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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Four, Twenty-second Session

Posted on March 17, 2016 | Leave a comment


Twenty-second Session (11 page pdf) – “A Narrow Escape” – The pirates finally get back to Nisroch and their ship; the Araska and the Dagger had a successful voyage. They are gathering up their crew when White Estrid’s fleet of longships hits. A bloodbath ensues, shattering the usual silence of Nisroch.

white estrid

White Estrid

The PCs return to Nisroch, having escaped death at the hands of plague, froghemoths, and the local law enforcement.  (I actually did a lot of work to figure out how likely it was the local constabulary would track the two murdered shadowcallers back to them. See the Paizo forum post.)

I did my usual thing – whenever the PCs leave their ship for a while and let the NPCs roam loose, I roll d20 for each NPC and they have a time according to that roll. Sometimes it’s a 1 and they die, sometimes it’s a 2 and they have something else bad happen.  Sometimes it’s a 20 and they really score.

So they get back, catch up, talk to Captain Clap, go to the Witch Markets… Seems like a calm “between adventures” session.  I was proud of my pacing on this one.  Thartane’s homunculus shows up to say “thanks for the froghemoth” and give them a manifest of shipping activity as requested.  Sindawe scans down it… “26 Ulfen longships?!?  Shit!!! Is that cannon fire from the harbor? RUN YOU DOGS!”

Sure enough, White Estrid’s fleet is pulling into Nisroch for the second time!  The only female Linnorm King made her bones sacking Nisroch and shooting the Arch of Aroden once before – and she’s pushing her luck by doing it again. They’ve known she was coming but kept pushing their luck time-wise. The PCs are way across town and run their asses off to get to their ships and get them underway as the Ulfen attack.

They get the Teeth of Araska underway but a bunch of the creepy mute monk Nidalese enforcers get on board. Then a longship rams them and Vikings board!  Meanwhile a linnorm flies in and a Nidalese tower disintegrates to let loose an ancient shadow dragon. Shit gets real, go read the deets.

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Four, Twenty-first Session

Posted on March 15, 2016 | Leave a comment
froghemoth

Froghemoth

Twenty-first Session (9 page pdf) – “Lions and Tigers and Froghemoths, Oh My!” – The group tracks down their promised froghemoth and set up a blind to lie in wait for it. Of course, it’s already lying in wait for them.

It’s finally time to pay the piper – the monster they promised to Thartane the Necromancer for his aid in their safe passage through Nidal. I loved how they ended up suggesting it in the first place. Now, a very very concerned party tries to figure out how they’re going to get one.

The session gets off to a very “City Slickers” start while they stay at a ranch, then hire a trapper to guide them to the froghemoth grounds. As usual they spend most of their time not trusting a random hireling instead of the much, much more suspicious characters they tend to meet.  “He is taking money for services!  Keep an eye on him!”

They get out there and lay in wait… But though they are stealthy, the froghemoth is wily. The plan goes out the door fast; Samaritha pours electricity into the creature to stop it from getting its like 6 attack full attack every round. It’s super tough, but Serpent rolls a super lucky crit (we use the Paizo crit deck) and does INT damage to it – which is of course a froghemoth’s Achilles heel.

Everyone freezes briefly at this stroke of good luck, then leaps into action… there is no telling how quickly the aberration might recover. Wogan urinates on the monster. Sindawe and Serpent pull out the teleport spikes and start hammering them into the monster’s flesh. Samaritha corrects them, “No, the spikes go into the earth around it.” “I knew that!” insists her husband as he pulls them free of the beast. The spikes work – the creature and a perfect circle of scooped out of earth disappear.

But read on, because the doppleganger reveals itself!

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Four, Twentieth Session

Posted on March 10, 2016 | Leave a comment

Twentieth Session (9 page pdf) – “Interview With A Vampire” – While heading to the Atteran Ranches to hunt them a froghemoth, the group comes across a lone figure at night. Unsurprisingly, hijinks ensue.

