AP: The Lakeside Shuffle

And on we continue with our quest. Participating this session:

Iolo (Half Elf Bard/Rogue) - A freelancer hired by house Vadalis to investigate the failed assassination attempts. The eccentricity of the group will drive him to alcoholism. At that point, he'll fit right in.
Paulic (Elf Ranger) - Continues to exemplify the perfect Ranger. And the perfect Valenar. A new measurement was created this session, Paulics per Million, or PPM. Paulic is all PPM. A regular ranger might be 30 PPM. He is like, the chosen one of Rangers.
Phedre (Elf Cleric) - Her wandering accent hides a vulnerable side. I think her left side? This must also be the side that encourages her to flounce. Elves, right?
K'rrul (Kobold Assassin) - Discovered the sexy side of assassination, earning the name "Cruel. . .Sexual Assassin".
Arashi (Genasi Swordmage) - Again, the battle basically swirls around him. Of all the characters in the game, he is the one most likely to be a kick-ass action game hero. Also, is intimidating to *crazy* people as well as non-crazies. Look out!
Jasper (Gnome Wizard/Warlock) - Hopefully adventuring with a band of felons and misfits only enhances his reputation as an explorer, not tarnishing his reputation as an academic. Since really, he's the scariest of us all.

The travel weary and teleport-lagged Eye of the Storm trotted into Lakeside after a journey of a thousand miles. We were after Serin. He was our latest clue in a continent spanning treasure hunt, with the prize being a spoiled Vadalis heir that was targeted by a cult of deathless assassins known as 'The Stillborn'.

Luckily for us, the Vadalis compound was easily found. In this small town of roughly 1,000 people, the Dragonmarked family was the largest institution. We made our way directly to the stables to drop off our charges. We were paid (surprisingly), and directed to where we could find Serin.

Yes, Serin was actually Nolan. He had been hiding out here since our departure, and had not been idle. He introduced us to Iolo. Iolo had been doing some digging about these assassination attempts, and had discovered:
- They were being undertaken by an organization known as "The Black Flock"
- A certain assassin known as Crow had been asking around Irongate, looking for sellswords. Presumably this was to replace the ones we have killed.

Over the next few hours discussion we learned that Nolan was a Dragonmarked scion of his house. His dragonmark allowed him control over animals and other beasts. Whether the flock wanted him for that, or for other nefarious purposes, we didn't yet know.

Iolo's investigations had also discovered that some unknown group was descending on Lakeside. We were pretty convinced that Nolan's cover was blown (and just in time, naturally). Luckily, while we discussed this, Nolan started getting more and more drunk on fine brandy. He agreed to go with us to the town's only Inn, and set a trap for this group.

When we arrived we found out that a woman had been asking around for Nolan. While the party arranged to purchase the second floor of the inn, Arashi told a stable boy to go to this woman and tell her where we were. The Innkeeper was kicked out. The party spread out on the first floor, and Paulic took a spot in the second floor window overlooking the entrance.

Three figures approached the inn. Paulic quarried one, but did not shoot. They entered, and after a short (and fruitless) conversation, a bar fight broke out:

An insane Kalashtar Monk, a Black Flock Necromancer, and an archer, just inside the door. Nolan was in the rear. Iolo was right up by the enemies (and Phedre's MC Shaman Spirit Companion). The middle row on the left was Phedre (on the bar), Arashi, and K'rrul (hiding on the stairs). Jasper was in the back, and Paulic was upstairs.

- Iolo darted in and with a flick of his rapier, spectacularly missed. The miss was most likely a feint, though, as he slashed across the face of the lead caster (minor action attack crit following his standard action miss).
- Paulic moved to the top of the stairs and executed a crit himself. Things looked smashing for the heroes!
- Phedre turned undead. . .and nothing happened. Seems her keen elven eyes and highly trained Clerical knowledge took a back seat to her hatred of Stillborn and she failed to check whether this necromancer was undead before she tried turning her.
- *Immediately* after she turned undead, the necromancer summoned a good handful of skeletons. Don't think the party didn't point out this poor timing to Phedre at the time. It's a good thing her flouncing on the bar top didn't provoke an Opportunity Attack when she moved in to Turn Undead.
- The tide began to turn. A skeleton ran at Nolan, cowering in the back of the tavern, and cut him down.
- The crowded inn was filled with explosions of thunder and lightning as Arashi and Jasper cut down skeletons in an effort to turn the tide.
- Paulic must have spent the months traveling in honing his craft. Instead of turn after turn of twin strike, he used all the tricks available to him, shifting around the battlefield and in general, filling even more things with arrows than before.
- Iolo's skill set was a perfect fit for our eclectic group. With no real solid front line, or a battle strategy worth anything, our plan is usually to scatter like roaches and chew at the closest or weakest thing we could find. Iolo was a natural at this.
- K'rrul, towards the end of the battle, leaped into the shadow of the necromancer. Due to the unintentionally suggestive things that got said about his status, he was dubbed the Sexual Assassin.
- When the outcome of the battle started looking inevitable, Phedre shrieked "I won't be denied!", as she wanted to be the one to deal the deathblow to the assassin.
- Paulic had a great time shouting that same thing before each shot for the rest of the encounter.
- The archer was cut down, and then the Necromancer, but the monk was still kicking. Like, really still kicking.
- Once bloodied, he was intimidated into surrendering by Arashi.

As it was well past our normal ending time, we stopped right there. . .

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Iolo is our friend Dan's character. A hybrid bard/rogue. He fits really well, and it looks like the powers of those two classes are pretty complimentary. He has quite a few ways to gain combat advantage by himself, as well as some leadery things (like CA for *everyone* and his 1/encounter heal). He is already more liked in the party than K'rrul. Can you blame them though? He's a half elf. . .

And Andrew (Paulic's player) was so bugged that we gave him a hard time about only twin striking, that he spent the intervening weeks poring over his cards. He was really, really effective with all his powers available. I highly approve!

This was our first fight since our shopping trip. Sadly, I don't think much got used. Arashi kept forgetting to activate his bracers to resist necrotic damage (until too late). Jasper changed the damage type of his curse once or twice, to no real effect. Of course, that is just how I like it. I like the power residing in the PC's, not their trinkets.

K'rrul hid in the Necromancer's shadow for one round, but the comments lasted the rest of the encounter. I can't wait until he can do that Daily, for an entire encounter. The lulz will never end. . .

Jay

PS - blogger is being a tard about me uploading the one picture I have for this session. I'll work on it.

AP: Do you have this +2 Goblinkiller Armor in baby blue? It sets off my eyes.

Alternate title: "Does this Cloak of Fireslaughter make my ass look big?"

Fear not gentle folk, I have not forgotten the blog. We have not gamed every week, so I am working on getting 2 sessions down. The session for this post was a shopping trip and globe trotting adventure. Not a lick of combat.

Our intrepid adventurers Paulic, Phedre, Arashi, K'rrul, and Jasper again sallied forth from a campsite surrounded by the rotting corpses of their fallen enemies. Paulic's excellent pathfinding and knowledge of natural processes sped our feet and we made our grand entrance into the Fortress of Fading as night fell.

Our first order of business was to raid the vault of our slain would-be ambushers. Irus took his share of the loot and bought his contract from Paulic, returning to his family in the city for now.

We traveled together to Senzimay's estate. She welcomed us warmly, and offered us a place to rest for a day, and her services as a ritual caster. We graciously accepted, and got to shopping.

Eladrin only trance for four hours a day, so the city was teeming with life at all hours. We had a bit of time to ourselves to unload the vast amounts of wealth we had acquired. Enough, in fact, for each member of our party to purchase one 8th level magic item.

A good deal of real time later, and one in game day later, we had satisfied our urges and spent about half of our current capital on becoming more efficient killers.

Then we began our travel. A couple of days hiking out of the mountain to the sea to catch our boat. No incident in the city (surprisingly), and no problem finding our ride outta town. The boat took a few weeks to sail West along the coast to the mouth of a large river, where we were dropped off. We hiked to the small seaside fishing village Seaside Reef. There Arashi leapt on his summoned horse and galloped ahead to the next large town, Quarry. In Quarry he hired a boat to go upriver, and when the party arrived we boarded this boat and traveled to Aridusk by boat. Another few weeks.

From Aridusk we were able to board the lightning rail and traveled in style to Verithrond. We hurried to the Vadalis compound to find Nolan. . .and he is not there. Nobody knows where he is. We are told that if we want to find him, we had best find the man known as Serin. He is posted in the Vadalis stronghold in Karrnath.

This is where our Eberron geography lesson occured. Since even with the map, divining how our voyage transpired was difficult, we related the voyage to landmarks in the US. We just left New Hampshire, took a boat to Minnesota, and then all the way up a river to like, Colorado. Or something. Now, we found out that the place we needed to be is like, Ohio, or Kentucky. Or something. Also, we found out that Nolan's brother was the King of Wisconsin. Nice.

Faced with the prospect of another long voyage, and one that would be simpler if we could only travel through the Mournland (remember, the Louisiana Purchase is an impossible mess to travel through), we started poking around for a way to teleport there.

Our eventual solution was to hire a house Orien mage to teleport us as near our destination as possible. To defray the tremendous cost (well, we could easily afford it, but we didn't *want* to pay) we offered to transport some magebred draft horses for house Vadalis. That was roughly half of our trip paid for. Not bad.

The deal went off without a hitch, and we ended the session arriving in Karrnath with a dozen expensive horses. A few hours ride was all that kept us from the next leg of our journey. . .

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Quite a bit of time was spent dividing up our money and purchasing goods. It had been awhile since I played in a shopping session, and I kind of enjoyed it. Like planning an assault, it can be fun occasionally, but can also be a drag if done too often. We had been hoarding our goods for awhile, so we had around 23,000 or so GP to spend. Most upgrading was actually pretty utilitarian. We couldn't afford to buy up too many plusses, so we bought items that helped us in other ways. Jasper got some gloves that let him change the damage type of his Curse, and spend some charges to add damage to an enemy. Arashi got some gauntlets that helped him resist damage. I think once our Mage and Cleric learn to enchant and transfer magic items we will do a little more of the upgrading. I know K'rrul still has a +1 neck piece, and I'm sure he's not the only one behind on the big three.

