The Gherkin Patch

It is late at night, and Valaina slips out of the steamy warmth of Albrigon’s tent into the freezing night air. She looks all around her, ever alert to possible enemies or danger, as she paces through the camp soundlessly. Leaving the perimeter, she glances back over her shoulder to make sure she is not followed. She starts to run, lightly and effortlessly, barefoot on the snow and ice of Ymir’s Fang.

Mia is awake and watching, disguised against a rocky cliff face by the power of her Chameleon Ring. She instructs her lizard, Cuetz, to follow.

Cuetz is no ordinary reptile, possessing the power of invisibility. He fades from view and scurries away after the ice-elf woman with surprising speed.

Well out from the camp, Cuetz sees Valaina turn and look back once more. She bares her teeth in a smile, falling forwards onto her hands and knees, sprouting silvery fur all over her body, her nose and jaws elongating into a snout, her ears rising up and becoming more pointed and triangular…a long bushy tail sprouting from her rump….within moments, she is no longer an elf, but a large silver fox. She races off down the slope of the mountain with sure-footed ease.

Cuetz cannot stay in touch with Mia beyond this range, so she calls him back.

Morning arrives and Valaina has not returned to camp, though this is nothing unusual in itself, since she has always avoided staying with the party at night. Her new ice-elf thralls express concern for her safety. Menwen, the uncharmed one, suggests that they should be more concerned for their own with her around.

Having breakfasted, Sorrel, the shamaness Lyrina and the boy Kaylan depart for the mountain to the north in order to return to the Rakeskia base and make contact with Lendela and the others in the betrothing party who have probably returned by now. Before leaving, a rendezvous point is agreed on near a distinctive landmark, in case the party are forced to break camp. Sorrel invokes the power of the god of the seas to transform himself and his companions to mist, and then summons a wind to carry them northwards.

The four male ice elves leave camp to descend to the treeline and go hunting. In their absence there is some discussion about the business of Valaina – what to do about her? Mia reports what she observed during the night. Ugrat is convinced that she is evil and deserving of death. If she is still with the party when the other ice-elves are freed she will enthral them. Which, it is mooted, is really her only purpose in remaining with the party – to gain power for herself. It seems that without Snake’s influence to guide them a sea change has come about the party’s attitudes and people now want to “do the right thing”! Or at least Ugrat does, and as Snake’s perceived ‘right hand man’ his voice carries a lot of sway. Mia is more than likely excited at the prospect of looting Valaina’s body for whatever magical treasures she might possess. Albrigon can see the arguments for doing away with her as well – she did, after all, double-cross the party when they first met her, and he’s not happy about her going around charming people left right and centre either. Though he is sceptical as to how successful this attempt will be – “Witches and warlocks are always full of tricks!”

In the middle of this discussion Valaina returns to the camp. The atmosphere can, of course, be cut with a knife, and with more than four centuries of life behind her she is nobody’s fool. She starts to discuss the business of making contact with Keraptis in order to open negotiations, and offers herself to act as a go-between.

People skirt around the issue a little uncomfortably. Valaina notices a few people whispering. Ugrat keeps trying to position himself behind her. Glances are exchanged between people.

Mia telepaths to Chillwind to ready his icy breath…

“Is there something you are trying to hide from me? I sense there is a secret being whispered of here that I am not party to.”

Albrigon breathes a sigh of resignation. It seems that he will have to be the one to start this.

“Well, Valaina, it’s like this.” He rises to his feet and draws his sword. “We don’t need you anymore.”

“Now, Chillwind!” shouts Mia, telepathing at the same time. The dragon breathes a gout of icy mist at her, frosting her. She barely flinches at this. Albrigon rushes her, taking a great swing with his bastard sword. She leaps backwards to avoid his blade, displaying amazing reflexes, then springs back in as she ducks to avoid his return swing, at the same time twisting her body away from his spiked buckler as it stabs towards her midriff. Wherever his weapons are, she is not. She meets Albrigon’s gaze steadily with a look of betrayal in her eyes.

He shrugs his shoulders. “Nothing personal – this is just business!” He swings at her again, and she deftly avoids with astonishing agility. Ugrat is moving to strike as well now. She snarls, baring rather pronounced canines, then shouts a word of power and the air crackles around her with mystical energy. Everyone flinches momentarily, not knowing what manner of sorcery she is about to unleash on them.

She vanishes.

“I knew this would happen!” Albrigon grunts.

“Ev’ryone, look fur her…she no gone far I tink…’member she take long time to cast spell to take us from cave to mountain other day.” Ugrat shouts. “I use my horn now, I find her.”

Ugrat concentrates trying to locate her but he can sense no invisible presences in the vicinity. He takes to the sky with Albrigon and Mia on Chillwind. They start sweeping the area looking for her, scanning for magical radiations or anything that moves.

But the trail has gone cold. The only creatures they find are the returning ice-elf hunting party, who have already made themselves flint knives and spears of remarkable workmanship and have brought down a couple of musk deer to feed the party.

The party tells the enthralled ice elves that Valaina had to leave for a while. They are upset by this, and propose that they should follow after her wherever she has gone, but they are persuaded to remain with the party ‘until she returns’. Only the unenthralled Menwen is told the true details of what has happened.

After eating, Ugrat proposes going to scout out Keraptis’ fortress to see what is occurring there. Chillwind and Albrigon fly Ugrat up as far as the cloud line and he makes his way onwards alone wearing white furs for camouflage.

He eventually succeeds in scaling a ridge that brings him level with the ruined fortress. There are no signs of life evident, except for a single gnome on watch atop the outer gatehouse. A white flag has been lofted. It seems the wizard is requesting a truce!

Ugrat scampers back down the mountainside and swiftly returns to camp with a mixture of climbing and feather falling. He reports what he has seen.

It is decided that Albrigon and Ugrat will go and parlay with the wizard. Meanwhile the camp will be relocated again to avoid possible reprisals from Valaina. The parlayers will meet with someone from the party at the rendezvous who will then guide them back to the camp’s new location.

He and Albrigon saddle up on Chillwind and rise into the air once more, this time flying all the way up to the wizard’s ancient fortress – hoping that this isn’t some kind of trap. They land on the adjacent ridge that bears the outer gatehouse and speak to its single gnomish occupant who is more than a little nervous.

The gnome says that the mighty Keraptis would like to offer a parlay. The party have something he wants, and he is not an unreasonable man. A shelter has been set up in the centre of the courtyard of the fortress and they may meet with him there.

Albrigon refuses to hold the meeting on ground that may have been prepared in some way by the enemy, and demands that Keraptis comes forth to parlay out here.

The gnome scurries over the rope bridge and heads towards the keep. Our heroes wait.

After some time a party emerges and makes its way towards the outer gatehouse. It consists of two Yeti, two gnomes who are giant-sized, and a single, gaunt-looking gnome at the centre. They approach the waiting Albrigon and Ugrat. Chillwind snorts irritably. Those yeti look tasty!

The gaunt-looking gnome in the centre raises his head and stares at the party’s two ambassadors.

“DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”

“Let me guess….you’re Keraptis, huh?” Albrigon sneeringly replies.

A discussion ensues, with the one claiming to be Keraptis seeking to intimidate, whilst Albrigon puts on a show of bravado and Ugrat, strangely, tries to persuade the legendary evil despotic tyrant that he could go much farther if he tried being nice to people for a change.

