SWEET

i used to (still do, actually) get descriptive with combat deaths when i DM.  then i discovered the crit/fumble tables in MERP, then WFRP after that, and i guess it's standard now.  but when robert redshirt is down to 1 hp and the player inflicts 22 points of damage, intense descriptions get the "overkill" point across nicely.

did you still have the +10 to all stats until the end of this session?

this is iron heroes, right?  
1.  do you need 3.5 core to run it?
2.  if no, is your ref using any other books?

thanks for the massive transcriptions!    :emot-black101:

:maniac:

I'm a big fan of Iron Heroes, and I love reading this thread; I could never get that sort of (OOCly) good natured player fighting to work in my group, but it's really neat to see it when it works.

Quote from: beeberSWEET

i used to (still do, actually) get descriptive with combat deaths when i DM.  then i discovered the crit/fumble tables in MERP, then WFRP after that, and i guess it's standard now.  but when robert redshirt is down to 1 hp and the player inflicts 22 points of damage, intense descriptions get the "overkill" point across nicely.

did you still have the +10 to all stats until the end of this session?

this is iron heroes, right?  
1.  do you need 3.5 core to run it?
2.  if no, is your ref using any other books?

thanks for the massive transcriptions!    :emot-black101:

:maniac:

We had lost the +10 once we slept. I thought about invoking the gods again, but I was 99% sure that Rob wouldn't give us the +10 again. I did try and bargain with Loki (as did Victor) but he just insisted on servitude in both cases, so we both told him to fuck off.

As to your other two questions:

We don't use any of the 3.5 core for it, though we could theoretically use the DMG and MM if needed. We have Mastering Iron Heroes, the Player's Guide, and the Bestiary though, and while none of them have been drawn on yet, I personally am pretty happy to have some of the options. So far though, it's mostly a one-book game.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine. . . it's mostly a one-book game.

very cool.  nice & easy.  i'll have to check it out

shame you lost the bonus, but man!  made for a great fight!  

If you do want to take on monsters, you are going to need the SRD + the willingness to rewrite some of the stats (breaking AC into Defense and Damage Reduction from armour mainly), but we've mostly been fighting other humans so far. There is also a bestiary that I notionally own (Rob currently has it, and I've never so much as opened its pages), but I can't speak to whether it's any good or not.

Personally, if I were going to use monsters for it, I'd grab the Arcana Unearthed Diamond Throne supplement for the Rhodin and Chorrim (goatmen and militarised ogres) and use Midnight's undead rules (which are wicked).

Though it's not actually a session, me and the rest of the crew are getting liquored up to celebrate one of the fellows getting a new job instead of playing tomorrow night. This kind of non-gaming association is key to pulling this kind of PvP intensive game off - you've got to be chums with everyone so you treat it as scrapping with your mates instead of some dick you see once every fortnight killing your character because he's a lump of menses in a T-shirt.

Very fun to read. Thanks for taking the time to post it.

Come on buddy, I want to read your extended summary of Victor getting laid.

I always post the next-to-last session so I don't miss anything from it that crops up next session.

We have three sessions backlogged and done right now that I've got to write up. Work's been a bitch, and D&D has, happily, eaten up the time I would otherwise spend talking and writing about D&D.

Session 6:

We begin on the boat that we all leapt onto and escaped last time. In the distance, the Confederates are finishing off the last Viking defenders of the newly-doubly-conquered Ft. William Sykes. Viking women and children are adrift in boats, their only protection the thick fog.

Lindsay Courtwright, captain of the boat and Cavatheer's childhood love, introduces us briefly to the crew. There's a guy named "Rip" who looks Spanish, a Viking who looks like Aquaman named "Vater", Lindsay herself (referred to only as "Linz"), and Oberin. The ship is an ocean-going sloop.

Cavatheer takes Terrin below decks to the crew cabin and begins tending to his wounds. Terrin is near-comatose and on the brink of death, and due to a houserule, requires hourly care (heal checks) to avoid bleeding out.