A lot of off topic chat, as we weren't really all focused on buying stuff together. One random conversation began as a musing as to what Deathless (an Undead Elf variant in the Eberron setting) ate, exactly. We determined that they can only eat twinkies that were forged when they were still alive. Twinkies are forged in the fires of Mount Doom. "Come and get 'em while they're hot!" Sauron says, as he adjusts his apron.

I guess you had to be there.

Jay

AP: Clever Title Placeholder

Full party again this session. Good thing too, as we stumbled into a nest of trouble. Stumbled/Galloped, really:

Paulic/Irus - One boy split into two bodies, this session they perfected the Twin Twin Strike. That's right, four arrows. As they are controlled by one mind, Paulic often acted as the laser designator for Irus' arrows.
Phedre - If her devotion to the party was ever doubted, she only need point to fights like this one. Arashi was propped up by her healing, and she brought back Paulic from the brink of death with it.
Arashi - Certainly got the enemy's attention, since even without being marked they focused on him, mostly. Was swarmed early, healed up, swarmed again, and healed again. . .ended the fight so deep in negatives that another attack would have killed him for good.
K'rrul - As an Assassin should, he stayed hidden, invisible, or concealed for the first half of the fight. Less impressive than Paulic, but the enemies were Brutes, so he hit with nearly every attack this fight.
Jasper - Obliging enemies clumped up for him, and his spells were extra effective this fight. Also managed to save Paulic's life. Three cheers for Jasper!

The party piled into the cave en masse, since our stealth was clearly broken at this point. Arashi carried the weaker party members over the river, and we climbed up into the ogre's home. It was a dead end.

There was a large ogre-sized bed, and several broken pieces of furniture that had been feeding a fire at one point. Despite searching around for another way in or out, we found nothing. We left the cave empty handed. Paulic looked at the surroundings and guessed that in other valleys like this, with a river, ponds or lakes often formed at the low point. He thought that if ogres had moved in, they likely gravitated to the lake as it was a source of water and possibly food. Arashi climbed a tree to scope out the area, and saw a thin wisp of smoke in the distance, coming from the lower part of the valley. With afternoon approaching, we shouldered our packs and walked the few miles to the lake.

We arrived on the opposite side of the ogre camp. From our position in the grass at the edge of the lake, we saw four or five buildings. One of them was a log cabin-type structure, and it had smoke rising from the chimney. At that distance we were unable to determine much more, so K'rrul ghosted off to scout out the camp.

He returned and confirmed what they saw. Four tents, one smallish cabin, and ogres and wolves visible. A quick and dirty plan was hatched:
- Paulic, Irus, K'rrul, Phedre, and Jasper go back to where K'rrul had observed the ogres and hide.
- Arashi was to circle around the opposite side of the lake.
- When he was good and ready, he would mount his Obsidian Charger and . . .charge through the camp.

Paulic and Irus each climbed trees to 15 feet or so high. Jasper, Phedre, and Phedre's Mister Bubbles each hid behind a tree in the forest. K'rrul hid in the high grasses and brush at the edge of the woods, but outside the camp. And waited.

Arashi charged through the camp like an elemental fury. Shouting and yelling, he whipped his sword over his head as lightning coursed over his body. It certainly got the ogre's attention. They unleashed their wolves and followed him into the woods.

A nublie young human, dressed in scant clothing stepped calmly from the cabin and took to the air, hovering 10 feet above the ground and moving towards the woods herself. In addition to all of that noise (3 ogres, 3 wolves, 1 mysterious caster), three totems in the village all released spirit animals. One each of a wolverine, bear, and mountain lion ghost totems leapt from their prisons and charged after Arashi.


Even though he was mounted, an ogre managed to catch up to him just as he entered the trees. It was perfect timing, really:
- The ogre had unknowingly lodged itself in our trap. It ran right by K'rrul in the grass, and ended up just a few feet from Jasper and Phedre.
- Almost the entire ogre army got to go before the rest of us went. The Vicious Dire Wolves, The Ogre Savages, and the jailbait something or other all went before any of us. They advanced, but as yet only one of the ogres was in our trap
- We sprung. K'rrul stabbed, Paulic and Irus shot, and Jasper cast. Now that our trap had sprung. . .were we just normal combatants, about to get smashed to jelly by ogres?
- Arashi was foiled early. He marked and moved, but the wolves had an ability to pull their target prone, and the other wolves all did bonus damage to prone targets. In addition to taking gobs of damage, he was wasting a move action every turn just standing back up. Luckily, the one he marked first attacked someone else, and he used his mark to teleport out of the gank and near his allies.
- Jasper changed the face of the fight in the first round or two. He bravely charged in, getting clubbed nearly to bloodied for his trouble, just so he can try to Otherwind Stride the ogres and immobilize them. He did hit one this way, and then dropped an Enlarged Acid Mire where he was, hitting most of the enemy and creating a huge, 5x5 area of difficult terrain.
- Phedre then spent her first few turns healing Jasper and Arashi up, then spent the rest of the fight healing herself, Arashi, K'rrul, Arashi, Paulic, Arashi, etc.
- Mr Improbable, Paulic/Irus, seemed invulnerable and cocky shooting at ogres without fear of reprisal. Their flying, improbably hot leader closed in on him, however, and instructed her ogres to do the same. Suddenly realizing that 15 feet is not that high to an ogre, Paulic was forced to use his magic cape to teleport away. Irus had an ability that let him get away from his ogre, too, but they were on the run and without their superior vantage point.
- The seemingly endless bag of hitpoints represented by the ogre mini finally dropped to our focus fire, leaving only two more ogres, two wolves (one of which was bloodied) and the spirit totems.
- Right. . .the totems. They were minions, which was a nice gimme in this bloodbath. Their catch, though, was that they imbued their allies with various, unnamed and improbable boons when they died. At one point we were fighting an ogre wearing a wolf mask with supernatural bestial elements reflecting the lion and bear totems. Quite the amalgam of a creature.
- With the ogres intent on killing our archers, and the boss lady not much of a threat (yet), we were able to start finishing off the wolves. This was working, being hastened by the Acid Mire, and Phedre summoning her Consecrated Ground. There was one poor wolf immobilized in two different auto-damage zones.
- Consecrated Ground was keeping Arashi from dying, and things were looking. . .okay. Or at least *less* deadly. Possibly sensing the same change in tone, the ogre leader morphed from a nubile young temptress into a Large, horrid, steaming mess of ugly. With a club. The ball is in our court, it looks like.
- Jasper had just teleported Arashi out of the way of the ogre leader and into the Consecrated Ground. Now she was in melee with two of the squishy members of the party, and she bore down on Paulic.
- With his freshly renewed vigor, and seven whole HP's, Arashi engaged her again. It was nearly his final act. He was dropped back into negatives again, and far away from the safety of Consecrated Ground.
- Desperation or teamwork had us focusing fire on her, and we quickly brought her down through bloodied, and eventually dead. Not before she dropped Paulic and chased Jasper away. Clever use of Eyebite kept him off of her radar, and kept him alive.
- Arashi didn't die, though he was so far negative that 10 or so more HP's would have killed him for good. We stopped there.

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Paulic's double crit Twin Strike. Those dice must have 20's on more than one side to crit so much. ..

This session was mostly combat. It was kind of the culmination of this little investigation, two sessions of figuring out what was so scary in this valley, and if it had anything to do with the wagon crash. It appears it did. The ogres were led by an Ogre Mage, Jesse let slip. Someone super smart had guessed this very early on, so it was kind of a confirmation more than anything.

This was a pretty fun time, despite it being a long fight. We are sixth level, and had enough tricks up our sleeves to stay creative through most of the fight. Except Arashi. Those wolves really messed with his game. He lost enough actions that he was still sitting on Dailies, even though Jasper, Phedre, and K'rrul had been using theirs. . .kind of an admission that this fight was maybe a touch out of our league. Despite that, all the attention paid to Arashi (and deservedly so, with his pre-fight role as bait) kept them off of us long enough for us to whittle them down. Had they honed in on our two archers early and taken them out, or shut down Jasper's controlling, it would have been a very different fight.

Next week . . .exposition, roleplay, and possibly a surprise or two!

Jay

AP: My name is Koulton Brightwind, and I approved this message.

So this will be a two for one post (again), life has jumped up and stolen a bunch of my free time, so I got a little behind. Both sessions were full houses, with all players present:


Jasper - Begins work on phase two of his life plan, gain notoriety for himself to enhance the dust jacket of his book(s). He does so by schilling for a Pirate Captain.
K'rrul - Continues his efforts at fitting in to the party. Unfortunately, he remains unsuccessful to date.
Arashi - Begins the quest that Jasper finishes, though his inner Swordmage would much rather just cut to the chase and kill the opposition.
Phedre - Ultimately it is her goal to return to Verithrond in time to save a pretty dragonmarked man from assassination. So really, this is *all her fault*.
Paulic - Continues his tradition of just shooting the hell out of anything that gets in his way. Along the way he attracts a follower who has similar goals in life.


After the dust settled from our epic(ish) battle with the Eladrin assassination squad, we decided to split up and gather some information. Que the montage.


Phedre cast Speak with Dead, and Arashi brainstormed on some questions to ask the Eladrin leader. We convinced the lone surviving assassin to join us. His name is Irus, and he is our new Paulic. So we had two Paulics now. Both taciturn, arrow shooting, elfin murderers.


The rest of us went to the rooms of the Spiked Star. We considered taking their group name (The Spiked Star!), but I think consensus was that it was too retarded. Instead we took a bunch of their stuff. In addition to some magic stuff we found on their bodies, we also recovered some maps and a journal. Oh, and a trunk full of *spellbooks*. This has the potential to be the most valuable thing we collected, but we won't know until Jasper or Phedre has time to catalogue them.


Speak with Dead was productive. We learned that the person that hired the assassins is none other than Anton. Big shocker there. Unfortunately, we were not able to find out why he did so. This was kind of a small time adventuring party, but apparently they were well known enough that when a different party of Eladrin (The Cunning Claws. Why couldn't we have killed *them* and taken their name?) noticed Irus traveling with us, they suspected something.


