We had our first session last thursday. The players were recruited by Lord Ariakan and they´ve just arrived at Storm´s Keep.
One of the things I hope will come out of this campaign (besides loads of fun and good roleplaying!) is for one of the characters to take over the knighthood after Lord Ariakan´s death (as an NPC of course), this way maintaining the honorable knighthood I prefer :D
Imagine adolescent kids being brought to this mysterious keep in the North Sirrion Sea, a place swarming with dragons. I really put some atmosphere into their journey to and their arrival at the Keep. And of course their metting with the dark warrior we know as Lord Ariakan. I really enjoyed playing him
My inspiration to this campaign was the painting made by Todd Lockwood and featured on the cover of "Chaos Spawn"...
The campaign has taken place mostly in Northern Ergoth, with a small field trip to the Blood Sea Isles. The campaign is taking place post-War of Souls, and is somewhat centered around a plot by the Church of Hiddukel to gain dominance over the pantheon of evil (a little cliche, perhaps). There are several characters in the campaign:
Mithras Lysanguire, a man from Solamnia who hopes to one day become a white robed Wizard of High Sorcery. His white robed mentor cast a divination before he died that indicated Mithras would find his destiny in Northern Ergoth.
Flewydor Ledelson, another Solamnic who was at one point in training to become a Solamnic Knight, but shamed his family by failing in his training and shortly afterward running away to engage in some shady business enterprises.
Jalathan Corrandan, a descendent of a line of Solamnic Knights. He is a Solamnic Squire, and hopes to some day become a Knight of the Sword. His family is now in exile in Northern Ergoth, and he hopes to reclaim his family's land from the Knights of Neraka.
Gregor VonBeck, an Ergothian nobleman. Gregor is a senator in the Ergothian senate who wishes to make a bigger name for himself and increase his family's territory. He accepts whatever dangerous mission the senate will send him on, hoping to curry favor with those higher up.
Rixie and Toby Whoopleberry, a pair of kender twins that the party found in Hylo. Rixie and Toby have been with the party ever since the group rescued their home village of Treetrunk from a gang of bandits.
(There are other characters in the game, but their appearances are often infrequent. We all have pretty conflicting schedules, and can't always meet at the same times)
The campaign began in Thonvil, where Gregor, Mithras, and Flewydor were staying at the time. A parade had been organized to wish Baroness DiThon's son, Lyim, a safe journey to the capital city. There was to be a vote in the senate, authorizing the emperor the power to send Ergothian cavaliers south to assist the Solamnics in their resistance of the Dragon Overlord, Frost.
Later that afternoon, word reached town that Lyim's escort had been ambushed by bandits and that Lyim had been kidnapped. As a majority of the town's cavaliers were sent to guard Lyim, the town sheriff called upon volunteers to aid in Lyim's rescue. Gregor, Mithras, and Flewydor readily agreed to help, and set off to find the kidnapped nobleman.
On their way eastward they ran across a small group of goblin bandits. After a brief skirmish, they took one of the goblins prisoner. He informed them that he had been part of the larger bandit force that kidnapped Lyim, but when the bandits reached the mountains, a large explosion in the distance triggered a rockslide that buried the mountain pass along with a good number of bandits. The group went to investigate, and found the mountain to be impassible.
They travelled south, trying to find another way over the mountains, and came across a village named Finsburg. Deciding to stop there for the night, they were awakened in the middle of the night by an undead attack on the town. Several zombies and skeletons were coming down from the mountains to attack the village, dragging several villagers off with them.
After spending the night trying to defend the village, the group decided to sleep and investigate the mountains in the morning. They travelled up the pass, following the trail of bones and dead bodies left behind by the skeletons and zombies. At the end of the pass they reached the burial grounds of an old barbarian tribe, led by a Chief Burningcloud. A brief investigation of the burial grounds revealed a tomb and a shrine to Chislev.
Long ago, before the first Cataclysm, Chief Burningcloud and his tribe had terrorized the area, and were known for cannibalizing their fallen foes. When Chief Burningcloud was finally slain in combat, he and his tribesmen returned to the earth as undead, cursed for their cruel practices. Burningcloud became a ghast and his shamans became ghouls. His other tribesmen became zombies and skeletons.
A young druid, sent by Chislev, was able to contain Burningcloud and his followers in a small valley, placing a magic seal around it to keep them at rest.
The party investigated Burningclouds tomb, and fought their way to his coffin. In the center of his coffin was a large hole, and Mithras was able to figure out that Burningcloud's coffin was the center of the magical seal, but a key component of the seal was missing. A brief investigation of the area revealed a giant hole in the side of the tomb leading to a roughly carved tunnel.