During the course of the parlay, the question arises of why Keraptis has sent the party on this quest and then apparently come here in person with an army of gnomes to do it himself anyway! His appearance seems somewhat different as well.

Keraptis explains that there are a number of imposters within White Plume Mountain who claim to be Keraptis, but that he is the genuine article. He suggests that it is one of these imposters who sent the party here on their quest. He says that he has actually been impressed by the party’s capabilities and thinks they ought to consider working for him.

Eventually a deal is struck which is beneficial to the party. They will persuade the ice elf shamaness Lyrina to take them to the glacier and harvest the magical shards that he needs. In return, he will release the elven prisoners he has and restore the petrified children to flesh and blood. In addition, he will provide them with the means to access the magical vault that Snake is seeking to gain entry to – with no further tasks required!

As a show of good faith on both sides, the party will bring Lyrina and show that she is still alive and in agreement with this arrangement. He will then release the ice elf captives that he still has who are unpetrified. The ice elf children will be restored and released on the party’s return from the glacier, and when the shards are handed over he will give the party the means to access the vault.

By the time Ugrat and Albrigon reach the relocated camp it is close to nightfall. A hungry Chillwind consumes a whole musk deer before settling down to sleep. He misses his cave, but it’s good to have these little hairless yetis running around hunting for him!

The next day Sorrel and Lyrina return, drifting in to the rendezvous where Menwen awaits them. They follow him to the camp’s new location.

They bring news that Lendela is heading south with a small but capable party of Rakeskia warriors. She has sent forth messengers to the other ice-elf tribes to convene a council of war in the shadow of Ymir’s Fang; the remainder of her tribe, mostly non-combatants, are relocating to a different stronghold. The place where Keraptis slew so many of her people shall ever after be a tomb and shrine to those who fell.

Having been apprised of recent events involving Valaina, Lyrina invokes the power of the ice spirits to dispel the charm that Valaina worked on the ice elves that were rescued. After several attempts they are finally cleansed of the enchantment.

Albrigon explains to Lyrina the deal that has been struck with Keraptis – but he stops short of telling her that Keraptis demands the metallic shards that are taboo for her people to gather. The shamaness agrees to go up to the fortress and meet with Keraptis in order to secure the release of her people.

The second meeting with Keraptis takes place as planned, the following day – Sorrel stays close to Lyrina in order that he might be able to employ his wind walk to whisk her out of harms’ way should Keraptis try to double-cross the party. The wizard is satisfied and holds true to his word, releasing his remaining non-petrified prisoners – including the chieftain Naramir, who is in a bad way mentally and seems to have suffered some terrible ordeal. A couple of other prisoners including Naramir’s own daughter have also suffered various abuse at the hands of the wizard’s minions. Keraptis waves aside Ugrat’s complaint that the prisoners are not unharmed as mere pedantry.

The elves are re-united with their kin who were rescued by the party on their earlier sortie and despite their grim circumstances there is cause for some small celebration, and they are cheered by the news that Lendela is on her way. By now some more game has been felled and brought up to the camp and people eat heartily that evening, a pleasant change from the thin gruel the gnomes had fed them with goodness knows what unsavoury ingredients in it.

Albrigon seeks the company of Lyrina this night, trying to impress her with his smattering of elvish. He tells her tales of his own youthful years spent in the chilly mountains of his homeland. He offers her some wine from the lowlands to try. She senses his interest in her, but although she is grateful for him rescuing her, he is one of the short-lived humans and not good material as a mate. She has lived ten of his lifetimes already. And there is another, Kandor, a shaman in the neighbouring Oreskia tribe, who has been courting her these past five years.

However, after she takes the wine, she feels her heart warming to this tall, burly human who saved her from the wizard’s clutches. She never really liked Kandor much anyway. And so what if her tribespeople disapprove? Does she not have the right to choose her own mate? This Albrigon may be a little immature, but he is very seemly and his facial hair makes an interesting change from the beardless menfolk of her own kind. And his jokes are very funny!

Nearby, the crushed remnants of an empty crystal vial lie glittering unnoticed amidst the snows of Ymir’s Fang…

Previous Installments:

Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Part 1
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Character Sketch: Snake
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Part 2
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Character Sketch: Albrigon
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Part 3
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Part 4
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Character Sketch: Ugra’at
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Part 5
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Part 6
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Part 7
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Character Sketch: Sorrel
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Part 8

Barrow of the Forgotten King by Ed Stark was a most excellent finale to the quest to capture the Golden Boar.  (This post contains a slightly disturbing image, so be warned.)

Part One of this write up describes the encounter-rich wilderness trek that sets the scene for the action that follows.

Before I move on to the module, a little more backstory.  The party had found the Singing Tor and completed their original quest to reunite Peter Chamberlyn’s body with his lost soul.  But they had now undertaken a new quest - to find the circlet that controlled the Golden Boar, and thus avert the doom prophesied for the Keoish army if they proceeded into the Hold of the Sea Princes without the creature amidst their ranks.

The circlet (they hoped) lay in the tomb of King Theron, a dwarven monarch who had ruled in these hills many centuries past.  And their enigmatic guide, Berna, had told them that this tomb was located in a cave complex which was also home to an oracle called Murthwanesta.

Berna - a woman with a mysterious past

The cave complex had also housed a clan of Hill Giants, who had held the oracle in some reverence.  En route from the Singing Tor to the caves, however, the party encountered a trio of giants - a shaman and her two sons - whom Berna recognised as being from the caves, and who they managed to parlay with.  It emerged that there had been a change of leadership amongst the giants, and the new chieftan had less reverence for the oracle than his predecessor; indeed he declared that he would descend to her cave and take her as a wife, by force if necessary.  This attempt evidently failed, but then the new chieftan got up to fresh mischief by attempting to dig his way into the dwarf king’s tomb, which Murthwanesta had forbidden them to enter.  The shaman told the oracle who was furiously angry and told her to take her sons and leave; ‘a terrible disaster is about to befall those who would enter Theron’s tomb’.

From this, the party surmised that perhaps the Golden Boar was a creature somehow created or summoned by the oracle herself to punish the hill giants.

After a couple of days’ journey the party arrived at the cave entrance.  Following Berna as their guide, who had lived at these caves herself for a while as a disciple of the oracle, they descended into the lower levels.  Remains of slain hill giants were found on the way bearing injuries that might well have been inflicted by the tusks of the boar.

Murthwanesta the Oracle of the Earth was a large stalagmite in the centre of a pool of bubbling mud, which transformed as Berna approached and greeted her, the upper half of the rock formation becoming the upper torso of a woman of giantish proportions.

She confirmed that she had indeed unleashed the boar on the giants to punish them for their disrespect, though she had not summoned the creature.  It had been bound by her magic as a guardian at the entrance to Theron’s tomb, but the creature itself was linked to the circlet which was not of her making.  Since driving the giants out of the caves the beast had sauntered off and she was unable to recall it.  She gave the party her blessing to enter the tomb and retrieve the circlet and bring the boar to heel, and even borrow the circlet for a time provided they ultimately returned it.

