Group B Session 1
Switching it up to group B's first session.
Group B session 1
The chronicles of:
Ahead of time I had decided that the Fallen Duchy would lie in the Dales of the Forgotten Realms. In a rather remote part of it specifically. The year is the Year of the Ageless One, 1497 dale reckoning.
I gave each of the players a rumor and a reason to head to Dragon's Delve.
Trippin, gnomish cleric of Gond, has marching orders to report to the temple of Vune for a matter concerning her own church. She also knows about the bluesteel doors in Dragon's Delve and, being an inventor, is intrigued about their function.
Amaryllis, the halfling rogue has heard rumours about a pair of dice that effect cause and effect on some fundamental level. Always one for a challenge, she travelled towards Brindenford to recover these dice.
Falur Mortek, the dwarven fighter, and expert of everything axe related, has picked up rumors of 12 ancient sigils. Being an accomplished weaponsmith he was very interested and thus set out to collect all of them. His god, Muradin, would want him to.
Finally we come to the wizard of the party. Narim Varidan, a human that has spent most of his years in the back of libraries and as apprentice to several wizards, reading books. He is a master of book know-how. His practical appliance of this knowledge is a bit iffy though. He has read nearly every book available to him. He has heard about the Mages Four and their might, and is about to check it out. He never really expected to do serious spellonking though. Narim has a trusty familiar called Titon, which is an owl, with him.
On a sunny afternoon, on the 9th of Kythorn, the four of them found themselves finding a place to stay, newly arrived in Brindenford. The tavern by the name of the Lost Shepard drew the attention of all of em. The Lost Shepard was still rather empty, it was just afternoon after all. Roman was just repairing a window that was broken by a barfight earlier. A woman, just on the pretty side, is serving drinks to a rather imposing dwarf with a rather big axe. Several empty glasses stand in front of the dwarf. In the back a halfling is managing the bar.
On four other tables are our player characters. Falur orders some food and cranberry juice from Taran. She informs him that they have some juice, but not specifically cranberry juice. Falur appears dissapointed, but takes the juice. As Taran is off to fetch the drink and food at the bar/kitchen a sneaky halfling rogue on an adjacent table is intently following what is happening around the tavern.
Narim comes up to Falur and introduces himself as a wizard of great knowledge. As they strike up a conversation Taran returns with the drink and food. Falur starts eating, cutting with a small handaxe. He must really like axes. While this is going on Trippin, at a nearby table, is shocked by the prices for a room. Especially since they apparantly don't come with locks! She nods nervously and Taran leaves. On another table the Amaryllis has had it with this boring scene. She grabs some of the nuts on the table in front of her and tries to throw one in the glass of Falur. Her aim is poor though and she hits Trippin. This is the start of a mischeavous alliance.
Falur and Narim start to exchange some stories about dwarves and eventually settle on the topic of Dragon's Delve. Then some more of Amaryllis's nuts fly by, but she keeps missing the glass. Out of frustration she just throws all of the nuts. This does get the attention of Falur, who berates the young halfling (at least he thinks she is young) and then continues his discussion with Narim. Amaryllis doesn't care one bit, as she runs over to the table of Trippin and fetches more nuts.
She ends up tying the shoelaces of the wizard together. Finally they all start talking to each other. Apparantly they all want to head to Dragon's Delve (what a coincidence). At the mention of Dragon's Delve Erlan, the dwarf with the empty ale glasses, jumps up. "Ya wanna know about Dragon's Delve? I have explored most of it myself recently!", to which the rogue simply replies "Yeah, like where it is!". They end up buying Erlan some drinks, and he sketches a map of the surrounding lands for Amaryllis (she payed for the ale afterall). He also tells them about the many dangers he has faced and explains every single kill notch on his axe.
They agree to set out for Dragon's Delve together, this very day. Even though it is starting to get dark. They couldn't really afford the Lost Shepard at the moment anyway. First Trippin sets off to the Temple of Vune. While going there she crosses a bridge, suddenly several fallen trees float by on the river below. Some guys are riding the big pieces of wood and steering them so they don't crash into the walls of the canal. They wave at the surprised cleric. Her player didn't really understand why they were doing that at the moment.
