Better Part of Valor
Nov. 9th, 2004 01:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothTonight we had a session of Jeff's Darksun campaign. Stacey didn't show up because she was sick, reportedly, which meant her brother didn't show up either. So there were three of us, facing an army. Literally.
On the plus side, this made it easier for us to run away, which is what we spent most of the night doing.
The party -- and all their friends, many of whom had never participated in a major adventure, numbering 15 in total -- had just inherited a base of operations in Tyr, in the form of a city block, 200' by 200', of prime real estate, covered in run down, crappy buildings. April owned the lion's share of the land, as she'd bought the parts of the block that weren't given for free as a token of appreciation for saving the city('s rulers), but the only person to build anything of note on the land was not a part of the party at all.
A halfling -- the same one they'd met in Lost Scale -- wanted to set up shop, but no one in the city would sell him land, or even rent to him. This made the party leery of selling to him, but they eventually agreed to let him rent a sixteenth of the land for his shop, in return for a few gold pieces and the promise of deep discounts on merchandise, and good prices for selling loot they collected, although anything expensive would have to be sold on consignment.
Within a month and a half, he'd grown a building and outfitted it with luxurious furnishings, and was offering for sale (among other things) Sheath armor, a living armor as easy to move around in as Chitin (chain shirts) but providing half again as much protection, with the slight disadvantage that it could never be removed. Cypher was quick to snap up a suit... Brightstone considered it, but only if it would continue to protect him while wildshaped, which couldn't be guaranteed [GM's word: no]. Kelt badly wanted a suit, but the halfling didn't have enough money to buy his existing armor, which he'd need to fund the vast amount of sheathing required for his giant's frame.
During the month and a half, the party worked at various jobs, and built a mediocre wall around the compound. The army came back from the campaign against the Kreen, having driven them back down the Great Rift to their wall, and ending the threat for the moment. Trade caravans over the forest ridge to Lost Scale and Hidden Vale steadily enriched the various merchant houses. The adventuring company -- Heroes of Tyr Incorporated (HOT Inc) -- got very, very bored.
Finally, an elf came to knock on their gate to offer them a job -- a group of escaped slaves from one of the cities that still had its sorcerer king were under attack from an army of Gith -- subterranean, savage lizards which Brightstone had almost been reincarnated as. They needed to hire mercenaries to protect their caravans, train them in combat, and otherwise generally get rid of the Gith menace. They offered the rights to 50% of the loot recovered in the process of eliminating the threat.
Yeah, that offer wouldn't fly, even with adventurers as bored as they were, and the opportunity to help people in need. They settled on 100 silver up front, and the rights to 50% of the loot recovered by the escaped slaves -- as per standard merc terms, they'd keep all the loot they recovered themselves. They set out in the morning -- Laika, Cypher, and April as the main team, with Santino and Saurian tagging along. [as remote control zombie NPCs who did nothing but run away, since their players were missing]
With April providing phantom steeds for the slower members of the party, the journey was expected to take only four days. April complained bitterly that this would leave her without the ability to fling fireballs, but they didn't expect *too* much trouble just travelling through the desert, and the phantom steeds would make it much easier to run from trouble they couldn't handle without her fireballs.
The first trouble they ran into, about halfway, was a giant drake flying in rapidly to attack an Inix caravan that they happened to be located near. The party tried to warn the caravaners, who hadn't seen the drake yet, then ran off to hide in some rocks, hoping that the drake hadn't seen them. Drakes were known to be intelligent and cruel, and far too powerful for them to take on -- second only to the dragon itself in deadliness -- but often uninterested in anything other than food, which the caravan could provide plenty of.
So the party got to watch while the dragon devoured the caravan. The Inixes, of course, were eaten right off. The caravan guard slaves tried to surrender, and received a slow, tortured death in respose, as the drake tossed them into the air to see if he could catch them on a single claw. Whether he succeeded or failed, they were not happy campers. He ate them too. The caravan master tried to run off and hide, but the drake tracked him down and... didn't eat him. Instead, it dominated him with its psionics, then started searching around for the party.
The party had been on the edge of bolting through the whole scene -- torn between continuing to hide, hoping they hadn't been seen, and running off while it was distracted, hoping that it was distracted enough not to bother chasing them, since they couldn't actually outrun it. Well, the people on phantom steeds could. Now, as the drake pretended not to see them, while 'coincidentally' wandering closer, they could do nothing but cringe and pretend they hadn't been seen.
Eventually, the drake decided to pick up his dominated caravan master and fly off. The party gingerly emerged from hiding... then scurried back under their rocks as it came flying back! It had obviously seen them, this time, as it dropped the man from a very, very high height, directly over the party's heads. April, for some reason, decided to save the man's life with a feather fall.