And so on to the tomb, and the published adventure.  I’ll discuss this more from a DM’s perspective than a narrative one.  Barrow of the Forgotten King by Ed Stark is an adventure for a party of 4 x 2nd level characters.  The module as published is not a dwarf king’s tomb but that of a human one - I had to recast the descriptions of the place in dwarven terms, which I generally did on the fly with no great difficulty.

So how about the party being 6 x 6-7th level characters instead of 4 x 2nd?  Well, I dealt with this in three ways.  The first and most obvious way was to beef up some of the encounters by adding a few extra combatants - though I found that surprisingly few were required in light of the disparity.

Secondly, the module as published is written with the expectation that the party will take several expeditions to complete the adventure, with rest breaks in between.  However, the plot of the module involves some tomb robbers who are ahead of the party.  This was easily used as a device to ratchet up the tension - I turned these robbers into an expedition by agents of Monmurg to retrieve the circlet, and it wasn’t too long before the party learned of this from captives.  This lent a sense of urgency to their mission and forced them to slog it through in a single expedition.

Thirdly, the final encounter involved some more powerful adversaries than those in the published text - the ringleaders of the Monmurg expedition, on the trail of the circlet that controlled the boar.  Now I’ve mentioned that I was presenting this as a race against time.  It actually was a race against time in a very real fashion.  Although I wasn’t keeping a detailed track of time down to the last minute, I decided prior to the party’s entry into the dungeon that the following applied:

• If the party just stormed through without taking any rest periods, they would catch up with their opponents at a point somewhat before the final chambers of the tomb
• If they took one rest period, their opponents would arrive in the final chambers well ahead of them and retrieve the circlet, which could then be used to summon the boar - which would arrive only very shortly before the party’s arrival, thus giving the worn-down Monmurgians very little time to make best tactical use of the boar
• If they took more than one rest period, their adversaries would also have rested, and would ambush them with the boar from a position of strong tactical advantage - a potential TPK or TPC (Total Party Capture)

As it happened, the very first room in the dungeon was a puzzle room which had to be solved before they could proceed further (a slight re-arrangement from the published module in which this is the second room, but it better suited my purposes to have the puzzle as an opener).  The party asked Berna to perform a Divination to gain some clues about the puzzle, as it was a real head-scratcher for them.  They were still stuck even after this, and so it was suggested they bed down for the night and get some rest and do another Divination in the morning.  This cost them one rest period on my doomsday clock.

Beholder Puzzle

When they took the rest at this very early stage, I was a little worried.  At this point there was less of a sense of urgency because they hadn’t encountered the Monmurg expedition and didn’t know they were in competition to retrieve the circlet.  Though every additional day would cost the 25,000 strong Keoish army another day’s delay in its progress, but I don’t think this weighed as heavily on their minds as it should.  Because of this early rest, they could not afford to take any more rests before the deadly ambush occurred.  Fortunately, this was the only rest period they took - though they came perilously close to taking another on several occasions!

It might seem mean or unfair to have started the doomsday clock from a point before the party knew they were involved in a race.  But I had no idea they would take a rest in the middle of trying to solve that puzzle room at the dungeon entrance when I planned this.  When they did, I elected to be ’sandbox’ about it - I’d already decided the Monmurg expedition was in the dungeon ahead of them and I didn’t want to rewrite that fact for the players convenience.  Sometimes I do have events happen for narrative reasons - like the bit in Part One where the boar popped up and attacked the party when Voss’s hunting party were conveniently nearby.  But other times I just let the chips fall where they may.  That’s my style.

So what was the dungeon like?  A nice little dungeon crawl, basically.  Plenty of interesting encounter areas with terrain features and traps.  Naming no names, but some folks on the bloggers network have lately been rewriting history by saying that D&D editions prior to 4e typically involved dull encounters with single creatures or handfuls of identical creatures that didn’t interact with other creatures in neighbouring rooms.  Honestly, I have read people saying this!  This description of D&D doesn’t resemble any edition or adventure I have played in or DM’d since, oooh before some of my readers were born I suppose.

The dungeon is extremely linear, but this is actually well suited to the feel of the adventure particularly when presented as a race to try to catch up a competing party.  The player’s adversaries have left various minions and animated creatures to try to slow the party down, and there are a few evil creatures in the tombs that the bad guys managed to bypass without fighting - in the published adventure this is a bit poorly rationalised (rationale is usually where I find published modules fall down, but then we are a very rationale-conscious group), but I added a stronger rationale by giving the Monmurg party leader, Xera, an ability that specifically empowered her to co-opt evil creatures to her side (I won’t go into too much detail about this as she activated her escape plan at the end and they may run into her again).  By the way, in the module as published, the big baddie is called Xeron.  Xeron, Xera - you see what I did there?

We had some nice cinematic moments in which the player characters experienced some horrors.  Sylvian the elven archer getting stuck in a web and covered in a swarm of tarantula-sized baby tomb spiders was, um, pleasant.  And Jonathan Flynn succumbing to ‘Horrific Rot’ brought a cackle of evil mirth to my lips.

(Don’t worry, he’s cured now!)

The final combat was epic.  We finished it in one session, which was nice.  The party reached King Theron’s resting place, the final chamber in the dungeon, to confront a worn-down Monmurg party, backed into a corner, who scrambled to set up an ambush against the foes who were suddenly upon them.  Their ace was the boar that had only recently arrived in answer to the summons of the circlet.  There was a frantic battle to try to shoot down the wearer of the circlet who was directing the boar’s actions.  The boar was meanwhile chewing up one party member per round, tossing them aside like matchsticks and leaving them unconscious and bleeding out on the floor (luckily for them, no actual casualties, but a pretty tense fight!).  At one point people started saying ‘it’s time to pull out’ and morale starting taking a nose dive.  Then Dylan’s invisible raven familiar succeeded in snatching the circlet off the head of its wearer!  The familiar got batted out of the air with a morning star within seconds and there was a scramble to retrieve the circlet from the floor.  Then Berna remembered her ‘mage hand’ spell and snapped up the unconscious familiar still clutching the circlet in its claws.  She popped the circlet on her head and it was all over for the Monmurgians.  It’s great when a crafty familiar and a well-placed 0 level spell can turn the tide of a battle!

Treasure-wise, I always find myself cutting stuff out of published modules, and this was no exception, even though the module was designed for 2nd level characters.  I wouldn’t even call our campaign a low-magic one, but there’s just too much awesome loot at too low level in almost every module I’ve ever read.  I’ve always found it strangely ironic that in D&D from 3e onwards, there’s been less of a need for characters to possess magic items to make themselves distinctive, because there are so many ways in which characters can be customised and acquire interesting abilities without the need for them.  And yet, 3e onwards have taken stronger steps than previous editions in building a default expectation for magical loot into the structure of the game (including magic kit in CR calculations and so on).  Entitlement, much?

So, I cut out one or two items and changed a couple of others.  There’s one exciting ’signature’ magic item which I left in, because I’m not so stingy that I won’t let a surprise windfall drop once in a while.

As the party emerged triumphant, two of the hunting parties (Voss’s, and a group of Axewood elves) were spotted riding along a ridge in the distance and were flagged down by the party (cue police sirens in the background).

A celebration was had, the party divided their spoils and traded some unwanted items for more desirable alternatives with the elves.  Voss reported a successful disruption of the war council that Monmurg had been trying to arrange (which the elves had also turned up at). Thus all the boxes were ticked, the three story threads in the adventure now resolved.