Trippin arrives at the temple of Vune where she speaks to the second in command, Sillitta, who fetches the high priestess, mother Gellow. She takes her to a small office and explains the problem. Apparantly a paladin of Gond, Baine Strongbow, worked with the temple of Vune closely and was recently killed by a hag attacking the temple. His gear was taken to what Mother Gellow figures must be Dragon's Delve. Baine confided in her that if he were to die his warhammer could hold a piece of his soul, making it possible for him to be resurrected. Mother Gellow asks the cleric to please keep an eye open for Baine's warhammer, it would mean a lot to her personally, and the church of Gond would not abandon one of it's paladins to a fate like this. Trippin agrees to look for the warhammer. She also gives a few of her last coins to the temple.
Once they are all back at the Lost Shepard they decide to set off to the south, towards Dragon's Delve. They have about an hour or two of light left afterall. Narim turns around and promptly trips because his shoelaces are tied together. He takes the rest of Falur's dinner with him. Taran scolds Amaryllis for playing such tricks on Narim, but doesn't seem to mind cleaning up.
And with that they set off. They pass a store called Fascher's suppliez. It is closed though. They proceed to the south. Dragon's Delve is about 10 hours on foot. So after an hour or two they decide to make camp for the night. They are still rather close to Brindenford, but they really can't afford to stay at the inn. After a bit of mingling at the campfire they suddenly hear someone approaching. Amaryllis quickly slips away and hides behind a nearby tree. "Good folk good folk, don't worry" they hear as a man with a hunting dog approaches their campfire. He is carrying an ornate longbow and pats his dog on the head. He introduces himself as sheriff Erro Mansan. Apparantly he is patrolling the countryside. As about 1000 people might live in Brindenford, just as many live nearby. He warns them to watch out, though he doesn't expect they will run into a lot of trouble so close to Brindenford.
As Erro leaves the party decides on a watch regardless. Falur is taking first watch. [At this point I rolled for a random encounter and rolled 99, bad news for the party!] Pretty soon after the others fall asleep Falur is set upon by a living shadow which attacks him from behind. Falur feels the chill through his body and feels significantly less strong. The others do wake up though. Combat ensues. Amaryllis quickly surmises she cannot harm the shadow and runs for help. Falur tries to attack it, but fails. Narim casts magic weapon on the axe of Falur, but Falur doesn't understand what it meant as he turns tail and flees. At the same time Trippin grabs her holy symbol and prays to Gond to turn this foul undead abomination. [She rolls a 19 and turns 4 HD, the shadow had 3 HD and 2 turn resistance, she fails] The shadow abruptly turns towards Trippin and drains some of her strength.
At this point Amaryllis sees Erro approaching from the distance. He must still have been nearby. [I actually rolled for this on D20 to see if he was nearby, then another D20 to see how many turns it would take for him to reach them. Both turned out very, very, good for the party] His dog speeding out in front of him Erro himself readies his bow as Amaryllis, Erro and the dog race towards the fighting. At this point Trippin grows weaker and weaker, but she keeps trying to turn the undead! [She needed a natural 20 to turn him] Things looked grim for trippin, as Narim cast some defensive mage armor on her. [At this point Trippin's player was at 1 strength, very close indeed] Then the dog charged (and missed) and two glowing arrows blast the shadow right in the chest. Erro had arrived.
Meanwhile Falur got the idea behind the magic weapon skill. So he grabs his axe back up and attacks the shadow, cutting it down in one fell swoop! [11 points of damage] Nothing remained of the shadow. The party is still alive, but their strength is drained badly. Erro offers to watch over them for the night and suggests they head back to Brindenford in the morning. He has fought shadows before, they normally don't get this close [unless you roll a 99 on the random encounters during the night that is!] In the morning they set off back to Brindenford. They would have to heal up for near a ten-day.
Amaryllis offers her services as a dancer in the Lost Shepard. She is quite successfull and sleeps at the Lost Shepard. The others all work for the temple of Vune. Tripping uses her spellcasting abilities, while Narim and Falur do the harvest. Narim quickly realises he should memorize only unseen servants, and that pays of for him. After nine days of healing, the party is back to full strength and they set off to Dragon's Delve again. Before they do however they pop into Fascher's Suppliez. Fascher is very happy to see potential customers, adventurers even! He sells some of them some basic supplies. Narim comes up short on cash though and will be eating some very meager meals the coming days. One of the deputies of Erro also hops in to make sure they are all recovered from the shadow encounter. He wishes them good luck.
