave the next day as it is too dangerous for them in this town. Nadia does not agree, but for the moment the argument is dropped as the session draws to a close.

gibbo88
2011-08-18, 07:02 PM
Awesome! what is this contest of wills thing that you have in the story? I apologise if it has been explained before, I've missed it if it was.

Morph Bark
2011-08-19, 07:11 PM
The duel of wills is part of the Intimidate skill as outlined in Tome of Battle. Winning, losing, ignoring or submitting to a duel of wills can give small bonuses or penalties to AC or attack for the encounter (iirc, nothing with regards to damage), but only between the two people in the duel of wills.

Morph Bark
2011-08-22, 02:15 PM
Special format session report! At the time I was too busy writing it myself, so I asked one of my players to write up the session in my place, the results of which you can read below!


The Twelfth Session - Nadia's Diary
Dear Diary,

This is just NOT my day…I’m not a particular fan of being stuck under a ton or so of rock and adamantine. Why was a lying under a pile of rumble you ask? Well, that’s quite a long story and like always, the fault of those blasted gnomes! I mean, Aaron is nice enough, but Vido is just a douchbag.

But anyway, back to the story. I’ll start on the morning of this unlucky and terrible day. Our joyful little group just retreated to the ship after running into 1 of the captains of the Redbolt mercenairy company. And 1 of the others shot me square in the shoulder, the lil’ runt! The insolence! I should have killed him when I had the chance… At any rate, back at the ship, we discussed the matter of storming or infiltrating the fortress. The opinions were mixed, so we decided to think it over overnight and see what the morning brought. So, next morning when we woke up, smoke was rising from the village, and Boa saw a caravan heading out of town. They must have some info, we thought, and proceeded to intercept them to question them about the business in the city.

The caravan was let by a elderly elf who rode a cart in front of it. After explaining who we were and what we were up to, he told us that 1 of the captains, Derrick Slaighil (The surname of the brothers is Slaighil, apparently) had been assassinated by a assassin send by this “Dark King” figure. He must be some real bigshot somewhere, although the reason why he wants the town liberated totally escapes me. The elder also tells us that the remaining 2 brothers tightened security around town and at the fort and are planning on unleashing a freaking DRAGON upon town, which is rumored to be as large as half of the fortress itself. Would make a nice zombie in the hands of Atrox, I’m sure, but I wasn’t quite fond of hearing this. This would not stroke well with my party members and I was keen on sneaking in, although in hindsight, this wasn’t a very good idea.

Despite the dragon, the fact that there were only 2 brothers left persuaded Vido, Aaron and Boa to tag along. So, 2 nights after we intercepted the caravan, we planned on invading the castle. We snuck into the village under the cover of night, making our way towards the castle walls. When we arrived there, I teleported up the walls, with Aaron and Boa following soon after. I get spotted by the sniper brother though and end up with a bullet in my left arm. It wasn’t a serious wound however, so I pressed on. Fortunately, the rest manages to stay clear of the sniper. Once we settled under the tower the sniper was on, out of his reach, we consulted what to do next. Vido would use his magic to climb up, invisible and under the cover of 1 of his silence spells. He would then try to charm the sniper while Aaron, me and Boa waited for the safe or the “OH MY GOD I’M DYING!!” signal. As it turned out, we got the “Huh, there is nobody here” signal.

We climbed the tower and after leaving Boa outside for guard duty, went inside, on our guard for any ambush the sniper might have laid. And once we reached the next floor, sure enough, that thunderous clap of his weapon was heard. 1 problem though, he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. We checked everything, even going as far as ransacking all his stuff and putting it in Aaron’s “bigger that it seems” bag. As we were about to go further, other claps could be heard, and we saw flashes of light appearing. Aaron did his darkness thing to protect us against him, which seemed to work. He then blinked in sight, allowing us to take his out in a flash and disarming and claiming his weapon for our own. We questioned him for a lil bit and we found out that the band was planning to skip town and terrorize another city, taking the dragon with them via some strange teleportation ritual. Hey, don’t ask me, I’m not a magic expert nya’know! So we took him hostage in a attempt to get his brother to comply to our demands. Sometimes, you gotta fight evil with evil, so even Aaron agreed.

