Carnifex
First Post
Welcome to the second thread cataloguing the adventures of the players in Acrozatarim: Fire & Ice, an online game that I run on a message board. It's been over two years now since I started the first story hour relating the tales of their troubles and achievements, and with that thread having gotten rather long, and having reached an excellent point to start afresh from, I decided it was time to move into a new one! 
This story hour joins the party just as they reach the Arcanist's Tower. Most of the PC's, except for Cazamir, were hired by a nobleman called Ecurius Tarravus of the land of Naseria, where sorcerous bloodlines rule the country, to investigate the tower, for it was reputed that a thaumineer - a mage melding wizardry and machinery - from the rival country of Carthagia had taken up residence there many years ago. By now he would surely be dead, and hopefully the party will be able to scavenge thaumineering lore from the tower, for it was said that this particular thaumineer was truly a genius and at the cutting edge of his field. They set forth eastwards from Naseria into the mountainous Sarokean region, where they were held hostage by a solar beholderkin, fought hiveminded ghouls, met a divine servant of the sorceror-god Naskha, lost their veteran leader Wolf Kieresane to an assassination attack by evil Red Talon cultist-warriors, and finally met with a party of wizard-scholars from the lands west of the Sarokeans, who were seeking the same tower - because it is a relic of an ancient civilisation, the Umbrals, from before the Dawn War when the Elder gods and Younger gods battled. A tentative alliance has been forged - the party bringing their combat capabilities, the wizards bringing their scholarly knowledge of just what tricks and traps the Umbral tower may contain. And now they approach the tower itself, not knowing just what lies in wait within...
Style: This game is played on a message board online and I am extremely lucky to have some truly awesome roleplayers in the group. As a result, the game itself often includes considerable amounts of character development and thought in posts, and I want to try and bring this as fully into the story hour as possible - along with the fair share of brutal, bitter fighting they undertake as well, of course. As a result, as much as possible I use as a base the actual text written in the game, edited to flow better as a story hour. This means that there may well be points where you get a particular event seen or pondered upon from several different points of view in turn, using the perspectives of different characters.
Campaign Feel: See the links below to get a proper feel for the campaign There's horror and grit in places, but also the wondrous and fantastic things that are inherent to a world made by Elemental Lords and with life brought to it by the Elder gods, the dreams of the Lords. It's got typical pseudo-medieval fantasy feel in plenty of areas, but I've tried to be innovative and interesting with the campaign world. It's also a world with a bit of a steampunk feel in places, such as thaumineering to blend magic with technology, and Manipulation, the art of bio-thaumaturgy and genetic manipulation. There are evil cults of ancient and insane Elder gods, plots against the nations and worshippers of the Younger gods that have arisen since the Dawn War, and great power just waiting to be unleashed.
Crunchy Bits - Under the Hood: I've got lots of homebrew material for this campaign - new monsters, feats, spells, prestige classes etc. Where these come up in the story hour, I'll try and make sure to post up the crunchy bits too, so that others can make use of the concoctions of my imagination
Note also, that the steam-tech elements in this campaign resulted in my writing Steam & Steel: A Guide to Fantasy Steamworks, which I may reference as a source for some of the stuff you'll see in this SH from time to time. I'm also now writing a sourcebook for the biothaumaturgical side of magic in the campaign world - rules for flesh-twisting, arcanogenetic manipulation and similar
The Cast of Characters:
And here they are...
PC - Melisande, Aasimar Sorcerer 4/Paladin 1
Carthagian by birth, her mother was a minerologist who after an unknown event in some deep mine became pregnant and gave birth to Melisande. She's an aasimar with blue skin and natural magic in her veins, as well as being rather naive and having a fascination with nature and living things. She ended up being trained as a Manipulator - basically a bio-thaumaturgist. They're common in Carthagia, where they do things such as the selective breeding of fang dragons to create a stupid, placable breed, the flesh-twisting of goblin slaves to cerate tough mine workers, the Manipulation of animals like horses to create steeds with more muscle (sometimes directly surgically implanted) and things like that. Of course, Melisande really didn't like the rather sinister and disturbing side of the work she was carrying out in the labs.
