The plan for session 1 was to introduce the group to the 4th ed system as well as introduce some of the plot hooks that they can latch themselves onto.
I printed the character sheets for the players, and made and sleeved cards for each of their abilities using Magic cards as a basis. This went down rather well, and the players were actually excited about having their attacks readily available to them.
As far as system goes I had two combats planned. The first with some little silt runners to give them the basics, taken from the "adventure" [I use the term loosely] at the back of the campaign book. In this encounter I wanted mainly for the players to get used to how their characters fare in combat, and familiarise themselves with their skills and abilities.
The encounter went as expected, I had a chance to show them what the poison on the darters do, and had players curse being immobolised. Luckily the shaman made good use of his spirit and helped out with the various saves. It bodes well for their future planning and encounter tactics. Optimistic :)
The second encounter was the Sinruth Redux encounter from the Astral Sea blog. Sinruth was reskinned to be a half-giant, called Syd, using cahulaks. The stones from the original encounter was replaced with Obsidian Facades from the Dark Sun Creature Catalog.
This encounter played out fabulously, I got to show them how dangerous forced movement can be especially in conjunction with terrain. It went rather fast with the first 2 phases of the encounter dropping very quickly, unfortunately the dice gods abandoned the party in phase 3 dragging out the encounter and costing them the life of a party member. Which in retrospect is a good thing, since it drove home that the setting really is a dangerous and deadly place. One player actually asked in a shocked tone "Does that mean he has to draw up a new character and everything?"
Hopefully they won't just rush in and apply brute force to problems, hoping that the encounters and the death will break some of the bad habits the group picked up in Dark Heresy Ascension.
So much crunch... now for some fluff!
========================================================
The story thus far.
The players started unlike most in the slave pens, mostly because a small girl was seen wandering up between the pens marvelling at all the fantastic beasts and slaves, her eye caught the half-giant in cell 17 and she started rattling off questions at break neck speed. The encounter showed a bit of a softer side of Jaryx, the half-giant, it was originally added by the player as a bit of back story but i thought it would make an excellent springboard.
She was ushered away, but new people means customers and customers mean that they will most likely be exhibited in the arena later. Lloyd [a vindictive jailer, added by another character's story] confirmed this when he brought their food, which consisted of meat instead of their usual slop. Only catch is that that Lloyd only brought 5 pieces of meat instead of the 6 they would need, smirked at Krath and wished them "luck". Some of them just grabbed some meat and scarfed it down one piece was left giving Krath a chance to sacrifice his meal and go hungry instead.
I was thinking of giving the hungry player a penalty during the encounter, but the RP that the player put into giving it up and rather having the healer fed made me wave the penalty to reward the player.
Traiy called over the beast trainer that he has built up a slight rapport with and enquired about what they might be facing in the arena. The beast trainer wasn't very forthcoming but he did let slip that the betting odds are currently heavily in favour of Cell 17. And also that there was 2 buyers currently at the pens, the first a trader from House Stel [father of the little girl they met earlier] and the second a frequent customer and trader from House Lavara.
[House Lavara was created for the campaign by the players and will probably be the main focus of their activities during the Heroic tier. I won't be able to run the game next week because of other commitments, so I'll use that blog post to detail Lavara and some of the other locations and organisations we created for the story.]
The characters discussed some quick tactics, mainly which House they would actually want to impress if any, and how to go about it. Lively argument was had by all, and eventually they decided to each do whatever they please and see which trader is most impressed.
Afterwards they were ushered off to their exhibition [encounter 1]. Their tactics paid off and they made short work of the Silt Runners, with only Traiy, the dray, being knocked out by poison darts. Down but stabilized quickly by Krath, the ever helpful Noble.
The combat finished up, and Nuuta noticed that the one trader has pretty much frozen in place, mug still half way to his mouth, staring into tha arena. He quickly recovers as Garruk, the slave master, adresses him and he flies into a heated discussion waving his arms around, taking out money pouches and poking Garruk in the chest. As this is going on the characters are ushered back to their cell.
Back at their cells they ask around and from some friendlier guards find out what happened. The other prospective customer is Hargan Lavara from House Lavara, apparently he challenged Garruk to show them a proper fight and suggested that he pits his own champion against Garruk's wares.
Garruk was a bit wary, since he doesn't really want his wares damaged before he sells them but caved as Hargan has been a very good customer in the past.
The characters were woken the next day by Lloyd banging their food dish against the bars. They noticed then that not only was Lloyd there but they had another visitor, Hargan Lavara himself came down to see them. Hargan in the style of annoying pompous jerks everywhere didn't make eye contact rather focusing on a spot above and to the left of them.
"I didn't expect to find you here, I know your father said he was getting you out of the way but this is just rediculous. I think I'll take it on myself and just get rid of you for him." Hargan than grabbed the food they were supposed to receive, threw it into the closest beast pen and skulked off. The characters did a quick tally of their respective fathers and came out of the exchange rather confused since those with fathers couldn't think that their fathers could be the father in question.
[I have several ideas on where to actually take the above comment as more than one of the player's back stories make the above relevant. I know where I would like to take it for the narrative's sake, but can change it if something else proves to be cooler.]
Again I was going to extend the hunger penalty to the group, but after checking their performance in the first battle I felt it might actually be too harsh, instead I'll "attack" each unsupplied character with sun sickness after the battle because of the exposure to the facades.
The fight went well, Syd [the House Lavara champion] actually killed Traiy before they managed to rally and take Syd down. Before Nuuta could actually finish him off he cried out to her in broken elven, calling her by the name of her tribe and asking for mercy. This gave her pause since her tribe, the Seekers, aren't very large or generally well known. [more on them next week]
Syd cast his gaze to the balcony asking for forgiveness, Hargan extended his right arm, spat and gave the thumbs down. The characters did notice [some silly perception rolls here ;p] his right arm to be a mummified husk, which probably coloured their decicion to spare Syd. Hargan stormed off, and the guards once more collected the characters/
A broken and battered Syd was also taken by the guards and deposited in Cell 18. Nuuta questioned the dying half giant and found out that her brother was actually bought by Hargan a month ago and travelled with Syd for awhile. He taught Syd elven, and some Seeker customs. Syd also mentioned a second elf from the Black Feather clan that travelled with them for a short while, this elf disappeared when Hargan took them to the Silt Sea. Syd has no knowledge of Nuuta's brother after they returned to Tyr. All the time Krath and Fullgrin is tending his wounds as much as possible.
This conversation was cut short as Garruk stormed in in a huff, ranted and raved about how they are a drain on his resources and just cost him a significant amount of money. Hargan Lavara has left the pens but he has left a parting gift for Syd and "message" for Cell 17. Garruk removes a small glass vial from his robes, inside is a single purple catarpillar. He removes to stopper and holds the vial to Syd's face, allowing the catarpillar to crawl into Syd's nose. Which soon starts to bleed profusely.
Fullgrin recognizes it as the catarpillar form of the Drillmoth. It will bore into Syd's brain, slowly lobotomize him and burst from his eye socket once it matures.
Fullgrin doesn't know a cure, but they will have roughly 2 weeks to find one should they want to save their new ally.
They decide that they have had enough, and if they wish to save this slave they will probably have to start planning an escape. They have heard some interesting rumours from Tyr, apparently Kalak is missing; either killed by a slug, or eloped with a haram girl, or killed in a construction accident at the ziggurat, or in seclusion.
Either way Tyr seems to them by far the better destination, especially to Nuuta who has finally picked up her brother's trail again.
End Session 1.
Phew, wall of text >.>
Future posts will focuse more on story and less on crunch, so should be shorter.
...I hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment