Starting the Saberstrath Campaign

This Saturday is the first day of the summer RPG campaign at my house (700 Oakdale).

At the end of last summer's campaign, the South Group party had (1) escaped from the dark elves in the Underdark into the Saberstrath, (2) captured a small stone beacon-tower containing an intricate clockwork mechanism, and (3) allied with one camp of pirates (the Styxx) in order to eliminate the camps of all their various rivals and liberate several hundred of their prisoners.

This is a great time for new players to jump in, or for old players to roll up a fresh character. Of course, anyone with an existing character from last summer will be eligible to continue. New starting characters will be at the "Adventurer" tier of power, with 20,000 experience points and 16,000 gold pieces of wealth, which may be exchanged for starting equipment or a henchman in accordance with the ACKS rules. Only your first character of the campaign gets starting wealth; if that character dies, then you'll have to leave an inheritance yourself to provide for the next one! However, any new characters will get the full 20,000 xp.

If you already have a copy of the rules, feel free to roll up a character in advance. As usual, the method is the strict "roll 3d6 in order", but you can generate 5 sets of stats and pick your favorite. You can also trade stats at 2:1 to adjust your prime requisite stat upward. The Autarch set will quickly roll new sets of five stats for you at this link and then email them to you.


The Current Situation
It's the middle of October, and the Saberstrath Valley is deep into autumn. The air has grown cold, and the few deciduous trees among the evergeens have shed their leaves. You are camping at the old clockwork watchtower located at the top of the great cliff that overlooks the valley road to the south and west, a superbly defensible position of great tactical value.

Unfortunately, the hundreds of men you've liberated from the pirates are unable to all live inside the tower. You now have a small domain of conquered territory north of the road and south of the river, such as it is, and with that comes responsibility. Daily and hourly, the men come to you with concerns and fears about their safety and the winter ahead.

Here are some of the most pressing concerns:

• You have managed to deeply offend most of the Great Houses of the dark elves in Emru-Marol, both by disrupting the Spider Festival and by slaying many of their pirate allies. They will not quickly forgive the wrongs you have done them. While a substantial blow was dealt to the City of Spiders itself, there is a vast underdark domain that will repopulate its losses and seek to avenge them!
• The Styxx crew's pirate camp to the west is well-fortified, and still runs a steady stream of slaver caravans along the road. Thus far they are greatly pleased with your elimination of their rivals. But pirates are treacherous by reputation.
• The men have thus far managed to subsist on foraged and plundered foods, but in the winter ahead, this will be more difficult. Unless a reliable trade route can be opened to purchase consumables, they fear starvation. A rich assortment of plunder from the pirate camps is packed away in crates and barrels, but it does little good this far in the wilderness unless it can be transported by caravan to somewhere more populated for sale or trade. (The Styxx pirates would happily take it, but only at absurdly unfair prices, knowing full well your desperation.)
• Even foragers are now reporting that the area around the tower is insufficiently pacified, and that various monster lairs are still present within a few miles of the tower and need to be exterminated.
• The young white dragon you rescued, Namazu, continues to eagerly seek knowledge and has been angling to learn any spells offered by mages in the party. Yet her heart is ever dragonish and she has begun to lust after treasure as well. She is willing to perform some light reconnaissance and to help defend the tower during her visits, but any greater services will require compensation. She is also ever-hungry for fresh meat.
• The pirate captives you liberated from slavery are mostly men, and they report that their families have been taken onward into the Underdark -- either to be sold to the dark elves or to be carried onward into the Undying Lands beyond. There is much grief over their possible fate given the ill reputation of the City of Spiders and its ever-hungry brood of sacred giant arachnids. Rumors of dread arcane experiments and the sacrificial rites of necromancers have set no one's hearts at ease. Morale is low, and some of the petitioners are demanding that you send a team back into the city to rescue their wives and children -- if they yet live. Barring this, the men would at least find satisfaction in any grim revenge you might exact for their loss.
• Opening a path out of the Saberstrath would serve many purposes: Diplomacy and trade with the Savage Reaches to the west (if there are any non-monstrous inhabitants to be found there), and the ability to communicate with the seat of human civilization in Durnovar. This, however, requires one of two things: (1) Capture of the high mountain pass held by the dark elves, or (2) locating the deep passage under the mountains. The captive men you liberated tell grim stories about the fortifications and defenses of the former, and will barely speak about the latter out of a lingering sense of terror. "The darkness -- weeks of darkness, and the mad dreams within" is all the details you can pry from them.
• The return of the dread lords of Nerigos, the Dead City of sand-deluged Hyperborea, is never far from your minds. Lord Varghoulis, awakened by Piper from the barrows of Balewood, is marshaling long-interred armies out of forgotten tombs to conquer the Undying Lands. In time his attention will begin to pass through the mountains to your small domain, and then to the fragile civilizations beyond. Even now already, you have heard rumors that creatures who fall in battle will rise again of their own accord and continue the fight beyond natural life.