The party followed the tunnel, and came across a broken down mechanical drill. Further up the tunnel, the party emerged at a bustling gnomish outpost. The gnomes had been testing their new steam-powered mining drill when it suddenly exploded (triggering the rockslide that blocked the mountain pass). The gnomes found Burningcloud's coffin, and a strange staff that kept the seal in place. Curious about how the seal worked, they took the staff for further investigation, awakening the hordes of undead that had attacked Finsburg.
Mithras was able to negotiate with the gnomes, and helped them to improve their drill by teaching them the alchemical secret of a special stonebreaker acid. The gnomes returned the staff, and showed the party a way down the mountain to the bandit village.
They were able to infiltrate the village, and discovered that the bandits had captured several other senators, and were holding them all for ransom. There were also several kidnapped kender, the original inhabitants of this village. The party freed the villagers, and were able to slay the bandits' half-ogre leader at the same time. The senators hurried off to Gwynned to participate in their vote, and Jalathan, Rixie, and Toby joined the party.
This is the first couple of sessions from a campaign that we've had running for about five months now. If anyone wants to hear more about it, let me know, and maybe I'll make some more posts!
Originally posted by Amaron Blackthorn
Maybe LordofIllusions can tell us about his campaigns?
Sure thing. As soon as I get time to write-up a summary(One suitable for WoTC's message boards that my players cannot garnish too much information from. I KNOW your watching.
) for my Dragonlance campaign I will post it. Right now I am just jumping from forum to forum dropping posts here and there.~~~
The group has gotten along pretty well without 'em, though they try to stock up on healing potions. There have been a few times when not having someone to heal has almost cost them, but they're very resourceful.
Jalathan will probably end up taking at least one level of cleric, seeing as he wants to be a Knight of the Sword.
For more on their exploits...
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?threadid=266562
Originally posted by Amaron Blackthorn
Is he a renegade or a sorcerer?
Perhaps I grossly misphrased what I said earlier ('godless' magic). The wizard draws magic from the gods, but is not, and refuses to become a WoHS. He actually wants to encourage people to stay away from the WoHS, and sow a little chaos here and there in order to accomplish those means. If he goes too far though, I'm sure it will draw the attention of the Conclave, and things are bound to get very interesting from there. So, he's a renegade and proud of it.
One fighter is a hill dwarf, striving towards the Dwarven Defender prestige class, and we have a human barbarian fighter from one of the scattered tribes east of the Dairly plains. That barbarian fighter character should be interesting, as they are friends with a kender that went missing, and they have a hatred of everything having to do with Malys and the Dark Knights. Should make the Peak of Malys an interesting session or 2 later on in the adventure. (they are a barbarian as in tribe, figher as in character class) The last fighter is an NPC half elf they freed from the mini adventure Sunless Citadel (the character in the adventure was a gnome cleric, I just switched out the character to serve the archetype niche of fighter they needed to have filled rather badly at the time.)
Originally posted by Amaron Blackthorn
How was running the Sunless Citadel in Krynn. Who did you substitue for the god of the temple, etc?
IIRC, there wasn't mention of gods, but if there was, I either substituted on the fly, or just don't remember. The citadel was in worship to a great red dragon called Ashardalon, so I just played off of that, and made him a great red dragon that existed long ago, and the temple were his (albeit zealous) groupies.
The setting is about 2000 years before the Cataclysm. The KNights of Solamnia had been founded about 400 years before, already had a well earned reputation. My original KNIGHTS OF SOLAMNIA campaign was based on the adventurers (mostly Knights, Clerics, a few magic users) being part of a regular rotation of troops to the Solamnic Garrison in Tarsis, putting the campaign in that region as the KINSLAYER war's are about to get started. THe campaign revolved around the PC's doing a lot of things. In 2002, I was able to end the campaign and went to a STAR WARS campaign, which I just could not get to work. I came back in January of this year to restart a new KOS campaign, in this case, set right after the KINSLAYER wars are now over, which were part of a plot by the Queen of Darkness to ensure Ergoth and Silvanesti would be too weakened to interfere in her planned war vs the Knights of Solamnia in the 3rd Dragon War.
In this new campaign, as one of my old PC"s is still there, he is playing the son of his original character. The rest of the party are Dwarves and Barbarians and such.
