Terrinoth #42 - Laboratory of the Forsaken

Campaign Diary

A voice called out from the other side of the door.

"My lord, is everything all right? I heard a noise - had there been another accident?"

Assuming the dead count's voice, Therion replied that there had indeed been a mishap, and warned the man from entering.

"Very well. The carriage is ready," the man replied and left.

The party began to plot their exit, but before they could arrive at a plan, a ghostly female form appeared over the pool in the cavern.

The ghost declared herself to be Lady Mirabel, the count's late wife. Holzel, (for that was the count's name) she explained, would periodically marry a noble woman and then murder her. He would at the same time kidnap a male infant and, announcing that his wife had died in labour, present the infant as his child and heir. When the child came of age, he would in turn murder him, announce his own death, and assume the child's identity - by this means he had managed to hold his title and demesne over many centuries. Regular change of the servants and guards at the castle helped to keep the secret.

Holzel, the ghost continued, had for years been labouring on some alchemical experiment in his mansion in the forest, and had for centuries sacrificed his many wives and "children" to it - she herself was the latest victim, and now Kolthar, the teenage "son" of the count the party had seen, was to be sacrificed too. Her soul, she said, could not rest as part of her life essence had been trapped inside Holzel's experiment, and she could only manifest at the pool at the bottom of the castle well, which was once the place she went to for solace. She did not know what the exact nature of the experiment was, but she knew it must be evil, and she begged the heroes to travel to the mansion to save Kolthar and end the experiment.

Tom, Giso, and Whisper were willing to take on the mission, but Therion asked for a reward (click here for PC profiles); Lady Mirabel promised to reveal where Holzel kept his treasures if they would save the child and release her soul.

Just then the voice at the door returned, announcing once more that the carriage was ready to take the count to the mansion, but that the bodyguards Lazar was supposed to send had yet to arrive.

Assuming Holzel's voice again, Therion declared that they had arrived earlier and were indeed with him in the cavern. They stripped Holzel of his clothes and hid his body in a sarcophagus. Therion called up some minor enchantment to mend the clothes, and then donning them, he pulled the hood on the cloak over his head, and the party strode out.

A small party of guards were awaiting their arrival at the courtyard, but in the darkness and with his face partially hidden, no one realised that Therion was not in fact the count. Arriving at the carriage, Tom dismissed the guard sitting beside the driver, and the party entered the carriage. The driver drove the carriage to the waiting barge, which carried it to the north bank of the river.

For two hours the carriage passed through the forest, which gave our heroes time to rest and recover. As they neared the mansion, they began to notice signs of death: trees stood withered, and streams were fouled with the stench of dead fish.

When they at last arrived at the mansion, they saw that it was a two-storeyed wooden building, surrounded by a tall wall. Therion dismissed the driver, ordering him to return the next evening, and then the party entered the foyer.

Inside, they found the place sparsely furnished, but clean. While they wondered where to go next, they heard the sound of an organ coming from a room from across the foyer.

Standing at the doorway Therion saw a man dressed in the clothes of a noble seated at a pipe organ. The man began to speak with Therion, mistaking him for Holzel, and thanked him for inviting him to the final ritual, which will bring to fruition the plans they have been making for three hundred years, and which would allow them to challenge the power of Waiqar.

Before long, however, the man began to grow suspicious, and when he moved to throw back Therion's hood, the party attacked him with the bog oak weapons they have prepared, and quickly took him down. As the man's body laid on the floor, the party saw a few skeletal figures approach the room from the foyer - but these skeletons did not carry weapons, but brooms and mops!

Two of the skeletons picked up the dead body, and began to move back into the foyer, while a third began mopping the floor, cleaning up the mess that the fight had caused. The party followed the two skeletons into the kitchen, where several other skeletons were standing, as if they were waiting for their turns to go to work. The skeletons brought the body into the cellar, and then into chamber where several carcasses of animals were hung, and hooked it to one of the meat hooks, and then they returned to the kitchen.

There were no signs of any living person or creature in the mansion - who or what were the carcasses meant to feed?

Venturing deeper into the cellar, our heroes found a passage that led to a maze. Giso called upon Kellos to bless his shield with a glowing light, and the party entered the maze. The passages branched and turned, making it impossible for our heroes to keep their bearings, and after a while they found themselves ending back at the entrance to the maze. They decided to venture into the maze again, this time using a barrel of wine they found in the cellar to leave a trail on the floor, and Whipser marking the way they went with chalk, but once more they found themselves back at the entrance - the wine trail and chalk marks had strangely disappeared!

On their third venture into the maze, they at last found themselves in a part they had not seen earlier. Here, they notice two skeletal figures approaching them from two ends of the corridor, seemingly floating just a few inches off the ground, and their limbs motionless.

Giso and Tom decided to try to rush past one of the skeletons... and found themselves running into a wall of cold, transparent slime! Belatedly, our heroes realised that the skeletons were actually enveloped in some form of living slime, which no doubt had been cleaning up the wine trail and chalk marks they had made.

Giso and Tom felt their lives being suffocated out of them, and it was with great difficulty that they managed to extricate themselves. Hemmed in by on both ends, our heroes struggled to fight off their silent attackers: Whisper's sword and fists seemed impotent against the things, but at last Therion and Giso came upon the idea of using their powers to alternately freeze and then burn the things, which eventually destroyed them.

The party continued onward, deeper into the maze, and at last came before a door guarded by a strange humanoid figure, whose body seemed to be stitched together from several different bodies.

Therion strode forward, once more pretending to be Holzel, and the creature unlocked the door with a key, and handed him a flask of yellow liquid, "for his protection".

Therion dismissed the creature, and the party entered the room behind the door. It was a large hall with its roof supported by several tall pillars. At the far end was a round pool, inside which bubbled a viscous, yellow fluid. Standing by the pool was Lazar, and beside him was Kolthar, who appeared groggy and unsteady on his feet.

Lazar recognised our heroes at a glance, and immediately surmised that they must have defeated his master and taken his clothes and sword. Announcing that he would nevertheless help his master complete the ritual and complete his work, he began to drag Kolthar closer to the edge of the pool.

But before he could push the helpless boy in, Tom leapt forward and cast his throwing knife at Lazar. The blade spun in the air, burst into fire, and buried itself in Lazar's chest. The loyal servant's eyes widened in shock, and then he fell into the pool.

The bubbling of the yellow liquid increased. Therion hurled the flask of yellow liquid into the pool, but that did nothing to quell its stirring. Soon some of the viscous liquid began to extrude from the pool, like so many tentacles. The tentacles began to strike at Tom, burning his skin with acid where they landed. Whisper ran forward and pulled Kolthar to safety, hiding him behind a pillar.

The viscous fluid now formed into a large blob, and with the aid of its tentacles crawled out of the pool and began to move towards the party. Our heroes made for the door, but the creature outside had by now realised that he had been duped by Therion - he locked the door, trapping the party inside the hall.

The blob seemed proof against the heroes' weapons and spells, and for a while things looked grim. Then Therion threw Holzels rapier at the blob - it lodged inside it, but did not seem to do any harm... until Therion started playing his hurdy gurdy; the music caused the rapier to vibrate rapidly, and soon it began to glow with heat. Bubbles began to form inside the blob, and after a while the bubbles rose to the surface of the blob, and steam emerged.

The blob started to move back towards to pool, but our heroes would not allow it. They surrounded it, and set upon it with all their might; bits of the blob were hacked off, and as they fell to the floor they lost their firmness and dissolved into liquid, until at last the blob ceased its movement, lost its form, and became a puddle on the ground. Therion recovered the rapier, and returned it to its sheath.

Our heroes peered into the pool - the water was now still and black, and smelled foul. Therion used the enchantment from his ring to move the water out of the pool, hoping to see how deep it went; but as the water level began to fall, the ground began to shake. Soon the columns started shifting - and the roof slabs began to shift - the hall was collapsing!

Our heroes grabbed Kolthar and rushed to the door, and Giso began to hack at it with his hammer; but Whisper was quicker with her lockpicks, and unlocked the door in a flash, catching the guardian creature by surprise. Giso struck the creature down, and with his glowing shield lighting the way, lead the party through the maze back to the cellar, and from thence out of the mansion. Moments afterwards, the mansion collapsed.

Prepping and Running the Game

The B Team arc was supposed to have ended with the previous session in September, but a few days before that I learned about the module "Weekend at Strahd's", and thought it would make an interest "Halloween Special" finale instead. I ended the session on a cliffhanger, and hoped that the module, which was then yet unreleased, would give me enough material to run a comedic session where the PCs have to go around with the body of the dead count making it look like he was still alive.

Except the module didn't do that.

Still, I liked the idea of the PCs having to do the "Weekend at Bernie's" thing, so I looked for a reason to why they would have to do so. The obvious answer is that they are discovered, and need to hide the fact that they had killed the count. Then I needed to make sure they couldn't just walk out of the castle once they are out of the cavern, so I decided that the carriage was waiting and would be taking them somewhere else. But that still didn't prevent them from jumping out of the carriage, or just running off once they reached their destination...

The breakthrough came when I found the module Laboratory of the Forsaken by Fantasy Craft. The setting of a mansion was of course fitting, as was the idea of a laboratory where a mad scientist had been performing 'unholy' experiments, and the final key was the ghost of the wife of the mad scientist begging the PCs to help her soul rest.

Unfortunately, my players did not go whole hog with the Weekend thing, and only disguised one of themselves as the count. Still, that provided some role-playing opportunities.

