Altaera

Planting Seeds

2010-07-14T21:59:00.001-05:00

Twentieth entry (before the 6//10 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/moonsong/wikis/poesjournalentrytwenty
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

I’m sitting here staring at my page, reading writing that isn’t familiar, about events I barely remember. Apparently the illustrious Ron Burgandy has been embellishing my tome while I sweated out the last of my alcohol. Serves me right I suppose and frankly, it’s helpful to read his account of things seeing how most of it is a bit fuzzy in my mind. Dwarven ale will do that to you. Especially when mixed with Halfling whiskey. Heh. That’s over now. The last of my liquor is gone and my taste for it as well. From now on Alia, like it or not I will face my fate clear eyed and sober. My Queen demands no less…

Raven wings battered at me as I stumbled through stinging blowing snow. I pushed the feathers aside and tried to continue.

“Poe.”

Hearing my name brought me to a halt. Perhaps it was the tone. So cold.

I turned.

“That’s better.” She looked at me. The wind picked up, whipping at her black hair. I stayed on my feet.

“So that’s how you want to play it, huh?” She smiled. It wasn’t nice. “Fine.”

“I’m tired of having to continually keep you focused. The babysitting ends now.” She held out her hand. My dwarven flask appeared in it. “This won’t be the death of you,” she smirked. “But it will certainly make your beloved’s death much more…shall we say lingering?”

Screams shattered the stillness. I gasped. Alia…

“Should be a simple choice,” She continued smiling sweetly as she dumped the contents of the flask onto the ground. “Assuming you really do mean all that lovey dovey crap you’re always writing in that silly journal of yours, of course.”

She tossed the empty flask at me. It clanged off my chest and bounced on the frozen ground at my feet.

“Well, on to my real business, shall we?” She stepped closer to me.

“The heroes will soon be facing challenges unlike anything you’ve seen before. I need you to be ready…”

I stared, frozen in place. Her wings enfolded us. She grabbed my chin in Her hand, pulling me close. Her eyes narrowed. “What’s this?”, She hissed.

Her grip tightened. She scrutinized me carefully before finally speaking again. “Well, no matter. Perhaps a little extra incentive is just what you need. And her bit of light may prove useful. Oh, she will be punished of course. So you’d best make her sacrifice worthwhile.”

Screams erupted in the distance again.

She ignored them. I struggled against her grip, but couldn’t free myself.

“Oh please,” She sighed. “This will only take a minute and believe me, you’ll need every bit of power I can spare you…”

Her hands were so cold they burned. I screamed…

It was a while before I stopped screaming. At least on the inside. Heh. With the booze out of my system I can at least take stock of things. Something feels different. Whatever She did isn’t quite all there yet, but I can feel it starting. Hopefully it’ll be ready by the time I need it. But fate waits for no man. The heroes are gathering outside some magical portal to some magical place – a cursed city I think. I should fit right in. Heh.

Killing you softly...

2010-06-26T21:42:00.000-05:00

A recent Fear The Boot podcast had a good discussion about how to set up a new campaign to succeed. It's a good discussion if you plan to start a campaign someday. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of character death...maybe because it reminded me of my first kill (so to speak) as a DM: Crag, a half-orc barbarian.

Crag's death broke nearly every rule that the Fear The Boot gang mentions. It was a meaningless encounter with bandits only very loosely connected to the main plot. Worse yet, he died not because he did something stupid or dangerous, but because the player failed a saving throw to wake up. And then a second saving throw against a coup de gras from an attacking bandit (sneak attack damage was nasty in 3.5 D&D...).

So why was I so stupid? Probably because I was a rookie and had no plan. As a player I was very familiar with character death. Hell, most of my characters croaked well before anyone else's and well before the campaigns petered out on their own. Never bothered me much. No one in our group seemed to mind losing the occasional character either. While planning my first campaign the only thought I gave to handling killing a PC was to come up with some house rules to take some of the sting out of it. Rather than lose a level, a raised character simply had to make up an experience point "debt" before continuing to gain levels normally.

I also hadn't given much thought beforehand to the type of atmosphere I wanted in the campaign. Was I trying to run a gritty fantasy or a cinematic fantasy adventure? Trust me, that's not the type of question you really want to answer while a rogue is standing over a player's sleeping barbarian, sword poised to make sure he never wakes up. well, I answered it all right. Though I guess I hedged a bit. Crag was raised by the group's powerful employer early in the next session.

This set up a pattern that was fairly consistent throughout the rest of the campaign. Characters died pretty regularly, both while in play (and sometimes more than once in a session) and after they'd been abandoned by the player. Deaths occurred in both important, plot-driven encounters and in minor encounters. I tended to let the dice fall where they may so if the character did something stupid or overly dangerous they paid for it. I also continued to make access to Raise Dead relatively easy, so the sting of dying was considerably blunted. It seemed to work, though Crag remained paranoid about his sleeping arrangements right up to the day the campaign ended.

So what would I do differently? Or rather, what will I do differently next time? Or, even better, what would I recommend? Have a plan in place. Share that plan with the players ahead of time (as recommended on Fear the Boot). I still want my campaign world to be a dangerous place where even a simple encounter can be deadly. I wouldn't temper this as much though. Getting raised should be a difficult task that comes with a price tag. Without that, there's very little to fear from death. That said, I know my group and we're all in it mainly for fun. We talk smack and eat and drink and hang out. So the price tag will be something paid in game - a set back in the story line, loss of an intangible benefit or something similar rather than a mechanical penalty to the character. I guess I'm still hedging...

Just desserts...

2010-06-19T09:10:00.002-05:00

Nineteenth entry (after the 05/10 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/moonsong/wikis/poesjournalentrynineteen
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

Courtesy of guest poster Ron Burgandy....

Hmm…appears I didn’t have enough scotch-y last night. Waking up early is not amusing. And waking up alone and early is really not fun. Guess I’ll channel Kobe and poke around in everyone’s stuff while they are sleeping.

Okay, greased Guss’ shield just enough to annoy him, put some itching salts into Kobe’s wineskin, and engraved “I’m luv green dragons” on the inside of Durkon’s helmet – too bad he sleeps in it and will never see it. On to Poe – what’s this? A book? No wait, it’s a journal – amazing, I didn’t even think he could read, let alone write. Let’s see – looks like he’s got the basics of our troupe down in here, although he appears to be woefully short on items about my magnificence. Perhaps that’s due to his being in the front line too much – he can’t see the mountainous magical energies I channel and seems to focus a little too much on insignificant things like what Guss is doing or Kloister’s latest tirade. Well, I can fix that, I’ll just add in our latest exploits from the proper point of view.

New page in Poe's Journal:

“It is clear that our leader Ron has a great destiny. He has led us to the desert and right up to a line of demarcation that the orc patrols avoid. There appears to be a large burnt-out shell of an insect of some kind – big enough to hide in and ambush us, so Ron bravely took the lead to investigate the carcass. I’m very fortunate to be a part of his entourage, I know that these are the heroes of prophecy and he will be the one to lead them to a glorious future. Ron has returned and seems unconcerned over whatever weapon may have killed this creature and is leading us onward to the desert city to find out the best use of the star metal.

We arrived at the city late in the day and Ron led the way to a local watering hole to gather information and find out more about the ancient city. He figured (correctly as it seems in retrospect) that we’re going to be here for a while and purchased a room for a month’s stay. Our other team members seem less wise and are paying by the day and paying much more, especially Durkon with his flamboyant displays of, well flamboyance and not worshipping the sun god, which appears to be a harsh crime in this town. I will have to pray in quiet to the Raven Queen or risk the wrath of the leaders of this town, which frightens me. Ron seems to have no such fear and claims to be going straight to the temple in the center of town on the morrow to investigate what is going on here. I wish I were half as brave as he is – I need at least 4 drinks to get anywhere near that level of bravery.

Ron returned from the temple and stated that he had garnered enough information to know that there was a gathering of tribes coming soon and that there would be several games, trading opportunities and guides would likely be available. It is good that he is so wise and can help us enjoy the time in-between adventures – truly a leader both in war and peace. The rest of the week passed rather uneventfully except for Guss trouncing a few guards here and there in practice contests. Ron disapproves of this, as he doesn’t like tipping our hand to others and prefers to let them think he is a buffoon and not a powerful wizard – a great tactic indeed.

The gathering of tribes has started. Ron has remarkably found a way to get into a contest with one of the leaders of the tribes, and it’s a tribe that literally is dripping with magic according to him, which makes them the best bet to know where the ancient city is. After the contest, which featured Ron allowing this tribal leader to gain honor by besting Ron with sticks, Ron not only made friends with them, but took a concubine from their tribe and began the year-long ritual to join them. And all it cost was Kobe, which seems a small price to pay to be rid of that star metal thief. How is it that Ron always knows the right thing to say and do to further our cause and gain allies for the First Burgundyian Empire? Truly he has the gift of foresight. And it appears other gifts as well, for many nights this week I have heard his new concubine crying out in delight – these walls are very thin in this inn.

The next challenge involved Durkon chasing and choking a chicken, which he seemed to take far too much enjoyment in the title of the challenge. At least he did figure out how to get the chicken before his competitor. It appears Ron must have given him some advice, for Ron bet heavily on Durkon and cleaned up. The last challenge of this gathering involved Kloister riding some sort of camel creature and trying to shoot arrows at targets. Ron correctly deduced that Kloister would be trounced and bet heavily against Kloister, and cleaned up again, making more than enough to cover his stay in this little city in the desert.

As the gathering dissolved, Ron’s new tribe offered guidance to the ancient city and even allowed us to take Kobe with, despite their growing fondness for him as a pet. Ron begrudgingly agreed to take Kobe, playing the part well making it look like it was a real chore to take Kobe, so that the tribe would think they were getting the better part of the deal in getting rid of him. Ron also traded back his concubine (which is good for her, I think she could have possibly died of ecstasy had she stayed with him much longer) so that we would be unfettered going into the ancient city. We now stand at the edge of a strange portal that looks to journey not only into a different city, but possibly a different time according to Ron. I feel a tingling of fear but it is quickly replaced by determination for with Ron leading us, I know nothing can go wrong.”

There, that should do it – now, onto Sunny’s cloth armor. With just a little snip here and there, it won’t even look like anything’s wrong, but when she stretches, her top should tear and fall right off. Just have to make sure I’ve got a good view for when that happens…

A Dilemma...resolved?

2010-06-11T14:45:00.000-05:00

It’s been over a year since I read Gnome Stew's post on collaborative world building . I quickly downloaded and read the full rule set for the Dawn Of Worlds game and began planning to run it via email. After mentioning it at one of our Moonsong City sessions and getting some interest I even began writing up an introductory blog post about it...three times. That post still hasn’t seen the light of day. Why? Well one reason is that I’m not sure I want to give up that much creative control. You see, I have a laundry list of ideas for campaign worlds – ranging from continuing with the world I used in my first campaign (thinking it would be cool to have characters from that campaign show up as historical figures or even NPCs) to simply using Athas from Dark Sun (probably mashed up with Dune..). Sure, it's possible that I’d be able to push a world created using a Dawn of Worlds game in certain directions. But, would the end result still be the Altaera I've been thinking of?

Well, then I read read this:

The best moments from my stint as a DM occurred when I either set up circumstances where I wasn't sure what the players would do, when the players did something completely unexpected and I had to react to it on the fly. or when we were all wondering, if even for a few minutes or the time it took for a dice to roll, what was going to happen next.

That was me, a couple of months ago. As easy as it is to argue with myself, sometimes you just have to recognize wisdom when you see it.

So, if you’re reading this and you’re part of my gaming group, get in touch and let me know if you’re interested in participating in a Dawn of Worlds email based game. If there’s enough interest, I’ll get to work laying out some ground rules and figuring out a structure and format for running turns.

Mashups...

2010-06-03T22:01:00.000-05:00

In a recent podcast from Postcards from the Dungeon, guest co-host Jim Dunning explained his Heaven's Gate campaign. The campaign is a mashup of a space story and medieval feudalism (the description of the campaign actually starts around 26 minutes into the podcast if you're interested). It sounds like a very cool campaign setting - and though he doesn't mention it, very reminiscent of the Dune universe (well, at least the first book anyway).

The podcast continues with a discussion about using mashups to create interesting campaign settings. I think this is right on. A lot of great settings are really mashups of several core ideas. Take Firefly for example. A western set in space with zombies. Or Eberron - D&D meets pulp adventure. I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceberg for examples of this phenomenon.

My first D&D campaign was set in a homebrew world that was essentially a mashup of Erna from the Coldfire trilogy and the short-lived TV show Brimstone (though it morphed into something quite different before it ended). My plans for Altaera (as primarily described here and here as well as elsewhere on this blog) are also a bit of a mashup. This time, its of the concepts in Heroes Die (actors, etc.) and probably Erna (again, mainly for the magic system). Lately though my thoughts have been turning more towards a Dark Sun- or perhaps even Dune-like world. And lord knows I've wanted to work in a Matrix-like universe somehow (maybe in place of the Heroes Die stuff?). Of course, that assumes that I'm creating the campaign world on my own, which is by no means a given right now. Intrigued? Me, too. More on the Altaera front to come soon. Yeah, I know I've been saying that for about a year...

Valkyrie revisted

2010-05-29T21:33:00.001-05:00

A while back I kicked off a recurring feature chronicling characters I have played with a description of Valkyrie whom I am (sort of) playing in a new paragon tier campaign run by my buddy Alex (the inestimable Ron Burgundy in the Moonsong City campaign). Valkyrie's a bit odd as she's a multi-classed Invoker/Barbarian. The one and only time I got to play her I found her glaring weakness to be hit points - she had too few to really hang out in the front lines where she needed to be to dish out her close burst and blast damage.

Well, the PH3 shipped with fancy schmancy new hybrid class rules. I've since updated Valkyrie to use these new rules. At first glance it appears she'll play better - she's got 12 more hit points for example and has a stronger mix of barbarian powers without having to sacrifice the angelic paragon path I'd wanted originally. Hell, she'll be able to fly in every encounter...can't beat that.

Anyway, here's her updated character sheet. There's a shot I'll be playing her next weekend. If I do I'll let you know how it goes...

On the Road Again...

2010-05-27T20:50:00.001-05:00

Eighteenth entry (after the 04/10 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/moonsong/wikis/poesjournalentryeighteen
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

We wintered with the dwarves. After about a week of sitting around watching the heroes perform various magical rituals, train with different dwarven experts and generally make nuisances of themselves, I started to get a bit restless. I guess I'm eager to get on with it Alia. Eager to get back to you.

Luckily, Ron was heading back through the portal to check on Burgandyville - I think that's what he's calling their little settlement in the plains these days - so I decided return with him and check in on the Raven. Several dwarven women accompanied us. Well accompanied Ron. He's a bit of a lady-killer, even amongst dwarves apparently. The dwarves were looking for new "breeding stock" and since (so I'm told) dwarves breed true, the humans in Burgandyville were fair game. Frankly, I tried not to think about it too much and carefully watched my alcohol intake when any of the dwarven women were nosing about. Ron wasn't nearly as concerned...heh.

I spent time with the Raven helping him train and recruit more followers. Some of the new recruits we dispatched throughout the human lands with instructions to quietly spread the truth about what had happened to the human village the orcs were claiming to have butchered. We will make your dream a reality Alia, I swear it.

After a week Ron and I returned through the portal to the dwarven stronghold. The difference was amazing. The dwarves were already organizing and moving into the caverns that Diamond had taken over. The clean up was dangerous and difficult work. Rather than sit around watching the heroes - who seemed in no particular hurry to go anywhere - I decided to join the dwarves clearing orcs out of the reclaimed mountain caverns. In return, the dwarves agreed to send several axe specialists to Burgandyville. Raven and his recruits would get some better training out of the deal. Seemed like a fair trade off. Especially since I'd kill orcs for nothing. Heh.

Anyway, before we got too settled in the dwarven thane held a ceremony to celebrate the freeing of the Grim Watch and the return of the high cleric. He passed out gifts to each of the heroes. He even had something for me, a beautiful silver flask of dwarven whiskey and a small statue of a raven, artfully carved out of black volcanic rock. I tried to explain that I was nothing more than a servant of the heroes, but the thane would hear nothing of it. The heroes assured me that it would be insulting to refuse these gifts so I accepted them. The flask came in very handy - I swore that night that it was magical for as much as I drank it never became empty. Turns out that was wishful thinking though. Since then I've had to fill it on my own. Ah, well, one can always dream. Heh. Luckily, I rarely have trouble find good dwarven spirits in the Grim Watch.

So, winter passed. A little over a week ago, around dinner with the thane, the heroes decided to set off for the Sun City. According to the thane, the sword I carry is from the empire that Sun City was a part of before being cast down. The city housed many secrets, one of which might include the answer to what the star metal is fated to become. As I said, I was eager to get on with things...to get the heroes back on their fated path. The dwarves seemed to be happy to see the heroes get on with things, too. They assembled to give them a grand send off - cheering wildly for Our Dwarf - High Cleric of the Grim Watch. About the only thing that could bring Our Dwarf down that day was Kobe. My little buddy slyly tripped the high and mighty cleric as he was blissfully acknowledging the dwarves cheers. Luckily, Our Dwarf was so distracted from all of the accolades being tossed his way that the two didn't come to blows.

Things got off to a quick start on our trip. Our first night out under the stars - something I'd definitely missed - ended up with a battle. Sunny's keen ears heard orcs yelling at someone they'd cornered nearby. When Sunny told us that the orcs had mentioned the star metal and were in fact demanding that it be turned over, the heroes really became interested. In no time we were arrayed around a force of orcs who'd set up in front of a cave. The leader of the orcs was calling for whoever was in the cave to turn over the star metal and surrender. A woman inside the cave was pleading with the orcs, insisting that she didn't have the metal. Ron heard a female voice and immediately went into action. A damsel in distress after all. Heh. Kobe and Beros joined Ron, attacking the orcs. As the orcs charged , Guss and I stepped up to shield our halfling and elven friends. Ron dropped a burst of magical fire on the orcs, catching me in the flames. Kobe skipped aside just in time, backing up a hill behind me to safety. Kleister Fokken pushed forward, calling encouragement to me. I straightened just in time to take a blow from an orc's great axe. Behind me I heard Sunny yelling something about the star metal. Whatever it was, she got the orcs' attention. Several of them peeled off and ran towards her. The remainder had Guss and I surrounded. Bad move on their part. Guss swung around in a deadly arc. He drove his blade through one orc after another, killing two of them. I kept the orcs focused on me, goading them to attack me while Guss cut them down. Beros' bow sang in the darkness and magical light flashed in various colors as Sunny and Ron took their toll on the orcs. Before long only the orc chieftain remained. The heroes made short work of him and I struck the killing blow after Our Dwarf pointed out a weakness in the beast's defenses. The power of the Queen flowed through me as the orc's blood steamed in the night air.

Ron approached the cave confidently - I mentioned there was woman inside, right? I guess if I were Ron and a woman were involved I'd be confident, too. Heh. In no time, he got the full story. While he schmoozed the woman, I took care of her two companions, both of whom were a bit worse for the wear after their encounter with the orcs. Between the Queen's power and my potions of healing I got them back on their feet. The woman, Tonya, recognized the heroes of prophecy immediately. They are heroes after all, so it is to be expected. Just makes my job harder in some ways. Tonya and her companions Russ, Joe and Darren had been inspired by the stories of the hero's adventures to set out to join them. Noble, but not really too smart. They should fit right in. Heh. Unfortunately, the elders of a nearby town under siege by an orc army also looking for our heroes had turned the young adventurers over to the orcs, hoping to save their town. Unsurprisingly, it hadn't worked, especially when Tonya and her gang had made a break for it.

Sunny suggested we return with the wounded adventurers to Grim Watch and seek the dwarven thane's advice about what to do about the human town and the orc army. After a short argument (well, as their arguments go), the heroes agreed with her. So, back to the Grim Watch we went. The dwarves seemed a bit puzzled upon our arrival. Ron and Our Dwarf were soon cloistered with the Thane and his advisors. I took the three young fighters to my favorite dwarven watering hole. They got their first taste of dwarven whiskey. Heh. It couldn't have been more than an hour later when a crestfallen Ron appeared at the entrance to the establishment. He waved me over and over several mugs of strong ale proceeded to fill me in on what had happened in the meeting with the Thane. I could hardly believe what he told me. Our Dwarf had apparently convinced the Thane and the dwarves NOT to send aid to the besieged humans. Apparently Our Dwarf believed it was too dangerous, would expose Grim Watch to the orcs, and would be a suicide mission. Ron was upset about the decision. As was I. The honorable dwarves I'd spent the winter fighting alongside would never have stood by while there were friends in need. But, Our Dwarf was a hero, so who was I to say otherwise. I went back to drinking...and well, let's just say after having a few I began to bemoan the fact that Our Dwarf apparently wasn't made of the same sturdy stuff as the dwarves I'd come to know over the winter. A few of my dwarven comrades picked up on this and pushed me for an explanation. They were not very impressed with Our Dwarf's honor or bravery either. The next thing I knew Ron and I had raised a force of 50 dwarven warriors willing to go save the humans and destroy the orc army. We marched out of the Grim Watch the next day with all of the heroes, albeit some more reluctant than others, tagging along.

Sadly, we were too late. Pillars of smoke, ravens and the smell of fresh death greeted us. We increased our already rapid pace (well, for dwarves, heh) for no other purpose than to confirm what we already knew. We found scores dead. With the help of the dwarves I spent the remainder of the day giving them proper burials and commending them to my Queen. That done, we set camp amongst the ruins for the night. Exhausted, I pulled on my leathers and fell fast asleep.

It seemed only seconds later that I was jerked awake by a dwarven sentry's yell. Skeletons were approaching. Our Dwarf, naked as a jaybird, began praying immediately. Maybe that'll help I thought as I grabbed my sword. But it usually takes more than prayers to destroy undead. Grimly, I rushed to the front lines to stand with my dwarven friends, thankful that Guss had insisted I acquire a backup set of leather armor to sleep in and that I'd been too tired that night to even take a single drink before collapsing in exhaustion.

A line of skeletons backed by three of the largest skeletons I'd even seen trod steadily towards the formation of dwarves. The bony figures paused momentarily as I rushed forward. Suddenly shards of bone burst from them in all directions. The dwarves took the brunt of this explosion and several were knocked down. The skeletons followed up immediately, pushing forward into the dwarven formation and thrusting their weapons into the fallen dwarves, finishing them off. The Queen's rage filled me and I cursed at the largest skeleton. He charged me. From the back I heard a voice taunting us and commanding the flaming skeletons in the second rank to target the fighter - clearly Guss. They did, and hurtling balls of fire at Guss from all sides. Guss threw his shield up and fought through the flames to engage a second large skeleton. Our Dwarf, still unclothed, commanded the rest of the dwarves to fall back. This was a job for the heroes. No frack. The dwarves reluctantly obeyed. I ducked but couldn't entirely avoid a blow from the large skeleton in front of me. I repaid the favor with a strike from my sword, knocking some chips off of the creature's thigh bone.

Guss gasped and I turned to see what had happened. The leader had charged forward and smashed him in the stomach with his fist. Guss was doubled over gasping for breath. Uh oh. The other skeleton taunted me - his fiery eyes blazing as he mocked the Queen. I struck at him without a thought, this time sweeping off one of his hands with my cold blade. A blow to the head I didn't see coming dazed me and I stumbled back a step just as Our Dwarf shouted a word of power. His faith pushed the skeleton next to me to the ground. Fire exploded around me. Frack. The fire skeletons had selected a new target. Lucky for me. At least the burst of heat snapped me out of my daze.

Nearby, Kleister began directing the battle. He thrust Guss into the thick of the action, giving him an opening to strike the leader. Unfortunately, it also meant Guss was suddenly surrounded by undead. Guss is always toughest backed into a corner. This time was no different. His blade whirled so fast I thought he'd pulled a second one when I wasn't looking. A shower of bone chips flew. As Guss came to a stop, several steps away from the surrounding creatures, two skeletons slowly collapsed into inanimate piles of bone. Thicket of blades, indeed. Heh.

A cloud of thick smoke surrounded the two large skeletons. Acid if the smell and sizzling sound were any indication. Thanks Ron. I surveyed the battle quickly. Beros was firing arrows at the fire skeletons, who'd spread out around us. Our Dwarf was moving up to heal Guss. Sunny tossed some magic at some more fire skeletons looking to flank us on the right. Kobe appeared out of nowhere to stab the leader in the calf with his dagger. And Ron, as usual was blasting things left and right. The leader turned on Kobe, cursed my little buddy and raised his arm to smite him. Before the leader could land the blow however, Guss skewered him, thrusting his sword straight through the creature's ribcage. With a wicked twist, Guss ripped the blade free, scattering the creature's ribs across the battlefield. He fell with a crash as Kobe leaped clear.

With the leader down, the attack lost its cohesion. The Heroes quickly mopped up the remaining skeletons. I nearly died protecting Kobe and Our Dwarf from one of the larger ones. Lucky for me, Ron stepped up and blasted the skeleton back with a thundering magical burst. Ron held off the creature long enough for Our Dwarf to call down some healing on me. He then promptly fled the field. Hopefully, he was heading out to get some clothes. Heh. Guss ran down and destroyed the remaining fire skeletons. The rest of the heroes and I focused on the last big skeleton. In seconds, we'd reduced him to nothing more than a pile of bleached white bones.

Once more I tended to the dead. Dwarves this time. I know it's part of my calling, but honestly Alia, my heart's not in it anymore. I helped my comrades among the dwarves prepare the bodies of the fallen for the return to the Grim Watch. They were grim themselves, but determined. Now, I have a moment of quiet and I sit, writing to and thinking of you. That, and watching as the heroes huddle together, talking...planning their next move. We'll see where they lead me to next. Hopefully another step closer to ending this all and bringing me home to you.

Poe

OK, here's an iPad usage I could get behind...

2010-05-14T21:29:00.004-05:00

One of my more consistently good reads in the gamer blogosphere, NewbieDm, pointed out the other day that new errata had been published by WotC for 4th edition. I was a bit amazed to read this in his post on the subject:

For the past two years almost, I’ve been printing out the erratas, updating my books, cutting and pasting over my DMG and PHB and all that good stuff.

Really? I guess I don't really have my geek on because doing this honestly never occurred to me. I think I've looked at the errata once but I wouldn't swear to it. Hell, I just recently got a subscription to DDI. Our group's resident rules expert seems to stay on top of these things and I'm not DMing, so maybe I'm just getting lazy.

Anyway, reading NewbieDm's post and thinking about the the pain he was having keeping his hardcover books up to date reminded me of something I'd read by Gina Trapani (a hero of mine from her days at Lifehacker and now Smarterware) about Kindle updating books on the fly*. That's when it hit me...if an iPad would do this for all of my D&D books - effectively replacing them all with a single electronic version that was always up to date - I'd have to seriously consider buying one.

I know, I know, the D&D Compendium already does this...but I'm talking about maintaining the look and feel of the books themselves. I've used the Compendium a bit and it's really not the same as paging through a book. And yes, I'm sure that at least one of the pro-iPad posts I linked to in my earlier semi-rant about the penetration of iPad hype into the gamer blogosphere mentioned a similar idea. So sue me. I guess my hope would be that something like this comes along for a form factor - tablet or otherwise - that isn't firmly in Cupertino's stranglehold.

* I just checked....unfortunately, no, none of the rulebooks for 4th Edition appear to be available for the Kindle...

Super hero for a day...

2010-05-05T21:33:00.000-05:00

Maybe it's a stretch to link to this on my blog since I have generally tried to stay focused on D&D related ramblings. What is roleplaying other than a chance to pretend, if only for a few hours, to be a superhero?

The whole article at the Seattle Times reminded me of the awesome super powers hidden behind the mild mannered secret identities of my friends and neighbors. So what's your super power?

Enough already...

2010-05-02T16:23:00.000-05:00

I get it...the iPad is a revolutionary device that is going to change the world. Fine. I'm just a little sick of the multitude of posts about it and how it is going to change how we play D&D. Really? Is Apple's marketing arm so long and thorough that even our obscure subculture is being targeted? OK, that's probably overly snarky and/or paranoid.

Judging from the number of iPhones around our game table there's a large crossover between gamers and those who appreciate solid tech gadgets. Hey, I'm not so against the thing that I'm going to ban it or anything (don't worry - that ban has since been lifted). I just think the hype is a bit overwrought.

Full disclosure: the guy who plays Our Dwarf in the Moonsong City campaign showed up last session with a shiny new iPad. He had his whole character sheet on it. Nifty. He was even nice enough to let me check it out a bit. Was it nice? Of course. Apple doesn't make junk. Did it seem revolutionary? Not so much.

If news reports are right, we're going to see a slew of similar gadgets over the next year or so. I'm sure some or all of these devices will find their way to our game tables in one form or another. Hopefully the software can keep up with the new form factor so that they are more than expensive, electronic character sheets.

