"Out of the Frying Pan"- Book IV - Into the Fire [STORY HOUR COMPLETED - 12/25/06]
handforged
First Post
Wow! That definitely took me for a ride. I never expected it and I am sure that your players didn't either. Can't wait to see what is next.
~hf
~hf
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
handforged said:
What did you expect? Care to make an guesses for what happens next?
Oh, and thanks for the bump, it reminded me to get started on the next installment. I have been doing so much prep for my next campaign that I sometimes forget I still have a story hour to finish before I that game can start.
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
Session #101 (part iii)
Balem, 24th of Ese - 561 H.E.
Roland of Bast felt a heavy weight on his head, as if he had been drinking too much the night before. He opened his eyes as he raised his head off of cold stone floor. He was in human-form, but he did not need the sensitive nose of a panther to notice the stench of death that clung to the air here. He heard heavy breathing, and a vaguely familiar voice whispered, “I don’t think we’re going to live through this.”
“Shut up, Teaser! And have a drink! Here you have a sip of the horn, too!” a dwarven voice growled, too loudly for the surroundings. “Hey! Roland is waking up! I thought you said he was near death, Reynald…”
Teaser? Reynald? Could it be? Roland called to his goddess to grant him the benison of light, and suddenly the dark little room was awash in it, throwing the shadows of Roland’s one-time companions to dance in the corner.
They were underground, that was certain. He sat up and saw a door in the center of the plain wall in front of him, and another smaller metal door in the right corner behind him.
Teaser turned around suddenly. He had been creeping over to the wooden door when the light spell went off. He was only slightly taller than Roland, with golden curly locks and a freckled nose. He wore studded leather armor and had a long sword at his side, but there was as shortbow and an arrow in his hands. He had a darkening shiner about his right eye, and his hands were stained in the rusty brown of dried blood.
“Ro! You’re alive,” he said, with genuine surprise.
“Um… Yes! Of course, I am,” the Bastite said, standing and dusting himself off. “You know us Bastites… Nine lives and all that.” He looked around and now he knew exactly where he was and when he was, and he gulped audibly.
“Does that explain how your clothes have changed?” Reynald asked. He was tall and lanky, and he too had long hair, though it seemed to have gone pre-maturely gray, as his face was still fresh and boy-like despite the stubble on it. He wore a chain shirt, and hefted a warhammer in his hands. About his neck was the silver symbol of an eye engraved with an ankh. “And since when do you have a chain shirt? And that ring…?” Reynald was seriously wounded. Something had torn at his neck and shoulder viciously and the wound was oozing again.
“Observant as ever, oh Wayfarer of Ptah,” Roland replied. “I will do my best to explain, but we need to get out of here. You don’t know how important it is that we all get out of here, right now… Shall we try this other door?”
“Well, since we won’t have to carry your knocked out form around this gods forsaken place, we just might have a chance,” the dwarf said. His name was Tarth Starn, and Roland knew the hill dwarf well. Dressed in his scored suit of chain mail, he was moderately wounded as well, and his cracking knuckles squeezed about the haft of his great axe. He had a bushy brown beard and a helmet-shaped like a bear’s head.
“Remind me again whose idea it was to break that seal and explore this place?” asked the fat man in shabby burgundy robes. The man’s triple-chins glistened with sweat and drool, and the blood stains on his robes were mixed in with a variety of grease stains already there. He held a light crossbow in his hands.
“That would have been me, Corasant,” said Reynald. “But I do not recall you complaining about the prospect of treasure when the topic came up…”
The argument was interrupted as the swollen wooden door bursting open.
“They found us!” Teaser squealed, leaping back and raising his bow. (1)
Through the door came necrotic loping forms with pale skin and stringy hair, wearing the ragged remains of their clothing. They were dead, but Roland saw intelligence in their eyes, awareness of their own pitiable desire to eat living flesh.
