Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Green Pass Campaign II, Session 6: Stalling For Time

This session consisted of everyone standing around trying to figure out what to do next. Eventually Sherlock noticed that ESP is totally broken, and used it to render the whole encounter trivial. This impudence will not go unpunished!

No treasure or experience, since there wasn't much in the way of treasure or exploration. I'll roll it over into the results of the next session.

June 25, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP
Everyone enjoyed a good night's rest, as the arrival of a crew of new adventurers from Centerpost at the end put the tavern in good spirits. Naturally this would not last, as the next morning's weather featured unusual atmospheric disturbances of a necromantic sort. Everyone piled out to gawk at the portent of doom, while the keep's upper echelon of officials moved into the upper bailey to hold an emergency town hall meeting. Helga the wonderworker went into another prophetic trance and had a vision of the shadow spreading out from the Hyperborean Desert's ruined cities of Nerigos and Thule hundreds of miles to the east, and eventually dominating the continent -- but not before a great deal of infighting between various chaotic factions.

After a good deal of deliberation about the best direction to run away, the elf Terra Daystar finally suggested that it might be polite to at least give the castellan some notice before abandoning ship. The party had little difficulty convincing the guards they could be useful as participants in the meeting and arrived in media res, as everyone was discussing the source and nature of the present crisis. The chapel curate had already brought up the mosaic showing the Black Legion parading as it once was in life, and the idea of facing an elite fighting corps of the ancient world sworn to the service of a dark god of chaos wasn't welcome news.

A good deal of speculation arose about the next course of action that might be taken by Lord Varghoulis. After a great deal of discussion, the following conclusions were tentatively drawn:
  • The newly raised forces loyal to Nergal would face local opposition from other factions already raising undead in the catacombs, and would probably need to consolidate power before marching to assault Balewood Keep.
  • As knight-captain of the Black Legion, the death knight Varghoulis would probably have limited necromantic skills himself, and need to make an alliance with some more powerful necromancer in the area to augment his forces and seize control of the free-willed undead in the area.
  • He'd probably want to raise some kind of undead mount, swift enough to travel the long path to the ruined temples of his masters in the east. The castellan's elvish advisor speculated he might try to seek the grave of a long-dead black dragon, to animate the skeleton.
The visiting priest recommended seeking out one of the rival chaotic cults in the catacombs, to see if they could join in an alliance of convenience against the forces of Nergal. This suggestion horrified enough of the party to cast suspicion on the priest's motives. The castellan suggested the possibility of a infiltrator already at the meeting, with the result that the mage Malcolm Hawk elected to interrogate the entire room simultaneously with an ESP spell. The visiting priest was immediately revealed as a servant of the cult of the Horned One, but without solid proof, this was only good for a severe case of Cassandra syndrome.

Everyone adjourned while Finkle scouted the high moors from the air, mounted on Helga's baby roc. (He would eventually return to report that the Legion had gone underground already, apparently through the main barrow entrance.) Petitioned by Malcolm in private audience, the castellan seemed deeply suspicious of the accusation against such a well-liked member of the community, but still approved of pursuing it to the point of investigation. Once the meeting went into recess, a single well-placed sleep spell -- by a mysterious newly-arrived paladin named Wulfhere who shouldn't have been able to cast arcane spells in the first place! -- immobilized the priest and his two acolytes and they were unceremoniously hauled off to the dungeon.

At this point, everyone in the party went a little psycho-crazy. The acolytes were murdered in cold blood, and their bodies burned and crushed into powder ("so they can't be raised as undead"). The priest himself was stripped down, and bound with chains on every limb. The sweet and innocent elfchild Terra made of point of permanently mutilating his tongue with a knife, then shaving his head and checking "his inner thighs" for evil runic tattoos. (It's always the shy ones who are into that stuff, eh?) So much for a fair trial with witnesses and evidence and all that.

Meanwhile, the saurian Zigzinu was dispatched back into the swamp to parley with the local lizardmen tribe. Because there just hasn't been enough talking already today, apparently.


At the end of the session, the party had just about settled on forming an expedition to the catacombs, looking for additional volunteers to accompany them from among the local adventurers...