This pissed the drake off. "Why did you save me?" it made the man ask. April pretended not to be there, until it walked over and poked her. "Hey, why'd you save me?" Then she screamed, and zipped off on a phantom steed -- and managed to actually get away.
So the drake had his dominated thrall turn to Cypher. "Kill me, or the drake'll come down and kill me himself, and maybe all of you too." Cypher didn't hesitate, quickly crushing the victim's mind with his psionics. The drake was mollified, and flew off again, this time not to return. The party gingerly looted the remains of the caravan, and scurried away from the grisly scene.
Another day passed without incident, before they came to the place where they had to leave the road to head for the escaped slaves' ancient ruined temple on the edge of the sea of silt. They decided to push on through the night, as the phantom steeds wouldn't get too tired, the elves could run tirelessly, and Laika thought that he could force march for three hours without getting too exhausted. During this march, however, they were ambushed by the Gith.
It was a true ambush -- the first the party saw of the enemy was when the gith psion blasted Cypher and April with fire, followed by half a dozen gith with metal spears charging down and skewering them. Fortunately, they quickly regained the initiative, and, by various means, ran away: April (whose phantom steed had been killed by a firebolt) with a dimension door, Cypher on his magic steed which still clung to life, and Laika on the wing. Their guide, and the second-string party members, continued running on their normal course, easily escaping, since this wasn't the end of the fight by any means.
In the dark, Laika couldn't really see to shoot, and so flew around casting defensive spells until the psion decided to open up on his with a firebolt, giving him the opportunity to spring an Energy Adaptation to turn himself into a brilliantly glowing beacon. Once he had light, he used his psionically enhanced arrows to pin the psion to the sand, then started in on the grunts, who were enthusiastically, if uselessly, throwing their spears at him.
April had D-Doored way too far to be involved much in the battle. She cast an ice storm on the patrol, started flying, healed herself, and never got within 400 feet of the action.
Cypher picked exactly the wrong direction to run. The eighth Gith in the patrol blew a horn to summon reinforcements, and Cypher ran right into them. Luckily, he was able to run right back, and assisted the battle against the initial patrol by dominating half of it and having it kill the other half. If it wasn't for the reinforcements, the battle would have been easily won.
Unfortunately, the reinforcements came, and there were lots of them -- three more patrols of the same size, including three more psions. They spotted Cypher and ran over to stab at him with their spears, doing enough damage to interrupt his concentration on the Dominate, while the psions conjured up a great wind, that knocked some of their own people to the ground, but basically negated Laika, who was blown almost a hundred feet by the strong winds, and couldn't hope to shoot an arrow through the gale.
Cypher forcefully transferred his injuries to the surrounding enemies, but since their position was getting untenable, he then d-doored near Laika, who doused his brilliant glow and landed on the psion's head -- at which point they d-doored again, to a spot hundreds of feet away, and obscured by sand dunes. They spotted April and were able to join up with her, then crept away quietly while the Gith stood around wondering where they'd gone.
The ex-slaves at the temple were very glad to see them alive -- their guide, and their other party members, had gotten there half a hour before, telling the tale of the attack. After a long and much needed rest, they went out to meet their employers and assess the situation.
Most of the camp was split between those who wanted to fight, and those who wanted to run. Which to do would be decided that night, in the temple meeting, but meanwhile the party was warned not to poke around in the depths of the temple, lest they annoy the great spirits that kept the water flowing across the temple altar, and could otherwise make their lives hell.
This was suspicious, but the party had plenty to do that *wouldn't* piss off their employer -- locate the Gith camp to get an idea of their numbers, go fetch obsidian from the possibly-haunted quarry to build weapons with, safely escort the large group of ex-slaves who'd ventured out months ago to secretly poach from the sorcerer king's forest, search the sea of silt for giant dead monsters with bones suitable for weapons and armor, and maybe interdict the Gith patrols, so that the large, slow group of carts would have a chance to get through.
First was the meeting, though, and the party managed to convince everyone that fighting would probably be necessary -- the Gith were using metal weapons as projectiles, so they couldn't possibly care about money, and there was no way they were going to *secretly* get two hundred ex-slaves out of the temple and across the desert. They also suggested using 'geurilla tactis', which confused everyone, but was finally determined to be a plan to use the temple as bait, and let the Gith warriors smash themselves uselessly against its ramparts, while the party snuck around to eliminate key leaderhsip.
The discussion and planning took a long time, but eventually they decided to send one of the ex-slaves, who was a skilled scout and good at slipping past Gith lines, if not at combat, to join up with the incoming poacher caravan and warn them about the danger, while the party did some other random tasks, like getting obsidian from the quarry.
