Sailing on the Seven (or so) Seas

[Desdichado]

Characters:

• Haeridan, a male gnome sorcerer focused especially on summoning spells. ("I choose YOU, Celestial Badger!")
• Bronwyn, a female half-orc fighter. ("Do I like halflings? Yeah, they taste alright…")
• Rurik, a male dwarf fighter. ("Pants? I don't need no stinkin' pants!")
• Ledda, a female halfling sorceror. ("Can I change my name to Harry Potter?")
• Falin, a male elf ranger/fighter. ("I'm Falin and I can't get up! OK, so I need a new catchphrase…")
• Jillian, a female halfling druid. ("No relation to Gillian, and I don't have red hair.")

OK, so this was supposed to be my wife's first game ever. For reasons which I won't go into here (because they're actually really boring) that didn't work out, but the rest of us played anyway, and she promised to show up next time we play.

The setting is a homebrew, by a DM that admits he watched a little too much Princess Bride recently, and we had tons of fun! As luck would have it, I somehow got nominated to DM next, so I've been trying to figure out what to do with a setting that I didn't originally have anything to do with (never fear, my fiendish little mind is bursting with ideas by now…) so this log will be from the perspective of my character, the aforementioned "Ash" Haeridan. Next time, we'll have a slight change in characters (Haeridan might be retired, or perhaps played by my wife, depending on if I'm likely to come back as a DM long-term, or if we continue to rotate) while the former DM will come up with his own character.

Right now, actually, I'm running out of time to post a campaign log, but I wanted to get started and reserve my slot here on the Story Hour board. Look for an edit to update this page (or perhaps just add another post: counts as a free bump that way too!) tonight or tomorrow.

 

[Rune]

Oooo! Swashbuckling!

If you're really having a difficult time figuring out where you want to go with this, read (or reread), letsee, I think it's Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S.Lewis (the third Narnia book). Lots of great sea-exploration inspiration.

 

[Desdichado]

Swiss Family Robinson

Heh, not really that much swashbuckling yet. But we've only had one session, too! Anyway, here's the log of the first half (we played something like six hours, so I'm breaking it up into two posts...)

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(And just for fun, logs will be in a different color so you can spot it easier. And remember, this is a bit tongue-in-cheek: my character is a bit annoying and has a bit of a superiority complex. Don't take his point of view too seriously!)

So, we start out as passengers on a ship. As we pass the island of Kaitain, a bit infamous for its piracy, our ship is attacked and, apparently, sunk. In a few rowboats, all the PCs and some punk noble named DeLaine all make our way ashore, and the game begins.

We see a bit further out at sea the ship that sank us, but for whatever reason, they don't seem to be coming our way yet. Standing on the beach, we all take stock. I'm already hungry (not having thought about buying rations -- I picked up a few ranks of Wilderness Lore instead.) DeLaine complains that he needs to make his way to Cuthbert city to vote on a treaty about piracy. I argue a bit with him, wondering who he really supports, for instance, and how he's going to vote.

Everyone agrees, despite my objections, so I just go looking for mangos. For some reason, I can't find any food while searching the rocks, but Jillian uses her superior skill to find some in the trees. Go figure.

We argue for a little while about which way to go to get to the city. Going north and east will certainly the long way, but we avoid going through the mountains that supposedly are infested with dragons. But as its getting late, we decide to find a place to sleep. A cave a little up the hill turns out to be just perfect. So, after a meal of mangos (and several trips into the woods following all that fruit: Jillian made some crack about a Druid spell - protection From Nature's Call, or something like that) we mostly all turn in for the night. The darkvision and low-light vision endowed team members get elected to take watch, but since I've a bit of insomnia, I stay awake to try to talk to Bronwyn. She's not much of a conversationalist -- CHA 5 or something like that -- but, hey! I'm incorrigible! The good thing is, though, that I'm awake when the crossbow bolt comes flying out of the woods.

Shouting quickly to wake everyone up, I quickly cast mage armor, while Ledda does the same (also sending her white owl out to find out where the punks are: my toad Trevor stays in my pocket.) About a dozen motley folks come out of the woods, orcs, dwarves (at least one or two), half-orcs, humans and at least one half-ogre. Jillian's panther rushes out (not named Guenhyvar -- or however those FR folks decided to mangle the name Guinivere) takes on the half-ogre, although he seems to get fairly chewed-up. Bronwyn also does some damage, and Rurik, after only spending the time to put on his breastplate runs out without any pants to fight the enemy.