This kind of marks our descent into madness. At that point, our careful plans about pretending to be dead, or seeking revenge, or any other interesting thing fell apart. We decided to stay in our adversaries' rooms. An official from the hotel approached us as we climbed the stairs, and though we were able to bribe him, we were still required to sign in. Since we guessed that the sign in was compared to the official log kept by the Guard at the gate, we couldn't just BS it (Dr and Mrs Smith, of Bree, with retainers) and we sent our least cunning member to the front desk to sign us in.


That's right. Paulic (of clan Paulic, of the Paulic reaches in Paulic county, Paulic) and Irus went to the lobby to see what was going on. While he was down there, Paulic signed us in, with our real names. He also gave Irus a little direction on what to say to Elaceiria, the leader of The Cunning Claws. It was awkward to listen to. Like Paulic, he was used to using his bow to solve his problems, and it was clear that she wasn't quite comfortable with things.


That night, as we prepared to lie down and be killed in our sleep, a city guard knocked on Arashi's door and gave him a letter. As he was in a room alone, and did not elect to share with us what it said, we didn't know anything was up until early the next morning. As he left to go to a meeting (indicated by the secret note), Paulic caught up with him, and they went to negotiate our future with a Pirate captain.


When they returned, the told us of the *new* plan. This pirate captain liked us. She wanted to take us home. She was willing to do so, for free, if we did a favor for her. A pirate election was coming up, and her candidate, Koulton Brightwind, was running against Anton Fatass. She wanted us to talk to some of the other Pirate captains about their votes, and hopefully sway them to vote for Koulton.


Despite being the party that negotiated this deal, Arashi was against it. He proposed an easy solution, if Anton was dead, he could not be elected. The party agreed, with one exception. Jasper wanted to try a more elegant solution. He wanted to destroy Anton's life, by destroying the source of his power. His ultimate goal was to take away his wealth.

So, Anton and K'rrul started talking. We chatted up sailors in seedy dockside taverns, dock workers in seedier dockside whorehouses, and eventually got ourselves audiences with a few of the influential Pirate Captains. Jasper spoke plainly and honestly about our experiences with Anton, and about his evaluation of the Quartermaster's performance. He used information gleaned from some Captains to sway the votes of the more difficult to persuade ones. Finally, he resorted to outright lies to sway the final contact of the day, convincing her that Anton was poised to eliminate the Piracy aspect of the organization in accordance to a contract he made with Dwarves.

In the end, Jasper was able to tell our contact that should the people vote as they indicated, Koulton would carry the day. In return, she offered us passage to the mainland at the end of the week. Six days hence.

With almost a week to kill before our ride outta town, the party had a pow wow to decide what to do. Our most attractive option, and our eventual choice, was to travel back to the Eladrin city and loot the holdings of the Spiked Star. Irus, their sole surviving member, didn't seem to take any offense at this, so we left immediately. Since we had a couple of extra days, we also wanted to spend some time in the dark and scary valley, and investigate the wagon crash that we discovered.

After making camp that night, we started off early the next morning and soon reached the crash. After extensive searching returned very little new information, Jasper performed a ritual to hopefully shed some light on what had happened. His ritual allowed him to see what was loaded on the wagon (various fine Eladrin goods from the Fortress of Fading), how it crashed (an ambush by several large canine headed humanoids and their wolves), and what they did with the wagon after it crashed (unloaded the contents onto sleds and pulled it into the woods in the valley).

Paulic was able to pick out a path once Jasper gave him a heading, and we started off into the forest. Paulic was out in front scouting with K'rrul a few feet behind him when he stopped suddenly. One hundred or so feet away one of the wolf-headed ogres stood with two wolves, apparently unaware of our approach. We snuck into position, and Arashi got his attention by using an arc of lightning to create a thunderclap in a clearing. The ogre charged:
- 5 on 3 meant that unless this ogre was a solo or vastly higher in level, we had this fight in the bag before it started.
- He wasn't a solo or higher in level by enough to matter.
- Three strikers (K'rrul, Paulic, and Irus) focused fire on him and he was bloodied in the first round.
- Round two saw him down for the count, and his wolf companions soon followed.

Disturbingly, when we examined him we noticed that the wolf head was actually a mask or a kind of headdress. When removed, we saw no way for him to see out, and it was obvious to us that this ogre was blind. Creepy.

Paulic continues pathfinding, and we followed the trail to a cave near a river. The stench of ogre permeated the cave, so we were pretty certain our quarry was there. Paulic and K'rrul snuck inside. After a bend, the light from the entrance disappeared, and we were left groping blindly along. The noise from an underground river masked our approach somewhat, but it also blocked our passage. We couldn't tell how large or fast moving it was in the dark, and were unwilling to compromise our stealth. K'rrul waded in. About ten feet into his swim, just as he was unable to easily walk, he was attacked:
- Dire Stirges lived in this cave. K'rrul and Paulic were a good 100 feet into it, alone and in the dark, with the party lounging at the opening waiting for us to return.
- K'rrul popped a sunrod and illuminated the cave. A handful (6 or 7?) or stirges were clustered over the river. Paulic yelled for the party and began Twin Striking and backpedalling.
- Through a series of obfuscating techniques, K'rrul managed to escape and prevent his blood from being totally drained.
- The party rushed in the following round and a natural kink in the cave provided a good point to hold them off. The battle surged around that point for a bit, with Paulic getting a good bit of attention from the Sturges, but our ability to teleport kept them from draining us dry.

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And with that, I'm almost caught up. I have yesterday's game to detail, and that should be a bit of fun (big, climactic combat!). These two sessions were filled with talking, discussion, and exploration of Jesse's carefully built Pirate town. Early on, Jasper was labeled as a shill (Sarah Palin, to be specific) for Koulton, and a lot of jokes were had at his expense. His goal was revenge (in 5-10 years, if interest rates hold), and his motives were. . .annoying. In the end, it appears that we got what we wanted, but this is D&D. You never know if things will turn out as planned or bartered, and you should never count on it. We also managed to get some cathartic wholesale slaughter out of our systems, and should get rewarded my large amounts of lewt. We will see. . .

Jay

AP: We spring the trap!

A full house this session:

Jasper (Gnome Wizard Warlock 6) - Despite being only half controller, he controlled very well. Had the biggest letdown of the night when he was dominated and unable to sustain his Acid Mire immediately after casting it
K'rrul (Kobold Assassin/Rogue 6) - In his virgin combat he emerged solidly mediocre. Managed to crit on some guy who only had 10 HP remaining. Yay?
Arashi (Genasi Swordmage 6) - Took a ton of damage, and gave as good as he took. The confined space virtually guaranteed he'd be close enough to take advantage of his mark when it went off.
Paulic (Valenar Elf Ranger 6) - Continued the time honored tradition of bow rangers everywhere, quarry+twin strike=awesome. Now holds both the gold and silver in single round damage totals for the party.
Phedre - (Aerenal Elf Cleric/Shaman 6) - Must have done something to piss these guys off, since she took enough damage to be killed at least three times over. Consecrated Ground saved her life.



After some pregame chatter, we jumped right in with an initiative roll. Despite high dex characters, and good rolls, we ended up going all bunched up *after* our ambushers.

At the top of the battle mat were the large doors we entered through. The three minis outside the warehouse were ours, as were two of the minis just inside (crappy camera phone and poor lighting, sorry!). This was taken immediately after they charged in on us. No surprise round, since we were pretty sure that our boat wasn't going to leave from a landlocked lumber warehouse. Most of the boxes with lines through them represent piles of lumber. The southernmost one was actually a staircase. The three long skinny boxes that are divided in two (1x3, 1x4, 1x5) were masts suspended from the ceiling of the building, 30 feet up. The Large mini (not an Aboleth!) was a Fey Constrictor, the toughest snake ever. This was a *long* battle-
- The snake slithered through the pile of lumber and grabbed Arashi before he could go.
- Two of the other attackers aimed for Phedre from range.
- Two more charged in to engage at melee range.
- The net result was our healer having to use her first Healing Word on her first action to bring herself out of bloodied. She used another minor to summon her Spirit Companion (an elven mummy affectionately called Mr Bubbles).
- Arashi teleported out of the snake's coils (the first of many times this would happen) and tried working his Swordmage magic.

Swordmage magic is different from other defender magic. Where a Fighter or a Warden needs to be in melee range for his mark to be effective, and a Paladin needs to 'engage' his enemy, Swordmages invert that. An Assault Swordmage like Arashi needs to make his mark think hard about who they attack. If the mark is violated, Arashi can teleport up to 10 squares and hit the offender. If Arashi can get himself to the other side of the battlefield, his mark has to endure a gauntlet of OA's, get whacked by him, or do nothing. This fight was a good showcase for that. We mostly stayed bunched up at the door at first, meaning that Arashi was well served by marking an enemy far from the door and teleporting back near his allies.

- After our first round, the fight was feeling tense, with the obvious focus on our Cleric very apparent.
- With all the teleporting available (three of the five party members have quite a bit of the Nightcrawler in us) the neat clump of allies frayed a bit. The snake surprises us when *it* teleports.
- Something else that blindsided us was the Half Elf using a power to make us belive he was our ally. Predictably, Paulic the bloodthirsty Valenar was immune, but everyone else had to give the guy a wide birth.
- In fact, even as she lay dying, Phedre was failing saves against this power. Her twilight thoughts as she drifted in and out of must have been concern for her new found friend.
- And die Phedre did. She started bringing out her Daily heals to stave off the inevitable. It was for naught, as just a couple rounds in, she lay bleeding on the ground. It was then that we realized that *nobody had any healing potions* (not strictly true. . .Jasper had one he had forgotten about).
- Jasper spotted an opportunity and jumped at it. He threw down his new 5th level Daily, Acid Mire. A sustainable 3x3 area of bubbling acid that damaged anyone who started in it, or fell prone. It also acted as difficult terrain. With his amped up Thunderwave, he could keep an enemy or two tied up.
- He was promptly dominated. His daily expired after doing a few points of damage to the two enemies caught in the area.
- The nearest ally to Phedre, Paulic, rushes to her side to administer 'Valenar First Aid'. By repeatedly kicking her in the ribs, he was able to allow her to spend her Second Wind.
- The big guns, Bacon of Hope and Consecrated Ground get thrown down. Consecrated Ground will keep Phedre alive the rest of the combat.
- Split the Tree struck again. Paulic critted with one of his shots. Does this sound familiar? This time his grand total was 72 points of damage to two enemies, killing them both. He now holds the all time record and the runner up.
- That was the second and third enemy death, leaving a skirmsher(?), a 'sniper', and a snake to deal with. The sniper was annoying, spending his time leaping from mast to mast, 6 squares above the party. The snake was eating a tremendous amount of damage and not getting bloodied. The other guy was a pushover.