The module also gave me a chance to use oozes, something which is an iconic part of D&D, but which I have struggled to fit into Terrinoth. This module allowed me to introduce oozes as a reasonable encounter, and also make them a 'limited edition' monster which have no reason to be found in other locales.

The combat with the two gelatinous cubes was played with slightly modified rules. I picked the maze map on my Big Book of Maps, and placed the PCs in a spot where their exits are blocked by the cubes. The cubes would move one space per turn, while the PCs could move two. This made combat almost like that game where you had to shift blocks of stones around while being pursued by a mummy.

The yellow ooze in the final fight was statted as a Black Pudding, but was given a yellow colour because that was the colour of the model we had. The vial of yellow liquid was supposed to allow one character to be immune to the digestive juices of the ooze, but Therion's player, to everyone's dismay, chose to hurl it into the ooze instead. Fortunately, he did manage to save the day by using the rapier and the Heat Metal spell to defeat the ooze.

All in all we had a fun session, but towards the end I realised that I had committed another error: by allowing them to save the count's heir, they now have a young and potentially impressionable noble who is in their debt. I have no doubt the players will leverage on this.

Once again, the B Team had acquired a strategic asset despite being, well, the B Team in our group. They now have a hidden keep in a swamp which commands a hidden causeway which can be used as a smuggling route, potentially a priory to 'inherit', and the favours of a young noble.

It may be many months before we return to B Team again, but I am keen to complete their involvement with Weiss, the other vampire drug-dealer in this saga. Stay tuned.

Seven Worlds #3 - Divided We Fall

The Magpie tries to stop the opposing fleets from coming to blow

Campaign Diary

"Good news, everyone - " Hassel-Hoffa exclaimed as he walked into the hangar with Nick, Kumra, and AJ, "our old friend Amahrius is here!"

Sure enough, before the crew was Amahrius, his security chief Colben, and assistant Lindsay. Amahrius greeted his old comrades, and explained that he was on a stopover on his way to Mathus, the Tazanian capital, in a last ditch effort to prevent the war; although war had been formally declared, it would be weeks before both sides could mobilise fully - but that window is closing.

After the brief meeting, Nick, Kumra, and AJ boarded the Magpie and began their journey to Caeora, where they would rendezvous with the hab-ship (habitat-ship). Jet would remain at the headquarters to continue his search for Lamar.

(Click here for PC profiles)

Three days afterwards, the crew arrived at Caeora, an industrial planet, where the crew met with the crew of the Kobold, a mining hab-ship: the hab-ship would travel to its destination, whereupon it would "transform" into the miner's workplace and living quarters, and the crew would return on the Magpie.

The Kobold was owned by Capstone Mining, a name which was unfamiliar to AJ. A search online revealed that is was a newly incorporated company, formed just four weeks ago, and jointly owned by a few conglomerates, some of which were based in the United Confederation. Its destination was the Keelan asteroid belt, a region which AJ knew was previously surveyed and found to be not cost-efficient for mining - perhaps Capstone was betting that the coming war would raise the price of whatever resource they were planning to mine and make operations profitable?

Our crew took over the cockpit of the Kobold and docked the Magpie with the larger ship. The first two days of the journey was uneventful, although AJ found his attempts to inspect the operational part of the Kobold or to learn more about the nature of the miners' operations rebuffed, on account of "corporate secrets".

Then, on the third day, just a few hours before the ship would exit hyperspace, Wilson, the chief of the miners, entered the bridge of the Kobold, and pulled his blaster on Nick and ordered him to drop out of hyperspace. Nick attempted to resist, but was knocked out by the blaster. Minutes later, Kumra and AJ, woken up by the jolt of the ship exiting hyperspace, found themselves held at gun-point by four of the miners.

The crew were locked inside a storeroom with no view. Not long afterwards, the ship entered hyperspace again. For three days our heroes planned their escape, and when the ship exited hyperspace once more, Nick decided to feign illness so he could leave the storeroom.

The wary guards opened the door, and the crew now saw that they were dressed in UC military uniforms. The soldiers entered the storeroom warily, with their guns drawn (but still set to stun), and escorted Nick to the infirmary. As he passed by the windows along the way, Nick saw that the Kobold was heading towards a gas giant orbiting a red dwarf; and orbiting the gas giants were dozens of UC warships.

After a quick examination, the medic at the infirmary declared that Nick was in fact fit as an ox, and should be sent back to the storeroom. Nick's attempt to palm a scalpel ended only in him cutting himself, to the amusement of the soldiers. When they opened the door of the storeroom once more, however, AJ and Kumra were ready; the crew rushed the soldiers, knocked them out, and took their blasters.

The crew decided to try to enter the operational area of the Kobold to learn the true nature of the hab-ship, but instead triggered the alarm. With little option left, they stormed the cargo bay to reach the docking port to the Magpie, and entered the freighter... to find its communications module disabled, and its fuel tanks almost empty.

Nick turned on the astronavigation module and learned that they were in the Folken system, right on the border of Tazanian space, and that the only inhabited system they could reach with their limited fuel was Tabari, a border system that linked two more densely colonised parts of the empire. As Kumra and AJ repaired the communication system, Nick took the Magpie away from the Kobold, and headed towards the edge of the gravity well.

They soon found themselves being pursued by a UC frigate, but Nick's skillful piloting allowed them to outdistance their pursuers, and enter into hyperspace.

Two hours later, they emerged at Tabari, where they found a dozen Tazanian warships in orbit. They were soon intercepted by a Tazanian frigate and boarded. The Tazanians at first accused the crew to be spies, but when their identities were made known, they were put in communication with the leader of the Tazanian task force: it was Irkalla, sister of the murdered ambassador and niece of the Tazanian Emperor.

When Irkalla learned of the UC fleet massed at the border, she gave orders for the remaining civilians on Tabari to be evacuated, the task force to prepare for battle, and for the Magpie to be refueled.

Irkalla bade the crew to leave while they still could, for this was not their war, but they refused, believing still that they could stop the war. Not long afterwards, dozens of blips appeared on the starmap screen: the UC had invaded Tazanian space.

As the UC fleet headed towards Tabari the crew was hailed by one of the UC cruisers: it was Wilson, who was in fact a major with the combat engineers - he berated the crew for their actions, which put in jeopardy the UC's plan to end the war swiftly, which would prevent the unnecessary loss of lives.

The crew took the Mapgie between the two fleets, and tried to convince both sides that the whole war had been a set-up. Irkalla replied that regardless of that, the insult to the Imperial house meant war was the only available course of action, while Commodore Holden, commander of the UC fleet, believed that war between the two sides was inevitable anyway, and did not plan to deviate from his orders.

Then, just when the UC fleet was closing into range of the Tazanian fleet, a dozen blips appeared on the starmap, well within the gravity well of the Tabari system. The crew felt the hair on the back of their necks rise. Moments later, the Telenet communications system shut down.

The ships switched over to short-range communications and the crew told Commodore Holden and Irkalla that what they were facing was similar to what the Beowulf had encountered. The new blips began to accelerating at a rate beyond that which was tolerable to human or Tazanian physiology towards Tabari. The UC and Tazanian fleets paused, and then both despatched a few ships to intercept the newcomers. As these ships reached visual range of the newcomers, they relayed the images back to the parent fleets: a dozen... vessels? each the size of a battlecruiser but with an organic appearance, and having no visible means of propulsion, were heading towards them.

Attempts to communicate with these bio-ships were met with missiles that issued from what looked like pores or portholes on their sides. The missiles quickly depleted the shields on the UC and Tazanian ships, and in less than a minute, they were destroyed.

As the bio-ships continued to head towards Tabari, Irkalla ordered the Tazanian fleet to intercept them so the civilian ships could evacuate safely. Commodore Holden issued the same order to the UC fleet, and at Nick's request, ordered Major Wilson's ship to get to the nearby Telenet satellite to attempt to restore its operations.

As the Magpie and Major Wilson's ship headed for the satellite, they could see the bio-ships tear through the fleets, seemingly impervious to their return fire. Despite the best efforts of the small Tazanian force, a couple of the bio-ships broke through their lines, shot down a few civilian transports, and began bombarding Tabari.

More blips appeared on the starmap - it was the second wave of the UC fleet. With Telenet down, there was no way to warn them of the threat.

Wilson's ship was the first to reach the satellite, but before his crew could even dock with the satellite, a bio-ship came within shooting range, and quickly destroyed it and then the satellite.

Nick steered for the edge of the gravity well - with no means to defeat these bio-ships, the best thing they could do now was to warn the rest of the galaxy. He sent another message to Commodore Holden, requesting all the data his fleet gathered on the bio-ships to be sent to the Magpie.

The bio-ship that destroyed the satellite now turned its attention to the Magpie. As Nick pushed the Magpie to its limits, Kumra turned its stern guns on their pursuer. Where the laser struck the body of the bio-ship, the sheen upon it would fade, and then quickly reappear. Kumra kept up the fire, until at last the laser seemed to pierce through the skin of the bio-ship, and ichor spilled into space.

The bio-ship slowed down.

The UC flagship transmitted the scan of the bio-ships to the Magpie, and moments later, beset by three bio-ships, went silent. By now most of the warships were crippled and adrift in space. The bio-ships now spat out larger missiles, which attached themselves to the hulls of these ships: boarding pods.

Nick took the Magpie into hyperspace.


