Terrinoth #26 - Gangs of Freeport II

Entana conjures up a fog to cover the party's attack

Campaign Diary

Our heroes found themselves under fire by five crossbowmen, shooting from the deck of the beached ship.

(Click here for PC profiles)

They charged towards their attackers, but found the going slow as they were hampered by the water and sand. Entana conjured up a fog cloud to cover their approach, while Percy called upon the power of Kellos to conjure a flaming sphere, which she then hurled onto the deck, causing confusion among their attackers.

Now hidden from the crossbowmen, the party continued to wade towards the ship. Gio, the nimblest, was the first to gain the deck. He lowered a rope to the others, and then found himself under attack and outnumbered, and had to find cover. Once the others have climbed up, the battle turned against the crossbowmen, and once two of them were down, the other three abandoned ship and leapt off into a boat moored on the far side of the deck. Gio jumped after them, as did Percy... and when Strigoi too followed, his mass caused the boat to capsize, throwing everyone into chest-high water; Entana had meanwhile elected to stay on the deck.

When the dust has settled, four of the attackers were down, and they had captured the last. The party tied the thug's hands, and while Strigoi and Percy attempted to interrogate him, Gio and Entana descended to the lower deck to explore the hold... and were immediately ambushed by three more thugs! Hearing the ruckus, Strigoi and Percy joined their fellow party members below deck, and quickly took down the opposition, capturing another prisoner.

Under the light of the lantern gifted to them by Steward Gleason, the party first explored the cabin at the stern, which they found was the living quarters of these thugs. Wary of finding more attackers, they next explored the cabin at the fore of the ship. As Gio opened the door to the cabin, a loud thump was heard - Entana, standing at the rear of the party, had slumped to the ground, and was fast asleep! As Percy checked on Entana, Strigoi and Gio entered the cabin - it contained an alchemical laboratory, and standing behind a table was a gnome.

The gnome held his hands up, even as Strigoi demanded to know who he was, and slowly turned his hands such that the back of his hands was facing him; on one of his fingers he wore a ring with an opalescent stone. Suddenly, multi-coloured light streamed from the stone, and blinded Strigoi. The gnome made a dash for the door, but Gio was quicker, and tackled him.

Returning with their now two prisoners to the deck, they found that the first prisoner had cut himself loose of his bonds, and was frantically rowing away from the ship in the boat. A few well-placed spells took the escapee down, and the party regained the boat.

Percy, infuriated by the unprovoked attacks, started interrogating the prisoners with such ferocity that the other party members held back for fear of collateral damage.

The gnome introduced himself as Til Terraghast of Gafford, gnome wizard and alchemist. He proudly admitted to having produced White Smoke, which he called his magnum opus. Til denied responsibility for the "security arrangement" for his laboratory though, and claimed to have been employed by one Hurst to produce White Smoke for him. White Smoke, he explained, made the user more relaxed and more suggestible - how Hurst used it, however, was not something he asked or questioned too much about.

When the party threatened to turn over Til and the thug to the local watch, Til revealed that many in the watch were also on Hurst's payroll. He then offered his ring, which held a Mind Rune shard, and information to Hurst's whereabouts for his freedom. The party obtained a pledge from Til to never set foot in Orris again, and set him free. The gnome then revealed that Hurst was in fact the lighthouse keeper Garras - the party had been bamboozled!

The party bade the exhausted Tobb to once more row them to the lighthouse, but when they had arrived they found the sailboat missing from the pier. Hurst had gone; climbing to the top of the lighthouse the party could see the sailboat sailing towards Torrue Albes in the north, but it was too far to chase down now.

The last prisoner proved to have tight lips, and for a while our heroes debated on what to do to him. Unable to bring themselves to killing a disarmed man, they likewise obtained a pledge from him to quit Orris, and then released him. Percy decided to take over Til's laboratory equipment, and the party gifted the thugs' rowboat to Tobb, and paid him an extra Gros for his troubles (and silence).

The next morning the party went back to The Broken Mug, and was met by Sergal. Once they had given their story, Sergal explained that Hurst was the former Captain of the Watch, who was removed from his position some eight years ago after being found guilty of corruption. It seemed that he had returned to the city that had thrown him out, and that he had used his connections with both the criminal underworld and the city watch to launch his plot, perhaps with the aid of White Smoke.

Thanking the party once again, Sergal took his leave, saying he would now wait for the situation to revert to the way it was.

A few days later, the party bade farewell to Entana's family, and boarded an Al-Kalim ship to the port of Trader's Fort. The journey took them to Redwater on Lorimor's west coast, before cross the open ocean to Thieve's Coast.

Once they arrived at Trader's Fort, Al-Kalim's gateway to the north, they were led to the Terrinoth merchant's compound, while their onward passage was arranged. A few days later, the party joined a camel caravan on the next leg of their journey to Al-Madena, the capital of Al-Kalim, and where Entana's father awaited them.

For two days the party traveled slowly westwards across the sandy desert. At this time of the year the days were still cold, and by night it was colder. Each day would begin with the caravaneers greeting the rising sun and chanting the Hymn to A'tar, and each night would end with a meal of roasted sheep around the camp fire, when Gio would sing to his captive audience.

Late in the afternoon on the third day, the caravan spotted vultures circling a couple of miles to their right.The dour caravaneers refused to deviate from their course, but Percy felt confident that she could find their planned campsite if they went to investigate, and so they did.

Driving their camels towards the vultures' direction, the party crossed several dunes, before arriving at a scene of carnage: half a dozen human and camel skeletons littered the ground at the base of a dune, their flesh having been scoured off their bones. As they went closer, they found that one unfortunate soul was still clinging on to life - half his face and the flesh on one side of his body had been sheared off. With his dying breath, the man whispered: ghibli, before dying.

As they surveyed the macabre scene before them, our heroes wondered what could have caused the injuries seen on the men and camels. It was as if, Strigoi mused aloud, that their flesh had been sandpapered off...

Just then they detected movement at the edge of their vision: two man-sized whirlwinds had formed, and was closing in on them...

Prepping and Running the Game

The first part of the session was a continuation of the Gangs of Freeport module which we started the previous session.

The fight on the beached ship took a whole hour, and was quite fun, with a flaming sphere moving randomly across the deck, people jumping off the ship, and a surprise attack on the party when they thought the fight was over and had not healed up.

Percy's player seemed genuinely pissed by the unprovoked attack on the party, and was yelling at Til and berating him for his lack of moral. We were all taken by surprised at the player's intensity during the role-playing.

I had based Til on the character Gale Boetticher from the show Breaking Bad. I imagined him to be a genius alchemist who was so invested in his craft that he did not question the moral consequences of his work. I had chosen to give him only non-offensive spells, as I gave him only a Mind Rune shard and thus only enchantment school spells, and as I thought it suited the character (Gale did proclaim himself as a libertarian), and as it gave the players less reason to kill him. I am glad the party did not kill him (they tend to spare those who grovel), and look forward to bringing him back again in the future.

The module was supposed to end with a confrontation between the PCs and Hurst, but in this case I ruled that the commotion they caused at the ship would have been visible from the lighthouse (and Hurst would have been watching), and when he saw them returning he would have known the game was up and it was time to cut his losses and plan another comeback another time. I am less certain of what I want to do with this character again; I imagine Hurst is too focused on his final goal of revenge on the city to want to go after the PCs, but his need to put together a cadre of... associates may see him meet the party again.

The last hour of the session covered the journey to and in Al-Kalim.

Al-Kalim is of course based on Arabia, but I find its religion more akin to that of Aten worship than Islam. Accordingly I lifted the Hymn to Aten and used it as the basis for A'tar worship in my world.

For the description of Trader's Fort I made use of the description of Alexandria in the book City of Fortune, and for the camel caravan I used information from wikipedia to add flavour. I had taken a short camel safari in India several years back, and would recommend the experience if you had the chance to go on one.

This session gave the PCs some interesting loot. Percy gained a whole lab set-up, which costs some 50 gps. She lacks the space to set a lab up now, but once they are back in Terrinoth, she could start brewing potions again. Entana gained a Mind Rune shard, which opened up the enchantment spells to him. I should plan some loot for Strigoi and Gio in the upcoming sessions, and I believe I might have an idea.

I have yet to settle on what modules to run for the main arc of this campaign. I will probably run a short urban-based scenario in Al-Madena, before embarking on the main quest.

Terrinoth #25 - Gangs of Freeport I

Gio takes shelter under the wagon

Campaign Diary

For three weeks our heroes journeyed south, passing through Nornholt, where a banquet was held in their honour, and Tamalir, where the heard rumours of a drug called the Red Mist.

