the Kyri Chronicles - last updated 22 Oct

[Plane Sailing]

Re: Syl again???

Nah! That's not fair!

She's really the groups whipping boy, ehm girl, isn't it? Darn, can't your strong boys look out for the nice girls?

It is a real shame about Syl - although it's not really captured here since I can't remember all the dialogue, Syl had really turned the corner in her relationship with Trajan and Lysander. They had always percieved her as a thieving, money grabbing fool who stuck in the background. Suddenly she had started taking a few more risks on their behalf, and after a bit of encouragement joined in the fight - and then suddenly it was all over.

I actually introduced a rule from Star Wars d20 to improve the survivability of the characters - when you reach -10, make a Fort ST against the damage which you just recieved... fail and you are dead instantly, succeed and you are unconscious and dying, make the same save again in an hours time. (and so on). This rule kept Azrin alive on three occasions, but his luck eventually ran out. Trajan has been at that point three times (one of which you haven't seen yet) and Lysander has once (fighting the white dragon).

My early games had such a high mortality rate, and I couldn't keep a plot going when all the "plot hooks" (PC's) kept dying!

In the next update you will meet Syl's replacement - a mysterious Mendonnan wizardess who talks with the wind...

Cheers

 

[Plane Sailing]

While waiting for the webs to dissipate they check out the treasure horde of the goblin bosses, in an anteroom off the main sanctuary, discovering some coinage and a wide range of trade goods – the fruit of hobgoblin banditry.

Time passes.

As the webs dissipate, they prepare themselves by the entranceway into the temple – and are surprised to hear a voice call out from around the corner in hobgoblin accents.

“You bastards! Give us our children back!”

The party look at one another. “Children?”

“Oh yes” says Anne Marie – “The children are locked and cowering in the room which the elite soldiers came out of”.

Negotiation ensues, the hobgoblins want to escape from this vile place before the priest or the sorceress returns. “This is no place to bring up a family” they complain. Eventually Lysander and Trajan agree to the terms, and allow a couple of the hobgoblins into the temple to bring their children out, before escorting the remains of the hobgoblin band through the horrible woods and into the scrubland beyond.

Instructing the hobgoblins to go and seek honest mercenary service up in the Borderlands, they are sent on their way, and the company continues southwards towards the wizards tower.

After a few days travel, they are surprised to see a small tent beside the road, with a lithe young Mendonnan woman standing, regarding them. Although the air is still and crisp today, her cape and hair blow as if in a gentle breeze.

“Greetings, travellers” she calls out. “The wind told me that you would be along this way. My path to adventure lies with you”.

Anne-Maries sharp eyes pick out the smoky outlines of a small creature circling around her, but neither Lysander nor Trajan have that familiar feeling of supernatural evil. They join, and introduce themselves.

Her name is Arilyn, a hawk-nosed Mendonnan who grew up in that city famous for its assassins – but she had always been a disappointment to her family. They worried that she would never be able to enter the service of one of the powerful families like her siblings planned to. Her life changed one day when she rescued a stranger in the city, and helped to nurse him back to health – a stranger who used books to prepare magic spells. She became his apprentice, and for several years travelled around with him, learning from his magic and his wisdom. She even started to scribe her own spell book, and found herself naturally drawn towards magic which reflected the air and the wind.

One day, their path took them to a fork in the road, and while her mentor travelled left, she knew that the time had come for her to travel a different path. It was a difficult parting, as a great affection had drawn up between them. Shortly after that, she decided to call a familiar for company, and casting the ritual during a thundery snowstorm she was astonished when a small portion of the clouds came down and introduced itself to her. It was at that time that she started the long journey to the East, through Caran pass and to this meeting place. Her familiar had heard stories of the company as she passed by Knightsbridge and the winds that had been with her since her youth directed her down this way.

After a very short discussion, the company decide to allow her to join them. Dala is somewhat scathing of someone who “has to get magic out of books”, and the pair needle one another continuously as they continue Southwards.

Drawing near to Holy Day, the second week of Floodwater, they spy the confluence of rivers where the wizards tower lies. With the waters surging in the first of the spring thaws there is clearly no safe way to get the horses across, but after a short discussion a plan is hatched. Trajan stays behind to look after the horses, Arilyn casts a spell and then flies up into the air, and one by one K’tan manifests “Featherfall” on each of the party, allowing Arilyn to shuttle them across.

Waving to Trajan, they make their way towards the valley which leads to the wizards tower. The harsh winter has left the area looking much bleaker than Anne Marie remembers, and the small stands of trees seem to have been chopped down – pity, they were so pretty.

Then they see the village past the head of the valley – with gates battered down – and rounding the corner a disciplined group of hobgoblin soldiers armed with large shields and two handed spears.


Arilyn is a Wizard 6, with an air-elemental familiar, the replacement character for Syl

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Nice, still going strong!

Don't you think it's time to change the title of the thread, though?

 

[Plane Sailing]

Nice, still going strong!

Don't you think it's time to change the title of the thread, though?

I'm hoping to lure in new readers

- or at the least alert people to potential spoilers which are in the text.

Maybe I could add "...and beyond" to the title?

