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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Flynn" data-source="post: 4157002" data-attributes="member: 1836">Session Notes - 04/09/08Good Morning, All:It's Thursday, which means that I was fortunate enough to run another session in my weekly Savage Worlds Fantasy campaign last night. Everyone was in attendance, and we generally stayed on topic, so we were able to get some good gaming in. Oh, and I got to introduce the party to some new undead... "Undead, this is the party. Party, this is undead."The Synopsis:After a week of helping Moonwell recover from the siege and subsequent assault of the Sundered, Thane Yngvar decided it was time to pursue the Sundered Emperor north to the barrow rumored to be the final resting place of a compatriot of the Archmagus Agerean. With twenty reprieved mercenaries, five forgiven crossbowmen, a human guide and the dwarven Defender Ioleth, the party headed out. As much of the local area had been scoured for food during the seige, the large company of warriors had to slow their pace in order to scrounge for sustenance. A two day journey turned into a three day trip, and the men marched hungry at least one day, but everyone held out until prey became more plentiful further away from Moonwell.It was on the last night of the march that the skeletons came silently in the night. A group of fifteen skeletons, led by a four-armed skeletal lord, attacked the band of thirty-two men. The shouts of the guards awoke the entire encampment, and Chrysander was among the first to act, casting a concussive burst into the midst of the skeletal forces. It was their good fortune that he did so, for that blast removed about a third of the attacking force. In retaliation, the skeletal lord launched a fireball of his own from the crystalline crown upon his head, which dealt its own damage to the Magus Chrysander and the men surrounding him. Despite their fearful presence, Yngvar's forces formed a front line, many of them responding to the natural leadership of the Warlord Andrus. The Defender Ioleth threw himself into battle, charging the skeletal lord. Calyt the Shade, having suffered severely for sleeping on the side of the camp where the skeletons first attacked, used his magic to burrow through the earth and flee the attacking skeletons that had surrounded him. It was a massive scene of turmoil and carnage.The skeletal lord dealt one more fireball from his Crown of the Deathflame and then engaged the Defender Ioleth, as well as some of the other dwarves on the front line. Slowly, the tide began to turn, and one by one, the skeletons fell. After the elven priest Anzjin felled the skeletal lord, the morale of the dwarven forces improved, and they renewed their assault on the remaining skeletons with a fervor. With their leader and his influence over them gone, the remaining skeletons dropped more quickly. Five of the dwarves had fallen, and two of those later died of complications related to their injuries. However, the rest of the party's small army came through the battle.Sifting through the bones, Chrysander recovered the crystalline crown and properly identified it as the Crown of the Deathflame. It gave any that wore it power over both fire and death. Legend has it that the crown is cursed, however, and that should one die while wearing it, they would become one with the death that they control. Chrysander also remembered that the Warlord Esteros was of a four-armed race from the ancient lands of Achea, and surmised that this skeleton was the last remains of Esteros, animated by the Crown of the Deathflame. Filled with thoughts of possible undead rising up from the fallen, the dwarves burying their dead, and the Magus Chrysander used his extensive knowledge of rituals to consecrate the site.The next day, their guide, Gatticus, requested to return to Moonwell. Being a kind man, Yngvar gave his permission, and the Thane's forces turned north again. Without a guide, it took longer than expected to find the barrow, and so it was in the late afternoon that the party finally came upon the small rectangular hill that housed the ancient tomb. It was obvious that a doorway had been uncovered on the eastern side of the tomb and had been opened. From the bodies strewn about in various states of decay, it was equally obvious that opening the door had unleashed something from within the tomb. Calyt and Anzjin moved forward silently to investigate, and Calyt noted the exposes bones of the bodies had been severely gnawed upon by sharp teeth, the bones broken open in some cases to expose the marror within.Grimly, the dwarven forces turned their attention to burying these dead, and the Magus Chrysander once again performed the ritual of consecration to bless their burial. By this point, it was dark, and so the forces retreated another location in order to set up camp.Yngvar and Calyt, as well as some guards on watch, noticed that a small band of pale-skinned figures crept forth from the tomb a few hours after sunset. Not finding the bodies before the tomb, they scampered off in the direction of the burial site, obviously following the scent of the dead bodies, or perhaps that of the living men that drug them away.Yngvar decided to take the party alone to the burial site, in order to investigate this