Prepping and Running the Game

This session is based on the second module in the Seven Worlds campaign. The original plot featured a ruse involving a secret jump point, but as my setting did not utilise jump points, I altered it to a secret and technically illegal concentration area within the Neutral Zone.

This session was more rail-roady than the first two, and I committed the GM sins of capturing the PCs, and of not allowing their actions to alter the course of event. Again, my players were cool with it.

In the first half of the session they were proactive in trying to figure out the real purpose of the Kobold and its crew, and while they learned enough to feel that there was something fishy going on, they did not put their suspicions into action.

In the second half of the session the players did some good roleplaying as they tried to convince both sides that the whole war was a set-up and that it was a mistake to come to blows before the mastermind behind the assassination was found; I felt kind of bad that despite their efforts the events would unfold the same way.

The remaining modules are all rail-roady to different extents, which is unavoidable for a seven-episode campaign - I will have to work at ameliorating this.

The climax of the session was the face-off between the two fleets. I think here the use of the map and the starship models helped a lot in setting the scene and making it look more epic.

We will be taking a break from gaming next week, and the week afterwards we will be playing a Halloween game instead, so we will return to this campaign in the month of November. Stay tuned.

Seven Worlds #2 - Rumours of War II

AJ blows a hole in the wall to create an escape route for the crew

Campaign Diary

"Split up!," Nick said, and he quickly stepped away from the lockers. One of the four men headed towards the crew peeled off to followed Nick.

Jet headed towards a side exit, and another man veered to follow him. AJ started to move towards the turnstiles, but just then the crowd leaving a train that had just arrived at the station headed towards them, blocking his way.

As the remaining two men pushed through the crowd to head towards them, Kumra noticed that they each had a hand under their jacket, and started to tear off the door of the locker they had just opened to use as a weapon.

(click here for PC profiles)

But before he could do so, one of them men reached him and, flashing a blaster under his jacket, demanded Kumra hand over what he had found inside the locker. Kumra made a grab for the gun, and after some struggle wrested it from the man. But the fracas has drawn the attention of the other commuters, and soon the station security arrived.

In the meantime, Jet had given his pursuer the slip and reached the car. Driving around the block, he soon spotted AJ, who had also eluded his pursuer. When the duo saw police cars arriving on the scene, they decided to drive off.

Inside the station, the station security had disarmed Kumra, and detained him and Nick, as well as their pursuers. When the police arrived, the men revealed themselves to be Telenet corporate security agents, who had followed the crew after learning that the crew had broken into the home of one of their employees.

All four were brought back to the station, where they were interrogated. Fortunately for the crew, AJ had kept the memory card, and the police did not find anything incriminating on Nick and Kumra. Kumra was released soon afterwards and told that Telenet had decided not to press any charges, but Nick was detained for further investigation into his United Confederation ID tag, which he had illegally removed when he fled the UC years ago.

Kumra reunited with AJ and Jet. AJ called on his contact in the black market to try to identify the memory card, and was told that it could be a military or a proprietary system, which was not accessible by other systems. When Jet's attempt to jury-rig a reader for the card failed, the crew decided to return to Galactic Core Point.

Back at the GTC HQ, the crew reported their findings to Hassel-Hoffa, who informed them that Lamar had mentioned that Telenet had its own hardware and software system, with a proprietary source code that rendered it immune to hacking from other systems. The crew decided that to read the contents of the memory card, they would need to access a Telenet facility... but the security at the Telenet HQ was too advanced to risk a break-in.

Then Kumra had an idea: break into a Telenet satellite!

Now the Telenet satellites were unmanned, but they required a regular supply of fuel, which was what Beowulf was delivering when contact with it was lost. Beowulf had a one-time access code key to the satellite at HP-3 - if the crew could locate Beowulf, and if the key was still on the ship, they might just be able to access the satellite.

The crew prepared for their mission: AJ packed a small supply of explosives, and Kumra obtained three decoy drones, which he set to Beowulf's transponder signal. When they were in hyperspace, Kumra turned off the Magpie's transponder code.

A few days later, the Magpie was at Beowulf's last known location. After several hours of scanning, their sensors located the vessel, adrift in the asteroid field near HP-3. When they reached visual range of Beowulf, they found a two-yard wide hole in the side of its hull - normal docking between the two ships was not going to be possible.

Kumra launched grappling hooks from the Magpie through the hull in Beowulf, set the ship on autopilot to match Beowulf's drift, and the crew donned their vacuum suit and entered the derelict vessel.

The hole opened into the cargo hold, which was empty. The sides of the hole did not appear like it had been made by blaster fire, but that it had been melted or corroded by some form of strong acid. The crew moved to the bow of the ship, and Kumra entered the code to the cockpit - as a safety measure, the doors to a ship are powered by batteries that are separate from the power system of the ship. At that moment, the door to the engineering section in the aft opened, and blaster fire issued from there - pirates!

Jet rolled to one side of the cargo hold and returned fire. Kumra and AJ entered the cockpit to find two more pirates waiting inside with their blasters drawn; but in the confines of the small freighter blasters were of little use - the crew put their fists and feet to work, and soon there were three dead pirates and one begging for his life.

The pirate told the crew that his crew had come upon Beowulf's wreckage several weeks earlier. Boarding the ship, they found signs of violence, but no trace of the crew. They looted the fuel, stripped the ship of its computers, and then decided to use it as bait and attack any salvagers that came after them. Returning with the pirate to the Magpie, Kumra made him contact his ship, which was hiding behind an asteroid.

When the pirate captain learned that his men had inadvertently ambushed Kumra Ka'an, he offered his apology, and agreed to Kumra's proposal to trade the code key he had looted off Beowulf for his men.

The crew waited for the pirate ship to exit the system, and then made their way to the Telenet satellite. The satellite was the size of a small building; while it was designed to operate unmanned, its interior was built to accommodate maintenance and repair crew. Kumra turned one of the decoy drones on, and initiated docking procedures. To the crew's relief, the access code was accepted, and the Magpie docked with the cargo area of the satellite.

Once they were inside, Jet quickly hacked into the door separating the cargo area with the secured area of the station. Using a fire-escape plan they found on the wall, they located the control area.

Entering the control room, they found a computer terminal with a card reader slot that matched the memory card they found. Kumra slid the card into the slot. The screen lit up.

"Please enter your user id and password."

The crew entered Lamar's full name... and then his brother name for the password.

"Password error. Access denied."

On a hunch, Kumra entered the license plate number on Lamar's Mini Cooper.

"Login successful."

The crew let out a small cheer, and Jet began to access the contents of the memory card. It soon became clear that it contained Lamar's personnel file, including his CV, application to Telenet, his interview notes and security check...

As Jet pored over the notes, Kumra and AJ noticed a clanking sound coming from the corridor outside. They popped their heads out of the doorway to find two Mark IV security droids headed towards the room - they must have triggered a silent alarm!

The crew traded fire with the droids, but were soon forced to retreat as two more droids joined the firefight. Kumra shut the sliding door and jammed it with his knife, and yelled for Jet to "find something!" on the file and prepare to leave.

But with four security droids waiting for them outside the only door out of the room, the crew had to find another way out.

AJ set some explosives against the far wall, and the remainder against the door.

Jet got to the last file on the card, which was a memo that read, rather ominously:

Subject is aware of K-code; initiate termination protocol.

"Got it!" he yelled, as he pulled out the memory card.

AJ hit the detonator trigger, and two explosions went off simultaneously. A door-size hole was made in the far wall - the force of the explosion was so great it took out the door in the opposite wall; but the explosion against the door was not sufficient to take out the security droids.

The crew rushed through the hole in the wall. The droids pursued them, shooting blasters from their arms as they did so. Jet was hit several times and wounded. Kumra picked up the loose door from the ground and used it as a shield to cover their retreat. AJ picked up the wounded Jet, and the three fled towards the cargo area and into the safety of the Magpie.

Kumra undocked the ship from the satellite, pulled away, and then decided that for good measure, they should turn around and destroy the area of the station that held the servers and wipe out any camera footage of their break-in.

Then, as the Magpie cleared the gravity well of HP-3, he launched two decoy drones in different directions, and took the Magpie into hyperspace, towards GCP.

When they returned once more to GTC Headquarters, they found Nick already there.

By now the news of the "terrorist attack" on the Telenet satellite dominated the airwaves, with the United Confederation and the Tazanian Empire both accusing the other side of being responsible for it. Curiously, despite Kumra's not-so-elaborate ruse, the name Beowulf was not mentioned in any of the reports. The Tazanian embassy staff had arrived at Mathus, bearing the body of the dead ambassador, and war seemed inevitable now.

Hassel-Hoffa was disappointed that the contents of the memory card did not reveal Lamar's whereabouts, but now the imminent war was the greater worry on everyone's mind. Clearly this was was engineered by someone; but who would want to start a galactic war?

"My mama always said: if you want to know who did it, just follow the money," Jet mused.

His remark gave Hassel-Hoffa a sudden realisation; he left the room, and returned with a thick sheaf of paper. The company, he explained, had received a surge in orders recently, which he had assumed was due to people hoarding before the coming war. Perhaps they could find some pattern that would indicate that some faction had something to gain from a war?

The crew started to look through the orders. Many were from companies that were from the United Confederation, or were partially owned by companies from the UC, but this in it self was not unusual. After a few hours, they decided that the orders seemed rather random, and did not seem to implicate any single organisation, or point to goods being shipped to any particular system.

Then Kumra had a thought: what if the reason why the orders looked so random was because someone had deliberately made them look random?

