Sailing on the Seven (or so) Seas

[Desdichado]

Thanks!

BTW, confirming our gametime for tomorrow, so hopefully another update next week. I'm also going to try and introduce the Freeport firearms rules into the game, just for fun. I might also borrow some Iron Kingdoms stuff, like dwarven inventors that have developed primitive steamjacks and steam-powered paddle-wheel boats, or some such. Corvus also seems like a good model to use for Kaitain. Probably I'll steal stuff from Corvus, Freeport, Krondor, and every other fantasy port city I can think of.

 

[Desdichado]

Just a quick bump to save me from the second page!

We played last night. Rurik and Ledda were out for the night (and maybe more: Ledda's player is supposed to be on bed-rest for the rest of her pregnancy.) and Haeridan (me) was DMing so he wasn't there. My wife played a new character, Lellyn a human fighter1/cleric3 and the former DM played Severn, a Ranger1/bard3.

 

[Desdichado]

Alrighty, here's the update. Like I said, I DMed, and we went just as late. We actually started earlier, so this was an even longer session than our last very long session. The exciting thing for me personally, is that it was my wife's first ever RPG experience, and she apparently had a good time and is willing to keep it up with me, at least as long as we're with this group, with whom she really gets along well.

Anyway, enough of my gushing. I think my last update showed the slight change in cast from our first night. I think Rurik's player will be back regularly, but his wife, Ledda's player, is on bedrest until she has her baby, so we're expecting her to drop out for a few monthes. As she's also a new player (who had a lot of fun, though) that's too bad, but I think she'll be a convert in the long run as well.

OK, off we go:

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

A few weeks after the safe delivery of DeLaine to Cuthbert, the group recieved a letter requesting their presence back at the guest-palace where he was staying. They were asked to be discrete. Silvern, a distant relative of DeLaine's was already there along with his friend Lellyn (pronounced like Ellen with an L, my wife says) . For some unexplained reason, Falin was there as well, waiting in the reception area. Bronwyn walked in in disguise, while Jillian snuck in through the roof, scoping out the palace.

When Bronwyn arrived she told everyone that some strange man had approched her in the street telling her to beware the son of Lothar. When she tried to question him further, he foamed at the mouth and then ran away. The group was a little disturbed, as their betrayal of Lothar a few weeks ago wasn't exactly kept as discrete as they would have liked.

DeLaine entered then, and told them why he had called them together. Apparently the war being prosecuted against the pirates was "in danger" of being won before it even started. One notable captain, presumably a former pirate, named Gothanius had risen in power in Kaitain, kicked the rest of the pirates more or less out of town and was trying to get recognized by the other island nations as a legitimate ruler. DeLaine tells the PCs that they're actually in favor of this, but that Gothanius, the Sea-Lord as he calls himself, has faced stiff guerrilla opposition from the other pirates. In order to broker the peace, DeLaine wants the PCs to scope out the city, find out where the pockets of resistance are, if feasible disable them themselves, if not, note the locations and forces so armies from the other nations can be sent to assist in quelling the opposition and installing the Sea-Lord as a pseudo-puppet ruler of Kaitain.

When some of the PCs wonder why they should care, he also makes some vague reference to having a specialist mage at Pellor enchant their already masterwork weapons.

A ship is chartered for them to travel incognito to the island, which turns out to be a relatively uneventful trip until they are only a few miles away hugging the south coast of Kaitain island. There, the ship stalls due to no wind and runs aground in the shallows. The PCs decide to take a rowboat to shore and walk the few miles to town. Upon arriving, they find the road easily enough that goes into town. On either side of the road, the ground is sunken and mostly partially underwater. Big cypress trees and the like stick up out of the muck obscuring most of their view. It's mid-afternoon. After walking just a short while, one of them spots a dark patch, like oil or tar in a pool near the road. They stop to investigate. (My wife at this point asks why we are investigating a dark patch in the water; wouldn't it be a lot smarter to just walk on by and get to the city? Man, I love her! )

Sure enough, the dark patches mean trouble. Two tar golems (from CC2) climb out of the water after Falin shoots an arrow into the pool. These folks have never seen anything like them, and are quickly frustrated that most of their attacks are useless against the creatures. Bronwyn, who actually has a chance at hurting them, gets her sword stuck in the creatures and it is wrenched out of her hand. She also gets covered in tar, slowing her down considerably. Jillian decides to try and flame the creatures with a spell, which only manages to make them much more dangerous, as now whenever they hit you, they cover you with flaming tar instead of just regular tar. In fact, if one of them hadn't been entangled in the water, they might have been a serious problem. Bronwyn gets her groove back, though, and finishes the guys off mostly on her own, since most other attacks are simply absorbed into the tar.

After this fight, the group finds a small locket with the name Drago on it. It looks like it's been dropped on accident off the side of the road.