So this was just a random encounter of one vampire to break up the travelogue.  But it quickly turned into an entire session given the roleplay, then the combat, then the tracking the mist, then the lair invasion. The Atteran Ranches are the least shitty part of Nidal, but there’s still random vampires and such.

Bonus content for your game: Leia Showanna, vampire sorcerer 8.

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One Shots!

Posted on February 6, 2016 | Leave a comment

Well, I’m still running regular sessions of Reavers on the Seas of Fate – and session summaries are posted regularly. After we finished Wrath of the Righteous however, we decided to do a series of one shots instead of another campaign on the alternating weeks.

So far we’ve had:

Paul ran a Trail of Cthulhu scenario, Sisters of Sorrow, we were all German WWI U-boat crew. We liked the GUMSHOE rules fine, though less fine when combat started. The jury’s out whether plain BRP CoC is just as good. In general this felt like any Cthulhu scenario, which is good for those of us that like Cthulhu!

I ran a high concept game – XCrawl (dungeon crawling as modern spectator sport) using the Dungeon World rules. All the characters were tributes to recently deceased celebrities, so we had The Goblin King (David Bowie), Severus Snape (Alan Rickman), Rochefort (Christopher Lee), Mirror Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Rowdy Roddy Piper (himself), and LEMMY!!! (Lemmy Kilmister).  It was fun, though of course very “dungeony,” we discussed that a campaign of XCrawl would need to have a lot of “between the crawls” segments  to be engaging. The Dungeon World rules were good (game fiction focus, GM doesn’t roll) but we felt them kinda sparse for long term play, and the 2d6 vs flat # mechanic seems like it’ll tip to “succeed all the time” once a couple levels are gained.  We enjoyed it for a one shot however, and I feel that like Feng Shui, this is a game you play to improve how you run/play other games.

Bruce ran “The Silver Mountain Shrugs,” a Runequest 6 adventure set in the Taskan Empire.  This was also fun, though the pregen PCs weren’t totally balanced.  The core RQ rules are BRP based so were mostly easy, even the spells, but then there were these “combat effects” that were a bit overcomplicated and also made magic seem flat in comparison. There’s “an app for that” apparently but I think the group overall isn’t totally sold on the ruleset. The Taskan Empire setting is fine, if turgid and overcomplicated in the usual way for RQ settings (we all just thanked the Lord it wasn’t Glorantha, mainly because Bruce’s completely incomprehensible Glorantha anecdotes cause several of us to start twitching).

Next week Tim is running Numenera, the game ‘we all want to like but have no idea how to run it because the setting’s so weird.’  Reminds me of Skyrealms of Jorune, anyone remember that?  Well crafted but somewhat inaccessible.

And more will come, including Gaean Reach and Eclipse Phase!  We’re not doing session summaries of all these, though we’ll try to do some.

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D&D 5e Now Under Open Gaming License

Posted on January 12, 2016 | 9 comments

Well will wonders never cease!  After revolutionizing the hobby by releasing D&D 3e under the Open Gaming License, Wizards performed the double (self) threat of publishing a new version people didn’t like (4e)  and refusing to open license it. 5e came out a good bit ago and no word on license had been forthcoming, which led me to believe the “suits that don’t get it” were still calling the shots and it’d stay closed.  Of course, at the same time people were getting more comfortable with the real limits of copyright law and what the old OGL let you do so were happily publishing adventures and such for 5e. But now, out of silence, looks like someone (Mike Mearls?) has pulled off a miracle – and the OGL is back for 5e.

You can download a combo OGL and SRD (weird) from the Wizards site in PDF.  The format sucks, but you can also browse in in HTML at 5esrd.com.

Warning to the OGL noobs: this doesn’t mean everything in the books is open for you to reuse, just the stuff that is designated in the SRD. But it is 398 pages worth of stuff, and that’s a lot! (See my old post Open Gaming for Dummies if you want more of an intro.)  A number of major items are left out, however, so make sure and check – like they generally just open one archetype for each class.

