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 [not yet linked]

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: [Missing - I remember one as we added another player but cannot locate the notes for it]

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!

Tim's Outlanders: Tomb Raiders, Session 1 – Late June, 20 IC

[The Outlanders return to Freegate and start all new shenanigans.]

[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 1 is missing from my records.  This is based on the written adventure and a very little from my memory.]

Session Begins

The adventure started with the Outlanders returning to Freegate via the airship Cloud Darkener.  When they arrived at Freegate they discovered that Tim was no longer on the airship.  In Freegate they asked around and learned that Tim had arrived in town a day before them, but left again, telling Steve the Half-orc (who worked at Tim’s pub) that he was “going for a walk.”

The Arch-Dean of Natural Philosophy at Outlands University contacted Wendell and arranged a meeting to introduce representatives of the University and the Temple of Toth [god of Knowledge], both of whom will be joining the Outlanders.  The University representative is to supply wizard skills and represent the University.  The representative of the Temple of Toth is there to observe and support the Outlanders.

The group met over lunch at the University Center Cafeteria (the Faculty Dining Room, specifically).  The initial meeting was rocky, but it was tentatively agreed that Crunch and Peter would be working with the Outlanders.  Whether or not they will be actually part of the Outlanders was still up for considerable debate.

The Outlanders had a map they found in the Temple of Watching Twilight [previous adventure] that showed the City of Freegate nearly 3000 years ago, before it completely occupied the mesa top.  The old city graveyard was shown in the area now known as Outtown, with several tombs marked out.  The Outlanders were curious why those tombs were marked and assumed there was treasure, treasure they wanted.  However, they would clearly need to dig to get it and wanted to avoid opportunistic interference from those that currently lived where they needed to dig or owned the land and could claim ownership of any treasure dug up.

The Outlanders consulted with the Temple of Usher [Usher being the Guardian of Time and the Dead].  The records of the Old City Graveyard were incomplete, partly due to age and partly due to the contents of the cemetery having been moved 2500 years ago.  The records showed that the majority of those interred were moved to the new ossuary next to Zenda Castle by the Temple of Usher itself, but a few of the crypts could not be moved.  Reasons for this could not be found.  The unmoved crypts had their above ground components disassembled and their entryways filled before the entire site was covered with a new layer of soil and blessed by the Temple of Fortuna [Goddess of Luck and Fortune, favored by merchants].

A partial map was found that showed the crypts that were left in place and provided names for three of them: Crenshaw Pinchpenny [an ancestor of Darkfox’s], Lady Danya of Kozelsk, and Timothy Brewer [the same full name as Tim, the Wizard].  The fourth crypt was listed as “Unknown”.  The Temple of Usher freely gave permission to the Outlanders to dig as the land was no longer considered under their purview.  [They will later change their mind, once they have more time to check their records more thoroughly.]

The Outlanders decided that the easiest way to avoid any interference was to purchase the land and structures currently on it.  Consulting a map of Outtown and overlaying it onto the old map, they worked out a short list of properties that currently sit on top of the tombs they want to dig down to.  In order to find out who owns the properties that they want to purchase, they had to do some research.  Property ownership in Outtown was never clear-cut and most properties had extensive back taxes owed on them.

The Outlanders first went to the Freegate Tax Office (FTO) in the Golden Triangle district, assuming they would have records of any taxes owed for each parcel and the ownership thereof.  While they had records of taxes owed, they did not have current ownership records – the records were kept at the Land Office.  After being shuffled through several departments, none of which knew where the Land Office was, the Outlanders were eventually told they needed to consult with the Governmental Office of Bureaus (GOB), which keeps records on all Freegate governmental departments.

At the GOB they were sent to various desks and offices until a bureaucrat was forced to admit that, due to some “issues,” the GOB does not have the current location of the Land Office.  The Outlanders were instead provided with a list of five possible locations to check, provided the Outlanders promise to never tell anyone who gave them the list.  The Outlanders made this promise and were given the list.