Poe

2010-04-25T14:27:00.000-05:00

Time for another character write up. This time I'm writing up Poe, my character in the Moonsong City campaign. It's hard to believe, but the campaign has been going on for just about 2 years already. The characters are getting close to hitting 10th level and we're starting to get geared up for the paragon tier. It should be interesting.

Poe is the first 4E character I made. During character creation it became clear that we needed a second defender. We already had a fighter (Poe's hero Guss) so I thought I'd give a paladin a try. For the first time ever. Yeah, I tend to lean towards either sneaky, know it all types (rogues, bards) or magical ones (mages mostly). The only cleric I'd played before now was multi-classed as a rogue (you can imagine that back story...). So a paladin was going to be a big change of pace for me. I mitigated some of this change by deciding to make him a paladin of the Raven Queen. A paladin of the goddess of fate, death and winter. Yeah, I've got issues. But, I think it's turned out pretty well. I've managed to make him all of the things you'd expect from a classic paladin - inspiring (well, occasionally...), self sacrificing, fearless in battle, etc. He just comes at it from a slightly different place. He's also become a bit of a romantic - if you've been following along in his adventure journal you know what I mean.

As I mentioned when discussing my other 4E character Valkyrie I came up with a core mechanic for Poe early on - he would be able to heal as much as possible. I envisioned him much like the Crow - dark, brooding and deadly. Armed with this mechanic Poe was pretty easy to create. Choices were pretty clear. I did notice that paladin's in 4E got a major upgrade with the release of the Divine Power source book and was happy to take advantage of that information to give him a nice bump in power. So far I haven't tried to incorporate anything from the Dragon Magazine's Channel Divinity article The Raven Queen's Champions (DDI subscription required). Maybe at some point in the future. Here's what he looks like at 9th level:

Poe

9th level male Paladin of the Raven Queen

See character sheet generated from Wizard's Character Builder here.

Poe was born the youngest son of a successful priest of Pelor. Darkness had fallen across the land, but Poe's father managed to stay beneath the radar and to continue his good works in spite of it all. And his good works paid off well, leaving him a major player in the small town where Poe grew up. And so, when Poe married a young woman from the neighboring town the wedding party was extravagant and the feasting exceptional for the times. Two days after the wedding, Poe and his bride packed up their gifts and her belongings and set out for Poe's home town to start their new life together. Riding through the woods with his father, family, friends and holding the hand of his love, his wife Alia, Poe had never been happier. Sadly, his happiness was short lived. During a mid morning break in a clearing to water the horses and grab a snack, the group was ambushed by a patrol of orcs. Everything of value was taken, the men were slaughtered and the women carried off. Poe was left for dead - stabbed through the chest with a spear. As he lay in the snow bleeding and certain that he was dying he heard his wife's screams as the orc thugs dragged her away. Despite being the son of a priest of Pelor, he cast his prayers to the Raven Queen. Please he begged Her with his dying breaths, take Alia, too - better for her to die than to suffer through the torture, abuse and pain that was certain to be her future. Please, he prayed, change Alia's fate, let her die so that we can be together. That was the last he remembered for a while.

Poe awoke as the afternoon was fading into evening. The spear was still in his chest. He watched it move with every tortured breath he drew. Next to him on the blood encrusted snow stood a raven. It bobbed its head at him as if nodding. Then it hopped away. Poe sat up. He'd never been so cold. Around him, his friends and family's bodies were slowing freezing. The raven squawked. It hopped a bit further away again. Poe realized he was supposed to follow it. Numbly, he pushed the spear the rest of the way through his chest, releasing a flood of blood into his mouth. Cold. I must be dead, he thought. Somehow however, he wasn't. His legs were blocks of ice, so the best he could manage was to crawl. He followed the raven for what seemed like hours. Night fell and a full moon lit the way. The bird led him to a clearing where he found more death. This time it was mainly orcs. The orc patrol that had destroyed the wedding party that morning had been in turn ambushed and slaughtered by something or someone else. Whoever or whatever it was had left no one alive. He crawled among the corpses until he found hers. Alia, his bride, dead. The raven sat next to him as he wept, looking at him knowingly. Poe understood. The Queen had answered his prayer. Alia had been granted an untimely death, saving her from an awful fate. But now the Queen was going to extract a price in return. Poe's servitude until his own death...which was apparently not to be any time soon. Poe followed the raven to a nearby cave - nothing more than a hollow in a large old tree, really - and spent the rest of the winter there. The Queen's power kept him alive and he survived the long winter accompanied only by the raven (who brought him tidbits of food) and his dark thoughts. All he wanted to do was die so that he could be with his love, Alia. But the beliefs drummed into him by his father and his fear of the Raven Queen's retribution not only on him, but on his dead wife as well, kept him from taking his own life. In time, he accepted his fate and became a grudging servant of the Queen. He still welcomes death as he hopes it will mean being reunited with Alia. But he also knows that the Queen has a fate in mind for him. Occasionally when he strays or needs guidance She sends the raven to him to nudge him back on the right path. It was one such "nudge" that sent him to Havenbrow where he met the heroes of prophecy (otherwise known as Burgandy's Follies). Since that day he has been following the heroes and attempting to keep them alive so that they can fulfill their fates. He's come to believe that this is the fate the Queen has saved him for...

Diamonds are a Guss' best friend

2010-04-17T15:45:00.002-05:00

Seventeenth entry (after the 03/10 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/moonsong/wikis/poesjournalentryseventeen
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

Well, Alia perhaps things are really starting to turn around. I'm sitting here in a rebuilt dwarven citadel - the Grim Watcher they call it - surrounded by the hustle and bustle of hundreds, maybe even thousands of dwarves. All of them have a light in their eyes unlike anything I've seen before. I imagine it must be the same light that shines from the crystal nestled among the black pearls of my prayer beads. Hope. Frack, but it's been a long time coming.

I guess I should have figured something was different when our dwarf agreed to swear a blood oath to defend the dwarven temple - and risk being cursed if he allowed the temple to be defiled. Of course, swearing the oath and lighting the brazier did give the heroes access to the dwarven forge. And a frack-load of treasure. Heh. I shouldn't complain though. A suit of plate from that lode saved my ass during the battle against the dragon. Diamond they said her name was. After listening to the last dwarven soul regale us with how Diamond had dispatched the dwarven heroes sent to retake the mountain our victory to secure the forge seemed less impressive. One thing about these heroes though - when they get their mind to something they don't ever back down. Especially if there's a dragon's horde at stake. Heh.

So it was that mere hours later we entered the dragon's lair. There were three entrances to Diamond's home, individual platforms a good 10 of 15 feet above the main floor of the huge cavern that was once the heart of the dwarven fortress. Sunlight from outside reflected off the clear ice walls. It was blindingly bright after having spent the last few days in torchlit gloom. My eyes adjusted quickly and though and I surveyed the room. Mist obscured most of the floor. What I could make out appeared to be ice, embedded with sharp, white shards of bones. Diamond apparently wasn't the cleanly sort. Heh.

At the far side of the cavern, in a raised area, lay Diamond. She was as big as advertised. And as white. And, asleep. I whispered a prayer of thanks to the Queen. She'd apparently decided to smile on us today. About frackin' time, I added under my breath. If the dwarven spirit was right, we'd need all the help we could get.

I'd spoken too soo though. As Guss and I carefully descended to the cavern floor, Diamond rose from her slumber. She stretched like a cat and disappeared. Frack. Kleister lept from the ledge behind me, somersaulted through the air over my head and landed nimbly. Somehow he managed not to impale himself on the jagged end of what was probably once the thigh bone of a horse. Kleister's spear thrummed in anticipation. My prayer beads froze around my wrist. Kleister caught his breath. His head whipped around and he caught my gaze. I shrugged and pointed towards where Diamond had been. He nodded, tipped his spear at me and started off across the cavern floor. As he advanced, I heard chattering from above. Frack. More frackin' kobolds. I couldn't tell exactly where the little frackers were yet, but if they had missle weapons the mist filled cavern would be a killing field. Just like the dwarf had said. Of course, the dwarves didn't have Ron. Heh.

Ron's opened by conjuring poisonous green fog to give us cover. As it billowed out of the ground, the mist covering the cavern floor writhed and crackled with blue energy. The energy coalesced into a sparking energy ball. Arcs of energy shot back at us. I tried to dodge, but the energy flowed through the mist. As it hit, waves of nausea washed over me. It was as if I was standing within the green fog of Ron's spell (trust me, I know the feeling). IF this kept up Ron would kill us before the dragon even got in a breath, I wasn't the only one worried about this. Beros launched several arrows at the energy ball. Each shot scattered bits of energy off of it. It could be hurt. OK, we had a shot. I grinned and started forward after Kleister.

With my first step I nearly tripped over a ghoul. It rose out of the mist right in front of me. A second ghoul clawed at my arm, pulling me around. And then the kobolds struck. Ice balls began raining down from above. The frackin' kobolds had slings. I ignored them. There were undead about. I drove the Queen's blade through the chest of the nearest ghoul. Guss cut another down and Sunny blasted a third into oblivian.

I heard Ron calling out the words to another spell and magical bolts of force flew from the entryway where he stood. He targeted the ball of energy, too. It exploded in a flash of light. Score one for the heroes. There was little time for celebrating though as Diamond appeared out of nowhere. She swooped down at Beros swiping at him with her massive claws. The elf threw himself to the ground and managed to avoid being grabbed. I swung around, looking for a chance to strike at her. As I watched Diamond became indistinct and blurry and I couldn't get a good read on where exactly she was. Kleister could though. With a loud battle cry, he charged and plunged his spear into Diamond's chest. Blue blood splashed across his armor, hissing and crackling into frozen droplets as it scattered to the ground. Beros and Kobe followed Kleister's example, Beros putting one arrow into the creature's neck and a second into its leg and Kobe tossing a dagger into the dragon's ample gut.

The crystal prayer bead on my wrist flared with light. You were with me Alia...and I used that power on Diamond. The beast hissed and shook it off. Frack. The heroes converged on her though, hoping for a quick kill. Ron casually flicked some more magical bolts. This time he took down a kobold. The little fracker fell screaming from the alcove where he'd been taking potshots at us. I grinned and moved to engage Diamond directly. Let's just say I got my wish. Her huge scaly claw grabbed me and jerked me off my feet. In seconds I was airborne, being crushed in her icy grip. Diamond quickly winged higher into the air. I swung my sword but couldn't get a good angle to strike her with any force. I didn't dare try to pry myself loose, for fear of dropping my blade...from this height and with the mist covering the floor below the weapon would be gone for good. Diamond made the decision for me. She dropped me right over Ron's poison cloud. I plummetted to the ground. Frack, frack, frack. Luckily, I didn't land right on any of the sharper bones. My new armor seemed to cushion a lot of the blow. I dragged myself to my feet and stumbled out of the cloud, trying not to inhale too deeply. A hail of ice balls greeted me. Frack you, too kobold scum...

The heroes were about 50 feet away, killing ghouls and kobolds. Even Ron had descended to the floor of the cavern. The dragon apparently had disappeared again. I scanned the area and moved to rejoin the heroes. No sign of Diamond. Guss and Sunny made short work of a few more ghouls. Beros began picking off kobolds. Even our dwarf began moving forward. Then Diamond reappeared. Directly above Ron. She roared and breathed a frigid blast of air. Ron dove into the bleached skull of some impossibly large creature. When the frosty breath cleared he poked his head out...apparently unscathed. Sunny ran forward, shimmered and seemed to transform into a silvery, mercurial liquid. She hurled magic at Diamond, drawing the beast's attention away from Ron. Ron siezed the opening Sunny had given him and cast another spell. He froze Diamond in place and then engulfed her in a wall of fire. Diamond roared again. This time in pain. She also breathed again. This breath caught Sunny, our dwarf, and Ron. Amazingly, the dragon then waved her claw and fired magical bolts at Ron. Guss and Kleister came to Ron's defense. I wasn't far behind. Sunny cast another spell behind us and Diamond thrashed, held again in the midst of the wall of fire. Our dwarf moved in and smacked the beast across the flank. Diamond spun, and roared. This roar was deafening and Guss, our dwarf and Sunny were stunned. Ron escaped again however and called forth a blizzard around Diamond. Kleister charged directly into the teeth of the gale. He struck another telling blow with his spear. Inspired, I followed him in, grunting as the dragon's claw caught Kleister across the chest. Diamond breathed yet again and frigid cold enveloped me. Nothing I wasn't used to...being a paladin of the Queen of Winter has its perks. Heh.

Kleister healed me then plunged through the wall of fire to take another shot at Diamond. Beros loosed an arrow that flew true - straight into Diamond's left eye. I realized I hadn't seen Kobe for a while. Frack. I hoped the little fellow was Ok, but I didn't have time to track him down. I followed the sound of Kleister's voice through the mayhem. He struck Diamond yet again with his spear and spun her around, exposing her flank to the rest of us. We all took our shots on her and Guss even managed to pull her to the ground. Diamond whirled around, her good eye widening in desparation, and breathed on us again. I think she'd just realized that this was going to be her end. Death smiles at us all, even ancient white dragons. She decided not to smile back. Heh. With a move that was impossibly quick for a creature her size, Diamond snatched Guss and launched herself into the air. Frack. I took off in pursuit, but she gained altitude fast and the best I could do was stay beneath them and shout encouragment to Guss. In seconds she'd be out the large opening in the cavern wall and outside the mountain. Double frack. Arrows flew past me, scoring hits in Diamond's back. She roared in pain, but kept going and kept her hold on Guss. Guss struggled, but couldn't break her grip. Sunny shouted from behind me and blackness exploded around Diamond's head. She lurched suddenly to the side and then went limp in the air above me...uh oh. Guss yelled at me and I tried to jump aside. Ever try to jump in plate armor? Yeah. It hurt, but I'm nothing if not tough. Ok, it was mostly her tail that hit me. Guss fared just as well. The dragon's corpse twisted as it fell, so he ended up landing on top. He hopped down, dusted himself off and pulled me out from under her tail. The heroes gathered around to survery their latest handiwork. One less dragon in the world. Heh.

I will say that it really didn't seem like a turning point at the time. But the Queen works in strange ways. I've heard now that even the humans are becoming bolder throughout the land. Rebelling against the orcs. It makes me smile, thinking of the Raven, somewhere out there killing orcs. It's a good thing. The heroes are basking in their hard won glory. They deserve to enjoy it. For now. The Queen's not done with them yet I'm afraid. Until she is and I am free of Her machinations, free to return to you Alia, I'll be at their sides to see that Her will is done.

Poe.

Speaking of cliffhangers...

2010-04-11T21:55:00.000-05:00

One thing that I liked about running a campaign using a TV show model, complete with a summer hiatus, was that it allowed for some really good cliffhangers. Out of four "seasons" I managed a couple of really good ones. For example, the first season ended with the group's employer, an epic level psion (effectively) being struck down in front of them*:

"Now, " the Queen says, rising easily and turning to Ysaie, "about that copy of the Writings - I can certainly use them for my research. I believe there are passages that have a direct bearing on what my erstwhile lieutenant is up to..."

As she speaks, the Queen's words begin to slur drunkenly. Her eyes cloud and she stumbles backwards as if struck, falling to one knee. Catching herself, she shakes her head as if trying to clear it. The stone on the pommel of her weapon suddenly blazes with pure white light. Her eyes snap back into focus, grabbing and holding Ysaie's gaze. "Call Mazaar", she hisses through clenched teeth, then with a twitch, her eyes roll back into her head, the brilliance from the gem on her sword winks out and she falls lifelessly to the ground.

That was the last they saw of her until nearly the end of the campaign though it did lead to their first encounter with the main villain of the campaign as he showed up to pick up her lifeless form and the powerful artifact she carried. Though come to think of it they never actually managed to call Mazaar...

The second season ended on an even bigger cliffhanger. As the group looked on an invasion force of githyanki flying ships appeared in the sky above the city they were in:

...it was a blinded Cletus who struck the final blow that slew the demon, impaling it on his seldom used sword.

"No matter about me...it begins..." the creature whispered as it died, its laugh gurgling quietly through blood and its eyes rolling upward...

Above them, in the lengthening gloom of the setting sun a black hole blossomed in the sky. Through this rent in the twilight burst first one, then two then more sinewy bat-winged lizards, large even at a distance, their horned death's head visages contorting as they shrieked battle cries. On their dull black scaled backs were mounted gith knights - their plate armor and sharp lances reflecting the sun's dying rays. The knights guided their beasts in great arcing loops, swinging around slower moving, impossibly huge, impossibly flying structures that had to be ships of some sort, though their twisted structures made them look more like some kind of strange wooden and metallic monsters. Escorted by the mounted knights, these ships slowly moved out over the city, seemingly of their own accord, their long shadows plunging entire neighborhoods into sudden darkness as they descended to roof top levels. As the group watched, the largest of the dreygaens - for what else but one of these mythical creatures of nightmare could it have been - swung low past the main gates to the city and over the Merchant's Bazaar. Merchants and customers packing up for the evening broke from their stunned observation of the sky and fled before the great beast. Not all made it - a great gout of boiling gray fluid spouted from the beast's opened mouth, engulfing stalls, buildings and those fleeing. Their death screams echoed off the walls of the main keep and in the dreygaen's wake there was only destruction - sizzling remnants of what were wooden and cloth stalls and the twisted remains of what was just seconds before their screaming owners. The shadowy light failed around the group as one of the largest ships moved directly over the tower...growing still larger as it descended directly over their heads...

Season three opened with the group fighting their way off the rooftop and out of the city. Pretty good stuff.

Things tapered off considerably in seasons 3 and 4 - both ended without real solid cliffhangers. The final episodes were solid, but things were wrapped up pretty neatly.

I was only occasionally able to end a session on a good cliffhanger. Half the time sessions were ending halfway through my prepared material - things always took way longer than I expected - so arranging a cliffhanger in the shorter time frames never really seemed to work out. That's something I plan to work on for my next campaign. The season ending cliffhangers were well received and seemed to add some excitement and incentive to the return of the next season. With my group's monthly playing schedule I think incorporating some of that excitement between individual episodes would be worthwhile.

*If you enjoy these excerpts stay tuned...the full set of recaps from my original Taera campaign used to be available on the interwebs. I'm looking to get them posted somewhere again soon. I'll let you know here where they end up when I do. For anyone who took part in the campaign they make for a fun stroll down memory lane and for anyone else, well, hopefully they're somewhat entertaining...

Cons...

2010-03-30T12:48:00.000-05:00

I've never been to a convention. But the last couple of episodes of Fear The Boot's podcast which featured a live forum from the group's convention (Fear The Con) and an episode devoted to preparing for a con have peaked my interest. Then I read this post from Wil Wheaton about PAX East. Maybe someday I'll be that guy at his first convention or maybe someday our gang will make one more (last?) big field trip to the grandaddy of them all and for once I'll tag along.

Memo from a writer for the small screen...

2010-03-29T20:38:00.000-05:00

The Unit is a show I discovered a couple of years into its short run on TV. I found it a great source for scenarios for D&D. Sadly, it's been canceled. However, one thing that's come to light is this memo from the show's creator, David Mamet to the show's screen writers. It's chock full of great stuff for writers and with the right interpretation, sound advice for a DM. Especially a DM who like me tends to think of their campaign in terms of a TV show. For example, if you think of the players as an active "audience", the following hits home for any campaign (that's him yelling in the original, not my added emphasis...):

BUT NOTE:THE AUDIENCE WILL NOT TUNE IN TO WATCH INFORMATION. YOU WOULDN’T, I WOULDN’T. NO ONE WOULD OR WILL. THE AUDIENCE WILL ONLY TUNEIN AND STAY TUNED TO WATCH DRAMA.

Like a good TV show, a campaign with drama will keep your players tuned in. Mamet even provides a succinct definition of drama:

QUESTION:WHAT IS DRAMA? DRAMA, AGAIN, IS THE QUEST OF THE HERO TOOVERCOME THOSE THINGS WHICH PREVENT HIM FROM ACHIEVING A SPECIFIC,ACUTE GOAL.

SO: WE, THE WRITERS, MUST ASK OURSELVES OF EVERY SCENE THESE THREE QUESTIONS.

1) WHO WANTS WHAT?

2) WHAT HAPPENS IF HE DON’T GET IT?

3) WHY NOW?

Answering these questions about any encounter you're building for your game will go a long way to making that encounter more meaningful. There's many more gems in the memo that make it worth reading for any DM, especially if you make some simple substitutions (audience == players, hero == PCs, etc.). For example, I particularly like this one:

THE JOB OF THE DRAMATIST IS TO MAKE THE AUDIENCE WONDER WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. NOT TO EXPLAIN TO THEM WHAT JUST HAPPENED, OR TO*SUGGEST* TOTHEM WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

It may be harder for a DM to evoke this sense of wonder in players since they have more control over what happens next than a TV audience. It's well worth the effort though. The best moments from my stint as a DM occurred when I either set up circumstances where I wasn't sure what the players would do, when the players did something completely unexpected and I had to react to it on the fly. or when we were all wondering, if even for a few minutes or the time it took for a dice to roll, what was going to happen next.

Really, that's just the tip of the iceberg here. If you're creating a campaign or building encounters, read the whole thing. You won't be disappointed.

Campaign Planning

2010-03-20T21:48:00.003-05:00

Since its release, the 4E DMG2 has been talked up on various blogs. I recently came into some free Amazon money, so I grabbed a copy of it*. I've made my way through the DMG2 and have to say that I wasn't dissapointed. It's a great resource for any DM (or GM of any system really) who is putting together a campaign. I especially liked how planning was broken down explicitly for each tier of play. So a major plot would carry through the heroic tier, grow in scope for the paragon tier and then change into yet a third plot for the epic levels.

The whole thing reminded me a bit of how I ran my Taera campaign. I'd read an article somewhere - probably Dungeon magazine or something similar published around the turn of the century - that suggested treating your campaign like a TV show. I'd followed through with that advice to the point of taking a summer hiatus. This break in the campaign worked out well for my personal life - the lovely wife was a teacher with summers off - and for the campaign. I used the time off to recharge, re-focus and to update story lines before launching into the next "season". I think each season lasted roughly 13 episodes (53 sessions spread out over 4 seasons) and like episodic TV from the '90's (Star Trek: TNG springs to mind...Locutus anyone?) managed to end with a pretty good cliffhanger.

The method seemed to work pretty well and reading the DMG2, I could see that method of planning easily mapping to the three tiers of play in 4E. Furthermore, laying down long term plans from the start would make things easier. Perhaps so much so that the length of the hiatus between "seasons" could be shortened since the general arc of the next season would already have been planned out and would only need to be tweaked to account for the events in the previous season. Of course, my first campaign's seasons only covered 4 character levels at most (the highest level characters were about 12th level at the end of the campaign) so that'd probably have to be changed. That isn't necessarily a bad thing since I've been thinking about character advancement anyway and considering speeding it up (which is really fodder for a future post - consider this foreshadowing if you like). I'm sure there's other things I'd have to adjust, especially since planning for an epic level campaign - and really a paragon level - isn't something I've had a chance to do before. But, as I'll likely have plenty of time to think this over and plan before I get to run a game again that shouldn't pose much of a problem.

*I got my hands on a PH3 as well, maybe more on that later assuming I have anything to add to the already extensive body of reviews out there...

I guess I'm not the only one...

2010-03-10T20:43:00.001-06:00

Thinking about playing 4E without classes. Maybe it's the whole idea of hybrid classes coming at us in the soon to be released PH3. Anyway, Matt didn't abstract the classes as much as I was thinking in my post on the subject (though several of the commenter's on his post did hit on that idea...) but he sure put a lot more concrete thought into it, making his post well worth the read.

I'm not sure I like the idea of giving every class the same starting and leveling up hit points personally. And I'd rather make the class features powers to be chosen than have players select a base class. I suspect that this would be pretty difficult with things like sneak attack or anything else that isn't already written up as a power.

Over all though I agree with Matt and many of his commenter's: there'd be ~~some~~ a lot of work involved to balance and police such a system to make sure it wasn't horribly abused by players. But, 4E certainly seems to lend itself to this kind of tinkering and it would be a fun experiment in adding flexibility to a homebrew game, especially for one that only had a few experienced players.

No Class...

2010-03-06T19:24:00.000-06:00

I recently listened to a podcast of the D&D Experience's seminar on the upcoming Dark Sun release*. In the new rules a new concept of Themes is being added. Listening to the explanation of this new feature - which seems to amount to a way to get an extra free encounter power at 1st level, more power creep but that's another post - something struck me. Classes in 4E are starting to seem sort of extraneous.

OK, maybe that's overstating it a bit. I'm not a professional game designer, and have only DM'd one campaign in my life so maybe I'm way off base. But hear me out.

The way things are set up right now, classes provide a bit of fluff, a few related powers and the basics for fulfilling one of four core roles in a party (things like number of surges, hit point progress, defenses, and power source). Each class also provides a set of powers specific to that class.

It seems to me the system could be made more flexible - perhaps more in the vein of GURPS - if classes were abstracted one level further - to roles and power sources. So, instead of picking a class, a player would select one of the four roles and then a power source. All powers could be lumped into the role they help fill and the power source they require rather than being segregated to a class. It would be up to the player to select from this larger list to tailor their character as they wished. Class specific powers could be grouped in a package or simply thrown into the larger pool of powers for the role the class currently fills. Perhaps selecting across roles or power sources would be allowed as well - similar to the hybrid rules that are said to be coming in the Player's Handbook 3 (and that are already on DDI).

I'm sure this added flexibility would make it easier to create a character that sucked and probably easier for certain players I know to create a character that totally kicked tail. But really, that's possible now (though arguably not to as great an extent). But if, as is the promise in the system (at least I believe there is this assumption), powers are well balanced, then really there shouldn't be too much danger in something like this.

*Which I am totally planning to buy even if I never run them completely as is. I never purchased them back in the '90's since I wasn't in a regular game at the time but I devoured everything I could about the setting and loved it. Some of my homebrew campaign world blatantly ripped stuff off from it as well - Mul for example. Nothing I heard in the podcast discouraged this either...just got me excited all over again. Who knows, maybe running a game in Athas would make prepping easier...

Character building

2010-02-28T15:46:00.002-06:00

Ever since reading this post at Stupid Ranger I've been thinking about a series for this blog cataloging the various characters I've played over the years. While I doubt that anyone reading this will be moved to create a cool "artist's rendition" of any of them, I figure it'll at least be fun for me and possibly of use for DMs out there looking for an NPC or two to drop into their game. Who knows, maybe for kicks, I'll even try to create them all in 4th edition.

As I've mentioned, my group is starting up a secondary campaign. We're playing through Revenge of the Giants. Our DM, Alex (a.k.a. Ron Burgundy in the Moonsong City campaign), asked everyone to create an 11th level character. Though I likely won't be attending many sessions I was able to make the first one, so I joined in the fun and created a character for the campaign. I wanted to try something completely different than Poe and was looking to try out the magic rules in 4E a bit so I gravitated towards a controller. I also wanted to try a class that we didn't already have running in our main campaign, so I ruled out Wizard immediately. That left Invoker and Druid.

I settled on Invoker and then cast around looking for a good concept for the character. I'm big on concepts...I think I've mentioned that. Character hooks, back story, a certain "look", etc. I think it's my favorite part of gaming actually. I gravitated towards the Angelic Aspect paragon path and hit on the idea of being a valkyrie. What's not to like? An inspired, otherworldly warrior-woman who goes beserk in battle. I figured the thunder and lightning invoker powers would work well. She could be a deva worshipper of Kord about to make the transition to a full-fledged angel. The invoker summoning powers could be her bringing her soon-to-be sisters in to help her out (just re-skinning angels as valkyries...). Cool.

The more I played with the concept the trickier it got though. I had this image of a valkyrie stalking through the battle field, wielding a sword and cutting down or blasting down her foes. And there was the whole beserk thing. Neither would really work with a vanilla invoker. Plus, if there's one thing I've learned from Poe about building a character in 4E, it's to focus on a single mechanic as much as possible. In Poe's case, it's being a damage sponge. At any point where I made a choice I chose to increase his number of healing surges or his hit points if possible. For this new character, I needed something similar.

Based on my concept, I decided to go with a front line area of effect attacker. Every attack power she took would affect multiple targets and be capable of being fired from the front lines. That meant all close attack powers and preferably bursts or blasts. Invokers had plenty to fit that constraint. But, I still didn't have the look and feel I wanted - no big melee weapon, no beserker rage.

So I multi-classed into barbarian. This drew skepticism from our resident rules expert and a LOL from the DM. Not the best of combinations. But it got me to where I wanted to be. The barbarian powers let me add a daily rage (one that has me doing lightning damage to all foes around me so it fits really nicely with worshipping Kord) and allows me to effectively swing a melee weapon. Besides, since I won't likely be playing her too much I figured something risky was worth a shot and I'd get to take the multi-classing rules out for a spin. Add in a bit of a dwarven back story to fit in with a couple other players from the group - we all took a tribal feat to boost our healing - and there she was. Perfect.

