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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Talakeal's Avatar

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    Default Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Now that health and family issues have been resolved, my gaming group is back to meeting up regularly, so I can continue my campaign journal from last year.

    The game uses my own Heart of Darkness system, a gothic fantasy game with elements of weird western and Arthurian romance; but anyone familiar with D&D or similar games should be able to follow along.

    The Fray
    It is the distant past, less than a century after The Cataclysm shattered the Old Empire and the Warlords took the frontier.
    The casino town of Golgotha stands on the edge of the desert, about to slip free of the last vestiges of Imperial rule, and into the chaotic battle that will determine its new master going forward.
    In the back room of a Golgotha pub, an unlikely group of mercenaries with dreams of grandeur come together to undertake a lucrative contract.
    Unbeknownst to any of them, they have caught the attention of mysterious powers, and they will soon stand at the nexus of history, determining the fate of all Pangea in the millennia to come.

    Characters:

    Spoiler: Bob is playing Krystal, a female tiefling rogue / warlock
    Show
    Krystal grew up on the streets of Concordance, stealing to survive.
    People looked down upon the young orphan for her demonic appearance, and always assumed the worst. Eventually, she learned that if she was going to be blamed for every crime, she might as well be guilty.
    Her only friend was the Nephilim Valentine, and soon the two urchins began running scams together.
    As they grew into adolescence, they joined a gang and eventually began working as agents of the fallen trade-prince Valen’s criminal empire. But they didn’t appreciate Krystal, and she decided to betray them, making off with the prince’s magic sword that had been entrusted to her care before selling him out to his enemies in a deliciously complex double-cross.
    But, it was no longer safe for her in Concordance, and Krystal needed to flee to the frontier, to Golgotha.
    Valentine came with her, and though she was at first mad that Krystal ruined a good thing, she has thrown herself into establishing her own criminal empire out here on the frontier.
    One fateful day Valentine forced Krystal to wake up at an ungodly hour for her latest get rich quick scheme, claiming that she has found a lucrative contract but needed to put a crew together really quick. And so Krystal found herself in the cramped back room of a seedy tavern looking for someone who was competent enough to be seen as a deadly huntsman but also gullible enough to not realize what is really going on.
    Krystal has little love of the arts, but she is known to sometimes practice scrimshaw upon the teeth of her kills.


    Spoiler: Brian is playing Kim, an intersex human eldritch knight with an earth magic focus
    Show
    Only bits and pieces remain of Kim’s life before the Cataclysm.
    She grew up in the Southern Empire, near the great temple city of Necropolis. Even as a child, she spoke to rocks, but nobody believed her until she taught them to talk back. As she grew older, she became fascinated by the stories stones could tell and made it her life’s work to record the history that had been lost to Earth.
    She attended the Imperial Archeological Society. She accompanied the Templar crusaders as an anthropologist. She alchemically augmented her gender. She learned abjuration from the Buddha Noboru. She learned biocontrol from the woman who would become her wife. She meant to settle down and start a family, but then she became obsessed with finding a legendary lost city on the shores of the Misty Sea, one unknown to Imperial maps.
    Eventually, she would find the answer, in the oral histories of the Goren Nation, an avenue which most Imperial scholars would have been too ethnocentric to consider, let alone pursue.
    She traveled to the wondrous city covered in mangrove swamps and fog, and found that the once-massive city was quickly and quietly abandoned, its population seeming to disappear overnight.
    Then Mount Krackenrock erupted.
    The ruins began to crumble around her, and Kim called out to her friends for protection, and she was engulfed in a diamond shell.
    And while she slept within her crystalline tomb, the world forgot about her and moved on.


    Spoiler: Dave is playing Valentine, a female aasimar valor bard
    Show
    Valentine grew up in a small shack in the slums of Concordance. She lived with an old man named Gabriel who may or may not have been her father, and who may or may not have been an archangel in disguise. He watched out for her, but provided little.
    As she grew older, she began to make money working as a con artist, finding that her charm and beauty would let her get away with almost anything.
    She made fast friends with a cambion pickpocket named Krystal. They concocted numerous schemes, their contrasting appearances and natures playing well off one another, as did her skill with words and Krystal’s skill with violence.
    As an adult, Valentine got a job working with a local crime syndicate under the leadership of the rogue trade-prince Valen, but it wasn't to last, she soon betrayed them and fled to Golgotha.
    Since coming to Golgotha, Valentine has decided it is time to live for herself and make her dreams come true. She has thrown herself into starting her own syndicate, so that she might one day lead a war band and work her way up to Warlord proper.
    To further her goals in Golgotha, she has started working to make a network of contracts, already befriending an informant named Tatters, a fence named Pops, a tinker named Zara; and of course her muscle, Krystal.
    Recently, she managed to talk herself up and get a very lucrative short-term contract from a cannery owner in Vladispol to the south, but she also promised him that she had an expert tracker in her employ. This was a lie, but it can't be too hard to find a huntsman on short notice, can it?


    Spoiler: Johnny is playing Quincy, a male human ranger
    Show
    Quincy grew up on a ranch in the hinterlands near Dungenus, city of the East. As a young man, he learned to love the land; hunting, camping, riding, and exploring the wilderness for leagues around.
    Like so many young men of the frontier, Quincy was drafted into Balthazar’s army as a teen, more grist for the Warlord’s endless conquests. Due to his superior riding and shooting skills, he was soon promoted to the dragoon corps.
    Quincy made a name for himself in the countless battles against the hengeyokai in the forests of the East, the Imperial Templar of the Great Plains, and the Warlord Apollyon on the moors, but after a decade of constant warfare, he grew tired of military life.
    He thought transferring to Golgotha would be a good way to disappear, but like so many, Quincy quickly lost his savings to gambling and drugs.
    He has become addicted to drugs and gets the shakes if he goes too long without. He claims it is too steady his aim as he grows older, but it is more likely that he is self-medicating to deal with years of untreated battle fatigue.
    Quincy has been hunting the hengeyokai beast folk and claiming Balthazar's lucrative bounties; so far he has nineteen confirmed kills. He has taken to using their hides for taxidermy as a hobby.
    Looking to make some money on the side, Quincy has answered a newspaper advertisement seeking a huntsman for a discreet and very lucrative mission.


    Spoiler: Sara is playing Anani, female human darkness domain cleric.
    Show
    Anani was born to a peasant family upon the Aitos plateau, far to the north. When unexplained phenomena began to follow her about as a preteen, her parents eagerly sent her to apprentice under the Archmage Thanatos, Warlord of the North West.
    Her time at the tower of Morpheus was unpleasant, the other apprentices were cruel and depraved, and left to their own devices by their uncaring and distant master.
    When the time came to curry his favor, she alone volunteered to let Thanatos experiment upon her, tearing her soul to pieces and then sewing it back together.
    She died and spent an eternity in the empty void. But she was not alone. She heard the whispers of oblivion, and the call of Magnum Tenobrosum, the nameless dark.
    When she was revived, her powers were amplified, especially when it came to controlling darkness, and she was all but immune to enemy sorcery, but all the color had drained from her world and a whispering voice guided her every move.
    Thanatos was disconcerted by her newfound grace and wisdom, and sent Anani far away, to be the ambassador to the city of Golgotha on the distant frontier.
    She has done well in the city, living a luxurious life, studying as a nurse, and preaching her own nihilistic gospel to any who would listen.
    As she was coming home one morning after a long night, a voice whispered in her ear with remarkable urgency, guiding her down a side street and into the back room of a small tavern, and insisting that she go along with the people inside.
    She didn’t know what it meant, but the voices have never steered her wrong before.


    Spoiler: The New Kid is playing Feur, a male human elemental monk with a time focus
    Show
    Feur is from a land far to the west, the city-state of Zaikhan where spirits and mortals work together to create perfect order. He is from a long family of bureaucrats, vassals to the royal family, but when his talent for seeing and manipulating the strands of time was discovered, he was sent to a monastery where he would learn to serve The Tribunal.
    The Tribunal enforces the laws of the spirit world, particularly oaths and divine mandates. Though they are normally trained in the art of Mysticism, having someone who can see alternate timelines is extremely useful in tracking down people who would try and use time travel to escape from their obligations. Once his arduous training was complete, he was welcomed into the order and given a golden medallion of station as well as a mysterious elixir which he was told to use when the time was right.
    Years later, when an anarchist cult was uncovered, the light of justice revealed they had been sent by the Warlord Umbriel to destabilize the ancient dynasty and leave the city of Zaikhan open to her conquest.
    Further interrogation found that similar agents had been sent to the city of Golgotha on the chaotic frontier, and when volunteers were asked to make the long journey and rout them out, Feur was first to step forward.
    Though at first he enjoyed his travels, Feur is now finding that his time in this city of sin and vice is making him soft; not to mention his money is running out. And so, Feur has decided to hire himself out as a bodyguard to hone your skills and fill his coffers while you wait for Umbriel's agents to show their hand.
    And besides, it will be good to feel like part of a group again.
    Feur is known for his love of bad jokes as well as his tendency to oversleep. He is also extremely loyal, and will happily kill or die for his companions, even those he has just met.


    Here is a link to the previous thread.


    And here is a .pdf copy of the entire campaign for anyone who wants to read it all in one place
    Last edited by Talakeal; 2022-05-10 at 12:10 AM.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Spoiler: Interlude: Summer 1114
    Show
    The Gunslinger
    Quincy is practicing his marksmanship at a target range cobbled together on the outskirts of Golgotha, in a depopulated region recently inventoried and scorched by The Scourge.
    He smells the man’s tobacco before he hears his footsteps, but does not interrupt his shot by looking up from his scope. The target is a full two hundred paces away, but he still curses himself when his shot strikes a finger’s width above the bullseye.

    He turns and sees the stranger watching him, a tall and scruffy man in early middle age, with dishwater blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, dark sunglasses, a worn duster, and gleaming revolvers on his hips.

    The man tells Quincy that he has talent, but if he can take some advice, he appears to be aiming with his hand instead of his eye. Quincy is confused by this, but is told that he will never reach his full potential while he still thinks about his hands. Quincy says that he has to mind his hands, for they shake, and the stranger asks him where he learned the shake; and is told it was in the service of Balthazar.

    The interloper, who identifies himself as Brad Weston, says that he was also involved in that conflict, albeit on the other side, and hopes the two never crossed paths in battle. He was part of the Imperial militia, helping evacuate the region after the Templar Lords who descended from Sir Perceval fell in battle or abandoned their ancestral homes.

    Brad asks if he may give Quincy’s rifle a try, and the dragoon hands his gun over. Brad tinkers with the sight a bit, admits he is rather rusty with long guns, and then fires it from the hip, matching Quincy’s carefully aimed shot.

    The two get to talking. Quincy asks Brad about his past, and he tells him that he is retired now, working as a freelance bodyguard and private investigator.

    When asked about where he learned to shoot like that, Brad says that there was once an order of Templar Gunslingers, but they were always at odds with the more orthodox Templar who believed all ranged combat to be dishonorable and a violation of their oaths, and when the Illuminati who secretly ran the Imperium after the Empress’ death decided to forbid advancements in gunnery, they all but disappeared and had to teach their secrets to promising commoners to avoid dying out entirely.

    Quincy asks if Brad can teach him, and Brad nods. When asked about payment, Brad says the training won’t be easy, and will be a price in and of itself.
    After a brief lesson, they arrange to meet up again when Quincy’s team returns from its next mission. He then goes back to his target practice, and sees that the adjustment to his scope, though minor, allows him to place his shots just a hair lower than his previous attempts, making for a bullseye every time.

    The Black Armory

    While Krystal is once again replacing The Black Flame Blade’s corroded metal blade, the sword speaks to her, telling her that she needs to find some nice Plutonian Steel so that it need not get used to a new face every few months.

    The blade speaks little, but when it does so it is in the gruff voice of an old campaigner. She comes to learn that it was created by a bastard son of Hephaestus in a place called the Black Armory. It was a realm made by Lucifer in secret to supply his forces during The Reckoning. When the war ended and the fallen angels were cast into Hell, the Black Armory was locked away and forgotten, but the mad demigod who dwells within has never stopped working at his craft, and by now it must surely contain weapons that could end the world.

    At one point, the sword says that it notices she tries to stay silent in battle, and cloven hooves on cobblestones aren’t always the best for that. It knows a guy who might be willing to buy the sound of her footsteps from her. Krystal doesn’t understand, and the sword sarcastically tells her that she can trade her “clippity-clop” for some “ching-ching”. But she is still uncertain.

    The sword goes on to say that she will need to make a human sacrifice to grease the wheels enough to arrange such a meeting, and wants to know if there is anyone she hates.

    Krystal only gives it a condescending look.

    The blade clarifies that it needs to be someone whom she hates enough to murder in cold blood.

    Krystal continues to stare at the sword.

    Exasperated, the blade asks whom she wants to murder most of all?

    Krystal summons Valentine, and the two begin to work out a plot for assassinating Trade-Prince Valen.

    The Rambling Prophet
    Anani sits by herself in a quiet roadhouse along the old highway running through the desert outside of Golgotha.

    She is approached by a tall man with a broad handsome face and the dust-caked clothes of a working man. He asks if he can join her, and she responds by asking if he is paying; he tells the barkeep to put her meal on his tab, and to buy a round for the house while he is at it.

    The stranger introduces himself as Russel Faraday, and Anani responds, seemingly ashamed that she has no second name. Her visitor laughs and says there is nothing wrong with being from common stock, he himself is scarcely better, owning little more than a grazing patch outside Gantry’s Ferry in what is now the Sundered Lands.

    Anani says that her homeland isn’t far from there, on the Aitos Plateau. Faraday looks pleased, and asks if Old Layke is still alive. Anani responds that she has no idea who he is talking about, and

    Russel says he isn’t surprised, he was pushing ninety when he taught Faraday his letters once upon a time.

    The barkeep offers them his best wine, and Anani takes some, while Faraday declines, says he never drinks wine, and asks for whiskey instead.

    When the meal is over and the patrons are well into their drink, a quiet falls over their table. Russel says that one of his men told him about her, and he was surprised, he didn’t know that their master had any agents operating out of Badlands, at least not since the Golgotha Ripper was brought to justice last year.

    Anani is confused for a moment, and asks who he means, and he confides that he serves the lord of lords, the King of all Pangaea.

    “The Black King?” she asks.

    “Some may call him so,” Russel smiles coyly.

    He goes on to explain that The Scourge has marked Pompur for judgment; for the university town teaches people things that their betters would rather they didn’t know.
    While there, he wishes to make a statement by slaying their Warlord, but true Warlords are tricky beasts, nearly immortal, and Naraka is slipperier than most, she will simply fall back and feign subservience to one of her compatriots, all the while plotting betrayal and revenge.

    He knows that Anani is one of the few beings who has the power to put a final end to Naraka. Faraday’s proposal is simple; when The Scourge’s attack on Pompur comes, and it’s still a few months off, logistics being what they are, he will hire a team of mercenaries to get her into the Warlords chambers and protect her while she puts the thin-lady down for good.

    Anani asks what is in it for her, and Faraday tells her whatever she likes, money, power, magic, knowledge, love, drugs, heck, even her own pet dinosaur if she so fancies.

    Anani nods in agreement, all the while her shadow laughs at the fool before her.

    Nighttime in the Park
    The rainy season is here again. Summer storms always hit Golgotha hard, threatening to flood the lake, and with so much damage having been done to the city, every room in town is full. For our heroes, it is cramped and uncomfortable, with eight people living out of a single vehicle.

    One evening, when everyone is longing for open space, it is suggested that they check out the stories about the park being haunted. Anani recounts the tale, of how every night that it rains, a hulking figure is seen dragging a sack through the park, and how any who approach are never seen again.

    They go, although some are skeptical and unhappy about the wetting. The park is beautiful, overgrown with trees, its canals near overflowing with rainwater, its tiled walkways and wrought iron fence posts slick. Gas lights provide dim light, contrasted with blinding bursts of lightning. Most cling to benches or seek shelter under trees. Kim and Feur enthusiastically search, while Quincy keeps watch from an old wooden footbridge over a rushing stream.

    Shortly after midnight, Feur becomes aware of heavy footsteps and shouts to his companions, the legends are true. The being is wholly material, with nothing ghostly about him, and stands about eight feet tall, wearing overalls and bare feet, with short dark hair and greenish skin. He has a bundle thrown over his shoulder, wrapped in white linens, and is trudging onward with a determined look on his misshapen face.

    Feur calls out, and Quincy immediately opens fire upon him, hitting the hulking man in the left shoulder opposite his burden, but he doesn’t fall and keeps marching. A moment later, he is brought to his knees, and blood spurts from his calf, as if attacked by an unseen assailant.

    Feur steadies his mind and looks into the unseen world, and sees that the stranger is being assaulted by a pack of what he knows to be the Hounds of Tindalos, doglike creatures from alien dimensions who police the timelines. But before he can call out a warning, Quincy’s second shot takes the being in the chest, and then Krystal is there, stabbing with her black flame blade.
    The hounds grab his package and pull it from the timeline, and Feur warns his companions to give chase, and though Anani is able to catalog the hound’s ren, it is not long before they are lost to the past. When they return to the scene of the battle, they find copious blood but no body.

    Feur tells his companions what happened, and they decide to try again, after all, the legend says that this has been happening every night since before the Cataclysm.

    It doesn’t rain again for a few nights, but when it does they are ready. Valentine has procured an herbal mixture that will allow them to see into the spirit world once smoked, and Anani has blessed all of their weapons in the name of her dark and terrible god.

    This time they set up an ambush, but are surprised to find their visitor coming from a different direction, still carrying his mysterious bundle.

    When the pack of unearthly hounds approach, Feur tells them to stop. They respond in their odd speech that sounds like barking played backward, and tell the mortals to step aside, for this is a matter of time, and The Tribunal has no authority over it.

    Feur laughs and proclaims that it is always time for justice.

    The party attacks, but the hounds manipulate time, slowing it for their enemies and speeding it for themselves, giving the combatants the feelings of fighting in storm-tossed surf, with the action slowing and then crashing upon them all at once, too quickly to react.

    Quincy and Krystal take down a few of the hounds, but soon find themselves overrun and forced to take shelter in the trees or under a bridge.

    Kim does better, protecting her companions with mana shields while using her chain to trip up and stun the hounds of Tindalos before they can get close.

    Anani approaches the tall man, who is ignoring the battle and steadily marching toward the park’s iron gate. She sees that his bundle is actually the body of a young girl, wrapped in winter blankets and apparently dead. She summons a shade to hold off the hounds while she makes her escape.

    She conjures up an anti-magic shell around them, a mobile tear in reality that separates the spiritual and physical worlds, making it impossible for the extra-dimensional hounds to even come near, and she walks with him out of the park and into the town, to the nearest hospital.

    Back in the park, her companions soon drive off the rest of the time spirits, who let them know that Cronus will hear of their betrayal.

    At the hospital, the surgeons are able to resuscitate the drowned girl.

    The hulking troll tries to tell his story to Anani, although his command of Terran is lacking and he is fighting back tears.

    His name is Flit, and he was a servant to a noble family who maintained a summer home in Golgotha before the collapse of the Old Empire. He was tasked with taking their young daughter Katjana to the park, and failed to watch her, for she slipped from a bridge and into the stream, and by the time he found her, she was already drowned. But Flit had sworn an oath, and Flit had always had a few gifts he couldn’t explain.

    He couldn’t turn back time, couldn’t undo the event. But he could pull her to him. Not while she was alive, for she would fight him, and his tricks were not that strong. But he knew they had potions that could revive the drowned if only he could get her to a hospital fast enough.

    But every time he tried, the dogs would attack, and he never made it in time.

    He learned new tricks, learned the fastest route, learned how to avoid the crowds, and learned that his pursuers couldn’t smell as well in the rain.

    So, for a thousand nights over a hundred years, he had pulled her body from the past and tried his run. But every time, her salvation was just out of reach. And he couldn’t try every night, for it took time for his magic to replenish, and his wounds to regenerate. And every time the dogs put the girl right back where she was supposed to be, for her parents to find her dead and to curse Flit as an oath breaker.

    But now, thanks to their help, he had finally succeeded. He has no gold, but he gives Anani a small jeweled pendant on a fine chain, and tells her that this is the charm that gives him his power, and he doesn’t want it anymore, doesn’t want to attract the hounds and feel their teeth ever again. He doesn’t know what awaits Katjana and him in this new world, but he has to try.

    Anani takes the pendant and wonders what catastrophe the Hounds of Tindalos were so eager to undo, what changes to history had already taken place when a noble family’s formerly dead daughter now merely disappeared without a trace, and what repercussions could have followed them over a hundred years.

    Krystal long ago made a promise to herself that she would never work for free, and she steals the pendant before Anani can hand it to Feur, intent on selling it to Pops for a few coins. Valentine intercedes though, paying Krystal out of the group’s funds and then explaining to Feur that she will let him keep the potent Talisman of Elemental Control, but as all profits must be split evenly amongst the company, this means he will be deeply indebted to the corps and that she will be garnishing his wages from now on.

    Feur, ever naïve and loyal, happily agrees, and does his best to learn to harness his newfound power.

    Valentine does not take a cut. For once in her life, she actually feels bad about taking advantage of someone.

    The Scoria
    Lady Abasinia contacts Kim with an offer to accompany her on a seaside holiday. Valentine told her of the crystal spires on the coast of the Dead Lands, and of Kim’s disappointment in not being able to investigate further, and proposes a joint expedition.

    Kim separates from her party, making arrangements to meet them in Price Town on their way south for their next mission. She then once again takes the train to Basewater station. There she waits for her companion to arrive, taking dinner with the locals. She marvels at how the water here is so alkaline, people with stomach ulcers would probably pay a fortune for it, but is only met with disgusted looks by her fellow travelers as they hold their noses and sip their bitter coffee.

    That night Kim sleeps on a wooden cot with a straw mattress, which she finds significantly less comfortable than open ground. She tosses and turns well into the night, but when she finally falls asleep she is dead to the world, waking up with a sore shoulder in the midmorning light to find that her companion has already arrived and is ready to depart.

    Lady Abasinia is standing before an expensive carriage, built on runners rather than wheels so that it moves across the sand like a sleigh. It is pulled by a team of alpaca, and the drivers are a pair of locals, wrapped head to toe in billowing black cloth, but where their skin shows, Kim sees that it has an almost wooden texture and assumes they are ghouls. One is carrying an antiquated blunderbuss, its broad barrel making for an almost literal hand cannon.

    The lady herself is ill-dressed for travel, but wearing oversized sunglasses and a hat with an almost comically wide brim. She waves Kim over. When she sees Kim rubbing her shoulder, Abasinia asks what the matter is. Kim replies that it's okay, its just the bed was rather hard, but she could use the toughening up. Lady Abasinia smiles and tells Kim she looks plenty tough already, and playfully slaps her on a shoulder which is already beginning to sunburn.

    The inside of the coach is opulent, the seats significantly more comfortable than most recliners Kim has sat in. It is somewhat cramped, but designed for only two people. A hanging cage of birds provides music, while a swinging tray of burning incense provides some light and also masks the smell of sweat and alpaca, but Kim can’t help but worry about what will happen if they hit a bump and it tips over. The windows contain strange rotating metal blades, turned by the motion of the carriage, which channel cool air into the cabin but also make the shadows dance hypnotically.

    Once underway, the ride is surprisingly swift and smooth. Lady Abasinia asks Kim to entertain her with stories of her adventures, but she doesn’t really seem to be paying attention, instead just listening to the sound of the archeologist’s voice as they snack on exotic candies.

    At one point, Kim shares the fact that she learned that the language of dragons contains words that literally cannot be spoken by those below a certain size, and that the meanings of some words change with the speaker's age as their voice deepens. Abasinia nods, and says that humans do something similar, forbidding those lower in station from speaking out of place, and insisting that one’s supposed superiors are addressed by titles rather than by their proper names, but dragons have formalized the process. Still, don’t think that it doesn’t go both ways, for the young have a wider range of hearing than the old, and you better believe that wyrmlings speak ill of their elders in words that they would have long since forgotten even if they were still capable of hearing the proper intonations.

    Kim comments about how cheeky that must be, and must then define the word for Lady Abasinia. The changeling apologizes, she finds Terran to be an awfully hard language to pick up. It was invented by the Old Empire as a trade language and they stole words from many unrelated cultures and struck down words from the vocabulary that were redundant or confusingly similar to other words, which seemed sensible at the time, but make it impossible to gauge meaning from context or etymology. And all that knowledge will eventually be lost, all for the sake of efficiency, until people don’t even remember having lost it when they need it. She adds that this is a suitable analogy for the Imperium as a whole.

    Kim shakes her head and says that she never thought about it that way before, and doing so makes her sad, but she isn’t quite sure why.

    When Kim tells of her most recent adventure, Lady Abasinia says that she supposes helping the troll was admirable, but doing so was likely a huge tactical loss for her companions, for each fractured reality the troll created gave endless new opportunities for Fleur to exploit in the branching timelines of possibility.

    When they stop for camp, Kim builds a fire and then Lady Abasinia produces several pods made from a material that is like both paper and metal. They expand in the heat, and when they are done, their tops burst, revealing a bowl containing a roast hen floating in herb broth along with chunks of dough and potato. Kim says she has seen similar cooking pots made out of clay, but nothing so sophisticated, and Lady Abasinia shrugs and says that she imagines the entire frontier would be using such things if not for the Cataclysm. They sleep under the stars, and in the morning continue on.

    Kim asks Lady Abasinia what her oldest memory is, and she describes pulsing colors that moved with the tide like music, and Kim has trouble following, and asks her to share her first memory of coming to Pangaea. Abasinia thinks for a moment, and then says it was eating monkey brains on the south coast. Kim looks repulsed, but her companion says that it is actually quite good, if a little rustic.

    She then recalls a cave in the land that would one day be Marhanna before the coming of the Buddhas, and a cave where each generation would paint the walls with their own dreams and histories, and after a thousand generations, they were all melded together into an impossibly rich tapestry.

    Kim thinks for a moment and then says it sounds beautiful, and maybe they could visit it on their next trip. Abasinia sighs and asks if Kim has ever heard of Aquaria.

    Kim shakes her head, and is told that it is supposedly a silver city rising from the southern ocean. It was built long ago by the Triamantes, and it was said that the three-eyed ones’ philosopher-kings knew of many secret concepts that were entirely unknown to the outside world. But then, when they lost the favor of The Prince of Tides, they decided to hide the city from their own heirs, lest they see their culture desecrated by their cyclops children.

    Kim asks if The Prince of Tides is a child of Poseidon, and the tall woman sitting across from her says that the two entities are in fact one and the same. When Kim asks why the three-eyed ones would have such a harsh reaction to their children, Lady Abasinia says that humans are not so different, for do they not always scorn their own offspring for talking or dressing differently or listening to the wrong music or reading the wrong books? Many even forbid them from marrying outsiders or immigrating to new lands in a vain attempt to keep their culture pure.
    She shakes her head and chides herself for referring to humans like an outsider. She needs to stop building dams and recognize that she is part of the world rather than an outside observer.

    Two days later, they reach the crystalline spires.

    They are a sort of mineral that Kim has never seen before, and which emits a strange song that she can hear on both a physical and spiritual level. Even stranger, she can feel magical energy flowing between them, changing slightly at each turn.

    Lady Abasinia seems to be uninterested in the spires, but rather enjoys watching Kim interact with them.

    Kim tries to talk to the stones, but gets only strange music in turn. It takes her a full day to realize that the music is a language, and puts her mind to work learning it.

    Kim discovers that the spires, called The Scoria, were sang into existence by an ancient avian race that are the ancestors of the coatls of Masaria. They are structures, although inaccessible from the ground, and the upper levels contain hollowed areas to be used as nests. They are also repositories of information, and serve to channel ley lines and manipulate the mystical energies of the Earth itself.

    Kim learns of their history, and about how they were abandoned eons ago when the manargus, to whom the avians could apparently speak to, blamed The Scoria for creating the Dead Lands; for the once verdant jungle was turning into desert. The coatl explained that they were instead bleeding corruptive energy away from Mount Krackenrock in the south, but the manargus didn’t believe it, and the coatl abandoned The Scoria rather than risking battle, for if the Scoria were destroyed, it could have torn Pangaea open and let something horrible in.

    The full purpose of the Scoria is beyond her, but they seem to have something to do with redirecting and subtly influencing the resonance of Ley Lines.

    Kim finishes her study with loads of new knowledge about the history, language, and culture of the Avians and their Coatl descendants. She has also learned many of the secrets of their stone singing, and in time hopes she can figure out how to apply it to her own crafts.

    They spend their last night before heading back to Basewater lying on a bluff above a beach under the night sky. Kim doesn’t go near the water, for she imagines it to be full of monsters.
    She is in the midst of telling Lady Abasinia about one of her early adventures when the blue-haired changeling interrupts, asking her for the name of the woman whom Kim never mentions but is still at the heart of all of her stories.

    After a moment of silence, Kim replies, “Sara. It means princess in Atlantean.”

    After a long pause, Kim asks, “Why do you say you need to stop building dams?”

    “Lie back and tell me what you see?” Abasinia responds.

    “The burning remnants of 10,000 noble souls,” Kim answers while staring up at the glittering night sky.

    “I see only pain and loss. Understand that, and I mean this quite literally, the stars are not right. I have wandered the Pangea so long, that even the constellations have changed. And it is terrifying. There is nothing left of the world I knew, and I find myself ever a stranger, an alien in a world that has moved on.”

    Kim responds with sympathy, but Lady Abasinia responds only with advice.

    “You need to learn to free your mind. Your search for knowledge, for truth, only binds you to a single existence. It is far better to understand that the world is made from limitless possibilities and subjective realities. Not only does this give you more avenues for achieving your own goals, but it also makes you more resilient and better able to weather assaults on your own foundations.”

    “That’s good advice.”

    The ride back to Base Water is faster and less eventful, mostly in dreamlike silence.
    It is late when they arrive. After saying their goodbyes, Kim staggers into the barracks and falls asleep almost immediately on a bunk that doesn’t seem nearly as hard as on her previous visit. In the morning, she buys the next ticket out of there, eager to meet the rest of her team at Price Town for their next adventure.


    A short session designed to shake the dust off after our six month hiatus and remind everyone where they were. Each player got a short bit that focused on their character and started then in the direction of acquiring legendary skills.

    Two points of conflict:

    One, after having messed up the reward structure in the first act, I told everyone before the hiatus to spend all of their money and use all of their consumables because I would be resetting wealth. When I did, the players still complained about me "robbing them" and "punishing those among them who were better with their money" despite the fact that everyone made a hefty profit in the changeover. It seems like every game I run into conflict with players who want to hoard their money to their own detriment.

    Second, Krystal stealing Feur's pendant and selling it is not something the system is really designed to handle. She has a character flaw whereby she demands a reward for everything she does. The way flaws work is that they give people a floating reroll when they put them at a disadvantage. But in Feur's case, he would be at a permanent disadvantage, which would outweigh any one time reroll. I resolved it by saying she had to sell it back to Feur, and that he would gain a number of rerolls based on how much he paid, but I am still not sure if that was the right call. Thoughts on how you would handle it?
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Spoiler: Chapter Eleven: The Glowing Marsh
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    September 1114

    The mercenaries, sans Kim, are gathered by Valentine, who has managed to acquire a contract from Conrad Heart, the owner of a local burlesque. The group meets with the middle-aged halfling in a parlor above his club, where the short paunchy man graciously provides them with tea and muffins as he explains their task.

    Long ago, he was a treasure-hunter and adventure seeker, not altogether different from the mercenaries he sees before him. Treasure hunting was lucrative in those days; with the Cataclysm in the recent past, competition was low and the best ruins were still unexplored. Still, it was dangerous work, and once he started to slow down, he was glad to use his found fortune to buy his club and settle down.

    He kept in touch with his old companions, those who survived, including a druid named Emilian. She used to stop by every few months to say hello and help him out with things like making sure none of his girls caught pregnant, but he hasn’t seen her in over a year.

    Conrad offers a bag of gold if they can find Emilian and verify her whereabouts. If she is in danger, he will provide hazard pay should they bring her back safe and sound, and if she has passed on, he would like to give her a proper burial.

    She was a human woman, short and slender, with long blonde hair going white with age. She is, of course, a potent primalist. She was last seen studying the strange ecology in the fungal swamps that have bloomed in the wake of the Cataclysm at the place where the Amber Flow enters the Wasteland.

    They do not tarry long. Leaving Harijan behind to handle their affairs, they pile into Zara’s juggernaut and begin a slow trundle south. Quincy regretfully leaves his horse behind; it is too cramped for livestock in the vehicle, and though Esper can outrun the conveyance, the noble steed cannot match its endless endurance.

