TheRPGSite

(I am playing catch-up with this log, but here goes...)

Fort Talon Campaign

Characters

Leopold is the bastard son of Lord Brassart, a vassal of Baron Vincent. When his father died, he left him a mysterious triangular necklace, but no explanation of its use. Leo's half brother, Armand, inherited his father's lands. Unfortunately, Armand used his newfound power to harass Leo and his mother, threatening them unless they handed over the necklace. When Leo refused, Armand sent agents to capture and torture him. He escaped and is now tries to learn the purpose of the necklace and bides his time until he can destroy his half-brother.

Leo is a duelist meaning that he has a high weapon skill, good defenses and great damage. However, his hit points are average and his fighting style precludes him from wearing armor. He also knows a rune called The Vault that deals in secrets and subterfuge.

Leo was a PC in a previous campaign and is thus slightly more skilled than the other PCs. He also has a little more history under his belt and it is likely that his story will drive the campaign at some point.

Urzeph is a Borakki and a former member of the notorious mercenary group called the Cal Tundel. The Cal Tundel battle bare-chested, relying on the art of breath control to make their skin resistant to blows. Urzeph has high strength and toughness and can induce rage, giving him numerous combat advantages.

Nathan lost a bet at the age of 16 and because of this, was forced to become the servant of a mage named Ezekiel Blackwell. Blackwell was a demonologist with the Rune of the Beast and the Third Eye and forced young Nathan to run errands for him and participate in horrible rituals. Nathan longed to escape, but was fascinated by the power his master wielded so he studied behind Blackwell's back and eventually learned some of the secrets of the runes.

Nathan managed to escape and bind the Rune of the Beast, killing Blackwell in the process. He later bound the Third Eye and Blizzard and is now a powerful mage. Blackwell's daughter Clarissa pursues Nathan, planning her revenge.

Ssrong is a Low Cobrat who escaped the brutal life of the gladiator pits when his master's caravan was wiped out by bandits. Ssrong was the only member of the caravan to survive and wandered aimlessly for some time before being found by Nathan and Urzeph. He is a fearsome combatant with extremely high strength and toughness -- a ball of muscle and aggression wielding a spear and shield.

Xavier is an assassin who ran afoul of his bosses and was run out of the business. He fled south and now poses as a Storyteller, traveling from town to town performing for room, board and spending money. Xavier is a competent combatant focused on stealth, defense and sneak attacks. He also knows the Rune of Fairy Wings which gives him powers of illusion.

GM Notes: We have a Borakki Berserker, a Cobrat Pit Fighter and a Duelist. This is going to be a very combatively powerful group. The mage comparatively does poor damage (though in a normal party, he would be fine), but makes up for it with the utility spells in his three runes. Xavier is the weakest of the lot, but even he has a high defense and backstab capabilities. Should be fun.

Session One (in which the party wonders what the Heck they are doing here)

June 10, y806

The campaign starts with the PCs in the middle of a crypt, fighting a pitched battle with a group of ghouls. No background is given on where they are or why there are there (for reasons that soon become obvious).

The ghoul rabble are falling left and right to the cobrat and the duelist, with only minor scrapes scored on the PCs. A couple rounds into the fight, the ghoul leader activates a mechanism that causes a pedestal to rise from the center of the room. On top of this pedestal is a glass dome covering a glowing, green crystal. Once the dome has risen fully, the ghoul leader charges the dome, obviously trying to get at the crystal for some nefarious purpose.

Both Ssrog and Leo intercept the ghoul leader before he completes his plan, killing him. In the meantime, Urzeph is being grappled by another ghoul and Nathan and Xavier are also locked in melee. Urzeph rages and manages to free himself from the choking grasp of his opponent, but is knocked back into the pedestal, shattering the dome...

...And suddenly everyone is standing in the middle of a dungeon room with the bloody bodies of ghouls littering the floor. Every one of the PCs has lost their memories. They don't know where they are or why they are here, or what that glowing crystal that Leo is holding is.

Expectedly, there is a moment of paranoia as each adventurer sizes up these strangers with which he finds himself. The borakki is still raged and he and Ssrog take a few swings at each other, but no one is seriously hurt. As the two behemoths go at it in one corner of the room, the rest of the PCs try to figure out their situation. In the meantime, Nathan is checking the door to their room and he can definitely hear activity elsewhere in the dungeon.

Finally, Leo looks through his belongings and finds (among other things) a leaded box and a letter that starts, "If you are reading this, it is likely you are confused and without your memory..."

The letter basically tells the PCs that they were hired by a scholar named Thomas Bricker to investigate this ruin. It is an ancient temple of the Church of Immortality, the Deceiver's church. The crystal they hold is a potent artifact, but that exposure to it causes insanity, memory loss and eventually transforms them into a ghoul. Bricker wants to examine the crystal, and in fact will need to do so to return the PCs' minds. The PCs are to put the crystal into the box and return to nearby Fort Talon, meeting Bricker in the First Stop Inn. The letter then goes on to describe Bricker, his main distinguishing feature being his stark white hair. Included is a map that leads the characters from Fort Talon to the general area of the crypt (though Bricker did not know exactly where the crypt was and so there is a gap).

Nathan: No really, something is coming!!

The adventurers put the crystal in the lead box and then they are set upon by ghoul reinforcements, a female ghoul guiding three giant beetles on chain leashes. The Beetle Mistress releases her pets and they all charge into the room.

Giant beetles are very tough, having almost 2-3 hit points of a normal man and strong protective carapaces. Even as strong as this party is, a straight up fight would be tough. The group does manage to flip one beetle, striking it in its unprotected belly and killing it. However, the other beetles are tearing up Leopold, Urzeph and Nathan. Xavier focuses his attention on the Beetle Mistress and finally takes her down. Once he does so, the remaining two beetles become confused and wander off.

The group, now fully united in their desire to leave the crypt, tries to figure their way out. Nathan uses his Third Eye and casts Floating Eye and Night Vision, allowing his eye to act as an advanced scout.

Night Vision
This spell allows the caster to see in the dark. He can treat normal darkness as though it were daylight. This spell provides no assistance in the case of magical darkness, gas, for or mist.

Floating Eye
The eye floats under the control of the caster. The caster can still see out of the eye. The eye cannot travel more than 200 meters from the caster. When the spell ends, the eye must be in the possession of the caster. If this is not the case, then when the spell ends, the eye will attempt to return to the caster, but it will be blinded for a day. During this time it will be useless for spell casting. If the caster cannot retrieve the eye, he cannot use this rune until the eye is returned to his head.

Between Nathan's eye and following their own tracks through the dungeon, they manage to make it to the surface without incident. However, they also see that there is more to the crypt than they explored, including what appears to be a ghoul "nursery" with dozens of child-like ghouls feasting on carrion.

The group uses the map and Urzeph's navigation skills to make it back to town without incident after two days. Once in Fort Talon, the group immediately heads for the First Stop Inn and searches for Bricker. Polite inquiries indicate that in fact, he has been staying in the inn, but has not been down to the common room for about two days.

The group is wary, but heads to Bricker's room anyways where they are confronted by ... The white-haired scholar, Thomas Bricker. Bricker is happy to see the characters alive as he had feared the worst. The PCs tell their story to Bricker and he indicates that, he expected this problem and yes, he can in fact make them a potion to reverse their memory loss, but he will need the crystal for a couple of days since it is a key ingredient.

The characters are obviously wary, but give Bricker the lead box and are each paid 400p for their trouble. Everyone but Urzeph heads to the tavern to spend their money. Urzeph, particularly non-trusting of the scholar, sleeps outside his door.

The next morning, a young, bruised man with greasy hair and tattered clothing bangs on Leo's door. The man's name is Marius and he introduces himself as Thomas Bricker's assistant. He tells the PCs that he and Bricker were captured about a day and a half ago. His master was carried off and he was dumped inside an abandoned warehouse. He just escaped and came looking for his master or the PCs (assuming they had arrived).

Of course, everyone is confused since they talked to Bricker just last night. They rush to the scholar's room and enter. The window is open and he is gone, along with the crystal.

GM Notes: This was a good session and everyone had lots of fun. Starting in the middle of a crazy fight worked, since this is a group of combat-oriented characters. The players handled their memory loss pretty well. I had been slightly worried that the normal gamer paranoia would translate into something stupid like "You might be my enemy, I am going to escape alone."  I shouldn't have been concerned; these guys are good players and friends.

All in all, an excellent night and everyone is stoked for next week.

Session Two (in which our protagonists search for their missing patron)

June 14, y806

Urzeph: The scholar has been taken in the night. I wasn't vigilant enough.

Marius: You mean my master was here last night? You talked to him?

Leo: Yes, we talked to him last night and exchanged the stone for our payment.

Xavier: Now, can you tell us who would want to take your master?

Marius: I don't know, but I don't understand how he was here.

Xavier: What are you talking about, kid?

Marius: My master and I were taken two nights ago.

All: Huh?

Marius tells the story that he and his master, Thomas Bricker were visiting with their friend, one Doctor Mortenson, late into the night. As they returned to the First Stop, they were set upon by six ruffians and hustled into an alley. Bricker assumed that they were being robbed and offered the thugs money. The thugs responded by clubbing Bricker and Marius unconscious. When Marius woke, he was tied and gagged in a dark, abandoned warehouse. He just managed to free himself and stumble back to the inn, looking for help.

The PCs check Marius' story, investigating both the warehouse and the alley. In the alley, they find evidence of a struggle and tracks that indicate one or more people were dragged from the spot. They also find a strange coin – a Bosotnian coin, defaced with a strange symbol.

 
The warehouse contained very little, but there were signs there that seemed to confirm the apprentice's story.

The group then headed to Doc Mortenson's shop. The Doctor tells the PCs that Bricker is a good friend of his and a scholar interested in the world of the Ancients. This particular visit, Bricker was researching the legend of Ghouls' Glow.

Ghouls' Glow

During the last days of the Ancients, Stratus, the All Father, turned the skies red with his anger, filling the followers of the Church of Immortality with dread. They sought comfort by fleeing to their temples and asking the priests there to conduct services. Great feasts were held in honor of the Immortality Gods in hopes that they would save the world from Stratus' wrath.

Several of the temples were feasting as The Father cast fire seeds upon the Earth. Just before the fire seeds blasted them into ash, Stratus allowed the feasting congregations to see the truth about their meal – they were feasting on human flesh. In that instant, all of the worshippers went insane and their souls were trapped in the crystal sculptures adorning the temples.