As a result of this, her mother sent her north to the land of Naseria, a land ruled by sorceror-nobles, to make her way there - the senior Manipulators were not going to just let her leave the labs with the knowledge of their techniques that she had, so she had to flee into exile. Since then, during the adventures she underwent to reach the Naserian capital of Tarravus and to be employed by Ecurius, she has become both a more capable spellcaster, but has also become enthralled by Naseria itself, the noble bloodlines of sorcerers who are said to have descended from great Naskha himself. She feels she has gained a purpose, a quest, to fight evil in the name of Naskha, and she has taken to that notion with great enthusiasm. Some might, however, call Melisande naive, and she certainly has a lot to learn about the world and how it works, and when to not tell people you've only just met important facts and details about your mission...
She has a two-headed toad familiar called Pierre that she Manipulated herself.
PC - Wyshira, Water Genasi Cleric 5
Wyshira was born in a small village in the cold northern country of Cryosia, where powerful magocracies of cryomancers rule. Her mother was the village priestess of Ishrak, the Storm Lady, and long ago their bloodline was blessed through union with one of the water servants of that goddess. From then on they have carried that touch in their blood, and hence Wyshira has faintly blue-green skin and pale hair, giving her a slightly sickly pallor (though she is in fact quite resilient) - she is a water genasi. Her sister was groomed to take the place of being the next village priestess in line, so Wyshira set out on her own, soon meeting with Wolf Kieresane and Kale Amegrion. From there her adventures led her with them to the Corinthian port-capital of Iril, across the wilds of the Drakkath and to Ecurius's employ. She is a competent spellcaster and healer in her own right, perhaps not aware of quite how much so.
PC - Kale Amegrion, Human Rogue 3 / Guerilla 2 (likely to soon be reworked as an Unfettered)
Hailing from one of the minor merchant families of Corinthia, Kalehad a priviledged childhood but couldn't settle down doing any one thing. Eventually his exasperated parents entolled him in a military school. He railed against this but at the end of it realised that, in fact, he really did want to be a soldier. However, he had such a reputation as a troublemaker by then that he didn't have the connections to become an officer, instead joining a mercenary band. Exasperated by their lack of competence he then left - without their consent - looking to make his own way in the world. Wolf Kieresane, a grizzled veteran and mercenary, took him on under his wing, and before long they had met up with Wyshira and then Burl. Kale's an inventive fighter, to say the least, always looking for new tricks and ploys to use in combat, and has been described by Sebastion as 'talking a better fight than he ever had a chance of actually putting up'. He is a competent warrior, but perhaps overly eager for risky ideas.
PC - Sebastion Cornell, Human Fighter 4 / Telepath 1
Born in a border-town between Carthagia and Huron, Seb is the son of the local farrier, who once was a soldier in an elite unit for the Huronese army but due to some disaster he was involved in - he wont speak of what - he retired and became a mercenary for a while, before finally settling down. Sebastion himself had been a member of the town guard for a while, but wanted to ses more of the world, and had recieved proper military training from his father. When the Blood Raven mercenaries rode through on their way to the service of a Carthagian border lord, he jumped at the chance and joined up. Ending up entangled with Melisande, Meg'anna, Ebri and Sandslipper in the mayhem after a battle with dreadspawn and ogres, he made his way with them into Naseria, and the rest, as they say, is history. He's a light fighter, wielding his father's two-bladed sword - which recently seemed to awaken with innate magic after he used it to slay a Red Talon cultist-warrior. The vision it gave him is giving hints as to just what happened to his father's military career, and he also thinks it's responsible for the headaches he seems to have been getting recently. He has yet to realise that he is developing the talents of a mind warrior - his brain has awakened with latent psionic power. Sebastion also has aspirations of greatness as a war leader, not to mention a distrust and suspicion of magic that he's only slowly overcoming. He prefers the solid reality of battle and conventional weapons to spells and sorcery.
PC - Ebri Zol, Human Cleric 2 / Monk 3
For a long time, Ebri has posed as a cleric of the god of travel, Immar, but it's really a ruse. She is in fact a Nephian, one of a secretive community to dwell in monasteries high in the mountains, and who are feared as assassins and infiltrators. The Nephians keep to themselves most of the time, but have information gathering networks extended into many nearby countries, for they serve the mystical Old Masters, shadow-shrouded beings of great power who follow the Plan, some sacred path that follow. With stealth, guile and the occasional required assassination, the highly trained and disciplined Nephians, practicing the Way of the Shadow, are as tools for the Old Masters to deploy in their battle against the Dreamweavers, their ancient enemy who are a peril not just to the body but to the mind.
