Markdoc

Re: And off we go! They explore the caverns beneath the alchemist's mansion where they defeated the archers and the sorcerer, taking the latter and one of his henchmen captive. At sea level a large curving cave opens out to the sea, with a ship's boat tied up above the waterline and barrels and sea chests stored high and dry. The chests are packed with quivers of arrows in wood shavings, 20 x 20 arrows per chest - smuggled WMD! Other chests contain blankets, and the barrels contain salt fish. All these are provisions for an army, so the characters help themselves, also to the bows dropped by the smugglers. Higher up in the cavern complex is another large cave, full of much more of the same. A heavy chain runs up into the roof, attached to a spidery grey hairy vicious monster, which is lying in a hammock over the door and which falls on Gen, when he walks in. An exciting fight ensues, since, while not armed, it has pointy teeth, is very nimble and it is much faster than the characters (SPD5!), but eventually it is killed. Khelsen skins it, and the rest dress their wounds. The many chests in this cave contain fine patterned fabric, brandy, and more dried fish, arrows and blankets. On searching the prisoners, they find that the sorcerer has a flashy gold ring, local gold coins, keys, dice of the Smiler and a goods manifest. The listed items match what they can find in the caves, except for a "special stone", which is nowhere to be seen. Aquila, Khelsan and Bellona row the prisoners to Salterton - through an illusion of a rockslide that hides the cave entrance - while Khatz and Gen go up to the qurrocks. But instead they find Castor face-down behind the fountain with a lump the size of an egg on his head (again!), and all the qurrocks are GONE! The players put the blame (correctly) on the now-vanished Ned, who came skulking back to steal a mount and decided to take all 6 so they couldn’t chase him. Khatz, Castor and Gen head straight to Salterton, but Ned and the stolen qurrocks went in the opposite direction, towards Theyre Town. Lamoniak sets off to try and catch him (Ned didn’t dare touch the horse, since he had no idea what kind of a monster it was) but he lacks tracking skills. When the prisoners are brought through Salterton to the temple and lock-up, no one recognises them (or at least admits it). The local armiger does recognise the shield belonging to the body in the cellar, however; it belonged to an armiger from Theyre Town who worked for the lord of Salterton, and who had disappeared without a trace about 3 months ago. She also tells us that there had once been a cave at the cliff foot below the alchemist's house, but that it was closed off by a rockfall some years ago. She’s surprised to find out that it was an illusory rockfall, as it turns out They find out from the archer they took prisoner that the smuggler's local contact in town is a merchant called Alys (He’s actually the guy who hired Ned, but the players forgot to press him on that point) and that the sorceror (called Sanbalet) is their boss. They and the armiger pay Alys a visit; when she accuses him of smuggling and the characters describe what they found, he looks guilty and doesn't deny it, but claims that he only ever bought brandy and other good things, not arrows. He says also that Ned was his go-between for contact with the smugglers, Ned not being a local; his contact with Ned was limited and he last saw him 4 days ago. A door from the back of Alys' house gives on to a narrow inobvious path down to the harbour. Alys is not jailed, being a well-known local but the armiger takes his cashbox, account books and keys. On searching his place (which takes them some hours) all the party find are two unlisted kegs of apple brandy, but a list of debtors reveals that most of the townspeople owe him money. They realise at this point that the keys found on Sanbalet probably open his sea chest, or its secret bottom, or something equally good back in the smugglers' caves, that the good people of Salterton will undoubtedly soon be trying to loot. A little belatedly, they tell the locals the story of the monster that still remains to protect the alchemist's treasure, the mother of the one they killed... After that, the interrogation of the prisoners begins. The henchman smuggler, Aton from Theyre Town, sings at once, but he doesn't know much about what goes on. Stuff comes in, stuff goes out, he shifts it. Their latest goods have been cloth, brandy and quivers of arrows; often he has no idea what is in the boxes, and he has never heard of a special stone. Some of their wares come from Theyre Town, hidden under fish on a fishing boat, other come on “the big ship”. The smuggler's ship is called Sea Ghost; a 'rough guy' is the captain. It was a smuggler from that ship, Godsroth, who shot the seahorse-shield armiger, after Sanbalet had blinded him by magic. When the ship last departed three days ago, they smuggled six priests with them - Sanbalet had known they were coming to Salterton. They seemed quite happy, as if they were glad to be going home. The party also find out that the grey spidery monster that they killed was from Samadria, or off a ship from there. They send an account of this adventure to the temple in Theyre Town by pigeon post, and equip Lamoniak with samples as proof of their story and send him to Theyre Town to give a report to the lord of the city and the temple. On the way he checks a little way down two side roads. No qurrocks, and no Ned, and the people he asks haven't seen a man leading four qurrocks. He arrives in Theyre Town at twilight and goes straight to the temple, where the senior priest sends him to the captain of the guard, but he must wait until morning for an interview. cheers, Mark