(Click here for PC profiles)

When they had at last arrived in Dawnsmoor, Percy took the opportunity to visit the Temple of Kellos there, and viewed the holy relic Kellos' Horn. It was the tail end of the trade season, but Entana's brother, now in charge of the family business, managed to secure passage on a ship to Orris, where the party hoped to find onward passage to Al-Kalim.

The 'Auspice', a Lorimor trading vessel, carried the party on the five-day voyage to Orris, during which - once they have got their sea legs - our heroes tried to learn as much of the customs and language of the country; the language of Lorimor was close to that of Terrinoth, but varied somewhat in the way certain letters were pronounced, and of course there were unique figures of speech.

On the noon of the fifth day the 'Auspice' rounded the tip of the Lorimor peninsula, and sailed into the wide mouth of the River of Sighs. There, on the left bank of the river, our heroes laid eyes on Orris for the first time - a sprawling sea port larger even than Tamalir.

As the goods were unloaded at the docks, Nott, a steel merchant on the 'Auspice' offered the party 2 Gros to escort him and his wares to the nearby warehouse, on account of the recent rise in crime in the city. Strigoi accepted the job on the party's behalf, seeing as it was it would take them closer to the merchant's district, where Entana's other brother operated the Venier family's office in Orris.

As the wagon wound through the narrow streets in the dock district, our little caravan found itself suddenly surrounded by six crossbow-armed men. Still unsteady on their feet from the long sea voyage, our heroes only managed to see off the bandits with some difficulty, during which the wagon was overturned. As they helped Nott reload his wagon, Gio felt a bump on his coin pouch. A quick examination revealed that someone had placed a scrap of paper with the writing, scratched in charcoal, "meet me at the broken mug" in Thieves' Cant.

Once the cargo had been safely delivered to a heavily guarded warehouse, Nott paid the party, and engaged a street urchin to guide our heroes to The Broken Mug, a tavern nearby.

Arriving at the tavern, they met with one Sergal, who claimed to be from the local gang called the Blackshirts. He told his tale of sorrow: of late the gangs of Orris had taken to the use of a newer, more potent form of the smoking leaves called Snake Grass; while Snake Grass was commonly used in Orris for its relaxing effect, this newer form of the leaves, called White Smoke on account of the thicker, whiter smoke it gave off, focused the mind. Curiously, the leaves were obtained cheaply, and the gangs had not begun to sell them for a profit, but had limited the use to its members. More curiously, they had stopped fighting for turf among themselves, and seem to have become allied in their efforts, committing crimes now in districts which they had not previously dared to. What is more, it seemed that the city watch was never there when these crimes occur.

Sergal had stayed clear of White Smoke, and indeed Snake Grass, but yesterday his men had offered him some, and when he refused they turned violent and drew their weapons on him. Barely escaping with his life, he found no place to turn to. When he came upon the party's altercation with the bandits earlier, he decided to seek their help. Offering up the last 50 Gros he had, he begged the party to get to the bottom of the mystery so he could regain his place in the gang hierarchy.

Leaving Sergal, our heroes made their way to the Venier family's residence, where Percy was welcomed by Entana's sister-in-law, who took an immediate liking to her. A chat with Entana's brother confirmed Sergal's story of the rising crime rate, along with the city watch's inability to stop the crimes.

The next morning the party learned that the next ship to Al-Kalim would leave in four days, which gave them time to do some shopping and investigation. Strigoi purchased some clockwork toys imported from nearby Torrue Albes, while Percy bought some amber jewelry, before visiting the local Kellos temple with the wives of the Terrinoth merchants in Orris.

Entana visited a recent victim of robbery, and learned from him that the merchants were losing their patience with the city watch's impotence, and were planning to threaten a move to Torrue Albes if things did not improve.

Gio followed the lead provided by Segal, and looked up Polov, a supplier of White Smoke, pretending to be an interested buyer from Tamalir, but was asked to return the next day for a reply. He then visited the city watch on the pretext of lodging a complaint on the attempted robbery the day before, but learned little for his trouble.

Later that morning, while making enquiries at the docks, Strigoi noticed Polov waiting by a pier. Watching from a distance, he observed a blond man with a large jaw approach the pier in a row-boat, and there he and his companion handed Polov a sack, and took from him a few crates filled with food and bottles, before rowing away again. Following discretely along the dock, Strigoi saw the row-boat turn westwards as it exited the mouth of the river.

Having learned that there was little west of the mouth of the river except for sand bars, some ships wrecked upon them, and a lighthouse, our heroes decided to hire a boat of their own and visit the lighthouse. They learned from Tobb the boatman that the previous lighthouse keeper had died some six months prior, his death only discovered when the light failed to come on on a stormy night, resulting in a ship running aground on the nearby beach.

When they arrived at the lighthouse, the new lighthouse keeper, one Garras, was waiting for them. The friendly man gave them a tour of his home and the tower of the lighthouse, from where they could see the shores of Torrue Albes, but could not tell them more about White Smoke or the crime spree. Strigoi did notice that Garras owned a row-boat that looked like that he saw earlier (but then most row-boats looked the same), and a larger sail-boat.

With still an hour before the tide went out, they decided to investigate the wreck of the ship that had run aground. Tobb beached the boat a short distance away from the wreck. Our heroes walked towards the sun-bleached hull of the ship... then suddenly, from the deck of the ship, crossbow bolts sped towards them...

Prepping and Running the Game

This session was based on the Freeport module 'Gangs of Freeport'.

Now Freeport is of course a rather famous setting, and I had been looking at the various publications from the range; but it is only now that I found a city-port in the Terrinoth setting that I thought matched the city.

There was only one combat this session - the attempted robbery. The players rolled rather poorly during the fight, while I rolled exceedingly well, which we attributed to the PCs still having wobbly legs, and the effect of White Smoke on the bandits.

Much of the session was spent on lore, as the players were all very keen to learn more about the places they would be visiting. They came up with the idea of buying expensive gifts in case they needed to gain favours while in Al-Kalim, and I had to on the spot offer up some options and prices, based on the idea I had about trade in the region.

This was in turn based on what I have learned about medieval trade from the book City of Fortune, a book about Venice. I recommend this book to any GM who would like to add some realism to international trade in their game worlds.

I enjoy going into the lore of my setting when the players ask me for more information, and I often compare what I describe with what happens or happened in our own world. Occasionally we come up with questions which I have not thought of, and which the authors of Realm of Terrinoth did not reveal, like: do gnomes predate humans in Terrinoth, or is it the other way round?

A lot of time was also spent on role-playing and in-game jokes. People the party meet now almost always assume that Entana and Percy are a couple, and the line "You're a lucky man" was whispered to Entana several times during the evening. The other running gag involved gnomes (or halflings), as Orris had a large population of them, and the Freeport supplement mentioned a scam where halflings would pretend to be human children acting as guides to visitors, only to lead them into ambushes where they would be robbed.

I planned a total of three fights for the session, but due to the slow pace of their investigation we only managed to play through one and begin another.

This was due to two reasons, in my opinion. One, the players had no real investment in the situation; two, my players are generally not very good with investigative scenarios.

The module itself is actually quite well-designed, with more than one way for the investigation to progress from one stage to another. In the interest of time and to make the investigation easier, I trimmed the number of locations down to four: the Broken Mug, the house where Sergal was attacked, the shipwreck, and the lighthouse. Readers will no doubt already surmised that the lighthouse keeper is in fact the true villain behind all this - I had expected the PCs to visit the lighthouse last, but am glad they did so earlier, allowing me to roleplay Garras' deception, which will give more impact when the PCs confront him again later.

The unexpected slow pace of the session is a blessing in a way, as it will allow me more time to plan for the Al-Kalim leg of the campaign.

Battle Ravens

Three months ago Plastic Soldier Company launched the kickstarter for their Dark Ages boardgame by Dan Mersey.

I have been a fan of Dan for several years now, and have playtested a few of his Osprey games, but I was not involved in the development of Battle Ravens.

I downloaded the pdf of the draft rules from the kickstarter site, and realised that I could play the game using the 15mm Dark Ages figures I already own, on the gridded mat by Deep-Cut Studio I had, so I roped Fg in for a game.

We played a game over pizza and 'Outlaw King' in the background, using my Anglo-Danish and Norman armies - the basic game treats all armies as identical, although the full game has special cards that gives each army its own flavour.

In the first few turns we both played in a literally straight-forward manner, placing Ravens rather equally in all our areas, and attacking or blocking with all our dice. After a few turns, I came up with the trick of not using all my Ravens for blocking when attacked, but reserving a few to counter-attack, when the opposing force will not have any Ravens to block - it worked!

As the game went on and the ranks thinned, it became necessary for us to move our forces laterally to shore up weakened sections. I made the first capture of an enemy area, and was feeling cocky, but Fg soon fought back and took two of mine, and it became harder for me from then on, and I eventually lost the game.

