# Sailing on the Seven (or so) Seas



## Desdichado (Jul 29, 2002)

Characters:

*Haeridan*, a male gnome sorcerer focused especially on summoning spells.  ("I choose YOU, Celestial Badger!")
*Bronwyn*, a female half-orc fighter. ("Do I like halflings?  Yeah, they taste alright…")
*Rurik*, a male dwarf fighter.  ("Pants?  I don't need no stinkin' pants!")
*Ledda*, a female halfling sorceror.  ("Can I change my name to Harry Potter?")
*Falin*, a male elf ranger/fighter.  ("I'm Falin and I can't get up!  OK, so I need a new catchphrase…")
*Jillian*, a female halfling druid.  ("No relation to Gillian, and I _don't_ have red hair.")

OK, so this was supposed to be my wife's first game ever.  For reasons which I won't go into here (because they're actually really boring) that didn't work out, but the rest of us played anyway, and she promised to show up next time we play.

The setting is a homebrew, by a DM that admits he watched a little too much _Princess Bride_ recently, and we had tons of fun!  As luck would have it, I somehow got nominated to DM next, so I've been trying to figure out what to do with a setting that I didn't originally have anything to do with (never fear, my fiendish little mind is bursting with ideas by now…) so this log will be from the perspective of my character, the aforementioned "Ash" Haeridan.  Next time, we'll have a slight change in characters (Haeridan might be retired, or perhaps played by my wife, depending on if I'm likely to come back as a DM long-term, or if we continue to rotate) while the former DM will come up with his own character.

Right now, actually, I'm running out of time to post a campaign log, but I wanted to get started and reserve my slot here on the Story Hour board.  Look for an edit to update this page (or perhaps just add another post: counts as a free bump that way too!) tonight or tomorrow.


----------



## Rune (Jul 29, 2002)

Oooo!  Swashbuckling!

If you're really having a difficult time figuring out where you want to go with this, read (or reread), letsee, I think it's _Voyage of the Dawn Treader_ by C.S.Lewis (the third Narnia book).  Lots of great sea-exploration inspiration.


----------



## Desdichado (Jul 30, 2002)

*Swiss Family Robinson*

Heh, not really _that_ much swashbuckling yet.  But we've only had one session, too!    Anyway, here's the log of the first half (we played something like six hours, so I'm breaking it up into two posts...)

================================================

_(And just for fun, logs will be in a different color so you can spot it easier.   And remember, this is a bit tongue-in-cheek: my character is a bit annoying and has a bit of a superiority complex.  Don't take his point of view too seriously!)

So, we start out as passengers on a ship.  As we pass the island of Kaitain, a bit infamous for its piracy, our ship is attacked and, apparently, sunk.  In a few rowboats, all the PCs and some punk noble named DeLaine all make our way ashore, and the game begins._

We see a bit further out at sea the ship that sank us, but for whatever reason, they don't seem to be coming our way yet.  Standing on the beach, we all take stock.  I'm already hungry (not having thought about buying rations -- I picked up a few ranks of Wilderness Lore instead.)  DeLaine complains that he needs to make his way to Cuthbert city to vote on a treaty about piracy.  I argue a bit with him, wondering who he really supports, for instance, and how he's going to vote.

Everyone agrees, despite my objections, so I just go looking for mangos.  For some reason, I can't find any food while searching the rocks, but Jillian uses her superior skill to find some in the trees.  Go figure.

We argue for a little while about which way to go to get to the city.  Going north and east will certainly the long way, but we avoid going through the mountains that supposedly are infested with dragons.  But as its getting late, we decide to find a place to sleep.  A cave a little up the hill turns out to be just perfect.  So, after a meal of mangos (and several trips into the woods following all that fruit: Jillian made some crack about a Druid spell - _protection From Nature's Call_, or something like that) we mostly all turn in for the night.  The darkvision and low-light vision endowed team members get elected to take watch, but since I've a bit of insomnia, I stay awake to try to talk to Bronwyn.  She's not much of a conversationalist -- CHA 5 or something like that -- but, hey!  I'm incorrigible!    The good thing is, though, that I'm awake when the crossbow bolt comes flying out of the woods.

