Dark Age of Eracost Session 4

 From my perspective, playing Fingol the Navgarine Keeper.

Party:

• Fingol Innes, Navgarine Keeper of the Stars 1

• Tavenna, 0-level apprentice keeper

• Greg, Paladin 1 (in absentia, played by me)

• Jaret, Navgarine Urchin 1

• Ceana, 0-level seamstress

• Efaila, 0-level tavern keeper

• Ambrogino, Venturer 1 (in absentia, played by me and Jaret)

• Szeidran, 0-level guard

• Draeo, Assassin 1

• Shevayron, Tratkean Fighter 1

May 5, 427

Yesterday, the party had arrived back in Amtolosz after raiding Tarvon’s brigand patrols. On the morning of the 5th, there was a disturbance in the streets, as a wounded man arrived in town, reporting that Tarvon had raided a hamlet in the Baronies, slaughtering everyone and sending the lone survivor with a message that the “coward” who had killed his men should show himself. Of course we had no idea who he referred to, since we were all very based and courageous lads who had slaughtered his men.

So after briefly considering a reckless outing to try to intercept his raiding party, we proceeded with our previous plans and force-marched south to the small city of Rantal.

May 6

Here the party took two weeks to prepare for the attack on Tarvon.

Notable hiring:

• Fingol hired a new 0-level henchman, Kirosz, a muscular launderer with an intense desire to “wring the brigands’ necks”

• Ambrogino hired an artillerist and a driver for his cart-mounted ballista

• Greg/the party hired a small force of mercenaries:

• 10 light infantry

• 14 heavy spearmen

• 6 bowmen

Notable purchases:

• 2 war dogs with spiked leather barding (1 for Shevayron, 1 for Fingol)

• 14 bags of caltrops (!!)

Tavenna was assigned to study healing for two weeks with the local physicker, Shevayron worked on learning riding and some others did odd jobs for a bit of coin.

May 21

We scouted the brigand patrol paths, then approached Tarvon’s fort after nightfall. The fort was a strong stone keep, with a bailey surrounded by a 10' wooden palisade.

A rough sketch of our force deployment:

Advance

• Draeo and Jaret

Center

• 14 Heavy spearmen + Greg in a single rank

• 6 bowmen + Kilosz in second rank

Right flank

• 5 light infantry with javelins

• Fingol, Tavenna, 3 armored war dogs and 2 hunting dogs

Left flank

• 5 light infantry with javelins

• Shevayron, 2 armored war dogs

Rear

• The ballista cart with Ambrogino, Szeidran, Efaila, Ceana and the unnamed cart driver and artillerist

The main force held back far out of hearing distance without torches while the advance force sneaked up to the palisade. They made it up to a dark section of the wall undetected, then slid along to the gate and began spreading caltrops. Still not hearing any disturbance, they went north and lit a section of the palisades on fire with naphtha, then circled all the way around to the south.

When the watchmen finally spotted the fire, they raised the alarm and sent five men out to fight the fire. Those five men ran across the caltrops and were horribly incapacitated. Seeing the fire lit, our main force advanced.

While the general confusion reigned, Draeo and Jaret slipped over the palisade on the south wall. They tried to light the stable on fire to stop the brigand cavalry from mounting up, but it didn’t stop them.

At this point we realized there were 31 medium cavalry with lamellar and barded warhorses. Previous intel had said there were 20 cavalry, and we had assumed they were light cavalry. We had prepared two layers of anti-cavalry defenses - first the caltrops, then the heavy spearmen. 14 against 31 didn’t look too good, but then…

The cavalry charged out the gates directly through 15 ft. of caltrops, and they were absolutely devastated. On the same round, we hit them with a bolt from our medium ballista and a volley of arrows. At the end of the round there were only 8 or 9 left standing, and their morale broke. The next round they attempted to retreat, but none made it back inside.

With the heart of Tarvon’s forces torn out, we advanced, exchanging fire with his archers until they retreated. To add insult to injury, Draeo had set even more caltrops on the grassy field between the gate and the keep, which took out even more archers. Unfortunately, the retreating archers caught on to the fact that someone was infiltrating, and they quickly searched the tents and outbuildings. Draeo and Jaret were both caught and slain by the enraged brigands.

Our main force advanced into the bailey, and the brigands sealed themselves into the keep.

Dark Age of Eracost Campaign Session 3

From my perspective, playing Fingol the Navgarine Keeper.

