[Games] Iron Kingdoms Player-Characters & "Fools Rush In" Resolution
So far, we've had our two "test run" game sessions for Iron Kingdoms. The gist was that we'd run some games, drawing from a pre-written adventure (with me filling in the gaps) and we'd keep in mind that the GM BARELY KNOWS WHAT HE'S DOING, so it might be a cakewalk or it might be a TPK (total party kill), and if necessary we'll do a retcon. On the flip side, if the players find, "Man, I really chose poorly by picking Arcanist as my second profession, when it's largely redundant to being a Warcaster," or whatever, then they can change skills, professions, even gear, as long as it's fairly exchanged. (No shenanigans like picking one profession for all the free starting gear, changing professions, and KEEPING the free stuff.)
There were a few skill tweaks, and learning the system is still a bit bumpy, but there were no total character rewrites, and (thank goodness!) no total party kill. (We did have one PC who got clobbered by enemy fire, but this is one of those games where being KO'ed has a good chance of not being fatal, unless you fell to a horde of zombies, your buddies left you behind, and the ravenous hordes ATE you.)
I was having trouble remembering character names ... but then it seems that part of the problem was because some of the players hadn't PICKED names, and hadn't told me yet. (No WONDER I didn't remember!)
So here goes on the cast so far.
The Commander, Khadorite Military Officer/Investigator
(Player: SV.) Once a military officer in the Khadorite army, he suffered greatly due to a corrupting agent employed by the Cryx, to the point where eventually most of his body (including his lungs, limbs, and half his face) was replaced by life-sustaining alchemically-powered prosthetics. Even his brain was not spared, and he shares his consciousness with an advanced cortex "co-processor" responsible for motivating his now-mechanical limbs. His memories are largely gone -- he does not even remember his name -- and attempts to reconnect him with reminders of his past have only thrown him into seizure-like states. His estate was largely depleted by the heroic efforts taken to preserve his life, and he was considered too unstable to continue service in the army, but he has proven unable to adapt to "normal" life as a civilian -- hence he has taken up the mercenary life. Presently, he is known only as "The Commander" of a small mercenary company.
Thorin, Rhulian Man-at-Arms/Soldier
(Player: CH.) Hailing from a dwarvish clan of Rhul with close ties to Khador, this dwarf actually served as an "advisor" to Khadorite troops in campaigns against the nationless barbarians of the wild lands, and previously served with the man who would become "The Commander." However, having observed the disastrous results of attempts to help the Commander recover his memories, the dwarf has prudently decided to keep such details to himself -- albeit hoping for progress over time.
Yuri Putinov, Khadorite Mechanik*
(Player: Digital_Rampage.) A greying, gruff old field mechanik/arcane mechanik, veteran of the Khadorite army, now lending his expertise to a mercenary company with a light laborjack pressed into quasi-military service. Very opinionated and argumentative, often taking the "devil's advocate" role versus whatever plan the rest of the group seems inclined to follow.
(* Note: "Mechanik" is a Warmachine universe term. "Mechanika" basically refers to "magitech" -- a fusing of mechanical principles with elemental and arcane magic. I'm guessing that it's meant to evoke the same feel as the archaic spelling of "magick" re-purposed by Aleister Crowley to differentiate between "stage magic" and "true" occult powers.)
Brother Whazzisname
(Player: NinjaTheWolf.) A priest of Menoth who showed up briefly to assist our heroes in their mission in Port Vladovar. Little is known of him. (And since the player got a promotion that means he won't be available on weekends for the foreseeable future, little is LIKELY to be known about him. Alas!)
The Alchemist, Mysterious Stranger
(Player: JZ.) This secretive fellow is secretly from the Scharde Islands -- the domain of the wicked Cryxian cultists known for their warped merging of technology with necromancy. He is one of the rare people with a gift for sorcery (a wild talent for manipulation of the elements -- in his case, earth/stone), and covers this up by practicing the art of alchemy. Although he's a refugee from the islands, his exposure to Cryxian culture seems to taint his views on how to properly react to moral quandaries. So far, he hasn't opened up to his fellows about his origins.
Maxim Smith, Gun Mage
(Player: HZ, AKA "JZ, Jr.") A former Cygnaran, he doesn't advertise his former nationality while traveling with a mercenary company with mostly Khadorite roots (even though this is no secret to his comrades). He is an educated man, trained in the arcane sciences at the Academy, though political intrigues dashed what could have been a promising career as an officer in the army of Cygnar. Now, he has applied his arcane and martial skills as a mercenary, combining his skill with a pistol with spells, to imbue bullets with potent arcane effects that would normally require a touch to deliver to the intended target.
...
