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View Full Version : Ashwood Vale - Castles & Crusades/Ancient Lands campaign log.



Yora
2013-12-31, 08:25 AM
Mentioning earlier this month during lunchbreak that I’d really like to play an RPG again, two of my friends were immediately up for it, which also got the others quite interested. So with everyone back from christmas visits, we started our first game of the new campaign yesterday. Having read quite a lot about OSR games over the past year, I decited on running Castles & Crusades rather than Pathfinder. The ease of preparation and improvisation was one reason for my choice, but I also quite like the idea of players approaching problems narratively rather than by consulting the skills and special abilities on their character sheet.

Having done a great amount of work to further develop the setting from my last campaign to a greater deapth and scope over the last two years, it was an obvious choice to make it an Ancient Lands campaign as well. Though I was really tempted to run Dark Sun or Planescape as well. Maybe I’ll come back again for a mini-campaign during a summer break, when not all of us are around.

For our first session we started with four characters, though two more might be joining us in the future. Two players were already familiar with pen and paper games, the other two were not. So far, the party consists of the following:

John (male human Fighter 1; Str 18, Con 16, Cha 16 as a primary!)
Rhyon (male human Thief 1; Dex 16, Con 14)
Bonni (female human Wizard 1; Str 12, Dex 16, Int 18, Cha 8), younger sister of Ragna.
Ragna (famle human Ranger 1; Str 16, Dex 18, Wis 14, Cha 8), older sister of Bonni.

These guys were really rolling quite well. I had already expected Johns player to end up as the party leader and the character he came up with is very suitable for that role.

The game started in a small village (named Fränkelbrook by Bonnis player and now we’ll stick with that) on the southern side of the Ashwood Vale. The Ashwood Vale lies in the northern parts of the Ancient Lands and is one of the northernmost regions that have been settled by the human Vandren people who came to the Ancient Lands a few centuries ago. Flanked by two large and old forests of ash in the north and the south, the vale is dominated by a large river that runs to the sea in the east.
Map of the Ashwood Vale


http://spriggans-den.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/hexmap03.png
Map of the Ashwood Vale

The leader of the villages warriors, Pavo, had called the PCs to the small warrior hall in the center of the village. Two of the villagers had not yet returned from a trip to another village at the edge of the northern forest where elves often come to trade with the humans, and he is sending out some of his less important people to go looking for them. Since it was still early in the day, the PCs decited to not waste any time and set out immediately.In the afternoon, the group reaches the fortified town of their chief on the south bank of the river, but neither the guards at the gates nor the barkeep at the local inn can tell them anything about the whereabouts of the missing travelers. They’ve come through on their way north, but nobody has seen them returning, but brining up the subject the gate guard started to wonder that there really havn’t been any travelers comming from the direction they had been heading to for almost a week. Rhyon excused himself and paid a visit to the local fence if there had been any news from the northern villages, but he couldn’t help out either. Since it would make sense that a thief would know of the shadier elements of the only larger town in the area, that is right next to their village, the party already created their first contact. Bran the fence.

Given the late time of day and the ramaining distance to their next destination, the PCs decited to stay the night in town and set out again the next morning, crossing the great bridge to the north bank. As they reached the intersection from which they would start the final leg of their journey, Ragna checked the road and noticed that there hadn’t been any horses or carts comming through for at least a couple of days. Shortly after the group spotted a small pack of wolves in the high grass near the road, which quickly ran off as the PCs approached them. (A random encounter.) The wolves had been feeding on the corpses of three armed men in armor, which had been clearly killed by wild beasts, but both Ragna and John had doubts that the wolves had killed them and suspected that they had simply come upon the uneaten corpses. Since they had stated multiple times that they wouldn’t need any equipment or supplies other than food and water for this trip, burrying the dead was out of the question, so they instead build a small pyre and burned the corpses instead. However, this still delayed their progress for several hours.

As they approached the edge of the forest during late afternoon, the party discovered a small farm near the road. Approaching carefully they found the residents killed by some large beasts and even all the pigs in the kennel. However, a quick check of the main building confirmed that nothing seemed to have been looted. While one player mentioned they could count the number of corpses and beds in the farm building, nobody ever got to actually do that. A missed opportunity. With dusk approaching and now considerably worried, the group pushed forward and made it to the village before nightfall. Torches were burning on the sturdy palisade and a sentry quickly had them ushered inside the door before the gates were closed again behind them. Black, shaggy monsters had been attacking travelers and outlying farms for the last four days and everyone had holed up inside the palisade since. With some relief the group learned that their fellow villagers were still in the village and allright. Because the leading guardsman was worried of attacks during the night, John and Bonni agreed to help out the sentries with guarding the palisade, but Ragna and Rhyon just called it a day and went to sleep in the villages great hall.