Green Pass Campaign IV, Session 4: Deus Ex Machinist

October 29, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP

Lizard sidekick not shown.

The curtain opened on a classic paladin-vs-demon tableau, at least if your version of the image also includes a helpful lizardman. Things looked to be going ill for Smaug and Sir Pal, as the massive avatar of Orcus dueled both of them at once with his mace, poisonous serpent tale, and an occasional lightning bolt or two. Smaug went down first to poison, and Sir Pal was left barely standing after taking a few million volts to the face. Meanwhile, the oozes slowly worked their way out into the open to engage the cheering cultists... only to come face to face with a pack of greater hellhounds, who proceeded to incinerate the black puddings (and, with much less effectiveness, the grey oozes). The remainder of the party charged through the worm-blocked tunnel to catch up, although it appeared that they would arrive too late to intervene on behalf of the valiants in melee.

And at this point, a 40-ton dwarven war mech dropped out of the sky.

hatamoto_chi_by_shimmering_sword

The pilot, a dwarven machinist named Bjorn Lindholm, had been cruising the area for trouble. [Editor's note: I can't blame Andrew for this, since it's not even a custom class. Giant dwarven war mechs are totally already a thing in the Companion rules.] The shock wave from the automaton's impact scattered cultists in every direction, crushing over a dozen of them on the spot. The primary armaments on the automaton -- a giant sword, a projectile cannon, and brute force applications of a giant metal fist -- quickly went to work pounding Orcus from the back. The result was a rapid reversal of fortunes. Avila Tressa, the priestess, quickly got Smaug back on his feet. Everyone else arrived just in time to see the last few desperate attempts to trigger the annihilation effect of the Wand of Orcus, and then the demon vanished back into the Abyss with a flash. The remaining cultists ran to the four corners of the compass, as gargoyles swept down to carry them off to safety.

Meanwhile, the party pondered how to deactivate the orange sky beam. Bjorn helpfully recommended an aerial suicide strike with his automaton, and rose dramatically into an arc headed toward the upper floor of the barracks. Immediately after ejecting, the automaton's chassis crashed into the building, setting off a kaleidescope of multicolored runes. The beam flickered and went out, as the swirling above the city began to ebb and fade.

And the moral of the story is this: I don't care who in the Pits of Hell you think you are, do NOT mess with master engineers. Because they will wreck you so fast.

The heroes made a post-victory sweep of the city of Centerpost to attempt to locate the vampire's coffin (or the lich's phylactery), but with the entire city already radiating evil out of virtually every crack and crevice, detection spells were of little use. Eventually, weeks later, the removal of rubble would reveal several additional giant wormholes running to both the barracks and the cathedral -- suggesting an exit strategy that exceeded the pace of cleanup.

The city had been saved, at the cost of nearly complete demolition. From this crew, we'd expect nothing less.

Green Pass Campaign IV, Session 4: The Worm Conquerors

October 29, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP
Tunneling further into the middle of Centerpost with the surving slimes and oozes took only a few hours. The party huddled in the makeshift tunnel after dispatching April through an upward shaft to examine the city center, as well as the cultist throng outside the barracks -- which now included a massive horned figure with wings and two gargantuan worm-like monstrosities. The central plaza was heavily patrolled from the air by gargoyles. Streaks of discolored lightning fell from the skies on the central plaza squares, periodically reigniting the dull glow of summoning circle runes traced on the ground. The perimeter was lined with upright spikes and poles that had plainly functioned to impale victims of the recent invasion.

