With that little detail wrapped up, we assessed the situation. The Nar(f) we had followed were all dead; their leader was gruesomely decapitated by the stone gout that erupted when we first reached the ruins, and we killed the others in the early going of eternal skeletons in the courtyard. Their horses, however, were still around, along with ours, so we had either a) self-propelled loot or b) self-propelled food. Seydlitz was also still alive, and figured to be a bit trickier to deal with. Now that we were on to his magical abilities, he let a shoe drop - he didn’t want to go back to the Adzo. Apparently in Rasheman a male caster gets stuck in a cave or something, and who wants that? Fair enough, said Lu Tse, he can come with us. “Really?” the boy asked excitedly. Nobody in the company was necessarily thrilled with the idea, but they didn’t seem to hate it, either; none of us had a keen interest to stick around except maybe Rahil, but being a native of a village that small is usually contra-indicative of wanting to be in said village.
Then the other shoe dropped. We asked him if he had any idea why he had been singled out. Did the Nar(f) know that he had magic powers? With all the guile of a 9-year-old, Seydlitz told us “you won’t like the answer.”

Oh. Well how bad can the answer be?

“I paid them,” he said. “I told them to come kidnap me.”

Wait. What?

“I didn’t want to be taken. I don’t want to go where they want me to go.”

“Do you realize how many people died? More than a dozen Nar. More than a dozen of your own townsfolk!”

Seydlitz shrugged. “They were going to stand aside and let me be taken away. I’m meant for greater things than that.”

Great; this is what chaotic evil looks like at nine years. Darwin would be in heaven; Sephora was fuming, livid that she’d invested herself so heavily into protecting the little shit. We press him on how he got the Nar(f) to do this; so many men in a raid would mean a lot of money. Seydlitz clammed up right about then, but Lu Tse remembered a pouch full of gold coins that he’d seen (and left) by the body of the Nar(f) leader. He mentioned it to Grapthar, who went and fetched what turned out to be 100 coins of gold. Seydlitz wouldn’t say how he came up with the money, but at least part of he mystery was solved.

The company returned to Adzo, toting four extra horses and a hog-ted little boy. When they reached the little collection of yurts (o! how I’ll miss including that word…) they made a beeline for the priestess lady who seemed to be in charge, not wanting to talk much with anyone about the bleak discoveries that they’d made. One very uncomfortable conversation later, the boy was no longer their concern and the company had been officially regarded as “Welcome in Adzo,” which not everyone who comes through is. Our stat damage was repaired, Lu Tse checked to make sure his stump money hadn’t been the source of Seydlitz’s slaughter before turning the cash over to the village, Sephora saw to the horses and began the long process of cleaning the mental filth of these events off of her psyche, and generally all the excitement of the last two(!) days came to rest.

So, like I said - CLIFFHANGER! (In case you’re reading this slightly later than immediately-after-the-last-recap, you should probably read this first.) “We are the last, lost,” chants the misty form in the center. “We will welcome you in the end.”

“Roll initiative, homes,” was the best thing we could come up with on only seven days notice. Stupid deadlines! Unfortunately, the early goings made it look like we should have been less ast-fay with the initiative-ay. You see, a party bearing no magical weapons is likely to have difficulty hitting the incorporeal guy who’s tossing out CON damage like he’s a Mardi Gras float captain and we’re a nude… oh hell, you get the idea, we were clearly going to get our asses handed to us. The company had minimal damage sources at its disposal: Lu Tse could generate fire on his hands thanks to his newly-discovered abilities, but that only worked once without disengaging to recover; Grapthar had a couple expenditures of his positive energy ability left, which were mild but useful; oh, and Seydlitz MacGuffin turned out to have magic powers! With a shout of some incomprehensible tongue, fire shot from his hands and landed on the shadow-y dude. Unfortunately, it was only somewhat effective, and we were all soon left with no useful resources and an angry shado- oh fine, Rahil eventually figured out he was a wraith.

Another day, another door, another death?

Fortunately, Anniel gave up on her bow and the mace she’d scrounged up and went rummaging through the rest of the room. “Surely Fate, that bald, 6′3″ god of chance and destiny, wouldn’t just put us in here to die” she thought. Next to an overturned giant chair (or throne, perhaps?) she comes across an old backpack and a large battleaxe made entirely of metal. It is etched with the writings of a tongue she does not know, and when she hefted it she heard a gruff voice grunt approvingly, although there’s no one else around. “Nobody bothers to write on a crappy weapon,” she thought before wheeling about and charging the wraith. One mighty swing (and one max-damage roll) later, the wraith is rent and destroyed, leaving a scorched mark on the paving stones. Relief abounds. The axe, being of dwarven make, didn’t actually hold any interest to Anniel, who soon passed it over to Grapthar; when he grasped it, he heard the same gruff laughter. “That’s a female!” he exclaimed. Examining the weapon, he found a single comprehensible word, likely the name of the blade - Jorthundaul.