Re: And off we go! What they do after learning that the Samadrian cultists have escaped from Tyre Gen and Lamoniak rush off and get supplies and eventually anage to get a letter of support for their mission from the temple. Khelsan, Castor and Aquila also get supplies, then persuade the city guard to release the bribe-taking, wanted-heretic-aiding fisherman so he can sail them up the coast (that takes a bit of persuasion). Khatz and Bellona get Khatz' cousin to find out where the Samadrians were staying, for which Khatz has to bribe Cousin Dmitri, that will take a day or so. Lamoniak on the Horse Silas and Gen on qurrockback will move fastest so they head up the coast road towards the village of Salterton, to find the cove where the Samadrians landed and to try and track them from there. They leave some personal item in their room for Khatz, take Khelsan's qurrock with them, and leave trailsigns along the way so they can be followed. After hard riding they find the beach by mid-afternoon. Khatz and Bellona meet Cousin Dmitri and his floozy Mirelda in a tavern. 'People' had told Cousin Dmitri that the Samadrians had been trying to buy passage out of the harbour for a few days and has found out where they were staying. They search the Samadrians' room and question the chambermaid, but find and learn nothing. The innkeeper says that the Samadrians were fairly cheerful and had talked of going home. He overheard a phrase that stuck in his memory because it was odd: "The secret that only stone knows". The players wonder if it’s “stone” or “Stone”? The Samadrians had also said they needed a boat and they had a ship to catch. That stresses the players out when they realize their target may have already been picked up! Khatz and Bellona set out on qurrockback that evening, with supplies from the temple and something of Khelsan's carefully wrapped in Khatz' pocket, just in case. They plan to sleep on the road if they cannot catch up to the rest of the group. At the cove near Salterton Gen and Lamoniak find signs that a bunch of people without qurrocks climbed up the bank from the beach, but they soon loose the trail. They find a camp site – maybe the Samadrian's in the trees just off the road. They climb the hill behind it out of curiosity, and discover some low ruined walls on the ridge running towards the headland - which is crowned by an old stone tower rising out of the woods. Before evening a small boat sails into the cove bearing Khelsan, Castor and Aquila. They have the gargoyle head with them. Together they cautiously check out the tower on top of the headland overlooking the cove. It has a crumbling stone wall, a half-fallen iron gate, and a largely overgrown path through trees that were once a garden and find the tower rises from a small manor house. Someone was here only a few days ago, but not as many as six. The manor house itself is derelict. The qurrocks, Horse and Khelsan wait outside - the rest of the group sneaks inside. There are cobwebs, dust and - footprints! Lamoniak guards the entrance while Castor, Aquila and Gen sneak upstairs. The footprints trail back and forth on the mezzanine; they follow them towards the right where the floor is solid, checking out the rooms. The first door is shut. When opened the room is empty, but something glitters in the fireplace. They leave it, and check the 2nd and 3rd rooms - nothing but some mouldy furniture. As they move on, the passage floor gives way, and Gen nearly falls through! They retreat to the ground floor and try the passage back towards the tower, opening all doors to try and let some light into the passage. They pass a dining room, another room, and the door to a yard, then open the door to a stone-flagged kitchen with a rickety wooden stair climbing the interior of the tower to the 2nd floor. They investigate the fireplace, and a giant centipede comes scuttling out of the chimney, bites Gen, and scuttles away before they can kill it. But the bite doesn't seem to be poisonous. It's getting dark; they give up on the manor house and go on to Salterton on the far side of the headland, marking trees on the way to show Khatz and Bellona where they went. Salterton is a large village on the cliff top with some big stone houses climbing up the ridge away from the coast. It smells of drying fish and salt, and wreckers. The inn is down by the cliff overlooking the little harbour. They stable the qurrocks and Horse in the shed of the warehouse beside the inn, and over dinner question the innkeeper about the tower on the headland. He tells us: it was the house of an alchemist years ago, and now there is _something there_, or it is haunted. Locals come to the inn for the evening and they learn more. Sometimes shrieks and screams can be heard from the house. A tinker sheltering there for the night hanged himself. Some panels in the walls sound hollow. A villager when young went down into the darkness of the cellar, heard screaming, and a grey figure with long nails and glowing eyes chased him out! The alchemist bought the house from the old lord of the village (who moved to Tyre), and restored and extended it. How did the alchemist die? No one seems to know – or even if he is dead – just that he hasn’t been seen in a very long time. In return they ask about the Samadrians, but nobody has seen them. The next morning Gen’s centipede bite has led to a badly inflamed leg, so he limps up to the temple where there is a priestess of The Woman of Tides, using the letter from the temple in Theyre Town to get a discount on healing. She says that if they want to know about the ruins on the ridge behind the cove, they should ask Hunter Evard who lives at the end of the village. When Gen hobbles back to the inn, Bellona and Khatz have arrived. They all return to the beach where the Samadrians landed, and near their old campfire they find some 'human remains' (or human waste if you like ). But Khatz inexplicably refuses to use his scrying on them! In the end they go back to the manor house on the headland. While the others explore further Gen lights a little fire on the stone floor of the entrance hall. Khatz investigates the glittery thing in the fireplace of the first room; it is a sparkly white rock, the size of a marble. While he is poking around in the hearth a spider as big as a watermelon drops out of the chimney - misses him! and flees back up the chimney again. When they open the next creaking door they hear a moaning noise, and thumping - but the room is empty! Khatz thumps the floor with his staff, which goes right through it, and the moaning sounds again. It's coming from behind the last door in the passage, which is locked. Bellona kicks it open - and there is a man lying tied up under the window. The floor partially collapses as Khatz approaches but he doesn't fall, and manages to get to the stranger and release him. All congregate by the fire in the entrance hall to hear his story. The stranger says his name is Ned, and he claims he is heading south to find work. He tried to stay here last night (after they had visited the house), and was exploring down the corridor towards the kitchen when something hit him on the head, and he woke up where they found him some hours ago. He saw nothing. Aquila and Gen stay downstairs to keep an eye on Ned, while the others continue exploring upstairs. Down the passage to the left of the mezzanine there is a fancy bedroom with a wardrobe full of mould, which gives Khatz a good faceful of spores when he opens it (it’s not dangerous, but some mild panic ensues). All there is inside is one old boot and a shabby old cloak. The 2nd bedroom has a bedframe, and centipede tracks in the dust. Down the back corridor over the kitchen passage they find a bedroom with a slashed-open mattress and a splintered chest. The clothes inside have rotted, but underneath there is a collection of papers! Some pages crumble when touched, but the pages in the center hold together, and it is carefully wrapped and stored in a backpack. Khatz shakes the chest - it appears to have a false bottom! On prying it open he finds: a leather pouch with 6 gold coins (over 100 years old from the Shiplord's name on them), and a scroll sealed with wax, bearing the monogram EBC and a skull painted on it. Bellona ties this up to prevent it opening accidentally! The 2nd room down the passage is a storeroom with shelves and broken chairs; also a new traveller's sack. This contains clothes and personal effects, including a belt with a dagger and a brass vial. On questioning, Ned says that the sack and contents are his, and that the vial contains liniment. It does – but the players miss the false bottom, which contains poison – Ned is not what he seems…. Past the storeroom the hall turns to a landing and the stairs down to the kitchen, which also continue further up the tower, but in a very decrepit condition. They all gather in the entrance hall again, and try to decipher the papers found in the splintered chest. They appear to be correspondence and possibly legal papers, from the alchemist to his agents about buying and restoring this house and moving his belongings up here from Theyre Town. It is now evening. They look around outside the tower, which has no windows under 6 meters above ground. Khatz and Ned gather firewood to build a good fire before the entrance to the cellar, which smells 'like a large beast has been pissing in the corners'. Ned is nervous about staying another night, but does anyway since they are, and there might be treasure... Khatz and Khelsan sleep inside the entrance hall on either side of the door, the rest of them outside. Aquila sets a tripwire across the door. Watches are set: Lamoniak, Bellona, Gen, Aquila, Castor - but nothing happens outside. However, _inside_ the hall, Khatz suddenly jerks awake, at a touch on his face! He rolls to one side and looks up - and a thing like a broad wet cloak lands all over him. He grabs his knife and slashes free, getting covered in a wet and stinging substance. He scrambles for the fountain outside, and throws himself in. On the way he trips over Aquila's tripwire and wakes Khelsan, who sees _something_ scuttling back up the wall above Khatz' bedding roll, leaving a wet mark behind it. The drips that it leaves behind smell bitter, and dry invisible. There is much running