Shouting quickly to wake everyone up, I quickly cast mage armor, while Ledda does the same (also sending her white owl out to find out where the punks are: my toad Trevor stays in my pocket.)  About a dozen motley folks come out of the woods, orcs, dwarves (at least one or two), half-orcs, humans and at least one half-ogre.    Jillian's panther rushes out (not named Guenhyvar -- or however those FR folks decided to mangle the name Guinivere) takes on the half-ogre, although he seems to get fairly chewed-up.  Bronwyn also does some damage, and Rurik, after only spending the time to put on his breastplate runs out without any pants to fight the enemy.  

I summon three celestial badgers, which are incredibly disappointing -- if I'd summoned three fiendish mosquitos I might have actually accomplished something worthwhile.  Leaving off that spell, I go for magic missile the rest of the night.  The halfling gal of my own particular class puts a guy to sleep.

When the half-ogre finally dies, four of the other folks run away, and the rest of the combat is really not much more than a mop-up.

We do a little investigation of the bodies -- the half-ogre has a letter written to one Lothar from some RKL about how DeLaine has to die before he can sign the treaty: and obviously he can't do it himself.  DeLaine, by the way, remained hidden in the back of the cave, much to our annoyance.  The guy who was _sleep_ed is woken up, but he seems pretty sincere in insisting that he's just hired muscle, he doesn't know much, but he'll gladly lead us to Lothar's crib, located in the wonderful pastoral community of Pirate's Cove.  Despite my protestations that the only thing he's good for is to have is throat slit, the team wants to take him up on his offer.  So, also against my well-reasoned protests, my apparently suicidal compadres tie him up and go back to sleep.  When the DM announces that there are no more encounters that night, I announce that I'll go ahead and sleep in the cave again anyway.

_Next: The Dread Pirate Rob... uh, Lothar!_


----------



## Desdichado (Jul 31, 2002)

Here's the second half of our first night of adventure.  Oh, and I have read _Voyage of the Dawn Treader_ (since I grew up, even!) although I don't have a copy handy anymore.  That did have some good ideas for sea exploration: I might have to _pirate_ some stuff out of there, if you'll pardon the bad pun.  

==============================================

In the morning, things were clearer to the party.  A plan of action was starting to develop: our captive pirate could lead us to the pirate's hide-out, a semi-legit little place called Pirate's Cove, and we could try to find out what this attack was all about as well as hopefully charter a boat to take us to the city on Kaitain.  This meant travelling towards the mountains for a little while, but not actually going through them, while we also were able to avoid the dreaded North Coast -- apparently infested with undead.  But, of course, it meant we had to walk right into the teeth of the pirates.  DeLaine assured us that he could disguise himself at need with his magic, so we decided to go for it.

Marching through the rain-forest on a narrow trail, our scouts (Falin and Bronwyn were at the front, Rurik stayed by me in the middle to make sure I didn't slit our captive's throat, or take down DeLaine to make him wear a real costume --  the gall of that dwarf!) found a narrow spot where two large rocks sat opposite each other over the trail.  On top of the rocks was apparently a goblin patrol.

However, since we had the jump on them, we weren't too concerned.  Three of us (including myself and that pansy DeLaine stayed back initially as we weren't terribly skilled in sneaking up on folks, while Falin (the ranger), the Jillian (halfling druid) and Ledda (halfling sorcerer) went forward with the others behind them.

The goblins turned out to be something of a non-event.  Four of them were _sleep_ed right away, although Falin got caught in the backlash and let out a few big yawns himself.  The rest were dispatched before they even seemed to be aware of us.  We examined the goblins to see if any of them had peg-legs, eyepatches, parrots (or if they said "Rrrrgh!" to each other a lot) but we were unable to find any definite links to the pirates.  Our captive, however said that we were getting pretty close to Pirate's Cove.