So that’s cool news – but they have something else too. The “Dungeon Masters Guild” is more like the old d20 SRD but with a bit of the Traveller “Foreven Free Sector” license to it. It lets you:

  • Write stuff for D&D (5e only)
  • Write stuff in the Forgotten Realms (and maybe more to come)
  • Sell it via their OneBookShelf powered ecomm site at www.dmsguild.com (and split the $ with them 50/50)
  • More details here

A smart business move from Wizards?  Hell is surely freezing over.  By letting people publish, and then saying “hey… Want to use our sales/marketing channel with reviews and stuff, for a 50/50 share?” they are going to make a large amount of free money especially from hobbyists. And they aren’t doing the tech themselves, which has been the Achilles heel in every damn thing they’ve tried to do over the last say 30 years (their track record with tech is something like 0 for 12).

What do I want to see come out of this?

  • More adventures
  • More content
  • Ideally open up other IP too, for Greyhawk, Planescape, etc. (seems like mostly free money for them)
  • Them to make money so the concept of open licensing and sharing stops becoming “scary newfangled talk grognards don’t get” and becomes de rigeur

I love Paizo too.  What should they do in response to keep Pathfinder competitive?

  • Publish all the cool Pathfinder classes for 5e, so I can be an occultist or witch or whatever without dealing with the rules weight of Pathfinder – my play group is starting to wander because holy crap level 16+ Pathfinder is a lot of work for 15 total minutes of real fun per game session.
  • Maybe publish Pathfinder 2e (Pathfinder Basic?) using the 5e rules (same deal)!  I’d buy it.
  • Paizo to do something exactly like the DMs Guild so people can publish Golarion setting stuff (or even just adventures set in Golarion) – again, free money and spreading the brand.

I mean, Wizards didn’t just do something good here, they are blazing new ground (well, the Traveller Foreven Free Sector license did a little of the “OK you can use our precious precious game world, but not tied to the sales and marketing channel)!  I sweat them hard when they do boneheaded things, which over the last decade has been a lot, but I give credit where credit is due, and this is awesome!

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Four, Nineteenth Session

Posted on August 11, 2015 | Leave a comment
Elenuta the Fetchling

Elenuta the Fetchling

Nineteenth Session (10 page pdf) – “No Substance But Horror” – The party finally finds the bosses of shadow Boroi Manor – and are promptly defeated and enslaved. But maximum kill always finds a way!

So they bust in to kill Nicasor and company but they get a little caught up in murdering the mostly harmless fetchlings lounging around.  This gives the bad guys a couple rounds to get ready, which means Nicasor’s up and ready and his summoner friend Elenuta is invisible and already has her eidolon ready and a summon in progress.

It goes bad for the PCs.  Sindawe natural-1’s a save and goes down suffocated by the shadowy snake eidolon. He has to spend an Infamy Point to come back into the fight (“I was feigning death, like a 1st edition monk!”). But the snake gets Serpent as well and Nicasor cuts Sindawe down again, and Sindawe has no choice but to surrender or die.

But Nicasor doesn’t want these pirates dead – he wants the Heart dead so he can get out of this damn dimension. He lets them  heal and herds them down to fight the Heart for him.  It’s a tenebrous tendriculos! I didn’t beef that up from the actual module because I figured they’d be beat to hell by then.

They kill the Heart, and then they turn on Nicasor and Elenuta and get the better of them this time. They break the mirror and are out.  When it comes time to demand their shadows back they notice Serpent already has one… And it’s Chmetugo the shadow demon!  He’s free and back on the Prime Material.  He skedaddles to leave the pirates to decide if they should kill everyone in the county or not. After a moment of it hanging in the balance, they decide not.

And then they tend their wounds and plan their trip to froghemoth country! And they decide to take Rucia the waitress with them, lest she be discovered and tortured to death for being chosen by Desna.

Now here’s a bonus for you – all the bad guys for the whole thing, as I statted them up in Hero Lab, in PDF!  Nicasor, Elenuta, the Heart, etc.

