Guardians of Marib

[GM_Brad]

The story begins with the death of King Syndor – weakened by treachery, and then slain in battle by the cruel Mayor Griswold of Carlow. The kingdom of Marib, left without its greatest king, was forced to make peace at a disadvantage with its enemies.

The late king’s son, a fourteen-year-old boy named Anselm, was proclaimed the new king. But because of his young age, and his sickly physical disposition, his mother, Queen Cyrilla, was named regent. She would rule Marib for her son until he would come of age. Who would have imagined she was a traitor herself?

The boy king is not as weak as many believe. For one thing, he has managed to surround himself with loyal guards, who keep him safe from murderous plots. On top of that, his mind is quite capable, and he has been able to seek out and build alliances for his cause as the rightful king. He has found out that his father was betrayed. And he knows that his own mother plots his death. Anselm is marshaling his forces and preparing to strike back.

That is where our party of intrepid adventurers comes in. The king has discovered the name of the man who poisoned his father, and the party is asked to go and kill him. For the man who helped to kill his father, the boy king will have no mercy.

These orders are given in a secret meeting. The queen knows nothing of it; while the death warrant was signed by the king and had his royal seal, without his mother’s signature its legality is in question. His advice to the group – don’t get caught. And with that, the three adventurers, along with Kristov’s band of soldiers, ride out of the capitol city at dawn the next day, towards the city of Madera, near the Forsaken Lands, where their quarry is rumored to be staying.

* * *​

Currently, there are three characters in our campaign:

Sir Kristov Julian Blackwolf: a mercenary captain and lord of a small, island manor. This dour and grizzled veteran leads a small band of soldiers, called Kristov’s Company, into battle. He was a friend of King Syndor, and knew Anselm as the boy grew up. Kristov is a warrior of great renown, and the bards of Marib sing of his past adventures, travels and victories on the battlefield. He is a tall, well-built man, with green eyes, and short black hair that is beginning to gray at the temples as his age begins to tell.

Roderic: his family was once nobility, but those days are long past. This giant of a man now fights for the king, hoping he can regain the glory days of his family’s past. He is a fearsome warrior, but there have been times he has gone insane and attacked his own allies in the heat of battle. It happens rarely, but there it is. Those who find themselves serving with Roderic are always ill at ease. He is also known to wake up screaming from nightmares. On top of all that, he is hideous to look at – his long hair is red, nearly orange; a long battle scar cuts across the left side of his face, from the eye down to his chin, cutting through his scruffy beard. The rest of his face is pock-marked from a childhood illness.

Jenera: this young woman is a restless spirit, always traveling from place to place. She has served the kingdom of Marib as a courier and, after the war with Carlow began, as a scout. While not a terror on the battlefield like Roderic, or a renowned fighter like Kristov, she is deadly with a bow, preferring to skirt around the action. When she’s not traveling, Jenera lives at an inn in the capitol ran by family friends. She is slight in build, and has red hair, like Roderic. She is also very tall, though not as tall as he is.

This story hour will be about the adventures of these three, and others (hopefully) who will join them. Marib is only a small kingdom in a large and dangerous world. Two dragons and their child-minions rule the Forsaken Lands to the west. In the north, another continent lies, inhabited by giants and goblins. In the south is the steaming jungle where lizards reign supreme. Who can know what lies beyond that? But the greatest danger comes from humanity itself – greed, treachery, revenge – vices that know no border or allegiance. Who will guard Marib from the dangers that lie within?

I hope to update this story hour every few days. We play every other week, and have had two sessions so far. Some things to keep in mind while reading this story hour:

All characters are human. The culture is similar to our own early renaissance. Magic is powerful, but rare, and it does not permeate the lives of everyday citizens. The characters that began the game did so at 8th level. While magic items are uncommon, characters are given the opportunity to purchase one for themselves before entering the game; others are sure to be picked up along the way.

