The Rambling Bumblers (it is the Rambling Bumblers, isn’t it? Are we all agreed?) explored deeper into the Nefari-built ice caverns beneath the Red Keep. Coming to a huge fanged archway carved in the ice, Jacob the mighty sliced it apart with the Thorn Sword….and released an enormous Ice Worm. Unfortunately for the poor fauna of the ice cavern, Jacob’s skill at Giant Killing made short work of the beast. Unfortunately for the party, the carcass of the worm attracted the hungry attention of the cloud beast in the chasm, which poured up out of the chasm towards them. Eleazar quickly hurled some silver crescents and put up a ward to protect the party, and after some hemming and hawing, Merath of Yahar let loose with a full-power blast of the Rose Light to try and destroy the worm carcass, so that the cloud would lose interest. Merath forgot, apparently, that within the Rose Kingdom, the power of the light was nearly unlimited, and ended up vaporizing a 30-yard diameter sphere including the worm, the archway, a goodly chunk of the cliff, and the ice bridge that the party had come in on. Ooops. It did kill or drive off the cloud beast, though.
Buried in the ice they found a new PC, Nathan (played by Brian). Nathan had somehow came to be buried there after severely annoying a curse witch three years before, but he was fuzzy on the details. Seeing no other way out, he elected to follow them, although throughout the evening they gave him cause to wonder at the wisdom of that decision.
A bit of fancy work with the rope later, and the party was in the ice tunnel (twenty yards behind the original entrance); proceeding down the tunnel, lit by Merath. After a while, the tunnel came to be suffused with at first a blue, and then a blue-green glow. Eleazar came to be more and more aware of whispering in Nefari that apparently only he could hear. Spotting shadowy humanoid figures paralleling their line of march, Jacob slashed through the ice, revealing another tunnel, and the polished surface that was reflecting the party’s images. They moved over to the new tunnel, and a fair distance farther came to a big, deep cavern, reminiscent of the cavern of the Rose Light beneath the Rose Tower. In the center of the cavern was an icy platform, and there were 24 ice bridges from the platform to tunnels in the walls; below they could see another such platform, and another beneath that, which was as far as the golden light from the torch ensorcelled by Bastriel could carry. As soon as they stepped onto the bridge, the ambient blue-green glow went out, and Eleazar stopped hearing the whispering.
Merath refused to enter the cavern once she figured out that her precious pink light wouldn’t work there, so the others investigated the platform and discovered a Nefari spiral underneath the undisturbed snow. Unlike certain other PCs, they did not walk right across the hidden spiral, so no unexpected journeys to the Nefari lands for them. Yet.
They decided to explore the tunnels methodically, starting at the immediate left, and once they had gotten to it safely managed, with some difficulty, to persuade Merath to join them. Once in the corridor her light worked again, and she was much relieved.
Down the corridor they were attacked by a horde of tiger-sized Ice Weasels, who attempted to rip their flesh. They dispatched several, but there seemed to be no end to them, and eventually (once they rediscovered the fact that Merath’s pink light worked as a damage shield) they sent Merath out into the pack, and eventually the ravening weasels were reduced to so many cauterized gobbets of flesh. In order to prevent them from being used by spirits to make undead, Merath systematically vaporized the lot of them. In the weasel’s nest they discovered a fancy red stone box with gold trim, in which they found a Nefari magical charm (a ring linked to a bracelet) that they tucked away for future examination. There was a narrow tunnel leading out, but since they would have to slither through it, they elected to ignore it.
In the second corridor they found a barrier of differently colored ice, and when Jacob poked a hole in it, water poured out (presumably from the lake above); Merath used her hedge-wizardry to reseal the hole before the entire lake came in.
In the third corridor they discovered a temple with a Nefari altar of ice (shackles, blood-grooves and everything), which Eleazar ritually defiled–although the process of doing so knocked them all out. Upon recovering, they explored two of the three adjacent rooms, in one finding feathery vestments in iridescent blue and green, and in another many sharp knives and instruments of torture as well as a big black Book O’ Evil. Jacob attempted to set fire to the book, and burst into flames himself. Unable to put out the fire on his leafy form, he raced back to corridor two, cut another hole and doused himself. Merath followed, a little belatedly, and sealed up the hole before too much of the lake came in.