Sure enough, we soon came across a gaggle of orkish slaves working the fields with manacles on their legs.  We sent Bronwyn out to flirt with them, which she did quite successfully, and we found out that the doors to Pirate's Cove opened twice a day, once to let them out and once to let them back in.  Pirate's Cove itself was in a large cave that had a small tunnel entrance and then a large water entrance where ships could sail in and out.  Near dusk we waited along with the orcs for the door to open.  I even sent my pal Trevor under the door to listen and keep me appraised of any approaches.  Only one guard came to open the door, though, and he was quickly _charm_ed to let us in.  He was very friendly at this point (at least to Ledda) and recommended an inn with some great lizard stew and possibly some information that we could use.  With that, we passed through the tunnel and entered Pirate's Cove.  The pirate's themselves were a motley bunch, mostly human and half-orc, so we didn't stand out _too_ much.  DeLaine's brilliant costume amounted to little more than becoming a dandy elvish version of himself.  We all rolled our eyes at that one.

The restaurant recommended by the gate-keeper turned out to not be that bad, although they took a dim view of my explaining exactly how I wanted my shark steak prepared.  We got some info on Lothar, the Captain (as he's more normally called) and his keep here in the cave.  Also heard rumors of a lord of Kaitain (who's initials were RKL, by the way) having blown through town yesterday.  Finally, we got some info on some of Lothar's buds; a female tiefling who nobody wanted to mess with, a yuan-ti abomination, and a blackguard --who was mercifully out of town at the time.

Then we ordered dinner.  We also got rooms for the night (the non-entertainment kind) and I made it quite clear that any dwarf who slept without pants wasn't sharing a room with me.

Amazingly enough, Lilley, the female tiefling came into the restaurant looking for someone.  Jillian, in a moment of insanity (in my opinion anyway) rushed up to her gushing and asking for her autograph.  She put an arcane mark on her forhead.  She left after that, but Jillian and Falin tried to follow her.  That ended up not amounting to much; she went into a shop a few doors down, they heard her meet someone through the door, but then they went deeper into the store and they couldn't hear anything of substance.  Meanwhile, a halfling err... entertainer started hitting on me at the inn, so I tossed her a few gold to get some more info on Lothar.  Seems he met with his "subjects" once a day, allowing anyone to petition him.  He met them alone, so we had a new plan: go to Lothar, confront him about his attack on us, and try to find out what gives.  Aren't we just the perfect model of subtlety?  

So, the next morning we go in, and we're the first one's there.  We're admitted to a big reception hall (which is empty) and we wait for just a few minutes for Lothar to arrive.  Lothar turns out to be a gigantic ogre.  He isn't terribly friendly, and threatens to give us to his yuan-ti to play with, but I -- employing my ever ready wit and charm -- explain to him that we aren't related to DeLaine in any way, and his incompetent help attacked us instead and were in turn either slain or driven off.  We will offer to take their place and do the job right for him (DeLaine has disappeared at this point, presumably turned invisible.)  After a pretty tense moment, he agrees, so we head down to the docks to charter a boat.

We ask around the various ships, and find one that recently took a well-dressed and somewhat foppish elf as a passenger to Kaitain city.  We book passage as well, and blunder into DeLaine's room, talking loudly about how we know he's in there.  He isn't particularly happy with our lack of tact right now, but is pleased with the job we did in general in protecting him and finding out more about the RKL-Lothar conspiracy to kill him and force the anti-piracy treaty to not pass.

From this point on, the journey is uneventful.  We sail to Kaitain, and other than finding it perhaps more lawless and tolerant in some ways than Pirate's Cove (_seriously thinking about stealing tons of ideas from Freeport for this place..._)  we pass through uneventfully, chartering another ship that will take us (and DeLaine) to the Isle of Cuthbert where he can sign the treaty for the nation of Pellor.

