Four Summoners - Snatching TURTLEs

Player Characters

Professor Demigauss - A mad scientist bent on world domination, specializes in robotics and force field technologies

Menagerie - a well-known hunter of endangered species, Sheila Masters was cursed by a witchdoctor to “live in the skins of those animals she had killed” 

Cannonade - A flying explosion looking for somewhere to happen, enhanced by Professor Demigauss

Doctor Zarathustra - a three-in-one entity seeking to corrupt and collect souls

The Set-up

While Cannonade slowly recovered from his case of acute allergic reaction to bullets, the rest of Summoner assisted in the completion of their new base, Summoner 1.  They also attended to their living quarters (unpacking all the boxes took forever) and discussing what they would do next.  It was decided that with a base of operations secured, Summoner next needed troops.

Knowing that their troops would need to stand against the police, Kraken troops, and possibly heroes, it was decided that the troops would need powered armor suits of some sort.  Not having immediate access to an armory or a mass fabrication unit, Professor Demigauss decided to take a short-cut and steal some powered armor.

The team used their contacts and “research skills” to track down a shipment of TURTLE armor being shipped to a MARS (Military Advanced Research Systems) test range in Virginia.  Professor Demigauss’s contact in the Bardalucci crime family was only able to confirm that MARS was using non-union drivers for the convoy.  After a field trip to the Federal Department of Transportation, Charity was able to find a bureaucrat who had access to the information needed.  Using her Mind Control power, she was able to secure the route of the shipment and the number of trucks in the convoy (two), but nothing about what kind of security was being used.

The Plot

1. Ghost will infiltrate the trucks and uses EGO drain and Mind Control to program the drivers.  The drivers are to take a minor exit off I-95, without radioing in, and pull into an abandoned gas station, believing it to be a scheduled rest stop.  Ghost will start with the lead truck and then get the second truck.  While moving between trucks, he will pass through the lead truck's trailer to verify that there are no surprises inside.
2. Cannonade will observe the trucks turning off the Interstate and start a radio blackout [large scale Darkness vs. Radio].  He will check for any security vehicles with the trucks.  If he spots any, he and Menagerie will quickly eliminate the security vehicles.
3. When the trucks stop at the abandoned gas station, Charity will use her (much stronger) Mind Control to get the drivers out of the trucks, wipe their memories of the entire event, and put them to sleep.
4. The team will verify the goods are in the trucks, replace the drivers with our own (hired through the temp agency, T&T), and disable any lo-jak or tracking systems.
5. Our drivers will drive the truck to a second location where we have “clean” trucks waiting.  Summoner will follow them in the Summoner Shuttle to avoid any “complicating incidents”.  The cargo will be transferred from one set of trucks to the other.
6. The “clean” trucks will drive the cargo back to Summoner 1 [the team's base].  The stolen trucks will be destroyed with an excessive amount of dynamite.

Resolution

Summoner set up at the abandoned gas station, with Cannonade and Menagerie hidden in some trees near the highway intersection.  Ghost intercepted the trucks ten minutes down the road and used Mind Control to get the drivers to talk.  In each truck he found two men and when they talked, he learned that they did not know what was inside the cargo trailers, but that there was a Hummer with two security guys following the trucks.  Ghost relayed this information to the team.

When Ghost tried to investigate the trailers, he discovered that they were impervious to his ability to move through solid objects.  This convinced Professor Demigauss that the bulk of the security was inside the trailers and he redeployed Menagerie to support the team opening the trailers instead dealing with the security vehicle.

The trucks took the exit and made the turn down the side road.  At this point Cannonade initiated his radio jamming.  When the security Hummer came around the corner, Cannonade attacked.  He stopped the vehicle, but not the occupants.  The occupants exited the vehicle and activated force field devices.  Cannonade put down one of them before the other hit him twice with a goop gun of some sort.  Professor Demigauss directed Doctor Zarathustra to move in and support Cannonade.

The second hit from the goop gun blocked most of Cannonade’s senses, but, as he had been flying when initially hit, he was still mobile.  He activated his radar ability to get his bearings and started heading towards the rest of the team.  Unfortunately, the stress and effort of activating the radar power knocked Cannonade unconscious, turning off his radio jamming but not his flight power [it was Persistent].  At this point Doctor Zarathustra arrived and put down the remaining security person.  Cannonade revived and resumed radio jamming.