At that point, we broke for the evening.
From Russell
To answer Rachel, I guess the Sunday game was on hiatus for wedding-related reasons the last two weeks. I came back to visit Josh this weekend, and ran a second Hero-Cities adventure.
The group was Eldor, the slacker elf sorceror (Doug); Rolly, the indestructible dwarf wizard (Paul); Bronwyn the Dostoevsky priestess (Josh) [I think he means Tolstoy (War and Peace) — Josh]; and a new fighter who adopted the nom de guerre “Bob” (Mike). We had some important character insights this game. For example, Eldor’s bad French accent is the result of a contagious disease that Bronwyn caught during the course of the adventure, but which mutated into Spanish, probably in Rachel’s honor. Rolly speaks fluent pig Latin. Mike names all his character’s WEAPONS but not his character.
Plot summary: A recon mission sent to spy on the gnolls has gone missing in Yaga’s Forest (aka, a bad place to be after dark). Since Belaphon the naiad couldn’t locate them by scrying, their commander concluded that they were probably in one of the entrances to the Armory, which is magically protected against divination. Our quartet volunteered to be one of several groups, each sent to look at an entrance. In fact, in Bronwyn’s words:
“Ooh! Ooh! Since we’re the PC’s, we volunteer to go to the entrance where they ACTUALLY ARE!”.
Each group is given a supply of healing potions for the people they are saving, and a few other supplies, like a whispering wind scroll to summon help from the officer corps. They go together to a few miles of the Armory, then split up. A wild boar and a few healing potions later, they find that as usual Bronwyn is correct. A trail of blood and consumed healing potions leads them to the entrance to the tunnel. As they are about to reach the tunnel, they are ambushed by two gnoll trackers, but Rolly puts one to sleep and “Bob” and Bronwyn beat up the other.
They find the tunnel, which is marked with the sign of the Hikitami cult in mud fingerprints. Since one of the MIA’s was in that cult, they decide to use the scroll to report success. But it will take up to half an hour for an officer to reach them, so they go inside the tunnel. “Bob” (very luckily) finds a trip-wire, and the group avoids it. A few hundred yards later, he finds a pit-trap, but not so luckily, he finds it by falling inside. A few healing potions later, the group is on the other side,and has reset the trap just in time to hear “Snap! Aaarggh!!!” from back down the corridor. Another group of gnolls has entered the tunnels, and got caught in the arrow trap the PC’s avoided.
Two gnolls appear in view down the corridor. They rush towards the party, just in time for Eldor to summon magical grease, on which they slide right into the pit trap, landing on their heads. But it’s not over. The boss gnoll is behind the cannon-fodder. “Bob” valiantly if not too cleverly jumps over the pit, sliding on the grease [Actually Eldor cancelled the spell — Josh] towards the boss. He takes on the boss in single combat, but gets some magic missile support from the magicians. The boss decides to flee, but is shot full of arrows by Eldor and Bronwyn as he turns to leave.
A few healing potions and a net trap later, they find the missing party. They use up the last of their healing magic getting that group conscious — Rapsel the Hikitami cultist was the only one functional. She had found, disabled and then reset the tunnel traps to ward off the gnolls that had been following their group. The druid officer Lilamir arrived, in the form of an owl, and escorted them back to the rendezvous, where they were congratulated and rewarded for their success.
Guest GM report
I was guest GM at both last Friday and Sunday’s games. Both games are set
in my fantasy world where adventuring types are organized into hero-cults,
dedicated to deeds worthy of the founding hero (and drawing power from the
said hero). The Friday group consists of Bell the very good-looking paladin (Josh),
Erabod the elven wizard and cook (Mike), Duramir the dwarven warrior (Walter),
Ostiel the uninhibited ranger who speaks many animal languages (Mac), and
Haha al-Ish, a part-Jannii priestess of Rai-Nocturne (sun god, night goddess) (Beth).