Difficult terrain was obviously available for us to use in this fight. Jesse had drawn it out lovingly in advance. He described in detail the features of the warehouse, and the masts hanging from the ceiling. Unfortunately, we were not availing ourselves of the options open to us. Partly it was the sinking feeling you get when your healer keeps dying. Maybe a little of it was our attempt to reform into some semblance of a strategic formation. Some of it was our power tunnel-vision, I'm sure.

- K'rrul had been shrouding the sniper as he crouched on a mast, plinking away. When he had stacked up four, he used a power to teleport up and attack the sniper, whiffing.
- On the sniper's turn, he leaped off and shot the rope holding the mast. K'rrul tumbled down and was crushed by the mast, dying a horrible death.
- Just kidding. Through several methods (Acrobatics training, Temp HP, and Insubstantial) he reduced the damage taken to 3.
- With the sniper in melee, and the only thing with legs left alive, we decided to take him alive. With those magic words, K'rrul critted on him, and the renewed shrouds as well as the rest of the damage was maximized. 43 damage on a guy with 10 HP that we wanted alive *anyways*. Lame.

- The snake took some work. We found out later that he was an Elite. He had several cool hypnotic powers that ultimately failed. In fact, enough of his otherworldly flavored powers failed that he behaved much as a normal 40 foot snake would behave, aside from the teleportation.

Following the combat, we had a quick interrogation session. Our Eladrin prisoner didn't seem to speak common, but with Phedre as an interpreter, Arashi made it very clear that his ability to continue breathing was due to our benevolence, and if he did not make it worth our while, we might cease being so giving. In return, we got pretty much nothing. We had killed the mercenary Captain, and this guy claimed to know nothing about their reasons for attacking us. Searching them yielded some magic items, and one solitary clue. A magical stone that we guessed was used as a key for an Eladrin safety deposit box. Our prisoner told us the box was located in the Hand of the Ivory Stone, back at the Fortress of Fading.

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About two hours of combat. It was admittedly a tough fight, with one enemy per PC, each one at 7th level. On top of that, the snake was a 9th level Elite. We did well, probably because they wasted a *lot* of actions trying to kill Phedre, and she kept popping up. Midway through the fight she said she had taken over 150 pts of damage, and she kept getting knocked down after that. After we killed the mercenary Captain, she dropped a healing potion. Before we could dash in and grab it, the freaking *snake* came from across the room and ate it, glass and all. Poor Phedre had been eyeing that potion.

After that the session went off track pretty quickly. . .and got pretty blue. Next week? We figure out what the hell we are doing next!

Jay

AP: An evening with no encounters is just. . .improvational theater?

That's right, last session was four hours of roleplay. There were a handful of die rolls (Insight checks. . .Perception checks. A Nature check, maybe) and a lot of in character talking. A pretty health ratio of in character/out of character, really. The participants were:

Arashi Stormcrow - Genasi Swordmage
Jasper Phinneas Merryweather III - Gnome WizardWarlock
Phedre no Delaunay no Montreve - Elf Cleric
K'rrul - Kobold Assassin

Senzimay (and her difficult to spell name) had left the party, as had Hogorth. Paulic (of the clan Paulic) was a zombie this session.

The session opens on May 16th. Arashi, Jasper, Phedre, and Paulic were preparing to leave the Eladrin city that they teleported to in haste two sessions ago. I missed the intervening session of roleplay, but since I am bringing a new PC. . .I never found out what was learned there. I gather there was some Speak with Dead ritual(s) and some roleplaying, but not much else beyond that.

The party was given two methods of leaving the city. Both led to the settlement of Blackrock, on the coast. One was the long and more safe passage along the edge of a valley. The other was the shorter, but dangerous trek through the unknown wilds. Arashi was all for braving the danger. Apparently he was the only one, because the party ended up taking the longer, safe passage. It is a few day's travel, most of it glossed over.

The one interesting event was the discovery of a coach or wagon that had gone off the road. Arashi climbed down to investigate, but was not able to immediately determine how long it had been since the accident. He found no evidence of survivors, and no valuables. Even though he figured a wagon of this type required two horses to pull it, he only found a portion of one of the horses.

Jasper and Paulic climbed up the hill on the other side of the road. They didn't find much, but a set of what appeared to be wolf tracks. The pack of wolves went up the hill, and their trail was lost as they entered a stony area and there were no more tracks.

While this discovery was *interesting*, the party had no context or motivation to pursue it further, so they continued on their journey to Blackrock. The town was aptly named, being built on a large deposit of black rock. It appeared to be obsidian. The city was bounded on one side by the sea, and on the other by a ten foot wall. The wall extended into the water, and metal gates kept boats out. The tallest building in the city had a structure that the party recognized as an airship dock. It was currently vacant.

As the party approached the gate, they were stopped by a solitary guard. He asked them to give their names, and as they weren't on 'the list', they were required to bind their weapons with silver ribbon. He seemed to indicate that only people with interesting or effective weapons were asked to do this. He recommended they stay at The Knight's Reprise, and sent them on their way.

Once inside the city, the party split up. They had to return to Verithrond, and were in a hurry. Jasper looked for some information on House Orien, to see about getting the teleportation sequence in Verithrond. The party had an Artifact that would allow them to Teleport there, if they knew the right Arcane sequence (think Stargate). Arashi went to the docks to see about hiring transport. If Jasper failed, they would need to get to the mainland somehow, and a boat was the only real way to do that. Phedre asked around about some information they had gleaned during the time spent with the Eladrin. All she found was an old crone tending a shrine to the Blood of Vol. She was pretty much antagonistic and told Phedre to get out of town, and that she didn't belong in the North.

Jasper had little luck, too. He learned that House Orien had little or no presence here, since they had a fierce rivalry with House Lyrandar. Arashi learned that most of the ocean transport here was cargo, but if they wanted to book personal transport they needed to talk to the half-elves in charge. The nature of the town began to become clear. This town was run by the shipping and pirate industries. Fishing was core, too. And it all seemed to flow from the large tower in the center of town.

Jasper, Phedre and Paulic all entered an Inn to look for rooms, and were accosted by a Kobold. He claimed that a seer had told him of the party's arrival. He wanted to join, as the seer had suggested his destiny was with them. Needless to say, there were various levels of scepticism. Despite several signs given by the seer about the nature of the party, for prudence sake they all went to verify things with her.

It was fully nighttime when K'rrul led the rest of the party to the door of Eltar the Sighted. She lived in a cave under the black rock, with her door made of chicken (when knocking, Jasper said 'bok bok bok'. made of chicken). A young half-elf boy answered and said that Eltar, his grandmother, was sleeping. With a bribe, we *encouraged* him to wake her, and after a few minutes he led us inside.

She had taken her seat in a tiny room with a small table and an obsidian 'crystal ball'. Jasper verified that the ball was indeed magical, and the seer represented with some out of the blue fortune telling about Phedre. It turns out that some of the information she had gathered about her nemesis, the Stillborn, was incorrect. Unfortunately, like most things of this nature, Eltar could not be more specific. The party grudgingly accepted K'rrul's presence (for now) and returned to the inn for sleep.

The next day we headed for the black tower at the center of town. Our only option was to take a sloop, a journey of four or more weeks, or to find another option with the folks running the show. A tip the night before had given us a name of a higher up we could ask for. A quick bribe and we were shown into the building. Shortly thereafter, a half-elf with a Mark of Storm over his eye entered the room. Over the course of a few minutes negotiation, we learned of several options. Our list became:
- Hire a sloop and travel to Verithrond. This was estimated to take at least a month, and cost 500 GP
- Hire the airship and travel to Verithrond. This could take only a week, but would cost 5,000 GP.
- Agree to owe this guy a favor, and get the airship for only 1,000 GP
- Attack and kill the captain of the airship and turn it over to him. We would still owe the 1,000 GP
- Double cross him and tell the captain (Koulton D'Lyrandar, this guy's boss) of his plans. No clue what the reward would be, or if we would gain passage this way.
- Blackmail him and hope he'd drop the price
- Attack and kill the captain and take the ship for ourselves

The two seriously debated choices became whether to double cross this guy, or do his bidding. Either choice was bound to anger people. Some information gathering at a dive down at the docks revealed that both men were well liked by their crews. The fight could go either way.

In the end, after long deliberation, we chose to sleep on it. The next morning during breakfast, Jasper was handed a note. It was from our Dragonmarked friend. A sloop was departing that day at noon, and we could be on it, headed for the mainland. It appeared that our choice was made for us, which was kind of a relief.

We finished up and headed to the indicated address. It was an abandoned warehouse. Adventurer senses tingling, we approached with weapons de-ribboned and ready to fight. The session ended there. . .

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Our DM, Jesse, actually ended it by telling us that we were ambushed from the shadows. Nothing like a combat-less week ending on a cliffhanger to motivate players to show up next time, eh?

The half-elf contact we spoke to had a name, I just can't remember which one it is. Anton, or Alton, or Amber or some A name. A hoity toity name.

Funny things this session besides the door made of chicken:

- Star Rubles (a mixup in gem pronunciation) got an impromptu description, with cosmonauts waiting in line to spend their Star Rubles on the moon. . .as usual, my description hardly does it justice.

- Relieve us of our bodily usage.

- Paulic Paulic of Clan Paulic in the house of Paulic, from the Paulic region of . . . .you can see where this is headed.

Next session, combat? And perhaps some sort of decision from the party about where to go and how to get there!

Jay

AP: In which we turn tail and run. . .