Well, almost. I got to play her last night and the major issue with the character came to light right away. Lack of hit points. I'm playing a controller who needs to be in the front lines. Despite some really wretched dice rolling though she did fairly well - only knocked to 0 hit points once in two combats - and was overall a blast to play. Hopefully, I'll get to play her again.

Well, anyway, here are her details. Her back story is a bit sketchy since she's a bit of a one-off character. I figure I'll flesh it out as needed the longer I play her.

Valkyrie
11th level female Deva Invoker/Barbarian
See character sheet generated from Wizard's character builder here.

Valkyrie (not her real name) is a deva who was recently reincarnated from the spirit of a rebellious dwarven woman named Valka*. Valka hated the strict patriarchal society of the dwarves and the worship of Moradin, turning to a different god, Kord, for solace. She had a terrible temper and was constantly getting into trouble due to it. Usually she was able to fight her way out of it, mainly because she was reckless and fearless in battle. At some point however, she got in over her head and was killed. That's when Valkyrie awoke. She found herself on a cliff in the mountains overlooking a valley that looked familiar. In the middle of a terrible thunderstorm. A passing dwarven caravan, heading for a stronghold concealed in the valley picked her up and took her in - looking past the strange color of her skin (jet-black) and the her hair (perfectly white). Years later, she's proved herself a valuable asset to the dwarves and feels very much at home with them. The remnants of Valka's temper are much more controlled now, coming out only in battle, when Valkyrie enters a violent rage and thunder and lightning explode from all around her as she lays about her with her battle axe. She keeps her hair braided tightly now, held in place with a wooden shard that's as strong and sharp as a dagger and that magically transforms into a full staff when needed (her implement - a piece of wood from a tree struck by lightning during the storm that was raging when she was reborn). She wears glistening dwarven chainmail and wields a wickedly sharp battle axe in her primary hand and the wooden shard in the other when fighting. She lives for the thrill of battle, taking any excuse to let her hair down and fight. The dwarven leaders have channeled her successfully so far into helping defend the stronghold - a task made easier by the occasional flashes of memories she has of her former life as a dwarf.

* last name withheld to protect the innocent - I'm considering having her be related in some way to one of the two other dwarves in the party - Gulga Dern, a warden, or Dorin Thunderstone, a shaman. If that happens I'll have to use one of those names as a last name. Otherwise, I'll have to come up with something else...

Sorry Jim..or How NOT to be a DM-friendly player

2010-02-20T19:54:00.001-06:00

Lately, I've been getting my D&D fix listening to podcasts while driving to and from work. So far, I've focused on Fear the Boot, but through RPG Podcasts I'm working on branching out (suggestions for good sources are welcome!). Anyway, something said in one of the Fear The Boot episodes struck a chord with me. I don't recall the exact quote, but it was something to the effect that a DM puts in a lot of extra work to set up and run a game and that as players, when the DM drops strong hints and tries to lead you to do something or go somewhere you owe them the benefit of the doubt and should at least give it a shot.

Why did that strike me? Well, before I ever DM'd I played in my share of games. As a player I love creating a character, fleshing out their back story, perfecting their "look", etc. Several years ago (hell, probably almost 10 years now...), in a 3.5 edition game run by a buddy of mine (Jim who's playing Kleister Fokken in the campaign I'm currently playing Poe in) I was playing a female barbarian/psychic warrior named Kaendra. One of the big hooks for me with Kaendra was that she used a greatsword. It was integral to how I viewed her and an important part of her back story. Well, Kaendra died. No worries, the party liked her enough to have her raised. But, as a part of coming back from the dead, Jim saddled her with a new weapon...a great club. Now, this wasn't just any great club. As time went by, Kaendra learned that it was demonwood - virtually indestructable - and magical. It was also impossible to get rid of and worst of all imposed penalties on Kaendra any time she used anything other than it in combat. So, did I take the DM's lead? Go with the flow of the story and embrace using this magical weapon? Try to work with the story arc to discover just what plans he may have had for my character and this weapon? Heck no. Kaendra lugged that damn thing around, took all the penalties it imposed with a grimace and kept right on slogging away with her beloved (non-magical I might add) greatsword. All the way through the point where the campaign fizzled out for one reason or another. Bad, bad Kev...

So Jim, here's a long overdue apology. Looking back now, with the added perspective of having run a campaign myself, I feel a bit sheepish about my actions. I suspect there was some cool back story to the great club that I simply refused to allow to unfold. Hopefully someday you'll share it with me.

Ritual Against Time, Part II

2010-02-15T21:36:00.002-06:00

Sixteenth entry (after the 01/10 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/moonsong/wikis/poesjournalentrysixteen
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

Ahh, Alia! Seeing you again...it filled me with purpose. Frack the Queen and Her heroes and Her fates. I will do this thing, but not for Her. I will see these people to their fates for you. For us. To spare all children a world of darkness and pain. And in the small hope that She will see fit to hold to her promise to bring us together at the end. You were right, of course. I had succumbed to the cold, calculating power of the Queen. Frack that. Your love has warmed me and even now as I clutch this crystal prayer bead I can feel your presence giving me strength to see this through. It's a strength I suspect I will need if recent events are any indication...

We'd just finished off the fowl creature and were regrouping inside the temple when Kleister mentioned that his spear was getting agitated. Putting aside the oddness of talking to an otherwise inanimate wood and metal object, this was a bit disconcerting because it usually meant that some kind of dragon or dragon-spawn was near by. That's when the annoying high pitched squeak of a kobold voice sounded from the darkened hallway. I don't speak whatever language those little buggers do, but I recognized the tone. Condescension. That meant only one thing - the little fracker was under the direct control of a dragon. Sunny quickly translated for us. Diamond had commanded that we must die and the kobold was offering us an honorable death. Apparently in the name of someone - or something - called Chill Chill the Unspoken. Heh. A named minion. I hoped Diamond wasn't too attached to him.

Our dwarf and Ron shouted some taunts back at the kobold and this Chill Chill fellow. Guss and I took up more defensive positions at the doorway. Just in time, too - almost as soon as we'd stepped back into the doorway, a huge, gnarled, creature appeared out of the darkness. As it rushed towards us, we all took swings at it. My blade bounced right off of its hide, scattering small chips of what appeared to be ice from the creature's sinewy arm. No one else fared much better. Frack. Our line held though, thanks to Guss, who shrugged off a blow from the white creature's huge hammer and stood fast. Behind me, Ron shouted, "Get back troll!" and unleashed a blast of thunder into the beast's chest. It staggered under the force of Ron's magic and stumbled back into the dark hallway.

Stone scraped behind us. Frack. Luckily, it was simply Kobe coming to our rescue. I grinned. The bigger they are, the harder it is for them to hit Kobe. With my little buddy in the fray we stood a decent chance of making it out of here alive. The troll returned to the room as Kobe slid into our front line next to Guss. This time, the troll wasn't alone. What's better than one tall, white-skinned monstrosity? Two, I guess. The new troll and I exchanged swings - his maul smashed down into the ground beside me and my blade skittered off his icy chest. Kobe didn't miss though - he buried his dagger in a soft spot in the creature's left leg. The gash Kobe'd made closed up before our eyes. Frack. Guss and I both landed solid hits on him. The wounds we inflicted healed almost immediately as well. Frack. At this rate, we were going to be here a while. Or, well, maybe not. An even larger troll shoved into the room. I heard Sunny gasp behind me. The poor bastard's mouth was sewn shut. This was Chill Chill. Now I got it - "unspoken" was unusually accurate in this case. Heh. Cold emanated from him waves, shivering even me. Ron stood toe to toe with the sad creature, took a painful looking blow from the beast's maul, but burnt the thing in return. Kobe ran straight at him, skipped up his leg and lunged towards his face, cutting one stitch free. Beros stepped into a breach that had opened in our line - I'm not sure who was down - and fired at Chill Chill from close range. Chill Chill roared in pain and swung wildly at the elf with his hammer, slamming it into the wall where the elf had just been standing. Under the heroes' onslaught Chill Chill started to actually look hurt. They were opening wounds faster than his unnatural power could heal them back up. Canny fracker that he was, he retreated...

We all took a quick breath. Sunny began talking in some language I didn't understand. Again, the gist of her words was clear. Let's just say, if she'd talked to me like that I'd have been hard pressed not to go after her. And In consider her a friend of mine. Chill Chill either didn't hear, couldn't understand or had a lot more self control than I do. Maybe the other two trolls who'd also retreated to the hallway were holding him down or something.

Anyway, a quick breath was all we got. A four armed skeleton stepped out of the darkness and attacked. As we engaged it we could hear the kobolds chanting in the hallway. Healing someone. Frack. Not much we could do about that though, being up to our ears in skeletons. Having four arms was simply an unfair advantage. One of them pushed my blade off guard and then landed four solid blows with his swords. I was bleeding heavily and burning from the skeleton's fiery aura. Kliester grabbed the back of my coat and pulled me out of the front line. The skeletons did what the trolls had failed to do - they broke through our line, overwhelming us with their whirling blades. As the battle swirled into chaos inside the temple, Ron stepped to the doorway and hurled a blast of thunder into the dark hallway. I guess he hoped to buy us some time to destroy the skeletons and reform the line before the trolls came at us again. He was nearly successful, but just as Sunny blasted a skeleton into a pile of bones and Guss cut down the last two a troll squeezed into the room. The creature easily pushed Kobe out of the way. Its ugly twin joined it a second later. And a second after that our good friend Chill Chill returned as well. Yippee for them. Guss wasn't having any of this. He thrust his sword through the chest of the first troll. Its eyes rolled up into its head and it fell on its face. One down. Beros was beside me, firing arrows at the other troll as it closed on us. At the last second, I dodged in front of Beros, deflecting the hammer blow that would have crushed his skull. The troll barreled into me, clubbing me with the haft of the weapon as well. Beros at least slipped away unscathed.

Ron came to the rescue again, speaking some arcane words and firing a blast of magic at the trolls...well, and Guss of course. When the smoke cleared they'd all been teleported somewhere else. I looked around for Guss or Our Dwarf...no luck. I did notice that the troll Guss had killed was moving though. Frack. It stood up, the hole in its chest nearly mended. Guss was really not going to be happy about this.

Beros and Sunny turned quickly on the rejuvenated troll. Arrows and fey magic felled the creature for a second time. Kleister stepped up and dumped oil on the carcass. Then lit it. That''d better be enough, I thought, or we're in a heap of trouble. I headed for the door, hoping to keep Chill Chill and the other troll from reentering the temple. Kobe and Guss joined me. The two beasts pushed past us. Guss was undeterred by this and seconds later, shouted a battle cry and pushed Chill Chill back into the hallway.

That's when the real shock troops entered the battle - the kobolds. Heh. Little frackers were suddenly everywhere. I tried to shove one back into Ron's magical stinking cloud, but failed. Ron meanwhile, faced off against Chill Chill. His magic brought Chill Chill to his knees but Ron paid for it. As Chill Chill fell, he lashed out with his hammer, clipping Ron on the side of his head. Ron collapsed in a heap, but a dwarven soul shot from the altar area and he was soon back on his feet.

Kleister yelled at me, pulling my attention away from Ron. He pointed out an opening and I took it, smacking one of the kobolds with my sword. Two of the little frackers quickly retaliated. And before we could stop it the kobold priest healed his minions and the last troll. I wiped blood from my face. At some point I must have taken a blow to the head. That explained the wooziness. Heh.

Our dwarf charged back into the fray, and as he passed me I felt his radiant power strengthen me. I shook my head, clearing it a bit, and took stock. I was in pretty bad shape. But Chill Chill was down for the count, the skeletons had been destroyed, and only a single troll and a handful of kobolds remained. None of the heroes were down, though several looked pretty banged up and everyone was bloodied. At the rear of the temple at least one dwarven voice droned on - so the ritual continued. I had no idea how far along it was, having lost track of all time in the heat of battle. I threw my arm up as Ron exploded in fire to my left, setting several kobolds aflame. Bet they liked that. Heh. The heroes began concentrating on killing the kobold priests, though something he said put the fear into our dwarf, who fled past me and back into the hallway. Frack. That left a clear lane for the last troll and he took it. The creature stomped forward, dazed Kobe with a kick in the head and then killed him with a vicious blow of his hammer. The troll roared in triumph, but the last dwarven soul not doing the ritual shot from the altar and raised Kobe.

I moved to aid Kobe. He was alive, but just hanging on and still within reach of the troll. Guss, fighting alone to my right against a swarm of kobolds took two sword blows and fell. Beros managed to bring down the kobold priest with a pair of well placed arrows. Our dwarf regained his composure and charged back into the room yet again. As I reached Kobe, the troll roared again and charged Sunny. The creature ran her down. She didn't get back up. Frack. Two down. I chose fast and charged the troll, trusting that Kleister would take care of Guss. My blow was too weakened to damage the creature, but I did at least get its attention. I heard Ron and Beros both firing missiles and then a squeal behind me cut short. The last kobold priest was dead. The troll's hammer smashed into my chest. Struggling to breathe I took a quick look at Sunny. She was bleeding out. Frack. I tossed my sword down, knelt beside the young woman and did my best to stabilize her. It'd have to do. Kleister was already yelling at me and the troll was on the move again. Grabbing my sword I dove in front of Kleister, blocking the troll's advance. Our dwarf struck the troll from behind and I saw an opening. I lunged...

...and there you were. Alia. My love. I dropped my weapon. It was you...exactly as I last saw you. Your wedding dress billowing in an unfelt breeze. Before...

"Poe...", you said. "You look...sad." I laughed. You had no idea. You smiled, too.

Blinking back tears, I started to apologize.

"Aw, shut up," you said. "I know everything. I don't care anymore. Seeing you like this...so cold."

You shook your head. "I miss us. I miss our dreams."

You stopped, looked past me and sighed. "She took that from us. And I hate Her for that."

I'd never heard such venom in your voice.

"But She's wrong, Poe. And deep down She knows it.

'There's no fate but what She makes'", you spat the mantra at me. "It's a lie."

I stared at you, amazed.

"Yeah, I'm mad." you said. "I hate Her, but I get it. Things have to get worked out. Right now, they're just plain wrong. And these heroes are supposed to fix it."

I chuckled ruefully at that and started to speak. You cut me off.

"I know...", you said. "...they're not always as focused as they could be."

That made me laugh outright. It felt good. You even smiled a little.

"Poe, remember our dreams? A son of our own? What would his life have been like? Thousands of little boys are growing up in fear and pain. These heroes might put an end to that. That has to happen, not just for us. But for all of them..."

Your eyes glistened. "Poe, I hate seeing you so cold. I remember your laughter, your love, your warmth. It's why I chose the dim witted, dreamy third son of a priest to be my husband."

I collapsed to my knees, sobbing. You dragged your hand across your face, wiping away tears.

"You need that warmth Poe, and the power of that love. Our love. She doesn't see it, but I know. It's a power even She cannot give. But I can..."

You reached out and touched my arm. Enfolding the prayer beads wrapped around my wrist in your two slim hands. They began to burn.

"I love you Poe. Finish this. And then come back to me..."

...I awoke in the temple. Kobe's worried face hovered above me. The little guy looked worried. I looked at my prayer beads - one sparkling crystal bead shining amongst the dull black ones. I smiled up at Kobe. Not today little buddy. Not today...

Poe.

More D&D Please...dealing with fluctuating player attendance

2010-02-06T20:01:00.002-06:00

My gaming group has been gaming once a month for years. This month however, due to issues scheduling the regular game and some members who are looking to start running a game of their own, a secondary campaign is getting kicked off. The plan is to double the number of sessions per month. Yeah!

Now, most of us won't actually be able to make it to the secondary session on any regular basis. That's why we currently game only once a month after all. So that means the secondary campaign is likely to have a core group of players - probably 3 or 4 - with 3-4 other players who drop in occasionally and rather randomly. This poses a large problem with continuity.

This is an issue I struggled with when I was running a campaign with this group and something that we still occasionally run into in our new campaign. How do you gracefully handle players missing a session when their character is in the thick of the action without straining the bounds of the game's "suspension of disbelief"? I outlined my plans for handling this issue here. But the group had several other ideas that were just as interesting...

Run a module with pre-generated characters.
I believe the idea here was to use a module and a "cast" of characters. Each session, whoever was there would be able to select a character from the "cast" to play during that session. This option would allow a player to try out several different character classes over the course of the module. I could see some conflicts possibly if two players wanted to play the same character. There also still could be issues with handling continuity across sessions - for example, if there were more or fewer players in two consecutive sessions.

Allow players to share a characters.
This is an interesting idea, too. I think there would be two ways to do this. First, two players could share a single character. I could see at least a couple of issues with this approach - conflicts when advancing levels and what happens when both players attend the same session?

The second way to do this would be to have players share two characters. This way, only one of the two players would have to be present for both characters to be played. It would mean that a player may have to be playing two characters during a session - which we have done in the past with some success. There'd still be issues if both players were missing from a session though.

Use a hook of the characters being the results of a summoning spell cast by a high level wizard.
This idea came from Lou (otherwise known as Guss to readers of Poe's Adventure Journal). In his own words:

"I have been thinking about a campaign where the players are summoned constantly by an evilish wizard by a spell. Kind of like a summon monster spell but with a group of adventures. (I got this idea from playing Ysaie, imagine that) Anyways, the group would be thrown into all sorts of crazy environments in order to protect the cowardly wizard. The general arc of the story would be the group hunting down the wizard to stop him.in their free time"

I have nothing to add to that. I think it handles pretty much every issue well - characters can easily be swapped in and out (the summoning spell expires or is dispelled, the wizard casts a new one, etc.). The only potential weakness is some way of explaining how or why the characters work together...but even that can easily be explained as the spell forcing them to at first and them gradually wanting to as they start looking for a way to stop the wizard from messing with their lives.

Use a very deadly story arc.

Nothing wrong with this as long as it is made clear from the outset. A character who dies during a session could be replaced with a pre-generated character for the rest of the session. But, I'm not sure how this exactly solves the potential continuity issues across sessions.

Note...
A quick Google search also led me to this free resource for handling the issue: "He was here a moment ago!", an article in a free e-zine from Mongoose publishing. It has some generic set ups for explaining a character's sudden departure from the rest of the group and their eventual return.

Maybe this would speed up 4E combat encounters...

2010-01-30T10:11:00.001-06:00

Thanks to www.gizmodo.com (which I read to keep up on all things gadget and tech related...) I ran across this some time back:

Surfacescapes Demo Walkthrough from Surfacescapes on Vimeo.

What can I say? This would make a great birthday present. Here's hoping Wizards is working with them on this. It would make D&D Insider worth whatever they wanted to charge for it.

And if that first clip wasn't enough to convince you, check out this extended clip:

SurfaceScapes Gameplay Session from Surfacescapes on Vimeo.

I look forward to playing on this before I die...

Inevitability

2010-01-23T16:09:00.002-06:00

This is something we've run into in our weekly game a lot. Our group - 8 PC's if everyone shows up - can take on a pretty big encounter. What ends up happening a lot is that we reach a point where it is clear that we're going to prevail but we still have spend multiple rounds (which eat up a lot of actual time) finishing off the remaining opponents. This can be frustrating, especially when the clock is ticking down towards the end of an evening (or heaven forbid, it's already past midnight).

I understand why we need to play these encounters out. We need to expend the resources (daily powers, surges, etc.) and really, you never know, a run of bad luck could end up with some serious consequences for someone (though this is pretty unlikely I think). Maybe there isn't really a solution. For what it's worth though here are some of my thoughts about how this could be handled:

1. Surrender!

The opponents know that they're going to lose (assuming some level of intelligence on their part) and really don't want to die. So they throw themselves on the mercy of the PCs. For this to work, our group will have to actually show mercy to such creatures of course which might be difficult to do since I'm running a paladin of the goddess of death.

2. Handwaving

The DM could handwave the remainder of the encounter. Maybe we have rules for how many surges are lost to wrap things up?

3. Run Away!

The opponents know they're going to lose (as in #1) but instead of surrendering, they flee. I've DM'd for this group and used this option. We really hate it and tend to try to run the fleeing opponents down to kill them. Yeah, we're a bloodthirsty lot...

John (our DM) has used option 3 as well to good effect. I guess it's my favorite as well - it allows a creature or creatures to take on a bit more of a life in the game and for the later encounters to become more like a grudge match. I think option 1 can work as well - it certainly leads to some fun role playing if nothing else. Option 2 seems like the weakest alternative - but at the end of a long night and immediately before a month long break to the next session it might make sense.

Ritual Against Time, part 1

2010-01-14T20:41:00.002-06:00

Fifteenth entry (after the 12/09 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/moonsong/wikis/poesjournalentryfifteen
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

Well, Alia, I guess I was a bit too optimistic. The Queen hadn't decided to bring us to the dragon quite yet. If we get through the next 10 minutes...well, 5 now, maybe we'll be so lucky. Yeah. I have a strange concept of luck, don't I?

Anyway, beloved, the temple had become eerily quiet. At least for a moment. I'm sure it was probably sacrilegious, but I took the time to say a quick prayer to the Queen, kneeling on the cold dwarven-made stone floor. The heroes meanwhile spread out and looted the place. I've mentioned that they're greedy in the past, right? Heh. The scraping of stone on stone caught my attention. The heroes had found a secret room. Naturally it was filled with treasure. Happy day. I returned to my sacrilegious prayers, ignoring the heroes as they debated over what to do with the spoils of this last battle. The next interruption was a bit more unsettling. A low moaning began permeating the defiled temple. It seemed to come from the very walls around us. Frack. Undead for certain. I hefted my blade and stopped praying. Undead would need to be killed and prayers alone usually didn't do it. Guss led a few of the other heroes to the main doors of the temple and spiked them shut.

A spectral dwarven figure walked through sealed doors. So much for spiking the doors. Heh. Sunny, surprisingly enough, stepped forward and spoke to them in dwarvish. Our dwarf joined in as well. That's about when I started getting a bad feeling about things. Last time our dwarf negotiated for us we almost ended up being dragon food. I mentioned this casually to the rest of the heroes, but they shushed me. More spectral dwarves appeared and we were soon surrounded. I walked away and stood with Kobe and Ron. The dwarves moved toward the room's altar, encircled it and began chanting. Creepy. Guss motioned me over to where the rest of the heroes were deep in conversation.

"The dwarves are going to purify the temple," he said. "But something 'bad' is coming...at least that's what they claim. We have to buy them time to complete the ritual." I grunted. Whatever they say I figured. I wasn't there to make decisions. I looked around and found a good place to get ready for an assault. I had just settled in with my cold blade when Guss waved me over to the spiked doors. "Let's brace these," he said. I shrugged. Seemed worth a try. Just as we leaned against the cold wooden doors, a loud voice boomed in the hallway outside.

"Chang the Flesh Reaver demands entry!"

The door creaked as it was pushed from the outside. Somebody wanted in. I shifted to the side as our dwarf joined me to help hold the door closed. I heard grunts and shuffling and curses - in giant. Orcs. I stepped back. Let them come in and die. Our dwarf couldn't hold the door himself and he was tossed backwards as it burst inwards under the weight of the foul creatures outside. I stepped into the breach, sword swinging in a deadly arc at the first orc's face. Sunny's voice called out arcane words behind me and the hallway was sheathed in darkness. Arrows from Beros' bow flew over my shoulder seeking orc targets in the darkness.

Guss held the other door closed a heartbeat longer, then it too was flung open. He and I battled side by side in the doorway and held the orcs at bay while Ron, Beros and the others rained magic and arrows upon them. The one who called himself Chang started yelling again, this time screaming for his minions to get out of the way. He appeared from the darkness, tossed an orc aside and plowed into Guss. I've seen some ugly orcs, but Chang took the cake. I expect he generally took whatever he wanted. Well, not today. Heh. Chang's charge hurtled Guss back into the room and I was left standing face to face with him.

"Come on in," I said and viciously cut at him with my ice weapon. Chang only laughed as it sliced a deep gouge in his side. Orcs rushed through the hole he'd made in our line. Chang called for them to target the elf and to strike at the forge. Sunny and our dwarf fell upon the orcs quickly, putting a quick end to those plans. The orcs that didn't fall immediately under their fierce onslaught scattered into the room. The fight descended into chaos inside the room - orcs and the heroes swirling about in a deadly dance of steel and magic. Chang brushed past me to get right into the middle of it. I followed him in. He was mine.

I stuck with Chang and exchanged several blows with him. Our dwarf and Kleister were the first to join my assault on the orc leader. The remaining heroes were not far behind and soon a well placed magical blast from Sunny laid him out. After putting Chang down we pushed the remaining orcs back out of the temple area. As the last of them fled, we heard them calling for someone or something named "fell fowl". Oh great...an evil bird, I thought. Hopefully the damn thing could actually fly. We had a brief respite. The ghostly dwarven chants continued from the back of the room. The ritual dragged on. This was shaping up to be a long frackin' ten minutes...

Thank the Queen, she didn't give us much time to worry. A scratching sound approached from the darkened hallway. Bone on stone. My prayer beads burned ice cold. Undead. I gripped my sword tighter and stepped forward with the heroes, just as two gaunt unnaturally fast creatures bounded out of the shadows. Wights. Frack. We all swung at them, but none of us could land a blow. One of the wights grabbed our dwarf, its dirt encrusted claws opening gaping wounds on his arm. Ron stepped forward and waved his arms. Blasts of thunder blew the wights and some zombies who'd followed them in back into the hallway.

The wights sprang back at us. The fight was on. Guss' blade began skipping around too fast for my eyes to follow. His rain of steel kept the creatures at bay, opening wound after wound on their dried bodies. Then the cold struck...ice cold as if from the grave. You'd think after spending a winter naked in a cave it wouldn't bother me. You'd think. All it did was bring back frackin' memories I could live without. The cold was emanating from the zombies and it was killing us fast. I fumbled in my pack, and swallowed down a potion that Ron had assured me would provide some protection. I was supposed to save it for when we faced the white dragon, but without it I didn't think I'd survive to do that. The potion burned down my throat like a powerful ale and its warmth spread quickly throughout my body. That'd do it.

Sunny, Kleister, Beros and Ron, fighting from behind the line that our dwarf, Guss and I maintained, dropped the wights and then got started on the zombies. The creature named Fell Fowl came out of the darkness in the hallway, bellowing its name and flinging more magical cold at us. Our dwarf was blasted with ice and fell to his knees. Before he could crumple to the ground, a light shot out from the altar behind us and struck him. His back arched in pain. His eyes bulged. Not a good look for him, really...but his wounds healed. Heh. Something strange going on here...I didn't have time to think about it too much as we were nearly being overrun by four armed skeletons who were backing up Fell.

As I pressed to hold the line one of a skeleton's four blades slid past my guard and sliced across my throat. Blood poured down my chest. This is it, I thought. I'm a goner. I thanked the Queen, closed my eyes and grinned. I've been waiting for this...to see you, Alia...

Suddenly there was a presence inside my head. It was foreign, but bolstered me with an alien strength and a sense of purpose. Defend the temple...I shook my head as my throat itched and the bleeding wound closed up. Frack. Guess today wasn't the day after all. Might as well kill that damn bird thing. I stood and took the fight to Fell. With the Queen guiding my strikes and the Heroes slaying undead all around me I struck the killing blow on the fowl creature. The Queen's power surged through me, strengthening me further. I again shook my head and this time, pushed the alien presence out of it. Alone with my thoughts again I saw that the Heroes were fighting with renewed vigor as well, led by Ron who, wreathed in magical flames had stepped to the front beside Guss and our dwarf to take the fight directly to the undead. Good man. As I watched, Guss swept his blade down on the last skeleton, slicing cleanly through its bare ribcage. Bones clattered across the floor.

We caught a break and our breath...and the ritual rolled on in the background. I poked at the corpse of the thing they'd called "Fell Fowl". Didn't even have wings. I shook my head. Stupid frackin' orcs...

The heavy tread of more enemies echoed through the dark hallway once again. I whispered a prayer to the Queen, grinned at Guss and stepped back to the front. What the frack. It's always a good day to die.

Poe.

Rescuing Kobe

2009-12-16T20:56:00.002-06:00

Fourteenth entry (after the 11/09 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/moonsong/wikis/poesjournalentryfourteen
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

So, my dear Alia, we caught our collective breath amongst the corpses of our former foes. After a minute of contemplation - OK, mostly looting on the heroes part - the heroes decided to push on. Probably eager to find their missing comrade, Kobe. Heh. I was in complete agreement with this plan and waited eagerly while our stoic elven friend Beros scouted ahead. He returned with a report of a warehouse ahead, and what he thought was Kobe, chained up in the back. That was enough information for me. I took the lead. The Queen would expect no less.

I rounded the corner, burst through an open doorway and found myself in a large open room filled with metal boxes. Lots of metal boxes. Each was tall enough that I could just see over it, though in some places they were piled two high, blocking all sight. Luckily, the villians had been nice enough to provide a spotlight on our little halfling friend. Kobe was in a small cage, suspended more than 30 feet in the air. I'm no engineer, but it sure looked like the chain next to him could be used to pull his cage up or down. I grunted and headed in. The little fellow was naked as a jay bird and must have been unconscious. Otherwise, I'm sure he'd find some way to grab the chain swinging only feet from where he was confined and lower himself. Frack, all he'd need is something about 3 feet long and prehensile. Heh.