From this point on, we decided to have a few objectives. Firstoff, interrupt the Teleporting of the Dragon. Second, Free the goblins who were captured. Third, ransack the whole place for loot. Especially the third objective sparkled my interest. While we went on further into the fort, we asked our new prisoner a few questions, once of which was how he felt now 1 of his brothers was dead. “The magic using one, what was he to you?” We asked. “Magic using?….You thought he was the one practicing magic?” He replied. “Well, yes, with all the darkness and such.”He displayed a sly smile and said: “You were wrong. I…..am the magic user.” And suddenly he disappeared into thin air. We struck the air of the place in which he was standing, but to no avail. He got away. After we cursed ourselves for our carelessness, we took off.

On the second level, we came across the prison of the fort, which contained the people who went missing inside the village. Because we’re not all evil, we decided to open a few cells and get some information on the layout of this place. The intel we got was highly valuable, the prisoners said that the dragon and the remaining brother were at the third level from here. Furthermore, it seemed that the assassin who killed Derrick was also running around inside. We send the prisoners on their way out of the castle (We killed all the guards anyway) and rushed towards our goal with grim haste. When we had almost arrived at the chamber with the dragon, our path was obstructed with a battalion of archers, ambushing us and nearly downing Aaron and putting Vido to sleep. We were able to get to cover in time, but we saw more archers coming up behind us, the way we came. Suddenly we realized….We were surrounded. The call sounded for surrender or death, like usual. Without further thought I went invisible and shadow jaunted. I intended to warn Boa and set up a escape plan. But….after I was halfway it occurred to me…I can’t leave my crewmates..no, my friends alone. With this, I ventured back to where the archers were. Aaron and Vido were already taken away, but 2 archers were still on guard at the corridor entrance. They couldn’t have gotten far. 20 seconds later, 2 archers lying dead on the floor, I proceeded further to search for my friends.

After a tedious maze of crawling tunnels and dark corridors I finally came at a gigantic hall, in the middle of which, a HUGE brown dragon was chained to the ground, roaring in anger and frustration. In the background, the assassin was fighting the brother I had been up against, with the strange sword. The archers were also firing at him, causing his to lose his concentration and take a heavy blow, knocking him down and unable to act. I shifted my view. In front of the dragon, I saw my friends fighting against the archers, clearly winning the fight. Until Vido went down…one of the archers took him hostage and demanded Aaron to give up fighting or let Vido suffer the consequences. I spurred to 1 of the archers, took her hostage, and demanded the same thing. With a little bit of help and a good measure of intimidation, the archer lowered her bow. And died 3 seconds later. At that moment, I heard a splintering sound. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw the dragon ripping his chains apart and storming towards us. Relinquishing Vido, I spurred towards the exit, hearing a blood-freezing scream when the dragon tore Aaron apart. Teary-eyed, I managed to get to the corridor, where I went invisible and hide behind a pillar, I could hear the dragon sniffing and searching for me. Suddenly, a wave of acid fumes washed over me, tearing me apart. Everything went black……..


Now you may ask…How am I able to write this diarypage? Well, maybe I’m in heaven writing it, maybe I’m not. But I’ll guess you’ll find out eventually. My legacy will not be forgotten. My fate will not be decided by anyone except me. Till the next time we’ll meet….

xX Nadia Stormclaw

DM's Perspective - My Favourite Parts
Also known as "some of the little bits where Nadia wasn't there or were just too great for me".

I personally loved the part where I could reveal that the brother they had captured actually was the mage amongst the three brothers. It felt like such a perfect delivery, especially with him immediately disappearing afterwards. (A good alternative could have been something like fog cloud and AoE spells and debuffs, but so soon that would just have been mean. Plus it seemed more logical for him to go inform his brother about this, especially since he had lost his primary weapon.)

