Diplomacy and Arson: A Likely Couple

The three brave party members are off to see the kobolds after a few days of rest. The first plan of action is find out how many there are, then murder exactly that number. They know that the little bastards have been troubling the local mushroom farmers, so head over to the farms and see whats going on. It turns out that the kobolds have been stealing food, and that can't go on, otherwise the town would grow less fat and more healthy. So they look around for the location of the kobold hole, and eventually find it, though it is somewhat less opulent than a hobbit hole. The send their talking man out first of course, and the little kobold bard descends down the deep dark hole.

After walking for not too long he trips a wire and gets covered by a bunch of oil, though is luckily not set on fire. This doesn't perturb him too much though, and he continues until he hears a small squeaky voice, telling him that only one may continue. He walks for another couple minutes, and finds a single kobold leaning out of the wall. They have a fairly amiable discussion, and the bard decides that it's time to help the kobolds to attack the town, as they have been oppressed for far too long.He comes out and finds his party has left, to go and train the mage's dog. 

Wandering around town blindly surprisingly does not help with this, though asking around they do find someone who helps them to a dog trainer. This man is a new player, a rogue named Ean. Also while wandering around they bump into a sorcerer elf who recognizes the barbarian from the boat. While he is not actually an elf, but a changeling, he also decides to join up with this party, not knowing anything else to do. The group then wanders back to the whole and find the bard, who tells them what they have to do. Here they have a large discussion about the morality of both sides, and in the end the party is largely divided, but grudgingly agrees to help the kobolds.

Before they try to burn the town however they go to the leader of the town, a gruff dwarf, and try to convince him to let the kobolds live like regular people. This doesn't go over so well, as he unequivocally decides that it won't work, and goes out hunting because he doesn't really like governing the town too much. They also manage to let out that the kobolds will attack in two days, but decide that the the current night will actually be the perfect time to attack, as it will before they are actually expecting the attack.

In the preparations for the attack they gather oil, flint and steel, and the changeling tries to infiltrate the guards. This does not go well however, as he is arrested by the member of the guards he is impersonating, and taken to the captain of the guards. The captain reveals he knows that the wizard is a changeling, and casts a small enchantment to identify him as one from then on. This puts a little bit a damper on his plans, because in addition to this he almost told the captain that they were attacking that night. Woops.

Despite all this they meet up outside the town at dusk and decide to assault the town, deciding they have enough numbers that it should go smoothly. However they forgot one thing, the elf arms dealer. He comes upon their group with his two guards, and tells them how he knows all about their plans, and that he will refuse to allow the destruction of the town to happen. This is when one of the guards decides he has had enough, and slowly shifts to the form of the elf. In one smooth motion he stabs a dagger straight through the elf's heart, and brings his other fist into the second guards throat, utterly destroying it. He then says, "Burn it all down, I love a little anarchy." 

He then disappears, and the party is stunned. Not literally of course, as they subsequently run over to the body and begin looting. After the most important thing is done they all set out to the sides of the town, and prepare to start the fires. The rogue however has a different role, he sneaks through the town and infiltrates the leader of the town's tent as quietly as he can. Unfortunately the leader is not there, and it turns out he wasn't as quiet as he thought he was. A guard comes in, and without the element of surprise the rogue drops very quickly.

The sorcerer saw all this through his familiar, and since previous going through a very similar experience he decided he needed to journey into town to save him. This goes better than expected due to some well made bluff checks. And enough magic missiles to bring down a horse, or a large jailer. Letting his comrade out of jail and healing him they both flee the scene. Unfortunately before they can get back to the farm they are confronted by several armed guards. By this point the fires have already begun, and they are the obvious culprits. The rogue however slipped away into the darkness, and the wizard was left alone to deal with 4 guards.

He ran, as fast as he could, calling for any help he could. Luckily he did actually get it in the form of the kobolds arriving with fires all around. The rest of the party charging in to help with the combat didn't hurt either, though by the end the barbarian and rogue had gone down, and the shugenja was on his last legs. In the end the true savior of the party was the dog, with some fiery support from the bard. And thus the party stood, looting the captain's body, staring at their handiwork. Since they had arrived they had disturbed they had disturbed an eel's habitat and killed said eel, dealt with some merfolk who were tormenting the town, helped to end one man's semi-dominance of the town, and then burned it all down. An adventurous couple of days all things told.

A New Journey, Leads Immediately to Disaster.

Well I started a new campaign today, with new players, new environment, and new technology. It's quite a change. A laptop will now be my main tool in DMing because saving that paper is honestly going to be a huge benefit, especially when I'm paying for everything. That and it means I can look up all monster stats pretty much instantly, as well as obscure rulings and other things of that kind. So that's the new technology, and it's working pretty great, with notepad documents for all the little notes I need to make in play.

As for the new environment, because going backwards through lists is cool, I discovered our dining room table is small, tiny really, and it's quite a change from the enormous white folding table we used to play at. We have space for about 3 players, and that's it, and luckily that's all we have right now. So that's the other thing, a much smaller party. Right now it looks like it's a Kobold Bard, a Goblin Shugenja, and a Dwarf Barbarian. It took a couple of hours to get all these characters set up, but that's usual for first time players. It's such a contrast setting up 3.5 characters with people who simply don't know the game, I mean they didn't know what the basic stats where, it was just quite a contrast.

In terms of players I won't do names, but we have someone who has never played before who's fairly into roleplaying as the Bard, a semi-experienced player who is playing a Thog Smash Barbarian, very simple, and a moderately experienced player playing the Shugenja, somewhat the force of order for the party, especially the Bard who never knows when to back down. The game is D&D 3.5, with a few little modifications like using the Color system for alignment and a number of smaller changes, including a uniqueish homebrew world.

On to the story though, we start with the Barbarian and Shugenja arguing over how many elements there are, 4, 5, or 118. These characters have never met before, but are newcomers to the small fishing village. The Bard then steps in to mediate the argument, and immediately finds a companion in the Shugenja, though they both agree that staying away from the Barbarian is for the best, as he is quick to anger and not to be trusted. With that they head to the nearest tavern for adventure, because they don't have any other ideas.