At the abandoned gas station, the trucks pulled up in front of the building and stopped.  They were in the covered parking where Summoner wanted them, so Menagerie started moving to a position where she could cover the rear of the trailers while the truck drivers exited the trucks.  Charity used her superior Mind Control to move the drivers away from the trucks and put them to sleep.

Just as Doctor Zarathustra and Cannonade rejoined the rest of Summoner at the abandoned gas station, the back doors of the trailers flung open and security agents deployed into defensive positions around the tail ends of the trucks – four with force fields, four in TURTLE armor.

Doctor Zarathustra attempted to immediately take down one of the agents with his sword, but was rebuffed by the agent’s force field and hit by an experimental flamer weapon with a 26 m cone of effect.  This incidentally hit Menagerie, triggering an uncontrolled shift into her form, first to a gorilla, then into a crocodile.  She charged the agent as a crocodile [she was Enraged] but failed to reach him before Doctor Zarathustra sent the agent flying with a return swing of his sword.  This allowed her to regain control of her senses and she dropped and rolled to put herself out.

Professor Demigauss unleashed his newly re-programmed Van der Botz (v1.1) with orders to take down the agents.  The Van der Botz charged around the building as a unit and set up a firing line to attack the agents.  The agents reacted by concentrating fire upon the Van der Botz, deactivating two of them before the remaining two triggered their Atomic Burster flash attacks, blinding the agents.

Cannonade fired a shaped arc of energy to soften up the agents without damaging the trucks as Ghost EGO-drained them and Professor Demigauss flew to a better position on top of the trucks.  In short order, the blinded agents were quickly dispatched with minimal damage to the goods.

The bodies of all the agents were placed into the abandoned gas station while the TURTLE armor was reloaded back into the trucks.  Professor Demigauss disabled the security systems on the trucks.  Afterwards, the drivers Summoner hired through the temp agency, T&T, climbed into the trucks and drove the trucks to the secondary location.

At the secondary location, Menagerie transformed into an elephant and moved the cargo crates into the clean trucks.  The drivers transferred to the clean trucks and freighted the cargo to Summoner 1.  The stolen trucks were destroyed with an abundance of dynamite set by Cannonade.

Once the cargo was unloaded at Summoner 1, the drivers were paid and Charity changed their memories so they believed they had performed a simple driving job in Delaware.  This left the drivers available for later jobs, but without leaving any evidence or reason for them to contact the police.  [Summoner secretly owned the temp agency and planned to make recurring use of them in the future.]

The local news that night covered the attack and robbery of the shipment by parties unknown.  Professor Demigauss noticed that the news reported the drivers and security people were murdered, despite Summoner leaving them alive.  It also revealed that the TURTLE armor was going to the MARS facility for upgrades prior to resell.

New Report

CAPITAL CITY – Eight suits of TURTLE Armor en route to the Military Advanced Research Systems (MARS) Facility in Capital City were hijacked from a convoy, less than 20 miles from the Virginia-Maryland border.

The escort vehicle was found destroyed near an exit ramp off the main highway.  The burned-out hulls of the trucks and their murdered crews were found over 20 miles from the escort vehicle wreckage.  The charred remains of the slain crews have not been identified.

The Armor was on its way to the MARS facility in Capital City for system upgrades.  Recently the federal government made it possible for municipalities to purchase advanced technology for law-enforcement use.

"This represents a significant setback to the authorities of this city.  The upgraded TURTLE Armor was going to be deployed in the ever-escalating fight against super-powered crime," said Lt. Powers, spokesman for the Capital City Police Department.  "Whether the suits were stolen for resale or if they were stolen for more sinister purposes remains to be seen."  Each of the TURTLE Armor suits is worth approximately $500,000.

FBI forensics teams are currently studying the evidence and have not ruled out super-human involvement.  The escort vehicle was pierced multiple times by some unknown energy weapon.

Officials at MARS could not be reached for comment.

Commentary

[And that is it for the Four Summoner campaign, at least the part that I have notes for.  Half the group wasn’t really interested in playing villains and the rest of us discovered we played naughty, not evil.  As a group we also realized that a villain campaign actually increases the work the GM needs to do ahead of time, not decrease it.  Or maybe we were still stuck in reaction mode like heroes and not in initiate action-mode like villains need to be.]

