There was a BIG break in the roleplaying for my young
group. The Work Group. Two completely new player, a player that only
played online, a player that had not played but once or twice since the 80s and
then COVID-19 ended it. But people still
wanted to play. We were all working
together, except one player now, so we reluctantly decided to cut ties with
them; they were the least regular player having only attended 2 of 5 sessions
before then. And one of the players
invited a replacement, who I had already been involved with in two other
games. No biggie, except I wanted to run
this game with him from the start in his other group, but it looks like that
game was not going to happen anytime soon, if at all. I will have another chance to debut this
adventure, perhaps more. Most of the
players forgot their characters and we had to try to find them on my end, and
some of those characters may have been in my possession, so my bad.
Not that the players cooperate with me when try to get
details out of them outside of game play.
The game started as I planned with the storm. The storm being the foreshadowing that they
will get to feel from later in the game after the Great River floods and sends
the animals and the herds into the city.
The dark clouds to the South reached toward them fading as
their tendrils approached into a deep red sky.
To the North, and back where they came from the clouds were no less
ominous but, instead held the appearance of violent storms; the lightning
flashes could be seen, but the toiling thunder was lost to the distance. The flat land of the plains made the clouds
appear deceptively close. The storm to
the South was different, the wind from that direction held the odd stray
snowflake, not an odd occurrence this early in the Spring period for here. Tiarah looked toward her homeland and knew
that it was snowing there heavily.
Sometimes the snows that came at this time in the season would dump
several meters of snow on the ground from a mixture of the North winds bringing
heavy rains and the South bringing crushingly cold air. Causnought was not a place that she wanted to
be on this day, which was fortunate, because she wasn’t. The tail end of that storm had sent a crisp
new coating of snow for the ground, whatever moved in the early morning would
leave a clear trail. The characters felt
that it might be better to just stay where they were, but if they did that
every time the weather was inclement, they would not have done a thing over the
past few weeks at all.
As they approached the ruined city of Awsland, they began to
take the signs that they had learned from the expedition to the other
ruins. The signs of the presence of old
walls became clear in the patterns of the way the grass grew, some blessedly
few structures rose from the plains to show that there was a city here and
there was a lot of in between type structures: walls half collapsed, a statue
here or there knocked over, or just a mound of rubble like an island in the sea
of grass. A few of the larger structures
on the edge of the city were reminiscent of gate houses and although most of
them were collapsed or torn apart by looters, there were three towers still
standing of the hundreds that there must have been. Two were on the road that went from Dhewtudum
and the last was on the road that exited the city close by to where they were
standing. Since it was closest, they
headed that way.
The early morning snow melted as
they progressed, the snow had beaten down the tall old grass, but let the
younger grass more alone. Nerwen stooped
before the ruined gatehouse and examined the ground; some of the grass had been
flattened not by snow, but by Kobolds and some other thing. She motioned to the rest of the party to be
alerted to the presence of their old foe.
Keylesh spotted an ancient window part way up the tower and decided that
it would be best to climb and see what was inside the tower from there. With her natural climbing tools, her claws,
she was quickly able to climb the old rotting tower to look inside from that
vantage point. She saw nothing, so she
continued up to the top of the tower. The
morning sun cast part of the fallen third story in bright light but the shadow
was a deep black in comparison, so she missed the enemies lurking in it.
The night had been a little exciting for the troop. They had been sent to guard and watch the
North of the city. They had survived and
learned to avoid certain parts of the city as there were some dangers that
would require a more co-ordinated approach along with a little observation and
some planning. The Necropolis and the
Sewers were part of the puzzling aspects of the city, but they would be cracked
in time. There were dangers that they
expected and dangers they did not expect, like last night the foolish Orc-kin
that was found entering the city nearby.
She had been dangerous, but careful planning brought it down in the
end. Six of the Crimson Skulls had paid
the price fighting it and bringing it down.
The Burning Daggers would not be pleased with the loses, but the honour
the capture would be well worth it, especially if the Orc-kin were to join up
in the Holy Crusade.