Two came rushing right at Reynald the Traveled (2), while two more leapt right at the dwarf. Tarth (3) deftly stepped aside and immediately took advantage of the opening he was given. His axe cut the head from the first and then the heavy blade landed in the chest of the other, driving it to the ground – finally, really dead. However, he felt his muscles grow rigid and looked down to see the slightest scratch had gotten through his breeches. The dwarf was paralyzed.
The hiss of an acid arrow from the fat wizard (4) as he withdrew behind Teaser (who was still backing for the metal door in the corner) was overwhelmed by the rush of holy energy as Roland called to Bast for a holy smite. The ghouls screeched in agony. Five more that had just come loping into the room shriveled into black lumps of near-liquid flesh, while the two attacking Reynald ran back out of the room, pushing past another half-dozen of their brethren crowding into the room with hunger in their eyes.
Roland sighed. For he knew that this was the Kingdom of the Ghouls. Early in his adventuring days, he and his friends had broken a seal in an old keep and had climbed down in search of treasure. He remembered it too well, and knew there was no end to the ghouls beyond that door. (5)
Reynald slammed a ghoul with his warhammer as it hurried recklessly through the door. Another ran right past to claw at Roland, ignoring an arrow from Teaser.
“Oh Great Queen Bast! I call on you to lend me your spiritual weapon that I may fight along side an aspect of my faith in you!” Roland cast as he stepped aside, and a glowing translucent dagger appeared and stabbed at the ghoul attacking Reynald in the neck. The thing fell over exanimate.
But cries of alarm overcame any joy, for one of the ones that had come rushing in was standing over the collapsing Tarth Starn. The paralyzed dwarf’s eyes could not even roll back as the ghoul stopped to slurp down the flesh and sinew it had ripped from his neck.
“Tarth!” Roland and Teaser cried at the same time. The latter began to frantically work at the lock in the door with a crowbar.
Corasant did not seem to notice, deep in some incantation.
The ghouls forced Reynald and Roland back, and as their black nails clawed at them they could feel the cold creep of the paralysis shake off every time, and every time they sighed in relief.
Reynald crushed another ghoul skull, as Teaser pried the metal door open with a gasp.
There was pop in the air as a glowing beetle of great size appeared between Corasant and a charging ghoul. It worried the ghoul with its pincers. The fat wizard flicked a pork rind across the room while saying, “ne multus!” More ghouls were pouring into the room, but now they fell over themselves as they entered. Corasant stepped though the metal door to find a round room beyond. A spiral stone staircase climbed up into the darkness, but it was cracked and broken, revealing a deep shaft beneath it.
Teaser crept into the new room and climbed above the door into a narrow shadowy crack.
Reynald backed into the round room, as Roland called to Bast once more with a roar, smiting the dozen ghouls now in the room. In a moment, only two were standing, but still more were pouring in. Teaser squinted as he saw someone climbing up out of the shaft beneath the steps. It was a man in brown robe and wooden sandals. He had a shaved head and as he came over the lip, they could see his face etched with scars.
“Whoa! That’s not Teaser!” Reynald exclaimed, backing away from the monk.
“Um, hello sir?” Corasant wiped his chin with the back of his hand and then wiped that on his robes and stepped forward, crossbow trembling in his hands. “Are you a monk of Anubis come to help us escape these terrible undead?”
“Where are the Keepers of the Gate?” Adder asked in his flat voice.
“Who?” the wizard asked.
Back in the first room, a ghoul fell from a wound from the spiritual dagger as Roland tore another ghoul apart. A third ghoul had stopped to feast on Tarth.
”No more are coming,” Roland called to his friends. “Come and help me fasten the door closed, so we can find a way out of here.”
Reynald the Traveled came charging back into the room leaping over the last ghoul as Roland tore its throat out and slammed the door shut. Roland looked up just in time to see Adder come stepping into room, leap up, land on one foot and spin with a devastating kick to the side of the Bastite’s panther head. Roland stumbled back as his ears rung and the world shook. He felt some teeth crack, and he wobbled back and forth to keep from falling.
