[Midnight] Dark Tower's Shadow (Updated 12/10)

[Paka]

Story Posts Written by Judd Karlman

Player Notes by JJ Enslow

Story Post #1

Chapter I - Theros Obsidia Trained

Also posted on www.againsttheshadow.org

Armies of Elves, Dwarves and Men attempted to defeat Izrador, the Shadow in the North, in the most important and final battle of the Third Age. They met and fought valiantly against armies of Orc, Demons, Dragons and other of the Shadow’s Minions on the southern shore of the Pellurian Sea.

They lost.

It is 99 years later, the Last Age.


Drip of Wax and Sealed Fates

The Shadow Legates could see the sliver of the moon from their study high in the dark tower of Theros Obsidia. A hearthfire kept the cold air at bay. Below their windows the moans of beggars could be heard along with the drums from the nearby Orcish fires.

Councilor Legate Hannah looked over the list of newly frocked Legates while fellow Councilor Legate Pintoss glanced at the maps of Eredane.

“Unaros, newly frocked in the Holy Order of Izrador’s Legates. His father has had no small number of successes in the Erethor. His son seems promising,” Hannah said, seeing that his teachers spoke well of his abilities.

Pintoss thought to himself of a particularly fine slave Unaros had given him, a Halfling girl with talents.

“Yes, I don’t see him being right for the Erethor nor the Kaladrun fronts.”

Hannah sniffed, “They need promising talent on the hard fronts too. We cannot expect the Shadow to fall completely if we only send our fools and failures. Where do you see him?”

“Unaros has good friends. I see him and his friends going to Baden’s Bluff. It is a good city for a young Legate and it has trials all its own.”

They looked over recent missives from Baden’s Bluff. Last month they had lost a Legate, a crossbow ambush in a dark alley.

Hannah shook her head, “The insurgents are bold in that city.”

“Don’t be too sure. I spent my first five years in the Bluff. Fellow Legates are just as dangerous thereabouts as the cursed Baden Family.”

“Fine, send him there, then and send his friends with him along with nine Orc.”

A drip of wax and a stamp of a seal and their fates were set.

Introduction to the Dornish Wildlander with Steelblood


Karhoun Esben was caught worshipping small statues, praying to his ancestors through them. His father beat him severely and sent him away to Theros Obsidia for schooling. The dark tower was magicked out of the sea rock; it towered above the skeleton of the old Highwall library. Karhoun first arrived to the dark tower during his ninth winter.

Puppet nobles Izrador put into power sent their children to Theros Obsidia. It was a sound way to keep them in line, a hostage taken and a fresh mind turned to Izrador.

They say that Karhoun’s father, Vildar Esben, had sent more sons and daughter than any five men in Eredane. He had turned to the Shadow before the Final Battle a hundred years ago and somehow he still walked and bred. They say his spite kept him alive, that he lived and breathed only because he couldn’t bare to turn his wealth and land over to anyone else.

Karhoun didn’t have a head for strategy and so he wasn’t put into the Soldier-Legate training. Instead he now ranged with the Goblins, keeping his eyes open and wondering what he was good for.

As his trainer had said, “We have Orcs to be tough and cunning, bred to be so from Izrador himself. We have no need for big, dumb humans.”

Rebels would be stupid to venture so close to the capitol of Izrador’s power. It was here all of his clerics and wizards were trained. It was here in the dark tower where his worst enemies were tortured.

Karhoun and the Goblins returned from their perimeter scouting, finding nothing of interest. They threaded through the beggars, ignoring their pleas when a Halfling slave approached. Immediately, the Goblins began to push the little creature, yelling at him, forcing him to the ground.

In one motion Karhoun grabbed him off the ground and walked away with the slave under his arm, “What do you want?”

"I-i-i-I, was s-s-sent to bid you come to the common room at the foot of the tower. Unaros has s-s-sent…”

“Tell him I’ll be there in a moment,” and the massive Northman set the Halfling down.

Karhoun looked up at the tower as he had many times before and remembered the first time he saw it. He had come over the rise in the midst of cruel Orcs. The cold air and the squalor of the beggars outside all shocked him. Bruises were still raw on his body and he knew that if his entire life was lived to raze this tower to the ground, it would be a life worth living.