And so, onwards.  Monmurg or bust!

Last week we concluded the 3rd edition published module, Barrow Of The Forgotten King, which fitted my requirements for a small self-contained dungeon crawl as the culmination of a wilderness-based adventure set in The Tors, a wild and woolly area of rocky hills on the south-east border of the Yeomanry in the World of Greyhawk.

I was very pleased with the way this adventure ran, and the players all seemed to enjoy it too. Though I say it myself, the mix of elements in the adventure - story, roleplay, decision-making, problem-solving, skills usage and combat action - seemed ideal.  Or almost so.

In this part I’ll talk about the wilderness trek, and in part two I’ll talk about the dungeon itself.

The party who embarked on this escapade were the lower-level characters who featured in the Falcon Series (WGA1-3) set in Loftwick, which you can read about here and here.  Namely:

• Jonathan Flynn, an urban ranger (non-spellcasting variant)
• Hakash Thomasson, a half-orcish cloistered cleric of Thoth and seeker of knowledge in all its forms
• Sylvian Keys, an elven ranger/scout/bow initiate
• Vee, an elven rogue / favoured soul devoted to Horus, on a quest for vengeance
• Snorri Halfbeard, a bard / rogue who pays his respects to the Norns
• Dylan, a machiavellian wizard with a strange talent for talking to the dead
• Echo the Pixie - actually an NPC, familiar to a powerful sorceress called Cerys Landry, who has been tasked with keeping tabs on her nephew Jonathan Flynn

No longer under the aegis of the higher-level characters (Thorbjorn Hrolfsson and Cerys Landry) who featured as diplomats and heavy-hitters-on-call in the previous adventure, our heroes are now around 6th-7th level, and starting to really gel as a team.  Indeed, they’ve started using two Teamwork Benefits (as described in the PHBII and various other supplements that followed) and this has lent even more of a sense of togetherness to the group -

1) The Infiltration benefit (DMGII) which allows team members to move at normal speed while hiding and moving silently provided the team leader directs their efforts, and which also allows them to always remain visible to each other when hiding.

2) A new benefit we made up called Getting Our Story Straight - the team leader spends time briefing other team members on a cover story, and then other team members can use the benefit of the leader’s Bluff skill instead of their own when someone questions them.

On to the adventure.  The premise was that the party had been sent into The Tors to convey the body of Peter Chamberlyn, the Burgermeister of Old Hardwick, to a legendary rock formation known as the Singing Tor.  Peter Chamberlyn died fighting against the coup faction in the Loftwick adventure, and was singled out among the casualties as being worthy of raising.  So why the trek to the Singing Tor?  Well, in our campaign, resurrection magic isn’t the push-button affair of the rulebooks - there are various mishaps that can occur, and sometimes you have to go and find out where the soul is and reunite it with the body within a certain time period.  A divination had revealed that Peter Chamberlyn’s soul could only be reunited with his body at the Singing Tor.  So there you go.

The Burgermeister’s body was transported in a wagon and given a small military escort, plus the PCs for the benefit of their more esoteric skills.  The question was raised, why could his body not be slung across the back of a swift horse, rather than having to drag this cumbersome wagon through the hills?  The answer, of course, was that this would be disrespectful…

Crossing the bridge over the River Thornsrush, the party headed up into the hills.  They became aware that they were not the only travellers heading in that direction.  They were passed by three hunting parties of the finest mettle despatched from the ranks of the nearby Keoish army (which had now peacefully entered the Yeomanry, thanks to the party’s efforts in the previous adventure).  Apparently, a seer, a priest of Istus the god of fate, had consulted the omens regarding the course of the war, and prophesied that if the army entered the Hold of the Sea Princes without taking with them a beast known as the Golden Boar, then disaster would befall them.  The Golden Boar had been rampaging around the Tors, according to rumour, so these hunters were heading up there to try and catch it.

The party wished them luck, though this was not their quest.  Though they couldn’t help but wonder whether this Golden Boar would happen to cross their path.  (Well, fancy thinking such a thing! )

A visit to the local druids at Lasker’s Circle proved instructive.  The druids being a minority faith in the Yeomanry, they decided that helping these people in their quest to revive an influential political figure might yield some dividends.  They provided information about the Singing Tor, which had a tendency to move from hilltop to hilltop in an unpredictable fashion, but always remaining within The Tors.  A commune with nature, expanded to cover a larger area than usual through the power of their stone circle, was unable to pinpoint the Singing Tor’s exact present location but narrowed the search down somewhat (to an area of about 700 square miles).

So, they headed deeper into the hills towards that region, charting a path to avoid various hazards they had been warned about.  The Tors appeared to be a sparsely populated wilderness, aside from an encounter with some prospectors.  There seemed to be some sort of big cats on the prowl, tracks and spoor were spotted and the prospectors had driven them off once, but the party never ran into them.  An occasional herd of deer was spotted.

The party’s advance scouts tangled with some bugbear scouts.  One was captured, and happily revealed everything it knew to save its skin - they were part of a very large assembly of disparate bugbear tribes that had gathered in these hills following ‘The Star of Hruggek’, a celestial apparition only visible to bugbears.

A while later, the party ran into one of the hunting parties searching for the Golden Boar.  A group of barbarian warriors led by none other than Uswuld Voss.  He being a chieftan of great renown who had come down from his mountain haunts to join the Keoish army in its expedition to the Hold of the Sea Princes, hoping to earn glory and plunder from the sack of Monmurg.

Voss and his people hadn’t had much luck so far.  They stopped with the party for a short while to rest and eat, and then the two groups parted again as Voss’s search pattern took him away from the party’s route.

The party continued on.  But they hadn’t gotten very far before - as fortune would have it - the Golden Boar appeared!

It was a great swine with a hide made of stone, golden bristles and trotters and gemstones for eyes, and great curving golden tusks that seemed flattened and razor-sharp along the edges.  It burst out of the ground close by the party’s advance scouts and started snuffling and peering at them, as if weighing them up as opponents.  They unleashed a barrage of missile fire at the creature at close range, all of which simply bounced off its toughened hide with no effect at all!

A web spell was thrown over it to glue it into its hole for a bit and the party turned and ran digging heels into horse’s ribs.  It wasn’t long before it ripped out of its webby bonds and tore after them.

Fortunately, their horses could outrun the beast.  They realised that if it headed towards the wagon bearing Peter Chamberlyn’s body, it would be disastrous, so they fell back and enticed the creature to follow them - leading it over the ridge and towards Voss’s hunting party that fortunately hadn’t headed too far away yet.

The swine crashed into the hunting party, ripping up the thickly corded nets thrown over it like so much lambs’ wool.  A furious battle ensued in which it soon became apparent that nobody in Voss’s hunting party had a weapon that could so much as inflict a scratch on the beast except Voss himself, who wielded Winter’s Edge, a large magical bastard sword.  Voss and the beast slugged it out for a while with others trying to aid Voss as best they could.  Eventually, the beast decided it had had enough; it put its snout to the ground and dived into the earth as if it were water.