Bjorn and Erik are in a grim mood, and go into the galley by themselves, where they get shitface drunk on whiskey. Victor remains on deck, sizing up Lindsay. Terrin and Cav have left behind Terrin's magical sword (his "holy" sword which he only drew when he went mad, as opposed to his regular, non-holy sword that he otherwise uses). Victor snags it and debates throwing it overboard before holding onto it. Curtis has Victor find some black tape and wrap the cross-hilt, a big Christian cross.

The next day dawns, and life on board ship gets underway. Cavatheer is below decks tending to Terrin, and refuses to come up when Lindsay calls a general meeting. She gets pissed but holds it anyhow. She tells us that she is a smuggler, and that we are heading to the Sunken Reaches, but first we will stop off at an island off the coast of Raxar (the southernmost major Viking island) to resupply. Raxar is where any survivors from the evacuation of Skeele were supposed to go.

After the meeting, Erik goes outside. Last session, I snagged some maps from the Cardinal's storehouse as I was stealing the pieces of the gods' souls. I give them a read through but they're mostly useless - they show what look like Confederate forces throughout Midgard and the islands, but don't show any particular information about the Sunken Reaches.

While I'm reading them on deck, Victor grabs Oberin in the galley, throws him out onto the deck and demands that he remove the Heathen Scar. Victor seems to think that Oberin promised he would, and Oberin thinks he's a fucking maniac. Grapple checks are made, and Victor basically has Oberin pinned with Rip, Lindsay and Erik facing him down when Oberin clarifies. Victor has misunderstood what he said. On the island we're going to, there's a sorceress there who might be able to do it if anyone can. Victor is mollified and we don't have to kill him, though things are tense for a while afterwards.

Shortly after this, Erik and Bjorn are outside on deck by themselves. The conversation goes:

Erik: So. Your family is probably dead.
Bjorn: Hmph.
Erik: I saw Terrin kill Logard.
Bjorn: Hmph.
Erik: We'll get revenge for all of them. But not now. We need the wizard [Terrin] for now.
Bjorn: Fine.
Erik: You'll get your revenge though, don't worry. Vidar will help us. Until then, we need to pretend to get along with the Confederates. But we won't forgive them for what they've done.
Bjorn: Agreed.

So we become good little worker bees. Eventually, Terrin is conscious again. He's wracked with remorse or something, but doesn't actually show any. Cavatheer comes up on deck, and while he is, Erik slips down and tells Terrin that they know that he killed Logard, and tells him to apologise to Bjorn. Terrin refuses.

Victor keeps on sizing up Lindsay and making veiled but obscene propositions to her. She deflects them with witty repartee. Eventually, he has to go down below to be shrived by Cavatheer (every Sunday) and he returns the holy sword when Terrin and Cavatheer order him to. Until that point, we weren't sure if Victor was now going to possess this incredibly powerful magical weapon or not.

Anyhow, time passes and we arrive at the island. Everybody splits up to do their thing. Lindsay and Rip go to meet with the chief of the island, Cavatheer goes to find a healer for Terrin, and Victor takes off to drink. I arrange to have some arrows made, then meet up with Oberin and Bjorn, and plan to go meet the sorceress Brythynia to see if she can give us some guidance on what to about restoring the gods once we reach the Sunken Reaches.

While we're getting ready, Victor goes to the inn where a bunch of Vikings are recruiting for the Jomsviking's army (the Jomsviking is the leader of all the Vikings). They say that a war between Confederates and the Jomsviking is imminent after the attack on Skeele, and they're looking for men to join. Victor tells them to fuck off and nearly gets into a fight with them until we show up. We have the supreme pleasure of calling Victor a "dog" and telling the Viking recruiters that he can't do anything unless they attack him first. They try and recruit us, and we decline. We've got more important stuff to do than go to war, satisfying as it would be.

Cavatheer finds a healer, takes Terrin to her, and then goes off to talk to a paladin of the Order of God. He's on this island for the same sort of reason Terrin and Cavatheer were assigned to Skeele - to get to know the locals, convert them to either Christianity or British culture if possible, to keep an eye on trouble for the Confederacy, and to ensure smooth trading.

We round up our wayward son and head for the sorceress. She lives on the other side of the island. We tromp there and go up into her cave, where she appears as a doe, and then transforms into a human. She tells Erik that the Sunken Reaches were once Alfheim, and that they sunk into the sea after Ragnarok. There is a palace in Alfheim that we must go to, and we will find the correct spot for the shield somewhere in the palace.