Introduction to the Wood Elf Channeler on the Healer’s Path

Vorden Quele was cataloguing items. A new batch had been brought from a recent battle and now that the blood was cleaned off of them it was up to him to make sure they really were magickal and determine what kind of magicks had gone into them.

His father hadn’t taken much interest in him and Vorden quietly excepted that. His father, after all was the Shadow’s own Sorcerer. A Night King has important matters to attend to.

Vorden dressed in red robes and was called by many of the Legates, outside of his hearing, The Scarlet Prince or the Night Princeling. The Orcs just called him The Little Elf.

Three such Orcs were in the room with him, making sure the items, a dagger, a ring and a neck brooch were returned to their tribe when he was done cataloguing them for the Legates.

One of the Orcs bent over, looking at the dagger, sniffed at the Elf.

“Can I help you?” Vorden asked, using that Elven haughtiness that came so easily, a gift from his father, no doubt.

“Just smelling what’s for dinner,” the Orc replied and the others grunted laughs.

“Hm, I doubt that. Who do you think would get into more trouble: you for eating me or me for eating you?”

The others watched their friend, watching for weakness. He sneered and replied in perfect Elvish, “Daddy’s not here now. I’m willing to take a risk, Little Elf.”

Vorden opened his mouth for a response and an Orcish hand gripped his throat. Vorden couldn’t know that this Orc had lost half of his tribe in the Erethor Forest by Elven arrows but the Orc was telling him all about it while choking the life out of the Little Elf. Spittle was hitting his face as the Orc began to scream and then, quite suddenly, it wasn’t spit coming out of the Orc’s mouth but blood.

The Orc was too busy throttling him to see his tribesmen bow to one knee, a common custom when a Night King enters a room.

Ardherin, Sorcerer of Shadow, watched the Orc fall over with interest, as this spell was a new one and he was interested to see how it would work.

His son rubbed at the blossoming bruises on his throat and regained his breath. When the Orc collapsed Vorden put his hands on him and healed him. Eyebrows raised, Ardherin greeted his son while the Orc skulked away.

“Father, I tried to explain to the Orc that he would get into more trouble – “
His father cut him off, “Explaining does not work with them. They only understand blood. You will be sent away from Theros Obsidia soon. Are you ready?”

“Yes, father.”

“Good, I will not have weakness blighting our family’s name. If you distinguish yourself, there will be rewards, as there always are when serving the Shadow. There is a continent, another land that Izrador rules. You could be the first Elf to see its shores, to study its magic, if you distinguish yourself in His service.

Stay away from the Erethor and the Witch Queen’s influence. The forest will whisper to you and put her enchantments upon you.”

Vorden nodded.

“Come to me.”

Vorden approached his father and felt the touch of his father’s cold signet ring on his forehead, it burned for a moment and his entire body was covered in cold sweat and then, on his forhead was the Night King's infamous seal.

“We are an outlawed race due to the Witch Queen’s foolery in the south and west. This will let the Shadow’s servants know who your father is and perhaps keep you alive.

When Vorden opened his eyes, his father was gone. He realized that it was the first time his father had ever touched him.

A frightened Halfling, fresh from being kicked down the hall by three Orcs in a terrible mood, told him to meet his friends in the tower’s common room.

Introduction to the Shadow Legate and the Oath-Taker’s Conspiracy

Unaros’s father was a General of the Soldier-Legates on the Erethor front. He was born with the Shadow over his heart and knew he would die that way too. His mother had died in childbirth and his father never spoke of her.

Olin sat lazily next to him, his wide mastiff head in his master’s lap. Unaros pet his ears in the way Olin liked, “Soon you will have one of Izrador’s demons in you, Olin. Then we will hunt those who would harm the Shadow together. Will you like that, boy?”

Olin licked Unaros’ hand, not knowing that later this evening a Wizard would visit and put an Astirax into his body, a demon bred for smelling magic and hunting those who channeled it.

Unaros re-read his orders to make for Baden’s Bluff before a fortnight had passed. He was given leave to go with nine Orcs and one Wildlander, Karhoun and one Shadow-sanctioned Wizard, Vorden.

