[Oct] What's up in your campaign?

[Aeolius]

Last week my undersea PbP campaign, "Beneath the Pinnacles of Azor'alq" returned from a lengthy hiatus.

After an encounter at a site of unspeakable evil, where a mass sacrifice was made to honor a fiendish sea hag lich, as she embraced the rites of the demi-lich, and a sea hag rose from the dead as a blood magus, the party awakened as if from a dream. They discovered that their benefactor Xaetra, a neutrally-aligned spectral hag who now inhabits a metal construct, had saved their souls from evil, but at a cost. Three years had passed, their souls entrapped within mystic gems while their bodies, recently reformed from ash, had aged but six months.

This week, the party learns what can happen, when bodies ages six months. One PC, a tiefling mermaid, is now expecting twins. The father of the unborn siblings, a human who has grafts and a symbiont from the extinct subrace of fish hags (a creation of the kaorti), discovered that he too carries a child, for fish hags are parthenogenetic. A fourth child, the mechanatrix daughter of the iron hag, nears it's birth from within an emerald hourglass, while the fifth child, the asura offspring of the spectral hag before her untimely demise at the hands of her sea hag granddaughter (now the blood magus), was recovered after being stolen by a bonehag (new type of hag inspired by Peg-a-Lanterns) body snatcher (hag PrC that can "steal" the unborn, among other abilities) has aged three years and now appears as a young woman.

The party learned of a demiplane or pocket dimension known as Dream Lake. Created by Xaetra to hold her own mobile fortress, the Nighthouse, Dream Lake may serve as a timely nursery for the impending infants.

One PC, the oceanid (offspring of a salt hag and triton) granddaughter of the spectral hag (salt hags being the children of night hags and sea elves) has learned that there is a traitor amongst the party members.

The party also discovered that the artifact they had been questing for, the Talisman of Al'Akbar, was given to the Thousand Immortals, paladins of Azor'alq, in exchange for purging the soul gems of the taint of evil. Xaetra had hoped to use the artifacts of Al'Akbar to regain her mortality.

Now they find themselves in Hagstone Chapel, a sunken shard of the isle of Almat, which once was suspended upon the pinnacles. Now wedged between three of the pillars, Hagstone Chapel features a deep circular chasm spanning the depth of its mass. The hole is the home of the Wyrding Witch, an elemental water weird.

 

[Evilhalfling]

The party Im running is 5 PC's mostly 10th lvl
They were setting up for raid on a kaorti Cyst, run by a committee of wizards and sorcerers 11th -14th level. They recruited an Adult Brass Dragon for arial support. The dragon considered and rejected taking a player on as a willing servant. The previous raid had resulted in two PC deaths, one permanent and the loss of the nations ArchDruid a 95yr old ageless human 16th level.

They have been magically hijacked to the tower of deception (from WoC site)
and have killed a succubus and are forcing a nymph to walk down stairs ahead of them. But they may be coming to blows over whether or not this is an acceptable tatic - hopefully less tired heads will prevail. The paladin will loose his paladinhood if he follows through on this plan, to make the injured nymph go first.

The campign will basically come to an end when they prevail over the cyst - or suffer a TPK

 

[The Grackle]

Man, you kids play some strange games.

This October looks like my fellow DM still won't make up his mind about what campaign he wants to run. So it's gonna be me GMing MnM every week instead of every other. blah. So many NPCs to make...

I had one character power-drained, sent to a super-prison, and then shived to death on the inside. He was a remarkably good sport about it, even before he realised it was all part the story arc. (Super-heroes don't stay dead as long as their title is still popular.) Now that he's back, there will several games of massive, non-stop, super-combat, property-destroying, collateral-damaging, Vengence.

I like to give the players some real carnage after several games w/no action.

 

[just__al]

The campaign started with the party arriving in the city-state to the south to trade for oranges that were going to be sent north through the ring gate that belonged the parents of 2 of the party members. The was at the time of the big fall festival.

They arrived there to find out that their contact had been banished and his store seized for "trading with foreign nationals"

The party found a contact outside the city proper to trade with and then continued south. The rescued a boy who had his parents massacered by orcs and brought him to the city and his aunt the priestess.

The city guard had started wearing banded mail and were carrying much better weapons. The party left for the south again and ran into a bounty hunter who was hunting down a member of the city council. He didn't know what he was wanted for but the council pays well so he didn't care.

After parting ways with him, they've ran afoul of a tribe of bugbears that has captured a cathedral. They have many alchemical items they've used in battle and the party has seen one of their leaders in armor that is clearly of the city-guard.

The reason for the tribe to be there is going to shed a lot of light on things. We had to end the lass session in mid battle so I won't say any more...

 

[Psion]

We are two sessions into the rebooted Sailors on the River of Worlds campaign. The PCs were hired on as crew of a ship whose owner/noble didn't entirely trust that nobody on the existing crew were above being bought off by an opposing house, entrusted with escorting his cousin to be wed to a distant nation to cement an alliance.

On the way, the PC discover that their ship has a dark secret. (I ran the En Route II adventure/interlude "Figurehead".

Spoiler

Basically, the party finds out that their mermaid figurehead is actually a mermaid queen, and their ship is held hostage by an angry mermaid family until they figure out what happened, who is responsible, and how to free her. The adventure ended with the party freeing the mermaid queen and making Hroth walk the plank.

