Sorcery! #10 - The Crown of Kings

Valerian is outnumbered by his former companions

Campaign Diary

The Archmage dismounted from the dragon, wearing the Crown of Kings upon his head, and ascended his throne. Then he spoke to the assembled tribes, of his aim to bring them all under one banner, bringing peace between all of them, and of Kakhabad dealing with the other kingdoms as equals. Although the assembled tribes each had their own language, they all heard him in their native tongue.

Then one by one the leader of the tribes came before him and pledge their allegiance. Morgana used her sorcery to turn herself invisible, and approached the Archmage unseen, and tried to seize the crown off his head, planning to teleport away afterwards. But even as she grasped the crown, the Archmage raised his hand and seized her by her wrist. The Archmage uttered a spell, and Morgana turned visible again. For a moment there was confusion among the guards and the tribes. Morgana tried to teleport away, but she felt he spell countered by the Archmage's.

The suddenly she felt talons grabbing onto her shoulders, and yanking her off the ground - a birdman had seized her. She broke loose from the Archmage's grasp, and held the crown!

As the birdman flew higher, Goncol loosed an arrow at him, which sank into his side. Other birdmen flew towards the first birdmen, only to be tackled in the air by more birdmen. There was a hubbub as the tribes tried to figure out what was happening. The Mampang Guards rushed forward, and Goncol and Glowulf, separated by the mass of people, each quietly slipped away.

The injured birdman bore Morgana towards the Forest of Snatta, pursued by others. He was an ally, he told Morgana, a spy working for Analand. Wounded, the birdman could fly no more than several hundred yards before he had to set Morgana down, under the canopy of the forest, which was fortunate, for now the Archmage had mounted his dragon and taken off; unable to see Morgana, he landed once more, and commanded the tribes to hunt her down and retrieve the crown.

Under the forest canopy, the birdman revealed that he belonged to the tribe of Schinn, a tribe of birdmen whose ancestral place was the volcano crater where Mampang Fortress was built - centuries ago, his people weere driven away by the Archmage and the birdmen who had allied with him, and since then the Schinn had hidden themselves among the other tribes, but had never forgotten the injury. Not long after telling this story, the birdman expired.

Alone and with no bearing, Morgana ran in what she she thought was the southerly direction. Not long after she began to hear the sounds of pursuers behind her, which at least told her that she was heading in the right direction. Then, while hiding from a party of swamp goblins, she felt a hand on her shoulder - it was Glowulf, who had managed to find the body of the dead birdman and tracked her from there. Together, the two found their way to Fenestra's hut.

When she learned of what had transpired, Fenestra cast an enchantment, causing the trees around her hut to shift, creating a maze and preventing the pursuers from finding them. There, in the relative safety, Morgana and Glowulf rested.

Back at the shore of the lake, the Archmage summoned Valerian, and asked him where he thought Morgana would head.

'Khare,' Valerian replied.

The Archmage ordered his troops to search the land between the Forest of Snatta and Khare, set Valerian in command of a party of the guards, and returned to Mampang.

The next morning Fenestra handed Morgana and Glowulf a wooden ring, which she told them held the enchantment that caused the trees to form a maze around them, and bade her familiar, a firefox, to act as their guide to the edge of the forest. As the trio set off, the trees parted before them to reveal a confused Goncol, who had retraced his step to Fenestra's hut but was flummoxed when he could not find it, and had spent the night in the open. Together, the party decided to travel to the edge of the forest, and thence to Khare.

Along the way they were attacked by Klattamen, whose shaman overcame the enchantment of the ring, but the party managed to defeat them before they could send a message to the Archmage. But when they reached the edge of the forest, they found many birdmen circling the skies above, and dust clouds in the distance, indicating the many parties that are even now looking for them.

Glowulf prayed to Fulkra, god of travelers, and asked for the safest way to Analand. The way ahead, Fulkra replied, was fraught with danger, but he may seek the aid of helpers, friends, and family.

This, Glowulf thought, meant that instead of heading towards Khare, they should head east into the Vanti-Bak Wastes, where his tribe lived, and thence to the Earth End Coast, and from there find passage by sea to Analand.

When the sun had set, the party began its journey, under the cover of darkness. For a while they managed to evade the eyes of Mampang, but in the afternoon of the next day they spied a dust cloud to their rear, which got closer with each passing hour. Soon afterwards a single birdman began to circle them. The party waited, and the birdman landed. He declared himself to be Peewit Croo, one of the Schinn. The party had been spotted by birdmen, and a party of six horsemen had been sent after them, and would reach them in less than an hour.

Unable to outrun the horsemen in the open plains, the party decided to head towards a nearby hillock. The hillock turned out to be an abandoned mine or quarry, with shafts cut horizontally into its rock faces. The party plotted, and decided to lure the pursuers into the shafts by tracking footprints into one of them before backing out, then hiding on the reverse slope of the hillock. Once the pursuers have dismounted and entered the shaft, Morgana would call upon Throff, the goddess of earth, to shake the ground with an earthquake, and bury them inside.

And so they did, and hid behind the hillock with Peewit Croo. Here they heard the horsemen come to a halt, dismount, and enter the shaft. They crept forward again, and found that one of the horsemen had remained with the horses, holding their reins - it was Valerian!

Morgana called out to Throff even as Valerian called out to his companions. The ground shook, causing the horses to bolt off, and the shaft to collapse. When it was over, the party picked themselves up.

Morgana, Glowulf, and Goncol tried to make Valerian to switch his allegiance back to Analand once more, but the former Royal Guard would not be swayed. He charged his erstwhile companions and struck Morgana a grievous blow, but outnumbered, he was wrestled to the ground by Glowulf, Goncol, and Peewit Croo. Goncol forced a potion down Valerian's throat to make him comply, and while the potion was in effect the party tied him up, rounded by the horses, and continued their journey eastwards.

