Hammerhead
Explorer
This is a cool story hour, I like the first person perspective. Is Kurgish a Ranger?
Shadows of Malboria (The Chronicle of Kurgish -updtd 11/09/05)
Sir Brennen
Legend
Thanks for the comments.
As a player in this campaign, I find first person actually easier. To me, the quirks of turning a campaign into fiction means that, unless you’re the DM, third person might seem a bit random, as you don’t really have enough knowledge of the plot’s direction to get objective events to hang together. Unless you do the story after the plot resolves, but then details start to get fuzzy for me if I don’t put them down right away. And as for third person omniscient, I’d never presume to know the true thoughts and motives of my fellow players.
Kurgish is indeed a ranger – in post #14 where Kurgish decides to fight without a shield is when he gained two-weapon fighting. His favored enemy is the servants of the dragon (reptilian humanoids); he’ll add dragons to the list later![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
Kurgish is going to start multiclassing into Scout (from the Complete Adventurer) which he probably would have started as if the book was published when I created the character, as it fits his concept little better.
I’ll post again soon – I’m two sessions behind now, but Real Life ™ is cramping my writing time.
As a player in this campaign, I find first person actually easier. To me, the quirks of turning a campaign into fiction means that, unless you’re the DM, third person might seem a bit random, as you don’t really have enough knowledge of the plot’s direction to get objective events to hang together. Unless you do the story after the plot resolves, but then details start to get fuzzy for me if I don’t put them down right away. And as for third person omniscient, I’d never presume to know the true thoughts and motives of my fellow players.
Kurgish is indeed a ranger – in post #14 where Kurgish decides to fight without a shield is when he gained two-weapon fighting. His favored enemy is the servants of the dragon (reptilian humanoids); he’ll add dragons to the list later
Kurgish is going to start multiclassing into Scout (from the Complete Adventurer) which he probably would have started as if the book was published when I created the character, as it fits his concept little better.
I’ll post again soon – I’m two sessions behind now, but Real Life ™ is cramping my writing time.
Sir Brennen
Legend
Maltus Haunted Estate – The Stables (Same day)
Ask and ye shall receive...
[Session 5 Feb 20th '05]
The wooden plank walls of the stables were weathered and splintered. In the middle was a large set of double doors, and at the end was a window with small square panes, several of which had broken over time. Through them we could see what appeared to be a workshop of some kind.
A limb from the large willow in the courtyard had broken and smashed a hole in the roof, forming a bridge between the building and tree. Thinking it might be best to check out first, to view the stables from above and see if anything had taken advantage of the accidental skylight, Barrick grunted for us to help him up into the tree. A tree. So much for dwarven dignity.
He shinnied out on the branch until he was even with the eaves of the building. Leaning forward and narrowing his eyes, I could tell he saw something. Without going any further, he carefully retreated and clambered down the willow’s trunk.
“What did you see?” Father Al asked.
“Huh? Uh, I don’t know. Somethin’ scurrying around up there. Let’s go in.” With that, Barrick promptly strode over to the warped wooden doors and pulled them open.
Inside there was an ancient carriage covered in dust and mouldering bits of hay, its leather trimmings long since cracked and peeled away. Down the north end of the building there were ten horse stalls on each side. A ladder near the carriage led to the hay loft above, grey illumination drizzling in from the punctured section of roofing.
We began carefully searching the stalls, one at a time, when Barrick declared he was checking the loft, to figure out what he had seen moving around before. He scaled the rickety ladder, but upon seeing the rotted and cracked floorboards above, he anchored a safety line to a sturdy beam before going further. He stepped forwarded, pushing back flat piles of decomposed straw with the head of his axe.
“Hey! Watch it!” Charlotte called from the stall below him where she searched, as dirt sifted through the loft’s floorboards onto her head.
“Yeah, yeah,” Barrick responded, followed shortly by a “Yike!”, then a solid thump that caused the wood above us to splinter. “Got him. Oh, no, wait. Still coming at me with his guts draggin’. Godspittin’ spiders." Another thump. "Oh, cack, there’s more.”
I shouted out to Barrick I was coming, pulling out my urgrosh as I ran toward the ladder. As I was halfway up, Aleator called for me to wait. From the floor, he said a brief prayer of some sort and my urgrosh seem to glint for a moment as if catching the high summer sun, despite the feeble rainy day light outside. While I paused, I could see Charlotte readying her crossbow and aim it at the ceiling above her. Marcus dashed over to the old carriage, threw his own crossbow onto the roof, and began climbing up after it.