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Four, Eighteenth Session

Posted on August 6, 2015 | Leave a comment
Nicasor the Shae

Nicasor the Shae

Eighteenth Session (12 page pdf) – “Shadowland” – The shadowy version of Boroi Manor is full of horrors. But they find Wogan’s sister and nephew!

They actually negotiate with Nicasor the shae, the boss in here. They’re not real happy with Baron Stepan so they are not sure who to throw in with (or just kill everyone, but they figure they’ll defer that decision a little while).

Then it’s more haunted house. Furniture comes to life and attacks, shadows come out of pictures, the usual.

My favorite part is how they go to a room full of keys, with one magical key that looks like a tuning fork. They get it and escape as the rest of the keys turn into a swarm and attack; they get out and slam the door and it only turns their summoned cat into gelatin. And then what do they do?  “I wonder what this key does…” They hit the key and of course it’s a chime of opening and the door holding back the key swarm swings open. Oh, I laughed and laughed. You can’t plan stuff like that if you try.

Serpent starts showing disregard for loot, which starts a very long-running gag within the group where they suspect him of being a doppleganger. He’s usually a very “and don’t forget to take their boots” kind of guy.

They find Anya and Marek and try to go get out, assuming Stepan was lying about them having to destroy the Heart to escape.  Sadly, he wasn’t. But they still think he’s lying. Nobles, can’t trust ’em.

Since they can’t get out… Next step, go kill Nicasor and Elenuta!  Not strictly required, but they were about ready to kill someone…

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Four, Seventeenth Session

Posted on August 4, 2015 | Leave a comment
kyton

Kyton

Seventeenth Session (8 page pdf) – “Beyond The Midnight Mirror” – The pirates venture into the Shadow Realm beyond the Midnight Mirror to rescue Wogan’s kin.

This is a good old shadow dimension dungeon crawl, where the shadow version of the manor house becomes more twisted from reality the farther they proceed. This fits into the general category of “haunted house crawl” that I’ve always found to be a player favorite.

They find Baron Stephan’s brothers, now turned into various kytons (which they refer to as Cenobites and variations such as sex-o-bites and hanging-o-bites).  I needed to both amp up and horror up the adventure as written, as it was for fourth level characters and was PG-rated. Both unacceptable!!!

Anyway, some horror, some fights, and then they find the fetchlings that have been trapped in stasis here for like a thousand years, who are all full of Underworld vampire type lassitude. And that’s where we leave off…

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The 2015 ENnies, My Analysis

Posted on August 2, 2015 | 3 comments

The winners of the 2015 ENnie awards were announced at Gen Con this weekend.  Let’s see who won and who I wanted to win! Here’s the full list of nominees for comparison.

Best Adventure

I’m a sucker for the East Texas University setting and adventures, but my picks this year were also the winners, Zak S.’ Red and Pleasant Land (Silver) and the Call of Cthulhu Horror on the Orient Express (Gold), reissued as a big ass boxed set.  Red and Pleasant Land is a significant step forward for RPGs as an art form and I voted it for Gold, just because Orient is a re-issue of an older adventure and that docks it a bit in my estimation.  The Tyranny of Dragons 5e adventure was just kinda poor, and it looks like the voting reflected that.

Best Aid/Accessory

I find it really hard to vote for these “random junk” categories.  Is this dice set better than this CD of sounds? What does that even mean?  But I know the Paizo Harrow Deck is good quality.  It didn’t win, the CoC dice set got Silver (how good can dice be?) and the 5e DM screen got Gold.

Best Cover Art

Not a great year for cover art, I thought a couple of these were pretty generic.  I love the Wayne Reynolds Freeport cover, but it didn’t win. Rise of Tiamat got Gold (that art style does nothing for me) and Achtung! Cthulhu: Rise of the Secret War got a deserved Silver.