Few of these temples exist today, but all that do still contain the glowing crystals. Anyone exposed to the crystals is driven insane by the screaming souls. Enough exposure turns the victim into an insane, cannibalistic ghoul.

As the Doctor finishes the story, a sweating, overweight man of about 50 sporting a long coat, a wide-brimmed hat and a pair of alchemical slings (think pistols) walks into the office. His name is Saul and he is a Purifier – a priest of an order that seeks out powerful and dangerous artifacts and neutralizes them. Purifiers have a knack for appearing when such artifacts do, and Saul is no exception. He tells the PCs that he "felt" the stone's presence and is here to claim it for the Church and render it harmless.

After a bit of wrangling with Saul (the group cannot give up the stone before regaining their memories, after all), they agree to help the priest and tell him what has happened so far. When Saul sees the defaced coin, he tells the group that it is a calling card of an organization called the League of Harsh Truth. They are a group of secessionists that trace their bloodlines back to powerful tribal families. They want to overthrow the Bostonian order and return the land to how it was 800 years ago -- several separate, isolated kingdoms (with them in power, of course).

It seems that the League has a notorious assassin, called the Harvester, working for them. The Harvester is a skilled combatant and a master of disguise. Even worse, about two years ago, the Harvester was involved in an incident in Salem in which an alchemist created a machine that could extract the essence of a living being, creating potions that allowed the drinker to take the form of that being. The alchemist's operation was disrupted, but the Harvester and the apparatus disappeared.

The group is now facing an organization of Illuminati bent of the overthrow of the King, whose agent is an expert shape-shifting assassin... with a memory sucking insanity crystal. There are a few moments of "what do we do now", but the group quickly regains their composure. If the Harvester is really toting around a large, delicate alchemical apparatus so that he can impersonate Thomas Bricker, he might still be in town. Furthermore, if the League wants Ghouls' Glow, they might need Bricker alive since he is the man who has studied it.

They decide that the weak links here are the six thugs hired to nab Bricker. Certainly, someone arranged for the thugs. If they could find that person, they might be able to find the Harvester. The group splits and Leo uses his streetwise and carouse skills to canvas the inns and taverns of Fort Talon, looking for a shady dealer who might be able to arrange for some muscle. He is introduced to a local criminal named Grummond.

Leo persuades Grummond to help for a substantial bribe. Grummond tells the PCs that he and his boys were hired to round up two scholars a couple nights ago. One was dumped in an abandoned warehouse, but the other was taken to a well-to-do house on the other side of town.

It is already night and so the PCs rush to the house. It is a nice, large house, obviously the house of a merchant or a town leader. There are windows all about and a fenced in yard containing a large wagon and two pack lizards. Leo (casts Lurker) and Xavier sneak close to the house and observe through a window. Inside they see a high cobrat, a nervous-looking man and Bricker holding a lead box on his lap.

Lurker

This spell gives the caster a +4 to his stealth and concealment skills (or a skill of 12, whichever is higher) if he is in the act of sneaking or hiding.

Leo casts Eavesdrop and listens in on their conversation.

Eavesdrop

This spell allows the caster to listen in on a conversation up to 20 hexes away. The caster is able to hear anyone participating in the conversation as long as he can see them.

The nervous man is the homeowner, a local merchant mixed up with the League. He is complaining to the other two regarding the use of his house. He wants to help the League, but does not want to be party to kidnapping. The cobrat makes a few snide comments about cowardly humans and the Bricker look-alike assures the merchant that they will be leaving tomorrow with the scholar.

Leo and Xavier take this as enough proof that this is their assassin. They wave up the others and then burst into the room through the windows.

Upon seeing the PCs, the Harvester flees the room, heading for the fenced in area with the wagons and lizards, the high cobrat begins to cast a spell and the nervous merchant screams and begs for his life. Both Leo and Xavier charge past the high cobrat and into the next room... where the low cobrat bodyguard is waiting. In the meantime, the borakki is just getting into the original room.

Leo slips past the low cobrat warrior and pursues the Harvester out the door. Xavier on the other hand is engaged by the bodyguard and manages to dodge one blow, but then is hit with an attack that shatters his arm. He slumps to the floor unconscious.

Meanwhile, Urzeph enters the room and faces off with the cobrat mage. The mage summons a giant snake for defense, but the borakki manages to get by the snake and deliver a fatal blow to the cobrat. Urzeph then makes his way to challenge the low bodyguard before he kills Xavier, or intercepts Leo.

The Harvester and Leo exchange a round or two of blows and then the Harvester uses his acrobatic skill to leap onto the back of one of the pack lizards, onto the wagon and then over the fence. Leo, also an acrobat, follows and chases the assassin through the streets of Fort Talon. When it becomes apparent that he won't catch his quarry, Leo stops and throws an axe at the Harvester's back.

The axe hits the Harvester, stunning him, forcing him to drop the lead box, and allowing Leo to close and engage. The two dangerous combatants exchange feints and parries. Finally, Leo scores a hit, but it is only a "graze" and the Harvester suffers no ill effects. The Harvester counterattacks, hitting and wounding Leo pretty badly.

Seeing a chance for escape, the Harvester pulls out a potion that will create a cloud of inky darkness through which only he can see. Leo is blinded and fearing the Harvester's escape, he desperately dives onto the lead box. The Harvester responds by kicking Leo in the head, knocking him to within a point of unconsciousness. Leo is prone, nearly unconscious and grievously wounded. He has a single action left before his opponent either kills him, or knocks him out and makes his escape.

So he opens the lead box...

BAM! BAM! Saul's pistols crack and the Harvester, confused and without his memory, flees the scene. The battle is over.

GM Notes: This was an awesome session -- one of the sessions that makes you realize why you play tabletop RPGs. Everyone had a blast and the duel in the end between Leo and the Harvester was classic.

You may have noticed that not much mention was made of Nathan and Ssrog. Their players were absent and so it was assumed they were pursuing investigations elsewhere, or that they were otherwise tied up in the combat and thus, were not in the spotlight. It is unfortunate that they had to miss, but at the beginning of the campaign, we agreed to play with as little as 3 players. Once you start canceling sessions, it becomes easier and easier to cancel the next one.

I feel bad that Xavier got axed so quickly in the battle. That is the risk of combat -- any single hit can take you down. The player still had fun and admitted that it was a little risky of him to charge in behind Leo, while half their force had yet to get to the house.

I like to have my players (and their adventures) make an impact in the game world. I often use material from one campaign in later campaigns, as I am sure we all do. The Harvester was a nasty NPC in a previous game and in fact, the PCs in that game were the ones who uncovered the essence-sucking alchemist. Now of course, because of Leo's actions, the Harvester is now wandering without his memory and a major NPC is out of action... very cool.

Fort Talon is a town of about 3200 inhabitants that lies high in the Terrorbald Mountains, 24 miles south of Jamestown. Fort Talon was founded by the decree of Lord Relequin James in the year 772. At first, the fort was simply a walled garrison designed to protect the mountain passes from goblin and cobrat invaders. In addition, a few small mining operations cropped up to take advantage of the tin and iron in the region.

However, four years ago, prospectors found a large vein of gold. Miners and prospectors of all types have flocked to the town, hoping to stake a claim. In the past four years, the population has increased from 400 to over 3200. The streets are crowded with miners, traders, street vendors, mercenaries, and fortune hunters from all walks of life.

A Fort Talon Timeline
772   Shield Guild and Baron Relequin James found the town of Fort Talon to guard the passes through the Terrorbald Mountains.

773   The Church of the Southern Gate is built in Fort Talon.

783   Lord Mayor Eliza Warrandale is discovered hiding taxable goods from Lord James. She flees with a few of her loyal supporters.

784   The Warrandale Raiders make their first attack on a mining camp southeast of Fort Talon.

788   Fort Talon Mining Company founded. Bright Burning Flame refugees settle in Fort Talon.

791   After a successful run as a bandit, Eliza Warrandale's Raiders are stopped by the Shield Guild. Warrandale escapes south into goblin territory.

798   Teeta Alliance invades southern Bostonia.

799   Joint Bostonian/Cobrat forces stop Teeta Alliance. Invasion stalls, though some territory is still held. Templars fighting against the Teeta Alliance find an old, crystal encrusted human skeleton. Thinking the skeleton is an oddity, the templars return with it to Ismoth. A Conference of Bishops determines that the bones belong to St. Olum.

800   Significant mineral and gold deposits found near Fort Talon. Large scale mining operations begin. Population begins to explode from 400 to 3200 (over the course of 4 years). With funds from the new mineral wealth, Lord James builds a beautiful cathedral on the site of The Church of the Southern Gate, and petitions the Church to house St. Olum's remains there.

801   St. Olum's remains brought to Fort Talon. Church is renamed to The Church of St. Olum's Solitude.

802   Tatokh are allowed to reestablish embassy in Fort Talon.

804   Suggested campaign beginning for Bostonia.

Our campaign started in y806 and the population has grown to well over 5000.

Session Three (in which the group joins Saul in an adventure)

July 6, y806

We pick up the story about three weeks after the characters defeated the Harvester and recovered Ghouls' Glow. In that three weeks, everyone rested and recovered. Saul arranged for Xavier's arm to be healed by a traveling priestess (looking at the possibility of starting a temple in Fort Talon). Thomas Bricker was rescued and managed to make memory-restoring potions for the group before Saul took the stone and "neutralized" it.

Saul chats with the party and gives them some news. The nervous merchant was captured and sent to Jamestown for interrogation. Unfortunately, he was poisoned and died in his cell, but the interrogators did manage to scrape together a couple of leads pertaining to the League of Harsh Truth. If the group was interested, Saul could give them a letter of introduction and they could head north to investigate. Alternately, Saul was heading to the ghoul temple to clean it out and could use some help.

The group talked a bit and decided that since the Harvester had lost his memory and all other League witnesses to their involvement in the situation were dead, they might be better off just lying low for a while. To that end, they decided to help Saul on his mission to destroy the remainder of the ghouls.

A couple days later and we find the fellowship trudging through the badlands south of Ft. Talon. They come upon a strange rock formation that forms a sort of wall about 100 meters across. Behind the rock wall, they hear the signs of a large battle.

A couple of the group members climb the wall, or heft someone else to the top. Indeed, there is a terrible battle going on between two goblin tribes, the Reapers (with a yellow, scythe banner) and the Skullsplitters (red banner with cleaved skull). The goblins are fighting a closely contested battle until the shaman of the Skullsplitters blows a mysterious horn.