They were looking for a worg that was spying on Rurik the Smith and his forge,
but never found it. I blame the drive down. After Philadelphia traffic, I must have
been subconsciously avoiding further confrontations.. I didn’t even know how to
react when Erabod asked an elderly hobbit druidess if he could look at her melons.
Was this an innuendo or did he have a devious plan to lure the worg
with canteloupe?
Anyway, i was about to burn my GM screen when I ran the Sunday game. This
was a blast, even if I didn’t get most of the in-jokes. The group was
Bronwyn, the priestess of Belic-Serene (war and peace, with a heavy
emphasis on WAR) (Josh), Soren of Molosh, a mighty and clever warrior
woman (Wendy), Eldor, an adolescent (very adolescent) elven sorceror
(Doug), and Rally the indestructible dwarven wizard (Paul).
The group encountered ghouls who had followed a path cut through
what is normally a defensive hedge on the border of the Haunted
Lands. After dispatching them, they followed the same path that
the ghouls had been following. They found a group of
merchants who had been robbed by bandits, then attacked
by ghouls, and was currently in sorry state. After bringing
them to safety, and a night of carousing, they hurried on their
way to their original destination, the town of Lillibridge.
In Lillibridge, they were suprised to meet the very same merchant
that they had rescued! The “merchant” acted in a suspicious
manner, and they eventually realized that he was actually a
disguised bandit, who had come to town to fence the stolen
merchandise. After failing to lure the group to his room, the
bandit snuck up behind Rally as he was interogating the bandit’s
assitant Corwin in the stable. The bandit hit Rally by suprise,
(twice!), but didn’t dent his thick skull. Once Eldor and Soren
ran to his aid, they quickly captured the bandit, just as
Bronwyn ran up with a group of guards to capture his accomplice.
Thrunk goes Klunk
First fatality in the new (Jeff and Andy) campaign: Jeff’s character Thrunk Shillelagh got pinned in a corner by a trio of skeletons and hacked to bits. Andy’s character Link was running pellmell for the exit of the dungeon, and so wasn’t in any position to try first aid or to recover the body. Remember kids: In D&D always bring a Cleric!
Russell sez
Buried in a comment that nobody but me will read, so I’ve copied here:
It looks like I’ll be running a few Sunday D&D games while I’m on the East Coast. Sunday night players might want to browse the game web-page at http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/users/russell/DND to get a sense of the world and to start designing characters. I tend to make a lot of world information available, so much that it intimidates some. Most of the information is just for my own benefit, although there’s nothing most PC’s wouldn’t know. So don’t be put off by the bulk, and just skim the parts you need for your character or that you find interesting.
The Body Count Rises
The Joe Dimaggio of Fallen Heroes kept his streak alive last night — just in the nick of time it seems. The mighty Monkasho (sp?), Scott’s character, was unceremoniously squashed, sprayed and flushed last night, bringing his campaign to character death ratio back to perfect alignment. Some said it could not be done, particularly since Scott had just leveled up (making his character the toughest in the party), but Scott, always the resourceful gamer, proved us all wrong. Now, just like all great champions, Scott is going out on top. 🙂
Rachel and Scott will be deeply missed.
Alas, poor Nolan
we hardly knew ye.
My good friend Russell, who’s been playing RPGs with me for a little over twenty years now was with us last Sunday, and the group promptly abandoned his character Nolan to his doom. This was the first time Russell has lost a PC in one of my campaigns, which are notoriously hard to die in, in years and years and it shocked him a little. I mostly blame Rachel. <wink> Sure, the monsters they were fighting were probably too tough (even though I was confused about the rules, not having internalized D&D 3.5 yet , and made them much wimpier than their official stats would indicate), and I neglected to have the inexperienced young NPC who was tagging along play optimally which probably would have saved him, but it was Rachel’s character Pedro who first cut and ran, leaving the dying Nolan to get crunched. It’s entirely possible that Pedro couldn’t have helped, but what surprised Rusell was that he didn’t even attempt it. Of course, it was perfectly in character for Pedro; don’t let Rachel tell you that she never plays evil characters. Hint: if she’s playing a Rogue, that Rogue will be evil, no matter what the official alignment is. Stealing from party members, betraying their secrets to local criminal families, it’s all part of the job to her. Russell, however, was foolishly assuming an implicit “Band of Brothers” contract among the party members because that’s what he’s used to. This was foolish, because I’ve told him enough stories about this group of players that he should have known better; he’s even read this blog.