The Outlanders worked through the list of locations.  Along the way they ended up at the Bureau of Recreation, Entertainers, Carnivals, and Sideshows (BuRECS), the Bureau of Equine Transference (BET), the Fringe Iconography and Religions – Investigations (FIRe-I) department, and the Bureau of Ordinance Management (BoOM) [who were big fans of the Outlanders and disappointed Tim was not there with them], until they finally arrived at The Land Office.

The Land Office people were surprised to see anyone, let alone the Outlanders.  After some coaxing and a promise to not tell anyone where they were located, the Land Office provided a list of the current owners of the parcels of land in Outtown that the Outlanders were considering purchasing.  The owners of the parcels of land, in the order of desirability, were:

• Baron Olaf of Eltdorf, an expat noble from the Bayern District currently living in Freegate
• Laurin the Red Wizard, an elven matriarch in Freegate
• Steinkel Bonemace, a local human
• Harald Bronzearrow, a local human, 200 years ago

The Outlanders tracked down the people on their list.

Baron Olaf of Eltdorf’s lands in the Bayern District were on the east side of the Greater Tabor River and were now claimed by the Duke of Lundania.  As a baron, Olaf must have ownership of land in order to maintain that status.  He won the plot in Outtown in a card game many years ago and held onto it as a joke, but now it was the only land he had title to and he would not sell it.  He offered to give it to the Outlanders IF they liberated his barony from the Duke of Lundania.  The Outlanders declined but left their contact information.

Laurin the Red Wizard had recently died of very old age and her will was in probate.  She outlived several generations of her children (many of whom were adventurers), so determining who, exactly, owned the land now was taking some time.  The Outlanders left their contact information.

Steinkel Bonemace was a crotchety old man who lived in a dilapidated building near the center of the large parcel land and didn’t want to sell.  At all.

Harald Bronzearrow’s parcel of land went to an heir when he died, but that worthy was not named.  It would take some serious research to track down the current heir to the land.  Without the title the current occupants had the right to live there and could not be made to move.  Wendell got some gnome archivists working on it.

At some point the Outlanders learned that if they just paid the back taxes on a parcel of land, they would become the official owners of the land.  There was some legal work to be done and afterwards the Outlanders would have to work out a way to get the current occupants to move, but they would have legal ownership of anything they recovered from the tombs below.  The Outlanders decided to follow this path, choosing to pay the back taxes on Steinkel Bonemace’s parcel.

The Outlanders also needed a cover story for once they started digging, if nothing else to keep other people from digging down to the cemetery layer and looting the tombs before the Outlanders could.  Wendell learned that the Gnome Consortium was looking to build a large facility for airships in their new passenger service with the Fortuna-class merchant airships.  He suggested that building the facilities on top of Outtown would be safer than building out on either canyon rim.

[Things happened and The Skytown Development Group was formed.  This incorporated company would work on designing and building Skytown, the newest district of Freegate, to be built over parts of Outtown.  It would require the purchase of more land through paying back taxes on properties and relocation the current residents, but the gnomes had plans and ideas for that.]

Session Ends.

NPCs Met

[Quite a few, actually.  Unfortunately the detailed records of what happened and who the PCs talked to were lost in the Hard Drive Crash of 2014.]

Happening Off-Stage

These notes are also missing.

DM Discussion

[I was surprised at how much I had for the first session.  Most of this was in my adventure notes.  I had to sum up the creation of The Skytown Development Group as I don’t have anything explaining exactly how it came about.  It was not part of my original adventure notes but something the players came up with and I ran with.]

[I do have session notes for Sessions 2 and 3, but nothing for Session 4, where the adventure and campaign ended.  The campaign ended because my burnout reached critical and I was out of ideas on what to do next with the campaign.  It would be 20 years before I returned to this campaign world and to do that I had to advance the in-game calendar forward 30 years and set the new campaign in a completely different area of the continent.  That is the Sudden Sea campaign.  The creation of the Sudden Sea itself ties back directly to events in this campaign, how exactly being a campaign secret I’m not willing to share just yet.]

[The In Search Of… campaign is also set in the same world, also 30 years later but a month behind the Sudden Sea campaign.  As the In Search Of… campaign involves a lot of airship travel it is entirely possible it will catch up with the Sudden Sea campaign on the calendar.  We’ll see how it goes.]