I heard Beros pull up and say something about a ledge up behind us, but I continued on into the darkness. Guss followed me. He jumped up on one of the metal boxes though and started making his way across them instead of running between them. Maybe a more direct route. Guess he was as eager as I to save our little friend.

Neither Guss nor I had gotten very far when the door we'd entered by slammed shut with a boom. From behind us I heard a guttural voice yell in Giant, "Dinnertime!", followed by "Kill the lightbearer first!" Frackin' orcs had set a trap for us and Kobe was the bait. Guess they're smarter than they look. The heroes started to scatter through the warehouse looking for cover. In the dim glow cast by the spotlight on Kobe I noticed some movement on the chains above him. Frack. Rats. I'm really going to kill those orcs...

Ron's magehand floated out into the warehouse, carrying a sunrod and casting weird shadows off of the surrounding crates. I heard Kleister yell something about oil and then start screaming about arrows. Sounds like the orcs had archers. Frack. If that wasn't bad enough, I noticed that not only were rats swarming down the chain towards Kobe, there was a second swarm heading up from below as well. At least Kobe had woken up though. The little guy was busy trying to rock the cage back and forth. I'm coming little buddy I thought to myself and whispered a prayer to the Queen to protect him. My prayer beads tingled with sudden cold as I grabbed the chain and gave it a yank. Guss took up a defensive position beside me as I hauled on the chain, pulling the cage and Kobe closer to the ground with each pull.

From across the warehouse's open space I heard Kleister shout my name. Frack - the rats were swarming all over Kobe. I swung my frost blade through them, slicing one in half and scattering several others. More quickly took their place though. I guess that's why they're called a swarm. Heh.

I heard shouts from behind me as Ron took cover behind some crates and our dwarf started running back towards the orcs. That's when the orcs loosed their second volley - this time at Kobe. One arrow struck his leg, another grazed his head and a third thumped solidly into his left shoulder. My prayer beads froze and pain washed over me. I shook my head. Despite the hits, my friend still stood. I thanked the Queen silently and wound up to strike the lock from the cage door. I hesitated as Sunny's voice called a challenge to the orcs. I looked over my shoulder and saw her standing atop a crate flinging magical bolts at the orcs on the ledge. Crap. Hopefully she'd be smart enough to duck back behind some cover. Like Beros had been doing. In the second I spent looking back I saw him dart out, fire an arrow into an orc on the ledge and roll back into cover. Frack he's good I thought. Too bad those arrows aren't much help against rats. Rats. Yeah, two swarms of them fell on us then, Kobe, Guss and I. Guss took off running - yelling something to me as he left about a large platform coming up from below with gods knew what riding on it. Frack. Rats weren't enough? I grabbed Kobe, told him to follow me and took off after Guss.

Just in time, too. As we sprinted away, Ron dropped a blast of fire on the rats. We caught up to Guss who had pulled up at the edge of a large section of the floor that was open. Four chains at its corners disappeared into the darkness below. He peered into the dark and then shouted and pointed. A huge centipede-like creature emerged from the dark, skittering up the chains. It wasn't alone. Frack. Rats or huge bugs. I started wishing for bigger boots. Heh. Luckily I had Guss. He yelled a battle cry and as both rats and bugs rushed towards him let them all have it with his sword. Kobe, naked as the day he was born and holding a sliver of bone as a dagger, slid past me and planted the bone shard deep into the soft underside of a bug. Green ichor burst out of the beast, coating him. I followed Kobe in, calling on the Queen to bolster us all as I thrust my cold blade into the bug's tough hide.

The three of us battled the rats and the bugs to a stand still. Thanks to Ron's ranged support, Guss' flashing blade and Kobe's well placed dagger thrusts the bugs soon lay twitching and dying around us. I took a quick look around to take stock of our situation. Beros had been continuing to exchange arrows with the orcs on the ledge. It looked like at least one of the orcs had taken a few of the elf's arrows. Kleister was battling some rats in a corner. Our dwarf was bleeding heavily as he worked to push some crates towards the ledge. It looked like he'd taken several arrow shots...or something. The back of his trousers were ripped out and his bare ass was exposed. Heh. That was more then I'd ever wanted to see of our gruff bearded friend. Sunny must have been hiding behind some boxes - I couldn't see her.

We needed to get onto that ledge. Kleister was clearly thinking the same thing - he stepped out from behind a crate swinging his grappling hook. With a heave, he hurled it up onto the ledge and then ducked back behind the crate, pulling the attached rope taut. Nice. Our dwarf ducked behind his pile of crates and fondled his holy symbol. Then, suddenly standing tall he called out a curse in dwarven at the orc leader. The orc spat in reply, yelling something foul in giant. He followed this up with a thrown hammer that took Sunny, who'd just popped out from behind a crate to launch a magical bolt at an archer, down. Ron was...well I couldn't quite figure out what the frack Ron was doing...something arcane I guess. He seemed to be concentrating and whatever he did got the rats' attention. Their little noses all started twitching and as one they all turned towards him. Kobe and I both took the opportunity to kill as many of them as we could.

From the corner of the room came a whooshing sound followed by a flash of flame. Screeching rats fled from Kleister as the floor around him erupted with fire. His triumph was short lived though - a rain of orc arrows fell upon him and he dropped. Frack. Guss, Kobe and I raced back towards the front of the room dodging and weaving between crates so the orcs had less of a target. Ron, under attack by archers himself spoke some arcane words and suddenly two of the archers appeared on the ground in front of us. I prayed quickly to the Queen as I passed Ron, lending him some of her grace. She approved, for some of it spilled over to me, bracing me as I flung myself at the two orcs Ron had brought within reach. The orc leader struck again, this time wounding Guss. Ron struck again, too. This time using Baxter the fire falcon to spray magical fire over the orcs on the ledge. The leader needed to be taken down though. I stepped out and challenged him, hoping to get him to come down to face me. No dice. Ron apparently had had enough. He flung a grappling hook up to the ledge. This one took, and he scrambled up the rope before the orcs could throw it back. Kleister was right behind him. Lucky for Ron, the orcs targeted Kleister first dropping him again under a volley or arrows. Frack. I raced up the rope myself and called down the Queen's blessing on Kleister - it wasn't his time to die yet. Me first. Heh.

Seeing some of us on the ledge and more on the way, the orc leader did what all orcs do - he fled. His underlings weren't so quick though. Ron blocked their path and the heroes killed them where they stood.

Once again the frenzy of battle was replaced with the startling calm aftermath. I prayed to the Queen, reflecting on the carnage around me. The thought of someday joining you Alia makes this bearable. OK, that and the cold pleasure I get from taking any measure of revenge for your untimely death and the circumstances that put me in this situation. I know, I know, there's no fate but what she makes. Doesn't mean a man has to like it.

After a brief respite, I shook myself out of my reverie to join the heroes who'd decided to use the large platform on chains to get to the next level up in the abandoned dwarven keep. We hadn't gone more than a few feet when Ron asked, "Where's Biz?" Apparently in all of the excitement the heroes had completely forgotten about the young lad. Last I'd seen him he'd been watching the corridor outside the warehouse. The little fracker was probably dead by now. Fate. Sometimes it's a bitch. I said a quiet prayer for the lad. With a collective shrug, the heroes decided to check their dragon token to ensure they were still on track. They were. So we pressed on. Before long, we found a passageway and a little way down that some stairs. Up. And up we went. At the top we found a large pair of doors covered with some carved runes. Sunny deciphered them for us - behind the doors was a temple to Bahamut. Our dwarf insisted we go in. He threw open the doors, called upon Bahamut's favor to shield us, and strode into the temple. He was met with a blast of fire. A group of orcs was waiting for us, supported by fiery skeletons.

Ron brushed past me and stepped up next to our dwarf. He flung his arms out in a dramatic gesture and a cloud of billowing green smoke covered half the room. My old favorite - the stinking cloud. Kobe and Guss charged bravely into the fray. Me? I went right for the undead. Frackin' undead. An arrow skimmed over my shoulder, blasting a hole in its ribcage. Kleister yells at me from the doorway. I duck, see the opening he's screaming about and plunge my cold blade into the skeleton again.

A large dwarven skeleton emerged from Ron's cloud, shook its head and looked around. Its empty eye sockets locked in on our dwarf. It charged and the two exchanged blows. That's when the skeletons started tossing fire again. Frack. Our dwarf took the brunt of it. Luckily he's got some fancy armor that makes him nigh invulnerable to fire.

I heard Ron chanting again and grinned. The orcs won't know what hit them. Suddenly I was enveloped in a swarm of buzzing flies. Frack. I'd had my fill of bugs for the day. From behind me I heard an orc cursing in Giant and Beros yelling for help. Sounded like he needed me. I charged out of the flies and scattered the two orcs that had him cornered.

An explosion to my right marked the death of a skeleton. I glanced over. Kleister was yanking his spear out of a burning skull. Nice. Guss had a couple of orcs pinned down as well. One tried to slip away, but Guss manhandled him with his sword, physically lifting him with the blade and preventing him from moving. I snapped back to my own combat as the orc in front of me swung his huge battle axe in a deadly arc aimed right at my head. Frack. Before the blow could land however, a arrow smashed into the creature's arm, redirecting his swing so that it glanced harmlessly off of my armor. I nodded thanks to Beros.

Fire flew through the air again. This time striking Sunny, who dodged but couldn't avoid all of the orbs. Her clothing flashed into flame. Kobe took a few hits as well. We were all starting to look a little rough. Frack. Then something struck me in the back...and I had to struggle to keep a grip on my blade as weakness nearly overcame me. I wiped the sweat from my eyes, swung unsteadily at the orc in front of me, somehow managing to hit it, and called on the Queen to bolster me. Her power surged through me.

Kleister slammed the butt of his spear down on the ground and called out to us to stand up and fight. His words invigorated us all. Just time, too. Both of the orcs facing me struck me hard with their axes. One rent my armor on the thigh, drawing blood. The other smashed into my arm. Frack.

Our dwarf, Ron and Sunny concentrated on the dwarven skeleton. Our dwarf's consecrated ground brings it down after both the magic-users blast it. Then Our dwarf pulled out his holy symbol and called on Bahamut to destroy the foul undead desecrating his temple. The skeletons withered before our dwarf's blast of righteousness. Ron was literally burning with magic as well. He lit up a bunch of orcs and skeletons and took down the death mage who'd been throwing around the flies and pestilence. Yeah. With the mage dead, we were able to concentrate our attacks on the remaining skeletons and orcs without having to deal with any magical artillery. Things went quickly then and the last orcs died with fear in their eyes. Heh. Now...on to the dragon...

Poe

Curses...

2009-11-21T07:42:00.001-06:00

DM's are a powerful bunch...and known to be fickle. Recently the DM of the game I'm currently playing in became a might bit peeved at a few of us for something completely out of the game. He reeled off a pair of curses at the offenders...and then got on a bit of a roll, much to the innocent bystanders chagrin.

The results are presented here as a warning and a reminder to all players to tend to the care and feeding of their favorite DM...

"...I proclaim a -5 to hit penalty for all spellcasters named Ron."

"Durton has a new helm of improved visibility. He is now permanently blinded and randomly re-targets any being within range after he commits to an action."

"Beros has new boots of sticky feet. Movement is at 1. Shifts fail to work and cause 40 arrows to snap in half."

(After it was unwisely pointed out that our dwarf's name was actually Durkon, not Durton...)
"Durkon has his name changed to Durton and must now constantly recite how wonderful halfings are in imamic pentameter. Also, all dragons get a +10 tasty check when appraising Durton's succulence."

"Poe can use all of his powers as at-will powers, but only when he's bloodied. Poe is compelled to take two healing surges per turn as a free action at the start of every turn until he runs out of them."

"Kobe now has an uncontrollable urge to wet himself every time he sees a new shiny object which has a value surpassing 75gp. This is a compulsorily minor action in combat situations. Additionally, every killing blow that Kobe does not land (on a friendly target or otherwise) causes him to take on a culminating -1 "I'm even more sullen"to-hit penalty. This effect persists and can only be removed by an "accidental" friendly fire incident on Durton or Durkon."

"Guss receives the shield of endless misery. Any and all zone effects that are cast where the range could have included Guss, now have Guss as the center of the effect."

"Sunny is now +5 to hit, but can only roll a d10 for to-hit rolls. Although come to think of it, that's probably an advantage for her."
(It was confirmed by our resident rules expert that this was indeed an advantage for her as long as she has a better than 50% chance to hit...)

"Kloister becomes a mute and is afflicted with a zone of perpetual truth. Additionally any creature within 20' of Kloister gains the ability to read Kloister's inner most thoughts with his spear providing commentary to the listener. The spear finds this to be immensely entertaining."

Waist deep

2009-11-17T20:40:00.002-06:00

Thirteenth entry (after the 10/09 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/moonsong/wikis/poesjournalentrythirteen
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

Time seems to be playing tricks on me these days. Perhaps, Alia, because all I can do is count the hours that pass before I am with you again. That hour cannot come soon enough for me. The Queen however, has plans for me though. Me and these heroes she's charged me with shepherding to their fate. Like it or not. There's no fate but what She makes...

So, mama spider had been dispatched and we were left recovering from the battle on the spiral staircase in the old dwarven fortress. The heroes took a minute to catch their collective breaths. Before they could start arguing though a guttural voice called out from above us in the gloom.

"Who's coming?"

I spat. Giant. Must be orcs. It'd been at least a couple of days since I'd had a chance to kill any orcs. Too long, really. Heh. I yelled back.

"Death."

"What's the password?", came the immediate reply.

Ok. I admit it. At this point I was a little surprised. But hey - I can go along with that. Maybe they were expecting Death. Maybe we all should be. But really, I had no idea what the password was. So, I simply replied, "Cold, cold death."

The rest of the heroes looked at me like I was crazy. I suppose maybe I was. Or am. Anyhow, I shrugged. That's when we all heard a door slam up above and the scraping sound of a heavy metal bar being dropped into place. Just as quickly, the darkness all around us came alive. Spiders suddenly moved through their webs, and even jumped towards the central pillar of the room. Uh oh.

A glow appeared above us. It quickly resolved into the form of a skeletal figure, floating down the stairway towards us. Undead. I charged, muttering a prayer to the Queen under my breath. Sprinting up the steep staircase, I stumbled...

And stood on a featureless plain of snow. An icy wind whipped my face. In front of me stood a beautiful, black haired woman. Huge black raven wings sprouted from her back.

"Poe," she said, meeting my wide eyed gaze directly.

The single word shook me to my core. I fell to my knees, snow crunching beneath me.

"Now that's better," she continued. "Proper respect."

Her voice echoed in my head but I resisted the urge to clap my hands over my ears. She was suddenly next to me, black feather wings folding around behind me as she bent down to take my face in her hands. I closed my eyes, trembling, hardly able to bear being this close to her.

"Now that you've finally accepted your fate I have a gift for you. Something you'll need for the tasks ahead. Try not to squander it...if only for your lover's sake."

The smell of rotting flesh made me gag. I opened my eyes just as the hag brought her cane down. Its gnarled bone handle smashed into my head. Light flashed before my eyes...

...and I caught myself against the inside of the spiral staircase. I continued my charge without breaking stride. My head ached, my left arm, wrapped in black prayer beads and tightly gripping my frozen blade was nearly numb with cold, and my head rang with an old woman's cackling laughter. Despite that I tingled - like a limb that has been too cold and is just now regaining some warmth.

Great timing, I thought as I leapt forward and closed the final distance to the glowing skeleton. That's about when I found myself enveloped in a clear, stinging goo. Too late, I learned that the glowing skeleton wasn't undead. It was merely a skeleton, holding a glowing sword held suspended in some kind of viscous clear goo. Goo that burned. Thank the Queen for full body armor. Heh. I swung the frost blade vigorously hoping to pull free of the gelatinous junk. Bits of frozen goo scattered from the blade's edge, but I remained lodged inside. In fact, it seemed to engulf me further as if it had a mind of its own. That's when what little light there was went out. Grasping shadows pulled at me and struck at the goo. I thanked Ron through gritted teeth, hoping this amorphous jelly thing was hurting as much as I was.

At least I was able to keep the thing from continuing to roll towards the rest of the heroes. I stood my ground, armor smoking where the goo touched it, holding the tide of gunk at bay while they scrambled to put up some ropes and get off of the steps below me. I heard footsteps behind me and Guss engaged the tide as well, slicing chunks of it off with his weapon. The goo wasn't working alone however. Large flying mats of darkness appeared, appropriately, out of the darkness, launching thundering attacks at the remaining heroes. As the booming sounds shook the cobwebs, Ron sprayed two of them with fire. I continued fighting within the goo, hoping to kill it from within. It reached out and smacked Guss, slamming him against the wall of the cavern and stunning him. I heard muffled yells as the heroes fought off the dark creatures. Then suddenly, one of black things fell on Guss. With Guss down, covered by a black, writhing cloak of a creature, the gelatinous creature I was trapped in began to move. I was pulled with it, still hacking away from the inside. Our dwarf's voice boomed over the din, ordering the goo to move away from me. Miraculously, it obeyed and I was free of its nasty embrace. I looked around quickly to take stock of the situation. Ron was pinned beneath a moving carpet of darkness. Beros was rapidly firing arrows at the other dark creatures. Our dwarf and Kleister were busy fighting them off as well. At least one was down. Magic flashed - Sunny was flinging her spells about, too. OK, things look pretty normal.

Guss yelled at me, shoved me to the side and then was engulfed by one of the creatures again. I turned to help him, but was suddenly picked up off my feet. And surrounded again by the burning goo. Again. Frack. Fire lanced from Sunny's outstretched hands. It struck the gelatinous creature surrounding me, burning me a bit in the process. She's been hanging around Ron way too much. Heh. A glowing hand floated into the goo, grabbed the sword from the skeleton's hand and whisked it away. Nice. Kobe would have approved of that move. Arrows plunked into the goo next to me, sparking with lightning. I swung my sword again as the goo slid past me. It reached out a gelatinous pseudopod and pummeled our dwarf. Kliester yelled across the stairs to me, pointing out an opening. I didn't hesitate - and slammed the frost blade deep into the goo's center. It collapsed suddenly into an inert pool of goop. Acidic spray splashed across several of the heroes.

And that was that. The other heroes had taken care of the black things - some kind of flying predator it seemed - so the threat was past. Guss hefted the sword we'd retrieved from the goo, wiped it off and claimed it for his own. That's when I realized that Kobe was missing. Frack. My little buddy was gone. Apparently carried off by one of the black things. Double frack. No one seemed particularly worried about him - probably because he's run off on his own before. Sunny however, thought she'd last seen him further up the stairs fighting off one of the black things. That sealed it for me.

We pressed forward and advanced up the stairs. I kept an eye out for any sign of the halfling hero. With Kobe gone, scouting ahead fell to the taciturn elf. Beros silently whisked ahead of us stopping to motion us towards him when he encountered a room. Inside, a man lay slumped over a table. A gem next to his stilled hand gleamed in our light. He didn't move. Apparently already dead. Beros and I started to walk in, but the elf grabbed me after we'd taken no more than two steps.

"The floor..." he said calmly. "Looks unsafe." We backed out carefully to discuss options with the heroes.

The heroes were intrigued by the room - or more likely by the gem and the lockers along the far wall with the promise of more loot - so we did more investigating. Sunny volunteered to be anchored to a rope so that she could scout the room on her own safely. As we secured Sunny to a rope, Ron sent his floating mage hand into the room to check out the man at the table. Turned out it was all an illusion. This of course, further excited the heroes - surely only a great treasure would be hidden by such powerful magic. Sunny, safely roped up, moved into the room to investigate further. As she reached the center of the room the floor suddenly gave way. I grunted, taking up the slack on the rope. Thanks to help from Guss and our Dwarf, we were able to keep her from plunging into the darkness below. Quickly, we pulled her back to the doorway and solid ground. Our light illuminated the bottom of the pit she'd have fallen into just long enough for us to catch glimpses of many large centipede-like insects skittering over a grated floor. A bleached white skeleton laying on the grates testified mutely to the insects' appetites. Ron stayed busy while we worked with Sunny. First he had his bird friend check out the lockers across the room. He wasn't able to find much out. But, once we'd unhooked Sunny from the rope, he used his mage hand to take it with a grapple across the room, anchoring it so one of us could go across to get at the lockers and their treasure. Only our dwarf was brave - or maybe greedy? - enough to want to risk the fall into the pit of insects to make the trip across the rope. He reached the lockers safely and managed to get them open. Turned out that that all they contained were chunks of iron ore. Clearly everything valuable had already been taken. Kobe must have gotten here already, bypassed the trapped floor and looted all of the good stuff from the lockers. Heh. The little fracker must be OK after all. Probably just waiting for us up ahead somewhere, grinning like a fool and pretending not to have his pockets stuffed with gold. I kept this to myself, not wanting the rest of the heroes - especially our Dwarf - to get upset with him again.

We continued up the stairs. Beros continued to scout ahead into the gloom. We hadn't gone too far before we encountered more spiders. Nasty things - they're bad enough when they're little, but when they're the size of small ponies they're downright dangerous. But, being heroes and all, my companions dispatched them pretty handily. I was a little concerned during this battle though. For the second time in as many fights, Ron targeted himself with a spell. I'm beginning to think I may be a bad influence on him. It all ended OK though with the spiders dead and the heroes ready to push on.

Up we continued along the endless stairway. We rounded a turn and found a corridor leading up to a solid looking door. Arrow slits were cut high into either side of the corridor. The heroes paused to consider their options. Ron sent some magical force forward hoping to use it to open the door. It failed. Some things you just have to do yourself. I shrugged, nodded at Guss and charged the door. Arrows flew at me from both sides, three of them hitting me I think. A magical bolt of energy blasted past me, reflected back off the door and just missed me on its way back. I heard Ron curse in pain. Hmmm. Either payback or I really, really need to stop hanging around with him. I pushed against the doors with no effect other than to crack them back against the bar holding them shut. Then Guss arrived. He slammed into the doors next to em. The bar cracked loudly and splintered. The doors burst open. A row of orcs stood waiting for us. Good times. Heh.

Kleister shouted some instructions to Guss, who stepped up to one of the orcs and stabbed it with his sword. Orc axes fell on him in retaliation. Sunny's voice cut through the din of battle, calling down darkness to block the sightlines of the orcs manning the arrow slits. Our dwarf boldly walked through the corridor to join the fray, chanting a prayer as he advanced. I quickly moved to stand with Guss, swinging wildly at another orc.

The next few minutes...or seconds maybe, were a bit of a frenzy. Let's just say that the heroes know their business. And killing orcs is a good business to be in. Heh. Guss' flashing blade accounted for several of the beasts and his shield work kept the battlefield under control. Beros' singing bowstring took out several more, saving me at one point from a potentially devastating axe blow with a critically timed shot to the orc's shoulder and later standing toe to toe with an orc to plug it in the chest while nimbly avoiding two clumsy swings of its axe. Ron, was, well, Ron. Stinking clouds, freezing darkness and various magical fiery blasts rained down on the creatures. My favorite move was when he blasted several of the orcs as they surrounded Kleister, blowing them through some magical portal so that they ended up right in front of me and our Dwarf. Speaking of our Dwarf, he acquitted himself well, calling down divine power several times to heal me and more than once illuminating the best place to strike a blow against an opponent. Kleister was everywhere, striking orcs with his spear and pushing by me to bravely take out the archers before they could empty their quivers into Sunny and Ron. And Sunny? Well, her darkness saved the day. It kept most of the archers from being much of a factor. And she continually flung magical blasts around the corridor, striking orcs with pinpoint accuracy. Ron could learn a thing or two about that - though I think I'm starting to get used to the smell of his stinking clouds. Heh.

Anyway, by the time Guss cut down the last fleeing orc, we'd all done our share of orc killing. The sudden silence of the end of the combat was punctuated by our harsh breathing. Something told me that this was just the start though - we had a way to go until we reached the dragon and this was but the entry way to the orcs' area. My Mistress would certainly be getting her fill of orc souls on this day.

Poe
Sometime after meeting the dwarves

To The Dwarves...at last

2009-10-12T21:40:00.001-05:00

Twelfth entry (after the 09/09 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/moonsong/wikis/poesjournalentrytwelve
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

Well Alia, I think I recall now why I hated shopping with you so much. It's not the spending of money (though the Queen knows I hate all the counting and figuring), but the frackin' wrangling over what to buy. You were nothing compared to these heroes though. They spent days arguing over what type of armor to have and who would get what shiny new magical item. Ahh, well. What I'd give for just one more of those trips with you...

After all the discussion, it was good to get on the road. The heroes set course once again for the dwarven stronghold. The path took us back through the town we'd recently freed from the orcs. Predictably, it'd been sacked. It was still smoldering in fact and scores of the dead were simply laying where the orcs had cut them down. It brought back memories I've tried hard not to think about...especially when I stumbled across a family, slain as they tried to flee their home. I spent the rest of the day praying to the Queen to provide all of the dead with a peaceful rest and burning their bodies. Guss and Kleister helped. Our dwarf seemed a bit upset with the delay and as soon as my work was done pushed us onward to the mountains. Fine with me...though I had to wonder where the fire was all of a sudden. Heh.

Once in the mountains it became clear that the heroes didn't really know where they were going. They tried to do something with their beacon to "triangulate" where the dwarves were located - whatever that means. As we marched, I shared some of my halfling whiskey with Ron. After a few swigs, he began sharing a bit of what he thought about the rest of us. Sunny, he said was a "hot chick with Poe's gold". Guss was where he cast all of his area of effect spells. Beros was simply "spit the tree". OK, maybe he'd had more than a few swigs. I forget the rest. I was drinking a bit myself. Heh.

Anyway, we stumbled into camp and somehow I managed to pull a shift on guard before crawling into bed. Unfortunately for me, a full night's rest was not to be had. I was awakened by someone shaking me fiercely and the sounds of battle in the distance. And off we went. The darkness wasn't much of a hindrance as we charged towards the sound. "Kobolds", I heard Kobe mutter under his breath as I caught up with the heroes. Great. I hate those little frackers. Probably means there's a dragon or two about. Guss apparently felt the same. Without even a "Hey, Poe I'm off to storm the castle..." he charged into the fray and started laying into the little beasts. Kleister whipped a sunrod out of his pants and lit things up as he followed Guss' lead. They were quickly surrounded by kobolds. Sunny started yelling at the man on horseback who'd been taking the brunt of the kobold's attacks. He veered his mount towards her just as Ron dropped a chill cloud on the kobolds. Our dwarf was in the melee by that point so with a shrug I threw myself into the thick of things as well. Sunny was on her own if the mounted guy turned out to be a problem...

The heroes made pretty short work of the kobolds. Guss really showed his disdain for the little frackers, calling them all to come and get it and then smacking the crap out of them when they did. Quite impressive. The only thing that made the battle interesting was that as usual the little beasts had some priests with them tossing healing around. That and the fact that a whole group of the sneaky bastards pulled a Kobe and snuck around behind the heroes, falling on Sunny and Ron while the rest of the armored folks were mopping up the main group. That didn't even faze Ron - though I swear I saw at least a small bead of sweat on his forehead. He simply stepped back and lit them all on fire. Unfortunately he caught Sunny in the blast as well, singeing her a bit. She was alright though. As the last kobolds started to run Kobe inexplicably started reciting poetry...

"An ode to stickers...
I was walking in yardickers when I saw a bunch of stickers..."

Apparently he'd been hitting the halfling whiskey on his watch as well. Heh.

With the kobolds routed the heroes set to interrogating the poor fellow they'd rescued. Turns out he really was a human (you never can really know for sure these days...) by the name of Bizz. He tossed them a sack containing a bronze statue as payment for saving his life. Kleister began acting strangely (more so than usual) - almost arguing with his spear. Uh oh...next thing I knew he was yelling at Bizz, asking him about his contacts with a dragon. I eased a little closer in case things got uglier. They did but not in the way I was expecting. As Bizz started babbling about how his master had sent him to find the heroes of prophecy the prayer beads around my wrist suddenly got ice cold. I guess 'you know who' was interested in this one. So, when Bizz mentioned that he was supposed to know the heroes by the fact that they had star metal I quietly pointed out that Ron was lugging around a big chunk of it. Bizz's eyes lit up at that. Heh. He insisted on seeing the rock to verify it - which took some doing since Ron is a lot more suspicious than our dwarf - but then happily spilled his story. He was in the employ of a copper dragon who was currently pinned down by all of the evil dragons in the area. His master, Byzantine, believed that the heroes were fated to wield the star metal. If he hadn't been trapped in his lair by the evil dragons, he'd have come to aid the heroes himself. Instead, he'd sent our his followers - like Bizz - to try to find them and warn them. Well, mission accomplished. Bizz was happy to serve the heroes as well, going so far as to give Kobe all of his money when asked for it. I guess I now have some competition in this whole side kick business. Heh. We'll see how he holds up under fire...