After a small confrontation with some Elves, as well as some confusion about what role Goblins and Kobolds play in society, they go to the barkeep and ask about any local news. A note should be made here, there are no humans nor any human-offspring type races, with them all dying out many years ago. Anyway it turns out Merpeople had been attacking local fisherman and stealing their fish, and no one was sure why, given until a few weeks ago they had been at a comfortable peace.

So the brave duo set out to go murder some Merpeople, who are clearly evil and need to die. They do actually try diplomacy first, after some knowledge checks and research, and after the bard delivers a stunning monologue to the water a few Mermen pop out and tell about the terrible dire eel that had killed their leader and ravaged their people. Not in that way. This seemed like a job for brave adventurers, but first they need supplies, and some poor sap willing to tank for them.

While walking back they stumbled upon the Barbarian and decided here is a man who we can use to take hits and not complain about it. So with that found, they go to the local fishing store and buy a net, which they figure they will wrassle the eel with, and done will be done. So they go to sleep just outside of town. Unfortunately they wake up to the sound of footsteps, and they run outside to see what's going on. They find the elves from earlier, and confront them in a very direct and violent way.

They win the fight, because the elves were weak and they were strong, but unfortunately they have two bodies to dispose of. Maybe 3 given one of them was cleanly bisected. They decide to give them a shallow burial and take the heads for bait, then move onto the other side of town. The next day they prepare for the assault, and rush towards the location of the Merfok's village. After some initial surveillance, namely some failed spot checks they charge in haphazardly.

The Barbarian takes all the impact, with the eel latching onto his leg and continuously biting him almost killing him, if not for the healing of the Shugenja. The Bard provided inspiration from the shore, not wanting to get wet. This was also where the Shugenja's guard dog who he had bought came into play, assisting very little but providing motivational support. With that done and the eel fully looted, getting a trident and an eele eye they head back to town and the Merfolk to claim their rewards.

They gain some minor magical accoutrements from the Merfolk, and some praise from the townspeople, free inn stays and other perks like that. They then investigate around the town selling some things and buying some things, until they find out that there is a black market arms dealer who meets during the night, who can provide them with some sneaky weapons. After an extraordinary performance from the bard during the day earning some extra coin they decide to see what is available illegally.

They go to the prerequisite location and have a little talk with the dealer, do some basic diplomacy, and get an instrument blade for the Bard. The Bard however tries to stiff the man, saying he made the instrument out of tune, this does not go over well. Though it doesn't immediately resort to violence, it costs the Bard some extra cash, then everyone is prepared to go away happily, but not the Bard, no he makes a snap decision and casts a spell to make the dealer and his guards sleepy. Again, bad things happen, but this time it is immediate violence.

The dealer rushes in and stabs the bard, and his bodyguards immediately put down the Shugenja, with the might strength of orcs. A surrender is immediately negotiated, with the party becoming indentured servants to this arms dealer who may have connections all over town. This could get interesting.

A death and an arm.

Over the past couple days we have had some interesting adventures, I will begin where the last entry left off. I continue my quest for knowledge, but unfortunately the island we were on seemed curiously absent of it, with no arcane casters of any kind. Luckily our activities had not attracted any unwanted attention, despite some minor arson, though it was justified according to the others in the party. We now had a choice, to kill a so called 'evil' man or to kill the relatively undefended dwarf who issued the request. The dwarf could be no better for accusing him of such a silly thing, and with a much easier, and less bloody path, we had chosen to murder the dwarf.

After some scouting we had determined that the best way would be for the warlock face to go and climb up the building, and to infiltrate it from the roof. We had also ascertained a sample of the dwarf's handwriting, and faked a suicide note, thus implicating everyone but us in his murder. He simply fell out a window after the warlock had done something to him, I am unsure of what, though he seems to fire some sort of arcane energy, weaker than my own but still of note. With this done we were able to claim the reward from the aristocrat, who we would eventually betray.

He delivered a fair sum for the murder, and showed us his ships, and the crews on them. Unfortunately the plan to take the flagship was impeded by the 20 or so men aboard, a difficult fight especially given the aptitude or lack of it shown by certain members. Instead we burned them down. I constructed another timed explosive device, and we delivered them to the ships as supplies, then sailed off as they detonated. Unfortunately this did not bring down all of their ships, just one of the three, adding some time pressure to our adventures on the next few islands, until we are sure we are rid of them.

Over the course of the journey I spent much of it with my tools, creating scrolls and alchemical items, still exploring this new art. The warrior as well spent much time crafting, making several small daggers, a small token but not entirely useless. Once we arrived though I was disappointed to see a lack of life, and though the island was claimed to be uninhabited, my raven saw a shack in the middle of the land that claimed otherwise. We set off in pursuit of what the aristocrat was looking for, and why he might investigate such a desolate place.

As we tramped out through the miserable land we were ambushed by some bandits with bows, who did quite a number on us, given we had expected no human presence. They were frightened of me though, and rightfully so. The rest of the party was able to dispatch them, though mostly due to our nature lover's crocodile, who at home in its natural territory excelled in combat. Unfortunately the warrior fell due to losing to a much physically weaker warrior, something which bears further examination when there is time.

With those defeated we could easily hazard a guess of what the shack would contain, and though it did contain an arcane caster, he was a sorcerer, without any physical evidence of spells I could learn nothing of value. The bandits that were with him proved to be some trouble, but in part due to a new spell I had picked up, summoning a slippery surface, they were defeated. The sorcerer however fled and we were forced to pursue.

All was not good with this victory however, as the warrior yet again showed his incompetence, though luckily it only affected himself. He had managed to cut off his arm with his axe. I almost felt something for him there lying on the ground, but given it was entirely his own fault it was difficult to empathize with him. Despite this seemingly disabling setback he still managed to push on ignoring all blood loss and pain to power through the shack, charging forwards foolishly, being hit by a bucket for his troubles.

Luckily we did find the false scholar, hiding in his room rummaging for one thing or another. He was guarded by three archers, but they were easily dealt with when the crocodile launched itself at their faces, ending them quickly. Now the one armed warrior was the one to get the finishing blow on the false scholar, delivering it with his own arm used as a bludgeoning weapon, barbaric but seemingly effective.