By the way, we are currently looking for new players, having lost a couple of our group members when they moved away. We play in LaPorte, Indiana, and have players coming from Valparaiso and South Bend. Our next game is this coming Saturday, April 2, and would be a good time to get involved. We play from 4pm CST until 11pm or midnight. Our typical game is a combination of role playing, combat/adventure, and humor. We are using 3.5 D&D.

If you think you’d be interested, please email me (Brad) at bradbrown5555@yahoo.com for more information. It will be possible to try the game out playing an npc this weekend and, if we all get along, make your own character before the next session.

I hope you enjoy our story.

 

[Cold Beer]

All things Marib...

Heya Folks!

Long time no see, eh? Well, I just popped in to bump this thread, since i'm in this game...

I'm playing Kristov Julian Blackwolf, the "grizzled veteran". We've played two sessions so far and things are starting to gel. We're starting to get used to our characters and their abilities and we're egar for the next session.

We've "finished" the mission in Marib, and are closing in on our next set of orders. As usual per our group, things didn't go exactly as expected. I can't really say much yet, because Brad has not posted the SH for the first two sessions, but I will leave with a quote from the game that sums up the first two sessions nicely:

"Get her?! That's your plan?!" -Roderic

 

[Yorthan]

Child-minions? I somehow missed that little detail.

(This is Jenera, btw.)

I also didn't realize that Blackwolf's middle name was Julian. No wonder he's so dour.

See ya Saturday.

 

[Cold Beer]

I also didn't realize that Blackwolf's middle name was Julian. No wonder he's so dour.

Julian was his father's name. He kept that name to honor his father and to not forget where he comes from.

"Blackwolf" is more of a stylized nickname that comes from his youth. He was called "The Black Wolf" when he was a younger man because his banner bore a black wolf and the nobles didn't know who he was. That's changed since then, but the name stuck.

 

[GM_Brad]

Session Log One: “A Bit of History” and “Hard-Earned Intelligence”
Characters Present:
Roderic (a fighter)
Kristov (a mercenary captain)
Jenera (a scout)

Two generations ago, a small border conflict between the kingdoms of Liguria and Armagh grew into something much greater. It became a long and bitter war, engulfing, at one point or another, all of the other remaining kingdoms of the small, cramped continent of Thassalos. Things began to go poorly for Liguria; her king, Clovis, took a desperate gamble – forging an alliance between his kingdom and a dragon, the vile Anthrakkus, from a faraway land.

Anthrakkus had his own plans, however, and soon the whole of Liguria was taken over by the forces of evil. Many people fled, but even more were trapped, enslaved by Anthrakkus. Some say that Clovis himself is now Anthrakkus’ pawn, corrupted beyond reason. Most of the refugees from this war wound up in Marib and Cumbria, who had been Liguria’s allies. Anthrakkus and his mate, whose name is not known, rule from Turin, the old capitol. The other kingdoms that border this forsaken land must now endlessly patrol against incursions into their own lands by the children of Anthrakkus and their soldiers.

It was towards this land that our party set out the morning after their secret meeting with young King Anselm. There were 12 people in total, the three party members, plus Jan, Kristov’s second in command; the rest were soldiers serving in Kristov’s Company. They rode quickly in the late winter sun, stopping only to eat and to sleep over the next two days. The death warrant for Lord Wadleigh, the man who poisoned King Syndor, was in Kristov’s pocket.

Marib is a land of farmers and merchants, and the party passed by many small farms and thriving villages as they traveled westward. The farther they went, though, and the closer they came to the border, the more desolate the landscape became. Signs of abandonment became evident everywhere – empty villages, fields left untended, farmsteads falling down in disrepair. Where once the road was full of traffic, going to and from the capitol, now only a few small military patrols were met. It was as if life itself was abandoning them.

On the evening of the second day, the party approached Madera. Once a proud, inland city handling the trade between Marib and Liguria, the city possessed high, stone walls and wide gates. At one time these gates would be a flurry of activity; but now there were only guards. Fortunately for the party, they arrived before it became dark, when the gates would be shut until dawn.