They started out in Ogre country, Blode, and ended up doing a few tasks for the ogres. They then moved on to help the Legion of Steel to get rid of an Ogre chiefton that was trying to become an Ogre Titan. This was successful and they ended up hitching a ride with the Legion of Steel up into Khur.
In Ak-Khurman they are helping out the Legion of Steel with various tasks, like helping them and the current tribe of the city(Mikku) track down a magical weapon rumored to have been used by Keja, the man who united the various tribes after the Cataclysm. The Knights of Steel are trying to help the current tribe because they get along well with the Mikku, whereas one of the other tribes has allied with the Knights of Neraka.
They currently have an NPC that they have taken a liking to that is a Minotaur WoHS who has just passed the Test. The Minotaur is an Abjurer who doesnt like killing people unless needed so he focuses on buff spells and ones that hinder foes instead of outright killing them. Therefore he has Evocation as one of his prohibited schools.
I have had some really good players come and go, and of course, had a few bad ones as well, but overall, the campaign has been fun and the Players interested.
The characters in the group are:
Gareth Nightstring: human fighter 1
Markus Nightstring: human sorcerer 1 (Gareth´s brother)
Daniala Firehammer: human fighter 1
Nicholas Uth Moriam: human cleric of Takhisis 1 (Son of a KoS! I plan for him to meet his father during the Chaos War. Should be interesting).
So far everything´s going as planned, which doesn´t really say much since the players haven´t had any real chances to mess things up...yet! ;)
I can´t really tell you all that much about the campaign because not much has happened yet...the next few sessions will revolve around the characters´ training, with a few plots added into the mix
They are also COMPLETELY UNAWARE that they ALREADY possess the KEY which they are searching for. As a matter of fact they tried to SELL the music box in Pashin during one of our first AoM gaming sessions.
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They are also COMPLETELY UNAWARE that they are ALREADY possess the KEY which they are searching for. As a matter of fact they tried to SELL the music box in Pashin during one of our first AoM gaming sessions.
Isn't pointed out by the Herald in the Sylvan Key adventure that the music box is the key? I'm pretty sure he blantantly tells the players that the former Dark Knight squire (can't remember his name) has it in his possession but that the "key isn't a key".
Isn't pointed out by the Herald in the Sylvan Key adventure that the music box is the key?
No it is not, "pointed out by the Herald in the Sylvan Key adventure that the music box is the key".
Furthermore, telling someone that the "key isn't a key" does not automatically equal, "music box".
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Furthermore, telling someone that the "key isn't a key" does not automatically equal, "music box".
True, but I'm pretty sure the Herald said that the squire had it in his possession.
Originally posted by Sysane
True, but I'm pretty sure the Herald said that the squire had it in his possession.
Irrelevant. There were MANY things within Pegrin's possession that COULD have been the key. The refutation(Posted by none other than MYSELF.) applies to the portion of your post which ASSUMES that the Herald tells them the music box is the key.
Also, the MUSIC BOX is NOT the key. The MUSIC itself is.
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Originally posted by LordofIllusions
Irrelevant. There were MANY things within Pegrin's possession that COULD have been the key. The refutation(Posted by none other than MYSELF.) applies to the portion of your post which ASSUMES that the Herald tells them the music box is the key.
Also, the MUSIC BOX is NOT the key. The MUSIC itself is.
ALL RIGHT, LoI, SETTLE down, I think you've MADE your POINT, there's nothing that SAYS specifically that THE KEY is a MUSIC BOX.
I do find it amusing that your party tried to sell it.
Have you considered making Shroud the shard of light? I've found that the wild theories of my players often make for a more interesting story than the one that's printed.
Cheers,
Cam
Originally posted by LordofIllusions
Irrelevant. There were MANY things within Pegrin's possession that COULD have been the key. The refutation(Posted by none other than MYSELF.) applies to the portion of your post which ASSUMES that the Herald tells them the music box is the key.
Also, the MUSIC BOX is NOT the key. The MUSIC itself is.
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Also, the MUSIC BOX is NOT the key. The MUSIC itself is.
Thats a bit trivial, but I guess you have a point. My players pretty much figured out that the music box must be the key though.
there's nothing that SAYS specifically that THE KEY is a MUSIC BOX.
No, but the Herald does say that Pegrin possesses it. ;)
Originally posted by Sysane
No, but the Herald does say that Pegrin possesses it. ;)
Well, I know that and you know that...
Cheers,
Cam
Originally posted by Sysane
No, but the Herald does say that Pegrin possesses it. ;)
A re-post:
Originally posted by LordofIllusions
Irrelevant. There were MANY things within Pegrin's possession that COULD have been the key. The refutation(Posted by none other than MYSELF.) applies to the portion of your post which ASSUMES that the Herald tells them the music box is the key.