“Foul monk!” Corasant cried, firing his crossbow from the doorway, but Adder spun and blocked it.
“Ptah! Heal this fellow traveler so that he might live to move on!” Reynald chanted, reaching out to heal his Bastite companion. But as soon as the wounds closed, Adder closed in on the still stunned priest and let loose with a flurry of bone-crunching blows.
“Exuro eate respergo,” chanted Corasant, but the splash of acid he flung at the monk fell short. Adder ducked the wayfarer’s warhammer and ignored that priest, preferring another foot plant right in the panther’s nose. The cat-shaped priest went flying backwards. Roland noticed how pretty the blue-white stars spinning about his head were, as all went black… (6)
-------------------
Notes:
(1) DM’s Note: Tim “Teaser” Reynolds was played by Kazrack’s player.
(2) DM’s Note: Reynald the Traveled was played by Martin the Green’s player.
(3) DM’s Note: Tarth Starn was played by Bastian’s player.
(4) DM’s Note: Corasant the Conjurer was played by Ratchis’ player.
(5) Roland was knocked unconscious fighting these ghouls the first time, only to awaken days later in an inn in a small town miles away. He never went back because he knew that was what the ghouls wanted, more victims to chew on. He never knew how he had gotten to where he was, and had to live with the fact the rest of his companions had been eaten, or made into ghouls themselves.
(6) DM’s Note: I always warn players, either come up with a background or I will come up with elements of it for you. This is especially pertinent for characters that come into an established game with several levels under their belt. That is, what was the rest of their adventuring career like before now? So, since Roland’s player had gotten me anything, and since I wanted each character to have a “time scene” for themselves, I made up a previous adventuring party, and knowing that at some point every hero in Aquerra experiences some kind of failure, I figured he had experienced a big one that carried with it some guilt.
Balem, 24th of Ese - 561 H.E.
Roland of Bast felt a heavy weight on his head, as if he had been drinking too much the night before. He opened his eyes as he raised his head off of cold stone floor. He was in human-form, but he did not need the sensitive nose of a panther to notice the stench of death that clung to the air here. He heard heavy breathing, and a vaguely familiar voice whispered, “I don’t think we’re going to live through this.”
“Shut up, Teaser! And have a drink! Here you have a sip of the horn, too!” a dwarven voice growled, too loudly for the surroundings. “Hey! Roland is waking up! I thought you said he was near death, Reynald…”
Teaser? Reynald? Could it be? Roland called to his goddess to grant him the benison of light, and suddenly the dark little room was awash in it, throwing the shadows of Roland’s one-time companions to dance in the corner.
They were underground, that was certain. He sat up and saw a door in the center of the plain wall in front of him, and another smaller metal door in the right corner behind him.
Teaser turned around suddenly. He had been creeping over to the wooden door when the light spell went off. He was only slightly taller than Roland, with golden curly locks and a freckled nose. He wore studded leather armor and had a long sword at his side, but there was as shortbow and an arrow in his hands. He had a darkening shiner about his right eye, and his hands were stained in the rusty brown of dried blood.
“Ro! You’re alive,” he said, with genuine surprise.
“Um… Yes! Of course, I am,” the Bastite said, standing and dusting himself off. “You know us Bastites… Nine lives and all that.” He looked around and now he knew exactly where he was and when he was, and he gulped audibly.
“Does that explain how your clothes have changed?” Reynald asked. He was tall and lanky, and he too had long hair, though it seemed to have gone pre-maturely gray, as his face was still fresh and boy-like despite the stubble on it. He wore a chain shirt, and hefted a warhammer in his hands. About his neck was the silver symbol of an eye engraved with an ankh. “And since when do you have a chain shirt? And that ring…?” Reynald was seriously wounded. Something had torn at his neck and shoulder viciously and the wound was oozing again.
“Observant as ever, oh Wayfarer of Ptah,” Roland replied. “I will do my best to explain, but we need to get out of here. You don’t know how important it is that we all get out of here, right now… Shall we try this other door?”