With that we took all the bandit's gold, a fair amount, and set off for the next island which is said to have real arcane casters, who I may learn from. They are apparently researching a frost covered mountain, which may prove to be of some interest, maybe the cold can preserve things for eternity.

The Bell Tolls Twice

Last time the second party left off they had just encountered some druids just outside of the kobold's lair in the basement of a house. They were subsequently dealt with so there was only one more thing to do. Deal with the blacksmith, in the kindest way possible.

This is where the amazing assassin attempts again to show off his skills. After his failure to immediately kill a cleric he needed a confidence booster. So he strolls right up to the blacksmith, invisible courtesy of the wizard and performs a sneak attack instantly killing the dwarf. Oh, no, no he doesn't. He stabs him once, misses, and doesn't even kill him with that attack.

The blacksmith responds to this unkindly, and beats his initiative and smashes him with a hammer, rightly deserved. The party wizard then comes to sort this out, but the rogue will have none of this, and stabs the blacksmith again, this time actually bringing him down. The party totemist, the only original member of the party that hated the blacksmith so much then does some unmentionable things to him.

So the party sets off, having accomplished everything they needed to. On the way to the location of the bow, they encounter two strange gentleman mounted on bears, who attack them without provocation. Bear cavalry is proven to be quite a formidable force, doing good damage to the party, though a summoned ape combined with a transformed ranger swiftly deal with one, though the other does a few ride by attacks before finally being brought down by the totemist and his leaping.

Without too much more trouble they arrive at the place where the bow should be, and find two doors, and two large gentleman, one wielding a bow, the other a sword, who are apparently beginning a race to the bow. They run in, and the doors close. After a little bit of scouting the party decides the best option is to smash the door, and go after the sword wielding of the pair.

Smashing through the door takes some time, but with the rogue's handy dandy admantine dagger it is eventually destroyed. They then rush ahead, and see a pit. A very deep pit, with a door on the other side, and a corpse at the bottom. Everyone can easily jump across, except for the engineer, who has to take off his armor to have a hope, and then fails his jump check falling all the way to the bottom, though using his insight to slow his fall significantly.

After getting back up with some help from friends with ropes, everyone arrives into the next room, which has a steady drip of water, something the engineer is utterly terrified of. After the party is entirely in the room, the drip becomes more of a rush, and it appears that the ceiling is buckling. With this unfortunate predicament the ranger and wizard run to the door opposite the one they came in on, and the rest of the party tries to smash down the previous door.

Then an enormous abberation collapses downwards, but the party assassin actually kills something for once, planting an arrow directly through its brain. The water continues rushing, but luckily the party is strong, and smash their way through both doors, continuing on through the dungeon.

 They are subsequently attacked by the man from before, wielding the enormous bow. After shooting them a few times, he runs off through the next door. they decide to follow him, breaking their way through the small partition separating them from where he was, and go charging forward.

Here they encounter a minesweeper room, with the mines being traps. Through a very long and animal sacrificing process they eventually uncover where most of the traps are, and acquire some very nice loot. Then things go bad.

Every other chest in the room was fine, why wouldn't this one be, thought the party rogue. This one was a mimic, a very sticky mimic, who got stuck to the rogue. The party didn't help things either, getting stuck or actually attacking him, the finishing blow was dealt by the engineer who threw a javelin straight through the rogue into the mimic, pinning his corpse to it.

This was not the only life claimed however, as there were a few other monsters in this room, including one tricksy earth monster, a xorn. This thing can float through walls like their air, or water or something, and had attacked the wizard previously. This time the wizard was weakened, and decided to attack head on with a dagger, instead of using spells like he should have.

This resulted in his head being bit off, and spit out. Finally the party found the lever, pulled it, and disabled all the traps. They also destroyed all the few remaining creatures, and then got ready to enter the next room, next session.

Catching up

Too long. It has been far too long since I've wrote something, done something creative. So the galavanting heroes or at the very least protagonists continue on their perilous adventures. The first party now 6 strong decides to go and visit Dr. Satan, a nice friendly trip to the underground which was sure to result in victory.

One small problem is a couple of hundred rats swarming. These are no normal rats though, ghost rats from outer space they are, ready to gnaw and to gnash and to drain all the strength. A little help from some dead adventurers though provided the party with much needed ghost destroying weapons and a way to restore some of the strength that the nauseous rats gnawed down.

So a little worse for the wear but still on their feet they descend to the very welcoming arms of Dr. Satan, who's actual name is Ptolemy and henceforth I shall call him by that name. Ptolemy is flanked by two large armed guards bearing the likeness of guard dogs with enormous scimitars. They convinced by his facade decide to descend on an elevator, traveling past several enormous objects in an empty black room of cavernous proportions.

Only then does he reveal that he is not too happy with their activities, agreeing to work for the city and all that. But doublecrossers that they are they decide to doublecross the city, and agree to work for Ptolemy once he shows them his secret project. On an enormous platform revealed to be the still beating heart of the dog they find an ancient being sitting on a throne, threatening to wake and to bring the world to a new sort of order.

Ptolemy reveals his entire plan was to conduct a series of murders and catastrophes at the same time so all the blood can feed into his new god, and bring him back from the edge of extinction. He also reveals that every city is controlled by this one man, and that killing or destroying him may have dire consequences. Suddenly there is a huge quaking, as the city shakes from a collision with a nearby town, the one the party is planning to raid.

Now after a few hours spent with grafts the party is ready to face the clerics in the new environment, and gets prepared for a war. They ascend quickly to the surface, and digging, jumping, and flying there way down they meet the welcoming comity. Unfortunately the group's collective charisma is not of the diplomacy sort, so an armed conflict is inevitable.

Luckily they are better armed, equipped with their new arms and legs courtesy of Ptolemy. They easily dispatch the guards, and capture one who was presumed to lead them to the clerics. Again though, they are too trusting, and are led into an ambush, involving archers and a few footsoldiers. This combat lasts quite some time, great damage being done on both sides, with the dragon shamans healing just barely keeping the party up as the constant volleys seek to perpetually annoy them.

