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The Adventures of the Knights of Spellforge Keep- UPDATED 6/6
- Thread starter Dr Midnight
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Neverwinter Knight
First Post
Nice Easter holidays to you folks! I hope Doc finds some time for the takin'...
oh yeah, and BUMP
oh yeah, and BUMP
Dr Midnight
Explorer
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I had time last night and didn't feel like writing. I was just tired. I sat at the computer and typed all of "Myramus" before giving up and laying on the couch watching stuff. Sorry my peoples. Expect my next free-timeage to be tomorrow (Saturday) night.
Neverwinter Knight
First Post
So there is no new, exciting campaign to fill your Saturday nights... Enjoy your DMing-free time!Dr Midnight said:
True, true !!!
Breakstone
First Post
It's okay, Doc, I know how it can be.
Dakkareth
First Post
After spending yesterday's evening and this whole day reading more than 70 pages of storyhour I have now reached the present.
The beginning was humble, but interesting. And almost right away tragedy struck the party in form of as-good-as-deaths and deaths. But they continued.
Things got a bit ... forced (or at least it felt this way), when the Temple of Elemental evil was being explored, the characters seemed a little unmotivated. But being slaughtered again and again, who can blame them?
And there was Dartan ... seeing his friends die again and again, seing new friends die, seeing his mount die after three days ...
"To Hell with Heironeous", indeed.
That was one the greatest highlights as far as I am concerned - Dartan reacting to the truly heart-wrenching death toll and general cruelness and becoming bitter.
Another highlight, but a dark one, was Jamison's turn to Evil (Evil with capital 'E', indeed) gleefully killing his former best friends and even his love. A moment truly inspiring great sadness.
Also Dartan's drawing of four (for heavens sake, FOUR (4)!) cards from the Deck of Many things was a cool thing. But where did his last wish go? IIRC the first card gave him two wishes and the second a third. Or was that a typo? Still, drawing four cards and living to tell the tale ...
Vek's reaction to the card dealer was also cool.
Finally the end of this mission, the artifact restoring sanity to the blinded people and all things that led to this end were great and the scene really showed the incredible power of artifacts.
Very good in a sad was was the end of the first generation of Spellforges with their children being forced to live with ignorant nobles being mocked by them and cursed by the rest of the world like their parents ... The scene of their parents departing was very sad and even more so after having the image of the little boys playind with adventurers with sticks and scraps of parchment in mind.
All the better the feeling, when at least *some* of the old crew were back together including Jamison (who's been my favourite together with Dartan and Vek). And Vek just rocks being a lich and high-level spellcaster. "Wee Jas grants you the gift of death." *Poof*
Vek's end was also an incredible good scene, even if his behaviour seemed a little out of character to me seeing as his faith and submission to Wee Jas had been the most important thing to him before. But the of course fanatics have done stranger things. Still a sad thing, he was deemed unworthy ...
But of course ... being killed by one's own goddess as a cleric of almost epic levels is something that probably has never happened before in know times and won't as long as today's powers stand.
"Wee Jas grants you the gift of Death."
Just great, seeing how Vek had used this phrase so many times on his enemies only to fall in this way himself at the hands (lips) of his own goddess ... simply great.
And of course the feeling of destiny in the last parts as the events are forming a full circle, fullfil the cyclus and end in it's own beginning ...
The general feeling of human weakness, mortality and continuing hope in spite of incredible strikes of fate is very ... <sad/sweet/bitter/great/depressing/...>
It probably doesn't come across as heavy, but if you read it from the beginning to the present, the sheer amount of misery and death (15+ permanent deaths of PCs and some of them died several times before that, too, iirc and countless deaths of NPCs, some of which were close) is more than a human could stand.
And still Dartan lives, the only link to the past, one of the first group of naive adventurers setting out from a bookstore to make the world a better place, who has seen all his friends (or at least people he cared about to some extent) being killed several times, one replacing another, has lost his faith and the strength it gave him and has seen more darkness than most 'heroes' will ever see - Godless and bitter he is, but still he continues, refuses to die or give up. This image alone is an image powerful enough to move everyone ... As are the images of Kizzlorn searching for her parents of Jamison troubled by his terrible deeds performed under the control of Elemental Evil, as are ...
Words describe things only so far ... I'll leave it at that. Consider this to be both my curse and my highest praise.
There are other story hours, which are about as good - but they all excell in their own special categories: Writing, fun, light-heartedness, coolness, wickedness, originality, etc, etc
This is not to say, this one doesn't possess these qualities, but what this story hour really excells in is decribed above. Like others this is one of the best things I have ever read.