"Well then perhaps the best way to find out if there is something fishy about these orders, is to deliver one of these orders yourself!" Hassel-Hoffa suggested.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session was a continuation of the first module in the Seven Worlds series, with some amendments. The original module required the PCs to enter a VR fantasy game to find some clues, and then break into Telenet's VR office to decipher those clues. As I have decided to abandon the whole VR things for my campaign, I needed to come up with something else.

I figured that for something as important as the galactic network, Telenet would not be using off-the-shelf technology, so I decided that they had a whole unique software and hardware system that was physically incompatible with other systems, which would make it hard to hack.

Once that was decided, there were two clear sites where the PCs could access the software: a Telenet office, or a Telenet satellite. I guessed correctly that the players would go for a satellite instead of the office, although I was prepared to run with it if they had chosen the office instead.

The session ran pretty much as expected; for the password to Lamar's account I had in mind "minicooper", but when the player suggested the car's license plate number, I thought it made more sense and just went with it.

For the final part of the session I was very glad that Jet's player made the "follow the money" remark, which allowed me to segue into the plotline about the increase in freight orders.

We are taking a break coming Monday, and the session the week after will reveal a major plot point, before we break for a couple of weeks as I go on a short vacation. Stay tuned.

Tribal Trojan War variant

A rather low resolution photo from today's game (yes, I have a cheap handphone), but when you are hanging out with old friends, getting high quality photos of the game, or even the game itself, is not a top priority.

We finally got to try out the Trojan War rules modifications I made to the Tribal game today. We played a small game, with two chariots and two units of foot on each side. My Hero was the first to fall to wahj's Hero, who in turn fell to a unit of foot. Martin's Chief then dismounted, stripped one set of armour, loaded it onto his chariot and ordered his driver to take it back to camp, then stripped the other set of armour, commandeered my chariot, and drove off, with fg's Chief powerless to stop him. The number of Honour points both sides had at the end was equal, but we thought Martin's side won.

The rules seem a little broken, since Heroes and Chiefs are vulnerable to only missile and thrown weapons when they are mounted, but they have to dismount to strip armour, which made them vulnerable. I suppose in future games we need more foot units, including at least one unit of missile troops on each side.

After the game we talked about other projects, and decided that we should perhaps finally get a game of aeronef going. I have in fact been having thoughts of that recently, and I have a bit of a headstart with my Dystopian Wars Ottoman ships. We are all of the opinion that whatever set of rules we choose should be simple, so if you have any suggestion, do let us know in the comments.

Seven Worlds #1 - Reunion and Rumours of War

The crew reunite (bottom right corner, from L to R): Marcelius Coban, Amahrius, Lindsay, Nick Johnson, Kumra Ka'an, and AJ Stamper. 

Campaign Diary

Our story begins at the headquarters of the Galactic Teamsters' Guild (GTC), where Nick Johnson, Kumra Ka'an, and AJ Stamper (see PC profiles here) had all come to attend the funeral of their former employer, James (Jimmy) Hassel-Hoffa XXVIth.

As the chief mourner delivered his eulogy, our crew, meeting for the first time in more than fifteen years, updated each other on their lives.

Nick, after the events of the last campaign, took to drinking, which doomed the Private Investigator business he set up; however, he had since managed to quit alcohol, and now relied on the constant consumption of coffee to get him through the day.

Kumra cashed out and bough the Magpie, their old ship, and started a business as an independent freight operator, although he was not averse to the the occasional less-than-legal deal when business was bad. His temper, however, prevented him from retaining a crew, and at the moment he was operating solo.

AJ too took to drinking, but was otherwise able to stay sober long enough to start and run a mining company of his own; however, his alcoholism had caused his partners to question his reliability, and strained their relationship.

When the chief mourner had finished the eulogy, the guests were invited to view the deceased one last time. As our crew passed his open coffin, Hassel-Hoffa suddenly sat up, and exclaimed:

"Good news, everyone - I'm not actually dead!"

He then took a stack of credits out of his suit pocket, and called Jet, a brawny young man, to hand them out to the mourners (who were in fact all hired actors) while he and the crew had a meeting.

Our bewildered crew followed Hassel-Hoffa to the conference room, where he explained that he had come up with the ruse as they had avoided his emails. The United Confederation (UC) government, he explained, was holding a parade at their Headquarters in New York to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the signing of the Second Galactic Peace Treaty between The United Confederation and the Tazanian Empire, and the crew, instrumental to the peace, were invited to attend.

After confirming that the trip would be fully-paid for by the UC, our crew accepted the invitation.

Hassel-Hoffa then revealed that he had another reason for wanting the crew to travel to Earth. His brother Lamar Hassel-Hoffa, he explained, was a software genius working for Telenet, which installed and operated the galaxy-wide communications satellites that allowed communications between stars systems and ships while in hyperspace. (Prior to the invention of Telenet, ships had to upload communications from the 'cloud' at their origin system before a jump, and then download the data to the 'cloud' at their destination system, and were unable to communicate while in hyperspace.)

Four weeks ago, the GTC lost the ship "Beowulf" near HP-3, an uninhabited planet where a Telenet satellite was deployed. The final audio transmission to the GTC indicated that the crew were surprised by the sudden appearance of a ship close to them, and within the gravity well of the planet, before communications was suddenly cut off.

(Hyperspace travel was sensitive to gravity, and it was not possible to jump into or out of hyperspace within the gravity well of a system.)

Hassle-Hoffa then played the audio recording from "Beowulf" for the crew, who felt the hair on the back of their necks stand at the moment when Beowulf's crew detected the other ship.

Hassel-Hoffa forwarded the recording to his brother, asking if he knew of any similar occurrence at any of the other Telenet satellites. Lamar replied that he would look into it, but Hassel-Hoffa received no communications for the next few weeks. When he finally decided to contact Telenet, he was told that Lamar had disappeared suddenly, and that the police had been unable to locate him, despite the fact that tracking devices were implanted in all UC citizens.

The Telenet office and Lamar's home were located in Boston, and Hassel-Hoffa asked our crew to drop by after the parade in New York to see if they could learn more about Lamar's disappearance. He would send Jet, a new employee, as their assistant and driver, as well as to pay all the bills along the way.

Ten days later, our crew found themselves in New York, standing in line to clear security to enter the restricted area cordoned off for the parade, which would be held in front of the UC Building (formerly the UN Building). After passing through the cordon, guests had to walk half a mile to the building, past displays set up to tell the story of the UC, the First Galactic War and the First Galactic Peace Treaty, as well as The Order and the Second Galactic Peace Treaty that resulted from its rise and fall. The trail ended at Ralph Bunche Park. For a few moments our crew stood before the steel obelisk Peace Form One as they recalled the Serran Guidestones that led to their involvement in the crisis so many years ago, and when they were reading the inscription below, they heard a chirpy female voice behind them:

"Remarkable, isn't it? He was the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize, at a time when his people were an oppressed minority. It reminds me of the plight of the Serrans and the mission of the Serran Brotherhood."

They turned to see a young Serran woman, who introduced herself as Lindsania ("call me Lindsay!"), Amahrius' personal assistant. She escorted the crew through a second security cordon at the gates of the UC Building, and then through a third to enter the viewing gallery. Here were hundreds representative and dignitaries from the UC, the Tazanian Empire, and the many worlds of the Neutral Zone. Lindasy led them through the crowd to Amahrius and his Security Chief Marcelius Coban. Amahrius expressed his regret for not being able to attend Hassel-Hoffa's funeral due to his work at the Serran Brotherhood for Peace, and was told that it had all been a ruse to get the crew to come to Earth.

The parade began, and our crew took their seats in the gallery overlooking the street below where floats and marching contingents passed. Suddenly, Nick noticed synchronised footsteps behind him. He turned just in time to see three UC security troopers raise their blaster pistols. He called out a warning, but it was too late - the troopers fired several shots into the Tazanian party.

AJ charged at the troopers, but a female Rakashan intercepted him. The two struggled for a while, until AJ managed to restrain her.

"Assassin!" she hissed at AJ.

"No! I am trying to help!" AJ replied.

"Then release me!" the Rakashan said.

AJ released the Rakashan, but the attack had ended: a Rakashan bodyguard had ripped the throat of one of the troopers, while Kumra had broken the neck of a second with a single punch, while he was held in an arm-lock by Nick; the third trooper turned his blaster on himself, and shot himself through his chin.

More security troopers entered the gallery to restore order, and it soon became apparent that the target of the attack was Archduke Emmul, the Tazanian Ambassador to the UC, and nephew of the Tazanian Emperor. The female Rakashan, the ambassador's sister, now carried his limp form from the stands.

"You have murdered the Emperor's sister-son while he was under your protection. Such treachery can only be repaid by war; may your gods have mercy on your souls, for ours will not," she declared.

As she exited the gallery, she turned to AJ, and said, "Thank you."

The area was locked down, but no one dared to stop the Tazanian party. When at last they were allowed to leave, the crew returned to their hotel, where they tried to contact Amahrius to see if he could help them gain a meeting with the Tazanians so they could offer their help, but Lindsay, who answered the phone, informed them that Amahrius was in meeting with the UC authorities.

But it was already too late: they could now see on the TV Irkalla, the ambassador's sister, carrying his body through the spaceport lobby, flanked by armed Tazanians, while the UC security troopers stood by, too stunned and too afraid to stop them. After a few minutes, the Tazanian ship took off. It would be two weeks until the ship arrived back at Mathus, the Rakashan home-world. Then, war will begin.