In the first adventure, based on the online adventure "Fools Rush In" (available as a download from the Privateer Press site), our heroes set out on a secret mission for a Lieutenant of the city watch in Port Vladovar to retrieve a lockbox from a rogue alchemist's shop and then deliver it to some Thamarists who purportedly were holding the Lieutenant's family hostage in exchange for the mysterious device. This mission was complicated when they ran into several hostile "mannikins" (mechanikal toys) that had gotten loose in the street, and then discovered that the alchemist had been attacked and left for dead, and the lockbox stolen. They rescued the alchemist and administered first aid, then chased the fleeing thieves, eventually tracking them down to a steam-boat captained by a notorious Farrow (boar-man) river pirate ... but under the ultimate control of a nasty necromancer proclaiming allegiance to the Cryx.
After making short work of the crew (twice -- since they were reanimated by the necromancer), the necromancer, and the big musclebound (but pea-brained) captain, they rescued a couple of Golden Crucible (alchemists' guild) investigators, secretly recovered the lockbox, and set out, despite warning from the Crucible investigators that they were seeking an item of forbidden alchemy that might possibly contain necrotite (the poisonous, cursed substance used by the Cryx in lieu of coal or arcane energy to power their constructs).
...
In the second session, we followed up on this. The priest took the wounded alchemist with the two Golden Crucible investigators to a hospital for proper treatment, while the group's own alchemist/sorcerer and the dwarf secured the boat as a potential prize of war. The other part of the group (the Commander, Yuri the Engineer, Maxim the Gun Mage, and the steamjack) rushed with the lockbox to the warehouse where the exchange was to take place, but they quickly realized that the Lieutenant had been surprisingly sparse on a number of what should have been critical details. (For instance, if they were there to make the exchange for "his family" ... exactly WHO was in his family again? How are they to be sure they got the right people in exchange -- or all of them? And how were they to know who to give this box to?)
Additionally, when they sneaked up to peer inside one of the grime-stained windows, they spied a bunch of dead bodies inside (not RECENTLY recently dead -- definitely not within the past couple of hours -- but not "ancient" dead, either). To them, this screamed "Ambush!"
While they were arguing about what to do next, a sergeant from the City Watch showed up -- a subordinate of Lt. Gregorivich, and someone the group recognized -- and maintained that he had men in position watching the street to back the mercenaries up. The group reasonably asked why the city watch didn't just make the delivery itself, to which the sergeant claimed that this was due to some sort of personal business of the lieutenant's that he himself was not to know too much about, and the whole reason the mercenaries were hired as intermediaries was for a matter of discretion ... but if the mercenaries had gotten cold feet, he would be willing to make the delivery himself.
The Commander got a bad feeling about all this, and decided that they would head back to the City Watch to meet with the Lieutenant. They had only about 15 minutes left to make the delivery within the time frame set by the kidnappers, but none of them had seen fit to poke a head out and go, "Pssst! In here!" or any such thing, and they'd not seen any tied-and-bound captives inside, so the whole thing stank as far as he was concerned, and while his first inclination had been to charge in regardless, now he'd rather face the fury of the Lieutenant than march into a senseless death-trap.
As they headed down the street, they were aware of the deep shadows, the lessened visibility due to the poor weather (wet snow, just shy of sleet), and various ideal ambush points. Sure enough, some shadows pulled away from the darkness to block their way, and to come in from behind. It was another sergeant with the City Watch, and several men in cloaks they recognized from the City Watch headquarters, plus a few assorted thugs. This sergeant started to gloat, while a laborjack chugged into position behind him, with something to the effect of, "Well! It's a good thing the Lieutenant didn't really have any family members whose lives depended upon you. That's what you get for trusting mercenaries, huh? Now then, just hand over that lockbox, and we'll keep this simple. Sorry to say, you won't be getting that charter -- after all, we can't very well be doing business with such criminals as yourselves. Tut, tut -- murdering the poor alchemist like that, and slaughtering a whole ship's crew of innocent fishermen...."
Or, that's about what he was saying, but the Commander wasn't about to let him get all the way through a monologue. At his signal, the mercenaries attacked. Yuri's laborjack charged forward, slamming into the opposing 'jack, while Yuri used his arcane-imbued wrench to curse the contraption with corrosion effects. Maxim the Gun Mage shot the gloating sergeant, slamming an enchanted bullet into his armored breastplate and knocking him backward, while the Commander charged into the ranks of the enemy, hoping to throw them off with his imposing profile.
The Commander's gambit was only partly successful, in that even while he managed to greatly injure one of the pausing guardsmen, another fired off a lucky shot, demonstrating that while the Commander visibly looked just as imposing as a light laborjack, all the alchemical contraptions powering his limbs were remarkably fragile. (Game terms: Yes, he had alchemical limbs and such, and a boosted size and strength, but he was still an Intellectual rather than Mighty archetype, and not considerably armored, hence very squishy.)
Alas for the Gun Mage, while all the others had rushed forward, he (being something of a "glass cannon") was left all alone standing in the middle of the street when the rear attackers unleashed their pistol shots. Though most of them went wild, three found their marks, and he went down.