    The group heads south along the river. They travel further than they ever have before, far enough south to see the fog-shrouded spires of Livonia’s fortress at Avarus on the far side of the river. They pass the walled cathedral city of Gollanthor, fortified in the Canyon Lands guarding the source of the Amber Flow as well as the last vestiges of the Imperial priesthood that survived the Cataclysm.

    They decide not to enter, Krystal likely wouldn’t be welcome, and instead, cross the river at night and follow its southern fork down into the desert.

    There they travel along the ruins of Imperial highways, raised concrete that still stands in the arid climate. In Price Town, the southernmost train station in the region, they meet up with Kim, fresh from her trip to the Scoria in the west.

    Some days later, the reunited companions approach the marsh itself. A massive fen, a hundred leagues across, with an ecology unlike any found elsewhere in Pangea. Few plants grow here, but algae and fungus dominate, and gigantic mushrooms, many larger than trees, fill the skyline and shade the region. The animals are primarily insects, jellyfish, and things that have no names, and clouds of luminous creatures that might be fireflies dance in the misty haze.
    With no better course of action, the group plunges in. They leave Zara with the juggernaut, for it will sink in the sodden ground, and the former dwarf is not eager to feed the hordes of mosquitos that must live within.

    As they cast about, Anani is entranced by light dancing deep within one of the ponds that lie along the path of the Amber Flow. It is likely caused by some sort of luminous bacteria within, but as she studies it, something also studies her.

    Quincy notices the smell, one of the most pungent he has ever known, like ripe fruit left to molder all summer long. He looks up, drawing his rifle with almost superhuman quickness as he does, the barrel an extension of his eyes. He fires without thinking.

    A creature has been stalking Anani, a great scaled beast like a giant hairless lion, with long mutant claws. It vaguely reminds him of the Mishipeshu water panthers of his homeland, but it is not one of them. It pounces the same instant that he fires, and though his aim is true, it is not deterred by the hole in its chest.

    The monster sinks its teeth into the back of Anani’s neck and begins to shake furiously. She feels the pressure but not the pain.

    Kim reacts next, bashing the beast about the head with her meteor hammer, and it is dazed, dropping its treat and backing towards the indistinct shoreline. Krystal takes a shortcut though the hellscape to cut it off, and though she could have dealt the finishing blow, she hesitates, unsure about coming in to flank the creature once she sees the wicked bony claws hooking from the back of the cat’s elbows. It disappears into the water and is gone.

    Anani isn’t hurt too badly, although she isn’t able to properly treat her wounds due to the location of the injuries.

    Not long after they get moving, Quincy finds signs of humanoids having passed this was, and they follow the trail.

    That night they camp in the gloom and the damp. It is too wet to get a fire going, and there is little to burn. They sleep in the muck, although Krystal instead spends the night on the cap of a giant mushroom some distance away.

    She is too far away to notice the ultra-stealthy intruders who invade their camp in the dark of the night. They quietly disarm the travelers, who are woken by the clanking sound of someone trying to spool Kim’s endless chain.

    Disarmed and disoriented, they are led back to their kidnapper’s domicile. Several buildings standing on chalk pillars, the walls and floors made from dried chitin.

    Once Krystal notices, she follows along at a distance, never fully uncloaking herself, and preparing to fight to free her friends.

    Once within, the attackers remove their ceremonial spirit masks and reveal the faces of humanoid marsupials which Quincy immediately recognizes as hengeyokai. They likewise see the trophies hanging from his belt in the dim light, and immediately recognize him as a hunter.

    The two go back and forth, each accusing the other of being a raider and an interloper, before an older wise man calms them down.

    To break the ice, Kim asks about their spirit masks and their religion. The marsupial folk tell her that they worship their ancestors as well as their totems; Publedina, spirit of marsupials; Menoetius, spirit of the fey; and Prometheus, spirit of all humanoids.

    Kim corrects them, saying Prometheus is only the spirit of men, and his brother Epimetheus is the spirit of other mortal races, but the hengeyokai shake their heads and say they don’t know a spirit by that name. Anani adds that she has also never heard of such a god, and Valentine scoffs and says that is because there isn’t one, leaving Kim shamed and perplexed.

    They are fed oven-dried algae cakes, bland but topped with flavorful seeds, and told that it is a good thing they didn’t try lighting a fire, for the swamp is home to drifts of black mold that are drawn to flame and will steal a person’s warmth in their sleep.

    Kim asks if that is why they build their homes on chalk pillars, and is told no, that is to protect from the slime waves. When they have a breeding bloom, the swamp slimes coat and consume all organic matter in short order, then quickly die, releasing deadly heat as they decay, creating a situation not unlike a forest fire.

    Valentine explains that they are here to rescue the druid Emilian, and asks if the marsupial folk know who she is. The elder says he knows of her, but will require a test of valor before he will tell them.
    In the swamp, there lurks a monster named the Tiddalik, and if they can slay it, he will guide them on their journey.

    The group is unhappy with the proposition, but is in no position to argue. They ask what the Tiddalik is, and are told that it is unlike any animal they are familiar with, and he does not want to give them a false impression. The closest analogy he can give is a blood clot in the river; something that exists in both the physical and spiritual world.

    The next morning, the travelers are led by the tribe’s hunters into the rotting fen where the Tiddalik lives. They are given back their weapons, but as Quincy’s rifle is handed to him, the young brave pulls him close and whispers into his ear that they better not think of double-crossing them; the seeds they ate were poisoned and only the marsupial-folk know the antidote.

    They then depart into the mist.

    The monster soon comes snuffling towards heroes. It is massive, as big as a mammoth, and it looks to have at one point been some sort of huge primeval amphibian with a crocodile’s shape. But now it is covered with glowing slime, and growing in the slime are hundreds of blinking eyes. The monster's mouth reveals a dozen long hooked tentacles that may once have been tongues, and hungrily move to grapple those who dare approach.

    Quincy fires several shots into the monster’s gelatinous hide, and it sinks down into the mud to protect its sensitive flesh. When it does so, Krystal, Kim, and Feur flank the monster and tear into it.
    Though it is able to get in a few good kicks with its flabby legs, the Tiddalik dies in relatively short order and without much fanfare.

    A voice whispers to Anani that she should take its blood to the alchemist at Morton’s Watch, and she does her best to collect the cloudy fluid in a vial.

    Valentine severs one of the monster's tongues to return as proof, but even severed it continues to twitch and scream for the rest of the day.

    Upon their triumphant return, Feur tells the hengeyokai tribesman that the Tiddalik has finally croaked.

    The old shaman thanks them for their service, and explains that such monsters will become more and more common as the Wasteland grows, until the entire swamp and all of its inhabitants have become strange to themselves and spill out to devour the world.

    Kim mentions that she heard the Omukade says something similar, and the elder hengeyokai nods and says he is familiar with the centipede monsters, for they have begun intermarrying with a clan of leech folk who live deep in the swamp.

    Quincy, who has worked out a plan of attack with Krystal, asks for the antidote. The old marsupial is shocked, and then snarls at the youngster, telling him to go out and fetch fuel in the swamp while his punishment is decided. The wise old creature apologizes deeply to Quincy, and says that was just a lie made up by a hot-headed youth eager to fight.

    In truth, the Tiddalik was less of a test than was implied, for they feared that the Druid might have called it to aid her if their meeting turned hostile; and they were best having it out of the way so that it might not come up behind them while they already had their hands full.

    When asked why Emilian would summon a monstrosity to eat them, the old shaman says he doesn’t know, but her actions have been strange of late, and her grove dangerous; they dare not approach.

    Still, they wish their guests well, and give them directions to the druid, as well as a small scrying crystal which Anani can use to navigate.

    That evening, they come upon the druid’s grove. It is unique in that not only are there mushrooms here, but also trees, although they are leafless and dying, likely holdovers from a bygone era. They see no sign of the druid, but several hulking creatures meander about the grove; they have a roughly humanoid shape, but with flesh composed entirely of rotting vegetation.

    Valentine calls out to them and says they are here for the druid, and in a croaking voice the creatures respond that she is here, but they cannot take her. She is dead, but she is also alive.

    The group moves forward, and sees a pool of pinkish slime in the center of the grove. Floating within is a human skeleton which matches the description they were given of Emilian.

    Feur casts a quick spell to see the past. His vision shows Emilian sick and dying, and falling to the ground here, and he confirms that these are her remains.

    Valentine reaches out to take them, when the pink slime lashes out at her, and then rises from the pool, its tendrils carrying the skeleton about like a puppet’s strings.

    Valentine stumbles back into a large mushroom, which immediately releases a cloud of spores that burn her lungs. She coughs and shouts out a warning to her companions.

    At the same time, the creatures who wander the grove, Dweomerlings, call out for the intruders to stop, and not to take her remains. They descend upon Valentine, and in a flash Krystal is there, cutting them to pieces. However, she notices that those who survive the Black Flame Blade are somehow invigorated by its magic, their movements quickening.

    Quincy fires his rifle at the skeleton, punching a huge hole into the slimy mass and apparently wounding it. It responds by firing a beam of concentrated moonlight at him, and Anani realizes that it has somehow retained use of the druid’s magic.

    Kim takes to smashing the toadstools while Feur speeds her and Krystal to allow them to rain blows at a furious rate, and soon the grove is empty, but the druid’s bones perform another incantation, and the skeletal trees move to surround them, hedging them in. Anani works to counter the magic, but one of the trees picks her up in its branches, grabbing her ankles and attempting to tear her in two like a wishbone.

    Quincy fires several times, doing enough damage to free her, and then the rest of the group proceeds to smash the trees to splinters using a combination of bullets, blades, and Kim’s enchanted flail.

    When the grove is destroyed, they look around and realize that the trees were not alive, merely moved by the druid’s magic, and that they have taken them for foes in a panic. There is silence for a moment, and then the entire group, even Krystal, begins to laugh heartily at the situation.

    Unfortunately, their mirth is short-lived, for the squirming parasite has magically healed its wound and climbed atop a nearby clump of giant mushrooms, from whence it begins to summon a swarm of stinging insects, many of them venomous.

    Quincy again fires at it, but the creature is ready for him, and commands a towering wall of brambles to grow around him. Quincy is quick on his feet and fires while running, but when it comes to reloading on the move, his hands fail him and he jams his gun. He stops and curses as he works to clear it.

    Kim responds by summoning a powerful tremor in the earth, bringing the parasitic blob crashing down into the muck.

    Krystal immediately moves to stab it, but it wraps a tendril around her throat and pulls tight. There is a sickening crack, and Krystal is no more.

    Feur, though distracted by the insect swarm, quickly looks through the branching timelines and finds one where her injuries were not quite so bad, and knits the two realities together, restoring her to life, if not health.

    He drags her body away, though he is lashed several times in the attempt, to where Anani is treating Valentine’s wounds.

    Kim again stuns the ooze long enough for Quincy to approach, and several blasts of the sawed-off scattergun he keeps as a holdout weapon put an end to the horror, whatever it was.

    They carefully clean Emilian’s bones of the stinging pink jelly and return to Zara. It is slow going, for Krystal must forsake the hellscape and is instead dragged on a travoy.

    Several nights later they speed through the desert on their way back to civilization, the druid’s bones in tow. As they drive along the old Imperial Highway, Zara stops abruptly, noticing that the road ahead has collapsed despite being intact on the way down. As she puzzles out how to turn around on the narrow road, a bullet pierces through the juggernaut's thick walls and leaves a clean hole through the pilot’s bicep. Quincy, who had been riding shotgun, shouts for her to get down and then barrels out the vehicle’s doors, rifle in hand.
    Valentine and Anani are close behind, though Kim and Feur will take some time to awaken, and Krystal is still not in fighting shape.

    Quincy soon spies a band of six soldiers perched on an old overpass above them, hoping to use the gloom and the elevation to their advantage. He takes cover behind the vehicle and returns fire, but soon they lob hand grenades down on him and force him and his companions out into the open.

    Valentine is their first target, for she glows like a beacon, and they are using hollow-point bullets that have been blessed by Moloch, the demon god of pain. She is cut down in an instant, bleeding to death on the pavement.

    Anani conjures a winged shade from the Abyss to steal her attacker's life force, and one brave young man chooses to ignite a flash bomb in his own face, banishing the specter but also temporarily
    blinding him and his companions.

    While they are stunned, Kim has finally awakened and appraised the situation, and conjures a localized earthquake, shaking and crumbling the overpass upon which their ambushers stand. Two of them tumble over the edge; one is killed on impact, and the other is shot out of the sky by Quincy and doesn’t even live to hit the ground.

    Once her enemies have recovered their footing and assessed the situation, their leader aims his heavy rifle at Kim and fires once, cleanly puncturing her heavy armor and piercing her heart. With the last of her will before blacking out, Kim uses the staff of Noboru to grant Anani complete invulnerability to bullets.

    With her newfound protection, the shadow witch climbs atop the juggernaut and using her own powers augmented by the Bloodstone Pendant rips the life forces out of each the attackers' bodies and transfers them into the wounded forms of her companions, ending the threat with a stark finality.

    A moment later the companions stand surveying the scene, and Quincy notices the glint of a spyglass on the horizon. He takes aim and prepares to shoot their observer, when Feur stops him and offers to take care of it, summoning one of the Hounds of Tindalos to track down its source and freeze him in time.

    Following the hound, the group finds a young man in the armor of the Black Scar Mercenary Corps, festooned with explosives, and stuck in stasis. Kim wants to tie him up, Quincy wants to shoot him,
    Krystal wants to sever his hands and feet, and Anani wants to send him into the Abyss, where every moment of sensory deprivation feels like an eternity, and then drag him back unable to tell the difference between pleasure and pain.

    In the end, Valentine decides to try talking to him, and learns that they were hired by Trade Prince Valen and given a dossier about his opponents and their routes. He says that they were hard to track down, playing the trick of sending Kim out to Base Water and then immediately heading back for Price Town, but Valen spent a lot of money on informants. Not that it mattered.

    He introduces himself as Jeremy Butler, an expert demolitionist, and explains that they won’t see him again, and if they take him back to the Sonata offices in Golgotha, they will be paid a fair ransom. Though he will probably get his walking papers after bungling such a straightforward ambush.

    Valentine asks what he will do next, and he shrugs and says find work in some other warband. Sensing an opportunity, Valentine produces a contract and asks him to sign on to their team.

    Among the fallen mercenaries’ belongings is a bandolier of bullets which radiate magical energy which Anani can sense. She sees that they are inscribed with magical runes that allow them to pierce any armor, which explains how they were able to so easily harm Zara and Kim. She tosses them to Quincy for later use.

    Before they return to Golgotha, Krystal and Feur both experience an odd sickness, numbness in their torsos with shooting nerve pains down their extremities, and the group decides to stop in Gollanthor after all.

    Anani finds a squirming mass growing on their brainstems, and is forced to remove it surgically. She exposes a small cnidarian parasite growing there, and it fights her when she goes to remove it, but in the end, she manages to excise it without incident, placing them in sealed jars for future study. She theorizes that this is the larval form of the same pink slime that infected Emilian before killing her and marionetting her corpse.

    While in the cathedral city, Kim searches the old archives of the Imperial Archeological Society and finds that there has apparently never been a god called Epimetheus despite her memories to the contrary. She wonders if this is a strange side effect of jumping timelines in the Wasteland, but is unsure what could cause such cosmic metamorphosis.

    While her patients convalesce, Anani takes a trip to the nearby town of Morton’s Watch, finding the alchemist who lives there and delivering the jar of phosphorescent goo. He is suspicious of the unasked-for gift, and the priestesses’ elusive manner does nothing to dissuade him, but he still accepts the mysterious ichor.

    Upon returning to Golgotha, the weary warriors are paid for their troubles by Conrad, who is saddened by the loss but not exactly surprised. They are invited to the wake which is held in his club, and allowed to drink away their troubles while they anticipate their next mission.


    Decent session.

    We had our first real PC death, even though it was reversed a round later.

    The bit where the party decided that the trees were all living creatures and spent several minutes smashing the scenery ended up being an uproariously funny moment and probably the biggest laugh of the campaign, but such a thing could have very easily gone the other way and ended up a GM horror story.

    So far we are 11 sessions in and have had 1 failed mission, so we are well on track for my typical 93% success rate.
    Last edited by Talakeal; 2022-05-10 at 12:09 AM.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    I'd hoped to have an update for you tonight, but unfortunately another round of illness has swept through my group. Hopefully I will see you all in 2 weeks!
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Ah, glad to see more of the ongoing story. I've been following the whole campaign for some time. Nice to see that play has resumed; and that you've managed to cut down on the horror :P
    A neat custom class for 3.5 system
    http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94616

    A good set of benchmarks for PF/3.5
    https://rpgwillikers.wordpress.com/2...y-the-numbers/

    An alternate craft point system I made for 3.5
    http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...t-Point-system

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    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Thanks!

    Good to know someone is reading; sometimes I feel like I am just scrawling into the void with these things.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

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    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Spoiler: Chapter Twelve: The Eye of the Deep (Part One)
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    October 1114

    Late one evening, the mercenaries are gathered together in an upscale café to meet with Lady Abasinia. As they snack on cappuccino and biscotti, she explains to them that an ancient merrow city lies beneath the village of Plum Tree upon the Tethys Sea. It has been abandoned for millennia, but recently a tribe of vores have taken up residence within. They are normally harmless, but have recently come under the influence of a sea-hag who is attempting to awaken the Eye of the Deep, an old bio-weapon left over from the Mesozoic wars. Should it escape into the open ocean and spawn, it could disrupt shipping across the entire Tethys Sea.

    If they defeat or drive off the sea-witch, she will pay standard mercenary rates, plus a heft bonus if they also manage to destroy the Eye of the Deep or lull it back to sleep.
    Feur jokes and says it is a good thing they are going after a see-witch, for he would hate to fight one who was invisible.

    Krystal, on the other hand, complains bitterly about how little they are getting paid compared to how much money they will be saving the shipping industry. Abasinia, who doesn’t seem to pick up on what she Krystal saying, says that she likes them and is therefore giving them the first crack at the assignment in lieu of hiring more expensive agents.

    Anani asks how they woke up the monster, and Abasinia responds that she imagines the hag likely tormented it by giving it bad dreams. Much the same as how the Lady would eventually learn of her scheme.

    Valentine wants to know how to find the place, and is given coordinates and told that while there are numerous undersea caves that open onto it, they are all guarded and inaccessible to land-walkers, and she is to seek out a small pool on the bluffs for their entrance.

    Quincy asks if there is anything else the group should know, and Lady Abasinia tells them that while she can’t give any specifics about the layouts or the inhabitants, she has never visited the place herself, portions of the complex are flooded and the group will need to prepare accordingly.

    Also, she doesn’t think there are any shoggoths there, but if there are, run. The mercenaries are no match for one, especially underwater.

    As Valentine rushes out to buy potions and bullets and to look into explosives that will detonate underwater, Lady Abasinia bids Kim stay a moment and help her with her hair, for she has a gala to attend and doesn’t have time to summon her servants.

    Deciding that time is of the essence, they depart by train the next morning. Plum Tree is a small village on the shores of the Tethys Sea. It is far closer to Nightholm than Dungenus, but the Warlord Balthazar has more resources and is thus able to keep it out of Apollyon’s hands.

    Before they arrive, Valentine pulls Feur aside and tells him she has a bad feeling about this assignment, and asks him to prepare a spell to turn back time if things go horribly wrong. He spends several hours in his compartment studying the scroll of eons and performing meditative rituals, eventually creating a special rune that will do as she asks.

    After a long day of travel, the group rests at a cozy bed and breakfast overlooking the ocean. It is run by Uriah, a plump middle-aged woman who is raising her late brother’s daughter. For dinner, they are served Plum Stew, which tastes a bit like boiled cranberry sauce with root vegetables floating in it. When asked, Uriah tells her guests that it is a concoction she invented trying to replicate the taste of plums, for visitors expect a town named Plum Tree to have plum orchards, despite the fact that the name is actually a native word that, when translated into Terran, means something like gateway to the forest country.

    They ask her about local rumors, and she tells them that three children have gone missing, and the mercenaries surmise that this is probably the work of the vores, and that while the town doesn’t know about them yet, the monsters will likely abduct many more people before long if they aren’t wiped out.

    The most interesting thing going on in town is that the local fishermen are putting together a pot hoping to attract whalers interested in hunting a special prize. A massive mosasaur they have named Bertha entered their harbor when it was younger, and has now grown too fat to leave. Soon, it will devour all other fish in the bay, turn aggressive, and then starve to death, its rotting flesh fouling the waters.

    In the morning they set out to the coordinates they were given, exploring the grassy bluffs, the sea breeze ruffling their hair and clothes. They find the pool, remarkably clear and with sides coated in thick saltwater vegetation, beams of sunlight disappearing into its depths. Valentine goes to distribute the elixirs of water breathing she purchased, but finds the bag empty. Feur looks back in time to see who removed them, but finds nothing; it appears the potions were never in the bag, even though Valentine clearly remembers packing them. Even more curious, the money she recalls spending to buy them is still in her purse.

    After a moment spent fretting and cursing the mystery, and debating returning to Golgotha to resupply, Valentine gives the order to dive in without.

    It is a deep hole which leads into a muddy twisting tunnel, but not un-traversable. Only Kim struggles to pass through, weighted down by her armor and chain, and when she is finally pulled out by Krystal, she is gasping and has nearly passed out from fatigue and lack of air.

    The corridors they enter slant oddly, as if their builders feared right angles. The stone is slimy, and the light which reflects off of it is distorted into unearthly colors. After catching their breath, the group wanders a while, until they came to a junction that is guarded by a quartet of hideous creatures that can only be the vore.

    These are truly monsters, even more repugnant than the omukudae, with a tauric body, heads like lampreys, legs like spears of bone, and long flexible arms that resemble a flayed spinal column. Their flesh is pale and slimy, with webs of blue veins visible beneath. Krystal wonders where such things came from, for they surely aren’t natural.

    They do not hesitate in attacking, wielding odds metal rods with jagged edges. Two of them move to the front, to engage Kim and Feur, while two climb across the walls to strike at the back ranks. Feur strikes one solidly with a fist that hums with the power of justice and leaves a deep bruise, but does not stop the monster that spears his calf with its own bony leg. Kim is bowled over, and her attacker attempts to brutally crush her under its weight.

    The pair on the walls lunge at Valentine, but Quincy makes quick work of one with his rifle while Anani drains the life from the other with her bloodstone pendant.

    Krystal moves through the hellscape to flank her foes, but as she reemerges, she slips on the slimy floor. She catches herself by burying her sword in the monster’s belly, and as she slides down the path, she splits it apart, a flood of shiny black worms spilling from its guts. The group looks down at them, and surmises that these must be larva ripped from a pregnant female, but the truth is far more disturbing.

    They move down the guarded path, wandering the twisting corridors of this ancient sunken city until they have travelled so far that they must actually be beneath the ocean floor. They finally come to a large roughly square chamber with runes covering its walls. It is the first room they have seen with proper angles, which makes its slight asymmetry somehow even more disconcerting. The walls and ceiling are porous, and the sandy floor is covered in waist-deep water.

    As they wade across, the water forms up into a hulking wave, animated by some spiritual force that Anani recognizes as an elemental. She opens her mouth to call out, but it is upon her, forcing its briny body down her throat and filling her lungs.

    Feur and Kim move to help her, when a throbbing pain fills Feur’s legs. He cries out and looks down to see that he had disturbed a large fish that was hiding in the sand, its body covered in long venomous spines. Kim acts quickly, casting an incantation that banishes all sand from the room, revealing a half dozen of the carnivorous animals.

    Valentine orders Krystal and Quincy to dispatch the aquatic beasts, while Kim and Feur continue trying to get the water elemental’s attention. Unfortunately, their weapons simply pass through its liquid body. Kim finally manages to pull Anani away from it, and the spirit responds by bashing her into the ceiling with the force of a waterspout and then falling upon her like a riptide.

    Once Anani has finally cleared her lungs enough to speak, she blesses the rest of the group’s weapons, and they are able to strike at the elemental spirit animating the water and drive it off. When they fish Kim out of the water, she is battered and bedraggled, looking like a drowned rat.

    She shrugs off their offers to aid her, and instead begins to study the glyphs on the walls. The merrow script is odd, starting at the center point and then spiraling outward. They all feel a sense of déjà vu, they have seen writing like this before, but can’t remember exactly where. Kim does her best to take rubbings with her waterlogged gear, and is confident in time she will be able to decipher this, and maybe even publish a guide on translating ancient merrow into Terran.

    Meanwhile, Anani gets to work harvesting the dragon-fish venom.

    There are two exits to the room, one leads down, the stairs looking like a slow-running waterfall, and the other heads up. Quincy listens closely, and can hear high-pitched moans coming from that direction, and the group decides to head up that way, thinking it might be the missing children they heard about the previous evening.

    They instead find a deep well, with a pair of hulking undines standing guard over it. These enormous crustaceans resemble bipedal sand crabs, and are known to be used as loyal guardians by many of the less savory peoples of Pangaea. The mercenaries do not bother trying to converse or intimidate them, and soon they know the crack of Quincy’s rifle.

    During the battle, a lone vore, older and craftier than the rest, clambers out of the well and up onto the ceiling. It scuttles above them, and then lashes out at Anani, using an odd multi-angled surgical tool to cut deep into her arm, severing the artery, which gushes a prodigious amount of blood.

    Her attacker then moves back out of reach, but unluckily for him, the stone he climbs atop, which has perched there for seven hundred millennia, finally decides to let go. The old torturer crashes to the ground, pinned under the rubble, and Krystal makes short work of him.

    His insectile guardians are driven into a rage at his death, and must be put down. Feur gracefully avoids their crushing claws while Kim bashes their heads in with the heavy steel head of her meteor
    hammer, and Anani drains the last bits of their life force to close the gash on her arm.

    At the bottom of the pit lies what appears to be a humanoid dolphin. They are going to drop a rope for him, but then decide that he must weigh over twenty stone, and looks to be badly injured, and instead lower Anani to his side, though she is not happy about it. She does her best to treat his wounds, most of which look like they were caused by dehydration.

    After the companions haul both them from the pit, the dolphin person thanks them for his assistance. He introduces himself by a pair of squeaking sounds that his rescuers are unable to interpret; the closest they can come is calling him Kiki. He tells them that he is a prince of the Cellunial, keepers of the sacred grottos, and that the vore were torturing him for information about how to open the sea gate which will allow them access to the open ocean, but so far he has been resolute.

    Anani asks if he knows how to put the Eye of the Deep back to sleep but, unfortunately, they lack enough common ground to pool their alchemical knowledge.

    In gratitude, Kiki takes them to an ancient place where the merrow grew crystalline coral, hoping they can sell it on the surface, and then tells them the way to the Sea Hag’s temple before departing to rally his people.

    The temple has an almost normal architecture, with broad marble walls and numerous statues, fountains, columns, and burning braziers that look to have been looted from ancient Atlantean outposts, or perhaps even the fallen kingdom itself.

    The side walls house alcoves with ancient tombs, art objects, and flowers, as well as spiraling stairs leading deeper into the merrow city. The far side of the temple drops below the water, its stairs creating an artificial beach with rolling waves, and floating atop these waves is an enormous pearlescent clam.

    As they approach, the clam opens, revealing the most beautiful woman any of them have ever seen, the very image of Aphrodite born from the sea. She begins to sing a lovely song that mesmerizes her guests, and before they realize what is happening, they find themselves surrounded by a small army of vores drawn by the sound.

    Feur shouts for Quincy to shoot her, but he is ignored, and then the vore fall upon them.

    Anani summons a pair of shades to defend her, and they manage to hold off the vore, but she does not notice when Quincy puts his sawed-off scattergun to the back of her head and pulls the trigger.
    Krystal manages to wade out into the water and engage the siren, but the clam closes tight, and even the enchanted blade cannot pierce its shell, especially considering that Krystal’s sword arm is still atrophied from the surgery to remove the parasites she picked up in the fungal swamps.

    Kim does her best to keep their attackers away from Valentine, but is slowly overwhelmed.

    Feur centers himself and uses his defensive martial arts to deftly dodge his enemies’ blows, but his companions are dying all around him, and just before Valentine is cut down, she tells him to activate the rune.

    He nods, and speaks the secret words of command, turning back the clock and reversing the flow of time, until he stands with his companions on the steps of the ancient sunken temple, pondering how best to avoid the mistakes of the past and write a new destiny.


    This was a strage session. Not bad per se, but off.

    Sarah and Johnny both missed the session due to illness, and both Bob and myself were out of it due to lack of sleep.

    Everyone was off their game. And the elemental fight beat the tar out of the PCs, as nobody could remember, either in or out of character, how to actually hurt an elemental.

    When it became obvious they were going to lose the last fight and Feur turned back time, nobody much felt like playing the last fight over again or doing the required math, so we decided to call it for the night and wait until the full group was present and better rested.

    I also had one of the strangest player interactions in a while. During the conversation with Abasinia at the start of the session, Brian asked us to hold on and then began digging through the rule book. After about ten minutes, I asked him if it couldn't wait until after the conversation, and he said no. Then ten minutes later he closed the book and announced a shopping list of items. When I reminded him that we were still in the middle of a dialogue scene, he announced "Oh. Well since she is done talked, we all leave and go shopping".

    Not sure what that was about. It was just weird. Although it might take the narrative in a different direction in the long run... this remains to be seen.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  8. - Top - End - #8
    Pixie in the Playground
     
    HalflingRogueGuy

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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Is it possible the player realized that there was going to be a shopping montage and got excited - I know that I have had players get hooked an an unexpected aspect of a PC -> NPC conversation and essentially lose the plot of the discussion because their focus shifts to whatever they got hooked on.

    The seemingly blatant dismissal when being reminded does seem odd, but maybe they just really misinterpreted what was going on?

  9. - Top - End - #9
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    And Covid has struck my gaming group. So I guess we are once again on hiatus. Sigh.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  10. - Top - End - #10
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Games back on!

    Spoiler: Chapter Twelve - Part Two
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    Time rewinds itself, slowly at first and then gaining speed, until they are back on the steps of the temple. Only Valentine has any memory of what has transpired. She is disoriented by the flood of alien memories, and does her best to recount the events of the aborted timeline to her companions, who are themselves distressed by her sudden change in demeanor.

    This time, the team puts up spells of protection, the strongest of which being Kim using her enchanted staff to render her companions completely invulnerable to the blades of the vore. Anani also calls forth a pair of elder shades from the Abyss.

    They rush down into the temple, taking its defenders by surprise. Krystal, Feur, Quincy, and the shades strike down many vores before they can react, guided by Anani and Valentine. Kim tries to make a break for it, pushing past the strange blades that bounce harmlessly off her skin and armor. Siren song again fills the city, but before any of its inhabitants can be drawn to it, Kim commands four of the massive columns that hold up the ceiling to lurch outwards, crashing into the side staircases and burying them in the rubble.

    Kim tries to move onward, but one of the vore forces her to the ground with a clothesline to the face, and then another leaps upon her knocking the wind out of her. At the same time, one climbs across the ceiling and drops upon Valentine, and the two of them scuffle in a dusty corner of the temple.

    A moment later, a huge Undine burrows out of the rubble that was once a staircase. Quincy is quick to react to the beast, and recognizes the marks of a tamed guardian. He holds out his hand in a gesture of dominance and friendship, and the large crustacean monster stops, staring at him passively as if awaiting a treat.

    Anani's shades move to assist Kim, and once she is again on her feet, Feur uses a ritual chant that speeds her personal flow of time, allowing her to easily outdistance her pursuers. Once she reaches the edge of the water and views the Sea Hag reclining within the shell of a gigantic clam, the very image of Aphrodite. The abjurer summons up an earthen maw, causing the stones beneath the surf to open up and swallow it whole into a tidal vortex before closing up again and burying her body, but also freeing her spirit from its fleshy prison.

    A moment later, a massive clockwork scorpion lurches out of the surf. None of the mercenaries have ever seen anything like it; and they do not know if it is some artifice or the merrow, a relic of lost Atlantis, or something born in the forges of Avarus. A meter-wide glass gyroscope is Perched atop the metal arachnid's tail in place of a stinger.

    When Quincy looks at the globe, he sees the most beautiful woman he has ever imagined trapped within. He suddenly imagines rescuing her, marrying her, and settling down to a peaceful life by the sea where he can put all the violence and horror behind him. But a sudden intrusive thought weighs on him; he knows that if his companions still live, it is only a matter of time before they come to him for aid and drag him back in. If he is ever to truly be free, he must kill them all.

    Quincy turns and empties his rifle into the melee, hitting his allies and their vore antagonists alike. The shots are rapid and poorly aimed, most do little more than flesh wounds, but one strikes Anani in the head, taking her down instantly.