I summon three celestial badgers, which are incredibly disappointing -- if I'd summoned three fiendish mosquitos I might have actually accomplished something worthwhile. Leaving off that spell, I go for magic missile the rest of the night. The halfling gal of my own particular class puts a guy to sleep.

When the half-ogre finally dies, four of the other folks run away, and the rest of the combat is really not much more than a mop-up.

We do a little investigation of the bodies -- the half-ogre has a letter written to one Lothar from some RKL about how DeLaine has to die before he can sign the treaty: and obviously he can't do it himself. DeLaine, by the way, remained hidden in the back of the cave, much to our annoyance. The guy who was sleeped is woken up, but he seems pretty sincere in insisting that he's just hired muscle, he doesn't know much, but he'll gladly lead us to Lothar's crib, located in the wonderful pastoral community of Pirate's Cove. Despite my protestations that the only thing he's good for is to have is throat slit, the team wants to take him up on his offer. So, also against my well-reasoned protests, my apparently suicidal compadres tie him up and go back to sleep. When the DM announces that there are no more encounters that night, I announce that I'll go ahead and sleep in the cave again anyway.

Next: The Dread Pirate Rob... uh, Lothar!

 

[Desdichado]

Here's the second half of our first night of adventure. Oh, and I have read Voyage of the Dawn Treader (since I grew up, even!) although I don't have a copy handy anymore. That did have some good ideas for sea exploration: I might have to pirate some stuff out of there, if you'll pardon the bad pun.

==============================================

In the morning, things were clearer to the party. A plan of action was starting to develop: our captive pirate could lead us to the pirate's hide-out, a semi-legit little place called Pirate's Cove, and we could try to find out what this attack was all about as well as hopefully charter a boat to take us to the city on Kaitain. This meant travelling towards the mountains for a little while, but not actually going through them, while we also were able to avoid the dreaded North Coast -- apparently infested with undead. But, of course, it meant we had to walk right into the teeth of the pirates. DeLaine assured us that he could disguise himself at need with his magic, so we decided to go for it.

Marching through the rain-forest on a narrow trail, our scouts (Falin and Bronwyn were at the front, Rurik stayed by me in the middle to make sure I didn't slit our captive's throat, or take down DeLaine to make him wear a real costume -- the gall of that dwarf!) found a narrow spot where two large rocks sat opposite each other over the trail. On top of the rocks was apparently a goblin patrol.

However, since we had the jump on them, we weren't too concerned. Three of us (including myself and that pansy DeLaine stayed back initially as we weren't terribly skilled in sneaking up on folks, while Falin (the ranger), the Jillian (halfling druid) and Ledda (halfling sorcerer) went forward with the others behind them.

The goblins turned out to be something of a non-event. Four of them were sleeped right away, although Falin got caught in the backlash and let out a few big yawns himself. The rest were dispatched before they even seemed to be aware of us. We examined the goblins to see if any of them had peg-legs, eyepatches, parrots (or if they said "Rrrrgh!" to each other a lot) but we were unable to find any definite links to the pirates. Our captive, however said that we were getting pretty close to Pirate's Cove.

Sure enough, we soon came across a gaggle of orkish slaves working the fields with manacles on their legs. We sent Bronwyn out to flirt with them, which she did quite successfully, and we found out that the doors to Pirate's Cove opened twice a day, once to let them out and once to let them back in. Pirate's Cove itself was in a large cave that had a small tunnel entrance and then a large water entrance where ships could sail in and out. Near dusk we waited along with the orcs for the door to open. I even sent my pal Trevor under the door to listen and keep me appraised of any approaches. Only one guard came to open the door, though, and he was quickly charmed to let us in. He was very friendly at this point (at least to Ledda) and recommended an inn with some great lizard stew and possibly some information that we could use. With that, we passed through the tunnel and entered Pirate's Cove. The pirate's themselves were a motley bunch, mostly human and half-orc, so we didn't stand out too much. DeLaine's brilliant costume amounted to little more than becoming a dandy elvish version of himself. We all rolled our eyes at that one.

The restaurant recommended by the gate-keeper turned out to not be that bad, although they took a dim view of my explaining exactly how I wanted my shark steak prepared. We got some info on Lothar, the Captain (as he's more normally called) and his keep here in the cave. Also heard rumors of a lord of Kaitain (who's initials were RKL, by the way) having blown through town yesterday. Finally, we got some info on some of Lothar's buds; a female tiefling who nobody wanted to mess with, a yuan-ti abomination, and a blackguard --who was mercifully out of town at the time.

