Adventure 12 - The case of the crystal... case.

So after some well deserved downtime, we find ourselves with a mysterious artifact, and a set of clues that will have us running all over Barsaive on a treasure hunt. It all started with a girl seeking out adepts to help her answer a riddle that had been passed onto her from her grandmother. After reviewing the riddle, and agreeing to help her, she wanted to meet us with the mysterious crystal box later. She was then ambushed and killed at the meeting place by some sort of zombie-like horror construct. Morgue was able to determine that the box held a key, appearing to be made out of elemental earth, and a bit of research at the Throalic library helped answer some of the clues hidden in the riddle. Parlainth was decided to be our first stop, partly because we had some experience there, and partly because a wizard there might have some further insight into the box. Due to some bad experiences with air travel, Morgue was leaning towards a month-long trek. My character Viran decided that a new spell might solve this little problem, and set about procuring it. We arranged for travel aboard an airship, and the night before we were to leave, I transformed into a falcon and flew up to his open window. Creeping inside as he slept, I cast a spell to place Morgue into suspended animation, and by enhancing the spell with a bit of my own blood, I was able to extend the duration. Technically, I could have kept him that way for a year and a day, but 4 days was enough to travel from Bartertown to Parlainth. Once we had arrived, I waited until the next morning to revive him. It was a minor thing, really, but oh-so fun. Best use of 300 Legend Points ever.

We saved the girl?

I really, really wasn't expecting it to work out as well as it did. In an "I saw that coming" twist, the girl was quite happy to be a slave for a wealthy couple. It was a real rags to riches to rags story with the only happy ending coming for the parents. I imagine within a few weeks we'll find out the girl has disappeared again.
The actual rescue went off without a hitch. No killings at all. Since that went so well, we've decided to push our luck and try and get some downtime-training in.

You hit... Armor defeating.

We'd missed a few play sessions due to some holidays and other miscellaneous engagements, and the one session we did have, we accomplished essentially nothing. This last one the GM swooped in to save us, and gave us a good push.

We were still humming and hawing over what to do, mostly because we were worried about doing something that would get us in trouble with the local law, and as a result we were being overly cautious. We had pretty much decided that we'd concentrate for the time being on trying to rescue the slave girl. We stopped at the girl's parents again to find a piece of clothing or something that we could use for Arumvandar's homing ability. Then, since we didn't really have anything else planned, we decided we'd hold off until dark and then break into the home.

I think, sensing we weren't going to accomplish much, our GM decided to spring a trap on us, and maybe get us moving. It started with a fairly large group of town guards coming into our favourite pub looking for us. Since they came in with clubs drawn, it seemed reasonable that maybe they weren't there just to talk, and Arumvandar and I both hightailed it immediately. I got really lucky avoiding quite a few blows, and in the end the two guards that had pursued us returned empty handed.

Morgue and Slate were escorted out, and told they were just going in for some questioning. Arumvandar and I managed to circle around and follow the procession for a while, until they made a turn into a bad section of town, away from their outposts. And this is where it turned ugly.

Morgue started by casting his pain spell on the leader, effectively disabling him and bringing them to a halt. Slate then broke free and knocked one of them down, at which point Arumvandar and I moved into position to back them up. Things almost seemed to come back under control until the guard captain insisted that I surrender to them. When I refused he drew his sword, and suddenly we had 3 dead guardsmen laying at our feet. 4 more had run off, and one lay unconscious. Morgue then used the butter spider box to heal the injured guard and we began to question them. The guard was unfortunately sparse on details, but it was apparent that our Nemeses, Team Rocket, was using the guards to walk us into an ambush.

Unfortunately we don't know exactly where they were taking us, so tracking them down and dealing with them might not be possible before they are warned that the trap has failed... Oh, and now we've killed a bunch of town guards. The night is still young, and I sense the mayhem has just begun.

Torture, torture, and more torture...