    Valentine moves to help her, but is suddenly overcome by a wave of tranquility and slips into a deep sleep filled with pleasant dreams.

    Krystal sees the sudden betrayal and does not question it; in her mind, it was always inevitable. She jumps into the hellscape and emerges behind Quincy. Though he is protected from blades, the corona of magical energy that surrounds her rapier punches a clean hole through his chest, and he crumples to the floor. But when he does, the Undine he held at bay goes into a rampage, and Krystal responds by dropping a smoke bomb and disappearing into the shadows.

    The creature is now confused, and moves over the Anani’s fallen form. Dead or dying, it matters little, as the creature begins to tear her body into bloody chunks and devour them greedily.

    Kim moves to combat the mechanical scorpion, but it catches her in a steel pincher, squeezing her tight and then tossing her into a pillar. The stone does its best to avoid breaking her back, but she is still knocked senseless by the impact.

    When Feur moves to help her, he is struck by a sudden manic urge to beat his own face. He recognizes the presence of foreign magic, and calls upon his training to still his mind. It works, but while he is in such a meditative state he is unable to intervene in the grizzly scene that is before him while the undine continues its banquet.

    Anani’s shades move to attack the scorpion, but without a life force to drain the best they can do is chill the metal and weaken its structure.

    Krystal darts forward, onto the scorpion’s back, where it struggles to grasp her, and attempts to pierce the gyroscope, which she assumes is some sort of control panel. But even the Black Flame blade is unable to puncture the transparent material that makes up the sphere.

    Feur, having shaken off the spell, moves to engage the undine. He is too late to save Anani, but he can still use his superior techniques to avenge her, toppling the massive brute.

    Then, suddenly, ropes of black shadow appear about her blade, guiding it, but not in any direction that a human mind could interpret. It passes through the dome and sizzles as it enters the salty water and tears into something within.

    Then, a tear in the spirit world opens up around Valentine, and she wakes from her sleep. She looks around, vaguely sensing the hollow around her, and she flits quickly, dragging Kim and Quincy into the magical rift and pouring all the tonics she has into their throats.

    Kim rises to her feet, stepping forward and lashing out with the endless chain. The gyroscope shatters, the scorpion falls still for a brief moment, and Krystal dismounts.

    But then the clockwork behemoth surges toward Valentine in a simpler, but far more ferocious, manner. Kim, thinking quickly, wraps one end of her chain around its tail and the other around one of the remaining support columns, and, its structure already weakened by the shades, it pulls itself apart in its simple-minded attempt to crush the half-angel.

    At that moment, Quincy comes around, and he spies the true form of the sea hag, a creature from a nightmare floating just out of reach. He raises his rifle and fires. His shot is true, and the interloper is banished from our world.

    Anani is dead, and their companions are tired and wounded. Valentine does her best to bind their wounds, but she is no surgeon.

    At the same time, Krystal deftly picks through the remains of the mechanical scorpion, plucking out a sheet of strange-looking metal covered in tiny grooves. She doesn’t know what it does, but knows it is worth a fortune to the right buyer.

    With the sea hag vanquished, most want to return to Golgotha and bury their companion. But Valentine convinces them that the Eye of the Deep is still down there, and now that it is awake, it is only a matter of time before someone lets it out. Some are swayed by virtue, others by greed and promises of Abasinia’s coin, and some are not convinced at all. But the group presses on to investigate the horror that lies in the black water beyond the temple.

    The seawater extends outwards, fed from the open ocean but blocked off by an immense gate. The chamber is about a hundred paces across, with rounded stair steps descending down into the water, the bottom lost to darkness. Quincy is in no shape to swim, not that he trusts his gun to fire when wet, and sets up a sniper’s nest on the furthest promontory of dry floor.

    Krystal quietly slips into the water, swimming forward and scouting the darkness with her devil’s sight. She can make out the ancient biological weapon. Immobile, it is covered in a thick shell. Its body is composed of a huge central eye, with a pair of long crab-like pincers and a pair of small antennas emerging from the top. Each of these antenna projects a cone of bioluminescence, like powerful searchlights in the deep.

    Floating around the beast are a dozen small leathery eyes, each about the size of a child’s ball. They do not appear to be connected to the main creature, and the party theorizes that they are its spawn. In reality, they are both spawn and appendage, but the vessels that anchor them to the main body are not located in this realm, but in a nearby dimension perceptible only in the insane calculus of the merrow.

    They debate setting up a winch and buying powerful hooks and chains to haul the creature ashore, but they lack the engineering skills or the materials. Instead, Valentine guides them, and uses her angelic halo to cast light as she circles about over the water.

    Quincy lights several grenades and tosses them far out into the water just before they explode, rousing the Eye of the Deep from its eons of torpor.

    As it moves toward him, his three companions enter the water, weapons drawn, but they are soon rocked by powerful sonar pulses which emerge from the halo of small eyes that swirl about the monstrosity. Their bones are fractured and they bleed from their eyes and noses as they are disoriented.

    Feur hauls himself from the water and instead focuses his magic on speeding up Quincy while he reloads and takes aim, carefully popping each of the smaller eyes with his rifle.
    As Kim and Krystal engage the monster, she uses her staff to protect herself from soundwaves. It grasps her in its claws, attempting to drown her and knock her weapon from her hands, and if not for the locking rings on her gauntlets it would have been lost forever in the depths below.

    As Krystal moves to finish off the last eyes, she notices that more are appearing; blinking into existence all around her! The creature is somehow regenerating its lost satellite weapons, and she instead turns toward its main body, swimming behind it and gouging it with the black flame blade.

    It is a ferocious battle in the churning seawater, but eventually, Krystal is able to slay the beast while its attention is focused on drowning Kim. At the same time, Feur, Valentine, and Quincy work together to shoot out any of the smaller eyes before they can locate Krystal and tear her to pieces by converging their deadly harmonics.

    When the abomination finally dies, or is at least cut into enough pieces that it is no longer a threat, Krystal and Feur drag Kim to the stairs, her armored body too much for her to bear alone in her exhausted and half-drowned state. Valentine plays spotter for Quincy as he uses the last of his ammunition to pick off the few eyes that survived and move to hide below the range of his guns, lest they one day mature into full-size creatures like unto their sire.

    They gather up what is left of Anani and her possessions, interring the former in a sepulcher by the sea.

    Krystal and Quincy don’t speak of the incident, but they have a newfound understanding of one another.

    Valentine elects to stay in Plum Tree while the group heals their wounds, but also puts out the word that their group is looking for a new priest or medic.

    Quincy makes a deal with a local butcher to split the reward money for slaying Bertha the mosasaur in exchange for buckets of offal. He takes these to the docks, along with numerous bottles of spirits. After many long midnight confessions, tossing food to the beast while telling it of his troubles, the beast comes to recognize the sound of Quincy’s voice and to associate it with foot.

    Once Quincy has fully earned the sea monster’s trust, Kim performs a ritual to part the mouth of the bay, temporarily holding itself wide open while Quincy directs the serpentine creature back to the freedom of the open sea. Kim then ends her magic and releases the stone, allowing it to resume its natural shape to detour pirates, raiders, and deep-sea predators from venturing into the peaceful cove.


    For those who are curious or confused and are familiar with D&D, merrow resemble Illithid, undines resemble umber hulks, and vores resemble neogi, and the sea hag is an extra planar creature from the realm of dreams that more resembles a night hag. Also, while Anani is dead, the dark force that guided her endured and continued to assist the party.

    Boy, after our long break we were super unfocused, took the entire day just to get through two encounters.

    The players struggled a lot on this one, even with rewinding time and for-knowledge. I think a lot of it has to do with the reinforcement mechanics, as the group's normal strategy is very defensive, bunkering down and letting the enemies come to them, which doesn't work when you have an entire city worth of potential reinforcements to keep ahead of.

    First actual PC death. Krystal could have prevented it, but I think Bob was looking forward to some PvP, and I think he regrets not finishing off Quincy.

    The players are still kind of annoying me in that they still put all of their money into hoarding consumables they never actually use rather than upgrading their equipment. I feel like they are making the game harder than it needs to be, and it almost seems like they are subconsciously trying to take control of the campaign pacing; struggling on the easy parts but then steam-rolling the more climactic moments with a mountain of consumables.

    Hopefully we get back into the swing of things going forward. Next week TWO new characters!
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  11. - Top - End - #11
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Introductions to the two new characters:

    Spoiler: New Recruits
    Show
    The group remains in Plum Tree while they recuperate from the numerous wounds that they suffered in the underground; but it is slow healing, and injuries both physical and psychological remain when they begin their search for a new recruit.

    Valentine sends the innkeeper’s niece Sonya to spread the word that they are looking for a healer or a priest. Sonya is a bookish teenage girl, short and stout, cute but not beautiful, hardy but clumsy. She has tan skin, dark hair, and large brown eyes, with a brilliant mind and an enchanting voice.

    When Sonya returns, tasks completed, she asks if she can herself apply. Her father was an adventurer who died under mysterious circumstances, and she has had a keen mind and an acute sense of the supernatural. She spent her youth reading books about all the places she wished she could visit, and thinks that traveling with the mercenaries could be her ticket out of this quiet existence.
    To her surprise, Valentine agrees, although her lack of practical skills means that Sonya will start as an unpaid intern. When Sonya asks to be allowed to study Anani’s spellbooks and artifacts, Valentine doesn’t think much of it, but what she does not tell Valentine, however, is that in the last few weeks her shadow has begun to speak to her, and it is teaching her to perform small magical tricks, and that she has been plagued by dreams about the coming end of the world.

    Still, they will need a proper healer if they are to survive, and eventually, they find it in the form of a wandering half-elven restorer by the name of Yllrora.

    Yllrora, called Aurora by humans, was born on Avalon almost a thousand years ago, although Feur can sense that she is only nineteen years old. She is of average height and build, but with the unearthly grace and beauty that only fey blood can provide. She has long black hair and coffee-colored skin, unusual amongst the nocturnal folk of Avalon, but common enough amongst the gray elves and those who, like her, have a good deal of mortal blood.

    Her mother was an elven witch, her father likely a human slave. She ran away during the chaos that resulted in the banishment of the dark elves, and eventually fell in with the court of Oberon and Titania, and made her way to the time-lost realm of Tir-Na-Nog. There, she was a handmaiden to the fairy queen, and refined her knowledge of the healing arts; be they magical, mundane, or alchemical. In the end, she found Titania no less overbearing than her own mother, and escaped from the magical realm in a time and place that was totally unfamiliar to her. She had heard tales of a dark elven embassy in the city of Nightholm, and had traveled there searching for information about her family, but when that proved to be a fruitless endeavor; she instead took to looking for work in the region.

    Valentine is impressed by her story, and tells her to introduce herself to her coworkers while she prepares a contract that is scarcely more generous than Feur’s. Feur is pleasant, Quincy is distant, and Kim is overly curious with a thousand questions about Avalon and the Sidhe. Krystal, on the other hand, refuses to engage with her at all, instead cloaking herself in shadows and remaining apart.
    After the interview, Valentine begins to chastise Krystal for her anti-social behavior, but Krystal lights into the Nephilim in turn, asking how she can take the moral high ground after agreeing to lead a little girl into what is, in all likelihood, going to be her death.


    Sarah will be playing Sonya. She is taking Anani's death in stride, helped by the fact that she will be carrying forward much of the same character's abilities, personality, and history, as the same entity that was possessing Anani is now possessing Sonja; it survived the death of its host and attached itself to the nearest suitable vessel, and has persuaded her to take up its old tasks.

    Aurora was created by a new player named Patty. I am very impressed with her, so seems to be taking a lot of initiative, having created her character, including a backstory and illustration, without anyone's help, and has taken to voraciously reading the game rules, setting information, and campaign journal. I hope this goes well!
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  12. - Top - End - #12
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Spoiler: Chapter Thirteen: The Nicene Mead
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    November 1114

    An urgent telegram arrives one afternoon. It is from the Immaterium and their message is brief.

    Their destination is a ship called the Nicene Mead.
    They are given its last known coordinates and heading.
    Their target is an overweight man in his mid-thirties with long brown hair and a matching beard.
    This is of the highest priority; should they succeed they will be paid triple, failure is non-negotiable.
    Other assets are to be disposed of or redistributed as Valentine sees fit.

    Details are scant, and Valentine surmises that they are only being chosen because the mission is so urgent and they are the only group in range. Feur warns them that not only are they still recovering from their wounds, but the moon has not yet cycled and his mana is almost depleted. Valentine shrugs, and tells him that she can’t turn down the money, and he has taken an oath to provide whatever services he can offer, and the Tribunal monk decides to quietly keep his disapproval to himself.

    Everyone, including Sonya, is surprised when the half-angel insists that the girl come along to chronicle their exploits and keep a tally of their gains and expenses.

    Valentine arranges the rental of the swiftest boat in town, a large racing sailboat that is charitably called a yacht. Quincy scoffs at the pretentious title, but does his best to steer it, being the only one in the group with the slightest clue how to navigate.

    Feur sits at the bow, chanting from the scroll of ages in a ritual of synchronicity, so that their path and that of their target will just so happen to intersect.

    As evening turns to night, they find a trail of their quarry, an oil slick on the water, shimmering with a multitude of colors both strange and vibrant. They follow it until they come into sight of the
    Nicine Mead, drifting in the water, and Sonya notes how strange it is that oil is emerging from what appears to be a sail-powered vessel, and that it is even visible at all with no sunlight to refract.

    Though apparently adrift, the ship’s deck is well guarded, with eight individuals wearing neat, almost military, uniforms and armed with both rifles and binoculars.

    The group decides to swing close, under the protection of Kim’s mana shield, and for Krystal to transport herself onboard and secure the ship’s helm.

    The plan goes well, but when they pull their smaller vessel aside the larger frigate, Quincy notices that the hull is strange. Large patches of what appears to be rust have spread over the wooden planks, and in some places have begun to eat it away, and the large leathery barnacles that cling to the side gnash at them with strange predatory teeth. As he investigates, Aurora spots a ladder hanging from the ship’s side and impulsively leaps upward and begins to climb.

    The “rusted” wood collapses under her, and though she is nimbly able to clamber over the railing of the larger ship, the ladder is done for. The rest of the group begins to panic, while Feur merely sighs and moves his hands in a circular pattern, rewinding history and restoring the ladder the pristine condition it had been in several days before.
    The invaders quickly clamber upward to a fierce battle on the deck, and though several are shot, they easily win. Aurora is able to heal their wounds, her ministrations aided by her enchanted knife and jeweled torque.

    Quincy is reluctant to take part in the battle, and takes on a withdrawn demeanor. Valentine puts her hand on her shoulder and attempts to explain that Anani’s death wasn’t his fault, and even if it was, they have a mission to accomplish, but he tells her that isn’t it at all and moves along.

    The ship appears to be on a party cruise, as there are numerous brightly colored streamers and signs about the deck, and the guards bear the insignia of the Immaterium itself, leading Valentine to conclude that some sort of mutiny or culling is underway.

    The entire group senses that something is very wrong here. They notice that patches of the deck are somehow distorted, and the angles are all wrong. The closest analogy they can put to words is that it resembles a photograph that has been blown up too far, becoming blurry and pixelated at the same time.

    Quincy can hear sounds below deck, odd disquieting tones that resemble the noise of an engine; though again this ship appears to be entirely driven by the wind. They stop and speculate that maybe the ship sailed through some sort of Vortex.

    It then dawns on Kim that the bloodstains on the deck, freshly spilled by their own hands, have neat right angles to them, and spell out odd runes in an alphabet that she has never seen before, and
    she posits that the crew, or perhaps even the ship itself, has become possessed by spirits of order.

    They move to capture the helm, and find a horrific sight. The crew has all been impaled by long shafts of metal that stretch across the room, creating an odd web of steel bars that fills the bridge and renders the ship inoperable. Sonya points out that this is an impossible attack, as the metal rods stretch from wall to wall, meaning it would have been impossible to actually wield them as weapons in here, and that they must have been launched from the outside by some sort of massive ballista. But an investigation of the structure reveals no holes, and when Aurora carefully begins to cut away the impaled flesh to free the corpses, she makes a startling discovery; the wounds were inflicted from the inside out; somehow these men burst from the inside giving birth to massive metal rods. This reinforces Kim’s idea, as many spirits of order are also elementals of metal.

    When asked how long ago this happened, Feur tells the group that he is unsure, time is warped here. Different parts of the ship are moving at different speeds; in some places, it appears to be a few hours, in others a few weeks, but he can average it out to about four days.

    His energy nearly depleted, Feur volunteers to stay on deck and monitor the situation, and to warn them of any temporal disturbances. When asked if he is ok being left alone, Feur waves them off, and says it won’t be the first time he has acted as a watch. If anyone notices his pun, they are not in a mood to laugh.

    The stairs which lead below decks show the signs of a massacre, blood stains the walls in bizarre patterns, and bodies are strewn about everywhere. Numerous bullet holes and slashes mar the wood.

    In the cramped passageway, the group comes to a crude barricade made of smashed furniture and shipping crates, along with more than a few wine barrels. Manning it is another guard patrol, although they are significantly worse for wear than those above.

    Upon seeing the interlopers, the guardians let loose a volley and shout something about not letting them infect the Godhead. The mercenaries jump into cover and come up with a plan, which they execute with brutal precision. Kim uses the staff of Noboru to protect herself from bullets, Krystal tosses a smoke bomb into the hallway, and then Quincy lobs a grenade over the barrier. Then Kim moves out to smash the barricade with the infinite chain, while Krystal slips into the Hellscape behind them and slits their throats as they try and flee. Sonya drains the life force from those who lay dying using the Bloodstone Pendant, and there are no survivors.

    They move down the hallway past many doors, until they see a shadowy creature scurry across the hallway behind them. It has the rough size, shape, and movement of an ape, but is too alien and angular, and something about it makes them think of a cockroach. They decide to go back and search for it, but see no sign. Instead, they find numerous quarters. Most are empty, some contain signs of a struggle. The odd alien patches are distorted space are everywhere.

    A few of the rooms have odd orange growths in the corners. The material is semi-transparent, and humanoid figures can be seen inside. Kim tries to shatter them, but finds that though they look crystalline, they have a fibrous consistency. When she uses her magic to analyze the material, she finds that it most closely resembles human earwax and pulls away in disgust.

    Aurora uses her magic to sense the people within, and finds that their bodies have been badly mutated, and are undergoing some sort of chrysalis. If they are freed, they will likely turn to soup and spill out upon the floor. She also detects a weak angelic presence within each of them, and wonders if they are not the Imperial Templar which she has heard so many tales of. She doesn’t have the strength to save them all, but she can save one. She asks her companions to cut him down and scrape away the cocoon, and just as he is about to be free, she calls upon the breath of life to restore the horrible genetic damage he has undergone.

    Her plan works, though the timing is close, the occupant nearly suffocates. He is a scrawny man who looks older than he is, a sailor and a friar for the Immaterium named Brother Josephus. He explains that this ship is a pleasure cruise for the Immaterium’s highest donors; rich nobles and merchants and the like. He is part of the crew, and though he is pleasant and grateful for his rescue, he doesn’t know anything about what is going on with the ship, and is shocked to learn of the apparent mutiny. When told about the toothed barnacles, he laughs and says that sometimes after scraping the hull it feels like they have bit you, but there is no such thing.

    They send him up to wait with Feur, but before he leaves, Kim asks if he knows what a Godhead is. He tells them that the gods wear many masks to deal with humans; avatars and incarnations. But the Godhead is the raw truth behind them. For example, Ares, Morrigan, and Thor are all separate gods of war, but they are all a part of the Godhead that is War itself, the same but separate. When asked if there was a Godhead on the boat, Josephus shrugs and tells them the Godheads are everywhere and nowhere all at once.

    As they press on, they find the stairs to the lower decks guarded by a quarter of security personnel, dressed in fine suits and wearing concealed handguns. These are clearly of a higher caliber than those above, and use more advanced tactics to suppress the invaders. Still, they are unarmored and only four in number, and three of them are quickly dispatched, but then the fourth opens his mouth and lets out an odd inhuman tone that seems to be some sort of alarm, and immediately three exact duplicates of his slain comrades appear out of nowhere. They seem just as surprised to be here, but lose no time joining the battle.

    This sequence repeats itself several times. Kim tries erecting a ward to stop summoning, but it does nothing. If Feur had been with them, he could have told her as much, for he would recognize that these people are pulling in their past or future selves from branching timelines.

    As our heroes risk being overwhelmed, Sonya reads a spell from Anani’s book, blanketing the room in unnatural quiet, stopping the tone that they use to summon reinforcements. In the aftermath,

    Aurora treats their wounds while her bewildered companions search and stack the identical corpses.

    As they press on, Quincy pulls Sonya aside and asks “How much of you is really you?”

    Sonya responds, telling him that now is not the time, but he presses her.

    “I can see Anani in you, even if you have the others fooled.”

    “It comes and it goes; it’s mostly me, I think, but in the dark of the night she talks to me, and when we are in danger it’s mostly her.”

    “Was she ever really Anani? Or was she something else just wearing her like a skin?”

    “I honestly don’t know. Neither of us does.”

    The lower level is more warped, patches of unreality spreading across its surfaces like paint, and even clouds of strange distortions float through the air.

    They pass storerooms containing lots of exotic foods and multitudes of drinks, and in the center of each is a massive block of ice, the light passing through it casting strange shadows that seem to move with a life of their own.

    Beyond is a sickbay, where dead and unconscious men rest. Aurora examines them and finds many suffered from horrific wounds, but they have survived and are healing well. But, upon closer examination, the new tissue has taken on a fractal pattern. Muscle fibers, blood vessels, nerve endings, and even teeth are all growing in an endlessly repeating pattern, duplicating themselves in miniature over and over until they grow too small for her to detect, but she has no reason to believe they stop there.

    Across the hall is the ship’s chapel, and within is a choir endlessly chanting with inhuman voices. Quincy realizes that this is the source of the strange tones that fill the ship with the sounds of alien machinery, and considers simply dropping a grenade into the mass to be done with them.

    Beyond, in the rectory, they find the ship’s chaplain. He is covered in bandages, including a heavy bloodstained cloth that hides his eyes, and he holds a wine-filled chalice in one hand and a ceremonial knife in the other, and he gesticulates with them wildly as he speaks in tongues. Valentine can tell that he is both deeply intoxicated and also in the middle of a mental breakdown as a result of some unknowable trauma.

    Kim is able to communicate with him in a long-dead language. She tells him that they have come on behalf of the Immaterium, and the old priest says that they must have heard of what befell the trip through whispers carried on the wings of the cherubim, and now they have sent thugs to cut their losses. But it matters not to him, for the father explains that he has beheld the Final Orthodoxy; that none of them are real, that this world is merely a pantomime for Cronus’ reminiscence. For Cronus was cast down long ago, and ceded this world to his son, the Lord of Thunder and the King of the Sky whose name he dare not speak.

    Kim asks if this Sky God is on this boat with them, and the priest laughs drunkenly and says no, for his domain is the present, and the ship and all who dwell within are merely a record of the ancient past. But, like a phonograph that has been played too many times, it is starting to wear away, and this ship has sailed through one of those holes.

    After Kim relates his message, Quincy tells her that if the priest really thinks his life has no meaning, he should kill himself. In response, the priest says that he has lived and died many times, all to no effect, one more death would merely be temporary pain and inconvenience that will change nothing, but if Quincy is so eager to see him die, he has but to pull the trigger.

    Quincy declines.

    The group grows confused and despondent as they ponder his words, all except for Sonya, who gives them an inspiring speech explaining that what he says changes nothing, for if it is true it merely shows that they have ultimate freedom, to live life as they will and to find their own meaning, to choose their own ultimate purpose free of demanding gods.

    They move on with renewed determination, and find the gates of the main ballroom guarded by a massive figure clad in steel. He stands seven feet tall, with a flowing golden cloak and an ornate two-handed sword, and a helm in the visage of a snarling lion. Her companions inform Aurora that this is a Templar.

    Valentine moves forward and asks if he can speak. The knight nods, but when Valentine does not follow up with anything but pleasantries, he moves to attack. Kim rushes to protect the half-angel, and though the manages to deflect the massive sword, she is surprised to find that the lion’s face that is carved into the steel of his mask is alive, and takes a ferocious bite out of her throat.

    As Kim falls to the ground, Aurora rushes to save her life, while Krystal attempts to get the Lion Knight’s attention. Sonya tries to use the bloodstone pendant to siphon their opponent’s life force into

    Kim, but finds this task difficult, as the warrior is neither wholly alive nor wholly machine, but somewhere in between.

    With steady fingers, Quincy loads the enchanted bullets he took from Valen’s assassins and fires several shots into the hulking warrior’s center of mass. They do the trick, but each shot blows away a chunk of metal, which then takes on a life of its own, flapping about on razor-sharp metal wings, forming an exaggerated V shape like a child’s drawing of a bird. These metal creatures swarm about the companions and cut into their flesh, and they are unperturbed by damage, for they have no real anatomy to disrupt.

    Valentine calls for the group to run, and they burst into the ballroom ahead, slamming the heavy oaken doors behind them.

    Though they are bloody and aching, and a sense of something terrible having just happened to them, none of them can quite remember what it was. They enter the ballroom disoriented and with a sense of dread, but no precise recollection of exactly how they got here. But their task is firmly in their mind, and soon they spot their target, a portly man with wild brown tresses, dressed in forest green robes and adorned in golden laurels. He jokes heartily and drinks with both hands, surrounded by a throng of laughing partygoers.

    The ballroom is immense, and the companions half-jokingly suggest that it might be bigger on the inside than on the outside. It is lavishly decorated, the guests well dressed and heavily perfumed, piles of gifts are stacked around the room haphazardly, and the tables are weighed down with what must be several tons of food, and full bars line each of the walls.

    Valentine cleans herself off and moves to mingle with the guests. She finds them all heavily intoxicated, but with a strange sense of panic hiding just beneath a jolly veneer. She approaches one ditzy young socialite and begins to make small talk, and though her target is afraid of being overheard, she explains that the man is none other than Dionysus, god of wine, who has been secretly blessing them with his presence, and legend says that if you can get him drunk enough, he will grant any wish.

    Valentine slips away and passes the message surreptitiously on to her companions, and Kim wonders if that might not be what is wrong with the ship, if the universe is reacting to the presence of such a powerful spirit of chaos, or perhaps his own magic is having unintended side effects, as is often the case with wyrd.

    Regardless of the cause, they need to strike. Sonya reads a spell with casts a darkened pall over the room, and then the crack of Quincy’s rifle sounds out. The man who is said to be a god looks down and sees the blood spearing across his robes, but he does not die, nor does he attack. But the guards in the room do.

    A battle breaks out, and suddenly each of the companions realizes they are much more intoxicated than they thought, even those who barely touched what the party had to offer.

    Kim immediately uses the staff of Noboru. Rather than directing its power, she just pumps as much energy out as possible, rendering everyone and everything in the room invulnerable to bullets.

    Dionysus’ guards soon take note, and resort to using knives and clubs. This also means that Quincy will be of no further use in this fight, and his target remains alive to work his wonders.

    The alcohol, combined with the darkness and the screaming crowd leads to pandemonium. The warriors stagger about drunkenly, and Krystal swings the Black Flame Blade with reckless abandon, doing more damage to her companions than to her enemies, and she soon finds herself fighting alone.

    The battle would have been lost, if an alien will had not taken over Sonya and directed her broken body to use the Bloodstone Pendant to its fullest effect, healing her wounded companions and slaying the beleaguered defenders. Then Krystal moves forward, and impales her target who, with his last breath, forgives her.

    A moment later Feur makes his appearance, having been drawn by the escaping partygoers. Some of them made it to the deck and piled into the smaller boat, others were lost in the unreality that now composes most of the Nicene Mead. He looks around and says that he didn’t know there would have been a party or he would have come along and brought the punch. Kim groans.

    As her companions bind their wounds, Krystal begins to dig through the presents, stuffing jewels and expensive bottles of alcohol into her pack. As she rips open the gaily wrapped boxes, she sees one addressed to Valentine from Lady Abasinia, and shakes it. It begins to tick, and she tosses it to Valentine, who has the good sense to know what a ticking package means and tosses it aside and shouts out a warning to Kim, who summons up a circle of protection just as the bomb goes off, redirecting the energy downward and blowing a gaping hole in the bottom of the boat.

    Water rushes in, and they rapidly move to leave. But, once they are on deck, the discover that their “yacht” is nowhere to be found, and worse, a pod of Tritons, fishlike hengeyokai, have been attracted to the sinking ship. Quincy knows that their kind is often eager to loot shipwrecks, but for a war party to engage this quickly means that they are intent upon taking captives, although what use they would have for them beneath the waves is anyone’s guess.

    There are about two dozen raiders, armed with spears and clinging to the sides of a massive megalodon shark. They are led by several priests, and flanked by trained manta-ray-like monsters called jenny hanivers.

    The water is already ankle-deep, and they are weary and badly wounded, but the mercenaries brace themselves for a battle they almost certainly cannot win, when Valentine steps forward.

    In a bold speech, she asks the merpeople if they do not see the blood on her clothes and the weapons they bear, if they do not realize that this ship is already lost, and that her crew has laid claim to it, and that they are responsible for the disaster that befell it.

    At first, the scavengers do not seem to take her meaning and circle in, but then they notice the strange disfigurements of the crew and of the marine life, of the unnatural warping of the deck and the space that surrounds it, and the odds runes and impossible shapes that are stained into it. Their eldest shamans raises a webbed hand in some version of the ward of the evil eye, and in a croaking voice pronounces the ship unclean.

    As the invaders swim away, the humans realize that they have only delayed the inevitable, as the ship is going down, and they won’t be able to survive long adrift, for they are all weighted down by treasure and gear, and none of them is a particularly strong swimmer to begin with.

    Just as things look most bleak, a massive squamous body rises in the midst, and they cling to the sides of Bertha, the mosasaur who has been following them like a lost dog since they departed from Plum Tree.

    They awake on a beach the next morning, all of them sore, water-logged, and powerfully hung over. All of them, that is, except for Quincy, who is relaxing and fishing in the early morning light, a veteran of much harder drinking than this.

    They make their way up the coast, only stopping in Plum Tree long enough for Sonya to say goodbye to her aunt Uriah, and for Quincy to make his own farewells as he leaves his pet sea monster.

    They discretely board the train to Golgotha, Valentine has no intention of paying back her benefactors for the cost of a missing sailboat.

    A fortnight later they meet up with Father Gennaro. The old evangelist tells them that he didn’t think they would get any further work after they botched up the whole Wulfenkine fiasco, but they must have done something to impress Deacon Zoltan, for their reward comes straight from the top. He hands over sacks of gold, platinum, and jewels, and proclaims it to be more than he takes in in a year.

    Quincy and Krystal are eager to hit the casinos and to show Aurora and Sonya what passes for a good time in the city of human vice. At the same time, Valentine goes to touch base with Pops, Zara, Jeremy, and Harijan and to look put out feelers for their next job.

    Kim goes to seek out Abasinia and demands an explanation for the bomb. Abasinia has no idea what she is talking about, and assures Kim that the mystery has quite a simple explanation; one of their enemies, likely Trade Prince Valen, employed a seer who has access to the same magic that Feur does, and simply decided to place a booby trap in their path when they would be at their most vulnerable.

    When Kim tells her about the horrors that she beheld on the boat, and what the deranged chaplain said, Abasinia scoffs and tells her that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

    She uses an analogy that Kim can understand; when geological activity releases poisonous gas beneath a lake until it reaches a critical mass, at which point it bursts forth as a killing cloud, smothering everything in the area before harmlessly dispersing. Whatever was on that ship was simply something unorthodox welling up from the depths of the Astral Sea, quickly passing through our existence, before disappearing into the void. It was a singular event, infinitely unlikely to happen again in her future, and Kim should put it out of her mind.


    First, I want to say that its hard to do weird cosmic horror without resorting to the usual tentacles and things man was not meant to know. I tried to do something unique with it, but I think it might have just come across as an incoherent mess.

    So, what is happening here is that this was a party cruise for the Immaterium's wealthy donors, and Dionysus, God of Revelry, who was sympathetic to their cause and not one to follow rules, even divine compacts, would sometimes manifest an avatar to onboard. The ship then sailed through a vortex of unreality (this is come unrelated weirdness, but I might connect it to the villain of my next campaign The Machine) that infected ship and its crew. The Immaterium, fearing what would happen to the cosmos if the avatar itself got infected and somehow transmitted it to the god itself when it discorporeated, sent the PCs, their only agent in the region, to kill the avatar at any cost to prevent an unlikely catastrophe.

