'Able' Xanthis
2012-12-30, 01:08 PM
So, I've started up a Spelljammer game using a rules conversion my own GM started years ago along side the web help I could find. The setting itself is homebrew, and filled to the brim with lots of goodies just waiting for some adventurers to find them.
Right, I figured out how to use spoilers and then compressed my story. From here on out you'll just have to read from the spoilers bellow. Hope this makes things easier for all of you guys.
The Heros so far.
All were created on the 4d6 system with a homebrew rule of if you rolled below an eight you got an eight. None of them had to use that rule though. I will finish this in a while guys.
Raven Liadon; Half-elf Fighter
Class; Half-elf Fighter3
Str; 16
Dex;15
Con;18
Int; 13
Wis;13
Cha;12
Feats;Red-Head (Know-Direction and Detect Magic) Reincarnated (Truenaming)
Flaw; Born in the Myst (Has to roll a will save DC 10 every time he meets someone the first time. If he dosen't make it he takes a -4 to all Charisma related checks with that person. This lessens by one for the next two days.)
Da Venchi; Kobold Rouge
Getting to it.[/spoilers]
Sadian; Half-orc Sorcerer
Turshell; Hobgoblin Binder
Kristia; Lesser Aasimar Duskblade
May put in a special guests for important NPCs later.
First Session
The party consists of a Ravenloft Half-elf Fighter, a Kobold Rouge from a Generic Fantasy Sphere, a half-orc Sorcerer who thinks he's a Monk from Eberron, a Lesser Aasimir Duskblade, and a Hobgoblin Binder from Kalamar, and they are truly a colorful bunch to play with. They are all Chaotic Good.
They are all taken from their respective homes by a Wizard who slaps a lesser geas on all of them to not try to escape, and then leave the room their in muttering about getting some sleep. (They are all level three at the start, so I had to give them an opening)
The Kobold named Da Venchi ('It's on his coat so that must be his name.' His player said) surprised us all by sitting down and going completely innert, after asking that no one bother him for a while. He then declares to me that he is going to break his geas with a Disable Device check. To which I said he couldn't even try it, as impossible as it sounds RAW says he CAN break perminate magical effects with a DD check. To which the Rouge responded in his best green man voice.
"There is no try there is do or do not, I'm taking a twenty so unless the spell that wizard just cast is over level six I can break it. When there is nothing but an assured victory you're not trying." (DC is 25+ Spell Level. He had six ranks DD +3 dex+ 2 Skill Focus, so on a 20 he had. 20+6+3+2= 31)
As insane as it sounds this makes sense this Kobold is trained to unweave magic traps without harm to himself, and by it's own twisted logic in RP HE ISN'T trying, he is doing. It takes him 18 minutes to do so 2d4=8*20=160 rounds. He then takes another 18 minutes each person and releases the only people that he can even think to trust, and scoring Browne points with everyone but the Ravenloft fighter, cause he trusts nothing.
Now that they are free they wander about the tower and the Half-Elf manages a spot check to find another chamber with an Eberron gnome in it surrounded by blank books and ink dripping down the walls in a creepy manner.
I ended first session there so how do you guys like? I know I could contest the logic argument and the DD check, but I am a big softy this is a game about having fun after all.
The Second Session
Alright, the group get's back together for the game. Everyone was quite ready for the next session so we started back where I'd left them hanging last time.
So, the Half-elf is staring into this weirdly creepy room when the gnome starts to groan and lift herself up out of the only clean spot in the room, the rest is spattered in ink save a two foot circle of lily white books. The Half-elf does not one but three spot checks before his good nature gets the better of him and he goes over. The Kobold is cursing up a storm because he was still trying to check for traps and the Half-orc follows after the Half-elf.
The Half-elf introduces himself as Raven (Original I know.) and extends a hand to help the gnome up. The gnome thanks the pair for the help and introduces herself as Tizmat Du Gearsledger and asks where she is. The Half-orc, after grunting out his name Sadian, tell her the some of the stuff they have past on the way here, not much but enough to know that this wizard is very well off as the walls are all iron and on all of their worlds that is real impressive.
