So anyone who's been over to Design and Development in the past year probably saw my "Plains of Kadiz" thread (the setting itself is called the Dawnlands). I finally got the opportunity to play this setting with my regular group. The basic plan right now is to play for 4-8 weekly sessions, and then move to a Shadowrun game come March / April.

Background:

The group has previously played 4e, having just abandoned a short campaign after a 2 wk. break due to scheduling issues. I am the DM, and am in favour of using house-rules fairly often, while our previous campaign was very "by the book".

PCs:

I asked them all to come up with epithets instead of worrying about the naming conventions of the setting. I used epithets for some of the NPCs too, to reinforce the convention and make it seem less goofy.

Titus the Black, an Elf Beastmaster Ranger played by Rob. Even though he is mechanically an Elf, and culturally a Hill Elf, Rob wanted Titus to be a human in appearance. Titus' beast companion is a dog named Pike.

Benedict the Bold, a Kaddish Human Paladin played by Curtis. Benedict serves Cassius, master of the Red and Blue Snake Cult in the city of Kaddish. His daimon is the Red-Handed Warlord, a martially-inclined and unforgiving daimon that manifests itself as throbbing red finger bones in Benedict's hands.

Djasper the Watchful, an Elf Cleric played by Chris. Djasper's tribe, the Owl tribe, were all killed by a mysterious magical plague. He serves the Whisperer in the Earth, who manifests himself as a thrumming noise in the earth underneath Djasper.

Garret Stoneshore, a Halfling Rogue helot played by Neil, who was trained by the Broken Chain and then turned loose. He has since become a factor for Kairos Tekton

Important NPCs:

Kairos Tekton, an Optimate Dwer Dwarf merchant, the nominal leader of House Tekton in Stoneshore. Generally known as "Tekton" or "Kairos the Rich". He is the employer of Garret, and has just hired Djasper prior to the start of the game.

Cleon, one of Kairos' factors and trusted steward, a Dwarf helot

Guron, Kairos' Halfling majordomo, herald and valet

Acheros, an Eladrin thaumate Infernal Warlock, master of the College of the Emerald Sign, the most powerful group of thaumates in Stoneshore.

Tiburon, of House Tiburon, an Optimate Dwer Dwarf merchant who is in exile in Stoneshore for obscure reasons. He is very old and in ill health. He has business dealings with House Tekton, and is the patron of Titus in Stoneshore.

Arion Kutron, an Optimate Dwer Dwarf warrior and administrator. The governor of Stoneshore, and a rival of Kairos Tekton. He leads House Kutron.

Cassius, a Human Star Pact Warlock, Master of the Red and Blue Snake Cult in Kaddish, the master of Benedict the Bold

Atric, Benedict's Halfling manservant and porter

Setting:

The setting is Stoneshore

I chose this setting because, given fourteen hours notice that we would be playing in my setting, and being unable to contact at least one player to discuss his character, I decided to go with a low-demand concept. The nomads can be difficult to run with multi-racial games, and I (rightly) suspected that several players would want to play non-humans. Stoneshore, as a mercantile town that sees a lot of wanderers and loose-ends come through it, struck me as being much better suited for a quick, dirty story. It would also allow me to work in numerous elements of the setting in the course of play, as the PCs could be encounter anyone from anywhere.

I also fiddled with Stoneshore slightly. Instead of being the furthest colony from Dwer Tor, it is considerably closer to the western plains, about four or five days hiking, though still in the rainforest proper.

Next post: Our first session

Session 1:

The game begins with Benedict disembarking the riverboat that has brought him from Kaddish. He has been sent by his master, Cassius, to work for Kairos Tekton. He doesn't know Kairos Tekton and doesn't know what Tekton will want from him, but he's eager to prove his loyalty.

He stops off first at a shrine to the daimons. The only person at the shrine is Kurion, a blind man who cuts the head off a chicken and pours the blood into a bowl for any passing daimons to taste. Benedict pumps him for information, and finds out that the best way to arrange a meeting with Tekton is to talk to Cleon, his factor, who should be down by the docks supervising the loading and unloading of cargo.

Benedict heads to the docks and meets Cleon. Cleon is expecting a man from Kaddish, and they make introductions. Cleon tells Benedict that all the set-up has been handled already, including the customary gift/bribe that Benedict was planning to give him. Benedict is surprised, and Cleon invites him to dinner with Tekton that evening.

Titus has just come to Tiburon's house at the edge of town, returning after having slaughtered some sheep. He pays his respects to Tiburon, who tells him that a merchant named Kairos Tekton has called in a debt from Tiburon and wants Titus to help him with something in exchange for forgiving the debt. Titus is invited to dinner that evening at Tekton's.

Djasper and Garret are both also summoned to dinner by Cleon.

Benedict, between the hours where he secures lodging and the dinner, hires a manservant named Atric, dresses him in dark green livery.

