Session One: "The Brotherhood of Grunt"
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Sergeant Carp and his team (the PCs) have been assigned to investigate recent string of pirate raids on thunderstone shipments. They went aboard an aircruiser - shipping thunderstone from Iron City - in hope it would be attacked. You were about to loose hope in that it would when a big metallic cruiser appears out of the mists of Shadow Mountains and fires harpoons at the ship, which hit and the pirates draw the cargo cruiser to them. Orc and human pirates start boarding the ship.
Picture of Sergeant Carp
In leadership of the pirates is Grunt, and one eared Orc well known by the PCs as the leader of the Brotherhood of Grunt bandit group, an old thorn in the Free Cities’ arse. When he discovers the red capes aboard the cruiser he snarls at Carp: “Ah Sergeant Carp, it would seem you owe me an ear!”, and signals his men to attack. He opens his black villain-ish cloak, revealing rusty chainmail and starts waving his sword around.
Picture of Grunt
The thugs attack, but are quickly dispatched by waves of the
sleep spell cast by Incognito and dozens of rounds of ammonution fired by the rest of the capes and cruiser’s guards and crew. After Grunt himself gets his sword knocked out of his hand by a fierce blow from Kurk’s greatsword, he decides not to take his chances and orders his men to retreat: “This ain’t worth it! There are many more ships to raid!”
The remaining thugs quickly follow their leader back aboard the pirate ship and with the engines roaring, their cruiser starts to move away from the capes. They try to stop the pirate cruiser, throwing hooks and ropes aboard it, but without any success. As a final try as the gap between the two cruiser widens, Kurk literally jumps after it, just barely succeeding in getting a hold onto one of the harpoon ropes hanging from the ship. After dangling there for some time, Kurk starts to slowly climb the rope and onto the ship.
Just as Kurk gets his balance he is attacked by two thugs, but both are quickly dealt with. Kurk chops one thug’s head off in one blow and the other gets a stab in the gut, showering the floor with entrails. Grunt grabs himself an axe and faces Kurk himself muttering something like “...always ya gotta do it yerself fergawdsake!”.
Kurk throws himself at Grunt, but Grunt dodges the blow with ease. Kurk does not wait to strike again but again blow is easily parried by Grunt who then lands a blow into Kurk's arm followed by kick that knocks Kurk's blade out of his hands. In desperate defense Kurk grabs a nearby bucket and throws it at Grunt who slices it in half in mid air. Grunt gives Kurk another kick, this time in the chest so that Kurk falls backwards onto his behind. Grunt patiently waits for Kurk to stand up and when he finally does, Grunt gives him a third kick. This time, Kurk doesn't fall down, but fumbles backwards all the way to the right side of the ship. Kurk tries to grab Grunt by the neck with his bare hands, but Grunt is stronger and pushes him over the side and off the ship. Kurk falls down bu tis saved by Incognito’s quick responses as he casts
levitate on him and levitates him back aboard the merchant cruiser.
From distance Grunt signals the capes with some insulting gestures. Sergeant Carp swears under his breath as he watches the pirate vessel disappear into the distance. “Shake the bodies,” he says to the PCs, “see who are dead and who are just sleeping. Then tie the sleepy heads up. We need to get the location of their base out of someone of them.”
After and
hypnotize spell and some “suggestions” one of the prisoners tells them that the base is located in an old abandoned Kentaari stronghold just west of the great stone mines in the Shadow Mountains, deep into the fog. The party agrees on going back to Serpent City, get rid of the prisoners, get some rest and healing before they head over to the stronghold with some backup.
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The next day the party heads over to Shadow Mountains with a raiding party of twelve well armed men aboard a City Guard aircruiser (notably known by the red sails and the big twin cannons standing out of the front). After four hour of cruising over plains and woodland the ship sails deep into the Shadow Mountains, beyond the stone mines and into the thick fog. After cruising straight ahead blindly for a couple of minutes, the fear of sailing straight into the rocky hills has nearly made them turn around. Those plans are abandoned when they see a strong blue light source in the distance. It is a guidance beacon.
As they come closer to the beacon the grey fortress walls of the ancient Kentaari stronghold come into view. It built into the mountain side out of light grey stone bricks, in strong contrast to the dark black rock of the Shadow Mountains, that surround it. The Kentaarian army obviously didn’t trust the native building material so they brought their own. Grunt’s ship is docked next to one of and the big two cannons which are located at either side of the base.