The road to Dragon's Delve is quick and empty [No more random encounters] and they arrive at the ruins of Chordille Keep. They notice there is a huge treestump of an unnaturally large tree. They decide to camp here for the night, and descend into the dungeon proper the next day. The night goes by uneventful. In the morning they descend into the darkness that is Dragon's Delve.
[By now it's a good way past midnight in out-of-game time]
They come to a room with three paths that each go deeper into the dungeon. Left, ahead and right. They pick the left stairs and immediately find a skeleton at the bottom of the stairs. Poor guy must have died close to getting out. They enter a room with several exits and some fascinating frescos on the walls. Amaryllis notices some text in a language she doesn't read [Elvish], but Narim makes quick work of it as they pick up the clue 'The gray lies between the black and the white' and 'The shadow lies between the dark and the light'. Narim dutifully records the text. Falur then notices he is standing on a floortile that can move and informs his party. He lifts the tile, making quite some nice. In the distance the party hears some movement. Something heard the tile moving. A narrow metal staircase is uncovered. Falur slowly touches the cold metal, finding that it is not trapped. [The player to me: "I touch it, do I die?"] They decide to cover it up and explore one of the other options first.
Falur moves into a corridor that goes of to the west. He enters a small room in which two mountain lions are protecting three cubs. He quickly leaves the room as they advance. They do not persue, for now. Amaryllis rightly remarks that parents can be very protective. They quickly choose another path, a door this time. Trippin checks to see if it is a rare kind of bluesteel. It is not, to her dissapointment. Falur slowly pushes the door open and catches a glimpse of a beholder-like creature floating in midair in the room. He quickly closes the door. The creature did seem to notice him, but no persue seems to be coming. Narim figures they cannot defeat this creatue just yet. [Wise choice. They didn't notice the glass cylinder around him yet].
They decide to backtrack to the entrance room and head north.
[At this point it was 4 AM and we decided to call it quits and pick it up later. They earned 55xp (shared the shadow with Erro + I cut all xp in half as suggested by Monte).]
Group B session 1
The chronicles of:
- Trippin - Female gnomish cleric of Gond
- Falur - Male dwarven fighter
- Narim - Male human wizard (and his familiar Titon the owl)
- Amaryllis - Female halfling rogue
Ahead of time I had decided that the Fallen Duchy would lie in the Dales of the Forgotten Realms. In a rather remote part of it specifically. The year is the Year of the Ageless One, 1497 dale reckoning.
I gave each of the players a rumor and a reason to head to Dragon's Delve.
Trippin, gnomish cleric of Gond, has marching orders to report to the temple of Vune for a matter concerning her own church. She also knows about the bluesteel doors in Dragon's Delve and, being an inventor, is intrigued about their function.
Amaryllis, the halfling rogue has heard rumours about a pair of dice that effect cause and effect on some fundamental level. Always one for a challenge, she travelled towards Brindenford to recover these dice.
Falur Mortek, the dwarven fighter, and expert of everything axe related, has picked up rumors of 12 ancient sigils. Being an accomplished weaponsmith he was very interested and thus set out to collect all of them. His god, Muradin, would want him to.
Finally we come to the wizard of the party. Narim Varidan, a human that has spent most of his years in the back of libraries and as apprentice to several wizards, reading books. He is a master of book know-how. His practical appliance of this knowledge is a bit iffy though. He has read nearly every book available to him. He has heard about the Mages Four and their might, and is about to check it out. He never really expected to do serious spellonking though. Narim has a trusty familiar called Titon, which is an owl, with him.
On a sunny afternoon, on the 9th of Kythorn, the four of them found themselves finding a place to stay, newly arrived in Brindenford. The tavern by the name of the Lost Shepard drew the attention of all of em. The Lost Shepard was still rather empty, it was just afternoon after all. Roman was just repairing a window that was broken by a barfight earlier. A woman, just on the pretty side, is serving drinks to a rather imposing dwarf with a rather big axe. Several empty glasses stand in front of the dwarf. In the back a halfling is managing the bar.
On four other tables are our player characters. Falur orders some food and cranberry juice from Taran. She informs him that they have some juice, but not specifically cranberry juice. Falur appears dissapointed, but takes the juice. As Taran is off to fetch the drink and food at the bar/kitchen a sneaky halfling rogue on an adjacent table is intently following what is happening around the tavern.