The game took longer than we had expected - although simple in concept, there were several levels of decisions to be made each turn and each round. The Ravens placement phase of the game felt like a game of Go, while the movement and attack phases felt more like a game of chess or a wargame. Like a game of chess, the playing pieces became fewer as the game progressed, so visually the game became less appealing as it went to; this is about the only complaint I have about this game, and of course it applies to most wargames.

We enjoyed the game, and will probably play it again when we want to play something quick but engaging.

If you want to read the draft rules, or  pre-order the game, you can still do so at the kickstarter site here.

Terrinoth #24 - The Beast of Graenseskov

In the lair of the werewolf

Campaign Diary

Their mission in Nerekhall completed, our heroes departed for Greyhaven.

(Click here for PC profiles)

As they neared the town of Nornholt on the afternoon of the fifth day, they noticed that a small settlement of tents had formed outside it walls. A quick enquiry revealed that the occupants of the tents were peasants from the surrounding villages - a number of attacks by a werewolf had made the villagers flee their homes for the safety of the town. When the town guards learned that the party were Gio Gerber and his companions, they were brought to the burgrave's residence. However, after being made to wait for several minutes, they were told that the burgrave would not meet with them, and so they made their way to an inn.

While they ate dinner at the inn, they learned more about the recent events from the townsfolk: several huntsmen had been sent to slay the werewolf, but none had returned except for one, whose body was discovered outside the town gate one morning, his throat ripped out.

Then a child approached them with a message: they were invited to a meeting at Mama Clay the astrologer's place. Arriving at the place, they found Steward Gleeson waiting for them.

The steward revealed that the werewolf was actually the old burgrave; the old burgrave had not died in a wolf attack two years before as claimed, but had in fact been wounded by a werewolf which he slew. Aware that he had been infected by lycanthropy, the burgrave ordered his loyal steward to tell the town that he had died. Since then Gleeson had met with his old master at the ruined tower in the forest on the night of every full moon to bring him news of the town. However, over the years the steward noted that the old burgrave had gained a more bestial nature; he also began to blame his fate on the old prophecy that the town would be cursed if the eldest son of his line did not hold the position of the burgrave. Finally, a few months ago, he bade Gleeson to lure his younger grandson out of the town so he could murder him, on the hope that his older half-brother would then take his place and release him from the curse of lycanthropy.

Gleeson tried to stall his old master, but the old burgrave began to slay innocent villagers, thinking that it would cause the younger burgrave to come out of the town to calm the populace. Now, on the night of the full moon, Gleeson found himself at wit's end, until he heard news of our party's arrival. He called our heroes to meet in secret to do what was unthinkable to him: to slay his old master.

Our heroes took up the quest, and together they hatched a plot to lure the werewolf out: Entana would disguise himself as Montford by dressing in the clothes of the young burgrave. The party will follow Gleeson as he traveled to the ruined tower for his meeting with the old burgrave, giving the impression that the young burgrave had decided to trail his steward on his secretive journey.

Gleeson agreed with their plan, and bade our heroes to meet him at the town gate in an hour, where he would hand them their young burgrave's clothes.

At the appointed time, our heroes arrived at the town gate to find Gleeson waiting. As they waited for Entana to put on the borrowed clothes, Percy felt a hand grab her arm from behind: it was Reynard, the burgrave's half-brother and chamberlain! Reynard had followed Gleeson when he saw the steward acting suspiciously, and was glad to see Percy once more. His gladness turned to puzzlement when he noticed Entana dressed in his brother's clothes, he began to ask Gleeson what was happening, but before he could raise an alarm, Entana stepped forward and punched him on the nose. Now smarting and even more confused, Reynard fled, and the party hurried out of the gate and headed to the forest.

For two hours our heroes trekked through the winter forest, following the light from Gleeson's lantern in the distance. As they neared the ruined tower, a mist began to surround them, and the howl of wolves could be heard in the distance. Then, out of the mist, the werewolf and his wolf companions attacked.

Our heroes put up a stiff resistance, and when the werewolf realised that the "burgrave" was in fact a wizard, he vanished once more into the mist. Arriving at the ruined tower, our heroes found Gleeson gravely wounded. He had been attacked by wolves, but managed to drive them off on his own. He handed the party his lantern, and bade them to pursue the werewolf.

Under the light of the full moon, our heroes followed the tracks of the wolves to a cave. Entering the cave, the party followed the winding tunnels within, coming across a cave filled with bones of beasts and men, then a cave with bestial and human hand prints upon its walls, before arriving at a large cavern filled with rock pillars.The pillars of rock made a maze of the cavern. As they moved deeper into the cavern, our heroes heard the low growl of wolves around them. Then from behind the rock pillars, or the darkness of the shadows cast by the light of their lantern, wolves darted out to attack them, then disappearing again before our heroes could retaliate.

At first our heroes spread out to try to track the wolves, but they soon realised the danger of doing so and closed their ranks. They called out to the old burgrave, claiming that Entana had a cure for his lycanthropy.

For a while all was silent. Then the werewolf and his wolf minions attacked with ferocity, but sparing Entana. Strigoi took on the werewolf with the enchanted bronze sword he gained from the ancient king's burial, while the rest despatched the wolf minions. Outnumbered and wounded, the werewolf disengaged and fled deeper into the cave system.

Our heroes pursued the werewolf, until at last they came upon a cave which opened into the night sky. Propped against the wall in the far end of the cave they found the old burgrave, now in his human form.

The old man forced a smile and asked: "There never was a cure now, was there?"

Percy pleaded with the old burgrave to think of his duty to his people and do the honourable thing. At last the old man raised his head and offered up his neck.

"End it, orc!", he said to Strigoi.

Strigoi stepped forward and beheaded the old burgrave with a single stroke, and the party burned his remains.

It was past midnight when the party arrived back at Nornholt with Gleeson. They escorted the steward to the burgrave's hall, but declined the invitation to rest there that night, returned to the inn, and left early in the day before they had to face Reynard again.

Arriving at last back in Greyhaven, they gave an account of their deeds in Nerekhall to the University Council, and were given the rewards they were promised: a Masters degree for Entana, a full scholarship for Percy, 1500 Gros for Gio, and a suit of enchanted armour for Strigoi.

In the ensuing weeks Gio departed to pay the weregild to redeem the freedom of his family, Strigoi had a suit of armour measured and made, while Entana tutored Percy in rune magic.

Then, in the middle of the month of Wintar a letter arrived in Greyhaven for Entana: his father had traveled to the lands of Al-Kalim, and had learned of something of great importance, and he bade his son to join him there.

Taking leave from the Council, our party began the journey south.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session was based on the module The Beast of Graensekov, available from DMs Guild. Although the module was written for Ravenloft, the storyline can be used for any fantasy setting with a dark or Gothic streak.

I had promised my players I would tie up the loose end of the story they started when they first came to Nornholt, and I knew it would end with a confrontation between them and the old burgrave. However, I struggled to find a way to make this something other than a straight fight, so I searched for a module which would give me some ideas.

During the prep for the session I toyed with the idea of using the whole storyline from the module, and making the burgrave's lycanthropy be due to a curse by a hag, and making a confrontation with the hag an encounter; perhaps this hag was the third member of the coven of the hags that B Team had met? As it turned out the hunt for the werewolf was enough to fill the session.

How the players would approach the problem was left pretty open, but the module offered several possibilities, including setting traps and luring the werewolf to them. I had expected my players to spend some time putting a plan into action, but as it turned out the day their party arrived in Nornholt was the day of the full moon (I keep a campaign calendar), and they decided to improvise a plan on the spot.

I was thrown off guard by this - I had hoped to roleplay some more interaction between the players and the young burgrave and his amourous brother, so I had Reynard make an unexpected appearance at the gate. Then I was thrown even more off when Entana's player decided to solve the problem with his fist. After the game I rationalised that Reynard may have thought that Entana was a jealous boyfriend, and that he had committed a faux pas.

The tracking of the wolves to their lair was again a skills challenge, and once again my players struggled to think of ways they could use their skills narratively. I think this will be the last time I use skills challenge, at least in this form.

The final fight was inspired by the map in the Battle Mat Book I owned. To let the wolves attack from a hidden position and then disappear again, I gave them the Nimble Escape trait. I was secretly happy when it looked like the players would separate in order to chase the wolves down, but they quickly realised the danger of doing so, forcing me to launch the attack.

The ruse to make the burgrave think they had a cure for lycanthropy was unexpected, and I decided that the burgrave would try to kill or incapacitate the other PCs and capture Entana, but the NPCs were no match for the PCs.

The final scene was a bit of a prepared 'cut-scene', and I was happy with how the players roleplayed it.