Cool, we fuck off with what we wanted to know. The sorceress asks Victor to stay behind to discuss the scar. I went out for a smoke, so I missed Victor and the sorceress fucking, but Rob and Curtis had wrapped up most of the interaction by the time I came back in. Basically, Victor and the sorceress fucked, and she told him that she could remove the scar if he would retrieve something from a certain vault in the palace of Alfheim. She gave him some magical metal bands and told him to put them on underwater when he next had the chance. She gave him the vault number and the combination to gain access to it. Then they fuck some more, and she lets him go back down the mountain.

There is a hilarious interlude here that doesn't directly relate to the plot. Cavatheer finishes up with the paladin and goes to find Terrin at the healer's. He walks in just as Terrin is taking a shit with the healer's help. The line of the session is "No! Cav!" Everyone burst out laughing for a couple of minutes at the thought of someone stumbling in on a badass paladin mid-shit.

Cavatheer walks out, and goes to resolve another plot thread. Chris had until the arrival on the island played it so that Cavatheer didn't know Lindsay Courtwright was Lindsay Courtwright. No one had called her "Lindsay Courtwright" around him - she was only referred to as "Linz" and Cavatheer had last seen her about twelve years beforehand. Because of this, he had pretty much ignored her, or at best treated her formally as a stranger with authority. It was only when someone greeted her upon arrival that he put it together and realised she was his childhood sweetheart. Lindsay had been in negotiations with the chief all day though, and he hadn't had time to apologise.

He heads back to the ship and finds her drunk in her cabin in a foul mood. He starts to apologise and explain that he just didn't recognise her, and she tells him to fuck off and die. Sulking all around!

We reform the next day, with Victor showing up just in time. We depart for the Sunken Reaches.  Two notable things occur on the way. When Oberin and Erik start drinking with one another. A difference of opinions finally comes up on Ragnarok. Oberin thinks that Ragnarok has already happened and that the world as it is is the epigone of that event. Erik thinks that Ragnarok is part of a cycle, with the gods and the world being born, living, dying in Ragnarok, and then being reborn. It's unclear (in this session) who's right IC or OOC, since I wasn't not sure if I made up the cyclical part myself or if Rob had Vidar mention it way back in the first session.

Also, we see a Giantish warbarge in the far distance. It's being rowed by all sorts of giants, and is really four barges stuck together around a giant fan-like sail. We avoid it, since it has hundreds of Giant raiders in it.

Eventually, we arrive at the Sunken Reaches. Oberin and Terrin are both jacked from the magic coursing through the area. Above water, the tips of towers jut up into the sky, and underneath, there's an entire submerged city. We have to enter by swimming down to a mostly intact building with pockets of air, then following the pockets across to the palace building and root around inside. To get down to the building, a glass dome the Dagger has been carrying is pushed down and we swim from it to a nearby entrance to the air pocket region. It's meant to be tense, but thanks to Iron Heroes rules, we're all master swimmers and we make it pretty easily, even the dudes in plate mail.

And that's the end of the session.

Commentary:

Yeah, there really was no combat in this session, other than the brief Victor-Oberin struggle, and that was at most one round of grappling. This session is probably the least interesting to read, but it was great fun to play. There was all sorts of OOC banter that made the game lively, even though it wouldn't translate well in a summary. For example, when Erik went to borrow the money from Vater to buy arrows, Vater was teaching some kids to swim. I said "I split the kids into two groups - one for fucking, one for eating!" Si and I came back from smoking to Rob and Curtis dealing with Victor talking to the sorceress after fucking her, and someone shouted "Conan!" by way of reference to what they'd been up to while we were gone. Also, the Terrin taking a shit thing was really hilarious.

This session ended a bit early. We were late starting, and to get to the combat would have taken another couple of hours from where we were at 1:30 in the morning. So we called it an early night.

One note: All ships, in all of our games, are always under-crewed. We regularly have four guys with no experience steering an ocean-going ship capable of carrying several tons of cargo. No one wants to deal with hiring crews, etc.

The next two sessions are full of combat and traps, and even have a PC dying... from an octopus swarm!