Slate is mostly healed, we've killed the Necromancer (indirectly), we've properly introduced ourselves to our antagonists, and of course, the passion Garlen has decided this is the perfect time to ask us for more help. It's been hell. Offing the Necromancer happened to be pretty easy actually. We lucked out. Morgue made a very good perception test and noticed that a dog on the street was the same dog he'd seen the day before, doing the exact same thing it was the day before. I was thinking it might have been the Illusionist, but as it turns out, it was the Necromancer, who had some sort of spell that allowed it to attach his spirit, and hijack the senses of the dog. We captured it, which on reflection would have been much more difficult had the games master had any idea what we were going to do to him. Morgue thought we might be able to interrogate the Necromancer, but I thought our chances of getting anything useful out of a dog were slim, and in the end I suggested and we decided to simply kill the dog, and then eat it, since just killing it would be wasteful. We had earlier gotten some information regarding a popular stomping ground of the antagonist group. Morgue and I decided we'd go to their territory in the Kingdom of Throal and see what happened. We figured we'd be relatively safe since Throal is heavily patrolled and guarded. They showed up a few hours later, accusing us of murder. Now, it should be mentioned that technically, we had no way of confirming that the dog was in any way linked with the antagonist group. We did know that someone was watching us through the dog, but no actual way of telling who. Their dwarf warrior lost his cool, and the Troll Illusionist kept his. The altercation was pretty minor, and I don't really know what I was expecting, but inside, I was pretty pleased with myself. Then, because we're not occupied enough, Garlen shows up and sends us on a mission to recover some peasant girl who'd been abducted into slavery by a well-off lawyer and his wife in Bartertown. We find out where slavers live, where the girl's parents live, and what the girl looks like. Morgue insists on talking to the parents to confirm she's missing and get some additional details. Arumvandar scopes out the slavers home, but then won't tell us anything. We pick up some additional details about the lawyer/slaver, and then check out his home. It takes us a very long time to do all this, because only one of our characters has any social skills at all, and he hasn't played in weeks. I think the GM enjoys watching us struggle with this. Of course, sowing all this confusion seems like something that the mad passion Dis might do for fun. I'm not actually sure we've ever been working for Garlen, or maybe I'm just paranoid.

Adventure 11 begins!

Last adventure we discovered some disturbing news. One thing was that some Horror Cult had taken an interest in us, and the second was that a Horror we had killed quite a while ago might not actually be completely deceased.

I didn't mention it in the last post, but while we were exploring those caverns in the last adventure, we encountered two separate groups of NPC's. One group we managed to completely avoid, while the second we talked with briefly, but managed to avoid conflict with. I had sort of suspected that one of these groups at least was probably related to this Horror cult, and at the time was just happy that we'd managed to avoid them.

Yesterday we were busy working through our 'downtime' (raising talents and such), when the GM ambushed us. I had rolled insanely good on my perception check, and was able to identify an elvish female at the scene as one of the NPC's we'd encountered in the caverns. We didn't see the attack coming, but Slate was targeted with a damaging spell and a potent poison dagger. Morgue spotted an invisible dwarf that may have been responsible for the spell, but we didn't actually see the attacker responsible for the dagger attack. We do know the Elf ran away when the attack came, but that could just be a red herring. It was very much a hit and run attack designed to weaken our tank.

We managed to get Slate to some healers, but it's already going to take several days for him to recover. It certainly doesn't seem like finishing our training is going to be an option, and with Slate out of the picture, the rest of us are at a severe disadvantage.

Ketchup!

We ended up sneaking back into town and killing the patrol leader, then we went to save Nagel's love interest, and catching the recurring villain, Norl the Windling Slaver. We delivered the Slaver to justice and celebrated, concluding Adventure 9. Adventure 10 had us exploring some caverns under a new development in Throal. It involved some political factions, which we did our best to avoid. Encounters consisted of an ambush by Mercenaries on our way to the area, and two groups of giant insects before we discovered the horror. The horror, which was also insect-like kicked our asses. The GM took some pity on us I think, and after one of us had died, and another two of us had been rendered unconscious, the last man standing was able to defeat it. We returned to Throal and our reward only to find we were still working for Falcos, in addition to Esk-ee-mos.

Sometimes I can't help myself...

The last two sessions consisted of one giant battle. This session involved a bit more rp'ing and some interaction with a few npc's.