[I wasn’t entirely done with Professor Demigauss and wrote a little bit of additional fiction after the campaign stopped, which I will post later.  I liked the interaction between the Professor and Dr. Zarathustra and wrote another bit with them later in Africa accidentally starting a zombie apocalypse as a test of a new power that Dr. Zarathustra developed, but I cannot find it now.  If I do, I will post it.]

Capitol City - The Landing Page for Superhero Campaigns

Four Summoners

Last Session: Bitburg Beatdown

Next: Fiction 1 – Summoner Leaves Base [Posted later, next in line for session notes is The Bold and The Determined]

Four Summoners: Bitburg Beatdown

Player Characters

Professor Demigauss - A mad scientist bent on world domination, specializes in robotics and force field technologies

Menagerie - a well-known hunter of endangered species, Sheila Masters was cursed by a witchdoctor to “live in the skins of those animals she had killed” 

Cannonade - A flying explosion looking for somewhere to happen, enhanced by Professor Demigauss

Doctor Zarathustra - a three-in-one entity seeking to corrupt and collect souls

Prior History

Four supervillains, Professor Demigauss, Menagerie, Cannonade, and Doctor Zarathustra (in his root personality, Charity), found themselves in prison cells, held by unknown captors.  The only representatives of their jailors were the guards that patrolled past their cells every 10 minutes.  The guards wore military fatigues and black berets.  The badge on the berets was a serpent infinity symbol with a graphic of the Western Hemisphere on the left and the Eastern Hemisphere on the right.  Most of the guards had a US flag on the left chest where their name would be.

After a period of time, the facility came under attack and agents of The Organization rescued the team.  The four villains did not know who their "rescuers" represented, but it seemed better than being in prison cells.  The cost for being rescued was being put on the job, in this case the job was to take over Capitol City's underworld from the criminal organization Kraken and run it for The Organization.

Not having better options and believing they could eventually turn the situation to their personal benefit, the villains agreed to the job, taking the code name Four Summoners.

The Plot

After spending some time scouting out Capitol City, the team selected a location for their base and started construction of it using trusted followers of Professor Demigauss.  While it was being readied, Professor Demigauss took the team on a mission to evaluate tactics.

The team stole dynamite and fuses from mining locations in Virginia.  They then selected the small town of Bitburg in Pennsylvania as their testing ground.  Doctor Zarathustra mind controlled some crack addicts, gave them the bundles of dynamite and a lighter, and sent them into a bank in Bitburg, screaming for the money or they would blow everything up.

Ghost [one of Doctor Zarathustra's 3 forms] monitored the crack addicts to keep them screaming while the rest of the team observed the bank from locations around the bank.  Professor Demigauss watched from the back of the bank with his invisibility field up, Doctor Zarathustra and Menagerie observed from an eatery in the parking lot next door, while Cannonade observed from the roof of a building across the street.

After three minutes, the police arrived (both cars) and blocked the front parking lot.  A little later, the local SWAT guys arrived in a truck, further blocking the front parking lot, and deployed.

Professor Demigauss Note to self: If we ever come back to this town to rob the bank properly, we should exit out the back as the local police will never notice our exit.

Finally the local hero arrived, a man going by the nom de guerre of Shellshock, although the team did not learn that until later.  He rode a motorcycle, wore black leather, and carried a large rifle with many attachments.  Summoner immediately started their attacks.  Cannonade attacked the hero’s bike, Professor Demigauss unleashed his Van der Botz (v1.0) with orders to attack the hero and any police that shot at them, and Menagerie moved in to get a better view of the target.

Resolution

In the ensuing fight, the motorbike was knocked around and destroyed.  Cannonade was seriously wounded by Shellshock before Shellshock was put down by Doctor Zarathustra.  Menagerie was continually foiled in her attempts to get a line of fire on the hero, but was not identified by the police either.  The Van der Botz were able to put the police officers out of the action, but kept missing Shellshock.  Professor Demigauss and Ghost grabbed loose money out of the back of the bank, but the vault had been closed and they could not get a large amount.

Commentary

[There was a session zero where we played out the whole "wake up in prison and eventually get rescued by people we now owe a favor to" but really, that summary covers the whole thing so I never wrote it up.]

