Gripping Beast Plastic Arab Infantry and Cavalry

I have actually been interested in Gripping Beast's plastic Arabs figures for a long time, but did not have an excuse to get some until the players in my RPG campaign decided they wanted to go to Al-Kalim, the Arabia analogue in the Terrinoth world setting. I didn't need a whole box, so I was glad to find a seller on eBay who sold sprues, and I bought one of the infantry, one of the light cavalry, and one of the heavy cavalry one.

I decided on a very simple, probably unrealistic paint scheme for six of the figures, since I needed them for the table soon, and since I wanted them to be generic enough to use for armed civilians, militia, bandits, guards, cultists, etc. I did give them differently coloured headdresses, which will make it easier for me to track hit points in combat.

I built four of the figures with face masks, in the Almoravid Black Guard fashion. I've always wanted a unit of these figures since I first saw some in an all issue of a wargaming magazine decades ago. They will probably be used to represent elite units or cultists in my games.

They are very nice figures which paint up nicely with my usual block-and-wash technique. I am not planning to get more of them for the time being, but if I ever want to expand  them into a full force for my skirmish wargames, they will give me  good core of troops.

Terrinoth #28 - The Heist at Nimressa

The party arrive at the fort at Nimressa

Campaign Diary

Having learned of the location of a magical artifact which will help them decipher the text on the cursed obsidian tablet, our heroes set about finding a way to get their hands on it. Iwan was sent to obtain more information regarding the fort and its guardians, and the party learned that the fort was garrisoned by some two dozen guards, led by a captain. The fort also had a staff wizard. The vault of the fort was underground, carved into the rock of the cliff upon which the fort was built, and the door was guarded by a key held by the captain, and a magical lock set by the wizard.

(Click here for PC profiles)

Seeing the formidable security measures, our heroes decided that force or stealth were not the best approaches here, and decided that guile would be required.

They learned from Iwan that Captain Sorya owed a gambling debt to Shazar, a local crime boss, and that Finaz the staff wizard was an ambitious young wizard who aspired to rise in the hierarchy of the Academy. Armed with this knowledge, they had Iwan arrange a meeting with Shazar.

Having explained their situation to Shazar, they first proposed to buy Sorya's debt off him, but was unable to pay the price of 1500 Gros. Shazar then offered a proposal of his own: that they acquire for him one of the treasures from the vault, a small wooden ball, which he claimed held a sentimental value for him. Confident of their ability to access the vault, our heroes agreed to the deal, and were given a 'letter of introduction' to Sorya, a (crude) replica of the wooden ball in question, and the letter of debt (which amounted to 750 Gros - but the value of leverage over the captain of a royal fort far exceeds the value of the amount in coins, you see...).

Entana then visited the Academy at Al-Madena to seek Finaz's professor, who turned out to be an expert in the field of Comparative Arcana, and the two wizards had a lively discussion over the similarities between rune magic and djinni magic, much of which was lost on the other party members. Impressed by the young wizard, the professor likewise furnished a letter of introduction to Finaz, and also discussed his student's thesis with him.

Armed with the letters of introduction, our heroes made their way to the fort at White Dune pass, called Nimressa in the Al-Kalim language, accompanied by Iwan, who assumed the identity of Najar, gentleman-interpreter. They handed over the letter from Shazar to the guards, and were brought to meet Captain Sorya after handing over their weapons (although Gio used the magic from Fortuna to disguise his shortsword as a flute).

Captain Sorya was not pleased to see the party, and when presented with the offer of allowing the party to access the artifact to translate some ancient texts in exchange for the canceling of his debt, fumed and threatened them, but finally relented. There was, however, he said, the issue of convincing staff wizard Finaz, for she held the password to the vault, and was the only one who knew how to use the artifact.