After a moment I explain that the ink has completely pooled about their feet and as I watch the Players tense up I smile. The Ink leaps into the air and streams into the gnomes eyes in a sicking display that forces them to make Horror saves as the entire thing is accompanied by a young gnome woman's screams. When the Ink is gone Sadian and Raven are close enough to see that the gnome's eyes are completely black for a moment before turning into thousands of small scripts and fading out, and the other players don't make the Spot check.
Raven immediately votes they kill her to keep her soul from further witchcraft, and everyone quickly gets into an argument. Sadian and the Aasimar, named Kristia, are both against this while Da Venchi and the hobgoblin, Turshel, agree whole heatedly that the sight they just witnessed was 'very bad' magic. Through all of this I am secretly rolling their spot checks.
During the argument Sadian casts True Strike and is about to hit Raven, I think, when Kristia notices a young man standing behind one of the others, Da Venchi to be exact. She screams and points Sadian swings in reflex, taking a -10, and clips the guy across the face with a nat 20. After damage was dealt the guy is on the ground out like a light. 1d6(*2)+4 dmg on one of the apprentices. Ouch.
Sadian, loots the guy, who is in the hall way, as everyone moves back into the hallway, with Raven grudgingly carrying the gnome over his shoulder. After going through the appretices robes and finding an athame (sp?) of redish-silver metal that he can't readily name as well as a wand holster with a wand in it. Turshel mutters under his breath for a moment and asks for the loot so he can figure it out. Everyone looks at the hobgoblin strange for a moment before the half-orc hands the loot over. It should be noted that Turshel is still running a binding with Niberius the Grinning Hound and so has Knowledge(History) and (Arcana) on tap. He asks that the others protect him and 'the body' as he trys to figure it out.
During this down time Raven takes a moment to cast Know Direction, (Redhead feat in Ravenloft handbook) to discern north and found that his spell pointed straight down. After a little thought and informing that 'he felt something off' they settled on trying to figure out what felt off. Finally, Turshel walked over and told them he had a clue about how to activate the wand, but there was something off about the metal as he had no idea what it was made out of. Then the gnome started to wake up.
Everyone turns and Raven grabs the Athame from Turshel. Everyone steps back and gives the gnome some space this time and she laughs in a shrill tone. This is more than enough to set Raven off and he goes to take a swing when the gnome turns to them and starts to speak, but is promptly cut off by Raven completing his swing over her head. (He rolled a 2).
Everyone laughed at the thought of a slightly panicked half-elf who had spent his life fearing the supernatural getting thrown into the deep end.
Raven get's talked down by the others, and the gnome who is poking and prodding her own body. After a few moments of tense silence the half-elf points the dagger at the gnome. What he says next basically defines how we think of the character that is Raven, Fighter of the Morning Lord.
"Make no mistake, Madame Gearsledge. I was trying to kill you just now, and had I been able to I would hope you would thank me for keeping you from the twisted ways of this madman's mind."
Tizmat laughed and laughed and then she got insanely serious and told him thank you. The others thought the interaction was weird mostly because thoughout it all Raven had a death grip on the Athame, but the gnome seemed almost wanting in her tone, and that forced the Good in Raven to ask what had happened. What they expected was a horror story.
What they got was worse.
The Wizard of this place stole people with knowledge, and some just to experiment on. They were a group of the latter whilst she was the former. Her knowledge into elemental grafts wasn't as vast as some of her companions, but she was the one stolen from her homeland six years before and forced to divulge her companies secrets to him, but when he found her knowledge lacking he threw her into that room 'with the other defects'. It was there that she spent four years, having only been useful to the wizard for the first two, with the Ink telling it's stories to her.
She had no idea what the Ink was, and that scared her, but it had kept her alive by phasing her into storybook tales where she could eat and drink just enough to live the next day. She'd been doing this so long that the Ink was now a part of her, having to bond with her to keep itself strong enough to help her, but the only stories that the Ink could send her to were horror and abomination to the sane mind, true horror stories where there was no happy endings.