Unaros had wild dreams in his head of the three of them hitting Baden’s Bluff like a storm off the Pelurian Sea. They would ferret out the Baden family, see their heads on spikes and rule the city for the rest of their lives.

But the young Legate didn’t understand reality nor his friends very well.

He had no idea that his friends awoke in the middle of the night, six months ago and made their way down to the library ruins. He had no idea that they entered a secret passage in the library, a room created for oath-taking.

There his friends swore to see the dark tower of Theros Obsidia broken, razed to the ground and they swore to thwart the Shadow and his minions in every manner possible along the way.

On the night he made his way to the oath chamber, Vorden dreamed of his mother. She told him about his father before she was given to a Shadow’s servant as a gift. She spoke of a time when his father was the greatest hero of the Elven kingdoms. He hunted and killed Demons for the Witch Queen and was known throughout the land as a powerful and just Wizard.

Karhoun dreamed of his father’s bitter face as he beat him. His ancestral tokens were knocked to the floor as his father whipped him and screamed, “You want to know your ancestors, boy? Look at my face and see where you came from.

"You want guidance? Pray to the Shadow in the North. Your ancestors all lie under his power now, boy.”

Unaros had a strange dream where a woman was begging him to do what was right, to be just and true. He woke up and felt the slightest compunction to sneak down the stairs and make his way to the broken library, a monument to Izrador’s might.

He thought of the Orcs and the penalty for being caught outside of your rooms at night. Unaros went back to sleep, wondering what would have put such a foolish thought in his head.

The young Legate smiled as his friends entered the common room. He was excited to inform them of their orders. It was time to gather his Orcish host to him; tomorrow they would begin their journey.

 

[Paka]

Story Post #2

Cleaver Unsheathed

They all watched the Orc Shaman take his cleaver out of his belt. The Orc had burns all over his body, desplays of his devotion to the Burning Mother Tribe, grabbed Vorden’s thin Elf wrist to hold it down to a rock but he shook away, “Get away from me!”

Defiantly, he put his lithe fingers on the rock and looked the shaman in the eye. The Shaman lined the cleaver up with his hand and Vorden took his fingers away, leaving only the one, they one they agreed to.

The Shaman grimaced.

Karhoun and Unaros, friends with the Elf since their own childhoods were holding their breath. Tomorrow they will leave with 6 Orc and 6 Goblins for Baden’s Bluff, begin their adult lives, their paths of manhood.

But in the now Vorden was giving up his finger. They thought back and wondered how they got here. This was madness.

Unaros’s mastiff, Olin, now possessed by a Demon, licked his lips, smelling fear and knowing that blood wasn’t far behind.

Before Now

Two hours ago Karhoun’s Dornish arms were ready to wrap Vorden up to hold him down. Unaros was going to do the cutting. The shaman wanted two fingers, he had said, two freshly cut Elven fingers in fair trade for his magic staff.

Unaros assured his large Dornish friend that the trade was in Vorden’s best interests and he would thank them in the end for making the decision that he could not make.

But Karhoun had tripped and Unaros’s dark magics had failed them.

Vorden walked away from their attack, left them in a pile and threw a dagger at Karhoun, which stuck in the meat of his buttocks. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so damned terrible.

Unaros healed his friend’s back end with his Shadow Legate magic, letting the cold comfort of Izrador wash over him like a winter’s wind.

Four hours ago they had been haggling with the Shaman and the Chief of the Burning Mother Tribe, trying to get their allotted nine Orc escort. The Shaman turned the missive upside down and claimed it was only six.

That was when Olin smelled the staff. He said it was powerful, maybe a marred Covenant item of some kind.

Vorden’s mouth had nearly watered when he checked the markings on the staff with runes in his Lorebook and realized it had Druidic origins. They all knew he would stop at nothing to get it.

They tried everything. They couldn’t get the Chief to allow his Shaman to go on the journey around the Pellurian Sea towards Baden’s Bluff. They couldn’t kill him and take it with his tribe all about him.

Vorden had even considered taking a Halfling slave and enlarging the cut off fingers. When it was put forth that an Orc would know the difference between Halfling and Elf fingers by smell he seriously considered marinating the magicked finger in his own blood.