The best part though? The best part happened after Nadia had already passed out and Aaron had been eaten. I went over some things in my mind concerning things that had happened earlier in the session, the stuff they had looted and the female soldiers they had killed until I remembered something... "Wait, who had the bag of holding?"
The late Shadow Sun Ninja's player's hand rose up slowly. "I had it."
"So... if Aaron had it... then the dragon ate it as well."
"...yeah! Scheisse, that's gonna suck loot-wise."
"...actually..." *dice roll dice roll, dice roll dice roll* "...it kills the dragon."
"...what." "WHAT?" "What." "HA!" "Waitwut?" "LOL. WHY?"
"It's stomach acid is dissolving it, destroying it, causing everything that was within it to spill out, which is too much for the dragon's guts to hold. Vido, as you wake up, you turn over and see the dragon groaning on the ground as its stomach bulges greatly and the dragon roars out in pain as its flesh begins to rip and tear until it explodes in gorey fashion, guts flying around, blood spilling everywhere as pieces of gold and magic items are flung around, forcefully emitted from the destroyed bag of holding."
"...I... blink I guess?"
"Congratulations Aaron, you posthumously killed a dragon."
"Trollface!"

After this Vido ran out of the fortress as it was slowly collapsing due to the dragon have thrashed around while he was knocked out, goes past Nadia's body -- temporarily trying to pull her along but finding himself too heavily encumbered, so he abandons her -- spotting the two brothers and one surviving female soldier atop the tower flying away as he comes out and finding Boagetash unconscious at the base of the tower, whom he pulls along out of the fortress before it completely collapses in on itself.

R.I.P. Aaron Barwann
R.I.P. Nadia Stormclaw -- or not?!
http://i53.tinypic.com/md06eu.png

Drawing by the player himself. Atrox' and Vido's players have also drawn their characters, which may be posted later on if it seems a good idea to anyone.

gibbo88
2011-08-22, 06:46 PM
Poor Aaron....

KotserB
2011-08-23, 03:41 PM
I can't understand Nadia blames me for her death.
I fell asleep at the feet of the dragon. That wasn't my fault.

What I don't understand is why she didn't try to save Aaron.
After all, there are more Catfolk on this world then Gnomes, since we were a few of the last Gnomes.. stupid housecat.

RoyVG
2011-08-24, 09:49 AM
Poor Aaron....

At least I managed to get into the Shadow Sun Ninja before dying. That was my greatest achievement in this campaign. (next to killing a dragon with a CR at least twice my level :smallcool:)

-----SPOILER ALERT------

He will be replaced by a draconic dragonborn warforged Crusader.

inb4 ancestory impossibility. Fluff wise it's that dragon blood was used in the forging proces resulting in this strange combination.

------SPOILER END-------


I can't understand Nadia blames me for her death.
I fell asleep at the feet of the dragon. That wasn't my fault.

What I don't understand is why she didn't try to save Aaron.
After all, there are more Catfolk on this world then Gnomes, since we were a few of the last Gnomes.. stupid housecat.

Yeah, she was caring more for the loot, damn pirates.
THAT's why I became a ninja. So nobody knows I'm there when take it from them, so they can't blame me.
JK Nadia

KotserB
2011-08-28, 09:58 AM
so i was bored a few days ago so i decided to play a little guitar and suddenly: LIGHTBUBBLE.
I thought it would be cool to write a parody on a song which would represent some things happened so far in our campaign.

so hear it is, my parody on Amy MacDonald's This is the Life (its not in a spoiler thing, since i dont know how to do that, but as soon as i know ill fix it :D):

Ooh, the fume’s coming down
From Vlad’s HQ today
And the party they were running
From the stone rain

And the Gnome hits the Kobold on its big ugly head
While the rest of the group waits way up ahead
And the loot gets higher, each stash bigger then before

Chorus (2x):

And you’re asking yourself, is this really my life
And you wake up by a dragon which somehow did not survive
Am I gonna go, am I gonna go, am I gonna sleep tonight?

Am I gonna sleep tonight?

So you’re heading down the desert in your ship full of loot
Some Mongrelfolk say they don’t feel so good
While Boa is out, collecting more bad food.

