seasong's Light Against the Dark III (Sep 29th)

[Greppa of Tartwater]

Last season on "Light Against the Dark"

I tend to look at games like they are television series on a young network like Fox or UPN. Each arc is a season and each game is an episode. Since we've started playing again, I thought I'd share my little daydream of how the game is progressing.

The threads, LAD 1 and 2 were seasons one and two. Part of season 2 extended into LAD3. The end of season 2 was pre-empted by a new reality show called "REALITY!" and the posts that are being put up now are those pre-empted episodes. The third season has already started filming and here is the trailer.


*Music starts*
Montage of scenes:

Merideth launching into the sky, cloak flapping behind her.

Bellos flitting among trees and along the surface of the swamp.

Greppa surrounded by a horde of hyperactive glowing sunhawks.

Narrator "With the destruction of their world looming,"

Cut scene to a sea of orcs and giant wolves, backed by a lightning swept sky.

Narrator "The heroes are forced to look to others,"

Flash shot of Thelanna, followed by a glimpse of Belial.

Narrator, "To find their way. They have to follow a path."

Cut scene to a phalanx of spinning and swooping sunhawks closing on a dark storm cloud led by several writhing worm-like clouds.

Narrator "One they thought they would never come to,"

Another long scene montage

A shot of a walled town followed by a downward shot of a cloud rolling through the streets and people siffening in rictus and dropping in their tracks.

A shot of Greppa and Merideth looking very angry, standing over some one.

A shot of Bellos watching a people work a mine that looks like a deep gash in the earth.

Narrator "In order to succeed,"

A close 3/4 shot of Amalan landing in the middle of a town square.

Narrator "They will have to learn the whole picture."
*The music builds to a crescendo*

Rapid flash montage of Thelanna, Agina, Phitios, Olga, Akeros and rapid passes several people who have not been introduced to the audience. The flash montage ends with a lingering shot of a woman's silhouette surrounded by a smoky orange-red field.

*Music stops*

Narrator, "Light against the Dark" season premiere coming soon on the WB.

 

[seasong]

You're a worse tease than me.

 

[Greybar]

I figured something musta been going on over here, but my subscription failed for some reason. gotta figure that out.

Great stuff. I love Uggrahd and can only hope that our heroes will need to go there.

I'm curious how it felt from the player and GM side to go from the incredibly close-knit group to the new composition. I really like the fact that the roleplaying has kept the "replacement" character from suddenly and mysteriously becoming everyone's best friend. That potentially derails some momentum on the plotline I suppose, but adds a lot of depth.

Flash shot of Thelanna, followed by a glimpse of Belial.

Can you do that, even on UPN or Fox?

Greppa - We had great visuals (in our heads) for the movie trailer of a game a friend of mine was running, so I know what you mean. (Elara - great stuff - no Story Hour but a nice Live Journal, actually a couple live journals from a couple PC points of view but that's the main one).

John

 

[seasong]

I figured something musta been going on over here, but my subscription failed for some reason. gotta figure that out.

Great stuff. I love Uggrahd and can only hope that our heroes will need to go there.

Oh yes.

I'm curious how it felt from the player and GM side to go from the incredibly close-knit group to the new composition. I really like the fact that the roleplaying has kept the "replacement" character from suddenly and mysteriously becoming everyone's best friend. That potentially derails some momentum on the plotline I suppose, but adds a lot of depth.

Oddly enough, we were very recently discussing this. Not with Light Against the Dark specifically, but just in general. I've run campaigns that go the gamut from "loosely affiliated, selfish bastards" to "grew up together, then joined the Marines together". The discussion was about preferences..

Personally, I prefer tight knit groups. I also enjoy driving a few wedges between them (like Greppa's growing mistrust of Allas, or Merideth's secrets), but I like the idea that the group is tight enough to survive such rigors, and potentially grow even closer. And I'm quite good at building that kind of group, but...

My players often like to play worldly rakes with few cares and no close ties. Selfishness, hedonism, avarice and spite are often motivating factors in their characters, and the result is a looser "alliance" rather than a tight bond. They also enjoy the tight knit group, but they don't want an intense campaign every time they play .

So we compromise. Prior to Light Against the Dark and the Shadowrun campaign I'm starting up, we've had a number of very loose groups, so these two are pretty tight. I'm also running a London gothic steampunk campaign that is somewhere in the middle .

 

[Greybar]

The risk with the loose groups is that you hit a major plot point or risk and suddenly the group shatters and the campaign ends.

"What, you meant that I'm gonna have to risk my neck in the Temple of Really Bad Things, and the only thanks I'm gonna get is from the God of Ugly Orphaned Children? Nope, I'm outta here."

John

 

[seasong]

ENWorld keeps logging me out. I just lost a bunch of words, and it will take a while for me to redo them.