The PCs assemble at Tekton's. Gurion, Tekton's majordomo, shows the PCs in. Benedict arranges a formal announcement of his presence by Gurion and Atric. Tekton is seated on a heavy chair on a dais, while his guests sit on comfortable cushions on the floor. He welcomes each on in turn and makes introductions. Titus introduces himself as "Titus the Black" and Kairos smiles back somewhat apologetically and introduces himself as "Kairos the Rich". He then snaps his fingers, the signal for dinner to arrive. Dinner is opulent, well beyond anything any of the PCs have eaten before, with the centre of the feast being a fully-cooked stallion made up to look like it was still alive, bucking in anger. The horse is stuffed with sausages and other roast meats, and the PCs gorge. Kairos himself barely eats, and fidgets impatiently throughout the meal.

Once they finish, he explains what he would like them to do. The Forest People (cannibal halflings hostile to the Dwer) have been raiding his caravans as they transport goods over the falls to waiting boats. He has requested more guards from Lord Kutron, but Kutron refuses to recruit any more guards or to give him any more of the ones he has. Tekton wants the PCs to go and negotiate with the Night Fox tribe of Hill Elves, about a week's travel away. The fact that two of the PCs are Hill Elves means that they may get a chance to talk before the tribe attacks. Djasper is to conduct the negotiations, with the other PCs advising.

Benedict can't believe he has been sent nearly a thousand kilometres to oversee the hiring of some mercenaries, and he can't see what his master's interest in this could possibly be. He asks to speak with Tekton privately, and Tekton agrees, calling for dessert to be served while they talk.

In the hallway outside, Tekton reassures Benedict. Tekton wants the Hill Elves not just to eliminate the Forest People nearby, but because they will give him the manpower to depose Arion Kutron and take control of Stoneshore. Kutron refuses to let the Kaddish trade in Stoneshore, whereas Tekton will happily let Cassius in as an exclusive partner. Benedict still doesn't totally buy it, but he sees the sense in the proposition.

Returning to dinner, Tekton gives a scroll to Cleon to brief the PCs with tomorrow morning, and dimisses himself politely. Afterwards, Benedict arranges with Gurion to get some whores, while Titus goes to talk to Tiburon.

Tiburon doesn't trust Kairos, since presumably he could hire local mercenaries if he just wanted more guards. He asks Titus to accompany the group not only to relieve the debt, but also to keep an eye on what Tekton is up to. Titus agrees, and reassures Tiburon that he would do anything for him.

The next morning, Cleon briefs the PCs on possible routes they could take, and other useful information. One route is slower and safer, the other trickier and more dangerous, but slightly faster. The PCs choose the more dangerous and faster route. They are to meet with Jamfa, chief of the Night Fox tribe, who has met with agents of Tekton's on previous occasions. Cleon's information is that the Night Foxes can be found at the Stone Barrow, a local landmark in the southern plains.

The route the PCs choose is northward to a set of ruins north of Stoneshore, then east across the rainforest through unknown territory, then into the hills and plains of the south-western plains of Kadiz until they come to the Stone Barrow.

Before they leave, Acheros, a local thaumate, approaches the PCs and asks them to take a small amphora of nightmare vine juice to Daru, the shaman of the Night Foxes. He mentions that it might serve as a gift to ease negotiations. Some of the PCs are familiar with the potent hallucinogen, and they wrap it in sheepskin to prevent breakage.

They depart and head north, straight through the jungle, rather than deviating onto either the East or West Rice Road. They reach the ruins near evening, at the bottom of a valley. The ruins are flooded with mud from hot springs nearby that have soaked the bottom of the valley. The PCs come fairly close to the ruins, and start skirting around the edge of the mud when they come across a raiding party of halflings.

The halflings are Forest people. 2 Halfling Slingers, and 9 Halfling Stouts, with about a third on solid ground connected to the PCs, and the rest on the ruins separated by a swathe of muddy difficult terrain. This is a tough fight for the PCs, since they don't have a controller or a lot of AoEs to wipe out many of the minions at once. They're also a new party, and aren't as familiar with their powers and group synergies as they will no doubt eventually become. Still, they pull through and disembowel their way to victory. Benedict ends up intimidating the last four halflings into fleeing, where two are run down, one makes it away, and the last is captured.

The PCs set up camp atop the ruins, and try to interrogate the halfling, but he does not speak Common, Kaddish or Elvish, the only three languages the PCs speak. Benedict ends up throwing him off the ruins down into the mud, a drop the halfling does not survive. Everyone is a little shocked, but they choose not to press him on it.

Benedict has Atric set up his tent, and goes to bed, with Atric standing watch in his place for half the night instead of the typical third of a night. Titus relieves him, and Atric reports he hasn't seen or heard anything, but seems exhausted.

A light rain comes in, and Titus begins to hear scratching below, coming from _inside_ the ruins. The building the PCs are atop right now is a half-collapsed ziggurat with no visible entrances. The scratching builds in intensity and Pike begins to get agitated. Titus makes sure nothing is going to come bursting out of the ruins, and realises that the moon is full, a time in which evil things flourish and their power waxes. This is where I bust out the whole "The Moon is the head of an evil god" thing, which is well-received.