So, yeah she'd be okay with dieing, but she warned them should she die they would face the Ink.
Turshel drops a Knowledge (Arcana) to see if he can figure out what the Ink is but all he can figure out is that it's a magical symbiotic life form of some sort, here he takes a moment to shake his head and ask if Tizmat knew anything about this place.
She nodded and told them all she knew. That they were on the Guest Floor of the wizards tower and he only came here when he was teleporting people for his use. The young man Turshel knocked out was one of fifteen apprentices that she knew of and all of them weren't very talented in her opinion, but the wizard seemed only to care that their objective aligned with him, and he enforced his law by placing any apprentice on the table if they weren't obedient. Other than that she knew that this was the only area where traveling magic could work and that they were no where near Eberron. She'd been hoping they could give her more info but that was a lost cause.
Now the group takes a moment to adapt to the circumstance and think over their options. They need a way out and none of them have magic on that level. Turshel asks if he can use the wand on the knocked out apprentice and everyone agrees that it wouldn't hurt and it takes three tries to figure out a six letter fruit; banana, but they do eventually get it. The young mage's arms snap to his sides and his legs snap together and he quickly wakes up screaming in pain, his legs coming together so fast made some sensitive parts hurt nothing permanent but it hurt like something awful.
Kristia walks over and tosses down an intimidate while saying that they would do worse to him if he didn't help, with Raven using Aid Another. I go for the save and the young man is completely terrified at this point, fumble on the save. I hem and haw for a few seconds describing his terrorized look whilst I try to figure out what this dude would know, as he is one of the most minor mages in the place. I decide he knows very little, but they could get something out of the guy.
He blubbers like an idiot for a moment before say he only knew where the dorms, labs, and supplies closet is. Of course, at the mention of supplies they all Aid Raven who places the point of the athame on the guys chest. I roll a save verses an intimidate that had four people very willing to kill this guy all trying to pump the guy who was about to kill him. Another fumble on the save, wow this guy doesn't do well under pressure. He mutters about getting to his boots and Da Venchi pulls them off and asks Turshel if he can figure out if they're magical in any way.
The guy ends up telling them that he was as low as it got in this place and that the supplies closet he knew about was mostly just components and a few minor wands, the one they had used was an Eternal Wand of Hold Person but they had just used it's last spell for the day. He then mentioned he was going to closet after finishing some work, when they had knocked him out. Raven takes an interest in this 'work' and the mage tell Raven where to find his workstation, he seems a little smug about that.
Raven leaves the party with the dagger and captive and goes down a set of stairs to see the Mages work. Whilst he does that Da Venchi and Turshel have done everything they can think of on the boots give it up, and Kristia looks at the boots and asks why a mage would wear boots when he could wear something softer. She asks for a Spot check to see anything odd about it and rolls well enough to find the poorly hidden compartment in the hollow heel. In this she finds a shrunken book and bag of leather.
Raven finds a body that looks to have been tortured before it was killed, with no defensive wounds. His Move Silently is barely enough to go up the stair but he gets away home free. He then asks for the dagger and Coupe's the guy without remorse. I smile and ask him to make check d20+ level he gets a 21 and I get a laugh as the trap I'd set was set off.
"Can you feel it!? The Quickening!" or in this case Usurpation, Bloodtheft.
Ah we ended the session here.
The Third Session (In which I rip hair out)
So, I left them hanging on the fact that something huge just happened and now that we were all back together I explained The Bloodright universe to my players, none of whom had ever played 2ed. Bloodtheft is an act in which the stronger the Blood line the more powerful the effects of Bloodtheft would be, but the jerk I created just to get killed had cheated the system by using Usurpation with a dagger of Blood Silver. Basicly he was using a work around to gain expectational power, kinda what you'd expect a power hungry guy to do.
However this power was now going into Raven who before all this had no Bloodline at all. This act causes one heck of a light show with silver lighting dancing it's ways up into the Ravenloft Fighter and a boom of displaced air. The biggest thing is everyone felt the power as it happened and I go on to describe how they would have felt it for miles what with it being such a powerful Bloodtheft.