The next arc of the campaign will be based in Al-Kalim, although the party will have to stop-over at Lorimor along the way. I have seeded this possibility when I made Entana's father declare that he wished to go there several sessions ago.

I plan to let the PCs pass through Nornholt again on their journey south and have them interact with Reynard, Gleeson, and the young burgrave again. Perhaps I will use their relationship with the PCs to launch another arc of this campaign.

Terrinoth #23 - The Haunted City II

Climax of the campaign arc - Percy confronts Markos, Strigoi faces the Undead Ironbound while Entana attempts to disable it, and Gio finishes off the last of the skeletons

Campaign Diary

Our heroes pursued Karpel into the winding alleys, and when they were close to catching him an assassin leapt from a rooftop and landed in front of him. Percy stepped forward to shield Karpel, but could not prevent him from being cut by the assassin's blade.

As Gio, Strigoi, and Entana moved in to protect Karpel, two more assassins appeared. In the ensuing chaos Karpel was stabbed twice more, two of the assassins laid dead on the ground, and the city watch was closing in even as the last assassin fled the scene. Percy stemmed Karpels bleeding with magic, but found that he was still weak from the poison on the assassins' blades. Carrying the ex-gravedigger between them as if he was drunk, the party managed to slip away and bring Karpel back to his home.

(Click here for PC profiles)

Once the effects of the poison had been neutralised, Karpel began hurriedly packing his bag, intent on fleeing the city. He revealed that he had previously smuggled bodies to Markos, but once their illicit trade was revealed the latter had not contacted him since parting with a stern warning to not speak to anyone about their business. He had little more to tell, except that he suspected that the recent disappearance of two Ironbound may be the work of Markos. The party escorted Karpel to the city gates, perhaps as much out of a desire to ensure his safety as out of the hope that an attacker would appear who would lead them to Markos, but Karpel left the city unmolested.

Using a letter of introduction obtained from Blasius, our heroes managed to meet with Kontesta, Master Engineer at the Iron Tower, hoping to learn more about the missing Ironbound. Despite their efforts, the tight-lipped engineer would not reveal anything of importance. But as the party left the office, Gio pocketed some papers left on the desk.

Once out of the Iron Tower, the party read the papers: they were a report filed by the city watch on the disappearance of two Ironbound three weeks ago, and the files of one Ducat, an engineer fired two months ago for poor performance. The party decided to pay a visit to Ducat at the address on his file.

When knocking on Ducat's front door did not produce a response, Percy and Strigoi went to the back door, only to see two assassins crash through the rear windows of the house. At the same moment the front door open, and Ducat emerged, looking panicked.

"Who are you?" he asked Entana.

"The man who is going to keep you alive," the wizard replied.

Ducat grabbed on to Entana's sleeve, and together with Gio the three raced towards the main street. The two assassins followed. Percy leapt through a broken window while Strigoi crashed through the rear door, and gave chase.

Entana summoned up a fog cloud to provide cover from their pursuers, and pulled Ducat into an alley, while Gio and Percy sowed confusion by misdirecting the two assassins. With their trickery, the party succeeded in bringing Ducat back to the Moonshade Inn without bloodshed or drawing the attention of the city watch.

There, Ducat revealed that his gambling addiction had cost him his employment at the Iron Tower, and Markos had sought him out after his dismissal, and had offered him money to pay off his debts for information related to the Ironbound. At first the information he required were innocuous, but when Markos asked how an Ironbound could be disabled, Ducat (or so he claimed) would not tell him, until Markos threatened him with harm. Thus, with Ducat's assistance, Markos and his accomplices were able to disable two Ironbound, and transport them to a hidden laboratory in the catacombs of the city.

Ducat drew a map of the way to the laboratory, and warned them that Markos had undead minions in his lair; and in exchange for escort to the city gates, Ducat told the party how an Ironbound could be disabled: the Ironbound are each powered by a runebound shard within their armoured chests, and the way to access this shard was via a hatch on its back. Armed with their newfound information, our heroes prepared to venture into the catacombs.

Entering the sewers beneath Nerekhall, the party followed Ducat's map to an ancient archway that led deeper into the catacombs of the city. Our heroes passed through the archway, and descended a long flight of stairs, until they came upon a set of heavy oaken doors.

The party pushed open the doors to find a hall guarded by six skeletal warriors. With the use of a well aimed flask of oil and torch, followed by cold steel, our heroes made short work of the guardians, and pressed on.

Finally, they came before another set of double doors, beyond which, according to Ducat, lay the laboratory of the Mad Mage Kovac. But even before they could open the doors, they heard Markos' voice from behind them:

"Leave? In the moment of my triumph? I think you rather overestimate my old classmate!"

Gio pushed open the doors: beyond them was a long colonnaded hall, lined with racks and operating tables, upon which were decomposed bodies. Rusty chains ran through steel rings on the columns and walls, as though they were iron webs spun by a giant spider. In the far end of the hall a short flight of steps led to a domed circular room; arcane runes were scratched into the walls of the room, and on its floor mystical circles, carved into the stone, glowed with blue light. In the centre of the room laid an armoured skeleton. On one side stood Markos. A cloaked and armoured figure was leaving the room via a door on the side even as our heroes entered - as he turned to look at them, our heroes saw that his face was a fleshless skull, and he wore an iron crowned helm.

From the shadows behind the columns four skeletal warriors stepped forth. Markos taunted our heroes, challenging them to come closer to him. As they charged towards the evil necromancer, he made arcane gestures with his hands, and a thick green mist formed in the centre of the hall, its acrid stench choking our heroes. At the same time, the armoured skeleton within the magical circles rose, and its skeletal head was wreathed in flames; it started walking towards the hall, a greataxe in one hand...

The cloud thickened and soon blinded our heroes. Percy stumbled about, and managed to find the wall, which led her to the edge of the cloud, from where she could see Markos. The necromancer cast bolts of green ray at her, causing strength to drain from her limbs - it was only with the power of Kellos that she managed to stay conscious.

Entana likewise stumbled about, until he came upon one of the wooden operating tables. As he tried to orientate himself, he felt a whoosh beside his ear, followed by a loud thud - he turned to see the flaming skull of the skeletal warrior, clad in the unmistakable armour of an Ironbound, just a foot behind him. The Undead Ironbound raised his axe, and swung... and once more missed!

Entana summoned up a gust of wind, and while it failed to push the Undead Ironbound back, it blew a clear corridor in the cloud, which allowed Strigoi to see him and come to his aid. The orc warrior fell upon the undead, and although he rained blow after blow on the armoured body, the Undead Ironbound would not fall. It turned its attention onto Strigoi, and slowly pushed him back, until the orc's back was against one of the columns. The fight turned against Strigoi - his body was covered in many great wounds, but he too clinged on and would not go down.

This was the distraction Entana needed - using the thieves' tools he found on one thugs who attacked them at The Hollow Way Inn, he managed to pry open the hatch on the Undead Ironbound's back - inside it he saw the purple glow of the Death Runebound shard, but he could not reach it.

In the far end of the hall Percy gathered up her courage, and charged Markos. Her attacked caused the necromancer to dispel the noxious cloud and instead turn his magic on her.

Gio, who had up to this point been incapacitated by the cloud, could now see clearly. He despatched the last of the skeletal warriors, and ran to Entana's aid - and not a moment too soon, for Strigoi had finally succumbed to the Undead Ironbound's relentless attack.

Leaping onto the back of the Undead Ironbound, Gio sank his shortsword into the hatch, and the runebound shard sprang out. The flame about the skull of the Ironbound extinguished, and its armoured form collapsed to the floor.

Now Markos was alone. But he would not flee. Even as Percy and Gio attacked him, he focused his fury on Entana, casting bolt after bolt of life-draining green light on his former classmate, until at last Gio's sword ended his life.

Percy healed Strigoi's wounds, and Entana retrieved the Death Runebound shard. They searched the hall and found the lost diaries of the Mad Mage Kovac, but ominously, there was no sign of a second Ironbound. Remembering their order to seal the lab, they decided to use the chains on the columns to pull them down, causing the roof to come down, burying the Undead Ironbound.

They then dragged Markos' body to the sewers, burnt it, and for good measure kept some of the ashes, and threw some into the sewerage. When they finally emerged from the sewers it was already dark.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session marks the end of the first campaign arc, which we started some six months ago.

The plot was a continuation from the previous session, and was again a rather straightforward investigation scenario.

The chase scene in the middle of the scenario was played using the Skills Challenge rules mechanics, which I learned from watching a Matt Colville video. It took a little longer than I hoped for as both the players and I were new to the concept, but narratively I think we did OK.