They rested in shifts, a fist watching the prisoner, a fist resting
and a fist on watch in the upper area. The
ground floor contained the support for the detachment; they guarded the supplies
and the lower floors. The window in the
top part of the room let natural light into the room. It looked like in the times that the tower
had been used it was a place for a lone defender with a bow could stand, but
time had widened it so it could be used as a escape route should some enemy
come to them here. The light of the suns
came through and brightened a patch on the wall opposite from it and from there
defused uncomfortably into the room. it
was clear to all that the opening was obscured suddenly, the light winked out
and the window was filled with a large head of a mountain cat. The cat looked around the room and sniffled
once before bounding up once more. She
placed a hind foot in the window and leaped up to the roof. There was an intruder. We began at once waking the sleeping Crimson
Skulls and we were ready when we heard a yowl from the cat as the fist on watch
dispatched the cat.
Dust lodged in the cracks of the
dried timbers holding the floor above broke loose when the sound shattered the silence
of the day in the ground floor rooms. We
did not know what had happened and at first thought that the fight above had
damaged the structure of the building and it was coming down on our heads. The Blessed Mother would not let that
happen. An enemy came up the stairs and
charged the fist that was guarding the Orc-kin.
The Fist Commander yelled, “Tactics!”, but I saw another set of
attackers climb from below. They threw
sand and things grew dark, the Eyes of The Mother were prominent, she was angry
. . ..
Keylesh landed on the top of the tower and crouched ready to
attack anything that should come her way.
“Anything could be here,” she thought.
There was movement and three Kobolds rushed out to attack her as three
stone whirled out of the darkness too. Two
were aimed well and they impacted with bone jarring smacks. The attacking Kobolds were clearly disliking
the light of the Suns that she was crouching in, but they attacked,
nonetheless. It spoke of some discipline
that Keylesh had not seen in the Kobolds before. She dodged easily out of their grasp but thought
that six kobolds might be too much even for her. She attacked anyways and slew two easily with
slashes from her claws. She sprung back
towards the ledge she had just leapt from, hoping to get away from the little
foes and warn her companions, however, the kobolds would not have her flee so
easily and lashed out at her, even though she had jumped up and towards the
rising suns, the kobold was effectively blinded, but it struck as if guided by
the hand of their god deep into her Achilles tendon; she stood and instantly
lost her balance and plunged over the wall.
Nerwen and Tiarah hearing the yowl of pain, looked up to see
Keylesh falling to her death, but still trying to slow herself down. They looked toward the dwarf hoping that he
might have something to help, but he had disappeared. “BOOM!” the sound of the dwarven Blunderbuss
discharging made it clear that he had charged through the front door. Nerwen took up her bow and charged in after
him, hoping that Tiarah had some means of saving Keylesh. Tiarah attempted to acrobatically climb and
vault up the wall in a manner that Keylesh had made seem so easy and make a
leaping catch, a bid to save her friend, they tumbled together and Tiarah
managed to dose Keylesh with a healing potion.
Together the three companions charged in and up the stairs
passed the bits of kobold that had been hit with the blast from the blunderbuss. They found the dwarf beset by many kobolds,
fighting over the corpse of some person.
Hopelessly out numbered, Nerwen and Tiarah cast sleep spells on the
kobolds and knocked half the enemy’s unconscious. It appeared that a rash of sudden deaths was
visited upon the sleeping kobolds as they were murdered before they woke
up. The remaining kobolds were killed
except for one who was interrogated.
The body of the person it turned out was still in use, a
barbarian half-orc with a disposition of one who had just been saved when his
luck seemed gone. He requested, in the
manner of the uncivilized heathen, to repay his life debt to the party. The Kobold spoke of a mystical holy quest
that his clan was required to fill for their Goddess, to find the Treasure at
the depth of the city and present it to her holiness.
The party sent the kobold to its goddess early, with a
progress report.
No comments:
Post a Comment