Unwilling to stand idle while the galaxy headed towards war once more, our crew leapt into action. Nick called on his friend Edwards in the police, while Kumra asked his contacts in the criminal world if they had any information on the three attackers. Kumra's contacts drew a blank, but with Edward's help the crew were able to enter the morgue and speak with the medical examiner (which turned up little additional information), and learn the address of the trooper who shot himself, whose name was Finn Holden.

Jet drove the crew to the Holden residence, where Nick, giving the story that he had previously worked with Finn, gained his father's confidence. There, they learned that the elder Holden was a retired UC security trooper, and that young Finn had wanted to follow his father's footsteps since he was a child. He joined the academy after graduation, and had been a security trooper for four years. Like all security troopers, Finn had cleared psychological evaluations, background checks, and had no debts - there was no explanation for his actions. To comfort the grieving man, AJ offered mind-control as an explanation. The crew promised to get to the bottom of things, and left.

That night and the following day the news was filled with discussion on the impending war, from the UC top brass reassuring the people that they would both try their utmost to resolve the issue with diplomacy, and that they were ready for war, to military pundits giving their views on the relative military prowess of the two sides, to market analysts predicting a crash when the bourses open on Monday.

Amahrius called the crew that morning, apologising for not doing so sooner as he was caught in the emergency meeting after the shooting. The Serran Brotherhood would send envoys to Mathus, he informed them, but he warned them that the chances of a peaceful resolution was slim: in Rakashan culture, a man was considered the chief protector of his sister's sons, and for the ambassador to be killed while performing a duty assigned to him by his uncle was an affront that the Emperor could only respond to with war; that the ambassador was shot in the back instead of dying in combat as a Rakashan noble was expected to made it even worse.

When the crew told Amahrius that they wanted to find out the truth behind the assassination, Amahrius bade them instead to leave Earth as soon as they could, and to find a quiet corner of the galaxy to hunker down until the war was over.

With space travel still closed, our crew decided to make their way to Boston.

At Telenet headquarters in Downtown they met Stanley Morgan, the Vice President for Software Research, who told them that Lamar was working on the next-generation upgrade to the Telenet system when he suddenly disappeared. The company had co-operated with police investigations, and conducted their own investigations, but were unable to find any clues. Due to the nature of Lamar's work, he was unable to reveal any details of his research to the crew.

With little to go on, the crew traveled to Jamaica Plain, where Lamar had his residence. The crew broke into the Lamar's home, and found the place thoroughly searched by the police and his computers removed. AJ spotted a high-end bug in Lamar's study, but was unable to tell who had planted it.

The crew then visited Lamar's neighbour across the street. As it turned out the owner was one Professor Velkmann, a professor of Classics and Greek History at the nearby Hellenic College. Professor Velkmann was a friend of Lamar, and the two would often visit each other at their homes and have long conversations. When Nick expressed his surprise that a software scientist and a professor of history had many topics in common, Professor Velkmann waved a hand at the ancient artifacts that decorated his living room.

The artifacts that a culture leaves behind, he explained, reflected its people's aspirations: a totem mask, for example, reflected the importance a culture placed on the spirit world and their connection to that world. And Telenet, which Lamar worked on, he mused, likewise reflected their culture's aspiration: to communicate, and through communication, to bring about understanding and peace.

Our crew then revealed that they had come at the request of Lamar's brother; Professor Velkmann recognised the crew, and knew that they had worked for Hassel-Hoffa. He handed them something that Lamar had passed him a couple of weeks before his disappearance, with the instruction to pass it to his brother when he visited: it was a car key, but not that of a "modern" car, but an older, antique car.

Our crew left the Professor and returned to Lamar's home and entered his garage. Inside, they found a modern car, its navigation system removed by the police, and a Mini Cooper, lovingly restored, in British Racing Green, and a Union Jack painted on its roof. The car key fit the Mini.

Searching the interior of the car, the crew found a second key in the glove compartment, this time that to a train station locker. Under the dashboard, Kumra found a homebuilt device that drew power from the car battery, and connected to a servo-motor under the hood that connected to the car's steering system. The crew removed the device and opened it, and were able to determine that it was a custom-made computer, but were unable to determine its purpose. Jet suggested they tried to connect the device to a computer, and drove the party to a nearby RadioShack. There, with various parts from the bargain bin, he was able to put together a computer that enabled him to determine that the device was built to navigate the car via servo-motors based on dead-reckoning, without accessing any external positional satellite or beacon. By superimposing the directions to a local map, Jet determined that the destination was Forest Hills station, not far from Lamar's home.

It was evening when the crew arrived at Forest Hills station. There were few commuters inside, and they soon located the locker. Inside, they found something that resembled a memory card, but did not look like it fit any of the current computer ports. As they stood at the lockers, wondering what to make of their find, Nick noticed four men headed towards them...

Prepping and Running the Game

This is a rather long campaign diary, as I had to get a lot of plot exposition and foreshadowing done.

The core plot of the session (and that of the campaign, really) is based closely on Seven Worlds, but I have of course changed the scale of the campaign from a few solar systems to the entire galaxy, and I based the main NPCs of the campaign on the NPCs the PCs have met in their previous campaign - in fact, Amahrius was one of the PCs.

When I pitched the campaign to the players, I told them to tell me what their characters had been up to in the intervening 15 years. Not surprisingly, all of them developed a substance dependence issue.

The first half of the session was a bit of a railroad, and the players went along because they knew that was the campaign I planned. What surprised me however was how the players rose to the occasion and took it upon themselves to "get to the bottom of things" and stop the galactic war. This is in stark contrast with the previous campaign when they were space truckers who were just trying to get the delivery job done without complications. At one point I had to tell them that this campaign different from the previous one, and that they should not expect to solve all the problems I throw at them in a single session.

I had a lot of fun researching for this session. For a start I decided that the UC Building would be the old UN Building, and looking at Google maps I noticed the Isaiah Wall and then Peace Form One. It occurred to me that the park would make a nice bit of foreshadowing to the campaign.

Once the attack had taken place, the players went into full gear, taking initiative in trying to first stop the Tazanian diplomatic team from leaving Earth, and then trying to investigate the three assassins. I had to make up backgrounds for the three of them on the spot, and when Nick called on his contact, I had to come up with an NPC on the fly too.

I feel a little bad that they are trying so hard to stop a war, when in truth *spoiler alert* war will come.

I set the second part of the session in Boston since it was a nice distance from New York, and the PCs could make it there and back in a single day. I had fun learning about the many neighbourhoods of Boston. The Mini Cooper was supposed to lock the PCs in itself and then drive them to the train station, but the players were cautious, which allowed Jet, the new character whose player could not attend this session, to show off what he was capable of.

At the end of the session I insisted the players write down the names of all the NPCs whom they have interacted with, partly because many of them would feature in future sessions, and partly because I was not sure I would remember the names I made up.

Over all this was not a session that gave the players many opportunities to affect the game world, but as a lead-in session, I think it achieved its purpose of introducing the major NPCs and plot elements, as well as allowing the players to get their characters invested in the plot.

Getting Ready for Savage Worlds Campaign

One of the fun things I enjoy doing as a GM is to prepare the hardware for the system which make GMing and playing a smoother experience.

I am expecting to receive my Savage Worlds Adventure Edition boxed set in a couple of weeks, but I have already started my preparations.

The first of these things I prepare was the GM screen. The boxed set will come with a 4-panel GM screen, but I am used to the 2-panel, A4 landscape format. These are easy to DIY: just two clipboards taped together with gaffer's tape, printed reference charts and tables clipped to the inside, and some themed artwork on the outside. I've put one of my MCDM stickers on the screen because I don't really know what else to do with them.

I've also made a few cards with 'Parry/Toughness' on them to put inside some plastic card holders. I plan to write the Parry and Toughness of the PCs' opponents on these with dry erase markers and plonk them down so the players can see them, which should make combat go faster.

Similarly, I have decided to use the 'tent' format character sheet for this campaign. I printed the character sheets on two sides, and placed them in these plastic folders which have a clear pocket as the front flap of the folder.

The thing about Savage Worlds is that 'hit points'/wounds and fatigue levels and such can be easily tracked with counters, so there is no real need for players to make any change to their character sheets during the game. The tent format of the character sheet means that, when placed in front of them, the players can see all their stats, and at the same time the GM can see those stats which are used in combat too, again making combat go faster. When the folder is flipped open, the players can see the other information like gear and details of their edges. There is also a half-pocket in which I have placed a copy of the players' reference, and which they can use to keep notes and handouts.

I own the Litko tokens for the previous edition of Savage Worlds. The new version of Savage Worlds introduced several more states, which the boxed set have tokens for. However, I wanted the new Litko ones to match my existing set. Having more than a dozen different types of tokens meant I needed an efficient way of organising them. I got a multi-compartment plastic box from the two-dollar store which was just the right size and had the right number of compartments for the tokens. To make it easier to find the right token, I had to label each compartment. To make the labels easily visible when the box is placed on the table, I decided to affix them at the 'wall' of the compartment. I used translucent tape, which makes the words visible, yet does not make the box look cluttered.

Terrinoth #41 - Blood & Gold, finale

Therion takes shelter in the pool, while the rest battle the Count

Campaign Diary

For the whole morning the party (click here for PC profiles) traveled westwards along the south bank of the Flametail River. A little after noon, a fog began to rise and cover the river. Our heroes pushed on, until at last they saw a dark shape loom a short distace ahead of them. A sudden gust of wind parted the fog long enough for them to see a small castle upon an island in the middle of the river: castle Pfalzenstein.