The capes keep themselves in the fog so they shouldn’t be seen by the pirates while they hatch their plan. The plan is just to storm the place in one quick strike. The only problem being the two cannons that defend the base. They should be able to blow one cannon up with the ship’s cannons, but not both. Just as they’d attack one cannon, they’d automaticly be sitting ducks for the other, so the PCs get the mission of sneaking into the base and blow one of the cannons up.
The PCs are dropped off out of sight and slowly they find their way into the base. When they finally get to the stronghold, Stickler sneaks onto the base with a grenade in each hand. He hears some voices and quickly jumps to hide behind some boxes.
“I don’t understand what they need all this thunderstone for,” It’s a whiny squeaky voice. It sounds like it has done it’s fair share of complaining through the years, “I mean, we’ve stolen enough to blow up half the Serpent for God’s sake! And now the capes are on to use, this job has become way too high profile for me ye know.”
“Sixteen good lads went down yesterday.” Another voice, much deeper. “Pity.” It sounds as it had done it’s fair share of following orders without any thought put into distractions like ‘why?’ or ‘what for?’, “Of course da boss probably has a good reason for all of this.”
“Then why doesn’t he share it with us then? I mean, I’d really like to know what I’m risking my neck for! ”
“But Scarran, if he told us we could talk.” The voice becomes little more serious, like a parent preaching the dangers of smoking to it’s child, “And we’d not like that, would we Scarran?”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ve made your point. Man the cannon won’t you, old Bink said he saw something move in the fog. It’s probably nothing, you know how he is, we can all remember the incident last year.”
“Yeah, we lost a lot of good men then.”
“It’s hard to trust his eyesight after that ye know, but I’m not taking any chances after yesterday. I’m going down to the kitchen to get mister Grunt something to eat now, I can trust you.” That last part wasn’t really a question.
Stickler hears the whiny voiced character leaving. Stickler sneaks a peek over the boxes and sees a rather stupid looking orc wearing studded leather which holds a war hammer in one hand. He seems to be counting the fingers of the other hand out loud. “One, two, three... erm... four and... eh... six... no that’s not right... five! Yup, that’s it! I wonder how many my other hand has...”
When Stickler tries to signal Incognito and Kurk, the orc spots him. “Who’s dat?!” With a large swing the orc demolishes the box Stickler is hiding behind. Now exposed, Stickler calls for help. the orc takes another swing at Stickler, which he just barely dodges. Kurk comes to the rescue and with two shots from his pistols he kills the orc who falls onto the boxes with a loud crash.
Kurk gives Stickler a good kick in the behind for messing up.
The noise did not go unnoticed and a pair of thugs come running from around the corner. When they see the capes they scream for help before they attack. One thug gets a quick death by a shot from Incognito’s pistol while the other’s right arm gets chopped off by Kurk, followed by his skull being crushed.
The Capes throw their grenades at the big cannon and run for shelter. The cannon goes up in neat blue thunderstone flames.
Picture of Scarran the Gnome
Grunt arrives at the scene followed by a scruffy looking gnome and a brigade of thugs. Grunt screams some orders at the gnome calling him ‘Scarran’. Obviously the gnome is the bearer of the squeeky voice. Just as the legion of thugs seems ready to attack the capes, the other cannon goes up in flames followed by a loud ‘BOOM’. The City Guard aircruiser sails into view out of the mists and soon waves of red capes crash into the pirate army. After a lenghty fight the capes come out victorious.
But Grunt along with a large portion of the army escape through a secret way out. When the capes finally find the way, all the pirates have gone, appearantly sailed away on another aircruiser which was docked inside a cave on the other side of the mountain. Also, there seems to be no traces of the loot, the many shipments of thunderstone that were stolen.
But one the of thugs that got arrested was Scarran, the scruffy looking gnome. When interrogated he cannot say where Grunt went or what he did with the loot, but he can tell of some mysterious hooded fellow Grunt seems to be spending a lot of time with. He cannot give a good description of the man, other that he spoke with a Serpent City accent.
So, the capes sail back home to Serpent City after a job well done although somewhat disappointed with the results and unsettled by the mystery of this new unknown character.