Party:

• Fingol Innes, Navgarine Keeper of the Stars 1

• Greg, Paladin 1 (in absentia, played by me)

• Jaret, Navgarine Urchin 1

• Ambrogino, Venturer 1

• Draeo, Assassin 1

• Shevayron, Tratkean Fighter 1

April 14, 427

Late in the evening, the party returned to Amtolosz and went to the Garden House inn, where they met a Tratkean sailor named Shevayron and quickly recruited him.

April 15-27

During the following two weeks of downtime the party sold all the bandit gear, including the magic items, and spent lots of money on equipment, mounts, dogs and henchmen. Fingol managed to get a war dog and kitted him out with spiked chainmail.

In all, four 0-level henchmen were hired. Jaret hired two women who appeared to have potential as thieves, and Draeo began training them in hopes that they would be able to level into assassins. Ambrogino hired a spearman from the town guard. And Fingol hired Tavena, an apprentice Navgarine Keeper.

“I’m essentially looking for if any of the women are morally dubious.” - Jaret

“I need FIGHTING MEN!” - Fingol before hiring a female mage.

“If you were to fall down the stairs, would you survive the impact?” - Jaret to Tavena, who turned out to have 1 hp.

April 28

The newly expanded party set out toward the location which we’d been told contained a hill fort occupied by Tarvon and his brigands. The total strength now was 6 PCs, 4 Henchmen, 2 hunting dogs and 2 war dogs.

April 29

We stashed Ambrogino’s cart and set out on elk-back to scout the hex. Very quickly we stumbled upon the fort, a small stone keep with a wooden palisade around the bailey. We set up along one of the trails leading toward it.

It wasn’t long before a patrol of 5 men came across the party’s path, and we ran them down, taking a prisoner. We got some basic numbers out of the prisoner before executing him, and found that the brigands had more numbers than we thought. We also found out that there were two patrols of 5 men out, and the route of the other. Thanks to this information we intercepted the second patrol and wiped them out as well.

April 30-May 1

The party had some wounded, and wanted to go back to town as the new month would mean another war dog, so we headed back to Amtolosz. On the way, we spotted what may have been a valuable vein of ore.

There, in addition to the new supply of war dog and military oil, we found that we could obtain siege engines. Ambrogino promptly built himself a war wagon with a medium ballista on the back. None of us understood the rules for siege engines so we got away with (figurative… just barely) murder. Next session we’ll have to correct the ballista rules, but at this point we were rolling with a warthog from Halo.

May 2-3

Returned to the field. Updated strength: 6 PCs, 4 Henchmen, 2 hunting dogs, 3 armored war dogs and a medium ballista on a cart.

We camped out again on the brigand patrol routes, and this time ran across a patrol of 10 men. They’d obviously doubled the patrol size since we ambushed the previous ones, but this was to our benefit, as we still won the fight with ease and took out twice the men.

Figuring if it worked once it might work again, we checked the opposite patrol route and… voila, another brigand patrol. This time after the shock and awe of our ballista, we captured 5 men.

May 4-5

We took the 5 prisoners back to Amtolosz and turned them in to the guard, accepting a small reward.

 

Dark Age of Eracost Campaign Sessions 1 and 2

Session 1

From my perspective, playing Fingol the Navgarine Keeper (custom race for the Illiras setting, closest analogue would be an elven mage).

Party:

• Fingol Innes, Navgarine Keeper of the Stars 1

• Jarett, Navgarine Urchin 1

• Ambrosio, Venturer 1

• Draeo, Assassin 1

• Greg, Paladin 1

April 10, 427

Arrived outside Amtalosz, where there was a wagon being inspected at the gate.

A guard approached the wagon, and a brigand stabbed him, shouting “Tarvon has a message!”

5 brigands leapt from the wagon and attacked the guards. Fingol tried to help, along with some other bystanders. Fingol’s two hunting dogs, Godwin and Fion, were slain in the fight, but the brigands were killed without any other human casualties.

After the fight, the party received no reward and little thanks from the guards, but only some information. Tarvon is a brigand leader, for whom there is a 1000 gp reward offered by the Earl of Amtolosz.

At the mercenary guild in town there were two other postings. One to investigate beastmen attacks in the north, and another to investigate disappearances.

Banding together with the other adventurers from the gate, Fingol agreed to go after Tarvon in a few days. In the meantime, Fingol (who has Alchemy 3) took on some work with the local alchemist, earned some gold and bought 2 new hunting dogs.

Session 2

From my perspective, playing Fingol the Navgarine Keeper.