    Unfortunately, I am not sure how much of that came across. The PCs came up with a lot of good theories, but failed to put the whole thing together. The bit with the drunken priest and the final orthodoxy was a major clue as to the story line of this campaign, but the PCs were too busy looking for specific answers to really notice it.

    Some good RP from Johnny, although I am not quite sure OOC what Quincy is going through.

    I had planned an epic final battle against the merfolk raiders, with Bertha the Mosasaur and their Megalodon warbeast doing a kaiju battle as the back drop, but the PCs were very badly beaten up from the Dionysus fight (his aura of inebriation required an intelligence check each turn to avoid acting randomly, and this party pretty much all chose intelligence as their dump stat, especially Krystal)
    so they may not have survived, but then a legendary success on Valentine's intimidation check averted the whole thing; the vagaries of dice and all that.

    No real OOC drama this session to speak of. Aurora's player, let's call her Patty for the time being, actually read both the previous campaign journal and the entire rulebook, and seems to be taking to the game well, although I feel I was a bit rushed and tired so I didn't give her the proper acclimation time that I should have.


    This weekend we run a catch-up session, two short missions, one of which tied up a lot of loose ends and dropped some big revelations, and know we are all going on vacation. So expect to short updates in quick succession, and then a bit of a break before we start on the campaign's final act.

    Cheers!
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  13. - Top - End - #13
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Spoiler: Chapter Fourteen: The Gallows Gap
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    December 1114

    Valentine is summoned to meet with Dave Nash, the businessman whom Kim had dealings with over the matter of Noboru’s estate some months prior. They drink expensive liqueurs in an overly hot office; Nash apologizes, for there is something stuck in his ventilation system.

    He has a proposal for her, he has learned of a lost treasure, and he will give it to them with no strings attached. His only ask is that they return to him a small pink stone which lies within, a historical trinket that he would like to present as a gift for his sister.

    She tries to wheedle as much information out of him as she can, but he will not agree to give over the exact details until a deal has been struck. Once hands are shaken, Nash tells Valentine that he has learned of a young dragon that has built its lair beneath a place called the Gallows Gap, and that the stone is within the beast’s hoard.

    Valentine consults with her group, and Sonya tells her that she has read much about the Gallows Gap, it is a sacred cave within the centaur realm of Lyre Wood, home to savage horsemen who are known to abduct travelers, assault them and sacrifice them to their strange gods. They defend the sacred cave and toss offerings into it.

    Kim adds that, typically, things only become sacred after generations of having a practical reason to avoid them. She also thinks it an odd name, there are no references to anyone ever being hanged there, and there is no word in the centaur tongue that sounds like gallows.

    Before they go, they meet with Sammy Whin to buy potions for their journey. Aurora is hesitant to deal with him, but the old man gives her a small charm in the shape of a cat, and tells her that if she returns it to him, he will provide her with a proper spell book to record her incantations in, rather than simply holding onto a jumble of notes and scrolls she has stolen from Titania.

    Lyre wood is peaceful, if somewhat bare and cold this time of year, and the group has no trouble making the trip on horseback. But, when they approach the Gallows Gap itself, they hear the thundering of hooves and a chorus of war whoops; a centaur war party has come to protect their sacred ground!

    Kim reacts by commanding rock walls to arise on either side of the chasm, funneling the centaur into a kill zone. Krystal slips through the hell realms and hides in the foliage on the far side, using the Black Flame blade to turn the centaur’s momentum against them, disemboweling no few of their warriors as they gallop past.

    Most of the centaur stall when they come to the gap, easy pickings for Quincy’s rifle and Sonya’s pendant, but their war-leader leaps straight over, driving his lance into Kim’s shoulder despite the heavy adamant plates that guard it.

    Feur rushes to her aid and the two of them manage to dispatch the mighty horse-warrior, and after his death most of his followers flee. While Aurora tends to Kim’s wounds, a young colt stays behind, one wearing the headdress of a priestess in training. She asks the outsiders why they have come to defile this sacred ground, and Valentine explains to her that an evil creature has taken up residence within, and they have come to remove it.

    The girl curses the lack of communication on both sides and the meaningless deaths that resulted, and tells them that she will do nothing to hinder their quest, but warns them to hurry, for she cannot guarantee that her people will not amass in larger numbers to avenge the fallen to drive the interlopers from their lands.

    Kim cannot quite explain the geology of the Gallows Gap. It is earthen and twisting, with many branching paths. It almost looks like a gigantic tree once grew here, and these tunnels are what remains of its root system after it was yanked out by some impossible force.

    They descend through the narrow twisting paths, seeing only by Valentine’s halo, but soon realize that there are many forks and turns, and Kim summons her old elemental spirit, bidding the demiurge find them the fastest route to the bottom, a task which it accomplishes swiftly and with no great enthusiasm.

    As they descend along the path of the elemental's choosing, they come to a point where their road is blocked by what looks like a large leafless tree, its grey trunk standing out oddly deep beneath the Earth. Kim moves to investigate when its branches shoot out, wrapping about her throat, cutting off her breath and pulling her closer. Quincy acts quickly, tossing a grenade amongst its roots, and the thing is blown to pieces.

    After Kim catches her breath, the group investigates the grisly remains, and determines that the creature is some sort of giant hydrozoan, a normally tiny anemone-like creature often found in freshwater streams. Krystal wonders why they would encounter a sea monster so far from water, and what it eats down here to have grown so large.

    It is far from the only one of its kind however, the lower tunnels are full of such creatures, some blocking their path, others tucked away in alcoves and quiet corners, lashing out at the intruders as they pass. Without the element of surprise, these beings are of limited danger, many Kim can simply wall off by commanding the tunnels they inhabit to collapse, and Quincy’s grenades are of special deadliness to creatures that cannot move out of their radius. All in all, they slay perhaps a dozen of the creatures which choke the passages with their strange colony.

    At one point they find a raised tunnel shrouded in darkness, and Sonya can sense magical energy above. They boost Krystal up, and she goes alone to explore, but then disappears into the darkness.

    Nobody hears a sound for a long moment, and an icy panic descends upon the group. When Kim finally gets up her nerve, she clambers up the embankment and peers into the darkness, quietly calling Krystal’s name. Suddenly, a grinning skeleton lunges out of the darkness and wraps its bony hands about her neck, and Kim falls backward onto the ground, flailing at her undead attacker.

    The panic is broken by Krystal's laughter, and everyone can see that the skeleton is inanimate and long dead.

    Krystal found it up there, clutching an enchanted crossbow and overgrown with strange ferns. She assumed it was some long-ago explorer who got injured by the monster’s tentacles and crawled in here to hole up and await a rescue that never came.

    Kim takes the ancient fedora it was wearing for her own, saying she finally looks like a true archeologist, and Feur makes a joke about Krystal’s pranking, and how one day he is going to catch her red-handed.

    Their laughter soon turns to coughing as they are overcome by a thick cloud of yellow spores that wafted up from the ferns when the corpse was disturbed.

    Further down, they reach the lair of the colonial queen of the strange polyp creatures that the lumberjacks sometimes call “roperites”. It is massive, thicker than an old oak, and the walls of its chamber are covered in its spawn. Again, the group wonders what sort of fare these creatures feed on, and what sort of strange current brings it this far underground.

    They have little time to ponder though, for once the massive monster spies them, it launches dozens of tendrils in their direction, binding their arms and legs and drawing them closer to its crushing maw. Quincy is all out of grenades, and they fight desperately for their freedom, but are pulled inexorably forward. Only Krystal can slip free, and rather than cut her companions loose, she turns her wrath on the monster, the Black Flame Blade practically singing in the dark as she tears the behemoth to pieces with stroke after well-placed stroke.

    They bind their wounds and carry on to the dragon's lair. It lies in a thermal cavern far beneath the landscape, so far down that it grows hot and pockets of liquid rock ooze slowly from the Earth.

    The dragon itself is only small in comparison to others of its kind; it is by far the largest opponent the mercenaries have yet faced. Though Bertha the mosasaur was longer, it was nowhere near as massive. The creature is stout, with four legs and stubby wings, covered in horns and cobalt blue scales that glimmer in the gloom. The monster’s broad head and short neck give it the impression of a giant horned toad, and if it can speak, it chooses not to. Instead, it casually raises its head and arcs its napalm breath over the invaders.

    Nobody is directly hit, which is fortunate, for they would not have survived. But Valentine, Aurora, and Sonya are all touched by drifts of flaming venom, and their hair, clothes, and feathers go up like torches. Kim has her work cut out for her, warding them against heat before they can be consumed, and then raising magical stone walls to shield them from the dragon’s continued wrath.

    At the same time, Feur charges forward, eager to do battle with the beast, but is casually tossed aside, rolling into a patch of sticky magma, and Kim must quickly divert her attention before he can sink below the surface and be incinerated, casting a spell to transform the burning lava into a smooth patch of heated rock that resembles asphalt on a sunny day.

    Krystal takes the opportunity to dart forward, stabbing at the creature’s flanks with her enchanted blade, but does little. The beast almost seems to enjoy battling with the rogue, stalking her through the shadows like a massive cat seeking a terrified mouse. Time and again Krystal attacks, but does little damage before she must again retreat into the darkness lest she becomes a victim of the dragon’s teeth and claws; she would not survive a direct hit.

    Quincy takes this opportunity to load the vorpal bullets they looted from Valen’s assassins, and he fires them at the distracted dragon. His heavy rifle easily punches through the monster’s hide, and now that it realizes its foes can actually hurt it, it stops playing around and turns deadly serious, crashing forward through Kim’s hastily erected barricades. Five of Quincy’s six shots find home, each punching a gaping hole in the beast’s carapace, oozing steaming blood onto the sulfurous rocks below. While he tries to reload, the monster's jaws snap shut round him.

    Before Quincy can be swallowed whole, Krystal uses this opportunity to teleport herself above the monster, and she deftly runs along its spine before driving her magical sword into the place where the dragon’s neck meets its skull, piercing it with all of her might.

    The dragon drops to the ground, regurgitating Quincy in its death spasms. The former dragoon is not in great shape, having been pierced by the dragon’s teeth in several places, and his ankle mutilated by Krystal’s sword as it caught him in the dragon’s throat.

    Feur watches in awe as a wave of golden light floods out of the dragon’s body with its last breath, but he is the only one who can see it.

    Once Aurora is done tending to him, Quincy deftly skins the monster, taking the metallic blue scales with the greatest of care. Much later, he will turn them in to the bounty master at Balthazar’s garrison, along with a half dozen centaur tails. Though they normally only work in manargus carapace, they will send it to their armorers in the East, and they will return to him a suit of dragonhide armor in the colors of Balthazar, along with the title of Dragon Slayer. But that is later, now he is in a stinking cave, attempting to work through the pain.

    Valentine scours the treasure horde. It isn’t what she expected, instead, it simply resembles a heap of nick-nacks, various figurines, and shiny stones, gizmos and religious icons, coins of various eras and denominations, and costume jewelry. It is more like the bottom of a wishing well than a dragon’s hoard, and she suspects that the centaurs have long been tossing offerings into the Gallows Gap for luck, and somehow they have all found their way down here. She can’t help but wonder if human or animal sacrifices were among them.

    Sonya can pick out the pink orb, about four inches across made from smooth glass, radiating strong primal energy. Valentine carefully hides it away, well aware of how much Krystal disdains giving over anything without compensation.

    They take what they can carry and begin the long climb up. Once at the surface, they find Esper waiting patiently, and they tie his master to the saddle before beginning the long journey back to Golgotha.

    As they travel, Feur, Quincy, and Sonya all feel strange. Quincy complains about how badly his companions' smell, particularly Valentine, while Sonya feels like a monster is stalking along behind her and always watching her back, but hiding before she can turn around, and Feur senses a dark demonic presence hanging over the group.

    That night Quincy is on watch when he spies the most terrifying thing he has ever imagined. A vast shape floating through the air like a living kite, its long underside pierced by rips that rip from its flesh and undulate like dozens of bony legs, its gaze burning as it searches the lands below, tears of flaming oil dripping from its blazing eyes. He awakens his companions with a scream, but none of them pick out the shape amongst the scattered clouds, even when Valentine takes to their air, against Quincy’s urging.

    The next morning, Sonya sees a column of Imperial knights mounted on elephants sinking into the surface of the old Imperial highway like it was made of tar, but her companions see nothing and assume that she is hallucinating or has gone mad.

    But when they arrive back in Golgotha, there are more horrors to be seen.


    Sorry it took so long to get this one up, August has been just about the busiest month of my life.

    I have three more sessions played and mostly written up, so expect more updates soon (knock on wood), along with some lengthy OOC musings that have resulted from tensions in my group both new and old.

    We are in the home stretch here!
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  14. - Top - End - #14
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Spoiler: Chapter Fifteen: The Backdrop Lifted
    Show
    January 1115

    Quincy, Sonya, and Feur all see terrifying sights about town. Oily tadpole-shaped creatures hang from building’s eves and stare at them with large unblinking eyes. Faceless, long-fingered, creatures move amongst the crowds. Vivisected corpses hide in alleyways. Some of the buildings, particularly the old casinos, are replaced by blobby monsters that seem to devour those who enter. Strange floating things of impossible geometry weep and scream from the sky. And most horrible of all, Boot Hill has been replaced with a great hole that they all recognize as the burrow of some vast and terrible subterranean god.

    Their companions don’t see anything amiss, even Aurora, who is possessed of the second sight, a medium that can view spirits and the ghosts of the dead.

    When they go to visit Sammy Whin, he presents Aurora with a spell book, and offers to do the same for Sonya, but the girl sees not a kindly old merchant, but a withered corpse puppeted by dark magic, and refuses to have anything to do with him lest she barters away her soul, and the old man on the giant turtle does his best to hide his hurt feelings.

    Krystal goes to Decker, and shows him the ornate crossbow she found in the Gallows Gap on the explorer’s corpse. He identifies it as Screecher, and says that it is enchanted to eat the screams of its victims, allowing its wielder to kill in perfect silence. Further, if one speaks the magic word, it will release said screams in a deafening cacophony, a perfect distraction to make one’s escape.
    When Quincy tells Brad of his troubles, he says that he hasn’t heard of any such affliction, but they should go talk to his sister Christine at the old Cathedral.

    Christine Weston is a humanist who has turned the Cathedral into a combination library, hospital, and homeless shelter. She is an attractive and athletic woman with strawberry blonde hair, and is well known and well-liked by the locals, and Valentine says that both Raven-Dies-Talking and Tatters spoke highly of her. Unfortunately, she cannot help them, but she gives them access to her library, and invites Aurora to a drum circle that night.

    Aurora stays at the Cathedral for some time, researching in the library, and it is not long before she is invited to volunteer there, they require a good doctor, and the elf is shocked by the lack of magic in the city, and that what the fey would consider trivial diseases are allowed to fester and spread.

    When she finally discovers a book that sheds some light on her friend’s condition, it is in a fiction story by the horror author Lorenzo Merrick; the events of the story precisely mirror the horrific visions that plague her companions.

    Before she leaves the cathedral to report her findings, Aurora is approached by a strange man with outlandish robes and graying temples. He says that he is in the region checking on someone for a friend, noticed her potential, and says in the future he might require her aid with a special job. Naively, Aurora agrees, writing down her information, which the stranger takes with shaking hands.
    Meanwhile, Valentine hands over the stone to Nash with his thanks and a promise of more work to come in the future, and then she takes to looking for further contracts.

    Her first offer comes from a foreign dignitary, Prince Hakkiel of New Jericho. The large man meets with Valentine and her companions in the back room of an expensive restaurant. He is guarded by a quartet of identical asura, women with golden skin and four arms. The prince has red eyes and greasy unkempt hair; Krystal can tell that he has demonic heritage, that the large leather coat he wears is actually folded membranous wings. To Quincy, he looks like the child of a thousand rapists.

    Hakkiel tells them that a woman named Lucia is seeking to take over the town in the wake of the Scourge invasion, and that she has already murdered Mayor Stone and Sheriff Nguyen. He is preparing a little party for Lucia and her companions in the Burning Lands, and he is inviting every competent mercenary in the region to take part.

    Valentine asks why he has an interest in this, and Hakkiel reveals a twisted metal claw in place of his right hand, and says that he owes her for past insults and past injuries.

    They will be paid double wages for the combat. In addition, should a member of her team manage to land the killing blow on Lucia or any of her companions, they will each be given a bag of platinum as a bonus. Said companions are Kendra, a monk dedicated to Hephaestus with a big gun and a shaved head; Zoe, a wandering messenger and martial artist with the ears of a cat, Silanthous; a powerful child witch with silver eyes and violet skin; Anya, a short curvy girl with the voice of an angel and the hands of a healer; and Cerebwen, a stout blue-haired woman with the armor of a knight and blessed with the vitality of a wild god.

    Valentine agrees to his terms, the pay is too good not to, but once they are out of the devil’s sight her companions all complain about how unseemly he is.

    Sonya explains that this is a lose-lose proposition; for Lucia is destined to become the Queen of a Thousand Winters, and there is no scenario where they can defeat her at this stage. Valentine is puzzled by her strange insight, but has learned not to question it, and the group toys with the idea of turning on Hakkiel and assisting Lucia and her amazons in the ambush, but they ultimately decide against it.

    Instead, they look for other work. Father Gennaro at the Immaterium will pay them to stand guard over their hospice at night, for since the battle with the Scourge, they are short-staffed. One of their patients houses a powerful demon, and he is nearing the end of his life, once he goes, the demon will be free, and someone with the power to bind or banish it needs to be there when it happens. They agree, but propose an alternate solution, to simply move him to the Immaterium’s main base, the Bastion of Resolute Splendor. Father Genaro says he would never survive the journey in his state, and Kim asks if she could incase him in crystal, much like she protected herself for the last hundred years. Father Genaro says it might work, but images the demon will fight like a Saint trying to ride a nightmare. Aurora steps in and casts a ritual to sap his will and sink his soul into the doldrums of despair, and thus Kim can complete the ritual and claim the group’s pay as the Immaterium ships the calcified demoniac off.

    Feur, meanwhile, has noticed a new addition to the city’s skyline, a strange hazy castle on one of the hills overlooking Golgotha that wasn’t there when he left. He tries to approach it, but can never quite find the right path. When he gets close, it looks to be constantly in motion, shifting slightly as the architectural style changes from moment to moment between one blink and the next.

    Eventually, he realizes that this castle, which was previously invisible to him, must be slightly out of sync with the timeline, and that the changes in structure represent different timelines holding sway over it as it falls from one future to another. Consulting the Scroll of Aeons, he finds a ritual to push himself out of the time stream, and he invites his companions to come with him to what he believes to be the Castle Outside Time which the blind monk told him to visit in his vision of Tatter’s death.

    Feur invites his companions with him, all except for Sonya, whom he has a sense of cosmic foreboding about bringing into the castle, and who he is unsure if he could affect with his magic anyway due to her soulless condition.

    They approach the castle, now stable in form, built from bloodstone, dark but with veins of red throughout. They knock on the massive door, and a moment later a burly man with a bushy grey beard answers. He is clad in the armor of The Scourge, but decorated with strange symbols and adorned in the teeth and claws of wild beasts. In a booming voice, he demands their business, and Valentine stammers, but Kim says that they are here to meet with Nathaniel Bloodborne, and they are escorted inside.

    Upon entering Nathaniel’s chambers, Kim demands an explanation. Sir Bloodborne explains that this nightly order is indeed The Scourge, or rather, what the Scourge will one day become. Here, within
    Castle Rhys, they are outside of time, and protected from the constant ebb and flow of fate. For time is an endless web, and always in motion, a river that flows in both directions at once, never knowing its course. Everyone here is dedicated to their cause, but has lost everything for it, for just like you can never step into the same river twice, if they spend enough time in this castle, they will find themselves in a completely different timeline than they left, the history they knew completely washed away. Thus their life is gone, with everyone and everything they ever knew having never existed in the first place.

    So, they do what they can, to preserve the world. Finding people and objects that are unique to one timeline or another, and pulling them from realities before they can collapse. So was the case with Tatters, and also with Kim herself.

    Kim replies that Tatters is dead, and Nathaniel nods solemnly and says that it is a tragedy, but he has no tears left for her after the magnitude of loss he has already suffered, for only that which exists within these halls is real to him.

    When asked about their ultimate goal, Bloodborne says that it is known only to their leader, the Old Wolf. She asks if she can speak to him, and though Nathaniel is hesitant, he agrees.

    They are taken to a sequestered hall, where a tall man of about eighty, with steely eyes and a classic Atlantean visage, sits uneasily upon an aged throne. Valentine can tell just from looking at him that he is the most confident and practiced warrior they have ever encountered.

    In a regal voice that commands attention, he tells them that he was once known as King Arthur Pendragon, but all that is gone, only the Old Wolf remains. In one splinter of possibility, he fell to despair, pledged himself to a dark and terrible god of the void, and was transformed into Kain; the Black King. Though impossibly unlikely, this abomination of darkness, and the master it serves, has been steadily at work, pruning every possibility which does not end with his blasphemous ascension. Thus, the Old Wolf is the last true and mortal king, and only because he was taking refuge here, in the Castle Rhys, whose eldritch enchantments protect it from all changes to the timeline, like a lighthouse in the ocean of time. And here he, and his chosen champions from across all possibilities, will wait, until the time when he can strike back at the Black King and those mockeries who serve him.

    Kim falls to her knees and pledges herself to the Once and Future King. He tells her he will accept her service, but it is not yet her time.

    Before they depart, Feur seeks out Kava, the blind watcher. Once found, Kava explains that he was a member of the Illuminated Templar, and a master of chronomancy. He worked with Lucia once upon a time, and years after they parted ways, she wound up fracturing the timeline, stranding herself in an alternate reality where Merlin had never taught Arthur wisdom and the Imperium had become a cruel totalitarian state that would choke the life from Pangaea for all eternity. He sensed her distress, and rescued her, but in setting time right, he was in an orphaned and collapsing future. He was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice, both to save his friends and to put history right, but it was not to be, for he was rescued by these agents of The Scourge that will be.

    But his past self recognized Feur, an interloper from an alternate future, and sensed his potential and their connection, and now, if Feur has a few moments, he would like to pass on his wisdom.

    Feur agrees, and Kava casts a spell that puts them in a time loop, repeating the same hour over and over again, endless lessons until Kava has taught Feur everything he knows about the nature of time and how to manipulate it. He is not a patient teacher, and several times he has to threaten Feur with a thrown shoe, but in the end, Feur comes away with a newfound understanding of his art.

    And thus they leave the Castle Rhys with an expanded outlook.

    That night, they are summoned before Lady Abasinia, who tells them that it is finally time for their last task.

    Thanks to the vertial astronomer they contacted last year, she has finally found a source of the exo-metal they will need. An asteroid that was once an idol and now orbits the Earth, built by a people far older and stranger than even she has ever known. Bathed in cosmic radiation, it is exactly what they need. Their mission is simple, Feur will use a synchronicity spell so that they will arrive at the asteroid at precisely the right time, plant explosives upon it to disrupt its orbit, and let it crash down where the dwarves of Tahrr can harvest the crater.

    Valentine wonders how they will get into orbit, and Lady Abasinia shrugs, that she doesn’t have all the answers, and their resourcefulness is part of the reason why she has come to rely on them.

    Valentine calls together Feur and Jeremy Butler to plan this operation, to calculate timelines and explosives and orbital mechanics, but Feur is distraught and distracted; for while everyone else remembers meeting with Lady Abasinia, he recalls only a cephalopoid horror stretching its tentacles forward from the dawn of time and filling their heads with false dreams. Clearly, he is still suffering from the strange affliction brought about by the spores under the Gallows Gap.

    Meanwhile, Valentine casts about for a powerful conjurer who can open a gate beyond the sky. She writes a letter to Samuel, who tells her he knows of only one, the keeper of the Illuminati library, a man named Herbert Branson. Valentine arranges a meeting with him, saying that she is a friend of Kava’s; a half-truth. But, Branson doesn’t really care what she needs or why, he is willing to open the gate in exchange for her gold.

    The asteroid is a vaguely humanoid idol, built by some unknown ancient people and somehow catapulted into the heavens. It is made from a strange golden metal, and covered in blue-green crystalline growths. Half of it is in scorching sunlight, and the half in freezing shadow, and it is dense enough that it retains the vestiges of gravity and an atmosphere, but this is not a place they can dwell for long.

    The companions are paralyzed by wonder and terror at the naked cosmos above and the entire curve of the Earth below, and those who are afflicted by the hallucinogenic spores see the sun as the half-lidded eye of the great cosmic dragon, and the stars as the souls of dead heroes looking down on them.

    But they are knocked from their reverie by the shrieking approach of a strange guardian, an impossibly tall and lanky humanoid figure that vaguely resembles a woman, all sanity gone from her hungry eyes. They think that it might once have been a troll, but can’t be sure.

    It lurches toward them, and Aurora, thinking it might be a vampire of some sort, conjures a liter of fresh blood in its path to distract it. The ploy does not work.

    The castaway grabs Sonya and attempts to get away with her, scuttling to the far side of the asteroid.

    The fight is brief, but alien, they are not used to fighting in an environment with so little oxygen, and where the recoil of a gun can send you flying into the great black oblivion. Nor are they used to a world so small that one can hide across the horizon and then come at you from any direction.

    They play cat and mouse for several moments, the castaway striking at them and then moving out of their line of sight, it knows every crack and crevice of this strange environment and how to move about on it. At one point Kim tries to trip the haggard creature, but it grabs her chain and pulls, and she comes within a hair’s breadth of tumbling down and being lost forever.
    In the end, they deal enough damage to the Castaway that it is still; it doesn’t die, but it stops being ambulatory. They hope that it will be burned up on reentry, its strange and pitiful life finally brought to a merciful end.

    Jeremy plants the explosives on the back of what passes for the strange idol’s neck, and then they return through the gate, hoping that Feur’s spell worked, that they will detonate at the precise moment required to send it rocketing to the ground ay the borders of the dwarven lands.

    After having completed their contracts in Golgotha, the group sets out for Lorenzo Merrick’s ranch at the borders of the Imperial Heartland to learn more about their companions strange visions. There they find the reclusive author, at the end of a shaded looping road, on the porch of a large wooden ranch house with many rooms capped by conical roofs. At first, he mistakes them for obsessed fans, and tries to dissuade them, but when they explain the situation in detail, he invites them inside.

    Merrick offers them coffee, but seeing how agitated they are, decided tea is a better choice. He gives them cornbread and gravy in his parlor while he gathers his notes. He explains that he too was once exposed to the same spores, which he came to heard called Mu. He learned of a cure, but it was made from the pupating carcass of a monster called Gloomwing, and he never dared to retrieve it. Instead, he learned to live with the visions, and was able to put what he saw to words, and make a fortune weaving them into his yarns.

    Aurora knows of the Gloomwing, a giant poisonous moth who dwells in a shadowed thicket under the protection of the Erlking, lord of the dark fey. Each generation, it mates with its own parent and then dies, only to be reborn as the product of the cursed union. Quincy scoffs and claims that is impossible, he knows a bit about animal husbandry, and Valentine concedes his point, but says that the Gloomwing likely lives less in reality and somewhere between the border of legend and fairy magic.

    They set out for the dead forest, and Quincy hears a deer stalking them through the dried leaves. His companions bid him to hunt it, and he tries, but he is startled by the grimacing face of a cannibal spirit in his scope, and the shot goes wide, the deer fleeing into the shadowed banks.

    They find the Gloomwing’s grove, a massive warped tree with a huge pulsating chrysalis stuck to its side. The massive moth, noticing their presence, descends from the foliage, which provides just enough cover to shield it from Quincy’s opening volley.

    Kim moves to block it, and it hovers above her, attempting to chew through her armor, and crushing the flesh beneath. It is about forty feet across, and hideously misshapen, even more alien than one would imagine an insect blown up to that size had any right to be.

    Feur attempts to flank it, but is sickened by the toxic scales that drop from its wings, and Kim erects a magical circle that blocks any poison from entering.

    As they fight, none of them see the assassins stalking them. Darts fired from a blowgun strike Sonya and Aurora, and Krystal hides. She spots her assailants, a pair of identical cambion women, who look very similar to herself save that their skin is a dark and ashen blue. They engage with Quincy, wielding crooked daggers, but when Krystal begins to shoot at them from hiding with her enchanted crossbow, the pair disappears from sight.

    Valentine goes to tend to the wounded, but finds that they are paralyzed by magic runes carved into the darts. She does her best to nullify the magic with a vial of holy water she keeps on hand for just such an occasion, and then pulls the darts free.

    Once they are united against the Gloomwing, it doesn’t stand much of a chance. Anani blinds it with her shadow magic, and Aurora exsanguinates it with her blood magic, leaving it weak and disoriented long enough for Quincy to take aim and deliver the kill shot.

    They remain on their guard, but the half-demonic assassins do not reappear, and Feur comments that they must have bugged out.

    They cut open the cocoon, and it screams, bleeding milky white fluid full of sickening black chunks of unidentifiable matter. Sonya takes a sample in one of her alchemical vials, and is guided by the voice of Anani to the alchemist at Morton’s Watch who still owes her a favor. Using Lorenzo’s notes, he can whip up a cure, which the companions, afflicted and healthy alike, gulp down eagerly.
    While in town, Valentine hears word of the Battle of the Blasted Lands, that the mercenary coalition was routed by the Amazon war band, and Hakkiel himself was lost, presumed killed.

    They bring what they have left of the cure to Lorenzo Merrick, and he declines. They urge him to take it, saying it's time for him to rest and to retire, that he will rest easier without the visions. And he says that, if anything, it will probably be worse, that he will always be terrified of things he can’t see but still knows they are there.

    Sonya is puzzled, and asks him why he has cause to be so scared of hallucinations, and Lorenzo, explains that she doesn’t understand. The Mu spores are not hallucinogens, they are soporifics, and they work by anesthetizing the part of your brain that filters out the true nature of reality.



    This was a longer and much less narratively focused session. Basically, I wanted to wrap up all of the loose threads before we broke for summer vacations so that we can focus on the final arc now that we have resumed.

    The players did good, and managed to stay focused and get a lot done.

    It was also a bit of a stranger session; there was lots of deep lore, revelations, and unreliable information being thrown about. I hope my players absorbed most of it. As for you readers, I am told that people are following along and enjoying this, but sometimes I wonder if there is anyone here because I get so little feedback on these long form stories, but regardless; if you have questions about the above, feel free to ask away!

    So, we have had four sessions with the new player now. She is mostly working out well, she seems to enjoy the game and pays good attention. On the other hand, her dice rolls are super hot, to a statistically impossible degree, which kind of makes me feel suspicious, and I have always preferred a more open honor system when it came to dice rolls. She also has a habit of backing up other players whenever they challenge my calls which, while it shows solidarity with the other players, stresses me out as I feel like I am being dog-piled over every little disagreement.

    Next week, the largest combat I have ever run.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  15. - Top - End - #15
    Ettin in the Playground
     
    Telok's Avatar

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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    As for you readers, I am told that people are following along and enjoying this, but sometimes I wonder if there is anyone here because I get so little feedback on these long form stories
    Yeah, there's eyes here. I get the same thing some times. Months of posting to the sound of crickets. Yeah, they're watching you... waiting... watching...

  16. - Top - End - #16
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    BardGuy

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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    Yeah, there's eyes here. I get the same thing some times. Months of posting to the sound of crickets. Yeah, they're watching you... waiting... watching...
    Lol. It's true though
    I love playing in a party with a couple of power-gamers, it frees me up to be Elan!


  17. - Top - End - #17
    Titan in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    Yeah, there's eyes here. I get the same thing some times. Months of posting to the sound of crickets. Yeah, they're watching you... waiting... watching...
    Shush, shush, all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Drink your mothra-larva and sleep, there is nought to worry about.

  18. - Top - End - #18
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Spoiler: Chapter Sixteen: The Showdown
    Show
    February 1115

    One afternoon a few weeks later, Valentine is in Pops’ store, working on appraising and dickering over the various trinkets that she recovered from the dragon’s lair beneath the Gallows Gap, when the elderly fence asks if she has heard about the new warlord.

    “Only Hakkiel’s stories about her having murdered the civil government,” she responds.

    “Well, today she made it official; declared herself the Warlord of Golgotha. And her first act was to outlaw slavery. It’s a good thing in the long run, if she can pull it off, more people with money to spend after all, but it's going to be damn tough to liberate so many people by force. It's going to be chaos, mark my words, and a lot of people aren’t going to survive.

    Now me, I am old, too old, but you might want to think about moving on. The lawless frontier days might just be over, and when Golgotha is no longer a free city, being mercenary won’t cut it. If you plan on staying, you are going to have to figure out whose side you are on and sign up for real.

    Now, what the hell is this? A brass lobster? Is it supposed to be an idol, or some sort of butter dish? This is totally worthless!”