In the end they got six Orc and six Goblins for their journey. The Chief was glad to be rid of the Goblins, parasites on the tribe.

As if to make Vorden want the staff more the Olin, the sniffer-demon said, “The staff smelled of the Erethor. I was in a body once on the Elven Front, serving a Legate who died there. The staff smelled like the wood from that cursed place.” The words seemed odd out of the mastiff’s mouth. The astirax or sniffer-demon was a new tennat in the once sweet and eager to please mastiff.

Last Day

Karhoun thought about walking around the tower for the last time. Seeing the links from Orc to Orc, tribe to tribe. He closely watched the way power worked here, how some Legates commanded better slaves and some Orc commanded more fear. Goblins had their own pecking order, he had seen that but in Orc presences the Goblin pecking order meant little to nothing. Karhoun walked around Theros Obsidia for the last day and thought about lines of power

Unaros thought about how everything had changed. Olin was his dog, had been his dog since his father’s bitch had birthed him in their family kennels. Now an ancient Demon walked in Olin’s skin.

His friends seemed distant, almost antagonistic. Would his status as a Shadow Legate be outshined by the Elven Night Princeling? If so, the Elf would have to perish.

Karhoun would do that, would do it for his old friend Unaros.

Vorden thought only of the staff. He was brought up far from the Elves and only knew his mother, his father and a few torture victims in the tower. The staff was made of Elven wood…wasn’t it?

It was a link to his past, to his future, to the man his father was.

He had to have it.

Paying the Price for Magic

The cleaver went through meat without a sound, through bone with a sick crunch and hit the rock with a metal on rock scrape and a spark.

The pain blinded Vorden and blood soaked the Scarlet Prince’s left sleeve.

Unaros healed the wound, closed it and Karhoun helped his friend away.

The Shaman slurped the finger into his mouth, eating it on the spot, blood on his lips and rapture in his eyes.

They walked away with the staff, marred at the ends where once there were iron shods before they were ripped away.

It was a fitting lesson for younglings on their way out into the world, a moral they would need to compile for themselves. It was up to them to take the magic, the squalor, the blood and the toll it all took and glean wisdom from the experience.

 

[Tuerny]

Looks good!

I can't wait to read the next chapter?

So what does the staff do?

Jesse Dean

 

[The Forsaken One]

Nice nice

 

[Siridar]

Cool.

Very nice.

 

[LRathbun]

Very well written! Good stuff.

 

[Paka]

Meta-Game

Thanks for the praise. I appreciate it .

Maybe you care about this stuff and maybe you do not.


House Rules

Double 20 Instant Kill Rule - I want combat to always have that danger. Even a dagger should be feared. Every arrow is a possible death. See the 3.0 DMG, page 64, Variant: Instant Kill

In the world of Midnight, I think that kind of un-romantic arrow to the throat in the midst of combat works. The players are aware that they can die fast and furious and I've asked them to just keep a secondary character concept in their minds just in case.

DM Keeps Hit Points Rule - In the Unknown Armies game I played in I was always interested in the way the game pretty much used a hit point system for a modern horror game.

The DM kept track of hit points and didn't tell you how many points you were hit for, he just described the hit and the effect it had on your body.

In a fantasy game it would keep the players afraid of the edge of the knife, not the piddly 1d4 of a knife's damage.

I'm not sure how well it is working since in the intro one of the players threw a knife at the other play but it works well in theory, in my mind.

Levels - I don't plan on using CR's and all that but will probably just give the players a set number of XP per game. I want levels to advance at a fairly brisk pace, Midnight is a world that demands the heroes grow strong or die .

I seem to remember their being a set XP per game rule in Star Wars. I will probably look that over before making any definite house rulings. Maybe Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed will have something interesting to swipe regarding experience points.

No Alignment - Detect Evil will be Detect Shadow more like the L5R Detect Taint, detecting a direct link to Shadow. If the players did a Detect Shadow on a cultist who worshipped a Demon not related to Izrador, then I would describe a different darkness than the one they are used to.