about in the dark. What actually happened is that Ned sneaked quietly off when he was “on watch” soaked a cloth in his poison, tied a string to it and tossed it in through a window so he cold drop it on Khatz’s face while staying out of sight. Unfortunately for him the touch woke Khatz – in the confusion (and the dark) Ned sneaks back to the rest of the group, pretending he never left. The next day Khatz' skin is pink and inflamed, but not seriously damaged. Bellona makes a heroic effort and runs up the walls to the top of the tower, since they don’t trust the staircase. The top floor is stone, and it was formerly roofed with wood. She can see the beach where the Samadrians landed, Salterton, and Theyre Town in the distance. There is a door set into the low stone parapet, to a small cupboard. It is covered with moss, but can be opened. Inside is a metal box with a ring on top - a dark lantern, which can be used for signalling ships at sea. With it is a sheet of leather marked with symbols and hatch marks (I II III); both are newish. A matching cupboard on the opposite side of the roof is empty. She takes both items. Back in the hall of the manor house there is no trace of Khatz' assailant from last night. He and Bellona venture down into the cellar, and while still on the stairs hear the faint sounds of little running feet and childish giggling (a triggered illusion, designed to draw investigators away from the cellar). The noises stop as they peer into the cellar with torches. Khatz drops firewood to the floor and a bloodcurdling scream terrifies everyone within earshot! (Another illusion, though the players don’t know that). Then Lamoniak goes all the way down and starts poking around. Khatz lights a bonfire, keeping the ends of the branches clear of the fire, so they can be used as torches if needed. When the wood is well ablaze he throws burning branches into the corners, to spread light. The rest of them cautiously come down to look. Under the stairs Lamoniak finds two large empty wooden crates. There is a fireplace at one end of the cellar that lies directly beneath that in the kitchen. While they have firewood at hand, they light a fire in the kitchen fireplace, just in case any centipedes get bright ideas and decide to join them (they have heard the centipedes moving in the flues…). There are shelves around the walls of the cellar, holding a few strange shaped bottles. Was this a wine cellar? The growing firelight reveals a shape lying in the middle of the floor - a body! When Lamoniak investigates, it proves to be the body of an armiger, which has been down here for some months or more. His sword and shield are still lying beside him; the device on the shield is a Hippocampus. Lamoniak turns the body over - and a huge maggot drops out of it, wriggles, contracts itself, and springs at Khatz – it’s a corpse worm that burrows into the body of its prey! Khatz slices it in half and kills it with one swift blow. They take the armiger's body upstairs to the kitchen on the lid of one of the wooden crates - and find that Castor is missing! They search for Castor, outside and within the house. Lamoniak goes down to the road to see if he's there. When they come to the 2nd floor room where they found Ned, the door is shut again. When opened, there is Castor, lying unconscious beneath the window! Khatz retrieves and revives him, and Gen treats him for two knocks on the head. They congregate outside in the sunlight to hear what happened to him. He was gathering firewood from the main hall, when he was hit on the head from behind, and somehow carried up to the 2nd floor. His gold medallion is gone! At once Khatz, Bellona, Lamoniak, Ned and Khelsan charge off to the storage room... where Castor's medallion is recovered. Ned took advantage of the giggling illusion to whack Castor from nbehind and stick him where he himself was tied up in the hopes of convincing the group the house was haunted – it works. Lamoniak challenges the ghost-thief, and childish giggling answers him. When they return to the kitchen, the body of the armiger is gone, and the lid of the crate it was lying on. It's not in the cellar either. There is only one scrape-mark heading from the stain the body left on the kitchen floor towards the cellar, but the characters are not sure whether they could have made that. Khatz scries the leather sheet of signalling instructions or sighting records, and sees a small cosy stone room or cave with a bed and a sea chest. Aquila examines the walls round the base of the tower and the cellar walls for concealed doors, guarded by Bellona and Gen. He finds something on the wall beside the cellar fireplace - and a pair of glowing hands, a giant hag-face, and a bloodcurdling scream burst from the wall, pass straight through Aquila, and vanish into the opposite wall! They scream too. Then they call the others (minus Castor), and Aquila identifies an unusual stone, the only stone block in a wall built of cobbles. Marking a tomb? When pressed, the stone slides aside to reveal a latch! Gen and Lamoniak go to fetch Castor. Ned follows, and tells them that Aquila said they should 'investigate the stone doorstep of the main hall' - which doesn't make sense, as it's miles away from the cellar and kitchen fireplaces! (He’s hoping to lure them away for a quick stab with his poisoned dagger). Suspicious, Gen returns to the cellar, Ned on his heels. Lamoniak and Castor follow them, quietly. On the cellar stairs Ned tries to stab Gen, who yells a warning, and then Ned knees him in the groin. Khatz wrestles Ned off Gen, and Lamoniak hits Ned as he flees. Deciding the game is up, the varmint heads out the kitchen window - gets stuck, and is captured! He caves at that point, and promises to 'tell all' if they don't kill him and give him a 24 hours' head start to get away. Khatz, anticipating some sort of deal being struck, had already jumped on his qurrock and ridden off before this collective promise was given, so he didn’t have to give his word. Ned explains he sometimes works for the smugglers, carrying packages to his contact in in Salterton and so on. He is a pro and never looks in the packages, nor has he ever been in the house before. This time he was hired by his contact (who had heard the players in the inn talking about going to the house) to get rid of them or at all costs to keep them out of the cellar. He admits he is responsible for some, but not all, of the goings-on in the house. He knows nothing about the armiger's corpse in the cellar. He did attack Castor, and points out that he could have killed him, but didn't. This does not endear him to the players. When the players show no sign of killing him, he leaps to his feet and flees again - Gen sees him off the property and along the road to Theyre Town, but doesn’t try to stop him. Now they become concerned as to where Khatz has got to: Gen cannot track which way he went, and Lamoniak searching about on Horseback cannot spot him. Khatz has headed to Salterton and found the local armiger, and he tells her everything. She says will support them if they are working with the city guard but first wants to see their writ from the temple in Theyre Town. Khatz promises to bring her it before the day is over. The rest of the group is very relieved when he turns up again after an hour or so. And then they go down into the cellar, leaving Castor outside to guard the qurrocks. Aquila checks and unlatches the stone door, Bellona pivots it open. There is a veritable warehouse on the other side. Crates and boxes stacked all over the place, twelve beds lined up neatly along the opposite wall, and an opening at the left end of the room. And there is a LIT lantern on the table in the center of the room - and a wooden crate lid with the rotting body of an armiger lying on the floor. They sneak in. Through the opening at left is a door nailed shut and signposted 'Danger!', and a door to the left again, through which is the cosy stone chamber that Khatz saw when scrying the signal parchment. They search the sea chest, finding lamp oil, candles, tinder and another signal sheet, and replace everything but the lamp oil. At the right hand end of the room Aquila discovers a wooden door painted to look like stone. They open it with a faint click; it is dark inside, but with the lantern Khatz makes out stairs going down to the left into darkness. He can see a faint light at the bottom and starts down the stairs - then he is struck by an arrow, and charges! Gen grabs the dead armiger's shield, and Khelsan grabs his crate lid. Lamoniak sprints for the door, his Horse, and the beach, intending to stop anyone fleeing by a secret entrance. Already at the bottom of the stairs having run past a side passage into a cavern and into a second cavern, Khatz attacks one of the archers, stunning him with his first blow. A villain further back in the cavern tries to cast magic on him. A third man fires an arrow and hits the incoming Bellona. As Gen is moving rather more cautiously past the entrance to the first cavern, twin giants loom up out of the gloom, and Gen abruptly decides to join Khatz and Bellona. On hearing the clamor of battle Lamoniak changes his mind about Horse, and comes charging back. From behind Khelsan, who is running down the stairs, Aquila throws daggers into the giants lumbering after Gen. In the second cavern Khatz is hit by a searing light from the spellcaster, and is blinded. Gen gets in front of him, first hitting the third smuggler and then backstabbing a giant - which comes apart into sticks and cloth! Khelsan and Lamoniak pile into the fray, Khelsan charging a giant with his crate lid. When Khatz can see again he also attacks the giant, and Lamoniak strikes its head off. It too disintegrates (both giants were illusions covering some animated broomsticks). Bellona leaps on the last fleeing warrior, stabbing him through the stomach and killing him. Gen races after the spellcaster, who seems certain to get away. Then Aquila, who has come around frm behind, through the first cavern, nails the spellcaster with a throwing knife, which slows him down enough for Bellona to catch him and run him through. The spellcaster collapses, bleeding to death. But Gen manages to bandage his wounds well enough to keep him alive for interrogation. cheers, Mark