The party found the staff wizard in the fort library, where she was teaching a soldier how to write. Unlike her professor, she was less impressed by Entana, but agreed to help them nonetheless. Entana, Percy and Gio, accompanied by Captain Sorya and Finaz descended to the basement of the fort, while Strigoi kept the guards distracted in the mess hall with tales of how he won the various trophies which he wore around his neck, as best as he could with no knowledge of the local language.

When they reached the vault door, Finaz spoke the incantation that removed the ward on the door, and Sorya unlocked it with a large key which he kept on a chain around his neck. Inside the vault the party saw several large chests on the floor, and a few smaller ones on shelves against the walls. Taking another bunch of keys from his belt, he selected one, unlocked a small chest with it, and removed from inside it a small statuette of a scribe, and handed it to Finaz. The party then brought the statuette to the table at the guardroom, while Sorya locked the door again.

While the rest were poring over the transcripts of the texts that Percy made, Gio once more used the magic of Fortuna to lift the bunch of keys off Sorya's belt, and made an excuse to leave the room.

The texts which Percy had copied off the walls in the tomb of the Sand Lord spoke of an ancient king called Eschardon, who turned from the worship of the old gods to Anzu, who was depicted as a lion-headed eagle. The text which she had copied off the cursed tablet read that to break the curse, the cursed must bathe in the holy spring of Essilim on the day of the equinox.

Meanwhile, sneaking back to the vault, Gio called in the magic of the brooch which he had taken from the Sand Lord, and turned into a gust of wind - in such a form he passed through the keyhole, and rematerialised inside the vault! Gio set about trying the keys on the various small chests on the shelves, and just as he found the wooden sphere, he heard the others approaching the vault - there was no time to return the keys! He quickly pocketed the wooden sphere and put the replica in its place. Then, in a moment of brilliance, he inserted the key into the box which held the statuette, and hid against the wall.

Captain Sorya entered the vault, reached for the keys at his belt, had a moment of panic when he realised they were not there, looked around frantically, and heaved a sigh of relief when he saw the key still in the keyhole of the chest. He returned the statuette to the chest, locked it, shook his head at his own forgetfulness, and bade everyone to leave the vault. In the excitement he did not notice when Gio emerged from behind the door and joined the party.

When they have left the vault, Captain Sorya asked for the letter of debt from Gio, and bade them goodbye. Finaz meanwhile invited the party to join her in the library, where she said she had a book which had information of Essilim. Once she was alone with the party, Finaz confronted them and demanded to know the story behind the texts - she did not buy their cover that they had come upon the text in a library. When the party revealed the truth to her, she demanded to join them in the search for the lost city of Essilim, and the right to first pick of any magical artifact which they find there. As they knew no other means of finding Essilim, the party reluctantly agreed.

The party collected their weapons and left the fort, and after an hour Finaz joined them, and together they traveled back to Al-Madena. There, Bram and Iwan made preparations for the expedition to Essilim. It would be nearly a month till the Spring equinox, and our heroes kept themselves occupied: Strigoi practised at his martial skills, Entana made visits to the Academy, while Percy visited the markets and learned the local language.

When the day came to depart the party left Al-Madena on the pretext of journeying to Irram. For three days they traveled west into the Great Sand Sea, with Finaz navigating using a series of landmarks detailed in a book which she guarded jealously. Then on the fourth day at last they came upon the lost city of Essilim...


Prepping and Running the Game

This session was based on the module The Heist at Nimressa by Jeremy Tuohy, available at DMsguild. The module as written was for a low level party, and covers an invitation to the heist, a short journey to the site of the heist, and a subplot which adds drama to the whole narrative.

I took the premise of the story and some of the NPCs for my game, but for the actual site I needed one with a battlemat with 1" grid. For this I used the Clifftop Keep from Seafoot Games, which I bought from Drivethrurpg.

I failed to prep adequately for this session, and I think it showed when I had to shuffle through my notes to find the relevant information and the NPCs' names. I had decided to leave the session pretty open, and became too complacent in the process.