I'm a bit frustrated, but the post should still go up sometime today.

 

[Caliber]

Weirdness. I didn't get any mail from my subscribed threads for two days and then I get a reply email from ALL of them today.

The history of the Broken Knuckle tribe drips coolness.

 

[seasong]

Well, this is a second writing of the original, due to server dodginess. I don't think it's quite as good as the first go through, but it will have to do.

Uggrahd

Theralis was situated in the midst of a vast mountain range, and her children understood well the effects of the atmosphere on far off sights. Mountains in the distance would fade to blueness until they disappeared in the faint fog that pervaded all of creation. But when they topped a rise and Uggrahd could be seen, a shade of violet-tinted blue against the haze of distance, they did not quite believe what they saw.

The mountain, named simply "up there" in orc, earned her name and defied the senses. She towered among the lesser mountains surrounding it, like a matronly orc among her children, until her tip, a mile further away through the atmosphere than her base, faded from view.

All paused, though for different reasons, as she came into view.

-----

Greppa reflected on the events bringing him here, and the self-confessed fiend that had provided the tantalizing hints that led him to this place. Belial had provided a map, and a mission, with his stingy bits of truth. The map showed where to find a book mentioning Belial, and the mountain they now saw.

The mission was more complicated.

According to Belial, the gods were preparing for war, and they had selected servants among mortalkind to wage it. Greppa was one, and Merideth, Bellos, and even Athan had been among those serving Allas... but there were others, serving other gods. Which meant Peladas, Xeras... perhaps even Dianas or Hethas.

The orcs had a phrase which Greppa had learned from Olgah: "When gods fight, mortals die". It was a harsh invective, usually followed by spitting, and it neatly explained the orc view of any gods other than their own trusted ancestors. And what Belial had said made a terrible kind of sense - it explained why the orcs had been moving so much, it explained why Allas was so active in Theralis again, it explained... what Athan had said in the dream, after he'd died. That something big was coming.

So here he was, hundreds of miles from home, travelling into the heart of an orc tribe that even the Breaking Cat tribe feared like the gates of hell itself, to find out what god was pushing the orcs like Allas was pushing Theralis.

If it wasn't Allas herself. Greppa thought back bitterly to Thelanna. She probably had known all of this already. Knew that Theralis was a pawn in the coming divine war. And had said nothing.

He grimaced, and continued marching.

-----

Bellos stopped walking completely. He believed, sincerely, that nothing could match the beauty of raw nature, and Uggrahd made him weep inside. That he was among friends and taking this moment to experience the raw terror and exhiliration of simply seeing such a monument of the natural world only made it sharper.

And for a moment, his doubts about his comrades vanished. His fear of entering the Buhkenahk territories misted into nothingness beside his desire to admire it with the People who lived in the shadow of such beauty. And the niggling guilt of not telling Greppa about his message to Thelanna even disappeared for a moment before its majesty.

When he finally jerked himself into motion, it was only to see what it looked like from one ridge, or two ridges, closer.

-----

Merideth's mind was elsewhere. Something was following them, something that danced at the very edge of her range. Something with no thoughts to read, only intent.

The intent was why she wasn't warning the others yet. It was wholly protective, and very patient. She hoped it was simply a cautious animal protecting its children (and indeed, suspected it was, despite its clever choice of range), but she kept an eye out in case that changed.

As they topped the ridge, she looked behind her, scanning the downward slope to catch it, but there was nothing there. When the others continued downslope she followed, and missed the mountain entirely.

-----

A night later, as they settled in for camp, two dozen orcs materialized from the darkening woods. Camouflaged too cleverly to see until they were in motion, they stepped from tree and brush as silently as snakes, and their leader, a massive brute bearing a spear tipped with the claw of a giant armorcat, stepped closer. "Who are you, and why do you enter the land of the Broken Knuckle?"

Greppa, momentarily stunned by the warband's sudden appearance, recovered and began to explain. They wanted to see the glory of the mountain. They wished to speak with a shaman. They wished to ask a private question of the orc ancestors.

And quietly, very quietly, in the depths of their hearts, the group hoped the answer would suffice.

 

[Indigo Veil]

Quick question. what were Chatham's thoughts? Wasn't he with them? What did the Broken Knuckle folks think of an orc not of their tribe going into their lands, and bringing humans with him?


Hank said:
A shot of Greppa and Merideth looking very angry, standing over some one.

You mean Bellos, right? <refrains from cheering upon the realization that Bellos is marching closer toward the possibility of death>

 

[Capellan]

ENWorld keeps logging me out. I just lost a bunch of words, and it will take a while for me to redo them.

Ouch. This is why I have taken to writing updates in a word processor, then copy/pasting, rather than typing it directly. It saves a lot of frustration