Re: Notes from NSU Just as a matter of interest, why does NSU stand for? Whenever I see it I automatically think "non-specific urethritis" - but I'm pretty sure that's not the intent in this case.... cheers, Mark

Re: And off we go! OK, some serious thread necromancy - finally got the notes written up from the last few months of play: First the sessions I forgot to post before: The players left the village of Doorn and crossed the ridge at the far side of the forested valley. The country on the other side was high and barren, a plateau in the mountains. Down the first ridge was a stream in a gorge spanned by a stone bridge, but their way across was blocked by an armiger who informed them 'You shall not pass!' After some negotiation Bellona fought him in single combat with the armiger first removing most of his armour to make a fairer combat. After several feints and blocks, struck him with a first swift blow. At that point, the armiger yielded and he became much more friendly. Over a cup of wine in his tent he told them that his name was Sir Donatus Guarch, and since his lord had died he was walking the earth, or at least Ostragaya, to hone his fighting skills. But apart from a party of 6-8 merchants and their qurrocks two days previously (the Samadrians!), he had seen precious few armigers to challenge - he was impressed when they explained why (the fact that the monster had blocked most through traffic), and what the players had done about it. Since this road was likely to be quiet for some time Donatus decided to travel with players, and immediately packed up his tent. They set off for the north coast, back the way he had come across the treeless plateau. From the last clear ridge they could see the Bald Man of Lossach in the distance, with what might have been a large port city at its feet. At last they crossed below the treeline, and camped in the forest that night. The next day, when Gen innocently stepped off the path to shoot a fat pigeon perched in a tree, he was grabbed - by another tree! Which promptly tried to strangle him. A mighty battle ensued, during which the tree proved resistant to huge amounts of damage, but more than capable of dealing them out, especially to Khelsen, who got picked up, beaten on the ground and then thrown into the undergrowth. It only dropped its prey in order to sweep away a fire that Khatz and Donatus had started by its roots, by which time Gen was thoroughly unconscious. They grabbed him and retreated out of range, vowing to come back and take revenge … ummm … later. A little further down the road, and after Gen came round again, they met a merchant and his bodyguard, who told the party that there was an inn ahead that they should reach just about nightfall. They did, and it was an extremely well fortified place, being the fore-building of an old castle that had fallen down ages ago, now converted into an inn. Ther party spent some time digging around in the ruins to see if they could find anything, but found only a dank, mossy cellar. So they had a decent dinner, a hot bath, and slept peacefully and in comfort. The inn turned out not to be haunted, and neither was the ruined tower that they poked about in the next morning. They confirmed with the innkeeper that they were still on the tracks of the Samadrians, now apparently traveling disguised as a flock of priests. They paid for their lodgings with Samadrian silver sails. Around midday the party stopped in a village for lunch and news, and after asking around, found that the Samadrians had left via the north gate. The group tailed them to a split in the road; the tracks apparently went towards Theyre Town, but the party decided to turn west to try and find the hermit before they did. A flash of sunlight on a large stained glass window guided them up the Bald Man of Lossach to a fortified temple built on a point on the far side of a ravine. There was a deal of skulking about to see if any Samadrians were there, but eventually Aquila and Gen scouted out the temple and found the hermit out back peacefully digging in his garden. He was a friendly chap who had formerly hunted Shadow cultists together with Kyris (the man who had given them the magic gifts), and he was very concerned to hear they were active again. He gave the players a bit of background - devotees carry out apparently bizarre or irrelevant tasks as ordered by their patrons (demons) - but he had no idea what precisely this bunch of Samadrians were up to right now, nor how to stop them. Only that it would probably be a very good idea. The hermit also liberally dealt out healing magic and the characters slept in the guest rooms that night - although Silas and the qurrocks had to stay in the ravine by the weir, guarded by Gen, as the path up to the temple was too steep and narrow for them to climb I'll edit and post the rest over the next few days to bring us near up to date. cheers, Mark