    Meanwhile, across town, Aurora is overhearing a similar conversation while honing her skills doing volunteer work in the Cathedral.

    Christine is discussing politics with her friends, who insist that she is only supporting the new government because she and Lucia are friends. Christine denies it, saying that while she would prefer to live in an anarcho-feminist commune, but a matriarchy at least gets them halfway there. And besides, Lucia is a fair sight better than one of the other Warlords who were eyeing the city last year, or one of the crime families, let alone The Scourge.

    At this, a tall man in the robes of a priest who had been proselytizing to some transients rises and says “But, surely you understand that The Scourge are harbingers of King Arthur’s return?”

    “That’s just a myth,” Christine responds dismissively, to which Aurora chimes in: “No it isn’t, Arthur is real, I have met him!”

    “Ah,” the strange priest says “So you to have visions of the true kings return? Then tell this nonbeliever of his glory!”

    Aurora shakes her head and says she doesn’t want to be involved. He starts to press her, but then Christine loudly proclaims “It doesn’t matter if they serve Arthur or not. Their methods are despicable, and Pangaea needs no king! The world is better off without him!”

    “Careful with such heresy, you never know who might be listening,” the priest says quietly.

    “I don’t care who hears me say it!”

    “Very well then, I will leave you to your blasphemy. Please, keep spreading your word.” And then he bows and walks out without ever giving his name.
    Hours later, Valentine calls a meeting of her employees in the back room of the Green Gator, where many of them first met.

    Valentine tells them a version of what Pops told her, and asks for input. Nobody is quite sure, their previous patrons; Tahrr, The Immaterium, Balthazar, etc. all have serious moral flaws that someone objects to, and Lady Abasinia is no suspect after Feur’s vision and Lorenzo’s insistence that these Mu spores provided no hallucinations, only the truth.

    Likewise, nobody has any idea what Lucia stands for, and Sonya says that Anani was fearful of her and saw dark things in her future.

    So, they put it to a vote and decide to remain a free company.

    Valentine explains that several months ago, Valin’s agents contacted her and offered her amnesty in exchange for the return of the sword, his attempts to hunt them down were wearing on both his health and his finances.

    Krystal asks why Valentine hadn’t told her this before, and the half-angel says that she is telling her now. Krystal pouts and disappears into the shadows.

    She has told Valin that she will take him up on his offer, and arranged to meet him in two weeks, at sunset in the town square of Sentry Gate.

    It is, of course, going to be an ambush. He has brought in several local gangs, and is gathering hired muscle as they speak. But, she is going to turn the ambush around on him, by having their allies come to relieve them, catching their enemy in a battle on all sides.

    As for allies; well, Zara, Harijan, and Butler are a given. But they will need to find more.

    Aurora goes to the cathedral to try and drum up some support, but it is unable to gather any. However, Christine herself is willing to come along. She isn’t much good in a fight, but can provide support to the wounded and shell-shocked, and still knows her way around a gun if worse comes to worst.

    That opens the door to Raven-Dies-Talking and Brad Weston. Although neither of them would agree to work with one another, Valentine is able to convince them both that they are coming along to protect Christine, as well as a sizeable portion of the take. She doesn’t let slip that they are both going to be working together until it is too late to turn back.

    Kim, Feur, and Zara take a trip south, to the nameless city, where they attempt to seek out the aid of Coraxe. The crocodile hengeyokai is amenable to their cause, but sees many risks involved. In the end, he tells them that he will travel with them, but in exchange for his time, he wants their dwarf. Zara will stay with him and help him explain the city’s many technological mysteries for precisely as long as he is away from it.

    Zara corrects him and states that she isn’t a dwarf.

    Coraxe is confused, for he has seen dwarves before and knows their scent.

    Kim interjects and says that she was a dwarf, but is one no longer because she has no clan.

    Zara butts in and asks Kim if that is so, and Kim, stunned, nods. Zara then asks if she knows why she has no clan, and Kim responds that they were either wiped out or she was exiled for a crime. And then Zara says, in her most ironic voice, that the wise archeologist forgot the third possibility while she was human-splaining her own culture to her; perhaps it was both, maybe she killed them all herself.

    She storms off and agrees to Coraxe’s terms, saying it will be nice to spend some time apart from these condescending know-it-alls.

    Sonya consults with Russel, who says that he cannot personally help as he has business with the hengeyokai in the north. She asks if he can send troops, and Russel says that all he could spare would be a squad or two of zealots, and if that truly means the difference in battle between her allies and a mere Trade Prince then he will be very disappointed, so she should think of this battle as a test of her mettle for the true struggle that is soon to come.

    Decker and Whin are not willing to help personally, but they will supply the group with ammunition, grenades, and tonics. Whin also prepares an elixir for Valentine that will amplify her voice, and makes a potent sleeping gas from the Gloomwing’s venom.

    Valentine herself has also arranged for further reinforcements, but is keeping them close to her chest.

    On the journey to Concordance, she briefs her companions, filling them in on Valin’s history and their relationship.

    He was once a trade prince of the Sonata corporation, the last of the great Imperial trading houses and owners of the vast city of Concordance, built at the junction of the rivers Sangrael and the Amber Flow.

    But, years ago, there was a scandal, which cost him his position and left him scarred and crippled. He has since made a name for himself in the underground, and has recently become the de facto owner of the small town of Sentry Gate, a suburb outside of Concordance proper.

    Quincy asks why they don’t just work with this Sonata corporation to take him down, and Valentine says that they would dismantle his empire and repossess his ill-gotten property, and she wants to keep it for herself.

    Since Krystal’s betrayal, he has become exceedingly paranoid and erratic. His fortune is nearly spent, but it should still be a grand haul for them as he has taken the whole town as his personal fief.

    He has brought together a gang of ne’er do wells and holed up in the town, and it will be easier for them to approach under a flag of truce than to fight their way in.

    His gang includes:
    Chet Leston, also known as the Sanguine Fox. A legendary gunfighter turned outlaw, always one big score away from retirement. At this Quincy adds that he knows how that feels.
    Wendy O’hara, a local torch singer who has taken to leading a band of thugs called the Saber Rats in her middle age.
    Alexandria Montfort, the elected sheriff of Sentry Gate. She and her handpicked deputies are as corrupt as they come, and expert riders everyone.
    The rogue wizard Al-hoo-whin the golden. He is obsessed with knowledge, and would like nothing more than to capture the Scroll of Aeons and add it to his own collection.
    The Two Whispers. Cambion assassins, the same who ambushed them in the Shaded Grove, she knows nothing about them save that they have come from a great distance to aid Valen.
    And finally, his personal bodyguard G’mork, a name that means Ghost Heart in the language of the Goren. A literal sasquatch, with black fur and glowing yellow eyes, he will tear you apart if you so much as look at Valin wrong.


    The town has packed dirt roads, and tank traps had been laid across them at several points; Valin was obviously wary of their juggernaut.

    In the center was a small grassy patch built around the public gallows, a symbol of the town’s self-governance as no Templar would allow such a crude method of execution. Around the gallows is a fountain and several hedges; these common areas would impede movement but not do much to hinder the line of sight.

    Shops line the north and south sides of the street, and Valin had hastily thrown up catwalks between the rooftops.

    On the south side were several warehouses. On the north was the bank, the largest and most fortified building in town.

    At the North East corner of the square stood the Sheriff’s Office and the adjoining jail, and kitty-corner to it was O’haras’ hideout, the Shining Night saloon.

    In the South East corner were the stables and an old windmill, while the North West corner was shaded by the town’s water tower.

    The juggernaut rumbles into the square from the South West, near the saloon, the Saber Rats hanging off the balcony and lounging about the porch, watching it closely.

    But, Valentine and her crew are not inside. Rather, they come walking up from the north, out from under the water tower, the massive crocodilian bringing up the rear. Krystal is, of course, nowhere to be seen.

    Valin can be seen across the square, standing on the bank’s balcony, slight and with a scarred face, and he calls out “Where’s the sword Valentine?”.

    “You’ll know soon enough,” she answers defiantly, in a voice that is soft but carries across the square.

    “I guess one of us will,” Valin says, dejectedly, and motions to the rooftop snipers.

    They fire before Valentine can react, and she is pierced by two bullets, both blessed by the dark powers, knocking her to the ground and sapping the life from her.

    And thus the battle for Sentry Gates began. It lasted just over twelve minutes.

    Minute One:
    Kim loses her cool and rushes south, moving for the ladder to the sniper’s nest on the roof of the general store, while Valentine collapses and drags herself into the shadow of the water tower, blocking line of sight.
    Krystal slips through the shadows to the north sniper nest, while Quincy attempts to return fire, but only succeeds in smashing a hole in the built-up storefront.
    Aurora summons a blood elemental to assist with healing and to stave off death for her wounded companions.
    The group closes ranks, but Valin has seen this coming, and has set up a pair of mortars, one on the roof of the sheriff’s office and another near the stables. Feur uses his chronomancy to see the explosion coming and makes sure he isn’t anywhere nearby. Likewise, Sonya and Quincy dive for cover, leaving Esper the horse free to move about on its own. Harijan is badly wounded by the attack, taking a bit of shrapnel to the gut.
    Christine, Brad, and Raven-Dies-Talking reveal their presence, emerging from the warehouse at the south end of town.
    A regiment of Black Scar Mercenaries takes up positions in front of the bank, while at the same time the local militia forms rank about the town commons, locking their adversaries in place.
    The wizard, Ahl-hoo-whin conjures a mana shield to protect them, while the twin demon spawn disappear from sight. A pair of priests, one holy and one demonic, bless the troops, while G’mork stands vigilant at the base of the stairs leading to the bank.
    Chester, the Sanguine Fox, laughs at Brad’s appearance, and proclaims “Surprised you would show your face after what happened at Red Wind Gulch. Of course, I’m sure this time you won’t get all of your allies killed.”
    At this moment, Valentine’s secret weapon appears from the North East; Samuel and his band of mercenaries have come to their aid. This group, whom you may recall assisted them in recovering the Mandala of Dreams, is led by a knight who is half angel and half asura. It also includes a winged pikeman named Vogel, a redheaded medic named Carrie Jidan, a Buddhist gunslinger named Kale, a fairy scout and magician whom they call Tinkerbelle absent her real name, and a mysterious sixth member who is not yet revealed.
    Three of them are soaring through the air, while Kale and Carrie charge forward atop a wild mustang whom he has been attempting to tame with limited success.
    Samuel swoops onto the north rooftops to engage the sniper.
    Alexandra Montfort and her deputies take off after Kale, and when they do, Jeremy Butler takes the opportunity to slip away. You see, he had infiltrated the Black Scar Mercenaries in town a week earlier, and had secretly been planting explosive caches around town. So he moves away from his regiment, even now forming ranks and drawing lines of fire, and moves into the now unoccupied sheriff’s office.
    The deputies can’t catch the wild horse, but a near-miss from Chester’s revolver knocks Kale from the saddle, and Carrie continues on across the square without him.
    Coraxe tosses a grenade into the militia, and when they break ranks to dive for cover, Vogel descends upon them, killing more than his fair share in the confusion.

    Minute Two:
    Valin holds out his arm, revealing a bird that is either a small eagle or an exceptionally large falcon, and pulls back its hood while directing it toward Valentine’s wounded form. But, before it can so much as cross the square, Raven-Dies-Talking’s pet Cyndi takes to the air and meets it, the smaller bird proving to be its superior in both agility and tenacity, and soon it takes to the open sky, being harried by the corvid the entire way.
    Kim clambers up an old ladder onto the roof of the shops on the south side, swinging her chain to disrupt the snipers that hunker there. On the opposite side, Krystal moves through the Hellscape to emerge onto the north roofs, but as she does so, she feels something massive scuttling after her, and only Brad, trained demon-hunter and possessed of the second sight, can see the massive predatory spider spirit which lurks on the other side of the Veil, but he is too busy trading shots with the militia to do anything about it at the moment.
    Zara drives the juggernaut right into the balcony of the Shining Night, sending young gangers toppling every which way, and before they can recover Aurora throws her knockout potion into their ranks, sending more than a few of them into a dreamless sleep. Rather than risk getting stuck in the building’s foundations, Zara rights the juggernaut back onto the south road.
    Sonya uses the Bloodstone Pendant to drain the life force from those militiamen who were wounded by Coraxe or Vogel, who still strike at them with scattergun and voulge, and Harijan does his best to mimic her spells, although, without the amulet to amplify his powers and distracted by his bleeding guts, he makes little progress.
    The sheriff and her deputies take potshots at Kale, who dives behind a horse trough and returns fire.
    The Sanguine Fox puts a well-placed bullet into Sonya’s shoulder, putting a momentary stop to her casting.
    Ahl-hoo-whin steps through the doors of the bank and then emerges from a shop much closer to his enemy's position, clearly some sort of wizardry at work. He attempts to cast a spell of some sort upon Feur, but the chronomancer resists his efforts, and summons a hound of tindalos to amplify his own casting.
    Samuel dispatches the northern sniper, while Carrie rides across the square and dismounts amongst the sleeping toughs in front of the Shining Night saloon, taking cover behind the armored Juggernaut.
    At this moment two hulking iron figures on either side of the bank, which the attackers thought mere statues, reveal themselves to be huge steam-powered golems. They slowly rise to their feet and jerk forward.
    At the same time, Jeremy is lighting a fuse.
    Valentine gathers her strength and flits onto the roof of the warehouse; escaping death by just a few seconds, although she will never know it.

    Minute Three:
    Kim and Quincy both strike at the southern sniper, although it is unclear whether it is her mace or his bullet that does the deed.
    Feur speeds up his companions with a haste spell, further laying waste to the town militia.
    Aurora, finding herself under fire from the mercenaries across the square, moves to the south side of the warehouse.
    The two priests move along the roads, one north of the commons and the other south, each flanked by a duo of Black Scar guards.
    Wendy O’hara rouses some of the gangers from sleep and rallies those who are merely shocked or dazed, and orders them to surround Carrie.
    Chet takes fire at Raven-Dies-Talking, and the wandering flutist takes cover by scampering up a ladder onto the side of the general store, and Alexandra Montfort dismounts and follows, leaving Kale to her deputies.
    Samuel flies down to a lower rooftop on the north side and helps Raven-Dies-Talking up all the while blocking incoming fire with his shield.
    Al-hoo-whin casts a more potent spell which he had held in reserve, and suddenly an irresistible halo of bright light surrounds Krystal, giving away her position to everyone on the battlefield. She panics and transports herself onto the warehouse roof, the monstrous demon-eating spider in hot pursuit.
    The golems continue their advance, the one on the south side slamming its massive fits into the hood of the juggernaut and denting the steel.
    Moments after Jeremy departs the sheriff’s office, the entire building explodes, the mortar shells and stashes of gunpowder within ignited by the demolitionist’s charge. The entire town shakes with the explosion, and the mortar is, needless to say, taken out of commission along with its crew.
    At the same time, the southern mortar emplacement finds itself without anyone to load it, as Shade, the glaistig rogue, and sixth member of Samuel’s troupe, has dispatched them without ever being seen, striking with the grace and ferocity of the dinosaurs that he resembles.
    Nommo are vicious monsters native to Masaria, they resemble humanoid frogs and are renowned for their long venomous claws, tough hides, and camouflaging abilities. Many of them were captured by the Masarian corporations, augmented alchemically, and conditioned to follow orders, and some of these have made their way to the mainland as bio-weapons. Valin has purchased some of these, and had them stalking Valentine. But, once she flits up to the roof, they instead turn their ferocity onto the nearest target; Quincy.


    Minute Four:
    Tinkerbelle moves to protect Krystal with a shell of anti-magic, and Brad, using his own form of teleportation by way of the Cubic Gate, moves to assist her on the roof, driving the spider-spirit away with his enchanted pistols.
    Coraxe turns to help Quincy, distracting the nommo long enough for Christine to drag the rifleman’s wounded form out of the fray.
    Valentine takes flight across the town square, and calls out to Kim for aid. Kim uses the Staff of Noboru to render her invulnerable to bullets, which is good because she takes a volley from the Black Scar who follow Valin’s instructions on the west side of the commons. Unfortunately, as she passes overhead, the diabolic priest tosses a vial of profane water upon her, which both weakens her shield and burns her holy flesh, and she comes crashing onto the rooftop beside Kim, bleeding and broken.
    Vogel, who had been doing so well against the militia, is, bereft of Coraxe’s support, pulled down and pummeled harshly, his delicate wings broken.
    Kale, meanwhile, gives the deputies the slip and climbs onto one of the northern rooftops, but is soon pinned down by fire from the Black Scar.
    Samuel and Raven-Dies-Talking fight back to back on the rooftop; Samuel slams sheriff Montfort down with such force that she crashes through a catwalk and lands in an ally below, while Raven finds himself engaged by the twin half-demons, and even his enchanted sword, Apshai’s Talon, passes right through one of them like smoke.
    The southern golem matches its metal against the Juggernaut, and in an amazing display of strength actually manages to turn the multi-ton vehicle over onto its side. Meanwhile, its northern companion goes after Sonya, who takes shelter beneath the porch of a nearby storefront.
    Jeremy is spotted by several soldiers garrisoning the roof of the jailhouse, and he tosses as a flash bomb at them before taking shelter inside.
    As Wendy’s goons move to surround Carrie, Aurora casts a spell upon several of them, causing them to drop dead of massive hemorrhages.

    Minute Five:
    The nommo swarm over Coraxe, and he rolls deftly, pushing them to one side, where he can engage them with tooth, claw, and wicked kukris.
    Samuel drops to the ground, scattering the remaining militiamen and moving to help his downed friend Vogel.
    Brad again jumps through the ether, coming to rest atop the water tower, where he rains bullets down upon the Sheriff’s deputies, killing one and wounding another. His brother Raven, deciding that the demon girls are beyond his abilities, drops down into the ally and begins brawling with Sheriff Alexandra.
    The Two Whispers teleport to the center of the commons and take cover out of sight.
    Ahl-hoo-whin and Feur get into a wizard’s duel, each attempting to bend the flow of time to their advantage and mostly ending up in a stalemate.
    G’mork is given leave by Valin to investigate the flash of light that came from the jailhouse. Inside, Jeremy is hoping to find some prisoners to free to add to the chaos, but the building is empty and so he instead looks to lock himself up.
    Chester fills the porch with holes, driving Sonya out from her hiding place and into the metal grasp of the golem. Its mate, on the other hand, smashes into the rooftop where Kim and Valentine are hiding, sending the abjurer crashing to the ground even as she attempts to bargain with an earth elemental for protection.

    Minute Six:
    Kim engages the golem with the Endless Chain, though even this hell-forged weapon does little to slow the metal colossus.
    Aurora finds herself surrounded by fleeing militiamen and gangers, with more than a few bullets and arrows whizzing past her head, and decides to climb onto the warehouse roof.
    Sonya does her best to run and hide behind Feur, and the golem loses interest.
    Krystal darts along the rooftops, each step barely exiting the Hellscape before the deformed spider can catch her, and deftly ends the lives of each of the Black Scar Mercenaries who stand atop the jailhouse, even as they are recovering their vision.
    Valen, seeing the battle turning in his favor, moves to join the Black Scar battle line, coming down the steps of the bank even as his hirsute bodyguard chases Jeremy out of the jail and down the north side of the square.
    The twin whispers teleport themselves through the Hellscape onto the roof across from Valentine, and hit the fallen angel with a paralyzing dart.
    Coraxe is more than a match for any of the nommo, and tears a few of them to pieces, but they are much swifter and more numerous, and he soon collapses under the strain of their combined venom.
    Harijan is shot by one of the sheriff’s deputies and nearly trampled by his horse, and when Christine attempts to drag him to safety, she catches a bullet in the arm from the Sanguine Fox and ducks back into the warehouse. Brad, deciding he has had just about enough of this upstart gunfighter, responds by filling him full of lead and leaving him dead on his back in the dusty street, putting an end to his long career.
    Carrie pulls out her Atlantean pistol and fires at Wendy O’hara, paralyzing her with a stunning blast of electricity, and then turns to faith the youths that now surround her, daring them to engage.
    Tinkerbell summons up a magical storm that scatters the few remaining members of the town militia, those who do not flee the field are struck by supernatural lightning.
    But, alas, before Samuel can reach Vogel, the massive golem stomps on his chest and crushes the life from him.

    Minute Seven:
    Kim realizes that the golem is too much for her disengaging by clambering up the rubble, which rises to meet her like a living stair, and stands guard over Valentine’s paralyzed form.
    Krystal darts across the field and stabs Ahl-hoo-whin in the back, shattering his mana shield. He then turns to her, leaning in close to bypass her own anti-magic shield, and whispers into her ear, asking if she should really be down here fighting with him when Valin’s agent is alone on the rooftop with Valentine’s helpless form. Krystal’s suspicions toward Kim flare for a moment, but then she recognizes the words of enchantment and shrugs off the suggestion spell. But, before she can clear her mind completely, the wizard darts away into a nearby doorway and is gone, and when she goes to give chase she feels a dart bite into the small of her back; the demonic assassins have found her.
    The nommo engage Samuel and Feur in melee combat while Aurora moves to heal their wounds with the words of magic.
    The water tower, already damaged by a mortar blast, begins to crash under the weight of structural damage caused by too many bullets and passing golems, and Brad finds himself tumbling to the ground, nimbly avoiding being crushed or drowned.
    While Sheriff Montfort and Raven-Dies-Talking continue to brawl, one of her surviving deputies cracks Harijan over the head with the butt of his rifle, taking him out of the battle.

    Minute Eight:
    While Kim stands on the ruined rooftop surveying the battlefield, she sings to the Earth, which rolls and buckles under the Juggernaut, until the massive vehicle is once again right-side up.
    Ahl-hoo-whin dashes out of the warehouse door and stands above the slain body of the Chet Leston, and draws dark runes of necromancy in the air. A moment later the Sanguine Fox rises again, a terrible wight driven only by hatred and vengeance.
    Krystal slays the priest and his Black Scar bodyguard just as Jeremy runs past, the sasquatch G’mork hot on his heels.
    Kale is injured, taken out of the fight by a bullet in the shoulder guided by the mercenary battle line under Valin’s direct command.
    At the same time, Shade leaps down from the rooftops, attempting to strike at Valin directly, but first, he must clear a path, and using stealth, claws, and poison, he takes down the mercenaries one by one.
    Raven-Dies-Talking emerges from the alleyway, the bound and gagged body of the sheriff dragged behind him.
    Brad reloads his guns and takes out the remaining deputies with careful precision and cold dispassion.
    Feur is taken out of the fight by the nommo, who now turn on Sonya.
    Aurora is hit by a bullet and collapses on the rooftop, digging through her pouch for a tonic to heal her wounds.

    Minute Nine:
    Kim centers herself and decides on a better method of dealing with the golems than attempting to whack them with her meteor hammer. She commands the earth to swallow them, and though they are too large to bury completely, they are also too clumsy to escape, and they end up half buried in the ground, swinging wildly at anyone who comes near.
    G’mork, hearing the screams of dying mercenaries, turns back to protect Valin from Shade’s rampage.
    The demonic cultist rushes forward to engage Samuel, his unholy blade eager to draw the angelic blood within.
    Carrie, meanwhile, is attempting to talk some sense into the remaining Saber Rats, trying to convince them to give up aiding these doomed outlaws, and promising to support them in their new lives.
    As the juggernaut trundles north, Jeremy moves to clear a path for it, demolishing the tank traps that lie between it and Valen. Al-hoo-whin, seeing this coming, conjures up a force field in its path to stall it.
    The undead gunslinger takes down Feur with a bullet to the chest, and it seems like the young Tribunal’s adventure is over, and he considers turning back time, but does not want to rob his allies of the victory he foresaw, and thus is content to leave his future in the hands of fate.
    Krystal moves across the battlefield after the sasquatch, but is finally caught by the spider that has been hunting her, and she scrambles back into real-space bleeding and feeling its venom burning in her blood.
    Raven-Dies-Talking moves to engage the golem, mostly just distracting it so that his companions can pass by its half-buried form, but he thinks his keen mithril blade just might be able to pierce its iron hide.
    Brad takes out the last of the deputies and chases away their horses before he turns to help Krystal.
    The sun has now fully set, and Sonya calls forth ancient shades from the Abyss to protect her from the encroaching frog-creatures.

    Minute Ten:
    Ahl-hoo-whin moves to reanimate Vogel in the same manner that he did the Sanguine Fox, and turns his back to Brad. Brad, not wanting to miss this opening, puts a bullet into the back of his head, but unfortunately, the golden wizard foresaw this doom, and performed a ritual to protect him from all bullets, and his spell goes by unimpeded.
    Samuel is injured by the cultist before killing the defiling priest, and now sees Vogel rise, and he is mentally and physically exhausted, unsure if he has it in him to face the monster that was once his friend.
    Quincy reenters the battle, somehow mounted upon Esper’s back, the loyal horse having taken him to safety. Aurora quickly casts a spell of restoration, giving him the strength to once more grasp his rifle, and, surveying the battlefield, the old hunter takes a swig from his flask to steady his fingers and loads some of his few remaining vorpal bullets.
    Krystal moves to hide behind the juggernaut, and the anti-magic shield that surrounds her disrupts the force field long enough for it to move through, but the spider is still searching for her.
    Sonya continues to summon forth shades, and they drink the life from her amphibian attackers.
    Kim engages a few enemy archers who have taken cover on a nearby rooftop, swinging her chain across the gap.
    Tinkerbelle, seeing the detritus about her, begins weaving spells of animation, dropped and discarded weapons now being wielded by phantom warriors.
    Valin commands his troops to move forward.

    Minute Eleven:
    Quincy takes the head off one of the golems with his enchanted bullets.
    Sonya and her shades clear the Black Scar mercenaries from the north side of the square, supported by cantrips from Harijan, freshly returned to the fight by Aurora’s spells.
    Brad and Raven-Dies-Talking work together to return The Sanguine Fox to his grave.
    As Vogel mortally wounds Samuel, he is in turn impaled by his own pike, which had been guided by Tinkerbelle’s magic.
    Ahl-hoo-whin launches a fireball into the mass of animated weapons, melting most or blowing them to pieces, and then steps away.
    The Juggernaut continues to trundle west, toward Valen.
    Shade attempts to escape, but G’mork catches him by the tail and yanks him back. The fearsome reptile bites and claws, but the mighty primate is simply too powerful, and he is smashed repeatedly into the ground until his bones are broken and his will to fight utterly spent.
    Carrie manages to talk down the last of the Saber Rats, only to find herself surrounded by advancing Black Scar Mercenaries and forced to surrender.
    “Little Sister, where are you?” The Two Whispers call out. Krystal crawls into an alley and hides behind some crates. But, a moment later, they cry out “Found you!” With the last of her strength, she fires Shrieker, startling and deafening them with the sound of a thousand screams, including one particularly vulgar tirade which occurred after she shot Feur in the back during a training exercise. Krystal slips into the Hellscape, and Tinkerbell quickly performs a ritual to strengthen the Veil to keep the spider spirit from pursuing her. She wraps herself deep in her cloak of shadows and lies still.

    Minute Twelve:
    The juggernaut trundles through the Black Scar lines. Those who do not evade are crushed, although a few, protected by shields of mana, survive only to have their life force stolen by the Bloodstone Pendant.
    Coraxe, cured of the poison by Aurora, happily devours those who remain.
    Quincy dispatches the second golem with his enchanted bullets, though he only has a few left.
    The Two Whispers move to Valentine, and one drops to her knees and begins to saw off the angel girl’s wings, hoping to draw Krystal out of hiding. Kim swings her chain at the one who stands guard, and it passes right through, and she realizes that they aren’t twins at all, one is merely an illusion, a mirror image created to distract those who would strike at the original.
    When Krystal rises unsteadily to her hoofed feet, Ahl-hoo-whin casts the spell he had been saving for this moment; seize. He pulls the Black Flame Blade from her grasp and into his own hands, and moves to take it to Valen; Brad thinks quick and teleports into his path, distracting him so that Raven-Dies-Talking, an old hand at this game, can sneak up behind him and steal the sword from his grasp.
    As the shades close in around Valen, he realizes that it is over; his mercenaries are dead or scattered, and his allies pulled thin, and with each incantation from Aurora, he grows more and more outnumbered. He calls out to Whin “Wizard, the night is lost. Get us out of here!”
    The golden mage looks at him and bows, responding “I agree that this evening is a loss, but unfortunately “us” is no longer a possibility,” he then snaps his fingers and disappears.
    Valin looks around uneasily, moving behind G’mork, and then Kim approaches him, and commands the Earth to swallow him whole.
    The Trade Prince barely even has time to register his surprise before he is buried, and before anyone can even think about digging him out, Zara rolls the Juggernaut on top of him.
    G’mork swears an oath of vengeance and then runs into the darkened streets. Likewise, Brianne of the Two Whispers decides that she has nothing more to do here and disappears into the Hell from which she came.
    The spider creature is now unable to detect any more demons in the area, and a few shots from Brad’s Fiend Slayer Revolvers convince it to go elsewhere in search of prey.
    There are few prisoners; Sheriff Montfort, Wendy O’hara, and a handful of Saber Rats, Militiamen, and Black Scar Mercenaries.

    The battle is over.

    A few hours later, the victors are celebrating in what remains of the Shining Night tavern, although it is more of a wake than anything else. Alcohol flows freely, for though Vogel was the only casualty, thanks to the dedicated work of Christine, Carrie, and Aurora, there is none among them who do not bear scars.

    Brad, Christine, and Raven admit that it was nice working together again, and agree that the next time Raven-Dies-Talking is on Golgotha, the three of them will get together for a proper reunion.

    In the morning, they will raid Valin’s vault as well as his personal estate, and find that his coffers were not so deep as they imagined, but still enough to make for a generous payday for each of their allies.

    Valentine has a lot of work ahead of her if she wishes to take over the town and Valin’s syndicate, and considers who to keep on and who to banish, and whether or not she can bring any of her allies in on this. If Decker has some boys who can help hold the town in exchange for a new trade route, and if Pops might not be too old to relocate after all, and maybe handle all the civil stuff, perhaps even as mayor.

    But for now, she is just glad to be alive, and enjoying Samuel’s attention. He is based out of Concordance, and looks forward to having her as a proper neighbor when he gets back from his next mission, a long and dangerous journey into the heart of the Wasteland looking for relics of the Old Empire for the Imperial Justiciars.

    When nobody is looking and the moon is full dark, Krystal slips away and exhumes Valin’s body; braindead but still technically alive. She takes him to an abandoned shop, and follows her sword's instructions to call forth The Maestro of Disharmony, a demon that was once a sound elemental.

    The foul spirit enters the room not as a being, but as a strange discordant tone that fills anyone who hears it with dread. And she makes the bargain; giving it the soul of her worst enemy along with the sound of her footsteps, rendering her utterly silent from this night on.

    Nobody does much of anything the following day, they are all too sore from the battle and too hung over from the celebration, and none of the townsfolk dares approach these armed marauders. The closest they come is to feed the prisoners, including the Sheriff who is locked up in her own jail.

    Among Valin’s effects, they find an enchanted brooch which is built to warn him if Krystal is near, something that he had no way of knowing would do no good while she wore the Oculus.

    In addition, they find a letter from Lady Umbriel, stating that she is sending one of her agents to bring the matter to a close, after all, does not the Tao say to fight hellfire with hellfire? But make no mistake, if he has not recovered her sword by the time she arrives, it will be Krystal, not Valin who will be lord of Concordance in the new age.

    They can only puzzle at precisely what this means, what sort of deal Valin and Umbriel had going on under the table, and why a gangster from Concordance would be dealing with the Warlord of a kingdom well over a thousand leagues away.

    The following day they all depart by their various means; Coraxe and Zara by way of the Juggernaut, Brad and Christine through the Cubic Gate, Kale and Carrie on the back of his wild horse which is being put in its place by Esper, and the rest by train. Raven-Dies-Talking and his familiar Cyndi merely walk off into the desert in search of whatever adventure awaits them next.

    And, as for our heroes, they must now answer the call of The Scourge.


    We are at the point in the campaign where we are off the map; when the campaign started I had no idea what the players would be doing at this point and didn't even try and plan anything out for the third act which we are now entering.

    While watching the finale of Boba Fett, I decided I wanted to try doing an old fashioned Western Street fight, and it seemed like a good way to resolve the Valin story line.

    This is perhaps the most complex fight I have ever done in Heart of Darkness.

    It is an entire session worth of encounters crammed together into one, which means that if the party tried doing this on their own they would, assuming average luck and tactics, be dead three times over. I made this clear to them, and gave them the option to gather allies. In addition to the NPCs, I made Samuel's Group an option. If they had taken different paths in the game, they could have also recruited The Wandering Idiots (whom we will meet next session), Lucia's Amazons, and the Nymph Collectors. All four groups are PC parties from previous campaigns, and thus it could have been like a mega crossover.