[The reason we went to Pennsylvania for our shakedown run was two-fold.  First, if things went poorly, no one in our target city would know and our reputations would not suffer.  Second, hitting only locations in Capitol City would tell law enforcement we were based in Capitol City.  By spreading out our attacks across the Eastern Seaboard, we could obfuscate where our base was.  In fact, by selecting our targets properly, we could even suggest we were based in a different city entirely, which was our goal.]

Capitol City - The Landing Page for Superhero Campaigns

Four Summoners Campaign

Next Session: Snatching TURTLEs

Capitol City - The Landing Page for Superhero Campaigns

[UPDATE 2 on 29 September 2026 - moved Four Summoners in order]

Because my superhero campaigns have all been relatively short, rather than do one landing page for each I'm creating one page for them all.  These include:

Four Summoners

A villain campaign wherein we learned our group of players don't actually make very good villains.  This will include some fiction I wrote after the campaign ended.

Sessions: 

Session 1: Bitburg Beatdown

Session 2: Snatching TURTLES

Session 3: [Commentary on the missing session]

Fiction:

Written as a series of shorts when I had some downtime at work. 

Summoner Leaves Base [with a background recap]

Summoner Approaches Bank

Summoner Robs Bank

The Morning After

Field Test in Capitol City

The Bold and The Determined

Two campaigns in one, an experiment in running a high-level and a low-level campaign at the same time in the same city.  The high-level campaign introduced the superhero team SABRE.  This campaign covers preparation from July 2009 to September 2009 and then monthly sessions from September 2009 to February 2010.

Countdown to Campaign - Two Months

Countdown to Campaign - 7 weeks

Countdown to Campaign - 6 Weeks

Countdown to Campaign - 5 weeks

Countdown to Campaign - 1 week

Campaign Session 1

Campaign Session 2

Campaign Session 3

Campaign Session 4

SABRE

The most recent campaign, featuring a newly reconstituted SABRE, several years after the previous campaign.

SABRE, Issue #1 – Pistolero Ambush!
SABRE, Issue #2 – Act 1: Books and Beat Downs
SABRE, Issue #2 – Act 2: The Hunt is ONT

General Campaign Posts

Not campaign specific, but about creating these campaigns and Capitol City.

Champions Pre-Campaign Data 1 – Superhero Timeline - Campaign background

Champions Pre-Campaign Notes: Scale Matters! - not all cities are the same

Capitol City Neighborhood Descriptions - short descriptions of the neighborhoods

Running Superhero Campaigns - some thoughts after 20 years of experiments

Running Superhero Campaigns

Since college, I've run 2 superhero campaigns and played in a handful of others run by my friends, many in the same fictitious city, Capital City, Maryland.  Capital City started as a nebulous place a friend set a his superhero campaign in for a short campaign to give me time to write the next part of whatever I was running at the time, which I think was one of the longer session gaps in Tim's Outlanders.

At a certain point I decided to give running a superhero campaign a try and I needed a map and some history.  I looked at a map of Maryland and decided a port town on the southern shore would work.  I did some reading on the history of the area and picked the actual town of Port Tobacco as the kernel to build a fictitious city around.  I made one divergence from real history - when the bay silted up, rather than that being the end of the town, smugglers approached the town council and offered to dredge the bay in exchange for "unique docking privilege's".  The town council accepted "The Arrangement" and everything else grew from that.  That gave rise to The Bold and The Determined, a campaign with a high-level team and a street-level team, so I could run whatever adventures popped into my head. 

Then I had to write some sort of adventures.

Superheroes is a hard genre to run for me as I never had a working example of what a long term campaign looked like.  This is surprising for me as I devoured comics when I was growing up, reading widely.  I also had access to the comic book collection of one of my uncles (Silver Age material) and eventually my dad's Golden Age comics.  Despite all that, I never gave a lot of thought as to how the stories were put together.

It has taken me quite a bit of time to work out what was missing and what I was doing wrong.  First, superhero comics are soap operas.  Without the drama a campaign is just a series of fights and that gets boring quick.  That lesson took a long time to learn and work out a solution to.  The last superhero campaign I ran, SABRE, I think succeeded at this.  There was drama and secrets between characters, culminating in one PC needing to convince the team to save his secret ID but without explaining to them that was who they were saving.