Re: Would you allow this?

Re: Surviving fall from orbit Actually, we had this very question come up in our first Champions Campaign and the GM decided that appropriate LS and 30 DEF would be enough. My Character (The Watcher: Flying Brick with Cyborg/Electromagnetic powers) was tackling alien spaceships when he got nuked The GM ruled a Nuke did 100 DC damage, which (with 36 rPD and a 60 ED forcefield from his multipower) the character actually survived. But the Stun damage left him at GM's option - so he was blown out of orbit and fell back to Earth. In this case, GM's option meant he woke up just in time to go "Wow! I'm alive! Hey, what's that coming towards me...?" WHAM - and go to GM's option land again. His comrades later found him still alive and steaming gently from radiant heat in a 10 metre deep crater (we guessed pretty close to what it should have been, by the look of it). Not perhaps his most glorious moment, but I always felt that surviving being nuked and then re-entry while unconscious was the high point of his career. cheers, Mark

Re: Enchantment after the fact

Re: Immune to Magic Actually, amusingly enough, D&D designers have also recognised that absolute immunity is a not a great idea in game terms and have pretty much abandoned it, substituting a Hero-Friendly DR system instead. cheers, Mark

Re: Ripping off the Late Roger Zelazny... Math problems: the reserve (with the limitations listed) costs 14 points and each slot costs a minimum of 1. Thus, the cost as listed should be 17 points. I agree that the summon should be Teleport UbO, but otherwise, it's good to go. Another possibility is to increase the concentration effect (and limitation and add in some extra time, but drop the independant. Independant suits the tarots as described in the Amber books, but that's because the tarots in circulation were made by Dworkin - through most of the books, the fact that there were a limited number of Tarots and people couldn't make their own was a major plot device. Your player, however might like to be able to make them him/herself - in which case, independant, while possible, can be a bit of a risk. cheers, Mark

