[We’ve reached the finale of the Side Trek.
This entry is from Robert. As always, my GM comments in italics and brackets.
When we last left the party, Snorri was missing and Tyrvi was alone and under attack with half the party some distance away.
Spoiler Alert: Portions of this session borrow from the adventure, The Garden of Miracles, by Faster Monkey Games.]
Tyrvi was fighing the zombie from the coffin, and taking a bit of a beating. Ivarr got down there to help, while Orcbane went aboveground to find the others to help. Meanwhile, Gansi, Stori, Mule, and Volos were heading back from the Orc encamptment, having found nothing.
[Coffin? What coffin? The zombie did not come from the sarcophagus in that room. It was just waiting around the corner for when Tyrvi came running into the room.]
While Orcbane was looking for the others, who were a good quarter mile away, Ivarr obliterated the zombie. Sounds of battle were then heard from down the hallway, along with what sounded like Snorri yelling “Curse you, invaders from beyond the grave!” Upon investigation, the sounds were comming from behind the ladder that leads up to the mound proper. Pushing up on a rung revealed a hallway, with Snorri standing there surrounded by a pile of bones, having just finished off the last skeleton. At this point, they decided to wait for Orcbane and the others to return, which took a good twenty minutes.
As usual, there was an argument for who would get to take the lead in the narrow hallway. Eventually, Mule won. The hallway lead to a small room while skeletons along both walls, who were bound to the walls by their hands with rusty bands. Mule destroyed one, which causes a section of the wall to fall and pin him. After Mule gets out and everyone is through the room, Tyrvi decided to try and get the rest of them with Holy Warrior. He succeeded, but this caused the entire ceiling to collapse, blocking the way back.
[Uh oh…did the party just seal their own tomb?]
Continuing to follow the winding hallway lead to a larger room with columns. A number of skeletons encased in bronze armor and wielding a sword and shield lay in wait. Orcbane ran in, only to be scared shitless. The magic items he put on turned out to be cursed! The helm gave him a major phobia of undead, and the amulet encumbered him. While the others battled the undead foes, Orcbane ran into the corner to hide.
[I don’t normally put in cursed items like this in my games. If I’m going to include a “cursed” item, I much prefer items that have both a good and bad element to them. It was just a side trek though and these were in the Garden of Miracles so I just left them in. Plus, Todd loves putting cursed items. ;)]
After battle, an examination revealed that the bronze armor was welded onto the skeletons, so there was no hope of taking it. At the far end of the room, there was a small bronze dome. Mule was able to lift it, and it swung open like a hatch to reveal a shaft going down six feet to a bronze floor. Tyrvi, being curious, jumped in and had Mule close the hatch. When it was reopened, he was gone. Everyone else quickly got in one at a time, repeating the process, Mule going last.
[I was kind of shocked at how quickly everyone just jumped in. I was tempted to just say everyone was dead as this had morphed into the Tomb of Horrors. 😯
It was, regardless, the beginning of the end.]
As the lid was closed on Tyrvi, the floor dropped out below him and he fell ten feet onto a pile of bones. In the room were a dozen skeletons wearing chain hauberks, and wielding battle axes and shields. Tyrvi managed to get his back to a wall, and the skeletons converged on him, hurting him badly. A voice laughed, “New recruits.” A Tuomi necromancer revealed himself. Interestingly, he was not albino, and thus not the man Volos was searching for. He cast a spell, flinging dark skulls at Tyrvi, incapacitating him.
Orcbane dropped down, and ran towards the necromancer, since he was the least undead thing in the room. The necromancer stepped aside, letting Orcbane past, into the room he came from, saying “Please, after you. My new lord is hungry.” Orcbane hit the necromancer before he closed the door on him, leaving him in the dark aside from the green glowing eyes seen through the eye slit of the upright sarcophagus in the room. Orcbane quickly decided the first room was the better option.
Ivarr dropped in, but by this point Tyrvi had died. Ivarr, too, is quickly surrounded by skeletons. Ivarr saw that now the necromancer was coated in a layer of bone, some sort of armor spell. Ivarr tried to take down his foes with a sweep of his weapon, but he couldn’t get a good hit off.