Best Interior Art

Dreamhounds of Paris not winning Silver at least is a miscarriage of justice! The Strange’s very cool and profuse art got Gold and the D&D MM (Silver) is decent if workmanlike, but Dreamhounds is about impressionism and surrealism in art…

Best Blog

I’ll be honest, I don’t read any of these.  I have tried year after year to get into Gnome Stew (Silver) because it always wins, but I never can. I don’t really like the “aggregator site” blog metaphor, it makes a lot of content but much of it of indifferent quality IMO (several of the others have the same metaphor). ConTessa got Gold, which is nice,well designed, and promotes women in gaming. It’s the only one that looks like a Web site from this decade. From checking out the nominees I also like DMDavid, as it’s a simple but consistent blog with good articles.

BeSt Cartography

Hm. My picks were the period maps in Horror on the Orient Express and the “pretty modern computer game” maps of Ninth World (Gold).  The Glorantha book got the Silver instead; it’s a good book but I don’t know about the cartography per se, they seem pretty… Simple?  Lots  of  indistinguishable green expanses?

Best Electronic Book

The D&D 5e free Basic rules are certainly notable and deserve the Gold.  Ken Writes About Stuff vol. 2 got Silver which is also deserved, though his writing is often not my cup of tea (Suppressed Transmission just gave me a headache… “What if the local WAL-MART is staffed by SNAKE PEOPLE who serve CHUPACABRA SANDWICHES to the MORLOCKS in the loading dock…”), often coming across to me like crypto-conspiracy Mad Libs. I like his actual games though.

Best Family Game

I voted Doctor Who, since it’s the one that I got my 12 year old daughter and she actually tried to run for her friends. Atomic Robo, which I hear great things about, got Silver and the D&D Starter Set got Gold.

Best Free Product

Well of course the Basic D&D rules get Gold here. Silver went to the 13th Age Archmage’s Orrery but I liked the Doctor Who Arrowdown adventure, a 15 page pro-quality adventure. Orrery is 64 pages but not pro quality layout.

Best Game

No surprise, we all knew D&D 5e was getting Gold and The Strange was getting Silver.

Best Miniature Product

I agree with this – the WizKids D&D prepaints got Gold and the innovative Paizo Pawn set (real module art, hundreds of pawns for $40) got Silver.

Best Monster/Adversary

Achtung! Cthulhu’s Terrors of the Secret War got a deserved Silver and the D&D 5e MM got Gold. The Strange’s bestiary really did deserve something too, but it was a tight race.  I’m not sure if the 5e MM is really as good or just got the “D&D 5e bump,” it’s a fine MM but it’s much like MMs of years past – not that that’s  bad, but is it award-winning?

Best Podcast

I didn’t like how most of these podcasts were very narrowly focused.  I voted Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff for Gold (the one of these I listen to regularly) and it won, the Miskatonic U podcast got Silver. Since I’m not hip deep into CoC or The Strange or whatever I probably won’t be starting in on any of these others, except maybe NPC Cast, I’ll check that out.

Best Production Values

The D&D Starter Set got Gold and Horror on the Orient Express got Silver, which is bizarre if you open up both and compare them (Horror is like a chest full of cool shit).

Best RPG Related Product

Usually I give this category a big “bah” because it’s an even weirder grab bag than Best Aid/Accessory, but this year’s Designers and Dragons books that are a history of RPGs are certainly notable and deserve their Gold. The Temple of Elemental Evil board game got Silver.

Best Rules

D&D 5e got Gold and it’s pretty well deserved IMO. Mutant: Year Zero got Silver, a game which was nominated in lots of categories and I have never heard mentioned until these awards (and I’m pretty active online).

Best Setting

Red and Pleasant Land got Gold here, and The Strange got Silver, which is all well and as it should be, both of these were true innovators. Dreamhounds of Paris was also good and my friend Bruce is doubtless cutting on himself right now since the Glorantha book didn’t get anything here (though it did get the Diana Jones award, so he’s actually pretty gloaty about it).

Best Software

Gold to Roll20, Silver to Hero Lab – finally we have truly outstanding pieces of software in the RPG space. I use Hero Lab all the time and would use Roll20 all the time if I did much online gaming.