Narim comes up to Falur and introduces himself as a wizard of great knowledge. As they strike up a conversation Taran returns with the drink and food. Falur starts eating, cutting with a small handaxe. He must really like axes. While this is going on Trippin, at a nearby table, is shocked by the prices for a room. Especially since they apparantly don't come with locks! She nods nervously and Taran leaves. On another table the Amaryllis has had it with this boring scene. She grabs some of the nuts on the table in front of her and tries to throw one in the glass of Falur. Her aim is poor though and she hits Trippin. This is the start of a mischeavous alliance.
Falur and Narim start to exchange some stories about dwarves and eventually settle on the topic of Dragon's Delve. Then some more of Amaryllis's nuts fly by, but she keeps missing the glass. Out of frustration she just throws all of the nuts. This does get the attention of Falur, who berates the young halfling (at least he thinks she is young) and then continues his discussion with Narim. Amaryllis doesn't care one bit, as she runs over to the table of Trippin and fetches more nuts.
She ends up tying the shoelaces of the wizard together. Finally they all start talking to each other. Apparantly they all want to head to Dragon's Delve (what a coincidence). At the mention of Dragon's Delve Erlan, the dwarf with the empty ale glasses, jumps up. "Ya wanna know about Dragon's Delve? I have explored most of it myself recently!", to which the rogue simply replies "Yeah, like where it is!". They end up buying Erlan some drinks, and he sketches a map of the surrounding lands for Amaryllis (she payed for the ale afterall). He also tells them about the many dangers he has faced and explains every single kill notch on his axe.
They agree to set out for Dragon's Delve together, this very day. Even though it is starting to get dark. They couldn't really afford the Lost Shepard at the moment anyway. First Trippin sets off to the Temple of Vune. While going there she crosses a bridge, suddenly several fallen trees float by on the river below. Some guys are riding the big pieces of wood and steering them so they don't crash into the walls of the canal. They wave at the surprised cleric. Her player didn't really understand why they were doing that at the moment.
Trippin arrives at the temple of Vune where she speaks to the second in command, Sillitta, who fetches the high priestess, mother Gellow. She takes her to a small office and explains the problem. Apparantly a paladin of Gond, Baine Strongbow, worked with the temple of Vune closely and was recently killed by a hag attacking the temple. His gear was taken to what Mother Gellow figures must be Dragon's Delve. Baine confided in her that if he were to die his warhammer could hold a piece of his soul, making it possible for him to be resurrected. Mother Gellow asks the cleric to please keep an eye open for Baine's warhammer, it would mean a lot to her personally, and the church of Gond would not abandon one of it's paladins to a fate like this. Trippin agrees to look for the warhammer. She also gives a few of her last coins to the temple.
Once they are all back at the Lost Shepard they decide to set off to the south, towards Dragon's Delve. They have about an hour or two of light left afterall. Narim turns around and promptly trips because his shoelaces are tied together. He takes the rest of Falur's dinner with him. Taran scolds Amaryllis for playing such tricks on Narim, but doesn't seem to mind cleaning up.
And with that they set off. They pass a store called Fascher's suppliez. It is closed though. They proceed to the south. Dragon's Delve is about 10 hours on foot. So after an hour or two they decide to make camp for the night. They are still rather close to Brindenford, but they really can't afford to stay at the inn. After a bit of mingling at the campfire they suddenly hear someone approaching. Amaryllis quickly slips away and hides behind a nearby tree. "Good folk good folk, don't worry" they hear as a man with a hunting dog approaches their campfire. He is carrying an ornate longbow and pats his dog on the head. He introduces himself as sheriff Erro Mansan. Apparantly he is patrolling the countryside. As about 1000 people might live in Brindenford, just as many live nearby. He warns them to watch out, though he doesn't expect they will run into a lot of trouble so close to Brindenford.