Session 7:

We come up from the swim and prepare for combat, but nothing shows up. We're in a staircase in a tower that stretches up above the waterline. The first significant thing we encounter as we go up the staircase is a locked door covered in ornate scrollwork of animals and vines and fairies, etc. We ignore it for now and head up the stairs to the top of the tower. It ends up being a dead-end, as the top of the tower has been sheered away, leaving only some planking behind. Rob describes the view in exhaustive detail, taking about ten minutes (I peeked at my cell phone to time it). Two minutes in, having realised it's a dead-end, Oberin, Erik and Victor have already turned back and are at the door, leaving eight minutes of talking about fog and the low visibility to sit through.

The door is magical. Cavatheer sees a little fairy in the artwork wink at him. Presumably there is some sort of complex magical puzzle to be sorted out here, but Victor and Cavatheer just smash the door down as soon as we've established that it won't shock us or activate some sort of terrible trap etc. if we do so. We end up following a set of descending tunnels between the towers, smashing doors as we go. We can occasionally glimpse out still-intact windows at the surrounding landscape, which is an eerie submerged garden. Defoliated trees, the occasional muck covered statue, etc.

Somewhere along the way, Oberin explains that there is a magical, insubstantial guardian of this place which only he and other wizards can fight. However, the last time he fought it, it cursed him and this is why anything he kills comes back to life (thus, the zombie woodland creatures on the mountain, and the dead Confederate at the dockland escape).

We eventually reach a large feast hall. Some of the tables at the feast hall are human-sized, but there are also giant-sized tables with giant chairs and cutlery at them. Despite the tremendous age of the ruins, the feast hall is not only intact, but in fact has fresh food and drink available. I suspect magic, and try to keep the Vikings from eating any of it, but Victor grabs a roast chicken off a spit and begins gorging himself (Victor has a low wisdom and a "chaotic evil" alignment, which Curtis plays as a lack of self-restraint and caution).

Oberin takes this time to point to two globes - one pink, one green - that are embedded in a pillar. He explains that these are a source of magical power the inhabitants of the Sunken Reaches used, that they can be activated or deactivated, and that breaking one can be catastrophic.

Victor eats the chicken, and finding himself thirsty, looks about for something to drink. At the head of the feast hall, on a small dais, is a huge jug - it's close to the size of a barrel, really. He goes over, craving a drink of beer, and finds the jug filled with frosty and delicious liquid. He tries to drain it, but the fluid keeps on pouring out, as if the jug were bottomless. He quenches his thirst and starts wandering around while Erik and Oberin come up and check the jug. We have a brief debate, then decide to hold onto the jug. At the very least, it's an eternity of beer, and besides that, it's a powerful magical artifact.

There are two rooms off from this one - a kitchen, and a private dining room. Every dungeon we are in has a kitchen somewhere in it, though this one isn't particularly interesting except as a running joke.

The private dining room is where we end up. It has bottles of strange liqueurs none of have ever seen before, two doors, and a giant crystal growing out of the ground against one wall.

Erik ends up touching the crystal. He sees himself dead - or at least looking dead, with cuts and bruises covering himself. Most importantly, his corpse does not look much older than he is now. This becomes important when Lindsay touches the crystal, and her corpse also appears. However, she is significantly older in it - maybe ten or fifteen years. I forget exactly how she's supposed to die, but I think it was hanging.

Finally, Victor touches it. He appears not one day older than he is now. His face is blue from choking, and he is covered in cuts and scratches, with two thin tendrils of blood coming down from his nose. As we will discover later, the prophecy crystal is surprisingly accurate about the events of the session.

We start to go down one of the doors when Bjorn knocks the table slightly. One of the bottles falls over and a thin stream of red railro^^wine goes towards the other door. We ignore this obvious gesture to get with the plot and go towards the other door.

It goes down a long corridor to a small room with a map of the nine worlds of Yggdrasil. However, the geography is that of the world _prior_ to Ragnarok (remember, we are post-Ragnarok - most of the gods are already dead, and I am carrying around some of their souls in the form of a rune-engraved buckler).