So you’re waiting in a town with nothing to do
Killing the guys of the Redbolt Mercenary Crew
And am I gonna go, am I gonna sleep tonight?

Chorus (2x)

Am I gonna sleep tonight?

Chorus (4x)

Am I gonna sleep tonight?


tell me if you like it.
ill probably make more of these parodies...

Ananasridder
2011-08-29, 04:23 PM
I really like your song dude! Even though you didn't mention me at all:smallyuk:
For your next (awesome) parody i demand MOAR pineapple:smalltongue:

KotserB
2011-09-06, 12:24 PM
Well I thought about mentioning you bringing the ship to us which almost got you the Badazz level but i eventually decided to go with this :P

if somebody has a proposal for a parody, just post it :D

Morph Bark
2011-10-09, 12:34 PM
Hello all.

This campaign has since yesterday been put on the shelf, paused if you will, after I've kept being unable to keep up with the journal due to school and also started losing inspiration for the campaign itself. Since I figured I should at least tell y'all what's happened since the last update, here is it, in short:


Thirteenth Session: Having leveled up, Annie had taken Mountain Hammer so she could dig up the loot from the fortress, which had entirely collapsed, as well as find Aaron's remains, which were still pretty intact after being partially digested (Nadia's weren't found other than her spiked chain and ioun stone). Atrox, Vido and Jim (played by Nadia's player) went around town trying to find food and ended up at a run-down old temple where they found an elven priest by the name of Petrovo, who promised to help them with the dragon, cutting it up and preserving the meat by salting it.

Atrox wanted Petrovo to help him animate the dead dragon, as he needed a desecrate spell to be able to do so, but to do that Petrovo wanted to be turned invisible so that the townsfolk would not see him helping them animate their once-protector. Vido did not want to do this, as it would only serve to give Atrox an incredibly powerful minion, so Petrovo searched the temple's library and enacted a ritual that made Vido and Atrox swear an oath that they would never cast spells on one another and that Atrox would never command any of his undead to harm Vido. After this they animated the dragon (as well as eight skeletons so that Atrox now has a bodyguard surrounding him), which they tied to the front of the ship to pull it. Atrox promised Petrovo a bottle of whiskey that the priest asked for, bought at a fancy shop in Las Sangas.


Fourteenth Session: The party makes a slight detour after Boagetash receives a letter from his great-grandfather, so they go to the forest where he is from, which is a two-week detour from Las Sangas, but the party has enough food now to last them a while. Once there, Boagetash and Vido get off (Annie's and Atrox' players were not present) and go into the forest where they are met by ravens with swirly rainbow eyes that speak in cryptic poetry.

In the middle of the forest they find a giant caterpillar on a giant mushroom smoking a pipe the size of a horse, with many thin arms folded over its bulging belly. He greets them and introduces himself as Beerf, Boagetash' maternal fey great-grandfather. He asks some questions about Boa's adventures since he left the forest and then tells them he has some people to introduce him to. Through the brush enter a broad-shouldered human man in a long grey coat, a rock-like humanoid with draconic features bearing a large sword and a skeletal robed figure, the latter of whom is presented as Boagetash' elder half-brother.

The human tells his draconic and undead companions (he is clearly their master) that he has other business to attend to and wishes for his apprentice, Boa's half-brother Zetsumei, to join a group of like-minded, power-mongering individuals to expand his experiences and allow his power to increase more rapidly as is common among adventurers. He also orders the other one, a warforged apparently, to act as Zetsumei's bodyguard during this time. With this reasoning, Zetsu appears to agree and greets Boagetash after going back to pick up his jaw, which had fallen off in the surprise at Boa being his half-brother.

They have tea with Beerf and then return to the ship, where they are promptly greeted by Jim trying to tackle everyone and hug them. (It is important to note that this session actually came earlier than the thirteenth one, but in-game chronologically comes later, hence why it is posted like this. This is also why Zetsu's player wanted to play Jim during the thirteenth session.)