Again they seem close to their goal, and seek a warehouse containing a group of clerics. After some mighty deliberation and dispatching of more guards they come up with a cunning plan. They will forge a document to enter the warehouse, and then easily backstab the guards claiming their reward. This does not go well, as the party gnome is grappled as his paper thin disguise does little to help, and as the rest of the party busts in the session comes to an end, to resume next week.

As for the other party, they are doing fine with their resting and all that, and have a brilliant plan, find some quests, and go kill stuff, something which their record clearly shows they can do. Their immediate target is the mansion of Mathew, a dwarf crime boss who can not be eliminated legally, but since when have adventurers cared about legality?

Their attempts at reconnaissance and stealth do not go that well, so they buy some acid and begin melting the front gate. At this point the party warlock pops his head over, and promptly gets headshotted down to 0 health, and lies on the ground for the rest of the session. The rest of the party charges in and attempts to execute the gun wielding guards. A few misses later and the mission is not a success, but as always the party wins in the end, and they go streaming through the front door.

Here they find more guards, who are met with more difficulty due to the crime boss being armed with magical armerments, and peppering them with acid orbs and fireballs. The totemist gets all up in the face of the boss, and rips and tears his small guts into oblivion. The clean up is fairly routine after, with one of the rogues surrendering and joining up with the party. This is a new PC. The house is then set on fire by the totemist, and the rogue and engineer have to make a run for it with a heavy admantine safe while battling the remaining two guards, one of which gets a face full of safe, and the other manages to shoot himself.

One mansion burned to the ground and their job is complete, reward claimed, and ready for the next quest. This involves opening the safe. After many smashings, and a few more subtle attempts the rogue realizes he has several acid wands in his possession. Many failed UMD checks later and the safe is open, granting a large amount of money to the party, the first of this kind. The party dwarf now commits huri kuri, to be replaced by a shapeshipter a short while later.

Before this can happen they encounter a warblade that a few of them remember from before. He looks a little different, having been reincarnated as an orc, but is none the worse for wear, and puts up quite a fight as a druid casts entangle on the party, severely limiting their movement possibilities. The orc goes down, and up, and down, and up again, and finally the little rogue gets a few critical stabs in, and brings him down for good. That all wrapped up they can finally do what they had been meaning to and go investigate a disturbance in the sewers.

These sewers are different than the ones previously mentioned, and have some interesting new challenges awaiting them. They meet some kobolds on their way down, and that was where we left off, just a few kobolds hanging out with some trabs and some crossbows.

A Summary

It ha been too long since I've made a blog post, and a lot of stuff has happened. We have had a session for both groups, because real life so rarely allows for everything to go as planned.


The first group has now not only destroyed the keep, but have managed to get themselves arrested, and brought to the local ruler. This ruler will absolve them of all their sins as long as they do a task for him. This task is very simple, just go to another city, steal all their clerics, and come back. Do it within a limited time, or your heads go off.

Unfortunately when they were arrested they had several guard corpses in their guild, something the guards were not too happy about. This means that if they put one toe out of line they will promptly be arrested and sent to jail, or an early death. They decided to camp out at the lady they murdered before's house, because it was the most innocent place they could think of.

So this goes fine, they all have a nice rest, and then decide to see if the kobolds from before had anything of interest for them. And by thing of interest, I mean straight up murdering all of them, for the inevitable slight that results from a gnome diplomancing a kobold. So everyone attacks, the gnome, he's brought down, but the party come to the rescue. And with a new member now, as a prisoner of the kobolds breaks out and assists by punching his way through a large amount of kobolds.

The monk and the party combine to take down the group, though the knight is brought to unconsciousness and the bard is flung from his back, almost dying himself. Overall though, the fight is won, and they win a healthy reward from the looting of the kobolds. The session then ends and will continue next week.

The other party made some slow progress down the beach, as they defeated the crabs and ascended towards a new goal, one of prosperity. First however they had to defeat the crab in front of them, with aid from their theoretical opponent, the magistrate. His army of horse bombadeers assists quite a bit, and the crab is taken down, albeit with quite a bit of damage done to the party. The magistrate then rides off, but the party has a brilliant plan.

The druid summons a hippogriff, and sends it off to pick up the magistrate and drop him, hopefully for a KO. One failed grapple check later and the hippogriff is thrown off and slaughtered, and the magistrate comes back and delivers a talking to the party. They decide the obvious solution is to beat the druid to unconsciousness and to let the magistrate have his way. This doesn't quite work though, as the druid springs into the water on the edge of consciousness and lives to fight another day.

Both parties part then, with the slower PCs travelling along the shore on foot. This turns out to be a bad decision as they fight yet another crab after about a day, and narrowly defeating the baby crab they retreat to the forest to regroup. The druid has not returned, and will in all likelihood abandon them.

Continuing along the path because they have nothing better to do they run into some bandits, again narrowly winning the fight they slaughter the bandits, burn their tree hideout, and take all their loot. They then proceed to a city which they found after several days search. After climbing up the city they go for a night's rest and the session ends. Fin.

Remember, Remember, the 5th of November

The tower is burning, burning down, collapsing, booming out over the city, letting the populace know just what has happened. That was how it all ended, but it began in quite a different way. As of last session the plot had become more involved, four factions not two now. There were the kobolds, the dwarves, the humans, and the goblins. In the end it would all come together in an explosive finale.

The original plan was such: the goblins would assault the keep from the front, distracting the guards, the dwarves would then go into the tunnel that the kobolds had built, and would be followed by the humans once all the guards were dead. The explosives would then be planted, and everything would go off without a hitch, with most of the factions dead resulting in less payment.

The initial planning and arming went fine, but the issue came when the actual plan was to be enacted. The dwarves went up, closely followed by the humans, but their was commotion just outside of the tunnel. The guard were more than expected, and better armed. This is further compounded when three guards descend the tunnel, and charge.

Luckily the party minotaur dwarf makes short work of these, with some additional courage from the bard. The magical energies granting the corrosive energy of acid, burning all in its path. But above was chaos, the garden stained with the blood of the not so innocents. The party bard plans to go and check the explosives but doesn't quite get that far.