The city was a reflection of the surrounding land – former prosperity transformed into bleakness. It's buildings, four or five stories tall, and now in disrepair, leaned out over narrow, twisting streets. Most of the city’s inhabitants had fled over time, and now Madera was populated mostly by soldiers who patrolled the border. Inns and warehouses had been converted into barracks and stables. A few establishments remained opened, and our party found themselves staying at one of them: a warm and cozy inn facing the empty city square.

Apart from the innkeeper and his two daughters, there were few others in the inn’s main room, mainly soldiers who had stopped in for a drink of ale. The two daughters hardly livened up the place. The “pretty” one had the face of a frog, a frog having a bad hair day, no less. Her sister was much worse. But the three members of that family were jolly and pleasant, happy to see so many travelers arrive who needed shelter and food. Soon all twelve were seated and eating a delicious meal. Kristov got one of his soldiers to begin singing. In no time at all, the main room was full of music as the soldiers, veterans all, sang marching and military camp songs. All the while, the two daughters moved about the room, serving drinks, and “accidentally” bumping into the charismatic Captain Kristov from behind.

But there was work to be done. A man needed to be found and killed. Jenera was relieved to slink out the back way of the inn, through the stables, and out into the dark and quiet city. She was a restless person by nature, and exploring the unknown was what she liked to do best. Slipping through the shadows, she began her search. With little idea of where this Lord Wadleigh might be, she spread her search out into the city, in wider and wider circles. Apart from a few lit windows, and the occasional patrol, she met no one. Until, nearly ready to give up and head back for the evening, the sound of laughter caught her ear.

Creeping along a flat rooftop, Jenera peered out into the street below. There, she saw a well-dressed, portly man, staggering drunkenly down the street in the center of a large group of people. Fortunately for Jenera, her eyesight is particularly well suited to poor lighting, and she was able to make out many details. Along with a woman walking with the fat man, there were three other men who were as drunk as he was, and all of them had shapely women on their arms, too. Two other men were not drunk at all, but moved in front and behind the fat man and his entourage with military efficiency, scanning the area for any signs of trouble. The drunk men and the prostitutes, if that’s what they were, seemed unaware of any possible danger; in fact, they were singing baudy tunes at the top of their lungs, laughing at each forgotten line.

Jenera watched them for a few moments, noting the direction in which they came and in which they were headed. When the group had turned a corner and was out of sight, she backtracked along the route they had come until she came to one of the few other establishments left open in the city. And this one was doing a brisk business. It was obviously a brothel, and light from its many windows illuminated the street as if it were daylight. Men came and went, lewd women leaned out from those same windows shouting obscene solicitations to passers-by, and music, singing and laughter rang from the open doors on the first floor. Acting on the hunch that the man she’d seen in the street was Lord Wadleigh, who had been rumored to have come into a large amount of money recently (suspiciously enough, after the battle in which King Syndor was killed), Jenera headed back to the inn to report what she had discovered.

Once there, she sat down with Kristov and Roderic and described all she had seen. Both of them agreed with Jenera that the man might be Wadleigh; and, lacking any other avenues of approach at the moment, the two of them decide to go visit the brothel and do a bit of reconnaissance on their own. With Jenera’s directions, they find the place with no problems. Roderic spends an hour researching upstairs with a prostitute, while Kristov scouts out the main room below with a mug of ale. Based on the description, they find out that the man Jenera saw was Lord Wadleigh. Also, they find out that (1) he comes to the brothel every night; (2) that he has hired bodyguards in the past, and may be in the market for more; and (3) he always frequents the same prostitute, an attractive, dark-haired woman. No one else will do, it seems, though many of the other whores have tried to win his affection (and his coin). Armed with this new information, Roderic and Kristov head back to their inn, where things have quieted down and most of the others have headed off to bed. Any further plans will have to wait until the morning.

Soon to come: “Breaking and Entering (is easier with a rogue)” And “An Ambush Surprise”

 

[Cold Beer]

“An Ambush Surprise”

Ha! I just misread that as "An Amish Surprise" and had to read it twice...

I can't wait to read the next instalment, as the action finally picks up. After Saturday's session I can see that certian events in Brad's next few SHs will be a forshadowing of our last game.