 _That's it, folks!  Looks like we'll likely play again this weekend, and this time I'm DMing, so we'll see what happens next!_


----------



## Desdichado (Aug 1, 2002)

Just a quick update: we are pretty much confirmed to play this weekend, and we are definately going to be round-robining.  I've never really done that _within_ a single campaign, so I'm finding that somewhat frightening yet mostly pretty exciting.   If anyone's done that before, feel free to jump in here and give any pointers...


----------



## Horacio (Aug 1, 2002)

Great story!
I love swashbuckling stories (BTW, have you seen _Swashbuckling adventures_, it's cool for such a campaign), and this one begins really good!


----------



## Desdichado (Aug 1, 2002)

I haven't seen it.  I'm just curious which set of sailing rules I should pick up first!    I can worry about more stuff after that.  I'm actually seriously considering picking up _Freeport_ and renaming it so it can be my Kaitain that the other DM came up with.  All I got from him on that was an extremely brief description of the city as "a wretched hive of scum and villainy" but I think Freeport as "the most larcenous city in fantasy" would probably fit the bill quite well.


----------



## Horacio (Aug 2, 2002)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> *I haven't seen it.  I'm just curious which set of sailing rules I should pick up first!    I can worry about more stuff after that.  I'm actually seriously considering picking up Freeport and renaming it so it can be my Kaitain that the other DM came up with.  All I got from him on that was an extremely brief description of the city as "a wretched hive of scum and villainy" but I think Freeport as "the most larcenous city in fantasy" would probably fit the bill quite well. *




Pick _Freeport_. IMHO it's the best city book. The best. Wonderful city, wonderful mood, wonderful art, wonderful map. Pick it now!

For sailing rules, I love _Seafarer's Handbook_, but many people prefer Mongoose's _Seas of Blood_.

BTW, I've just begun my own Story Hour, using the new superheroes supplement from Natural 20, Four Color to Fantasy:
Golden Apple Rescue Squad 
If you have time, visit it, and drop a comment...


----------



## Desdichado (Aug 2, 2002)

Who publishes that _Seafarer's Handbook_ again?  Is if FD, or FFG?


----------



## Horacio (Aug 2, 2002)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> *Who publishes that Seafarer's Handbook again?  Is if FD, or FFG? *




Hum... Let me see... 

Fantasy Flight Games, the same who publishes *Dragonstar*


----------



## Desdichado (Aug 2, 2002)

Thanks!

BTW, confirming our gametime for tomorrow, so hopefully another update next week.  I'm also going to try and introduce the Freeport firearms rules into the game, just for fun.  I might also borrow some Iron Kingdoms stuff, like dwarven inventors that have developed primitive steamjacks and steam-powered paddle-wheel boats, or some such.  Corvus also seems like a good model to use for Kaitain.  Probably I'll steal stuff from Corvus, Freeport, Krondor, and every other fantasy port city I can think of.


----------



## Desdichado (Aug 5, 2002)

Just a quick bump to save me from the second page!  

We played last night.  Rurik and Ledda were out for the night (and maybe more: Ledda's player is supposed to be on bed-rest for the rest of her pregnancy.) and Haeridan (me) was DMing so he wasn't there.  My wife played a new character, Lellyn a human fighter1/cleric3 and the former DM played Severn, a Ranger1/bard3.


----------



## Desdichado (Aug 5, 2002)

Alrighty, here's the update.  Like I said, I DMed, and we went just as late.  We actually started earlier, so this was an even _longer_ session than our last very long session.  The exciting thing for me personally, is that it was my wife's first ever RPG experience, and she apparently had a good time and is willing to keep it up with me, at least as long as we're with this group, with whom she really gets along well.

Anyway, enough of my gushing.  I think my last update showed the slight change in cast from our first night.  I think Rurik's player will be back regularly, but his wife, Ledda's player, is on bedrest until she has her baby, so we're expecting her to drop out for a few monthes.  As she's also a new player (who had a lot of fun, though) that's too bad, but I think she'll be a convert in the long run as well.