The party split into two groups. One group (including Sir Pal, Thorin the sapper, Smaug, and the ooze-summoner Spinal Pyrope) pressed forward extending the tunnel toward the far side of the city, seeking to infiltrate the barracks. The other group (including April Dawnbow, Criptus the skinscribe, the mage Qaldor Nim, and a few others) elected to branch off to investigate the plaza and town hall. Some other members of the party, including the craftlord Darrin, retreated outside the city to guard the entrance.

The group tunneling to the town hall stopped beneath the plaza, dumping a summoned hydra as a distraction and then magically sealing the summoning portals closed as a temporary measure. The hydra managed to drop several gargoyles before being fully swarmed. Meanwhile, the party surfaced into the clerks' office area of the town hall, finding the desks and files in a state of disarray. Pushing around the corner in the hall revealed a nearby room of identical construction, this time full of crouching feral ghoul-zombies and a cultist prelate shuffling through papers. Most of the contents of the room were noted to be highly flammable; the party dumped a fireball through the door onto the inhabitants and then shut it again while the fire raged through the offices.

At this point, there were two options: pressing upstairs into the mayoral suites, or moving back toward the lobby area. The path to the lobby followed a discrete hidden passage, and just beyond the lobby was a receiving room for dignitaries. The party searched the room and found a hidden vault just beyond it guarded by a heavy blast door. The vault was full of carefully cataloged treasures of the city.

Just beyond the lobby, a hall lead deeper into the darkness, toward an apparent storage area with a barred door. The party was horrified to find that the current stored contents of the room were dozens of bodies stacked like cordwood, in various states of decay and yet somehow twitching as if slightly animated. Moving forward for a closer look revealed the source of the animation; not undeath, but swarms of feasting rotgrubs that required immediate fiery termination. The party doused the room in combustible oil and then set fire to it as the maggots shrieked and writhed.

Image by Jean-Francious Beaulieu

Recognizing that portions of the building were now burning merrily, the party split, with several members staying to dump the treasure into bags of holding while the others left to check out some disquieting noises from the upstairs. The upstairs door was shut, and behind it was a general buzzing and humming. The moment it opened, the explanation became clear -- a snake-demon (marilith) surrounded by a cloud of several dozen giant flies. The flies and marilith gave quick pursuit, quickly smothering some summoned berserkers that the party used to buy time for an expeditious retreat. Everyone (including those from the treasure room) made a fast dash for the tunnel, then collapsed the exit to prevent the flies from following.

Meanwhile, the barracks group was facing its own complications. To distract the guardian worms, which were presumably hunting by acoustic vibrations, the party enchanted the tunnel behind them to reverberate with the noise of a celestial choir. Within a few dozen yards the barracks, the tunnel in back of the party suddenly exploded into a rushing mass of shadowy bulk -- a worm at least 60 feet long, plowing through the enchanted locus of the choir chant! Thorin dropped a disintegration trap to cover the mouth of the tunnel behind them, preventing pursuit. Sure enough, a few moments later, a pack of hell hounds charged down the newly formed side tunnel, baying for the hunt. The hell hounds came around the corner, and promptly charged into the disintegration barrier. After the first few hounds were vaporized, the remainder cringed and retreated back into the side tunnel.

Then the worm came back, this time slower and more deliberate in motion -- showing a keen intelligence that refused to be deceived by any more choirs. Horribly it crawled directly through the trap, ignoring the magical wards.... until it reached roughly the midpoint, and its magic resistance suddenly failed. The trap suddenly sprang back into function, neatly guillotining the worm into two thrashing segments. One worm down.

Image from George RR Martin's In the House of the Worm

The party broke into the lower floor of the barracks, into a recreation room full of hunting trophies. After a bit of poking about, they found a passage out through a storage area into a larger training room where soldiers met to spar and practice. From there, they advanced to the next floor up, at the ground level.