    As it was, they had enough allies that they significantly overpowered Valin's forces. They made some dumb mistakes (see below), but I never doubted they were in any trouble. Honestly, Brad is probably the strongest (human) NPC in the game, and if played smart he could have potentially soloed Valin's entire force. About turn nine, the players were unanimously convinced they had no hope, and were begging Feur to turn back time and reset the battlefield, even though I knew that by that point the bad guys had basically no chance. Once Krystal went down, Bob actively pouted and refused to participate in the game at all. Sarah, who was controlling Hraijin, offered to let Bob control him, as she has never played a mage before and doesn't know what any of the spells do that aren't on Anani's list and Bob was a veteran player of generalist wizards, but he refused.

    Tactically, the players several a big mistakes. The first was to send Kim and Samuel, their "heavy tanks" off onto the flanks chasing snipers rather than getting into the thick of things. Another was not splitting up. The battle was designed so that there would be several smaller skirmishes taking place around the town square, allowing the players to flank Valin's forces in a pincer. But instead they chose to huddle up in a death ball, allowing themselves to get blasted by ranged attackers and area of effect attacks. The few people who did move out on their own were unsupported and by themselves, and quickly taken down.

    The board was fully modeled, with scenery and miniatures for everyone. To save time, I had Valentine briefing them as I set up the board, describing terrain features and opponents as I placed them. I thought it was a clever time saver, but it had the unintended side effect of robbing the players of planning and pre-buffiing phases, as we went straight from deploying the enemies to deploying the PCs, and nobody noticed we had skipped the prep phase until after the session was over.

    Of special note is Zara, who has been getting kind of shafted in character development. My players really don't like talking to NPCs, and I realized that we were running out of time to explore some of the side characters, thus her exposition is a bit rushed and forced. Also, before the game started I planned on her using all sorts of dwarven figures of speech and came up with a long list of them (with the help of the people on this board). Its funny watching Rings of Power to realize that apparently Hollywood screenwriters also have meetings where they brainstorm as many dwarven figures of speech as they can come up with. And, surprisingly, the two lists are almost entirely different.

    I had each player controlling three characters. This was too much, and I won't do anything like it again. Turns took a long time, and my players tend to get bored and play with their phones when it isn't their turn, which makes it take even longer because they haven't given any thought to what they are going to do until their turn comes around.

    I knew I wasn't going to be able to remember all the details of the combat, so I took a photograph at the start of each turn. Of course, I forgot to take pictures more often than not, and a lot of them didn't come out. When writing my summary, I decided to have each of the twelve useable pictures represent one minute of the battle. Of course, the actual game took nowhere close to the ~120 turns that would represent 12 minutes of combat. This got me thinking about how weird an abstraction tabletop RPG games are, as any unit of time you settle one will create ridiculous results; people move slowly, weapons have very short ranged, close combat is over too fast, etc.


    The next week I went out for dinner with a few players and tried to discuss why they were so upset.

    Bob said that, apparently, at some point in the adventure I had Al-hoo-whin target him with a spell from out of range and had the spider spirit attack him on a turn when he didn't use his teleportation powers. This was enough to convince him that I was cheating to screw him over, and so he didn't want to participate anymore. I tried telling him that if that happened, which I didn't recall but well could have, they were honest mistakes. It was a very complex session and I had a lot on my mind. I pointed out that I also made a lot of mistakes in their favor, for example I forgot to give any of Valin's forces an aiming bonus for being stationary and I let them attack and climb ladders at the same time, but this was ignored.

    Bob also ranted about the enemy flaw. He told me that he would never take it again, and that he would not allow anyone else to take it either (how he would enforce this, he didn't say). He said that it was too big of a liability. Now, mechanically, the flaw means that roughly once a session, I give an enemy an ability designed to counteract Bob's character to represent him being hunted; but the flaw is mostly a narrative device that allows the player to shape the story-line and the world by deciding who it is that is hunting them and why, allowing the player to create and introduce a villain.

    I used the example of the spider-spirit. I knew Valin had a bound spirit, and thinking back to D&D I decided it would be cool if it were a spider demon based on the Bebelith, an abyssal predator that eats tanari. So I gave the spirit tremor-sense and the ability to go ethereal, countering his invisibility and teleportation abilities, essentially making a D&D phase spider. (Although, oddly enough, D&D phase spiders lack tremor sense, which is a power all other spiders in the game and irl possess, is this a mistake or a design decision?) But I didn't add an extra monster.

    Bob, however, seems to think that if he hadn't taken the flaw that Valin and all of his minions would simply have vanished from the game and been replaced by unguarded bags of loot and xp. When I explained that they would have had encounters anyway, the enemy flaw merely allowed the players some control over what form those encounters took, he balked.

    First, he complained that Valentine also had the enemy flaw, but the traits given to monsters to counter her abilities were far less impactful than his; which I suppose is true, but it seems weird to get jealous of an allied NPC like that.

    Second, that he insisted that it was mechanically unfair that a two point flaw negated eight points of powers. Which was, kind of crazy, because even if his powers were fully negated rather than a single monster being able to partially counteract them, it still only applies to one fight a session, which means mathematically it is still a good deal. I also thought to bring up the fact that he got points for several flaws in that have literally never come up despite the fact that he assured me they would when he created the character, but I held my tongue.

    Third, he insisted that there was no way I was only adding a single trait a session, because the encounters were all impossibly over-tuned. Once again, I asked the old question, if I am such a killer DM and all of my encounters are over-tuned, why do the players win fifty fights for every one that they lose? Bob didn't say it directly, but again I assume the answer is a weak ego; my players simply can't accept any loss and have to convince themselves that they were cheated to rationalize losses to themselves.

    At this point I got a little upset and asked them why they trust me to DM for them in a system that I have created myself, in a world I created, using monsters whose stats and abilities I wrote, but they still can't trust me to balance a single encounter and have to accuse me of cheating them or putting them in an impossible situation every single time they struggle. At this point Brian told me it wasn't that they didn't trust me per se, but that I "make a lot of mistakes and need to challenged about them". Which, I mean, that might be true, but as I said above, my mistakes are to the player's advantage as often as not, and the players make plenty of mistakes themselves, so I am not really sure why that is justification for giving the DM the business every time the players struggle.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  19. - Top - End - #19
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    As for you readers, I am told that people are following along and enjoying this, but sometimes I wonder if there is anyone here because I get so little feedback on these long form stories, but regardless; if you have questions about the above, feel free to ask away!
    FWIW, part of that may be that it's much easier to talk about dysfunction than peace - it's why stories are usually centered around conflict. Talk about things going well in your life and people will nod and smile; talk about issues and you'll get no end of advice.

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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Spoiler: Chapter Seventeen: The Haunting of Pompur
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    March 1115
    Having returned from his business in the northlands, Russel summons Sonya to him, not caring a bit that the woman whose skin the shadow wore when they first struck their bargain is no longer alive.

    He explains their mission, that in exchange for power and knowledge, he will hire her friends as mercenaries to assault Neraka, the Warlord of Pompur. While The Scourge lays waste to the city, her group is to meet up with a group of elite Scourge Irregulars on a ridge outside of town, make their way to the tower which is the Warlord’s lair, and then slay Neraka. Sonya’s mission is to then destroy her soul as she did to Akatosh, ensuring that the Warlord’s immortality will not save her.

    Sonya agrees, or at least the shade which is piloting her does. She goes forth and presents the mercenary contract to Valentine, explaining that it was amongst Anani’s things. She also asks Kim to carve her a set of periapts from Jet and Obsidian so that she may channel the shadow magic which lies inside, saving her power for the god-like ritual she is being asked to perform.

    With Zara being away in the Nameless City training Coraxe, they purchase horses and make the journey of several hundred leagues to the south.

    The tropics are an alien environment for them, lush and humid, and inhabited by numerous exotic animals, particularly birds, that color the jungles with their plumage and fill the air with their cries. The city of Pompur itself was unusually isolated, and was spared much of the war that scarred Pangaea in the wake of The Cataclysm. Though not large, it is densely populated and built with modern architecture; high-rise buildings dot the skyline and the Warlord’s tower is more skyscraper than a castle. It is said to have been built around a great university, and after leaving the Old Empire, it is one of the few places in Pangaea where science and magic work together rather than at odds.

    When they find their companion’s camp, there is no mistaking them for anything else. They are:
    Firalith, a demigod child of Surtur with wings of flame and a gruff, mercenary demeanor.
    Arithus, an elven acrobat possessed of supernatural good luck and a haunted past.
    Wolf, a totemic barbarian from the wild who rides an enormous silver-furred dire wolf that is her namesake.
    Jimmy, a slight man with powerful mental abilities and psionic powers.
    Deonis, a famed gunslinger with a reputation for shooting out the eyes or, if he is being merciful, groins of anyone who gets in his way.
    And Big Jim, a large man who is their manager and has the demeanor of a snake-oil salesman, all smiles and humbug.
    Together, they have taken on the team moniker of The Wandering Idiots.

    The two groups are standoffish, and do not get to know one another well as they camp, although they share a few stories of their past exploits and boast of their capabilities.

    The attack comes at sunset. Scourge Zealots emerge from the jungle without warning, slaying anyone who stands up to them while their heavily armored Immortals set fires around the city. Unlike Golgotha, Pompur is unified, and soon its army moves out to defend it, and The Scourge must be constantly moving lest they be overwhelmed by a disciplined force that greatly outnumbers them and has both psychic and demonic support.

    Once the army has moved out to engage The Scourge, it is the irregular’s cue to move in and take the capital.

    They don’t find much resistance, but at one point they do encounter a blockade in their path, manned by hellions. It is a short battle, as both Krystal and Arithus, hidden by their demonic powers and magical Harlequin’s Cloak respectively, move around and flank them while Jimmy uses his pyrokinesis to set their hastily constructed barricade alight.

    While binding their wounds and catching their breath, Arithus hints to Quincy that he knows who he is, and suggests that he might be a double agent in the employ of Balthazar, but the dragoon keeps his cards close to his chest and refuses to say anything committal, and thus Arithus does not open up about the true nature of their mission.

    The tower is guarded by a quartet of literal giants, each warrior standing two stories high and equipped with a heavy steel mace that can turn the stoutest man to jelly. They are guarding a trio of men who stand on the building’s steps, and Jimmy identifies them as members of The Order, a cabal of mentalists who have pledged themselves to Neraka. They are currently generating a psychic field that compels people to leave the area, but these determined warriors push themselves through it.

    Krystal scouts the compound, which is surrounded by low spiked walls, and announces that while there are several side entrances, they will be unable to cross the courtyard as a group, so they take the main approach.

    Aurora, Arithus, and Jimmy can also see a demonic Malebranche lurking in the spirit world and guiding the giants' strikes.

    Kim starts by collapsing the steps with a magical tremor, stunning and disorienting the mentalists.

    Quincy and Deonis take down one of the giants quickly, with Big Jim providing covering fire.

    Their new companions work together to bring down another giantess in close combat, with wolf riding about and drawing its attention while nimbly dodging its hammer, while Arithus climbs her back and hangs from her hair, causing her head to jerk back, allowing Firalith to rise into the air and slash her exposed throat with his two-handed sword.

    At this point the psychic members of The Order manage to reorient themselves, invading Valentine’s mind and forcing her to give conflicting orders while implanting the compulsion to attack her allies in Kim’s mind, forcing her to goad Feur into fighting back.

    Krystal slips forward, and their psychic powers do not give them prescience enough to see her coming; the half-demon assassin slays them one by one.

    With their spell broken, the group manages to take down the remaining pair of giants with no injuries more severe than a few broken ribs that resulted from glancing kicks, injuries that Aurora’s magic can easily repair. Firalith is glad to have a trained medic in the party, as his first aid skills are minimal and he much prefers inflicting wounds to treating them.

    The capital is arranged much more like an office building than either a palace or a seat of government. Work is done by bureaucrats sequestered in offices and meeting rooms; there are no council chambers for matters to be discussed or debated openly, for those who toil here are directed by the will of Neraka alone and have no reason to hear any voice but hers.

    The mercenaries climb to the upper levels, and find themselves in an extremely long darkened hallway, when a quiet falls over them and they all feel on edge. They are suddenly surrounded by their fears; Arithus sees his hands fall to the ground as his body decays before his eyes, Aurora hears her abusive mother berating her and tenses in anticipation of the blow she knows is coming, and Feur is certain that this is the moment when his friends will leave him behind to go on without him.

    Valentine spots a strange object hanging from the ceiling in the center of the hallway and casting odd shadows; the closest analogy she can think of is the rotating mirror balls that hang above some ballrooms. She is certain it is the cause of their sudden panic, and orders Quincy to take down the mind-trap before it can break their wills entirely. Quincy, his hands shaking worse than ever, misses his shot, and rather than try again he begins to paw through his bags looking desperately for his medicine. Firalith does not wait; and instead summons up his divine heritage, blowing the strange relic to bits with supernatural fire.

    As they slowly come down, their nerves frayed but no worse for wear, Jimmy and Sonya look over the odd device, and realize that it is technological rather than a true artifact, likely the product of some strange pseudo-Atlantean alchemy.

    As they move along, Big Jim suggests that they raid the treasury while they are here. He has an entire persuasive speech prepared about how they need to raid it first as they might not get the opportunity later, but finds that his new allies need no convincing.

    The treasury is modest and guarded by a heavy iron door as well as four members of The Phoenician Guard and a monstrous Balrog.

    The Phoenician Guard is made of warriors who have attained the rank of Trierarch and allowed themselves to be possessed by a third circle devil in service of Leviathan. They wear ornate spiked armor whose design gives the impression of conch shells, and Jimmy is horrified to find that their helmets are modified to shield their thoughts, meaning his powers will be all but useless against them.

    The balrog is a powerful demon of the fourth circle, a huge crimson-skinned beast with a head resembling a skinned and roasted boar. It fights with an oddly protective style, keeping the hellion warriors close to it, watching them and shielding their bodies with its own, only striking out in retaliation when an enemy comes too close or lets its guard down.

    Still, as powerful as the balrog is, the hellions are outnumbered three to one, and the invaders have supernatural backing of their own, and the fight is relatively brief before the Phoenician Guard are killed and the Balrog is banished eyeless back to Hell.
    Big Jim moves to crack the vault door, but Firalith is impatient and instead simply melts its hinges.

    Though modest by most Warlords’ standards, the treasury holds more than they could possibly carry. They focus on platinum and orichalcum coins, letters of credit, and strange devices which Jimmy explains are psionic in nature, and though they wish they could take more, the group knows it would be suicide to weigh themselves down before trying to engage a Warlord in her lair.

    Neraka’s throne room lies at the apex of the tower. It is a long room with a triangular ceiling and a dark magenta carpet over a white marble floor. At the far end of the room one can see a delicate throne of twisted golden wire, sitting in front of a broad, pyramid-shaped, window that overlooks the entire city. Tonight, the view is completely obscured by clouds of thick smoke and drifting ash.

    Along the sides of the room stand a dozen members of the Phoenician Guard, and next to the throne squats another balrog, this one incorporeal and ethereal, and serving in an advisory position to the Warlord.

    Neraka rises from her throne and turns to face her unannounced visitors. She is tall and imposing, with smooth ebony skin and straight alabaster hair. She is impossibly slender, and though undeniably beautiful, there is something about her that transcends physical perfection, a naked hunger that burrows its way into the minds of those who stand before her; man, woman, and beast alike.

    Her voice is a sibilant hiss, and she says that she knew this day was coming, but not expect it so soon. She asks if Umbriel sent them directly, or merely manipulated them into coming for her on the very day that the Lady of the West withdrew protection from her city.

    Valentine, recalling what she learned from Eorl in Havensbrook, does her best to look impassionate and states that their motivations are their own.

    “Very well,” Neraka responds “I can rip what secrets I need from your corpses.”

    Big Jim moves forward and tells her that there is no need for violence, that surely they can come to some sort of an arrangement, when Neraka moves forward with unnatural rolling grace, and with a flick of her wrist so fast that only the most perceptive amongst them can even see what happened, she draws her enchanted blade Frost-Kiss and takes Big Jim’s head off in a single stroke. His heavy body falls to the ground with a thud, and his head nearly shatters as the blood within it freezes solid.

    Only graceful Arithus has the speed to keep up with the Warlord, and even he cannot land a blow upon her.

    She fights with rhythmic movements that are as much a dance as a combat stance, mesmerizing her enemies even as she inspires those under her command. Occasionally she will pause to throw out a spell to stun one of her attacks, or to fire a shot into the melee with her delicate Atlantean pistol.

    The attackers find that even considering striking the Warlord is punished by mental fangs biting into their minds and injecting them with psychic venom, and so they instead focus their efforts on battling her Phoenician Guard or exorcising her demonic vizier.

    This is not an easy battle. The elite hellions are bolstered to superhuman levels of prowess by the devils within, and though each of the invaders manages to win their fight, all of them are wounded, even the elusive Krystal.

    Indeed, it is only through their magical artifacts, primarily the Staff of Noboru which protects them from steel, and the Bloodstone Pendant which heals her allies for every wound that Sonya inflicts, are they able to survive the battle at all.

    Growing tired of Arithus, Neraka casts a metamorphosis spell to transform him into a pig, but Firalith, having already defeated his opponent with balefire, can counter the spell before his elven comrade can be butchered.

    Firalith then moves to assist Arithus, flanking Neraka and allowing him to score a telling blow, impaling her with his longsword. But, to his horror, Firalith sees his sturdy blade melting under the venom that is her blood, even as the gaping hole in her lithe belly knits itself shut with supernatural speed.

    Once her guard is entirely dealt with and the Warlord finds herself cornered, she says a prayer to Leviathan and casts a transformation spell on herself, stretching out and becoming even more slender and graceful as her body is transformed into a gigantic sea-snake, a full twenty paces long.

    Feur tries to catch her, but finds himself crushed in her coils, and loses consciousness as the breath is pushed from his lungs.

    Quincy shoots her several times, but she is too thick to be blown apart even by his heavy rifle, and the bullet holes patch themselves closed in an instant. He considers switching to the last of his vorpal rounds, but realizes that penetrating her black and white banded scales is not the issue, and wisely decides to save them for a future fight where they might actually turn the tide.

    As the group backs away from the snake, she sprays burning green saliva in their direction, and it is all Aurora can do to keep the hearts of those it strikes beating.

    They won’t last long under this barrage, and so Deonis, true to form, resorts to shooting her in the eyes, forcing the massive snake to her to hide her head lest she be blinded.

    Wolf takes the opportunity to dart forward, impaling the monster with her spear, and then her mount lunges at the great snake's throat, tearing it wide open. This act of feral aggression, no doubt spurred on by the aura of hunger that hangs about Neraka, may well have been the turning point of the battle, but it also spelled the doom of this noble beast, for it drowned upon the tide of venomous blood that poured forth.

    As she does this, Firalith spies the Warlord’s discarded sword Frost-Kiss lying on the marble floor, a patch of rhyme spreading out from it. He grabs it and flies forward, cutting a vast slash down the serpent’s belly with her own blade, a choking cloud of toxic vapor rolling forth.

    Sonya, who is now wholly possessed by the dark spirit of Anani, sees her chance. Drawing out every last drop of power from her periapts, she opens a rift into the Abyss, and a veritable horde of shades poor out around the writhing Warlord. They climb upon her and upon themselves, creating a living throne of tangled shadowy hands. They lay the serpent out, her head seeking the sky and escape, and their dark hands tear at the edges of her wounds, holding them apart so they cannot heal, ripping and pulling her ribcage in two directions and exposing the still beating heart within.

    Anani knows that this is her moment, and she gathers up all her willpower into this single spell, a piercing bolt of pure nothingness designed to tear a soul asunder.

    She casts the same ritual that she performed in Akatosh’s house so long ago, and with even greater proficiency, but something is wrong. She did not count on the presence of the Arch-Devil Leviathan that had bonded itself to its mortal avatar. Sensing its danger, the great demonic sea serpent attempts to pull away, but the frightened mortal soul of the human girl that Neraka once was clings to it for protection, and is caught between the force of the Hellish god’s escape and that of Anani’s spell, the soul is not wholly unmade, but is instead merely torn to pieces. And with it, globs of Leviathan’s divine ichor are also ripped away, and the psychic residue of Neraka’s soul clings to them, like water around a mote of dust before a storm.

    Those with the second sight can see what is happening; shards of the former Warlord’s soul mix with divine blood and rain down upon the tower, envenomating the spirit of whatever it touches. But even those without the ability to perceive the spirit world can tell something is wrong, they all suddenly feel like they are at the bottom of the ocean; intense pressure, biting cold, and an almost complete inability to draw breath.

    They have to get out.

    As they make their way down the stairs, they are accosted by numerous ghosts, each convinced it is the real Neraka looking for a way to escape this endless Hell of its own making, each wearing the emaciated and drowned face of one of her countless victims.

    The walls erupt as huge cadaverous worms burst through them like the core of a rotten apple, and Aurora recognizes them as Takklemaggots, fallen lemure who feed upon psychic energy.

    Sonya, who is just now starting to regain some sense of self, raises her holy symbol, an ornate silver and obsidian pendant designed to look like a stylized lunar eclipse, and calls out the forgotten true name of her dark and terrible god. A small bubble of colorless un-light surrounds her companions, and they discover that if they stick close to her the terrible apparitions dare not approach.

    Moments later they burst forth from the haunted tower, their veins burning with a feeling of too-rapid ascent.

    Nobody can quite put their finger on how, but the tower appears somehow darker and more ominous. The mediums amongst them look up to see it rising forever into the sky, like the spine of a massive, writhing serpent. Those servants and prisoners of the Warlord who remain trapped within will wander its cursed halls forever, in a nightmare from which they can never wake.

    Most want only to rest, but Kim urges them to set out and try and save the university’s library from the flame. She asks Firalith to go with her, to command the fire to extinguish itself in his father’s name, but he will only do so in exchange for a hefty payment which she can ill afford but will grudgingly pay.
    The city is in chaos. The Scourge attack has ended, but nobody knows when or if they will return, and the army is still out searching for them or riding hard to their outposts with furious orders to return home. The fires will burn for weeks.

    The groups decide to travel back together, at least as far as Golgotha, save for Wolf, who must return to the deep Wild with the body of her longtime companion.

    In the dark of the night, a harbinger of the silent legion comes for Sonya. It wears a tarnished funeral mask of antediluvian design, and priest’s robes so old and faded that they have taken on the texture of ancient parchment. It sits upon the back of a winged monstrosity that calls to mind images of a vulture, though the horror looks almost nothing like the carrion bird. It holds out its hand to the young girl, and she takes it without fear.

    They ride with the speed of the night wind, and below her she sees the Wasteland stretching out. Tortured landscapes. Plains of jagged black glass scarred by veins of pulsing red magma. Forests of twisted flesh. Nameless things cavorting just out of sight. Vast chasms in the Earth with writhing masses of serpents for bottoms. Pillars of radioactive fire that burn with sickly colors for which there are no names. Oceans of black water so addictive that a single sip would corrupt the soul. And monsters that words cannot describe.

    And at the center of the vast Wasteland, at the foot of Mount Krackenrock, still smoldering a century after the Cataclysm, lies Necropolis, the city of the dead. A thousand years of temples, monuments, and statues, all jumbled and piled atop one another in a maddening heap, as if each was trying to outdo the rest with no thought given to the styles of the past or the harmony of the whole, each screaming for attention. The streets are buried under volcanic flows, and nothing here lives, but corpses still move, and the city is still home to the ghosts of the past.

    As her unspeakable mount descends, Sonya’s gaze falls upon the only living thing in the city, a haunting woman who stands a lonely vigil of an ancient hilltop tomb.

    They land before a great obsidian pyramid. It is a thousand paces high, easily the largest monument in a city of overblown monuments, but still dwarfed by the great volcano. Her deathless guide stops, and in a dry whispering voice that may just be the wind, tells her that no living being has ever left King Arthur’s tomb, and it presents her with a small crystalline vial.

    Sonya drinks it, and her heart stops, and she falls still upon the cold stone. Untethered, her shadow drifts freely into the pyramid. Its great reception chamber is long and dark, bounded by two streams of still water, and lit only by burning braziers that rise from the inky liquid. At the far end stands a great throne, two stories high. Slumped upon it is the armor of the Black King, a crown of albatross bones upon his brow, the fabled book of the dead clasped in one hand, and a scepter of twisted skulls in the other. Beneath his dark cloak, one can see the symbols of The Scourge etched in glowing scarlet onto his pauldrons, the only color upon an otherwise onyx frame. Upon his chest is a hollow socket where once rested the Heart of Darkness itself.

    At his feet are the skeletal remains of a priestess who died trying to in vain to get his attention. She seems tiny, almost a child, but that is only because of the great scale of the figure to whose ankle she still adoringly clings.
    The armor is slumped; empty; dead.
    But, when her shadow approaches, it raises its head ever so slightly, the dust of years caking off of the impenetrable plates. And when she meets that silent figure's terrible gaze, its eyes come to life, burning red. And when she looks into the deadlights, it reveals to her terrible truths about the nature of the universe, dark secrets that nobody was ever meant to know.

    When Anani exits the pyramid, she feels as if her knowledge and power have grown a hundredfold. She drifts over to Sonya’s body, now as cold as the stone upon which it lays, and demands the antidote. Her guide questions her, saying this soul is nearly consumed, and it would be a waste of her energy to draw anything more from it, but Anani insists that she return to Sonya all the same.

    When she returns, it is not on the black wings of a monster, but instead she simply steps into the shadows and walks through the Abyss itself, returning to her camp without giving her companions a chance to even realize that she had left.


    They continue on to Golgotha, and once there Sonya is summoned to meet with Russel Faraday.

    Before they part ways, Arithus gives her a warning. Russel is not the provincial wanderer struck by visions of a dead king that he appears to be, he is something far older and more sinister. Arithus has heard tales that after The Scourge defeated the hengeyokai, Faraday performed a ritual to destroy their most sacred site, The Flooded Palace, by perverting the soul of the land itself, and then drinking deep from the blood that began to rain from the sky.

    Sonya thanks Arithus, but tells him that she has nothing to fear.

    They meet that evening, in a nightclub above a casino with a long dusty bar. As they sit sipping Brandy, Faraday thanks her. Tells her that their recent victories will have Balthazar and Livonia furious and with nothing to do but vent their frustrations upon one another, for the last thing The Scourge wants at this late date is to have the Warlords unite against them before Project Scalpel is ready.

    Russel tells Sonya that he had a gift crafted for her, and shows her an ornate suit of black and crimson armor that stands in the corner, impossibly heavy and with a strange crest and built-in flamethrowers. He tells her that it is a scourge immortal, a vessel into which she can bind a shade to grant it increased power, protection from sunlight, and the ability to touch the physical world. It can also serve as a shelter for her own shadow should the flesh she wears grow too weak.

    Sonya casually asks Russel about his past, and how he came to work with the Black King. He grows somber and strokes his chin, and explains that his mission is one of penance. He was cursed for betraying the King when they were both mortal men, and he has lived a thousand years with that curse, looking for some way to put it right.

    Sonya asks what he did to the King to deserve such a curse, and Russel bluntly states that he tried to rape his wife, but doesn’t elaborate.

    “I was once known as Lancelot Du Lac, child of the lake, and was the greatest of the Empire’s knights. But now they mock me, and have corrupted my name to Dracul, which means child of The Devil. But soon, they will mock me no longer, and they will call me nothing at all.”

    Before she can ask a follow-up question, the room is lit by a blinding light. A second later, the whole casino shakes, and there is the crashing of glass as bottles fall behind the bar and a few of the windows buckle, and downstairs there is silence, broken by the clanging of jackpot bells and then screaming.

    “What happened?” Sonya asks, her voice a high-pitched shriek in her surprise.

    “Talasanta accomplished her mission.”


    In the coming days, they will learn that The Scourge finally exacted its revenge upon Christine and her cathedral. In public view, a priest approached her, announced its allegiance and what it means to defy The Scourge, and then detonated a terrible bomb of ancient Atlantean design. Both Christine and the priest were incinerated, without even ash to identify them by, and most of the crowd who had gathered to witness the confrontation was struck blind or badly burned.

    The Cathedral itself collapsed, and there were no survivors.

    The city’s secret masters quietly celebrate the news, while the common folk mourns the loss, for Christine was well-liked as a pillar of the community, and many people are already talking about elevating her to the status of a martyred saint.

    Even Arithus and Dave Nash grieve for her, for Christine had touched their lives in different ways.

    Brad Weston descends into alcoholism and paranoia, he will teach Quincy no more, instead spending his evenings crafting weapons and booby-trapping his home. He vows vengeance against both The Scourge for committing the act as well as Lucia, whom he blames for putting this idea into her head in the first place. Whatever happens, his reconciliation with his estranged brother Raven-Dies-Talking will never come.

    Valentine’s company swears to never work with The Scourge again, and her companions all start to distrust Sonya for carrying out Anani’s legacy.

    Kim's immediate reaction is to try and salvage as many books as she can from the ruins of the Cathedral, for it served as a public library in addition to its role as a shelter. She takes what books she can recover to a rare book dealer in Concordance so that they can be copied. While there, she spies an extremely rare abjuration grimoire called the Secrets of the Stone, and she must have it. She could never afford it, even if she hadn’t given most of her gold to Firalith, but she talks Valentine into giving her a massive advance on her wages. In exchange, she must sign a new contract, one nearly as binding as Feur’s.

    Sonya also spends a small fortune at the book seller's, buying many books for far more than they are worth, but reading makes her happy. Amongst them, she finds one particular tale that has a special interest to her. It is the story of Prince Mordred, born of King Arthur and Morgana Le Fay, when the witch took on the Queen’s shape to seduce the noble king. After Arthur’s death, Mordred tried to succeed him, and nearly destroyed the nascent Imperium by plunging it into civil war. The story ends with his death at the hands of the Paladin Sir Galahad and the Dolorous Stroke.

    This much is common knowledge, but the book goes on to tell that Mordred was not the only child of Morgana’s deceitful union, for she also bore him a twin sister named Ariel. And when the Black Prince died and was interred atop a hill in the mortuary city of Necropolis, his sister, who had her mother’s gift for magic, vowed to eternally stand guard over his body, for there is almost nothing that the Black King would like more than to raise young Mordred as the dark leader of his Silent Legion.


    Fairly straightforward session without many issues.

    Lots of lore and purple prose in this write up. Some of my older players grumbled about how quickly I was revealing all the deep secrets of my world in this campaign when it took them literal years of playing to uncover a lot of this stuff. But, at this point its kind of old news and just a refresher for newer players.

    I did discover that Bob was giving Krystal permanent attacking from high ground bonuses by saying that every time she teleports she appears just above the ground, and got a bit miffed when I had to explain that this isn't how the rules work.

    Quote Originally Posted by TexAvery View Post
    FWIW, part of that may be that it's much easier to talk about dysfunction than peace - it's why stories are usually centered around conflict. Talk about things going well in your life and people will nod and smile; talk about issues and you'll get no end of advice.
    Oh for sure. That's also why, I think, people have an overly negative view of my gaming group; because I post all of these threads discussing and asking for help with our many dysfunctions, but not about all the times when our session goes along smooth and we all have a great time.
    Last edited by Talakeal; 2022-09-25 at 11:57 PM.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Oh for sure. That's also why, I think, people have an overly negative view of my gaming group; because I post all of these threads discussing and asking for help with our many dysfunctions, but not about all the times when our session goes along smooth and we all have a great time.
    I don't know about that. Your baseline for group behavior seems rather... off compared to my own (and most other people's, I think). A lot of sessions that you've described as "mostly okay" or something like that have stuff that would at best make me very vary of playing with these people, while the sessions you actually complain about would make me never play with them again, move across the country and change my identity. (Okay, I'm exaggerating a little, but not that much).

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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Spoiler: Chapter Eighteen: The Clockwork Messiah
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    April 1115

    Valentine calls the group together and tells them that it is time for the fulfillment of their largest long-term contract. The various components which they have gathered and safeguarded for the Dwarves of Tahrr have been refined and delivered to the Immaterium where they are being assembled into their final form. The Immaterium leadership has reached out to her and asked for her team to be present at the unveiling of their new project. Officially, it is to celebrate a job well done, but reading between the lines it is out of a desire for extra security; they are spread thin, especially after the appearance of The Scourge.

    Valentine tells her group to bring their fancy dress, and is dismayed to learn that several of her companions have already lost, damaged, or soiled theirs. On the plus side, when she tells Krystal to stay out of the shadows, the rogue cambion states that her control over her powers has increased to the point where she can instinctively cloak herself when threatened rather than needing to consciously summon them in anticipation of combat.