Kristia, Tizmat, and Turshell all begin to flip out as that was bright and loud and they are all three conviced they are going to get caught, a fact that soon send the gnome into gibbering mindlessly on the floor. Sadian the walks over to the area where they found Tizmat and walks inside. While the others are role-playing having their socks rocked (Raven) or panicking Sadian, slowly makes his way through the Defect Room, which now that there is no Ink on the Walls looks like it was splashed with acid at one point or another.
Sadian throws a spot check and finds noting, there really isn't anything to find, but I do note for him that the books that were piled up are still there. He grabs one of the books and looks at its cover. It's written in an entirely alien language that Sadian feels his left eye ache for just trying to read it. He leaves and says he's going to use his faster speed to get to that supply closet the dead guy talked about.
The others calm down at the chance of escape, except Tizmat. Raven straightens and pulls the sheath from the dead body and agrees that Sadian should go ahead, and that they would follow. Sadian 'gathers his Ki' casting Expeditious Retreat on himself, and begins running to the location given. The others are left to throw some some checks and get Tizmat out of her funk.
Sadian makes it to the supplies closet and instead of slowing down Bull rushes the door. After a few minutes of looking over some notes and such I had on hand, we get back to the game with a Half-orc slamming shoulder first into the door dealing enough damage to send the thing flying five feet into the closet full of supplies of a magical nature. The Door go carrening off its hinges and smashes three cabinets of potions before slamming into the wand shelf on the far wall.
Back with the others they hear a air rending explosion and Da Venchi starts sprinting towards Sadian's location. When he gets there Sadian is no where to be seen and the entire closet is on fire with Crimson-Black fire that doesn't seem to put off heat of any sort, but is in fact eating through the stone floor. I have Da Venchi do a Listen check which he fails and as such doesn't know that Sadian is one floor down through the hole the fire was making.
The others are finally coming over when they find the fire. I turn to Sadian's player tell him he has fallen through a hole melted out of stone with fire that doesn't burn and that he can see that the fire doesn't fall down it just hangs in the air. All around him are the gold and riches of a mad Wizard. He asks me one thing that sent me laughing.
"Ladder?" A true adventurer thinks not of the riches that surround him but to the escape of whatever hold those riches.
He mutters when I say no and then proceeds to ask if he has pockets to which I tell him, no. He nods and starts to look for something he could possibly get away with, literally pawing through the hundreds of platinum, gold, and gems for anything he could viably put on, but he wasn't having any luck failing four back to back Search checks whilst the others are arguing if he is dead a floor above.
After four more failed checks he finds a book and a ring. The book is written in Orc and he says he'll read it later. The ring however has three sapphires set into a solid obsidian band. He guesses that it is a magical item and throws a UMD check to use blindly (DC 25). I smile thinking he's not going to get to use the Ring of Three Wishes (1 Wish) because he rushed it. The clumsy half-orc, who has no idea he's a sorcerer naturals on the check.
I tell him he just got himself a wish and everyone at the table process to winch. Everyone here knows about Pun-Pun and such I'm sure so to keep my players from this I have a direct counter for it as such. If you gain power slowly you're below the notice of the gods, who in my world are OP as all heck because they are GODS the lowest among them has forty-three class levels, but should you infinite combo yourself into strength they will remove you from the game as a whole. Wish shenanigans are heavily frowned on in my worlds because of this.
It takes an hour for him to properly word the wish but it came to this.
"I Wish, that me and my companions would gain the aid of the most sympathetic, but able being who is willing to help us."
A good solid Wish, solid enough that I wanted to reward him for not abusing the Wish. A genie appears a floor up and casts telekinesis on the Orc getting him out with only a useless ring and book. The Genie explains that he was summoned by Sadian and would aid them in getting the heck out of there. He then casts an amnesia spell of them that triggers five seconds afterward giving them an info dump on the setting at large.
I was tempted to ask for Sanity checks, but didn't.