The finale fight took around an hour. I plotted out Markos' spells weeks ago, and had even made a template for the Stinking Cloud spell from a green transparency sheet I had left over from a terrain project. The spell was a little too effective, as it left Gio incapacitated for several turns, which of course was no fun for the player; I was aware that the spell could have such an effect, but had decided to take the risk anyway. To make the spell even more effective, I ruled that when inside the cloud, a PC may not always move in the direction he *thinks* he is moving, but had them roll a die to decide where he moved to. The result was that only one of the PCs actually moved out of the spell area.

The dice-rolls during the fight was memorable. The first two rolls I made for the Undead Ironbound were literally a 1 followed by a 2. Had even a single blow landed, Entana would have been taken out of the fight and the game would have ended very differently. I could not roll above a 6 for the next few rounds, until Strigoi joined the fight. Then followed an impressive exchange of axe-swings as Strigoi's player rolled a few crits, scoring more than a hundred points of damage in 3 or 4 turns. However, my rolls got better too, and Strigoi actually went down twice - the first time only negated by the orcish tenacity rule.

Tactically, it was a challenging fight for the players. Percy, being the only one who could reach Markos, had to decide between fighting him alone and preventing him from using his spells on the other PCs, or supporting them in their fight with the Undead Ironbound. Entana had to decide whether to try to disable the Undead Ironbound "manually", something which he isn't exactly good at, or to use his magic - as it turned out he made the right decision: I gave the Undead Ironbound a Helmed Horror's stat block, and made him immune to the three spells that Entana had most often employed against Mondock and his thugs.

With this arc concluded, I asked the players which part of Terrinoth they wished to explore instead. The vote was two for Al-Kalim and one for Lorimor, and one "anything". I made the call to let them go to Al-Kalim, but then I realised that they would have to stop at Lorimor on their way there, so everyone will get what they want after all.

I still have several weeks to prep a full arc based in Al-Kalim; for now they must return to Greyhaven, spend the winter there, then tie up some loose ends at Nornholt on their way back south. This will give me some time to think of some adventures for them to go on in Lorimor, and for the plastic Arab figures I ordered immediately after the game to arrive and be painted.

For now I am thinking of repackaging some Al-Qadim modules for their Al-Kalim arc, but if you have any suggestion on other Arabian-themed modules, I would be happy to hear them.

Thank you.

Terrinoth #22 - The Haunted City

Guests of The Hollow Way Inn are besieged!

Campaign Diary

Entana, Gio, and Percy made their way south to Nornholt, where they ran into Strigoi at an inn - the orc fighter had heard of the tale of Gio the Gnomish Hero from bards in Tamalir, and had journeyed to the town in hope of picking up their trail.

(Click here for PC profiles)

In the months he was apart from the group Strigoi had tracked Shaglot down and vanquished him in combat. The party brought Strigoi up to date on their quest, but conveniently left out the rewards promised to them.

Now one stronger, our heroes made their way westwards to Nerekhall, where they hoped to find the hidden laboratory of the Mad Mage Kovac. Three days after leaving Nornholt, they arrived at the Hollow Way Inn, a roadside establishment a day's travel from Nerekhall. Despite it being in the middle of winter, the small inn had a few other guests: Louj and Lerj, gnomish merchants on their way to Nerekhall, Elvahn, aspiring elven opera composer, also traveling to Nerekhall to apply for a place in the Academy, and Khertral, a steel merchant from Forge on his way home.

Louj and Lerj recognised Gio from the bards' tales, and became quite excited. As they asked Gio for more tales of his adventures, Elvahn became inspired, and decided to compose an opera based on them. While Gio regaled his fans with stories, the rest of the party learned from Khertral that the magistrates of the city had put in an urgent order for high quality steel, but were unable to determine the reason for the urgency.

The guests retired to the upper floor of the inn after a night of drinking and singing. Late at night Percy was awakened by the smell of smoke. Looking out of the windows, she saw the orange glow of flames - the inn was on fire! She quickly roused the rest of the party and the guests.

Someone had put a cart each against the front and back door of the inn, piled firewood on them, and set the whole on fire - the guests were all trapped inside the building. When they tried to exit through the windows, they found that the inn had been surrounded by a dozen archers, who stood ready to shoot those who tried to exit. Strigoi spied a floating, glowing skull watching them from across a stream outside the inn: Mondock has returned!

The party donned their gear, and herded the other guests to the ground floor. Seizing a chair as his shield, Strigoi burst through one of the windows, followed by Percy. The pair was immediately set on by the archers who were outside. Mondock closed in, shooting beams of sickly green light from his eyes at Strigoi, which caused him to feel ill and weak. Strigoi tried to push the burning cart to block the bridge across the stream to prevent more attackers from joining the fight, but in his weakened state he failed to do so.

Entana and Gio leapt through the window and joined the fight even as more attackers closed in. Entana was struck by Mondock's green beams too, which made him feel faint. The undead necromancer and his minions surrounded the party and slowly closed in on them. Things looked bleak for our heroes.

Then Gio called on Fortuna's help and caused Mondock to be seized by an irresistible urge to laugh. Seeing the attackers all close together, Percy called upon Kellos to strike them with a thunderclap, which caused several to fall to the ground.

Strigoi summoned his reserve strength and set about with his great axe, and a few more enemies fell.  Seeing the tide of the battle turn against him, Mondock decided to flee, but was struck by spells from Percy and Entana, and destroyed. However, his minions would not surrender, and fought to the last man.

With their foes vanquished, the party, with the help of the other guests and the inn staff put out the fire. Afterwards, they gathered the pieces of Mondock's skull and ground them to dust, and for good measure split the dust between them, and threw part of it into the stream. When they were done it was dawn, and the party continued their way to Nerekhall.

The city of Nerekhall was small compared to the likes of Tamalir, and it had a brooding air about it. As they passed through the city gates, their names and purpose of visit were logged by a clerk. On the corners of the streets stood Ironbound, silent sentinels. The party lodged at the Moonshade Inn, recommended by Khertral the dwarf, and there they planned their next move.

The next morning they went to the Blasius Trading House, where they learned that the person who had paid for the letter of credit (see here) had a description that matched Markos of Nerekhall, and that he was a student at the faculty of Medicine at the Academy.

Not wanting to alert Markos to their presence, our heroes decided against enquiring at the Academy, and chose instead to visit the black market to see if they could learn if anyone was buying contraband magical items - something which they suspected Markos would have been doing. Unfortunately for them, it was obvious to the locals that they were from out of town, and they learned nothing of value. Just then, they saw the sign to "Arnan's Rare Bookstore", which they decided to visit. Inside, they found the proprietor Arnan the dwarf, but no rare books. They did learn from the talkative dwarf that Markos had previously visited the bookstore and bought volumes on anatomy and (strangely) metallurgy. He also revealed that Markos frequented The Green Dragon, a tavern popular with students of the Academy.

As our heroes made their way across the town square to the Green Dragon, they saw a procession of the cult of Kellos. As Percy looked upon the worshipers, one of the priests turned towards her and she was stunned to see that his eyes glowed with a bright light. Leaving the rest to go to tavern she joined the worshipers as they entered the church, but once inside she could not find the priest.

At The Green Dragon, Entana managed to find a couple of students from the Academy, who revealed with much schadenfreude that Markos had been expelled a few months ago for obtaining cadavers illicitly from a grave-digger. With this lead, our heroes proceeded to the undertaker's guild and learned that the grave-digger in league with Markos, one Karpel, had also been expelled from the guild and now spent most of the day drunk at the The Brown Bottle, a tavern in the poorer part of town. With the sun setting soon, our heroes hurried there, only to find many drunks matching the description of Karpel in the taproom.

Strigoi called out: Karpel!

Several drunks lifted their heads to look at the new arrivals... and then one stood up and bolted for the backdoor!

Our heroes chased the man down the winding alleys. Karpel tried his best to shake his pursuers, but soon they closed in one him... but just as they were about to reach him, a dark form jumped from the surrounding rooftops and landed before him. In the dim light of the alleys our heroes spotted the glint of metal...


Prepping and Running the Game

This was the first game of the year and I was looking forward to having Strigoi's player rejoin the group.

This session was loosely based on The Haunted City, the official FFG Realms of Terrinoth scenario available on their website. I had taken the name of the inn and its guests (as well as their motivations), and the module also contained a lot of description of Nerekhall which I used in my game.

The mentions of Gio's fame is by now a bit of an in-joke for the party - Gio's long term goal is to become a household name in Terrinoth, and for a while now Gio's player had him asking those whom he had helped to remember his name; I thought it would be nice to show that his efforts have borne fruits. Of course, to a GM, a PC's fame can be a double-edged sword that can be turned against him and his party...

The only fight of the game took place early in the game, and nearly resulted in a TPK. The bad guys were a formidable force, with a boss with powerful ranged attack that imposed a 'poisoned' condition on those he attacked, and the large number of minions demonstrated the effect of the 'action economy'. The players responded well to the challenge, focusing on first disabling Mondock before he could do more harm, and then using area-of-effect spells against the weaker minions.