Who We Are

I've been trying to get a game started with JJ for a while now. He was in a car accident a few months ago and has been mostly bed-ridden and often stuck in his house. If anyone I know needs a game it is him.

He had made up two Riddle of Steel characters but the other gamers kept having to stand us up, real life getting in the way of gaming. Grrrr.

Finally, I just decided to run a game with just one other player, easier to get both together during the day on Wednesdays after I get off work on the night shift at five in the morning.

The nice thing about the game's scheduling is I drive a cab and run the game right after a 12 hour shift (5pm to 5am) means that I've had 12 hours to think about it a bit, mull it over in my brain. The bad thing is that I am often exhausted but I also run some of my best games strung out on caffeine, eyes bloodshot.

The players, JJ and Barry are prominent members on a plot comittee of a local LARP, IFRA. They also are veterans of what was probably my best game ever, a Tolkien and Jordan influenced Ars Magica game that ran for about a year before I went abroad and returned to the players scattered to the hills.

JJ and Barry have been friends since high school and when Barry get's married in a year or so, JJ will no doubt be the Best Man or at least in the wedding party. I say this only because I think trust is a very important issue for a gaming group and it is nice to know that I think it won't be much of an issue here.

Barry's fiancee, Brandy, has also been invited to play and hopefully, she will. She's a loud, fun, dynamic gamer who brings alot to the table and when I pitched the game to her with the standard, "Picture Middle-Earth but Sauron won," her eyes lit up.

The game will run every Wednesday and hopefully the Story Hour will be posted in the next 24 to 48 hours or so.

For the record, I am a cab driver/frustrated writer, who quit my job working with teenagers so that I could take more time to write. My current project is a modern Arthurian fantasy about the bastard son of Elvis Presley. That has been put on hold far too much while writing this fine crap here.

I picture running this game until JJ can walk and/or the PC's take down, lay siege to or take over Theros Obsidia (and maybe they can happen at around the same time, that'd be cool).

I like the idea of journaling a game completely and in the end, having a detailed account of what happened as a memento. Hopefully, I'll dig Crown of Shadows and will begin running out of that once it comes out.

Thanks for reading and thanks again for your kind words.

 

[Paka]

Story Post #3

Sad Father

Durannil Feyworth of the High Clouds stood at a full three feet. Still, as the old Gnome stood beneath the dark splendor of Theros Obsidia he felt small. He wished he were on the deck of his ship, Feya’s Sacrifice. He felt sure of himself there, sailing the Ebron Sean down to the Rivers in the south. Lately, though, even on the river, he had felt small.

His son, Thanil, stood just under three feet and had his mother’s green eyes. Thanil’s hair was shaved because the young Gnomes felt it made them faster swimmers.

Quickly they were ushered past the beggars by a squad of Orcs with breast plates stained with blood. Durannil knew that was the tradition of the Mother of Blood tribe. He looked over at his son and tried to work up a smile for his boy's sake but couldn’t make it happen.

Together they were locked into a guest quarter and told not to leave. The list for what the tower will need for summer was almost completed and it was the High Clouds who brought it across the sea. Durannil wondered if this would be the last time he would ever see his son.

“You won’t be joining me on the barge,” he explained to Thannil.

“Why not?”

“My business won’t allow for it. There is a Legate traveling with some Orcs and others. They will be making their way along the eastern rim of the Ebron Sean, what the humans called the Pellurian.”

Thannil nodded and his father reminded himself again that his son wasn't a boy anymore.

“You will go with them and look up your auntie once you reach Baden’s Bluff. The Bluff is a good place for a young Gnome, a good place to seek your own fortune. It is time for such things.”

He wanted to say things to his son, tell him that he missed his mother and that sometimes he reminded him of her so much it made him ache. They silently sat in the cell until an Orc summoned Thannil to meet the Legate and his men-at-arms before they left on their overland trip.

A mastiff whose shoulder was as high as Thannil’s head led him down the dark halls to a Legate’s private room.


Introduction to the Gnomish Rogue on the Charismatic Path

Thannil observed his new traveling companions carefully. The Northman, introduced as Karhoun, was a brute, six spans high with a shaved head and blonde beard. He noticed that a space was on his left cheek where no hair would grow, perhaps a scar. Karhoun wore wool clothes in muted colors and had notched weapons on his belt.