 

[Darklone]

Nah. Simply keep on writing! A cloud familiar... I once knew a character with a permanent raining cloud over his head... The others thought it was a curse, but in reality he was a watermage and liked it wet...

 

[Plane Sailing]

Four of the hobgoblins open fire with longbows, but Arilyn creates a windwall between the two parties, and the arrows are deflected all over the place. Lysander and Anne-Marie move in to attack the hobgobline spear wielders, but they are obviously well trained fighters, taking full advantage of their long spears and combat reflexes to get several attacks of opportunity against their attackers. Even Anne-Maries spring attack doesn’t help against this hedgehog of spears.

The hobgoblins are clearly outclassed though, and as the fight continues and the magic users look on, the hobgoblins are slowly whittled down – although one of them manages to actually strike Anne Marie and gain a critical hit, which really hurt (took her down to half hit points).

At last, the hobgoblins are all dead. Ignoring Awk’s request to take advantage of the “tasty treats going to waste”, they press on into the village, and find it strangely deserted… strange because in many of the houses there is still food laid out on the tables, and childrens toys scattered across the floor. It is all cold now, but these villagers must have left in an awful hurry.

Careful examination of the gateway to the village reveals numerous tracks frozen into the mud – although nobody is a skilled enough tracker to make out the details, it looks like the villagers were herded out of here a few days ago by booted soldiers – probably hobgoblins.

Concerned by this news, the party continue round to the valley leading to the wizards tower – siz hundred feet away from them they see it now, rising from a solid base into a carved spire, high in the sky. There is something odd, assymetric about the tower though. Dala sends Awk to go and have a quick look around the tower and he reports back that the room at the top of the tower has one of its walls blown completely out, probably a long time ago. Arilyn tries to send her familiar to have a more detailed look, but Smoke baulks a little. He has a bad feeling about that tower and is at pains to point out that he is not very robust at the moment!

As they watch, huge brass doors at the foot of the tower slowly swing open, and another troop of hobgoblins with similar armament troop out. Dala quickly makes himself and K’tan invisible, Arilyn hides while Lysander and Anne-Marie draw their bows and start to open fire at extreme range. The hobgoblins hunker down and return fire in turn.

After a minute of fruitless arrow exchange, apart from a good hit by Anne Marie and a couple of truestrike – enhanced shots by Lysander, the missile fire has not been effective at this long range. The Hobgoblins drop their bows, ready their longspears and start to charge across the open ground towards our heroes.

In the meantime, Dala has been cautiously working his way down one side of the valley. Seeing the hobgoblin charge he waits, and prepares one of his favourite spells. As the yelling line of hobgoblins draws level with his position he throws his hands forward and utters a few sharp syllables – and a bolt of lightning crackles across the valley, frying almost all the hobgoblins in mid stride. The one survior attempts to make a break for it up the side of the valley but is shot by Anne Marie as he is climbing.

The way is clear to investigate the tower.

 

[Darklone]

Wonderful

Hobgoblin phalanxes and archers protected by towershield wearing comrades... that's the way to go

There's nothing like scaring a mid level group with some puny little hobgoblins!

 

[KidCthulhu]

Hmmm. Tower shields. Think Plane has been getting ideas from PC? Tower shields are bad news.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Actually there weren't tower shields... I didn't fancy going in that direction because they are a pain to keep track of in combat.

The hobgoblins were all 2nd level Fighters, and they had Combat Reflexes and Hoplite feats. The Hoplite feat allows a soldier to use a large shield (+2AC) and a longspear at the same time. After all, it was historical! The shield was mostly strapped across a shoulder or something IIRC.

If I'd thought about it it would have been good to have used tower shields for the same reason that PC used them to such great effect, but... I wanted them to get into the BIG fights (heh heh heh)

 

[Plane Sailing]

Anne Maries early years spent in monk training under her mentor makes her best suited for spying, so she creeps quietly through the main doors, into a vast hall, cold and dimly lit by flickering torches. From corridors at the far side rings the sound of metal weapons clashing and harsh hooting and jeering. Bypassing the doors, and taking advantage of the shadows, she investigates the corridors at the far end of the hall. The first she tries has a door with a barred window at the end, and a stairway that spirals up into the tower. Checking out the other corridor reveals a mirror of the first.

She peers through the barred window in the door and finds that she is looking into the ground floor of an ampitheatre – two wounded men are warily circling one another, while ranks of seats ascend up away towards the ceiling – many of which are occupied by... hobgoblins? No, it is something different... the creatures jeering and shouting as they watch the gladiatorial combat have horrible bat wings, and their goblin like faces have been distorted into muzzles filled with sharp teeth. It is almost as if hobgoblins have been horribly merged with something of dreadful, fiendish ancestry!

Carefully she creeps up the stairwell, and after three turns of the stairs she can hear the moaning and crying of injured people coming from above. Peeping ever so cautiously up into the room she sees a chamber of horrors. Chained around the walls are villagers – men and women from the abandoned village – weeping and moaning, covered with painful cuts and bruises and crying out in agony every time a large, half-fiendish bugbear casually flicks out with his whip to increase their torment.

Chilled, Anne Marie carefully slides back down the stairs to report back to her friends. Something has gone very wrong in the wizards tower since she was last here, five weeks – and fifty years – ago.