So. . .I did not blog about the one session I attended earlier in December. I anticipated the party finishing that story arc while I was unable to game, and figured I would start back in when I joined back up with them. Well, due to typical holiday Shenanigans, they did not play in the main campaign at all. A couple of one shots. So our game this week was a direct continuation of the last session I attended. And did not blog about.

Our investigations had led us to the basement of Alomar's house. His lab held a portal similar to the one in the basement of the Inn we worked in. His was a different color, and appeared to be a key to our way out. We entered.

We exit in a dark and moody jungle. It is nighttime, with washed out colors and the ambient light of the Mournlands. We discovered that Alomar's Crystal Ball was pulling us along, and since we had no other clue as to where to go, we followed it.

The ambush should not have surprised us, since we were in hostile territory, but the Kenku still got the drop on us. Two of them seemed to blend into the blackness so completely that they often disappeared from view after their lightning quick strikes. A caster walked on a path made of inky black feathers 40 feet in the air. The five of them worked together to coordinate their hit and run attacks and split the party in two:
- Paulic, for the second week in a row, rolls to hit on an unarmed OA, and crits. This kills the Kenku. Those of us holding swords look at each other in horror. . .we are being outdone by the Elf's boot?
- Jasper uses the ancient Gnomish art of Hadoken, and blasts Kenku away. He is very effective, as usual.
As the Kenku die, they dissolve into blackness and are either drawn into the Crystal Ball, or away to the North.

As we travel North, we eventually stumble on our goal. It is a large black hemisphere. Thirty or so feet in diameter of, and swirling, menacing blackness. After some study and contemplation, it is determined that this is a veil of souls trapped within some kind of arcane net. In an attempt to destroy it, Phaedra Turns Undead. Then all hell breaks loose.

Another Skill Challenge, only this one had a strong combat component to it. Again, the concept with this Challenge was rock solid, and its execution was perfect. The layout was as a regular encounter. In addition to this, we had the option of making an Arcana, Diplomacy, Religion, or Endurance check. A failure not only counted towards one of the three total failures to loose the Challenge, but each skill had an individual effect as well.

The center of the challenge was the shade of Prince Amir. He was surrounded by spirits, and a few of those became corporeal enough to attack us. Successes and Failures of certain skills would increase this number, and more would appear on their own at certain points in the challenge. This mechanic worked well. Notably, Paulic and Hogorth did not have much skill in the Primary skills required for this challenge. It became a battle to keep the minions away, since their aura applied a negative penalty to the skill rolls.

We totally rocked it, too. We completed the skill portion in the first couple of rounds, getting our five successes, and only incurring one failure. This didn't end the combat, it just made the Shade of Prince Amir more manageable. We then went on to defeat him.

With his destruction, we had a short race to get out of the forest and through the portal before Something Bad Happened. We made it. We appeared in a changed Thrace, with our goal in hand and the bubble destroyed.

The final portion of that session was spent exploring the new Thrace, now exposed to the Mournland. It was devoid of the illusions that had lived here, but the houses and their contents all still stood. We discovered the graves of six people, and deduced that the party we were sent to rescue had died of old age in the time bubble and been buried. We also found Alomar's home, and learned a bit more about the final days of Thrace. Alomar had been close to the Prince, and so it fit that while his research about this mysterious Artifact uncovered more about it's planar properties, he would bend it to aid the prince somehow.

In the final days of Thrace's day to day life, Alomar had activated the cube, stranding Thrace in a bubble apart from the world, and stranding the souls of the Day of Mourning's catastrophe in the bubble as well. I am really not sure I am getting all of that right, and I'm sure there is more there. To be frank, as my *character* is not very interested in such things, I did not devote much brain space to piecing it together. Maybe someone will pipe up in the comments and clear things up.

Last session began with an Extended Rest. It had been awhile since we had been safe enough to do this. Unfortunately, since we were now in the Mournlands again, we were not able to get the full benefits of the rest. In particular, we recovered only 1d4+con mod in surges. During our meager rest in the former lab of Alomar, we began to hear disturbances up in the town. Some exploration revealed a winged female (harpy!) was directing some stone formed allies in the sacking of Thrace. As they were keeping well away from us, we finished our rest and prepared for the day. Paulic soon realized that their loud searching was getting closer, so we hustled up the ladder and into the house. Our quick plan was to hide, while Arashi tried parlay with the Harpy.

His efforts appeared to be going somewhere initially. She was looking for more statues to complement her collection. She had with her a minotaur, a one armed soldier with a spear, and an arbalest. When Arashi did not have any knowledge of statues in Thrace, she said she could also work with bones. Arashi laughingly told her that he did not have any bones.

Combat started when she used some of her innate control over bone to jerk Arashi around. Paulic, crouching across the street and looking through the crack, let loose a shot, and with that everyone jumped into action.
- Everyone on our side gets a Surprise Round except Arashi (obviously in plain sight) and Jasper (cruddy Stealth roll). Paulic uses his to fire the Twin Strike above.
- Hogorth tries to run out from the second floor and across the ruined wall to engage the minotaur, but slips and falls.
- Phaedra is unsure of what to do. She can't hit anything right now, and if she moves she will be exposed. She hides.
- When combat begins in earnest, it immediately gets dangerous. The Minotaur charges the building and rocks it to the foundation. Hogorth and Jasper both try forced movement to keep him away, and he ends up even further inside.
- The harpy, in a pattern repeated many, many times, will fly upward and attempt to use her sorcery in battle. Arashi and Paulic focus fire on the harpy, and she is soon bloodied.
- The animated ballista has a twist that is revealed when it finally fires. It's bolts are blunted and not really deadly. The electric shock that accompanies them, however, is quite deadly. Arashi resists lightning, so it only wastes one shot on him before switching to other, more vulnerable targets.
- The combat on the first floor of the house is brutal and deadly. When the second melee statue joins in, things begin to look grim. Hogorth's last surge is expended, and the only surgeless healing the party has available. Eventually the minotaur goes down, only to be followed by Hogorth.
- We are all saddened when the minotaur rises again.
- We are all angered when the harpy falls to her death, and rises again.
- Hogorth is stabilized, but effectively out of the fight. Phaedra can now focus her healing on the newly bloodied Arashi.
- The harpy is killed again. Breathing a sigh of relief, the party focuses on her cronies.
- We are incredulous when the harpy rises from the dead yet again. Around now, Senzimay (played as a DMPC) grabs the Planar Artifact from Jasper (also played as a DMPC) and starts fiddling with it.
- In a moment of awesome, Arashi triggers his aegis to teleport *above* the harpy in an attempt to grapple her to the ground. He fails, and falls 40 feet to his death. Not dead-dead, just negative HP's. Still, no fun.
- Hogorth and Arashi are both resigned to their deaths, and our poor healer is probably left feeling a bit unwanted. Regardless, she keeps Arashi from death, and despite ourselves the harpy goes down yet again.
- We poop in our pants a little when she rises for the thousandth time, cackling.
- As we put away our swords and prepare our last wills, making sure to cross of Senzimae as she has spent the last two round fiddling with the cube (and, as was suggested, summoning Hellraiser) instead of fighting.
- She opens a portal over Hogorth's body. Everyone runs for it.
- In a last bitch effort, the harpy starts immobilizing folk. Working together, everyone is rolled/tugged/shoved through the portal and to safety in a strange Eladrin city.

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Jesse did give us two very good handouts that explained both the Cube and the research behind it. I did not study these, and don't have copies to reference. In a nutshell, the cube we found is attuned to portals and planar travel. It allows the use of rituals related to such travel even if the user does not know the ritual. It works as a focus if they do. It has other, more combat oriented functions. It also has functions that were not enumerated, but must be discovered.

Our flight from Thrace was something I thought about on our downtime. We ended the session and Hogorth had 11 HP's and no surges. I did not imagine him surviving a trip of a few days, unless they were encounter free. He recovered two surges at the beginning of the session, and used one to bring himself up to near full HP's. He dropped in the first third of the fight. I don't know what possessed Jesse to have Senzimae use the cube to port us out. According to him, the harpy was using a finite resource to resurrect. Each opponent could do it a number of times, or she could *steal* one of theirs to do it, too. We did not know that of course, so we felt absolutely screwed.

Okay, this we stuff should be clarified. *I* felt a TPK coming, and I imagine the others felt pretty grim about it too. When Jerome and I were both talking about our back-up characters. . .you get the feeling you are gonna be using them soon.

So the session ended with the portal closed, and we have a week or two of in-game downtime to level to 6th, and do some training or magic item creation. Should be interesting to see what the next session holds.

Jay

World Building: Other Races

Shifters - Shifter blood runs thinly throughout rural communities in some parts of the world. Occasionally a child is born who displays some of these shifter traits. Usually, unless someone intervenes (often the Church) he or she can live a normal life. These shifters are drawn to solitary lives as shepherds or fishermen.

Gnome - As Tieflings influence finances, Gnomes influence Academics. Gnomes are sought after by the wealthy as tutors of utmost quality. The University has several tenured Gnomes, and Gnomes are scattered the world over in schools and research houses. Gnomes have a singular interest in knowledge, and the power that comes with it. Extensive study of archaeology and history has allowed the Gnomes to corner the market on ancient magics, and to introduce some technological marvels as original creations. Gnomes are almost always independently wealthy, and live in large (for them) estates with many generations sharing a compound.

Deva - Although quite rare, Deva do exist in connection with Divine events. Often a Deva will claim to be the Avatar of their God and create a highly devote cult of personality that follows them without question. Whether these actions are sanctioned or not is unknown, but Deva have garnered a reputation as Cult leaders and mystics.

Goliath - These stubborn individualists are perhaps most well known for their rebellion. Goliaths make their home in the high mountain passes, and every generation or so their extreme distance from civilization emboldens them to declare independence. After a hastily gathered army of city guards and wardens is gathered and dispatched, the Goliaths usually back down and see reason. Once in awhile a rebellious young Goliath will leave his home to make his name in the city. These Goliath are highly prized in combat arenas and mercenary troupes, and rarely return home.