OK, off we go:

==============================================

A few weeks after the safe delivery of DeLaine to Cuthbert, the group recieved a letter requesting their presence back at the guest-palace where he was staying.  They were asked to be discrete.  Silvern, a distant relative of DeLaine's was already there along with his friend Lellyn _(pronounced like Ellen with an L, my wife says)_ .  For some unexplained reason, Falin was there as well, waiting in the reception area.  Bronwyn walked in in disguise, while Jillian snuck in through the roof, scoping out the palace.

When Bronwyn arrived she told everyone that some strange man had approched her in the street telling her to beware the son of Lothar.  When she tried to question him further, he foamed at the mouth and then ran away.  The group was a little disturbed, as their betrayal of Lothar a few weeks ago wasn't exactly kept as discrete as they would have liked.

DeLaine entered then, and told them why he had called them together.  Apparently the war being prosecuted against the pirates was "in danger" of being won before it even started.  One notable captain, presumably a former pirate, named Gothanius had risen in power in Kaitain, kicked the rest of the pirates more or less out of town and was trying to get recognized by the other island nations as a legitimate ruler.  DeLaine tells the PCs that they're actually in favor of this, but that Gothanius, the Sea-Lord as he calls himself, has faced stiff guerrilla opposition from the other pirates.  In order to broker the peace, DeLaine wants the PCs to scope out the city, find out where the pockets of resistance are, if feasible disable them themselves, if not, note the locations and forces so armies from the other nations can be sent to assist in quelling the opposition and installing the Sea-Lord as a pseudo-puppet ruler of Kaitain.

When some of the PCs wonder why they should care, he also makes some vague reference to having a specialist mage at Pellor enchant their already masterwork weapons.

A ship is chartered for them to travel incognito to the island, which turns out to be a relatively uneventful trip until they are only a few miles away hugging the south coast of Kaitain island.  There, the ship stalls due to no wind and runs aground in the shallows.  The PCs decide to take a rowboat to shore and walk the few miles to town.  Upon arriving, they find the road easily enough that goes into town.  On either side of the road, the ground is sunken and mostly partially underwater.  Big cypress trees and the like stick up out of the muck obscuring most of their view.  It's mid-afternoon.  After walking just a short while, one of them spots a dark patch, like oil or tar in a pool near the road.  They stop to investigate.  _(My wife at this point asks why we are investigating a dark patch in the water; wouldn't it be a lot smarter to just walk on by and get to the city?  Man, I love her! )_  

Sure enough, the dark patches mean trouble.  Two tar golems (from CC2) climb out of the water after Falin shoots an arrow into the pool.  These folks have never seen anything like them, and are quickly frustrated that most of their attacks are useless against the creatures.  Bronwyn, who actually has a chance at hurting them, gets her sword stuck in the creatures and it is wrenched out of her hand.  She also gets covered in tar, slowing her down considerably.  Jillian decides to try and flame the creatures with a spell, which only manages to make them much more dangerous, as now whenever they hit you, they cover you with flaming tar instead of just regular tar.  In fact, if one of them hadn't been entangled in the water, they might have been a serious problem.  Bronwyn gets her groove back, though, and finishes the guys off mostly on her own, since most other attacks are simply absorbed into the tar.

After this fight, the group finds a small locket with the name Drago on it.  It looks like it's been dropped on accident off the side of the road.

They make it relatively easily to the city after that: after all, it's not much more than an hour's walk or so.  The gate is open, although two half-orc guards in half-plate with halberds and big pistols at their belt eye them and ask them a few routine questions.  They pass through the relatively prosperous district called Riverside, turning south towards Old Docksides.  There is a gate and a wall around that district of the city, although at this time the gate is open and they simply walk through it.  They find a small bar right inside the district and decide to go inside to try and use their natural charm to get some information out of the patrons.  Severn tries to lead this effort, but the crowd, which is mostly extremely unsavory humans, orcs and half-orcs, doesn't take much of a liking to him.  Some of them try to order a drink and ask if they can provide entertainment.  The barkeep tells them that if they can outwrestle his bouncer, they can have all the drinks they want.  The bouncer turns out to be an ogre.