The party hears growls behind them and quickly moves to get out of the way of whatever is coming. Suddenly, several dozen wolves made of the earth rise from the ground and charge through the stone wall. They engage the Reapers and quickly turn the tide of the battle. The shaman then drives his staff through the enemy chieftain's chest and he wilts into dust. The battle ends and the Reapers surrender and after a brief "negotiation" with the Skullsplitter shaman, join under his banner.

Later that day, the adventurers reach the temple and head in. The first place they investigate is the ghoul nursery they spotted on their first time here. This time, there are no child-like ghouls. Instead, the entire floor is covered in bones up to knee-deep. As the group moves slowly through this room, they spot something scurrying under the cover of the bones. Ssrog moves to intercept the unknown creature and spears it. It is a ghoul who is quickly dispatched.

Continuing on, the group comes upon a door behind which they hear someone speaking. Xavier checks this door for traps and finds a particularly nasty acid trap, which he disarms.

When they open the door, they are in a well-lit room filled with chairs and tables and people sitting down to a meal. One of the people stands and is giving a speech (in a language no one understands). The man is dark-skinned, very handsome and covered in tattoos on every inch of his visible skin. The tattooed man walks from table to table, chatting with the others as they eat, shaking hands and touching their foreheads as though he is blessing them. The mood is calm.

The group enters the room cautiously and tries interacting with the people. They are just phantoms. Nathan (and Saul) recognize the tattooed man. This is Tomax of One Thousand Runes. He is one of the original disciples of the Deceiver, a demon. Tomax's domain is magic and the lust for magical power. He is said to have every single rune known to man (aside from the Sacred Falls of Aestra, though there are those in the Church that debate that fact).

Suddenly, bells begin to ring in the distance and the mood of the people in the illusion seems to change. People look around nervously. One of the female patrons lurches up screaming, holding what looks to be a severed finger from her plate. Someone else collapses onto his knees and begins vomiting violently. Others push their plates away from them in horror, weeping or yelling incoherently. Then, everyone looks toward one of the walls of the room and it is bathed in a blinding light. In that instant, all of them are blasted to dust.

A metal box containing a crystal seems to be the source of the illusion. The group confirms this by closing the box, stopping the illusion. Opening it again starts the scene from the beginning. The group takes the box (it could be a very important religious artifact) and continues.

The final room the group explores is a kitchen of some type, complete with racks of pots, pans and other cooking utensils and a roasting pit with a large chimney. About 10 or so of the child ghouls are here, menacing two of the larger ghouls who are chained to the far wall. The group wades into the fray and smashes through most of the ghouls, though a couple of them escape up the chimney (the child ghouls have the uncanny ability to climb on walls and ceilings like insects).

NOTE: One very humorous episode occurred when Ssrog entered the room and was beset by 5 of the ghouls. They were all over him, clutching and biting. The cobrat withstood their assault and then backed out of the room where the rest of his group then took turns knocking the monsters from him and killing them...

Once the room was cleared the group briefly talked to the chained ghouls. The ghouls babbled insanely, but the party got the impression that something had caused the child ghouls to frenzy and now they were killing everything in the crypt, including their own kind. The PCs then dispatched the ghouls under Saul's direction since they are wretched, godless creatures.

Then the whole dungeon was filled with wailing, crooning and the skittering of hundreds of ghoul feet. A huge wave of the frenzied child ghouls is coming through the halls and from the sounds of it, they are somehow coming through the chimney as well. The group retreats and decides to barricade themselves in the "illusion" room.

Once in the illusion room, Ssrog and Urzeph secure the door, Xavier resets the acid trap and Nathan opens the illusion cube to start the scene. Their plan is to use the illusion of Stratus' holy light to stun and scare the ghouls (they ask Saul about this course of action and with his theology skill, confirms that the ghouls ought to fear the light) and while the ghouls are stunned, activate the acid cloud trap.

When the ghouls burst in, they are basked in the light of the Father's fire seeds and they freeze in fear. Xavier activates the acid cloud. The cloud fills the hallway, burning all of the child ghouls severely. Many of them die on the spot and the rest are incapacitated and quickly dispatched. The battle is over.

Session Four (in which the party kicks back and causes a ruckus)

July 12, y806

The group has returned to Fort Talon and is busy dispensing the spoils from their expedition. Of particular note are potions of levitation and water breathing, and the illusion box.

Nathan examines the box with his artifacts skill. The crystal is akin to a cobrat memory crystal used to record images. However, the crystal's setting is runed spirit iron. Spirit iron is meteoric iron that is especially conducive to magic. It can be used to store spells and interact with spirits. Nathan posits that the device has somehow trapped the spirits shown in the illusion.

NOTE: There is a little bit of tension between Nathan and Saul. Saul is anxious to get the box to the Bishop in Jamestown, but Nathan wants to continue to study it. Also, both the Third Eye and the Rune of the Beast are considered to be demonic in nature. When Saul is nearby, Nathan must be careful and refrain from casting most of his spells, lest the priest become suspicious.

Finally, Nathan finishes his examination of the box and reluctantly hands it over to Saul. Saul talks to Leo, thanking him and his companions for accompanying him into the crypt. He tells Leo that he is "heading west", into the mountains to follow a hunch he has. Saul gives Leo a thin tile and tells Leo that if he breaks it, Saul will know and come to his aid.

Leo contacts the local authorities and ends up talking to Captain Brizzen, the leader of the local guard. Leo tells the Captain about the group's encounter with the goblins. The Captain tells Leo that the local goblin tribes are always battling, but the emergence of a powerful shaman with the power to summon wolves that can phase through stone is troubling.

The evening finds the group back at the First Stop Inn, everyone is having a fine time. At some point in the evening, Leopold spots a crowd of human rowdies bullying a pair of grunj prospectors. It seems the two groups are arguing over a plot of land – the humans claiming the grunj have stolen their land, the grunj claiming that the humans lost it in a dice game. Leo listens to the argument for a while, but then it appears the humans are going to become violent and so the duelist calmly bashes one of them in the skull with a mug.

What follows is a huge bar fight in which Leo fends off the human rowdies while Ssrog and a bunch of low cobrat he befriended earlier in the evening smash a bloody path to aid him. In any case, the thugs are run off and Leo listens to the grunjs' tale. The grunj, Norton and Pak, are brothers living together with their families on a plot about fourty minutes out of town. They won the plot off the Lowrey Brothers, a family of ne'er do wells, who had thought it was barren. Pak however, can smell precious metal and using this unique skill, the grunj struck a silver deposit. Now the Lowreys want "their land" back. Leo offers his help, but Norton refuses, indicating that his people are pacifists and could not stand to see anyone harmed.

Before any more can be said, the towns alarm bells ring. Something has been spotted at the south gate. Curious, Urzeph and Leopold head out to the south gate to find Captain Brizzen and about 100 of his guards there, along with the local Shield Guild commander. Also there are a dozen goblins carrying a banner with a white wolf's head. The goblins are lead off to the town barracks, but nothing else happens and everyone retires for the night.

The next day, Cpt. Brizzen sends a messenger for Leopold. He and the rest of the group attends a meeting at the barracks. Various town personalities are there, including Doctor Mortenson, the Shield Guild commander, Isadore, and a local borakki weaponsmith named Angus MacClaren.

The goblin leader, Sharp Spear, tells the assembly that he is from the tribe called the Wolves and he is here to warn the Bostonians of a coming war. A shaman called Ulgharid subverted his tribe, has acquired a couple powerful artifacts and is using them to unite all of the tribes under his banner. He has managed to conquer four of the eight tribes and two of those that remain are talking about joining Ulgharid peacefully. That will leave only the Stalkers and the Wolves to stop the shaman from taking over all the goblins in the southland.

When Isadore asks what this has to do with Fort Talon, Sharp Spear tells him that Ulgharid is not content with the goblin lands. He has designs on the rich mineral wealth of Fort Talon. The shaman has contacted the cobrat called the Teetha and make an alliance with them. Between the goblins and the cobrat, Fort Talon is in great danger.

Sharp Spear's father, Great Wolfslayer, has a plan to stop the shaman and end the alliance, but he needs the help of Fort Talon. More specifically, he needs the weapon smith to accompany the goblins back to the Wolves' territory to "honor his debt". Everyone is somewhat taken aback by this request, but Angus agrees to go. The goblins and the smith leave first thing tomorrow. Various other preparations are made by the town officials and word is sent to Jamestown about the possible danger.

After the meeting breaks up, the PCs meet up with Angus and Mortenson at the Doctor's office. Angus tells them that when he first came to the south, his party was attacked by goblin raiders and nearly wiped out. Angus was captured and made a slave. He worked for two years as a smith in the Wolf tribe. When Wolfslayer came to power, he freed Angus and now the borakki is honor-bound to repay the goblin chief for his freedom.

When asked what possibly he could have to do with Wolfslayer's plan to defeat Ulgharid, Angus replies that when he was a slave, there was much tension between the tribes' shamans and their war chiefs. The chiefs often told a story about "giants" that explored the southland years ago. These giants supposedly left many books and tablets detailing the making of powerful weapons. One of these weapons would supposedly allow a chieftain to kill a shaman at a touch. Before freeing him, Wolfslayer asked Angus about the possibility that such a weapon could exist. Angus explained about the borakki art of rune carving and Wolfslayer was convinced that the legend was true and he vowed to find this shaman slaying rune.

Session Five  (in which our heroes scare some ruffians and Angus returns)

July 24, y806

Early that morning, there is a knock on Leopold's door. It is Pak. He tells Leo that the Lowreys have been coming to their stake and threatening him, his brother and their families. He wonders if he can hire Leo to protect their land. Leo talks to the group and they agree to the work, setting the rate at 10p/PC/day – a pretty amazing rate for a guard, even in the inflated Ft. Talon economy.

The group talks to one of the guard, Sgt. Rathmore and asks about the Lowreys. Rathmore confirms the story told by the grunj earlier. The Lowreys are something of a local legend for their lazy ways. They were given a plot by their uncle, and claim that the grunj stole it from them, but of course, the grunj have the deed. Then the Lowreys changed their tune, saying they did in fact lose the land in a dice game, but that the grunj cheated. The Captain sent them on their way.

The grunj have a fairly extensive plot, with a couple of sheds, a small, ramshackle cottage and some digging and sifting machinery. The group sets up watch.

That night, six Lowrey boys head to the plot, carrying torches and making a lot of noise. Various party members move to intercept and a couple of them surprise the thugs. Xavier creates the illusion of a slavering dog charging the ruffians and they flee in panic.