Half-Orc - Called Orcs, these brutes are ubiquitous in the more dense urban areas. Their strength makes them ideal for some of the jobs Halflings can't do, and their prolific nature means they breed like rabbits. Bouncers, bodyguards, builders, and other non-skilled professionals in the inner city are often Orcs. Occasionally one will learn a trade and rise to become a genuine artisan, but stigma against buying from a non-Human will always keep them second best in this regard.

Gnoll - Some segments of the world do not regard Gnolls as thinking beings and deserving of the rights that such beings have. As a result, Gnolls are secretive and self serving. Most Gnolls adopt nocturnal behavior to further limit their contact with the public, and crime is common among them. When Dwarves are accused of theft, it is usually a Gnoll that is truly guilty.

Warforged - Occasionally recovered in old ruins, Warforged are without exception very, very old. They are considered property of the state, and kept apart from society in general. From time to time, when a show of force is needed, a squad of willing Warforged will be deployed, and they generally do their job without needing to lift a finger. For most, however, their needs are met, and they are free to spend their days in whatever leisure activity they desire. As a result, there are quite a few very powerful magicians, historians, and physicians among their ranks.

Changeling - Official word is that they do not exist. The truth is that a small population of Changelings does exist. For all of recorded history a clan of Changelings has followed the powerful, shadowing and influencing them subtly. Their goals are unknown, as is their true number.

Drow - The only colony of Drow is under the mountains. Most of their efforts are bent towards excavating and attempting to find their Underdark. While the rest of the world view it as a religious or racial obsession, the Drow are convinced that somewhere under the world lies a second world, and their home is there. While they are nominally citizens, most officials don't bother with them, as they can be extremely deadly on their home turf.

Kobold - Kobolds are commonly considered to be to Dragonborn what Halflings are to Humans. Lesser in number than Halflings, they have also avoided the traps of slavery and poverty.

Goblin - These cunning beasties are found in civilization's garbage piles. Subsisting on scraps and hand me downs, Goblins, like rats, have carved out their niche in the sewers of mankind. Commonly viewed as pests, most civilized people have no desire to associate with Goblins.

Minotaur, Shadar-kai, Revenant, Kalashtar, Genasi - Unknown in the world, if you want to play this race you are from another world, and need DM permission. That goes for MM races, too.

Jay

World Building: PHB Races

Races may or may not have a different flavor in this world. I will include relevant PC races and some MM races.

Human - The dominant race in numbers and influence. Essentially flavorless, a blank slate for you to imprint your character on.

Half-Elf - This true breeding race is labeled Half-Elf almost as a slur. They appear mostly human with some elfin qualities that give them their name. Half-Elves are not numerous, and exist mostly in the shadows, functioning as conmen and grifters. Honorable Half-Elves exist, often rising above their brethren to work in law enforcement, or occasionally as entertainers.

Tiefling - Possessing a reputation as superb bankers and money managers, Tiefling have risen above many of the other non-human races to several positions of power. A loose network of family and professional ties have made them one of the more powerful factions in the world. While certain criminal elements do exist, a majority of Tieflings operate entirely within the law. This relatively recent surge in power has allowed them to dig into their past. Discoveries made there indicate that not only are the Tiefling not native to this world, but they are changing over time to a more 'human' appearance. Who knows what more digging will uncover...

Dwarf - Rather than attempt to integrate themselves into Human society, most Dwarves spend their entire lives in one of several Dwarven enclaves. Living on the outskirts of society, they have earned a reputation as tinkerers and occasional thieves. While it is true that a Dwarf is almost always an opportunist, propaganda and racial tensions are mostly to blame. Dwarves also have a rich cultural heritage, with songs and poems without equal in the world. Their oral history is particularly rich considering they are among the longest living races in the world.

Halfling - The most human-like of races, Halflings are also most numerous (besides Humans, of course). They thrive in urban areas where space is at a premium, and are often exploited for cheap labor. River barges and other small vessels are also filled with Halflings, generally, as their quick feet serve them well on the water. They are, as a whole, a poor and dirty race, with little cultural history of their own. Common belief is that they are descended from humans, and are slaves as their birthright.

Eladrin - The most beautiful race in the world, or so they would have everyone believe. The most visible Eladrin function as attractive escorts for politicians and businessmen. Their dirty little secret is that they are able to use their innate fey powers and their affinity for weapons to function as very effective bodyguards. Eladrin society places high value in martial prowess, and Eladrin boys and girls learn quickly or are weeded out. Children unable to participate in this training are taught in segregated schools, instructing them in Arcane and other mystical training. Like Dwarves, they keep to themselves, but they give the appearance of aloofness, rather than being cast off.

Elf - Feral cousins of Eladrin, Elves are so rarely seen that they are viewed as myth by some members of the population. Almost all Elves live in wooded areas, surviving by hunting and gathering what they need. The few elves that choose to live in society are often mistaken for Eladrin. Elves are fanatical about ancestry, and have genealogies that go back a millenia. These records end abruptly at a time the Elves are reluctant to talk about. Whether this reluctance is due to fear or lack of knowledge is unknown.

Dragonborn - Called Dragons by the populace, Dragonborn are feared for there size and ferocity. Their relative rarity is compensated for by their presence. Dragonborn dominate wherever they tread, and are seen as military commanders (under Human supervision, of course), performers, artisans, and criminals. Their numbers remain small most likely due to their wanderlust. Dragonborn are natural travelers, and rarely settle down. When an opportunity to mate presents itself, they often do, but Dragonborn have a poor reputation as caregivers, and most eggs don't hatch.

Jay

World Building Again

I still have an actual play to write. Motivation is low since I missed that session, and I'll miss two more because of the holidays. I'm not alone in this, I think holidays muck up *everyone's* gaming.

I've been spending my down hours, like driving, showering, and falling asleep, thinking about trying my hand at a real, honest-to-goodness homebrew world. My, that was a lot of commas. I don't have a chance to DM in my future, but honestly. . .that is the best time to work on this kind of thing, right? No pressure? No outside influence regarding PC choice or players or anything? I will be sticking with 4e though, so not an edition neutral build (though that is mostly to accommodate player choice regarding race and class).

This was all spurred by this enworld post on campaigns. I tried to do this with the couple of small attempts on world building in my recent past, and realized they were very, very derivative. Not that derivative is something new for me, it is a major reason I don't write much any more. I get this bug in my brain to write something, and it turns out to be a reflection of some earlier book/story. We'll see if this turns out like that.

For my starting point, I'm taking a theme or trope that I really like and building on it. One of my favorites is the post-apocalyptic world. This is not Mad Max (though Mad Max does exist in this space, as does Fallout), this is more generally a fallen world. One where the glory days have passed. Some good fantasy literature does this, like the Shannara books or the Wheel of Time books. What really got me thinking about it was Lord of the Rings. The book doesn't emphasize this, and the movies don't show it, but at the tail end of the third age, most of the glory days are behind Middle Earth. Relics like Narsul and Glamdring are beyond the ability of man to create, and ruins like Weathertop are all that remain of a great civilization.

I'd like to emulate that, but focus it more. I initially went to far and started in on a Logan's Run style place, where the entire history of the outside world was unknown, and everyone was gathered to one small place. While that might make for an interesting story or one-shot, it has an implicit level of player cooperation. I'd like for this world to be as house rule free as possible, and the smaller I made it the more that became difficult.

So, I have four areas I am working on, with a fifth I try to keep in mind as I go:

Geography

This is one of the simpler questions to work out. In keeping with my original Logan's Run (and The Island, and Aeon Flux) inspired idea, I want the landmass to be small. A single continent. The historical clues point to emigration from elsewhere, but details are lost to the sands of time.

I don't want to get too fancy or crazy with the geography. Ideally the world will have no wilds left, with only the fringes having any sort of mystery. While most or all of the possible races have a home, fantastic beasts like Dragons and Medusas are legend.

One country accomplishes this. No Eberron-like fracturing of the continent. My current plans in this regard are to take an existing map, whether real or fantasy, and work it over to my satisfaction in Gimp. Not far out of the planning stages here.

Races

The most developed section of my world. I'll save a full individual writeup for another post. I worked on races first with the understanding that knowing how so many races fit in a small amount of space helped me to visualize the shape and current state of my world. For example, in this campaign, Tieflings are viewed with a cultural bias as being excellent managers and bankers. Since most non-humans are faced with some amount of discrimination, intelligent Tieflings often exploit this bias as route to power. This results in an old boys network of Tieflings that aid each other in this line of work, and an underground that assists in siphoning off assets from their masters.

Little insights like that help me to guide the rest of my thoughts, and hopefully the end product is better for it.

Class

The makeup of the world has meant that classes are viewed differently. In a traditional medieval fantasy world, there is plenty of room for fighters and their derivative classes. In a world without a meaningful standing army, and with no wilderness to speak of, ruffians who like to stab things are almost always criminals. The integration of Primal classes also impacts this, but I am making headway there. I think this section will get put on hold until I finish my work on. . .

Divinity

I struggled with this, since it is likely the largest amount of work, and will have the smallest payoff. I am tempted to go with Core here, and save myself trouble, and make it easier for Divine PC's, but that feels like a lazy move to me. I still have some thinking to do here.

Plot

I do not want to make an adventure path. I will likely not get to run this world for a long, long time, if at all. Putting work into something like that is folly. However, I do want to consider where the plot can go. This means placing interesting hooks and things throughout the fluff. It means building with an eye towards interesting changes, not making a static world and standing back. It is also the thing I am itching to dive into, but won't waste my time with.

Jay

Where have I been? What is going on?

Not sure what the audience is like for this thing, but an update is warranted for my own sanity.

Two weeks ago we did not game due to low expected turnout. Last week the game was held, but family obligations prevented me from attending. Our excellent DM has posted his writeup on our campaign message board. The specific thread is here.

We will be gaming tomorrow (that's the plan, anyhow) so I will endeavor to remain caught up. Still looking for my 'voice'. We'll see what comes out.

Jay

AP: Double Teamed to Death (nearly)

Arashi - Genasi Swordmage
Paulic - Elven Ranger
Senzamei - Eladrin Wizard
Phaedra - Elven Cleric
Jasper - Gnome Warlock/Wizard
Hogorth - Eladrin Fighter/Warlord

We soldiered onward this session, towards the castle and our goal of ultimate understanding. . .