Ebri has been assigned to keep Melisande safe - not that her ward actually realises this, as Ebri has thus far managed to do a fairly good job of her pretense. She is a cleric, just of the Great Prophet, the deity that the Nephians - and perhaps the Old Masters, though this is unclear - worship. The Old Masters want Melisande protected because she is of a 'shadow-touched' bloodline, and it seems they neither foresaw nor are very happy about the way in which her aasimar heritage might interact with the bloodline. Every so often, though, Ebri's facade slips a little, and others have long suspected that she is not what she tells them...
PC - Cazamir Jan'Zhat, Human Monk 2 / Savant 2
Hailing from the huge empire of Huron, Cazamir is noble by birth but entered a monastery at a young age - he was manifesting psionic abilities and his mother sent him there for his and his families safety and reputation. There he trained to control his rebelliousness and to focus his mind, becoming a devout follower of the Huronese patron deity Urazel, lord of fire, battle and horsemanship. When eventually the elder monks decided there was little more he could learn from them, they sent him out into the world; not needed by his family, since marriage alliances had cemented the line, he took up the path of a wanderer. Travelling north from Huron into the expansive area called the Drakkath and into the nations within that locale, he hired himself out as a mercenary, taken on by a band of Drakkath guild scholars seeking protection for their expedition to an ancient Umbral tower, somewhere in the Sarokean mountains. With the sages and Ecurius's party now allied, he still watches the adventuring band with suspicion, his uppermost priority being the safety of the scholarly wizards he is supposed to protect.
PC - Meg'anna Liadon, Human Druid 5
Meg'anna's village was slaughtered by fleshtearers when she was a tiny child. Fleshtearers are the shock-troops of the Church of Toran in Carthagia - they are made by Manipulators, then some closely-guarded ceremony by priests of Toran brings them to life. A druid found her and took her into his care, bringing her up.
The druids of the area live in harmony with the gnoll tribes (IMC gnolls are not slavering evil psychopaths), and there is a lively political arena amongst the druids, especially over the split between those who follow the nature goddess Lliras and those who simply believe in the fundamental force of nature. They all answer to the High Druid though (currently a gnoll). Meg used to be very active and vocal in such debates, but then she and her mentor were trading at a gnoll village when a fleshtearer squad was deployed by the Carthagians (who border the area the gnolls inhabit) and killed her tutor and most of the gnolls, while one tore at her throat and ruined her vocal cords.
She fled back to her grove, and lived there in isolation and mourning. Oddly she found she no longer needed to speak the words of spells, now that that she was mute, but instead strange sounds would be invoked when she cast them (basically the character manifests audible 'displays' psionic-style instead of having verbal components to spells). Eventually she moved on from the grove, wandering in search of purpose, where she met with Melisande, Sandslipper and Sebastion, and accompanied them north into Naseria. Yet she was called away from them, searching for answers to a terrible phenomenon - a sickness of the earth itself, causing crops to wilt and fail and nature to fall ill. She travelled to the druidic council in the heartlands of the gnoll-inhabited woods, where she found that they too had yet to fully discover the secret of what was causing this affliction to the very earth itself. They asked her to help them find out by following a potential lead - a gnoll ranger of the Knights of the Thorn, guardians of nature in the servive of the life deity Lliras, had travelled to some ancient tower in the Sarokeans, apparently believing something related to the problem was there. Yet the ranger had never returned, and Meg'anna agreed to seek out the tower and discover what had befallen the Knight, as well as why he had gone to the tower in the first place.
NPC's:
Burl Overton - an ex-PC necromancer from Corinthia, plucked from danger in Iril by Wolf, Wyshira and Kale and accompanying them on their adventures. The player drops out a little way into this story hour, sadly
Cord - another ex-PC, who left towards the end of the last story hour thread. A dwarven monk of the earth god Grumand, who departed to attend the Council of Stone, where the clergy of Grumand will meet and discuss the terrible sickness of the earth that they have all felt.