A gunshot is heard, and he falls, not quite dead, but on the brink of unconsciousness. Luckily he gets off one more spell, and instantly he has 6 copies, adding confusion to the already chaotic battle. The rest of the group goes to assist him, but are intercepted by an additional sniper. Luckily both of these are still in the courtyard, and so can still be reached.

With one sniper down the other fell quickly to the sword bigger than him, and now all that was left was the explosives. The leader of the human anarchists seemed to be the only one alive, and he was surrounded by guards. But one shout from the knight drew them away, enabling a back-stab and death. Corpses were gathered and everyone was just about done, when a group of seven guards burst through a door, and urgency was again added to the situation.

Luckily they were faster and set up all the explosives to be triggered at the same time, destroying the tower and everything in the surrounding area, hopefully disincluding them. Unfortunately the explosives timing was a bit off, and five of the seven made it into the tunnel for an extensive fight in close quarters. The fight was close in the end, with the party knight being knocked out, and the dragon's pet almost being destroyed. But in the end victory, for some at least. The tower is burning, burning down, collapsing, booming out over the city, letting the populace know just what has happened.

And the City Shall Burn

The plan was a success. The retreat went exactly as well as expected, with the fog cloud providing the much needed escape. The next destination was obvious to the party, to go underground and meet "Dr. Satan". There was only one problem though, the woman whose house they normally went through had decided that enough was enough.

So the woman will not let them through. She claims that they have trounced through her house one too many times, and that they should probably leave. Of course, being the party that they are they decide to grapple her, and force their way through. This does not go as planned though, as they hear a rumbling sound coming from inside the house.

An ogre, a large, brutish infuriated ogre comes charging in from the house, and everyone prepares for the oncoming storm. The knight is busy wrestling with the woman, and rushes inside to allow his party members past. Unfortunately he had already blocked the skeleton and the dragon shaman from coming in, and now it was the ogre's turn.

He takes a mighty swing at the dragon, and misses. Truly exciting stuff. Now the druid has a brilliant plan, he will transform into an eagle. That is his plan. Then the rest of the party converges on the ogre, with the knight tossing the woman away, who then tries to escape. The druid then swoops in and takes a good swing at her.

This swing is extremely effective, quite literally cutting her head off with the critical hit table. Now the ogre wants revenge for this callous act, and proceeds to murder him. One hit and he is down, out, and splattered all over the wall. The rest of the party take down the ogre, but it was all for no avail, as their beloved comrade has dies. Oh wait, they don't care.

No they proceed to Dr. Satan's secret base, and deposit their corpses, proceeding back to the main city for more destruction. A brilliant plan is construed, to raise the cast offs of the cit into a frenzy, and to collapse the government to the best of their abilities. This goes swimmingly as their gather information checks lead them to the sewers, where they meet their guide to the underground, one bard named John. Q. Everyman. They returned to the surface to acquire weapons for their coup.

Murder, Arson, and Jaywalking

We wake up from last week's session to a rather fortunate situation. The two people recently dead, are no longer as much. This is due to a little help from a little friend. The party Tank now has regeneration, at the cost of having a little person living inside his chest, and the druid is made of dire badger parts, giving him more resilience. They are also now working under a new master besides chaos, giving a little bit of direction to a lot of unlawful deeds.

Their first task is simply to cause chaos, kill a few things, burn things, steal things. This is mostly business as usual, but now they have a reward for it. They first decide to find a tavern, and have a good old fashioned tavern brawl. So they arrive at the first inn they saw, called the Full Mug, and the party druid smacks the first person he can.

He misses, no one is surprised. However after the imitative rolls are over he gets a second attempt, and hits and brings down the barkeep's son, but that is all he does. Next the rest of the bar attacks the party, seeing as they violated the sacred pact between tavern owner and party. This doesn't end up too well for them, leaving three roasted, two sliced, and several more with bashed in heads.

The only one moderately successful in their venture is the bartender, who manages to punch and grapple the druid. The druid however has a brilliant plan, and moves his flaming sphere into his space, burning him and the keeper. This ends in what could be called a win, both unconscious at the same time, but the party to support him, with the bartender left on ice, or fire as the case may be.

There is quite a lot of fire too, given that the party knight decided to burn down the tavern, not their best plan as the guards have been brought in. These guards are summarily dealt with, by running away. Plan Alpha it was, use a fog cloud and then sprint away as fast as they could go. And so they did. I ruled that this did count as besting the encounter, and this was enough to push them over and level up. This ended the session, with everyone happy with their new levels, and prepared to fight for a new day.

It'll be the end of the world as we know it (But I'm a fucking dragon)

So we began play with the party knight in a bit of a pickle, surrounded by kobolds and a dwarf with guns. This was resolved fairly speedily however, with a big stick and some assistance from officer Snuffles, of the dire badger division.

So the dwarf was mostly strewn across the back wall, one kobold missing an arm, one missing a head, and one beaten to the ground with a magic stick. So that was mission accomplished, even though there was supposed to be no murder involved, meerly taking them in. But whats done is done so it's time to get the reward. They search the dwarf and find several explosive packs and an ever-full mug, things which could be useful, but maybe not right now.

So they return to the chief of the town guard, get their payment, and return to the guild, content to sleep and restore their spells Here they discover the thief they helped to arrest earlier, and are on guard, given he probably wants revenge. They throw him up against a wall, but still hear what he has to say, given he broke out of prison to do it.

He warns them of a great evil brewing, something that would disrupt the power between good and evil, and throw the world into a new layer of hell. They decide to take his word on that and with his assistance, and some basic supplies, journey down into the under-city. They again go to the woman's house, knock on her door, and go through her basement despite the lamentations of the women.

So they continue down, and eventually find their way to the room they were in last, containing one enormous centipede corpse and one small alone kobold wizard. He casts his spell, makes some more centipedes, but they take him down with surprising ease, killing his centipedes with one blow, and the wizard himself only taking 2 hits. They then, after taking his stuff, proceeded down the stairs that alluded them before, and met with some kindly dwarves killing one of the monstrosities from before.