Bronwyn think she's up the task, although "wrestling" would be a pretty loose interpretation of their fight, since it's mostly done with fists, elbows and knees.  Although Bronwyn is somewhat the worse for wear, she does manage to K.O. the ogre, and the entire party is now the object of some respect and admiration amongst the bar patrons.  They break up into a number of small conversations, each trying to figure something out about reistence to the Sea-Lord, who doesn't seem to be too popular amongst this crowd (perhaps because they're all out-of-work pirates.)  One conversation reveals that Lothar is reputed to be leading a band of hold-outs from a hide-out deep in the marshes north of the city.  Another conversation also knows about Lothar, and says the dwarf Carantoc (unfortunately quickly nicknamed Carrot-top) owns a boat and can take them up-river and off into the bayou where he's hidden.  These two folks have never heard of Lothar having a son.  However, another shifty fellow says that Lothar _does_ have a son named Drago -- and that he doesn't appear to be all ogre by any means.  The group considers this to be sinister news.

At this point, Bronwyn, who wants to rest from her ordeal with the ogre, takes a room and goes to bed.  The petite and quite pretty Lellyn joins her, much to the disappointment of many of the bar's patrons (who don't want to intrude on Bronwyn's room, that's for sure.)  Jillian and Falin announce that they've kinda "got a thing" going on, so they take a room together too -- although there's much questioning of the logistics of having a "thing" with a halfling.  Severn, who's not used to spending the night alone, spends a few gold on a companion, but by the time he's asleep, he's alone in a room next to Jillian and Falin.  The other two girls are across the hall.

Much later in the night, Falin wakes up hearing folks walking stealthily outside and rattling their door handles.  Lellyn, who was keeping watch, also hears it.  They both wake up their companions and get ready for something to burst in on them.

Which is exactly what happens.  Falin's door is thrown open and he sees two humans standing outside.  He quickly looses his bow twice and Jillian and the panther also get to work.  Inside just a few seconds they are both dead.

Bronwyn and Lellyn are not so lucky.  A huge hulking figure, like an ogre but with hornds, jet black skin, huge claws and teeth and a massive flaming sword is right outside their door.  With a small gesture of his hand, he surrounds them in utter darkness and then lays into Bronwyn.  Lellyn shoots at him with her pistol, but misses, blasting a huge hole in the wall.  The blast wakes Severn who runs out in his long-johns to help the panther finish off the two humans.  Meanwhile, the half-fiend ogre keeps tearing into Bronwyn, and with two swift cuts with his massive sword he practically cuts her in half, ending her life instantly.  But Lellyn (or Falin -- can't remember which) casts _light_ in the room, dispelling the darkness, and each of the combatants scores hits on the beast.  Seeing that he is in danger of dying here, he rushes past Lellyn and crashes through the wall, falling to the ground outside (they were on the second floor.)  Lellyn swears that she hit him as he went past and he appeared to fall through the wall unconscious.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anything to be done with Bronwyn at this point, so they try to investigate the body of their attackers.  A small pouch with a few gold and an amulet of a skull surrounded by ruby roses is on each of the humans, while the half-fiend appears to have disappeared leaving nothing but a scorch mark on the ground and some drag marks in the sand.  When the watch starts to approach, they decide to put some distance between themselves and the inn, as nobody knows exactly how "lawful" the watch of a pirate haven really is.


----------



## Lazybones (Aug 5, 2002)

An interesting story.  I like stories about new players getting into the game.  Sounds like you've got a solid group together.  