    Krystal still gripes about doing such important work for mere mercenary rates. Valentine responds by telling her that since they are working for a church it will be tax deductible, and Krystal laughs and tells her she needs to stop pretending that either of them has ever paid tax in their lives.

    Sonya prepares by pulling an ancient shade out of the Abyss and binding it inside the Scourge Immortal, animating the armor and providing the group with a silent protector.

    The Immaterium is based out of The Bastion of Resolute Splendor, which is on the northern border of the Canyon Lands on the edge of Imperial territory. With Zara still not returned, they have no choice but to ride on horseback as there are no working train tracks in the region.

    The night before they are to arrive at the destination, their camp is visited by a strange group of unexpected guests who are simply there one moment, completely bypassing Quincy’s watch. He starts and goes for his rifle, but when they make no sudden moves he instead goes for his pills and asks where they came from.

    The visitors respond enigmatically, stating only that they came “out of the shadows”. Each of these six figures appears human, but their features are so mild and nondescript that it would be impossible to describe them to anyone, even their gender is unapparent, and their skin is so pale it looks almost gray in the moonlight. They wear long black coats that appear to be almost biomechanical in design, along with broad-brimmed hats and thick sunglasses despite the gloom.

    As the group rouses, their guests state that they must not aid the Immaterium, for the Immaterium seeks to usurp the gods. They speak with a strange flat accent and do not elaborate much; they answer even direct questions with vague and contradictory statements. They will only state that they are friends, who were sent to warn them about the impending destruction of the world. They say they know this because this is the past, but they are not from the future. The gods will die as a result of the Immaterium’s actions, but the gods are already dead.

    Valentine is unable to rouse Feur by shaking him, and instead plugs up his nose and mouth, receiving a punch to the face for her trouble. When Feur comes to, he groggily scans the intruders. He tells them that they are only a few minutes old, but there is the resonance of a spell upon them that will not be cast for three centuries.

    The strangers finally leave with the ominous statement that if the Immaterium is not stopped, they will be with them when it happens.

    The group discusses what this means as the fire dies down in the early morning. They all agree that their visitors were unusual; Aurora says they reminded her of the Shadow Court Fey, and they were certainly suspicious, to say the least, but nobody really trusts the Immaterium either. After some debate, they all vote to sabotage The Immaterium’s project. Only Quincy stands staunchly in favor of the Immaterium, but he will not disobey a direct order from Valentine.

    The next afternoon, the bastion comes into view, it stands at a hilltop overlooking the ruined jumble of an ancient adobe town. It is taller than it is wide, almost a tower, and is a delicate overbalanced structure that is more stained glass than stone. Kim cannot believe it is still standing, for it is obvious this region was hit hard by the Cataclysm, and it was never stable to begin with.

    As they climb the large hill, they are all exhausted from their short night and a long ride, especially Feur, and Krystal and Anani can feel the strength drained from them by the holy ground upon which they stand, although thanks to the Oculus Krystal does not set off their wards this time.

    They are stopped by stern Templars whom Aurora can see are ridden by guardian angels, and one of them summons Brother Josephus, whom the group had previously rescued from the Nicene Mede, to give them a tour of the compound.

    The structure is labyrinthine, all tight corridors and vast rooms with nothing in between, and it is built over many floors, but without clear delineations between them; the chambers are all of different heights and many hallways open out as catwalks or balconies above a lower floor.

    Light from stained glass windows and the echoing hymns sung by a multitude of choirs in different parts of the building gives the entire place a dreamlike quality.

    There are small shrines and kachina dolls in every corner, many containing strange artwork, holy relics, or sacred texts. Kim is enthralled, but recognizes very few of them, many are impossible to utilize for anyone with a human shape, and some of the writings are indecipherable to even a polyglot like her, for they fail to have even the basic patterns of a language.

    When she asks, Josephus explains that the Immaterium honors all gods, even those who are forgotten by the rest of the world. There are many unknown gods who are no longer worshipped by any society, and many who linger on even though their names have been lost. And some lack a demesne entirely, being the spirit of a flood that happened seven hundred years ago, the muse of an unremembered song, the patron of a dead city wiped out by a long ago plague, or the kami of an ocean that dried up ten thousand years before the dawn of history. Some are so alien that the very concepts they represent are nonexistent; emotions or thoughts only felt by species that went extinct before the ancestors of mankind ever came down from the trees. The world is far older, and history far deeper, than anyone can ever know.

    Krystal asks why, if they honor all gods, they bar demons from entering. Josephus tells her that, by definition, demons are spirits that have fallen from their appointed role. Their attitude toward demons is one of forced penitence and rehabilitation; for even demons can be made to serve a good cause, just as Valentine has guided her onto a righteous path. Krystal and Valentine snicker and exchange knowing looks behind the friar’s back.

    They are taken to a humble feast of honey-drenched angel food cakes and candied fruit barbequed on a skewer. When Kim complains that it is too sweet for her tongue, Josephus laughs and says that he has found the food a bit bland lately, missing her point entirely. She asks for a ham and cheese sandwich, and Josephus says he will do his best, but foods like that are in short supply because so many of the parishioners are on diets that forbid certain foods. In the end, he returns with a plate of croissants, smoked venison, and yogurt, and says it is the best he could do. He then escorts them to steam baths where they can clean up and change into clothes worthy of meeting the Deacon in.
    The Deacon Zoltan awaits them in the high Aetherium, a grand glass-walled worship hall where he can give a sermon to a thousand parishioners at once. He stands before an ornate altar built around a vast fresco depicting a scene of the Olympians descending to Pangaea upon a rainbow bridge and charging into righteous battle.

    The Deacon is a middle-aged man of average appearance and build, with short black hair and beard. He speaks with a delicate drawl and is obviously forcing himself to sound humble. His clothing is of the finest cloth any of the mercenaries have ever seen, and he wears a billowing cloak that flashes with all the colors of the rainbow and which Aurora can see radiating holy power.

    He greets them, and congratulates them on taking care of the incident in the Tethys so thoroughly and discretely. He tells them that the grand project is nearing completion, and they will begin with the dawn following the morning sermon. He will tell them more as the time approaches, but until then he needs to keep it close to his chest.

    They ask if the gods approve of his plan, and Zoltan says that they can’t approve directly, not with their hands bound by the Gotterdammerung, but they have shown their tacit approval in many miracles, the first of which was The Bastion of Resolute Splendor itself, surviving the Cataclysm in a showing of divine providence when all logic would have said it should have been devastated.

    At one point his gaze fixes on Sonya and he tells her that he can sense the terrible darkness within her, and that she should come to him when this is all finished so that he might cleanse her soul. Sonya’s mouth stammers to respond, but her eyes look at him with a deep hatred.

    Valentine breaks the tension by making a mocking reference to being wary of child abuse by the church.

    Deacon responds by laughing and stating that they do not do that here, for this is not Gollanthor.

    They all laugh, and then Kim interjects, for while they are on the subject of Gollanthor, what is the Immaterium’s relationship with Archbishop Octavian.

    Zoltan responds by saying it is cordial but cold. They are both playing their own games, trying to win independent churches to their side. The archbishop would love to get his finger’s around the Immaterium’s neck and put them on a leash, and he undoubtedly has a few spies here already. It is one of the reasons they are keeping their grand project so secret, and working so fast.

    He says that Gollanthor isn’t the only one interested, for they have learned that The Bishop Beneath has also heard of their intentions and is even now planning an attack on the bastion.

    Zoltan expects gasps of wonder or shock, but is met with only blank stares. He explains that The Bishop Beneath is the spiritual leader of the fomorian Under Kingdom.

    The group has never dealt with the fomori, although Aurora has met a few of Under King Balor’s ambassadors in Tir-Na-Nog, but the morlocks beneath the nameless city spoke of them with dread, so they must be terrible indeed. Feur asks what god The Bishop Below follows, to which Zoltan responds that he is the father of a thousand blasphemies, he has never met a faith he could twist or a bit of scripture that he could not misinterpret. In short; all of them and none of them at once.

    They speak for a bit more, Valentine trying to subtly goad Zoltan into revealing the nature of the project they have been working on for so long, when a demure woman in white robes enters the High Aetherium and whispers something into The Deacon’s ear.

    He then speaks to the group. “There has been a disturbance in the hospice, would you fine people please don your armor and go resolve it? I hope it isn’t Ur-Shul-Gath,” at hearing this, Kim cringes not so much at the thought of the demon but at hearing The Deacon butcher the ancient tongue in which it is named, “Father Genaro should have never sent it here at such a delicate time. If he had asked me first, I would have forbidden it outright.”

    The group nods and looks solemn. None of them want to let slip the fact that they put the idea in Genaro’s head in the first place, and so they quietly depart to garb themselves for battle. They ask Zoltan to bless their weapons, and he debates it for a moment before praying over them, imbuing their armaments with holy power faster and more thoroughly than should be possible.

    They are led to the hospice, a quiet room deep in the bastion where old men and women, combined with those who are drugged or comatose, are left in peace to expire on elaborate stone biers. Normally they would be tended to by orderlies who had taken penitent vows, but today they are left in solitude.

    The mercenaries can see the old man whom they imprisoned in Golgotha, his crystalline prison shattered and his body torn asunder with no sign of the assassins. Aurora can also see the monster that emerged from it like a butterfly from its cocoon, hunched and red, wreathed in sulfurous vapor, and festooned in twitching tendrils. It moves down the rows, stopping periodically to plunge its trowel-shaped hands into the sleeping demoniacs’ chests and squeeze their hearts. After doing so, the demons trapped within reanimate the bodies as corpse candles, twisting their faces into hideous leering visages with burning eyes and long crooked teeth. Upon noticing the intruders, these latter spring to their feet with unnatural speed and race toward them, reaching out with long ragged nails.

    Quincy cannot see the ancient demon, but once Aurora informs him of its presence, he can infer it based on the actions of those dying upon the biers. He is a veteran of night operations, and isn’t much hindered by an unseen target. As he tries to aim, Krystal runs up his back and uses his shoulders as a springboard to launch herself into the fray.

    Armed with holy weapons, they make short work of the possessed corpses, and Feur’s Fists of Justice are practically humming with the ferocity of his blows as they turn their target’s sins against them. Aurora prefers a more humane approach, and uses her magic to heal their souls, bringing redemption upon them and allowing them to die quietly with looks of peace on their faces. Quincy even puts more than a few blessed bullets into the unseen balrog, and once it has finished its task of pushing the enfeebled bodies into the other side and turning the trapped demons loose, it manifests within Quincy’s reach to crush the troublesome sniper.

    Kim quickly intervenes, warding him with a mana shield and then wrapping the demon in her own unholy chain, and it is not long before the group manages to banish it back to the hells, their powers augmented by Sonya’s prayers and a canteen of holy water which Valentine had been saving for just such an occasion.

    After the chaos subsides and Aurora has mended their wounds, Valentine tells them that now is the time for their sabotage. Krystal is sent away to scout out the halls of the bastion, and soon returns with a path to what she thinks is the grand project.

    She leads them past the patrols and into a quiet workshop at the end of a darkened hallway. There is a large object lying under sheets and supported by chain winches, flanked by several large unfinished statues of ancient saints and crusaders.

    But, it is not without a guardian, for something terrible slips out of the darkness. To many it looks like a photograph brought to life; a blurry human shape drained of all color. It does not move, but instead changes position between blinks, eerily drifting towards them. Sonya recognizes it from legends, Deva who served the Tribunal once attempted a crusade into the Abyss, and were returned to Pangaea by the night, turned inside out for their temerity.

    Aurora tries her spell of redemption, but finds that it is resistant to her magic, and all she does is draw its attention. She quickly casts an incantation of recovery to heal her wounds as it produces a crooked blade, but is horrified to find that when it slashes her torso, it cuts into her soul as well as her flesh, leaving her spirit wounded and unable to cast spells.

    As it moves toward Sonya, the only one it registers as a true threat, Feur attempts to strike at it, but finds that even blessed and enchanted, his fists pass right through it, for the Anathema is made of nothing but dark-light.

    As the group draw their weapons, two of the massive statues rise to their feet and lumber toward them. Valentine shouts out that they are Golems, but Sonya corrects her, saying that they are powered by holy energy rather than spiritual, which makes them idols. Feur shuts them both up by saying that whatever they are, they aren’t idle anymore.

    Quincy draws his rifle and fires at one of the approaching statues. Upon piercing the bronze shell, blinding light bleeds from the wound and then drifts upward like smoke, and he thinks that it resembles a lost soul being drawn toward heaven.

    Flanked by the immense constructs, the group can’t afford to deal with the Anathema cutting through them, and it is too smart to allow itself to be distracted, hunting down their vulnerable spell casters with analytical precision. Feur goes for a desperate gambit, casting a spell to banish it into its own personal timeline, an endlessly repeating loop from which it can never escape, and though it takes all of his discipline and more than a little luck, his spell pays off and pierces its resistance.

    Sonya desecrates the ground and saps the power from the automatons even as Kim uses the Staff of Noboru to ward her companions from the guardian’s blows, and it is not long before they are depowered and inanimate once more, their light having been wholly extinguished.

    Aurora’s wounds close of their own accord, though her soul is still weak. They uncover the device before them and find an intricate mass of machinery far beyond what any of them are familiar with. Many cogs and gears, some of them so tiny they are all but invisible, surround a pristine woman’s face that appears to be made of the exo-metal they recovered from the asteroid. Around it are numerous radiating rings, some bound together by what appears to be threads from the Mandala of Dreams, and festooned with charms and strange icons.

    None of them are tinkers, nor would they have any idea what this means even if they had the mechanical inclination. But Aurora’s mind is sharp and Krystal’s fingers are nimble, and between the two of them they can remove a few critical components whose absence they think will be overlooked during an inspection.

    They are met by a scream from the doorway, a young acolyte who happened upon the carnage. He stammers and asks what is going on here, and Valentine, thinking quick and talking quicker, tells him that the Bishop Below has sabotaged the project, and they were sent down here to take care of it, and she makes him promise not to speak a word of this, for the Deacon is trying to avoid a panic on the eve of their triumph. When asked where the bodies are, Valentine says that they disappeared when slain.

    They return with news of their success, and retire to the relatively modest apartments they are afforded to try and get a few hours of sleep before the morning service.

    When the dawn comes, they are brought as guests of honor into the crowded High Aetherium where most of the church members wait in rapturous anticipation of the Deacon’s words. When he does appear, it is to give a long inspiring speech about how the gods no longer need to bear the burdens of the world alone, for now, they can freely descend to earth as equals, leaving the ministrations of heaven safe under the watchful gaze of the Clockwork Messiah.

    He gestures to the grand machinery which now hangs suspended above them. Fully revealed in the morning light, it resembles a vast orrery, surrounded by metallic rings which hang upon nothing, festooned with cryptic religious icons which are balanced about them like planets in the heavens.

    The Deacon continues, proclaiming that his grand project is capable of automating the cosmos, so that he and the gods may finally work together, taking up the Hecantochires and cleansing this world of the Warlords and all of their foul servants. For on this day, he has finally taken the first steps to healing the wounds opened by the fall of Atlantis so long ago.

    A raspy voice echoes across the room, saying that The Deacon has finally outdone himself with this ultimate heresy. They all turn to see The Bishop Beneath, a figure clad in ornate cardinal’s robes, with a face that is only a black pit under its hood, lit by two large eyes glowing red in the dark.

    There is a cracking sound and the wall behind it collapses, revealing dark tunnels hiding a fomorian legion. Kim struggles to grasp where these tunnels come from, for they surely must be many stories above the ground, and the best she can figure is some sort of junction between Earth and the Elemental Planes. Aurora, who is used to dealing with the fey, could tell her not to worry herself trying to make sense of the senseless.

    The fomori spill forth, mutated creatures like beings out of a fairy tale, monstrous and with no two of them alike. Some are smaller than goblins, others larger than ogres, all of them horrible and malformed.

    The Deacon commands Valentine to protect the flock while he rallies the Templar, and soon the fight is joined by holy warriors ridden by avenging angels as well as massive metallic idols given life in defense of the cathedral.

    Quincy fires a shot right into The Black Bishop’s chest, and though blood and gristle fly out the back of his robes, he still moves forward. His motions are strange, as if the body beneath the robes was of inhuman shape and constantly squirming.

    Sonya stands behind her Immortal and tries to clear her head. She draws up the secret knowledge of The Abyss and calls forth the Hand of Despair, a great shadowy apparition that grasps at the sun, blocking out its light and plunging the chapel into gloom. Then she proceeds to call forth a great swarm of tiny scuttling shades to devour the invaders.

    Kim is quickly surrounded and bogged down by the smaller fomori, and though they cannot hurt her through her warded armor, she is still unable to protect her companions. The larger fomori make for the group, save one who takes a detour to desecrate the Deacon’s altar.

    The Black Bishop strides toward the group and tosses a vial upon Valentine, the foul liquid within both negating Kim’s protective spells and burning her beatific flesh. He then begins to speak unknowable words of a dead faith that cause her to bleed and convulse, while at the same time keeping Krystal and Sonya’s shades at bay.

    As the fomori draw close, Quincy puts aside his rifle and draws his sawed-off shotguns, nearly liquefying those who draw near him until one of the larger ones whose hide is too thick to be more than stung by it grabs it from him. With three slanted mouths, it tells Quincy to “Hand it over before I jam it someplace that you won’t like,” and bends the barrel with unnatural strength. Feur then steps forward, shattering one of the behemoth’s kneecaps with a jab and then pummeling its chin with precise strikes guided by the light of justice.

    Aurora attempts to heal Valentine, but the bishop grabs at her. She stabs it repeatedly with her scalpel, but there is no appreciable effect.

    Kim tries to fight her way free, shouting at Sonya to bring down silence upon the Bishop, but see’s that the girl is too distracted maintaining the shadows on the holy ground, and Kim tries to think of an incantation that will save Valentine’s life. In the end, Feur beats her to it, transporting Valentine a few minutes into the future when, hopefully, the battle will be over one way or the other.

    Krystal finally steels herself against the holy energy radiating off the Bishop Beneath and brings the Black Flame Blade down upon his miter, splitting it in twain. His robes collapse and she prods at them with her hoof before a vast tide of rats pours out, scrabbling over her and her companions as they seek out the dark tunnels under the world.

    Without their leader, the fomori flee before the holy Templar, and the battle is soon over. Valentine reappears and Aurora does her best to stabilize her.

    The Deacon Zoltan can wait no longer, and he moves to the Clockwork Messiah and begins to tinker with it, chanting passwords and instructions in the form of ancient Enochian hymns and then activating it by bestowing it with a secret name. Suddenly there is a change, the exo-metal face doesn’t move, but somehow its eyes now have the spark of life. The rings begin to spin about it, slowly at first but then faster, and as they do so they begin to hum, a sublime vibration that transcends sound and takes on the symphonic aspect of an infinite chorus.

    Then, something goes wrong. The rings slow, appearing to catch on nothing at all, and reality appears to bulge around it, distorting like it was viewed through a miscast lens. But, then, after a brief straining moment, it tears itself free, space itself ripping apart and being dragged behind it like streamers. Soon, the entire thing resembles a kaleidoscope made from funhouse mirrors.

    Then, it explodes, and bits of ultra-dense machinery and etherically charged components shoot out, shattering glass, impaling people, and collapsing stone. Where the Clockwork Messiah once perched, there is only a deep vortex stretching into the depths of the Astral Sea. And anyone who looks in to it sees only madness, and something terrible looking back.

    The Dimensional Shambler drags itself from the rift, languidly, like an infant who is reluctant to be borne. It is almost incomprehensibly ugly; a skull-like head with baleful eyes like those of a fly, great and elephantine tusks, long arms with three scissoring claws, a transparent carapace that does little to hide the purposeless organs within, legless and bound only by a spinal column that trails away into infinity.

    Deacon Zoltan stands before the titanic abomination and shouts in defiance as if he is unable to comprehend what lies before him. “I am Zoltan! Deacon of the Immaterium!” These are his last words as the huge thing picks him up like a curious toddler, breaking his flesh and then tossing him aside once his form is no longer of interest, his glimmering cloak floating free of his bisected form.

    Krystal is the first to reach it, running up the thing’s arm and stabbing the Black Flame Blade into one of its compound eyes, leaving it blind on one side. She expects to be hidden from any reprisal, but it turns toward her. She doesn’t know it, but the monster has senses unlike those of any living creature, and it can hear her heat. She runs into the darkness and hides, only emerging to take shots with Screecher when the shambler is good and distracted.

    Kim covers her escape by distracting the monster with her meteor hammer, but it picks her up like a doll, its claws slipping through her adamant armor as if it wasn’t even there; using a combination of strength, sharpness, and the ability to strike from directions that mortal men cannot even comprehend. It casually disembowels her and tosses her aside.

    Kim is still alive, and crawls toward Aurora, who attempts to remove her armor in an attempt put her back together. Kim tries to focus her mind enough to use the Staff of Noboru, when Valentine whispers advice into her ear, and Kim instead conjures a circle of protection that forbids the monstrosity from approaching within five paces of them.

    The monster doesn’t notice them at first, it is instead content to slay the Holy Templar and Anointed Monks and then feast upon the unbound angels that rise from their broken bodies.

    Quincy picks up his rifle and does not hesitate to use his remaining vorpal bullets. This gets the monster’s attention, and it moves forward, stops at the edge of the circle of protection, and then proceeds to try and force its way through. Kim knows it won’t hold for long, for this thing can slide between dimensions and will soon find one that Kim didn’t know how to ward.

    Feur summons a hound of tindalos to bolster his spells, and this ends up saving their lives, although not in the way they had hoped, for the time spirit serves to distract the shambler, who turns upon it and devourers the elemental as it howls in fear and anguish.

    As it does so, Anani’s Immortal guardian unleashes its flamethrower upon the monstrosity, setting it alight and inflicting the only serious wounds it will suffer in its incursion. It turns and smashes the armor apart before turning its attention back to Quincy. Rather than attempting to strike directly, it picks up the huge marble altar and tosses it into the circle, forcing them to choose between leaping out of the way and forfeiting the magical protection or risk being crushed or buried alive.

    Once it has crushed the life from its opponents and devoured all of the spirits it can find in the bastion, the monster grows annoyed by Krystal’s bolts and burns it has suffered, and returns to whatever strange realm birthed it. Aurora is then revived by her spell of regeneration, and she is able to use the last of her magic to save her companions' lives and raise them from unconsciousness.

    The building is collapsing around them, and as they move to flee, Valentine goes back to recover The Deacon’s Mantle. When she fastens it about her shoulders she hears an alien voice in her head.
    “Greetings Deacon.”
    “I am not the Deacon.”
    “You are now.”
    “What are you?”
    “I am the leader of The Immaterium. The source of the Deacon’s authority.”
    “Where did you come from?”
    “I do not recall, any more than you can remember being born. It takes millennia for artifacts to gain sentience, let alone sapience. My best theory is that I was crafted by one of the Atlantean patriarchs when he sewed the blessings of every god into his son's cloak to protect him on a voyage to Pangaea.”
    “What do we do now?”
    “Rebuild.”
    “Is there anything I need to take before we depart?”
    “We will salvage this place before it becomes uninhabitable. Now go.”

    Valentine will come to find that her new garments allow her to draw upon the blessings of any deity, and to perform miracles as if she were a priest of any faith.

    They run into the desert alone, Krystal carefully carrying a laden collection plate in each hand, Sonya and Quincy struggling to drag the Scourge armor so that it might be repaired. They huddle together with the few surviving members of The Immaterium whom they will shepherd to Concordance as The Bastion of Resolute Splendor finally gives in to the inevitable and crashes down behind them, a heap of splintered glass and stone beneath which slumbers the remains of The Clockwork Messiah as well as the final legacies of ten thousand lost gods.

    The group remembers stopping in Golgotha and reporting to Lady Abasinia.

    She congratulates them on a job well done. When Valentine asks how she can congratulate them on an abject disaster, the Lady laughs her off, saying that they did exactly what they were meant to do; can you imagine what that group of buffoons would do with something as dangerous as The Clockwork Messiah?

    They ask why she helped them build it for so long, and she said it was the only way she could ensure that this whole affair would meet its proper resolution with any degree of certainty; for if the Deacon had found some other way to build it she would not be able to get her agents close enough to stop him with any sort of finality.

    Kim asks what her end goal is, for surely it cannot be mere profit.

    Lady Abasinia asks what the matter is, but Kim will not say. Lady Abasinia bids her to speak plainly, and she will speak plainly in turn.

    Kim explains Feur’s visions while under the effects of the Mu Spores, and says that they are told that they are not hallucinations, but revelations.

    Lady Abasinia asks Kim what she thinks that means, and Kim bluntly states that she thinks her one of the merrow.

    “If you think so, then that is what I am.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “I told you poppet, you really need to learn to untether your mind, clinging to such a static view will only bring you despair.”

    Lady Abasinia then tells them that in truth none of them have ever met, even now. She is a seer who currently lives some thirty million years further in the past. She can see the future, and can even communicate with people who have yet to be born, but only by implanting false memories in their heads. She can anticipate their questions, but cannot actually communicate in real-time.

    They ask why, and she says that some three hundred years further into the future, a mortal woman will gain the full powers of The Night, and to protect herself from the goddess of magic, she will command that dark deity to protect her at all point in time; betraying a fundamental misunderstanding of how time works. The only way that The Night can accomplish this is by finding ways to prune every path that does not lead to that moment. In this, he is locked into one course of action, and thus has finally created a vulnerability that may one day be his undoing; his own rigid adherence to a single truth.

    Valentine’s group lives in the past, and Abasinia is further in the past still. While the Silver Hour is fixed in time and inevitable, the further away one gets from it the more outcomes can potentially lead to that moment. She tells them to think of it like a sturdy rope that has become frayed at the ends. This Fray is the reality in which they live.

    Kim asks if Lady Abasinia is alive in their time, and she says she doesn’t know. It is possible, but she cannot be certain, for she cannot read her own future, as her every action changes the future slightly, and attempting to do so while foreseeing her own fate causes such an out-of-control spiral of possibilities that even she cannot keep them all straight. But even if she does live, she cannot predict who she will be or what her goals are, for time makes us strangers to our own selves.

    They ask what her goals are, and she says that in the present, the actual present, 1360 years in their future, a great battle is brewing between the Queen in Black and the Queen in Red. And it may likely destroy not just the world, but all worlds, ending existence entirely and collapsing time so that it never began. She is doing what she can to put the proper pieces in place going into the fixed moment in time so that the deck is stacked in the proper way when this final apocalyptic battle truly unfolds and the Age of Wonders begins, so that reality will finally come through not only intact, but in a manner most pleasing to her.

    She tells them that she will call upon them again when she needs them, and when they ask why they would ever work with her, Lady Abasinia grows stern and says that they need to understand that just as her world came to an end, so do they stand upon a precipice; both of their peoples are facing extinction.

    ***

    A week later a teenage girl approaches Aurora in Concordance. She wears strange clothes and is of an unfamiliar ethnicity, she is tall with broad shoulders and broader hips, black hair streaked in gold, and with a pronounced witch’s mark. She introduces herself as Dr. Arin Phoenix, and tells Aurora that the half-elf was referred to her by a mutual acquaintance who is looking to start a humanitarian effort on Pangaea called the House of Miracles, and she was sent here to train its operators on this world because it runs on a similar reality to her own paradigm. It will take centuries to get it up and running, but Aurora is to be her first disciple.

    “You are immortal, aren’t you?”
    “No. I am merely lost in time after being in Tir-Na-Nog.”
    “Oh, I see. Yeah, I spent the first seventeen nights of my life captive to the Nightmare Fey.”
    “That’s horrible. How did you survive?”
    “Maybe I will tell you about it one day.”
    “Anyway, I can show you how to fix that.”
    “Fix what?”
    “Mortality.”
    “Oh.”

    And thus she begins her internship. Arin is not actively abusive like her mother, or manipulative and sharp-tongued like Titania, but she is not pleasant either, for she is equal parts stubborn and petulant. Still, she teaches Aurora every secret of the human body, and expands her knowledge of medicine, alchemy, and restoration magic beyond anything she thought possible, and even how to blend them together so that they are one indistinguishable whole.


    Well, this is probably the last big lore session before the finale next month, and the players probably have 95% of the pieces of the puzzle even if they haven't put them all together yet.

    There was a brief instance that I made another thread about, when Bob asked how it was possible for Sonya to both be immune to magic and still cast spells at the same time, and I told him his character didn't know. Brian then proceeded to pull out the monster book and show Bob the entry for Shade, the sort of spirit that Anani is, and I asked them to "please not metagame" at which point they put the book away and both gave me dirty looks.


    I noticed that the teamwork was especially bad this session, there were several times when one player would move to save themself in a way that put a more vulnerable party member in peril, and when Kim was trying to recreate a silence spell using abjuration magic despite the fact that there was a friendly illusionist right there was shocking. I also created another thread about this, and I think I will use some of its suggestions next time and let you know how they went.

    Aurora's dice rolls are continuing to be impossibly good, to the point where the other players are starting to notice and complain. This is a conversation I don't want to have.

    The plotline with Lady Abasinia is actually a reused one from my aborted Delta Green game. It was going to feature Goblin Punch's Caesar, a psychic dinosaur, as the parties mentor and / or antagonist, but unfortunately I couldn't get enough interest in the system for the campaign to get off the ground, so I took a bunch of the ideas and repurposed them. My players are starting to notice tropes, that every campaign has an enigmatic NPC that seems friendly at first, then villainous, and ultimately complicated; and looking for my ideas for future campaigns about 2 out of every three do feature this, so I may need to work on shaking things up.

    The epilogue at the end is for Aurora's legendary skill quest. It is very abbreviated and not well integrated because she joined the game so late. It is a cameo by my PC from Mage: The Ascension and a bit of a meta joke, as well as some foreshadowing.

    We have reached the frustrating point in the game's economy. Heart of Darkness is designed so, assuming average performance, you get enough money to upgrade all of your gear every 20 sessions. My players, however, fixate on one or two "things" and then upgrade that as much as feasible and ignore everything else. As a result, they struggle early in the game as they refuse to buy consumables, in the mid game are happy but still struggling as they neglect their defensive and auxillary gear, and then late game simply pour all of their money into consumables while still neglecting their auxillary and defensive gear and just start playing sloppy because they got their "one thing" and no longer care about money or objectives.

    The players whined that I never explicitly gave them a chance to go shopping before the mission and wanted me to retcon it, but I didn't. They had way more than enough potions already, and that's all they wanted to buy. They still got a bit bitter at being told no though.


    Quote Originally Posted by Batcathat View Post
    I don't know about that. Your baseline for group behavior seems rather... off compared to my own (and most other people's, I think). A lot of sessions that you've described as "mostly okay" or something like that have stuff that would at best make me very vary of playing with these people, while the sessions you actually complain about would make me never play with them again, move across the country and change my identity. (Okay, I'm exaggerating a little, but not that much).
    Please not that by "mostly ok" I don't mean "eh, its just kind of all right, nothing really good or bad." We still genuinely have fun and enjoy the game the vast majority of the time. What I mean is that my group is made up of people who don't play well with others and are prone to outbursts when they get their way, so "mostly ok" is my way of saying no issues occured during the game other than a bit of minor bitching, not that nobody is having fun.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  23. - Top - End - #23
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Talakeal's Avatar

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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Sorry for the lack of updates. The game has been proceeding regularly, but I haven't had much chance to actually write it up.

    Spoiler: Chapter Nineteen: The Triumvirate
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    May 1115

    Word of mouth has it that the dwarves of Tahrr are under siege by the Omukade swarms. Balthazar’s forces are unable to provide relief, having opened up a war on at least four fronts before the unexpected appearance of The Scourge. Valentine is sure that her team’s assistance will be appreciated and richly rewarded, but first, she has a crazy plan; to strike at the Omukade leadership and claim the bounties while their army is away and their capital undefended.

    Kim doesn’t like this plan, she tells them that they haven’t seen the full horrors of that place, or the undead legions lurking beneath it. They wonder what happened to the alleged skeletal army on the night of the restless dead, and Feur mentions the necromentals which The Tribunal told him are attacking the elemental planes. At this point, Sonya says:

    “I am to tell you that the necromentals are not a curse, but a gift. The Titans were foolish in connecting their realms to Pangaea, for the Borderland have given the Nidhogg access to the Elemental Planes. If not for the blessing of undeath, all realms would have been corrupted beneath their notice.”

    Feur does not know quite what to make of this.

    They prepare for the trip, purchasing potions of dimming from Whin, which will allow them to slip in undetected. They also ask for a scroll to create a magical gate for them to escape through, but Sammy tells them that without proper coordinates and angles it could do more harm than good. He will, however, instruct Harijan on how to make one once they have the proper measurements.