So they meet the dwarves, do a bit of talking, and then they all join up for a decent sized party of 8 people and 2 animals. They then move into the next room containing 1 large mutant and 1 small one, as well as two acid spitting cats. These are again quickly dealt with Coup de Grace dealing with the regeneration and one hit bringing down the cats. Then the end, we continue for the stunning conclusion next week.

Snakes, Why did it have to be Snakes

We begin the session as we last left off, in the midst of an epic combat. Our intrepid heroes, (bard, dragon shaman, knight, druid and ranger) fighting an enormous zombified centipede. Also zombified is totally a word, no matter what the spell checker says.

So the fight progresses normally for a turn, hits being exchanged on both sides, nothing abnormal. Then the bard decides to charge in with his 5 health, yes he hit, and for some damage, but something bad was bound to happen. And it did. The bard was ripped in half by the centipede's (Which can have between 20 and 300 legs) mandibles. This was quite a surprise to everyone, especially to me given on average damage I wouldn't kill him, but I rolled max.

So now the dragon shaman stabs him one more time, and manages to take down his one hit point that he had left, and the battle is over. Everyone levels up, yay! Except for the unfortunate bard. So after that is done, and some significant time is spent on it, we proceed to the next great encounter, a wizard descending from the ceiling.

This wizard immediately begins summoning centipedes, smaller ones, but still man sized, and still fairly dangerous. The party decides a fighting retreat is the best way to get out of here, and it almost works, but the knight gets critted by one of the centipedes, and is stunned for 4 rounds, bringing him down and out for quite a while. Meanwhile the others are fighting to the best of their ability, but the wizard is summoning more centipedes, and can not be hurt by arrows or thrown stones.

So the druid runs in and begins dragging the knight, at a whole five feet per round. This does actually end up working alright, as everyone else escapes with their lives, though not much else. They return to there guild for much needed healing, and go looking for a quest, which they decide is better than wandering around aimlessly. But first the druid and the ranger need new animal companions, so they go to a pet store. The conditions at this place, more  of a livestock storage area than store are not good, so the druid burns it to the ground while saving the animals, except for a snake who he hates for some reason.


Anyway they find several jobs, but the one that strikes their interest is the rogue guard, not of the rogue class, who has holed himself up with some firearms. The find the place, and try talking to him. This doesn't go so well, as they lost their only member decent at diplomacy, so it is up to them to fight it out. So after attempting to leave the party knight gets shot, and pissed off, and charges the door while trying to smash it down. He gets shot a couple more times for his trouble, but breaks down the door successfully, and we then had to end the session, as real life got in the way.

Down the Rabbit Hole

We begin the session back at the guild as always, now with a new member of the group, but not party, not yet anyway. So the party realizes they are missing some equipment and head over to their dear friend mister shopkeeper who they don't know the name of. They see him arguing with a large customer, somewhat similar to a dwarf. This is our new party member.

You see he is a half-minotaur dwarf knight. After defusing the situation and giving a discount to this stranger they coerce him into joining them. Happy as a clam to have an actual bruiser in the party they set up to destroy the door that ever thwarted them before. The one they sat around waiting for a day just for something to happen. This time they do manage to break it, only to be surprised by what is inside.

They find two apparent stoners sitting in chairs around a table, as well as 2 doors. In a typically militaristic fashion they proceed to guard the doors to prevent them from escaping, then talk to them. After finding out that they know nothing, they go through the other doors very little. They find a room full of bunk beds as well as one sleeping occupant, after just about everyone leaves the ranger is left alone with the two original guys, who reveal they are a bit more aggressive than expected and attack with daggers. Incidentally the ranger player was not here and was played by the warlock player from the other party.

These sneak attacks manage to deal about half of her health, resulting in some worried players and some screams from the character. This causes everyone to run towards them, and combat begins. The druid runs in and uses flaming sphere to deal a moderate amount of damage to one, and the ranger sprints away as fast as she can. The little rogues now run over and try to stab the druid, resulting in a couple of bad rolls and misses. After some more fire, and the timely arrival of the knight and the battle was over.

Next came some "interrogation" work on the sleeping dude, as he was knocked into unconsciousness and revived multiple times due to the dragon shaman's healing aura. Eventually he revealed that he knew nothing, but the house was a hotspot for people coming and going, so after some investigation work they find a trap door, which the party druid ever reckless immediately opens. A successful reflex save later and he takes no damage, and soon descends into the depths.

After all the party reaches the bottom, with no one falling luckily, they proceed forward into a  hallway. Oh look, a pit trap, some one should really think about these things. So everyone falls down, some taking less damage than others, and are in a cage. Of course no cage can hold a man with 20 strength, so a few smacks later and they are out to fight the wardens.

These wardens are giant dwarves similar to the knight, with mutated lumps of flesh for hands, which they use as clubs. Druid uses an entangle hitting two of them, and the bard greases another. Unfortunately, for the party at least, two of them made their saves and come lumbering towards the party. The knight gets knocked down quite a bit of health, brought all the way down to 2, then promptly healed again, and manages to tank it out bringing all of the enemies to unconsciousness and bringing the session to an end.

This was unfortunately a short session, as making the character took quite a bit of time, and we started a  bit late anyways. We'll resume it next time as they attempt to escape from their underground prison.

Rocky Road

Second party today. We began with what many sessions begin with, the disposing of the body. Of course in this case it was the body of their comrade, the recently deceased warblade guard. The party decided it was not worth the thousand gold to reincarnate him, so off the city he goes. Now they realize they are wanted criminals, and should probably do their best to get out of town so it's time to hop off.

I don't think I've described the world before, so here is the basic description. In this world pretty much all the major cites are situated on the backs of giant animals, like really really big. For example the city this party is in is, called Innisfraught, is situated on the back of an enormous horse like animal. So getting off the city is a bit more involved than just leaving the gates. There plan was to simply jump off the back off the animal, with a friendly wizard casting feather fall so they don't fall to their deaths. Now normally feather fall would not work at such a distance, but this is a slight homebrewed version, such as my lower level create food and water which provides sustenance for the cities.