Despite Bizz's protests that there weren't any dwarves in the mountains, the heroes continued on their quest for the dwarven stronghold. Finally, they reached the place their talisman said was where the place's backdoor will be found. Not much around to be seen though. They seemed confident that our dwarf - who does have a lot of insight into dwarven backdoors - would be able to find it, so they made camp. I took the opportunity to nap. That's what I was doing when Sunny tapped me gently awake. She'd noticed some crossbows up in the rocks nearby. She started talking to the crossbow wielders - turned out they were dwarves, much to Bizz's surprise - in an ugly guttural language...apparently dwarvish. Three dwarves came out of hiding on a ledge up above our camp. She must have been convincing (isn't she always), because they spoke some words that seemed to rhyme and a door opened in the cliff in front of us.

There was an armed squad of dwarves waiting behind the door. Things seemed a little tense at first, but after a lot of talking in dwarvish and some pointing at the talisman on the spear, the armed group let us in. They escorted us to a huge room where an important looking dwarf - greybearded and wearing a fancy golden crown - talked with Sunny for a while. Ron began translating for the rest of us. Old Greybeard was interested in learning more about the heroes' adventures so far. I volunteered to let him read my journal as I've recounted most of what they've accomplished. The upshot of the whole conversation? The dwarves would love to work the star metal into something more useful than a chunk of rock. But they could only do that for brothers. Of course, non-dwarves have to undergo some kind of test to become brothers. Kleister slammed his spear down at that and announced that the heroes would slay the white dragon that had taken up residence in the dwarves' former hold. This he claimed will make them brothers of the dwarves. Greybeard was impressed by Kleister (who I have to admit, can put on a good show...). The dwarven king added that the star metal could only be worked by a set of tools that were lost inside Grimwatch when Diamond (the white dragon) took the holding from the dwarves. Apparently within Grimwatch there was a vault used by a great dwarven smith. Once Diamond was killed the talisman the heroes have would help them find it.

We spent a couple of days with the dwarves. And that's when I made a surprising discovery. In a small side cavern I found a whole herd of those damned flightless birds from the plains. Turned out the dwarves raise them to, get this, eat. Heh. Gotta hand it to them - dwarves are tough bastards. Funny, too. They have a wonderful dish made from the wings (yeh, bird things have wings even though they can't fly...go figure) of these creatures slavered in a spicy red sauce that they call "buffalo bites". And boy, are those buffalo bites excellent...they go extremely well with the halfling whiskey. And even better with the dwarven beer. Let's just say that the three days pass rather quickly for me. Though I did manage to pick up some nice plate armor for the Raven. Something tells me he's going to need it.

The heroes left the star metal with the dwarves and set off on the dragon hunt. The dwarves lined the halls of their caves as they marched out. I've told them a million times that they are a big deal...I hope they're finally starting to believe it themselves. Heh. It was a long walk. Three days underground until we made it to Grimwatch. Did I mention that Grimwatch is a holding built in the form of a 4000 foot tall statue of a dwarf? Or that Diamond's lair is in the dwarf's chest - right where his heart would be? Or that, most importantly, we're entering the place from...wait for it...the statue's left ankle. It's gonna be a long long climb. Heh.

We found a spiral staircase just inside the ankle and started the long climb. We were no more than 50 feet in when Kobe - who was scouting ahead for treasure - ran into a spider. He attacked it and several more spiders the size of small ponies jumped out of the webs above us to attack. Green goo was quickly flying everywhere as Guss and I began hacking at the creatures. Beros' arrows found their mark but he was bitten in the process. Kliester went down under one of the creatures, wrestling with its eight legs. Ron started lighting them on fire and then, when he gots a bead on the largest spider (mama I think...) dropped his chill cloud on it. The worst of it all? The damn things jumped. First on top of us, then back into the middle of the cavern into their webs. Which don't burn by the way. Big disappointment that was. For some reason I expected their webs to simply go up like kindling. Not so. The heroes proved their mettle once again, killing spiders with abandon and finally, with some fierce strikes from Kleister's spear and a few well placed arrows from Beros, dropping the mama spider. The remaining spider fled at that...leaving us panting and bloodied on the staircase staring at a waving sea of broken webbing...

Well, Alia...I must break here for now...darkness calls.

Poe

Saving the City

2009-09-13T14:59:00.001-05:00

Eleventh entry (after the 08/09 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/moonsong/wikis/poesjournalentryeleven
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

You know, this fort - hell, it's really practically a town now - is really starting to feel like home. Maybe it's just because I've spent so long convalescing here lately. Or maybe, Alia, it's because it's starting to remind me of the little town you and I grew up in. Either way, it'll be a sad day when I can walk steadily for more than a few paces and can accompany the heroes on whatever their next mission turns out to be. Mission, heh. More likely that it'll be some greed-fueled trek across the country after some mythical hoard...

Meanwhile, I've got plenty of time while I'm laid up here to write it all down. And since the local healers are strongly advising me against drinking (ok, so I sneak one in occasionally, but it's a little tough to get to the bar and Sunny has so far refused to deliver anything), I've even been mostly sober so maybe it'll all make sense. Heh. So, where was I my love? Oh yeah - the main floor of the orc governor's mansion in that god-forsaken little town Kobe'd talked us into. We'd just killed everything on that level and Ron was leading the heroes up the stairs to press the attack. Or rather, he'd sent me up the stairs into his stinking cloud. Seemed like a good idea at the time...and as it turns out, Ron's decision to press onward probably saved the lives of everyone. You see, as I reached the landing on the second floor, I heard muffled chanting. My prayer beads turned so cold they hurt. We'd stumbled into a ritual of the Queen's hated enemy. Something designed to raise a demon from the depths of hell. Frack. I took off running, yelling over my shoulder at Ron to hurry.

Two arrows whizzed past my ears. For once, charging into the thick of it was working in my favor. Heh. The two long bow wielding orcs fell back as I barreled down on them. I continued straight towards the sound of the chanting, hurtling at the wall to the next room, ready to blast through it and interrupt the ritual. The wall held. I bounced. Ouch. Luckily the wounds were mostly to my pride. I'd started to move towards the doorway when Guss caught up with me. He was a little upset with me - running off on my own. I started to explain but the breath was crushed from my lungs by a blow from a battle axe. My fancy new armor held. I suspect it's going to need some serious work to get that and various other dents pounded out. Heh.

The chanting was reaching a feverish pitch, so I tried to shove past the three orcs blocking the door. They stood firm, pushing me back. Guss had better luck - all that fancy footwork and years of training paid off. He got the orcs to move enough that I a narrow path into the room opened in front of me. A booming voice reverberated throughout the room, speaking in a strange tongue. Suddenly the back wall blew to pieces. Ron stepped into the room through the cloud of dust. He waved his hands and spoke some arcane words. Darkness burst from his fingertips, striking down all of the orcs and the newly summoned demon. Now that's an entrance. Heh. I didn't hesitate to back him up - charging into the room straight at the demon. I spent the next several seconds unconscious...recovering from a vicious strike from a fallen orc. Ron apparently hadn't killed them, just knocked them down. Frack. While I was out however, Kobe and Sunny joined the fray, each damaging an orc. Ron and the death mages traded magical attacks and several orcs closed with Beros, trying to keep him from using his bow. Oh, yeah, and the demon stood up and one upped Ron, blowing the remaining three walls of the room - the whole side of the mansion really - to dust. Sunny tells me that the demon then asked where his star metal was and that Ron, ever ready with a quip, quickly asked the creature how much he was willing to pay. Heh. Sunny also said that things started getting really interesting about then (as if they weren't already). The orcs began to flee, led by the indomitable Snarl, who crawled off the edge of the building to get away from the carnage. Ron yelled after him, calling for him to come back with the star metal. Apparently this ploy didn't work quite as planned. The demon responded with a blast of fire, forcing Ron to throw up a shield to avoid being crisped. Beros launched an arrow at the demon. It flew true, but was, according to Sunny consumed by the creature's fiery aura before it could do any damage. Kobe and Sunny kept their distance, killing fleeing orcs. Guss moved over to me and rendered some desparately needed first aid. And so I awoke - to a sea of flaming rubble and the entrance of our flaming dwarf, holding in his hand, of all things, a beer. Talk about service. Heh.

I figured I didn't really have time for a cold one, good as it sounded. Someone had to give Ron a hand. He'd moved the stinking cloud over the demon and then shrouded the demon and the death priests in fire. No one else seemed too eager to take on the creature. Well, I guess that's what I'm here for...I screamed the Queen's challenge at him and charged. Our dwarf shouted a prayer, sending waves of healing washing over me and then took up a defensive stance in front of Ron. None too soon either - the demon started towards them. Sunny lashed it with her magical power and it thought better of that plan, instead turning to swing it's fiery glaive at me. The burning blade crashed into my side, but I kept going buoyed by more healing from our dwarf. Ron's stinking cloud finally did in the death mages, but they had a last trick up their tattered black sleeves. As they died, their souls flew through him, raking him with black claws. He fell. Our dwarf was there though, exercising his praying muscles yet again, to bring Ron immediately back to his feet. I bought the two of them a second of respite, going toe to toe with the demon and trading blows with it. Ron wasted no time, flinging two magical missiles at the creature as soon as he was back on his feet. Unlike Beros' projectiles, these penetrated the creature's aura. Our dwarf started yelling something about the floor. I looked where he was pointing. Cracks were widening in the floorboards and several boards were starting to pull apart. Uh oh. Our dwarf continued praying as he backed away from the fast failing floor. He must have been calling for help for me, because I suddenly felt invigorated. Hell with it. I stood my ground, keeping the demon away from the heroes. Behind me, Sunny's voice cut through the din, calling down a curse on the demon. You'd think he'd be immune to such a thing, but no, it clearly stung. With that and a final groan, the floor gave way, sending the demon and I plunging back down to the main floor of the mansion.

Good thing we were only on the second floor. Plus, most of the heroes were smart enough to have backed out of the room before the floor fell. Me? Well I was up close and personal with the creature. Close enough to see him draw on some power to close several of the wounds that Ron had dealt him. Frack. I stood up and smacked him with the Queen's cold blade. A couple of arrows thunked into him as well. Good. Beros was back in the fight, too. Our dwarf continued praying from up above and the ground around the demon and I suddenly began to glow slightly. Soothing warmth spread up my legs. Guss was back, too - swinging at the demon with his blade as it tried to step out of the glowing area. Things were looking up. The demon didn't stand for long against the combined power of the heroes. Our dwarf hurled a lance of glowing power at him. Sunny blasted him with some sort of magical energy and then Guss finished him off with a sweeping blow from his sword. Suddenly all I could hear over my pounding heart was the crackling of the fire consuming the upper floor. I fell to my knees and thanked the Queen for helping to vanquish the creature.

While I prayed, the heroes stood in the burning building deciding on their next course of action. Stay and search for treasure or get out before the place collapsed. You can guess their decision. Heh. Fortunately, we got word relatively quickly that Snarl had holed up in the guard's barracks and may have actually gotten some of the remaining human guards to fight for him. We'd see about that. So, off we sped to the barracks. As we approached the building my prayer beads suddenly chilled and I noticed a raven launching itself from a nearby rooftop. Uhoh. I stepped in front of Ron, just in time. Three arrows thumped into my chest, kicking the wind from my lungs. Human archers on the walls behind the building were using us for target practice. I heard Snarl yelling at them. Time to put an end to that frackin' orc. Before I could act on that though, the humans loosed another volley of arrows. I was hit again. Sunny started yelling to the archers, asking them to join us and throw off the yoke of the orcs. The rest of us took a more direct path - charging the barracks. Kobe got there first and took up a post near the door. Ron and I moved forward together, following him. Ron hurled a spell at the structure...but missed. I looked at him in dismay. That didn't last long though as the barracks' door burst open and the orc who'd stabbed me from the floor earlier in the morning charged out. His wicked axe sliced into me again.

Sunny continued talking to the archers on the wall. I hoped she'd be able to talk them down. I'd taken enough arrows for one day. I figured our best bet though would be to get Snarl. Our dwarf must have been thinking the same thing. I heard him chanting and suddenly Snarl himself stepped out into the light of the morning, blinking and looking slightly confused. Ron tossed more fire at the orcs and I took the opportunity to smack Snarl with the Queen's blade. Orcs now poured out of the barracks. A single arrow threaded through the ranks, finding a home in Snarl's chest. Beros again. Guss wasn't quite so lucky - Snarl managed to dodge his blade. That was when I heard the yells from inside the barracks and several of the orcs in the back were mobbed by human guards. They'd joined us. The archers on the walls stopped shooting, too. Sunny's charm offensive had obviously succeeded. Good for her and us.

I watched Kobe dart around me and bury two daggers in the orc I'd been holding off to my left. I heard Sunny shout "Sorry!" and had a second to duck before I was engulfed in a firestorm. I clenched my teeth and tried to dodge as another orc's huge axe swept towards my head. Out of nowhere an arrow came shrieking past my ear, driving directly into the axe's shaft and deflecting it to the side. I breathed thanks to Beros. Snarl screamed his rage at the turncoat humans, "You'll all die for this!" Well, he's half right anyway. Heh. Guss shoved his way through an orc, his blade stabbing through the beast's defenses. Without pausing, he spun his sword as if it were nothing more than a dagger, catching a second orc with his back stroke. Frack, he's good. Me? I could barely keep a hold of my blade, what with the blood pouring down my arm. Warmth flooded over me, thankfully not fire this time, as our dwarf's prayers brought me healing yet again. The orc next to me staggered back as a blast of fey energy from Sunny caught him in the face. Not to be outdone, Ron flung a few missiles of his own, two burning bolts of magic that pummelled into Snarl and temporarily at least shut him up.

I'd finally got a good grip on my sword and I swapped blows with one of the orcs. The creature was shifty though and slid quickly behind me to strike a second blow - solidly this time - with his axe. I heard the twang of Beros' bow again and a grunt from Snarl. Another hit for the elf. Our dwarf yelled a battle cry. The orc behind me screamed as his knee was shattered by our dwarf's hammer. Kobe materialized out of thin air again, his daggers flashing as he, too struck the orc. A blast ripped the air off to the left. Ron again, I thought as I spun myself around and cut the orc behind me. Another orc came flying into the fray, slashing me with his axe. I smiled as Beros' bowstring sung again. Snarl yelled. Yet another hit for the elf. Our dwarf brought his hammer down again, this time smashing the orc's forearm. White light radiated from the weapon. With a flick of his wrist he sent the light towards Guss, who's eyes widened as several of his wounds closed up. I heard a gurgle and spun again. The orc who'd been threatening me was on his knees, one of Kobe's daggers protruding from his right eye socket. I was a bit disoriented, still bleeding pretty heavily. Ron shouldered me out of the way, blocking a pair of orcs from closing with me. We needed to end this fight now. I looked around and then found him. Snarl. Cut off the beast's head I figured. I wasn't the only one. We converged on Snarl. Sunny blasted him, drawing a howl of pain. Kobe twisted him around and pushed him to the ground. Ron loosed yet another volley of fire at an orc trying to shelter in the doorway of the barracks. Standing over Snarl, I growled at him myself. "Last chance to die quickly," I told him. He spat at me in reply. The remaining orcs weren't through yet either. They struck both Ron and Sunny. Beros plugged Snarl just as he was climbing to his feet. This brought him into range though and Snarl didn't waste the opportunity to strike at the elf. The archers on the wall joined in the battle again - this time on our side - firing on the orc that'd charged out to engage Sunny. Sunny pulled a trick of her own, sidestepping the creature while blasting it with more fey power. Ron threw more magic at the orc in the barracks. It seemed like things were well in hand around me...but Sunny was on her own against that orc. Frack. I charged without thinking, blood scattering from multiple wounds. As I staggered up to the orc, he spun around, batted my sword to the side and sunk his blade into me. Things went dark...

Sunny's filled in the details of what happened after I fell in what she calls my foolish attempt to save her. Turns out she can more than take care of herself. In fact, she was the one who stabilized me and kept me from dying on the field. While she did that, our dwarf and Ron teamed up to take down Snarl. Ron at one point literally stood over my body fighting off an orc. Together, the heroes killed the remaining orcs. After that, and some well deserved rest, they gathered all the humans who were interested and made the trek back to the fort. I wasn't much help for most of that, being laid up and barely able to walk. Sunny and Ron insisted I take it easy and since I wasn't in any state to argue, I did. Hopefully, I'll be back on my feet and full strength again soon.

Poe

Redemption, Part 2

2009-08-14T21:54:00.002-05:00

Tenth entry (after the 07/09 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/moonsong/wikis/poesjournalentryten
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

So here I am again beloved...ahhh, Alia, why is it only in the dregs of my cups that I can find any solace without you? I thought perhaps dedicating myself to the Raven Queen's service, dutifully praying and trying to advance her goals - though I still sometimes wonder at the import she has placed on this particular group - would ease that pain. It's not to be. Only in the heat of battle do I find peace. At least these heroes of prophecy lead me into the thick of the fight more often than not...even when they decide to run, as they did in the forest.

We took off from the battle site as fast as our little dwarf's legs could carry him. Try as we did though, we were not fated to elude the little frackers. They quickly ran us down from behind, almost literally as they were riding a huge lizard. The ensuing battle was bloody and brief. Six of the little frackers struck me with their short swords. Ron conjured waves of darkness to claw at them and Beros took one down with some well placed arrows. That's when the lizard - and I say lizard only because Kleister spent most of the battle yelling that it wasn't a dragon - spit poison at us. The green goo spewing from it's mouth smelled as bad as it felt. I gritted my teeth, held my breath and stepped into the spray. That's why She put me here I guess. Channeling her power I thrust the cold sword into the beast's chest. It roared. Felt that one. Heh. My gloating got me into trouble as I failed to notice the lizard's little kobold keeper slipping behind me. He quickly got my attention though, thrusting his short sword into my back. Kleister yelled at me, pointing out an opening and I took it, swinging my frost blade at the lizard again and connecting solidly. I heard a whistle and felt the wind of Guss' sword cutting the air behind me, killing the little fracker who'd just stabbed me. A grunt and a dwarven curse indicated that our dwarf had deigned to enter the fray as well. Good for him. The lizard wasn't done with me yet though. It chomped at me with its poison dripping fangs. I must not have tasted too good though as it promptly backed away after doing so. I pressed the attack, flailing wildly with my weapon. This time, the beast's fangs struck true, injecting its poison into me. Frack. High pitched screams erupted behind me - Ron clearing out the kobolds by the sound of it. With its handlers dead, I took a chance and ordered the lizard to sit in my fiercest voice. Amazingly it began to back down...just in time to be caught by a magical bolt hurled by Ron. Ron's magic killed it instantly. So much for riding out of there in style...

I suppose it was for the best - the Queen probably wouldn't have taken too kindly to me letting it live anyway. The battle turned out to be the kobolds last gasp and we made it out of the forest without further incident. Interestingly enough the longer we stayed in the forest the more I began to understand why it (whatever "it" was) was so pissed off. I guess I'd be a little upset if my body had been invaded by parasitic green dragons and their foul minions. Understanding this didn't make it any easier to sleep though so I was glad to leave the place behind.

The trip back to the fort went well. It was good to get back there. A lot had changed...most obviously that the fort itself was not as obvious. Apparently the negotiations with the gnomes had gone well - I heard that they spoke elvish - and the gnomes had cloaked the fort in an illusion spell. They'd also discovered a portal that would allow some of the magic using heroes to instantly travel between the fort and any other place that had a similar portal. The heroes were smart enough to be worried about this and so had blocked it up (after discussing ideas for using it as a trap for various evil creatures). The fields were growing well, too. Apparently the green dragon corpses really did make for good fertilizer. While the heroes regrouped and planned their next step, I caught up with the Raven. I was a bit disappointed to learn that he hadn't killed anything yet, so I spent some time with him teaching him how to use the bloody axe and getting him up to speed on the Queen's priorities.

Before too long the heroes decided to head to the mountains to visit the dwarves. Apparently they'd been told to present themselves there at the full moon some time ago. So off we went again...

Life on the road is becoming the norm for us. Traveling the plains especially is becoming old hat, but we did encounter something new this time: buffalo. A whole herd of them. It didn't take me long to realize that they were likely the main source of food for those frackin' flightless bird things. Frack. That put me on my guard Guss however saw the immediate danger - a stampede. He wisely led us to a rocky outcropping where we made out camp for the night. No stampedes and no birds things. Heh.

Things continued to be uneventful until we came to a road and followed the road to a city that looked to be about the size of Long Meadow. I guess the heroes had gotten a bit bored with life on the road. They decided to stop and enjoy the comforts of civilization for a night. Kobe took the lead, moving ahead of the rest of the group and attempting to talk his way past the gate guards. He was gone a while and from the looks we got from the guards as we came in he must have told them one heck of a story. Or maybe just paid them a bunch of money. Or perhaps both. Whatever he did, it got us in and to a comfortable looking inn. Ron wasted no time in getting himself hooked up at the inn, getting a good room and some companionship. I was happy to have Sunny procure me some new alcohol and promptly sat myself in the corner of the common room to test it out. I hadn't even gotten through the first glass however when I noticed a raven sitting on the windowsill, looking at me knowingly. Frack. I corked my new bottle and followed the bird's gaze. Two men sat in the opposite corner, their heads together. Clearly they didn't want to be bothered and didn't want to draw any attention to themselves. I looked at the bird again. He nodded at me. I sighed. OK, here we go. I took my bottle over to the men's table, plunked it down in front of them, grabbed a chair and sat down. As I did so, the raven squawked loudly and flew away. Their eyes darted to it and both made the sign of the Queen. Interesting. I did the same. Then quietly showed them my holy symbol. It wasn't long before we were discussing the sorry state of things for humanity. I told them about the Raven and how the Queen had chosen him as her champion. They agreed to spread the word among Her followers. In return, I acquired some gold from Sunny and Kobe and donated it to their group. All in all, a good night's work and I don't think the Queen begrudged my finishing off the remaining bottle by myself. Heh.

The next morning I learned that Ron had procured me a fancy suit of plate armor. Guess he likes having me between him and the bad guys...and on my feet. Heh. I also learned that Guss had started recruiting people from the town to emigrate to the heroes' fort. Worst of all, several of the Queen's worshippers I had talked with the night before approached me with a plan to overthrow the orc governor of the town. I deferred, but hooked them up with the heroes and let them decide. Predictably, we were soon planning to storm the governor's mansion. As I sit here writing this, they're feverishly working on their attack plans. Me? I don't care as long as I get to kill some orcs. They killed me not too long ago. I figure I owe them. Heh. Heck, today's as good a day as any to die.

We're catching our breath here, so I have a moment to write. Battle was joined as the sun broke above the horizon this morning. We snuck Beros into town with a hat pulled down over his pointy ears (he wouldn't let us cut them round...) and ambushed the orcs at the front door of the mansion. Sunny successfully lured one of the guards out but the other sprinted inside and pounded on a gong. So much for the fancy plan. Guss and I charged the door, leaving the rest of the heroes to deal with the first orc guard. Kobe and Beros were on the case, so we figured they'd be fine. The gong ringing orc charged back out of the door, right into Guss' steel. The orc had friends behind him though - and at least one of them either had magic abilities or an uncommonly close relationship with the local garbage heap: a swarm of flies flew out of the building, surrounding me, biting me and obscuring my sight. Lucky for me, the flies moved on quickly. I heard Ron cursing...they must have found him instead. Heh. The yells of the orc outside suddenly gurgled and stopped. I caught a glance of Beros, looking grim, nocking a new arrow. Score one for the good guys. I stepped into a hail of blades - damn orcs and their frackin' axes - trying to keep up with Guss who was pressing into the building. Ron followed right behind me, wreathed in fire and throwing one of his magical stinking clouds past me. I was bleeding heavily and Guss was looking like he's hurting. The Queen however had other plans for today. My new prayer beads iced up and Her power flowed through me, healing both myself and Guss. Arrows whistled past me and buried themselves into the one-eyed orc's shoulder. That should slow him down I thought. The Queen's power was still flowing strongly through me so I struck out with it, lending it to my nearby comrades as well. Ol' One-eye was still back though - he threw some sort of disease at Guss, who almost immediately began to take on a greenish hue. Uh oh, I thought. Luckily Beros and Kobe had finally joined the fun. Kobe walked straight up to One-eye and calmly stuck his daggers in the grimy creature's chest. I dropped the orc still holding and was rewarded with the Queen's blessing. Energized I charged forward. Guss beat me there, bashed One-eye with his shield and with a sweep of his blade, ended the creature's foul existence.

So here we are...getting ready to put an end to this orc governor's hold on this town. If She wills it, I shall relate how it went to you when I can. If not, I shall join you, Alia, in eternity.

Poe

Redemption, part 1

2009-07-11T21:16:00.002-05:00

Ninth entry (after the 06/09 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/moonsong/wikis/poesjournalentrynine
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

This will have to be quick. I'm sitting in the woods, on the banks of a fast moving river, as the heroes weigh their options. Orc horns are sounding in the distance and Ron's falcon friend (Baxter I think he called him), is reporting scores of kobolds heading our way. Yeah, as if we haven't already killed enough of the little frackers. You'd think they'd take a hint. Anyway, we won't have much time to lick our wounds before all hell breaks loose again. I figure I should get some of this down while I have the chance...especially since the last week or so I've been too busy praying at night to properly record anything. From the sounds of things - and the nervous arguing of my intrepid hero friends this might be my last chance. Ahhh! Alia! Perhaps I'll be with you soon...

So, if you've been keeping up you've long since realized that our heroes have a greedy streak a mile wide. If that's the case, you'll not be at all surprised to learn that after dispatching the two dragons at their fort their thoughts immediately turned to the beasts' hoards. Well, almost immediately. First, they concocted a plan to acquire seeds to take advantage of the outrageous fertility spawned by the corpses of the two dragons. Apparently, the monsters' dead bodies make great fertilizer. I've spent some time on a farm recently and believe me - I haven't ever seen anything like this. If their plan pans out and Sunny and Kobe are able to trade some of the dragon parts to the gnomes for seeds the humans the heroes are leaving behind will be eating like kings with very little effort. Lucky bastards. I suppose this makes up for letting the dragon eat a bunch of them. Heh.

All my praying seems to have paid off, too. I think I'm at least on speaking terms with the Queen again. While everyone was bustling around looting kobold bodies and such, my prayer beads suddenly got cold. That was right about when I noticed a large raven sitting on the body of one of the dragons. The bird cocked its head at me and gave me that knowing look. I followed its gaze to where a group of the humans were busy cleaning up some of the mess of the battle. One of the men stood out...a good half a foot taller than the rest, his head crowned with waves of long black hair. Hmm. The raven looked at me, then at the former slave, then at the bloody axe. Ahhh. Slowly I figured it out...interesting. I hefted the axe and walked over to him. His eyes widened as I explained the weapon's powers and uses to him. Understanding and then grim determination took over as I quietly told him about the Queen, the raven and the cold cycle of fate and death that all of us are trapped in. He nodded slowly as I told him that he was no longer to be called Crag. He was now "the Raven" and fated to spread the Queen's judgment in the world. The Raven promised to use the bloody axe and to prepare another to take it up when he finally met his fate. It was my turn to nod and then, without thinking, I handed him my prayer beads. They were ice cold. He took them reverently and we both jumped as the large black winged raven launched into the air from the dragon's corpse, cawing loudly. It felt right at the time, but I sure could use those prayer beads right about now. From the looks of things, we're going to need all the help we can get.

So where was I...yeah, after christening the Raven, I learned that the heroes had decided to indulge their greedy streak. So while Kobe and Sunny set off for the Summit of Three Races, the rest of us set off after the dragon hordes. Beros and Ron start tracking the kobolds - no mean feat considering the time that had passed. A couple of days and sleepless nights on the plains - hard to sleep when I keep thinking about those frackin' flightless bird things pecking me apart - and we're hopelessly lost and the tracks have become too muddled to follow. We wander around a bit and, as food supplies start getting low have to begin eating off the land as we go. Prairie dogs and roots. Yum. I've never been so happy to see a river in my life. Well, until I realized that the heroes expected us to cross it. Heh.

Thankfully they decided to look for a better spot to cross. It was pretty swift moving where we were. We came upon one pretty quickly, too. Unfortunately, it turned out to be Moonsong City...seat of power of the hated orcs. The heroes used their heads on this one and decided not to attempt to use its bridges to get across the river. Apparently the strain of wandering in the sun had affected both our dwarf and Ron...for after three days of walking alongside the river trying to find a way across they both independently realized that they have the ability to cast water walking rituals on us...assuming we can pony up the 10 gold pieces of course. Remember...greedy. Heh. Luckily Guss' friend Kleister - a true leader - pays my way. I knew there was a reason the Queen wanted him to have that spear.