I've also learned that I currently cannot write a superhero campaign for more than 5 players and that group had 7-8 players in it at any one time.  I felt that some of the characters were not getting enough screen time and some I just had no plot for.  My next superhero campaign will be limited to 4 players max until I can "git gud" at spinning up the drama.

All of this is due to reader Brian Rogers asking to read about my superhero campaigns and me realizing how little of them made it onto this blog.  I have 3 sessions for SABRE, which I do not think is complete, and nothing of The Bold and The Determined or the villain game, Four Summoners, which I wrote some supplemental fiction for.

I'll spend some time this week getting a landing page for my superhero campaigns set up and link in the SABRE material.  Then I have to track down the material for The Bold and The Determined, which I think is still over on Obsidian Portal, and port it over here.

That's it for now.  Type more at you later!

Capitol City - The Landing Page for Superhero Campaigns

Tim's Outlanders: Tomb Raiders, Session 3 – July 7 to 8, 20 IC - UPDATED

[Digging down and exploring tombs.]

[This session took place sometime in 2005, I have no indication of when.  We were playing Champions 5th Edition with the Second Edition Fantasy Hero supplement.]

Player Characters

Crunch – male ogre from the Free City of Freegate, representing the Temple of Toth

Dangar Stonekleaver – male dwarf from the Northern Dwarven Kingdom

Peter Peterman – male human, representing Outlands University

Wendell Dorshield III – male gnome, Captain and Architect of the Yardbird

Malwyn – male High elf fighter and military expert

Darkfox – female human thief from Freegate, secret ID of socialite Karlyn Gryphshaw

NPCs

Lucan Prasuta – male human from Freegate, joined SDG to impress Karlyn Gryphshaw

Session Begins

July 7, 20 IC

The Outlanders started their excavations by digging down to the tomb of Crenshaw Pinchpenny.  The group consisted of Malwyn, Dangar, Darkfox, Crunch, Wendell, and several of Wendell’s gnome bodyguards.  Peter was assisting in the negotiations elsewhere [which means the player was unavailable for the session].  Using Wendell's Rod of Excellent Engineering, they bored a pit straight down to the entrance of the tomb and used a ladder to climb down.

They found the lock on the tomb door was of an old type and the tomb was protected by the cheapest measures possible – painted on magical glyphs.  Darkfox quickly bypassed the lock and the tomb was opened.

The inside, at the bottom of a set of stairs, was rectangular and mostly empty except for a sarcophagus in the center and three chests on the far wall.  The sarcophagus’ right side faced them, making it an additional barrier to the chests beyond.  The paint the protective glyphs were made of was pealing and flaking, but contained enough power to maintain a force barrier that sealed off the back two thirds of the tomb.  The attending “funerary frescoes” on the walls were merely paint directly applied to the stone walls and were perfunctory at best.

Darkfox used her knowledge of bypassing magical traps to disarm the wall of force.  Leaving the sarcophagus for last, Darkfox walked past it to investigate the three chests.  Dangar followed and stood directly behind her, ready to pull her out of harm’s way or strike at anything nasty that came out of the chests.  The rest of the group held back until Darkfox determined whether or not it was safe.

Darkfox carefully looked over all three of the chests and determined that all three were locked, but only the middle one was trapped.  She picked the lock on one of the untrapped chests, oiled the hinges, and opened it.  Inside was Treasure but at exactly the same time, a baleful howl arose from the sarcophagus and a spectral figure appeared over it.

The spectral figure was of an old man wearing the ragged clothes of a much older style.  The man pointed a boney finger at Dangar and started haranguing Dangar in a language none of them understood.  Dangar felt the dread chill of the apparition’s anger flow over him and was dumbfounded, not knowing what to do [high-level Presence Attack].  The rest of the group immediately stepped up and attacked the spectral creature with whatever magic attacks they had at their disposal.  Crunch cast Voice of Toth, a specialty spell of the clergy of Toth where the voice of Toth whispered unyielding secrets that shake undead to their foundation.  The entire group heard the quiet susurration of Toth’s words in the spell’s area of effect, but only Dangar, who was inside the area of effect, and the ghost of Crenshaw Pinchpenny heard anything distinct.

