Exile Empire - New Arrivals I
Trips to the other side of the world and upcoming yuletide celebrations are not enough to stop my Eberron campaign - they merely serve to complicate the scheduling. But we managed to get it together for a four-player group today, and jumped right into the next chapter of the game.
Details behind the cut.
As the Kraken's Keepsake approaches Stormreach, Ballast and Spark search the belongings (and bodies) of their deceased comrades, discovering Alarich's dragonmark and noble background, and Jin's journal of stolen mystical findings that might benefit from translation. Then, after too long, the city of Stormreach comes into view - clusters of modern, human-sized buildings clinging to the roots of ancient giant ruins, a sprawl of ramshackle and ever-shifting buildings wrapped together with rope and regret.
Two witnesses watch the ship dock and the warforged disembark:
Eventually, the four heroes end up in the Rusty Nail (Stormreach's only tavern serving warforged 'alcohol') where Kaddik ropes them into his mission. They break into the warehouse, fighting their way past a Liondrake's Roar unit (monstrous mercenaries in service to House Thurashk) to get to the basement, where a House mercenary and a masked woman argue over money next to a pair of unearthly beasts like flying octopuses made of mist. In the battle that follows, the woman draws on the dead-gray mists of the Mournland and the creatures nearly devour the minds of the heroes, but the adventurers finally prevail. At Slaine's insistence, they bring the surviving mercenaries back to her inn for questioning - only to find Aeden near death and cut to pieces.
--
We're back into the things with one replacement character (Slaine for barrington) and one new player and character (N. with Kaddik), and a plan to play the game with whoever can turn up with whatever character. We spent a little time exploring the city and getting a bit of the flavour (I hope so at least), letting everyone bounce off each other a bit, and managed to wrangle everything together for a quick dungeon bash at the end. I was pretty happy with it, on the whole.
The tricky part for me is that the session was about 90% improvised. I asked the players for ideas on what they wanted to do (and have happen to them) in the first few sessions, took in the offers, tried to find some connections and then just played it by ear. That's hardly a staggering thing, as I've run a lot of games that way - but generally not D&D 4E, which tends to require forethought about encounters, miniatures, dungeon tiles and the like. My main tool was a bunch of prepared encounter groups for the various locations, factions and groups in Stormreach, ready to pull out as needed. Then it was just about rifling through the (critically underappreciated) City of Stormreach sourcebook for ideas and locations, squishing people's backgrounds together, and trying to kill Ballast. Everyone tries to kill Ballast.
Mind you, the improvisation would have been a lot easier if my Monster Builder software hadn't catastrophically crashed on my laptop yesterday. This meant I had to get onto the desktop PC in the study, assemble the encounter groups and paste the stats into dozens of different Word files, which I then put onto an ISB key to access on the laptop. I know, that's a pathetic 'problem', but it really ate into my prep time, and it was really goddamn annoying - although Wizards Customer Service are doing their best to help me fix it for the next session. Wah wah wah, woe is me.
Next session, we may have a different player/PC lineup, along with a different set of plot hooks to juggle. It'll be interesting to see which lines continue, which pause, and which (if any) get dropped. I could run for a while on what's on the table now - but the fun is in the shakeup.
Details behind the cut.
As the Kraken's Keepsake approaches Stormreach, Ballast and Spark search the belongings (and bodies) of their deceased comrades, discovering Alarich's dragonmark and noble background, and Jin's journal of stolen mystical findings that might benefit from translation. Then, after too long, the city of Stormreach comes into view - clusters of modern, human-sized buildings clinging to the roots of ancient giant ruins, a sprawl of ramshackle and ever-shifting buildings wrapped together with rope and regret.
Two witnesses watch the ship dock and the warforged disembark:
- Slaine, a human from the Iron Soul monastery in ravaged Cyre, now in Stormreach with her master Aedan to pit themselves against hardship and seek answers to the mystery of the Mourning
- Kaddik, a half-orc tracker (and alchemical crossbow expert) in league with House Tharashk, searching for his missing mentor Marik'aashta whose trail led from the Shadow Marches to the shores of Xen'drik
Eventually, the four heroes end up in the Rusty Nail (Stormreach's only tavern serving warforged 'alcohol') where Kaddik ropes them into his mission. They break into the warehouse, fighting their way past a Liondrake's Roar unit (monstrous mercenaries in service to House Thurashk) to get to the basement, where a House mercenary and a masked woman argue over money next to a pair of unearthly beasts like flying octopuses made of mist. In the battle that follows, the woman draws on the dead-gray mists of the Mournland and the creatures nearly devour the minds of the heroes, but the adventurers finally prevail. At Slaine's insistence, they bring the surviving mercenaries back to her inn for questioning - only to find Aeden near death and cut to pieces.
--
We're back into the things with one replacement character (Slaine for barrington) and one new player and character (N. with Kaddik), and a plan to play the game with whoever can turn up with whatever character. We spent a little time exploring the city and getting a bit of the flavour (I hope so at least), letting everyone bounce off each other a bit, and managed to wrangle everything together for a quick dungeon bash at the end. I was pretty happy with it, on the whole.
The tricky part for me is that the session was about 90% improvised. I asked the players for ideas on what they wanted to do (and have happen to them) in the first few sessions, took in the offers, tried to find some connections and then just played it by ear. That's hardly a staggering thing, as I've run a lot of games that way - but generally not D&D 4E, which tends to require forethought about encounters, miniatures, dungeon tiles and the like. My main tool was a bunch of prepared encounter groups for the various locations, factions and groups in Stormreach, ready to pull out as needed. Then it was just about rifling through the (critically underappreciated) City of Stormreach sourcebook for ideas and locations, squishing people's backgrounds together, and trying to kill Ballast. Everyone tries to kill Ballast.
Mind you, the improvisation would have been a lot easier if my Monster Builder software hadn't catastrophically crashed on my laptop yesterday. This meant I had to get onto the desktop PC in the study, assemble the encounter groups and paste the stats into dozens of different Word files, which I then put onto an ISB key to access on the laptop. I know, that's a pathetic 'problem', but it really ate into my prep time, and it was really goddamn annoying - although Wizards Customer Service are doing their best to help me fix it for the next session. Wah wah wah, woe is me.
Next session, we may have a different player/PC lineup, along with a different set of plot hooks to juggle. It'll be interesting to see which lines continue, which pause, and which (if any) get dropped. I could run for a while on what's on the table now - but the fun is in the shakeup.