Out of character, my first question is "Where's Muspelheim?" because I think "Muspelheim" is the most awesome of the names of the nine worlds (side note: Rob and I are the only ones who read up on Viking culture for this game). Rob delays that question and has Oberin explain the nine worlds. However, one of the worlds is "unknown", its name having been lost to history, and unfortunately, it turns out to be Muspelheim. I felt like a bit of a goof, but I also figure this means that Muspelheim will figure in the plot later on, which is good.

Anyhow, it turns out that we're in Alfheim, the land of the elves, which sank into the sea during Ragnarok. Rob mentions to the British PCs that they know this map is bullshit, and that it puts landmasses where they know for a fact they aren't any, and ignores the existence of Britain and the other far western countries. Terrin and Cavatheer are both still pretty skeptical about this "quest" Erik, Bjorn and Oberin have drug everyone along on.

After the metaphysical exposition, we go down the other door from the private dining room. This leads us down a long set of stairs, where a fantastic mural/frieze of Ragnarok has been etched and painted. Rob reads out a prewritten speech by Oberin as he explains what we see. We all marvel at it, even Terrin, who admires the artists and seems to be warming to Viking culture, even though he doesn't believe it to be true or not. Cavatheer and Victor are dismissive of the Viking gods, but we brush them off - we're wandering around Alfheim and encountering magic everywhere, and complaints about Jesus being the one true god ain't gonna get them anywhere. Oberin and Erik have a brief debate about whether or not Ragnarok will happen again, with Oberin once again claiming it won't, and Erik claiming it will.

We emerge into a hallway and do a bit of exploring before coming to a statue with a tunnel in its base. I climb into the tunnel and explore it for a few seconds before a spike trap nearly crushes my head. All of a sudden, the floor pivots ninety degrees and most of the party is dropped into a pool of seawater that breaks our falls. It also keeps us from being impaled on spikes at the bottom of the pit, which prior to the submersion of this place would've been pretty fatal.

The party recuperates and regroups. There's a small tunnel at the bottom of the pit, but the water goes on far enough that air supplies could be a problem. So, most of us get out of the water and up onto solid ground again (the floor stays pivoted, but another part of the hallway forms a ledge we can sit on and plan).

Victor does not. Last session, he got those metal Bands of the Sea that let him breathe underwater. While the rest of us look for secret doors, etc. Victor jumps into the water and starts exploring. This will be his doom.

At first he's fine. The tunnels he's swimming through are bare stone and set in concentric circles. Better yet, he finds a vault door, and recalling the information of the sorceress from last session, he opens the door using the combination she gave him. Inside is a fortune in gold and a single wooden dart made of holly - the object she sent him for. He pockets the dart (I whisper to Rob "Baldur's dart!" out of character and receive a nod), and. takes a fistful of gold. Rob describes the coins in detail and then sketches a picture of them for us.

Victor continues on to the centre of the circles. To do so, he must manipulate some levers in the inmost circle which drop a glass drawbridge that blocked his way. The tunnels come out over a pit, which the drawbridge crosses. Above the pit is a pocket of air, and below it, a faint and dim green light can be seen. Far above him, a pale pink orb hangs from the ceiling. He also sees that the pit chamber opens up, about fifty feet above the surface of the water, to an air-filled room.

Before he can explore further though, shapes begin to flitter in front of the green light below him. These shapes resolve into pale white octopuses that attack him. The tension is broken somewhat as there is a debate out of game about what the correct plural of octopuses is (octopi, octopodes, or octopuses, with the later two being correct), which Si, Bjorn's player and our resident linguistic expert resolves by consulting dictionary.com.

The combat is a bit quirky, and has at least two distinct rules arguments in it between Rob and Curtis. The first is whether or not the octopuses have the Improved Grab feat, and second, whether or not Victor threatens squares in three dimensions.

In brief:

The first arises because the octopuses are swarming Victor, but he can kill them with a single attack (they have low HP). If they do not have Improved Grab, then he can get an attack of opportunity whenever they try and grapple him (which they are all doing). Victor has Combat Reflexes and a Dex of 16, so this is potentially three additional attacks a round - very important because he is being swarmed by approximately sixteen or so octopuses who  grapple him and bite him with their beaks.

It is decided that the octopuses have Improved Grab because octopuses in the SRD have it, even though these are not SRD octopuses.