Tim's Outlanders Landing Page

Tomb Raiders

Previous session: Campaign Status Update

Next Session: Session 2

Tim's Outlanders: Campaign Status Update – June 20 IC

[What’s going on around the campaign in June 20 IC.]

[This update was technically given at the beginning of the next adventure, but I'm making it a separate update.  It is much smaller than the last one.  We were playing Champions 5th Edition with the Second Edition Fantasy Hero supplement.]

Player Characters

Tim, a Wizard - male human from the Free City of Freegate, graduate of Outlands University

Dangar Stonekleaver – male dwarf from the Northern Dwarven Kingdom

Mord Worldfist – Deceased

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

Gnomes

This is the status of the various Gnome construction projects as of June, 20 IC.

• The Yard refit was complete.  There were now five construction bays built into the wall of the Canyon’s north rim with the above ground structures converted into hangars.
• The Berkheim Flight School was under construction and on schedule to complete at the very end of the year (December 31, 20 IC).
• Merchant airships had been developed and orders were being taken (notably from the Kingdom of Silverloc).  The first Fortuna-class airship would launch soon.
• The rebuilding of Fordsway was progressing, with an estimated completion in November of the following year (21 IC).
• Wemmel Water Works, Phase 1 was nearing completion.  Its estimated completion date was July 20 IC.
• [Gnomes Eyes Only] Aetherstone supplies were running low.  The Gnomes had scouting teams out looking for a new supply.

Politics

The following political issues were being discussed.

• There was a great deal of tension between the Free Bayern League and Greater Lundania.  It was expected that the Duke of Lundania would attempt to annex the remainder of Bayern before the Emperor resolved the war with the orcs and lizardmen.  The barons of the League were still working out how to resist the Duke and not become beholden to someone else (like Freegate for instance…).
• Tensions between the two dwarven kingdoms were rising.  Raids were happening across the border between the two dwarven kingdoms with Uplander villages were attacked as well.  Both sides denied they had anything to do with the raids, but both sides said, “If it happens again…”
• The Empire was too busy dealing with the Lizardman Horde and the dragons to spend any resources dealing with the Silverloc or Syrak Alliance rebellions or the Mountain War.  For the moment.

Military

• What was being called The Mountain War was in full swing.  The Uplanders took the High North Trade Route north of the Citadel of the 4th Imperial Legion.  It was confirmed that the Uplanders had help from the Northern Dwarven Kingdom in the form of an airship.  That being the case, the 4th Imperial Legion’s Citadel might fall to Uplander attack sooner rather than later.
• Syrak Alliance forces were coping with raids from the Hordes and the Khanate.  No dragons were involved yet, but improved bat-rider units were reported operating against the Grand Duchy of Mercia and the Sterich District.
• Imperial forces stabilized the borders [read: stopped losing land] with the Dragon Lands (as they were being referred to), but fighting continued with raids by both sides.  The Dragons were active there, but the Legions were gaining experience in defending against them.
• There were no reports of fighting from the area near the Kingdom of Silverloc.  The war there still seemed to be on hold as the Legions responded to the Khanate and the Mountain War.  The rumor of an armistice between Silverloc and the Legions seemed to be true.
• Pirate activity was rumored to be on the rise on all coasts of the continent.

DM Discussion

[I was experiencing GM burnout at this point but I was not fully cognizant of the fact yet.  The different power levels between characters was making my job very difficult.  I had allowed the players free reign when spending Experience Points and not set caps on anything which ended with Dangar having in OCV of 18 with his axe but a DCV of 6 or less, depending on his combat maneuvers (he was specializing in doing sweep attacks at this point, often on a single target).  He also had enough armor that anything that could actually harm him would flat out kill any other two members of the party in one attack.  Worse, he had no non-combat skills, so when I shifted to a more political/negotiation type game, he had little to do and bored combat players are always an issue at the table.  This (power balance among the players) is one of the areas where the HERO System requires the GM to do a lot of work and reign in things.  I learned that here.]

