Destan
Citizen of Val Hor
iwatt said:
I'll let you in on a secret - the reason I don't post too many stats is because I'm fearful of exposing my ignorance of the rules. I'm largely a 1E guy who skipped 2E and is now, still, learning 3E. I think I have a good handle on the rules, but all I need to do to temper my self-congratulatory smirk is to head into the Rules Forum and realize how little I know. Thus, if my answers are ambiguous and rambling, it's harder to pin me down.
And, on that note, I'd like to do two things:
1) Give a brief synopsis on the Sorrow Elf quest.
2) Explain my reasons for not including it in the story hour itself.
Adventure: Barrow Mounds of the Duskingdell
For this little adventure, I wanted to hearken back to the simple days of 1st Edition. Back then, everything in the dungeon didn't always make sense. The ecology might be unrealistic, there may be riddles that serve no "real world" purpose, there might be five barracks rooms and no privy chamber, etc. One only needs to peruse some old 1E modules or read Gary Gygax's column in Dragon to realize adventues are written much differently now-a-days than they once were.
Still, those old quests were fun. At least, I think so. So I wanted to steer away from the morbid, realistic campaign theme and throw a dash of simple fun to my players. I handed them the tattered scraps of an old journal that gave tantalizing hints toward riddles and puzzles, and then we set off.
The party kept going deeper and deeper into the earth beneath the barrow. I wanted the players to really feel like they were hundreds and hundreds of feet beneath the surface. Normally I shy away from including too many traps - I have found they slow down gameplay without enough of a return. But in the barrow mound I placed more than a couple - all of which the party easily disabled or circumvented.
Eventually they arrived at a large chamber. On one wall was a massive tapestry depicting an atlas of Ostia Prim as it was during former Ages. There were four "tests" associated with the map. If a PC touched various locales on the map in a certain order (again, coming from the journal I had supplied) they were whisked away (teleported) into an illusion.
These illusions depicted four scenes from the bloody past of Ostia Prim. One hinted at a horrible elven betrayal in the Arn Vale. Another had the party arrive on the parapets of Val Hor just when the Raki horsemen were swarming over the walls. The third had the party appear upon a Rorn mountain pass as now-extinct cave trolls rushed them. And the fourth placed them in Pell, when that city was but a fishing village, and again hinted toward a betrayal.
The players had to work together to ensure they remained cohesive as a group. Some of them would make their Will saves and not be subject to the illusions; others would not. It became a frantic, and fun, session as my players tried to help one another "out" of the illusionary scenes.
Finally, after they had "defeated" each illusion, and received a particular crystal shard after each, the party placed the shards within small depressions on a stone lectern fashioned for such a purpose. Thus was Belaraphon, the last Hero, summoned.
The Sorrow Elf spoke to the party. He explained a bit of his history and exhibited an emotion wholly foreign to the half-divine members of his ilk - regret. He gave the party a jeweled box, informed them Ral was contained within, and then disappeared - forever - from Ostia Prim.
The party buffed, prepared, and called forth Ral. The battle, like the earlier one with Ippizicus, was anticlimatic. One the party was able to close with the spiked chain-wielding demon, it was over rather quickly.
In short, the session was great for gameplay but I couldn't make it "work" in terms of updating the story hour.
I think it also mildly interesting to repeat the old DM adage that "one's players never do what is expected." When I originally wrote the Baphtemet and Ral adventures, I had planned on the party first getting the jeweled box. The plan was that they would know the history, by that time, of Ral's and Baphy's hatred of one another (stemming back to the accidental death of the Elfqueen Elendra). I expected the party to then carry the box to Borbidan's Crypt, loose Ral, watch the two demons fight it out, then wade in to slaughter the victor.
Readers of the story hour know this was not the case, of course. The party, despite Poridel's veiled recommendations, opted to first kill Baphtemet. The battle nearly resulted in a TPK.
I think of these adventures - the slaying of Ippi, Baph, and Ral - as the first portion of the campaign. By the time the party finished those quests, they were about 4th - 5th level. As I write this, that's where they stand in the story hour as well.
We'll now embark on the "second" portion of the campaign, but I won't say much about save to say that the stakes are significantly raised, and the threats correspondingly increased. Our fearless Brothers of Olgotha will directly and irrevocably feel the pain of loss.
Anyway, again, a rambling answer!
I'll say it again - three times, actually - thank you, thank you, and thank you for reading. I would post a simple thanks each day if it didn't look like such a blatant attempt to "bump" my own story hour. I haven't done so on the SH thread in a while, come to think of it, so I think I'll head over there and do it now.
Have a great weekend, everyone.
D
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