As this fight demonstrated, while a laborjack is very strong and potentially hazardous to one's health if it hits you, it's not really made for combat, and has a lot of delicate pieces that can be broken -- and hence in a battle between two laborjacks, what really matters is which one strikes FIRST. In short order, the opposing laborjack was literally "disarmed" -- but in the chaos, one of the opposing guards noticed the lockbox that had been strapped to Yuri's steamjack's back (because nobody had wanted to CARRY the potentially cursed thing). The guard cried out, and slashed at the supporting straps with a blade, cutting it loose. The fallen sergeant had just enough time to cry, "Noooooooooo!" as the lockbox fell to the ground, struck right on the corner, and broke open, releasing some glowing green phials, miscellaneous mechanical parts ... and an egg-like metal device.
The egg-like device clicked and whirred, and panels began to pop out, with parts fanning out, and impossibly expanding, all in a flash, until it exploded into the magnificent form of a clockwork bird of paradise fashioned of gleaming brass. The guard who'd set the box free was caught in the face by one of the wings and its razor-thin feathers, screaming as he took a wicked gash to the face. Then, the bird-thing took flight, prompting various cries of dismay from onlookers: "That's no cortex. We were cheated by that insane alchemist! Curse him and his forsaken toys!" "Oh no! We've lost it. The Lieutenant will kill us!"
Combined with the fact that the guards in the rear group had conventional flintlock pistols (i.e., one shot, and then you can forget about actually managing to reload it in the middle of a combat) and hence couldn't follow up their withering barrage with another, the guards and thugs began to break and run. Yuri even allowed one particularly injured guard who was facing him to drop his sword and run, rather than finishing him off. Even the opposing engineer fled, abandoning her now-destroyed steamjack -- leaving only the sergeant to defiantly scream and charge. He was quickly clobbered with the wrench.
The Commander quickly tended to the fallen gun mage's wounds, then took to the business of interrogating the mortally-wounded sergeant. They got the gist that the Lieutenant was the only actual "Thamarite cultist" involved in all of this, that there was no family to be kidnapped, and the Lieutenant had taken some sick pleasure in being able to tell such bald-faced lies to a group of out-of-town mercenaries who wouldn't be informed enough to know better. The crazed alchemist was recruited and provided with various broken parts salvaged from a destroyed Cryx war machine, encouraged to reverse-engineer them in order to create a new and better cortex. As for what it would be used for, the sergeant had no idea -- just that the Lieutenant could afford to pay well, and that Thamarites were notorious for dabbling in all things forbidden (being as their philosophy was a sort of "liberty for its own sake" extremism that delighted in pushing all boundaries, even if for questionable gains). The alchemist, known for an obsession with mannikins (complex clockwork/arcane/steam-powered "toys") had evidently been more obsessed with using the resources he was given to pursue his own hobby, rather than completing the task he was charged with, hence the bird-like device that just flew away, rather than a cortex ("brain") that could be used in a warjack. As for the pirates and the necromancer -- they were a wild element in all this, possibly tipped off by someone corrupt in the Watch -- and the Golden Crucible investigators had evidently been on the case for a while, prompted into rash action when the alchemist's lab was destroyed, and getting in over their heads when checking out the boat.
Once the sergeant had passed on, the Commander led the others in quickly scouring the scene for any potential evidence that might tie them to the fight (aside from witness accounts, of course). While they could be certain that the Lieutenant would use his resources to persecute them, should they remain in the city, he hoped that he could at least weaken the case that might be made against them in absentia, so that he would be less likely to draw upon the full weight of the law to pursue. They loaded up Yuri's laborjack with what salvage they could take, dropped a couple of pirate flintlocks and cutlasses they had salvaged from the previous fight, fled to the steam-boat, and hoped that they could rely upon the good word of the two Golden Crucible investigators, the wounded alchemist, and the priest that those pirates were the villains here.
At the next port, the group sold off the steam-boat and the steamjack parts (after Yuri had fixed what he could), and booked passage for far deeper inland and away from Port Vladovar to seek work elsewhere.
...
And that's where we left off. The adventure as written wasn't really meant to be resolved -- it was just a convention one-shot originally based in the nearly lawless port city of "Five Fingers," though I moved it to Port Vladovar to fit the Khador theme, and worked in references to mannikins {sic} and the mechanical bird, in order to present a potential tie-in with the later "Firebird" campaign.
Next, the group will travel to the lands of Tzar Vazlov, at the fringe of the Thornwood, and ride a railway to a distant outpost in a cursed forest, taking part in an elaborate "escort quest" for young Tzarevich Ivan Vazlov, and keeping a watch out for the minions of his two jealous older brothers (also traveling on the same train).
If time permits, I may throw together a "train" table piece, using an O-scale cheap plastic train set (a Christmas toy from the thrift store), but I may just have to reduce it to semi-abstracted floor plans, as time permits. Ideally, it should be a chance to introduce all the major "players" in this quest, and get a little more acquainted with the PCs. Of course, there'll be an excuse for combat, and the train itself is the "dungeon," so to speak. (I'm thinking of digging up the old train miniatures maps I made up for the "Helstromme Express" adventure that was included with the Deadlands Reloaded GM Screen, and printing those off. It's far more practical than cutting O-scale plastic trains open and trying to decorate the interiors.)