Tim's Outlanders Landing Page

Previous session: Cultists, Cultists, Cultists: Session 9

Next Session: Tomb Raiders: Session 1

Tim's Outlanders: Cultists, Cultists, Cultists, Session 9 – May 9 to 10, 20 IC

[Final confrontation and near death experience.]

[This session took place either December 2004 or January 2005.  We were playing Champions 5th Edition with the Second Edition Fantasy Hero supplement.]

Player Characters

Tim, a Wizard - male human from the Free City of Freegate, graduate of Outlands University

Dangar Stonekleaver – male dwarf from the Northern Dwarven Kingdom

Mord Worldfist – male dwarf bodyguard [and handler] for Dangar

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

Rebecca – female gnome, part of the Gnome security detail for Wendell

Herschal “the Hunter” – also known as “Bearkiller”, male gnome, part of the Gnome security detail for Wendell

Yacov – male gnome, part of the Gnome security detail for Wendell

Horace the Mad – male human, a fur trapper and mountain man operating in the Southern Reaches

[Session 7 and Session 8 are missing from my records.  I have no data on what happened in either.  Further, Session 9 does not state when the game actually happened, so I’m guessing either December 2004 (based on our schedule) or January 2005 as December is a tough month to schedule a game with the holidays happening.]

Session Begins

May 9, 20 IC

The Outlanders arrived at the Temple of Watching Twilight and spent the day exploring the ruins.  They located three sealed entrances to the lower catacombs and took the time to perform the ritual to unseal the entrances.  Unexpectedly, all three entrances opened, not just the one they were standing by.  They pushed the sealing slabs back over two of the entrances and made camp in front of third.

That Night

During the night, Apostol in wolf form leapt over the camp and charged into the catacombs.  Dangar and Mord were on watch and they woke the others to inform them.  The group decided this was probably a werewolf and they would deal with it in the morning.

Meanwhile, Apostol started waking up the undead inhabitants of the catacombs and holed up with some wights in their crypts to discuss strategy.

May 10, 20 IC

The Outlanders entered the catacombs at dawn and started tracking the “werewolf”.  Horace chose to stay at the surface, refusing to enter the catacombs.

The Outlanders found where the “werewolf” awoke some skeletons, who went deeper into the catacombs, and then doubled back.  The Outlanders continued to follow the “werewolf” deeper into the catacombs and tracked him to the crypt he was in with the wights.

After the Outlander defeated several wights, Apostol closed the crypt door to keep the adventurers out.  Dangar broke a hole in door with a pick and Tim started lobbing explosions into the room through that hole.  Several confined explosions later, the Outlanders pushed open the crypt door and entered.  Apostol had hidden behind a stone sarcophagus and was still active!  Dangar attacked Apostol and cut off the top of his head (at the teeth) in one blow.  [As the GM, I had plans for this later in the campaign.]  Dangar then mounted the skull on the top of the Outlanders’ banner and proceeded to loot the body.

After a bit, the Outlanders discovered that Yacov had disappeared again.  They tracked him back up to the surface and to a nearby field.  Yacov was walking away with some sort of mist surrounding and following him.  An altercation happened and the Outlanders drove away the mist.  [My notes do not say how.]  Yacov recovered his senses and asked how he got there.  At this point the Outlanders realized that there was more than one vampire operating in the area.  They strongly suspected Yacov will become one soon (or may already be one).  After some testing [again, no indication of how], they decided this was not the case (yet) and returned to the catacombs.

Back in the catacombs, they followed the skeleton footprints.  They discovered a multitude of fresh prints and trails.  Upon further investigation, they determined that a group of goblin-sized creatures and some human- or elf-sized creatures left through one of the other catacomb entrances.  They tracked one set of prints, belonging to either an elf or a human female deeper into the catacombs.

After descending winding stairs deeper into the earth, they encountered a series of hallway ambushes by skeletons with moveable barricades.  Heavily damaged, the Outlanders eventually defeated the skeletons and found a barracks.  They fought the rest of the skeleton guard by lobbing explosions into the room and then sorted through the debris.