The ground level was quiet and dark, with no signs of activity. A secret door lead into a large open room, presumably once the location of the sleeping quarters, but with all the bunks removed and replaced by flat sleeping rolls on the floor. Several men reclined on the floor, but sprang at once into alertness as the door swung open. Taking one look at the party, they fled around the corner with Sir Pal and Smaug in hot pursuit. (The slower oozes opted for a shortcut directly through the wall.)

The chase ended at a short side- hall that dead-ended into a doorway. The door opened and out burst a tall figure in spiked black armor, bearing a greatsword. After the predictable bellowing about wanting to know about the meaning of this particular disturbance, everything erupted in violence. The melee fighters pushed forward to handle the commander while everyone else mopped up the underlings (who turned out to be werewolves, not that it did them much good).

Everything was going relatively well until another giant worm crashed up through the floor from the level below. It made a quick grab for Thorin, swallowing him down in a gulp. Thorin, reasoning that he wanted to be as indigestible as possible, proceeded to uncork all of his potions into the worm's belly, giving it a terrible case of indigestion. It managed to avoid losing its lunch, and instead sank back through the floor to rest off the effects of consuming an ill-flavored dwarf.

As the dark-armored commander looked nearly beaten and began to scream of treachery, the armor suddenly clattered to the floor, empty. A ghostly form ascended out of the armor -- the gaseous form of a vampire that fled back through the door and out the window, into the night.

After a moment of peace, the wall itself began to crack and shudder. A huge mace covered in petrified skulls crashed through the wooden frame -- the Wand of Death, the favored weapon of the Demon Prince of Undeath when manifested in his material avatar.

Ladies and gentlemen, Orcus has entered the building.

Green Pass Campaign IV: Yet Another Interlude

I assume this applies to April Dawnbow as well as anyone else who elects to scout the surface with a side tunnel.

You emerge just north of the city square. To the south you can see the rain of lightning from above as before, but it seems less frequent as the green bolts have vanished. Only the orange bolts fall, and where each strikes, you can hear a wail rise like the sudden opening of a torture chamber. There seem to be a number of sharpened stakes around the perimeter of the square, some of them bearing impaled bodies, and not all the bodies are entirely lifeless. The roiling purple clouds above seem to have grown paler and now have a peculiar neon tint to them, as if they are struggling to smother light from the sun above.

To the east you can see a great throng. Even hundreds of yards away, you can easily make out several figures rising high above the crowd. The first is a shaggy winged monstrosity with curled horns, waving what looks like an enormous maul (though it seems but a small scepter in his hands). Its girth must be around 50 times that of a man, with wings up to 25 feet in the air.

What appears to be a wave of stretching rippling arches of shadow stretch out of the ground all around him, large enough to frame his body, constantly fading and reforming in new locations as if drawn by an artist's charcoal and smudged away. With extended observation, you realize that the "arches" are actually portions of the serpentine bodies of some great subterranean creature of shadow. No more than two new arches appear at any one time, so you surmise there must be two of them. A host of smaller human-sized figures surround the tremendous shadow worms, cheering in excitement.

They are all standing in front of the old barracks building, the evident location of the orange beam, and seem rather determined to protect it.

Green Pass Campaign IV, Session 3: Undermined

October 29, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP
The party ascended to the stairs to discover that the chapel had become a cathedral of horrors. Evil signs and markings covered the walls and floor, and all things of beauty had been vandalized or ruined. The old altar was broken, and instead there were five rough hewn stones of some necromantic origin, all of them pumping up various foul energies to the ceiling. Four of them were surrounded by undead: 3 soul-draining spectres, 6 armored black skeletons, 24 orange-eyed funeral pyre zombies, and 4 of the nine-skeleton polearm phalanxes, with each group distributed to a different corner. The center of the room just below the green sky-beam was shrouded by magically-animated fumes and debris, but clearly someone was chanting near the center. The ceiling above had been shattered where the beam had torn a huge hole.

Nothing in the room seemed interested in attacking, with only some slight defensive repositioning to protect the various evil altars. From outside the chapel, a mocking voice announced a challenge to come forth and meet the new rulers of Centerpost.

Instead, the mage Qaldor flew to the vestible and wizard locked the doors. The the party carefully arranged themselves around the apse and waited for the underground team of slimes and oozes to finish tunneling a level below.