/me bows deeply
-Dakkareth
P.S: I've said much about Dartan - that's because he was the longest time with the party and the closest to my feeling of the atmosphere of the story. I like the other PCs very much, too, especially Vek with his attitude and spell casting, Jamison, the curious, childlike wizard turned epic monster turned troubled hero, Kizzlorn and the many others.
The beginning was humble, but interesting. And almost right away tragedy struck the party in form of as-good-as-deaths and deaths. But they continued.
Things got a bit ... forced (or at least it felt this way), when the Temple of Elemental evil was being explored, the characters seemed a little unmotivated. But being slaughtered again and again, who can blame them?
And there was Dartan ... seeing his friends die again and again, seing new friends die, seeing his mount die after three days ...
"To Hell with Heironeous", indeed.
That was one the greatest highlights as far as I am concerned - Dartan reacting to the truly heart-wrenching death toll and general cruelness and becoming bitter.
Another highlight, but a dark one, was Jamison's turn to Evil (Evil with capital 'E', indeed) gleefully killing his former best friends and even his love. A moment truly inspiring great sadness.
Also Dartan's drawing of four (for heavens sake, FOUR (4)!) cards from the Deck of Many things was a cool thing. But where did his last wish go? IIRC the first card gave him two wishes and the second a third. Or was that a typo? Still, drawing four cards and living to tell the tale ...
Vek's reaction to the card dealer was also cool.
Finally the end of this mission, the artifact restoring sanity to the blinded people and all things that led to this end were great and the scene really showed the incredible power of artifacts.
Very good in a sad was was the end of the first generation of Spellforges with their children being forced to live with ignorant nobles being mocked by them and cursed by the rest of the world like their parents ... The scene of their parents departing was very sad and even more so after having the image of the little boys playind with adventurers with sticks and scraps of parchment in mind.
All the better the feeling, when at least *some* of the old crew were back together including Jamison (who's been my favourite together with Dartan and Vek). And Vek just rocks being a lich and high-level spellcaster. "Wee Jas grants you the gift of death." *Poof*
Vek's end was also an incredible good scene, even if his behaviour seemed a little out of character to me seeing as his faith and submission to Wee Jas had been the most important thing to him before. But the of course fanatics have done stranger things. Still a sad thing, he was deemed unworthy ...
But of course ... being killed by one's own goddess as a cleric of almost epic levels is something that probably has never happened before in know times and won't as long as today's powers stand.
"Wee Jas grants you the gift of Death."
Just great, seeing how Vek had used this phrase so many times on his enemies only to fall in this way himself at the hands (lips) of his own goddess ... simply great.
And of course the feeling of destiny in the last parts as the events are forming a full circle, fullfil the cyclus and end in it's own beginning ...
The general feeling of human weakness, mortality and continuing hope in spite of incredible strikes of fate is very ... <sad/sweet/bitter/great/depressing/...>
It probably doesn't come across as heavy, but if you read it from the beginning to the present, the sheer amount of misery and death (15+ permanent deaths of PCs and some of them died several times before that, too, iirc and countless deaths of NPCs, some of which were close) is more than a human could stand.
And still Dartan lives, the only link to the past, one of the first group of naive adventurers setting out from a bookstore to make the world a better place, who has seen all his friends (or at least people he cared about to some extent) being killed several times, one replacing another, has lost his faith and the strength it gave him and has seen more darkness than most 'heroes' will ever see - Godless and bitter he is, but still he continues, refuses to die or give up. This image alone is an image powerful enough to move everyone ... As are the images of Kizzlorn searching for her parents of Jamison troubled by his terrible deeds performed under the control of Elemental Evil, as are ...
Words describe things only so far ... I'll leave it at that. Consider this to be both my curse and my highest praise.
There are other story hours, which are about as good - but they all excell in their own special categories: Writing, fun, light-heartedness, coolness, wickedness, originality, etc, etc
This is not to say, this one doesn't possess these qualities, but what this story hour really excells in is decribed above. Like others this is one of the best things I have ever read.
/me bows deeply
-Dakkareth
P.S: I've said much about Dartan - that's because he was the longest time with the party and the closest to my feeling of the atmosphere of the story. I like the other PCs very much, too, especially Vek with his attitude and spell casting, Jamison, the curious, childlike wizard turned epic monster turned troubled hero, Kizzlorn and the many others.
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