As the sun began to set, they spotted smoke from cooking fires ahead - they have found Glowulf's clan. Glowulf approached the caravan, and showed the pendant that was left with him when he was found by his foster father. By the pendant the Black Elves knew he was the child of one Gloranda, who bore him out of wedlock, and left the tribe one night, never to be seen again. They asked if Glowulf wanted to learn of his birth name, but Glowulf declined - his heart was with Analand, and he would return to his adopted family.

The Black Elf Tribe had ignored Mampang's summon, valuing their freedom, and after hearing the party's story, agreed to take them to the Earth End Coast in their caravan, hidden from Mampang's spies. And so they arrived at the coast, where they managed to hail a fishing boat from Analand.

The boat took them to Gummport, in Far Analand. There, they took the long journey to Arkleton, Analand's capital city, with Valerian in chains. Even as he was brought before the chancellor of the realm, the former Royal Guard would not renounce his allegiance to the Archmage. Pleading that his mind had been charmed by the Archmage, the party begged that his life be spared, and so it was that Valerian was imprisoned in the dungeon.

To reward the heroes there would be no great fanfare or feast, for even now the news of the loss of the crown had been kept secret, but each was asked what boon they requested from the king.

Morgana asked for land and a tower, wherein she could continue her study of sorcery.

Goncol asked for a grand manor, which he planned to continue his study of wizardry, with the aim of starting a school.

Glowulf asked for a modest reward, and returned to his adopted parents, and continued the life of a fisherman.

Thus ended the tale of the quest for the Crown of Kings, and peace was once more restored to Analand.

Epilogue

It was several years later when Goncol, now more learned in the craft of wizardry, asked for Valerian to be delivered to his manor, that he might use his knowledge to restore the warrior's mind. But by now Goncol had been tainted by the forbidden knowledge of the evil tome from which he learned the arcane arts, and his evil magic would soon warp Valerian's mind too.

Then one morning, Goncol awoke to find the guards he set to watch Valerian slain, and the fighter gone...

Prepping and Running the Game

I am both proud and ashamed to say that this final session of the campaign had been a hidden railroad.

Now when the previous session ended my players and I were not sure how the final session would play out. One brought along a boardgame for this session, and another prepared a one-shot game, in case the session ended in an early TPK.

On my part I procrastinated on prepping the session until the day of the game.

I had asked each player to tell me privately what their PC's plan was, and I knew Morgana was going to seize the crown with the use of magic. Now I could of course have the Archmage be so powerful that he could thwart Morgana, and have a TPK, but that would have been a bad way to end a campaign. The party, or at least the three 'loyal' PCs, must escape. I decided that the birdmen of Schinn, an important faction in the gamebook, would help them do this.

Once that was decided, then the question was: where would they escape to?

The obvious choice was Khare, but that would be obvious to Mampang too, so I decided that there had to be an alternative. Fortunately, in an earlier session, I randomly decided that Glowulf's clan lived in the east, near the coast. The coastal route seemed to be a reasonable option, and to nudge the party in that direction, I counted on Glowulf using his prayer to ask for the safest route to Analand, and slipped in a semi-cryptically worded message, which had the intended effect.

As for the route they would take, I guessed that the players would want to backtrack and seek the allies they have met along the way, and so I prepped what Fenestra, The Sham, and Shadrack would do to aid the PCs. As predicted, the PCs did seek Fenestra.

Now I knew Valerian's player was not going to abandon his allegiance to the Archmage, so I needed to prepare a temporary character or two for him to play. For this I took a 'monster' from the original gamebook, a firefox, and made him Fenestra's familiar. I gave the firefox the ability to do 1d6 points of fire damage by expending 1 of its Stamina, so as to give the player a combat option, and threw a combat their way.

The second temporary character was Peewit Croo, the birdman. Once more, I gave him the ability to grapple, and therefore lift a person off the ground, and perhaps drop him from a height. With his ability for flight, I had freedom to decide where and when to introduce him to the story.

To provide another encounter for the travel across the plains, I took inspiration from an episode of Manhunt, where the protagonist stole a horse from his pursuers who have dismounted to search for him in broken terrain. I decided that a quarry or mine would fit the terrain and also give another indication that there was once a civilisation in these lands, and then once more nudged Morgana's player to employ the trick of luring their pursuers into a shaft and then burying them with a divinely-inspired earthquake by asking who else had not used their godly favour this session.

This encounter was also a neat point to reintroduce Valerian into the story, so to avoid having him buried with the rest of the horsemen, I made him a horse-holder, which allowed the party to face him for a final confrontation.

In the end, we completed the session at the usual three-hour mark.

I do not know if my players knew that the whole session had been a bit of a set-up, but we enjoyed talking about what happened after the quest so much that we eventually decided (mostly via messaging over the phone afterwards) to play a spin-off of the campaign. Glowulf's player asked for a campaign where they could go all-out murder-hobo, so I decided this would be a good opportunity to run an evil-PCs campaign.

Goncol's player had asked for a building to be granted to him, and planned to start a wizardry school. He also wanted to use his magic to 'convert' Valerian back. I had originally ended the story with Valerian disappearing from the dungeon not long after the events of the game, but now we decided that Valerian was turned over to Goncol, but that the magic would in fact warp Valerian's mind. Valerian would escape, and form a band of evil henchmen, who will avenge him by killing the other three.

We will probably use 5E instead of AFF rules for this campaign, and I imagine it will be a short one, maybe one session for each if the former PCs. Our campaign calendar is pretty packed for the rest of the year though, so it will be a while before this happens, but I am quite excited about it.