So they hopped off the city, and landed in the mountains at the northern part of the continent. Now these mountains are fraught with dwarves, kobolds, and gnomes, all fun to play out, and on their journey they met all of these. The party decides to head south, on the basis that the lord of Innisfraught is traveling south with a guard. They plan to help stop any would be attackers hopefully earning the lord's trust and his "rupees". Their first encounter would be with some troublesome gnomes.

See these gnomes were actually sorcerers who used color spray and silent image, which can be used to both knock out and confused the enemy, or in this case the party. So they arrive at a roadblock, (actually illusionary), and are accosted by a gnome, who demands 400 gold for the four of them, which they promptly refuse. They plan to come back at night, and as befits an evil party murder them in their sleep. So the ninja, totemist, and warlock go out to attack some gnomes, leaving the cleric behind to sleep.

This doesn't end so well as the tent they find contains one awake gnome, and after a few failed stealth checks and the ninja sticking his head through the flap resulting in a color spray to the face, and unconsciousness. The totemist then charges straight in, fails a grapple check to a natural 20, and gets color sprayed. The warlock then decides to just break the tent and stabs the gnome for max damage, which with his -2 strength is only 6, but enough to bring the gnome down.

After some cleanup with potions, everyone retreats back, and the warlock decides to hang out on the side of a mountain. I guess the totemist would want me to mention, he punted the gnome's corpse up a tree. So some non common speaking dwarves walk by, and the warlock fires a "non-hostile" eldritch blast over the dwarves head, and their response of throwing axes was very surprising to him. So the rest of the party wakes up and rushes out to fight and fairly easily defeat the dwarves.

Now it's late so I'll be brief. They then ran into the old warblade player playing a dwarf engineer in half plate mech armor. Then they kept going south, found some kobolds, talked to them, then wandered into a kobold's lair, triggered a few traps, found the kobold leader, then were shunted out and we ended it there with a level up. So everyone but the engineer is level 3, though both the ninja and totemist are taking a level of monk. Party now is Warlock 3, Cleric 3, Ninja 2/ Monk1, Totemist 2/ Monk 1, Engineer 2.

Instant Class Change

Today I had the second group again, though the classes are a little bit different this time. There is the original warblade, then a warlock replacing the duskblade, a cleric replacing the samurai, and a ninja replacing the rogue. Thus the title.

So we begin on the steps of the keep, just where we left off, with most of the party unconscious, and a few guard corpses around. After some small looting of guards, and a few convenient healing potions everyone was up, and ready to go. So the next course of action is of course to find the cheapest tavern in town, and spend a night there. After a relatively safe night, it was time to go out and get a job, so where would one acquire a job? Of course, at the tavern. Here they learn about someone who has been destroying buildings, and decide to murder him/it, as is the natural response.

So they arrive at the house where he was staying, though at this point they have a sort of a disagreement, as they can't decide whether they want to kill him, or see what his deal is. After knocking on the door, with the warlock spider-climbing his way up to a window. Now they meet the man, though all they can see is an enormous suit of armor, towering above them all by at least a head. This is actually an engineer using mountain plate as his mecharmor, but they don't know that. After the man questions why they're here they realize they don't actually know. So, surprise shurikens. Tink, Tink, no effect. Everyone rolls for initiative, ninja wins, slash slash, again no effect. Everyone in the party actually beat the guys initiative, so they all had their turns, ineffectively stabbing and shooting their way to no gain. The man then rips a huge chunk out of the wall, and smashes the warblade all the way down to 5 health.

This is when the warlock actually got a chance to attack the guy, and since he had 10 touch AC, he hit pretty much every time. This d6 damage didn't seem like a lot, but it did add up, and he began to get annoyed, running up and with one hit knocking the warlock down to -3, and bleeding. This is where the cleric really came in handy, healing the warlock and giving him another attack. Meanwhile the ninja has made many attacks, dealing a grand total of no damage, truly inspiring. The warlock however spider climbs his way up the building, not the best idea considering this guy's reputation, and looses another blast. As a natural response the guy, we'll call him Bill, decides to destroy a large part of the building, causing what I thought would be a fairly easy balance check, which was failed by the warlock. Now was the running time.

Running far, but not quite far enough, then charged down to -8, where he stayed. During this time the warblade was firing arrows at Bill, to little effect, but a lucky crit did enable a good amount of damage, so at this point the guy is almost dead, and is kind of flailing around, still doing damage, but not a great amount. Here comes the ninja again, nobody expecting much, but surprise, sudden strike shuriken and he actually takes Bill down. Now the warblade decides to drag Bill back to the keep, and claim the bounty. So he goes off alone, being the only one who is not a wanted criminal, but is unfortunately assaulted by 3 brigands, who I wasn't really expecting much of, but then I wasn't expecting a 1, and for him to toss his greatsword 50 feet away. So he goes down and unconscious, and loses just about everything but his life. This changes fairly soon.

So, he's pissed, and finds his party and they go on a crusade, busting down doors and such to find these guys. This has no real result, as they were already arrested, and gone. So their quest rendered moot, they go looking for others. They find one, in the case of a shop owner blackmailing another, a simple intimidate and beat up mission. This however goes horribly wrong, when they arrive at the door to find the man's wife, and before anyone can do anything intelligent the chaotic stupid ninja decides to spam shurikens, missing with both, how sad. The warblade then fails to keep the door open, as the woman screams and shoves the door shut. A careful application of force gets them through, and they charge into the basement, the only place she could really have gone. Here they find an ogre, what I though would be a fair challenge.

Well his first move is to just about knock out the warlock, bringing him down to 0 health. Both parties slogged it out, the ogre further knocking out the ninja with some fairly powerful swings. Then the warblade got what was his fifth one for this session, managing to critical hit himself, damaging his strength and con, and bringing him close to death. So the ogre, using his massive strength smashes the warblade right into the ground and down to -18. Death. Oops. They do manage to kill the ogre, and the man's wife, and knock out the shop owner, and this is about where we ended it. Next time they plan to go on a quest for a resurrection spell for their fallen comrade.

Second Party, First Session

Today we had the first meeting of our second group, this one consisting of 5 members. First thing we had to do was design one character and redesign another, resulting in another slow start, about an hour after we were supposed to. Hopefully this will get better the more we play.

