Exile Empire - A Warforged Interlude
But my weekend wasn't just taken up with fiddling with website settings and flying to Sydney to talk about maths textbooks. It also involved a session of Exile Empire, with a special session focusing on just fengshuiguy and damien_wise (with barrington helping out undercover).
For the curious, talk about gaming sessions is one of the things I'm going to continue to put here, rather than on PODcom. Best to avoid crossing the streams. If you wish I would take them there, so you didn't need to read them... well, at least I leave them behind a cut. Like this.
Early morning: Spark waits outside the Black Wrack for the rest of the party, only to be chased by a large group of men intent on capturing him. Fortunately his escape is aided by Tyrnan Thiel, a mysterious Aundarian who has been sent by persons unknown to assist him. The pair run through the alleys and over the rooftops of the Respite district, ducking through stores and using tricks and disguises, until they throw off the pursuers and the blue-gloved sorceress that leads them. Tyrnan tells Spark that his task is to escort the warforged to a magic circle in a floating island above the city, where they will open a magic portal and an ally will come through to present Spark with a gift.
Elsewhere: Ballast comes to consciousness in a mysterious ruin that houses warforged parts of rough make and oversized proportions. Exploring the ruin, he finds that it’s an incredibly tall tower in the centre of a ruined town divided by canals, and he is hundreds of metres above dense jungle that must be far away from Stormreach. He discovers an ancient and malfunctioning creation forge in the ruin, an ancestor of the device House Cannith used to create the warforged, that now seems to be slowly giving life to the metal and stone of the ruin, hatching metal insects and golem-like animals.
In Stormreach, Spark and Tyrnan climb up to the Brass Minaret, a small fort floating above the Summerfield district that no-one has ever been able to enter. Tyrnan has a key to the corroded ruin, though, and inside is a small room with an inlaid magic circle. The two begin to cast a ritual from the scroll Tyrnan carries, sympathetically attuning the circle to Spark’s connection with the mysterious ally. But just before the portal opens, a pair of the men hunting for Spark burst into the fort to capture him.
Past the creation forge, Ballast discovers an orb sitting on a pedestal, and a panel in his chest opens to allow him to insert it - but when he does so, pain drives him into convulsions and a voice thunders in his mind in languages he doesn’t understand. Eventually he ejects the orb and it starts speaking in Common; named ‘Shinra’, it is an intelligent warforged component called a docent that has been waiting millennia for a vessel to carry it, but Ballast is not the one it’s waiting for. When Ballast takes the docent from its place of rest, the whole tower creaks into life, and he is chased by flying, dart-throwing forge guardians back to the storeroom where he woke.
As the two warforged struggle against their opponents, the portal finally opens, connecting both places. Spark and Ballast are able to cooperate long enough to fetch Shinra and defeat the warriors before both coming back to Stormreach as the portal closes. A panel opens in Spark’s chest, emitting wisps of energy, while Shinra telepathically pleads with Ballast to hand it to the other warforged. Instead, the surly fighter keeps hold of it, argues with Spark, and tries to throw Tyrnan off the edge of the Brass Minaret. The mystery man escapes and runs off, and the two warforged continue arguing as they climb back to solid ground.
--
I wanted to do a side session that explained why Spark didn't make it to the expedition to the White Oubliette. I was working on some ideas when fengshuiguy couldn't make it to the last session, and it seemed like a natural step to come up with a short session that brought those two stories together. When barrington offered to help, I hit upon the idea of introducing a mysterious stranger with a hidden agenda, and he brought Tyrnan to life, like a French James Bond.
The session was conducted in back-and-forth shifts between Spark's chase and Ballast's exploration, culminating in the joint fight-scene at the end. Mechanically, I set both plots up as simple, organic skill challenges, cutting away just after each skill check. Like the challenge in the first session, I didn't formally develop it, but used the structure to suggest outcomes and shape the flavour of play. Success on the challenges was indirectly helpful - it meant that the enemies that PC faced came with a vulnerability to the other PC's attacks or fighting style. If the fight had been a little harder, that might have mattered more, as it would have pushed the guys more strongly to change places; instead, they mostly stuck to their initial opponents and only teamed-up at the end. Still, it was pretty cool.
The last couple of sessions have really pushed the 'ancient giant magic' theme pretty hard, what with planar portals and ruined skyscrapers, and now a powerful, intelligent magic item that's got its own stories to tell. I'm going to pull back a bit from that now, or at least from introducing new aspects of that theme, and let what's there do the work. Between Shinra and the genasi Janda-Shen from the previous session, we've got two outlandish NPCs that demand to play a role in the PCs' stories, but I want the players to drive that, not me. I'm going to focus more on continuing to develop the other story elements and see what emerges from them. Lots of dominoes have been set up; time to push a few and see how they fall.
As to why Tyrnan Thiel was on hand and who sent him... that's a story for another time. And a decision I'll make much later - that's a plot secret I'm happy to justify in hindsight rather than foreshadow in advance.