I pulled myself up over the loft’s edge just in time to witness Barrick's axe plowing through a spider the size of a cat, his follow-through stroke missing a second pest. Yet another leapt up and bit at his weapon, as if it could poison the metal.
Blaine was moving up the ladder behind me. A bolt whizzed into the loft a few feet away, and I saw Marcus standing tip-toe on top of the carriage, fumbling to load his crossbow again as he craned his neck, trying to judge the effectiveness of his last shot. I gave him the thumbs up to let him know his aim was good, and then went after the little vermin myself. The spider must have been confused by my entrance, jumping suddenly backwards in the manner only something with eight legs can do. When Blaine joined us, however, we were able to surround the last two and made short work of them.
We did a quick check of the loft, finding small bones and bits of feathers from animals mistakenly seeking shelter in the stable through the open hole in the roof. There were even a couple of husks of other spiders – apparently these little fellows had gotten very hungry lately – but found little else. Not even any complete webs; hunting spiders, I judged.
“What were they?” Charlotte had joined Marcus on the carriage roof. She let out a little yelp as Barrick punted one of the spider corpses down toward the carriage, where it smacked wetly against the side.
“Spiders,” he said. He glanced back toward me.
“Wolf,” I prompted.
“Kurgish says wolf spiders.” Seeing her glare of annoyance, a look I was beginning to suspect Charlotte practiced in the mirror to be able to convey that much irritation, he said. “What? You asked.”
Once we had joined the others back on the ground level, we proceeded to investigate a door on the other side of the carriage. The corroded lock presented little resistance and gave way to the workshop, a smithy, which we had seen through the broken windows. Tools rusted beyond use lay all about, but we discovered nothing of import.
I was about to declare it time to go back and investigate the latrine, when Marcus whispered harshly, “The candle’s back!” Indeed, from the windows of the smithy we could see the flickering flame had returned to the library window. As one, we rushed pell-mell and without plan from the stables, across the courtyard and in through the doors of the dining hall, Barrick and I bringing up the rear with our stout dwarven legs.
Ask and ye shall receive...
[Session 5 Feb 20th '05]
The wooden plank walls of the stables were weathered and splintered. In the middle was a large set of double doors, and at the end was a window with small square panes, several of which had broken over time. Through them we could see what appeared to be a workshop of some kind.
A limb from the large willow in the courtyard had broken and smashed a hole in the roof, forming a bridge between the building and tree. Thinking it might be best to check out first, to view the stables from above and see if anything had taken advantage of the accidental skylight, Barrick grunted for us to help him up into the tree. A tree. So much for dwarven dignity.
He shinnied out on the branch until he was even with the eaves of the building. Leaning forward and narrowing his eyes, I could tell he saw something. Without going any further, he carefully retreated and clambered down the willow’s trunk.
“What did you see?” Father Al asked.
“Huh? Uh, I don’t know. Somethin’ scurrying around up there. Let’s go in.” With that, Barrick promptly strode over to the warped wooden doors and pulled them open.
Inside there was an ancient carriage covered in dust and mouldering bits of hay, its leather trimmings long since cracked and peeled away. Down the north end of the building there were ten horse stalls on each side. A ladder near the carriage led to the hay loft above, grey illumination drizzling in from the punctured section of roofing.
We began carefully searching the stalls, one at a time, when Barrick declared he was checking the loft, to figure out what he had seen moving around before. He scaled the rickety ladder, but upon seeing the rotted and cracked floorboards above, he anchored a safety line to a sturdy beam before going further. He stepped forwarded, pushing back flat piles of decomposed straw with the head of his axe.
“Hey! Watch it!” Charlotte called from the stall below him where she searched, as dirt sifted through the loft’s floorboards onto her head.
“Yeah, yeah,” Barrick responded, followed shortly by a “Yike!”, then a solid thump that caused the wood above us to splinter. “Got him. Oh, no, wait. Still coming at me with his guts draggin’. Godspittin’ spiders." Another thump. "Oh, cack, there’s more.”