The party hid themselves and their mule cart among the vegetation by the river, and observed the castle from a distance. A pair of guards patrolled the ramparts of the castle, while another one stood watch at the top of the keep in the centre. As they watched, they saw a barge coming across the river to the bank they are on; on the barge was a familiar-looking carriage. With the aid of some men along the shore, the driver of the carriage drove the carriage onto the shore, and soon the carriage was moving past our heroes. Inside the carriage rode the steward, Lazar, and a young man with dark hair and dark eyes.

With the way to the castle watched constantly by guards, our heroes decided to steal their way into the castle late at night. Whisper stole a boat from a farmstead upstream, and with the aid of Therion's water magic, the party moved silently across the river to reach the little island.

Here, once more with the aid of Therion's magic, Tom scaled the wall of the castle unseen and opened the gate to let the others in. A quick reconnoiter of the compound showed that walls of the castle surrounded a small compound, in the middle of which stood the keep. The door to the keep was not found at the ground level, but was reached by a wooden bridge that spanned from the ramparts of the wall. Near the gate was a well.

Tom once more ascended the walls, and from there let down a rope, which the others then climbed up. Then Whisper crossed the bridge silently, and picked the lock to the door - the party entered the keep, and shut the door behind them.

Even now, within the keep, they did not let their guard down. They found themselves in a hall, which was dimly lit by the moonlight streaming in from the narrow windows. On one end of the hall was a spiral staircase. Our heroes debated where to go in whispers, and at last deferred to Giso's wisdom to head downwards.

The level below the hall turned out to be the servants' quarters, and our heroes took care to not wake them. Descending further, our heroes found themselves in the storage area, which was piled full of sacks of wheat, barrels of beer, and preserved meat. With the rest of the party unable to see in the dark, Whisper had to do most of the searching, Her keen eyes soon noticed that a path had been left that led to one corner of the room. Walking to the end of the path, she found an empty barrel placed against the corner of the room. She shifted the barrel aside, and found a loose flagstone beneath it. She lifted the flagstone, and found a flight of stairs descending into the ground below.

With their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them, the party gingerly made their way down the stairs, in complete darkness. It was only when they were all underground and had replaced the flagstone above them that Giso dared to conjure up a light. The steps of the stairs were cut into living rock and were clean. They led some twenty foot into the ground, which Whisper surmised would take them to the level of the river.

At the bottom of the stairs a narrow corridor led to a heavy wooden door, which was unlocked. With their weapons drawn, our heroes pushed open the door, and stepped beyond it...

Our heroes found themselves in a large cavern, party-natural, part-shaped by hand. On one side of the cavern was a pool of water, which was illuminated from above by moonlight shining through the well in the courtyard above. Niches were carved into the walls of the cavern, and within them were sarcophagi.

Our heroes crept silently into the cavern, but were interrupted by a voice calling out to them:

"It took you long enough. But tell me, have you taken care of Weiss?"

They followed the source of the voice to the other side of the hall. Here, on a dais, was a long table, upon which was placed alchemical apparatus, books, and other paraphernalia. A man in a noble's clothes sat at the table. His skin was pale, and his eyes and hair dark. On his belt he wore an ornate rapier. He was the Count of Pfalzenstein.

Our heroes at first tried to feign ignorance, but the Count made it clear that he knew who they each was.

Our heroes demanded to know his purpose for poisoning the populace of Tamalir with Red Mist. The Count replied that the creation of Red Mist was but a 'hobby' to him - something to pass the boredom brought about by the gift of immortality; the ill effects of Red Mist, he explained, was but an unfortunate side-effect of his diversion. Alchemy, he elaborated, was a passion of his, and he had for years tried to find a way to keep vampire blood stable in sunlight, a task which he accomplished a while ago.

On a whim he decided to let his servant Lazar sell it as a drug to the rich and famous of Tamalir to see its effects and, after the novelty had worn off, had decided to end the business. However, the emergence of a rival drug-dealer, which also meant the presence of a rival vampire who had also found the secret to keeping vampire blood stable, piqued his interest again, and he set himself the aim of destroying this upstart. When Lazar's thugs failed to find and eliminate this rival, he turned to our heroes, who did the job, but not well enough. Soon afterwards, Weiss, his rival, would use his own tactic against him, and trick our heroes into breaking up his Red Mist business.

Now the Count made an offer to our heroes: help him hunt down and destroy Weiss, and he would end his Red Mist business altogether. After all, he asked, had they not come because they wished to see the drug trade ended?

Whisper asked the Count if this meant he would not think up other schemes that might harm the people of Tamalir, but the Count would not commit.

Frustrated by this, Giso bellowed out a warcry, and sent forth three scorching rays of light that struck the Count. Injured and enraged, the Count swept the contents of his tabletop towards the party, and as the glassware struck the floor and broke, a red mist began to form, and soon our heroes were caught in a cloud of noxious gas.

Holding their breaths, our heroes backed out of the cloud, even as the Count strode into the middle of it, seemingly unaffected by the gas. He did not draw his rapier, but from his hands he sent out tendrils of darkness, which when they struck our heroes drained strength from their limbs, and held them immobile. Therion began a song of encouragement to the party, and our heroes began darting into and out of the cloud, attacking the Count in turn as a pack of wolves would. But the Count had supernatural speed and strength, and when he struck our heroes with his bare hands he sent them hurtling through the air.

Still, Therion's clarion voice lifted their morale, and they continued their attack on the count, who summoned forth undead servants from the sarcophagi. Giso called upon the aid of Kellos to keep the undead servants at bay, and sent one of them fleeing back into its sarcophagus.

Soon the red mist dissipated, and the Count sought to hunt down Therion, who fled into the pool at the other end of the hall, which the undead servants would not follow.

With the threat of the mist gone, the other heroes closed in on the Count; Giso drew his attacks and fended off his blows with his shield; Tom attacked with his makeshift spear of bog-oak tip; Whisper attacked with a bog-oak stake as well as her fist. Surrounded and outnumbered, the Count in the end succumbed to an enchantment from Therion, and fell to the ground laughing manically. Then, in the moments before his death, he turned to Therion, lifted his rapier, and said: take this.

At the moment that the Count died, the undead servants too fell dead.

For a moment there was silence, but before our heroes could catch their breaths, they heard footsteps coming from the corridor which they had entered from...


Prepping and Running the Game

This was supposed to be the final session in the Blood & Gold arc for the B Team, but I ended the session on a cliff-hanger for a reason which I will reveal later.

This session was not based on any module, but was a natural continuation of the story so far. I knew I wanted them to fight the Count in his lair, which meant I needed to make him a lair. After the previous session, I also knew I needed to give the players more confidence that they are on the right track.

The lair which I chose for the Count was Pfalzgrafenstein Castle, and actual Rhine castle. Honestly: does this not look like it should be a vampire castle?

I managed to find plans of the castle from a site by a guy who made a Lego version of the castle. From there, it was a job of deciding what each of the rooms held. I made a list of the number of guards, servants, and retainers who would be found inside the castle, as well as on the river bank, and bought a random items table to fill the Count's study in the top floor of the keep (which the PCs did not visit).

As this was sort of a heist scenario, I had to be prepared for different approaches. I had the boatmen on the river bank who I thought would welcome the PCs and perhaps give them more information about the castle and the Count if they had decided to approach them.

The Count, I decided, had a 'system' for keeping his identity hidden over the centuries. He would marry a noblewoman, bring her to his castle, and then murder her, kidnap a baby who looked like him, and then announce that his wife had died in labour. The child would be raised as his heir, and then when he reached a certain age, would also be murdered, and the Count would then take his place and announce that the old count had passed away. To keep this ruse up, he would routinely change the guards and other servants in his castle.

Unfortunately, the players decided to take a stealthy approach, which meant that they managed to not interact with any NPC until the boss fight. Also, by choosing to go directly into the keep, and once inside to go down instead of up, they managed to avoid all the guards and the bodyguard, whose stats I had ready behind my screen.

We had a bit of fun roleplaying the stealthy approach though. To illustrated how dark the inside of the castle looked, I actually switched the lights inside my apartment off for a while. For most of the session, the players were actually whispering to each other as they discussed what to do.

The actual conversation with the Count was also done in-character, and I think for a while they were in fact tempted to work with the Count.

For the Count's stats I chose to base them off the Deathlock Mastermind instead of a Vampire. A Vampire as written would have been too powerful for the party, and was also to me a little too predictable. The Realms of Terrinoth book did not give vampires the classic Dracula powers, but gave them some ranged magical abilities, so that was what I wanted to do too. The Deathlock Mastermind had both a formidable melee attack, as well as a ranged magical attack which could keep attackers away from himself. I wanted also to do the movie vampire thing where their melee attacks were so powerful they would fling an opponent they struck backwards, so I ruled that he would throw an opponent back by a number of squares equal to the damage he inflicted, and that the opponent would be prone. In addition, I decided to give him Legendary Resistance and Legendary Actions. On top of all this, I decided that for his opening move, he would do the Breaking Bad thing of using a chemical attack, which would further weaken the PCs.

