It happened again. We had scheduling issues for a whole variety of reasons, including power outages after hurricane near misses. As all of my regular players know, I am significantly deficient in whatever ability it is to maintain an ongoing campaign when play is too sporadic, especially at the start of a campaign. And thus, we bid a sad farewell to the most recent attempt at a Borderlands campaign. We may come back to doing something like this again in the future. For now, we are going to be playing…
Stonehell!!!
More below the break…and obviously there may be spoilers for Stonehell below. GM comments in italics.
This last week, only Rachel and RJ could play and since this sort of game is more conducive (at least to me) to having players popping in and out, we went ahead and started violating my own rule of always wanting to start a new campaign with all in attendance. We started, of course, with rolling up some characters. Since it was just the two of them, each wanted to roll two up characters.
Rachel ended up with Ivy the Half-Elf Witch and former Cooper and Brielle the Dwarven Fighter former Moneylender. RJ got Korgath the Goliath Fighter former Gravedigger and Torin the Beast former shaman (Torin goes by The Beast). (We use Goliath instead of Half-Orc…same abilities and all, just different fluff.) Korgath as an 18 Strength…woohoo!
Each of these characters had come across a pamphlet released by the Hawk’s Nest Department of Treasure & Tourism which advertised the greatest dungeon that any could ask for…Stonehell. Ivy had come because she had heard that she could learn a lot more about occult lore within Stonehell. Brielle is curious about the rumors of a dungeon that shifts and changes the very stone itself. Torin had grown tired of the colosseum and the gladiator’s life; he hopes to get more wealth and eventually find a wife and settle down. While engaging in his normal occupation, Korgath came across a puzzle box and a moment later a pamphlet blew right into his hands…it was kismet (he has never been able to open the puzzle box).
The four traveled together, passed through the town of Hawk’s Nest and arrived at the former Gates of Hell. They decided to not pass through the broken gates and bent portculli, choosing to cross through one of the sections of destroyed wall to enter the canyon beyond. (I believe I asked if they would like anything interesting to happen and the response was yes.) As The Beast took the lead and had made it most of the way across, a rocky creature rose up from the debris within the gap. Brielle recognized it as a type of elemental that works to return mined and worked stone and metal back to a natural form…a recyclemental! (Grin…yes, I came up with that on the spot.)
The creature was not very pleased to have been walked across by The Beast…quite rude! Nor did it appreciate all of the metal being carried by the group. Metal should be in the earth! Some coins and iron spikes were offered as tribute and the creature calmed down. The party was able to pass through and avoid their first fight (smart players!).
The canyon behind is dotted with caves in the cliff walls at various locations, some copses of trees, a waterfall, and a handful of ruined buildings. It looks to be mostly teetering walls remaining. The group starts to explore one of these ruins. Korgath starts poking around and digging in the corners; he’s hoping that some treasure might have been stashed. (I guess you can’t take the gravedigger out of the goliath.)
Ivy summons her cauldron and has a rather large toad hop out and start hopping around the ruin in the hopes that it might turn up something. It did disturb and consume a number of completely normal insects and get both The Beast and Korgath to comment about eating frog legs. (I think Rachel also summoned it for RJ. He constantly claims that all of his characters get killed by giant frogs and toads…I think the actual number is like three characters over the past twenty years. He never exaggerates at all.)
With this building turning up nothing, they move on to the single building that still has a roof. They find that it was once a temple and a statue still stands intact, though covered in moss and lichen, depicting a kneeling warrior, head bowed, helmet on the ground with one hand resting upon it. The group starts to explore. The Beast starts moving the remains of stone stairs that would have led up where there had once been a second floor. Brielle comes over and starts to help. After some hard work, they are rewarded…maybe. Beneath the former stairs, The Beast finds two needles with one spool of thread (already threaded) each. One spool is gold and one is green. The needles and threads are in pristine condition. He hands them over to Ivy to hold on to for now.
Meanwhile, Korgath had been examining the statue. He kneels before it and hears, in his head, a deep masculine voice say, “What challenge do you wish to devote yourself to and are you willing to dedicate yourself to this goal?” Korgath responds that he’d like to help people and do good. The voice asks him to if he could be a little more specific…you know…like a quest kind of thing. The voice also tells Korgath that he can come back later when he has something in mind. Korgath spends the rest of the time the others are clearing stone stairs to clean off the statue as best he can.
Yes, it kind of degenerated from a serious sort of scene to something a little more Monty Python in flavor…gaming is about having fun, right?
We ended the session at this point.
We’ve had a few attempts to play Stonehell in the past, but we’ve never gotten too too far into it for various reasons. I’ve been working on modifying things up a bit (and will continue to do so) to both make it a little different for those playing in it before and to customize to our group. I believe all four players will be at the next session so we’ll have more characters and see where things go.