(DM’s note: I had already worked out the average damage that Voss and the boar would inflict on each other and how many rounds the fight would last, making a slight adjustment on the fly for player intervention to assist Voss.  I didn’t make the players sit through this NPC-vs-NPC combat in detail.  I did roll a few dice to see if either inflicted critical hits on the other.  The boar’s tusks have the sharpness property and can take a limb off!)

Healing magic flowed in answer to the prayers of the party’s clerics.  Much head-scratching ensued about how they could catch this elusive and rather dangerous creature.  Voss and his men agreed to accompany the party, to offer safety in numbers, for there now seemed little hope of following the trail of this creature over land in any case.

Further along the way, after a couple more minor encounters and events, the boar attacked once more, and again was driven off by Uswuld Voss.  However, it was noted that on its return the boar seemed no worse for wear after the previous attack, and obviously possessed regenerative capabilities; whereas Voss’ people had all sustained injuries and the party was out of healing.  If the boar continued this hit-and-run strategy it would ultimately wear the party down.

Late that day, the party came across a hillside cottage under attack from a crowd of bugbears.  The occupant, a somewhat unusual individual, was grateful for the party’s assistance in driving off the attackers.

Her name was Berna, and she was a big girl. 6′6″ tall, well muscled and with stone coloured (and textured) skin.  And entirely bald.  She showed the party her labours - the gradual restoration of an ancient dwarven runic circle atop the hill, from the time of King Theron who had ruled in these hills before the armies of Vecna destroyed this small kingdom for its defiance of his imperial ambitions.

Berna had a mysterious past, having been a foundling.  The Oracle of the Earth, Murthwanesta who resided in a cave complex a day’s journey away, had told Berna she would reveal the secret of her past after she completed the restoration of the circle.

Berna had an affinity with the stones of this land and, being closer now to the area where the Singing Tor was located, she was able to use a meditative trance she called an ‘Earth Dream’ to pinpoint its location.  Being grateful to the party for their aid in seeing off the bugbears, she agreed to accompany them there and act as their guide.

The party and the hunters spent the night there.  Berna had so far not been troubled by the boar, and the party scouts could no longer detect the occasional subterranean rumblings that had followed them since their first encounter with the boar.  It seemed that the creature was somehow discouraged from entering this area.

Thereafter, and much to their relief, their journey to the Singing Tor was untroubled by the Golden Boar.  It was as if it had lost interest in them after their overnight stop at Berna’s cottage.

However, they did have to deal with an attack by some Perytons. Imaginative use of illusion magic by Dylan the party wizard split their forces and they suffered heavy casualties.  A few managed to flee the scene alive.

Peryton

(I hadn’t used these classic D&D monsters for years so it was great fun to set them on the party!  In 3rd edition they were shunted off to Faerun - but having obtained a copy of the ‘Monsters of Faerun’ supplement, I decided to restore them to Oerth, their rightful home.)

A while later, a patrol of hippogriffs swooped to eyeball the party, and it soon became apparent that they were ridden by hobgoblins.  It also became apparent that Berna knew their leader, Grokworg, a hobgoblin of great stature.  In fact she knew him extremely well…having allayed the initial tensions between the party and the hobgoblins, some gossip was exchanged.  These riders came from the hobgoblin city of Traga Hai in the southern Tors (a locale the party had been warned of).  Grokworg was one of the Herzog’s sons.

There had been some trouble recently between their people and the bugbears who had swarmed down from the mountains and gathered here.  But some ambassadors had arrived from Monmurg - the enemy of the party’s homeland.  These ambassadors wished to unite the hobgoblins and bugbears into a guerilla force to harry the Keoish army on their way into the Hold of the Sea Princes and cut their supply lines.  Grokworg himself was skeptical of the whole affair, but a meeting was to be held soon to discuss these matters.

The party continued on their way but one party member - Echo the pixie - invisibly tailed the hobgoblins back to their stronghold to glean more information.  From this, the exact time and location of the meeting was determined and eventually conveyed back to the party, who meanwhile pressed onwards towards the Singing Tor.  Having reached the Tor, Peter Chamberlyn’s soul, called back by the Raise Dead spell cast back in Loftwick, was finally restored to his body, as the divination had foretold.

As the sun set over the hills, the Singing Tor started to sing, emitting a broad range of harmonised tones.  Snorri Halfbeard, the party’s bard, tried to join in, for his musical talents were also vocal in nature.  He gave such a fine performance, that the Tor took notice.  (DM’s note: I’d set the DC at 25 for this; Snorri got a 30).  After the sun set, the Tor unfolded itself and stood up, congratulating Snorri on his performance.  It was in fact an ancient Galeb Duhr of enormous size, called Skerrungnundoon.

The party had a fine old chat with Skerrungnundoon, who remembered the old days of the dwarven King Theron’s rule in the Tors.  It seemed that Theron had been able to command a boar-like elemental creature to do his bidding using a magical circlet.

The party wondered where this circlet might now be.  Berna now revealed that, though she had known nothing of this circlet, she did know the location of King Theron’s tomb - it was in the same cave complex that housed her mentor, Murthwanesta.

By morning, Echo returned with information about the war council between Monmurg, the bugbears and the hobgoblins.  It seemed desirable to try to kick off some kind of fracas at this meeting and scupper any hopes of an alliance.  Which was more urgent, to deal with the meeting, or the boar?  Every day that the boar remained at large was another day’s hold-up for the Keoish army.

The party discussed this with Uswuld Voss and it was decided that surely they had enough resources to accomplish both tasks in parallel - Voss and his people could follow Echo to the meeting place and disrupt the meeting, while the player character party could head for Theron’s tomb and retrieve the circlet.  Peter Chamberlyn could now be taken on horseback to the safety of the nearby city of Melkot by his military escort.   The boar didn’t appear to be trailing them now, but if it should poke its ugly snout above the ground again the party’s horses were swift enough to outrun it.

(DM’s note:  Which is rather the way I wanted things to pan out!  But the players came up with it themselves.)

So, there was a parting of ways, with a pared-down party consisting solely of player characters heading tombwards.  What they found there will be discussed in the next part.

If you missed Part 1, then click here to find out how character generation went.

So, anyway, young Gherkinette has got Daisy Appleblossom, her dryad bard, all worked out and ready for some adventures in Narnia under the White Witch’s rule.

Things kick off when one day, Daisy returns from her morning ritual dance (see Part 1) and finds her talking robin friend, Trill Scarlet, waiting for her in the branches of her apple tree.  Trill has an important message, that’s being sent out by Mr and Mrs Beaver up at Beaversdam - but only for a few trusted individuals.  There will be a secret meeting held tonight in a small clearing deep in the forest.

Daisy spends all day wondering with excitement what the meeting will be about.  Before leaving for the meeting, she plucked some apples from her tree to take to the meeting and put them in a basket.  (Well, because it’s always winter, this wouldn’t normally be possible, but I granted that she could magically call forth apples from her own tree).

At nightfall Daisy heads up into the deep forest and finds the secret meeting place.  The beavers are there already together with a guest, a gnome called Erasmus Pebblegleam, who has some important news for everyone.  Trill Scarlet is already there too.

Various other creatures start to arrive.  This is an opportunity to introduce the skill check mechanic - use of Knowledge (Local Info) to see if she knows who these creatures are.  As each creature arrives, I ask her to roll a d20 and add her modifier of 3 to the result - if she gets 15 or more, she knows who they are, and I give her a little information about them and where she knows them from.  She can add 3 to numbers up to 10, but still counts up on her fingers to add 3 to a number in the teens.  But she has no trouble with this, really.