We scouted out the rest of the tower, finding it to be a hollow shell with a catwalk that leads to doors on the top story (probably lining up with the library and the battlement we spent time in last week) that the company just wasn’t interested in at the moment. Assessing the situation, it boiled down like so: either standing outdoors when dawn broke would safeguard the company, or it wouldn’t. That solution existed as a fallback plan and nothing could be done to alter the results. In the meantime, the options were to search for another solution (probably escape from the keep) or don’t search (because of the likely danger) and hole up and wait for the dawn. Seeing as how we get together to roleplay fantasy adventures and not, say, camping, you can guess which option we chose.

Moving forward meant going out the set of double doors oppposite the ones we came in from - the keep is in a rough “U” configuration and, having come down one side and into the middle, we were going to move up the other end. The first room we encounter is laid out essentially like the one fronting the doors on the other side, complete with skeletons that look ready to leap up yet again to rend us. Strangely enough, these skeletons stay put when we stepped in. Not trusting the dead buggers for a moment, Lu Tse proceeded to kick the skeletons apart and hide their weapons in the ruined furniture. The company quickly moved on to the next room, which contained, in no particular order: the decayed remains of an armory, completely with dozens of useless weapons (although Lu Tse upgraded his useless daggers to a useless longsword); a magic set of nunchaku which, when Lu Tse grasped them, induced the vision of a woman’s face who whispered his name (um, w00t!); and a trap in the floor which ran a gigantic serrated sword up Grapthar’s gullet, nearly butterflying him. Still, he survived the experience, and whatever doesn’t kill you makes you easier to cook evenly.

O HAI! We can haz ur flesh?

Another day, another door. Listening to it gave us a hint, but the chittering of skeletons, we had learned in the keep, still left a lot of possibilities. Rat skeletons? People skeletons? Gopher skeletons? Still, it’s not like we thought there wasn’t going to be any danger when we set out, and so Grapthar opened the door. Sure enough, he saw skeletons wandering in the room; skeletons that turned to look at him. It seemed as though he might have an opportunity to close the door before they made it to him, but he had a new, dwarf-y axe that wasn’t going to try itself out.

FIGHT! In one of our less-smart tactical moves, despite having the drop on the skelys we decided to hold until they moved, and move they did, swarming into the room. Our fool-proof response (take full attacks, whap the shit out of them!) suffered a minor setback when we all missed completely. From there, it’s a pitched battle for a couple of rounds while they get a few licks in while we thin their numbers. Then the balance tips and we’re able to finish them up.  Our reward? Stairs up! That’s never been a bad idea - last time we got the key we needed, and it only cost us 6 points of Charisma.

This time, we quickly realized that we were ascending into fire, ’cause we’re super-observant. Fortunately we weren’t walking into the fire, we simply walked into a room in which there was a fire. A large fire. Which, in point of fact, was a person. With a gem in its head. So yeah, even by the really abnormal standards of the last 10 hours, this was weird. The fire guy spoke to us, and a lot of it wasn’t easy to comprehend, but between what he told us directly and what we pieced together from our shared dreams finally revealed a large part of the puzzle.

The keep (called Zhughal, we think) had been home, long ago, to people called “Binders,” who apparently bound beings from other planes in order to power great works. Shockingly, something went wrong with this plan at some point and a let’s-call-it-a-demon either got loose or was in danger of getting loose. Their last attempt at locking the thing back down “worked,” but instead of pleasantly hiding the baddy away it seems like it dragged part of the keep into the prison. In any event, the keep is now (as we’d seen) all f’ed up. “I had no choice. I paid it gladly. It must not escape.” So said the fiery guy. “You must leave.” “That’s right!” we all shouted. “But,” added Lu Tse, “we don’t know how, and in trying to escape we might err and release the demon.” “That’s right!” agreed the company. After a long, long moment we heard the distant *clank* of what had to be the front gates opening for us. Without another word we h-a-u-l-e-d–a-s-s to get there before anybody changed their mind. Sure enough, the gate was cracked, and out we scootched.

Continued tomorrow, in part two - “Wait. What?”