Sandslipper - another ex-PC who dropped out a long time ago, a desert-nomad earth genasi psion, a pathfinder who had been banished from her own people and headed north into the lands of Huron and the Drakkath. She is currently in Naseria where she fell ill and had to remain to be tended to by priests of Naskha.
Wolf Kieresane - a veteran mercenary and mentor to the group, as well as member of the secretive Azure Blades, an organisation dedicated to fighting the cults of the Elder gods. Slain recently by Red Talons, warrior-cultists of the Elder god Gilamesh.
Ansas'Turi - an Ironjack rogue, hired on by Kale. The Ironjacks are a people chased from their homelands by foul blood-sorcerers, bringing their great knowledge of mechanics with them to their new home, the nations of the Drakkath. Ansas is along to help with any mechanisms or traps they might encounter in the Tower.
Jarvis, Johanne & the Sages - the band of wizard-scholars Cazamir is accompanying, who often argue with one another on points of theory and archaeology. Johanne is their de facto leader, the most powerful actual spellcaster of their number and the wisest too. Jarvis is a Naserian pathfinder, another hireling of the scholars like Cazamir, and a sharp-eyed and agile man.
Lots of other NPC's as well, of course - there's literally a cast of thousands
More details on all these characters and their pasts, and lots of other characters, are in the previous SH thread, chronicling events up to this point. Read of their encounter with the vicious werewolf pack, fighting alongside an Inquisitor and Solar Templar, their battle with an insane alienist mage deep below Tarravus and his Gilamee cult cell, or the hostage-taking beholderkin. Yet all these will pale compared to what they have yet to encounter...
Links:
The message board on which the game is actually played:
http://www.roleplayinggames.net/cgi-bin/viewboard.cgi?&board=60
The Campaign Details, giving a brief overview of the homebrew campaign setting:
http://www.roleplayinggames.net/cgi-bin/details.cgi?&board=60
The Game Notes, including more detailed character equipment lists, recent events, and a write-up of the gods:
http://www.roleplayinggames.net/cgi-bin/notes.cgi?&board=60
The actual character write-ups:
http://www.roleplayinggames.net/cgi-bin/chars_view.cgi?&type=details&game=60&display=entirelist
Of course, the previous Story Hour thread
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=1202
And the previous 'crunchy bits' thread for the Story Hour:
http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39102
The first actual story hour post for this new thread will be coming soon!
This story hour joins the party just as they reach the Arcanist's Tower. Most of the PC's, except for Cazamir, were hired by a nobleman called Ecurius Tarravus of the land of Naseria, where sorcerous bloodlines rule the country, to investigate the tower, for it was reputed that a thaumineer - a mage melding wizardry and machinery - from the rival country of Carthagia had taken up residence there many years ago. By now he would surely be dead, and hopefully the party will be able to scavenge thaumineering lore from the tower, for it was said that this particular thaumineer was truly a genius and at the cutting edge of his field. They set forth eastwards from Naseria into the mountainous Sarokean region, where they were held hostage by a solar beholderkin, fought hiveminded ghouls, met a divine servant of the sorceror-god Naskha, lost their veteran leader Wolf Kieresane to an assassination attack by evil Red Talon cultist-warriors, and finally met with a party of wizard-scholars from the lands west of the Sarokeans, who were seeking the same tower - because it is a relic of an ancient civilisation, the Umbrals, from before the Dawn War when the Elder gods and Younger gods battled. A tentative alliance has been forged - the party bringing their combat capabilities, the wizards bringing their scholarly knowledge of just what tricks and traps the Umbral tower may contain. And now they approach the tower itself, not knowing just what lies in wait within...