Unfortunately, because we are just *that* lucky, we triggered two encounters, so the session was one, long, painful fight. I am getting a tad ahead of myself, though.

We got within sight of the castle and saw 11 or so guards gathered outside. Presumably, they knew we were coming and this was their response. We also saw Captain Regal there, and Senzamei remembered that he is familiar to her. He is a character in a children's book, or series of books. Not only does he engage in a series of daring exploits, but he has a pet dragon.

Suddenly a little less cocksure, we discussed some other options. Waiting until dark, or trying to find another way in were the two best options, until Jasper thought it would be a good idea to try and bluff our way in. Senzamei recalled that the nemesis of Captain Regal was the Dread Pirate Roberts (yes, that one?!) and we tried bluffing the Captain, telling him the Dread Pirate was after the Prince.

Captain Regal apparently believed us, and led us into the castle. Once in the courtyard, the trap closed and we were ambushed from all sides. Smart, eh? We bluffed our way into the trap, and past one encounter to take both on at the same time! Hurrah!
So the dragon in the corner is Flamey, Captain Regal's wingless dragon. . .until it sprouts wings of flame. Nice. The large enemy in the other corner is the wolf that we saw the prince riding. Yes, there are archers on the walls.
This is midway through the first round. We had some amount of leeway, since without the first encounter outside to alert them, the dragon and the wolf are still sleeping when we enter the courtyard. At Captain Regal's signal we are attacked, and our retaliation is swift and. . .unfocused. Hogorth and Arashi are both in the lead and take on Captain Regal, since he has a huge target on his back by virtue of being the captain. Jasper blasts a chunk of enemies out of the way and makes a patch of difficult terrain. Now the heavies are up front with the Captain (good) and the soft centered party members are in the back surrounded by solders and about to be attacked by wolves (bad):
- Senzamei is in good form, actually hitting fairly often. These hits are punctuated by a crit even, which is awesome!
- Lead the Attack on Captain Regal felt right, and may have actually been the right call, but he went down pretty quickly to the focused fire. Things did not get noticeably easier when he died.
- The rear of the party was attacked by a Wolfmaster and his two wolves. They did repeated high damage to our softies.
- A round or two in, Flamey and The Wolf both entered the fray. This was BAD. We had two big enemies and two defenders, which is fine, but we were fighting on basically three fronts, without someone sturdy to hold off the eight or so soldiers and their two wolves.
- Things get a bit worse when the Dragon uses a mobility power to shift back and create some zones of damage. With all the melee fighters involved, it is tough for us to keep or stay out of these. Senzamei Fey Steps out, which is good in the short term but leaves her exposed. The Wolf predictably goes for her.
- A slight misread of Senzamei's Guardian Blades power puts a serious dent in the wolf when he makes a series of attacks against her and Arashi, and is dealt Int*4 damage (16) in response. We cheer.
- Phaedra is flanked by wolves and gets beaten down to less than 0. She falls.
- Inspiring Word brings her to positives, but she is hit again before her turn and must make her first death save. She fails.
- A cunning plan involving Hogorth Fey Stepping adjacent to her and Paulic tossing a Healing Potion goes off without a problem, and she is able to roll out of the way while Hogorth holds off her attackers. A shift granted to the entire party puts most of us within range of her healing powers, and she unloads her big guns. Healing is dispensed and appreciated. The two tanks were in single digit hit points for most of the fight to this point.
- Tired of the constant (yet surprisingly ineffective) sniping, Jasper uses Otherwind Stride to pop up on top of the wall. He proceeds with the business of tossing the archers off with Thunderwave. We cheer.
- Things still seem grim, since at this point we have killed only the Captain, but bloodied almost everyone else. A lesson to be learned about focusing fire? To make matters worse, all of these solders grant their allies Temp HP when they are bloodied. Stacking Temp HP.
- Arashi takes on The Wolf, and Paulic disengages from melee. The recently healed Hogorth incurs several OA's (to Phaedra's disapproval) and uses the daily magic item power of his sword to immobilize the dragon. With it marked and unable to move, the most powerful attack available to it seems to be a basic claw attack.
- The Wolf dies.
- In a freak event, one of the wolves draws an Opportunity Attack from Paulic, and he crits. He crit with his boot. Max damage. 5 damage. It kills the wolf. His ego is forever inflated. He states "I am a God."
Better. This is about an encounter's work. They are all bloodied though, so we power through this.
- Jasper crits on the final archer, flinging him off the edge to his death.
- Phaedra pulls out all her healing mojo, granting Temp HP and healing to Hogorth. He takes enough damage to kill him, but does not die due to this. Even though she is upset that nobody told her how *dead* they were, she continues to heal. What a champ.
- Following this, a few members of the party use second winds. With no more real healing triggers to spend, and almost everyone bloodied, it was needed.
- Jesse is frustrated to find several of his attacks over the next round miss by less than two, indicating that the Second Wind's defense bonus saved them from harm.
- Like dominoes, the enemies begin to fall, and we are victorious.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Horrible note taking. Mostly consisted of writing down the bizarre things spoken by the party:
- One plan for destroying the castle was to concoct the AIDS virus and spread it to the troops. This was predictably suggested by the bloodthirsty Valenar Elf.
- The Wolfmaster sounded like a bad 80's movie. While I initially thought 'bad beastmaster clone', Paulic thought 'bad Die Hard or other action movie clone'. We ended up fleshing out a Road House-like movie, where the protagonist was the Wolfmaster. With Patrick Swayze dead, we would just have to settle for photoshopping wolves into the fight scenes.
- XXY, the genetic condition, was mentioned as causing one to be covered in floppy penises.
- Since everything we kill disappears, and it is looking more and more like the Prince is at the heart of this, a parallel was made to the movie "The Neverending Story". We are the Nothing. The prince is Bastian. How sad.
- Jesse mentioned that this was a "Custom Dragon". We were derailed for a moment describing his hydraulic tricks. There was a cholo standing a few feet away with the control pad for him.
- And finally, splintery wooden cocks of death...

I don't remember where that came from. Jesse was telling us that originally we would have only needed to fight the Captain and his men, and that the fight with the Dragon and the Wolf were the second encounter. It also included some wooden toy soldier minions that could only be killed with fire, so I imagine that is where that last one came from...

This session, denouement. Well, following some final battle against an eight year old or his pet wizard. Or both. Or neither.

Jay

AP: What was I doing here? It's not important...

Following a mid-week email that fast forwarded us to our destination, Thrace, the usual group assembled:

Paulic (Valenar Elf Archer Ranger 4) - Learned a new skillset this session, that of teppanyaki master. If this adventuring thing falls through, he can always fall back on twin striking cuts of meat on a hot grill.

Arashi (Stormsoul Genasi Assault Swordmage 4) - Slid right into the role of Tavern owner like he'd done it before. Amazing for a guy who spent most of his life in a cage, but he held the mantle of authority well. Usually by holding it over our heads in a menacing manner.

Phaedra (Arenal Elf Devoted Cleric 4) - Since death worshipping powers don't port well into the hospitality industry, she fell in line as the Tavern's main chef. With meals consisting of all-vegetarian fare, and (apparently) delicious cakes, she was kind of the main draw. And she made sure that as a tavern wench, she had her cleavage appropriately maximized.

Hogorth (Eladrin Hybrid Fighter/Warlord 4) - Despite a keen mind and quick blade, he was dropped in the most obvious spot befitting a man of his strength. As being a bouncer for the mildly overbearing Arashi, he spent the beginning of this session drunk. Playing second fiddle to a mildly intelligent lizard will do that to you.

Jasper (Gnome Hybrid Wizard/Warlock (Fey) 4) - With magical tricks up his sleeve and the charisma to make it work, Jasper should be obvious as the main performer in the tavern. Unfortunately, the wrongness of it all and his inability to handle stress led to a near mental breakdown. He compensated for this by sobbing uncontrollably out of view of the rest of us.

Senzamei (Eladrin War Wizard 4) - With her player absent, alternated between mindless zombie, DM controlled personality, and comatose baggage. She was the waitress, though it was hinted that there might be another profession she engaged in on the side.

Boxed text that kicked off this session set the stage. Jasper is playing his crystal keyed xylophone on stage, while Phaedra and Paulic prepare meals for guests. Arashi surveys his bar, keeping an eye on Zap and Hogorth as they watch the door.

Any questions about our reasons for being here were met with "You start thinking about it, and then realize that it's not important." We are all working in a tavern in Thrace called The Eye of the Storm. Arashi came into town awhile back, and set up the tavern for our arrival. About two weeks later the rest of us came following him into town, and for the past couple of months we have been spending our day-to-day lives running the tavern.

As for our other options, such as leaving town or exploring the nearby castle, "You think that is a very bad idea. It makes you uncomfortable to think about it." Residents of the town are currently packing our bar and enjoying themselves very much. With no real reason not to, we all stop fighting the compulsion and do our job.

The action this night is a possible bar fight. An unruly patron is getting violent and a brawl would be bad for business. Hogorth confronts and forcibly removes the offender from the bar. Crisis averted. . .not quite, as a couple of kids dash through the door and steal some drinks from a table. Hogorth sees them giving their drinks to a shadowy figure in an alley across the way, so he goes to investigate. It is the drunk troublemaker from just a moment ago. Two of his companions use the distraction to dash into the bar and start making with the brawling. By time the bouncer returns, things have devolved into a messy barfight, and the evening is quite ruined.

Getting things cleaned up once the guard has carted away the offenders (Guard insignia is best not thought about, since it is not important) is a priority. The Prince of Thrace is having his 8th birthday party here tomorrow, and we have much work to do. While Phaedra slaves away in the kitchen preparing, everyone gets the mess cleaned up, and Hogorth and Arashi have a FIGHT. Not like, with fists, but about Hogorth's supposed lapse in judgement and the resulting mess. Hogorth, for his part, remains drunk throughout the evening, and prefers to blame Arashi for holding him back. After Hogorth stumbles off to pass out for the evening, Arashi draws up a post advertising an open position as a bouncer, and tacks it up by the door.