Best Supplement

Gold to the 5e DMG and Silver to Pathfinder Unchained.  (Is the DMG really a supplement and not core rules? Most games have that in their core rules nowadays). Anyway, taxonomic complaints aside, good picks. Paizo continues to innovate inside the 3.x realm with Unchained.

Best Website

Look can someone explain this to me.  Every year The Escapist gets nominated and usually wins, this time getting Gold. Go click on that link.  It’s a dead Goddamned site.  Forums, closed down. Features, not in a decade. Archives, end in 2011. Blog, exactly three posts this year.  WHAT THE FUCK?  Am I missing some large and active part of this site amidst all the dead links? I have to be missing something because as best as I can tell it’s a DEAD GODDAMN SITE GETTING GOLD EVERY YEAR. Politics? Money? Sex? How is this happening? I mean, they do tweet I guess, is it just because of their Twitter stream? Then be honest and link to that!  (And maybe they should put a tweet-stream on their front page if that’s the real draw!)

Tabletop Audio, on the other hand, is a proper Web site that got a deserved Silver.

Best Writing

Red and Pleasant Land took Gold and the D&D 5e PHB took Silver.  I’m not sure I think “Writing” when I read the D&D PHB.  Best Rules yes, but Writing, I mean, technically it is writing, but I expect “Best Writing” to be like, good and not just rules explanation (like in Red and Pleasant Land). Or Designers & Dragons, which is also nominated here despite only being “RPG Related” in category (?)

Product of the Year

The D&D PHB in Gold – I mean, it’s a new D&D release, you gotta expect that.  What’s more surprising is the dark horse indie Red & Pleasant Land getting Silver, bringing it to 4 ENnies and one of them being in the most prestigious category! I hope this means less business as usual and more innovation – even a lot of Kickstartered stuff is “here’s just another FATE game” and more real out of the box stuff (which to be fair Numenera and The Strange also are, as well as adventures like Dreamhounds of Paris).

Fan’s Choice for Best Publisher

Gold for WotC and Silver for Paizo!  Quite an upset because Paizo is very beloved by all their fans.  Mearls and Crawford did a yeoman job in dragging D&D/WotC’s reputation out of the shitter this year (come on, I think that’s fair to say) by being accessible even while not delivering on some things fans care about (like licenses).  Increased transparency has helped a lot here – I’m not sure WotC has gotten better than Paizo in an absolute sense but they sure get a gold star for “most improved,” that’s for sure!

How about you, what did you want to win that did (or didn’t)?

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Four, Sixteenth Session

Posted on July 30, 2015 | Leave a comment
plague-painting-3566-ga

The Triumph of Death

Sixteenth Session (13 page pdf) – “Painted Shadows” – Ansar’s paintings hide a dark secret; Wogan’s sister and nephew are kidnapped by the evil that lies on the other side of the Midnight Mirror.

The PCs go to see one of Ansar’s masterworks… And naturally it attacks. I use Pieter Bruegel’s “The Triumph of Death” as the visual. Ansar the glyph-bearing gendarme and disturbed painter gave in to the temptations of the shadows and is now a shadowy lurker from U1 Gallery of Evil, a shadow creature that can travel through paintings.

They burn the first painting and Ansar flies off with a “the child will be ours!” They run to the child Olga’s room in the temple but she’s fine.  Then with a start Wogan realizes it might be his baby nephew the undead creature was talking about!  After a sprint across town to the manor house they find out that indeed Anya and the baby have gone missing. And there’s an Ansar original in the basement.

The PCs and household go down there and get an even bigger setpiece battle. Painted night hags and kytons and undead! Ghosts and hounds and barons! It’s a fun time.  Finally they take the bad guys all out but no Anya…  U1 Gallery of Evil is all done but The Midnight Mirror is just cranking up.

The baron takes them to his study and explains that they’ve probably been taken into a shadow mirror artifact thing in the basement his family uses to make deals with a shae (shadow creature) Nidal style. He asks the PCs to get their shadows removed, go in there, and destroy the mirror from the inside. “That sounds sketchy as shit.  OK.”