LB


----------



## Horacio (Aug 6, 2002)

So Bronwyn is dead? Wow! Harsh DM


----------



## Desdichado (Aug 6, 2002)

They're only lucky she's the only one who died!  My tactics were too straightforward, the two guys who were supposed to keep the others busy failed miserably, and Drago just ended up taking 6 hits for every one he dished out.  Of course, he did 36 points of damage in a single round to Bronwyn, leaving her at -20.  If he had been able to do that to anyone else, they probably would've gone down at once.  And he could've done more, those damage rolls just above average, not excellent.  The Death from Massive Damage rule almost came into effect, except that she was so dead anyway that it didn't matter.


----------



## Desdichado (Aug 10, 2002)

*!!*

Well, since we're getting together again tonight, I thought I better finish up last week's episode!  This one will be relatively short, but there's just a little bit more that happened worth telling.

I'm not sure if there'll be an update after tonight or not.  The original plan was to play Settlers of Catan tonight instead of starting our long-term campaign.  But, since my wife unexpectedly went out of town for a few days, I'm not sure that's what we'll want to do.  I'm going to spend half an hour or so preparing a quick one-shot just in case.  A real, nice one-shot.   We'll see, though.

In any case, here's what we've got for the end of last week.

==============================================

The group avoids the watch, all except one guy, who weirdly enough is actually Bronwyn's brother.  Grieved (a little bit, apparently) over the death of his sister, he decides to throw in with her friends and make her quest his own.  Presumably the group explains to him exactly what that quest is.

First off, is to take care of Bronwyn.  Lellyn claims to know that she always wanted to be buried at sea, so they decide that if they can comandeer a small boat of some kind and set her adrift that it would be an appropriate way to send her off.  However, stealing a boat from the docks sounds a bit ...not their style, at least, so they decide to search the abandoned warehouses in the Old Docksides district for a boat they can use.

The warehouse they look in is old, long-abandoned and partially submerged at times.  Long before they find a boat, they find moss-covered corpses that get up and attempt to rake them with their long talons.  Lellyn calls on her faith to turn at least half of them, and the others are fairly easily dispatched.  A boat, partially slimed from long=exposure to the damp conditions, but otherwise quite serviceable, lies behind them.  Bronwyn is set in it with some of her things, and cast adrift on the river towards the sea.  The party says a few brief words as she floats away in the early morning mist (it's about 3-4 AM at this point.)  Then, they go and try to get what rest they can on the roof before dawn breaks.

The new day sees them eager to find Carantoc and move closer to Lothar and his camp.  However, Severn notices a strange thing as they try to find his dock: someone appears to be following them.  The split up into two parties of three.  Lellyn and ...um, the other half-orc (I'm not sure I ended up getting his name, to tell you the truth) have an uneventful trip to the docks, but Severn and the panther, and then the druid and ranger are both attacked by shadowy men who look very similar to those that they saw the night before with Drago in the inn.  The respective fights are brisk, yet not too difficult.  However, getting anything out of the defeated swordsmen is a real challenge, as they apparently contain poison capsules in their mouth, and if they survive the fight, they quickly bite on them and die frothing.

Jillian is determined to question one of her attackers, though, so she casts _delay poison_ and _cure minor wounds_ on hers.  However, he isn't too helpful.  Contrary to their belief, he doesn't appear to know much about Lothar, and when questioned about Drago, his reply is not to worry so much about him, but about his mother!  Then he casts himself off the roof on which they've been fighting and falls to his death in the street below.

From the bodies, they are able to gather a few gold each and a strange medallion each that look like a steel skull surrounded by rubies fashioned to resemble roses.

Jillian decides to question some of the artisans in town about the medallions.  Of course, Old Docksides isn't the place to do that, but the northern district (still on the same side of the river) called Montrose is much more well-to-do.  There, an artisan says he has commissioned several of those medallions, usually for the wives of local noblemen.  Jillian is extremely skeptical of this, but her instincts lead her to believe he's not lying.  Thoroughly confused, they decide to continue their quest to find Lothar's camp.  Apparently, they have to commission Carantoc's river boat to take them up-river, where they enter a bayou that leads to his hide-out.  Without much more ado, they find Carantoc (and he does indeed have crazy reddish orange hair) and he agrees to take them on.
_And with that, since it was close to 1 AM, we called it a night! _


----------



## Horacio (Aug 10, 2002)

So the player chose the classic "I will play the brother of my dead character"...