The next day, everyone is up preparing for the Prince's arrival. Some drama is inevitable, though, when Hogorth sees the ad for his position. He brings it to Arashi, upset about this (and apparently, a lot of other unresolved baggage). It remains unresolved when the Prince and his retinue arrive.

The Prince and a herd of children his own age are accompanied by a dozen guards, and the old cloaked and bearded vizier. Among the guards is the Captain of the guard, an ex-pirate named Captain Regal. He lives up to every stereotype a pirate ever had, with a peg leg and a pirate hat (non regulation, I imagine). In an effort to keep Hogorth's bad attitude from ruining the party (and his reputation), Arashi sends him up to the main marketplace to purchase some blue dragon meat for the prince. Paulic then puts on a show with said meat, chopping and grilling it with flair. He unfortunately rolls a 1 on one of his opening moves, and is only saved when the harried Jasper manages to catch the haunch before it hits the ground. Playing it off as intentional, Jasper holds it over Paulic while Paulic slices bits off with his deft knifework. This is while Jasper is simultaneously playing the xylophone, and using ghost sound and prestidigitation to duet with himself. I believe the song was "Farmer in the Dell" or it might have been "The Hokey Pokey".

The party is going quite well. The meal is a success, and the guards dig in to the dragon meat leftovers while Senzamei brings out the Prince's cake. She places the eight candles, and then lights them with a cantrip. This seemingly mundane act gets Paulic all disoriented. He has seen Senzamei do this before, even in his current life as a grillmaster. Something about the setting though, with the prince, and the magical flame, causes him to loose it. He remains quiet throughout the rest of the party, and then attempts to approach Jasper about something. From the outside, it appears like. . .well "We've been friends for awhile now," and "I've been having these strange feelings." and "Why can't you just make this easy?" lead us to believe that Paulic has just now professed his love for Jasper. Jasper is not pleased by this (and any effort to steer the conversation to *why* is, predictably, not important) so he retires to his room.

Part of our mental compulsion is the sealed chest at the foot of our beds. Whenever we think that things don't feel right, we are comforted by going to our rooms and meditating on this chest. Several things in our current circumstances trigger these feelings, like the magic room under our cellar, Old Thrace, and any suggestion about a life before our current one. Paulic, in his manic insanity, breaks several knives trying to pry open his chest, and eventually uses an axe to chop into it. Inside he finds his old belongings. This is quite the development for him, but given his recent failure to talk sense into Jasper, he decides to sleep on the problem for now.

Arashi, on the other hand, can't let a possible workplace romance get out of hand. He awakens early and goes to talk to Paulic about his overtures to Jasper. He makes it clear that Paulic's acts in the bedroom are his own business, but he doesn't want anything to interfere with his work. Paulic, for his part, manages to break Arashi's compulsion. The Prince of Thrace, and Captain Regal seem to be a key, as they are figures from their shared adventures.

With Arashi now fully aware of his real self, along with Paulic, they split up to convert the rest of the party. Arashi confronts Phaedra, and tries using his hatred of her religion to jog a memory. She steadfastly clings to the delusion, until he mentions stillborn. She swoons, and remembers. Paulic is unsuccessful in convincing Senzamei. Arashi tries to talk with Hogorth, and things predictably go downhill. His methods include a mop, and hand to had combat. They crescendo with attempted electrocution, and his familiar as an improvised thrown weapon. They climax with a verbal drubbing where Hogorth's ambitions are questioned, and for him that is the final key to unravelling the domination.

Senzamei, now quite afraid of her insane-seeming companions, is trying to get into Jasper's room, but he is having none of it. After her chest is broken open, she falls unconscious, and Hogorth breaks down Jasper's door to talk with him. Jasper is able to shake off the effect when his meeting the party is mentioned, and he remembers that he thought we would make a very poor archaeological team.

With Senzamei's unconscious body forgotten in the hallway, we all gather downstairs to talk about what happened. We have memories of 2 months working in this tavern. For Arashi, he has memories of an additional 2 weeks waiting for the rest of us to arrive. Since he only entered the town of Thrace a few seconds before the rest of us, we come to the tentative conclusion that while in Thrace, time runs at a different pace. Very different, since as Phaedra looks at her journal from the past couple of months, she reads that the Prince has had his birthday here about every 2 weeks. Her entries are regular, and reveal that we have been basically repeating the same actions over and over. It then dawns on us that if the party we were looking for has been missing for about a month, odds are that if they made it this far they died of old age long ago.

We decided to investigate our tavern before we go anywhere. On our way to the magic room below the basement, we stop to check out the cellar. Inside it we make a horrific, or mundane discovery. We uncover a stack of signs that we posit once hung in front of the Eye of the Storm. They are the names of the past taverns (Lydia's Rest, Heart of Fire, Ale's well that ends well, and the Laughing Minotaur). Lydia is the name of the leader of the last expedition. It is reasonable to assume that she was stuck running a tavern and throwing a birthday party for the rest of her life. Hogorth found that horrifying, and possibly one of the worst punishments imaginable. Phaedra felt that it wasn't so bad, since the laughter of children can bring a smile to your face.

We also found a few chests identical to the ones we just destroyed to get our gear. Upon opening them up, we find some increasingly ancient magic items. All of the mundane material has decayed away, but we collected quite a few useful pieces. After that sobering revelation, we climbed down the ladder into the next basement. The room was covered in arcane glyphs written in glowing blue. The arcane specialists in the group were not able to make any sense of the gibberish. The other feature of the room was a glowing blue sphere hovering in the center of the room. Arashi touched it and disappeared. Not wanting to arrive two weeks later wherever they were sent, and end up a bouncer again, Hogorth touched it, and the whole party followed suit.

We appeared in a jungle. Despite various clues, such as the vegetation and the wildlife, we are unable to determine where we are. It doesn't seem to be a different plane entirely, but we are not able to figure anything out beyond that. In our immediate area are some blue crystals, and just beyond those are some red. Experimentation reveals that:
- We are not seeing precisely the same thing
- Some force will not allow us to move deeper into the jungle
- The resonant hum of the crystals can be enhanced with Jasper's tuning fork, and that creates a hovering blue ball like the one that teleported us here.
- Nothing else seems to do that

Fruitless in our efforts to determine more, we leap through the next glowing light, and reappear in our sub-basement. It is quite possible that we are more confused now that we were before that little jaunt. We gather up Senzamei and decide that our best option is to check out the castle. A few things we conclude:
- The vizier who looked like an old wizard could be Alomar, the last man known to have the artifact we need
- The Prince's birthday seemed odd to us. Every two weeks, really?
- It was the only other landmark we really knew about
- It was on the other side of this odd bubble in time, so we would pass through the center and be able to see what was what on our way

Right away Jasper sees something odd. As both a Gnome and a wizard he was able to see that all of the buildings beyond New Thrace appeared. . .odd. Illusory, probably. Not that the buildings here in town were normal, they were described ass oddly constructed as well. We soldiered on towards the center of town, and the open air marketplace that dominated it. As we neared a guard checkpoint in town, Paulic saw one of them jump on a horse and ride hard to the North. With no way to catch him, we just knew that meant that our decision to go to the castle was probably warranted, and that things could get violent.

Entering the marketplace was yet another revelation. Jasper noticed something odd about the vendors there, and a piece clicked in his head. Looking around he saw the same face repeated a dozen times over. His sharp eyes noticed some imperfections in the proportions of the people milling about. It looked like the population there was entirely illusory. When the squad of five soldiers galloped up he was shocked yet again to notice that the plate armor didn't have seams. There was no way to get into or out of it.

The soldiers announced that we were not allowed to have weapons in the town. Hogorth rebutted that *they* had weapons. Things didn't really devolve from there, so much as they exploded:
- Paulic had taken the time to climb a scaffold as he saw them approach.
- Hogorth and Arashi stepped out in front to protect their allies. They both consistently hit this fight, which kept the attention focused on them.
- Arashi kicked things off by marking a swordsman, dashing to slice at an archer, and then riding the lightning to engage the Arcanist.
- Hogorth was dazed the entire fight. His very nice allies kept the enemies within reach of his spear, so it was a non-issue.
- Jasper showed his depth by killing things in a much less flashy manner than before. The opposite, in fact, as his curse+eyebite managed to finish off a couple of the enemies
- Despite his position very far behind the party, Paulic drew fire from the archers after they saw his effectiveness
- Straining the probability of this encounter, Phaedra crits twice, and keeps the party up. While doing that we discover that the healing dampening effect of the Mournlands is not present here.
- The last archer had climbed to the roof, and was immobilized, cursed, and quarried before he was killed. He dissolved into weird nothingness like the rest, and Jasper rode the curse to teleport back down to the ground. Showoff...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

No pictures this week. My cameraphone is just not up to the low light and unsteady hand. I'll have to start stealing the actual camera.

The bulk of our evening was spent roleplaying as confused tavern workers. It was quite fun. Enough so that we were going on and on about how it would be awesome to play in a campaign where we owned a riverboat tavern, and traveled from town to town, adventuring and serving drinks.

Poor Paulic was the first 'awakened' and every time he tried to talk to Jasper about it we really gave him a rough time. It just sounded like he was hitting on him. A lot. Senzamei was the prostitute in all but name, as the stereotypical tavern wench. Of course, before when she was not there she was taken advantage of by Phaedra, so she seems to attract those sorts of things...

Hogorth and Arashi had a few spats about Hogorth's attitude problems, drinking problems, people skills. From the outside looking in, Hogorth was an accident waiting to happen, but the real scary one was Jasper. He was not taking the stress well, and as someone pointed out "Its always the quiet ones...".

Some other good lines:

- "Please help me. I am retarded. I need the following things:" - joked about hanging that sign around Hogorth's neck when he went to market. We had just established that he can, in fact, read.

- "Yours consist of murder and horse farts" - Arashi, about Paulics recently recovered memories.

- "Your are just the inside of a cage." - Paulic, about Arashi's memories.

- "Like a family friendly Hannibal Lechter!" - Trying to deal with the comatose Senzamei eventually involved loading her on a sled painted with smiley faces, tying her up and putting a mask on her (to prevent spitting).

- "Keep your government out of my bag of holding" - The next idea was to load her in Paulic's bag of holding with her head sticking out.

Jay