Sadian asks for a way out, the genie teleports them off the rock to a world where spelljamming is common. The genie then fade out as a gnome with a monocle comes up and asks if they are Sadain and compony. Oh yeah they are now wearing their gear.
End session here
Right, I figured out how to use spoilers and then compressed my story. From here on out you'll just have to read from the spoilers bellow. Hope this makes things easier for all of you guys.
The Heros so far.
All were created on the 4d6 system with a homebrew rule of if you rolled below an eight you got an eight. None of them had to use that rule though. I will finish this in a while guys.
Raven Liadon; Half-elf Fighter
Class; Half-elf Fighter3
Str; 16
Dex;15
Con;18
Int; 13
Wis;13
Cha;12
Feats;Red-Head (Know-Direction and Detect Magic) Reincarnated (Truenaming)
Flaw; Born in the Myst (Has to roll a will save DC 10 every time he meets someone the first time. If he dosen't make it he takes a -4 to all Charisma related checks with that person. This lessens by one for the next two days.)
Da Venchi; Kobold Rouge
Getting to it.[/spoilers]
Sadian; Half-orc Sorcerer
Turshell; Hobgoblin Binder
Kristia; Lesser Aasimar Duskblade
May put in a special guests for important NPCs later.
First Session
The party consists of a Ravenloft Half-elf Fighter, a Kobold Rouge from a Generic Fantasy Sphere, a half-orc Sorcerer who thinks he's a Monk from Eberron, a Lesser Aasimir Duskblade, and a Hobgoblin Binder from Kalamar, and they are truly a colorful bunch to play with. They are all Chaotic Good.
They are all taken from their respective homes by a Wizard who slaps a lesser geas on all of them to not try to escape, and then leave the room their in muttering about getting some sleep. (They are all level three at the start, so I had to give them an opening)
The Kobold named Da Venchi ('It's on his coat so that must be his name.' His player said) surprised us all by sitting down and going completely innert, after asking that no one bother him for a while. He then declares to me that he is going to break his geas with a Disable Device check. To which I said he couldn't even try it, as impossible as it sounds RAW says he CAN break perminate magical effects with a DD check. To which the Rouge responded in his best green man voice.
"There is no try there is do or do not, I'm taking a twenty so unless the spell that wizard just cast is over level six I can break it. When there is nothing but an assured victory you're not trying." (DC is 25+ Spell Level. He had six ranks DD +3 dex+ 2 Skill Focus, so on a 20 he had. 20+6+3+2= 31)
As insane as it sounds this makes sense this Kobold is trained to unweave magic traps without harm to himself, and by it's own twisted logic in RP HE ISN'T trying, he is doing. It takes him 18 minutes to do so 2d4=8*20=160 rounds. He then takes another 18 minutes each person and releases the only people that he can even think to trust, and scoring Browne points with everyone but the Ravenloft fighter, cause he trusts nothing.
Now that they are free they wander about the tower and the Half-Elf manages a spot check to find another chamber with an Eberron gnome in it surrounded by blank books and ink dripping down the walls in a creepy manner.
I ended first session there so how do you guys like? I know I could contest the logic argument and the DD check, but I am a big softy this is a game about having fun after all.
The Second Session
Alright, the group get's back together for the game. Everyone was quite ready for the next session so we started back where I'd left them hanging last time.
So, the Half-elf is staring into this weirdly creepy room when the gnome starts to groan and lift herself up out of the only clean spot in the room, the rest is spattered in ink save a two foot circle of lily white books. The Half-elf does not one but three spot checks before his good nature gets the better of him and he goes over. The Kobold is cursing up a storm because he was still trying to check for traps and the Half-orc follows after the Half-elf.
The Half-elf introduces himself as Raven (Original I know.) and extends a hand to help the gnome up. The gnome thanks the pair for the help and introduces herself as Tizmat Du Gearsledger and asks where she is. The Half-orc, after grunting out his name Sadian, tell her the some of the stuff they have past on the way here, not much but enough to know that this wizard is very well off as the walls are all iron and on all of their worlds that is real impressive.