They make it relatively easily to the city after that: after all, it's not much more than an hour's walk or so. The gate is open, although two half-orc guards in half-plate with halberds and big pistols at their belt eye them and ask them a few routine questions. They pass through the relatively prosperous district called Riverside, turning south towards Old Docksides. There is a gate and a wall around that district of the city, although at this time the gate is open and they simply walk through it. They find a small bar right inside the district and decide to go inside to try and use their natural charm to get some information out of the patrons. Severn tries to lead this effort, but the crowd, which is mostly extremely unsavory humans, orcs and half-orcs, doesn't take much of a liking to him. Some of them try to order a drink and ask if they can provide entertainment. The barkeep tells them that if they can outwrestle his bouncer, they can have all the drinks they want. The bouncer turns out to be an ogre.

Bronwyn think she's up the task, although "wrestling" would be a pretty loose interpretation of their fight, since it's mostly done with fists, elbows and knees. Although Bronwyn is somewhat the worse for wear, she does manage to K.O. the ogre, and the entire party is now the object of some respect and admiration amongst the bar patrons. They break up into a number of small conversations, each trying to figure something out about reistence to the Sea-Lord, who doesn't seem to be too popular amongst this crowd (perhaps because they're all out-of-work pirates.) One conversation reveals that Lothar is reputed to be leading a band of hold-outs from a hide-out deep in the marshes north of the city. Another conversation also knows about Lothar, and says the dwarf Carantoc (unfortunately quickly nicknamed Carrot-top) owns a boat and can take them up-river and off into the bayou where he's hidden. These two folks have never heard of Lothar having a son. However, another shifty fellow says that Lothar does have a son named Drago -- and that he doesn't appear to be all ogre by any means. The group considers this to be sinister news.

At this point, Bronwyn, who wants to rest from her ordeal with the ogre, takes a room and goes to bed. The petite and quite pretty Lellyn joins her, much to the disappointment of many of the bar's patrons (who don't want to intrude on Bronwyn's room, that's for sure.) Jillian and Falin announce that they've kinda "got a thing" going on, so they take a room together too -- although there's much questioning of the logistics of having a "thing" with a halfling. Severn, who's not used to spending the night alone, spends a few gold on a companion, but by the time he's asleep, he's alone in a room next to Jillian and Falin. The other two girls are across the hall.

Much later in the night, Falin wakes up hearing folks walking stealthily outside and rattling their door handles. Lellyn, who was keeping watch, also hears it. They both wake up their companions and get ready for something to burst in on them.

Which is exactly what happens. Falin's door is thrown open and he sees two humans standing outside. He quickly looses his bow twice and Jillian and the panther also get to work. Inside just a few seconds they are both dead.

Bronwyn and Lellyn are not so lucky. A huge hulking figure, like an ogre but with hornds, jet black skin, huge claws and teeth and a massive flaming sword is right outside their door. With a small gesture of his hand, he surrounds them in utter darkness and then lays into Bronwyn. Lellyn shoots at him with her pistol, but misses, blasting a huge hole in the wall. The blast wakes Severn who runs out in his long-johns to help the panther finish off the two humans. Meanwhile, the half-fiend ogre keeps tearing into Bronwyn, and with two swift cuts with his massive sword he practically cuts her in half, ending her life instantly. But Lellyn (or Falin -- can't remember which) casts light in the room, dispelling the darkness, and each of the combatants scores hits on the beast. Seeing that he is in danger of dying here, he rushes past Lellyn and crashes through the wall, falling to the ground outside (they were on the second floor.) Lellyn swears that she hit him as he went past and he appeared to fall through the wall unconscious.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anything to be done with Bronwyn at this point, so they try to investigate the body of their attackers. A small pouch with a few gold and an amulet of a skull surrounded by ruby roses is on each of the humans, while the half-fiend appears to have disappeared leaving nothing but a scorch mark on the ground and some drag marks in the sand. When the watch starts to approach, they decide to put some distance between themselves and the inn, as nobody knows exactly how "lawful" the watch of a pirate haven really is.

 

[Lazybones]

An interesting story. I like stories about new players getting into the game. Sounds like you've got a solid group together.

LB

 

[Horacio]

So Bronwyn is dead? Wow! Harsh DM

 

[Desdichado]

They're only lucky she's the only one who died! My tactics were too straightforward, the two guys who were supposed to keep the others busy failed miserably, and Drago just ended up taking 6 hits for every one he dished out. Of course, he did 36 points of damage in a single round to Bronwyn, leaving her at -20. If he had been able to do that to anyone else, they probably would've gone down at once. And he could've done more, those damage rolls just above average, not excellent. The Death from Massive Damage rule almost came into effect, except that she was so dead anyway that it didn't matter.

 

[Desdichado]

!!

Well, since we're getting together again tonight, I thought I better finish up last week's episode! This one will be relatively short, but there's just a little bit more that happened worth telling.

I'm not sure if there'll be an update after tonight or not. The original plan was to play Settlers of Catan tonight instead of starting our long-term campaign. But, since my wife unexpectedly went out of town for a few days, I'm not sure that's what we'll want to do. I'm going to spend half an hour or so preparing a quick one-shot just in case. A real, nice one-shot. We'll see, though.

In any case, here's what we've got for the end of last week.