As Erro leaves the party decides on a watch regardless. Falur is taking first watch. [At this point I rolled for a random encounter and rolled 99, bad news for the party!] Pretty soon after the others fall asleep Falur is set upon by a living shadow which attacks him from behind. Falur feels the chill through his body and feels significantly less strong. The others do wake up though. Combat ensues. Amaryllis quickly surmises she cannot harm the shadow and runs for help. Falur tries to attack it, but fails. Narim casts magic weapon on the axe of Falur, but Falur doesn't understand what it meant as he turns tail and flees. At the same time Trippin grabs her holy symbol and prays to Gond to turn this foul undead abomination. [She rolls a 19 and turns 4 HD, the shadow had 3 HD and 2 turn resistance, she fails] The shadow abruptly turns towards Trippin and drains some of her strength.
At this point Amaryllis sees Erro approaching from the distance. He must still have been nearby. [I actually rolled for this on D20 to see if he was nearby, then another D20 to see how many turns it would take for him to reach them. Both turned out very, very, good for the party] His dog speeding out in front of him Erro himself readies his bow as Amaryllis, Erro and the dog race towards the fighting. At this point Trippin grows weaker and weaker, but she keeps trying to turn the undead! [She needed a natural 20 to turn him] Things looked grim for trippin, as Narim cast some defensive mage armor on her. [At this point Trippin's player was at 1 strength, very close indeed] Then the dog charged (and missed) and two glowing arrows blast the shadow right in the chest. Erro had arrived.
Meanwhile Falur got the idea behind the magic weapon skill. So he grabs his axe back up and attacks the shadow, cutting it down in one fell swoop! [11 points of damage] Nothing remained of the shadow. The party is still alive, but their strength is drained badly. Erro offers to watch over them for the night and suggests they head back to Brindenford in the morning. He has fought shadows before, they normally don't get this close [unless you roll a 99 on the random encounters during the night that is!] In the morning they set off back to Brindenford. They would have to heal up for near a ten-day.
Amaryllis offers her services as a dancer in the Lost Shepard. She is quite successfull and sleeps at the Lost Shepard. The others all work for the temple of Vune. Tripping uses her spellcasting abilities, while Narim and Falur do the harvest. Narim quickly realises he should memorize only unseen servants, and that pays of for him. After nine days of healing, the party is back to full strength and they set off to Dragon's Delve again. Before they do however they pop into Fascher's Suppliez. Fascher is very happy to see potential customers, adventurers even! He sells some of them some basic supplies. Narim comes up short on cash though and will be eating some very meager meals the coming days. One of the deputies of Erro also hops in to make sure they are all recovered from the shadow encounter. He wishes them good luck.
The road to Dragon's Delve is quick and empty [No more random encounters] and they arrive at the ruins of Chordille Keep. They notice there is a huge treestump of an unnaturally large tree. They decide to camp here for the night, and descend into the dungeon proper the next day. The night goes by uneventful. In the morning they descend into the darkness that is Dragon's Delve.
[By now it's a good way past midnight in out-of-game time]
They come to a room with three paths that each go deeper into the dungeon. Left, ahead and right. They pick the left stairs and immediately find a skeleton at the bottom of the stairs. Poor guy must have died close to getting out. They enter a room with several exits and some fascinating frescos on the walls. Amaryllis notices some text in a language she doesn't read [Elvish], but Narim makes quick work of it as they pick up the clue 'The gray lies between the black and the white' and 'The shadow lies between the dark and the light'. Narim dutifully records the text. Falur then notices he is standing on a floortile that can move and informs his party. He lifts the tile, making quite some nice. In the distance the party hears some movement. Something heard the tile moving. A narrow metal staircase is uncovered. Falur slowly touches the cold metal, finding that it is not trapped. [The player to me: "I touch it, do I die?"] They decide to cover it up and explore one of the other options first.
Falur moves into a corridor that goes of to the west. He enters a small room in which two mountain lions are protecting three cubs. He quickly leaves the room as they advance. They do not persue, for now. Amaryllis rightly remarks that parents can be very protective. They quickly choose another path, a door this time. Trippin checks to see if it is a rare kind of bluesteel. It is not, to her dissapointment. Falur slowly pushes the door open and catches a glimpse of a beholder-like creature floating in midair in the room. He quickly closes the door. The creature did seem to notice him, but no persue seems to be coming. Narim figures they cannot defeat this creatue just yet. [Wise choice. They didn't notice the glass cylinder around him yet].
They decide to backtrack to the entrance room and head north.
[At this point it was 4 AM and we decided to call it quits and pick it up later. They earned 55xp (shared the shadow with Erro + I cut all xp in half as suggested by Monte).]