Fay Visions

This spell allows the caster to create a small illusion up to the size of a person. The illusion may be anything the caster desires, but must be something he has seen before to be effective. Anyone seeing the illusion may make a PER save vs. DL 16 to ignore the illusion. The illusion continues for 1 hour, or until it is touched.

The group chases down Luke Lowrey, the leader of the band, rough him up a little bit and tell him that they have bought a share in the grunj mining operation and will be watching closely. If anything happens to "their" plot, the PCs will come down hard on the Lowrey family. The message seems to sink in.

The group spends the rest of the night and the next morning celebrating with the grunj and their families.

Everyone wakes up to the sounds of yelling. Five goblins stumble through the plot with Angus carried on a makeshift litter. The borakki smith looks sick and pale. The goblins indicate that they were ambushed by Ulgharid's minions and in the fight, Angus was struck by a poisoned blade. The goblin party rushed back to Fort Talon in hopes of getting medical attention for Angus.

The group escorts the goblins back to Fort Talon and then to Doc Mortenson's office. The Doctor examines Angus, administers some medicine to his wounds and then tells the group that Angus has been poisoned with lak paste, a nasty goblin poison. The borakki is lucky because his powerful constitution and the fact that he was likely drunk at the time of the attack slowed the onset of the toxin. The antidote is based on a rare plant called Wolf's Weed, a pungent herb that grows in marshy soil near ancient sites. The Doctor only has enough of the plant to keep Angus alive and comatose for another week.

The goblins know of two possible nearby sources of Wolf's Weed. The first is in Skullsplitter territory, about 50 miles southwest. The second is in Wolf territory, almost 100 miles to the south. The group offers to undergo the more dangerous journey, into enemy territory. They take one of the goblins with them as a guide, provision, and then head out that evening.

Their overland journey takes a little over two days of hard hiking. Nathan's Third Eye powers get excellent use to scout ahead and avoid contact. Two encounters occur during the trip. The first is that the party spots a set of sunken buildings away from their path – they look like silos of some sort, but the PCs have no time to investigate. The second is a pack of starving wolves ambushes them, circles and attacks, but the PCs manage to scare them off.

When the fellowship reaches Skullsplitter territory, the land becomes more rocky and hilly. The group has to take narrow trails that lead through the ridges and boulders. Unfortunately, their path is blocked by a large encampment of Skullsplitters. They scout a bit and talk to their guide and come up with three main options.

First, they could take a very circuitous route around the guards, adding about a day each way. Second, they could take a slightly shorter route, using their climbing skills to cut over the jagged hills. There would be a slight possibility they could be seen this way, but not high. Third they could possibly fly most of the group over. Nathan has a flight spell as well as a spell that lightens his load and a levitation potion. That and some rope gets three people across... perhaps with multiple trips.

The last way they could avoid the guard encampment would be to use a tunnel that cuts under the hills. Xavier found the entrance to a tunnel while he was investigating the area. The goblin guide confirms that there is a tunnel that cuts under the hills, but it is blocked by a powerful steel gate and is filled with angry spirits. Goblins don't go in there because those that do have been killed by the spirits.

I can only wonder which way they'll pick... :)

Session Five (in which our heroes enter the mysterious tunnel)

July 29, y806

The entrance to the tunnel has an inscription in Cobrat, "Here lies Melenthos the Cruel. May the souls of his victims reap endless retribution."  Ssrog knows that Melenthos was a cobrat king who lived a couple hundred years ago. He became obsessed with a spider demon and her magic and took to sacrificing his subjects in hopes of pleasing her, but that did not work. Next, he tried to take the spider demon's magic by force, but was bitten and poisoned. When he died, his people revolted and sealed the remains of Melenthos and his followers in a crypt.

Nathan uses his rune knowledge skill and understands that the spider demon in the story is a beast called the Widow Queen and she is the guardian of a rune site. To bind the rune, a would-be practitioner would have to steal some of the queen's silk and then sew it into his abdomen in the shape of an hourglass.

With the thought that a twenty-foot tall spider lurks somewhere ahead, the group enters the tunnel. On the walls are relief carvings depicting Melenthos' life and his eventual demise at the hands of the Widow Queen. Cut into the floor of the hallway is a shallow trough about four inches wide. A rough, crystalline dust fills the trough, forming an unbroken line across the tunnel. Everyone seems prone to ignore the crystal dust and move on, but Ssrog insists on gathering as much as possible and putting it into a pouch.

After a bit of walking, the group comes to a hexagonal room with six exits (including the one from which they enter). The room seems to be some kind of ceremonial room. A carved, stone, spider fountain dominates the middle of the room. Its base is covered in pieces of debris and trash that looks like someone's house was looted and everything was dumped here. There are columns around the perimeter of the room and oil lamps that are all bone dry. A man-sized stone slab rests along each wall. The air here is particularly dry and everyone who enters gets itchy eyes and feels the need to take a long drink.

The group gets to checking out the various features in the room. Urzeph digs through the junk at the base of the fountain. Suddenly, he hears, "I thirst" whispered in a gravely voice. When he looks up, he is being menaced by a wispy, vaporous humanoid figure. The figure touches the borakki and his skin dries to the point of being brittle and it hurts.

The group moves to attack the "ghost" in the fountain. Unfortunately, weapons do not harm it. It just keeps reaching for various PCs and moaning, "I thirst." Leopold throws some water into the basin of the fountain and the creature greedily absorbs it and it is distracted for a few seconds.

In the meantime, the group tries to find another way to attack or placate the creature. Nathan's Snowblind spell is ineffective, as are attempts to reactivate the fountain. At some point, Nathan uses his Ice Spike spell to blast away at the creature and the attack is effective, causing great pain and damage to the spirit. Unfortunately, the Desiccating Spirit goes crazy at the assault and launches itself toward Nathan attacking wildly. Nathan gets in a few more shots, but so does the creature.

When it looks bad for Nathan, he retreats and others step in to intercept the spirit. Xavier throws a pot of lamp oil down and the creature absorbs it, changing his color to the dark brown of the oil. At that moment, Leopold smashes his lantern at the creature's feet and it bursts into flames.

Searching the debris, the group finds a book, written in Cobrat, that is so dry and damaged, that it threatens to crumble at all but the gentlest of handling. Also, a dark iron ring carved with runes is found.

With the hexagonal room secured, the group starts exploring the hallways. The first hallway is wide and turns into dozens of criss-crossed hallways with bodies of Melenthos' followers buried in alcoves. A terrible chunking and grinding noise comes from here. The party tracks the noise, the group spots a strange device, a large metallic wagon with a large swivel arm and a powerful spiked wrecking ball moves through the hallways of its own accord. The PCs think better of investigating this device and head back to the hexagonal room.

As they return to the hexagonal room, the group spots a group of four skeletons skulking into one of the unexplored hallways. The heroes follow the skeletons stealthily and find them in another catacomb hallway, gathering bones and putting them into sacks. Ssrog uses this moment to experiment with his dust. He lays an unbroken line of the crystal dust across the entrance to the catacombs and then gets the attention of the skeletons. They charge, but stop cold when they reach the line of dust. They cannot cross. The PCs play a few rounds of Angry Skeleton Mimes and moves on.

The next hall leads to a sturdy gate with closely-spaced narrow bars and two diagonal crossbars. This seems to be the hallway that leads to the Wolf's Weed shrine. Nathan confirms this using his Keen Vision. The gate has a panel and a keyhole facing the characters, but when Xavier heads to investigate it, the crossbars animate and the giant steel tentacles try to smash the rogue, but he escapes.

Keen Vision

This spell gives the caster great distance vision. The caster gains a +3 to PER tests and can see objects 100 meters away as though they were only 10 meters away.

As the group returns again to the hexagonal room, they see the strange wrecking ball wagon trundling into another hallway. It seems to make a circuit into the six hallways. The party takes note and continues.

In the next tunnel, the PCs find a shoulder high pile of debris blocking their way. They could climb over with some effort and noise, but decide instead to send Leopold to scout. As a contingency, Ssrog puts another line of the undead repellant dust down behind Leo.

Leo uses his Lurker spell to sneak toward a chamber containing the open sarcophagus of Melenthos. The cobrat skeleton king is here, his bones glowing red with fiery runes. He is lording over a dozen skeletons, directing them as they build more minions from the bones found in the catacombs. Through the activity, Leo spots the gate key wedged in the lid of the sarcophagus.

So, Leo charges...

With his moment of surprise, he manages to run directly into the middle of the gaggle of skeletons. He uses his fast draw skill to snatch the key before any of the creatures can act. Still, they close; Four of them charge Leo and the rest block his escape. Then, Leo draws his Rat Dagger and cuts his own belly, transforming into a swarm of rats. The skeleton king is incensed and manages to cast a seething ball of lava at the rats. A couple of the rats are singed, but then the ball of lava splats on the invisible wall of force projected by the crystal dust.

Rat Dagger
This strange artifact was acquired by Leopold in the previous campaign when he and his companions defeated the Bandit Lord Scarbelly. It is a finely made dagger with a carved rat's head pommel. It allows the wielder to speak with rats and if he slices his belly with it, he will transform into a swarm of rats for a short period of time.

The group uses the key to open the Smashing Gate and exit Melenthos' tunnels. The tunnels exit near the pit that contains the herbs needed to save Angus. The group gets the herbs and heads back through the (now mostly safe) tunnels and starts back toward Fort Talon.

Session Six (in which the fellowship returns home)

July 30, y806

GM NOTE: This was a very short session due to my son starting football practice. In addition, two of the five players were out sick. For these reasons, this session was largely a "blow off steam" session featuring a combat with a goblin patrol. Also keep in mind that only the three PCs whose players were at the game participated in the combat.

A patrol of six goblin warriors intercepts our heroes and the party moves to as favorable position as is possible. They manage to wedge themselves into a rock formation that makes it difficult to approach them. They even manage to lose the goblins long enough to set up a crude ambush and gain surprise over the goblins, engaging only two of the six at first while the others had to reposition to reach the characters.

Unfortunately their surprise round goes poorly. Leopold uses his Vault rune to strike one of the goblins blind for a few rounds. Still, I think the group was counting on taking out one or even two goblins with their surprise action to even the odds. This didn't happen due to some really bad die rolls and at the end of the first round, you still had six goblins standing.