Elsewhere they found a dissection room with an undead landshark chained to a table.  They found a training room with animated dummies, an anti-magic trap that caught Dangar, a library of engineering books and drawings, a writing room protected by ant men, and finally the way down to an even deeper level of catacombs.

In the deeper level, they found a robe room with ancient ceremonial robes.  The Outlanders put on robes as a form of disguise.  This caused a problem later.

A little later, they found a room that summons earth elementals as a defense mechanism.  Tim and Dangar recognize this kind of room from The Vault in the Worldspine Mountains [connecting this death cult to the ancient Enemy].  After some discussion, half the party decided to try and run past the elementals as they formed and half fell back to a safer location to see what happened.

Malwyn went first and made it across the room easily.  He opened the doors on the far side of the room, which lead to a large temple area.  Mord went second and made it across the summoning room and then waited at the door to verify Dangar made it.  Dangar and Tim ran side by side, but realized they would still be in the room when the elementals finished forming.  Trying to save his friend, Dangar grabbed at Tim in order to throw Tim clear of the room.  Unfortunately, he only grabbed the ceremonial robes and ripped them off Tim instead.  [His player rolled an 18 on the attack roll, which in HERO System is the worst roll.]

The earth elementals finished forming and started to pummel Tim and Dangar.  Tim decided to try and disrupt the energy pattern on the ceiling that powered the elemental summoning magic by firing a magic bolt at one of the power nodes.  Malwyn had just enough time to jump [abort to dive for cover and made the DEX roll] behind the altar at the far end of the room before Tim fired his bolt.  Mord was not so lucky.

Everything suddenly went white and then faded to black.

When the Outlanders recovered, they found the explosion had severely damaged the summoning room and the temple beyond, destroyed all of the earth elementals, nearly killed both Tim and Dangar (Tim was protected by his force field spell, Dangar by the earth elementals surrounding him), and did kill Mord, who had no cover or protection from the explosion.

The gnome security detail rushed forward to use The Rock and the last of the group’s healing potions to patch up the surviving members of the Outlanders.  Wendell used the Rod of Excellent Engineering to stabilize the walls and ceiling to keep the weakened ceiling from collapsing and killing them all.  The damage was extensive and he was only able to gain the Outlanders an hour’s leeway before the room, and possibly the entire catacombs, would collapse.

Session Ends.

NPCs Met

Apostol the Burning, although they were never introduced or even exchanged names before Dangar chopped his head off.  Rude.

Happening Off-Stage

Locally

[Ossip tried to escape with Yacov (he was the mist), but was driven away by the player characters.  He decided to leave before they actually found a way to kill him permanently.  Yacov is still deeply in his thrall but does not know it.]

In Freegate

[No additional notes on the negotiations.]

DM Discussion

[This was the third time Tim nearly killed the entire party blowing something up.  In his defense, releasing untold energies IS the goal of the High Energy Thaumaturgy college.  The other players still objected to their characters being caught in the blast radius.]

[I’m going to sum up Sessions 10 and 11 here rather than do a separate blog post.  In Session 10 the Outlanders finished looting the catacombs as best they could before the entire thing collapsed.  In Session 11 they traveled back with their loot.  They returned to Waterfall Island early and camped there until the equinox.  Wendell spent time establishing diplomatic relations with the Nozumi in Bleak Tower.]

[When Janko and his crew arrived they shared stories and had a feast.  The next day they made their way down the river to Phaisbourg and then overland to Haus Senke, where they caught passage on an airship heading back to Freegate.  The next (and final) adventure started with the Outlanders arriving at Freegate.]

Tim's Outlanders Landing Page

Cultists, Cultists, Cultists

Previous session: Session 6

Next Session: Campaign Status Update [not yet edited]

Tim's Outlanders: Cultists, Cultists, Cultists, Session 6 – April 23 to 30, 20 IC

[Deeper into the mountains and making a new "friend".]

[This session took place September 9, 2004.  We were playing Champions 5th Edition with the Second Edition Fantasy Hero supplement.]