Fifteenth Session: The party arrived at Las Sangas after a three-week trip and they park the ship a little ways away from the city, paranoid as they are. They enter the city and stay at an inn, after which they go out their seperate ways, with Atrox, Tharion and Zetsu going to the whiskey store where Atrox proceeds to get drunk after just one shot of the black-labeled Black Wind. They leave with a bottle of Desert Storm for Petrovo and some information about the Lich Count who rules Las Sangas. Vido in the meantime makes errands of his own and Boagetash is dragged along by Annie to go out stealing, because she desires for some reason not to pay for a bag of many things that she has heard of and really wants to have. She goes in to scout the shop during the day and breaks in in the middle of the night, causing an alarm to go off and a goblin samurai member of the goblin mafia of Las Sangas to come after her, tracking her movement with a magical device that she steals from him before teleporting away to Boagetash. The two promptly flee the city to the ship.


Sixteenth Session: At the inn, Atrox wakes up with a huge hangover, to Vido's delight. They, Zetsu and Tharion go out again, their seperate ways, with Atrox, Zetsu and Tharion trying to find some coconut oil, having heard at the whiskey store that to get an audience with the Lich Count of Las Sangas they should present him with something - and the Lich Count is very fond of keeping his skull shiny and oiled up, considering it's rumoured to be an artifact. They run into trouble with a one-eyed goblin with an eyepatch, a member of the goblin mafia, who takes them along to their headquarters to meet their boss. When they arrive at the mafia boss' pagoda, they find him drinking tea with Vido, who appears to be very surprised at their appearance there. The boss introduces himself as Don Corpardune, and he specializes in exotic creatures, being interested in Atrox' dragon that he heard of. "It's kind of hard to miss..."

They discuss the matter, but Atrox is unwilling to part with the dragon, which he has affectionately named Herr Klaus (due in part thanks to Annie's player). They very nearly end up provoking a fight, but through diplomacy it is prevented and the party can leave in peace, albeit with a semi-threat from Don Corpardune. "I will have that dragon."

In the meantime, while Boagetash is sleeping on the ship (player absent, so yeah), Annie is visited by a tall, lightly-dressed man who bids her to come with him. She refuses and he assaults her, grappling her and dragging her out of her cabin. On the way off the ship she sees that all the Mongrelfolk and the elves are knocked out on the deck. Eventually she manages to escape and hides on the ship. After this happens, she suddenly feels the ship move as it is actually pulled towards the city.

When the others arrive back at the ship, it lies just barely 30 ft outside the city walls, with a note attached to the hull. "Sorry for the disruption. Orders have been called off. - Guy"

In the middle of the night that follows (after the ship is sailed to a different position again), Atrox is visited by two men who stand in his room, apparently having snuck past the crew and having gone unnoticed to his skeleton bodyguards. They speak to him of the goblin mafia and warn him about them. They also want to know about Nadia for some reason, addressing Atrox as "a member of Nadia Stormclaw's crew". They are quickly informed that she is dead, upon which the two men decide it is time to leave again, leaving behind a card that invites the party to the assassin's guild.

The invitation is taken and the party goes to the address provided where they are let in by a little girl, whom is scared off by Atrox and Zetsu, after which the door is opened by Guy, the tall man, bearing a heavy frown on his face after the little girl was scared so. He lets them in and guides them down a stairway to a room, where he closes the door and announces that they will be tested. Instantly they are attacked by a woman with a scythe and a spellcaster, while someone in the back of the room pulls a lever that drops Atrox and Vido into a poisoned-spiked pit after Atrox one-hit-kills the scythe-wielder with a Phantasmal Killer. An ooze drops right on top of them and the two rapidly drop towards the negatives, while Zetsu flings AoE spells until he two is dropped into the pit due to Guy punching him into it. With the two initial assailants quickly dead, Guy is the only one left and he surrenders after a mighty blow from Tharion.