After a moment I explain that the ink has completely pooled about their feet and as I watch the Players tense up I smile. The Ink leaps into the air and streams into the gnomes eyes in a sicking display that forces them to make Horror saves as the entire thing is accompanied by a young gnome woman's screams. When the Ink is gone Sadian and Raven are close enough to see that the gnome's eyes are completely black for a moment before turning into thousands of small scripts and fading out, and the other players don't make the Spot check.
Raven immediately votes they kill her to keep her soul from further witchcraft, and everyone quickly gets into an argument. Sadian and the Aasimar, named Kristia, are both against this while Da Venchi and the hobgoblin, Turshel, agree whole heatedly that the sight they just witnessed was 'very bad' magic. Through all of this I am secretly rolling their spot checks.
During the argument Sadian casts True Strike and is about to hit Raven, I think, when Kristia notices a young man standing behind one of the others, Da Venchi to be exact. She screams and points Sadian swings in reflex, taking a -10, and clips the guy across the face with a nat 20. After damage was dealt the guy is on the ground out like a light. 1d6(*2)+4 dmg on one of the apprentices. Ouch.
Sadian, loots the guy, who is in the hall way, as everyone moves back into the hallway, with Raven grudgingly carrying the gnome over his shoulder. After going through the appretices robes and finding an athame (sp?) of redish-silver metal that he can't readily name as well as a wand holster with a wand in it. Turshel mutters under his breath for a moment and asks for the loot so he can figure it out. Everyone looks at the hobgoblin strange for a moment before the half-orc hands the loot over. It should be noted that Turshel is still running a binding with Niberius the Grinning Hound and so has Knowledge(History) and (Arcana) on tap. He asks that the others protect him and 'the body' as he trys to figure it out.
During this down time Raven takes a moment to cast Know Direction, (Redhead feat in Ravenloft handbook) to discern north and found that his spell pointed straight down. After a little thought and informing that 'he felt something off' they settled on trying to figure out what felt off. Finally, Turshel walked over and told them he had a clue about how to activate the wand, but there was something off about the metal as he had no idea what it was made out of. Then the gnome started to wake up.
Everyone turns and Raven grabs the Athame from Turshel. Everyone steps back and gives the gnome some space this time and she laughs in a shrill tone. This is more than enough to set Raven off and he goes to take a swing when the gnome turns to them and starts to speak, but is promptly cut off by Raven completing his swing over her head. (He rolled a 2).
Everyone laughed at the thought of a slightly panicked half-elf who had spent his life fearing the supernatural getting thrown into the deep end.
Raven get's talked down by the others, and the gnome who is poking and prodding her own body. After a few moments of tense silence the half-elf points the dagger at the gnome. What he says next basically defines how we think of the character that is Raven, Fighter of the Morning Lord.
"Make no mistake, Madame Gearsledge. I was trying to kill you just now, and had I been able to I would hope you would thank me for keeping you from the twisted ways of this madman's mind."
Tizmat laughed and laughed and then she got insanely serious and told him thank you. The others thought the interaction was weird mostly because thoughout it all Raven had a death grip on the Athame, but the gnome seemed almost wanting in her tone, and that forced the Good in Raven to ask what had happened. What they expected was a horror story.
What they got was worse.
The Wizard of this place stole people with knowledge, and some just to experiment on. They were a group of the latter whilst she was the former. Her knowledge into elemental grafts wasn't as vast as some of her companions, but she was the one stolen from her homeland six years before and forced to divulge her companies secrets to him, but when he found her knowledge lacking he threw her into that room 'with the other defects'. It was there that she spent four years, having only been useful to the wizard for the first two, with the Ink telling it's stories to her.
She had no idea what the Ink was, and that scared her, but it had kept her alive by phasing her into storybook tales where she could eat and drink just enough to live the next day. She'd been doing this so long that the Ink was now a part of her, having to bond with her to keep itself strong enough to help her, but the only stories that the Ink could send her to were horror and abomination to the sane mind, true horror stories where there was no happy endings.
So, yeah she'd be okay with dieing, but she warned them should she die they would face the Ink.