Player Characters

Tim, a Wizard - male human from the Free City of Freegate, graduate of Outlands University

Dangar Stonekleaver – male dwarf from the Northern Dwarven Kingdom

Mord Worldfist – male dwarf bodyguard [and handler] for Dangar

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

Rebecca – female gnome, part of the Gnome security detail for Wendell

Herschal “the Hunter” – also known as “Bearkiller”, male gnome, part of the Gnome security detail for Wendell

Yacov – male gnome, part of the Gnome security detail for Wendell

Horace the Mad – male human, a fur trapper and mountain man operating in the Southern Reaches

Session Begins

April 23, 20 IC

After discussing their options, the Outlanders left the ruins they were at and headed west, pursuing the tracks of their unknown quarry, pushing themselves in order to catch up.  

April 25, 20 IC

Evening

After two days of moving quickly, the Outlanders arrived at the last set of ruins on their maps.

Not wanting to approach a potential undead stronghold during the night, the Outlanders used the Rod of Excellent Engineering to reshape a patch of nearby woods into a more defendable bowl shape and made a fireless camp.  They then set watches and slept for the night.  During the second watch, Darkfox heard the sound of something approaching and she quickly and quietly awoken rest of the Outlanders.

Immediately after getting into positions, the Outlanders saw a number of humanoid forms jerkily and awkwardly moving through the underbrush towards them.  As the forms approached them in the light of the waning quarter moon, the Outlanders slowly came to the realization that these walking forms were already dead – they were walking skeletons and zombies!  Wendell raised a defensive earthen wall along the side of the camp on which the undead were approaching while Darkfox and Tim fired arrows and magical attacks against their foes.

Once melee ensued, it quickly became apparent that the undead had great resistance to physical harm and most of the weapons the Outlanders had were ineffective.  Dangar, Malwyn, and Tim were having some success, but things looked grim until Darkfox remembered the anti-undead cream the Outlanders had purchased in Phaisbourg.  After coating an arrow with the cream, suddenly her arrows started causing the undead great harm.  She called out to the rest of the Outlanders to coat their weapons and the tide of the battle quickly turned.

After the battle, most of the Outlanders examined the remains of the undead while Darkfox used a perch in a tree to look for other threats.  The only thing she could see was a lone bat flying through the night sky.  The zombies appeared to be simple peasants wearing the ragged remains of recent clothing.  The skeletons on the other hand, were wearing armor of great antiquity that Malwyn recognized as belonging to a period before the Crendian Unification.

April 26, 20 IC

The next morning the Outlanders approached the ruins.  The ruins were on a low hill overlooking the confluence of two mountain rivers and appeared to be the ruins of either a small fort or a medium-sized temple.  Like the last set of ruins, nothing grew in or on the ruins themselves with trees stopping at the foot of the hill and grasses stopping several feet short of the ruined walls.

The Outlanders spent the day investigating the ruins and their surroundings.  They found that while some work had been done on the ruins to clear out a basement or crypt, the ruins were now abandoned.  There were multiple sets of tracks, including the tracks of the undead who attacked them the previous night.  There were also the tracks the Outlanders had been tracking from the previous set of ruins.  Those tracks approached and entered the ruins and then left, heading northwest, now only three days ahead of the Outlanders.

April 27, 20 IC

The Outlanders pursued their quarry northwest.  After nearly a day’s travel, the river they were following came to its source and entered into the side of a mountain – one of the landmarks listed in the Copper Scrolls.  Later that the day, the Outlanders discovered a way-stone, pointing to an apparent pass in the wall of taller mountains to their north – another landmark in the Scrolls.  It occurred to the Outlanders at this point that their quarry was also following the landmarks and might be searching for the ruins of the Temple as well.

They made camp.

April 28, 20 IC

Late Afternoon

Pushing on, the Outlanders arrived at what must be the valley through the Lesser Spines and located another set of ruins.  These ruins were more expansive and seemed to have included a set of walls that once stretched the width of the valley.  The Outlanders made camp and prepared for possible attack that night.

April 29, 20 IC

Early the next morning, the Outlanders start investigating the ruins, starting above ground and then moving below.  The dwarves stayed above ground to watch their camp and prevent the party from being ambushed.  Those searching the ruins did not find any signs of rubble being cleared, but did find odd bits of metal artifacts, some of which appeared to be pieces of torture devices.  All of them showed signs of being subject to great heat or flame.