Whack-a-mole on hard mode

On the ready mark, the party unloaded a volley of powerful magics at the spectres and zombies. The slimes then collapsed the floor below the enchanted stones, sinking them by ten feet into the floor (taking along the unfortunate prelate in the center). The horde outside banged on the doors while the party slowly mopped up the survivors, summoning in an earth elemental to smash apart any of the ritual stones that the oozes found indigestible.

At this point, April Dawnbow, who was watching out the window from the rafters, announced an incoming wave of gargoyle bogies (margoyles, actually) led by a balrog and another vrock. The squadron smashed through the large stained windows just as the party was retreating back into the tunnels, with Sir Pal, his pet bear, and the hydra covering their evacuation.

The hydra and balrog savaged one another as the vrock and gargoyles beat down the bear and began to surround Sir Pal. Meanwhile, the ooze patrol began to gnaw apart the foundations of four pillars in the center of the chapel which everyone agreed looked plausibly load-bearing.

After a couple rounds of getting clawed by dozens of gargoyle arms, Sir Pal announced a fighting withdrawal, and jumped into the central hole (with the vrock in hot pursuit). At that moment, the ceiling came down on the rest of the margoyle swarms.

Having eliminated one Ominous Sky Beam (tm), the party continued boring east across the city toward the second, while the previously frustrated occupiers above erupted in an unexpected wave of celebration...

Green Pass Campaign IV: Another Interlude

Following a short rest, you elect to advance up the spiral stairway from the mausoleum level into the chapel above. The stone of the steps is wet and slippery, perhaps from the unnatural fog that previously filled the valley. You can feel a low vibratory hum through the ground and walls, like a hive of bees, that grows stronger as the stairs wind upward.

The stairs exit into the northwestern transept of the chapel. Even looking into the room from the archway of the stairs, you can sense that this space has undergone some horrific recent alterations. All the decorations -- tinted windows depicting the lives of saints, statues of winged angels, plaques bearing the holy words of the scriptures -- have been not simply destroyed but desecrated, vandalized to show unwholesome images and blasphemous words. Some of the angels have been decapitated, and their heads replaced by the rotting heads of farm beasts. You can see chains suspended from the walls that probably suspended the bodies of the chapel's priests and acolytes, though what few bodies remain are mostly mangled and unrecognizable. This is now clearly a sinkhole of great evil.

In the four corners of the chapel, along the front and back of each aisle, are enormous altars of formless unshaped stone, heavy enough that they have shattered the floor tiling. Above each of the four altars is a small plume of rising plasma, in small imitation of the two massive spires of energy outside. One is white, and its altar is surrounded by several dozen white-boned skeletons. One is black, and its altar is surrounded by a half-dozen black skeletons. One is deep violet, and it is veiled by what appear to be three ethereal apparitions. The last is a crimson smoking vortex, and is surrounded by several squads of the same fiery-eyed zombies that burst into flames below. The four plumes hit the ceiling and create lightning-like channels across the ceiling, blending their colors toward the middle.

The center of the nave is shrouded in a huge cloud. The outer edge of the cloud is covered in spinning jagged bone fragments. They spin within a hazy purple fog, and within the fog you can see thick black smoke, and behind it, a wall of solid flame. None of it looks especially conducive to health. From the center of the cloud you can see the crackling green sky-beam plummeting upward, like a waterfall inverted. It appears to have broken a rough hole directly through the chapel's roof.

From inside the cloud you can hear chanting in some foul language (perhaps understandable to anyone who speaks Zaharan). But just as some of the nearest undead become aware of your intrusion and turn to interpose themselves between you and their stone altar, the chanting suddenly pauses.

"Foolish intruders! Do you suppose you can hold back the Phlegethon Deluge? Stay here and witness the End as my guests, or pass through to perish to the Scepter of the Horned One, when Zur has fully summoned him. I have my orders, and they do not involve you." The vile chanting resumes, and the green sky-beam swells in diameter.

From the colossal doors at the far end of the chapel you can hear raucous laughter outside. "Yes, come out, and leave this most holy place in peace. We have such a warm reception waiting for you!"