One of the attendees at the meeting is another dryad, Rowena.  It turns out that Daisy knows her well already - in fact I lowered the DC to 5 as she was one of her own kind, and this also demonstrated to my daughter the way that the number she needed to get varied depending on the difficulty.  Rowena is a very shy, retiring sort of dryad and a bit less outgoing than Daisy.

One of the creatures arriving is a Minotaur.  I show her the picture.  I explain that this is a bit worrying as these creatures are usually on the Witch’s side.  Rowena clings to Daisy in a nervous funk.

Daisy: ‘Don’t worry, he’s been invited so I’m sure he’s alright, though he is a bit scary’.

The Minotaur’s name is Brak.  It turns out he is an old friend of Erasmus the gnome.  He bows.  ‘Delighted to meet you’ he intones in his gruff voice.  (You can tell I had fun with this!).

A centaur arrives - Rollo Swifthooves.  Another picture to show.  It turns out that he is an old friend of Daisy.

The meeting gets underway.  Erasmus, it transpires, is an escaped prisoner from the Witch’s dungeons.  While there he met an old Storm Giant called Raxus.  The Storm Giants of Stormness Point are by now only known in legend, all of them believed to have met their end at the hands of the Witch’s allies the Cloud Giants, or else petrified by the White Witch.

Raxus told Erasmus that in their caves on the heights of Stormness Point, the Storm Giants had a magic scrying pool that they used to communicate with Aslan.  When the Witch seized power, Stormness was her first target.  Cloud Giants who were guests of the Storm Giants treacherously seized control of the chamber to prevent anyone from using the pool to contact Aslan and tell him of what was occuring.  More cloud giants then arrived together with the Witch and overwhelmed the noble Storm Giants.

‘So’ chimes in Mr Beaver, ‘if only someone could get to that pool, then they could send word to Aslan about what is happening here in Narnia -’

Without hesitation, Daisy suddenly and boldly steps forwards, interrupting Mr Beaver before he’s even finished, and declares:

‘I’ll do it!  I think I can do it…I’m not sure, but I’ll try my best, and if I can do it, then I WILL do it!’

Everyone is impressed by Daisy’s bravery.  Mr Beaver calls for other volunteers.  Many of the talking beasts such as Merrick and Martha the hares and Oswald the Owl seem to be terribly busy and are very sorry but they really can’t spare the time right now…Rowena is terrified and tries to persuade Daisy not to go.  Daisy tries to persuade Rowena to come with her (opposed Diplomacy check) but fails to overcome Rowena’s fear.

There are two other volunteers.  Brak the Minotaur and Rollo Swifthooves the centaur.  Erasmus is a wanted gnome so it would be unwise for him to accompany her - but he gives her a map made by Raxus the Storm Giant showing a secret way into the inner heart of the caves so that she can sneak past the Cloud Giants to reach the magic pool.

Daisy feels that she only wants one travelling companion.  Rollo is an old friend.  Brak, she’s not sure about.  She starts trying to think of a polite way to turn him down.  Rowena helpfully reminds her that maybe she should pick one of them to stay behind and guard her tree.

Daisy asks Brak to guard her tree, and Rollo to accompany her on her quest.  Both happily agree.  Rowena says she will keep an eye on Brak for Daisy and make sure he is doing a good job.

The meeting breaks up, and Daisy, Rowena, Brak and Rollo go to Beaversdam with Mr and Mrs Beaver and Erasmus to enjoy a supper of hot apple pie.  Afterwards Daisy and Rollo head south back to Daisy’s tree and Rollo shelters under its branches for the night.

Daisy wakes early, as usual, and goes for her morning sojourn beside the frozen lake, then goes to dance with her fellow dryads.  She tells them she is going away for a while, she can’t tell them where.  They all wish her luck.  She returns to her tree and finds Rollo awake and ready to leave.  She climbs onto his back and practises riding - a Ride check to see how well she and Rollo work together as rider and mount yields a favourable result, so they will make swift progress.

(I give my daughter a map of Narnia and ask her to draw the route she wants to take from her home in the Western Woods down to Stormness Point.  She gets a pencil and draws a route on.)

Daisy and Rollo set off.  The adventure has begun!

OK, so I’ve been promising young Gherkinette an intro to Daddy’s peculiar hobby for quite some time, and a window appeared this weekend.  I recently read her ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’, so we’d decided to run something based in Narnia.

A while back, maybe six months ago or more, she’d rolled a character up, and had decided at that time to be an elven bard.  We never took that anywhere further, but I thought I would take my cue from that and create a character for her to play in Narnia, based on her original concept but translated into Narnia’s slightly more fantastical setting.  So her elven bard got upgraded to a dryad bard, i.e. starting level 5 - 4 levels of dryad and 1 level of bard.  As she is the only player right now it made sense to give her a slightly tougher and more versatile character to increase the range of challenges I can present her with.

I didn’t want to overwhelm her with the full detail of 3rd edition D&D character generation for a ‘monstrous’ character, so I decided to mostly pre-generate the character myself, but leave her with a few options that she could decide on for herself.  These were:

• What type of tree she lived in - she decided on an apple tree
• Her name - she came up with Daisy Appleblossom
• Clothing - she decided to have a green dress made from leaves ’so I can hide in trees and no-one will see me’.  I reminded her that, right now, the White Witch’s magic means it is always winter and never Christmas.  ‘OK, I’ll have a snowy white dress as well’.
• 2 items of jewellry - she elected to have a ruby pendant and a diamond ring
• Her musical instrument - she wanted violin as her preferred instrument (there is provenance for violins in Narnia, so that’s OK) - and flute as a secondary instrument
• 4 skill points to allocate - see below
• 4 bardic spells to select - see below

Skills:

Me: ‘You already have a bunch of skills, but there are 4 points left over to add on to whatever skills you choose’.

Her: ‘Skills are things I know or can do, aren’t they?’

Me: ‘Yes.  You can put all 4 on one skill, or else split them up.’

Her: ‘So each skill I can put 4 or less points on.  I’ll put one point on each skill so that means I put a point on 4 skills.’

Wow.  She catches on fast.  She chooses Craft(Art), Jump, Tumble and Knowledge(Maths).  Interestingly, she decides on these four skills without actually looking at the skills list first to see what’s available.  Though ‘Tumble’ was my interpretation of Gymnastics.

Spells: 4 x 0 level (bardic)

She chooses Lullaby first.  Next is Dancing Lights.

The third one is interesting.  She wants ‘Light’.  Here’s why.  She decides that every morning, she and her fellow dryads are going to perform a ritual dance to welcome the rising Sun, and they go around casting Light spells to wake up the forest creatures early so that they can watch the Sun rise.  I’m stunned.

Though, apparently, before she goes to dance with her fellow dryads, she likes to go and spend awhile alone each morning beside the frozen lake, just looking at the lake and enjoying the peace and quiet.  It gets better and better!

One more spell to go.

Her: ‘What’s Read Magic?’

Me: ‘It lets you read special magical writing, that you can’t normally read.’

