Items to bounce around

[Scott Cohan]

>Hope things get better.  In CA there is a mega flu going on now I hear where
>hospitals are not even taking elective surgery.  Must be a bad season out
>there.

  Glah.  The Plague is over.  For my daughter and I at least.  Unfortunately, my
  wife got it again, although she's mostly better now.

sc>   Thurston, Ticasi Necromancer (yes, in a land where you can study any
sc>      magic except Necromancy, he had to study Necromancy.  Needless to
sc>      is Persona Non Grata back home)  (Necromantic, Darkness, Chaining

How about some bounty hunters for those crimes :)

  Not for Ticasi.  They're much too liberal for that.  Merely denying him access
  to the biggest library in the world is punishment enough.  Everyone else is
  hunted by various people.

sc>   Daoine Sidhe.  They went in through the back way (through the outhou
sc>   sinkholes) and managed to free the prisoners without exploring the r

"my nice silks in THAT mess"...I can hear it now with some of my characters :)
Boy they must've actually reconned enough to get that info.  Smart party...

  Yeah, I'm doing more planning now because they are so clever.

sc>   to it)  They killed the goblins and drove off the Daoine Sidhe.  A f

     You could always turn the events of this around.  Whoever sent them to
rescue the people may not have intended them to survive.  That person maybe had
a enemy or wife? :) in those kidnapped.  So they made a new enemy from the
rescue.

  Well, they're past that, and while the rescue was pretty straightforward, the
  notoriety the gained made them targets.

sc>   Well, that's what has happened so far.  Any comments, suggestions?

     Interesting.

     Let's see...
Unfournately I don't have many players these days due to time and other
conflicts.  I don't do much table running except on special times so I run the
game via my network/bbs.

Players -
     Farseeker - Heavy weapons fighter (uses heavy gear mainly)
Grew up a warrior with the Sarghunti in the large plains.  Has animal power.
     Darbin - pirate/sailor - though one without a ship :).
     Trelnoire - Born on Ashudan over the years he eventually became a Knight
who now resides mostly for his lord in Sivas.
     Bryson - npc squire of Trelnoire
     Trmbyl - Balance Wizard of mirky history.  Has Supernatural will power and
gained the Evil Eye.  Newest member of the party.
     Xian - Me..ok..ok..I know but since I only get to play once every 2000
years it seems I want to play a character (G).  Hes a old timer character
balance wizard as well but is handy with a war staff :).  He maintains the
balance for the players and as a GM in-between for the players.
     Thig - only non-human - Faerry sidh magician

     Cannon fodder - npcs
     Kron, Duncan, Barody, Trefore - mercs basically of various quality
     Fuz & Storm - Thig's dog III's
     Barnacle - Darbin's dog III.

     Basically I'm running a free-form game.  In that the players really choose
what to do.  I might hint around to special things and they can ignore it and
or follow up into mini-adventures.  Takes more skill to run these types of
things since  your doing a lot of forethought. But I think I can handle it (I
hope).
  This is exactly what I'm doing.  I got tired of the GM fiat style of gaming
  and am letting events be player-driven.  However, you do need to have some
  things in the back of your mind.  I have a small notebook that I put all of my
  ideas, stats, etc, so I can go back and look at what I ws thinking and seeing
  if I can stick some of that back in.

     They started out on a merchant ship (booking passage) for various reasons
from various locations to various sites.  It ended up though a storm near Clima
sunk the ship.  The longboat finally ended up near Porta where they landed.
But before the captain of the ship gave Darbin a bill of sale for a ship (he
the captain) was buying in Sivas and almost had it paid off (only about 100
gold left - whatta a deal).  After escaping some near miss gang incidents they
headed north to Thaliba city itself on the highway.  There they bought horses
and decided their next move.  Some of the crew of the sunk ship decided to head
off to Donara.  Forgot to mention Varange was another player - a faerry
magician of interesting morals :).  Through several days in Thaliba they
collected new equipment and clues of the events to the north (nil. and such).
They avoided the clues I gave and decided to head for Sivas.  All of them.  The
cannon fodder, Trelnoire, trembyl wasn't with them at this point.
  That's when (if you really, really want them to go in a certain direction) you
  do things like rockslides and storms that close off passes, so they can't go
  the wrong (i.e. where you don't want them to go) direction.