We had finished travelling to our first destination, the little village of Vavua.
We stopped in at the local inn, and listened to the locals talk about their experiences with the bandits /slavers. Shortly thereafter the patrol from Throal stopped in. We talked briefly with him, while he dismissed our findings before heading to bed for the night.

That night, Garlen visited us in our dreams. She told us that the leader of the patrol was molesting his daughter. Of course we agreed to deal with this, and in the morning we hatched a plan to assault his senses with a vision of his own death. This mostly went okay, however I think that Morgue may have reduced the effectiveness with some poor conversation choices.

So after we'd packed up and headed out Nagel started questioning what had happened. It was at this point that I let my inhibitions go and insulted him and his entire race.  It was great fun. I did have a bit of a history of making fun of him, so he was particularly sensitive to it. The character gave me dirty looks, and Morgue did some damage control while I giggled in the background.

Strangers in the night...

My character Viran was on the first watch. I rolled fantastic for my perception check. Of course, that's not when the monster attacked. Thankfully, I was not the one it pounced upon. Slate was not so lucky, thankfully he's got tons of hit points, although he was still severely wounded from the horror fight. The dice were being favourable, and I managed to wake easily and rise quickly. My first attack was a totally whiff. Slate managed to hit it lightly and keep it's attention though while the rest of the party slowly got up.
My second attack was a solid hit, even managing to wound the beast. I was pretty sure this would turn out badly, but Arumvandar was able to hit it and it dropped.
Archers are crazy, or maybe just ours, but damn sometimes they're completely overpowered.
It turned out the beast was a horror construct known as a 'Quick Razor'. It's basically a giant cat, that attacks with a pair of claws and a massive bite each round. They're really quick, as the name implies so generally not very easy to hit.
We collect it's head and add it to the trophy pile. (At this point the Arumvandar's player had to bail for the night so his character wasn't involved in anything that happened next.)
It's morning so we carry on. The storm over the death sea is still very violent, if not a bit further in the distance now.
We come over a ridge, and in the valley we see a couple of Ogres. They attack! Luckily we beat them on initiative. Morgue runs and hides behind Slate, but one of them attacked him anyway. The other attacks me.
I manage to avoid one of the blows, and am hit solidly. On the next round, I was feeling overconfident and decided to spend the extra effort avoiding the attacks and pay for it. I'm hit solidly, wounded and on the ground.
Morgue gets hit, and knocked unconscious.
Next I try to cast a spell and critically fail. I was lucky not to lose the spell matrix entirely.
I managed to avoid another blow, and then get the Icy Surface spell out, causing one of the Ogre's to fall and slide down the hill a ways.
The one still standing was struck by Slate solidly causing it to drop, while his buddy got up and started back up the hill after us. I let our guide Oghuck intervene before attacking and managed to do some good damage.
It hit me again, causing me another wound, although I was lucky this time to stay on my feet. Although it didn't really matter since Slate's next blow was sufficient to kill it.
It was a short fight, but I still managed to take 38 damage & 2 wounds. 7 more and I would have fallen unconscious. We manage to find a bit of silver and other miscellaneous loot on the bodies.
My first recovery test is good for 15 damage so with any luck I'll be free of damage the next day, and ready to heal up those wounds the day after that.
At this point we're about a days travel from the Pass. And that's where we stopped. We still have a long ways to go before we're home.

Like butter...

So this week we picked up where we'd left off last time. We had just killed the Wormskull horror & two of our party were horribly wounded.
We let our meat-shields rest for the night, and then tried to follow the Horror's tracks back to it's lair if it had one. Arumvandar's wilderness survival allowed us to follow it for a bit, then our Nethermancer was able to pick up the trail when it went astral.
Unfortunately, the trail led us in a bee-line to the coast of the lava lake known as the Death sea. We made it as close as a few hundred yards before we had to call it off. We did get to battle some magical vampiric flying 'Bone Shards' though. We had spotted them early but the Nethermancer blew his perception roll and misidentified them as a boon from the passions and in a bit of brilliant roleplaying our public relations dept ( the troubador) walked up to them and tried to claim them. I imagine it would look somewhat like a dinosaur striking a Jesus-on-the-cross pose in front of a hive of killer bees, followed by a panicked run to and fro once he realized he was being stung. I admit it. I laughed.
They were dispatched rather quickly, and the ones that had begun to feed were removed easily with our nethermancers spirit grip. It was the least he could do.