They also acted in a suitably paranoid fashion when they decided to grind Mondock's skull to dust, which is as well - left alone he would have regenerated after an hour. I was hoping to save Mondock for the boss fight in the next session, and so made him flee when he was at 80% hp level - but the players were relentless, and I did not want to cheat them of their well-earned victory.

From the plot point-of-view, killing Mondock and his minions give the PCs a huge advantage as Markos now has no certain knowledge of their arrival in Nerekhall.

The second half of the game was an investigation. I decided to keep things loose and have more than one way for the PCs to track Markos down. To do this I began by thinking about what Markos had been doing after he trapped Wilfred in his tower. I decided that he would need a supply of corpses, and perhaps even a 'deactivated' Ironbound. This meant that someone would have had to obtain these for him, and so I knew I needed a grave-digger NPC, and an engineer/mechanic.

The grave-digger and the illegal body-snatching would be the perfect reason for Markos to be expelled from The Academy (and go literally underground), and the theft of an Ironbound would of course put Nerekhall's ruling body in a bit of a panic, which resulted in the urgent order of steel for the manufacture of more Ironbound and arms/armour.

Although I had the University faculty demand that their quest be executed in utmost secrecy, I was fully prepared for them to blow their cover and march right into The Academy or The Iron Tower (Nerekhall's government building) and spill the beans and ask for help. There were too many options available to them for me to prepare for every possible encounter, so I just made short notes of a few places of interest in Nerekhall, and left the rest to them. Other than those mentioned in the module, I also added a few locations from the Streets of Zobeck supplement by Kobold Press, and was rewarded when the players decided to visit the Rare Bookstore - the fact that there were no rare books in the store was supposed to be a joke: the 'rare' part referred to a bookstore owned by a dwarf.

This session was notable to me in a couple ways: I had to RP more NPCs than I usually do, including a dozen named NPCs, and the session did not end with a fight.

I realised a few days before the session that almost all of my games ended in a big fight, followed by a quick denouement. This is of course a rather classic structure for RPGs, and was reinforced during my Space Opera campaign, which almost always had three fights per session. The B Team games are all self-contained and thus also follow a similar structure, but with the continuous narrative of A Team's play, I can afford to change things up a little, and end a session on a cliff-hanger.

The next session will be in two weeks, when the PCs will finally come face-to-face with Markos, and the "Necromancer" arc of the campaign will end. I plan afterwards to tie up some loose ends, and then let the players pick which region of Mennaras they wish to visit in the next arc - hopefully they choose somewhere 'exotic', like Al-Kalim or Isheim.

2018 in Review and Looking Ahead

2018 had been a leaner year for wargaming than 2017 was, but on the flip side I played around a hundred hours of RPG, and look set to play around that same number of hour in 2019.

As regular readers will notice, the focus of this blog has shifted from wargaming to RPG in the past couple of years, especially from the middle of 2018, when I decided to document what went on in my gaming sessions, as well as my thoughts during the preparation and the running of the game. It's a way for me to keep track of what happened during each session, the story hooks that I have dropped, and also a way to remind myself of why I made certain GMing decisions.

I am very happy with the way my Terrinoth campaign (more accurately campaigns) have turned out; having two teams of PCs in the same game world and time-line has allowed me to use more setting and module material, and gave us all more flexibility in the scheduling of the game.

Having two teams of PCs also means I now have a larger stable of regular players, three of whom are GMs themselves. This, added to the more open, sandbox nature of the B Team campaign meant that the storyline for B Team has developed in a more organic fashion, prompted mainly by how the PCs have interacted with the NPCs and the setting. There are multiple story threads which I am weaving together to tie up loose ends which were left over from earlier sessions.

B Team will also benefit from Matt Colville's Strongholds and Followers supplement: two of the PCs have earned "strongholds" during the course of the game, and if time and inclination allow, we may pursue this aspect of gaming in the future.

On the A Team front I am close to completing the story arcs for two of the PCs, and hope to develop and close those for the remaining PCs over the course of this year.

I started GMing more than thirty years ago, but really it has only been in the past decade or so that I approached it as more of a craft than just a game. One of the things that I have adopted is to incorporate the PCs' backstories and their goals and motivations into the story. This can be difficult in a campaign where there are (currently) 9 characters, but it's also rewarding.

The Terrinoth adventures are scheduled to continue for at least the first four months of this year, after which I may switch to a Sorcery! campaign from the last week of April to the first week of August (projected 13 sessions) - this spans the June school holidays period, during which many people with school-age children go on vacation, so we may be seeing a new line-up of players for this short campaign.

The Sorcery! campaign is just one of those "bucket list" hobby projects for me (like the 10mm FPW project which we completed a few years ago, and the Arab Revolt project which I still hope to one day do). For the plot of the campaign I am planning to stick to the premise and basic structure of the original Steve Jackson story: a quest to retrieve a stolen crown, taking the party through a series of villages in the borderlands, through a lawless city, through the dangerous wilderness beyond, and finally into the Archmage's fortress.

I have not yet decided on which set of rules to use for this campaign, although I am rather keen to stick to a magic system that requires specific components, as in the original gamebook rules. The Advanced Fighting Fantasy rules are probably too simple for my tastes, but I look forward to recommendations from my readers.

From the middle of August to the middle of November I hope to switch from fantasy to sci-fi and run a short campaign (again of around 12 sessions) using the upcoming new edition of Savage Worlds. I backed the boxed set edition of this new edition, which is scheduled to deliver in June 2019; factoring for delivery and delay, I think a mid-August start is reasonable.

I have still not yet decided the subject of the campaign: it may be Season 2 of our Space Opera campaign we played in 2017, or a mash-up of the Shadowrun campaign we played in 2016 and the Gamma World mini-campaign we played in 2018. The first will be based on the Seven Worlds campaign, a Savage Worlds campaign (albeit in the by-now older edition), while the second will be a homebrew campaign set in a post-apocalyptic world where the cities are populated by humans ruled by mega-corporations runned by vampires, and where the wilderness are populated by wasteland warriors and mutant animals and plants. Both campaigns will see the return of characters from the previous campaign/s, and both excite me, but I imagine eight months is a long term in the hobby world and who knows what other setting will tempt us between now and then?

Amidst all this I am hoping to get more painting done. Among the kickstarters that my friends and I have backed together in 2018 are West Wind 15mm Dark Ages and Fireforge 32mm fantasy figures; I have pledged to paint up 3 units of Gothic Heavy foot to supplement wahj's Late Roman force, which hopefully will give us the impetus to get back to some historical wargaming soon.

I am also looking at some 48 castings of undead foot, horses and dogs to be added to the 19 Rune Wars castings I have primed... I had best get started.

Everything I painted this year

28mm Sci-fi

28mm Fantasy

Terrinoth #21 - Rescue Wilgold Part 2

(image from Heroic Maps)

Campaign Diary

It was late when Professor Wilfrey led Entana, Gio, and Percy to the Council House. Despite the lateness, the University Council was summoned, and our heroes quizzed over the events of the evening and the past few months. Having given their accounts, the trio were dismissed, while the council deliberated over what course of action to take.

(Click here for PC profiles)

At dawn the next day our heroes were once again summoned to the council chambers. There, the council offered them a quest.

It was the council's belief that Markos had come under the service of Waiqar the Undying, and that his theft of the Diaries of the Mad Mage Kovac could mean only one thing: Markos plans to continue Kovac's work and create undead versions of the Ironbound!

Our heroes' quest, if they chose to accept it, was to travel to Nerekhall and hopefully find Kovac's laboratory. If they did not find Markos there, they are to destroy the laboratory; if they did find the necromancer there, they are to kill him, and seal the laboratory.

"What if he surrenders?" asked Percy.

"He is a necromancer - he is too dangerous to be left alive." Wilfrey replied.

"Should he not be brought back to face justice?" Percy persisted.

"He is too dangerous to be left alive." Wilfrey repeated.

Markos has had some forty days of head-start on our heroes, and during good travel season. Adding to the difficulty of the mission was the requirement that it be conducted in strict secrecy - if word of the loss of the diaries under the guard of the University reached the Barons, there would be grave consequences, the Council warned. The mission will also need to be kept secret from the rival Academy in Nerekhall, which meant they could expect no aid at their destination.

In return, the Council let our heroes name their rewards if they succeeded in the mission.

Entana asked that the mission be considered his dissertation for his Master's degree, in practicum.

Gio asked for a reward of 1500 Gros, the sum owed in weregild for his family's freedom.

Percy asked to study wizardry at the University, and was offered a full scholarship upon her return.