     They had no incidents on the highway.  When in Malnon Xian (who was born
there) toured them around as they rested from the trip.  However, the day they
arrived they found a noble carriage in front of them.  Waiting obviously since
there were many guards blocking they watched the scene.  It turned out the
carriage was the King's (Marentia) who was on a inspection tour of sorts.  Upon
entering the carriage the king's bodyguard entered and found it empty.  It
turned out that magic was at hand.  Xian recognized this magic as likely
teleportation (since he had it).  There was a clue in the carriage as well that
led him to belive (and rightly) that he knew who did it.  A chase (of the party
following behind Xian) ensued where Xian led them to his home ( a cabin in the
outer city area).  Xian explained it was his brother who was known to do
various criminal activity.  A combat eventually ensued when they found the king
was indeed inside.  So they attacked for the rescue.  They eventually made it
to the basement where they found Xian's brother and the king.  The king however
was in a time stop spell and the other wizard was about to place him there
pernamently (for safe keeping to retrieve later).  After a short combat Xian's
brother teleported out of there from seeing the odds against him.  The spell
was broken and the king was rescued, with his troopers soon to find him.  So
they quickly made strong friends of sorts.  (theres always a twist in my
games).

     They eventually travelled by ferry to Sivas (farseeker stoping in the fort
to visit old military friends).  There in sivas the ship was found and was in
good shape actually.  But Darbin didn't have the funds.  So they all looked for
jobs or quests.  At this point Varange seperated the party and went on a
seperate quest of sorts.  No longer in the game per se.  Eventually Trelnoires
lord hired them to find some missing Dwarf miners in the mountains to the
south.  So they went off.  By this time they had the cannon fodder and
Trelnoire, and new dogs.

     One bandit combat ensued with no losses but it was more a good intro to
good combat techniques to some.

I always start off slow and work them up in combat, just so there's no calls of
"I didn't know how that worked!"  or somesuch.

  One night they had some demons as a surprise. of the three 2 were killed, one
successfully possessed Duncan.  They eventaully made it to the fort south of
sivas at the road dead-end.  There they learned various new clues of flying
mysterious weapons.  Duncan was left there for his safety and the party's (G).
They made it to the Dwarf's camp to find it of course empty.  While searching
the area they were saw a messenger on horseback riding north and ran after it.
Found a note to the King stating that if a reward (etc..etc) wasn't given Sivas
would be sacked by new weapons from the sky.  As proof the fort they just
visited was burnt (which it was as they left but didn't see).  As they were
questioning the messenger an Alal came toward them.  Luckilly no melee occured.
 Instead Trembyl seeing from afar teleported in front and between the party and
opened a chasm JUST as the horse closed in. The alal fell in but the steed did
not.  The fall and a lucky arrow was enough to kill the alal.  By this time
they learned Trembyl was after a master (magical) of his in the area who was
kidnapped (linkage to the events).  He joined the party.  They followed the
steed back to a cave.  After playing with illusions of protection and such
they've entered.  And that's basically where I'm at ...in the first section of
the cave (some natural some magically made areas) in a stall area of horses.
They are about to interrogate one guard for information.

     whew...too much info but I couldn't stop for some reason :)


~~~ Telegard v3.09.g1/mL


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  Sounds good to me.  My next game isn't scheduled until next week, but it
  should be entertaining.  Life in Porta.  The assassin has received a job to
  spy on Hali Slitnose and see if she is up to something.  P'er, the Dirlla
  duellist is looking to study with Farad Choman and see if he can pickup
  Two-Weapon Fighting.  The Gutter Golem gang is on the lookout for a
  seven-foot-tall Rogizini woman, so there's some more trouble to be in.  I
  can't wait until the locusts.


  Later,

  Scott