) As the party departed, they saw him go down amidst a swarm of sharks. Too bad the players never heard of weresharks from Creatures of Freeport. He'll be back. (Edit: Suddenly, I recall the campaign detail that there are no lycanthropes in that game world. Ah, well, there are other ways...)

Last session, the party was just sailing up to their destination port to find it ransacked. This was from a ravening chaos horde that will be a major recurring villain in the Sailors campaign for some time to come. I'll foreshadow the Chaositech nature of the hordes next session, and their adventure to discover what is going on will involve a stitched together version of Castle Briar (from Atlas' Seven Citadels) and Kerishan's Garden (from AEG's Adventure I).

 

[billd91]

I'm running a Classic Modules campaign. The PCs, at 5th to 7th level right now, are fighting a war of attrition with the Slaver Stockade. They have been attacking through the hidden tunnels in the dungeon and have made more than one attempt to break the back of the defenders. So far they've managed to free most of the slaves in the dungeon, kill Icar and Executioner, capture Markessa (or is that he double?), and kill Guliyet's winter wolf pet. Needless to say, the leadership at the stockade is getting fairly cut down but there are still 70 or so hobgoblins about and there is a roving search party of worg-riders out for blood. They have encountered Blackthorne the ogre-mage, but don't know what the heck he is yet since he disappeared so quickly after hitting them with the cone of cold.
After this, it's on to fight the Slavelords. Then, who knows? It's a classic module campaign so the Giant series is in the works. But I think they need a bit more adventuring before they're ready for that. I'm torn between White Plume Mountain and Return to White Plume Mountain. I like them both and several of the players have done WPM. It might be nice to try the Return version just for an interesting difference.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

PbP is my only gaming outlet at the current time. RL has come back with a vengeance and dashed the gaming group apart for the most part (one guy moved away, the other's engaged and so otherwise occupied).

In my Victorian-era horror campaign, things are getting interesting after an encounter with the Little People, courtesy of Arthur Machen, in the Welsh hills. Plus, their companion Edward Langan has some sort of item with him... (players in Resurrection City STOP!)

Spoiler

He's really a younger version of Aleister Crowley (pre-Golden Dawn days) and he has the Jewel of Seven Stars (from Bram Stoker's novel) with him and is about to meet with Queen Tera (same novel).

In the Lone Wolf campaign, which Krug is in (as a dwarven rifleman), things have sorta stalled but we're wrapping up a combat with some Dhax (dog-men from Lone Wolf #7).

In my Shadowrun game, the characters are planning out the run (an extraction of a grad student from a local university).

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Because of DM Burnout coupled with the Real World, I've had to put my campaigns on indefinite hiatus. One had been in progress for three years and had fizzled due to bad planning on my part (but was still salvageable) and another had only had 2 games played in it before I hung the DM hat up. I'm hoping to get to play more under other GMs in the party, but even that seems out of my grasp 4 out of 5 times sessions.

Sigh...........

 

[dougmander]

Tomorrow night my d20 Modern group is losing a player (sadly, he's moving out-of-state). We intend to send him out on a high note, though.

It's a present day campaign linked to Arthurian legend, with the characters searching for Arthur and Merlin's resting places, to wake them before evil fey conquer the earth. The PCs include a homicide detective who is none other than Nimue, now amnesiac and trying to remember where she left Merlin for safekeeping; a werebear who began his career as a Mob legbreaker; a computer wiz (literally) who has discovered how to meld magic and technology; a young psion being hunted by the Feds who want to recruit (or destroy) her; and an army veteran who was part of a secret cross-planar Special Forces unit that has fought the evil fey on their own turf, and is now obsessed with getting back to Faerie and continuing the fight.

At the moment, the characters are in Niflheim, fighting to free some of Arthur's knights who have been captured by Geirrod, an undead frost giant. We ended last week's session with the party about to burst into Geirrod's hall, with Glocks blazing and longswords swinging. I'll have it all set up with Dwarven Forge stuff ahead of time, should be quite a spectacle!

 

[Galethorn]

Well, in my homebrew campaign (run with Grim Tales, if you were wondering), the party (which has thankfully been narrowed down to about 4-5 players who can regularly make it, plus two or three other people with hectic schedules) finally made it to the city (Fort Tirad) they were sent down-river to with an important message. Unfortunately, the city had been besieged (at least on land; the defenders still have a sea-route open), and the message was no longer of any help to High Admiral Tiranion (the 'city lord').

Fortunately, Tiranion is a smart man, and knew that it wasn't the messengers' fault, and thought that they might still be of use to him. After giving them their reward, he had them speak with his Justiciar (Garrick, who is also known as the spymaster), who had all sorts of potential jobs for them.

Garrick told them about the fighting between the various factions of the city, as well as the spies that were potentially inside, and putting the besieged city at greater risk. Since they accepted his offer of a job (the offer of a suite in the castle interested them more than any money did, as well as the whole duty thing on the part of the group's knight), Garrick gave them a simple mission; infiltrate what he thought to be a den of spies.

Long story short, they bluffed their way in, got in a big fight with the spies, and then intimidated the surviving foes (the old "come peacefully and we won't kill you, or keep fighting, and we kill you" speech).

So, we last left off with the group (along with some guardsmen) leading their new prisoners back towards the castle for questioning.