They go back down to the basement and think to check the dungeon and on its guard and inmate. They find Yuris and Isiem melded into a single piece of Kuthite art. Their bones are fused to the ceiling, their flesh hangs festively. Blood pools on the floor.

Baron Stephan says, “Ah.” He closes the door.

Next time, into the midnight mirror!

 

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Four, Fifteenth Session

Posted on July 28, 2015 | Leave a comment

fallenFifteenth Session (9 page pdf) – “Casting Shadows” – The proximate cause of the plague is revealed, and it’s… Samaritha?!?

With their weapons, the PCs return to the inn and find Samaritha all fevered. The others go to talk with Rucia and leave Serpent to his wife, but she ends up being too much for him – she goes all black-eyed and starts melting him to shadows with her touch.  They manage to drive the creature inside her out, it’s some incorporeal shadow thing. It goes down into the common room and they have to play seek-and destroy, and they do so quickly to my disappointment.

Replacing the weird twist in the actual Midnight Mirror module I had an umbral lurker moving between people – have you seen the movie Fallen, with Denzel, where a demon moves from person to person? It’s like that. And it leaves behind a little present, tallowthroat.  The little girl was infected and passed it on to Samaritha, who while possessed hid the weapons chest herself! I was hoping I could play Fallen with them for more sessions but Serpent was super johnny on the spot about rooting it out and killing it.

Back to investigation. While the plague has been nipped in the bud there’s clearly other weirdness afoot. They meet Baron Stepan, who is a bit agitated and, it turns out, not casting a shadow. Suspicious! Then they meet a ghost in the basement and find out Stepan had some brothers what disappeared. And they interrogate a petty thief in the manor dungeon for a hot lead on candlesticks.

 

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate – Season Four, Fourteenth Session

Posted on July 23, 2015 | Leave a comment
Gloomwing

Gloomwing

Fourteenth Session (11 page pdf) – “The Candle Is Snuffed” – The plague is revealed to have a sinister, more shadowy nature, and a visit to the local candle-shop turns gruesome.

Things get weirder. Besides the local torture-god, and Samaritha getting KOed and their weapons box stolen, the plague seems to end with shadows tearing out of a person’s throat. The fact that their weapons are locked up and they can’t use divine magic or get executed by faithful locals puts a crimp in the PCs’ activities, but as things escalate they quickly go into zombie apocalypse “THE RULES OF SOCIETY ARE NO MORE” mode.

After drafting some local deputies, they go to the candle store and bust in and Sindawe runs up and punches… A wax golem that looks like a storekeeper. That’s surprising, but not eventually fatal (to the PCs).

Wogan says, “He was a wax man. Just like Olya described.”
One guardsman replies, “Yeah… Wait, what?!?”
Sindawe explains, “Yup, she described that wax guy just before she fell asleep. He lured her into his wagon with candies, then bragged about how he would get away with everything because the guardsmen are dumbasses.”
Both guardsmen stare at Sindawe.
Sindawe continues in Aklo, “Wogan, grab the cash box while I take the law guys into the next room.” In common he says, “Let’s go do some good!”

Then as they investigated I laid on the horror atmosphere. Shit, I even use the cat-jump scare in this one.  I’m not proud.

Tenebrous Worm

Tenebrous Worm

Then it’s a big ol’ proper fight, with a fun ecology – gloomwings and a tenebrous worm. They’re freaked out enough that they want to run but Serpent gets hit by their confusion so they have to come back and help him – he snaps out of it briefly but when he’s tempted into “just one attack before I run” he gets caught by it again.  Ah, adventurers. They kill all the critters and then, besides the loot, find out that someone’s been making sacrifices to Chmetugo the shadow demon.

Remember Chmetugo from the Devil’s Elbow in Season Two? And how he took over the head of the Cypher Lodge? Well he’s back! More, next time!

 

 

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