The Keep

As described last week, the company decides that restocking the spell-casters is critically important to surviving this accidental expedition, and so barricades are erected on both entrances to the room using the cauldrons that were already here; nothing spooky about them, nossir! Setting a rough watch rotation, everyone does the best they can to rest in this most disquieting of locations. Shockingly, we have nightmares. Actually shockingly, the nightmares seem to be related to one another. Much to the chagrin of the DM (I’m betting), we don’t actually dig all the way to the bottom of this particular strangeness, so eager are we to get out of the keep before (we fear) it dissolves into nothing, taking us with it.

[You gotta hand it to us, we've put ourselves on a clock that may not even exist. We're the easiest party to entertain ever.]

We ponder which direction to go, and quickly decide that we want elevation to get a better view of our surroundings - thus, we want to head around to the tower at one end of the keep. We listen to the appropriate door, through which Grapthar had heard scraping noises hours ago, but nothing now stirred. “Let’s go then,” said Lu Tse, and the door was opened. Stepping in with a torch, a series of combat practice dummies are revealed, along with several dead bodies on the floor. “I’ve seen this movie before,” thinks every single member of the company as the bodies rise up with a series of rattles and hisses.
FIGHT! Grapthar, Rayhil, and Lu Tse move in to engage, while Anniel stays back to provide cover fire and Stripeyface McScaredycat stands protectively over Seydlitz MacGuffin. For his troubles, Lu Tse gets hit as hard as he could ever remember being hit; a zombie seemed to hit him in *ahem* a critically-sensitive spot on his head. The blow dazed and dizzied him. When an opportunity came to return fire, his hands suddenly burst into flame. With a wild, almost startled swing Lu Tse hit the zombie back and it fell, broken apart and on fire. “That’s… new,” thought Lu Tse. [note to readers: on a lark, LT was retconned into a monk/fistsage (née swordsage); this was the first manifestation of such.] Rayhil flashed out with positive energy, sending a couple of them fleeing, and then Grapthar and the rest cleaned up.

Investigation of the large-ish room revealed that double-doors led back to the Courtyard of Unending Skeletons, and a gigantic door that geography dictated would lead into the keep’s tower. That door was patently creepy and, more important at the moment, locked. Sephora took a long look at the lock before saying “I’m not even going to bother, this thing’s too complicated for me. We’re going to need the actual key.” After a brief discussion the company made to double back to the room they’d started in; there was a door in the opposite direction, from which noise had been overheard earlier that evening and, sadly, from which a skittering noise could still be heard. “How bad could skittering be? Rats, right?” said Lu Tse, opening the door. Yep… it was rats. Skeletal. Rats. A Swarm. Of Skeletal. Rats.

Creepy, right? Now imagine all the flesh stripped off. . .

FIGHT! Keeping with the theme of the company’s time in the keep, the worst thing about the encounter was how freaking creepy it was. At one point, Lu Tse was paralyzed with sharp disgust as rats crawled all over him. “If this isn’t the grossest thing that ever happened to me, I’m glad I lost my memory,” he said to no one in particular. The swarm was particularly tricky to deal with since, despite it being composed of hundreds of teeny critters, it seemed to act with one mind. Among other things, this meant that area-affect attacks like the positive-energy bursts of Rayhil and Grapthar only dinged the swarm once. Eventually, the swarm is subdued and dispersed, and a thorough search of the room revealed a sack stuffed full of copper coins. They’re the lowliest coin, but a lot of anything can be worth something, right? Unfortunately, no key turned up. The room had another door aside from the one the company came in from, and there was also a spiral staircase going up.

*flip* Heads! We tried the door, which yielded uber-creepiness: a room swathed in black iron from floor to ceiling. All along the walls were inch-deep etchings of glyphs and such; there’s a magic-y circle in the floor, and perhaps a pile of something in the far corner. Facing a surfeit of volunteers, Lu Tse moves into the room to investigate. Grapthar’s detect magic guides Lu Tse away from a patch of strong enchantment, and without further difficulty the corner is reached. There, Lu Tse discovers a corpse, with most of his belongings long since eroded but for one length of cloth. Passing it to the casters when he returns, they discover that it is in fact a scroll containing spells which may later be cast. L00t! It is noted by several that the room seems to resonate with imagery from our shared nightmares, but again we’re on a tight deadline and so ruminations are shelved.

To the bat stairs! We ascend to the second story, into a library of ancient scrolls. I have to pause here and point out that, in my other campaign, a room full of scrolls would signal the effective end of the evening, as each one would be lavished with attention until no more secrets could be weaseled out of it. This bunch, thankfully, is willing to accept the DM’s overall assessment more-or-less at face value - to wit, the scrolls describe wicked, evil stuff. Grapthar and Lu Tse, however, not being readers, decide to investigate sundry doors and openings, and it is thus that Lu Tse happens upon a ghost, trapped in a room for who knows how long, singing a forlorn song. Enrapt (or ensorceled), he is drawn to the ghost, and when his companions discover this and try to free him all heck breaks loose.