Garret finishes out the night, and he hears the scratching too. But mixed in with it are whispers. The voice asks Garret to release it, but he refuses. Nothing else comes of it - by morning the noises have faded, including the scratching. Before Garret wakes everyone, he sabotages Benedict's zipper. I thought at the time that it was senseless and kind of silly, but I think Neil was trying to express Garret being sneaky and fucking with Benedict for killing the halfling prisoner from the previous day unnecessarily.

The PCs head east, through the rainforest.

About mid-morning, they come across a ruined plantation. The building is covered in Forest People graffiti and has been partially ruined. There's what looks like the remains of a dwarf or elf inside, but it's badly decomposed. There is an untended banana orchard surrounding the plantation house, and the PCs eat some bananas before heading on their way.

About half an hour later, the PCs begin to "trip balls". Colours start changing, bleeding into one another, and growing or diminishing in brightness. Everything gets "auras". Even sounds change - all the bird song is unfamiliar, and they can hear other weird and incomprehensible noises. Someone sees a hand-sized neon-red spider and kills it. It splatters into a mess of titanium-white blood.

Titus thinks that they might have accidentally broken the nightmare vine juice open, but the amphora is intact. They then begin to worry about the bananas they ate, but Atric and Pike didn't eat any, and both of them are seeing things too.

The PCs continue to press on eastward. They go for about another half hour before someone notices that the trees are moving around on them. Whenever their backs are turned, the trees rearrange themselves. No one _sees_ it happen, but everyone is sure it must be happening.

The PCs enter into a skill challenge, hoping to discover a way through the forest. They find that the blue trees (as opposed to the yellow, purple, orange, magenta and green ones) seem to move the least, and begin following them. They pass patches of air that are the colour of spots in your eyes, and end up staggering into a clearing.

The clearing has a single giant tree with magenta leaves. Coming around the other side of it is a huge praying mantis, with chitin the colour of an oil-slick. The mantis is a reskinned Young White Dragon that does psychic stuff instead of cold stuff. At first, this led to some complaints, since the four level 1 PCs thought that this fight was going to end with a TPK. To be fair, I had just stunned, weakened, and frightening presenced two party members in a single turn, but still... I thought that was pretty lame and defeatist on their part, so I mentioned in passing that there was probably a trick.

The real idea behind the fight was for one or two people to hold the mantis off while the others attacked the tree, which only had 60HP. They glommed onto that pretty quickly without me having to tell them what to do (thank god). I made a mistake here, but since it benefited the PCs, I let it stand. When the tree was bloodied, it began shedding leaves. The leaves it shed caused confusion to anyone who was too near. I believe I could have specified the nature of that confusion, and allowed the tree to move the PCs before they attacked. As it was, Rob asked "So how does confusion work? I just make a basic attack on the nearest creature?" as he was standing next to the tree. I blanked, and assented, and Titus and Pike proceeded to slay the tree.

The PCs got their first treasure parcel from this fight. They harvested the sap of the dying Dreaming Tree into two potions of healing, and they took the taproot, a valuable magical material worth 100gp.

Comments:

The first two thirds of the game were better received than the last third, with the tree, but this tree business is an important part of the plot. That's a reveal for next session, so I don't blame the PCs for going, as Curtis did "I don't get why we went to the magical kingdom? That's not something low-level adventurers like us do normally."

This session was kind of slapdash, in that we decided the night before we played that we would be running in my setting. I think it turned out alright for such little prep, but I've got hopes that future games will be better now that I've got a full week in between to prepare.

In terms of the setting, the confusing or interesting parts for PCs were:

Hill Elves vs. Elves in general vs. Hill-Elves-Who-Are-Human. One of the PCs explained it to the others as "It's like being an American, and then being an African-American, or an Italian-American or that kind of thing" which seemed to clear it up for everyone.

Money. We still refer to the value of things in GP, but I made it clear that it's an abstract metagame evaluation. My plan is, rather than giving PCs lots of money, to give them valuable stuff of equivalent value instead, like the taproot. I already have all the money in the treasure parcels sorted out into various things the PCs can harvest or collect. Most of those things can also serve as ritual components directly, making them immediately useful.

Daimons vs. Demons. I explained that this wasn't a sharp distinction in world, and that few other than scholars would make a distinction between them. The two people serving daimons both chose to emphasise the pronunciation difference, while the others, including NPCs didn't distinguish them. This seemed to match up well with the in-game attitudes of the PCs. Both daimon-using PCs seemed to enjoy not having to be a member of a huge church or obey a particular dogma. They both also spoke directly to their daimons, and called on them for help in a skill challenge using Knowledge (Religion) (which I allowed). I let their daimons speak back to them, albeit not always clearly and not at length.