Style: This game is played on a message board online and I am extremely lucky to have some truly awesome roleplayers in the group. As a result, the game itself often includes considerable amounts of character development and thought in posts, and I want to try and bring this as fully into the story hour as possible - along with the fair share of brutal, bitter fighting they undertake as well, of course
. As a result, as much as possible I use as a base the actual text written in the game, edited to flow better as a story hour. This means that there may well be points where you get a particular event seen or pondered upon from several different points of view in turn, using the perspectives of different characters.Campaign Feel: See the links below to get a proper feel for the campaign
There's horror and grit in places, but also the wondrous and fantastic things that are inherent to a world made by Elemental Lords and with life brought to it by the Elder gods, the dreams of the Lords. It's got typical pseudo-medieval fantasy feel in plenty of areas, but I've tried to be innovative and interesting with the campaign world. It's also a world with a bit of a steampunk feel in places, such as thaumineering to blend magic with technology, and Manipulation, the art of bio-thaumaturgy and genetic manipulation. There are evil cults of ancient and insane Elder gods, plots against the nations and worshippers of the Younger gods that have arisen since the Dawn War, and great power just waiting to be unleashed.Crunchy Bits - Under the Hood: I've got lots of homebrew material for this campaign - new monsters, feats, spells, prestige classes etc. Where these come up in the story hour, I'll try and make sure to post up the crunchy bits too, so that others can make use of the concoctions of my imagination
Note also, that the steam-tech elements in this campaign resulted in my writing Steam & Steel: A Guide to Fantasy Steamworks, which I may reference as a source for some of the stuff you'll see in this SH from time to time. I'm also now writing a sourcebook for the biothaumaturgical side of magic in the campaign world - rules for flesh-twisting, arcanogenetic manipulation and similar The Cast of Characters:
And here they are...
PC - Melisande, Aasimar Sorcerer 4/Paladin 1
Carthagian by birth, her mother was a minerologist who after an unknown event in some deep mine became pregnant and gave birth to Melisande. She's an aasimar with blue skin and natural magic in her veins, as well as being rather naive and having a fascination with nature and living things. She ended up being trained as a Manipulator - basically a bio-thaumaturgist. They're common in Carthagia, where they do things such as the selective breeding of fang dragons to create a stupid, placable breed, the flesh-twisting of goblin slaves to cerate tough mine workers, the Manipulation of animals like horses to create steeds with more muscle (sometimes directly surgically implanted) and things like that. Of course, Melisande really didn't like the rather sinister and disturbing side of the work she was carrying out in the labs.
As a result of this, her mother sent her north to the land of Naseria, a land ruled by sorceror-nobles, to make her way there - the senior Manipulators were not going to just let her leave the labs with the knowledge of their techniques that she had, so she had to flee into exile. Since then, during the adventures she underwent to reach the Naserian capital of Tarravus and to be employed by Ecurius, she has become both a more capable spellcaster, but has also become enthralled by Naseria itself, the noble bloodlines of sorcerers who are said to have descended from great Naskha himself. She feels she has gained a purpose, a quest, to fight evil in the name of Naskha, and she has taken to that notion with great enthusiasm. Some might, however, call Melisande naive, and she certainly has a lot to learn about the world and how it works, and when to not tell people you've only just met important facts and details about your mission...
She has a two-headed toad familiar called Pierre that she Manipulated herself.
PC - Wyshira, Water Genasi Cleric 5
Wyshira was born in a small village in the cold northern country of Cryosia, where powerful magocracies of cryomancers rule. Her mother was the village priestess of Ishrak, the Storm Lady, and long ago their bloodline was blessed through union with one of the water servants of that goddess. From then on they have carried that touch in their blood, and hence Wyshira has faintly blue-green skin and pale hair, giving her a slightly sickly pallor (though she is in fact quite resilient) - she is a water genasi. Her sister was groomed to take the place of being the next village priestess in line, so Wyshira set out on her own, soon meeting with Wolf Kieresane and Kale Amegrion. From there her adventures led her with them to the Corinthian port-capital of Iril, across the wilds of the Drakkath and to Ecurius's employ. She is a competent spellcaster and healer in her own right, perhaps not aware of quite how much so.
PC - Kale Amegrion, Human Rogue 3 / Guerilla 2 (likely to soon be reworked as an Unfettered)
Hailing from one of the minor merchant families of Corinthia, Kalehad a priviledged childhood but couldn't settle down doing any one thing. Eventually his exasperated parents entolled him in a military school. He railed against this but at the end of it realised that, in fact, he really did want to be a soldier. However, he had such a reputation as a troublemaker by then that he didn't have the connections to become an officer, instead joining a mercenary band. Exasperated by their lack of competence he then left - without their consent - looking to make his own way in the world. Wolf Kieresane, a grizzled veteran and mercenary, took him on under his wing, and before long they had met up with Wyshira and then Burl. Kale's an inventive fighter, to say the least, always looking for new tricks and ploys to use in combat, and has been described by Sebastion as 'talking a better fight than he ever had a chance of actually putting up'. He is a competent warrior, but perhaps overly eager for risky ideas.