Boo.

FIGHT! The ghost, who covets an audience, seems drawn to the most forceful personalities in the company; ironically, that 7 in Lu Tse’s CHA is a free Protection from Ghost Siren.  Many others, however, present themselves as tasty-looking morsels - “dance with me,” the ghost keens to Anniel as it drains away some of her inner forcefulness. (”Killing me softly with her song/draining my ch’risma awaaaaaaayyy…“)  We’re all in real danger of succumbing before Rayhil’s blast of positive energy sends the ghost fleeing into the night. Left behind, perched precariously on a crumbling wall, is a strange looking doo-dad. Fortunately Sephora has a keen mind for devices and recognizes this unlikely trinket as the key we’re looking for. Down periscope!

We back-track to the giant doors that previously denied us and, sure enough, the key fits the lock securely, putting unseen mechanisms into motion with a distant cacophony. Opening the doors, a gaping darkness greets the company. Lu Tse takes the torch he’s holding forward, and as soon as he crosses the threshhold he’s met by lumbering shadowy shapes and a rasping voice, proclaiming the residents of the tower to be “the last that remain.”  A brief attempt to offer peace (”we mean no harm, only escape from here”) is met with menace and a call for initiative.

CLIFFHANGER! LEVELS! Tune in next time, which will actually be tomorrow because I’ve been sick and this is incredibly late. :p

The previous session ended with the party beginning its descent to level 12, the bottom of Cyrran Shelter #3. There was, I forgot to add, a repeat encounter with some shadows. They did not pose a serious threat but during the fight we learned that Guard, who had been happily immune to any and all threats on his home level (that’s level 6, yo) was susceptible to stat damage just like the rest of us anywhere else. Good to know. We proceed the rest of the way without incident and come to level 12, where we face a classic fork in the path. Left or right? One way houses the Red Queen, Guard tells us, and the other is home to the Living Document… whatever the hell that means. We choose left.

Success! We enter a large room with a dias on the far end. On the dias stands a humanoid figure composed completely of gently swirling paper. Sadly, the Living Document’s predisposition is to treat visitors as hostile, and so it unleashes an enchantment that leaves several people befuddled, listless, and incoherent… okay, more than usual. The rest of the group manages to maintain its composure and talk to the thing, rather than pay it back in kind. They keep a fight from breaking out, but the Living Document demands that we show our marks. Our what now? A brief frisking of ourselves later, it turns out that all of us except the Kalashtari have small tattoo-looking marks somewhere on our bodies. These being displayed to the Living Document, it explains that it is prepared to answer any three questions that any markbearer asks it. As an added bonus, unlike the stereotypically adversarial stance of, say, a djinni in granting wishes, the Document is happy to explain when a question is pointless and/or unanswerable without it costing a question. So why even have limitations? “Because that’s the way it is.” Dammit.

Funnily enough, while three questions doesn’t sound like much, we actually know soooooo little about our situation that we don’t even use all of our questions in one sitting. Nevertheless, the picture does get clearer. In no particular order:

• We were set aside 16,000 years ago by the nation of Cyre. The shelters were scattered across the world as a means of preserving vital resources. By resources, mostly that means “capable combatants, valuable hostages, those who have breedable talents, and large caches of weapons.”
• Cyre built the five shelters from the bottom up, working through the Underdark, so that no other nation was aware of them. They apparently knew that a cataclysm was coming and expected to retrieve the shelters’ contents afterwards.
• Given the 16 millenia that passed, that plan didn’t seem to work out.
• The “marks” that are on most of us are something called “dragonmarks,” and they denote that we held some sort of status in society at the time. Each of our marks is different, and now that we know about them we realize that we can affect minor magical abilities by focusing on our mark.
• We get a run-down of general geography, i.e. we were shown the inside cover of the Eberron book although a lot of the names are different now.
• The wand that we recovered from level 6 (see last session) is one of five siblings, one in each Cyrran Shelter, that together are the key to something called the Warforge. Given that Guard has self-identified as a “Warforged,” we get what that does. Oh hell…that’s two pieces of information people would kill for (the other being the existence of the Shelter’s themselves.
• We get the access codes for any and all secured areas of the Shelter. This grants us, among other things, nearly limitless food and all of the finest non-magical weapons imaginable.
• We learn the locations of the other remaining living folk in this Shelter.

Our questions wind down, as we realize that we just don’t know enough to ask meaningful questions. We proceed to the Red Queen’s side of the level, where we get easy access to her communication setup - basically we can scry for short distances outside, and have a rudimentary database to peruse. A scan of the area confirms that we are under the Frostfell, where the conditions are hot, humid, and rainy.

