Three Worlds #6

At long last the Castellan of Belton, representative of the Duke, arrived at Fort Davelmag, accompanied by six bodyguards and a couple of servants. He had met the four orc mercenaries who had left the fort along the way, and come across the half-eaten body of the guard sent from the fort a few days prior, but nevertheless asked our heroes for their accounts.

After unsuccessfully trying to persuade the Castellan to abandon the fort, our heroes proposed a plan to weaken the orcs by sending out a fake caravan laden with poisoned food to lure them to attack. By means of a poisonous fruit collected by Arwin during his travels, our heroes laced some dried beans, and Arwin, Enree, Kargen, and Mala (see PC profiles here), accompanied by Gad and one of the Castellan's bodyguards set out in a mule train.

The journey to Stoneglow Draw campsite was uneventful, but a few hours before dawn the manticore swooped down from the night sky to attack the party. Enree attempted to control the mind of the manticore, but was instead commanded by it to attack Mala. The rest of the party was able to break the spell of the manticore by wounding it, and thereafter they were able to drive it off. Afterwards they left the campsite with the mules, leaving behind their stores, to give the impression of hurried flight, and doubled back to the campsite off the track to observe.

Sure enough, shortly after sunrise a party of orcs arrived at the campsite and took the abandoned goods before setting off south. Our heroes followed the orcs unseen down to the river, where they rested in the shade of the trees and waited.

As the sun began to set our heroes made their way to the orc tower. It was beginning to get dark when they arrived. The approach to the tower was unguarded, and our heroes entered the cave at the base of the tower to find some twenty orcs lying on the ground, weakened and groaning - they had taken the poisoned food. A tunnel led from the main cave; uncertain of the duration of the poison and unwilling to risk having enemies in their rear as they explored further, Kargen and Mala slew the helpless orcs as they laid on the ground.

Exploring further into the cave complex inside the tower, our heroes came upon a large cave where the orc chieftain and two of his guards laid, also ill from the poison. Enree employed his magic to probe the mind of the orc chieftain, but found that the chief was in fact under the control of the manticore, who was nearby.

The party tied the chief and his guards up, set Gad to watch over them, and explored further. In a long cave they found wall paintings that seemed to tell the tale of the manticore attacking the orcs, and how an orc received a magical bow from a masked character and with that was able to slay the manticore. At the end of that long cave the tunnel led to where the rock guardian kept vigil.

Returning to the chieftain, Enree once more interrogated him and learned that the cave paintings depicted the tale of how the orc hero Atoko received a magical weapon from the sun god and slew the manticore that attacked the canyon orcs, and how his body was entombed within the cave complex. Satisfied that they now had all the information they required, our heroes slew the chieftain and his guards.

They party located the tomb of Atoko, which was sealed by a stone slab which bore three niches upon it, each the size of the stone orbs which activated the teleport portals. Our heroes placed their stone orbs into the niches, whereupon the stone slab split and opened to reveal the tomb of Atoko.

The body of an orc laid upon a stone plinth within the tomb. Grave goods in the form of pottery and jewellery made from precious stones, silver, and gold were placed around the plinth, and next to the body of Atoko on the plinth were the remains of a bow and three arrows; the bow and arrow shafts had long decayed, but three arrowheads, which Kargen recognised to be made from star metal, remained untarnished.

Arwin affixed the three arrowheads to his crossbow bolts, and they party devised a plan to provoke the manticore into attacking them. Recognising that the manticore was nearby, but too large to fit inside the tunnels of the cave, our heroes surmised that it must be lairing at the top of the tower. The party split up, with Arwin and Kargen climbing up the side of the tower (which was about 100 feet tall) to reach its top, Gad and Mala waiting just within the entrance of the tower unseen, and Enree stepped out of the cave and shouted a challenge to the manticore.

Sure enough, the manticore peered over the side of the top of the tower to see who had challenged it. At the same moment, Arwin and Kargen reached the top of the tower.

The manticore dived off the top of the tower and pounced on Enree, knocking him unconscious. From the entrance of the cave Mala and Gad taunted the manticore, which moved to attack them. Arwin loosed a bolt at the manticore but missed, and the crossbow bolt landed on the ground. But his second shot found its mark, and pierced the side of the manticore.

It seemed then that the manticore would once more take flight and flee, but just then Kargen leapt off the top of the tower and landed on the back of the manticore - the impact knocked the wind out of the dwarf, but also caused the manticore's legs to give way. At that moment Enree came to, and seeing the crossbow bolt near his body, he seized it, and stabbed the manticore in its face. The monster stopped moving. 

The party rested for a while, and then Kargen returned to the cave to loot Atoko's treasure and retrieve the stone orbs, while the rest took the head of the manticore as trophy and proof, and afterwards they retreated once more to the river before more orcs could arrive.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session concluded the first of three modules which I have planned for our campaign. I had imagined that they players will enter the tower by overcoming the stone guardian, but they had a different idea, and I broke my rule of not allowing them to use poison to overcome enemies because, frankly, it was a reasonable one.