Her: ‘I’ll need that then, to read my spell book with.  Oh by the way Dad - you forgot to add my spell book to my equipment list, silly!’

I’m really in awe now.  I’ve never even mentioned spell books to her, she has no knowledge of them in the context of the game, but she’s already deduced their existence and that she will need ‘Read Magic’ to read one.  I expect her to extrapolate the entire existence of the multiverse from a small piece of fairy cake at some point in the near future…

Now, as we know, 3.5e Bards are spontaneous casters and so technically, they don’t require spellbooks, but I was sure as heck not going to pour cold water on her idea - and it so happens that as a house ‘preference’ I like spontaneous casters to keep a small spellbook anyway, not as a Vancian source of spells to memorise-cast-forget but as something they study from time to time to keep their known spells fresh in their mind.  I also require spontaneous casters to learn their newly acquired spells from some source like a spellbook.

We have a bit of a discussion about the game and what sort of things it may involve.  The background is Narnia under the Witch’s spell, before the arrival of the four Pevensie children.

She decides that, if she runs into any of the Witch’s bad creatures, and she has to fight them, her strategy will be to hide in a tree and shoot arrows at them, and they won’t know where the arrows are coming from.

Her: ‘If people get killed in this game, then we shouldn’t worry, because they are not real people, and nobody will really be hurt - it’s just a game, isn’t it?’

‘I’ll play this character in this adventure, but for the next one I can try a different character.  Maybe I can  play a talking horse in the next adventure.’

Having wrapped up character generation, we pressed on with the opening events of the game - which I’ll discuss in Part 2.

There has been a lot of discussion recently on the future of tabletop/pen’n'paper gaming, with much doom and gloom involved.  For example Steve Jackson’ prediction (quoted from Stargazer’s World) that pen’n'paper gaming will be ‘forgotten in ten years’.

I had some thoughts on this myself recently. The first thing I’ll say is that for tabletop/pen and paper roleplaying games to survive (and I believe they are worth keeping alive), we need to distinguish these games from other games that are essentially ‘Roleplay Simulators’, in the same way that Guitar Hero is a guitar sim, not to be confused with actually playing the guitar.

When I say tabletop/pen and paper, of course I may be talking about a game that contains a good deal of computer assistance, as others have commented on, and may eventually be played almost entirely online.

Maybe we need to find some new way of describing these games. ‘Narrative’ games would be treading on freeform/fanfic type gaming territory so that’s not going to work. I don’t know what the answer to this is but I do know that it is going to be hard-to-impossible to take the acronym ‘RPG’ back from the g@m3rZ who have misappropriated it.

We need to find a way of drawing the distinction in a way that the lay person can immediately grasp, otherwise their default assumption is that computer RPGs are an upgrade or replacement for tabletop, and that the latter is effectively obselete.

The other day, I was inspired to write a sort of ‘Introduction to the uninitiated’ in which I tried to explain the differences between tabletop roleplay and computer RPGs. Please take a read.  Comments and criticisms are welcome:

http://www.covengaming.org/wordpress/?page_id=2

But there has to be a simpler way to enlighten people than getting them to read an essay. Pointing out that WoW is a ‘Roleplay Simulator’ is a concise way of doing it but also a negative one, and you’ll never get MMO advocates to let go of the RPG tag anyway.

I was recently inspired to write an introductory piece, explaining to the uninitiated the difference between computer and tabletop RPGs - and why the former isn’t actually a replacement for the latter.

You can read it here. I’d appreciate any comments or criticism (head back and reply to this post to do so).

Having patched themselves up a little the party decide to relocate their camp a good deal further down the mountainside for a number of reasons; firstly, to lessen their proximity to Keraptis’ fortress; secondly, to enable Sorrel to recuperate from his altitude sickness (and prevent others from developing the same malady); and thirdly, in the hope of easier hunting, for there are musk deer to be found at lower altitudes where hardy vegetation pokes through thinner snows. Chillwind will be able to use the cloud base as cover for his predations and minimise the risk of being spotted by Keraptis’ rather larger skeletal cousin of his.

They spend the rest of the day making their way down the mountainside. The ice elves greatly help in this endeavour as they are very familiar with this terrain already; indeed this particular mountain is a regular destination of theirs. Ugrat’s Ring of Feather Falling is also a boon in helping to descend steep inclines. Albrigon does his best to keep up with the elves by his own means, for he is no mediocre climber himself and generally prefers not to put his trust in wizard’s tricks.

Once under cover of cloud Sorrel successfully dispels the transformation in form that Mia had worked on Chillwind and this gives them a further means of transport.

It seems that Keraptis’ minions have either failed to find them or have given up the chase, for the party is not troubled by them. During the course of the climb, and later that evening, several new pieces of information emerge, provided by Lyrina the shamaness.

The way to the Sacred Glacier of Thelandira (as the Hanging Glacier is known to the Rakeskia) is through a cave in the mountainside. A magical ritual may be performed on nights when Luna is fully in shadow - every four weeks by the common reckoning of humans. This opens the way to the sacred glacier. The Rakeskia harvest three colours of magical shard from the glacial ice - red, blue, and yellow, each having different properties. The red shards increase the potency of beverages. The yellow shards can be used to cure disease or injury. The blue shards seem to absorb heat and can be used to keep things cold or frozen, and are also used by the Rakeskia to tip their arrows and daggers with to inflict chilling wounds on their targets - possibly a kindness when used to hunt animals for food.

Time is known to flow differently on the sacred glacier. The harvesters remain only for four hours but find that an entire night has passed when they emerge. It is taboo to stay beyond a certain length of time on the glacier - it is said that spirits awaken and roam the glacier when the sun rises in that realm, and it is exceedingly dangerous for mortals to remain there. Old legends state that if you stay to watch the sun rise on the sacred glacier the spirits will trap you there for a month and you’ll not return until the following new moon - if you return at all, which is unlikely.

Nine hundred years ago Keraptis’ vassals first arrived in the Corsuks having learnt about the fabled glacier and its magical shards. At first they traded with the Rakeskia but soon the wizard grew greedy and decided that he alone should control access to the glacier and its magical treasures. He usurped the Rakeskia and constructed the fortress which the party saw earlier on. The gatehouse set in the mountainside guards the subterranean path to the glacier. Keraptis continued to allow the elves to enter the realm of the glacier and harvest the shards, but he exacted a heavy price - typically one half of the shards they had recovered, sometimes more, and other forms of tribute besides such as food and furs for his minions. Amongst Keraptis’ servants was a form of elven lycanthrope, a Foxwoman known as Néava, who was not of the ice-elves but from lowland stock, a sylvan elf most likely. She had the power to enthral men by her mere presence and this power even worked on elves, who were by and large resistant to magical charms. Only the stronger-willed could resist her allure.

Keraptis’ tyranny was not to last. After a time his servants that staffed the fortress grew somewhat thinner on the ground, and complacent in their demeanour. Keraptis himself stopped making any personal appearances, the last being around five hundred years ago. A century after his final visit to the fortress the shard harvesters of the Rakeskia encountered a pair of humans on the glacier who had allegedly travelled there from another world. Their names were Orn the Wanderer, a priest of a deity called ‘Odin’, and his large, powerfully built companion Urwath the Boar. Orn was on a pilgrimage to spread his religion to a new world. The Rakeskia had vaguely heard of these norse deities for they figured as minor characters in one of their own legends of Solonor Thelandira who had once gone to the hunt in a place called Alfheim accompanied by primitive ‘wild men’ with names like Uller and Frey.