…

What?

Oh fine, it’s a nightmare of cold and ice, happy? We know of a sled up in the equipment areas, but we don’t know that we have a means of moving the damned thing. We make our way back up the Shelter, freeing the other survivors along the way. One is a human fighter, while the other seems willing to be called Kalashtari but doesn’t seem to fit quite right. In any event, he seems psionically atuned. Ye Olde Narrator hasn’t dabbled in psionics since the days where you rolled percentile dice on every character to see if they had psionics, so I don’t have much to say on this subject. Besides, I think I’m a chicken; bawwwwwwk! We reach the top of Cyrran Shelter #3 and beging to assess what it will take to cross the icy wastes.

Next time: Baby, It’s Cold Outside

When we left off, the scraggly outcropping of rocks that the Nar(f) were camping in had exploded in a torrent of dirt and rock that resulted in a surprisingly-complete Keep of Evil(tm)(c) surrounding the company and the Nar(f). We pick up this week with a fuller description of what ails us – we’re all in a courtyard that has several doors leading away from it, as well as a giganto double door that, ostensibly, leads to our freedom. In the center of the courtyard is a gigantic statue of a demon (a glabrezu to be precise, although I don’t think that anybody’s character knows that) and scattered about the courtyard are about a half-dozen skeletons. This being a fantasy game and not just, you know, life, the skeletons are as upright and mobile as the rest of us.

A fight breaks out! The company faces both barbarians and skeletons, but they aren’t allied and many of them are fighting each other. Sephora rushes forward and stands protectively over Seydlitz MacGuffin (such an ironic last name!). The skeletons are heard to hiss things like “forgotten” and “lost” and “forlorn” and “loss” and “sorrow.” At first the fight goes almost too easy, as many skeletons are dropped by a burst of positive energy from Rahil while many of the party’s attacks focus on the Nar(f) – Lu Tse figures that only they have a motivation to get the boy in particular, so they have to be dispatched first. Then the other shoe drops and more skeletons are spewed up out of the ground. From there it’s a pitched battle of skeletal attrition as skeletons drop and occasionally are reinforced – by themselves, it turns out later, or at least the same undead souls powering each collection of bones that rise up. No individual skeleton is particularly threatening to the members of the company, but they just. Keep. Coming.

During the fight, Sephora examines the base of the gigantic glabrezu statue and determines that it seems to be the heart of the enchantment that is providing protection to the undead I(and who knows what else). Later, when Grapthar takes a tremendous blow that almost drops him, Sephora decides that enough is enough and makes for the giant doors at the head of the courtyard we’re in, Seydlitz firmly in tow. She sees that the doors have an iron lattice-work that matches the appearance of the glyphs that begin at the statue. Nobody is able to open it and, finally when we “catch up” on the skeletons for a round and have no opponents, we retreat through one of the doors that face the courtyard and pile into a room.

The room has benches and chairs, torchieres (unlit) and the remnants of a meal service that lie strewn about. As the party catches its breath, Sephora goes to investigate a sheet or fabric of some sort that lies on one table.

Oops.

It turns out that the sheet is actually a large skein of skin etched completely with tattoos. It flaps into the air and wraps itself around her, and then proceeds to rip the skin off of her face. *ahem* IT RIPS THE SKIN OFF OF HER FACE. HER FACE! EW! Charisma damage ensues, and after the sheet of skin (did I mention ew?) leaves her she collapses into a corner, wailing. Lu-Tse charges, leaping onto a table and then into the air before dropping an elbow into the sheet, which (perhaps in defiance of expectation) bruises from the blow. Unfortunately it manages to latch on to Grapthar and suck on his face, too, before Grapthar smashes his flail (and the skin sheet) into the wall, killing it.

The company collects itself, examining the surroundings and listening at the other two doors that lead away from this room. Sounds are heard behind both, a skittering from one and a snorting, snuffling sound from the other. Meanwhile, Sephora notices a box under a table. It’s marked with a strange glyph and contains pristine silver coins that are marked with a disturbing, demonic image matching no currency we know. And, of course, the sound of skeletons banging at the door from the courtyard starts up, but they don’t seem to grasp the concept of latches so we’re safe for the moment.

For whatever reason, Lu Tse says he prefers the snffling sound to the skittering sound, so Grapthar joins him at the door before Lu Tse opens it and steps in. Well, the snuffling sound is not, in fact, a truffle-hunting pig but instead is a flesh-hunting ghoul. Another melee ensues, but compared to the
skeleton onslaught it’s a straight-forward affair involving a brief exchange of blows before the ghoul is dispatched. At this point, the spellcasters in the party explain that they’d be of more use if they could rest and recuperate, and so this room is barricaded on both ends (there’s another door leading out besides the one the company came in through) and a rough camp is established.