Prince Vorden was the first Elf he had ever met who he wasn’t smuggling illegally on a boat. He wore a red metal skull cap with a deep crimson robe. His bow and sword were jeweled, little as that meant nowadays. Thannil had heard older Gnomes talk about how pretty stones once were a sign of wealth.

In this Last Age a sign of wealth is food or a few goats.

When Thannil looked at the Elf and Man he felt the tickle in his head, the knowledge that these were two who wanted to see Theros Obsidia fall, to kill Orc and Goblin and other Shadow Minions. He knew that they were in the oath room a week ago with him. They were noble. They had heard the call.

He sighed in relief.

The mastiff turned to the other man in the room and spoke, “Here’s the Gnome.”

The other man had no such shred of nobility. He wore his black hair short and was beginning his first beard. On his back were the newly spun robes of a Legate with a red collar, close to his throat. On his hip was a shiny new morning star.

Unaros spoke to the Gnome in Trader’s Tongue, “I am Unaros, newly frocked Shadow Legate. We will leave at first light tomorrow for the Bluff. You may spend the night here with Karhoun and Prince Vorden.”

Karhoun looked at the eating dagger on Thannil’s hip and spoke, “Should we equip him?”

Unaros responded, “With what?”

The Dornishman shrugged. “We might meet trouble on the road. It is a long journey.”

“That is why we are traveling with the Orcs. No, I won’t arm this merchant. I wish to pray to the Shadow for a safe journey. Good night.”

As the Legate left his slave scurried after him. Thannil hadn’t even known he was in the room but the Halfling slave exited behind the Legate, eyes downcast.

They were all left in the room alone. Slowly and deliberately, Karhoun silenced Thannil’s questions by putting his finger to his lips and said, “We’ll talk later.”

Vorden looked tired and rubbed the bandage over his left hand where his finger used to be. He asked, “You speak Erenlander?”

The Gnome nodded.

“Good, do you have any gear on your ship you’d like to fetch?”

“I’d like my shortsword.”

The both shook their heads, “Not a good idea right now. When we kill a Goblin, that will be your gear.”

“Maybe my bedroll for the road.”

They walked him to the ship and while aboard the Freya’s Revenge for the last time he tried to get some food off of the quartermaster who sternly but kindly refused him and wished the young Gnome a safe journey over land.

Vorden, the Crimson Prince saw to other business.


Prince Vorden’s Other Business

Kaza was a dirty little boy. He saw the one the Orcs called the Little Elf. He had never seen colors like the ones on the Elf's robes anywhere but in a sunset. He must have food, Kaza thought and approached him for alms.

Vorden was looking at the written signs he had posted in all over the shanty town surrounding Theros Obsidia. He noticed that Orc were standing guard over them, making sure none of the populace could read the words. After a short and frustrating parley with a pipe-smoking Orc warding his sign, he walked away, shaking his head.

Tired of the squalor he almost tripped over the little boy asking for food, “Hey mister, some food for me or my ma?”

He looked down at the boy and surmised that the child looked healthy enough. “I need someone to carry my things, boy. Do you know who I am?”

“You’re the one the Orcs call, Little Elf. Do I get food?”

“Hm, is that what the Orcs call me? We will go on a long journey and yes, I will feed you while you are under my car.”

Kaza thought about this and said, “You’d better talk to my ma.”

Kaza’s ma lived under an old fruit cart, set up to keep the weather off of them. It was hell in the winters but the summer rains were mostly off of their backs.

When she saw the Elf she was scared. Kaza had done something and this creature was going to take him away. She had heard stories about how the Witch Queen came in the night to take children away from their parents, leaving only wood in their place.

“Madame, I would like to employ your son.”

She shooed Kaza down the street and spoke, “He don’t do things like that but I do. For a day’s food I’ll see that your needs are met, master. Let’s just wait until Kaza is out of earshot.”

Comprehension and sadness dawned over Vorden. “No, ma’am, that is not what I mean. I mean I want to take him away.”

She murmered, “He’s all I have.”

That sentence sat between them until the Elf broke the silence, “Kaza can have a better life than this. It will be a dangerous road but I will keep care of him.”