The first party mission was to send Laika out to scout for the Gith camp, because who better than a night-blind Aaracockra to search for enemies, alone, at night?
last session | next session
On the plus side, this made it easier for us to run away, which is what we spent most of the night doing.
The party -- and all their friends, many of whom had never participated in a major adventure, numbering 15 in total -- had just inherited a base of operations in Tyr, in the form of a city block, 200' by 200', of prime real estate, covered in run down, crappy buildings. April owned the lion's share of the land, as she'd bought the parts of the block that weren't given for free as a token of appreciation for saving the city('s rulers), but the only person to build anything of note on the land was not a part of the party at all.
A halfling -- the same one they'd met in Lost Scale -- wanted to set up shop, but no one in the city would sell him land, or even rent to him. This made the party leery of selling to him, but they eventually agreed to let him rent a sixteenth of the land for his shop, in return for a few gold pieces and the promise of deep discounts on merchandise, and good prices for selling loot they collected, although anything expensive would have to be sold on consignment.
Within a month and a half, he'd grown a building and outfitted it with luxurious furnishings, and was offering for sale (among other things) Sheath armor, a living armor as easy to move around in as Chitin (chain shirts) but providing half again as much protection, with the slight disadvantage that it could never be removed. Cypher was quick to snap up a suit... Brightstone considered it, but only if it would continue to protect him while wildshaped, which couldn't be guaranteed [GM's word: no]. Kelt badly wanted a suit, but the halfling didn't have enough money to buy his existing armor, which he'd need to fund the vast amount of sheathing required for his giant's frame.
During the month and a half, the party worked at various jobs, and built a mediocre wall around the compound. The army came back from the campaign against the Kreen, having driven them back down the Great Rift to their wall, and ending the threat for the moment. Trade caravans over the forest ridge to Lost Scale and Hidden Vale steadily enriched the various merchant houses. The adventuring company -- Heroes of Tyr Incorporated (HOT Inc) -- got very, very bored.
Finally, an elf came to knock on their gate to offer them a job -- a group of escaped slaves from one of the cities that still had its sorcerer king were under attack from an army of Gith -- subterranean, savage lizards which Brightstone had almost been reincarnated as. They needed to hire mercenaries to protect their caravans, train them in combat, and otherwise generally get rid of the Gith menace. They offered the rights to 50% of the loot recovered in the process of eliminating the threat.
Yeah, that offer wouldn't fly, even with adventurers as bored as they were, and the opportunity to help people in need. They settled on 100 silver up front, and the rights to 50% of the loot recovered by the escaped slaves -- as per standard merc terms, they'd keep all the loot they recovered themselves. They set out in the morning -- Laika, Cypher, and April as the main team, with Santino and Saurian tagging along. [as remote control zombie NPCs who did nothing but run away, since their players were missing]
With April providing phantom steeds for the slower members of the party, the journey was expected to take only four days. April complained bitterly that this would leave her without the ability to fling fireballs, but they didn't expect *too* much trouble just travelling through the desert, and the phantom steeds would make it much easier to run from trouble they couldn't handle without her fireballs.
The first trouble they ran into, about halfway, was a giant drake flying in rapidly to attack an Inix caravan that they happened to be located near. The party tried to warn the caravaners, who hadn't seen the drake yet, then ran off to hide in some rocks, hoping that the drake hadn't seen them. Drakes were known to be intelligent and cruel, and far too powerful for them to take on -- second only to the dragon itself in deadliness -- but often uninterested in anything other than food, which the caravan could provide plenty of.
So the party got to watch while the dragon devoured the caravan. The Inixes, of course, were eaten right off. The caravan guard slaves tried to surrender, and received a slow, tortured death in respose, as the drake tossed them into the air to see if he could catch them on a single claw. Whether he succeeded or failed, they were not happy campers. He ate them too. The caravan master tried to run off and hide, but the drake tracked him down and... didn't eat him. Instead, it dominated him with its psionics, then started searching around for the party.
The party had been on the edge of bolting through the whole scene -- torn between continuing to hide, hoping they hadn't been seen, and running off while it was distracted, hoping that it was distracted enough not to bother chasing them, since they couldn't actually outrun it. Well, the people on phantom steeds could. Now, as the drake pretended not to see them, while 'coincidentally' wandering closer, they could do nothing but cringe and pretend they hadn't been seen.
Eventually, the drake decided to pick up his dominated caravan master and fly off. The party gingerly emerged from hiding... then scurried back under their rocks as it came flying back! It had obviously seen them, this time, as it dropped the man from a very, very high height, directly over the party's heads. April, for some reason, decided to save the man's life with a feather fall.