Outside, the skeletons pause in their assault on the door and turn their eyes to the keep’s tower, before spreading out along the perimeter of the courtyard.

We have a cold opening (no warm-up or background) of our characters waking up to find themselves drenched in goo, standing in the midst of giant, broken glass(ish) tubes. Each of us is dazed and disoriented, but we can spend little time asking questions because there’s a more immediate problem. In the center of the room, several goblins are dead or dying at the hands of a pack of shadow-y undead. Not just shadow-Y, shadow-shadows! Right into initiative we go, where we discover that whatever we may not remember, our inherent skills and abilities are still right at our fingertips. Wallace Worthington V, a sneaky little halfling, plays dead and riffles through the pockets of the goblins, but the shadows don’t buy it and he gets whapped for ability damage. Meanwhile, Mekashtari (a human-ish woman who later tells us she is from Kalashtar) channels divine energy to force the shadows to flee, Corn (my human swordsage/warblade who is sure that that isn’t his actual name) tries to stab them without much luck, and Lucius Deveraux Minster (”you can call me Buck¹“) draws his pistols and shoots one dead. Wait, what?
In the aftermath, the entire group (also including Naideria, a sorceress with a be-bubbled sea anemone floating next to her and Alaran, a man with a penchant for stabbing people at great distances using arrows) comes together to compare notes. Sure enough, nobody remembers much beyond their name - not where they’re from, no personal history, no friends/lovers/acquaintances, nada. so, like a fresh game of Civ with nothing but shadow-of-war on all sides, we start wandering about to gather any information at all. The room we’re in contains other tubes besides ours, some with people in them and some with… corpses. Oops. The goblins seemed to have tunneled into this chamber we’re in, rather than using the one door, but we’re feeling unstable enough without leaving “civilization.” That’s about when the door opens, an a man made of metal enters.

The metal man, who is referred to immediately and forevermore as “Guard”, turns out to be sentient and free-willed, but a metal man nonetheless. He answers some basic questions that leave us almost as confused as before. We’re in “Cyrran Shelter #3,” we’ve been here a whole lot longer than he thought we would be, and it’s been very boring up until now. “Five” (as Wallace Worthington V gets nicknamed; perhaps h’s a Cylon!) produces a map that he snagged from a dead goblin and asks Guard to mark it up for him/us - paranoid looks naturally ensue. In any case, with map marked out we set out to investigate three distinct locations.

1. The Armory. Here a few of us find a vast array of finely-crafted weapons of all varieties, secured behind clear barriers that each bear a numeric keypad. We think about trying to break the barriers, but Buck is familiar with explosives (Wait, what?) and points to some things behind the barriers that might not take kindly to jostling. ooooookay.
2. The “secret room.” Wow, you’d think they’d name it something different…. anyway, Five gets us in, where we discover a wand. Our magically-inclined folks aren’t able to make much sense of it, so we stow it for later.
3. A library containing all sorts of information. Too much to take in all at once, but some history is gleaned. Most pertinent, we discover that we were apparently stowed away for future use by a nation called Cyre, but an “extraction team” would have been sent to release us under normal circumstances. We still don’t have an exact timeframe, but from bits of pieces from Guard and the library it looks like the time can be described in terms of millenia.

We also get put into communication, thanks to Guard, with somebody on a lower level of the Shelter that he refers to as the Red Queen. The Red Queen is not exactly more helpful, but she’s differently helpful and gives us our bearing within the Shelter; she also tells us the location of a couple of other living souls here. We resolve to work our way down to where she is, along with something called The Living Document which may be able to provide us with more answers.

Next time: Red Queen’s Race!

The village

21^st of Eleint (Sep), 1372 - The Autumnal Equinox
Present this week: Anniel, Grabthar, Lu Tse, Rayhil, Sephora (that’s everybody)

The curtain rises on the village of Adzo, a bare blip on the map hard on a lake in the lands of Rasheman. There’s a harvest festival going on, the same as in villages all across the Realms at this time of year. Accounting for our heroes: Anniel, an elven ranger, is going about her mundane business, trading with the four sisters (as they’re known in Adzo) who trade in herbs and poultices. Lu-Tse, a wisened old human who looks to be from Shou and has never spoken a word to confirm nor deny it,  is seemingly comatose, as always, on his stump in front of the village common house. Grabthar, a dwarven bard with the aspiration (if not the talent) to be an actor, has returned to Adzo to provide entertainment for the festivities. Jayhil is a woman of the village (and priestess of Selune) and is simply going about her routine; currently she is mending fishing nets. Sephora has come from out of the village to deliver a message to the Fyrra, Tadmek Adzolev.