Next session... actually, I really don't know. Guess we'll all find out.
For the curious, talk about gaming sessions is one of the things I'm going to continue to put here, rather than on PODcom. Best to avoid crossing the streams. If you wish I would take them there, so you didn't need to read them... well, at least I leave them behind a cut. Like this.
Early morning: Spark waits outside the Black Wrack for the rest of the party, only to be chased by a large group of men intent on capturing him. Fortunately his escape is aided by Tyrnan Thiel, a mysterious Aundarian who has been sent by persons unknown to assist him. The pair run through the alleys and over the rooftops of the Respite district, ducking through stores and using tricks and disguises, until they throw off the pursuers and the blue-gloved sorceress that leads them. Tyrnan tells Spark that his task is to escort the warforged to a magic circle in a floating island above the city, where they will open a magic portal and an ally will come through to present Spark with a gift.
Elsewhere: Ballast comes to consciousness in a mysterious ruin that houses warforged parts of rough make and oversized proportions. Exploring the ruin, he finds that it’s an incredibly tall tower in the centre of a ruined town divided by canals, and he is hundreds of metres above dense jungle that must be far away from Stormreach. He discovers an ancient and malfunctioning creation forge in the ruin, an ancestor of the device House Cannith used to create the warforged, that now seems to be slowly giving life to the metal and stone of the ruin, hatching metal insects and golem-like animals.
In Stormreach, Spark and Tyrnan climb up to the Brass Minaret, a small fort floating above the Summerfield district that no-one has ever been able to enter. Tyrnan has a key to the corroded ruin, though, and inside is a small room with an inlaid magic circle. The two begin to cast a ritual from the scroll Tyrnan carries, sympathetically attuning the circle to Spark’s connection with the mysterious ally. But just before the portal opens, a pair of the men hunting for Spark burst into the fort to capture him.
Past the creation forge, Ballast discovers an orb sitting on a pedestal, and a panel in his chest opens to allow him to insert it - but when he does so, pain drives him into convulsions and a voice thunders in his mind in languages he doesn’t understand. Eventually he ejects the orb and it starts speaking in Common; named ‘Shinra’, it is an intelligent warforged component called a docent that has been waiting millennia for a vessel to carry it, but Ballast is not the one it’s waiting for. When Ballast takes the docent from its place of rest, the whole tower creaks into life, and he is chased by flying, dart-throwing forge guardians back to the storeroom where he woke.
As the two warforged struggle against their opponents, the portal finally opens, connecting both places. Spark and Ballast are able to cooperate long enough to fetch Shinra and defeat the warriors before both coming back to Stormreach as the portal closes. A panel opens in Spark’s chest, emitting wisps of energy, while Shinra telepathically pleads with Ballast to hand it to the other warforged. Instead, the surly fighter keeps hold of it, argues with Spark, and tries to throw Tyrnan off the edge of the Brass Minaret. The mystery man escapes and runs off, and the two warforged continue arguing as they climb back to solid ground.
--
I wanted to do a side session that explained why Spark didn't make it to the expedition to the White Oubliette. I was working on some ideas when fengshuiguy couldn't make it to the last session, and it seemed like a natural step to come up with a short session that brought those two stories together. When barrington offered to help, I hit upon the idea of introducing a mysterious stranger with a hidden agenda, and he brought Tyrnan to life, like a French James Bond.
The session was conducted in back-and-forth shifts between Spark's chase and Ballast's exploration, culminating in the joint fight-scene at the end. Mechanically, I set both plots up as simple, organic skill challenges, cutting away just after each skill check. Like the challenge in the first session, I didn't formally develop it, but used the structure to suggest outcomes and shape the flavour of play. Success on the challenges was indirectly helpful - it meant that the enemies that PC faced came with a vulnerability to the other PC's attacks or fighting style. If the fight had been a little harder, that might have mattered more, as it would have pushed the guys more strongly to change places; instead, they mostly stuck to their initial opponents and only teamed-up at the end. Still, it was pretty cool.
The last couple of sessions have really pushed the 'ancient giant magic' theme pretty hard, what with planar portals and ruined skyscrapers, and now a powerful, intelligent magic item that's got its own stories to tell. I'm going to pull back a bit from that now, or at least from introducing new aspects of that theme, and let what's there do the work. Between Shinra and the genasi Janda-Shen from the previous session, we've got two outlandish NPCs that demand to play a role in the PCs' stories, but I want the players to drive that, not me. I'm going to focus more on continuing to develop the other story elements and see what emerges from them. Lots of dominoes have been set up; time to push a few and see how they fall.
As to why Tyrnan Thiel was on hand and who sent him... that's a story for another time. And a decision I'll make much later - that's a plot secret I'm happy to justify in hindsight rather than foreshadow in advance.
Next session... actually, I really don't know. Guess we'll all find out.