I had no fixed idea on how the players would pull off the heist, but I did make it clear to them that garrison of the fort were competent and outnumbered them, that as foreigners they could easily be identified and located if they showed themselves (an orc and a gnome would stick out in Al-Kalim), that it would be difficult to smuggle anything they stole out of the Al-Madena region if it was known they took something, and that any killing of the guards will bring massive and swift retaliation not just against them, but likely against all Terrinoth merchants.

It was clear that they would have to take the stealth or the guile/blackmail approach.

When they realised that they could use the statuette without actually taking it out of the vault, it made things much easier. However, when they decided to seek the help of Shazar, I decided that he would ask for something in return; I had populated the vault with a few other magical items which I thought were appropriate and likely useful for them in the near future, in case they got greedy, and I decided that Shazar would ask for one of them to be brought to him as a price for his help.

Had they taken the stealth route, things would have been challenging, as opening the vault door required a physical key and a password (both of which I was prepared to let them bypass with lock-picking at a high DC or magic), and I had placed an Alarm spell on the inside of the vault, which would have alerted the garrison to anyone entering it without authorisation.

The players discussed sneaking into the fort inside supply carts, scaling the walls, and even getting arrested so they would be held in the jail cells in basement of the fort, but eventually decided to take the diplomatic route. This worked so well, we ran the whole session without a single combat.

Gio's player really shined this session. The players' plans entailed them distracting the captain and the staff wizard so Gio could "do his thing", and he acted on his own initiative after hearing me describe the layout of the vault and where Sorya kept his keys. While he had a magical item that allowed him to effectively cast Misty Step, he could only do so once per short rest, and once he got inside the vault there was no way he could get out in time and return the keys. When he decided to stick the key into the keyhole and hide behind the door, we all cheered at his brilliance, and I mimed the whole scene of Sorya getting shocked when he could not find his keys, and his relief and confusion afterwards.

I had Finaz fully statted out, and was prepared for the party to fight her and the rest of the garrison if things went that way. However, Entana's player surprised me a little when he asked to visit her professor, and he rolled a '20' on his Charisma check, so I had to develop her character more on the spot. I decided that she was a competitive wizard who wanted to make a name for herself, and that she was hard-boiled. I had initially intended for Iwan to serve as the party's guide to Essilim, but as there was already tension between Finaz and Entana, so I decided that it would be logical for her to want in on the expedition for her own ends, and this would let me further develop that tension in the next few sessions.

The whole reason for this session was based on the need to decipher an ancient language. By D&D rules as written the whole thing could have been solved with a Comprehend Language spell. While I understand that D&D is primarily a resource-management game where spells known and prepared are a limited resource, and such spells reward players who invest in them (at the expense of another spell), I find such spells ruin the mystery of the narrative; as such, I made the ruling that this spell did not exist in my world.

I feel the same way about spells that allow PCs to track quarry unerringly, or create food and water out of thin air, or teleport, which essentially negate the challenges of wilderness travel. I guess I want to see my game world as one where despite all the powers of magic, it is still a dangerous place and you can never be sure that you can know everything and be safe from everything.

Anvil Industry Heavy Weapons with Mad Robot Miniatures Crew

I've always wanted to add a few heavy weapons to my Warzone Trencher force, but have not found any that fit the WW1 British look I wanted other than a mortar.

Then a few weeks ago I received news that may mean that these figures may see some playtesting action in the near future, so I started searching for suitable pieces again, and found some excellent ones at Anvil Industry. I ordered a Maxim gun and a Howitzer, and some Mad Robot Miniatures crew figures again.

The Anvil Industry models are excellent: clean, crisp casts with no mould lines and no flash to speak of, and they come with a number of accessories that let you make a mini-diorama of your base, which I have tried to do. The model is very WW1 in style, down to the canvas ammunition belt.

I did run into some trouble with painting the crew - I have forgotten which paint I used for the uniform, and had to just go with the closest one I could find; you can see the difference in the two crew figures above if you looked closely.