Many of the party hears thunder, despite the clear morning that has blessed this feast day. Soon they realize it’s the sound of many hooves, approaching from the North. Not long after that, a shriek is heard from the same direction, then a discordant horn is blown. Pushing through the treeline is a band of nomadic barbarian raiders, all screaming “Naaaaar!” Apparently, they’re the Nar. Or from Nar. Or both. Naaaaar!

Combat ensues, wherein the players acquit themselves well. Lu Tse, in particular, seems to surprise people when he rises out of his catatonia, climbs on top of the common house, then seconds later leaps down onto a passing rider, snapping the rider’s neck as he is dragged from his horse. Sephora, exhausted from her long travels, wisely goes for cover during the chaos, Grabthar and Anniel waylay the attackers, and Jayhil miraculously calls forth a radiant energy that she then focuses and hurls at a rider, causing him greivious harm. The fighting dies down soon enough, leaving a grisly stew of fallen riders, stricken villagers, and burning yurts. (Ask your doctor if you have burning yurts.)

Udana, a woman of the village, is seen wandering through the carnage, a sheet of blood going down half her face. Rayhil uses positive energy to heal her, but the woman still seems troubled. “They took him,” she says. “They took my nephew. They grabbed him and rode away. Why would they take him?” It comes out that the boy is a 9 year old and named Seydlitz; he’s known to be stand-offish and a layabout, whom the other children dislike. He’s also known to be very, very bright.  We hear of no other hostages taken, which seems to confirm our suspicion that the raid was targeting this boy in particular.

What the hell are those things??

Udana leads the party to the ruins of the hut. With some investigation they determine that three horsemen stopped here, dismounted, then remounted and left. Four of the characters seem to fall into a loose company, compelled to help find the boy. Sephoa slept through this (she showed up exhausted and emaciated) but is hired to handle the horses – nobody else in the group knows anything about der ponies. They set out north, following the not-disguised-at-all trail of the retreating horsemen. After a day of hard riding, the party is simply a half-mile away from the riders, at the bottom of a ridge where the baddies are at the top.

After a bit of discussion, the company decides to flank the riders, despite the oncoming darkness and depleted spell-casters; it’s only going to get worse the farther north they get, we reason. However, once we get up there it looks like a bad idea, with the riders alert and restless, so Lu Tse sneaks around the encampment to beg off the attack for now. And that’s when the trouble starts.

The ground begins to shudder, then it vomits up huge gouts of stone and dirt, all the while a keening noise fills the air. Sephora almost loses her footing, and one of the Nar is crushed by the onrush of stone. The wise woman of the village had warned Jayhil to “avoid the ruins,” but apparently a convenient description of said runes was not provided. Anyway…  When the dust settles, an entire building of some kind has enveloped the company, the remaining Nar, presumably the boy Seydlitz… and “something” else that’s moving about. CLIFFHANGER!

Pathfinder beta rules -free!

Sadly, the Wednesday game didn’t happen this week, because yours truly is still carrying PLAAAAAAAGUE!!! and nobody else wants to catch it. Shocker. Still, that lets me play a little catch-up and describe my character and what I know about the campaign.

First of all, we’re using the Pathfinder beta rules. This is brand new to me, so it’s taking a little getting used to. Not that it’s that different from D&D 3.5, but that’s the problem - just when I assume I know something, I find out it’s changed. Take skill points - I blithely multiplied my starting skill points by four and started looking through the skill list. “Uh, no” I’m told. Whoopsie. Still, the classes seem to be better balanced than in days of old. Ah, 2000, when we were young and dumb. =p

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m almost completely unknowledgeable about Forgotten Realms, so my character concept needs to accomodate my own stupidity. I know, we role-play characters who can do things that we can’t all the time, but there’s a certain fundamental understanding of my character’s abilities that I expect of myself. So, my options as I see it are: young, dumb, or brain-damaged. I’ve pretty much given up playing young characters, although playing a VERY young character (say, 10; no, not for laughs) is still on my docket of unused PCs. Dumb doesn’t appeal to me, at least not at the level required not to know fundamental geography. So, brain-damaged; in this case, amnesia.