A few hours into the night, strange noises were coming from the forest and Bonni cast a light spell at the edge of the treeline, lighting up a small horde of small black beasts with glowing eyes and long fangs, that came charging forward at the disturbance. Consisting of different kinds of creatures, some of the more wolflike monsters simply jumped up at the palisade, unable to reach high enough, but the more monkey-like ones quickly started to scale the wall and reach the platforms at the top. One was successfully impaled by Johns spear while Bonni and one of the guards were struggling with another one. With the guard badly wounded by the beasts claws, Ragna arrived soon enough to distract it with a mostly ineffectual arrow which gave Bonni an opportunity to crack its skull with her staff. Meanwhile a third beast had climbed over the gate and with a couragous jump John leaped of the platform he had been manning, but the only thing his spear stabbed was the ground. Hurriedly getting into his armor, Rhyon arrived only now to throw a dagger at the third beast but missed. Even with the combined efforts of John, Rhyon, and Ragna, they were not quite able to land anything but a slight nick with one of Rhyons daggers until Bonni joined them and landed a second kill with her staff. With more of the beasts trying to scale the gate and scratching at it, Bonnie got back onto the platform and threw a blast of flames at the beasts, which quickly got them running back into the forests and Ragna was able to take down another one with an arrow.

Taking a good look at the slain beasts, they seemed to be sick and warped shriekers, small monkey-like creatures native to the area, but which usually don’t come near any settlements. Bonni was able to confirm some magical influence on the bodies, but in the middle of the night there wasn’t much else to do for now and everyone went back to rest.

The next morning the corpse that had been shot by Ragna was dragged in from outisde the gate, and this one looked a lot more like a wolf, but showing the same sick and ragged appearance. With their two friends unwilling to leave the safety of the village without their wares and help from the villagers chief already long overdue, it was decited that Bonni would return to the headquarter of the PCs clan and report the incident. After some negotiating by John, the leader of the guardsmen agreed to send one of his men with her for some protection. Meanwhile, the rest of the group would scout the surrounding forests to see if they could find any clues of what has caused the monsters to appear all of a sudden and attack the village. For the first hour of searching they didn’t really come up with anything until they ran straight into a bear that had killed two of the black beasts. (Another random encounter). John tried to scare it away but that only got the bear to charge straight at him, but the animal was quickly put down. The severe burns on one of the two black beasts identified them as being from the pack that had attacked the village during the night and Ragna was able to pick up the trail of the remaining three.

Not long after they arrived at a small crumbled ruin on a rocky hill in the middle of the forest. Deciting to be careful, the three spread out with John taking the main path and Rhyon and Ragna sneaking up the hill through the underbrush at the sides. They all made it up to the ruin without detecting any sign of life and entered the broken courtyard, when suddenly John was hit by an arrow coming from a still standing section of the upper floor. Spotting to archers above them, John and Ryhon ran for the tower to get up the stairs, while Ragna got into cover and returnd fire at the archers. Rhyon made it up first, but his dagger sailed right by one of the archers and landed in the courtyard. However, up close it turned out that the two were appearently undead eleven hunters. John came up close behind Ryhon and charged at the second archer, successfully impaling him on his spear and pushing him over the edge with his shield to land hard on the ground below. After a short struggle, the two were able to dispose of the other one as well. Back in the courtyard, they entered the interior of the ruin through a crumbling door that had been left ajar and began exploring. With some searching, they discovered an almost hidden passage where the roof had collapsed and broke a hole through the floor, but they decited to try out the stairs first. At the base of the stairs all three completely failed their perception check and were suddenly charged by sickly and raging bear. While they were able to take this one down as well, John was starting to look quite beaten up. Exploring deeper into the underground halls, Ryhon successfully managed to quietly open the door to a smaller room filled with benches on which corpses where lying. He did however fail at silently sneaking up at the figure who was standing with its back to the door and it turned out to be some twisted abomination with claws instead of hands a mouth full of fangs. Not being the durable type, Ryhon went down just as John arrived to help him. Rarely have I seen a group roll so many 3s and 4s in a row than this time. Ragna was able to land a single hit with an arrow while John was badly wounded by the creatures claw and it was decited that this was a time for retreat. Since at that moment someone noticed that Ryhons player had misread his character sheet all the time and he actually had a significantly higher AC, I adjusted the outcome of the fight to him being at 0 hp and conscious rather than at negative hp and knocked out, so he could also stumble towards the exit rather than joining the collection of bodies. Seemed the most fair solution at the time without turning back the time on that fight.

Meanwhile, Bonni had made it back to the town and after hearing what had happened, the captain got 10 of his men and told them to be ready to ride out at dawn, and also supplying a horse for Bonni to accompany them back to the village.

As the other three limped back towards the village, they encountered two elven hunters searching for missing companions (another Random encounter). After hearing what was happening, they patched John and Ryon up and helped them back to the village where the healer would take care of them properly. With Bonni due to return the next day and hopefully with reinforcements, it was decited to simply stay put and wait for now.