As a result of their plan I had to improvise much of the session, and instead of fighting orcs and the manticore, they ended up fighting the manticore twice. The first fight was "instructive" as it established that the manticore could control minds, while the second fight was interesting tactically due to the terrain, and the way the players devised their strategy.

I was a little surprised by the players' decision to kill the helpless orcs, but I suppose it fit the theme of the campaign. For the next arc of the campaign I will be running The Scourge of Northland by the same author; whether they will treat the orcs they encounter in the next arc remains to be seen.

Three Worlds #5

The news of the magical teleportation pits caused a stir in Fort Davelmag. Believing that getting past the rock guardian that blocked their path in the Tower cave complex held the key to finding the manticore, our heroes sought the aid of Dareni, the dwarven stone mason at the fort. Dareni revealed that the rocks in the canyon could be split by the careful application of force through a chisel placed along their planes, but that to do so required the guardian to be held immobile.

That same evening that our hero returned another caravan arrived at the Fort, this time from the eastern end. The merchant and guards of the caravan reported that they spotted several orcs at Watcher Butte the day before as their caravan passed. Concerned that this meant that the canyon orcs were plotting an attack, Captain Mossak asked our heroes to find out if the orcs were indeed gathering north of the river.

While Kargen and Rokas worked with Dareni on a means to immobilise the rock guardian, Arwin and Mala, accompanied by Enree (see PC profiles here), a guard with the caravan, Gad, and Lennard the porter returned to Watcher Butte to investigate.

A day's travel brought our heroes to Stoneglow Draw campsite just as the sun was setting. While the rest made camp, Enree went to the nearby stream to collect water. There, he saw the prostrate body of an orc across the stream. The orc was wounded and unconscious; he carried no weapon, but had a bag that held some berries, and a bone flute. Enree packed the orc's wound with his hat, splashed water on him to wake him, and gave him water to drink. When the orc had regained some of his strength, Enree helped him back to the camp.

The orc's arrival was met with disapproval by Lennard. To our heroes' relief the newcomer was a farmer orc like Gad, and introduced himself as Tokala. Tokala told the party that he and two other villagers was foraging for berries to take back to their village at the nearby Rak-Rosar plateau when they were attacked by canyon orcs. He was struck by an arrow but managed to flee, but grew weak from the loss of blood and fell unconscious just as he was about to reach the stream.

As they were having their meal around the camp fire, Enree asked to see Tokala's bone flute, which the orc happily obliged. Tokala then offered to play a tune for the party. As the party listened to the tune, they grew sleepy, and one by one, except for Enree, they fell asleep. Through his groggy eyes Enree now saw Tokala transform into a bestial form: his skin inverted and fur covered his body; a snout emerged from his mouth, baring sharp teeth. The transformed Tokala moved towards Lennard...

Enree called upon his magic to cause fear in the mind of Tokala, causing him to pause, and at the same time roused Arwin. The two then battled the monster, and were soon joined by Mala, who conjured up fire to set it aflame and kill it.

Afterwards Gad, who was frozen with fear throughout the event, told our heroes that the monster was known as a Skinwalker among his people: an evil shaman who had the ability to assume the form of orcs and beasts.

The party spent a fitful night at camp. The next morning, as they were eating breakfast, they saw a small party of orcs approaching their camp. The party hid among rocks as the orcs approached, and when they were close enough for Gad to identify them as farmer orcs, they revealed themselves.

The farmer orcs were apprehensive at first, but when they noticed the burnt body of the skinwalker nearby and learned from Gad what had happened, they became friendlier. Our heroes asked about the presence of canyon orcs, but the orc party had not seen any of them so far. The orcs in turn asked about sightings of Bighorn sheep, which they hoped to hunt. Eager to earn an ally, our heroes offered to lead the orcs to where they saw some sheep the day before. There, they saw a herd of sheep drinking from the river in the valley below.

The orcs invited our heroes to join them in their hunt, which they agreed. Setting two parties in ambush on either side of the valley, a third party made their way near to the herd to cause an alarm. The herd split into two, each fleeing one way. One ram led the herd up the side of the canyon, right into the site chosen by Arwin for the ambush, who brought it down with a bolt from his crossbow.

The kill was met with much rejoicing by the orcs, who butchered the ram and presented the tongue and the head of the ram to Arwin. The party was invited back to the camp of the orcs, where a feast was held. There they met with the matriarch of the tribe, when our heroes presented gifts to her and received gifts in return. From the matriarch they learned about the history of conflict between the farmer orcs and the canyon orcs, and also about the legend regarding the manticore - which the canyon orcs called the Piasu. The Piasu was a creature from the legend of the canyon orcs - a monster that arose from the underworld and terrorised the people, until at last it was slain by a hero. Unfortunately, the means by which they did this was not known to the matriarch.

Prepping and Running the Game

A couple of the regular players could not make this session, and we had one new player, and so I decided to not progress the story to a final encounter with the manticore, but play a sort of a filler session. This session consisted of two parts: the encounter with the skinwalker, and the Bighorn sheep hunt.