The howitzer model also comes with nice bits like a case of rounds and empty casings, which I've always liked to see on dioramas. For some strange reason, even in the far future they have chosen to make the ammo case out of wood and gave it a handle made of hemp rope. The gun itself is of course multi-part, and you get the options of a closed breech and an opened breech, which would be cool used with a "loading" crew figure.

Both the Maxim and the howitzer are beautiful pieces on their own. However, a slight problem emerges when you put them side-by-side: the two weapons have a similar size. The Maxim is oversized compared to its historical counterpart, and the howitzer is much smaller than a real one would be in that scale. This is of course so that both pieces would fit nicely on the standard wargaming crew-served weapon base. I would have preferred the Maxin to be a little smaller, but then being made of resin, it would have been more fragile as a result.

Over all I am very pleased with the models, and if I want to expand my force again, I will definitely look at Anvil Industry again.

I hope to have more news to report on the playtesting in the near future...

Terrinoth #27 - Curse of the Sand Lord

In the tomb of the Sand Lord

Campaign Diary

Sensing that the dust devils were approaching them with sinister intent, Strigoi, Percy, and Gio charged towards one, while the other one went for Entana.

(Click here for PC profiles)

The whirlwinds fought as though they were living beasts, abrading the skin of our heroes with whirling sand, but were soon destroyed.

While they took stock of the situation, our heroes noticed the skeletons of the dead rising from the ground, and then slowly stumbling towards the north. Unwilling to suffer the undead to... live, Percy began calling on the flames of Kellos to destroy them, but were eventually persuaded to allow one to survive, that the party may follow it to whomever had created and were probably summoning them now.

After an hour, they arrived at a large stone structure in the middle of the desert, resembling a stone house built atop a ziggurat. The skeleton climbed the tall steps of the ziggurat, and disappeared into the doorway of the building.

By now the sun was close to setting. The party hobbled their camels, Percy took her bearings once again, and they then followed the skeleton into the doorway.

When they have ascended the steps of the ziggurat, they realised that the strong stone doors of the doorway had been broken as if by a great force, and that a gentle wind blew out from the doorway, and trailing on the ground was a thin stream of sand that flowed out within the doorway, like a layer of water.

From the doorway stairs descended to the darkness below. At the bottom of the stairs some 60 feet below the party found themselves at the start of a long gallery. On both walls of the gallery were bas relief with the figures of men and inscription of an unfamiliar language.

The first six reliefs depicted what appeared to be the coronation of a king, his battles against his enemies, and finally their subjugation. In between the panels they saw depiction of a lion-headed eagle battling and triumphing over a bull with the face of a man. The final two panels, however, were unfinished. Percy took tracings of the relief and script, hoping to study them later. As she did so, she noticed that fine lines were scoured across the surface of the relief - could the sand once have covered much of the walls?

The gallery led to an archway, the lintel upon which once more showed the lion-headed eagle clutching two bulls in its talons. The archway led into a large hall. The floor of the hall appeared to be covered with sand which streamed slowly outwards. On both sides of the hall, standing against the walls, stood dozens of skeletons, silent and motionless.

Strigoi stepped into the hall, only to sink into the soft sand, and was promptly pulled free by the others. Probing with the shaft of Strigoi's axe, they soon determined that the hall resembled a pool that had been filled with sand, but there was a ledge on the sides, which the skeletons stood on. The party gained the ledge on one side with the aid of rope and pitons, and as the proceeded along it they burned the skeletons, which did not put up a fight.

At the far end of the hall a corridor continued. The party investigated a door on the left of the corridor, which was a large room with shelves carved into the stone walls, but it was otherwise empty.

Moving to the far end of the corridor, they entered yet another hall. At the end of this hall was a raised platform, upon which was a plinth. Standing before the plinth was a figure they recognised: it was the king from the bas relief!