Re: Heroic Endurance and Stun Also, part of the problem may be that two concepts over time have flowed together. The initial problem - that Mages who use END to power their spells have their full arsenal again after a minute or two's rest is a significant one. In my FH games, I dealt with that problem by making all spell use cost LTE. Simple, direct and limits spell casting to a couple of spells per combat or one spell-casting orgy per day - and if the mage feels suitably heroic or desperate they can burn STUN (and even BOD) to keep going. Too much spellcasting leaves them so exhausted they can't move at more than a walk, carry heavy objects, etc. In another game, Spell-casting used up EGO (which recovered at REC/day) and all magic was EGO-based, so as spell casters used up EGO, they became more psychically vulnerable. There are, of course plenty of other solutions to this particular problem: it's a question of what sort of "feel" you want. That's a *different* problem to the lingering effects of STUN damage and probably warrants a different solution. Greatly reducing the rate at which STUN recovers is likely to be too impairing - as noted, it shifts the game to DnD mode where your ability to survive greatly degrades as time goes on - leading players to hole up for recoveries or magic healing once they have taken "X damage". Even if the intent is not to increase lethality, that's what the effect will be, since an unconscious character is at the mercy of his foes. An alternate suggestion for the "wound" problem might be to introduce variants on the impairing system. When you take a hit that "Con-stuns" you, that location becomes "partially-impaired". The effect is the same as impairing from BOD damage, but you can recover one partial impairment in 24 divided by REC hours. So Joe Normal could recover a partial impairment in 12 hours, but Bill the Tank (Rec 8) could do so in only three hours. That way combat has the chance - but not the certainty - of reducing your capacity for some hours, but the effect will not last more than a day, unless you have taken multiple "partial impairments" within a short period. This method has the advantage of requiring little book-keeping: you simply note that location X is partially impaired when it happens. It has the disadvantage that it would widen the combat gap between combat monsters with high PD and CON and more fragile characters (that might be an advantage if you want to encourage character specialization) Alternately, just use the impairing rules, where even minor BOD damage can have a lingering effect. This takes STUN damage out of the equation, but will mean that multiple combats in a short space of time becomes very dangerous. cheers, Mark

Re: Enchantment after the fact I use route A. I specifically don't allow route B: it can very rapidly become unbalancing (unless of course you want a game world, where almost everyone has magic weapons, in which case it balances again). Even if you require points to paid for the alteration, buying the STR min off a weapon in many cases near doubles its damage - and costs as little as a combat level or two. It's a no-brainer for any fighters to want such weapons. If you use transform, it essentially costs nothing at all and everyone in the party will have magic weapons, literally at the beginning of the first game session such a spell enters play. In my game, if a mage wants to enchant an item, he pays for the whole enchilada: you can't add free points from a mundane item into something you are building with your own points. Trust me, this is a bad idea. cheers, Mark

Re: PCs go down the hole... Alternately let them get partway down the creepy tunnel (throw in some dangerous crevices to cross and slopes to descend). If that's not exciting enough, add in an appropriate monster (off the cuff: a bound titan who can cast fire) and then let them come to the brink of Acheron, where the spirits of the restless dead will swarm them, begging silently for blood to drink... If the dead drink, they can become (briefly) fleshly again and speak. The Dead know many hidden things and can provide the GM with useful plot hooks. Of course, traditionally it is impossible to ascend by the same route you descended which means they are going to come out through another cave, somewhere else..... cheers, Mark

Re: Hi, Gene! Magic, Sanitation and Cleanliness

Re: Hi, Gene! Magic, Sanitation and Cleanliness

Re: Why hasn't magic changed the world?

Re: Surviving fall from orbit Well IRL a few people have survived falls at which they reach terminal velocity, so it can happen (but don't try this at home, kids!) but in the example you gave (8 PD/20 BOD), while theoretically in the "normal" range is by no means normal. I don't think I've even seen a super with 20 BOD! And since highrises are usually built out of reinforced concrete, you're going to be impacting an 8 DEF, 5-7 BOD surface for a 13-15 d6 attack. So you'll make a hole in one, maybe two floors. Your 8 DEF/20 BOD character will have taken about 12 BOD, and be at GM's option, but alive (unless like I would, the GM converts the damage to killing in that situation, given the effect of falling through a network of steel reinforcers, in which case he's a lumpy stain on the floor). A more normal normal is going to be a stain on the floor in any case. cheers, Mark

Re: Why hasn't magic changed the world? The only thing I'd quibble with here is this point. It's possible to run a "medievalish" setting with common magic as long as it's neither all encompassing and all-powerful. In the game I'm running now magic is quite common - even well off commoners will often know a spell or two. But the power of magic is limited because: a) the commonest sorts of magic require the character to either buy the spells/powers outright, or use a VPP: meaning that ordinary folk have the choice of a few powerful spells or a larger number of little ones and the choice of spells is limited, since they are taught by religious cults, which guard them jealously as cult secrets and teach them only to proven devotees of the cult. Thus warriors tend to follow the warrior god - which means improved combat potential at the cost of no other sort of spells (including no healing). So large temples with many different cults play a crucial role in society, being a kind of combined hospital/court/university/Western Union - but they still can't alter the lives of the vast majority of people because (in this game) c) casting magic is exhausting (it uses LTE). To take an example, the town the players were last based in had a small shrine with two priestesses, who fortunately could do healing magic and weather/sea magic. But casting 6 healing spells would essentially wear the healer out to the point where she'd have to go and lie down for a few hours and could do nothing else until the next day. That's fine for mending a broken leg, or a few swordcuts, helping at a childbirth, treating a sick animal and so on, but if the Bloody Death or a similar plague hit her town, there's no way she could cope. Not only is her magic not strong enough to completely cure it (unless she rolled gangbusters, all she could do is ameliorate the symptoms) but she could only do that 4 times a day if she wanted to keep it up each day and likely, she'd be keeping some of her spells for herself in case she got it. So in a plague time people still behave much as they did in real life - flock to holy sites with lots of healers, or lock themselves in their houses and pray nd try to prevent strangers from entering town. Some of the villagers have learnt magic from her, so they can also do small healings, but overall, they're not much better off than - say - a rural town in 18th century England, which also likely had a doctor who could set broken limbs, treat some illnesses but not other and so on. The weathercaster can predict the weather and make minor local changes, and she can cast charms on boats to make them more seaworthy, so the fishermen and local farmers are well-served: but she lacks sufficient power to dispel (or create) a really big storm: the best she could do would be create a small calm area around a boat (if she was on it). Most of the fishermen are initiates of her cult, so they know the same sorts of spells, but at an even less powerful level: they can predict the weather with a bit less accuracy and summon up a small breeze - enough to move a fishing boat, say. But they can only keep it up for a few phases - it's simply a useful emergency measure. So again, the town has a short-range lifeboat service if they really need it, and fishing and farming are more reliable than they were in real life, but that doesn't actually change the appearance or function of the town: it still just looks like a prosperous small coastal town. The point here is to think how you want magic to work - and then build from there. It's perfectly possible to have a medieval-like setting with common magic, as long it's restricted in some other way(s). cheers, Mark

Re: Entangle in Fantasy Hero More to the point, I use nets as a tool for grabbing not an entangle. That's historically how they were used in gladitorial combat: to catch an opponent's weapon, to tangle his legs or trip him, to tangle his head and pull him off balance. Not to wrap him up so he can't move. Remember an entangle doesn't just tangle up an opponent: it wraps hims securely so that he can't move, can't use things in his hands and can't get out unless he somehow breaks it. That doesn't sound like a net at all. Basically, a net big enough to throw over an opponent and roll him up so he can't get out, is way too big to throw by hand. A net small enough to throw by hand is way too small to completely entangle a human-sized opponent - but you can use it to tangle a weapon, or an arm or a leg. Let go of it to draw your two handed sword and your opponent will just flick the net away - in other words, it's a grab and requires you to hang on. I give combat nets a +2 bonus to grab maneuvers and you can also use them at -1 to whack people with the weighted ends. They are also "dangerous weapons" which means if you roll a fumble, you entangle or whack yourself! That makes nets useful but not overpowering and solves your fighter/net problem - but for magic, entangles are pretty deadly and need to be carefully watched. cheers, Mark

Re: Why hasn't magic changed the world? Well, when it comes right down to it, most FRP games take place in a "sanitized" environment anyway. When was the last time that one of you players caught an ordinary non-magical disease and died of it - or even got seriously ill? "Medieval" cities in FRPs usually have functional streets, buildings that don't fall down or randomly catch fire, plenty of spacious places to live, stay and work and often have huge sewerage networks, inns that function like modern hotels, temples that function like hospitals, organized full-time city guards who function like modern police, etc. They work like a modern city would work if it was translated back to the middle ages.* So half your work is already done for you. I handle the rest, by making magic relatively uncommon. Not rare, just relatively uncommon. There's a limit to how many spells a magicker can cast in a day and learning magic tends to be a fairly time-intensive proces, so there aren't that many mages: about one percent to a half percent of the population in civilised regions, less in more rustic places. So in my game, plagues can still happen, but they will tend to get choked off when they hit more sophisticated areas - and wealthy people don't die of the plague. Magical plagues, on the other hand can still happen and tend to be devastating because they can kill a whole city in a day, far faster than the magical healers can heal everybody. Wealthy people, in fact, do live disease free lives generally: they can afford magic. Poor people - who can't always afford the services of a magical healer, don't. Spells to boost crop fertility certainly exist and do allow higher population desnities than might otherwise be the case, but in general magicians have better (meaning more lucrative) things to do than help some rustics make more sugarbeet. Magic is usually only used for crop magic when there's some kind of emergency - which since weather control spells exist, usually means malign magic. Compare it to real life: for a long time feudal landowners knew the value of fertiliser, deep tilling and adequate water for crops. And for a long time they did nothing about it: preferring to spend their time, money and effort on more interesting things (like better armor, a fancier house, nice clothes, etc). Such innovations only crept into general use very slowly. Communication, combat and travel magic have (in my world) drastically altered the nature of business, diplomacy and warfare. Empires can be larger and more cohesive, important messages don't take months to travel long distances, and multinational corporations exist carrying on trade across whole continents. The old medieval armies with knights and levies only really exist in very backward places, having been replaced with smaller, more "modern" magically supported forces. But the same kind of people are still in charge, and Tim the peddler can only look enviously up at lord Salwark's flying merchant galleon as he plods onto the next village with his goods on his back. Unless you deliberately choose not to make it so, you can't have more magic than you have magicians, so there's not likely to be enough to go around: and there's no equivalent to production-line production. So you are unlikely to have cheap magic for the masses. So ... you can have a world that is "recognisably medieval" but if magic is at all common, it's unreasonable to expect it to be really close to what existed. My advice for a fantasy game - pretty much before anything else - is to work out how you want magic to work -a nd then build the world to conform to that. cheers, Mark *Amusing side-note: when my wife started playing FRPs she expected the "medieval" cities to be .. well, you know.. medieval. So she started asking questions like "why does this place have a huge inn, with private rooms and stuff? Do they get a lot of nobles staying here? Are we allowed to stay here? Why do they have a full time city guard? Is there a war on? Etc etc. It took me a while to get the message across that "actually we are playing in the 1950's Hollywood version of the middle ages - that's why"