Party:

• Fingol Innes, Navgarine Keeper of the Stars 1

• Jarett, Navgarine Urchin 1

• Ambrosio, Venturer 1 (in absentia, played by Jarett)

• Draeo, Assassin 1

• Greg, Paladin 1 (in absentia, played by me)

April 13, 427

The party set out with the five adventurers, 2 hunting dogs, 1 war dog and a cart, searching the road to the south for evidence of brigands. In the morning there was an encounter with a merchant train that amounted to nothing. But in the evening, we encountered brigands.

25 brigands came out of the hills, and we failed our surprise roll so they were 2 rounds from engaging us before we could even think about fleeing. Not wanting to lose our cart and supplies, and knowing that Fingol had a big AoE spell, we started shooting and casting.

Fingol got the perfect casting of the spell Falter Creatures, which is a lightning spell that does damage in a cone similar to Fan of Flames. Bigger cone, smaller damage, and creatures who fail the save falter for a round. The cone covered EVERY brigand. It was glorious.

With elementalism I had a d6+1 of damage… and I rolled a 1. 4 out of 25 brigands went down. At this point we all figured we’d be switching to our backup characters.

Draeo shot down the brigand leader, but they charged in and surrounded us. Fingol fled to his riding mule, Greg got wrestled to the ground immediately, and the 2 new hunting dogs were butchered (that’s 4 dogs in 2 sessions I’ve lost). The three remaining PCs were all Charisma guys, and they negotiated a surrender.

As the party was dragged away, Fingol followed the trail.

After force-marching, the brigands had an encounter very similar to the one we’d had earlier in the day - a merchant caravan of 20 wagons. Now the CHA characters went to work again, and before long the wounded brigands were convinced to greedily attack the caravan, and our assassin was going in with them. Six brigands were left with the prisoners, and of course as soon as the others were gone, the prisoners rose up to attack, and Fingol came out of the woods to help. Jarett’s war dog had a field day and the brigands were slaughtered.

On the other end, it was 10 brigands against a merchant and 4 guards, but the merchant was a 5th level venturer. Between him cleaving and Draeo backstabbing, the brigands were crushed and scattered. We chased them down and left only one alive, to answer questions.

We learned a lot from the prisoner. We got the rough location of Tarvon’s hideout in an old fort, learned that he has about 50 more men, including 20 cavalry and 2 Navgarine practitioners. We got the tip that local village women had been visiting the brigands, and Jarett followed this up the next day on the road, speaking to a farmer, then a village priest, then a disgruntled father, then finally a young woman who had run off with a brigand. Miriam gave us some further details of the fort and Tarvon’s routines.

Finally, we returned to Amtalosz to sell our cartful of brigand equipment. Loot included a potion, two magic scrolls and a map, as well as 25 sets of bandit gear.

Game Mechanics of Praying for Miracles in ACKS II

Today I'm sharing my house rules for miracles in Novalia.

Two things led to me writing this set of rules. Firstly back in February, Arbrethil dropped this very interesting set of house rules. At the time I read them with great interest, but didn’t think they were quite right for my campaign. Then, one of my players had a character pray for a spontaneous miracle, a cure from poison. It came at a time and place where, while unlikely, it was totally plausible in-world that his god might be listening.

So, I made a quick ruling, rolled a die and carried on. Rulings over rules, right? Well, not so fast. As Alex Macris and others have pointed out, rulings should become rules, lest the campaign become inconsistent and regress into a game of “mother may I” in the long term. My initial ruling was a band-aid. Roll a d20, and on a 20 your god will grant your request. This was fine for a one-off where I need a ruling off the top of my head, but obviously simplistic, easily abused and not conducive to actually simulating the world.

The result of sitting down to flesh out the system is this: my own version of Miraculous Divine Magic, using Arbrethil’s work as a foundation.

Miracles v3 (google drive pdf)

Novalia Campaign Session 30

Andrzej

• Eduardo del Cuchillo, Thief 1

Matt

• Su’zhan Thatcher, Barbarian 1

The 3rd day of Dolor, the 1181st year in the Era of Compact, about noon.

Eduardo, Su’zhan and Hardwin (being played as a henchman in the absence of his player) stood over the dead body of their companion, Johan. They pressed on, hoping to find the remaining secrets of the tomb.

After searching the stone soldier statues for traps and finding nothing, Eduardo snuck south and found a room covered in yellow mold. On the far side of the room was a closet with ancient rotted vestments. The characters could see gold thread glinting.

Su’zhan poked at the mold with an unlit torch and it shot spores into the air at him, but he managed to dodge back and avoid breathing them in!