As the combat continues, the group takes out one of the first two goblins, but the other's blind status wears off. Meanwhile, the rest of the goblins have flanked and now you have a situation where Xavier and Urzeph are dealing with three goblins and Leopold has two by himself. Now numerically, this should not have been a huge problem (though goblin warriors are tough in my game), but some poor luck (and the fact that the goblins were flanking and double-teaming) really started to wear down the group. Both Leo and Xavier started taking hits and were down to about half their health.

At some point, the group managed to drop one of the key goblins in their midst which allowed them to "give ground" and readjust their ranks, ending all of the flanking nonsense. They emerge victorious, but battered and bruised. Two days later, they arrive at Fort Talon.

GM NOTE: Frankly, the six on three thing sounded good, but was a pretty bad idea. I did not mean for this to be a big, close contest, but it was. Don't get me wrong, it was fun, just not quite what I had intended when I thought of "blowing off steam."

Session Seven Part 1 (in which the party hears some news)

August 1, y806

The group returns to Fort Talon and heads to the office of Doctor Mortenson. He treats Angus with the Wolf's Weed and also sews up the PCs as best he can. There is some downtime as everyone heals and catches up with news.

Xavier meets up with a fellow Storyteller named Lars Steelheart (it is fairly common for traveling performers to take overblown stage names). Lars has been traveling in Salem and Boston recently and passes some news on.

The northeast region of Bostonia is hurtling towards a crisis. Let me explain some of the events of the previous campaign (which ended prematurely due to the birth of my fourth child).

The previous campaign saw the player characters working for Lord Bellthorne, a landed noble in the Olander Barony. The Olander Barony is a major agricultural force in Bostonia, but had been suffering from a neglected infrastructure and a couple years of bad crops. To make matters worse, the Baron and his wife had started to isolate themselves from public life, leaving the Assembly at Boston and retreating to their manor. The lousy economy and lack of leadership left many of the Olander nobles, including Bellthorne, struggling and unhappy.

Vincent is Olander's neighbor to the southwest. The Family Vincent has a reputation of being a group of scoundrels whose ancestors stole their land from several other baronies. The current Baron Vincent is very ambitious, but is kept in check by the militarily powerful lands of Falleron and Richelau. For this reason, Vincent is always looking for allies.

So recently, envoys from Vincent have been pouring into Olander, offering assistance and advice. At first, this assistance is appreciated by the landed lords as Vincent's engineers to repaired roads, bridges and locks and his deep pockets helped to bail out failing nobles. However, over the course of the campaign, Vincent starts to gain more and more influence over Baron Olander's policies (and in fact, the Baron starts replacing many of his ministers on Vincent's advice). This culminates in Olander signing an alliance treaty with Vincent, and as a provision of that treaty, Olander ceded control of the Bost River (the most important artery in the land).

This incenses the local lords that relied on income from river tolls as well as Baron Falleron whose cities are now cut off from the markets in Boston. Falleron covertly sends agents into Olander and meets with these nobles, indicating that it would support a rebellion against Olander. A couple months later, several of Olander's nobles (including Bellthorne) rise up in rebellion. This draws Falleron and their ally Koren (north of Olander) into the region as well as Vincent and his ally Hierant.

A few bloody weeks follow as the various armies march across Olander and battle. The decisive battle in the campaign comes when the forces of Falleron "trap" Vincent's main force and engage them. Unbeknownst to the Falleron commanders, Vincent had armed these men with his new invention, the Alchemical Sling (firearms). Surprised by a powerful new weapon, the Falleron forces took terrible losses and had to retreat back across the border.

Without the backing of Falleron, the rest of the rebellion fell to Vincent's alliance. Bellthorne was captured and is being held somewhere in Olander awaiting his trial. The territory of the rebellious lords became the property of Armand Brassart, Leo's half-brother.

Things are momentarily quiet, but that won't last. Falleron is a long-standing enemy of Vincent and cannot allow Vincent to control the Bost river. Any conflict involving those two baronies will likely include their lesser allies Hierant and Koren (who, by the way are also long-standing enemies). The Church would love nothing more than to see Vincent crushed, but is loathe to directly enter a secular war because of the Traditions of Succession. However, they might act through Baron Richelau who borders Vincent on the east, or through the Azareth. To counter this, Vincent has recently send envoys to Baloric (historically sympathetic to Vincent) and Ulund (who has long coveted the mineral wealth of Vincent).

You get the picture... I have to cut this session short. I will continue with the actual events of the campaign in a bit.

Session Seven Part 2 (more news... and assassins)

So, almost three weeks pass.

In that time, a contingent of goblins from the Wolves tribe arrives with the spear and the rune book, since it was decided that Angus would not be well enough to travel through the badlands. In addition, about 300 troops arrive from Jamestown to bolster Fort Talon's defense. Angus is up and about and starts work on the killer rune that will end Ulgharid's bid for power. Finally, several enemy patrols consisting of goblins and cobrat are spotted dangerously close to the prospecting camps south of town.

Finally, with one day left before Angus completes the spear, warning bells clang in Fort Talon. A patrol spotted a force of nearly 250 cobrat and goblins heading for the outermost mining camps. The Bostonians gather their troops and consider their options. A force of such a small size cannot possibly take Fort Talon, but it could do some heavy damage to the mines and settlements to the south. The decision is made to send a force out to meet the enemy, harass them and try to draw them back toward Fort Talon's south gate where archers can destroy them. A pitched battle is ruled out because the human commanders are somewhat nervous about facing almost 200 low cobrat shock troops.

The army marches out of the gate while various civilians flee into the city.

Some time passes with no word or indication of how the battle is going. Suddenly, there are cries of "Fire" from inside the town. Some fool has managed to start a fire and citizens are lining up for bucket brigades. Leopold hears cries for help from within the burning building and he rushes in to help. Inside, he finds a young girl trapped under a beam, but manages to free her. As he pushes the beam off of her, he sees a dead goblin buried in the rubble. There is no time to investigate, but he does notice an ornate necklace around the goblin's neck and takes it before carrying the girl to safety.

Another alarm... another fire has been set and the PCs scatter with some at the first blaze, some at the second and Xavier heading back to Angus' forge. Something isn't right.

Xavier returns to the forge and tells the borakki smith to hide the spear and the instruction book. Xavier then Almost immediately afterwards, several men enter the shop. They close upon Angus and one of them hisses, "Give us the spear and the rune book, giant."

Xavier slinks up behind one of them and ambushes him, killing him almost immediately. The dead man's features melt away, revealing a goblin. Angus yells for aid, grabs a sword off the wall and combat begins.

For a few rounds, Xavier and Angus manage to hold off their attackers and Xavier (with the benefit of some very nice rolls) is mangling his foes. Angus is not doing quite so well as he has taken a couple minor hits and he is still weakened from his previous ordeal.

The rest of the group arrives and sees one of Ulgharid's shaman lieutenants and his two bodyguards ready to enter the forge. Some of the group engages the goblins at the door, while the others circle around to the side entrance to help Xavier and Angus.

A round after, Angus succumbs to his wounds and blood loss and collapses. Xavier protects him, while Leo and Ssrog enter the forge from the side and lend support. Urzeph tries to follow the shaman into the forge, but the goblin creates a cloud of biting flies that stops the borakki. Nathan blows the flies away with his Snowblind spell, but it is a round too late.

At this point in the battle, there are three goblin assassins remaining forming a rough "wall" between the shaman, Angus' body and the PCs. The shaman wastes a round looking for the spear and book, but then it becomes clear that he is going to kill the smith, and the entire success of the battle hinges on a single initiative roll.

And the shaman wins... and kills Angus and then tries to cast a spell to escape. The PCs are in no mood to let that happen and they blow through the assassins to disrupt the spell and kill the goblin lieutenant.

Ouch...

Some reflections about the first seven sessions and the log so far:

1. I have a hard time figuring out how much detail works in one of these threads. I continuously find myself worrying that such and such paragraph makes no sense unless I can dig up some reference from Bostonian history or from a previous campaign.

2. Looking back, I think it must seem like my group does nothing but combat after combat. We do like combat, but really, only the last two sessions were dominated by fighting (and session six was hardly a game session at all). Most of the early fights were pretty trivial and I tend to try to keep it short by making sure the bad guys flee, surrender, or go down when appropriate; very few enemies fight to the death.

3. I like surprises when I GM and I have gotten a couple this campaign. The first was when Leo zapped the uber Harvester. The second was the use of the Rat Dagger to grab the key from Melenthos. The final surprise was the death of Angus.

4. It seems to me that the campaign is likely to move north after this goblin situation is dealt with. I know that Nathan is ready to upgrade his Blizzard rune and in this case, that means bargaining with an ice spirit far away from Fort Talon. Similarly, Leo's player has expressed an interest in rescuing his former boss, Bellthorne, from Armand Brassart. This could easily get them involved in what is likely a large-scale civil war.

5. It might be sort of railroady, but I think I can parley the death of Angus into something interesting for Urzeph. What if he were asked by Wolfslayer to finish the rune spear? He does not have the runecarving skill, but perhaps Angus had it nearly done and the book has enough instructions for him to continue and then gain the skill? It would give him something interesting aside from just being yet another nasty fighter in a party of nasty fighters.

6. I think I am going to pull out the mass combat rules I have and actually play out some of the battle that will happen shortly between Fort Talon and the goblin allied forces. Not sure...

Session Eight (in which the characters are witness to a battle)

Friends of Angus attend a wake in his honor. Meanwhile the Cobrat and Goblin forces retreat from the Fort Talon area, their attack having been a diversion to cover the attempt on Angus' life. Doc Mortenson is the executor of Angus' will and he asks the PCs to help clean the shop and go through the borakki's things. The group spends the better part of a day rummaging through Angus' junk. Xavier finds a silver flask, which he keeps as a memento, and two bottles of liquor. Nathan pockets a borakki (heavy) dagger and Urzeph takes interest in a couple books on rune carving.

At this point, Great Wolfslayer enters the shop and is informed of Angus' death. He is saddened by the death of the borakki who he considered a friend, but is more concerned that his deadly spear is not complete. His anger abates immediately once he sees Urzeph. The goblin war chief walks up to Urzeph and tells him that he will complete the runed spear. The group protests. Urzeph is not a rune carver... he is not even literate. The goblin is resolute, telling Urzeph that rune carving is "in his blood". Wolfslayer then walks out of the forge, leaving his men behind to guard the borakki as he works.

