[Our Side Trek to give Cliff and Kathryn some experience with the SW system got a bit sidetracked this week. Kathryn was sick and the air conditioning in their house broke. While that might not seem like a big deal, keep in mind that this is in Tallahassee and our highs have been hitting 100 degrees plus very high humidity.
Unfortunately, I was out of touch pretty much all day (aka sitting at a bar watching the World Cup) so I didn’t know until about an hour before everyone else was showing up. Don’t panic…no need to panic…why panic…after all the drinks, I couldn’t have even if I wanted to.
I just decided to play this out as though it were an earlier mission that Ivarr led. All the characters kept the same basic characters but, except for Ivarr and Gansi, they just weren’t the same people as the current side trek characters: Moose=Mule, Playboy=Hefinnr, Jackass=Tyrvi. While I, for my part, would just make it up as we went along…with one exception. I decide that there might be a small amount of foreshadowing for the side trek AND that there would be an undead t-rex!
The session was, perhaps, a bit more “tongue-in-cheek” than our normal sessions.
This entry is from RJ. As always, my GM comments in italics and brackets.]
I feel that Scaetha wants things investigated in the Withered Lands and wants me to fix the problem. There are strange things that seem to be going on in the Withered Lands. But somehow the job was given to Ivarr and Gansi. They hire a couple of mercenaries to come with them. One is brute of a man called Moose and the other is a man called Playboy the Bu`ney (means undead but sounds like bunny) killer. It’s a good thing that Scaetha wants me to do this mission or I think my brothers Ivarr and Gansi would have a problem completing the task.
We come to the Withered Lands, there is a mist that is the start of the Withered Lands. I make the decision that we should go thru as a group. The mist seems to cling to me, I say a small prayer to Scaetha to help me destroy her enemies. The light seems to dim and it is hard to make things out here in the mist. There are moans and whispers coming all around us. It seems to be unnerving to the group.
[Wiggy did a pretty good job with his description of the Withered Lands. I largely read the description directly from Region Guide #06 while we were eating pizza and Rachel decided to go finish eating in the kitchen instead of listening. :D]
I tell the group to light a torch and it does seem to help us see better. As Scaetha has stated there is never too much darkness that can put out the smallest of candles. Fortunately, I am like a bonfire in this darkness for our group.
I see a body staked out and some severed heads hanging from a tree. I tell the group that we need to check out the tree first. As we get closer we see there are several heads in the tree tied by rope to their hair. They start to smile and I call upon Scaetha to banish them, nothing happens, and the heads start to laugh. I have to assume that Scaetha has a hard time hearing me in this darkness. Three skulls come after Playboy and another flies off into the mist. I change my tactics and ask Scaetha to bless Playboy’s weapon. She hears my call and his weapon glows brighter. Moose comes up and splits a skull in half. Ivarr calls down Scaetha and seems to weaken one of the heads. Playboy swings at one the heads and shatters it.
The heads start talking, “Fred is Dead”. Another answers “So what Fred was an asshole’”. I come up and split a head open. Gansi uses his spear but just grazes a head. Playboy picks up a torch and tries to burn the tree with no success. I call out to Scaetha as one of her favorites and she answers; she severs the necrotic energy and the heads go silent.
[Pat was in town and was playing Moose. He got a benny for reminding RJ that Jackass could use his Holy Warrior Edge to hurt the skulls since RJ was trying to just beat all of the skulls with a sword one by one by one. I’ve informed and encouraged my players to offer each other good ideas…and they’ll still get the benny if one is awarded.]
We move on, heading deeper into the Withered Lands. Playboy sees a dead rat, swings his sword and kills the rat. Unfortunately, he trips when he does and lands on his back. As he is looking up he sees a head following us looking down on us. The head sees him looking and goes up into the mist and we cannot see it. Good thing or else I would of sent it back to the pits of hell.
[There is more than one way to succeed on a Notice check. ;)]
About a mile later, we come to a ravine. It is about 30 feet across and we can’t see the bottom due to the mist. I hear moaning from the ravine. Crossing the ravine is a bone bridge; it has arm bones for rails and thigh bones as the main part of the bridge.
We have to keep going so I tell the group that we have to go forward. Playboy ties a rope to himself and Moose holds on in case the bridge collapses. He crosses first with no problems. I cross next and get to the other side. Gansi gets halfway across when the bridge collapses. Gansi is holding on to the rope by his hands when zombies come out of the ravine.
I call on Scaetha, “Into the darkness back to the pits of hell. May Scaetha bless your souls.” Scaetha stuns two of the zombies. Moose and Playboy are straining to hold on to the rope as the zombies seem to go after them. They are working on a way to get Gansi across. Playboy starts to walk backwards and Moose is giving the line slack. Of course, this is when the flying head comes out of the sky and rams Gansi, he takes it in the guts but holds on. The head moves back and screams, it is a horrible scream but doesn’t seem to affect me. However, Playboy seems affected and has developed a slight tic to his face. Playboy shakes it off and takes out a zombie.