Then the party made the fateful decision to try to tiptoe across the mold to reach the closet. Su’zhan’s first few steps didn’t trigger it, but Hardwin’s armored boots did. Spores filled the air and Su’zhan and Hardwin began choking and gasping for breath. Eduardo leapt forward to try to pull Hardwin back, but inhaled a lungful of spores in the process. Within a minute, all three men lay dead among the spores.

Part 2, after the TPK

Andrzej

• Adhar, Paladin 1

Matt

• Morrin Elderbrook, Explorer 1

Dolor 24

Three weeks later, another pair of adventurers wandered into Rosenfeld. Adhar and Morrin immediately learned about the horrible events at the tavern. Hans Weimann, whose life had been saved by Johan, told how the men had not returned, but no one in town had the nerve to go back in. The arrival of the paladin steeled Hans’ resolve, and he equipped himself to lead the adventurers to the tomb.

Inside, the pair quickly followed the footsteps of their predecessors through the insect-damaged wall into the termite queen’s chamber, then into the room with the sarcophagus. There they found Johan and the others. Hans picked up Johan’s holy symbol, and they began troubleshooting the problem of the mold again.

This time, Adhar had the idea to throw a torch and found that it burned the mold pretty effectively before dissolving. Morrin recklessly threw a cloak onto the mold and… inhaled poisonous spores. With Morrin gasping and coughing up blood, Adhar prayed for him, invoking the intercession of his dead son (a callback to an older campaign with alternate universe Adhar).

DM aside: at this point I made a roll to see if a miraculous cure would occur due to this intercession. This may sound a bit like “mother may I” or “rule of cool” gaming which generally goes against my gaming philosophy. But it made sense to me given the worldbuilding and situation. Anyway… the die fell perfectly for Morrin and Adhar.

Mysteriously, Morrin’s choking stopped and he slowly regained consciousness. He was left incapacitated and in need of a week’s bed rest.

More throwing of torches followed, igniting the cloak and eventually Hardwin’s flask of military oil. The mustard mold was burned away. The party noted that the smoke drifted away down the south hallway, not toward them. They proceeded into the room after the smoke cleared, and looted their former characters. They also grabbed the handful of gold thread which had tempted them to their deaths earlier.

To the west, Adhar and Hans found a room filled with embalming tools and amphorae. Adhar was surprised to sense no evil enchantments, but they smashed the amphorae anyway.

To the south they came to a dead end, with a mechanism for pulling part of the sandstone wall aside. Adhar opened the door and sunlight shone in! They found themselves back in the entrance chamber. From here they returned to Rosenfeld and scored a decent haul of xp. Since Morrin had some xp from previous adventures, this was enough to bump him up to level 2.

The party at this point believed the tomb was clear of enemies, but wanted to haul away the remains of their friends for burial. But since Morrin was weak and the Dirge fast was near, they waited in town until the end of Dirgetide. In the meantime, Hans was officially hired on by Adhar as a henchman, and three farmhands agreed to help haul the bodies for an exorbitant fee. The silver sword was given to Karla, the widow of Marcus, whose death had begun this adventure.

Morrin also loaned Adhar his sword - an ancient weapon that had once belonged to a Paladin long forgotten.

Victor 5

The party set out on the day after Dirgetide and re-entered the tomb. While the farmhands carefully gathered the human remains, with Hans watching over them, Adhar and Morrin began searching the tomb carefully.

After some time painstakingly searching the Termite Queen’s cave, Morrin heard a sudden, unearthly scream, which came from behind the stone wall! Through the stone floated the ethereal shape of a man, his face twisted with hate and anger. Morrin held his nerve and reacted with sharply honed instincts. He struck the apparition with Marcus’ silver dagger, slashing it apart.

A second ghost followed, and managed to touch Morrin. At the ice cold touch he felt part of the warmth of life leave him, but he fought on bravely and Adhar came to his aid. Between the Paladin’s magic sword and the silver dagger, the undead spirit was dispersed.

Enemies defeated:

Mustard mold

2 Haunts

Treasure:

Silver sword

Silver dagger

Gold from the idol of Kaleth (1000 gp)

11 garnets

Gold thread (50 gp)

XP gained:

PC: 797

Hench: 398

Current XP totals:

Adhar: 797 / 2750 (level 1)

Morrin: 2095 / 4000 (level 2)

Eduardo: dead

Su’zhan: dead

Hardwin: dead

Hans Weimann 398 / 2000 (level 1)