Leopold goes to talk to Cpt. Brizzen and inform him about Wolfslayer's insane plan.  Brizzen doesn't care. Wolfslayer also came to him and the two leaders agreed on a plan: Wolfslayer has let it be known that he would be traveling with a small contingent to collect the magic spear. The traitor that is surely in his midst will let Ulgharid know this. The goblin shaman will see this as the perfect opportunity to kill Wolfslayer and end resistance to his rule once and for all. Ulgharid will ambush Wolfslayer sometime on the way back, knowing there is no spear to collect. As the ambush pursues Wolfslayer and his men, the human forces will descend upon them. In the chaos, the chief intends to meet the shaman in man-to-man combat and surprise him with the completed spear. As Brizzen sees it, whether the spear works or not, the goblin is willing to use himself as bait to lure the goblins and their allies into a trap.

So as to not disappoint Great Wolfslayer, Urzeph and Nathan begin work on the spear.  The runecarving instructions are very complete; unfortunately, Urzeph does not have the runecarving or smithing skills.  The assistance of the alchemist, Doc Mortenson, and a town smith produce the special metal alloy needed for the rune and the die to form it.  After about six days of work, the moment arrives.  The spear is heated, the alloy melted, the die is struck into the hot metal and the rune formed with the alloy.  The last step is the rune is sealed with Urzeph's blood.  

Great Wolfslayer returns for his spear on the seventh day and heads out into the battle the next day.  The Human forces arrayed behind him include Captain Brizzen leading the Fort Talon Guards, two lieutenants leading the infantry sent from Jamestown, a company of archers and Captain Isadore leading his Shield Guildsmen.  Our heroes: Leopold, Urzeph, Nathan and Xavier will sneak around the battle in the hopes of ambushing the shaman Ulgharid when he meets the Great Wolfslayer.

The Great Wolfslayer and his goblins move into the valley.  He is faced with two companies of low cobrat and one company of Goblins, lead by Ulgharid.  The Great Wolfslayer and his goblins pull back, luring the enemy forces into the valley.  The Human forces advance, securing the flanks and the archers take up positions on a hill.  The cobrat charge ahead of their slower goblin comrades and come into withering arrow fire.  Their initial assault on the Fort Talon forces is less than impressive.  The cobrat and Fort Talon forces melee.  Brizzen, exposed on the left, falls in battle and his Guards barely hold the line.  The central cobrat force also loses its commander and retreat and reform.  Finally, the goblin company arrives before the Fort Talon forces can rout the cobrat.  At this point, Wolfslayer sees his opportunity and charges through the lines to meet Ulgharid just as the PCs approach from behind.

1. We dragged out the mass combat rules for this session for no better reason than, "I wanted to drag out the mass combat rules and no one objected."  Overall, we had a good time and the rules held up pretty well.

2. Having said that, I would say that we probably won't ever run the mass combat rules again because one of my players is blind and has a hard time enjoying the larger scale games. When we do man to man combat, he has no trouble because we can easily give him a nice rundown of the immediate situation with regards to Leopold. In a battle of 34 units vs. 24 units, it is very difficult to do so.

3. Also, our sessions are a little too short to completely run one of these combats. We did a decent job of keeping things moving and ran about 7-8 rounds of combat, but we needed 6 hours instead of 2 to do the battle justice. Instead, as soon as the PCs and Wolfslayer were in striking distance of the shaman's unit, I called it a night.

4. I think the missile fire rules need a little tweaking. Right now, melee units that engage are forced to spread their attacks out across the line of battle. Missile units can target any non-engaged unit and thus have an easier time concentrating fire. This makes missile units a little too powerful for taking out commanders.

5. Since Runebearer itself is undergoing a bit of a rewrite, the mass combat rules require one as well.

6. Also, I did not get the sense of the character-level to battle-level interaction I have gotten in other mass combat scenarios. The commanders weren't using skills, the mages weren't casting, etc. This is because of everyone's unfamiliarity with the rules and my rushing to keep things moving in our short play time.

Session Nine (in which the heroes engage Ulgharid)

The PCs wind their way around the battle and finally approach Ulgharid and his host. At the same time, Great Wolfslayer, seeing his chance to kill the shaman, leaves his own warriors behind and charges through the front lines into the shaman's unit. (We switch out of mass combat mode this session and back into a man-to-man scale to play out the final confrontation.)

Ulgharid is a disciple of the goblin god, Oppengrull, the Nattering Skull. As such, he has a floating skull as a familiar. The skull is small and fast and the shaman can use the skull as a point of origin for any of his spells. He is accompanied by this skull, his bodyguard Grog, and about a dozen warriors. When Ulgharid notices the party, he orders his warriors to attack and screen him from the heroes.

The first couple of rounds see quite a bit of spell casting. Leopold casts a silence spell on Ulgharid, but the shaman resists. Xavier manages to cast Bedazzle on Grog, blinding him. Ulgharid buffs his skull (that sounds strange), giving its bites the power to inflict bleeding on its victims and then casts Blather on Ssrog, disorienting him.

When the line of goblin fighters and the party meet, there is a huge clash. Ssrog kills the first goblin instantly. Leo is engaged by two opponents, but sweeps, incapacitating the first and hobbling the second. Great Wolfslayer is met by three of Ulgharid's henchmen, but runs one through before they engage him.

Xavier finds himself unengaged and charges straight for Ulgharid, attacking and hitting him, but the shaman uses his exceptional willpower to maintain his spell casting. Two goblin guards who were trailing the main engagement move to save their boss and engage the wily, but now overexposed Xavier. Xavier manages to defend himself against two of the attacks, but the blind Grog makes a wild swing and manages to hit Xavier, taking him down in a single blow.

Nathan casts Visage of the Beast on the goblins around Ulgharid and two of them began trembling in fear.

Meanwhile, Trevor, a Bostonian alchemist and prisoner of the Goblins wakes up on the battlefield.  Several months ago, he had been captured by Ulgharid's goblins and  made to craft potions for the Goblins on pain of death. During the raging battle he was forced to stand beside Ulgharid and feed him potions, but an errant blow knocked him unconscious and he was just now regaining his senses. Seeing his captor engaged by a group of humans, he decided to exact his revenge and so he closed on the shaman while pulling one of his remaining vials.

Ulgharid casts Acid Tongue, causing the skull to spit a caustic cloud. Nathan dodges the cloud, but Urzeph is not so lucky and his skin is badly burned. While Ssrog, Leopold and Great Wolfslayer find their advance halted by goblin warriors, Urzeph decides to charge Ulgharid before he can cast another spell. He manages to reach the shaman just as Trevor uncorks a Flaming Bottle.

Now, Ulgharid (on fire) is backing away as Urzeph battles the still blind (and on fire), but still potent Grog. The borakki and goblin warriors exchange blows. Grog gets the better of the exchange and fells Urzeph, but then succumbs to Trevor's flame. In the meantime, Ssrog manages to dispatch his goblin and close on the main battle, but he is doused with acid by the skull.

Seeing his bodyguard dead, Ulgharid makes a break for it, disengaging from the PCs. Unfortunately, as he does so, Great Wolfslayer manages to disengage from the goblins harassing him and he intercepts the fleeing villain. He thrusts the Spear of Slaying into Ulgharid, but having been constructed by an unskilled rune carver, it does not kill the shaman outright. It does however, wound and stun him which allows the party to catch up and finally kill him.
 
As Ulgharid falls, the remnants of the cobrat and goblin forces start their retreat and the battle is won.

1. I thought that magic was used to good effect in this battle. Too often in these fights, the mages end up exposed and taken out by the fighters. In this battle the goblins put up an effective screen, allowing the enemy shaman to get in some nice attacks. Similarly, the PCs blinded and terrified the enemy with their spells.

2. After the first combat round, I was thinking "Man, I am going to need about a half-dozen more goblins."  The PCs just smashed their opposition in the first round. Strangely enough, the front-line fighters bogged down after that due to unlucky rolls and a disorienting spell. In a way, that was cool, since it left Urzeph, Nathan and Xavier to do the interesting stuff.

3. We added a new player from my previous gaming group. He is playing Trevor, an alchemist. This is cool because the group sorely lacks healing. Alchemy is one of the most useful skills in the game, but it is also underutilized because it takes a high level of attention from the player. The guy playing Trevor is up on this and so should do well.

4. Once again, Xavier charged in ahead of the rest of his group and paid for it.

5. Overall, this was an awesome combat. Even though there were 20+ combatants, it was fast-paced and exciting. I don't think the PCs ever really lost the advantage, but there were a few moments where it was in doubt, namely when Xavier and Urzeph dropped.

6. The group is currently deciding what to do next. I know Leo wants to pursue a spider rune rumored to be in the goblin tunnels explored in session five. The problem is that only Nathan has the requisite rune knowledge to understand how to bind it... and he isn't telling. This is causing a little bit of friction at the table. We'll see how it plays out.

Session Ten Part I (in which the heroes investigate the mysterious silos)

The Bostonian forces regroup and return to Fort Talon as victors. With their leader dead, the goblin coalition unravels; the forces representing the various tribes begin squabbling and the cobrat return home. A couple of weeks later, a goblin messenger carries a note to the gates of Fort Talon. This message bears the news that Great Wolfslayer has united the tribes under his banner and to thank the humans for their part in his ascendance, he guarantees the safety of Fort Talon and its residence for the period of one year. Baron James arrives in the city with an additional 500 troops and the PCs are treated to a heroes’ reception and given free room and board.

The PCs are glad to learn that Cpt. Brizzen survived the battle. Leopold goes to visit the Captain and they discuss the Baron’s arrival. It seems that the Baron intends to not only bolster the city’s defenses, but to expand southward to reclaim settlements lost to the cobrat in years past. The Captain offers Leopold and the rest of the PCs a chance to aid with the expansion and become members of the Baron’s military. Leo declines the offer.

The PCs hang around for a while, resting and catching up on some business. They check on the grunj miners and finds that the Lowery’s seem to have moved on to other prey. Thane indulges his gambling habit and loses a good portion of the money he has acquired on his adventures. Trevor works with Doctor Mortenson in healing the overflow of injured soldiers and as he does so he meets Xavier who recruits him into the adventuring fellowship.

The group spends some time discussing where to head next and some more time dickering over who should pay the cost of alchemical reagents (alchemy is a useful, but expensive science in Bostonia). Leo makes it known that he would like to try and get the spider rune rumored to be in Melethos’ Tomb (from session five), but would require Nathan’s help to do so (since Nathan has the skill of rune knowledge and thus knows how to bind the rune). Nathan agrees as does the rest of the party and so the group prepares to head back into the goblin badlands to seek out the Spider Queen and her rune.