Whatever the ghost of Crenshaw Pinchpenny heard greatly affected him.  He screamed out, slapping his hands over his ears, and his form became less distinct and more tattered.  Dangar only heard the words, “he means to kill all of you,” whispered into his ears.  Suspecting the ghost was tied to the sarcophagus; Dangar grabbed the opened chest and called out for people to run for it.

The gnomes immediately pulled back out of the crypt, as did Malwyn and Darkfox.  Crunch stood his ground and re-cast Voice of Toth to keep the ghost from laying its soul-chilling touch on Dangar.  Once again the quiet susurrations were heard.  This time, Toth’s truths completely blew the ghost back to the ether from whence it came, but Dangar only heard, “the treasure is cursed,” whispered into his ears.

With the immediate threat removed, the exodus from the crypt stopped.  Dangar set down the chest and relayed what he had heard.  After some discussion, Darkfox stated that she may know someone who could handle the problem.  She recommended that everyone return above ground and wait for her to return.

While the rest of the Outlanders had a short lunch, Darkfox went to the guildhouse of the Rare Art Brotherhood and made inquiries.  She returned with a specialist who was calm and detached and a bit of a cipher for the Outlanders.  He asked everyone to leave the crypt and went to work while the Outlanders watched from the crypt’s entrance.  He worked with his back to the Outlanders, so they could not see everything he did or hear everything he said.  Crunch was able to recognize some of the items being used as tools made and used by the Temple of Usher.

After a while, he finished laying the ghost of Crenshaw Pinchpenny to rest and picked up his gear to leave.  He did not answer any questions about who he was or who he worked for except in oblique terms.  It was never determined if he was part of the Temple of Usher, merely associated with them, or something else entirely.

The treasure in the chests was cataloged [but never written down in my notes].  The locked chest turned out to contain only personal items that once belonged to Crenshaw Pinchpenny.  They were left in place and the chest relocked.  Dangar tipped over the sarcophagus to see if anything was hidden underneath it and a copper penny was found.  It was taken by Darkfox.

With the first tomb explored, Wendell used the Wand of Excellent Engineering to dig a lateral tunnel over to the tomb identified as belonging to Timothy Brewer.  Upon reaching it, Darkfox inspected it closely, looking for traps or anything unusual.

At first, the most unusual thing about the tomb was how plain it was.  Looking closer, Darkfox discovered many small glyphs inscribed in out of the way places on the tomb door and lintel.  Pointing them out to the rest of the Outlanders, those recently back from the Temple of Watching Twilight [see Adventure 6: Cultists, Cultists, Cultists] recognized certain similarities between these glyphs and those that sealed the temple catacombs.  Further exploration was halted for the day.

July 8, 20 IC

The Outlanders split up to find out more information, querying the various temples in the city.  This set off quiet alarms at both the Temple of Toth and the Temple of Usher.  Both temples sent people to discretely follow the Outlanders.

The Temple of Druuna nearly arrested Wendell under suspicion of being a minion of the undead after his frank retelling of the events of the previous expedition.  After some testing and some talking, the Temple of Druuna agreed to let Wendell go on the condition they can test the rest of the team that was at the Temple of Watching Twilight.

Later that day, Wendell had the Outlanders meet him at the Gnome compound along with the rest of the gnomes from the previous expedition.  A priestess of Druuna and several Temple Guards were there.  After some initial tension, the priestess was able to test all present for undead influence.  Everyone but Yacov passed, which surprised no one but Yacov.  Yacov was restrained and taken to the Temple of Druuna for treatment.

Session Ends.

NPCs Met

Unknown exorcist associated with the Rare Art Brotherhood, name never given.

Priestess of the Temple of Druuna [cannot find where I recorded her name]

Happening Off-Stage

The gnomes spent some time shoring up the tunnels dug by the Outlanders in order to avoid a cave-in.  They scrupulously avoided coming into contact with the tomb currently being investigated.

Karlyn’s parents got wind that their daughter’s name appears as a principle investor of the Skytown Development Group.  They both hit the roof, but for different reasons.  Her father for “holding out on the family while giving the Pratsuta family a leg up”, her mother for completely disrupting the intricate social plans and arrangements made “on Karlyn’s behalf.”