Volos dropped in next, in time to see Ivarr incapacitated by skeletons. Snorri then dropped in, and by then Ivarr was dead too. Snorri then moved over next to Volos and Orcbane and began attacking them! The Tuomi laughed, “Excellent, Snorri. The master will be pleased.”
Gansi dropped in, and Orcbane yelled out that Snorri had betrayed them, but Gansi just figured that he was mad with terror and did not believe him. Soon, Volos, too, was dead. Stori dropped in to see Ivarr raised as an undead by the necromancer. Gansi and Stori quickly succumbed to the undead assault before Mule dropped in and was felled, too.
It was then that the mummified lich from the sarcophagus emerged. “MASTER!” Snori cried out, a look of rapture on his face.
[Yep…Snorri was playing for the other team all along. He was the one responsible for signaling the undead to attack Hrafn Point when Obbi led his men out against the orcs. In the last session when Snorri “fell” on Tyrvi, Jamie was intentionally trying to kill one of the group’s healers. During the fights in this session, Jamie kept using tactics that gave him the biggest penalties to hit the undead (for example Called Shots). He did an excellent job of not doing anything while looking like he was fighting alongside the party.
The Tuomi, a man named Koli, was Snorri’s “handler” and, when Snorri had gone to check the sarcophagus room last session, the two decided to lure the party deeper into the complex. The party had been discussing heading back to Hrafn Point to bring the full force of men here and Koli didn’t want that to happen. This is why Snorri was found “fighting” some skeletons behind the “secret” door.
If the party hadn’t all died, the session would have ended with the creature in the sarcophagus (btw, no one said it was a liche…at least not the GM) emerging and the room going black. Besides giving the new players a taste of the mechanics of Savage Worlds…at least in term of combat…this was intended to provide some foreshadowing of the possible rise of another power group in the Járn Vale. It is entirely possible that, in the main campaign, certain individuals/creatures from this Side Trek will show up.
And thus ends Side Trek #1.]
Lots of fun helping out with the demise of this party–best thing is that right up until Snorri attacked party members, the group seemed convinced that Thomas’s PC, Volos the Tuomi, was the plant…
Smoke and mirrors, baby, smoke and mirrors…
I do not like putting on cursed items. I like putting on magic items, which happen to be cursed sometimes. I’m hoping that my next character can figure out the difference, between the oh looky at what we found vs RJ, have your character try this on.
Be honest now, Todd, you like putting on magic items that lead to drama! 😀
hey it’s not my fault the magic items you leave for me to find are filled with drama. I just provide the release. Though, I do miss your Runequest magic items. I’m trying to remember, was I the only one to use the Runequest items? Does SW provide the ability to incorporate the same kind of magic items?
As for Volos, i dont think it was that i thought he was the plant, just if there was a plant, Volos seemed the more likely candidate.
What exactly do you mean by RQ items?
I actually feel bad for poor Volos. Poor guy couldn’t cut a break. His family gets murdered by his crazy sister and her husband. He almost dies but lives only to be forsaken by his deity (he was a paladin formerly). He tracks down what he thinks is his sister and her lover only to fall in with a group of adventurers that think he is a member of the cult he has vowed to help destroy. Then he dies in the bottom of a barrow mound realizing he was double crossed and he had in fact not tracked down his sister and her husband. What a string of disappointments!
Welcome back! 😈
the snake braclet/tattoo, the delduwath, the bat cloak, the oak bow thingy. yeah, i guess i did bring out the drama in those items, didn’t i?
we attuned with spirit points. they had benefits and drawbacks.
The most common “magical” items are going to be the various alchemical devices. Given that they are pretty much a power in physical form, they won’t really have much to them.
Relics, especially the more legendary relics, are going to have that same sort of feel with different benefits and drawbacks and histories and such. You won’t need “power points” to attune but you will need to spend that benny to do so initially. Some will also require an “activation” or some sort of action to awaken the item.