Turshel drops a Knowledge (Arcana) to see if he can figure out what the Ink is but all he can figure out is that it's a magical symbiotic life form of some sort, here he takes a moment to shake his head and ask if Tizmat knew anything about this place.
She nodded and told them all she knew. That they were on the Guest Floor of the wizards tower and he only came here when he was teleporting people for his use. The young man Turshel knocked out was one of fifteen apprentices that she knew of and all of them weren't very talented in her opinion, but the wizard seemed only to care that their objective aligned with him, and he enforced his law by placing any apprentice on the table if they weren't obedient. Other than that she knew that this was the only area where traveling magic could work and that they were no where near Eberron. She'd been hoping they could give her more info but that was a lost cause.
Now the group takes a moment to adapt to the circumstance and think over their options. They need a way out and none of them have magic on that level. Turshel asks if he can use the wand on the knocked out apprentice and everyone agrees that it wouldn't hurt and it takes three tries to figure out a six letter fruit; banana, but they do eventually get it. The young mage's arms snap to his sides and his legs snap together and he quickly wakes up screaming in pain, his legs coming together so fast made some sensitive parts hurt nothing permanent but it hurt like something awful.
Kristia walks over and tosses down an intimidate while saying that they would do worse to him if he didn't help, with Raven using Aid Another. I go for the save and the young man is completely terrified at this point, fumble on the save. I hem and haw for a few seconds describing his terrorized look whilst I try to figure out what this dude would know, as he is one of the most minor mages in the place. I decide he knows very little, but they could get something out of the guy.
He blubbers like an idiot for a moment before say he only knew where the dorms, labs, and supplies closet is. Of course, at the mention of supplies they all Aid Raven who places the point of the athame on the guys chest. I roll a save verses an intimidate that had four people very willing to kill this guy all trying to pump the guy who was about to kill him. Another fumble on the save, wow this guy doesn't do well under pressure. He mutters about getting to his boots and Da Venchi pulls them off and asks Turshel if he can figure out if they're magical in any way.
The guy ends up telling them that he was as low as it got in this place and that the supplies closet he knew about was mostly just components and a few minor wands, the one they had used was an Eternal Wand of Hold Person but they had just used it's last spell for the day. He then mentioned he was going to closet after finishing some work, when they had knocked him out. Raven takes an interest in this 'work' and the mage tell Raven where to find his workstation, he seems a little smug about that.
Raven leaves the party with the dagger and captive and goes down a set of stairs to see the Mages work. Whilst he does that Da Venchi and Turshel have done everything they can think of on the boots give it up, and Kristia looks at the boots and asks why a mage would wear boots when he could wear something softer. She asks for a Spot check to see anything odd about it and rolls well enough to find the poorly hidden compartment in the hollow heel. In this she finds a shrunken book and bag of leather.
Raven finds a body that looks to have been tortured before it was killed, with no defensive wounds. His Move Silently is barely enough to go up the stair but he gets away home free. He then asks for the dagger and Coupe's the guy without remorse. I smile and ask him to make check d20+ level he gets a 21 and I get a laugh as the trap I'd set was set off.
"Can you feel it!? The Quickening!" or in this case Usurpation, Bloodtheft.
Ah we ended the session here.
The Third Session (In which I rip hair out)
So, I left them hanging on the fact that something huge just happened and now that we were all back together I explained The Bloodright universe to my players, none of whom had ever played 2ed. Bloodtheft is an act in which the stronger the Blood line the more powerful the effects of Bloodtheft would be, but the jerk I created just to get killed had cheated the system by using Usurpation with a dagger of Blood Silver. Basicly he was using a work around to gain expectational power, kinda what you'd expect a power hungry guy to do.
However this power was now going into Raven who before all this had no Bloodline at all. This act causes one heck of a light show with silver lighting dancing it's ways up into the Ravenloft Fighter and a boom of displaced air. The biggest thing is everyone felt the power as it happened and I go on to describe how they would have felt it for miles what with it being such a powerful Bloodtheft.