Late Afternoon

While searching through one of the underground floors, Wendell realized that Yacov, one of his bodyguards was missing.  The Outlanders backtracked their own trails and found where Yacov's prints suddenly veered off down an obscured side passage.  Based on the tracks, Yacov apparently met someone in the side passage and then followed that person further down the passage until both sets of tracks disappeared into a wall.

Deducing there was a secret door where the tracks ended and suspecting Yacov was in trouble, Wendell unhesitatingly used the Rod of Excellent Engineering to dig through the wall.  Behind the wall was another passage that wound its way further back into the ground.  Wanting the dwarves for the rescue and a quicker way to the surface, Wendell then used the Rod to create a hole straight up to the surface.  As luck would have it, Dangar was standing directly above the spot where the hole appeared and fell in.  Dusting himself off after the fall, Dangar opined that if Wendell had wanted him, he could have just yelled.  [It is notoriously difficult to die from falling damage in the HERO System.]

Waiting only for Mord to secure a rope and climb down, the Outlanders continued on down the winding passage in double file, Dangar and Darkfox in the lead.  Coming around a corner, Dangar was suddenly shot by a repeating crossbow!  Luckily the arrows bounced off Dangar's thick armor, doing minimal damage to Dangar himself.  Looking down the passage to the next corner, Dangar and Darkfox spotted the attacker – it was Yacov!

Responding instinctively, Dangar charged forward and activated a pressure plate that dropped an immense stone block onto himself and cut off the passage.  Wendell used the Rod of Excellent Engineering to start melting away the stone block to see if Dangar had died and to push forward with Yacov's rescue.  Fifteen feet into the block, the Outlanders found Dangar's body and determined that he was alive but dying.  They used the Rock [the healing stone they have carried nearly since the beginning of the campaign] to stabilize him and several healing potions to bring him back to a semblance of health.  Dangar's armor had to be cut from him and the helmet was destroyed, as were several of the more fragile things Dangar carried upon himself – in fact it was the shattered healing potions he carried that kept him alive at all.  Dangar considered losing those potions and his armor a small price to pay to still be alive.

In the meantime, Wendell used the Rod to determine how much more there was to the stone block and then burrowed to the last two feet of the stone.  He then activated another power of the Rod to separate the last two feet of the stone block, create view slits at Gnome and human height, and then move the slab forward like a rolling barricade.

The Outlanders soon learned that Yacov had retreated when the block fell and that around the corner was the end of the passage.  The passage ended in a set of thick metal double doors.  Wendell moved the rolling barricade closer and Darkfox used her telekinesis spell to pick the lock of the doors.  Unfortunately she set off a spore trap while doing so.  Wendell quickly sealed the barricade and the Outlanders waited for the spores to settle.

After some time had passed, Wendell reopened the view slits.  Everything between the doors and the barricade was covered in a light dusting of yellow spores.  Darkfox used her telekinesis spell again to disable the trap, unlock the doors, and then push them open.  Beyond the doors was a well-lit throne room.  Sitting on the throne was a man leaning on one of the arm rests, who appeared to be amused.  Standing in front of him was Yacov, who was pointing his automatic crossbow at his own throat.  Between Yacov and the Outlanders was a line of five armored skeletons, swords drawn, and in defensive poses.

Surprisingly, the man on the throne started to negotiate with the Outlanders.  He claimed he and "the boy" [meaning Yacov] had just been talking and that "the boy" was free to go when the Outlanders left the ruins and went home.  Wendell declared he was of the opinion that Yacov should leave with the Outlanders immediately and where the Outlanders went after that was their own business.  There was further discussion about who was trustworthy and neither side showed any inclination to back down.  Malwyn recognized a Kashubian accent in the man's speech, which implied he was from the northern portions of the Empire, not any of the local provinces.  Eventually, Wendell asked for some time to discuss options with the rest of the Outlanders and they moved back down the corridor a few feet to talk, leaving the rolling barricade where it was.