The party was given horses and travel expenses, and sent on their way. Even as they made ready their mounts at the University stables, they saw a dozen riders being sent out - the Council had made plans in case their mission was a failure.

Prepping and Running the Game

As I mentioned in the previous post, the conclusion of this session set the stage for the completion of the character arcs for all three PCs: Entana must face an enemy from his past to succeed in his short-term goal; Gio has a chance of completing his short-term goal if he survives, although the fact that he had been sworn to secrecy means this quest will not help his long-term goal of becoming the most famous gnome in Terrinoth; Percy has a chance to learn rune magic.

The next session will see Entana and Gio reunited with Strigoi, and over the next two sessions the climax and resolution of this campaign arc.

Terrinoth #20 - Rescue Wilgold Part 1

Gio is trapped in the room by the Ironbound

Campaign Diary

Five days after leaving Nornholt, Entana, Gio, and Percy find themselves in Greyhaven, home to the famed University, where Entana had learned the magical arts. Entana led the party through the outer city into the university grounds, only pausing for a pint at his favourite pub, before meeting up with his mentor, Professor Kroft.

(Click here for PC profiles)

Kroft's face grew grave when Entana related the party's tale and showed him the purple runebound shard which he had taken off Mondock, and he bade the party to seek the opinion of Emeritus Professor Wilfrey, who had his residence at The Tower, an ancient building located about an hour north of the city.

Percy asked if it would be customary for them to bring a gift - at this Kroft noted that Basil, Wilfrey's manservant, had not come to claim his master's stipend for more than a month. The party bought some food and beer at the local store, and made their way to The Tower.

The origins of The Tower had been lost in time, although local legends said that it was built by Timorran himself. Now it served as the official residence of the Emeritus Professor of the University, and housed the most precious of the university's collection of books and scrolls. To protect this collection, The Tower was protected by powerful magic.

It was close to sunset when the party reached the tower. Right away the heroes noticed something was not right - light shined from the windows of the tower, but the snow on the path to the front door had not been cleared for many days. Approaching the heavy double-doors, Entana made the glyph of unlocking, and pushed the doors open.

There in the foyer was the prone form of a man. Entana recognised the man as Basil, Wilfrey's manservant, from his clothing and build. Instinctively Percy rushed through the doors to aid the man, and as she passed the threshold she felt as though she had moved through an invisible curtain - right away a stench assailed her senses - Basil had been dead for many days. Percy crouched down next to the body, hoping to find out what had killed the man. As she did so the corpse reached out a bony hand and attacked her. Entana and Gio rushed to Percy's aid. Entana attempted to cast a spell of fire, and when it failed to work he recalled that a spell put on The Tower prevented the use of fire within it. Gio decapitated the undead, and Entana crushed its head with his staff, for good measure.

Entana called out to Wilfrey, but there was no answer. The trio searched the ground floor of the tower - the interior of the tower was lit with magical lights - but found no sign of the professor. Gio pocketed the coins he found in Basil's quarters - while Percy looked on with disapproval.

A search of the second floor revealed that the professor and a guest had been interrupted mid-dinner several weeks ago. A search of the professor's quarters revealed no further clues, although Percy, inspired by Gio, decided to take a detailed map of Terrinoth that she had found there.

Climbing up to the next floor, the library, the party was confronted with a terrible sight: the library was in disarray, with books and scrolls strewn across its floor. Standing almost motionless in the room were eight skeletal warriors. On the ground laid what seemed to be a full suit of plate armour, and piled around it were many more skeletons, crushed and broken, as well as many rusty weapons.

Our heroes decided to tackle the problem head on. Gio called on the power of Fortuna to conjure up an oil slick in the midst of the skeletons, and the party revealed themselves. The skeletal warriors charged towards them. A few of the undead slipped on the slick and fell, and Entana summoned a thunderous wave to throw back those who reached them. In such a fashion they prevented the skeletons' superior number from bearing down upon them all at once, and Gio's sword found the joints between their bones and one by one took them apart.

After the battle the party surveyed the room. The suit of armour turned out to be an Ironbound, a magical construct that acted as guardians. With still no sign of the professor, the heroes ascended to the next floor. Opening the locked door to the fourth floor with a key he had found in the library, the party saw a large room with glowing magical patterns upon its floor. On two corners were two pedestals, with arcane patterns carved upon them. Standing motionless at each end of the room were two Ironbounds. The room, Entana reasoned, must hold the runebound shards that powered the lights and the magic that protected the tower.

The party closed the door to the room, and made their way to the top floor of the tower, where Entana knew the observatory was located. Near the top of the staircase, Percy struck her head against an invisible barrier. A voice called out:

"Who is there?"

Entana recognised the voice - it was Professor Wilfrey.

A disheveled man appeared at the top of the staircase. The elderly wizard explained what had happened:

Some forty days ago, a former student of the University, one Markos of Nerekhall, expelled for cheating - and caught in the act by Entana no less - several years ago, appeared at his door. He had with him a runebound shard, he said, which he hoped to show the professor. When he produced a rare, purple-coloured Necromancy shard, the wizard's curiosity overcame him and he lowered the magical barrier guarding the tower and invited the former student in to join him in his dinner. However, in the middle of the dinner, skeletal warriors entered the tower and attacked his manservant. Wilfrey fled to the rooftop observatory, activating the tower's protection as he did so. In his sanctuary the wizard was safe from the undead, but he was also trapped there until the magical force field could be deactivated by an ally. There he heard the intruders ransack the precious library, and when no help from his manservant came even after they had left, he assumed the worse. For the next forty days he survived on rain and snow - for water and air could still pass through the magical barrier. Now he needed the party to enter the room in the floor below, and remove the Force runebound shard which powered the magical barrier in the tower from its pedestal and free him; the other pedestal held a Light runebound shard, which provided the tower with its light. Unfortunately for the party, the Ironbound were charged to attack anyone but Wilfrey or Basil if they entered the room; fortunately for them, he revealed, one of the Ironbound was actually just a plain suit of armour!

Knowing the power of an Ironbound, our heroes was unwilling to risk a confrontation. Climbing through a window was not an option, even though Gio was small enough to pass through one, as the magical barrier also covered the windows. Eventually they decided to use speed as their strategy: Gio and Percy would run into the room simultaneously, grab one of the crystals each, and then run out again before the Ironbound could react.

That, at least, was the plan.

So Entana unlocked the door, and Percy rushed headlong to the pedestal in the far corner, while Gio ran for the nearer one. But as Gio passed the Ironbound by the wall, it moved with surprising speed and swinged its two-handed sword at him. Gio ducked under the weapon, and continued to the pedestal... and then the whole room, and indeed the whole tower plunged into darkness - Percy had removed the Light runebound shard from its pedestal.

Entana cast a spell of light on his staff, illuminating the room. Percy ran back through the door. Entana cast spells of attack on the Ironbound, but they did not seem to affect it. Gio lifted the Force runebound shard from the pedestal, then eyed the Ironbound, hoping to duck around it and run back to the door when it moved against him.

But instead of moving towards to rouge, the Ironbound stepped in front of the doorway, and blocked his escape.

For a minute all four figures were still and silent.

Then Entana had a thought: if the Force shard had been removed from the pedestal, then the barrier across the window would have been lowered - Gio could jump through the window, and simultaneously he would cast a spell to slow his fall so he would not come to any harm.

Gio agreed. Entana cast his spell, and Gio made a running start, ducked under the Ironbound's sword once more, dived through the window... and floated safely to the ground fifty feet below.

The party returned to the now-liberated wizard - the ham that they had with them turned out to the best gift they could have brought. Even as he chewed on the first food he had for weeks, Professor Wilfrey asked to be brought to the library. After some frantic searching, his face turned grim as he declared that it was as he feared: Markos had taken the diary of the Mad Mage Kovac, who experimented on fusing dead flesh with steel to create constructs - essentially undead versions of the Ironbound, more powerful and resilient than zombies and skeletons, and proof against magic. When news of his unholy experiments leaked, the wizards attacked Kovac in his laboratory in Nerekhall and killed him. His dairies and plans were taken, and would become the basis of the Ironbound later. His laboratory was sealed, and all records of its location deleted... except for the diaries.

Wilfrey replaced the Force shard in its pedestal, and gifted Entana with the Light shard. Then, the four made their way back to the University, where Wilfrey planned to summon the Council.


Prepping and Running the Game

This session was based loosely on the module Rescue Wilgold by Dragon Turtle Games. The basic idea was that a wizard had been trapped in his own tower, and the PCs must rescue him.

For the layout of The Tower and the battlemats, I used Heroic Maps' The Wizard's House, adapting the adventure to the map, instead of vice versa. This required a bit of a thought, as one of the problems with any tower adventure is that the PCs can essentially just go from the ground floor to the top floor by taking the stairs, bypassing all the floors in between, or climb up or even fly to the top.

