Tag Archives: river of darkness

Twenty-eighth Session (10 page pdf) – “The Battle of Nightfall Station” – It’s death or glory as the Ekujae elves assault the station in force. Can the PCs stem the tide of these “savages?” Or will they fall to overwhelming numbers? Find out as we conclude River Into Darkness!

Well, it turns out one of the Hated British was actually a necromancer, making fast zombies out of elves and dead colonials alike. The Ekujae have very severe taboos around their dead so that explains their “wipe out whitey” program. There’s no opportunity to negotiate a peace, however, as wave after wave of elves throw themselves at Nightfall Station.

But finally they are rescued by a real high level party – the Hands of Slaughter from the Rival Guide, a real bad set of dudes (like, a gorilla antipaladin named “Eater of Elves” bad) that are the Aspis Consortium’s local enforcers. The party gets paid, levels up (they’ll level up again in… seven years I guess, spoiler alert), and heads off to Nantambu, putting the impending genocide out of their minds. “We’re pirates, man, this isn’t our problem.”

It’s always tricky emulating a problematic type of story, but I think everyone came away with the clear message “these were the bad guys and we were helping them.”

And with that, we have finished River of Darkness!

Twenty-fifth Session (12 page pdf) – “Brimstone Falls” – After leaving the somewhat-relieved Whitebridge Station and its casual racism, the PCs search for fuel for the River Queen, leading them into both toil and trouble in the depths of the jungle.

Anyway, the party has to go get some tumors off a shambling mound to power their magical riverboat. And in a cool twist, the adventure has some lizardfolk “come to pay homage to the loa spirits” that have statues along the path and they are “none too please to find strangers (especially “softskins”) at this sacred place, and don’t hesitate to attack.”

But the party, having a wendo goddess sponsor themselves, left an offering at each loa statue on the way up, and when they also parley with Serpent’s “serpent shaman” parseltongue trick, that’s enough to chill them out. I really, really like rewarding interacting with the fictional world and not just moving from “combat” to “combat”, that is so lame.

And (almost) just like that, they have a captive shambling mound!