The second comes about because the octopuses are swarming Victor from three dimensions, but Rob only wants to give him Attacks of Opportunity in two dimensions. The octopuses have a reach of 0 squares (they are Tiny creatures), meaning they must move into Victor's square to attack. This too could provide him with up to three attacks of opportunity per round, meaning four dead octopuses instead of just one or two.

It is decided that Victor only gets AoOs in two dimensions, though only Rob really supports this decision.

Victor ends up killing all the octopuses anyhow, but a house rule we've been quibbling about all campaign now rears its ugly head. Victor has been reduced to nine or so hitpoints by the attacks, with two subdual damage. We have a "bleeding out" house rule Rob came up with. Whenever a character takes a wound that reduces them below ten hit points (even if they originally had less than ten hit points), they must make stabilisation rolls. Rather than using Iron Heroes stabilisation rules, we use another set of house rules that we've had for two or three campaigns now.

The rule is: Roll a d10. On a 1 (or if one prefers, another number that one calls out prior to rolling), one stabilises. On 2-9, one loses a hit point and continues to roll. On a 0, one of two things can happen. Cjaracters with positive HP totals drop to 0 HP and continue to bleed out from there. Characters with negative HP totals die (later amended to, in both cases "they lose two HP instead of one").

Characters may stop bleeding out if they are still conscious by making a heal check, or having someone make it for them, DC 15.

Curtis ends up failing about seventeen rolls, even using hero points, and fails all the heal checks (low wisdom, and Rob gave him a penalty for trying to staunch wounds in cold saltwater without anything to treat them with). Victor bleeds to death, cold, alone, and in the dark. He struggles desperately against death, but succumbs to his wounds and floats there, awaiting discovery.

Minor note: Victor is nearly naked, because Rob ruled he could break octopus grapples by stripping off clothing/armour the octopuses had gotten ahold of. Victor's pants, and thus Baldur's dart, are now at the bottom of the pit, well out of sight.

Back at base camp, we notice that Victor has been gone for about twenty or thirty minutes, and we decide to investigate. Lindsay and I volunteer because we are both fast, strong swimmers.

I try something with the jug. I leap down into the water and have it lowered to me, and tell Rob that I desperately want it to be filled with air. I am gambling that it is a jug that provides me with any fluid I want - and air is a fluid (not a liquid admittedly, but I am making my case to a DM who was trained as a mechanical engineer and therefore ought to know the difference).

And it works! Normally, my ideas are shot down like biplanes circling King Kong, but this one works. We begin Operation Go Find the Corpse.

With a few careful swimming rolls, we do, with plenty of air. We explore a bit further, notice the room above, and then decide to return with Victor's body. We bring him back, haul him out of the water, and debate what to do with the corpse. I suggest (in and out of character) mutilating it, but the Confederates want to bury him. We also try to figure out how we was able to stay underwater for so long, and we notice the metal bands. We can't slip them off from around his neck, so I once again mention decapitating his corpse, but the suggestion is brushed off.

I then suggest we immerse him in water (we know OOC that this will make the bands softer), but this is derided as metagaming, so I drop it. Eventually, Oberin tells us that he will return to the ship with Victor's corpse while the rest of us go on. We do so.

For his part, Curtis grabs some dice and begins rolling up a new character like a trooper. We break for pizza and talk about what his new dude will be like. Victor's death will really change the tone and feel of the game, since he and I were the two prime motivators of PvP shit disturbing (with Cavatheer helping out where he could).

We come back from the break and continue exploring. At the top of the pit Victor died in, we find a room made of tiered circles that opens into three corridors. I explore the central corridor, and find a massive pit of spikes that I can't cross, and another branch that's partially blocked. I can duck through a side door that seems to lead to a library, but I don't pursue it further because I can hear noises further down.

Bjorn gets a mysterious flash telling him to go through the third corridor, and when I return, we do. We emerge into a room with a pentagram on the floor that looks like a puzzle. There are five kinds of dirt (white sand, red dirt, etc.) and some skulls - children's skulls - in the centre of the pentagram. I realise after a few steps that we're immediately above the pit of spikes I saw down below, and everyone panics a little. We end up taking it slow, using rope and climbing the walls etc. to get across, only to realise that unless we disturbed the skulls, nothing was going to happen.