On the way, Nathan tells Leo that to bind the rune, Leo will have to enter the Queen’s chamber and collect a portion of the special web she weaves. Easier said than done of course, since the Queen is a ten meter tall spider that guards her web jealously. Once he has a good handful of web, he will have to sew the fibers into his abdomen in the shape of an hourglass. This act will bind Leo to spider-kind and grant him the power of the Queen.

Before they reach the tomb, they come upon two silos (from session four) partially sunken in the ground. Being curious, and having no poisoned borakki smith to worry about, they decide to investigate. Nathan scouts with his Third Eye.

The first building has three stories above ground. There is a metal stairway winding around the outside of the silo which had it been intact, it would lead to a vault-style door on the third floor. However, it had long since collapsed and eroded away. The roof had also collapsed, leaving the third floor exposed to the sky. Inside, Nathan saw broken barrels and crates of supplies made into a messy nest by four sleeping gaunt.

The group decides to try the second silo. This one has two floors above ground and the stairway and roof are intact. Xavier and Leo try the stairway and it is so corroded it almost gives way under their combined weight. Leo does make it alone, but cannot budge the rusted vault door. He does manage to tie off a rope which Ssrog climbs. The low cobrat is so powerful that the door poses little challenge for him, but it does make a horrible noise, waking the angry gaunt.

A short battle follows. One of the gaunt swoops down and grabs Ssrog, but he is still tied to the vault door and so the creature lets go and he slams into the ground. When the cobrat stands and turns, the gaunt is flying at him for a second pass and he impales it on his spear. The other gaunts are just as unlucky in their search for an easy meal. Nathan uses his Ice Spike on one. Leo, Xavier and Trevor battle another gaunt and it falls. Xavier manages to Bedazzle and blind a third which flies away. The fourth gaunt flees.

The group is then free to investigate the two silos. From Xavier’s notes, they find the following:

“Three Story Silo -
Attic room - Nest of the Gaunts. Broken supplies, Gaunt poop.  Ladder down.
Second Floor -
Firtst Floor - Empty except for two bookcase sized vault doors with complex combination lock mechanisms.  
Basement - 24 metal and glass vertical tubes around the walls, each broken.  There are the bones of many children.  They look to have been gnawed on by the Gaunts.  
Sub-basement  - 24 metal and glass vertical tubes around the walls, each broken.  There are the bones of many children.  They look to have been gnawed on by the Gaunts.  

Two Story Silo-
Second Floor - Circular door entrance.  Ladder down.  Supply room.  Crates and barrels, some broken.  Pooling, moldy liquid on floor.  Smells of stale sweaty vinegar.  
Firtst Floor - Empty except for two bookcase sized vault doors with complex combination lock mechanisms.  
Basement - 24 metal and glass vertical tubes around the walls, each holding one human in a liquid solution.  The humans are adult, naked and of both sexes.  They look to be in some sort of stasis.  The fluid is a brownish, flat liquid.  
Sub-basement - Same as the basement.”

Trevor uses his ancient knowledge skill and deduces that this place might have been an ancient site of the Cult of Immortality and that the adults in the one silo might be members of that cult who were trying to prolong their lives by feeding off the life force of the children in the other.

Nathan pulls his Third Eye out of its socket and enchants it and directs it through the broken silos that once held the children. He finds that the tubes are connected to the vaults on the upper floor and are also connected to the tubes in the other silo containing the intact bodies of the adults. Nathan squeezes his eye through the maze of tubes into one of the vaults which seems to contain controls for the strange equipment.

The group decides to stay here for a time and allow Xavier to attempt to open the complex vaults. He studies the mechanism with the help of Trevor. He thinks he can open the doors, but that it will take some time and much trial and error. The group waits and discusses the possibility that the adults are still alive and if they can be revived.

That night, the group rests in the silo and they begin to rumble and shake. The buildings are sinking back into the earth! The group gathers its things, climbs to the attic of the silo and jumps clear just in time. The structure sinks into the ground and is covered so completely that it is impossible to tell that anything was ever here.

The next morning the spires rise again… the Ancients were strange… and Xavier continues his study, but ultimately fails and the group decides to move on before the gaunts return.

Session Ten Part II (in which the heroes return to Melenthos' Tomb)

A couple days more and the group enters Melenthos' Tomb. Before heading to the Spider Queen, they check on Melethos and his skeletons and see that, though they are still trapped by the undead repelling dust, they are trying to dig their way out of the tomb. The group decides they have to deal with the skeleton king once and for all and so they clear the pile of rubble from the hallway and allow the metal wrecking-ball wagon to trundle in.

The skeletons spend a few seconds trying to damage the wagon, but their attempt is futile and the machine quickly smashes the king's bony servants. Melenthos backs into a corner and casts a spell, causing the floor underneath the wagon to become a pool of lava. The wagon falls into the lava pool, but is strangely not damaged by the molten rock. However, when the spell ends and the pool becomes solid again, the wagon is trapped and though it can still swing its powerful arm, it cannot reach the skeleton king and he manages to skirt around it. Melenthos hides in another corner of his room and the PCs leave him for now.

The group then heads down the final hallway in the hexagonal dungeon and come to a shaft with a ladder leading down. Upon descending the ladder, the PCs find themselves at the entrance to a monstrous cavern filled with large, thick webs, cool mist and the sound of rushing water. The webs form a tight, sticky maze that wends through the cave. The group considers burning the webs, but finds that they are moist from the mist. They enter, being careful to disturb the webs as little as possible.

Spiders are everywhere in the tunnels, crawling overhead and through the walls of webbing. A party of dead goblins are found as is another living goblin nearby. The goblin shakes and tries to reach out to the PCs, but Ssrog stabs him to keep him from moving and disturbing the webbing. Too late! Hungry spiders descend upon the corpse and the party quickly moves on in disgust.

Another strange encounter came when the group stopped to watch a tangled mass of webs moving of its own accord. The strands writhed and twitched and then wove themselves into the form of a spider which then pulled itself from the sticky strands and leapt to the ground, only to be smashed by Ssrog. It seems the spiders here are formed from the magical webs.

Finally, after over a half hour of wandering, the group comes upon a wall of webs embedded with the bones of a dozen or so cobrat skeletons. The group can see light on the other side of the webs, as well as a huge shadowy figure. Leo moves closer to the webs and puts his eye to a small hole to get a better view.

Suddenly the dangling skeletons come to life and one of them grabs Leo's head and presses it to the web, pinning him. The others grab at Leo or brandish weapons to form an animated wall of web and bone. Ssrog leaps forward, grabs the hapless duelist, pulls him free, says flatly, "We're going now" and runs all the way out of the spider cavern, carrying Leo the entire way.

Everyone at the table burst out in raucous laughter.

Session Eleven (in which the Queen claims a victim)

Ssrog and Nathan (whose players are absent) decide that they will stay behind instead of risking another encounter with the Spider Queen. Urzeph, Trevor, Xavier and Leo will try again, but they first return to the goblin pit to collect any Wolfsblood that remains because it is a powerful antidote that works on many poisons. The group lowers Trevor down into the pit and he notes that he is standing on the tiles of a roof. A building of some sort must have sunken into the ground here.

Trevor pulls up some of the tiles and opens a hole in the roof large enough to crawl through. He descends into the ruin and finds an old cobrat temple. After a quick search, he finds a half-buried turtle altar, a silver censure, shards of colored glass, a crystal knife and turtle shell bowls. Trevor then comes out of the temple, collects what Wolfsblood he can and then returns to the group.

Our heroes then return to the Queen's lair. Trevor uses a Flaming Bottle potion to burn a hole in the web from a safe distance. Xavier and Leopold then charge through the hole, dodging the skeletal guards. Of course, this disturbs the web and alerts the Queen and all of her spiders. Just as she turns to face the intruders, both Leo and Xavier cast spells in an attempt to blind her. Leo's spell fizzles, but Xavier's does not and the Queen is blinded! Xavier continues casting, trying to keep her blind and disoriented while Leo moves deeper into her chamber.

The chamber is tall and open. Along the far wall is a pool with two jets of water shooting into the air and filling the place with spray. Magical lights line the pool's edge. Above the pool some 7-8 meters is a huge web. The droplets of water reflect the light and reveal the runic script woven into the threads. This is what Leo is after.

Unfortunately, he has no way up to the strands and so he is forced to throw his rope and grapple in hopes of catching enough of the web. Not easy, since he needs to collect at least an entire runic symbol's worth of webbing. He throws his grapple... nothing. Second attempt... damn. Xavier luckily blinds the giant spider again and keeps her from hitting them with her webs.

In the meantime, Trevor and Urzeph are set upon by waves of spiders ranging from the size of a small dog, to man-sized. Trevor is bitten (and nearly succumbs to the poison) and webbed, but manages to escape using another Flaming Bottle to burn through the strands. Urzeph is hacking through spiders with his mighty axe and as he does so, the spiders dissolve into sticky strands and he must pull his axe free. Just as one wave is destroyed, another follows.

Third try with the grapple... nothing. Fourth... "Leo, what the Hell are you doing in there?!"

Finally, Leopold throws the grapple and pulls down a set of runed strands. Unfortunately, Xavier fails to bedazzle the Spider Queen and she regains her sight, charges the wily thief and steps on him. Xavier is wounded and even worse, stunned. Luckily, he recovers just in time to dodge a second attack from the mighty Queen and realizes that she is blocking the hole in the webs.

"Run for it, Leo!" Xavier draws his sword, stabs at the spider, then falls back (a Give Ground maneuver), hoping she will press her attack and step clear of the exit. The Queen pursues Xavier, clearing the way out. However, her attack is relentless and she knocks Xavier down and then bites him in the head, killing him.

Just as the monstrous spider turns to kill Leopold, he leaps toward the hole and tumbles through. Urzeph and Trevor have just managed to finish off the last of the wave of arachnids facing them and they run for their lives.

It is a somber two days back to Fort Talon.

GM Notes on Runebearer Magic

Runic magic is the main form of magic in our game. In general, a rune is a tattoo, or disfigurement of the body that gives the bearer magic powers. Runes represent elemental, divine, philosophic or cosmic forces in the universe and by binding the runic symbol to his body, the mage aligns himself with that force and taps into it. Runic magic does require use of the hands and invocation of a word of power, but not material components, study or memorization.