“Well, since we won’t have to carry your knocked out form around this gods forsaken place, we just might have a chance,” the dwarf said. His name was Tarth Starn, and Roland knew the hill dwarf well. Dressed in his scored suit of chain mail, he was moderately wounded as well, and his cracking knuckles squeezed about the haft of his great axe. He had a bushy brown beard and a helmet-shaped like a bear’s head.
“Remind me again whose idea it was to break that seal and explore this place?” asked the fat man in shabby burgundy robes. The man’s triple-chins glistened with sweat and drool, and the blood stains on his robes were mixed in with a variety of grease stains already there. He held a light crossbow in his hands.
“That would have been me, Corasant,” said Reynald. “But I do not recall you complaining about the prospect of treasure when the topic came up…”
The argument was interrupted as the swollen wooden door bursting open.
“They found us!” Teaser squealed, leaping back and raising his bow. (1)
Through the door came necrotic loping forms with pale skin and stringy hair, wearing the ragged remains of their clothing. They were dead, but Roland saw intelligence in their eyes, awareness of their own pitiable desire to eat living flesh.
Two came rushing right at Reynald the Traveled (2), while two more leapt right at the dwarf. Tarth (3) deftly stepped aside and immediately took advantage of the opening he was given. His axe cut the head from the first and then the heavy blade landed in the chest of the other, driving it to the ground – finally, really dead. However, he felt his muscles grow rigid and looked down to see the slightest scratch had gotten through his breeches. The dwarf was paralyzed.
The hiss of an acid arrow from the fat wizard (4) as he withdrew behind Teaser (who was still backing for the metal door in the corner) was overwhelmed by the rush of holy energy as Roland called to Bast for a holy smite. The ghouls screeched in agony. Five more that had just come loping into the room shriveled into black lumps of near-liquid flesh, while the two attacking Reynald ran back out of the room, pushing past another half-dozen of their brethren crowding into the room with hunger in their eyes.
Roland sighed. For he knew that this was the Kingdom of the Ghouls. Early in his adventuring days, he and his friends had broken a seal in an old keep and had climbed down in search of treasure. He remembered it too well, and knew there was no end to the ghouls beyond that door. (5)
Reynald slammed a ghoul with his warhammer as it hurried recklessly through the door. Another ran right past to claw at Roland, ignoring an arrow from Teaser.
“Oh Great Queen Bast! I call on you to lend me your spiritual weapon that I may fight along side an aspect of my faith in you!” Roland cast as he stepped aside, and a glowing translucent dagger appeared and stabbed at the ghoul attacking Reynald in the neck. The thing fell over exanimate.
But cries of alarm overcame any joy, for one of the ones that had come rushing in was standing over the collapsing Tarth Starn. The paralyzed dwarf’s eyes could not even roll back as the ghoul stopped to slurp down the flesh and sinew it had ripped from his neck.
“Tarth!” Roland and Teaser cried at the same time. The latter began to frantically work at the lock in the door with a crowbar.
Corasant did not seem to notice, deep in some incantation.
The ghouls forced Reynald and Roland back, and as their black nails clawed at them they could feel the cold creep of the paralysis shake off every time, and every time they sighed in relief.
Reynald crushed another ghoul skull, as Teaser pried the metal door open with a gasp.
There was pop in the air as a glowing beetle of great size appeared between Corasant and a charging ghoul. It worried the ghoul with its pincers. The fat wizard flicked a pork rind across the room while saying, “ne multus!” More ghouls were pouring into the room, but now they fell over themselves as they entered. Corasant stepped though the metal door to find a round room beyond. A spiral stone staircase climbed up into the darkness, but it was cracked and broken, revealing a deep shaft beneath it.
Teaser crept into the new room and climbed above the door into a narrow shadowy crack.