After the dangerous trek across the river - hey, you ever tried walking across rapids? You may not be in any danger of sinking and drowning, but it's still frackin' hard to stay on your feet. We found a lot of kobold tracks and even a series of shrines. It appears that there are at least two different bloodlines of green dragons being worshiped by the little frackers. As if one fork tongued dragon family wasn't enough. I suppose they need two so they don't interbreed too much and all become stupid. Heh.

The forest turned out to be a crappy place to hang out, too. I thought the plains were bad... but here it's as if the trees are alive. And not with the sound of music. I'm not saying I'm usually a good sleeper - especially when I'm sober - but there's something in these woods that is just giving me the creeps. As if the trees themselves are pissed off. I'm almost longing for the prairies and those damn birds. Almost. We kept walking...I don't know, maybe the heroes think there'll be signs eventually or something. You know - "This way to the dragon's lair..." or "Here be dragons..." or something. All there is are these frackin' shrines though. Ron kicks one over...then another...and then another. Maybe that's what prompts the kobold attack. Or maybe it was seeing our dwarf start trying to put the moves on me. You know, there are some things I won't do for the heroes of prophecy. I'm all for our dwarf coming out but he's going to have to back off or Queen's wrath or not I'll pop him. Besides, I'm pretty sure Ron would be more willing to help him out. Ron seems willing to do anything for a good time. Thankfully, the kobold attack took my mind off of that mental image. The kobolds seemed to be keying on poor Beros, hitting him with several javelins in their first volley, so I jumped in front of him. I felt a cold shiver run through me and his wounds began to heal back up. I guess I can still get some love even if I don't have my prayer beads. Heh. The battle was fierce and fast. I spent most of it trying to keep Beros from getting hit. Whatever the Queen had done, every time he took a javelin or a sword thrust from one of the little frackin' kobolds I felt it as if it had hit me. Gah! Talk about making things personal. Ron, Kleister and Guss didmost of the heavy lifting and pretty soon all of the little frackers were dead. Ron looted their bodies carefully - he clearly didn't want to miss any of those pricey balls of string you know. Remember...greedy.

After a bit more traveling, and nearly walking right into a major kobold community, the heroes decided to rest - as much as possible in these accursed woods - and then head to some appointment they apparently have with the dwarves. Yeah, I thought all the dwarves were basically dead, too. Guess I was wrong. Darn orc propaganda. I can't trust anything I learned growing up. So, since we're stuck between the kobolds and the orc city, we found what we thought was a good spot to walk back across the river and Ron and our dwarf started to cast the water walking ritual again. They didn't get too far though - the kobolds returned. Guess they wanted a rematch. Heh.

Beros was ready for them this time - shooting down three of the liitle beasts as the first group of eight charged out of the woods at us. He paid for it though as they all seem to once again concentrate on killing him. I felt a cold shiver run up my spine. Uh oh. Here we go again. I moved to cover the elf as Guss and Kleister got into defensive positions. Ron was on fire. Literally. After bursting into flame, he conjured black shifting shadows, deflected a kobolds magical attack - scolding the creature for attacking him - and then, when he saw our dwarf surrounded by eight of the little frackers, blasted them all, leaving only our flaming dwarf (heh) and a lone kobold standing. I'm was gritting my teeth as Beros kept getting hit and one kobold after another took their turn shoving a spear into my gut. Seeing Kleister in trouble, I charged over to him, freeing him to go to our dwarf's aid. A few of the kobolds tested Ron's fiery aura. From the smells and screams, I guessed that didn't go too well for them. Heh. Our dwarf did an admirable job as a spotter for Ron, serving as the point of attack for a stinking cloud and some sort of phantasm spell. It wasn't long before the heroes had the kobolds on the ropes. Kleister impaled one of their shamans on the dragon killing spear and then did a little mocking victory dance. That did it. The rest of the kobolds broke off and fled. Not before a couple of them jabbed me with their swords though. Lucky for me, our dwarf was right there and sickeningly eager to touch me. Gah! At any rate, I was healed and able to ram the Queen's cold blade through the last kobold.

So there you have it. And here we are. It sounds like they've made a decision. So, my Queen it seems my task is not yet finished. But today, like every day, is a good day to die...

Poe

The Trojan Dragon

2009-06-15T21:34:00.002-05:00

Eighth entry (after the 05/09 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: Poe's Adventure Journal, Entry 8 at Moonsong City on Obsidian Portal
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

Ever have one of those days? You know, when nothing you do seems to work and every time you turn around you're tripping on something or stabbing yourself in the foot? You'd think being a chosen implement of the Goddess of fate would give you some protection from the worst of the bad turns that life tends to dish out. Maybe I've been spending too much time in my cups lately and not enough time with the old prayer beads. Come to think of it, I haven't seen that raven hangin' around lately either...Clearly just keeping the heroes of prophecy from getting themselves killed before they fulfill whatever destiny She has picked out for then isn't enough to keep Her happy. Guess I'd better get me to church, so to speak. Heh.

Anyway, things worked out alright in the end I guess. Despite our dwarf's best efforts to the contrary. He cut a deal with one of the dragon's that was after the heroes and their star metal. He bought the creature's sob story about sibling rivalry and wanting to get free from his older brother. I couldn't believe the rest of them went along with the dwarf's plans. Only Kobe showed any real suspicion and that was mainly because there wasn't any money in it for us. I smelled a rat right away, but not being a hero I shut up and did as I was told. Too bad about the human slaves the beast ate while they had it "hiding" in our keep. The raven always gets her due - one way or another. Heh.

Anyway, the fun started with a chorus of "Got bread?" as Ron's magical wards were tripped by the second beast's kobold minions. Thank the Queen for that - I was getting sick of sitting in the courtyard waiting for something to happen. Three nights in a row is a long time without a drink...

Ron was on the case immediately, hurling a spell that immobilized the newcomer. Right about then I and the heroes noticed that the beast our dwarf had negotiated a deal with wasn't coming out of the tunnel as planned. Well, he wasn't, but *his* kobold minions sure were, spilling out of the tunnel like a colony of upset ants. attacking on our back ranks. Big surprise there. Heh.

I figured Guss and Kleister could handle things back there, so I took off running to try to get at the larger reptile while it was stranded on the ground. I heard shrill screams from behind me as I ran - Kobe and Sunny must have been hit by something. Things started happening fast...I heard Ron slinging another spell and then cursing as Meep, a kobold he'd tried to befriend, (don't ask...) turned on him. No good deed goes unpunished I guess. I reached the wall and hurled myself over it. Crap. It was a lot further down than I remembered. I fell flat on my face. I pulled myself back to my feet and stumbled over to the prone dragon. Three arrows whizzed over my head, missing the dragon altogether. Whoa. Beros must have gotten his hands on Guss' bow...

I lost that train of thought as the dragon reared up in front of me...just as a kobold snuck past my guard and smacked me in the chest with his weapon. A shuriken flew past my head as I scrambled away from the kobold as fast as possible. Whaaa? I was inexplicably terrified. A few panicked moments later I realized I've been enspelled. Frack. At least I didn't wet my pants...hate to get the new armor all rusty so soon.

I tightened my grip on the long sword and charged back into the fray. Kleister was yelling from within a cloudy area of the battlefield. I couldn't understand what he was saying (just between you and me, that's sadly not that unusual...), but it didn't sound like things were going well. My fears were confirmed when I heard our dwarf chanting some healing prayers...things must have been bad if he was actually healing instead of trying to kill something. Did I mention that this was all his fault? Yeah, stupid and ornery. Great combination. Luckily, Ron Burgundy was on our side. With a wave of his hand he dismissed the dragon's foul cloud. Then, as the beast's claws raked across his body, he hurled another spell that pushed a kobold and the dragon itself back and into the cloud he'd conjured earlier. Yeah. Ron was a front line fighter today. I may just be out of a job. Heh.

Kobe climbed the wall near me, trying to get back into the thick of things I guess. I figured he'd get things under control inside the fort, so I sprinted around the corner to take out the kobolds cowering there. They looked like healer types - the dried feet and bones hanging around their necks were dead giveaways - so I figured someone should take care of them before they could heal their scaly leader. As I closed with them though a wave of nausea hit me and I staggered back yet again, suddenly weakened. Frack, not again. I shook it off and, hearing cries from inside the keep decided I'd better check in on the heroes. Gaining the top of the wall I saw Ron picking himself up off the ground. From the looks of things, he very nearly bought the farm there. Frack. Frack. Frack. I really can't afford to let one of the heroes die. I whispered a prayer to the Queen to keep him up and felt a cold shiver run down my spine. Not sure what that was exactly, but the next time Ron took a blow from a kobold I winced as the pain shot through my body. I guess that's what I get for praying. Serves me right I suppose. I ran past Ron to engage the dragon, trying to keep Ron free to kill things since I certainly wasn't going to be doing much worshipping of that sort this evening. Lucky for us, Guss and Kleister had managed to hold the other dragon in the tunnel all of this time. I watched as Guss plunged his sword into first one, then two different kobolds and then nimbly leapt over the dragon's swinging tail. And I can barely keep my sword pointed in the right direction tonight. Damn. He's really making me look bad. Heh. I settled for doing my best to get in the way of the other dragon - maybe I could buy enough time that one of the heroes could take it out.

Our dwarf started chanting again...and I felt several blows rain down on me. Ron must have gotten in trouble again. Suddenly, a bestial roar of pain blasted out from the cave and then just as suddenly cut off. A feminine voice cut through the chaos of the battlefield like a knife. "Surrender now! Or Die!" I nearly dropped my sword before realizing Sunny wasn't yelling at me...and I'm wasn't the only one. Kobold weapons clattered to the ground and even the dragon's great head bowed in surrender. Only Beros was unfazed. He took the opportunity to sink several arrows into the remaining dragon's side. This broke whatever glamor Sunny had spun over us all and time seemed to start up again. The dragon launched itself into the sky, trying to flee. He didn't get far before Kobe's dagger found a soft spot - in his backside. Heh. The ground rumbled as his carcass fell from the sky.

I spent the better part of the night praying and performing burial rites for the many dead - kobold, dragon, halfling and human. No time like the present to start getting back in Her good graces. Wait, I'd better go - I think the heroes are planning something again. I should probably find out what's going to be trying to kill them next...

Poe,
Cursed servant of the Raven Queen

Gnoll Way, Gnoll How...

2009-05-02T14:28:00.002-05:00

Seventh entry (after the 04/09 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: Poe's Adventure Journal, Entry 7 at Moonsong City on Obsidian Portal
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

OK, so I know now why I'm not a hero. Just not cut out for it I guess. I see twenty newly liberated human slaves as a burden that we're best free of as soon as possible. Guss and crew see them as people to be rescued. I figured we'd done enough already, freeing them from their orc masters and their life of slavery. Nope. We had to herd the crowd back to the halflings and then cut a deal with the nomads to secure a place for the humans to live in peace. Heh. As if that's possible in these times anyway. Better if we simply armed them and sent them straight at the nearest orc outpost...

So, the halflings got the humans. And the star metal, too. And Kobe. And Kleister Fokken. And Beros. I'm not sure who came out ahead in that deal. Heh.

We also apparently volunteered to take out a group of gnolls who'd taken up residence in an abandoned keep near the halflings' lands. If we did that, we'd not only get to keep the keep (I think Kliester liked the idea of owning his very own castle...having 20 some odd servants, even if they could barely speak and clearly hadn't bathed for some time, seemed to be going to his head...) but the halflings would also keep an eye on the humans for us. The heroes figured it was a good deal, so who am I to argue?

The first day's travel through the plains uneventful. None of those frackin' flightless birds. Or lizards. Whatever. That night however, our camp was raided by a group of kobolds. The little frackers interrupted my nightcap (yep - I replenished my supply of the fiery halfling alcohol when I got the chance...). Luckily, they seemed to be focused on getting Ron. I guess he's personally pissed off some dragon somewhere. Judging from the poison gas some of the little frackers exploded into I'd put my money on that green one we drove off a few days back. These heroes are really going to have to start actually killing dragons one of these days or I swear, its going to come back to haunt them. And not in a good way. Heh.

Anyway, after some more uneventful travel, we made it to the keep the halflings had been telling us about. It's going to need so work..even after we get rid of the gnolls. Without our fearless leaders, Kleister and Kobe, we approached carefully, waiting to approach until the gnoll guards went inside. In a somewhat shocking display of tactical thinking, we actually set up an ambush. Ron took up a position on one of the watch towers (nothing more than a raised platform really, but good enough to keep him out of the front lines and to provide a clear line of sight to the probably field of battle). The rest of us arranged ourselves in a defensive arc around him, facing the large hole in the middle of the courtyard that undoubtedly was where the gnolls had disappeared to. Then we settled in to wait. As the night dragged on I thought about taking a nip of that halfling brew, but each time I so much as thought about it, my prayer beads turned ice cold. Something was certainly brewing...and not in a good way. That's OK - I'm making up for it tonight. Heh.

After a long chilly night, the gnolls finally resurfaced. Probably well rested too, the frackers. Guss did his best Beros impression, yelling "Split the Tree!!!" as he fired his bow at the first gnolls to stroll out of the cave. Wit all due respect to Guss - The Queen knows I love the guy - it wasn't nearly as effective as our skinny elven friend. That's when I saw their damn dogs come running out. I really hate those damn dogs...

Ron and Sunny were on top of things though, blasting the gnolls and the dogs with all sorts of magical power. A large, spiky dog charged up to me just as Ron dropped a freezing cloud on both of us. I called upon the Queen's power and made the creature more vulnerable to the grave's icy grip, then set about doing my best to send it to an early one. Our dwarf joined in, consecrating an area of the courtyard and catching most of the dogs in a blast of radiant power. Gnoll archers were doing their best to take out Ron. They seemed to be having trouble hitting him though. It just wasn't there day I guess. Sunny came to my aid against the spiky dog, hurling some sort of evil eye at it that stopped it dead. In what would become a recurring theme of my day, the creature, even though dead on its feet, exploded right in my face throwing me to the ground as it died. I shook my head and watched as Guss pulled himself out of the freezing cloud - just in time, too, it looked like it was about to get the best of him - and charged the gnoll archers.

Sunny seemed to have things under control with the dogs so I took off after Guss. Our dwarf came along, his little legs pumping fast to keep up with me. The three of us took down the gnolls before they had a chance to retreat back to the cave and call for reinforcements. We didn't wait around outside too long anyway, heading into the underground and right into more gnolls. I guess that's what we were there for, so I shouldn't complain. But man, more of those frackin' dogs. Guss charged ahead this time instead of trying to channel Beros. This not only separated him from the rest of us, but also put him at ground zero for Ron's magical attacks. I shot Ron a glance...and he showed remarkable restraint, keeping his stinking cloud spell from hitting Guss as he dropped it on the gnolls. I tried to close the gap to Guss, but the gnolls had me blocked in. Guss was stuck up ahead, holding off three of the creatures. I pulled back, blocking the remaining dogmen's access to Ron and Sunny. As I did so, I shouldered our dwarf out of the way behind me. He whined something about wanting to bash gnolls instead of healing, but I didn't have time to respond. Lucky for me, Sunny and Ron were focused on their jobs - Ron maintaining his cloud and flinging magic missiles at the gnolls while Sunny hurled curses at them. Between their efforts and Guss' heroics, the creatures were defeated. Afterwards, Ron was very appreciative to both Guss and I, thanking us for acting as human shields. I shrugged. What did he think I'm here for anyway? It's not like the food and companionship are all that good...well, asid efrom Sunny anyway. She always manages to hook me up with something to drink...

Our dwarf lead us off into the maze of tunnels. It seemed reasonable, him being a dwark and all, that he should lead us. Sure. And, just as I was starting to doubt that he had any idea what he was doing he lead us right into a bunch of gnolls and a large, bull headed humanoid monster. Uggh. Talk about a face only a mother could love...

Guss and I drew our weapons in unison and moved to the doorway of the room. Sunny filled the room with a cloud of necrotic energy while we held at the doorway. Bull-head and several of the dogmen charged...but I lost sight of them in the cloud. Guss yelled that they'd headed down a side passageway. He and our dwarf shoved several of the gnolls into the inky black cloud that Sunny had conjured. Their screams were frantic. And satisfying. Crap. It dawned on me that bull-head was probably heading for our rear flank, so I shifted my way to the back of our group, moving to put myself between him and Ron and Sunny. I heard Guss yell and glancing over my shoulder saw him pulling his arm out of the mouth of a large, spiky dog. As Ron rained fire down upon the dogs, Guss whirled his sword around, catching the spiky dog with a wicked back slash. Sunny snarled some magical words of power and one of the gnoll archers was blasted with something that didn't look too comfortable. Good for her - she was really kickin' some serious tail. Not to be outdone, Ron let loose with yet another magical strike on the gnolls and their dogs. That's all I saw as I suddenly got busy again. As expected, bull-head appeared at the end of the hallway, charging towards me. The next thing I knew, his horned head was planted in my chest and I was tossed to the ground in a heap. My armor did its job though - turning the beast's horns away and keeping them from puncturing my lungs. Still hurt like the dickens though. I took a second to catch my breath and regain my feet. As I did so, I heard a yelp, cut short by an explosion. Ron's gotten another one. Heh. My grin was short lived as bull-head's huge axe smashed into my side, crushing the breath from me and probably breaking a few ribs. Ouch. I was jostled to the side as Guss pushed past me shouting a battle cry. He ran right into bull-head's back swing, taking it full in the chest. Despite that, he managed to slip around the creature and thrust his sword deep into the beast's side. Nicely done, I thought, gathering my wits and preparing a strike of my own. I heard our dwarf praying behind me and bull-head roared in pain as flames shot from the ceiling and engulfed him Just as quick, they were gone, leaving the fur on the creature's head singed. Now that's a smell I could have lived forever without having to experience. I brought the frost blade down on the creature. The prayer beads around my wrist turned even colder and I noticed that Guss was bleeding heavily from the wounds he'd taken getting by bull-head. Uh oh...I reached out with the power of the Queen and healed him. Can't afford to miss signs like that even in the heat of battle - I suspect my Queen won't be too pleased if I lose another one of these heroes...

Keeping Guss up turned out to be a good idea. He became a whirlwind of steel, constantly slipping the tip of his blade past bull-head's defenses, inflicting scores of small cuts and slashes on the beast. Before long, the creature was covered in blood. I kept hearing gnoll screams and explosions from behind us, so clearly Ron and Sunny were handling the remaining archers. Our dwarf stepped in and struck the killing blow, dropping bull-head to his knees. Exhausted, I dropped my guard, too soon apparently. The last thing I remember is bull-head letting our a roar and coming straight at me as an all too familiar sting pricked my back...damn archers...

The constant chanting made it difficult to sleep, so I opened my eyes. I was lying in a cave, covered in blood. Our dwarf was standing over me. Chanting. I'm told the minotaur (bull-head) took me down with his final blow, just as our dwarf killed him. Apparently, a stray arrow managed to find my back right about the same time. Better me than any of the heroes I guess. With the minotaur dead though, the rest of the gnolls appear to have fled. The heroes are now gathering up whatever loot they can find here. I suspect we'll be heading back to the halflings now to collect those humans and join the rest of the heroes. Hopefully the humans will have better luck in this old keep than I did...or than old bull-head did for that matter, though say what you will, that lucky beast is dead. Heh.

Poe,
Almost lost my third life...

Too late?

2009-04-06T05:46:00.003-05:00

So how late is too late? The last D&D session I attended in the Moonsong City campaign went until after 2 AM. Considering it got started at 6 PM or so, that's about 8 hours of smack talking 4E goodness. Who can complain about that, huh?

Well, anyone who has a toddler running around or (and in my case), like me is too damn old to be out that late. It's fun, certainly, but the pain the next day and the anticipation of that pain as the night gets later siphons some of the fun out of it. It's hard to justify losing a whole weekend so I just power through on Sunday...and end up paying on into Monday.

So what's to be done? No one likes to be the first guy to call it a night - especially with 8 other geeks ready to conquer that next hill or slay just one more dragon. (Yes, I said 8...but that's a subject for another post...). It was a lot easier when I was DM - I simply pooped out about 1 or so and kicked everyone out. Like it or not the game ended when the DM stopped running it. John K. however has way more stamina than I did, so that doesn't happen.

I guess the only thing for me to do is to bring it up with the group and see if we can come to some kind of consensus on when we'll always call it quits - or at least when it's too late to start that "just one more encounter".

That's what my barber - who gets together monthly with the guys to play "normal" poker - suggested anyway. His group does just that for all of the reasons I mentioned above. They deal their last hand at midnight, no matter what, and once it's done everyone hits the road.

If anyone's reading this, please feel free to offer suggestions in the comments. I suppose we probably just need have some sort of group contract (I've read about these on RPG blog sites - Gnome Stew has a good post discussing them for example), but we're way too informal for something like that - it would just seem way too much like work...

Dragon Slaying, almost...again

2009-04-01T05:22:00.001-05:00

Sixth entry (after the 03/09 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: Poe's Adventure Journal, Entry 6 at Moonsong City on Obsidian Portal
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal
Also, enjoy this: Poe's Adventure Journal - Special Guest Star Edition

You know, a guy really ought to be told. I mean, I have no problem following the heroes of prophecy around - it is my duty after all - and I can even handle being out on these accursed plains. But teeming masses of flightless carnivorous birds leaving nothing but pecked over bones in their path is a little much. I mean really - flightless birds. What's the point? Aren't they really just lizards with feathers? Anyway, I first became aware of these critters when Beros lost Kobe's tracks due to a mass migration of hoofed animals. That's also when we first spotted some of the pecked bones. And our dwarf. Not that the two were related - unfortunately in this case. At least the heroes were careful - we took a break for the night rather then press on in the dark.

The next morning we headed off, looking to pick up Kobe's trail again. This was easier said then done and we spent much of the morning simply wandering around until our dwarf noticed that we were being followed by some large cats. Great, I thought at first, more gnolls. I was wrong though. The cats were ridden by halflings and bearing what Beros claimed were elvish standards. Seemed strange to me, but these guys live for strange, so we tried to talk with the halflings. Turns out, after some shouting, some intimidation and some silliness (Kleister trying to convince them that he was a god...which actually started to work once they got a good look at his spear. Heh.) that they had just seen Kobe. I doubted their story - especially when they claimed that Kobe had turned down an offer of 10,000 gold and two wives for the star metal. Certainly didn't sound like him to me and I'd guess I know him about as well as any of these guys. The heroes bought this story though so I stayed out of it.

Things started looking up, at least for me, that evening when the halflings broke out some alcohol. It was good stuff. Much better than the beer I'd been subsisting on lately. I spoke with Sunny and she hooked me up with some money - enough to lay in a good supply of the stuff for the road. I got started right away and don't remember much else from the evening until I awoke in my armor face down at the table, mug still in hand. Things had suddenly gotten dark and very chaotic. Kleister was surrounded by pint sized halfling children (quarterlings?...heh), half of them chanting "Tallwalker" as he tried to wrangle them into a group and get them off the front lines of what looked to be shaping up as a rather bloody battle. The rest of the heroes were busy fending off a swarm of what looked like small chickens...Gah! The "piranhas of the prairie" were every bit as bad as I imagined. It didn't help that I was still feeling the effects of the halfling ale. Luckily, my mom's old remedy for drunkenness still worked. The mixture of herbs tasted like crap but it did the trick, sobering me up as soon as I started chewing it. By then I was in the thick of things, just in time to dodge a huge landshark that exploded out of the ground, scattering Beros, Ron and the other dwarf. Kleister and I fought off some of the frackin' chickens, keeping them away from the little halflings, while Guss moved to take on the landshark. The swarms and the landshark proved to be a potent mix of foes, but our heroes were able to overcome them - Ron's wintry magic squeezed the breath out of the large beast and Beros' arrows silenced its beating heart. The halfling children were saved and I got to have another drink. Yeah!

The halflings showed their appreciation for the heroes' efforts the next morning, presenting Kliester Fokken with a ribbon marking him as a champion of their tribe...or clan or whatever. Pretty ribbon though, if you're into that sort of thing. Which Kleister is. Big time. There were a lot of whispers of "Tallwalker" in the crowd. The name sounds familiar, but I can't quite place it. Probably a hero of some sort though. Or maybe a legend. I mean, these are the heroes of prophecy, right?

The halflings also told us to bring the star metal back to them. Everybody seems to want that stuff. They also asked if there was anything else we needed. I suggested that some of the large cats they had prowling all over their camp might be useful. This drew the evil eye from several of them. Geesh. You'd think I'd asked to date their sister or something. Well, I guess I'll have to settle for the large flasks of this strong ale that I purchased. I tagged along with the heroes as they headed out, back on the trail of our wayward halfling friend.

We caught up with Kobe rather quickly - probably because he'd hooked up with a group of humans pulling a cart. Slaves of the orcs apparently. Which frankly, most humans are in one way or another. These were just worse off than most. The kind of life I'd spared my beloved from...

Kobe was riding in the front of the wagon with an orcress. The cart was surrounded by a large guard of orcs. almost immediately, the bickering begans - Beros and Guss suggested setting up shop and shooting arrows at the orcs. Kleister suggested charging the cart. I sided with Kleister on this one, although I thought we should surround them first - at least try to cut off their obvious escape route down the road. Sometimes I suspect it would be a whole lot easier if I were workin to protect the "hero of prophecy" instead of the whol egroup of them...at least there'd be a chance at a cohesive group decision...

After a good 5 minutes of arguing as we followed the caravan at a safe distance, Kleister got disgusted with Guss and simply charged. I took off after him - and our dwarf joined us as well. We got a good head of steam going as we rumbled down the slight incline towards the unsuspecting orcs, yelling at the top of our lungs "You can take our Kobe...but you can't take our star metal!!!!" Soon enough, we engaged the orcs. It was a pleasure to introduce them to the Queen. The frackers all have it coming...the whole stinkin' lot of them. I saw Kobe jump out of the back of the wagon and run toward us as well. I figured that it would be good to have his blades on our side, but our dwarf had other ideas. Not to self - never, ever steal anything from a dwarf. Especially if it happens to be a precious metal...they're just plain mean...

Our dwarf laid into Kobe as if Kobe were an orc, smacking him a good one upside his head. I heard Kobe muttering about having no friends, except for Poe and then noticed a strange glaze to his eyes. Something wasn't right. He and our dwarf were squaring off and my prayer beads were suddenly like ice around my wrist. Damn. I hate it when she's all subtle like that. I couldn't let either of the heroes die...so, as Kobe's dagger flashed downwards towards our dwarf's exposed throat I threw myself into him, pushing him out of the way and catching Kobe's dagger in my chest. Frack.

The next thing I knew our dwarf was standing over me praying to that dragon god of his. I sat up, a bit dazed. An awful stench wafted across the battlefield. I noticed Ron concentrating. Luckily, he had that cloud under control. Heh. It looked like Sunny and the others had been doing good work - several more orcs had been dispatched to my Queen. Good. I stumbled to my feet looking for another opponent. Guss and Kleister were charging at the cart. I take a swing at a nearby orc as our dwarf takes another swing at Kobe. Gah! I push myself to Kobe's side and give him some of the Queen's cold strength. Gotta keep all of the heroes alive, even if it kills me. You can imagine my dismay when our dwarf uses magic to command Kobe to enter Ron's magical stinking cloud. Luckily, Ron moved the cloud in time for our dwarf - after some serious looks from me - to decide to use his magic to heal Kobe and keep him from dying.

Again, I was left looking for a target. Only the orc commander and that orcess are left. I watched as Kleister jumped into the back of the cart and tossed out the star metal. He started fighting with the orcess. Guss, who had been trying to help free some of the humans chained to the front of the cart, decided to grab the star metal. The orcess grinned and ponted towards the sky. We all followed her gaze and saw the incoming dragon at the same time. Not another one I thought. Frack. I'd rather fight more of those damn chickens...

Guss acted quickly, pushing the star metal into Ron's cloud where it would be safely out of sight. And certainly untrackable by scent. Heh. Kleister and the orcess continued to fight as the dragon made its first pass. Beros took a few shots at the beast, wounding it. Our dwarf and Kobe seemed to have put their differences aside, for the moment anyway, and the three of us kept the orc commander at bay. Guss jumped to Kleister's aid, killing the orcess. he then stood tall and yelled at the orcs, commanding them to knock off all their evil. Not sure any of them understood him. Or cared. heck, most of them were already dead.

The dragon then hit us with a blast of its posionous breath. Man, and I thought my breath was bad after a night of drinking...This was downright painful. Ron however, had the cure - the Queen's cold. I followed his lead and hit the beast with everything I had of the Queen's wintry power. The creature hissed in pain, but breathed at us again. Ron pulled deeply from his reserves and the Queen answered, helping him keep the cold up a bit longer. The other dwarf smacked the creature and it breathed yet again. Frankly, I was getting a bit sick of this...but right about then the thing decided to smack me with it's tail and then take a chunk out of my leg with its teeth. I fell unconscious at that point and don't really remember much else. From what I gather from the heroes' accounts of the remainder of the battle, the beast was driven off relatively soon thereafter. Let me repeat. Driven off. That means there are now two dragons out there gunning for the heroes of prophecy. You'd think the Queen was intentionally trying to make my job difficult.