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Originally posted by Sysane
Thats a bit trivial, but I guess you have a point. My players pretty much figured out that the music box must be the key though.
*Clap, clap*
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Originally posted by Cam Banks
I do find it amusing that your party tried to sell it.
As did I. My players have LOTS of freedom in my campaigns. Even the freedom to do something as silly as selling away the receptacle which houses the key that they are looking for.
Originally posted by Cam Banks
Have you considered making Shroud the shard of light? I've found that the wild theories of my players often make for a more interesting story than the one that's printed.
No, not at all.
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I was just trying to make the point that the Herald pointedly stated that Pegrin had the key. I was just confused as to how the players could think objects outside of the Sylvan Key could be the key.
But no big deal. Nothing worth starting The War of The Key over ;)
Originally posted by Amaron Blackthorn
The module in the DLCS has the Herald telling the group that Pegrin has the key.
Of course it does he just never specifies WHAT the key is. The music box was not the ONLY item that is found in Pegrin's camp.
I already said this TWICE already. Give it up(That was not aimed at you Amaron Blackthorn.).
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Originally posted by LordofIllusions
Of course it does he just never specifies WHAT the key is. The music box was not the ONLY item that is found in Pegrin's camp.
Seriously though...let's look at the items that Pegrin had. Out of everything...if the party can't figure out that the music box is the odd item out and therefore obviously the damned key...maybe they don't deserve to know.
No offense to your players, of course. :D
Here's what I'd do. I'm guessing that characters are probably brighter than the players, so I'd allow for a generic Wisdom check (DC...whatever you want to make it) to see whether or not they can figure out that music box is the key. It's kind of based on a rule in the Stargate SG-1 game...can't remember what it's called...maybe like "Moment of Clarity" or something like that...it's supposed to mimic Carter's ability to make huge logical leaps to bring the stories to a close before the allotted 42 minutes is up.
Anyway...that's what I'd allow your characters to do.
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I already said this TWICE already. Give it up(That was not aimed at you Amaron Blackthorn.).
Give what up? Your the one that went all ballistic for the simple statement of the Herald telling the players that the key was there. Granted, I was mistaken in my wording saying that he told them that the music box WAS the key. My bad.
No need for the condescending attitude Bro
Originally posted by LordofIllusions
I think I will just let this one die since it is pointless and there is OBVIOUSLY baiting going on here.
No...there's no baiting. I'm being serious. I agree that it should be painfully obvious that the key is the music box...it's not my fault that you take that personally. But I at least tried to be helpful with my post.
Originally posted by Brimstone
No...there's no baiting.
How about we let the WizOs decide on what is baiting and what is not ?
Originally posted by Brimstone
I agree that it should be painfully obvious that the key is the music box...it's not my fault that you take that personally. But I at least tried to be helpful with my post.
I am not going to be goaded into re-posting something you could easily have read yourself. Your attempt to BAIT me into an arguement today did NOT begin with THIS thread in particular. Hence your intentions, ON THIS THREAD fighting a losing battle, are clear as day.
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Wow! Things are brewing in the Land of Krynn!
Yup. I was actually HOPING that they would sell the music box, although they didn't
, so that I could introduce my little mini adventure wherein they would have to get it back, from SOMEONE whom would have purchased it from the buyer, after finding out they made the mistake of selling the music box. ~~~
Originally posted by LordofIllusions
I am not going to be goaded into re-posting something you could easily have read yourself. Your attempt to BAIT me into an arguement today did NOT begin with THIS thread in particular. Hence your intentions, ON THIS THREAD fighting a losing battle, are clear as day.
This is rediculous. It is impossible to have any sort of civil conversation with you. I was trying to be helpful. I can't speak for the others, but it doesn't look like you're being "baited" or any other such nonsense to me...but I can tell you that I'm not trying to bait you into an argument.
Why don't you go ahead and look back throughout this thread and see which ones are being hostile...it's pretty obvious that it was you who was baiting Sysane into an argument. And when he finally "snapped" (after 3 hostile posts from you), you scream bloody murder.
This is stupid.
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Why don't you go ahead and look back throughout this thread and see which ones are being hostile...it's pretty obvious that it was you who was baiting Sysane into an argument. And when he finally "snapped" (after 3 hostile posts from you), you scream bloody murder.
Ah, the truth hurts, doesn't it?
Everyone take 5.