So to gain magic power, a mage will travel to a rune site which is usually a hidden, remote and dangerous location and bind the rune. Binding a rune usually requires some sort of trial or test. Practitioners of the Hand of Lightning lie flat on a mountaintop, hold what amounts to a lightning rod to their bare chests and wait to be struck. If they live, they receive a lightning shaped scar on their chest and can now cast lightning spells. Priestesses of Aestra show their faith by drowning themselves and then rising from the water with the sea goddess' rune on their backs. Mages who want to bind The Blizzard have to trick, bargain with, or coerce the elemental spirit who holds the rune to give it to them.

In this case, Leopold has collected some of the Spider Queen's silk. To bind the rune, he has to sew the silk into an hourglass pattern on his abdomen. To succeed in this task, he needs to make a willpower test as well as a dexterity test. If he fails at either of these tests, he does not get the rune and in fact, can never do so.

Mechanically, runes are spell lists with 12-20 spells in them (the system does include rules for modifying spells and some improvisational spellcasting). Certain runes have bonuses and penalties that are always applied to their practitioners. Leo's spider rune will cause him to take 1 hit point of damage whenever any spider is killed in his presence.

I have to catch up on this log... but for now it is back to work.

Session Twelve (in which the party travels to Ismoth and runs into Nathan's past)

The group rejected an offer of land and commission in the army of Fort Talon and instead have chosen to head north so that Nathan can revisit the ice spirit from which he bound The Blizzard and hopefully make that rune more powerful. They talk to Doc Mortenson before they go and agree to help settle Angus' estate by taking a shipment to Ismoth and some personal effects to the Borakki lands (far north of Bostonia, but largely on the way to Nathan's rune site). Everyone takes care of some administrative business and then the party acquires a couple of mules and a cart and heads north along the road to the city of Ismoth.

Ismoth is a port town of ~35,000 people. It is the capital of Baron Terzani's lands and is a seat of learning and scholarship with a university and two libraries. It is the home of numerous mages and alchemists as well as sages and scholars of theology and ancient times.

The PCs arrive in the early evening and Nathan leads them to a nice inn/gambling establishment on the far end of the port district. On the way, Ssrog hails a group of low cobrat sailors who are busy repairing their vessel after damaging it on a reef. The sailors chat with Ssrog and since the captain has forbid them to leave until repairs are complete, they bid the pit fighter to buy them some rum.

Then the PCs head onto the Trade Road to find the weapon shop at which to deliver the shipment. They find the store just as the owner, Dawson, is locking his doors for the night. The group delivers the goods and talks to Dawson briefly about Angus' death. It seems that Dawson is primarily a maker of tools and nautical supplies and had a deal with Angus to sell his weapons and armor. The group gets directions to a bar in the Slums called Jenny's to get Ssrog's rum.

Jenny's is a crowded, smelly bar in the basement of an otherwise condemned building in the slums of Ismoth. About two hundred people are there shouting, drinking and gambling. The group finds the proprietor, Jenny, and negotiates a price for several barrels of rum. They pull the cart around the back of the place, get loaded with the rum casks and Ssrog returns to his cobrat brethren while the rest of the group retires to their casino for the night.

During the night, Nathan wakes up, but is paralyzed – unable to move or speak. By the candlelight in his room, he can see the shadowy figure of a woman. This is Natasha Blackwell, the daughter of the man who enslaved Nathan in his background story. Nathan killed her father and Natasha has vowed revenge. Yet, even though she now has Nathan helpless, she says she won't kill him. See, Natasha has greatly profited from the death of her father, and now finds herself in a situation where she needs Nathan's help. She is willing to give Nathan an artifact in return and forget her vendetta against him. She places an envelope on the bed table and leaves. Nathan sleeps. The next morning, he finds directions to a tea house in Ismoth and a suggestion to meet Natasha there in the afternoon.

Thief's Candle

The material component of this spell is a candle made from the severed hand of a thief. To cast the spell, the mage whispers a magic phrase while lighting the candle. The candle burns for 30 minutes. While it is burning, it affects any sleeping person upon whom its light falls. Affected will sleep as normal, but if they awaken, they will be paralyzed with fear and unable to move or see anything more than shadowy, blurry forms.

There is no saving throw unless the victim sees the shadowy form move close to him and perform a threatening act. In that case, the victim is permitted to make a WIL or SPI save vs. DL 15 to break the spell and move to defend himself.

Nathan goes to the Tea House to talk to Natasha and the group follows to make sure he is safe. Nathan and his hunter meet and she explains her situation. Natasha, like Nathan and her late father wears the Rune of the Beast – the rune site for which is on a mist-shrouded island relatively close to Ismoth. This site is the object of constant battle between the two factions of the rune's practitioners, the demon hunters and the demon worshippers.

Natasha needs a way to turn this battle in her favor and she thinks she found an artifact that will allow her to do so. Somewhere nearby lies a demon, buried and immobilized by a magical sword thrust into its gut. Before his death, Natasha's father was researching the sword because he felt it had power over demon-kind and by association, the mages with the Rune of the Beast. Natasha wants to obtain this sword.

Unfortunately, her father is dead and took with him the location of the sword. Natasha tried to summon her father's spirit, but the ritual failed. She wants to try the spell again, but with a single change. Whereas previously, she used a miniscule trace of her father's blood, she has since determined that "blood" is a metaphor in this case referring to the "blood on the hands of my killer". She needs Nathan's hands to complete the spell.

Which you would think might be a deal breaker...

Natasha ensures Nathan that she can regrow his hands with the use of a potion and that once she takes the sword, and awakens the demon, that she can use magic to rebury the beast before it can kill everyone involved. For his help, Natasha will split her father's spirit, trap it into two spirit iron necklaces and give one to Nathan. The necklace will boost his magical abilities (give a +2 to all magic skill rolls).

Nathan talks to the group about the deal, but is evasive and unclear as to the nature of the risks and rewards. The group decides to do a little research before deciding either way. Nathan and Trevor head to the library and university and start their search. They learn the following:

•   Years ago, a rich merchant named Edmund Berg lived in a huge house on a cliff east of Ismoth.
•   He was married to a notorious pirate named Aldora (a.k.a The Butcher). She consorted with demons and was given a gift from each of The Five. (In Bostonia, there are only five true demons. Their minions and children are called spawn by scholars, but are known as demons to laypeople.)
•   The Bergs were supposedly conducting demonic rituals from their house and cursing the nearby village in the process.
•   At some point, the Berg House was assaulted by a demon hunter named Zahn and a host of templars of the Bostonian Church. The result of the battle was the house falling into the sea and all of the combatants vanishing mysteriously.
•   Zahn was the last known holder of First Blood, a powerful sword forged during the War of Unification. The known powers of First Blood are the fact that in any battle in which it is drawn,  is moves to parry the first attack that would have otherwise hit its wielder and if it is used to impale a creature of demonic origin, it will immobilize it for as long as it is left.

What follows is an entertaining discussion of whether the party should go along with Natasha to get the sword, only to betray her, whether they should flee, whether they should tell the Church, whether it is possible to deal with the demon held immobilized by the sword... and the night ends with that.

1. Though Leo has gotten his spider silk, he still has to sew it into his abdomen to bind the Widow Weave rune. To do this, he has to make a willpower test and then a dexterity test. His willpower is not very high, but Nathan has a spell with which he can boost Leo's score. Also, there are herbs that can help. Leo has decided to wait until he can get his best possible chance to successfully bind the rune.

2. Though I hate to butt into PC discussions, I did feel the need to jump in with a reminder that the group did not HAVE to take this particular plot hook. As they were talking, it seemed to me that the tone of the discussion was, "Well here is this thing most of us are not comfortable doing, but the GM has laid it out there, so he must intend for us to do it."

Though I am by no means cool enough to be a true "sandbox" GM, I do my best to have 3 or 4 things going on that could turn into adventure opportunities. Not every rumor, or proposition that is uttered at the table is meant to be pursued.

Heck, I was sort of hoping they would take the "land and commission" at Fort Talon.

Session Thirteen (where the party decides to flee Ismoth)

The evening starts with the decision to leave Ismoth and not deal with Natasha. Trevor and Urzeph head to the docks to book passage on a ship. As luck would have it, a borakki ship named the Star of Bor is leaving for points north the next morning. The PCs negotiate a fee of 300p for passage to Jherod. As the two leave the boat, Trevor realizes they are being followed.

Nathan casts his Detect Scrying spell and determines that someone is watching him. He spends the day with Ssrog for protection.

Once he is alone, Leopold heads to the main Church and manages to gain an audience with Bishop Agon. Leo tells Agon some of the story – mainly that he thinks that First Blood is holding a demon is stasis somewhere nearby and that Natasha Blackwell is looking for the legendary sword. He leaves out Nathan's involvement and the part about the Rune of the Beast. The bishop is unconvinced, but promises to look into the matter and intimates that he might assign some Templars the task of seeking First Blood.

The group prepares to leave town, but is wary of being attacked by Natasha and her crew. Ssrog insists that before they leave, they revisit his cobrat sailor friends who are still in port. The group reluctantly agrees and heads to Jenny's to buy some rum.

While at Jenny's the group is set upon by a group of thugs led by a net-wielding alchemist. During the battle, Urzeph engages the alchemist. The alchemist tries to trap the borakki in his net to no avail. The alchemist then tosses a gas potion, but the borakki is unaffected due to the fact that he is from a warrior order that holds his breath while fighting (of course, the alchemist could not know this).

The rest of the thugs charge the bar in an attempt to get to Nathan. Leo and Ssrog manage to stop most of the thugs, but two of them manage to dive over the bar and grapple the mage (whose spells are ruined). A brief struggle ensues in which one of the thugs cracks a cask of ale over Nathan's head and carries him away.

Ssorg chases the thug out of the back and into the alleys of Ismoth's slum. The cobrat manages to catch the thug just as he dumps Nathan into a basement door. Ssrog leaps into the basement and chases off the two thugs there, one of them armed with a meat cleaver presumably to take Nathan's hands.

After the fight, the group collects their rum and heads to the cobrat ship. Ssrog gives a keg to the crew, and the rest he shares with the bosun and the captain, Hisseth. The group remains on the cobrat ship for the rest of the night and at dawn, they head to the Star of Bor and set sail for Boston.

Boston is a large port town of about 60,000 people. It is a maze of streets and old buildings packed into a tiny area. The group arrives two days later and Leo immediately heads for a local tavern. The barmaid taps him on the shoulder to ask him what he would like. When he turns to answer her, she drops her tray of food and drink and exclaims, "By the Father!"

And we ended there...