Green Pass Campaign IV: Lich, Please

GM Note: This adventure will have a single experience-point award at the conclusion of the expedition, to be divided among the survivors (if any).

October 29, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP

After advancing on the ruins of Centerpost, the party elected to send out a scouting party of stealthy types, along with the invisible skinscribe Scriptus and his hidden wife. Following one of the farm-to-market roads, the scouts soon spotted a herd of bizarre herd of thirteen gaunt creatures (demon swine, or Gehenna-goats) unlike any natural livestock, being herded by a vrock (vulture demon). The Gehenna-goats easily penetrated the invisibility spell with their otherwordly senses, and moved in hungrily to graze on delectable mortal souls.

Recognizing that the demons had them outnumbered, the scouting party quickly created warded themselves with a protection spell. The furious fiends danced around the perimeter, gnashing their jaws and waiting for an opportunity to strike. The vrock goatherd attempted to attack across the barrier, but succumbed to the ward's holy power and felt his weapon arm melt away into the void. Shrieking in terror, he flew away into the night, as the party slaughtered his charges with magic and steel.

The scouts advanced as far as the wall, scaling it to peer over the side. The landscape below was laid to waste and ruin, and devoid of life... but also bereft of corpses despite other traces of battle. In the distance, strokes of green and orange lightning fell on the city square a half-mile away, descending from the cyclonic vortex in the sky above, and a swarm of circling dots filled the air above. The location of the nearest sky-beam (the one green in color) seemed to be the Centerpost chapel, close to the west wall. Everyone knows that giant glowing sky-beams are always bad news!

Shut it down, quick, before the world ends!

After the return and report of the scouts, the party deliberated over the best vector of attack -- eventually settling on the strategy of tunneling rapidly under the walls using High Jellomancer Spinel Pyrope's gloopy army of slimes and puddings. After several hours of rapid rock removal, the tunnel connected with a tomb vault in the the crypts below the chapel. Even after slamming open the stone

vault door, the crypts seemed empty and silent... until the part rounded the corner and found a host of undead waiting for them: a mummy, four spectres, four dark-skinned zombies, eight zombies with glowing orange eyes, and four skeletons -- not naked, but with their burnished black bones clad in full armor. Behind them stood a frail and withered woman, her skin rotted away at the joints, waving a gnarled staff of ironwood root -- a lich!

The party divided into three groups to flank around the two great central pillars in the center of the chamber that housed the most important tombs. The specters to the north went down first as a priority target, before they could bring their energy draining attacks into play, thanks to the work of a couple henchlizards. The south flank, however, made the unwelcome discovery that their zombies were somehow ensorcelled with fire, exploding into a raging pyre after each strike that burned all those adjacent. Even worse, the central group's slimes discovered that the pillar crypt tombs in the center of the room contained a pair of tight-formation skeletons with spears, ready to crush the casters from behind with bristling phalanxed spearpoints. Some of the skeletons were black, and others were unarmored but had strange gems set into their skulls. Warriors and slimes moved to block the ambush.

Ambushed from out of the the walls!

The zombie guards around the lich fell quickly, in a great inferno of flames, and she was quickly surrounded. Before she could be slain, she cursed the intruders and shattered her staff, consuming the entire northeastern corner of the crypts in a tremendous fireball. Most of the slimes were instantly vaporized, and the saurian vanguard was terribly scorched with the blast, at the cost of one henchman.

The spirit of the lich fled her smoldering body, shrieking through the ceiling into the troubled skies above. The remaining skeletons in the alcoves quickly collapsed back into bone, no longer bound by the will of their disembodied mistress.

The party gathered its wits and nursed their wounds, resting for about an hour, before exploring the stairway into the chapel above.

Experimental undead types discovered: 

• Funeral pyre zombies - These zombies are otherwise typical but burst into flame when struck, burning all those around them.
• Juju zombies - These sturdy zombies are durable and move with alarming speed, with even the ability to scale walls.
• Black skeletons - These skeletons are armored and enormously durable.
• Skeletal phalanxes - Ordinary skeletons, but organized to stand in a virtual wall of bone, bursting with spears at anyone who comes too close.
• ?? - Skeletons with a curious blue gem set into their skull.