[Gansi was Shaken by the skullbutt to the head (not guts). I probably should have made him make a Strength or Agility check to hold on. I didn’t.
We aren’t using Guts so the terrifying scream of the skull called for a Spirit roll to resist the Fear. Playboy failed and rolled, I think a 20, on the Fear Effects table. I let Todd come up with the physical alteration caused. So to go along with being Ugly, Playboy has a rather disturbing facial tic.]
Moose and Playboy get Gansi across. We start to finish up with the zombies when the last one jumps back into the Ravine. The bridge reforms and Ivarr makes it across. Moose ties the rope and starts across and it collapses again. He falls but we start to pull him up. Of course a bunch of zombies start to paw at him. He gets up and we head out again.
[The bone bridge was kind of a “reverse” drawbridge. It split in the middle with each of the opposite ends holding on to their respective sides. I thought, if I was a really powerful liche type (or one of three), I’d have some nifty little “traps” like this that would deal with the living intruding upon my realms. It simply rests and waits for the next beating heart to cross before dropping them into a chasm of zombies.]
We keep going, the hills come to a flat land. I see some stone columns ahead, as we get closer the columns are in a U shape, about 8 feet tall, and they start to look like teeth. They are made of stone, round at the base, but sharp at the top. We also start hearing some chanting, it is in Blacktongue.
We go thru the teeth like columns and we are met by skeletons. Moose and Playboy try to take out the end of the skeleton line. Gansi knocks a bunch of them down along with Playboy. As Moose shatters two of them a flaming skeleton comes up to him and the heat is intense. He takes it on the chin and then swings his massive axe and severs the head from the rest and it disintegrates. We mop up the other skeletons and get closer to the chanting we hear laughter.
We see a pale guy, smiling and laughing. He says, “Feast my pet”. He takes a bone out breaks it and a purple cloud surrounds him and he disappears.
[Said pale guy was an albino and described as such along with the fact that he had numerous tattoos and looked to be of Tuomi descent. The bone/cloud was an alchemical device…Teleport…but the PCs didn’t know that at the time (they do after reading this). After a brief concern for where this “pale guy” went, I think the players pretty much forgot about him…mostly. I almost wish it had been Invisibility and he whacked the party upside the head instead…that might illustrate that out of sight does not mean out of fight. There is a tendency amongst my players to think that is the case.]
The ground starts to shake, and a huge skeleton lizard comes up to us. It is a Thunder Lizard. I ask Scaetha to bless Player’s sword again. Moose runs up and swings, hits it but doesn’t seem to have any affect. The thunder lizard tries to bite Moose but misses him. Player comes up swinging and does some damage, Moose heads back in and hits it with a massive swing. I call on Scaetha to weaken it and little axes are chipping at it [that’s his trapping for the Weaken Undead spell]. Ivarr come up and swings at well. We are frustrating it. It leaps over three of them and tail whips them, knocking them down to the ground. Then it bites at Gansi and does some damage to him. Player gets up and takes a massive swing at its knee, he takes it out and it crumbles to the ground.
[I just took the Thunder Lizard and the Undead Monstrous Ability to it. It was a Wild Card. I really wasn’t worried about it getting an even higher Toughness because I was pretty sure that one of the first things that was going to happen was either Ghostmane or Jackass would successfully use Weaken Undead against it…Jackass did (but, surprisingly, I don’t think he ever tried to use his Holy Warrior power).
The Toughness certainly was difficult to get through but the party was pretty much designed to beat up undead…even very big, very primitive undead. Given its Large size and the Gang Up bonuses, it was nearly impossible for the PCs to miss. There was one bit of player discussion that was both interesting and disappointing. Todd brought up how something as big as a T-Rex couldn’t really be subjected to a Called Shot since its head was so high up and suggested that maybe Moose could toss Playboy up onto the beast. The idea was almost immediately dismissed. I was disappointed…I thought it would have been great! Instead, attacks focused on the creatures knees in an attempt to bring it down (literally and figuratively).
Overall, it seemed that the fight might have been just a bit too easy for the PCs. I don’t think any of the PCs were hurt much at all in the fight.]
We head deeper in and come to a pit, we can’t see into the pit but hear movement and moaning. We drop a torch down and see dozens and dozens of zombies digging at what looks like other Thunder Lizard bones. The zombies look up and they start coming towards us. We need to get the information back so I decide we should leave, if I have to I will get the group out and stay and buy them some more time. They all seem to think that is a great idea and we start heading back the way we came.
[I did explain that even though getting back with their report of what was going on was of top priority, it would still be a Sin for the Eulogist and Divine Slayer to leave without killing the hordes of zombies. That’s life as a cleric type in Hellfrost, right?
We ended the session with this. It wasn’t too bad for just making it all up on the fly and, yes, there was some foreshadowing for things to come in the Side Trek and/or main campaign but I’m about to hit my word limit on this post so I’ll stop now…]