Now her mother will have to re-evaluate all of the arrangements made based on Karlyn’s new social standing as part of an obviously well-funded business that is associated with the Gnome Consortium and Tim’s Outlanders.  Her father started trying to use Karlyn’s name to make inroads into Skytown.  Both parents want to talk with Karlyn immediately and have sent messages saying such.  She studiously ignored the messages.

The Allied Construction Trades Guild was originally pleased with the amount of new work the Skytown Project was bringing in.  Now that they have a better appreciation of the scope of the gnomes’ plans, they are starting to balk, claiming they do not have enough skilled guild members to do all of the work in the time scale the gnomes are pushing.  They are extremely resistant to the idea of bringing in workers from Fordsway and negotiations are starting to get tense.

There has been an increase of goblin raiding parties attacking merchants on the trade route to Orpheon [west of Freegate].  Rumor had it that a new tribe, the Uz-Uzs [Fire Suns], had started raiding close to the HNTR Terminus, leading to the increase in attacks.  The Uz-Uzs appear to be organized and have spellcasters among their raiding parties.  With the ongoing Mountain War, the Imperial Legionnaires stationed at the Terminus cannot spare troops to deal with this problem at this time.  The commander of the Terminus is contemplating posting rewards for handling the situation at the Freegate Adventurers Guild.

DM Discussion

[Prior to finding the folders with notes (see Original Post, below), I did not have anything for July 8 in my notes and had forgotten about it entirely.  This is exactly why I started typing up my notes and writing up what happened during sessions in the past – I was losing important information to maintain consistency in the campaign as I naturally forgot it over time.  The notes were mostly to jog my memory when I started, but later I realized I needed better notes than that, especially to remember things 3+ years after they happened.]

[My recovered notes also remind me that 2005 was when I started writing adventures for the Bandit Kingdoms region of Living Greyhawk, which was a lot of fun.  I was also running my superhero campaign at the same time, trying to patch over that I was out of ideas for my fantasy campaign.  Eventually I explained to the players that I was tapped out and shutting down the Tim’s Outlanders Campaign.]

Tim's Outlanders Landing Page

Tomb Raiders

Previous session: Session 2

Next Session: Session 4 [missing?]

Original Post:

So just as I was wrapping up this entry and ready to post when I came across two folders containing my original hand-written game notes and a complete printout of the adventure notes.  There is enough material that I need to update my [rather scanty] Session 3 notes that survived the hard drive crash plus supplement material for Sessions 1 and 2.

I'll post the full session notes with supplemental material this afternoon.  Sessions 1 and 2 will get updates afterwards and have a note up top when they get updated, so you can quickly tell once that is done.

I also found some hand notes on the end of the Cultists, Cultists, Cultists adventure that has the actual in-game dates of the Outlanders return from the mountains, so I will add that to the relevant posts.

Tim's Outlanders: Tomb Raiders, Session 2 – June 28 to July 6, 20 IC

[The activities of the Outlanders start a land boom in the slums of Freegate.]

[This session took place sometime in 2005, I have no indication of when.  We were playing Champions 5th Edition with the Second Edition Fantasy Hero supplement.]

Player Characters

Crunch – male ogre from the Free City of Freegate, representing the Temple of Toth

Dangar Stonekleaver – male dwarf from the Northern Dwarven Kingdom

Peter Peterman – male human, representing Outlands University

Wendell Dorshield III – male gnome, Captain and Architect of the Yardbird

Malwyn – male High elf fighter and military expert

Darkfox – female human thief from Freegate, secret ID of socialite Karlyn Gryphshaw

Session Begins

June 28, 20 IC

The Outlanders land purchasing plans progressed, with two hitches.  Baron Olaf of Eltdorf paid his back taxes and now had full title to his land in Outtown.  This included one of the blocks the Outlanders were seeking to gain ownership of.  Another parcel had its back taxes paid, but receipt was delayed due to the “Blue Paper Incident”.  [I no longer remember what this was in reference to, but I’m pretty sure it was PC shenanigans.]  This removed another parcel from their very short list of desired properties.

Additionally, once the Outlanders initial set of ownership papers were filed, papers on the surrounding blocks started being filed by others with rapidity.  Within a week, back taxes on the surrounding blocks and the most direct path to the main road through Outtown were paid and new ownership secured for them.  The Freegate Tax Office (FTO) started receiving regular inquiries about what other properties were in arrears in the area followed by prompt payments from various land speculators.  This created a noticeable windfall in the city’s revenue.