Now, I knew amnesia is a time-worn trope, but I thought I had stolen (ahem) a pretty good idea from one of Monte Cook’s players: a once-powerful adventurer who got wiped out by even more powerful, level-draining undead. Well, not only had Monte’s game seen it, my new friends had seen it in their last campaign! D’oh. Still, I kinda like the idea. He was the Master of his Order at one point, a supremely powerful monk. Nevertheless, his Order was wiped out by <insert baddies at DM’s discretion>, and Lu-Tze (an homage to Terry Pratchett) was left, incapacitated, memory-wiped and nearly broken, in an unknown land, probably as a joke. He’s sat, essentially immobile, for the last 15 years, but he’s finally starting to stir just as… well, I dunno. The DM tells me there will be a catalyst to get us moving, so up he’ll get.

Crunch-wise, we rolled dice for stats (how quaint!) and I had a choice between a moderately good set of numbers and a completely skewed one, which of course I immediately took. Two 18s, an 8, a 7, and a couple middling scores. The lowballs go in INT and CHA, to reflect his unbalanced and decimated mind. Lu-Tze isn’t crazy, but he’s missing more than one marble.

Otherwise, the party has an archer-style ranger, a couple of casters, and a rogue, so I’m (God forbid) the tank. We’ll see how it goes.

I really crack myself up sometimes…

Tonight is the first session with my new-ish group. There are three male-female couples in it, which I realy like; it’s been a long-time since I’ve played in an all-boys game, but if I remember correctly I really prefer the energy of a mixed group. One couple we’ve known for years and years, and they live right next to us (literally, like 100 yards), and the men share a similar sense of humor and the women are very alike… so of course, we’ve rarely made the effort to connect with one another. Sad, really, but hey! We’re hanging out now! The other couple are the people I met at Half Price books in another post awhile back; the man is DMing this go-’round. Interestingly, L and I have played with the 1st couple before, and I can’t say that it went well. We liked each other fine, but I’d say our styles of gaming were very different, so it’ll be interesting to see how we mesh this time around. I suspect there’s a strong will in place to make this work, which should help.

The game is going to be set in the Forgotten Realms, to the delight of two of the couples, the indifference of my darling L, and the moderate discomfort of yours truly. I’ve never read the books, and I’ve always felt vaguely stupid when everyone else at the table knew things about a campaign that I didn’t, when I’ve been in the campaign for as long as they have. Sure enough, during character creation last week the DM told us we’d be starting in a village he had created, located on a lake in … er… Rasheman?

“Which side?” asks the woman in the other couple.

“North side,” he reples.

“Oh, along the trade road,” she says.

“Yep, that’s the one,” he replies.

“Oh Dear God,” thinks I. But I know they’re not showing off, they just all enjoy knowing a lot about the world they’ve been playing in for so long. I’ll get over it, eventually, I’m sure. (And in case you’re wondering, yes, they know about this blog. I’m not poking anybody with a stick here, I find this story funny even if it also makes me a little queasy.)

I’ll give you a run-down of the players and the starting scenario tomorrow.

We started at the Wizards of the Coast offices, where I posted a want ad in Local-U.S. (an Outlook discussion group for general postings that went to everyone who subscribed to it (which was practically everyone in the company)), looking for folks interested in trying the then-new Wheel of Time d20 game. When we stopped meeting in the WotC conference rooms (gaming in conference rooms after hours was pretty common) and moved to living rooms, a couple more joined. From there, it’s been an ebb and flow as boy/girl-friends came and went and the occasional drop-out was replaced by “a guy I know.” We switched to a D&D game that went for about 5 of those years, and recently switched to another - the Ptolus campaign I’d started posting about.

With the Ptolus campaign, I thought I’d try new things. I’ve always been incredibly improvisational; it is either true or a mild exaggeration that I wrote fewer than 1,000 words, TOTAL (NPC names, locations, story notes, etc…) over the course of the entire campaign. This time, I wrote a detailed players guide that covered world-building issues and house rules. Rather than hand-wave character creation issues I wrote (for me) a complex set of rules that merged Arcana Evolved and SRD-style characters together. I asked for backgrounds from each player, and I laid plans for everyone’s background to fit into the overall story.

Problem was, I’d never used this sort of information before, and I just wasn’t very good at it. I’d lose track of things, and I neglected a couple players whose stories I just hadn’t come to grips with yet. I was using a lot of published material (Ptolus, as well as professionally-written adventures), but that required more set-up than I was used to. I was paradoxically over AND under-prepared to DM each week. With that circumstance facing me week after week, I finally lost the will to beat myself up and I packed up my tents.

The take-away from all this, for me and for you, is that if there’s going to be change to your game, it should come gradually. Find the couple of things that most bother you and focus on those. And for pete’s sake, talk to your players and ask them for their input. You might be completely off-base about where your strengths and weaknesses are.