The king spoke to them in an unknown tongue, and when he did not receive a reply, repeated himself twice more. Our heroes tried to appease the ancient king by their gestures, but he raised his hands, and in an instant two sand devils formed, and he himself took the form of a whirlwind, descended the platform, and then took human form again as he moved to attack them. Up close, our heroes now realised that his body was made up of a shifting mass of sand.

The ancient king was a formidable foe, as many time just as their weapons looked sure to strike him, the sand that made up his form parted, causing the weapon to cut through only air, or he would turn into a whirlwind and passed between them when he pleased; yet when he struck our heroes, it felt like they were hit by a bag of sand. Entana tried to cause his form to disperse with a spell of wind, but found to his frustration that he could not do so.

In the chaos of the battle Percy noticed that the brooch upon the king's headdress did not appear to be formed of sand as the rest of his form, and called out to the others. Now they focused their blows upon the brooch, until at last Gio struck it with his sword, causing it to fly into the air - the form of the king and the two dust devils collapsed in an instance.

As the party tended to their wounds and recovered the brooch, they noticed that sand was beginning to seep through the cracks in the ceiling. The raced through the gallery and hall which they came through, and when they ascended the stairs and passed through the doorway it was already dark. The camels bellowed as the ground trembled, and the stone house which the party had just exited began to collapse, sending a cloud of dust into the cool night air. At the same time the sand around the ziggurat sank, as if it were filling the space beneath it.

Exhausted and disorientated, it took the party several hours before the managed to find the camp. Their fellow caravaneers were curious about their wounds, but our heroes remained tight-lipped.

Two days later the caravan arrived at White Dune Pass, which led to the Blessed Valley. Passing through the customs, they noticed a white stone fort in the cliff above the pass.

The land beyond the pass was like a different world from the desert they had just left: here the land was green and lush, and filled with the sound of birds. Picking up their pace, the caravan arrived at Al-Madena by the next day.

Much of the city of Al-Madena sat at the valley floor, but carved into the cliff on the west side of the valley were the homes of the nobles and the wealthy, while at the top of the cliff, next to a waterfall that plunged for hundreds of feet to the valley below, was the palace of the Caliph, the building to meet the rising sun each morning, as befitting the residence of the son of A'tar.

The party made their way to the Terrinoth traders' compound, where they were led by a worried servant to the Veniers' quarters. They were greeted at the door by Bram, the elder Venier's bodyguard, and led to his room. The merchant lay in his bed, pale and gaunt. He explained that he had sent for Entana several months ago when he had obtained a map to a lost tomb, hoping that father and son could explore it together. When the weeks passed without sign of his son, he decided to go with Bram and a small party to find the tomb himself, before the weather turned hot. They managed to locate and enter the tomb, but the only grave good he found that appeared to be of value was an obsidian tablet, engraved on one side with the figure of a beast-headed man and animals, and on the other an unfamiliar script.

Returning to Al-Madena, the elder Venier soon became ill and his sleep became haunted by nightmares monsters and fire. When neither Terrinoth nor local physicians were able to make a diagnosis or find a cure, Bram decided that the tablet must have been cursed, and attempted to destroy it; however the tablet seemed indestructible. When he attempted to discard it by throwing it into a river, it mysteriously appeared back in the quarters again.

Examining the tablet, our heroes found the script to be similar to those which they have found in the tomb which they have recently explored themselves, but were unable to decipher them. Entana had the suspicion that the inscription on the tablets held a clue to how the curse may be broken, and upon his suggestion the elder Venier sent for Iwan, an Al-Kalim man who was his local 'fixer', and whom Gio recognised to be someone familiar with the workings of the criminal world as he himself.