possible threat to his people and his mission. The small band of adventurers arrived at the burial site as the pale creatures had finished looking for the dead bodies and had found the scent of the living men leading back to camp. Just as the adventurers began to move forward on the undead, the wights noticed them and surged towards them, outnumbering them eight to five.A concussive blast removed a few of the attacking wights almost immediately, but after that, the wights were upon them, and the adventurers were fighting for their very lives. One struck the elven priest Anzjin with such force that it was able to feed upon the warm life within the priest, leaving Anzjin filled with a numbing coldness that would not leave him. It was the elven priest that first determined that the undead were immune to non-magical attacks, and so the party took to different tactics instead. Using a combination of unusual tactics and vicious non-magical blows, the party kept their attackers on the defensive while Yngvar used the magic sword Tiwazbrandr against the wights one by one to fell them. Chrysander attempted one more concussive burst, but his aim was off, and with the wights so close to the party, they ended up outside the area of effect when the burst drifted. Still, the band emerged victorious, though some were worse the wear for the experience.Among the dessicated bodies of the wights, the party found a necklace bearing a noble sigil, likely related to the House of Warlord Esteros. They knew, then, that whatever else had happened, the Archmagus Agerean had dabble in the necromantic arts in order to protect this particular tomb.And that's where we ended our session...The Commentary:This three-hour session managed two combats, one with almost fifty participants and one with thirteen. In regards to the large first encounter, per the rules, I let the players control their allied forces, leaving me to worry only about the wild card NPC Ioleth, the fifteen skeletons and the skeletal lord (Esteros, for those keeping score). The combat lasted just over an hour, and we took no shortcuts. I really liked that. Certainly, the good guys outnumbered the bad guys by two to one, or thereabouts, but the undead immunities and such helped balance that out. It was a pretty nice fight. Both the Warlord Andrus and I (through the skeletal lord Esteros) got the chance to experiment with the leadership Edges. It's interesting to me just how much of a difference a simple +1 Toughness can make. The skeletons within Esteros's range were only slightly harder to make Shaken, but where that +1 really seemed to hit was in getting that raise to destroy the undead, because it meant the difference between getting an average damage of 12 instead of 11. With the undead's natural +2 to recover from Shaken, skeletons rarely stayed Shaken long enough to allow the typical two-hit takedown that you see with most Extras.When that battle was done, the players seemed surprised that we still had about half the session left. There was some lively discussion about the historical data I'd given them on Esteros, and Chrysander's player made a number of personal realizations about the campaign setting background that gave me that "GM Did Good" feeling of creating an internally consistent background and then letting them discover it on their own. I like those "Ah-Ha!" moments for the players, and while this one wasn't a big megaplot element, it's still cool to give them that kind of thing.The second battle of the night was against wights. I pretty much used the wight from Savage Beasts, and since I had bennies, I made sure that I showed off the special attack power for the wight over the course of the encounter. By doing so, I felt I was able to create a better distinction for wights from other undead, and create a more memorable encounter. The players learned a bit about immunities with the encounter, and so used a variety of techniques (from Tricks to holding their actions) to keep most of the wights Shaken so that they couldn't attack, while the guy with the magic sword delivered the final blow. They are also hopeful that they will find magic weapons in the loot run they are embarking upon, and I assured them that there will be a few. Still, I was pleasantly surprised how well Savage Worlds allowed them options against their foes, even when they were incapable of delivering the final blow.All in all, I felt that I had three resounding successes with the Savage Worlds system this week: 1) I began to integrate the use of the Leadership Edges into my combats and could see the impact of them on the combat; 2) I got to run a combat with 48 combatants and it took only about an hour to do so from start to finish; and 3) I got to see the players use the system to remain effective when the direct "beat 'em down" approach was denied to them. Add in the "GM Did Good" moment, and last night went pretty darn well.Now, a minor dungeon crawl lies ahead, and that should be fun for everyone involved. At the end of it, the party hopes to have slain the Sundered Emperor and gotten some great loot in the process. If all goes well, and the PCs do not die, of course, they should be able to accomplish their goals. We'll see how it all goes, though.Wish Them Luck,Flynn</blockquote>

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