Great update, BTW


----------



## Desdichado (Aug 11, 2002)

Thanks!  Last night, we did a one-off _Aliens_ rip-off game that I'll throw up as a quick update later in another color (so you can spot easily that it's not the same campaign.)

Looks like we are going to continue doing this for at least one more session, but we have a d20 modern (starting with the Shadow Chasers rules) long-term campaign in the works as well.


----------



## Desdichado (Aug 13, 2002)

Well, to those who are following this story hour (Horacio and ...ehh, well Horacio at least) we did play this last weekend: a one-shot _Aliens_ rip-off which I DMed.  Each character had a Jamis Buck generated Expert3 and Warrior3 with a few Dragonstar skills, feats and equipment slapped on, and then they were thrust inside a space ship trying to salvage hyperdrive parts that they needed for their own ship.  Unbeknownst to them, the ship was infested with creatures having this template although a bit toned down so that every acidic blood splash wasn't a ticket to instant death.  Still, I killed 5 PCs, and two of the three survivors were _heal_ed up from negative numbers.  The one hale survivor, who's name was Rosario or something like that (prompting player jokes that she was the maid from _Will & Grace_) who wasn't hit by anything the whole night!  I don't remember too many of the details: who went down when (each player had two characters as I anticipated a lot of downtime for players otherwise) but it was lots of fun.

What's perhaps more interesting, and I'm not sure how to keep this up in this thread, we decided to a plan moving forward.  This campaign was never really intended to be a long-term campaign, but we've had enough fun with it that we don't want to kill it off entirely.  One guy will DM a long-term campaign using Shadow Chasers rules: he describes it as _X-files_ meets _Raiders of the Lost Ark_.  But, not wanting to be burdened with coming up with a new adventure every week, we decided that he'll do it every other week, or perhaps every third week even.  On the off-weeks, either one of the rest of us would DM a seperate long-term campaign (or not) and we'll continue the one-off tradition, trying to maintain our characters from this campaign as much as possible.  So, although the campaign is kinda up in the air right now, we'll have at least one more adventure with these characters, and possibly more as we move forward.


----------



## Horacio (Aug 13, 2002)

Will you make a one shot story hour of the alien adventure?


----------



## Desdichado (Aug 13, 2002)

Maybe.  I meant to, but I'm not sure I can remember enough details, like who died when and all that.  I never really even knew who most of the characters were!  We also started late (some of the wives were off visiting the player that just had a baby, so me and the other husbands had to sit around talking about gaming theories and fantasy novels for a few hours or so -- kinda fun!)  If I get my act together, I'll just add it in this thread, although I'll make it a different color so it stands out easily.


----------



## Desdichado (Aug 30, 2002)

Well, I didn't feel like posting an update to tell you that in D&D Clue, I discovered first that Regdar did it with the Flaming Battle-axe in the Dragon's Hall (or whatever room it was) or that in Settler's of Catan Falyn's player won by a long-shot.  So, here I am again, just bumping this page up one more final time. 

Tomorrow night we're beginning a new campaign, one designed as a long-term campaign based on Shadow Chasers with a little bit of CoC thrown in.  But, I think the consensus is that this little trial campaign that we did here might not be completely _kaput_ either -- there might be gradually added adventures in it for a little while since the DM of the modern campaign likes to _really_ prepare and feels like once a week is a bit of a burden for him to come up with the kind of session he likes to run.  So, there might be some sporadic updating of this thread still, although the real news will be the new thread on the modern campaign we're starting, and any other alternate long-term campaign that we may run on off-weeks.  In theory, we may run two long-term campaigns with a third week being used as an alternate night for one-offs or other non-RPG games.  We'll have to see how it all works out still.


----------

