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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Water Bob" data-source="post: 5983590" data-attributes="member: 92305">CIMMERIAN BLOOD - part oneIn broad strokes, I give you the outline of the first selection of our massive Hyborian Campaign. Think of the overall campaign as a series of books, with each book telling a part of the overall story. Or, like a TV series, we've finished the first season, waiting for the second to start.This first story introduced us to some of the main characters (probably more to come) and their world. This first "season" told the story of how these barbarian children became men. We saw the tests they needed to take to prove themselves. We saw them make their first kills. And, we've been tantalized by a dark evil that will stretch much farther than this first story-arc of the overall campaign.PART ONE: In Part One of the story-arc, we saw these children (age 12) run the Ras Croi--the test that sets them upon the path to manhood. The characters trained with weapons and learned to become fighters. This part was also designed to teach the game mechanics to the players.PART TWO: We drove things up a notch in Part Two. This is when the little girl, Mallie, was taken by the Grath. We saw the boys' first dangerous foray away from the village. Into the thicket trees they chased the Grath attackers in a daring chase, high above the floor of the Blood River Basin, across the branches of the massive trees that interlock with one another, making a giant, tree, thicket, grove.It's not long before the characters learn that dark sorcery lives in the Blood River Basin. Time is not constant in this witched wood. And, it is populated by creatures known as the Chakans. The area Cimmerians believe these beasts to be kin to their ancestors from the time of the Breaking of the World. They are thought to be early Cimmerians that never developed and evolved, and thus, the local modern Cimmerians consider the Chakans as another Cimmerian clan. The Chakans are used in tales and myth among the local Cimmerians, sometimes as a way to scare children into sleeping in their skins. The characters, though, met these tribal, beastial people and found them to be more ape-creature-ish than human. Yet, a definite tribal intelligence abides among the Chalkan. And, the players learned that the Chalkans seem to have adapted to the strange way Time exists in the Blood River Basin.As the adventure continued, the PC's survived capture by the Chakans and contact with Grath warriors. A big confrontation took place as the characters found where Mallie had been taken--a cave just south of the Blood River Basin at the edge of the dry and rugged Cracked Lands. This place is a mystery itself. Called Howling Cave, this place was discovered to be a natural cavern that had been worked by miners of some skill thousands of years ago. The characters encountered Grath warriors, and people, not Cimmerian, from another land...and worse. Sorcerous, demonic beings inhabited the cave as well, and the young Cimmerian warriors found themselves faced with the scaly hide of a demon from the deepest, darkest regions of the shadow world.PART THREE: The last part of the story-arc saw the Cimmerian heroes rescue the little girl, Mallie, from the Howling Cave only to find themselves in a race for thier lives across the Cracked Lands as the demon tracked them with a band of risen dead--the same dead that the player characters had killed in the Howling Cave. The heroes faced a flash-flood, exhaustion, a hurricane force storm, and a climax with the risen-dead and the demon itself, before our main characters dragged themselves back into their home village of Seven Stones Ridge.It had been just over two weeks since they had disappeared and started their chase after the young girl, Mallie, and their clansmen in the village were quite pleased to see them alive.The two young Cimmerians, Silaigne, the orphan, and Caelis Redbirth, son to the clan chieftan, had earned their right to be called "warrior" and sit among the adults at the new moon gatherings. They had survived where adult, seasoned warriors probably would not have. They faced overwhelming odds, and won. The two, since, have been recognized to have been born with Battle Destiny--the blessing by the war goddess Badh that makes them more suited than normal for the blade and the axe and war.Several questions remained unanswered. Be sure to note that those will become paramount in the future story-arcs of....CIMMERIAN BLOOD!NOTE: During this first story-arc, the two PC's, Silaigne and Caelis, have gone from 1st to 3rd level Barbarians. At the end of this first story, the PC's are 15 and 14 years old, respectively. They started the adventure as children and ended it as battle-hardened men.</blockquote>

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