The game goes on: Russell’s already made up another character for next time we play, one that’s much more survival oriented. I kind of wonder whether a sniper with a cloak of invisibility isn’t too much of a reaction, though….
Las Confesiones de Sor Teresa
I’ve been charged with writing up last night’s session — the one where the GM was, quite literally, on the floor laughing — but it’s easier said than done. Mental mistakes were made, and it’s difficult for me (the person who made them) to quite reconstruct why. However, I’ll do my best.
We were looking for one last artifact: a pistol with a medallion embedded in it that belonged to one Colonel Beauregard. We’d been sent to a rather unfortunate moment in the past, however — the past self of one of our party, James Jadwin, had just knocked over a bank with his partners. Beauregard was hot on their trail. We could hear the hounds baying in the distance. We were going to have a hard time explaining our presence in that snowy field at midnight, so we took to our heels and ran.
Jadwin urged us not to hide the same place as his younger self, fearing that we might lead the posse there. I told him that if the posse caught us and thought he was himself (so to speak) we could say, “No, no, this isn’t James Jadwin. The *real* James Jadwin is hidden in the tanner’s shed!” Jadwin thought this was a bad idea.
We came to an apparently abandoned barn. But when Jackie “Fingers” McGuire opened the door, someone shot at us. Using a hitherto undemonstrated power, Fingers was able to let the bullet pass through his body without harming him.
“Stop shooting!” he shouted. “We don’t want to hurt you!”
But the fellow in the barn (one of Jadwin’s gang, presumably) shot at us again. So Jackie blew his face off. That boy always was hot-headed.
Of course, the posse heard the shots and came to investigate. Jackie tried to explain, but was stumbling through it, so I took over. I told the posse we’d been weathering the storm in the barn when this bandito came upon us and shot at us. In self defense we blew off his face. The deputy sheriff looked through his stack of wanted posters, and I identified the man we’d killed as “James Jadwin”. There was a $500 reward for Jadwin, and we were all set to collect it the next day.
It wasn’t Jadwin, of course, and *our* Jadwin, 24 years older than the one they were looking for, was just laying low and trying not to attract attention. He was trying to look as old as possible. I identified him as my nephew Alfonso, at one point, which caused a bit of confusion.
I asked the deputy sheriff a few questions about Beauregard and the army, and was starting to feel quite at ease. This is where I get a little hazy. I believe our Jadwin expressed relief at not having been caught. He didn’t say it in language the deputy sheriff would understand, however, but said something like “Boy, I’m not going to get any sleep tonight!”
Aaaaand… that’s when Sor Teresa had her astounding brain fart. Completely forgetting that the deputy sheriff was standing RIGHT THERE, she says loudly, “Yeah, JAMES JADWIN is going to need some clean pants!”
And that just about did in our GM. He laughed. He laughed until his face turned red and tears streamed down his face and he ended up sitting on the floor HOWLING. We were all laughing, even me (although I punctuated it with “Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!!)(Sor Teresa has Tourette’s, apparently).
Josh let us off easy. He shouldn’t have, but he was so out of breath he didn’t have the will to look up all the fiddly Deadlands combat procedures. The deputy sheriff was astute enough to realize that the dead man wasn’t Jadwin — his hair was the wrong color — but he didn’t realize Jadwin was in our party. We got $100 instead of $500, and Scott took back my MVP award (which he’d given me for convincing the guy that Jadwin was dead).
Now I will say, I had the power to spend a blue chip and become an avenging angel of death, and I would’ve done it if the posse had really gotten wise to us and tried to do us harm. It would’ve been completely my fault, so I owed it to the party to fix it. However, anyone who looked upon me would’ve had to make a sanity roll, I was that terrifying, and even if I had warned everybody to close their eyes, I don’t think anybody would’ve done it (unless *maybe* Doug — he has pretty strong self-preservation instincts).
So then the whole party would’ve been insane. But, as Josh might say: “This is different, *how*???”