Then the assassins' guild leader appears and drains the ooze away (Vido at -7 hp and 1 Con, Atrox in coma due to a spell bringing his Wisdom down to 0). He tells them he wishes to recruit them in their fight against the goblin mafia, which has made it so that the assassins have no business, and the goblins refuse to hire them also. Halfway through his speech he is interrupted by a minion who whispers something in his ear. The leader then informs the party that a giant skeletal dragon has crashed into the harbour.


Seventeenth Session: The party moved towards the harbour, Tharion carrying Atrox. Once there, they discovered that cannons were already being brought in place by soldiers, to attack the dragon. Boagetash comes flying from the ship, staying high enough to remain safe. They see that the dragon is digging with its head in a hole from which shines a golden light. A giant zeppelin appears with a tower atop it and three huge dragon skulls on either side of the zeppelin, the tower being surrounded by purple lightning. Boagetash flies towards it, intending to ask them to stop, thinking they want to destroy the dragon. He is struck by the lightning and quickly changes his mind. The zeppelins zaps the dragon, connecting to it with the lightning and levitating it upwards, shrinking it into a psychic ball and finally encasing it in a black cube that is eaten by the zeppelin.

The party, helpless to stop this, simply watch on and decide to help Atrox first. Boagetash lands when he sees a pod detach from the zeppelin and come down to the hole, where he spots paw prints of a cat in the dust on the ground in the hole the dragon has created. The Lich Count and several undead stop at the edge and Boa overhears him grumbling about danger to his power, after which he orders an undead to go fetch a squad to enter the hole. Boa tries to converse with the Lich Count and is instead promptly drafted into coming along with the undead squad.

The rest in the meantime go back to the ship where they find Annie. They turn the ship and go to another harbour of Las Sangas, close to which Tharion knows is a temple to the god Arthasz, run by his High Priest Sauron (hence the running out of inspiration :P). The temple is frozen over with "frozen lava" surrounding the complex. Tharion does not want to go inside, but Annie, who is weak to cold, takes Atrox inside. There they meet Sauron, who turns out to be a midget wearing heavy armour frozen together. Annie instantly converts in an attempt to convince Sauron to let Atrox heal there. Sauron tells her that he is willing to cast restoration on Atrox if she can go to the recently-uncovered ancient Paladin temple on which the city was built 400 years ago by the Lich Count. She agrees to the deal, goes out and explains it to Tharion, then meet up with Zetsu at the ship. (Vido is once again gone into the town, where he is chased by Jim, who has chased Boagetash to the city, but gotten lost there.)

Eventually they all meet up at the hole, aside from Boagetash, who has been forced inside the hole with a group of undead, who keep pushing the unwilling Boa forth as a trap-triggerer. He dodges a few bolts here and there but eventually comes cross a trap that apparently strangely heals him. He tricks an undead into it and watches it disintegrate, after which the other undead stay behind, resulting in a stalemate. This stalemate is broken once Jim suddenly appears and charges in towards Boagetash to hug him, straight through the trap, accidentally pushing in another undead. Boagetash convinces Jim he will give him lots of steaks if Jim brings him more of the undead to hug, to which Jim happily agrees. The undead promptly flee, chased by the hug-happy hungry Jim, who has not eaten all day, resulting in three more destroyed undead. Boa and Jim meet up with the others outside the hole after night has fallen, while the others stand at a hot dog stand where the salesman tries to sell them some t-shirts. (Annie ends up buying two, Boa one. Including I travelled for months to Las Sangas and all I got was this lousy T-shirt and one featuring a picture of the dragon and the hole.)


- - - PAUSE - - -


Atrox
http://i51.tinypic.com/wlwt3p.jpg

Chief
2011-10-18, 09:41 AM
Thanks for DM-ing this campaign, it was epic :P

I should ad something to session 16 though:

I, Atrox Morbus, did not get my wis dropped to 0 by a lousy spell!
O no, I dropped my con to 1 because of this ooze and then i tried to heal it with a random potion. (The assassin leader let me chose which of the 3 I wanted)
I choose all of them! That's when my wis dropped to 0.
No one but I, Atrox Morbus, has enough power to do this!

Greetings,

Dr. Morbus :smallwink: