Forestkiller additional notes
by Rodger BurnsJohnBiles wrote: Why are the Oards trying to facilitate the Odic's rampage? I think this would be stronger if we knew exactly what they're trying to accomplish by facilitating its rampage and give some clue of that; as it stands, the PCs are likely to be oblivious to the larger plot.
Yeah, I was afraid I didn't go into enough detail about that. Briefly, the oards are trying to facilitate the odic's rampage in order to simply change history, in a measurable way; the death and destruction is an added bonus. The problem with going into extended detail on this is the degree to which I'd like this to be suitable to fit other DMs' campaigns - I was trying to strike a balance between providing enough info to be interesting but not so much that a machete had to be taken to the text to make it usable, and it looks like I didn't go far enough.
With that said, here's an illustration of three different possible timelines that could unfold from this series of events:
Version 1 - Original Timeline (No Oard Involvement)
8 Ambyrmont: The oard is created in the Barony of Igorov, in Boldavia, and begins heading north. The Walkers of the Wildlands meet with Bensarian, learn about the upcoming threat, and begin heading south.
10 Ambyrmont: The Walkers cross the Wendar highroad without incident. As they've no need to slow down, the PCs miss crossing paths with them by about fifteen minutes.
11-13 Ambyrmont: The Walkers continue to head southward, into the foothills of the Wendarian range. The odic continues northward, crossing the border between Wendar and Glantri.
14 Ambyrmont: The Walkers meet the odic in the wilderness of southern Wendar, and after a tough fight defeat it. For the moment, at least, Wendar is safe.
Version 2 - Altered Timeline (Oard Interference, No PC Involvement)
8 Ambyrmont: The oard is created in the Barony of Igorov, in Boldavia, and begins heading north. The Walkers of the Wildlands meet with Bensarian, learn about the upcoming threat, and begin heading south.
10 Ambyrmont: The Walkers are ambushed by the oards' bioengineered nekrozons. The PCs aren't able to involve themselves (for whatever reason), and as a result several of the Walkers are killed and the rest have to turn aside from their mission in order to get their companions raised. The oards' plan is proceeding splendidly.
11-16 Ambyrmont: The odic continues northward, crossing the border between Wendar and Glantri and heading towards the lowlands.
17 Ambyrmont - ??? The odic enters into the forests of Wendar, bringing death and destruction with it. Villages and woodlands within the 'safe' heartland of the country are razed or poisoned, packs of animated zombies start to shamble across the land, and eventually a contingent of the Wendarian army has to mobilise to help destroy the menace. The fact that a Boldavian necromancer originally created the odic comes to light, badly straining diplomatic relations between Wendar and Glantri. All these are things that should never have happened, and the fact that they somehow did is sufficient to weaken the barriers between Mystara and Oard Spacetime, increasing eschaon and making the oards more powerful.
Version 3 - Repaired Timeline (Oard Interference and PC Involvement)
8 Ambyrmont: The oard is created in the Barony of Igorov, in Boldavia, and begins heading north. The Walkers of the Wildlands meet with Bensarian, learn about the upcoming threat, and begin heading south.
10 Ambyrmont: The Walkers are ambushed by the oards' bioengineered nekrozons. This time, the PCs get involved and are able to help defeat the nekrozons with a minimum of casualties. The PCs agree to help the walkers stop the odic.
11-13 Ambyrmont: The Walkers and the PCs head southward, into the foothills of the Wendarian range. The odic continues northward, crossing the border between Wendar and Glantri.
sometime between 13-16 Ambyrmont: The Walkers and the PCs meet the odic in the wilderness of southern Wendar, and after a tough fight defeat it. History is slightly different than the Original Timeline, but not by very much; there's no chaos, no undead-driven massacre, and no major diplomatic incident between Wendar and Glantri. The oards' plans have failed, for the moment at least, and their chances of mounting an invasion of Mystara grow weaker.
These guys don't seem quite tough enough to have devastated a party as tough as the surviving members make it look, though I'm not familiar enough to be sure.
First part seems like a good setup for the rest.
Would you believe that in addition to bioengineering from the oards, the nekrozons also got combat training from Miko Miyazaki?...
No? Darnit.
Okay, a short 'script' for how things might've gotten to where they were:
- Surprise Round: The nekrozons ambush the Walkers of the Wildlands and get complete surprise. Being slowpokes with a move of 60' (20'), they can't get into combat range from their initial position in the undergrowth, but per the Rules As Written one of them does get a no-save death gaze on an enemy. Random roll has it be Graeme McKonnach.
- Round 1: The nekrozons close to melee. One of them shiskabobs Katrin Oesterhaus's horse; she fails her Riding general skill check to get herself free, and is trapped beneath its dead weight. Auren Windleaf takes to the sky, Rajivri Virayana and Jarrod Redlinhelm dismount in order to avoid suffering the same penalties as Katrin.
- Round 2: Auren attempts to shut down the nekrozons with her Hold Monster spell, but it fails. Rajivri and Jarrod melee and score some solid hits (this being why one of the 7-HD creatures starts the encounter with only 19 hp), but Jarrod gets targeted by a gaze attack and rolls a 3 on his saving throw. Down he goes.
- Round 3: Ralindi successfully saves against another gaze, but gets torn up a bit by a couple of tail strikes and starts a fighting withdrawal. Auren can't drop an ice storm on Ralindi's head or get any solid use out of phantasmal force, so she cuts loose with her magic missile spell for minimal damage. Katrin continues to try and get free of her horse's corpse without getting stuck or death-gazed.
- Round 4: The PCs arrive.
If the PCs had never shown up, the Walkers could probably still have pulled out a pyrrhic win; Rajivri's retreat would probably have drawn a couple of the nekrozons off long enough for Katrin to get free, and as long as Auren was airborne and carrying arrows she would have been effectively invincible. However, sheer number of attacks, and also save-or-die effects, means that either Rajivri or Katrin probably bites it in a protracted battle; there's only one or two survivors to drag bodies back to Wendar City to be raised. As a result, the odic gets a clean shot-on-goal, as it were.
Also sidenote - the Walkers are not nearly as weaksauce, in my little picture of things, as the above example might make them out to be. They just have a real reliance on Graeme McKonnach and his 7th- and 8th-level spells to soften monsters up, and a healthy and mobile Katrin Oesterhaus tanking against enemy melee attacks and using her effective THAC0 of 7 to bring the pain. Take those out of the mix and things get hairy - and losing both of them at once was an unexpectedly large dose of bad luck.
In any case, thanks all around for the feedback. There's more to come.