PC - Sebastion Cornell, Human Fighter 4 / Telepath 1
Born in a border-town between Carthagia and Huron, Seb is the son of the local farrier, who once was a soldier in an elite unit for the Huronese army but due to some disaster he was involved in - he wont speak of what - he retired and became a mercenary for a while, before finally settling down. Sebastion himself had been a member of the town guard for a while, but wanted to ses more of the world, and had recieved proper military training from his father. When the Blood Raven mercenaries rode through on their way to the service of a Carthagian border lord, he jumped at the chance and joined up. Ending up entangled with Melisande, Meg'anna, Ebri and Sandslipper in the mayhem after a battle with dreadspawn and ogres, he made his way with them into Naseria, and the rest, as they say, is history. He's a light fighter, wielding his father's two-bladed sword - which recently seemed to awaken with innate magic after he used it to slay a Red Talon cultist-warrior. The vision it gave him is giving hints as to just what happened to his father's military career, and he also thinks it's responsible for the headaches he seems to have been getting recently. He has yet to realise that he is developing the talents of a mind warrior - his brain has awakened with latent psionic power. Sebastion also has aspirations of greatness as a war leader, not to mention a distrust and suspicion of magic that he's only slowly overcoming. He prefers the solid reality of battle and conventional weapons to spells and sorcery.
PC - Ebri Zol, Human Cleric 2 / Monk 3
For a long time, Ebri has posed as a cleric of the god of travel, Immar, but it's really a ruse. She is in fact a Nephian, one of a secretive community to dwell in monasteries high in the mountains, and who are feared as assassins and infiltrators. The Nephians keep to themselves most of the time, but have information gathering networks extended into many nearby countries, for they serve the mystical Old Masters, shadow-shrouded beings of great power who follow the Plan, some sacred path that follow. With stealth, guile and the occasional required assassination, the highly trained and disciplined Nephians, practicing the Way of the Shadow, are as tools for the Old Masters to deploy in their battle against the Dreamweavers, their ancient enemy who are a peril not just to the body but to the mind.
Ebri has been assigned to keep Melisande safe - not that her ward actually realises this, as Ebri has thus far managed to do a fairly good job of her pretense. She is a cleric, just of the Great Prophet, the deity that the Nephians - and perhaps the Old Masters, though this is unclear - worship. The Old Masters want Melisande protected because she is of a 'shadow-touched' bloodline, and it seems they neither foresaw nor are very happy about the way in which her aasimar heritage might interact with the bloodline. Every so often, though, Ebri's facade slips a little, and others have long suspected that she is not what she tells them...
PC - Cazamir Jan'Zhat, Human Monk 2 / Savant 2
Hailing from the huge empire of Huron, Cazamir is noble by birth but entered a monastery at a young age - he was manifesting psionic abilities and his mother sent him there for his and his families safety and reputation. There he trained to control his rebelliousness and to focus his mind, becoming a devout follower of the Huronese patron deity Urazel, lord of fire, battle and horsemanship. When eventually the elder monks decided there was little more he could learn from them, they sent him out into the world; not needed by his family, since marriage alliances had cemented the line, he took up the path of a wanderer. Travelling north from Huron into the expansive area called the Drakkath and into the nations within that locale, he hired himself out as a mercenary, taken on by a band of Drakkath guild scholars seeking protection for their expedition to an ancient Umbral tower, somewhere in the Sarokean mountains. With the sages and Ecurius's party now allied, he still watches the adventuring band with suspicion, his uppermost priority being the safety of the scholarly wizards he is supposed to protect.
PC - Meg'anna Liadon, Human Druid 5
Meg'anna's village was slaughtered by fleshtearers when she was a tiny child. Fleshtearers are the shock-troops of the Church of Toran in Carthagia - they are made by Manipulators, then some closely-guarded ceremony by priests of Toran brings them to life. A druid found her and took her into his care, bringing her up.