When these two mighty humans accompanied the harvesters back through the portal it was the beginning of the end for Keraptis’ foothold on the Corsuks. When they witnessed the indignities that the elves were forced to endure at the hands of Keraptis’ servants they were filled with wrath and a fight ensued. It is said that Urwath was charmed by the foxwoman Néava and turned against his friend Orn, but Orn solved the problem by decapitating her with a single blow from his sword. Until this time the Rakeskia had assumed that any such resistance would be met with a terrible response from the mighty wizard himself as had happened in the past but none was forthcoming.

Orn and Urwath succeeded in fighting their way out of the fortress with their elven companions. After this incident there was an uprising among the Rakeskia who mustered aid from other tribes and stormed the fortress, slaying every last servant of Keraptis without mercy. The two human heroes headed down to the lowlands afterwards and it is said that Orn had considerable success in spreading his strange new faith amongst the Schnaii barbarians who dwelt there.

Néava left a legacy behind in her passing however. It is known that she fostered a number of young ice-elf girls stolen from the Rakeskia and other tribes, infecting them with her peculiar strain of lycanthropy. As Lyrina explains this in hushed tones to Albrigon and Ugrat, she directs a furtive glance at Valaina who is busy queening it over three of the elven men who were rescued who seem entirely submissive to her whims. She also has the young waif Kaylan eating out of her hand too.

“Hmmmm. She had me and Ugrat under her spell, when we first ran into her, before Sorrel’s prayers to Aegir cleared our heads. Though I think she got me by spiking my drink.”

Ugrat’s snout crinkles as Albrigon speaks. “You speak f’r yousel’. I zee thru her, straight way. But Uruviel, Valaina’s daughter, now she lovely girl, beautiful girl, she no make charm on us. I worry, maybe she in danger, maybe Valaina infect her. I want save Uruviel from foxwoman curse if can be done.”

Albrigon stares at Ugrat for a moment. He suspects that Ugrat is still enthralled by Uruviel.

Lyrina frowns. “She is no true daughter of Valaina’s. The foxwoman can bear no young of her own; it is part of her curse. Uruviel is the name of a girl who went missing from our tribe a number of years ago. If she has been in Valaina’s company for that time, she too is infected by now.”

Lyrina has more information. The Rakeskia children were turned to stone by a bull-like creature with iron skin that breathed on them. The seven gnomes that Ugrat saw claim, collectively somehow, to be Keraptis although usually only one of them speaks at a time. Keraptis has a number of other members of her tribe prisoner besides the petrified children - she believes they are held in the dungeons of the main keep. This is confirmed by Menwen, the male elf who seems to have resisted Valaina’s charming effect. He tells of around 7-8 more elves held by Keraptis including, he believes, Naramir their chieftain although he was separated from the others soon after their arrival and he doesn’t know for certain if he is still alive.

Lyrina says that Keraptis, naturally, wanted her to open the way to the sacred glacier once more and harvest shards of ice for him. Not content with red, blue and yellow shards he also wanted copper, silver and gold shards - these more exotic types had not been seen by the Rakeskia in living memory and although spoken of in legend, they were said to be the property of the spirits who dwelt on the realm of the glacier and not for mortals to possess.

If she did not comply with his request, he would start feeding her kinsmen to his pet monsters. If, however, she obeyed, he would let them live, as his servants.

Later that evening, there is a general discussion about what is to be done. Lyrina feels that it is important to make contact with the other members of her tribe who had been away at the betrothing. They need to be told that there are a few of their kinsmen who yet live, that their chieftain may yet live, that there may be hope for their children to be restored to flesh and blood. The shamaness knows that they will be beside themselves with grief if they return to the scene of the massacre and find no living thing remains in that place. She declares that she will make the journey alone if need be.

Valaina says that someone should head back to the fortress and make contact with Keraptis. He needs to know that Lyrina is still alive and that the party are open to negotiation, as she is his only means of access to the glacier. The moment he believes he has lost his chance to lay hands on the shards, he will no longer place any value on the life of his prisoners.

Night falls. Albrigon’s keen senses and natural alertness awaken him to someone slipping into his tent. It is Valaina. She shrugs off her fur cloak and lays beside him.

“Hmmm! Just couldn’t keep away, huh? Three of your own kind on a leash not enough for you, are they? See, once you’ve had a real man there’s no going back!”

She silences him with a slender finger across his lips. “Hush now….I like you much better when you keep your mouth shut, human. Now…business before pleasure, as I believe your people sometimes say.” She presses a small crystal vial into his hand. “The shamaness, Lyrina….we need to ensure her cooperation. Now that she is at liberty from Keraptis’ stronghold she may want to bargain him down. She will not want to stay on the glacier to harvest the metallic shards - it goes against the Rakeskia’s tradition. For that matter, once she has made contact with the other survivors from her tribe, she may choose to deal with Keraptis directly - she has no need of us in any negotiation and she will have her own people for protection. We will be left with nothing.

“She is already grateful to you for saving her, but that is not enough. This potion will make her more malleable. Slip it into her drink or food. It is near tasteless and odourless. I used it on you, in fact, to make you my puppet for a while.

“Make sure you remain in her company and have her undivided attention for a short time, and it will work its magic. She will be enthralled by you and hang upon your every word, be subservient to your every wish.”

Her dark almond-shaped eyes gaze into his, taking his breath away with their sinister beauty. He struggles to resist falling under her spell once more.

“Then, you and I will hold all the cards. You and I, Albrigon.”

Previous Installments:

Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Part 1
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Character Sketch: Snake
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Part 2
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Character Sketch: Albrigon
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Part 3
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Part 4
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Character Sketch: Ugra’at
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Part 5
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Part 6
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Part 7
Quest For The Hanging Glacier - Character Sketch: Sorrel

A flight simulator simulates the experience of flying. At least, it conveniently allows you to experience some of the aspects of true flying. But when we play on a flight simulator, we don’t make the mistake of saying that what we are doing is flying.

In a similar way, a guitar simulator - such as Guitar Hero - simulates some of the aspects of the experience of playing the guitar, in a convenient fashion. But we’re not actually playing the guitar when we play it.

Then, CRPGs and MMORPGs should actually be called CRPSs and MMORPSs - Computer Roleplaying Simulators and Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Simulators. Because they allow you to conveniently experience some of the aspects of true roleplaying.

Just a thought.

(See. I can write short posts. Sometimes.)

Source: Quiz Farm

Posted on: Stargazer’s World

Hmmm, seems about right. Though my highest score was ‘tactician’ I’m also strong on the acting and storytelling side, which is true (in fact I’d say I’m about equal on tactics, storytelling and acting, but 9% difference probably isn’t statistically significant in a quiz of this nature). A touch of powergaming but I think that’s only healthy, up to a point I enjoy butt-kicking once in a while but it gets a bit tiresome if that’s all you’re doing, it’s nice to have mysteries to investigate, research to carry out and social stuff going on in the game as well - I guess 58% is reasonable. Not even sure what ’specialist’ means (someone enlighten me?). Casual gamer - definitely not!