Not surprisingly, the options discussed were attack plans and how to keep Yacov from shooting himself.  This took some more time, which the man on the throne did not seem to begrudge them.  Finally, Wendell returned to the barricade, asking if the man would not reconsider releasing Yacov immediately.

When the man declined, Darkfox used her darkness spell on the throne.  At the same time, Tim used his telekinesis spell to keep Yacov's crossbow from firing and Wendell used the Rod to create a stone globe around Yacov.  Wendell then created a stone tube connecting the barricade and the globe, which Rebecca immediately moved through to get the crossbow away from Yacov.  Darkfox observed the man on the throne turn to gas and move up to the ceiling, where he moved out of her line of view.  From the tube there was heard a crack and then a thump, shortly followed by Rebecca dragging an unconscious Yacov back to the barricade.

Wendell sealed the entrance to the throne room using the Rod and the Outlanders fell back to the surface via the shaft Wendell created earlier.  Once back on the surface, they discovered that the sun had set and night was upon them.  They made camp again, outside of the ruins, and kept tense watches.

April 30, 20 IC

In the morning, Wendell used the Rod to trace the location of the throne room on the surface.  At noon he used the Rod to quickly excavate the earth over the throne room, exposing the entire room to the sun.  He was highly confident that he had killed what was probably a vampire.

Once that task was complete, the Outlanders headed north, into the valley through the Lesser Spines and closer to the Temple.

Session Ends.

NPCs Met

Ossip Pogopol – lesser vampire and minion to Apostol the Burning Wizard.  He was originally from Tusmit and has a Kashubian (Russian) accent to his Common.  He was one of the townsfolk of Biers Hollow that Apostol slaughtered upon awakening.  The Outlanders don't like him and he doesn't like being a minion.  He will try to manipulate the Outlanders into killing Apostol so he can gain his own freedom.

Happening Off-Stage

Locally

[Ossip's goal in the negotiations was to keep the Outlanders talking until the sun set and he was able to transform and escape.  He was successful in doing so and used hidden airways to escape into the night.  He then turned into a bat and flew after his master to report.  He caught up to Apostol at the Temple at dawn on May 2 and reported what he had learned.]

[Apostol the Burning Wizard, the master vampire, and his entourage have arrived at the Temple of the Watching Twilight and are now searching for a way in.  Once Ossip reported what he had learned, Apostol will know that he is being followed (not pursued) and has some idea of what the group is capable of, especially since Ossip had time to question Yacov.]

[Apostol will have Ossip and Woldemar Biermann, his other lieutenant, observe the adventurers and harass them.  He very much wants Wendell’s earth moving magic to be stolen or depleted.  He will have the zombies try to obscure their tracks in the vicinity of the Temple as much as they can (this will give a –2 to any Tracking roll) while he searches for a way into the Temple.  He will be rebuffed by the Sacred Earth Ritual and realize that he must await the Outlanders to arrive and unseal the catacombs.]

[It will take the Outlanders a minimum of 3 days to reach the entrance of Harbeth Pass.  This is where Ossip and Woldemar will attempt to ambush them.  Ossip still has Yacov dominated and will use that to his advantage.]

In Freegate

[The Silverloc Royal Emissary, Yasha of Piriatin, continues meeting with representatives of the NDK and the Gnome Consortium in Freegate to negotiate for airships for the Kingdom of Silverloc.  Negotiations are going favorably so far.]

DM Discussion

[Yeah, having Ossip dominate Yacov really lit the fires of hatred in the players for the vampire.]

[So I’m missing my notes for Sessions 7 and 8, which covered the rest of the trip to the Temple of the Watching Twilight.  The next session posted will be Session 9, which is the last session I have notes for as the notes for Sessions 10 and 11 are also missing.  Luckily, Session 9 is the climax of the adventure with Sessions 10 and 11 being the Outlanders traveling back out of the mountains to Haus Senke and then on to Freegate.]

Tim's Outlanders Landing Page

Cultists, Cultists, Cultists

Previous session: Session 5

Next Session: Session 9 (Sessions 7, 8, 10, and 11 are lost)