The druids of the area live in harmony with the gnoll tribes (IMC gnolls are not slavering evil psychopaths), and there is a lively political arena amongst the druids, especially over the split between those who follow the nature goddess Lliras and those who simply believe in the fundamental force of nature. They all answer to the High Druid though (currently a gnoll). Meg used to be very active and vocal in such debates, but then she and her mentor were trading at a gnoll village when a fleshtearer squad was deployed by the Carthagians (who border the area the gnolls inhabit) and killed her tutor and most of the gnolls, while one tore at her throat and ruined her vocal cords.
She fled back to her grove, and lived there in isolation and mourning. Oddly she found she no longer needed to speak the words of spells, now that that she was mute, but instead strange sounds would be invoked when she cast them (basically the character manifests audible 'displays' psionic-style instead of having verbal components to spells). Eventually she moved on from the grove, wandering in search of purpose, where she met with Melisande, Sandslipper and Sebastion, and accompanied them north into Naseria. Yet she was called away from them, searching for answers to a terrible phenomenon - a sickness of the earth itself, causing crops to wilt and fail and nature to fall ill. She travelled to the druidic council in the heartlands of the gnoll-inhabited woods, where she found that they too had yet to fully discover the secret of what was causing this affliction to the very earth itself. They asked her to help them find out by following a potential lead - a gnoll ranger of the Knights of the Thorn, guardians of nature in the servive of the life deity Lliras, had travelled to some ancient tower in the Sarokeans, apparently believing something related to the problem was there. Yet the ranger had never returned, and Meg'anna agreed to seek out the tower and discover what had befallen the Knight, as well as why he had gone to the tower in the first place.
NPC's:
Burl Overton - an ex-PC necromancer from Corinthia, plucked from danger in Iril by Wolf, Wyshira and Kale and accompanying them on their adventures. The player drops out a little way into this story hour, sadly
Cord - another ex-PC, who left towards the end of the last story hour thread. A dwarven monk of the earth god Grumand, who departed to attend the Council of Stone, where the clergy of Grumand will meet and discuss the terrible sickness of the earth that they have all felt.
Sandslipper - another ex-PC who dropped out a long time ago, a desert-nomad earth genasi psion, a pathfinder who had been banished from her own people and headed north into the lands of Huron and the Drakkath. She is currently in Naseria where she fell ill and had to remain to be tended to by priests of Naskha.
Wolf Kieresane - a veteran mercenary and mentor to the group, as well as member of the secretive Azure Blades, an organisation dedicated to fighting the cults of the Elder gods. Slain recently by Red Talons, warrior-cultists of the Elder god Gilamesh.
Ansas'Turi - an Ironjack rogue, hired on by Kale. The Ironjacks are a people chased from their homelands by foul blood-sorcerers, bringing their great knowledge of mechanics with them to their new home, the nations of the Drakkath. Ansas is along to help with any mechanisms or traps they might encounter in the Tower.
Jarvis, Johanne & the Sages - the band of wizard-scholars Cazamir is accompanying, who often argue with one another on points of theory and archaeology. Johanne is their de facto leader, the most powerful actual spellcaster of their number and the wisest too. Jarvis is a Naserian pathfinder, another hireling of the scholars like Cazamir, and a sharp-eyed and agile man.
Lots of other NPC's as well, of course - there's literally a cast of thousands
More details on all these characters and their pasts, and lots of other characters, are in the previous SH thread, chronicling events up to this point. Read of their encounter with the vicious werewolf pack, fighting alongside an Inquisitor and Solar Templar, their battle with an insane alienist mage deep below Tarravus and his Gilamee cult cell, or the hostage-taking beholderkin. Yet all these will pale compared to what they have yet to encounter...Links:
The message board on which the game is actually played:
http://www.roleplayinggames.net/cgi-bin/viewboard.cgi?&board=60
The Campaign Details, giving a brief overview of the homebrew campaign setting:
http://www.roleplayinggames.net/cgi-bin/details.cgi?&board=60
The Game Notes, including more detailed character equipment lists, recent events, and a write-up of the gods:
http://www.roleplayinggames.net/cgi-bin/notes.cgi?&board=60
The actual character write-ups:
http://www.roleplayinggames.net/cgi-bin/chars_view.cgi?&type=details&game=60&display=entirelist
Of course, the previous Story Hour thread
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=1202
And the previous 'crunchy bits' thread for the Story Hour:
http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39102
The first actual story hour post for this new thread will be coming soon!
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