I decided on the second part after a player wondered aloud in an earlier session how the Bighorn sheep (which I had said they encountered in previous sessions) tasted. I did a bit of googling, and it turned out that native Americans did hunt bighorn sheep, and still take people on hunts today.

I knew that a hunt would only take up part of a session, and so I looked for a combat encounter to fill the time. I came upon the legends of the skinwalker, and decided to build an encounter around them. The skinwalker as it appeared in our session is not representative of the skinwalker as the Navajo people know it; in fact it seems that the Navajo people are reluctant to share their tales of skinwalkers with outsiders. Now even though I included the skinwalker as an encounter which was not linked to the rest of the campaign, my players were very curious about it and asked many questions on its nature, which I was able to give second-hand answer through the farmer orc matriarch.

The campaign should come to a close in another session or two, after which I hope to move on to another sandbox campaign by the same author.

Three Worlds #4

Gad and Mala kept watch over the orc tower through the night. They learned that there were about two dozen orc warriors in the tower, and that they were receiving supplies from the south, which told them they were not leaving any time soon.

The next morning, with their supplies running low, the duo returned to Fort Davelmag. They arrived at the Fort in the evening, but just as they were reporting their findings to Captain Mossak over dinner, they heard a commotion outside: the manticore had flown past the Fort and dropped the body of one of the guards sent by Captain Mossak to Belton earlier that day to get help from the duke. It was missing the lower half of its body.

There were now only seven guards and nine caravan guards left in the fort, and no help would be arriving soon. To make things worse, the four orc mercenaries announced that they would continue with their plan to leave the next day with the remains of their employer, and take the message to Belton. On his part Captain Mossak was reluctant to evacuate the fort, reasoning that they would be safer behind its walls.

Fearing an attack by the orcs and the manticore, our heroes decided to venture once more to the cave of the manticore, hoping to kill it if it had returned to its lair. And so Arwin, Kargen, Mala, and Rokas (see PC profiles here) once more made the trek up Devil's Laugh Canyon, with Lennard, the fort's porter.

Returning to the cave that led to the salt lake, our heroes this time explored down another tunnel to find another magically cold cave with a shallow pit at the centre, and a firepit to its north, just like that which they found inside the cave complex to the north.

Further exploration led to a burial of another orc shaman in a nearby cave, along with similar grave goods and a necklace bearing a large gemstone, this time a white moonstone.

Mala sensed that the two stones were magical, and surmised that they were somehow connected to the caves with the pits. When our heroes brought the stones near the pit, the space within the pit turned pitch black, and objects placed within it vanished into the darkness, but could be retrieved.

After some experimentation, Kargen made the bold decision to leap into the pit... and found himself emerging in a similar pit in a similar magically cold cave. In the same cave was the frozen body of yet another orc shaman, who wore a necklace of yellow topaz. Kargen retrieved the stone and stepped back into the pit, and as transported back to the cave where his companions were waiting.

By further experimentation, our heroes were able to determine that the stones allowed travel between this cave, the cave to the north, and a third cave, and that they could determine which one the portal led to by their thoughts, and that the thoughts "tower" and "manticore" led to the third cave.

Despite the lateness of the hour, our heroes traveled once more to the third cave, and exited the single tunnel that led from it. a short distance from the cave they found a boulder in the middle of the tunnel, and when they approached it the boulder shifted and took the form of a giant humanoid. When they got closer, the rock form attacked them, and pursued them back to the magical cave.

Unable to get past the magical guardian, and by now hungry and exhausted, our heroes returned to the salt cave to plot their next move.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session saw little combat, but took the campaign forward by putting the PCs back on the "right track" and let them figure out how the teleport system worked. The original portal in the module took the more traditional form of a portal/door, but I chose to lean into symbolism of the sipapu (the pit) and make it a real magical portal.

The module did not give much information on how the portals worked, and I had to make things up as we went along, but I think the way they work now is practical for the purpose of a game.

The rock guardian in the tunnel leading out of the cave is too powerful for the PCs to defeat in a straight fight, so the players will have to figure out a way to defeat it or bypass it.

Forbidden Psalm, This Town Ain't Big Enough for the 2-4 of Us, and Tiny Towns

For our February session we played a game of Forbidden Psalm. Well technically it was two games: the play area being 2' x 2', I set up terrain to cover a 4' x 2' area and the four of us played two separate games side-by-side.

The game rules were simple enough, although with each character having some sort of special rules, it was difficult to keep track. It plays very much like Mordheim or Frostgrave.

After the game we played two games each of two board games: This Town Ain't Big Enough for the 2-4 of Us, and Tiny Towns. The first is a simple game that is sometimes difficult for new players to grasp, but once they get it it is easy to set up and play.

Tiny Towns is one of my favourite board games, but one which I am not very good at. Still, I managed to win the game for the first time in our first game, but a careless mistake in the second put me at the bottom of the table. I am keen to play that game again soon.