To make sure that they had to go to the two floors with the "monsters", I built in a couple of fetch quests: the force field had to be disabled by entering the runebound shard floor, and the key to the floor was located in the library, where the skeletons were.

As it turned out I did not really have to worry: after their experience in the B Team game, the party decided that the prudent way to clear a tower was to go floor-by-floor, so they would not be caught by enemies both before and below them.

I had expected the fight with the Ironbound in the runebound shard room to be the boss fight of the session - the plan was to show them how powerful an Ironbound was, so they would realise the level of threat an army of undead Ironbound posed. However, the players simply assumed that it was a formidable foe based on the lore, even before the fight began, which was always gratifying for a GM. The way they overcame the challenge was classic PC, and made all the more cool by this passage about the Ironbound from the Realms of Terrinoth book:

"The Ironbound lack initiative and drive, though, and can often be defeated through cunning and ingenuity."

The conclusion of this session sets the stage for the conclusion of the character arcs for all three of the PCs - in the interest of length I will discuss this in a subsequent post.

Terrinoth #19 - Blood of Malar

Fight at The Golden Lion

Campaign Diary

Therion Lakemane was closing up his store ('Lakemane's Luxries') for the day when he heard a knocking on his door. Looking through the glass of his door, Therion saw a bald, middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper moustache, dressed in the clothes of a merchant.

Therion opened the door, and the man introduced himself as Weiss, a shipping merchant, and asked if he could enter the shop and speak with Therion. He had found Therion through the blacksmith to whom Therion had sold the good-quality chains he recovered from the ruined keep in Blackwing Swamp a month ago. The chains, he said, were stolen off his barges, presumably by his rival, one Aris, and he had hoped to learn more about the circumstances of their recovery, so he could bring a formal complaint to the merchant's guild.

Therion played dumb and claimed that the chains were recovered by his employees, and that he himself did not know where they were found. Weiss then offered to buy Therion and his employees a round of drink the next evening at The Golden Lion tavern, as a means to thank them, and also to learn how the chains were recovered from them.

The next evening found Therion, Giso, Whisper, and Risvir at The Golden Lion. Tom, busy with tending to a new wave of red mist victims and the temple, was unable to join the party.

(Click here for PC profiles)

Therion related his encounter to the party. The name Weiss immediately stood out for Whisper, who recalled coming across it when the party investigated traffickers of the drug red mist, under the employment of one Lazar. The name Weiss was a common one in Terrinoth, and Therion had not managed to find any more information on his visitor, but our heroes decided to continue to play dumb in the hope of making Weiss reveal more about himself.

Weiss arrived at the appointed time and began to politely ask our heroes about the chains, but was met with feigned ignorance. Just then, Whisper noticed a carriage coming to a stop on the street outside the tavern - it resembled Lazar's carriage. Moments later four tough-looking men entered through the tavern's door, scanned the room, and then started to move towards the table where our heroes were seated.

Therion bade Weiss to move to a table further away from the front door, and signaled for the others to move to block the new arrivals. As our heroes sought to distract the men, they heard a cry, followed by a clatter, behind them. Turning around, they see that the serving girl had left a dagger in Weiss' back, and was drawing another dagger from inside the folds of her clothes. Whisper and Giso leapt into attack, driving the assassin away, while Therion and Risvir blinded the men with a combination of mind tricks and enchanted fog to cover the party's escape.

Leaving with the gravely wounded Weiss through the side door, the party soon realised that the snow on the ground would make it easy for their enemies to track them. Summoning what remaining strength he had, Weiss asked them to enter the sewers, and from there make their way to the outlet to the river, where he had a boat stowed for just such an eventuality. With no other option, the party entered the next manhole they found, and entered the sewers.

Now the old city of Tamalir was built upon the old city that was devastated during the Dragon Wars, and its old streets now served as the sewer channels of the new city. Risvir summoned up a magical platform formed of shadow, that floated a few feet off the ground. Onto this they placed the now-unconscious Weiss, whose wound would not stop bleeding despite the healing spells our heroes cast upon him. Desperate, they eventually took the risk and removed the dagger and cauterised the wound with a heated dagger. The bleeding slowed to an ooze. Therion examined the dagger - it had a triangular profile, and upon its blade were carved arcane runes. Was it a cursed blade?

With Weiss seemingly stabilised, the party followed the flow of the sewage towards the river, Therion opting to ride upon the floating disk so as to avoid soiling his shoes. For a while it seemed that they were alone in the sewers apart from some rats, but half an hour after they started their journey, they could hear footsteps echoing though the tunnels behind them.

Then they came upon a channel in the sewers which was too wide for them to cross easily. While they pondered over how to cross the span with the aid of the floater disk, a giant lamprey broke the surface of the foetid water and attacked them. Our heroes drove the beast off with steel and spells, but the din of battle had drawn the attention of their pursuers - there was need for haste now.

Whisper noticed a thieves' sign marked upon a wall - they were near the river now. As they continued south there was a change in the air, and light coming from ahead.

Whisper scouted ahead. Not far from where they were the sewer tunnels widened and opened into the river, and there two boats were moored. Here the ceilings were taller. Several ruined houses had new doors on them, and standing outside these, as if on guard, were a few armed persons... one of whom was the serving girl from The Golden Lion! The area was lit by a few torches set on brackets on the walls, and the moonlight reflected off the surface of the river.

With pursuers not far behind them, the party decided to launch an assault on the guards and seize one of the boats. Whisper led the attack, shooting off arrows from her bow and then rushing out from the tunnel... only to be ambushed by an attacker she had not seen hiding just around the corner. Giso moved forward to aid Whisper, but the other guards also moved forward, trapping the party at the mouth of the tunnel. Missiles and magical energies were exchanged. The party could not break through. Behind them the pursuers were getting closer. Risvir cast an enchantment upon his dagger, whereupon it became a spinning cloud of blades that blocked off the passage - but the spell would only last one minute...

In the sewers of Tamalir

One by one their enemies fell, and the serving girl from the tavern abandoned her comrades and fled in one of the boats. The party rushed forward to seize the remaining boat, with Risvir carrying Weiss on his back.

But as they were passing by one of the room, Weiss moved himself off Risvir's back, grabbed a torch from its bracket on the wall, opened one of the doors, and threw it in. Inside the room was crates and boxes, which quickly caught alight. Before the surprised eyes of the heroes, Weiss calmly walked to the remaining boat, and asked them to join him.

The party rowed out into the river, and was soon taken outside the city walls by its flow. Not long afterwards, Weiss pointed out a spot on the south bank where they could land. Our heroes accused Weiss of being less than honest in his dealings with them, and he wryly replied that they had been less than honest with him regarding the circumstances of the discovery of his chains. Now seemingly completely well, Weiss stepped off the boat, and disappeared into the nearby woods.

The next day a sum of 200 Gros was delivered to Lakemane's Luxuries, which Therion split equally with the others.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session was a natural follow-on to the last B Team game - my players came up with the idea of investigating the origins of the chains which they found on the beings at the ruined keep, and I reasoned that the person who had the chains made would likewise try to find those who took the chains via the same means. The sewer-crawl idea came from the module Blood of Malar, which involved the party escorting a merchant through the sewers while he was being hunted.

I will not yet reveal the true identities and purposes of Weiss and Lazar, but it is now obvious to the players and PCs that they have been employed/used by both sides in a conflict, and that the drug red mist was somehow in the middle of all this.

In the post-game talk they speculated that Weiss was perhaps an undead - maybe even a vampire - and that red mist was perhaps made from vampire blood. To prove this hypothesis, they wanted to find someone who knew more about undead and vampires, someone who could put their hypothesis to the test.

At the same time, they also asked to investigate Lazar, and to track down the serving girl-assassin who had twice eluded them.

This gives me fodder for at least three more sessions. The players are now so determined to get to the bottom of the mystery they are not asking about reward for what they are going to do next. On my part I have promised that the truth will be revealed in the future. But for now, I shall not spoil it for them or for my readers here.

This was again a light-prep session - light to the point that once I had the basic ideas and the maps chosen for the session, I had little else to do on game day.

The maps that you see in the photos above are from Loke Battle Mats. These are A3 sized spiral-bound books with gridded battle mats which can be laid open to form an A2 size playing area, or even an A1 size area with two books. There are around 60 different designs per book - I got two of their fantasy ones and a sci-fi one off kickstarter.

You can find a place to buy a copy by googling "giant book of battle mats".

The glossy surface of the maps are a bit too reflective for photography, but they are dry-erase, and durable. They are not as flexible as the Heroic Maps tiles which I buy and print myself, but they are a lot more convenient, especially if you are a traveling GM.