[December 21st – Ozrel, Ricky, and Zarek enjoy a quiet evening at the Guildhall during the Royal Winter Ball.]
[This game uses the Fifth Revised Edition of the Hero System
rules along with the Fantasy Hero supplement.
This session happened May 30, 2022.]
Player Characters:
Jala – human female – a person of discretion, studier of
Pact Magic with a focus on shadows
Ozrel Runeweaver – human male – Pugilist and Rune Magician
Zarek the Red – fox male – Golem-mancer
Vorgand – human female – Guildmaster and Chief Combatant for
the Delvers Guild
Ricky the Astrologer – human male – Newly-minted specialist
in Magic Circles and Teleportation Gates
Non-Player Characters:
Torsten, Fish, Harek – ex-bandits, now The Torchbearers for
the Delvers Guild
Lars – Seneschal of the Delvers Guild Guildhall in Aegea
City, very competent
Yggsday, December 21st, 1st year of the reign of King Vladik the Gamesman
8:00 PM
With Vorgand and Jala away for the Royal Winter Ball, Ozrel,
Ricky, and Zarek pursued their own activities.
Ozrel was on the first floor in the Common Room [also the Ballroom and
the Rental Party Room] doing practical exercises as part of his training to
learn Research. The few guards on duty
were playing dominos over by the closed and locked freight door. Lars was in the Guildhall office updating
records and finances. Zarek was doing
magi-tech experiments on the second floor in one of the small rooms without a
window [he was paranoid about the elves spying on him]. Ricky was sitting up on the roof of the
Guildhall, above the 6th floor storage room. He was wearing the Invisibility Pin and
dividing his attention between the Royal Palace [visible across the city],
reviewing some start charts against the sky, and eavesdropping on the elves
using the magical earrings to communicate between their various spy posts in
the city. It being a Yggsday, he could
also hear various parties happening across the student quarter.
9:30 PM
Ricky hear three sets of soft thumps coming from the
Guildhall’s lower roof [he both has a very high Perception and he rolled very
low, succeeding despite a -8 to his roll].
Curious and suspicious, he stepped over to the edge of the upper roof
and looked down to see what he could see.
He did not see anything unusual but due to the angle [and an intervening
sub-roof] he could not see the part of the Lower Roof directly below him.
He could, however, hear the quiets sounds of oil being
applied to the shutter hinges on the shuttered windows of the 4th floor.
Ricky shadow jumped down to the 4th floor, which
was an open area and not yet in use.
There are steep stairs up in the northeast corner and regular stairs
down along the southern wall with the top being I the southwest corner. There were two windows each on the east and
west walls, the windows on the east wall providing access to the lower roof of
the Guildhall. Three people were in the
process of breaking in through one of the windows on the east wall with one of
them already inside, one outside, and one crossing the sill as Ricky arrived. All three were wearing concealing dark
clothes and were roughly human sized.
The intruder already inside noticed the effects of Ricky’s
shadow jump and swung a quarterstaff where he thought Ricky was standing. Ricky was not standing there. [The intruder rolled an 18 on his attack and
barely held onto his staff.] Ricky took
the time to drink a potion of speed [raising his speed to 4]. The intruder on the window sill finished
entering the room.
The intruders were quicker than Ricky, even with the potion
of speed, and the two inside moved to block the stairs and waited, realizing
they faced an invisible opponent. Ricky
started casting Dark Leaching, intending to target the intruder blocking the
stairs down. The intruder blocking the
stairs up realized roughly where Ricky was and attempted to move through on
Ricky and disrupt his spell casting. The
intruder just missed Ricky, who completed the spell and hit the intruder blocking
the stairs down [draining that worthy of 8 Body]. Once done casting, Ricky called out “Guards!”
and then attempted to scare the intruders [Presence attack] by saying “This is
your chance to leave.” The intruders
were not impressed [Ricky had few dice and rolled low]. Two floors down, Zarek’s ears perked up,
hearing Ricky calling out for guards somewhere above him and cast Stoney Skin
upon himself. [Ozrel and the actual
guards heard nothing.]
The intruder guarding the stairs down, angry at Ricky due to
the Dark Leaching pulled a device out of his clothing and pointed it at
Ricky. Ricky recognized it as a type of
lightning pistol just in time to be hit by a bolt of lightning from it, which
stunned Ricky. The other intruder in the
room attacked Ricky with his quarterstaff but missed again, even though Ricky
was stunned. The intruder outside on the
roof spoke in Elven, calling out “Remember objective one,” and then moved out
of sight to the left [he was trying to leave the clearly botched mission]. Zarek, Ozrel, and even the guards heard the
sound of the lightning bolt and were now all on alert. Ricky shrugged off the stun and Zarek started
flying to Ricky’s rescue, making it to the top of the third floor stairs.
The angry elf with the lightning pistol shot at Ricky, who
aborted to shadow jump down to the third floor.
Ricky was not quite fast enough and was hit before teleporting. He fell to the floor very unconscious where
Zarek could see him. The other elf pulled
out his own lightning pistol, but thought Ricky had been disintegrated and
instead started climbing back out the open window.
The elf in the window finished climbing out and the angry
elf moved to the window to start exiting.
Ozrel teleported to the Upper Roof for maximum visibility and started
looking for trouble. Zarek continued
flying up the stairs, reaching the top of the stairs on the 4th floor and saw the intruders leaving through an open window.