Anyway, now we're stuck here on the side of a road to a large orc controlled city, with a large lump of precious metal, a cart pulled by a group of dirty human slaves and scores of dead orc bodies laying around us. Not sure what we'll be doing next. It ought to be good though and as I always say, it's a good day to die.

Poe
Still living my third life.

Poe's Adventure Journal - Special Guest Star Edition

2009-04-01T05:11:00.003-05:00

A special guest appearance in Poe's Adventure Journal by th eillustrious Kleister Fokken. Here's how he viewed the events that took place during the last session (03/09). Courtesy of Jim H.

ok, here's Kleister Fokkens view of the last battle- just an FYI

Beros- Let's shoot em in the back since I can hit them from 200 feet.

Guss-Yeah I got this bow that I never hit with. I'm so much better with a sword so why not sit here and shoot off a few arrows because I wanna be like Beros.

Poe- Oh let me swing around their group and take them all on. Really I just want to die-C'mon, let me do it. It will happen soon enough again.

Guss-Yeah you're a little misguided, so I'm so much more about shooting the orcs in the back.

Kleister- Lets just rush up there in the flying V formation and split the difference. Ron will mop them all anyway so we just need to keep them busy while he finishes them off. then we can attack up the middle like usual and finish off the leader and save the starmetal.

Beros-but we'll get like 10 arrows into their backs before they can move. I really really like shooting them in the back. Have I said that yet?

Guss- Yeah lets do it the Beros' way. I'm not really into running up there and actually doing something useful with my magic sword. I'd rather just fling some wood into the air and hope it sticks to something.

Ron Jeremy- My orb is so big. Don't you guys wish you had an orb this big?

Kleister- Guss, don't you work for me?

Guss- Shuddup ya blowhard. I can't listen to the great Archer Beros while your talking. I'm learning how to shoot orcs in the back. What a neat trick. I'm going to get really good at it too.

Kobe- ahh look at em- they look evil- I'm gonna stab one of those f'ers in the back. God I love this woman. Why is she sending me away from her? Did I do something wrong?

Guss- See I fired my bow and missed. I'm the best fighter with the bow- Now if I had a magic bow I could really do tricks.

Kleister- Charge

Beros- Hah. Split the tree. Split the tree!

Guss- Wow. look at poe and Kleister go. they should really try this bow. I think I'll try a trick shot into the ground. I know I don't have a magic bow, but better to practice these tricks until I find one.

Durkon- I'm gonna kick some orc ass dwarf style like

Sonny- Hopefully these orcs have some hair supplements. My naturally curly hair seems a little droopy lately.

Poe- Well if you can't beat em- join em- these humans of prophecy really know how to get into the thick of it. I'll die in no time. I love it. This is better than sex.

Beros- Split the tree.

Guss- ok well that didn't work. I better go protect Kleister. I don't want to get fired. I just got this job. I really did like Beros' way of shooting them in the back though. I guess I was wrong about him being a coward.

Sonny- Finally a line is formed I'll just drop behind the men and shoot some orcs. I really hate fighting them. It really messes up my naturally curly hair.

Guss- Oh my, this is exhilarating. I keep forgetting about how exciting it is to swing my sword around.

Durkon- Oh Look at that little shit Kobe. Whack, whack whack. Hah, what a dumb little halfling.

Kobe- Holy crap I didn't even hit him yet and he's f'in' jacking me up. Durkon's so gonna die. Just wait you f'in dwarf.

Durkon- Halflings just can't handle it all dwarf like. I think if I knock him out he'll snap out of it, or maybe I can get him to talk about his feelings. Feelings, nothing more than feelings...

Rob Jeremy- My erogenous zone is huge. I can love all those orcs at the same time. I hope they can handle how big my orb is. I just don't want to wear them out too quickly.

Kobe-Poe, what's Poe doing here. He's my only friend. Oh, Here's my chance. Die f'in' Durkon

Poe- Thank you my queen. Thank you. Oh thanks Kobe. unh. That feels GOOD. My queen I'll be there soon.

Kobe- No, Poe! I didn't mean it.

Beros- Split the tree. I'd rather be hugging trees but this works for now. It kinda pays the bills.

Kobe-Durkon's right. I gotta spill my feelings. The real reason I like you as a friend is I LIKE you as a friend. I'm so sorry I hurt you, but this dance has gone on long enough. I need to know. Do you like me Poe?

Poe- Uhhh

Kobe- It's all right, you can tell me. Just let your feelings hang out.

ok, ok I could finish this, but I think you know where all this is going... Ron shooting "Magic Missile's" at the green dragon. maybe just maybe I'll finish this if time permits.

Running man...

2009-03-25T21:14:00.002-05:00

Fifth entry (after the 02/09 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: Poe's Adventure Journal, Entry 5 at Moonsong City on Obsidian Portal
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

I never thought I'd want to see a tree so bad. All this open land and rolling hills can really get to you after a while. Or maybe it's just that I'm sick of listening to the infernal yapping of the gnolls and their hyena pets. Thankfully, after our last skirmish, they've done the smart thing and left our intrepid heroes of prophecy pretty much alone. Having your butt kicked will do that to you. But I'm ahead of myself. I don't want to forget any of the details of the last few days, so before I finish off the last of this good stuff - the stores of strong drink that Sunny procured for me before we left are so painfully low that I'll be drinking mere beer starting tomorrow - I'd better get it all down. So where were we...

Yes, the dragon had been driven off and the hoard finally discovered. Or had it? I've mentioned that these heroes were greedy. And persistent. I guess I should add smart? Hmm, maybe that last one is premature. Anyway, I followed them out of the complex to the entrance - they suspected that the kobolds had made off with a portion of the dragon's hoard and were determined to capture it. Kobolds? I thought we'd killed all of the little frackers, right down to their women and children. Hmm. Turns out I was wrong and they were right. Beros found the tracks of a group of the frackers making their way through the swamp. They were apparently dragging something heavy. And square. The heroes' eyes lit up and the chase was on. Have I mentioned they were going through a swamp? Heh. A couple of damp, smelly days later we caught them. Too late to exact any kind of punishment on them though. Something else already had eaten them. Or sucked the blood right out of them. Uggh. We found out what it was soon enough - Stirges. Cunning little bloodsuckers had laid a trap for us and we'd walked right into it. The bait, an unopened wooden chest, was just too good to pass up. As the cloud of winged creatures descended upon us, Ron was inspired by the Queen and dropped a freezing cloud on them. My personal barmaid Sunny smote several with a thundering blast that literally flung them back from her. The rest of us pretty much stood around, swatting at them and trying not to become a stirge's tall cool drink. Luckily, Ron was inspired by the closeness of the treasure and blasted the bloodsuckers again, dropping most of them. In the midst of all of this, our dwarf starts screaming from behind me that an evil tree is attacking. Now I know dwarves are creatures of the underground, but I figure he knows that trees don't move so he should be fine if he simply walks away. I stay with the stirge, watching helplessly as one of them goes after Ron who's been our most effective attacker to this point. Ron flicks his wrist and a magical shield pops up. The bloodsucker smashes his long beak right into it rather than Ron's meaty arm. Heh. I sense some annoyance from the gods. Turning to see this however allows me to see our dwarf - just as he is engulfed by a walking tree. Ooops. I guess I'd better get back there. Guss must be thinking the same thing. We both hurry to help our dwarf.

Guss pushes the tree-thing at me and I smack it good with the axe. I figure trees should be afraid of axes, right? Heh. Ron's back on the case, too. Some frigid darkness descends on the plant creature (my wintry Queen is really working through our group's namesake today) and Sunny follows this up with a blast of magic that blows splinters off of the tree. We don't take too kindly to things that try to eat our dwarves...or stop us from getting to some treasure. Ron's on that case, too. He heads back towards the chest now that the stirge are all down, causally flinging a magical blast that slays the tree thing over his shoulder as he does. The heroes get the chest open and inventory its contents. I'm busy keeping watch and praying about the death that we've inflicted here so I miss whatever they pull out of the wooden box. Hope it was worth almost losing our dwarf...

So, we head back to town to collect Kobe. You can imagine the heroes' surprise when they learned that he'd left with the start metal in the company of a beautiful woman. I'd seen how he'd been looking at the young halfling lass in town, so I figured right away that something was up. When everyone we talked to failed to describe the woman, except to say that she was beautiful, we started to realize that something was probably up. Not to worry, we had business to conduct first. So after the loot had been sold we began getting ready to head out. However, it turns out that we had another mission as well. Apparently some owlbears were causing problems to the north. Since it was the same direction that Kobe was reported to have headed (which had been confirmed by Beros), the heroes decided to kill two birds with one stone. Works for me - fewer stones, more killin'. Heh. A trapper from town volunteered to show us the way, so we were off. He and I got a little friendly on the trail and he shared some information about the necromancer we'd run into earlier with me. Apparently the necromancer was known as Germar and he lived nearby. The trapper drew me a map to Germar's tower. I think it'll come in handy when we finally decide to pay the fracker a visit. Heh.

So we arrived in the area where the owlbears were causing problems. The heroes' plan made sense - they wounded a deer and put it out for bait, hoping to draw the creatures into a trap. The group arranged themselves in a rough circle around the wounded animal, hidden in the trees. I decided to stick by the dying animal and buried myself in leaves and underbrush right next to it. We settled in to wait. We didn't have to wait long. An owlbear approached within the hour. As it closed on my position, Beros plunked it with a couple of arrows, getting it all riled up just in time for it to smack me good. As I was shaking this off, I heard Sunny scream - a second owlbear had arrived and grabbed her. Sunny's tough though - her screams turned to curses and then blasts of thunder. The creature drops her and she takes off as Guss moves in. That's all I see because the owlbear in front of me grabs me in a feathery, smelly embrace. Its not as much fun as it sounds. Thankfully, Kleister, Ron and the others are pounding on it. Problem is as it gets weaker it lets out a screech the likes of which I've never heard. My head's ringing, but Kleister is knocked senseless, stumbling around dazed. Good thing Sunny and I are on the case - I smack it with the bloody axe and she hit sthe creature with something magical. It drops.

Meanwhile, poor Guss has been holding of the second owlbear all by himself. I've mentioned that Guss is one tough SOB, right? Well, Kliester and I run to help him out anyway, getting there just as it grabs him. We both strike it as he pushes it off. The creature isn't done yet though - I grabs Guss, ripping him to pieces and shrieking. I catch the full brunt of this screech and am stunned so I can only watch as Ron hits the beast with a blast of frigid darkness followed by a flurry of force orbs. Kleister shouted at Guss, bringing him back to consciousness with some inspirational words, but Guss was still trapped in the owlbear's grip. It bent to bite him again, but I jumped in taking the hit for him as Beros' arrows finally bring the creature to its knees. Not a moment too soon if you ask me. We take some time to heal up - but not until after we've tracked down the creatures' lair and looted it of anything of value.

That task completed, the heroes set out after Kobe. It's a long journey. For one with such short legs, he sure is moving far and fast. To keep us in food, Ron and Beros do some foraging as we travel. Pretty soon we're in the plains. Well, rolling hills really. I think I'm already on record about how I feel about this landscape. Before long, we're in trouble here, too. Hyenas are howling nearby and pretty soon we can see their masters. Gnolls. Filthy, frackin' dog-men. We decide to wait for them at the top of a hill - another ambush I guess you could say. Wow, two in a row. It's almost as if the heroes have been learning from all of the ambushes they've walked into. Heh. We still aren't too good at it though, so we end up surrounded on top of a hill - hyenas behind us, gnolls charging up at us. Or maybe that was the plan - I don't know. At any rate, Ron covers the charging gnolls with a cloud of poison while Kleister and I move to intercept the hyenas. Guss, Beros and Sunny join Ron attacking the gnolls. Sunny adds a zone of necrotic darkness to the poison engulfing the gnolls' leader. Ron turns his attention to the hyenas, giving Kleister and I some support by freezing several of them. And for once, I am not singled out by the enemy's archers - this time Kleister is their preferred target. Not to worry though - between Sunny's darkness and Ron's poison the gnoll leader is in trouble. Worse yet, just as he tries to get free of the overlapping zones of painful death, Guss lifts him off his feet and hurls him back in. He never emerges...and we mop up his underlings.

Now, we're resting again and I'm putting things down on paper. Beros says we're gaining on Kobe and should be able to catch him soon. That's good I guess. I hope the little bugger is OK - even if he did take off with the star metal, he's still one of the heroes of prophecy and I doubt the Queen will be too pleased if I let anything bad happen to him...

Poe
late in the first month of my third life

Dragon Slaying, almost...

2009-03-24T05:30:00.001-05:00

Poe's Adventure Journal
Fourth Entry (after 1/09 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: Poe's Adventure Journal, Entry 4 at Moonsong City on Obsidian Portal
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

One thing’s for sure about these heroes of prophecy…they sure are persistent. Especially when there’s treasure to be had. Another thing’s for certain. Dragons are mean sons o’ goats. And somewhere out there, there’s one who’s not at all happy with our heroes. Ah well. I suspect the list of creatures, people and probably gods who are less than raving fans of our glorious heroes is destined to grow rather long before they get around to accomplishing whatever it is the Queen has in store for them. Just makes my job of keeping them alive until they can do that all that much more difficult. Well, I guess no one – especially Her – ever promised it would be easy.

Anyway, we bashed our way into the dragon’s lair, fighting a bunch of kobolds right at the entryway. They had some good archers. Have I mentioned that I hate archers? It wasn’t enough to stop us though. Some of the little critters acted pretty strange – seeming happy to die. I can understand the sentiment. I imagine it’s a lot stronger if you find yourself fated to be a kobold. Still…it was a little odd. Not odd enough to keep us from slaughtering them all of course, but definitely odd.

After that, not having Kobe around to guide us and clear out any traps we might find, we relied on Beros. He took us through a series of tunnels to a large cavern, wisely avoiding any of the smaller tunnels. He must have a keen nose for food – he quickly led us right to a kobold campfire. They were roasting rats. Yum. The Heroes decided we’d better attack. Yeah, like the kobolds might be sitting on the dragon’s treasure. Maybe this was some sort of victory feast. Fine with me – any chance to worship the Queen and send a few more souls to her cold embrace. I followed Guss in at full speed. Did I mention that we didn’t have Kobe with us? Yeah. There were traps…pits actually. First Guss and then I fell into them. That made things interesting for a while…but Ron decided not to throw flaming oil on either of us and the kobolds weren’t any match for my comrades and I (at least once Guss and I climbed out of the pits). Soon they were all taken care of. I am getting to like this bloody axe…

We continued on – still hadn’t found the dragon hoard you know – and found a wall of water. Interesting stuff indeed, but you can’t buy crap with it. So on we went. Eventually we found a larger cavern…and more kobolds . In we went and there it was. The dragon I mean. Big, nasty looking beast. Sticking with Guss has always served me well so when he charged at the dragon I followed. Right into sudden darkness. Damn. OK, well Guss had a plan – concentrate on the enemies we could see. Or piss off Ron. I’m not sure which it really was, but together he and I accomplished both. Heh.

The fight was rather chaotic, but eventually it came down to the heroes, led by the indubitable Kleister Fokken and his bloodthirsty spear vs. the dragon. Doesn’t it always? It was quite a stalemate since we couldn’t see the dragon, but it couldn’t come out of its darkness to fight us directly (for fear of being struck down by our “artillery”). Guss solved that problem, bashing the beast repeatedly and forcing it back out of the magical darkness. At the same time, Ron, our dwarf and the others started plundering the creature’s hoard. That really made it mad. Almost felt bad for the thing. Well, for a second. Anyway, rather than stand and face us, the dragon finally gave up and fled, yelling curses at us as it did. I’m sure we’ll see it again one of these days. Hopefully not before we get a chance to go after that necromancer…o’ what’s his name…

Poe
Still the first month of my third life

Personal Conflicts

2009-03-24T05:26:00.001-05:00

Poe's Adventure Journal
Third Entry (after 12/08 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: Poe's Adventure Journal, Entry 3 at Moonsong City on Obsidian Portal
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

Sometimes it’s hard to carry out your patron’s wishes. And not because I’m not trying. I’ve got plenty of reason to do that. But what do you do when two wishes conflict – like kill the necromancer or guard the heroes of prophecy? Hopefully I chose right in this case. If not, I’m sure She’ll let me know.

So, we saved this elf and his owl. He must have recognized the Heroes of Prophecy – or at least the spear the Queen provided to Kleister Fokken recently. He eyed it and then started babbling in elvish. Kleister Fokken started talking to him so I wandered away, certain things were in good hands. I quickly looked over the battleground. A raven flapped down from a nearby tree and landed on the corpse of the large orc leader we’d just killed. I walked over. The raven bobbed his head at me and then looked meaningfully at the orc’s great axe. Have I mentioned that I can take a hint? I pried the dead creature’s fingers off of the haft of the weapon. It was unusually fine for orc gear, well balanced and comfortable in the hand. I wiped the blade carefully. Sharp and clean. Well cared for I guess. As I watched though, blood began to ooze from the clean blade. Hmm. Maybe I’d missed a spot. I wiped it again. More blood. Must be magical I figured. I looked around and saw that Ron wasn’t engaged with the elf (yes, Kleister Fokken was still talking to him). I asked his opinion on the weapon. He told me it was definitely magical and that the Queen probably meant it for me. He also said that the weapon would be become more effective in a fight after I’d been injured. Seems like I spend most fights bleeding, so it should certainly be a good fit for me. But, how am I to use both this and the winter blade she also sent to me, I wondered aloud. Easy, Ron replied. Just use one on even days and the other on odd days. Sound advice. I hefted the bloody axe and returned to KF’s side. Things appeared to be wrapping up and we were getting ready to move out.

We soon met up with a larger group of elves. There was a lot more talking. Seems the Raven Queen’s gift to Kleister Fokken was quite generous – a spear with some sort of dragon slaying abilities. Nice. Especially if that Glint fellow is telling the truth. Heh. The elves also give us the run down on what’s happening at the place where the star metal crashed to the ground. Apparently this stuff is popular. There are four groups surrounding it. All of them held off by some kind of earthen elemental being that is guarding the metal. Everyone starts arguing over what we should do next. I have a drink or two and wait to see what the heroes decide. Ron takes the lead on this one. He’s got a spell that he plans to use to carry the metal out. Sounds like he thinks he may be able to sneak in, cast the spell and simply walk out with the stuff. Works for me though I’m pretty sure it won’t be that easy. Good thing I brought weapons. Heh.

Well, we snuck in…the whole lot of us. Then we backed out without grabbing the stuff or attacking the earth creature. Guess I didn’t need the weapons after all. The heroes regrouped…I mean argued some more over what they should do. Durkon argued that since the earth creature didn’t attack it was clear that the metal was meant for him. The others weren’t so certain. Luckily, the Queen solved it for them…fate has a way of overtaking those who can’t make a decision. This time it came in the form of a fifth force approaching the stalemate. Hearing what this force was comprised of made froze me in my tracks. Undead. Lots of them. Apparently led by a necromancer. This sure simplified things. At least for me.

The rest of them decided that the best course of action was to get close to the metal and lie low. Once the battle had started, they’d try to dart in, grab it and flee in the confusion. Fine with me. I figured I’d have plenty of chances in that plan to take some swings at the necromancer. I’m sure that’s why the Queen sent him my way. He’s probably due for some punishment…

That’s pretty much how it went. The necormancer’s forces were impressive. Huge zombie creatures that were being driven by men riding in their hollowed out skulls. Talk about your mindless undead. The undead scattered and engaged the orcs and goblins while the giants moved straight for the prize. Hidden in the debris nearby, we waited until the earth creature engaged before jumping in ourselves. The giant’s skin seemed to be stone. Neither of my weapons could do much more than scratch its surface. Guss and Kleister Fokken didn’t seem to be doing much better. We stood our ground though and somebody got some licks in on the necromancer himself ‘cause I saw him drop down inside the creature’s skull to take cover. Behind us I could hear Ron shouting some directions and casting a spell. Next thing I heard was them running – he’d grabbed the metal and was on his way. We stood our ground, Guss and Kleister Fokken buying him time to escape and me tryign to figure out some way to take out that necromancer.

Once Ron was away, Guss and Kleister Fokken started backing away. That’s where my conflict of interest started…She’s given me pretty explicit instructions to protect the heroes of prophecy but…at the very sight of undead my prayer beads turn icy cold and I can barely hear myself think over the muttering ravens in my head. As I said, she’ll let me know if I chose wrong. I backed out with Guss and helped run after Ron. Turns out the elves had another trick up their sleeve for us – they sent their owl steeds in to pick us up while they threw themselves into the battle in a suicide mission to buy us time to get free. The Queen smiled on them that day…and I’m sure they took many of the frackin’ orcs or goblins with them to their deaths. Lucky bastards.

Well the owls dumped us out of immediate harm and then were off to join their elven friends. I wished them good hunting. We of course, being heroes, ran as fast as we could with the star metal and soon found ourselves hopelessly lost in the wilderness. OK, maybe not hopelessly lost, though it did seem like it if you listened to some of the heroes whining about it. Hell, the temperature was above freezing so I’m not sure what all the complaining was about. Try spending an entire winter in the woods sometime wearing nothing more than your wedding finery…

Unsurprisingly, at least to me, since I’m pretty sure that the Raven Queen wasn’t having me guard them just so they could perish in the wilderness hauling around a chunk of metal, one of then eventually figured out where we were and pointed us towards Havenbrow. Sadly, we had to trek through a swamp to get there…OK, maybe skirt the swamp. Of course, as we made our way to the road we heard an approaching patrol of orcs so we took an alternate route. This didn’t turn out much better – we were set upon by a dragon. Yep, those things are as ill tempered and foul breathed as they say. Even the little ones are nasty. Personally I think Kleister Fokken’s spear arranged the whole thing – it simply wanted to kill it some dragon. Heh. YOu gotta admire that kind of attitude. Well, I can’t recall who did all the killing but dragons were certainly killed. Of course, the one thing our heroes know about dragons – they are all fabulously wealthy. You’d think a huge boulder of star metal would be enough, but Kobe has a female halfling gold digger to woo, so we went looking for the creatures’ lair. Good thing one of the heroes noticed that the place was inhabited by kobolds and talked them out of going in right away. I suspect we dodged a bullet there. I’m not sure how I feel about that…

Anyway, we finally made it back to Havenbrow. They spent a lot of time haggling with the local dwarf about what to make out of the star metal. Sounds like they’re having a hammer and some necklaces created. They couldn’t get the dragon’s horde out of their minds however so we headed back there pretty quick. Which brings us to this evening. It seemed like a normal traveling day. Lots of walking and not much else. I drank my usual dinner during my first watch – it is my only hope at getting any sleep these days – since it didn’t seem likely that we’d run into any trouble this close to the town. Boy was I wrong. Not more than twenty minutes ago I awoke to the sounds of combat. Seems a group of wights had ambushed our camp and everyone was up and fighting them. Nice of them to ask me to join the party. Anyway, the bloody axe proved useful against the undead as I took down two of them. Guss and the others handled the rest. It seems that necromancer is a little peeved about losing the metal to us. Heh. I think maybe I’ll have a shot now at convincing these heroes that we need to pay him a visit. But that’s for another day…for now, I’ve got another flask calling my name and with any luck, I’ll be out cold again soon…

Poe
1st month of my third life

The Light In The Sky

2009-03-24T05:20:00.001-05:00

Poe's Adventure Journal
Second Entry (after 11/08 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: Poe's Adventure Journal, Entry 2 at Moonsong City on Obsidian Portal
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

It seems to me that when a blazing light falls from the sky the gods are trying to tell you something. I can’t figure out why it was so hard to get Kleister Fokken and the rest of them to recognize that. Sheesh, you’d think they didn’t know that they were destined to save the world or something…let’s just say that it’s been an interesting couple of days.

I all started simply enough. I was in town having a few drinks – OK, maybe more than a few, I never was good with numbers, and hey, they haven’t been charging me – when we were suddenly asked to leave. Something about an orc patrol coming and how we’d raise alarms. So the lot of us head out to Amy’s family’s home to ride out the patrol’s visit. I can see that Kobe is looking to get into some trouble, and I figure I may as well keep an eye on him so I volunteer to head back to town in my farmer clothes to see what all the fuss is about. Kobe naturally jumps at the chance to poke around and Guss joins us, too. While I pick up where I left off with my drinking, Kobe works the crowd. It turns out, he says, that this isn’t a normal orc patrol. Of course not – why would a normal orc patrol be looking for the humans of destiny? Anyway, this patrol is lead by a scion which I guess is an orc who claims to be descended from a dragon. Or at least, is big enough and mean enough to claim that and get away with it. Either way, probably bad news. This orc, Glint, supposedly can smell elves and is here looking for something. He calls for a town meeting the next day where he’ll probably announce a bunch of new taxes and take a bunch of the people’s livestock and food. Frackin’ orcs. I can’t wait until the change happens and my friends kill them all. Anyway, we spend the night holed up with Amy’s folks – where interestingly enough, Kleister Fokken notes that his spear is humming or vibrating. Sounds like a bad joke, but I’d guess that that weapon has a lot more to it than meets the eye. Why else would the Raven Queen send it his way? I guess she’ll let us in on it’s full potential when the time is right…probably when we meet up with this Glint fellow again.

Speaking of Glint, did I mention that orcs are frackers? At his little town meeting, Glint – who really just looked like an ugly orc to me, scion or no scion – was a bit out of sorts. Apparently he hadn’t found what he was looking for. Poor fellow. I almost feel bad for him. It was good to see him go though, even if the orcs did leave with a lot of food and stuff from the townspeople. For us, it’s back to Amy’s family’s house and a restless night. I was up most of the night…and at one point the raven appeared at my window. The prayer beads were like chunks of ice around my wrist, so I knew something was up. I followed the bird outside. It showed me the sky, which suddenly lit up with a flash of light. A loud boom knocked me on my back…and I woke up on the floor on my room. Sometimes I wish the Raven Queen was a little more subtle…

The next day was eventful to say the least. The commune we were staying in was attacked and burned and several humans carried off. We had no idea who or what was responsible. Not like that would stop us. Lucky for us it wasn’t a dragon or anything – just gnolls. And dogs, lots of dogs. I never really minded dogs, but these were enough to change my mind. They kept us pinned down while the gnolls peppered us with arrows. Have I mentioned how much a frackin’ hate archers? Let’s just say I enjoyed introducing several of them to the Queen’s judgement. Heh. The rest of them fled before the combined power of Ron, Kleister (who managed, I think to bleed on at least one of them…), Beros, Guss and the rest of them. We managed to follow their trail and rescue the people they carried off. When we return with them we are, believe it or not, even bigger heroes in this little town than we were before. If this keeps up I shouldn’t have to pay for a drink the rest of my life…

So another slow day of drinking begins – this time I am treated to the diversion of watching some halfling mating rituals. Or at least I think that’s what Kobe was up to. From what I can tell, the young halfling lass he’s mooning over isn’t too interested. Seems to me that he needs a bit more money before that one will give him a second look. I’m about to point this out to him when the town elders kick us out again. Seems the frackin’ orcs are coming back…

Well, now I’m getting interested…so I don my farmer duds again and along with Kobe and Guss, hang around the town to see what happens. It’s that Glint fellow again. Even more upset this time. Ranting about how he know the town is hiding something, how a lot of money’s been spent around here lately on expensive armor and other adventuring gear. He wants to know where the cash is coming from. As he speaks, there is a flash of light in the sky. It streaks westward, toward the horizon as a loud boom shakes the trees and rattles the shutters on the towns buildings. That shuts the big guy up. He drops to a knee and appears to be in pain. Heh. After some long moments, he stands and announces that the orcs are leaving. In mere minutes he has the orcs saddled up and riding off to the west.

Kobe and Guss talk to the town elders and learn that the flash in the sky was probably a meteor which could contain something called star metal. A dwarven smith in town says he could fashion star metal into a powerful magi item. Before I know it we’re headed west, too. A couple of days on the road and we run into some of those ugly goblins again. Apparently they’re after the star metal as well. Somehow they manage to talk us into letting them go. I think it was because they gave Kobe one of their fancy hats. A couple of nights later we’re attacked by more goblins and some larger bear-like creatures. They’re not so tough once you get to know them tough and we make short work of them. It begins to feel however that we’re not really making any progress towards the site of the meteor’s crash. We have made it to a more heavily wooded area though. Elf country. As we’re walking, I see the raven perched on a branch high up in a tree. He was looking right at me and nodding. The beads around my wrist grow cold. Did I mention that I can take a hint? Well, I climbed up after the raven. He kept moving higher into the tree, so I kept climbing. Eventually we were both near the top and from there I coul dsee what looked like the likely site of the meteor’s crash. I slid back down quickly and pointed the group in that direction.