Despite all that, and the addition of three minions based on Deathlock stats, the fight was less deadly than I had hoped as the Count managed to roll below 8 for most of his attacks. At the same time, Therion's player managed to resist the temptation to attack, and instead stayed in a supportive role throughout the combat, which gave the others just enough temporary hit points to stay alive. The fight lasted for 6 or 7 rounds, but seemed longer because of the Legendary Actions and the presence of the minions. The PCs actually managed to force me to use my my Legendary Resistances, and won the fight the honest way.

Still, as a back-up in case I rolled really well or they rolled poorly, I had the three Justicars on stand-by, ready to rappel down the well, having decided to follow the PCs.

The battle mat is once again from Heroic Maps, specifically their Down The Well map set. I have been using my map books for the past few sessions, but the layout of the Down The Well set is just so evocative, I could not help using it as the arena for my boss fight.

When the fight ended I told the players they hear footsteps coming, and then paused the game there. We skipped ahead a bit give them the dropped loot and to roll for random loot, but I told them these would not be in their possession until we resolved the next session...

And the reason why I had to end the session this way is because of this:

I saw this announced a couple of days before I ran this session, and I thought it would be a hilarious way to end off the arc, similar to how we ended the A Team arc on a The Hangover parody. I have originally planned to not game on the Monday before Halloween (it being a long weekend and I try to avoid gaming on a long weekend so the players can spend time with their families), but now it seemed like the perfect date for the perfect scenario.

The module will only be released on 01 October, so I am taking a bit of a risk planning the next session based on a cover, but hopefully there is enough material for me to work something out.

Eureka Miniatures Bronze Age Greeks and Cutting Edge Miniatures Sea Peoples

I resumed work on my Trojan Wars project last weekend and managed to have a few more units painted.

The first was this chariot from Eureka Miniature's Bronze Age Greek line. These have a classic Eureka chunky look, and paint up nicely. The rail chariot is an interesting piece, and requires you to actually bend the rails to fit the base of the chariot. It makes for an easier, sturdier construction, actually.

I wanted to get dismounted versions of the same characters, but the foot figures come with head options; Nic was kind enough to ensure that the heads that came in my pack were the same as those of the riders.

I also painted this Sea Peoples chariot from Cutting Edge Miniatures, which sell their  stuff through Warlord Games.

They are smaller in scale than Eureka's figures, and have a slimmer look.

I painted up a unit of foot figures too. The figure with the blue shield in the middle is actually a third rider from the chariot pack, but I decided to base him on foot to serve as the dismounted version of the hero.

I still have two more units from Cutting Edge to paint - a unit of Early Achaean spearmen and a unit of Sea Peoples Levy javelinmen - but with four chariots done I have enough to playtest the Trojan Wars variant of Tribal.

Seven Worlds Campaign - Prologue

A New Campaign

The Terrinoth B Team campaign arc is scheduled to come to an end next week, and we will be starting a new campaign at the end of this month.

Now I plan my gaming schedule way in advance. Like, nine months in advance. As early as the end of last year I had planned to run another Savage Worlds sci-fi campaign, using the new Adventurer's Edition of the rules, which I backed on Kickstarter. With a promised June delivery date, I reckoned an August start date would be conservative... but it seems now that the physical books will reach me some time in October, so I will have to use the pdf for now...

For a while I could not decide between running Seven Worlds, or a sequel of our Gamma World campaign, but after re-watching The Expendables and its sequels on Netflix, I decided I would do Seven Worlds after all.

While Seven Worlds has a harder sci-fi setting with a much lower tech level than the setting I used for my previous campaign, and the central techs featured in the modules will not apply to my campaign, the central threat/conflict fit the story of my setting very well, which brings us to...

The story so far...

The new campaign takes place 15 years after the end of the first one.

About three centuries ago, humanity developed faster-than-light travel and began colonising nearby systems. As they explored further from Earth towards the centre of the galaxy they came into contact with alien civilisations, and together they formed the United Confederation, a (Star Trek) Federation analogue for our world.

Eventually, the Confederation came into contact with the expansionist Tazanian Empire, based on the other side of the galaxy. A century-long war ensued, until both sides decided to conclude a peace to preserve their respective polities.

Each power retained the core systems close to their respective capitals, and large swathes of the galaxy were designated as the Neutral Zone. Under the terms of the treaty, ships from both sides were forbidden from entering the Neutral Zone. As a result, shipping companies based in the Neutral Zone that would ply the routes between them sprang into existence, and it was in one of these companies that we found our heroes, among whom were:

Nick Johnson, a human ex-cop from the Confederation who fled to the Neutral Zone after being framed for the murder of his wife by one Rian Raynaud.

Kumra Ka'an, a space yeti with a criminal past.

RB-62, a reprogrammed utility droid.

AJ Stamper, a space-miner made redundant when his company decided to use droids as workers.

Amahrius, formerly captain of the Royal Guard of the Serran-ruled planet of Hirceptus, who had to flee his homeworld after being framed for the murder of the Empress.

(They will be joined in the new campaign by Jet Black, an orphan from the streets with a flair for tech, who joined the Galactic Teamsters' Guild for the chance to travel and see the galaxy.)

Over the course of the campaign the crew were caught up in the activities of The Order, a political movement that emerged not two years ago near a region of the galaxy known as the Dead Zone (on account of all the uninhabitable planets found there). System after system joined The Order, sometimes suddenly and inexplicably, even though there seemed to be no uniting cause for the movement.

Eventually the crew learned that The Order had been 'brainwashing' people to join them by means of psychic power (a power which was unknown in the galaxy at that point) which they were able to project by proximity (out to a dozen light years or so away), or by means of strange stone obelisks.

During this time, Amahrius and the crew rescued Princess Aiel of Hirceptus, who was held prisoner by the usurper Prince Kol'vyl. She revealed that the prince was the mastermind behind the murder of the Empress, and that he was also the secret leader of The Order.

Using the information provided by the princess, the crew set off to investigate The Order, and eventually learned the story behind The Order.



Millennia ago, the Serran race developed primitive space flight. As they traveled to other systems, they realised that their innate psychic powers allowed them to dominate the other species found there. Slowly, they began to conquer these other worlds bloodlessly. As the range of their space travel increased, they learned that their powers faded if they were too far away from their colonies. The Serran priests learned that the psychic power of the race in fact flowed from the bedrock of their home planet and through each Serran via an invisible link that was weakened by distance. To remedy this, they carved twelve obelisks from the top of their sacred mountain, which they called guidestones, placed them into twelve cathedral ships which formed the flagships of the Serran fleets, and so the Serrans vastly increased their dominion, spreading to the far reaches of the galaxy.

For a while the Serrans were masters of the galaxy, but things took a turn when they came upon Mathus, the home planet of the feline Rakashan. The Rakashans were immune to psychic powers, and their primitive warships took the Serrans by surprise and defeated and captured the Serran fleet sent to conquer the planet. The Rakashans were able to commandeer and up-arm the Serran ships and use their navigational data to find the other Serran colonies, even though they were unable to duplicate their faster-than-light engines. Slowly but surely, the aggressive Rakashans conquered one Serran colony after another, with each victory giving them more ships and resources.

The Serrans, never a numerous people, fled before the Rakashan invasion, and destroyed their colonies in their retreat, which resulted in the formation of the Dead Zone. Eventually their homeworld was lost, their people enslaved, and as the psychic chains that linked their colonies broke, the Serran overlords were overthrown in those colonies not yet reached by the Rakashans. Only on a few worlds did the Serrans remain the dominant people, and one of these was Hirceptus. The history of the Serrans, now scattered across a hundred planets, were suppressed, both by their erstwhile subjects and the Serrans themselves, for fear of persecution, and eventually tales of both their psychic powers and their imperial history would be forgotten.

For their part the Rakashans soon fell into internal warfare, and as their Serran ships were destroyed in civil wars, they lost their capacity for long-distance space travel, and with it the memory of their brief first empire. It would take centuries before the Rakashans would develop the technology that will allow them to form the Tazanian Empire.



Millennia later, Prince Kol'vyl, a star-archaeologist, would come across records from this period, and begin to search for the Serran homeworld and the lost cathedral ships. When he located the wreckage of one of the cathedral ships on a planet in the Dead Zone, his latent psychic abilities was awakened by the guidestone contained within. The prince kept his discovery secret, even as he began initiating and training an order of psychic warriors, with the grand ambition of restoring the Serran Empire.

When his schemes were discovered by the Empress, he had her assassinated and took over Hirceptus. Then, acting behind the scenes, he began to engineer the rise of The Order.

When The Order became sufficiently powerful, they began to encroach on the territories of the Tazanian Empire. As these incursions increased, the Tazanian Empire threatened to retaliate against The Order - unfortunately, when the peace treaty was written a century ago, neither power predicted a time when a third power would arise within the Neutral Zone that would have the power to threaten either of the signatories, so any military action by the Tazanian Empire would breach the terms of the peace, and draw the Confederation into a second galactic war. As tension rose between the two great powers, a peace negotiation was called on the Galactic Core Point to try to avert war.

With Princess Aiel by their side, the crew presented evidence of Prince Kol'vyl's machinations at the conference, but the revelation only made the Tazanians more determined to go to war, and by then it seemed The Order was too powerful to be stopped except by war.

In a last ditch effort to stop The Order, the crew seized one of the guidestones, and traveled to the Serran homeworld, now a Tazanian colony, for it was predicted that the return of one of the guidestones to their origin would create a short-circuit in the psychic chain, breaking for a time the psychic power.