Coming soon: A roster of everyone of local interest, for sake of reference.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

The Four Temperaments Of Elves

One peculiarity of Tolkien's reinvention of Northern European mythologies is that it appeared in several distinct forms: the "children's fiction" of The Hobbit (along with some similar early poetry), the high fantasy Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the elaborate mythology laid out in the Silmarillion and other unpublished works. The result is that the reinvention of fantasy staples like "elves" and "dwarves" created not just a single depiction, but a number of competing presentations. Elves in The Hobbit are frivolous and wild merrymakers, while elves in the trilogy are noble warrior-sages.

Mucha, The Four Seasons
While the setting of Middle Earth creates an explanation for why elves come in different varieties, I think the basic idea of elves being divided by history and genetics is less interesting than the idea of them being divided by temperament. In a game setting, no one has enough time to listen to a long discourse on the history of your pseudo-Tolkienesque elves. But the personality types are immediately obvious. I've grouped them by "season", which seems appropriate for a nature-oriented magical race.

Vernal Elves
Vernal (springtime) elves are lighthearted and full of nonsense. They love jokes and jests, and are prone to singing and dancing. They are sanguine and make for pleasant company, at least for those with a tolerance for their foolishness. They are hard to motivate, and tend toward the vice of frivolity. (Example: Rivendell elves in The Hobbit)

Estival Elves
Estival (summer) elves are seekers of pleasure and leisure. They love wine, feasts, and hunting, and favor epic poetry and romantic ballads. They are skilled at entertaining, although they often dislike the intrusion of uninvited outsiders.  They are boastful and stubborn, and tend toward the vices of arrogance and passion. (Example: Elves of Mirkwood in The Hobbit)

Autumnal Elves
Autumnal (autumn) elves are melancholy, weighed down by sorrow and longing. They secret themselves away in distant forest groves, either dreading change or else seeking a quiet reconciliation with the loss it brings. They are wise and noble, and have a fondness for ancient lore. But they are tragic, living in a world of fading dreams, and prone to the vice of despair. (Example: Galadriel and the elves of Lothlorien in the trilogy)

Hibernal Elves
Hibernal (winter) elves are brooding and intense, and are susceptible to anger or jealousy. They value craftsmanship and warfare, and are quick to take offense and slow to forgive. They make for powerful allies, but fearsome enemies. They are prone to the vices of cruelty and vengeance. (Example: The Noldor, particularly Feanor and his sons, in The Silmarillion)

Again, these aren't subraces or species of elves, but elves of a given personality type and philosophical outlook. In a fantasy game world where elves are often found in the same geographical regions as fey creatures, it would make sense that these tendencies would emerge not genetically but from contact with that aspect of the faerie realm. Vernal elves would be influenced by the company of playful sprites and pixies, estival elves would make their homes amid lusty satyrs and centaurs, autumnal elves would prefer to live near dryads and nymphs, and hibernal elves would be hardened by living a constant state of war with sinister fey like boggarts and formorians.

In my own game world setting of Proxima, I imagine that these classifications are explicit -- so that someone could actively refer to a group of elves as "Elves of the Summer Court", and everyone would know exactly what that meant.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Religious Affiliations In Proxima

It's becoming important to nail down the precise relationships between different groups in the Green Pass region, now that the agents of the long-forgotten evil god Nergal are running amok and threatening to cause trouble. Ordinarily the logical response would be to create a Combined Army of Good to combat the threat, but of course that's easier said than done. Here's a rough breakdown of where different religious views are in conflict, complicating that kind of cooperation.

The Church of Durnovar

Description: Basically medieval Catholicism with the serial numbers filed off. Formally monotheistic, though with the usual assortment of celebrated angels and saints who have their own private cults (which the Archbishop of Durnovar grudgingly tolerates).

Alignment: Lawful (with some neutral adherents)

Popular Saints and Angels: St Michael, St Raphael, St Gabriel, St George, St Brendan, St Martin, and inevitably, St Cuthbert

Common Classes: Cleric, Wonderworker, Paladin, and a few fighting Mystics

Enemies: Pretty much any religions that follow other gods, but especially cults. More liberal members might argue that the more benevolent gods of the old pantheons are "angels freelancing under different names" -- but you wouldn't want to say that in front of the Archbishop.