On top of that, the Outlanders were approached by Great Keeper Gildas Alfredson of the Temple of Usher.  He requested that the tomb of Lady Danya of Kozelsk not be disturbed in any way.  He was somewhat unclear as to exactly why but was very firm on the basic point.

Finally, Lucan Prasuta, a scion of House Prasuta (importers and exporters of fine teas and smokeweed from the Shires) approached Peter about becoming a junior member of the Skytown Development Group.  After extensive negotiations both with and within the Outlanders, it was agreed he would be accepted as a junior partner with the option of increased profits if he could secure either or both of the two parcels the Outlanders were unable to secure.

End of Session: June 30, 20 IC

NPCs Met

Great Keeper Gildas Alfredson of the Temple of Usher - head of the Temple of Usher in the City of Freegate

Lucan Prasuta – a scion of House Prasuta (importers and exporters of fine teas and smokeweed from the Shires), pursuing the hand of Karlyn Gryphshaw through business venture

Happening Off-Stage

A week passes between sessions 2 and 3.  During this week, the following happens.

Relocation of residents in the Skytown construction area started.  This had the potential to be explosive, but the creation of a Residence Location Service (RLS) by the Gnome Consortium is reducing tensions.  The RLS is helping relocate those who do not want to become employees of the Skytown Development Group (SDG) [and thereby secure new living places in Skytown - literally as most of these residences will be in the support structures Skytown will rest on] by placing them in locations being left behind by those who do.

Construction of modular temporary housing (developed by Nira Dorshild, a cousin of Wendell's) has started.  Actual construction of the modules is being done in facilities on the Eastern Rim.  The modules will be air-lifted in via Fortuna-class airship.

Clearing of land is being handled by demolition of the few completely abandoned buildings using a combination of golems and spells.  To date, two entire blocks have been cleared of previous residents through relocation.  These blocks have been secured by the expedient of using the Rod of Excellent Engineering to create stone walls and seal off the blocks.  One of these blocks is where the Outlanders plan to start digging.  Signs have been put up labeling these blocks as construction/demolition sites.

Overall planning of Skytown is still being developed by gnomish and dwarven architects working around the clock.  Once complete, the plans will have to be filed with the city bureaucracy.  The gnomes told the Outlanders that this is normally a formality, but due to the size and amount of construction, they are already getting inquiries from the city.

Lucan sent word that he may have achieved an agreement with Baron Olaf, but is having difficulty tracking down the land owner for the fourth parcel.

DM Discussion

[To clarify something the notes might gloss over – Skytown is an arcology being built on top of portions of Outtown, adding a second layer of city.  Outtown is the last part of the mesa that Freegate sits upon to be enclosed within the city walls and is the slums of the city.  The Outlanders are using the giant civic improvement/construction project as cover to dig down under the streets of Outtown to loot some tombs left behind when an ancient cemetery was moved about 3000 years prior.  Land speculation began all around the area the Outlanders claimed title to by paying the back taxes on, especially once the Skytown Development Group was established and its paperwork filed.  People don’t know exactly which land the SDG wants, but expect to be able to reap large amounts of coin if they have title to needed land, especially since the Gnome Consortium is involved.]

Tim's Outlanders Landing Page

Tomb Raiders

Previous session: Session 1

Next Session: Session 3

Status Update

Our life kind of imploded the last two weeks.  My wife is looking for a job to help fix our finances plus dealing with some other stuff while I'm desperately trying to keep all the plates spinning until she finds work.  Unfortunately, she is having trouble finding jobs that actually pay what they promise, when they promise.  This has made life an emotional rollercoaster as we edge closer and closer towards fiscal oblivion.

Not fun, to say the least.

I will post the next two sessions of Tim's Outlanders: Tomb Raiders this week, probably Tuesday and Thursday.  After that, I'm not 100% certain at this point.  I should work on typing up the session reports for In Search Of..., especially as I'm supposed to run the next session in two weeks, so that seems likely.  I'm also working on the next arc of the Sudden Sea campaign, when the players leave County Modon to avoid the revolution they accidentally started there and travel through the Grand Duchy of Mercia, looking for mercantile riches and whatever other wealth they can lay their hands on.

That's it for now.  Type more at you later!