Reynald backed into the round room, as Roland called to Bast once more with a roar, smiting the dozen ghouls now in the room. In a moment, only two were standing, but still more were pouring in. Teaser squinted as he saw someone climbing up out of the shaft beneath the steps. It was a man in brown robe and wooden sandals. He had a shaved head and as he came over the lip, they could see his face etched with scars.
“Whoa! That’s not Teaser!” Reynald exclaimed, backing away from the monk.
“Um, hello sir?” Corasant wiped his chin with the back of his hand and then wiped that on his robes and stepped forward, crossbow trembling in his hands. “Are you a monk of Anubis come to help us escape these terrible undead?”
“Where are the Keepers of the Gate?” Adder asked in his flat voice.
“Who?” the wizard asked.
Back in the first room, a ghoul fell from a wound from the spiritual dagger as Roland tore another ghoul apart. A third ghoul had stopped to feast on Tarth.
”No more are coming,” Roland called to his friends. “Come and help me fasten the door closed, so we can find a way out of here.”
Reynald the Traveled came charging back into the room leaping over the last ghoul as Roland tore its throat out and slammed the door shut. Roland looked up just in time to see Adder come stepping into room, leap up, land on one foot and spin with a devastating kick to the side of the Bastite’s panther head. Roland stumbled back as his ears rung and the world shook. He felt some teeth crack, and he wobbled back and forth to keep from falling.
“Foul monk!” Corasant cried, firing his crossbow from the doorway, but Adder spun and blocked it.
“Ptah! Heal this fellow traveler so that he might live to move on!” Reynald chanted, reaching out to heal his Bastite companion. But as soon as the wounds closed, Adder closed in on the still stunned priest and let loose with a flurry of bone-crunching blows.
“Exuro eate respergo,” chanted Corasant, but the splash of acid he flung at the monk fell short. Adder ducked the wayfarer’s warhammer and ignored that priest, preferring another foot plant right in the panther’s nose. The cat-shaped priest went flying backwards. Roland noticed how pretty the blue-white stars spinning about his head were, as all went black… (6)
-------------------
Notes:
(1) DM’s Note: Tim “Teaser” Reynolds was played by Kazrack’s player.
(2) DM’s Note: Reynald the Traveled was played by Martin the Green’s player.
(3) DM’s Note: Tarth Starn was played by Bastian’s player.
(4) DM’s Note: Corasant the Conjurer was played by Ratchis’ player.
(5) Roland was knocked unconscious fighting these ghouls the first time, only to awaken days later in an inn in a small town miles away. He never went back because he knew that was what the ghouls wanted, more victims to chew on. He never knew how he had gotten to where he was, and had to live with the fact the rest of his companions had been eaten, or made into ghouls themselves.
(6) DM’s Note: I always warn players, either come up with a background or I will come up with elements of it for you. This is especially pertinent for characters that come into an established game with several levels under their belt. That is, what was the rest of their adventuring career like before now? So, since Roland’s player had gotten me anything, and since I wanted each character to have a “time scene” for themselves, I made up a previous adventuring party, and knowing that at some point every hero in Aquerra experiences some kind of failure, I figured he had experienced a big one that carried with it some guilt.
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
And for those of you interested in the very early stages of the next Aquerra campaign, check out "Second Son of a Second Son" Stat Draft
Ximix
First Post
el-remmen said:Yes, most everything will be resolved, if not in the next 2 and a half sessions to the end, then by the end of the two reunion sessions after that. . .
Well, maybe "resolved" is not the right term - reaches a satisfying conclusion. . .
As your campaign focuses on more realism it is only fitting that not everything gets wrapped up in a neat tidy hollyweird ending. A major appeal of your plot-lines and character development is the adversity and struggle they face in the attempt to save the world.
Too many groups struggle through similar trials only to wipe away the sacrifices and cost with a quick raise dead or true res. Hard to be really scared of PC death when you know that the local temple is always just a day away, glad to hand out raises and do so with little cost and no strings attached...
A long way of giving kudos for a well told story relating a well played, detailed campaign.