Old Faiths

Description: Basically pre-Christian medieval paganism. Instead of filing off the serial numbers, I'm inclined to just leave the names the same, but change up their domains a little. It's easier to say "This dwarf is a cleric of Thor, but Thor is also a god of smiths in this world", rather than say "This dwarf is a cleric of Norvek, who is a god kinda like Thor -- and now I expect you to memorize two dozen gods I made up the same way, and also to know which real-world mythological figures they most resemble."

Alignment: Neutral (with some lawful adherents)

Popular Gods:
  • Dwarven (Scandanavian): Thor, Odin, Loki, Freyja
  • Elven (Celtic): the Dagda, the Morrigan, Brigid
  • Human (Greco-Roman): Apollo, Athena, Artemis
  • Ancient Civilizations (Mesopotamian/Egyptian): Marduk, Horus, Isis
Common Classes: Priestess, Shaman, non-chthonic Witch, Bladedancer, and any divine Dwarven or Elven classes

Enemies: The Church of Durnovar (which wants to absorb/replace them), other pantheons, and underworld gods within the same pantheon

Cults

Description: All pantheons have a malevolent underworld god who is tolerated but rarely loved. Sometimes a cult will spring up of unscrupulous types who try to curry favor with the underworld by expanding its ranks through wars or human sacrifice. These groups are secretive and try to conceal their structure and leadership. The Church of Durnovar regards all these "gods" as merely diabolical fiends from the Abyss, although that's mostly a matter of semantics.

Alignment: Chaotic

Popular Gods: Tiamat, Orcus, Sutekh, Nergal, Demogorgon (all in their classic D&D incarnations, not their more nuanced real-world ones)

Common Classes: Anti-Paladin, chthonic Witch, plus evil versions of any standard divine class (usually casting reversed versions of healing/buffing spells)

Enemies: Pretty much everyone, but especially rival cults (hey, that's chaos for you!)

Monday, July 13, 2015

Green Pass Campaign II, Session 5: Swatting Mosquitoes While The World Ends

Tether went home for the summer, so we're down by one player. At this rate, I'm not sure if there will be anything left when he comes back. I spent a while frantically prepping the catacombs before the session, so predictably that was the one place that nobody wanted to go.

June 24, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP
While Malcolm recovered from his excessively intimate encounter with a spiked pit, the rest of the party went back to Centerpost for the week. Piper the bard decided to propose to the long-suffering sage Fridaswitha with a 300 gp ring, which in hindsight should have tipped everyone off to start checking his socks for suicide notes. Frida implored him to retire to a life of musical performance, but instead he slipped off on some scheme to create a complete tailored set of vestments to robe himself as a Necrolyte of Nergal. He decided to keep this new costume secret from the rest of the party as a surprise. Everyone loves surprises.

On the way back, he elected to have a peek at the runic tablet that the sage had pushed away in horror. One glimpse of the cursed runes and Piper promptly took permanent leave of his sanity. No one noticed immediately, given his reputation for erratic behavior. This gave him plenty of time to slip off toward the haunted moorlands by himself, once they had settle back in at the keep's tavern. More on that later!

That face is so wrong
Meanwhile, everyone else (except Meros, who wanted to loot more graves) voted to head to the orc-infested cave area for more clues about the threat from the east that had initially most worried the castellan. They set out along the road, and carefully scouted the entrances to the caves upon arrival. Most of the entrances were dead quiet, but one of them stank horribly and another was emitting a mysterious din of beastly noises. Scouts reported a number of small flying monstrosities within in a generally agitated state (agitated mainly because Finkle dumped a drive-by faerie fire on one). The prospect of something worth smashing excited the martially inclined saurian Zegzinu, who began lumbering toward the cave at top speed (20' per round) in hopes of a fight -- with everyone else following a few steps behind. Upon his unsubtle entrance into the first high cavern in the tunnel network, a group of angry ACKS-style stirges immediately descended to feast upon the party's blood.

The tumult of battle attracted the attention of the cave's real master, a grumpy minotaur, as well as a few hungry beetles. They all moved quickly to the entrance in time to to intercept the second wave of the party's reinforcements and create a thoroughly chaotic melee. The minotaur brained Bartimaeus with an axe, despite heavy damage from Reed's earth's teeth. The stirges managed to extract enough blood from Bar Helm to render him comatose, perforating his limbs, abdomen, and face with their greedy proboscuses probisces probosci pointy-type-noses. Meanwhile, Dunflow's evisceration of the beetles back at the entrance tunnel suggested that Renata was probably rather more unhappy about losing her broadsword (+3, in fact) than was previously appreciated.