Having heard their tales, Iwan ventured his opinion: the script was familiar to him and his... associates, who had knowledge of ancient tombs (the exploration of which, it may be worth noting, was forbidden by the court for fear of releasing hidden djinni) for... various reasons. In the course of their work, he had surmised that the ages of the tombs spanned many centuries, and the dress of the figures depicted in reliefs found therein, the form of the grave goods, and indeed the variations in the scripts found within each of them indicated one thing: that despite the official account of the court that the people of Al-Kalim were all one people, in the days before the djinni they must have comprised of different cultures and nations. When he shared his insight with his associates, he learned that there were stories of magical artifacts created in the days of the djinni, which would allow those who wielded them to understand the language of any nation - why would such artifacts be needed if all the people of Al-Kalim spoke the same language, as they do now, he mused?

Since they needed to know what was written on the tablet, and since they could not just go to the nearest arcane college and reveal that they possessed grave goods, perhaps such an artifact was what they needed, Iwan ventured.

Fortunately for them, he then revealed, it was rumoured that one such artifact was kept at the fort at White Dune pass, not two days from Al-Madena...

Prepping and Running the Game

The first part of this session was based on the Hellfrost Land of Fire module The Curse of the Sand Lord.

While looking for modules for a Arabic setting, I decided to look at the Hellfrost Land of Fire modules (I had previously looked at some of the Hellfrost modules and found them interesting), and found that they actually had a lot more fluff than Realms of Terrinoth had on Al-Kalim. Interestingly, they also seem to have had a period in history when djinni ruled over mankind.

I took the background story from the module plus a couple of the more interesting encounters as the basis of this session's plot. The dust devils were just reskinned Dust Mephits from the Monster Manual, and the Sand Lord was a fusion of the Mummy Lord and the titular Sand Lord from the module.

I had decided against basing the tomb on an Egyptian one, and went the Mesopotamian way instead. The Mesopotamian mythology is less familiar to most people but certainly no less interesting, and to me their demons have always had a more bestial, atavistic horror to them.

Of course the Mesopotamian cultures are not known for the scale of their tombs compared to their Egyptian neighbours - the overground structure I described in the game was based on the Persian model. The players gathered from the description of the tomb that it was incomplete, and that it once may have been completely filled with sand. They were correct, of course: the background here was that the tyrannical king who worshiped the Lion-headed Eagle demon - a wind demon - was overthrown by his own people and buried alive in sand in his tomb. In his dying moments he called upon the power of his patron, and was turned into an undead whose form was composed of sand. Over the centuries his power had slowly grown, and with the power of the wind he had slowly emptied his tomb of sand, and only recently he had sent out dust devils to gather skeletons for him, with which he planned to create an undead army out of. Typical mummy stuff, you understand. The players may never learn of the whole story, but I supposed this was realistic as the PCs may never find out either.

I was not too happy with the way I ran the dungeon-crawl. I had made the wrong decision of having a large number of relatively weak opponents in the form of the unarmed skeletons. I had initially counted on the players leaving them alone, since I decided that they would not actively attack the PCs, but I had forgotten that Percy hates undead and would destroy any that she came across. This left me with the choice of either playing through a massive combat against forty or so skeletons, which would drag, or having the situation of them being able to destroy the skeletons at their leisure, without the skeletons or the Sand Lord retaliating - a situation which would almost certainly cause a total party kill. Lesson learned, I guess: do not place opponents within reach of the PCs which you don't want them to fight.

The second part of the session set the scene for next week's module, which I will discuss in the next report. Here too I am not too satisfied with what I have done: essentially a hackneyed "mummy's curse" plot with an obvious and too convenient solution, leading to a heist game. The players seem to have taken it in good humour though, so hopefully next week's game will make up for this deficiency on my part.

Despite all that, I learned a lot prepping for the session.

As with the other regions the party travels to, I tried to find its real world geographic counterpart so I could have an idea of the climate, daily temperatures, and sunrise and sunset time. Other things I learned prepping for this game were Mesopotamian history, mythology, and languages, how oases are formed, and we all learned at the table how to hobble camels.

In the sessions after the next one we may be seeing more elements of Mesopotamian mythology incorporated into the game, so do stay tuned if they are your cup of tea.

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.