The party consists of:
Garar, Lizardfolk Rogue 2 who had minimal success with his crossbow
Earl, Azurin Totemist 2 with a focus on grappling
Grimnir, Human Duskblade 2 who had extremely effective color sprays
Kirara, Dwarf Samurai 2 who had some fun with intimidation
Drake Bladestrider, Human Warblade 2 who they met later

We started the session off with a bit more excitement than last time, with the decision that they should all meet up in jail, then proceed to break out. This resulted in the need for a bit of improvisation on my part, given that I had had no plans for them to go to jail yet. We started with the duskblade using color spray on the warden, making him flop about uselessly for a bunch of turns, and the resident rogue picking the lock. Interestingly enough the rouge had neither search nor disable device, so traps will definitely be fun for the group with no healer. After getting out on a natural 20, they proceeded to get their weapons from a nearby chest, and tie up the warden.

Now there is only one exit to this place, and that is a stairway leading up, so they decide the best course of action is to have the Rogue scout ahead, and the rest of the party to come after , leading the warden up with a knife to his back. After a few botched stealth rolls at the top of the stairs, the guards in the next room both see and hear the rouge, and proceed with the stabbing. Now the rest of the party hears this, and kicks their prisoner down the stairs as they run up for a fight. With two guards standing back and shooting the party, and two at the front blocking for them, the combat was difficult, especially the with the limited maneuverability of the stairs.

A well aimed color spray late in the battle however turned the tide, as the remaining two guards were incapacitated and unconscious for about 10 rounds, an immediate death sentence. Before that however the Totemist, who killed the other two guards in one attack, managed to fall down and be color sprayed, to writhe on the ground inefficiently for the rest of the battle, and the dwarf Samurai managed to stab himself in the foot, halving his speed to 10 ft. for 10 minutes, which was incidentally the rest of the session. So after this basic combat, and the goes without saying looting, the party decides to exit through another door, into a courtyard. This is where we found the final member of the party, a disgruntled Warblade guarding a door, which after some quite painful to watch role-playing joined the party.

This next combat is where I first introduced guns into play, and showed just how powerful they can be, almost knocking out the Duskblade in the first shot, and actually doing it on the second, of course they do take a round to reload, and with non-proficiency for the players they really aren't that powerful. This was also an important combat because it showed just what the Warblade was capable of, missing his first two attacks and then critical failing himself all the way down to -8. After the wrap up of this combat, and some generous healing potions on the guards corpses they were on their way to the exit, only one door and two guards on the other side stood in their way.

Of course these two guards were much better than the level ones they had previously been facing, and though they outnumbered them 5 to 2 they still thought long and hard about how they were going to do this. Their first plan was for the Warblade to go out and convince one of them to come, but after some failed bluff rolls, and decent sense motive checks they had no chance of coming in and it was time to get creative. He boosted out of there and they decided to simply gank the guards, death by swarm and all that. So slowly opening the door, the rogue missed his sneak attack, but the Warblade's bow found his mark, as did the Samurai's sword. The Totemist tried to rush by but was knocked to 0 HP by the attack of oppuritunity, and with his last effort got a bite on the non-wounded guard. Through a combination of good rolls on the part of the guards and bad rolls on the part of the players it ended with only the Duskblade and the Warblade up, each with about 5 health, versus the guard with about 3. It was fairly close at the end, but a lucky critical fail by the guard resulting in him falling down and it was all over.

And that is where it ended, more than half the party unconscious, and the rest not in exactly good shape, no way to transport there nearly dead friends and standing at the gate of the castle with two corpses. We'll see what happens next time, I'm sure it will be entertaining at the least.

First Party, First Session

Well, today was the first session, and it went moderately well. It was a little slow starting up, but once everyone not playing had gone we got some decent work done. We started off with brainstorming how the group would come together, and we decided on an old classic, they're in a guild together. Though the guild they have is pretty crappy, with their party being the only members. After that they decided to go looking for quests, and I told them about the bounties that I had created.

The party consists of:

Laxus Dreyar, Human Druid 2 with his trusty horse companion Buttercup
Fyiad, Half-Orc Dragonborn Red Dragon Shaman 2 with 6 intelligence
Lia Galanodel, Elf Ranger 2 with archery style
Bistechrn, Lesser Aasimar Bard 2 with 20 charisma

They started off by splitting up, always a bad idea, one half of the party going to find a thug hanging around in an alley, and the other half to go investigate some thievery. I had a little difficulty here as I tried to switch between the parties, allowing both to be doing stuff at the same time, which never really seems to work. So here we had the first real combat of the game, the dragon shaman and druid with heavy horse companion fighting a group of 4 orcs.

The battle was littered with misses and a spectacular critical fail on the part of the orc leader, which resulted in him knocking himself out and all the way down to -9, then failing his stabilization and bleeding out. The three basic orcs proved to be about the threat I thought they would, though an early lucky crit brought the druid down to -8, where the dragon shaman's aura kept him from dying. After dispatching the orcs, and a little bit of looting the rest of the party arrived from their investigations, they had decided to go to a upper class elf party in the hopes of catching the thief.

I'm not sure quite where this idea came from, but I let it slide, because I didn't really want them to waste their time. So I had the thief arrive at the party, acting shifty and the like, but a few failed sense motive checks later and I really had to tell them nothing was amiss. After the ranger decided to go and get the less stealthy of the party, the dragon shaman and druid, the party had come to a close, I had the thief try to run, and they of course decided to run after him, resulting in a chase scene which really could have been better. It ended with the druid, who got there first and alone, being stabbed to unconsciousness, again, and the dragon shaman coming to the rescue. After a lucky hit from the thief the dragon shaman was down to 0 health, though his aura granting fast healing 1 he was not doing too bad, especially after a series of 5s and 6s from me, and finally the ranger comes in, and finishes him with a couple of well aimed shots, with a little courage from the bard, and he was captured for next session.

And that was where we left off, the thief in chains and interrogation and presumably torture and murder soon to follow. Tomorrows group may take a completely different turn.