Minotaur (by Speeh)
The minotaur's lair was at the end of a mazelike set of passages that would have allowed him to easily pick off scouts one by one, so it was probably lucky that the fight lured him into the open. Behind a stone slab in the lair, the party discovered a collection of treasures, including two locked chests which Zegzinu promptly smashed into smithereens with a spear, the classic lizard lockpick. (Breakin' stuff!) This violent approach tragically resulted in the loss of a growth potion.

Meanwhile, the chorus of voices now swirling inside Piper's head were full of all kinds of helpful advice. Most of the advice revolved around applying his prodigious diplomatic skills toward the considerable challenge of befriending the lonely long-dead champion of Nergal sleeping in the southeastern-most barrow mound. A bit of small talk via more blood-seeping messages in the dust revealed that the Black Legion captain's favorite food was "the marrow of a righteous man's bones", and Sir Pants-on-Head the Bard felt comfortable interpreting this as a generous dinner invitation, to the resounding approval of his newfound cranial interlocutors.

He set himself to work with good cheer, smashing apart the great band-wrought doorway with a pickaxe, and donned the bespoke ceremonial vestments that he had purchased in Centerpost at great personal expense. Oh, but he looked absolutely fabulous in the matching pair of demon-face gloves, crooned the voices. Descending the stairs into the crypt, he discovered a sarcophagus with a bas relief stone-carved knight on the cover, and pushed it aside to reveal a wight -- who was not, in fact, Varghoulis at all, but only his faithful gonfaloniere.

The gonfaloniere was greeted by a rollicking birthday-celebration polka.

Varghoulis himself was in a matching chamber beyond a secret door in an even finer sarcophagus. Opening this sarcophagus (which the wight accomplished with contemptuous ease) had the effect not merely of releasing Lord Varghoulis (Captain of the Black Legion, Champion of Nergal, Inquisitor-General of Umeskelion, and general Scourge of the Living), but also of similarly arousing the entire guards-corps of the legion, including four nearby lieutenants and ten sergeants from an adjacent barrow with their accompanying contingent of adjutants and attachés -- all in an advanced state of decay and undeath. As they broke forth from the earth like frogs boiling out of swamp mud, the sky darkened and erupted into a swirling and crackling vortex of necrotic energy that stretched up into the heavens, a hellstorm that announced apocalyptic doom to everyone for miles in every direction

It was a good bit of solo work, and with his last vestige of sanity the charming and charismatic bard rolled a successful reaction check that established himself as an honorary officer of the Black Legion's fife and drum corps. Which just goes to show that combat skills are vastly overrated, whereas diplomatic specialization comes out ahead every time.

Lord Varghoulis: "Sup, bro."
Casualties
Brother Bartimaeus, addled due to brain trauma (-10% experience, -2 proficiency checks)
Bar Helm, blinded in one eye (-2 ranged attacks, requisite eyepatch)

Treasure and Experience
Coins: 903 gold and 310 electrum (=> 1058 gp)
Gems/Jewelry: 3 pieces of jewelry (1600, 900, 600) (=> 3100 gp)
Trade Goods: a pair of minotaur horns (320 gp)
Items of special interest: 2 potions (gasous form, ?), the minotaur's spear, a suit of ornate plate mail, and a staff

Total nonmagical treasure value: 4478 gp, less 64 gp (20% fee) to appraise jewelry
Gold per share: 465 gp

Explored: minotaur cave complex

Kills: 1 minotaur (320 xp), 9 stirges (117 xp), 3 fire beetles (45 xp)
Put to flight: 2 stirges (25 xp)

Total experience from treasure: 4478 xp
Total experience from kills: 507 xp
Total experience from exploration: 100 xp
Total Experience Gospel Choir: ft. Barry Manilow
Total experience: 5085
Total experience per member: 509 xp

(Note: Mort the Wardog is taking an  experience half-share but not a treasure share. Brother Bartimaeus takes a half-share of each.)

I can't see how Peter's bard is going to survive this, but we can at least rest assured that he'll be remembered fondly as another exemplar of his celebrated profession.