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

The group avoids the watch, all except one guy, who weirdly enough is actually Bronwyn's brother. Grieved (a little bit, apparently) over the death of his sister, he decides to throw in with her friends and make her quest his own. Presumably the group explains to him exactly what that quest is.

First off, is to take care of Bronwyn. Lellyn claims to know that she always wanted to be buried at sea, so they decide that if they can comandeer a small boat of some kind and set her adrift that it would be an appropriate way to send her off. However, stealing a boat from the docks sounds a bit ...not their style, at least, so they decide to search the abandoned warehouses in the Old Docksides district for a boat they can use.

The warehouse they look in is old, long-abandoned and partially submerged at times. Long before they find a boat, they find moss-covered corpses that get up and attempt to rake them with their long talons. Lellyn calls on her faith to turn at least half of them, and the others are fairly easily dispatched. A boat, partially slimed from long=exposure to the damp conditions, but otherwise quite serviceable, lies behind them. Bronwyn is set in it with some of her things, and cast adrift on the river towards the sea. The party says a few brief words as she floats away in the early morning mist (it's about 3-4 AM at this point.) Then, they go and try to get what rest they can on the roof before dawn breaks.

The new day sees them eager to find Carantoc and move closer to Lothar and his camp. However, Severn notices a strange thing as they try to find his dock: someone appears to be following them. The split up into two parties of three. Lellyn and ...um, the other half-orc (I'm not sure I ended up getting his name, to tell you the truth) have an uneventful trip to the docks, but Severn and the panther, and then the druid and ranger are both attacked by shadowy men who look very similar to those that they saw the night before with Drago in the inn. The respective fights are brisk, yet not too difficult. However, getting anything out of the defeated swordsmen is a real challenge, as they apparently contain poison capsules in their mouth, and if they survive the fight, they quickly bite on them and die frothing.

Jillian is determined to question one of her attackers, though, so she casts delay poison and cure minor wounds on hers. However, he isn't too helpful. Contrary to their belief, he doesn't appear to know much about Lothar, and when questioned about Drago, his reply is not to worry so much about him, but about his mother! Then he casts himself off the roof on which they've been fighting and falls to his death in the street below.

From the bodies, they are able to gather a few gold each and a strange medallion each that look like a steel skull surrounded by rubies fashioned to resemble roses.

Jillian decides to question some of the artisans in town about the medallions. Of course, Old Docksides isn't the place to do that, but the northern district (still on the same side of the river) called Montrose is much more well-to-do. There, an artisan says he has commissioned several of those medallions, usually for the wives of local noblemen. Jillian is extremely skeptical of this, but her instincts lead her to believe he's not lying. Thoroughly confused, they decide to continue their quest to find Lothar's camp. Apparently, they have to commission Carantoc's river boat to take them up-river, where they enter a bayou that leads to his hide-out. Without much more ado, they find Carantoc (and he does indeed have crazy reddish orange hair) and he agrees to take them on.
And with that, since it was close to 1 AM, we called it a night!

 

[Horacio]

So the player chose the classic "I will play the brother of my dead character"...

Great update, BTW

 

[Desdichado]

Thanks! Last night, we did a one-off Aliens rip-off game that I'll throw up as a quick update later in another color (so you can spot easily that it's not the same campaign.)

Looks like we are going to continue doing this for at least one more session, but we have a d20 modern (starting with the Shadow Chasers rules) long-term campaign in the works as well.

 

[Desdichado]

Well, to those who are following this story hour (Horacio and ...ehh, well Horacio at least) we did play this last weekend: a one-shot Aliens rip-off which I DMed. Each character had a Jamis Buck generated Expert3 and Warrior3 with a few Dragonstar skills, feats and equipment slapped on, and then they were thrust inside a space ship trying to salvage hyperdrive parts that they needed for their own ship. Unbeknownst to them, the ship was infested with creatures having this template although a bit toned down so that every acidic blood splash wasn't a ticket to instant death. Still, I killed 5 PCs, and two of the three survivors were healed up from negative numbers. The one hale survivor, who's name was Rosario or something like that (prompting player jokes that she was the maid from Will & Grace) who wasn't hit by anything the whole night! I don't remember too many of the details: who went down when (each player had two characters as I anticipated a lot of downtime for players otherwise) but it was lots of fun.

What's perhaps more interesting, and I'm not sure how to keep this up in this thread, we decided to a plan moving forward. This campaign was never really intended to be a long-term campaign, but we've had enough fun with it that we don't want to kill it off entirely. One guy will DM a long-term campaign using Shadow Chasers rules: he describes it as X-files meets Raiders of the Lost Ark. But, not wanting to be burdened with coming up with a new adventure every week, we decided that he'll do it every other week, or perhaps every third week even. On the off-weeks, either one of the rest of us would DM a seperate long-term campaign (or not) and we'll continue the one-off tradition, trying to maintain our characters from this campaign as much as possible. So, although the campaign is kinda up in the air right now, we'll have at least one more adventure with these characters, and possibly more as we move forward.