She shook her head.

When they parted company, Kaza walked away with the Prince Vorden. His new master claimed that Kaza wasn’t a slave but Kaza didn’t really understand the difference, nor did he care either way. When they got to Baden’s Bluff (wherever that was) his new master had said that Kaze would be able to send for his mother if he saved enough.

His mother was given a week’s dry rations in return for allowing an Elf to walk away with her son. She hoped the old wives’ tales she’d heard about the Witch Queen were false.

The boy was brought into the tower. Vorden, not knowing how else to let Orcs know not to kill the child, put his Wizard Mark on Kaza’s hand.

Given explicit instructions to bathe before he returned, the child was left alone in his new home.


Meeting at the Grove

The trees were all about a hundred years old, almos the same age as Prince Vorden, the Crimson Prince. The elder trees had been cut down in the sacking of Highwall to feed the fires. Izrador had wanted the smoke of Highwall to be seen from the southern Pellurian shores where the mass of three armies awaited.

It was a safe place to talk freely. Thannil, the Gnomish Merchant, Prince Vorden, the Elven Channeler and Karhoun Esben, the Dornish Wildlander discussed the coming journey.

Oddly the human preached patience and the Elf wanted blood. Karhoun wanted to get to Baden’s Bluff safely with the Legate and set up safely, knowing that life on the road would be difficult.

The Elf wanted to kill the Legate at first opportunity. He said that they needed a plan, a signal a swift action to break the yoke of tyranny.

The Gnome wanted to play evil against evil, let Orcs and Legates and Goblins do the work they didn’t have to.

Karhoun expressed worry concering the Astirax now inhabiting Olin's immense mastiff body, “That thing is scary and I’m not sure who is in charge, the Legate or the Demon.”

Vorden nodded agreement, “I’m not sure who is in charge and furthermore I’m not sure if it matters.”

Karhoun began to rant, “That thing said it was in the Erethor with its former master but its body was killed. That means if we just kill the damned thing on the trail it is going to float back here and tell everyone that we went renegade. Killing the Legate and Orcs in their sleep is signing our execution notice.”

They argued more about pride, how much longer they could live in the Shadow and a concise plan of action. Vorden mentioned how when they were discussion the journey he had wanted to go west around the Pellurian, make his way to the Erethor.

Karhoun expressed his doubts that their reception by the Elves would be a warm one.

In the end no clear decisions were made. They would leave tomorrow at first light and when the time came would take action. None of them knew when that time would come, all they knew is they hoped it came soon. They had all seen their fathers twisted by Shadow and many of them had known their mothers killed by it.

They knew one thing: They were tired of waiting.

Tomorrow they would go east along the shores of the Pellurian Sea. The first town they would come to was Whitecliff, once the trading capitol of the north, now an abandoned and perfectly preserved ghost town squatted by Goblins and frequented by smugglers and bandits.


(Note: Again we only had about an hour to game due to Real Life stuff but I felt we covered a fair amount of ground and these past two weeks will serve as good prelude-style introductions. Hopefully, the tone has been adequately set. Next week I am eager to get along with the journey. Truth is, I wanted to start this week but there just wasn't time.

Brandy is talking about playing an Orc, which should be interesting. If she is going to play I'll make her character up with her before the game day to save time for GAMING.

Thanks for reading.)

 

[wolff96]

It's nice to see a story hour set in the world of Midnight.

I'm intrigued by the setting but haven't had a chance to pick up the book yet. So it's very cool to see your characters setting out into a world that I know very little about.

Keep up the good work!

 

[Paka]

Thanks.

The players were great in this one and had some amazing dialogue that I didn't remember faithfully enough to put in. I am seriously considering taping games with a microcassette recorder just to make sure I catch everything.

Again, I've always wanted to document a game from beginning to end and thought this one would be a fun one to try it with.

If you haven't picked up Midnight yet, please do so. It is a wonderful worldbook with great rules variations on D&D. There are threads about it on ENworld and on RPG.net, not to mention the Midnight fan site (www.againsttheshadow.org) and the Yahoo group frequented by the writers. All worth checking out.

Thanks for reading.