When they arrived at the sacred mountain, however, they found Prince Kol'vyl waiting for them. After a titanic battle, the crew were able to return the guidestone into the niche in the mountain rock from which it was cut, and the resulting energy release killed Prince Kol'vyl and his retinue, and at the same instant, the psychic hold The Order had over its constituent systems was broken.

Overnight, planets declared their departure from The Order, and the military crisis was over. However, a backlash against Serrans started almost immediately, as fear of their psychic powers and 'corrupting influence' fueled pogroms and persecutions on a hundred planets. Our crew should have been celebrated as heroes for averting the war, but their revelation of the Serran involvement resulted in atrocities, so instead they chose to fade into obscurity to deal with their guilt. All except for Amahrius, that is.

Now raised to the throne of Hirceptus, Empress Aiel (with the aid of Amahrius, restored to his position as the captain of the Royal Guard) opened Hirceptus to the hundreds of thousands of refugees and traveled to the many systems to plead for her people. Tragically, she was murdered by a mob on one such visit. The death of a uniting figure for the Serran people caused great anguish and anger in the people, and for a while it seemed that another war would break out. But Amahrius rose to the occasion, and became a voice for reason and peace in this trying time, and was able to convince the Serrans to forgo their vengeance, and so peace was kept.

In the decade that followed, Amahrius promoted the peaceful use of (the now weakened) Serran psychic powers, and formed the Serran Brotherhood for Peace. Using their subtle psychic abilities, the Serrans act as negotiators and counselors for the various factions in the galaxy. While initially viewed with suspicion, the positive outcomes from the employment of Serran 'speakers' soon became apparent, and they began to become a valued asset by the various governments.


So as our new campaign begins, the galaxy is enjoying a new era of peace and prosperity. But as we rejoin our heroes, we all know that the crew that once saved the galaxy from total war, is gonna have to do it again...

Terrinoth #40 - Blood & Gold, continued

Ambushed by the Two-Blade Gang

Campaign Diary

After two weeks of travel, Giso, Therion, and Whisper arrived back at Tamalir in the company of three Justicars (battle priests of Kellos). Their first stop was at the Church of Kellos, where they reunited with Tom Kellosson, when Giso explained his sudden and long absence (click here for PC profiles).

Tom, in the meanwhile, informed them that the number of Red Mist victims which the church have collected from the streets had increased in the past month, something which they attributed to a sudden loss in the supply of the drug. Whisper questioned a victim at the hospital, who confirmed their suspicion, and also informed them that he had last obtained his supply from the Pasha, which was familiar to our heroes.

The party decided to pay another visit to the Pasha, and stopped by at Therion's shop, which was close to the brothel. To his dismay, he saw that the shop was closed. After some frantic knocking on the door, his assistant opened the door. She explained to her employer that on the day after Therion had left without notice, a sum of 200 Gros had been delivered to the shop by someone, and that same day a suspicious character had come to spy around the shop on the pretext of buying something. She also noticed that the shop seemed to be watched, and had decided to close the place until Therion returned.

The party continued to the Pasha, leaving the Justicars to keep an eye on the shop. A quick conversation with the madam of the place confirmed the fact that Red Mist did come back into circulation for a short while after the party's first errand for Lazar, but had quickly disappeared a little after their business with Weiss. The party surmised that there were in fact two, rival, parties selling the drug - Lazar's party selling the more expensive version or the drug, and Weiss' party selling the cheaper version - and that they had unknowingly been involved in disruption of both businesses.

As the madam was mum about the supplier of their Red Mist, the party left the brothel to plan their next move. They struck up a conversation with the bouncers outside, and learned from them that one of the characters that they had seen loitering around Therion's shop was a gnome nicknamed 'Ratbone', whom they believed to be with the Two-Blade Gang, a small-time gang that operated on the south, poorer side of Tamalir.

Therion came up with the idea of equipping everyone in the party with two daggers, prominently displayed on their belts, and Whisper, who lived on the south side, led them into the territory of the Two-Blade Gang. They were soon able to find Ratbane (not Ratbone!), but quickly lost him in the crowd. Instead, they spotted the assassin that had wounded Weiss at The Golden Lion!

As Tom had not encountered the assassin previously, the party decided to split up, with Tom following her, while Giso and Therion kept a distance behind him, while Whisper followed him from the rooftop.

But alas! Tom was lured into an alley, and ambushed by Ratbane and several members of the Two-Blade Gang. Fortunately, the others were not too far behind. As the other heroes joined in the melee, more and more gang members, each wielding two bladed weapons, entered the fray. For a while things looked grim, until Giso summoned up a flaming sphere that barreled through the ranks of the gangsters, setting their clothes on fire and forcing several of them to jump into a nearby canal. The assassin was killed by Tom, and Ratbane, now alone and outnumbered, tried to flee but was cornered.

Ratbane confessed to working for Lazar, guarding the stock of Red Mist which Lazar would periodically send to the storeroom there, by boat or through the sewers. However, apart from instructions to keep watch over Therion's shop, the gang had had no contact with their paymaster for several weeks. He then led them back to the sewer hideout, which they had evacuated since the storeroom was torched by Weiss, but which they were supposed to man in the event Lazar needed to contact them. Searching the storeroom, Therion came across a broken glass vial which held Red Mist, and remarked that the material seemed to be of higher quality compared to that used in Weiss' version - Tom recalled where he had seem a similar material: in the glass wine bottles in the Pasha!

A little enquiry revealed that the wine was imported from Trast, from the vineyards that lined the southern slope of the Flametail river valley. The wine would be shipped up the river in giant tuns, along with the glass bottles, and the bottling would take place in a bottling plant in Tamalir. The vineyards and the bottling plant belonged to the Count of Pfalzenstein, and it is believed that the family possessed certain alchemical tricks which they employed to make the wine last longer.

The Counts of Pfalzenstein, the party also learned, hailed from an ancient line, and previously were the Dukes of Tamalir. In the aftermath of the Second Darkness, the Duke was unable to pay for the support of Tamalir, and was forced by the Barons to relinquish the city, which was granted Free City status. In exchange, the House of Pfalzenstein was given a permanent seat on the city council, granted a monopoly on the import of wine (the family owned vineyards in Trast), and they kept their hereditary seat at Castle Pfalzenstein, a small castle on a small island in the Flametail river, about half a day's journey east. The current count of Pfalzenstein kept a townhouse in Tamalir, but the day-to-day business was attended to by his steward.

The party made their way to the townhouse, hoping to lean more about the supplier of the glass vials from the steward, but when they arrived Whisper saw a carriage outside the place - it resembled the one used by Lazar. Not long afterwards the steward exited the townhouse and entered the carriage. Our heroes' request for an interview was rebuffed, and the carriage drove towards the north gate of the city.

That evening, Whisper sneaked into the townhouse and rifled through the contents of the steward's office. The papers there showed that the glass vials were indeed imported along with the wine bottles, but the quantities were so small that, given the selling price of Red Mist, the profit derived therefrom was dwarfed by that of the selling of the wine. There were also invoices for certain alchemical components, which Tom recalled were also seen on the invoices they had recovered from the rival faction for Lazar.

With more evidence pointing to the count's involvement (or at least someone within his household) in the Red Mist trade, the party decided to pay him a visit at his castle. The next morning, they packed their gear (with Therion cutting up an expensive bog oak chair in his inventory to fashion stakes and arrowheads for use against vampires), sat themselves on Therion's mule cart, left instructions for the Justicars to come for them if they had not returned in a week, and made their way out of the city.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session is not based on any particular module, but evolved out of the background of the story so far.

I knew the arc would end with a confrontation between the party and one of the bosses behind the Red Mist trade - the players were quite clear that they wanted to go after Lazar's gang first, so I prepped with this in mind.

I needed to lay a trail of clues for them to follow, so I started to imagine how the count operated his business. It soon became clear to me that his business model did not make sense at all if profit was a motive, which led me into thinking why he had decided to start the whole operation to begin with. The answer, of course, is that 'some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.'.

I decided to link the Red Mist trade to the wine import, on account of the glass, which led to me deciding about the history of the House of Pfalzenstein. The fact that medieval wine was hard to keep fresh allowed me to bring in the element of alchemy, which we will later learn has something to do with the manufacture of Red Mist.

I placed clues in the form of the wine sold at the Pasha, an empty glass vial in the sewer hideout, and the Two-Blade Gang as a source for combat and clues. I had expected the players to visit the bottling plant, which was another possible combat encounter, but they decided to investigate the Two-Blade Gang first, and then skip to the steward's house.

To me the whole chain was pretty clear: glass vial links to glass bottle, glass bottle to wine, wine to bottling plant and vineyard, bottling plant and vineyard to a count residing in a castle outside the city... how much more obvious can it be?

Unfortunately for me, for once my players were reluctant to jump to a conclusion. They spent a bit of time discussing their investigation, with Therion's player proposing that they went to Trast to investigate the make of the glass vials. Fortunately, the other players were able to convince him that they should follow the trail downstream instead of upstream.

In retrospect I realise I could have planned things better, but it is always difficult to strike a balance between making the evidence so clear that the players would be able to go to the city watch or church and just asked them to handle the business, and making the connection so tenuous they are afraid to make the move.

I had actually set aside up to six sessions for this arc of the campaign, but as it turned out we will only play four sessions. This prevented me from developing some of the plot points into longer adventures or encounters - I was planning to have a session where the players would play the roles of the three Justicars, who are sent on a side-quest with Erkiss the kobold to obtain bog oak, and when this could not materialise, I had to improvise and decide that Therion would conceivably have something made of bog oak in his luxury store.