James Jadwin – 1840-1886. RIP.
OK, maybe I shouldn’t be have been surprised.
Last night my Deadlands character James Jadwin was struck dead by God. Frankly, I’m surprised that God had the balls to do it.
In our continuing quest to put back together the universe that we had so blithely destroyed, our party had acquired the last of three artifacts: an obsidian knife, a medallion-adorned pistol, and a jeweled crucifix. Orders from God, relayed through Sor Teresa, were that we were to place these around the canyon where our characters previously shattered time, and so contain the explosion.
So we have the artifacts, and we travel back in time to the canyon. Who should we see going into the canyon but ourselves, on our way to the Nevadan silver mine where it all started?
Suddenly it hits me … we could either put God’s plan into action, deploying the artifacts around the cavern, or else we could try something much easier—just warn ourselves not to shoot that damned Clock!
Thoughts race through my mind. Do we really want to put God’s plan into action, when God has bungled things so badly already? How do we know that this really is God’s plan? We only had Sor Teresa’s word to go by, and you can imagine what that’s worth! Why waste these cool occult artifacts on a containment field, when a simple holler would do just as well?
Then the metaphysical worries kick in … is it actually possible to alter the past? If I shout at the party of adventurers below, will they hear me, and heed my warning? Of course it must be possible to change the past—isn’t that exactly what we’re trying to do here? I figure that there’s actually little to lose—if it is possible to change the past, then I will be able to shout, and stop the tragedy of the exploding universe before it starts. If it’s not possib le, then I will somehow fail to give a warning.
So I shout “Hey! Don’t shoot the clock!” It was really the only option. Suddenly, before the words can come out of my mouth, I’m stricken dead. Technically speaking, it might have been a heart attack, or maybe a stroke. But no matter. We all know that really I was struck down by the hand of God.
I’ve been pondering why. At first I thought it was obvious—God killed me so my actions wouldn’t alter the past, and destroy the timeline, and wreak havoc upon the world a second time. (I refuse to comment as to whether this was what I was really hoping to accomplish in the first place.) But upon further reflection, that doesn’t make any sense—the whole purpose of our mission was to alter the past, and prevent the universe from being destroyed. So altering the past clearly couldn’t create some kind of catastrophic failure. So we were definitely supposed to alter the past.
The problem is, of course, that I came up with a simpler and better way to save the universe than God did. I made him look bad. So the bitch slapped me down. Hard. Vindictive bitch.
There was a happy ending of sorts … my dying prayer was to be saved by the beautiful goddess Althea. My prayer was granted, as I found myself in Her universe for my afterlife. James Jadwin has successfully emigrated from this universe to enter paradise, thereby making a lie of Sor Teresa’s predictions that he would go to hell.
Clockstoppers Quotes
“Well, hell, I’ve got the clap!” – Cal
“The corn grows as high as the vampire bat flies…” – Scott
“I can make any of jou dead at any time.” – Sor. Theresa
“My suggestion is, if they come and catch us, we all strip.” – Sor. Theresa
“You will report to the stripping angel of death” – Doug
“All of our quotes involve sex or death” – Wendy
“That’s because that’s what you guys think is funny.” – Joshua
“We are all nephews under God” – Sor. Theresa
“It always comes back to the hot nun nooky.” – Paul
Wendy’s character Fingers is made to split the bounty money with the rest of the party, which makes Wendy start sputtering in outrage…
“God says you have to share–” – Sor. Theresa
“–and stop making noises like a parrot.” – God
“…and God says spend it now, because it will be worthless when we get back” – Sor. Theresa
“Perhaps I can offer my services to the entire army…then he won’t be suspicious” – Sor. Theresa
“That’s it! A special blessing for his special pistol!” – Fingers
“Nobody plays bagpipes that loudly unless they’re raping their aunt” – Rachel
“Oooh-kay, you’re standing knee-deep in sh-now” – Joshua
“That’s not where I thought he was going with that” – Rachel
“That’s God’s whore, thank you very much.” – Paul
“Jou can explain jour slave-holding ass to God when the time comes.” – Sor. Theresa
Tales of the Rambling Bumblers 