    Zara returns and shuttles them to the edge of the Wasteland in her juggernaut. She is quiet the whole time, though Aurora and Sonya try and get her to engage in small talk while the others go over their tactics in the back.

    Once the Omukade city is in sight, Quincy surveys it with his binoculars, and he is able to plot out some rough angles for Harijan to prepare a rune that should create a gate leading from the palace into the rugged mountains beyond, and then they arrange a meeting spot for Zara to pick them up and proceed to the city on foot.

    They drink their potions of dimming and are not noticed by any of the guards or inhabitants of the town. It is strangely deserted, and even the heavily fortified ziggurats that were once full of undead warriors are deserted.

    They are finally spotted once they attempt to climb the great ramp leading up to the royal palace, the centipede-headed guards demanding to know their business. Valentine, who had hoped the potions would obscure them until the end, talks fast and explains that they are mercenaries who have been summoned by the Triumvirate for a special assignment involving the dwarves of Tahrr.

    The guards look impassive, but pass messages by intertwining their antennae, and soon begin to twitch nervously and escort the humans up the ramp.

    The long ramp extends seven hundred paces into the sky, and from the top one can see the sun setting over the wasteland, the clouds of ash and plains of volcanic glass turning all sorts of strange alien colors.

    The palace itself is built hanging from the underside of a cliff, only accessible to bipeds along a narrow servants' path. Before the group can cross it, they are sniffed over by a pair of languid Yowies, enormous twelve-legged creatures which are like a cross between serpents, dragons, and electric eels. It is said that they were bred for hunting by the giants of old, and it appears that the Omukade has continued the practice to produce these hand-reared guard beasts.

    They enter the palace and move through the narrow corridors of tile and adobe until they come to the lair of the Triumvirate, rulers of the Omukade. The room is square, about forty feet on a side, and hanging below the palace, only accessible by a single staircase. Broad rectangular windows laced with leaden bars provide a spectacular view of the city below.

    As for the royal family, there are three of them, one male, one female, and one who is both, a bonded unit. Each lies on a cushioned palanquin attended to by smaller creatures that are simultaneously priests and handmaidens.

    The male, bald and adorned in hooked bronze armor, grabs his spear and granite shield and demands to know the meaning of this intrusion, but the mercenaries are not here for banter, they draw weapons, and Quincy fires without a word.

    Kim immediately casts a spell of abjuration to seal the door behind them, making it impossible to open and impervious to harm.

    Krystal moves forward and dispatches the priests one by one from the shadows.

    The triumvirate are no strangers to combat, and they do not take this lying down. They work as a team, the male distracting his foes and blocking their attacks while the hermaphrodite circles behind them and tears into their flanks with a pair of cruel copper scimitars. The female, meanwhile, a hugely fat specimen with long green hair and the legs and tail of a giant desert centipede, uses her magic to repair their wounds.

    Aurora notices a demonic creature lurking in the Dreamtime, a shaggy, lanky form with a head like a grinning jack o’lantern, a creature that her companions would have recognized in a different world. It uses its power to banish the elementals that the invaders had bidden to aid them in their assault, and then summons several of the Omukade guardians who had come to investigate the gunfire and found themselves barred.

    Once Aurora explains what is happening, Kim wards the room, preventing magical transportation both in and out.

    The battle is a strategic one; the Triumvirate knows its tactics well. The male is too sturdy to be taken down by a single shot, and the hermaphrodite too quick, and any wounds they suffer are quickly healed. Of course, Aurora also repairs any wounds that they inflict upon their would-be assassins.

    Sonya is taken down relatively quickly, a victim of friendly fire, knocked out cold when Kim’s meteor hammer strikes the side of her head.

    Feur and the pumpkin creature play a game of chess, one manipulating time and the other space. Feur speeds up his allies and slows his enemies, while the fallen boggart rearranges their positions to his advantage.

    In the end, they decide to focus on the female while Aurora reverses her magic, causing her wounds to fester and bleed. Once she is down, Feur banishes the heavily armored male into an alternate timeline rather than wasting time and energy trying to penetrate his thick shield.

    After he is gone, the remaining member of the Triumvirate and the few surviving guards and attendants do not last long in the face of Quincy’s gun, Sonya’s Immortal, and the Black Flame blade.

    Aurora quickly works to stabilize their wounds and get Sonya back on her feet while Krystal and Valentine loot the room. There is little of value; the Omokuda’s currency is made of clay and worthless in the wider world. Though they have a few pieces of jewelry made from copper and obsidian, most of their treasures are in the form of scarified pieces of chitin taken from the bodies of honored ancestors and passed down the family line. Still, Quincy can probably use these as trophies or proof of his kills.

    Kim drops the wards and Valentine goes to smash down the rune to create their escape portal, when Feur deftly catches the delicate sigil. He explains that he has come back from the future to warn her that this path leads to their ruin, for the Pumpkin Man will twist the gate and use it to separate their group so that they can be picked off one at a time by the Omukade response forces that are even now amassing outside and preparing to storm the palace.

    Instead, he summons the most powerful spirit he knows, an arcomental of time called Eonus, and bids it to chase away the Pumpkin Man, as well as any other bound spirits that the Omukade might send forth to hinder them. The ancient demiurge agrees, but he drives a tough bargain, and Feur was never one for negotiation, and he promises the powerful creature seven favors to be named later.

    That done, the companions open the gate and step through into the rocky scree above the palace before hurriedly making their way to the rendezvous point.

    Though they are pursued, they have enough of a head start that they quickly outpace the Omukade search parties. The yowies are another matter entirely, for the beasts have their scent and can scale the rocky ground as easily as a flat highway.

    After a long pursuit, Quincy gives into exhaustion, stumbling and falling, and the serpentine beasts are upon him. Kim reacts by erecting a circle of protection around him and hurrying down the mountainside to his aid. The huntsman pulls his shotgun and fires at the approaching monsters, and though they are prevented from drawing too close, they are still able to respond by stunning him with a powerful jolt of bioelectricity.

    They then move to Kim, recognizing her as a threat, and carefully move to position her between them using well-rehearsed pack tactics; it will only be a moment before they manage to pull her apart like a wishbone.

    Feur and Krystal move down to aid her, but the creatures are adept at rotating their longsome bodies, and neither is able to get into a good position to distract or wound the massive creatures.

    Sonya conjures several shades to distract them, but the incorporeal beings prove susceptible to the monster’s electric pulses.

    Eventually, Quincy is able to come to his senses and aim his rifle, and once he does he manages to bring down both creatures from the safety of his magic circle.

    Although he doesn’t have time to skin them, he inspects the yowies as Aurora works to put Kim back together, and he notices odd patterns of scars on their hides. He points it out to Sonya, and she surmises that the Omukade are harvesting their blood for some reason.

    Later, Aurora will analyze a sample and see that their blood is a powerful hallucinogen and that they were likely bred for their narcotic properties.

    An hour later they exit the mountains and meet up with Zara, Jeremy, and Harijan, and set off for The Towers of Tahrr, leaving their pursuers behind to mourn the loss of their kings and queens.


    This session had more than its share of drama.

    First, you may notice that not a whole lot happened this session, but it was still one of the longer ones.

    We play in a house with three small children and a dog, all of them hyper-active and attention starved. I don't really mind this, but it does mean the session is frequently interrupted, and this was worse than most.


    During the battle with the Triumvirate, I accidentally took a turn with a model that Feur had stunned. Brian pointed this out to me, and then Aurora's player immediately jumped in (did I already bring up how she has a habit of dog-piling people at the table? I can't remember) and started shouting at me about how I did something wrong, at which point I told her to calm down, that I wasn't trying to argue I just made a mistake and am owning up to it. Brian thought I was talking to him, and apparently this reminded him an argument we had a few days previously where he exploded at me for almost nothing and I kept trying to tell him to calm down but every time I did he used it as an excuse to escalate, and he decided to bring that rage to the table screaming and swearing at me for having the audacity to tell him to be calm (even though I wasn't even talking to him).


    The next drama I already mentioned in my other thread, but I found myself in another situation where the game grinds to a halt and I have to walk the narrow path between being accused of being a rail-road GM or a killer GM.

    Then, the party made the tactical mistake of dropping their rune before dealing with the so-called Pumpkin Man, whom they knew had powers over space and conjuration magic, resulting in the party being split up. Now, I thought this an interesting complication, but the players found it an insurmountable setback, and spent almost two hours of real time wallowing in despair and talking themselves into hopelessness before finally deciding to simply have Feur cast a spell to rewind the decision. This is a frequent problem that I don't really know how to solve; they encounter a setback, convince themselves the situation is impossible instead of trying the myriad solutions at their disposal, and if I intervene and give them advice they accuse me of railroading them.


    While they are debating the problem, at one point Aurora asks if she can simply climb down the mountainside and into the palace, and Bob tells her it would take a dozen climb tests. Now, that isn't actually how the rules work, but she takes him at his word and picks up a dozen dice, rolls them all, and proclaim that they all succeed. Now, I mentioned before how she has statistically impossible good rolls, but in this case not only is 12 successes in a row on a climb test less than 1:1,000,000 for her, but I actually see that the numbers on the dice don't match what she says she rolled. I don't say anything at the moment because the situation is so ridiculous, but this will come to a head next time.


    So the session runs really long. Brian and Sara are both super exhausted having stayed up really late the night before, and Feur and I both need to be up really early the next morning. I apologize for taking up everyone's whole day and the sleep deprivation that resulted, but with the interruptions by kids and breaks for meals and indecision after the gate fiasco, it was just really all over the place. Sarah took from this that I am calling her a bad mother and blaming her parenting for ruining my session, and after the game she tells Bob that she has decided to leave the group once the campaign ends.


    So yeah, pretty bad session. Although nowhere near some of the horror stories I have had in the past.

    Well, I have one more session in the can which I hope to post soon, and then I hope to run the final session this weekend. Wish me luck!
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

  24. - Top - End - #24
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Ok hi I'm new to this thread. I didn't read anything from before part 2 so sorry if I'm missing stuff.

    Anyways i just want to say the battle in the town where every pc played like 3 different characters was awesome. If it was a movie scene I'd definitely put it as a top tier fight scene.

    I'm also sorry for your group troubles. But if you lose some members of the group i don't think it'd be too bad if you lose some players since that means less people to dog pile on you for minor mistakes or things not going their way. If Sarah wants to leave so be it. Also if calling out on the player cheating causes the new one to leave that if fine too.

    Plus less players means less to manage and quicker rounds.

    Also I'm totally checking out heart if darkness now.
    Last edited by Ameraaaaaa; 2022-11-12 at 04:36 AM.

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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Quote Originally Posted by Ameraaaaaa View Post
    Ok hi I'm new to this thread. I didn't read anything from before part 2 so sorry if I'm missing stuff.

    Anyways i just want to say the battle in the town where every pc played like 3 different characters was awesome. If it was a movie scene I'd definitely put it as a top tier fight scene.

    I'm also sorry for your group troubles. But if you lose some members of the group i don't think it'd be too bad if you lose some players since that means less people to dog pile on you for minor mistakes or things not going their way. If Sarah wants to leave so be it. Also if calling out on the player cheating causes the new one to leave that if fine too.

    Plus less players means less to manage and quicker rounds.

    Also I'm totally checking out heart if darkness now.
    Thank you for your kind words, it's nice to know some people are enjoying my work.

    The problem with Sarah leaving is that she is married to Johnny and we play at their house, and if she leaves I imagine there is a good chance that we also lose Johnny and will then need to find a new gaming space. And they are both among the more drama free players.
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Thank you for your kind words, it's nice to know some people are enjoying my work.

    The problem with Sarah leaving is that she is married to Johnny and we play at their house, and if she leaves I imagine there is a good chance that we also lose Johnny and will then need to find a new gaming space. And they are both among the more drama free players.
    I see. Well if that's the case what can you do. Hopefully she doesn't leave but if it happens it's not the end of the world.
    Just a note i got adhd and autism.

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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Spoiler: Chapter Twenty: The Towers of Tahrr
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    On the drive to Tahrr, Kim and Zara continue to be cold and pretend the other does not exist.

    July 1115

    Eventually, Valentine pulls Kim aside and asks what is happening, and the archeologist explains their confrontation before the fight with Valen, and how Kim offended Zara by assuming things about her past. Valentine nods and gives Kim a quick script to follow in the form of an apology, as well as an expensive bottle of spirits to loosen her up.

    A few nights later the group is camped by the great rune-stones that mark the edge of the dwarven kingdom. Seeing this as her last chance, Kim approaches Zara by the fire and does her best to recall Valentine's words, stuttering at several points but powering through. She explains that she is sorry for making assumptions, but she really was curious about Zara’s past, and wants to get to know her as a friend rather than as an anthropological specimen.

    Zara sits in silence, sipping the alcohol with a stony look in her eyes, before grunting in acceptance of Kim’s apology and starting in on her tale.

    She was born to Clan O’Meara, the first hold in Pangaea to accept the oaths from young Prince Arthur and join his Imperium. They lived in the rolling hills by the long lake between Lyre Wood and Concordance. Though they were venerable and proud, the Cataclysm hit them hard, and they are now a clan of elderly widows and widowers. She is the last daughter of the thane, and thus the only one who can continue the bloodline. But she had little interest in romance and babies, she was plenty satisfied tinkering with her engines.

    There is a sudden noise from the nearby bushes that sounds suspiciously like Feur and Krystal trying to stifle laughter, but they pretend not to notice.

    When her father arranged her marriage to Prince Baird of the Jebusite Hills, Zara agreed out of duty. They exchanged dowries and oaths and were wed, but when it came time to settle down and consummate the union, she couldn’t do it. She fled her home, becoming a beardless nomad, and doomed her entire clan to a slow death.

    Kim tries to tell Zara that it isn’t her fault, but delicately so as not to belittle her culture. Zara explains that she cannot cross the stones into dwarven lands or they will see her for what she is, and that is a shame she cannot bear, so in the morning she and her ironclad carriage will be gone. Kim toasts her, and both fear that they might never meet again.

    In the morning before they set out, Kim uses the Staff of Noboru to protect her companions against poison, but Quincy refuses, saying it will be awful hard to relax after a battle without his medicine.

    As they walk the long road under the burning sun, the group debates their goals for the dwarves. They have decided that the Omukade need to be wiped out, but the dwarves are also slavers and despoilers of the Earth, and might also deserve death or be brought low under one of the Warlords. This troubles Feur, who says they need to think very carefully about this, for they are the good guys and must not do anything which will tarnish their reputation. Valentine shrieks with laughter and congratulates Feur on the first truly funny joke he has ever told.

    Valentine says that no, the dwarves of Tahrr are too economically valuable to dispose of, and Valentine will do everything in her power to make sure that they succeed, and that they know she was responsible for their prosperity.
    That afternoon, Quincy spies three hulking figures guarding the road. Massive Aqrabuamelu, which Sonya says are the offspring of spirits of loathing and desert scorpions. Each has a burly manlike head and torso, but from the waist down they have the body of an arachnid, eight legs, long pincers, and a poisonous tail.

    They surmise that these are hired muscle that the Omukade are using to deter merchants who might be tempted to bring supplies to the besieged dwarves, and that they should be taken out both to clear the road. Besides, they don’t want to risk becoming lost in the desert should they attempt to go around.

    Kim quickly digs a trench in the road and fills it with punji sticks, and then Quincy draws a bead on the scorpion folk and opens fire, at first to get their attention and then to cripple their stingers. As they draw nearer, Krystal leaps out from hiding and pushes one into the pit, leaving his two companions confused and surrounded. They do not survive to delay our heroes for long.

    Hours later it begins to grow dark, although no one is quite sure if it is from the setting sun or the clouds of smog that hang over the towers which are now rising taller and taller above the horizon.

    The armies of the Omukade surround the towers like a living tide. Most are slaves, humanoid creatures driven into a berserk frenzy by chemicals dripped into their shaved skulls, but the centipede folk still number in the thousands, and when they surge forward they climb up the sides of the edifices like a dark carpet of algae borne upon the waves of the assault.

    The attack is cyclical, and in one of the lulls, the mercenaries fight their way to the front gates which are opened just wide enough for them to slip inside. They are welcomed by the besieged dwarves, and brought to the council chambers. They are given only thick beer to drink and cold potatoes to eat, and Carrock winks at Feur and tells him that he hopes that he is not averse to the idea of cannibalism.

    Major General Lanniel Brashton wants to ride out and fight the Omukade head-on, while Lady Ophelia wants to keep up the siege and hope that their allies will eventually come to their aid, and with news of the Triumvirate’s destruction, she thinks the swarm might lose focus or the will to fight and merely drift away.

    Valentine sees value in both plans, but knows that help will not be coming, and volunteers to stand guard over the tower for as long as it takes.

    Eventually, they decide on a plan.

    Lanniel will lead their best warriors out into the field in a desperate sortie, hoping to draw the Omukade away from the tower and into the old quarry for a pitched battle. This will give the slaves and civilians time to make a break for Balthazar’s lands, both sparing their lives and relieving the dwarf's stores of food and water. They will then empty the servant’s tower of treasures and fill it with traps, all the while fortifying the noble’s tower.

    Valentine and her group will then make their stand on the bridge connecting the two towers, hopefully turning it into a meatgrinder.

    Then, if the battle in the quarry goes poorly, Ophelia will open up the floodgates of the great dam which holds back the river Luhne, drowning the invaders along with the valiant dwarves who will give their lives pinning the attackers in the river’s path.

    The next afternoon the group stands upon the bridge, which they have fortified to the best of their ability, and which Jeremy has rigged to explode as a last resort.

    Kim has drafted two earth elementals into her service, and coerced them into taking physical bodies to help with both labor and combat. She then builds two barricades that run lengthwise across the middle of the bridge, forming a funnel for her foes.

    Harijan conjures up a magical storm, with winds blowing into the attacker’s faces and with bolts of lightning at his command.

    Then they wait, watching Lanniel’s army engage the enemy forces below and draw them into the quarry while the long line of refugees heads north. But many of the Omukade storm the servant’s tower, and once they find it empty and abandoned, they brave the chokepoint that is the bridge.

    Archers with the legs of men and the heads of worms, pikemen with the bodies of centipedes and the heads of men, great Bandersnatch hunting hounds, and mighty buraqs ridden by fearsome cataphracts wielding toxic glaives all come at them in waves, but they are prepared to hold the bridge for as long as it takes.

    Quincy shoots freely, and Jeremy tosses both grenades and flash bombs. Enemy arrows do little in the face of such mighty headwinds.

    When they move across the stone barricades, Kim claps her hands and they slam together, crushing those within. Then she pulls them apart, forcing those on the outside to risk being broken upon the stone railing or toppling over and dropping a thousand paces to the unforgiving desert hardpan below.

    Krystal darts forward and finishes off those who survive, and when those with centipede legs attempt to crawl along the outside of the bridge, Harijan conjures up a storm of sleet, sending most of them sliding and skittering to their dooms.

    One Bandersnatch leaps across the center of the bridge and into their midst, where Sonya’s immortal guardian snaps its neck, and then Aurora binds a blood elemental into its corpse, providing her with an undead guard dog to keep her safe while she tends to the wounded.

    Sonya, meanwhile, conjures up a cloud of unnatural darkness, particularly around Krystal, who then slips behind the enemy lines and strikes unseen from the shadows. Quincy is used to fighting in the dark, and Kim does not need her eyes to hold the line, she can feel the enemies' movements in the stone below her feet.

    Eventually, a rampaging buraq smashes the barricades apart and then grapples with an earth elemental, their pair crashing through the railing and both plummeting to the ground below. The elemental never thought its deal with Kim to end in any other way.

    Though they are still winning, this marks the turning point in the battle, when their endurance starts to flag and more Omukade cross their lines than fall in the attempt. Jeremy continues to drop grenades, and the shrapnel does as much damage to himself and his allies as it does to the chelicerate invaders.

    Feur starts to panic, and he reaches into the past, to make contact with the most powerful entity he can. He finds a mighty spiritual presence, and pulls it forward in time, pledging to help with its resurrection in exchange for aid in battle.

    He does not know it, but this is the lost kami spirit of Mount Luhne, from whose bones this tower was built. Upon accepting his deal, one of the great stone blocks behind him dissolves into windblown sand, revealing the fossilized remains of a coatl priest that once dwelt here in eons long ago, a fitting vessel for the undead spirit to reenter the world.

    Though it is slow in getting acclimated to the current eon, the spirit interloper easily turns the tide of the battle, and once it blocks the far side of the bridge wrestling with a buraq, it tells the mercenaries to leave, it can hold this on its own.

    They fall back to the noble’s tower, and rise to the throne room. There they find Lady Ophelia sitting on her throne, nervously running her fingers over the rune-covered stone rings that are built into the chair’s arms and which can control the tower’s infrastructure, including the dam’s spillway. She is alone, save for her four most loyal oathguard, and her advisor, the ancient crone Giselle who naps in the corner, and none have the heart to wake.

    Kim goes to ask her about the runes, but Valentine steps forward, blocking her questions with a snow-white wing.

    Valentine tells Ophelia that she need not flood the field, for her team will help Lanniel achieve victory. But even as they speak, they look out over the lands below and see that the dwarves were not the only ones who had a backup plan, for the Omukade has unleashed a monstrous megapede to scour the battlefield.

    The great arthropod is more than a hundred paces long, and cares nothing for the dwarves or their weapons, for this creature has been grown to giant size by decades of alchemical infusions, and now only lives to satiate its unnatural hunger like a whale amidst plankton.

    They leave the tower and make for the ridge above the quarry with manic speed, Kim urging the ancient elevators to move faster than they were ever designed to travel, and whispering open long-forgotten doors.

    They move to engage the colossal monster, but find the air grows foul around it, as it produces a cloud of cyanide that follows its path. Harijan casts a spell to purify the air about him, and warns his companions not to get far. At the same time, Kim uses the Staff of Noboru to make her companions immune to its claws and pincers.

    Valentine takes to the sky, coordinating her companions' attacks from above, well out of the monster’s reach. Kim gets its attention with her mace and Quincy with his gun, and it turns on them, and though they are immune to its strikes, Aurora is swallowed whole, and would have suffocated if Harijan had not gated her away to safety.

    Krystal will not risk getting close and using the Black Flame Blade, and instead snipes from a distance with Shrieker. The bolts do little, but the sonic pulses serve to disorient and aggravate the great beast.

    Unfortunately, Sonya and her Immortal are immune to Kim’s protective spells, and the armor is torn apart and the girl is nearly killed. Anani moves to resuscitate her, and Feur attempts to banish her to a safer time, but neither can touch her shadow soul, and instead, Kim simply buries her beneath the Earth, hoping she can survive long enough without their assistance.

    Enraged, the megapede moves to crush the attackers with its body; though they are protected from its strikes, they are still brought low by its seven-hundred-ton bulk. At this point, the monster makes a fatal mistake and decides to devour Jeremy Butler, who was in the process of lighting a phosphorous grenade to throw at it.

    There is a moment of silence, and then a low rumbling as a series of internal explosions tear the creature apart from within.

    Still, it is not wholly dead, and the companions hack it to pieces as it continues to lash out at them. Miraculously, they are actually able to find enough of Jeremy for Aurora to put back together, and he may make a full recovery in time.
    Likewise, Sonya is soon unearthed and barely pulled back from the edge of death.

    In the field below, Lanniel Brashton is heralded as a hero, for he led the dwarves to a crushing victory, and the few remaining Omukade flee the field before his wrath.

    In the end, it is a decisive victory for the Dwarves of Tahrr, and they heap praise upon Brashton and riches upon Valentine and her crew, even crafting for them fine adamant arms and armor.

    In the coming weeks, the dwarves scour the land of both the Omukade and the Morlocks, committing a cleansing of those who carry the mutated centipede blood and adding their slaves to the dwarves’ own, only freeing those who will fetch a high ransom. Even the warlords Livonia and Velonious are forced to acknowledge dwarven sovereignty and pull their forces back from the region.




    Some months later, the heroes are fully recuperated and ready to return to Concordance. As they depart under much fanfare, the ancient crone Giselle approaches Kim and whispers the following into her ear:

    “You once asked why the dwarves of Tahrr were so different from those of Rhybar. Do you remember lassie? Well, the difference is, the dwarves of Rhybar didn’t have me. Nine hundred years ago, Arthur’s bitch queen banished me from the Imperium, but I never left Pangaea, and I never died. I came here, to guide the dwarves into building an unsustainable new empire. And with your help, they have done grand.

    Oh, and one more thing, the next time you talk to Lady Abasinia, tell her that I am coming for her. She and I have a date at the Cliffs of Morrian.”

    Kim is too shocked to respond, and by the time she realizes what this means, the towers are long behind them.
    The group travels overland to Gollanthor, where they catch a riverboat bound for Concordance.

    Kim recalls stopping in Golgotha to speak with Abasinia, but she now knows that it never happened. Lady Abasinia told Kim not to seek her out, for she does not know what awaits her at the Cliffs of Morrian, but one thing is certain, she cannot read her own future, doing so causes the timelines to branch out faster than even her mind can conceive of, and if Kim does find her in the future, she will never be able to see her again in their shared present.




    One evening when the riverboat is docked for the night and the group is well content with food, wine, and gambling, they are ambushed by a gang of sasquatch.

    Though few people can survive a surprise attack from a raging yeti, our heroes do admirably, Feur manages to deftly take one down with his bare hands, and Kim sends her opponent stumbling overboard into the river.

    Aurora is on the ship's prow when she is confronted by their leader, G’mork, bodyguard of the late Trade Prince Valen. His eyes glow yellow in the dark, as do the silver runes of warding which are painted onto his black fur.

    Aurora claims ignorance, but G’mork says that he knows who she is, and he needs to reclaim his soul from Valentine, for she stole it when she made him flee from battle and abandon the one to whom he was bonded for a life’s service. She continues to stall the sasquatch, and it works, for when he finally tosses her like a ragdoll from the ship's bow, where she clings quietly from the masthead, he turns and sees Feur, Kim, and Krystal surrounding him and armed for battle, his hired muscle all neatly dispatched, all save one.

    Quincy is lying on the roof, watching the wonderful color trails the stars leave behind when he dips his cigarettes in the Yowie’s blood. He feels a dart strike him in the neck, and he staggers to his feet and then falls to the deck, more disoriented than usual.

    He feels a knife piece his back, and he turns to see the blue half-demon assassin Brianne of the Two Whispers holding a bloody knife. He pulls out his side arm and fires the sawed-off shotgun at her point blank, but it is merely an illusion, and he passes out from a combination of poison and blood loss.

    Brianne then moves to Valentine, who is blissfully asleep on the back deck, but before she can finish her bloody task, Sonya speaks a holy word, and the cambion recoils, leaping to the roof and hissing like a scared cat. She fires her blowgun at Sonya and the girl is instantly paralyzed.

    Brianne drops down between them and draws her wicked knife, locking eyes with Sonya and tells her not to make a sound, not even a scream, not even a whisper. As she goes to slit Valentine’s throat, a deep roar of pain shakes the boat.

    On the foredeck, Krystal has slain G’mork, striking upward and skewering his heart on her enchanted rapier. Brianne shakes her head, and tells Sonya that it looks like she isn’t getting paid either way, sheaths her dagger, and disappears into the Hellscape.

    Sonya will later relate the experience to Krystal, who seems almost impressed. She tells Valentine that maybe they should recruit Brianne, whom she feels is like her evil twin. At this, it is Feur’s turn to laugh.



    Much better than last time, but still not drama free.


    To start with, I told the players that if they needed something from Zara, this would be their last chance. Brian did his usual "I roll diplomacy" without giving me anything to work with, but I am trying to be more open with my players, and so I worked with him both in and out of character by having Valentine coach Kim. I said that it didn't matter how eloquent he was as a player, but I needed to know broadly what he wanted from her and what approach he was using to get it. At this point he said "I want her to like me" and I tried to say that isn't really something gameable, that's more free-form RP. We settled upon him being apologetic and wanting to know more about her past, so I was able to give him a set difficulty which he was able to pass with Valentine's help, and bring Zara's story to something of a close.

    Its kind of an annoying paradox, Brian is the only player who really cares about the "fluff" aspects of the game, but he is terribly awkward and fearful when it comes to actually talking during a session.



    I did a lot of improv during this session. It surprised the hell out of me that the players didn't do something to betray the dwarves and instead supported them wholeheartedly. So I left the dwarves success up to the dice, and they rolled extremely well, and the session went in a direction I wasn't expecting. I really thought this would be the story of their fall, and I am going to have to figure out how they will factor into future campaigns as a new regional power.

    My players were also amazed at how much detail I went into and how much deep lore I had prepped when Feur summoned the ancient spirit of Mount Lhune, and I didn't have the heart to tell them I was making it all up as I went along.



    The players really enjoyed the fight on the bridge. They came up with a good plan, and ended up solidly dominating their enemies. It was supposed to be an endurance match with greater rewards the longer they held them off, but after fourteen turns I declared them the victors and gave them maximum rewards.


    The last fight with the megapede was something else though. The monster was dishing out a TON of damage, and on each of Aurora's turns she would declare "I healed it all". Several times I ran the numbers and realized she could only pull it off with rolls well above 20 (Heart of Darkness uses exploding dice, where if you roll a natural 20 you roll again and at the dice together) and she always said "yeah I did". Now, rolling a twenty every turn is pretty suspicious, but not impossible (although Aurora does it every session) but in this case she is attempting spells every turn that REQUIRE a natural 20, and then not announcing it before hand and acting nonchalant about it after the fact. Everyone else was kind of looking at each other nervously, and then eventually Brian turned to her and yelled at her, flat out telling her that he doesn't believe her and that she simply has to be lying about her dice rolls.

    She denied it and kind of sat quietly for the rest of the session and then left quickly when it was over. I don't know if we will see her again; although Brian apologized to her and she said she is planning on coming to the last session. I posted that I was aware of the drama and we will have a conversation about it.

    Now, I am glad it was addressed, and kind of relieved that I wasn't the one who did it, but I am not crazy about the timing or the manner. I was really hoping to finish this campaign without any major drama. I was planning on (and maybe still am) waiting until we were getting ready to start the next campaign and then making a general announcement that there are some trust issues going on, like there are every time we have a new player in the group (this is true, and it goes both ways. I play on the "honor" system and every time a new player comes in there is either someone who thinks they are cheating or they think one or more existing players are cheating) and until everyone is more used to one another we need to start rolling in the open to cut off drama. But Brian kind of forced the issue.


    Anyway, one session left. I was supposed to finish the campaign this weekend, but everyone was sick so it got pushed back until next weekend. Let's hope it happens and goes well! Thanks for sticking with me, looking forward to the end!
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Dwarves succeeding is a success for me.

    2 questions btw.

    How viable would a tinkerer be in this system and How would power armor work.

    If i were to play this system from the skimming i did of the rule book I'd probably start with either a tinkerer like zara, a martial arts master, or a gigantic grappler (maybe as a macho man randy savage rip off)
    Just a note i got adhd and autism.

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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Quote Originally Posted by Ameraaaaaa View Post
    Dwarves succeeding is a success for me.

    2 questions btw.

    How viable would a tinkerer be in this system and How would power armor work.

    If i were to play this system from the skimming i did of the rule book I'd probably start with either a tinkerer like zara, a martial arts master, or a gigantic grappler (maybe as a macho man randy savage rip off)
    Tinkers absolutely work, the system has a robust system for artificers, craftsmen, alchemists, etc.

    Earlier versions of the game had a lot more technology, including power armor, as the game had a more post apocalyptic setting, but a lot of it felt kind of redundant with magic and so I leaned into a more fantasy western feel and stripped out a lot of it. If you want unique gadgets, such as power armor, and want to play a sort of gadgeteer character or iron man equivelant the best bet would be to treat them as technological artifacts.

    Precisely how you would do that would depend on what exactly you mean by armor. Is it just really good armor or does it actually increase your size, strength, etc?
    Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.

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    Default Re: Talakeal's Campaign Diary Part II (Now 90% horror story free!)

    Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal View Post
    Tinkers absolutely work, the system has a robust system for artificers, craftsmen, alchemists, etc.

    Earlier versions of the game had a lot more technology, including power armor, as the game had a more post apocalyptic setting, but a lot of it felt kind of redundant with magic and so I leaned into a more fantasy western feel and stripped out a lot of it. If you want unique gadgets, such as power armor, and want to play a sort of gadgeteer character or iron man equivelant the best bet would be to treat them as technological artifacts.

    Precisely how you would do that would depend on what exactly you mean by armor. Is it just really good armor or does it actually increase your size, strength, etc?
    It wouldn't increase size much but it would make the user really strong.
    Just a note i got adhd and autism.

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