And then, on the other side, Victory!

The next room has an artificial pond with an artificial island containing a giant statue of Freya. The statue is dressed as a Valkyrie, and has a sword in one hand. The other hand is empty, but looks like it grips a shield.

Team Viking gets to it, losing no time making it across, eager to restore their gods. But, trouble ensues. Just as we get onto the island, valkyries pop in. They're in war chariots with two valkyries to each chariot - one spearwoman, one archer. The valkyrie leader, whose name starts with G and that I can't remember comes to the forefront and tells us to stop what we're doing.

We tell her to fuck off and I move to put the shield in Freya's hands. Combat ensues.

The combat basically goes like this: We start on the island in the centre of the pond, while the Valkyries are circling around on on the "shore" (a circular ledge of stone higher up than we are). We have minimal cover from the statue and some fallen rubble, but they have higher ground and I'm the only one of us who carries a ranged weapon. The leader summons in this four-armed hydralisk cyclops demon to get into melee.

The interesting thing about this fight is that it's really the one where our party begins acting like a party. Curtis controls one of the Valkyries so he has something to do during the fight, and he tries his damnedest to kill us.

Basically, Si and Chris move Bjorn and Cavatheer in to hold the hydralisk. It starts tearing them to shreds, but they tag team it and start putting out serious damage, with each one trading aggro, so that the monster keeps on finding it advantageous to attack one, then the other, then the first one again. They have it flanked, so Lindsay comes in for sneak attacks.

Terrin runs out and intercepts war chariots as they go by, while I soften them up with arrows when I can dodge the attacks of the monster (since its goal is to stop me from placing my shield in the statue's hand).

The Valks are a tough fight, but Bjorn/Cav/Lindsay end up murdering the monster with some savage critical hits, and I take the opportunity to dart over and place the shield in its hand.

Except, pretty much the exact opposite of what we expect happens.

The statue drops its sword and reaches over with its other hand to grip the shield. Odin tells me that he can't take my sacrifice because I'm pledged to his son (presumably, Vidar). Loki screams quickly to me as Freya grabs the shield. He gives me a cryptic line about the best place to hide a gate being a well-travelled road before the statue pipes up. The statue grabs the shield and begins tearing it apart. It intones that only one beast knows the hiding place of the Well of Life, and it is neither Aesir, nor Vanir nor Elf nor Giant. It then proclaims that the betrayers shall never escape again, and crushes the last fragments of the souls of Thor, Odin and Loki into scrap.

Then everything explodes. PCs are flung in all directions. A piece of Odin-soul shrapnel catches Bjorn in the eye, driving itself into his brain. Odin appears to Bjorn and gives him some wise words of wisdom, and IIRC, his two ravens flutter over onto Bjorn's shoulders as he fades out.

End of session.

Commentary:

After the session, there was a long debate about the bleeding out rule, and we decide to modify it so you could only bleed out while we were in initiative/combat. While Curtis had been killed by a freak occurrence (not a single one in seventeen rolls), it was still kind of silly. Curtis also told us about his new character, who is a Hunter (an Iron Heroes class) who is super-intelligent, wields a bastard sword, and is a sort of cultural attache for the British government to the Vikings.

Overall, this session was remarkably low on PvP. It was a sort of dungeon-crawl without many monsters, and the PCs only bickered a little. We were goal-oriented and unified against a common foe (the environment). The party dynamic is highly unstable right now, especially with Victor's death, and it fluctuates all throughout the next session.

I refer to the piece of metal in Bjorn's brain as his "railroad spike" out of character. The connection with Odin that was developing all session was presumably the cause of the mysterious omens he had.

Speaking of omens, I thought it was clever that the prophecy crystal had correctly predicted Victor's death. Rob claims that he is often completely surprised by what we choose to do, but he correctly predicted Victor's hubris leading to his death. Actually, he wasn't too far off on my character either considering what happens next session, but I survived it.

Next session: We decided to play on Labour Day Monday, but Curtis doesn't come because there won't be a way to slot his PC in until the end of the Labour Day session. Cavatheer saves my life, and Bjorn mows down zombies. Also, a major NPC dies.

Update this, you lazy fuck!