Re: The artwork drives me nuts No, it's just that these days, almost all Universities and research institutes are trying to cut down or eliminate tenure. I've had (and still have) colleagues with PhD.s, postdoc.s in hot lab.s, plenty of publications and their own grants who have failed to get tenure for years. The reason? It's cheaper for universities to keep staff on short contracts, it's easier to dump them if the budget is stressed and there's this perception that they will "work harder" if they know their job (and the jobs of all their postdoc.s and TAs) depends on getting that next grant. At Berkley, when my wife was there, this got so bad, a group of professors revolted: they refused to reach classes. The university threatened to fire them and the prof.s basically said "We dare you. You won't give us tenure, you don't pay more than 10% of our salaries and you pay nothing of our research support. But we bring in top flight students and millions of bucks a year in external support. Fire us and we'll walk - plenty of other universities will be happy to take us." The university caved and assigned their teaching duties to TAs - much to the annoyance of people like my wife who were paying 20 grand a year to go to Berkely because of the hotshot professors. It sucks for the students, but I can see the profesors' point: their salary and their job depends on their grant money and their grant money depends on their research. And tenure depends on having both, in large quantities. Teaching doesn't figure anymore. As a result, it gets farmed off to TAs or junior lecturers. And since these people don't bring in fame or money, they are at the bottom of the heap, status-wise: which means no tenure. I did my PhD in a top research lab - there were a bunch of scientists who got all the publications and bought in all the money and taught one part of one course a year (about 3-4 weeks: the minimum allowed). All the department's teaching load was carried by two lecturers, who got tiny windowless offices and zero respect: even though the department's continued functioning rested on their shoulders. It's pretty sad - but that's how it is, given the current economic model. I voluntarily lecture at the Technical University here and also voluntarily teach an advanced course for PhD students at summer schools around Europe, but I'm one of those professors who actual teaching responsibility is zip. cheers, Mark

Re: The artwork drives me nuts I guessed - hence the avuncular, professorial "m'boy" Anyway reading *is* work: when it's directed. Right now is the glorious summer holidays and our department has shrunk to about 8 from more than 40. All I'm doing this week is sitting in my office, drinking coffee and reading - all preparation for writing a couple of manuscripts. I like my job, but let's face it: I'm not going to read "Increased Bcl-2 and reduced Bax expression in infected macrophages in slowly progressive primary Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection" for yuks.

Re: The artwork drives me nuts Got some advice for you, m'boy (speaking as a full professor with tenure, here). If you want tenure, be prepared to work 50+ hours a week, 11 1/2 months a year. If you want to climb the ladder to a full professorship, kick that up to 60+ hours a week. Seriously. I like the academic life: it offers intellectual stimulation, pretty good colleagues and a great deal of freedom in your work life. I actually like my job and have turned down offers to move onto the commercial side for much more pay, partly for that reason. But to make a secure career out of it (particularly in the US) you're going to need to really work hard at it. That means not only teaching (and preparing for classes), but also research, administration, mentoring graduate students, writing papers and/or books, travelling to meetings and securing external funding. If your goal is primarily to teach (and I'm not dissing that ambition), you can avoid most of that, but you won't get tenure that way. Just sayin', is all. Cheers, Mark

Re: The artwork drives me nuts You're forgetting inflation - over those 4 years it was 10.7%: meaning they faced a revenue decline of nearly 30% in the face of costs that escalated more than 10%. Given the fact that they were almost certainly paying a substantial chunk of licencing and publishing fees up front, the hit to cash flow was probably well over 40%. It's no wonder they went belly-up. And contrary to TB's assertions, GoO isn't the only Canadian gaming company to to do the bankruptcy bellyflop: Hip Interactive which had licences for Call of Cthulhu and George Romero's zombie flicks went down a year or so ago and they blamed currency fluctuations too. A number of indy houses have also faded from sight. Basically, for game companies from the Frozen North, the Big Southern Neighbour is their major market. And most game companies run on pretty thin margins anyway: any time your major market devalues its currency by a third in just a few years, you are going to get squeezed. cheers, Mark

Re: The artwork drives me nuts It's also important to note that all of us here are on the Hero boards, so we're not saying "her0 is teh suxx0r!". I buy more Herogame stuff than any other gaming company's, so this should be seen as (hopefully) helpful feedback from customers. cheers, Mark

Re: The artwork drives me nuts Alternatively, I'd probably buy more books if their presentation was better. Again, seriously. As it stands, I buy Hero products only if the content specifically interests me because - let's be honest here - no-one's buying 'em for their aesthetic value. In cases where I've been "will I, won't I" over a book (Turakian Age is a point in case) poor presentation was a contributing factor (maybe even the deciding factor) to me not buying: since I am unlikely to get much use out of the content - and I'm certainly not going to browse it for pleasure. Also as it stands, I have no certainty that a better budget would improve quality: the overall impression given so far is that presentation is not something that Herogames puts a lot of thought into - smaller press houses manage better quality, so budgets are not the only excuse. Basically a book - gaming or otherwise - is a cheap luxury purchase. They're easy to to afford (hence cheap) but I don't need them (hence luxury) so I won't buy a book if I don't actually want it. If it looks grufty, then the "want" factor is severely diminished. cheers, Mark