I shouted out to Barrick I was coming, pulling out my urgrosh as I ran toward the ladder. As I was halfway up, Aleator called for me to wait. From the floor, he said a brief prayer of some sort and my urgrosh seem to glint for a moment as if catching the high summer sun, despite the feeble rainy day light outside. While I paused, I could see Charlotte readying her crossbow and aim it at the ceiling above her. Marcus dashed over to the old carriage, threw his own crossbow onto the roof, and began climbing up after it.
I pulled myself up over the loft’s edge just in time to witness Barrick's axe plowing through a spider the size of a cat, his follow-through stroke missing a second pest. Yet another leapt up and bit at his weapon, as if it could poison the metal.
Blaine was moving up the ladder behind me. A bolt whizzed into the loft a few feet away, and I saw Marcus standing tip-toe on top of the carriage, fumbling to load his crossbow again as he craned his neck, trying to judge the effectiveness of his last shot. I gave him the thumbs up to let him know his aim was good, and then went after the little vermin myself. The spider must have been confused by my entrance, jumping suddenly backwards in the manner only something with eight legs can do. When Blaine joined us, however, we were able to surround the last two and made short work of them.
We did a quick check of the loft, finding small bones and bits of feathers from animals mistakenly seeking shelter in the stable through the open hole in the roof. There were even a couple of husks of other spiders – apparently these little fellows had gotten very hungry lately – but found little else. Not even any complete webs; hunting spiders, I judged.
“What were they?” Charlotte had joined Marcus on the carriage roof. She let out a little yelp as Barrick punted one of the spider corpses down toward the carriage, where it smacked wetly against the side.
“Spiders,” he said. He glanced back toward me.
“Wolf,” I prompted.
“Kurgish says wolf spiders.” Seeing her glare of annoyance, a look I was beginning to suspect Charlotte practiced in the mirror to be able to convey that much irritation, he said. “What? You asked.”
Once we had joined the others back on the ground level, we proceeded to investigate a door on the other side of the carriage. The corroded lock presented little resistance and gave way to the workshop, a smithy, which we had seen through the broken windows. Tools rusted beyond use lay all about, but we discovered nothing of import.
I was about to declare it time to go back and investigate the latrine, when Marcus whispered harshly, “The candle’s back!” Indeed, from the windows of the smithy we could see the flickering flame had returned to the library window. As one, we rushed pell-mell and without plan from the stables, across the courtyard and in through the doors of the dining hall, Barrick and I bringing up the rear with our stout dwarven legs.
Last edited:
Kid Charlemagne
I am the Very Model of a Modern Moderator
Excellent!
I've got one suggestion - add an "updated on" to the subject line (I think you can edit the subject line by editing the initial post). Whoever was the first person to do that was freaking genius.
BTW, we're one session behind the actual game at this point, if I'm remembering correctly.
I've got one suggestion - add an "updated on" to the subject line (I think you can edit the subject line by editing the initial post). Whoever was the first person to do that was freaking genius.
BTW, we're one session behind the actual game at this point, if I'm remembering correctly.
Kid Charlemagne
I am the Very Model of a Modern Moderator
I thought I'd draw a map for those who might be reading... Dagger's Fall is not on the map, but would be essentially half way between Trent (Aleator's hometown) and Stonehearth (where the party makes their main base of operations for the moment).
Lazybones
Adventurer
I recently DLed a huge swath of story hour threads to read at work (block MY EnWorld, will you!), including this one. I wanted to comment on the enjoyable read; having read Kid C's former SH thread a few years back I could see his colorful characters and deep plotlines throughout the narrative. Nice characters, well-captured (although the humans are a bit thin, perhaps due to the dwarven perspective). Kurgish has just enough distinction to separate him from the hordes of other dwarven PCs one encounters in these writeups, and his underlying motivation to defeat the dragon adds an interesting depth to the overall campaign.
Too bad the thread seems to be on hiatus; I encourage you to post again.
Too bad the thread seems to be on hiatus; I encourage you to post again.
Kid Charlemagne
I am the Very Model of a Modern Moderator
I'll start bugging Sir Brennen to post; he's still taking copious notes. We play this coming Sunday for the first time after 4-6 weeks off...
Son_of_Thunder
Explorer
Very Good!
Yes please, do get him to update. It's my favorite story hour lately. Very well done.
Yes please, do get him to update. It's my favorite story hour lately. Very well done.
Sir Brennen
Legend
Oh, man. The pressure, the pressure...