Kristia, Tizmat, and Turshell all begin to flip out as that was bright and loud and they are all three conviced they are going to get caught, a fact that soon send the gnome into gibbering mindlessly on the floor. Sadian the walks over to the area where they found Tizmat and walks inside. While the others are role-playing having their socks rocked (Raven) or panicking Sadian, slowly makes his way through the Defect Room, which now that there is no Ink on the Walls looks like it was splashed with acid at one point or another.
Sadian throws a spot check and finds noting, there really isn't anything to find, but I do note for him that the books that were piled up are still there. He grabs one of the books and looks at its cover. It's written in an entirely alien language that Sadian feels his left eye ache for just trying to read it. He leaves and says he's going to use his faster speed to get to that supply closet the dead guy talked about.
The others calm down at the chance of escape, except Tizmat. Raven straightens and pulls the sheath from the dead body and agrees that Sadian should go ahead, and that they would follow. Sadian 'gathers his Ki' casting Expeditious Retreat on himself, and begins running to the location given. The others are left to throw some some checks and get Tizmat out of her funk.
Sadian makes it to the supplies closet and instead of slowing down Bull rushes the door. After a few minutes of looking over some notes and such I had on hand, we get back to the game with a Half-orc slamming shoulder first into the door dealing enough damage to send the thing flying five feet into the closet full of supplies of a magical nature. The Door go carrening off its hinges and smashes three cabinets of potions before slamming into the wand shelf on the far wall.
Back with the others they hear a air rending explosion and Da Venchi starts sprinting towards Sadian's location. When he gets there Sadian is no where to be seen and the entire closet is on fire with Crimson-Black fire that doesn't seem to put off heat of any sort, but is in fact eating through the stone floor. I have Da Venchi do a Listen check which he fails and as such doesn't know that Sadian is one floor down through the hole the fire was making.
The others are finally coming over when they find the fire. I turn to Sadian's player tell him he has fallen through a hole melted out of stone with fire that doesn't burn and that he can see that the fire doesn't fall down it just hangs in the air. All around him are the gold and riches of a mad Wizard. He asks me one thing that sent me laughing.
"Ladder?" A true adventurer thinks not of the riches that surround him but to the escape of whatever hold those riches.
He mutters when I say no and then proceeds to ask if he has pockets to which I tell him, no. He nods and starts to look for something he could possibly get away with, literally pawing through the hundreds of platinum, gold, and gems for anything he could viably put on, but he wasn't having any luck failing four back to back Search checks whilst the others are arguing if he is dead a floor above.
After four more failed checks he finds a book and a ring. The book is written in Orc and he says he'll read it later. The ring however has three sapphires set into a solid obsidian band. He guesses that it is a magical item and throws a UMD check to use blindly (DC 25). I smile thinking he's not going to get to use the Ring of Three Wishes (1 Wish) because he rushed it. The clumsy half-orc, who has no idea he's a sorcerer naturals on the check.
I tell him he just got himself a wish and everyone at the table process to winch. Everyone here knows about Pun-Pun and such I'm sure so to keep my players from this I have a direct counter for it as such. If you gain power slowly you're below the notice of the gods, who in my world are OP as all heck because they are GODS the lowest among them has forty-three class levels, but should you infinite combo yourself into strength they will remove you from the game as a whole. Wish shenanigans are heavily frowned on in my worlds because of this.
It takes an hour for him to properly word the wish but it came to this.
"I Wish, that me and my companions would gain the aid of the most sympathetic, but able being who is willing to help us."
A good solid Wish, solid enough that I wanted to reward him for not abusing the Wish. A genie appears a floor up and casts telekinesis on the Orc getting him out with only a useless ring and book. The Genie explains that he was summoned by Sadian and would aid them in getting the heck out of there. He then casts an amnesia spell of them that triggers five seconds afterward giving them an info dump on the setting at large.
I was tempted to ask for Sanity checks, but didn't.
Sadian asks for a way out, the genie teleports them off the rock to a world where spelljamming is common. The genie then fade out as a gnome with a monocle comes up and asks if they are Sadain and compony. Oh yeah they are now wearing their gear.
End session here