The elves moved over to the edge of the Lower Roof where
ropes were waiting and prepared to start climbing down the ropes.
Ozrel heard the sounds on the Lower Roof and teleported down
there to engage the intruders. Zarek
flew out the open window and cast his own lightning spell at the elf about to
descend the rope [designated as Elf2 – angry elf is Elf1 and the other elf, now
at the bottom of the rope, Elf3]. Elf2
released the rope and let gravity move him down to the ground, falling 3
stories [and taking some Stun as Hero System is very forgiving about falling
damage]. This left Zarek’s spell
destroying the rope, cutting off angry elf’s escape.
Angry elf switched the setting on his lightning pistol to
hit a line of targets and shoots both Ozrel and Zarek [Ozrel, thinking it was
AoE: 1 hex, dove for cover closer to the angry elf, but it didn’t help]. Elf2 stood up and waited for Elf1. Elf3 ran, escaping the fight entirely.
[Ozrel had no action due to aborting to a dive for
cover.] Zarek, believing Elf1 was
trapped, flew over the edge to attack Elf2.
Elf2 tried to dodge the attack but Zarek hit anyway, knocking him
unconscious.
Angry elf, tired of this mini-golem, switched his lightning
pistol settings again and shot at Zarek point-blank. He missed.
Ozrel kipped up from being prone and through a Branding
Strike at the elf, missing the elf. The
elf shot at Zarek again, tagging the fox in the legs, which kept him from being
stunned. Ricky regained consciousness at
this point.
The angry elf pocketed his lightning pistol and climbed down
the side of the Guildhall to the ground.
On the ground, Elf2 woke up from being knocked unconscious.
Ozrel performed a blind teleportation from the Lower Roof to
the Ground and arrived in the same space as the angry elf! Ozrel was shunted aside in a huge release of
energy that knocked both of them unconscious.
Zarek, noticing Elf2 was awake again, hit the elf with a lightning bolt,
knocking him unconscious again.
Zarek flew down and relieved the elves of their lightning
pistols, piling the pistols against the Guildhall.
Elf2 woke up again and dodged Zarek’s attempt to zap him
unconscious again. Ricky shadow jumped
to the Upper Roof to find out what was going on.
Elf2 kipped up and ran down the street, just getting around
the corner of the Guildhall, all the while yelling out in elven.
Zarek chased the elf around the corner, switching up his
lightning spell and using it against the elf, but he missed the shot.
Ricky worked out where the elf was running and shadow jumped
to the front porch of the Guildhall, at the mouth of the alley the elf was
running through. This put him in
position just in time to see the elf, running for all he was worth, pop out of
the alley, run down the street slightly, and duck into another alley. [Elf2 was running at non-combat speeds, which
doubled his movement.] The angry elf
woke up, stood up, and moved over to where the lightning pistols were stacked.
Ozrel woke up, stood up next to the angry elf, activated his
runes, and then punched the angry elf back into unconsciousness. Ricky shadow jumped to the mouth of the alley
Elf2 had run into and hit the elf with Dark Leaching. Zarek flew out of the alley beside the
Guildhall but failed to see Ricky down the street, so he had no idea which way
the elf ran.
Elf2 continued to run, ducking down seemingly random alleys
with Ricky in pursuit, but the elf quickly lost Ricky in the maze of the
Students Quarter.
Meanwhile, Zarek went back to where Ozrel and the angry elf
were. He took a magic earring off the
elf and stashed the earring and pistols in his back pouch. Ozrel fetched some rope and they tied up the
elf. Zarek also tracked down the
abandoned quarterstaves and discovered they had defensive magic on them [+1
DCV].
Once the elf was tied up, Ozrel carried him inside and they
waited for Ricky to return. Once he was
back, Ricky questioned the elf. The elf
didn’t share much, but Ricky got the impression they were looking for evidence
the guild was grave robbing.
Midnight
A patrol of the city watch finally arrived. The city watch claimed the elf. When Zarek protested, the watch told him to
take it up with the magistrate in the morning.
End of Session
Guild Postings
[This session covered what happened while Vorgand and Jala
were at the Royal Winter Ball. For a
couple of reasons, I’ve paused the campaign after this session. One of the reasons was that I needed to run a
playtest for my OD&D clone, testing out the wilderness exploration
rules. Running the playtest with my
weekly group meant I could get the testing done quickly with minimal rules
refresh time each session. The other
reason was that the players have gone beyond the prepared material for what was
supposed to be a place-holder campaign.
I was ready to shut things down once the group found the ship on the
moon and we’ve gone months past that. I
need some time to plot and plan if I’m going to keep running this campaign.]
[The other reason I need a break is my mom’s medical
condition has gotten suddenly worse due to her contracting Covid. This is causing financial and emotional burdens
that I’m struggling with.]
[So I might be going silent for a couple weeks after this
post. I have a couple of new monsters to
post to the Creature Catalog and the updated Guild Organizational Document I
promised a while back. When those get
posted depends on how much headspace I have available over the next few weeks.]
Delvers Guild
Arc 1
Arc 1 Landing Page – Links to all Arc 1 sessions
Arc 2
Arc 2 Landing Page – Links to all Arc 2 sessions, as they post
Last Session: Arc 2, Session 16
Next Session: Arc 2, Session 18 [Not Scheduled]
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