We didn’t get far before we ran into more trouble though. This time it was a group of orcs harassing a large owl…I mean really large – horse size. The owl seemed to be guarding an elf who looked like he’d seen better days. Beros seemed upset by this and hell, I’m always looking for a fight, especially if it gives me a chance to kill some frackin’ orcs, so we waded in. We’re starting to come together pretty well – Sunny struck down several orcs with her magical power, Ron Burgundy stepped up next to me to hold the line, Kobe snuck around the battlefield, sticking his daggers in orc backs when they least expected it and what can I say about Guss – he’s a whirlwind on the battlefield, striking several orcs at once with his flashing sword. Throughout it all, Kleister keeps us going – shouting words of encouragement, instructions to get us into better positions, and curses at the orcs. Together, we do the Queen’s work…

As the last orc’s blood spills, Sunny rushes to the downed elf. She calls for help and I catch sight of the Raven sitting in a bush looking at me. He nodded towards the elf and bobbed up and down. The beads felt like ice on my arm. So I stepped up and pushed the power of the Queen into the elf. This roused him enough that Kleister could talk to him. He’d apparently been poisoned and warns us that “she is coming” before passing out again. I get the feeling he’s not talking about my patron deity…

Poe
1st week of my third life

Starting Over...or, A Third Chance

2009-03-24T05:18:00.001-05:00

Poe's Adventure Journal
First entry (after 10/08 session)
See the original post and the full journal at: Poe's Adventure Journal, Entry 1 at Moonsong City on Obsidian Portal
Or here using category: Poe's Adventure Journal

The tankard in front of me is half empty. The page completely. It’s been a while since I’ve written anything down. Father always said that nothing was real until you wrote it down. Horrible thing to tell a kid. Effective though. I was always obsessive about recording everything that happened to me. I wasn’t ever any good at figuring numbers or learning history, but I could always write. I guess part of me was hoping that what’s been happening wasn’t real…now though I think it’s time to face the music.

Where to begin. Not at the beginning. I’m not ready for that. How about yesterday. Or what was yesterday for me anyway. We were holed up in the desecrated temple. Somehow we’d lived through attack after attack of goblins. I wasn’t sure how much longer we’d last. Guss and I were on either side of the door, waiting for the next attack. It came quickly. Guss stayed inside the doorway while I stepped in front of the charging goblins. The Queen’s orders had been pretty clear – protect them. Besides, I wasn’t one to waste an opportunity…

This time the goblins were different. Bigger. And their attacks more organized. Several of them stepped past me before I could stop them. I figured, “Why waste time on them?”, and called a challenge to their clear leader, a taller goblin with a funny nose. I should have been a bit more worried when he grinned and moved straight for me. The beasts were all around me. Right where I wanted them. Heh. I hit the big one twice with the Queen’s blade, cutting two slashes on his hairy chest. His black blood froze instantly on the blade. I spun…and was on the ground. Not quite sure what happened there. I must have blacked out for a moment. I bet the new wounds had something to do with that. Kleister Fokken was yelling at me to get up. I didn’t, not right away anyway. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The goblin leader was arguing and actually wrestling with his spear. He threw it down in disgust and cursed it. He drew a different weapon and stepped over me to get at my friends. The prayer beads wrapped around my left wrist suddenly felt very cold. OK, OK, I can take a hint. Clearly the Queen was telling me that the spear was meant for Kleister Fokken. I pretended to be helpless a bit longer so that the fight moved past me. Then, I rolled to the spear, grabbed it and threw it at Kleister Fokken, yelling his name to get his attention. Hopefully that’d help them get things turned around in there. I had other plans.

The greasy feeling in my stomach had started as the goblins descended on us. I recognized it from our earlier fights. One of the beasts was using magic to weaken us. That little fracker had to be taken out or we were all in trouble. Guss must have realized this as well (he’s usually at least one step ahead of me). He also had figured out what I was up to. As I stood and started for the open area outside the temple he gave me a shove. I stumbled into the open. Perfect! A straight shot right at the little fracker. He was done for now…

The flash of bright light caught me off guard. I found myself standing in the clearing where we’d stopped for a break during our return from Longhaven. I looked around confused. Everyone was here…even…I didn’t hesitate. She should be right over here…and she was. I started towards her, but was brought up short by a flock of ravens blasting out of the woods nearby. A claw-like hand grabbed my arm and spun me around.

“It can be like this again, you know.” The crone’s black eyes bore into mine. “Or, it can be worse than it was…”

Screams came from behind me and I whirled around. There was blood everywhere. My bride…Alia…I fell to the ground in the trampled, bloodied snow.

“We had a deal you and I”, the old woman continued walking slowly around me. “I kept my end but you seem intent on trying to wriggle out of yours. Let me make myself clear.” She grabbed my chin and pulled my face close to hers. Her hot breath smelled like rotten meat. “I decide when your service is at an end. Continue to tempt me and your service will no longer be worth my trouble.” More screams began from the darkness ahead of me. A woman’s screams…

“If that happens, Poe”, the old woman breathed, “this will seem like a fairy tale compared to what I will do to your soul…and your wife’s soul.”

The screaming ended suddenly. The crone shoved me away and I tumbled onto my back. She stepped over me, towering above me like I was a child.

“Now, get back to work and don’t make me regret our bargain.” Her twisted staff came down hard on my forehead with a loud crack…

And I was floating above the battlefield. My body lay where I had fallen, stuck with several black-fletched arrows. I watched as Sunny and Ron took down the goblin leader in the desecrated temple. Kleister Fokken wielded the spear well – throwing it into the clouded area to strike another tough looking goblin. Guss wisely retreated to the room. He led rest of them in a brave last stand.

It was not their day to die. Instead, the Raven feasted on goblins that day. I was not the only one to die. The dwarf we rescued from the crypt died, too. Everyone looked seriously wounded. But the drums were finally silent so they decided to hole up once more, regroup and heal up before trying to find a way out.

After resting, the group gathered up their fallen comrades. After a bit of looking around, they came upon the goblin women and children. The Raven would have approved of the slaughter. Kobe and our Dwarf sure approved of the spoils – 2 large chests of goblin gold. Finally, they found the way out. All they had to do was walk across a path hanging over a pit and fight their way through several goblins and a handful of skeletons. Guss took the lead. He rushed out onto the path. Our dwarf followed. The skeletons moved to attack. Someone in the group called out that the skeletons were like the ones we faced earlier in the dungeon. That meant they exploded. Sure enough, when Guss tossed one off the path, it exploded into a ball of fire as it hit the ground below. Another was tossed into the pit, but did not die. It started climbing the wall near the rest of the group. Our dwarf, Guss and Kleister Fokken quickly reached the far side of the room. Lucky for them they made it before the path fell. The goblins had cut the ropes holding it up. At the far end of the room, our dwarf pushed a goblin into the pit while the others made quick work of the rest of them. The fallen goblin started shrieking in terror the minute it hit the ground. Something about “flesh eaters”. Seconds later the beast’s terror made sense – a swarm of rats came out of the dark corners of the pit and devoured him. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. At the near end of the room, Ron and Beros finished off the climbing skeleton. Ron then burned out the rats in the pit, making it easy for everyone to get to the other side of the room. Soon, they were all outside under the open sky again.

The return trip to the inn was easy. Especially for me. I just sort of floated along above my body. At the inn, the group collected their pay. The innkeeper seemed a bit upset when he heard their story – or when he saw the heads of the goblins they’d brought back (sorry – forgot to mention that grisly bit of trivia earlier…they collected the heads to make sure they go paid. This group is greedy and thorough…). Anyway, before long the innkeeper is all packed up and gone, leaving the inn empty. The group talks a bit and decides to leave, too. They return to Havenbrow where they are greeted as heroes. I guess Amy was popular in town or something. It’s good I guess since it makes it easier for them to get me raised, which they do. They also get that dwarf we rescue raised. Then everyone disperses and I’m left here to drink. And write. I still haven’t made sense of it all, but putting it down seems to help. Maybe I’ll even get some sleep tonight…

Poe
Day 1 of my third life.

Cross Posting Poe's Adventure Journal

2009-03-22T16:07:00.005-05:00

I plan to get going on the creation of the new campaign world any day now (I know you've heard that one before...). In the meantime, the other writing I've been doing is for the Moonsong City 4E campaign I'm playing in. My character in that campaign is Poe, a reluctant paladin of the Raven Queen who is fulfilling a debt to the Queen by shepherding a group of "heroes of prophecy" around until they meet their final fate (whatever that may be). I've been writing up recaps of our sessions in character for a couple of months now (we play monthly). I've decided to start cross-posting them here so I can play with the Google Doc's synchronization a bit, get a better feel for how Blogger works and guarantee at least 1 post a month...

And the recaps - Poe's Adventure Journal - will continue to live at their current location on Obsidian Portal as well so they'll be easy to find there as well.

To start with, I'll be posting the first 4 entries and then the latest one for last month. All of Poe's Adventure Journal entries will be tagged with the Poe's Adventure Journal label so they will hopefully be easy to find.

Moving on...

2009-03-16T21:15:00.004-05:00

So Altaera has moved.

Well, I initially got started last year with a blog. I really didn't keep that up too well. As I've always said though, it's not because I haven't been thinking about a campaign. I think it hurt (in a good way) that I've started playing in a new 4E campaign. I've started writing recaps of those sessions (in character as Poe) and frankly, getting one of those out each month is sometimes challenging.

Anyway, about the move. I've moved to a new home that allows me to directly post Google Docs - something I like because it makes it simple for me to maintain and update longer documents (like for instance, a world history or campaign primer...) while sharing them for comments. Everything also stays in a format that I can easily pull down to my own PC should I decide to take my ball and go somewhere else. This solves one of my main gripes about an otherwise very cool site, Obsidian Portal.

So that's it. Off to Blogger...where this is being cross-posted and where I have plans to take a new tact in getting a new campaign world off the ground...with a little help from my friends.

So here I am. Hopefully to stay. And hopefully to be a bit more productive...

Everything old is…

2008-07-06T21:56:00.000-05:00

new to you. I realized the other day that I had a lot of material and ideas for the old Taera campaign that never saw the light of day. Being lazy generally and looking to minimize my preparation time I thought this could be put to use. Why not make Altaerra == Taera?

The events from the Taera campaign could easily be worked into the history of Altaerra - who wouldn’t want to read about their character’s exploits in the history of the “new” world? - and what little history of Taera was revealed in play could also be reused. All of the maps and other background information I never worked into the campaign will easily transition to the new campaign as well. Or not - if it didn’t make it the first time, maybe I don’t even need it the second time around…

Obviously there’ll be some tweaking to maintain consistency with the previous campaign and probably to fit things better with the 4E rules. I’d also plan to advance the timeline a bit (ok, probably a lot) from the end of the last campaign. That will allow some flexibility to build a different feeling campaign - probably with less focus on undead - while retaining some of the familiarity from the original.

Anyway, I’m heavily leaning towards this plan. Let me know if you hate it in the comments…

I’ve been found out…

2008-07-03T21:54:00.001-05:00

Yes, I did set up a site for Altaerra at a very cool looking Web portal Obsidian Portal. John K. is using the site to run his Moonsong City campaign and so far it seems to be working (well, heck it’s only been one session but it seems cool…). There’s nothing there yet…as I chose to go the blog route instead of the Wiki route. That may have been a mistake. We’ll see. Anyway, I mention this because Lou found me out and favorited me there (that sounds soooo Web 2.0 of me, doesn’t it?). I don’t want to maintain two sources of information, so I may have a decision to make before too long here…

To 4E or not to 4E, reprise…

2008-07-03T21:54:00.000-05:00

So, I’m still struggling to get things posted to this site. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about it though. Of course, having a chance to be a player in a new 4E campaign (run by my good friend and a great DM, John K.) is proving to be a distraction. In a good way though. :)

At any rate, I have some things in the works, and having now read 4E and getting a chance to play it will probably need to make a call on whether that should be the system for this campaign. Having made the investment (and having everyone who’d likely be a player in this campaign do the same) it is looking more likely. We’ll see how it plays over the next few months but I have to admit that although it is definitely a different game it did seem to play well. If it proves to be easy to DM (I’ll be bugging John for his impressions of that, especially prep time…) as well it’ll probably be a winner. So, as more things get posted, you’ll probably see a slant towards 4E. Hopefully, that’s Ok with you potential players out there…

The Altaerran Consortium’s Primer

2008-05-30T21:52:00.000-05:00

The Altaerran Consortium carefully trains all actors it sends to
Altaerra so that they fit seamlessly into whatever Altaerran society or
culture has been chosen for their background. This training includes a
crash course on human history on Altaerra dating from the time of the
initial human arrival on the planet. This history has been gleaned from
the records put down by the descendants of the survivors themselves as
discovered and researched by various actors in the Consortium’s employ
and recorded in what actors commonly refer to as the “primer”. All
actors who successfully navigate the Consortium’s education center and
end up on Altaerra are intimately familiar with all of the information
in the Primer.

Introduction

Based on
Consortium research, it is believed that nearly all of the GASA ship’s
electronic records were lost in the sacrifice. As a result, the
survivors were left to reconstruct from their memories any knowledge
and history they could. It is unsurprising that, faced with a battle
simply to survive, only things of a very practical bent were
immediately recorded. Most of the rest was quickly lost. It didn’t help
that technology of most sorts - especially the complex, miniaturized
electronics that modern man relies so heavily on - failed fast in the
chaos inducing fey of Altaerra.

Stories and legends of the ship, and earth survived for the first
few generations but after that were soon the province of only the most
learned and of fairy tales. Still, the legacy of Earth thought and
pricinples can be

seen in much of the human society on Altaerra. Perhaps that’s why it
feels so familiar to most actors and why they find it easy to fit in.

Recorded human
history on Altaerra generally picks up from the second generation after
the Sacrifice. The first generation of the survivors and their
immediate offspring were too busy fighting for their very survival to
have the time or inclination to record much. The Primer, like the
scholarly works from Altaerra that it draws upon as its major sources,
contains very little detail about these years. What it does contain is
a copy of the writings of Zane Archibald.

Zane was the grandson of Jonas Archibald, one of the original
survivors of the crashed GASA mission. Bedridden due to a disease that
gradually weakened his limbs and eventually killed him, Zane spent
weeks recording his life story and his remembrances of his
grandfather’s tales of Earth and the years immediately following the
Sacrifice. Zane’s writings, preserved at the library in Chaycia, are
the sole surviving record of the earliest days of humanity’s existence
on Altaerra and the only written records of Earth that the humans on
Altaerra were able to maintain.

Where has the time gone?

2008-05-19T21:45:00.000-05:00

So if I’d been sticking to my goal of posting 1 time per week there’d be 21 posts here by now. Clearly, I haven’t been getting it done. Luckily, this was a self-imposed deadline so there are little or no repercussions (aside from the feeling of inadequacy…). Luckier still, I’m not yet trying to actually run a game - if that were the case we’d either be having crappy sessions or I’d have become the best improvisational DM ever.

Well, here’s me trying to get back on track. I still want to run a game next year and will be trying to catch up over the next couple of weeks with multiple posts per week…not including this one of course. :)

You got your sci-fi in my fantasy…

2008-03-21T21:38:00.000-05:00

Christian raised a good point in the comments to my post describing the Everret Effect:

“I like this idea for a sci-fi game, not sure how it would fit in with a D&D world.”

As I responded there, he’s got a point. Here’s my attempt to clarify what I’m trying to accomplish with this and how all of this sci-fi background will fit into a D&D campaign.

The scifi campaign world I’m describing will serve as a shell for the actual D&D campaign world. I intend for 90% of the action and background in the campaign to take place and be created for the fantasy world of Altaerra. The remaining 10% - mainly set up for adventures and general background along the lines of what I’ve started posting - will take place on or detail the future Earth.

So what’s the point of going to the extra effort to create the sci-fi “wrapper” to Altaerra? The primary reason is to try to make my job as DM easier. It’s pretty common for players to miss sessions, or have to leave early or arrive late. In the first season or two of the Taera campaign I dealt with this using the Pale Queen. Unexplained and sudden absences of a character due to a missing player were easily written into the current plot line by having the Queen show up and pluck the character out of the scene to fulfill a “special assignment”. No muss, no fuss. As an added bonus, the Queen also provided a ready made reason for the characters to be adventuring together.

In later seasons, after the Pale Queen was taken out of the picture, I found that coming up with explanations for suddenly missing characters a little more difficult - especially when players had to cancel at the last minute. I have never been fond of running someone else’s character while trying to DM and am equally reluctant to have another player take that on. The plan for the Altaerra campaign is to have the Everret Effect and the future Earth serve in the role of the Pale Queen. On the future Earth, the group will have a “director” or “producer” who is responsible for orchestrating their adventures on Altaerra and then marketing their escapades to eager fans back on earth. This producer will occasionally need to pull a character out of Altaerra for one reason or another - perhaps to do some marketing appearrances, or because of a family emergency back home, or to make things more dramatic or even simply for some R&R (perhaps mandated by the “players union”). Plus there’s always the chance that some piece of the character’s tuner malfunctions, briefly kicking them back to Earth. Because of the way time passes differently between Altaerra and earth (more on that in a future post…) and the inherent uncertainty built in to returning someone to Altaerra a character can be pulled back to Earth briefly and returned much later in game time without having to account for all of the missing time.

More 4E discussion…

2008-03-17T15:47:00.003-05:00

I haven't had time to read through the discussions he linked to yet, but here's an interesting discussion on the upcoming 4E release from the Chatty DM…

Altaerra Discovered

2008-03-02T21:37:00.000-06:00

The GASA mission
to Europa - to mine the rich mineral deposits there - went perfectly
until a computer glitch incorrectly fired its retro rockets during its
final descent to the moon’s surface. As a result, the craft began to
spiral downward into the atmosphere of Jupiter. Desperately trying to
save themselves the crew rigged their main engine reactor to fire. The
resulting explosion ripped what has been described as a hole in the
space time continuum. The ship crashed through this hole spinning
wildly out of control towards the surface of an unknown planet. The
pilot, Murray Kilcannon, managed to right the ship enough that it was
not completely disintegrated as it enter the planet’s atmosphere. He
was even able to guide it to something that could be called a landing -
dropping it belly first on a rocky plain.

What happened after this is known only because several of the ship’s
instruments, including the voice recorder of the first mate Bai Jun,
continued to broadcast for the next 99 hours. Scientists spent years
studying these broadcasts trying to determine exactly what happened to
the crew. The readings from the instrumentation were puzzling. The
voice recordings, ominous. Initial speculation was that Bai Jun had
simply been driven mad by the experience or perhaps had suffered some
kind of physical trauma that resulted in hallucinations. It was later
shown however that his recordings were a rational, detailed record of
mankinds first experiences on Altaerra.

Bai Jun’s recordings documented the following:

The survivors’ escape from the wreckage of the ship. Their initial
searches for additional fellow crew members and their subsequent
operations to salvage as much from the ship as possible.
Discussions with a scientist on the crew - Corentin Casteel - who
claimed to be able to see strange currents of light swirling all around
the surface of the land they’d crashed on. He further claimed to get
“feelings” from these currents - feelings that they were being watched,
inklings about impending weather changes, etc. The feelings were most
interesting for two reasons - he felt that by concentrating he could
glean different specific information and second, the information seemed
to be invariably correct…
Arguments among the survivors about the nature of the creatures
that seemed to be materializing out of the darkness to attack them.
Each crew member recognized creatures from their childhood nightmares
and cultural myths - vampires, goblins, trolls, etc.
The frightening death of a crew member who’d been lured from the
safety of the encampment by the image of his wife - whose dead body lay
buried in the wreckage of the downed ship - and then set upon by some
sort of wild beast.
Complaints about the breakdown and inexplicable failures of
equipment that had survived the crash. According to crew members’
reports, items stopped working seemingly for no reason. This frustrated
their salvage efforts and their attempts to set up a safe base of
operations on the new world.
Bai Jun’s breakthrough. Bai rather quickly formed a hypothesis
about what was happening - something he called “fears made manifest”.
Just as quickly he leaped to the logical (at least to him) extension of
his fevered theories - the idea that sacrifice had power. Bai Jun’s
final transmissions recorded his hurried preparations to as he put it,
“make the ultimate sacrifice” to save the remainder of the crew

Focus

2008-02-27T21:33:00.000-06:00

By which I mean tying things tightly together, rooting game rules being used in the campaign’s environment (i.e., world) and theme and yes limiting the rules being used to those that have been “vetted” and integrated completely into the campaign. Why do this? Well, several reasons:

1. Maintain a cohesive campaign environment.
So, for example (and really - this is simply an example - I haven’t gotten to the point yet where anything like this has been decided…) if no monastic tradition exists on Altaerra then sadly there will be no monk class available. The goal is to make sure things “hang together well”. Nothing should feel shoehorned in just because some cool new feat that the DM liked came out halfway through the campaign.

2. Limit preparation work and complexity.
With limited time to prep for obvious reasons (sorry - cheap excuse to link to a picture of Lila…), I’ll need to focus my preparation time as much as possible. Having a limited number of source books to have to understand during the process will help. Limited options will also make it easier for me to guage the difficulty of encounters I’m preparing and hopefully making them less likely to be overkill or simply complete push overs because I failed to note the single weakness or subtle strength of a new class, feat, or spell.

3. Simplify things at the gaming table.
Mainly for the DM but also for everyone else. How do the new powers rally work? How do they stack? Etc. The core rules typically undego extensive playtesting. I’m not sure the add on’s always do…

Unlike my first campaign - Taera - in which I explicitly stated that “all the variety of DnD could be found just alittle modified” (check quote), Altaerra will have limitations and choices. Hopefully this will make for a better experience.

In future posts I’ll expand upon this topic, explaining and exploring how I plan to apply this concept in the following areas:

Classes
Races
Feats
Spells and magic
Religions
Skills

As always, let me know your thoughts on this. - are limits something you can live with? What makes them palatable? Do they take all the fun out of the game?

The Everett Effect

2008-02-21T21:31:00.000-06:00

Also known as the Everret Transfer or Everret Shift.

The Everett Effect refers to the re-tuning of the fundamental
vibrations of the building blocks of matter so that it shifts between
parallel universes. It is named for the American physicist Hugh Everret
III, who first postulated the many worlds interpretation of quantum
mechanics. The effect itself was first observed during an ill fated
GASA (Global Aeronautics and Space Administration) mission to Jupiter’s
moon Europa. The mission was lost when its ship’s computers
malfunctioned sending it spinning out of control and descending towards
the surface of the gas giant. In a last ditch attempt to save
themselves, the astronauts on board manually fired the craft’s nuclear
engines deep in the Jupiter atmosphere. The result was a chain reaction
that shifted the crew to a parallel earth - something GASA mission
control learned because the crew’s equipment inexplicably continued to
transmit data, including voice recordings, for several days. These
recordings were never made public but they were purchased by an
eccentric billionaire (zillionaire?) inventor whose brother was lost on
the mission. He vowed to find out what had happened to his brother.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), he didn’t live to see the
fruits of his investment. Funded by a large endowment set up by their
benefactor, teams of scientists studied the incident for two full
decades before they were able to understand what had happened to the
crew. Another ten years passed before this understanding was translated
into practice and the conditions that had caused the incident were
recreated. In all, it was more than a half century before the process
and the technology needed to create it was perfected to the point that
humans could begin to explore Altaerra. Both the process and technology
remain a closely guarded secret of the consortium (now called the
Altaerran Cooperative) that created it. What has leaked onto the Web
and is known generally is the following:

the effect allows the “transmission” of matter - both living and
non-living - to any parallel world for which the correct quantum
mechanical wave functions have been solved.
So far the only parallel world for which this has been accomplished
is Altaerra - a feat possible only because of the recorded data from
the lost GASA mission.
Huge amounts of energy are required to achieve the conditions
necessary for a “shift”. Large wind-farms throughout the Arctic circle
allegedly power the Cooperative’s operations
Special “de-tuning” transmitters have been developed that allow
those who have “shifted” to send communications back to Earth’s
universe. The Altaerran Cooperative has combined this technology with
the thought transmission devices developed over the last 5 years,
miniaturized it and now implants a small “thought-mitter” in the heads
of each of its players. These devices allow it to record and
re-broadcast the sensory inputs of its players as well as specific
trains of thought in the form of internal monologues or soliloquies.

The Void

2008-02-09T21:28:00.000-06:00

Interesting concept on a recently recorded episode of Doctor Who (a show with the concept of parallel worlds): the space between worlds is a void - completely and utterly empty. “Many people call it hell.”

Seems like an interesting idea for the campaign. Perhaps its something that players need to worry about - if an Everett Transfer goes wrong they could be lost in the void forever. Perhaps its something that the natives of Altaerra know about as well - what D&D has long called the ethereal plane…accessible by their spells.

A cool adventure would be to have the player’s rescue a famous former player “lost” in the void by using magic on Altaerra to travel to there and retrieve him or her…

To 4E or not to 4E

2008-02-09T21:27:00.001-06:00

That really is the question…as posed by John K. in response to my first post.

I confess I don’t know a whole lot about the plans for 4E, I’ve spent a little time reading about it online, mainly here. There’s a lot for me to catch up on. From the little I do know there are pro’s and con’s to moving or staying with 3.5. Here’s my preliminary list:

Moving to 4E:

* New system claims to make it easier to prep and run a game
* Everyone’s on the same page with new rules
* Not as many “optional” rules and things to have to deal with (easier to limit to core books only…)
* Electronic support directly from Wizards (DnD Insider) (not sure how much we’ll have to pay for this though…)
* The excitement of playing a new system may suck us in again…

Staying with 3.5E:

* We already own the books - nothing new to buy
* No need to learn new rules, learn the new pitfalls
* Existing material for adventures, plenty of third-party stuff out there, etc. should make prep easier
* New rules may not support the kind of campaign I’m planning on running (magic rules in particular)

Hmmm…my sticking with 3.5 list isn’t quite as long (nor as convincing in my mind) as the Moving to 4E list. Wonder what that says. :) Add your thoughts in the comments…

What is Altaerra?

2008-02-08T21:26:00.001-06:00

The original thought was that it was marketing guy’s play on “Alternate Terra”. Hence the added tag line “Are you ready to be a player?” - clearly I’ve been spending too much time with those marketing folks…

As you surely noticed, the spelling is also reminiscent of the old Taera campaign (I guess it’s hard to let go…). Let’s just say I like to keep my options open.

But I’m getting ahead of myself and not really answering the question…what is Altaerra. The involvement of a marketing guy (fictional or otherwise) in the naming isn’t coincidental. The core concept behind Altaerra is that of an alternate earth-type planet. Imagine if the world of World of Warcraft were a real place. Imagine if “players” were actually actors (the old definition of player) sent to this world to (as Matthew Woodring Stover, author of Heroes Die, from whom this concept is blatantly ripped off, says), “die in interesting ways”. Now imagine if the thoughts and actions of these players were recorded and broadcast to an eager world as the ultimate form of reality TV - brutal entertainment for a slightly dystopian future Earth. Imagine that a MMORPG based on the alternate world has taken the internet by storm - largely because of a whisper campaign that claims “if you’re good enough, you too can be a player…”. Now imagine that you are such a player…having been selected as a teen, educated in Altaerran history and culture, trained as a fighter or rogue or to access that strange altaerran force known as the fey, and finally transferred to Altaerra through an Everett Shift (to be more fully defined in upcoming posts…) to find yourself at last in a fantastical world of elves, dragons and orcs.

Clearly, there’s lots left to be fleshed out with this core concept but I think this captures the core idea. In future posts I plan to expand on (among other things…)

* the history of Altaerra…
* who lives on Altaerra and how they got there…
* how Altaerran history is intertwined with the future of this world…
* just what the Everett effect is and how it works…
* how and why I think this concept will help manage some of the meta game issues we ran into in the Taera campaign…

That’s just a preliminary list….For now, I welcome your comments - let me know what you think - intrigued? Bored? Think it’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard? Now’s the time to let me know…

Coming Winter, 2009

2008-02-01T21:24:00.001-06:00

At least that’s what I’d say if this were a movie trailer…

Here’s the scoop. After a long run as DM of the Taera Campaign (see also here and here) I ended the campaign this fall and took a break for the birth of my daughter, Lila. Well, the itch to DM hasn’t gone away but as many of you know with a <1 year old around the time to really do it well is scarce. So, I’ve come up with a plan…

I’m going to use the next year to craft as much of the campaign as I can - build the campaign world, plan the campaign arc, learn tricks to make my preparation go faster and the sessions run smoother, etc. The goal will be to launch the new campaign after the holidays next winter.

So what’s this all about you ask? Why a blog? Well, since as Christian always describes it, what we will be doing is basically shared story telling I hope to enlist your help in building the campaign world. That means adding your ideas to the world, suggesting house rules, commenting on the world’s history and make up, providing direction for what kind of campaign you’d like to participate in. Making all this public has the added benefit that if I start slipping you can keep me on track.

My goal is to post at least once a week. (Although, preferably that would be 2-3 or more times a week.) I’m hoping the blog posts will become something that you comment on so that I can roll your feedback into what I’m developing. Longer term, the posts will serve as a way to record the campaign design, house rules and timeline (for what we use to use as session recaps, etc.).

So that’s it for now. Let me know what you think in the comments…