Dumb luck

The obsidiman and the troll were rendered all but useless in the first few rounds, although thankfully Slate was able to get a few hits in and cause some significant damage. The deadfall trap was completely ineffective.
I managed to hit it for nothing but did manage to knock it down with an Icy Surface spell.
Morgue's gadfly spell might have been helpful but the effect wasn't immediately evident.
The true hero of the day was definitely Arumvandar, our Archer. His damage might not be obscene like Slate's, but his ability to consistently hit is incredibly valuable.
So yes, we defeated the horror, but it was getting really close. If it could have gotten two or three more successful attacks it would have quickly crippled us.

The problem with knowing and not knowing

So last game session we spent the entire time planning our next combat encounter.  We know it is going to be a wormskull horror with the potential for some adds if the gm is feeling vicious. We've setup a deadfall trap to potentially add some damage and surprise.  What we really need is an array of debuffs to apply to make the combat feel a little safer. What we have is a pair of glass cannons in the form of an archer and a nethermancer a tank in the obsidiman warrior and myself filling out the middle with my weaponsmith/shaman (or as I've begun to think of him as the Iron Druid after the book series). I've got some utility spells, a mote of crowd control and defense, and some decent melee damage. I feel like it's not quite enough, but we'll probably manage with only one or two deaths... I hope we still have enough last chance salves for everyone that will need one.

Of mistakes made long ago

The point-buy system of Earthdawn at least so far as starting talents goes in 1st edition is somewhat flawed. I'd known this, but I hadn't run the math so I didn't realize how bad it was.
Yesterday I was reviewing my point expenditures on my current, and 2 year old character when I noticed that after the first adventure I had spent the points to raise all of my first circle talents from rank one to rank two.
It probably sounds reasonable to anyone unfamiliar with the system. The problem is that during character creation you are given 8 points to distribute among 6 talents. I hadn't distributed 2 of those ranks. I had shorted myself 400 experience off of every other  character.
If I had been paying more attention at the start I could have saved myself another 500 experience over that even.

The rules specifically mention a maximum of 3 of those ranks can be put into any one talent, but there is no minimum. As it turns out, if you can do without a couple of those starting talents for that first adventure you can save yourself a bit by assigning 3 ranks to two talents and 2 ranks to a third talent.
The cost to reach second circle is 600 xp both routes,  but the cost to reach 3rd is 500 less if you assign those ranks off the start.

Slogging along

So last night we left the safety of the Troll moot and made our way over the mountain pass.
Thankfully we were allowed to spend some of our legend points before we left and I was able to increase my melee attacks by a rank.  I can do decent damage when I score a hit, but a recent run of poor rolls had me feeling particularly ineffective.
The first encounter was a small group of 'Bone Sprites'. They are hard to hit, requiring around a 13 or so. I missed every time but thankfully they were dispatched before they did much damage. There's just nothing like not hitting at all to get you to re-evaluate your career path.
The second encounter was a larger group of 'Foul Folk'.  They ambushed us, so it took me a few rounds to get going, but once the air armor was up, and my weapon was drawn I was able to get into the swing of things, so to speak. We only needed a six to hit them, so we were able to whittle them down quite quickly. I managed to one-shot the first two, while the third required a pair of strikes to disable. As I said, if I hit, I can do some decent damage, and I managed to roll quite well for damage. I didn't manage to escape entirely unscathed however, and found myself down 19 damage at the end of the night.

Gone Trolling

My character is a 4th Circle Weaponsmith / 1st Circle Shaman Elf. It was the first time my character's backstory played any role in a story. I had originally decided that the my character's language choice was going to Trollish, and not Elvish, the idea being that while my character was carrying on the family business as a Weaponsmith, they had actually been stuck in a primarily Trollish Kaer during the 'Scourge'. Up until now, this had primarily flavour text, since it had never come into play, unless you count the other Elvish character in the party being somewhat disgusted with me for not being able to speak Elvish.

Now, however, we're in Troll country. Being able to speak Trollish is actually turning out to be useful.