Then we ordered dinner. We also got rooms for the night (the non-entertainment kind) and I made it quite clear that any dwarf who slept without pants wasn't sharing a room with me.

Amazingly enough, Lilley, the female tiefling came into the restaurant looking for someone. Jillian, in a moment of insanity (in my opinion anyway) rushed up to her gushing and asking for her autograph. She put an arcane mark on her forhead. She left after that, but Jillian and Falin tried to follow her. That ended up not amounting to much; she went into a shop a few doors down, they heard her meet someone through the door, but then they went deeper into the store and they couldn't hear anything of substance. Meanwhile, a halfling err... entertainer started hitting on me at the inn, so I tossed her a few gold to get some more info on Lothar. Seems he met with his "subjects" once a day, allowing anyone to petition him. He met them alone, so we had a new plan: go to Lothar, confront him about his attack on us, and try to find out what gives. Aren't we just the perfect model of subtlety?

So, the next morning we go in, and we're the first one's there. We're admitted to a big reception hall (which is empty) and we wait for just a few minutes for Lothar to arrive. Lothar turns out to be a gigantic ogre. He isn't terribly friendly, and threatens to give us to his yuan-ti to play with, but I -- employing my ever ready wit and charm -- explain to him that we aren't related to DeLaine in any way, and his incompetent help attacked us instead and were in turn either slain or driven off. We will offer to take their place and do the job right for him (DeLaine has disappeared at this point, presumably turned invisible.) After a pretty tense moment, he agrees, so we head down to the docks to charter a boat.

We ask around the various ships, and find one that recently took a well-dressed and somewhat foppish elf as a passenger to Kaitain city. We book passage as well, and blunder into DeLaine's room, talking loudly about how we know he's in there. He isn't particularly happy with our lack of tact right now, but is pleased with the job we did in general in protecting him and finding out more about the RKL-Lothar conspiracy to kill him and force the anti-piracy treaty to not pass.

From this point on, the journey is uneventful. We sail to Kaitain, and other than finding it perhaps more lawless and tolerant in some ways than Pirate's Cove (seriously thinking about stealing tons of ideas from Freeport for this place...) we pass through uneventfully, chartering another ship that will take us (and DeLaine) to the Isle of Cuthbert where he can sign the treaty for the nation of Pellor.

That's it, folks! Looks like we'll likely play again this weekend, and this time I'm DMing, so we'll see what happens next!

 

[Desdichado]

Just a quick update: we are pretty much confirmed to play this weekend, and we are definately going to be round-robining. I've never really done that within a single campaign, so I'm finding that somewhat frightening yet mostly pretty exciting. If anyone's done that before, feel free to jump in here and give any pointers...

 

[Horacio]

Great story!
I love swashbuckling stories (BTW, have you seen Swashbuckling adventures, it's cool for such a campaign), and this one begins really good!

 

[Desdichado]

I haven't seen it. I'm just curious which set of sailing rules I should pick up first! I can worry about more stuff after that. I'm actually seriously considering picking up Freeport and renaming it so it can be my Kaitain that the other DM came up with. All I got from him on that was an extremely brief description of the city as "a wretched hive of scum and villainy" but I think Freeport as "the most larcenous city in fantasy" would probably fit the bill quite well.

 

[Horacio]

I haven't seen it. I'm just curious which set of sailing rules I should pick up first! I can worry about more stuff after that. I'm actually seriously considering picking up Freeport and renaming it so it can be my Kaitain that the other DM came up with. All I got from him on that was an extremely brief description of the city as "a wretched hive of scum and villainy" but I think Freeport as "the most larcenous city in fantasy" would probably fit the bill quite well.

Pick Freeport. IMHO it's the best city book. The best. Wonderful city, wonderful mood, wonderful art, wonderful map. Pick it now!

For sailing rules, I love Seafarer's Handbook, but many people prefer Mongoose's Seas of Blood.

BTW, I've just begun my own Story Hour, using the new superheroes supplement from Natural 20, Four Color to Fantasy:
Golden Apple Rescue Squad
If you have time, visit it, and drop a comment...

 

[Desdichado]

Who publishes that Seafarer's Handbook again? Is if FD, or FFG?

 

[Horacio]

Who publishes that Seafarer's Handbook again? Is if FD, or FFG?

Hum... Let me see...

Fantasy Flight Games, the same who publishes Dragonstar