This pissed the drake off. "Why did you save me?" it made the man ask. April pretended not to be there, until it walked over and poked her. "Hey, why'd you save me?" Then she screamed, and zipped off on a phantom steed -- and managed to actually get away.
So the drake had his dominated thrall turn to Cypher. "Kill me, or the drake'll come down and kill me himself, and maybe all of you too." Cypher didn't hesitate, quickly crushing the victim's mind with his psionics. The drake was mollified, and flew off again, this time not to return. The party gingerly looted the remains of the caravan, and scurried away from the grisly scene.
Another day passed without incident, before they came to the place where they had to leave the road to head for the escaped slaves' ancient ruined temple on the edge of the sea of silt. They decided to push on through the night, as the phantom steeds wouldn't get too tired, the elves could run tirelessly, and Laika thought that he could force march for three hours without getting too exhausted. During this march, however, they were ambushed by the Gith.
It was a true ambush -- the first the party saw of the enemy was when the gith psion blasted Cypher and April with fire, followed by half a dozen gith with metal spears charging down and skewering them. Fortunately, they quickly regained the initiative, and, by various means, ran away: April (whose phantom steed had been killed by a firebolt) with a dimension door, Cypher on his magic steed which still clung to life, and Laika on the wing. Their guide, and the second-string party members, continued running on their normal course, easily escaping, since this wasn't the end of the fight by any means.
In the dark, Laika couldn't really see to shoot, and so flew around casting defensive spells until the psion decided to open up on his with a firebolt, giving him the opportunity to spring an Energy Adaptation to turn himself into a brilliantly glowing beacon. Once he had light, he used his psionically enhanced arrows to pin the psion to the sand, then started in on the grunts, who were enthusiastically, if uselessly, throwing their spears at him.
April had D-Doored way too far to be involved much in the battle. She cast an ice storm on the patrol, started flying, healed herself, and never got within 400 feet of the action.
Cypher picked exactly the wrong direction to run. The eighth Gith in the patrol blew a horn to summon reinforcements, and Cypher ran right into them. Luckily, he was able to run right back, and assisted the battle against the initial patrol by dominating half of it and having it kill the other half. If it wasn't for the reinforcements, the battle would have been easily won.
Unfortunately, the reinforcements came, and there were lots of them -- three more patrols of the same size, including three more psions. They spotted Cypher and ran over to stab at him with their spears, doing enough damage to interrupt his concentration on the Dominate, while the psions conjured up a great wind, that knocked some of their own people to the ground, but basically negated Laika, who was blown almost a hundred feet by the strong winds, and couldn't hope to shoot an arrow through the gale.
Cypher forcefully transferred his injuries to the surrounding enemies, but since their position was getting untenable, he then d-doored near Laika, who doused his brilliant glow and landed on the psion's head -- at which point they d-doored again, to a spot hundreds of feet away, and obscured by sand dunes. They spotted April and were able to join up with her, then crept away quietly while the Gith stood around wondering where they'd gone.
The ex-slaves at the temple were very glad to see them alive -- their guide, and their other party members, had gotten there half a hour before, telling the tale of the attack. After a long and much needed rest, they went out to meet their employers and assess the situation.
Most of the camp was split between those who wanted to fight, and those who wanted to run. Which to do would be decided that night, in the temple meeting, but meanwhile the party was warned not to poke around in the depths of the temple, lest they annoy the great spirits that kept the water flowing across the temple altar, and could otherwise make their lives hell.
This was suspicious, but the party had plenty to do that *wouldn't* piss off their employer -- locate the Gith camp to get an idea of their numbers, go fetch obsidian from the possibly-haunted quarry to build weapons with, safely escort the large group of ex-slaves who'd ventured out months ago to secretly poach from the sorcerer king's forest, search the sea of silt for giant dead monsters with bones suitable for weapons and armor, and maybe interdict the Gith patrols, so that the large, slow group of carts would have a chance to get through.
First was the meeting, though, and the party managed to convince everyone that fighting would probably be necessary -- the Gith were using metal weapons as projectiles, so they couldn't possibly care about money, and there was no way they were going to *secretly* get two hundred ex-slaves out of the temple and across the desert. They also suggested using 'geurilla tactis', which confused everyone, but was finally determined to be a plan to use the temple as bait, and let the Gith warriors smash themselves uselessly against its ramparts, while the party snuck around to eliminate key leaderhsip.
The discussion and planning took a long time, but eventually they decided to send one of the ex-slaves, who was a skilled scout and good at slipping past Gith lines, if not at combat, to join up with the incoming poacher caravan and warn them about the danger, while the party did some other random tasks, like getting obsidian from the quarry.
The first party mission was to send Laika out to scout for the Gith camp, because who better than a night-blind Aaracockra to search for enemies, alone, at night?
last session | next session
