Leveling Up, Surprise Pregnant Lady

So, we play again tonight, but I forgot to update on what happened in our Hackmaster campaign last week, given the frentic orgy that is finals week.

A good portion of the party was ready for a level, either 2nd or 3rd, so we sat down and worked through that. Since most of the group is not familiar with the system, that took a while to raise attributes, refigure things, and spend BP. For his part, Sevlen picked up the basics of blacksmithing (I figure he's been making a living as a tinker since he left home; blacksmithing is part and parcel of his General Repair), plus some more languages, religions, and the Local History proficiency for the Earldom of Reyifor. Since I'm familiar with the module, I've purposely built Sevlen so he can metagame about the setting a bit without cheating. I'm usually dropping a BP each level to learn about churches we encounter... I've got the party's religions covered (due to some fortuitous penetration, I now know the Bear's religion better than my own), and plan to pick up the Caregiver, as we interact with him a bit.

After that, we debated what we should do to get into the keep, but it seems our adventures against the vampire earned us a friend; we got a note saying that looking into Vespin Tower might result in enough favor to get let into the keep. So, with Evlyn and Fredi having sold our stuff, we started up the mountain, just the seven of us (Grimwulf, Fredi, Ava, Sevlen, Evlyn, Tedi and Grimwulf's cook, who we don't trust being left alone in a town full of rough men). We set out towards the tower, but late on the first day, we encountered a woman.

She was bloody and beaten and very pregnant. She raved that the child inside her was a beast and, as we calmed her, we learned that she and her family merchant caravan had been taken by orcs late last fall. Her family had been killed, but she'd been kept and raped. She'd escaped in a harrowing climb to freedom when a cloaked man had come for her (for reasons she did not know). We decided we couldn't leave her there, nor let her walk back alone, so we started towards town, and dropped her with a Brandobian cleric of the Caregiver... and learned that the keep had opened in our absence, as they'd found someone to blame the assassination attempts on. We decided to enter the keep, and got ourselves registered as an adventuring company, the Bleeding Hearts, because most of our other name ideas were stupid. ;-)

Fudge Fudge Fudge Fudge Vampire: Hackmaster Campaign Log

"Only I didn't say 'fudge.' I said THE word, the big one, the queen-mother of dirty words, the 'F-dash-dash-dash' word!"

So, we reconvened for Hackmaster, and it was an abbreviated group; Ted the Wizard and Elwyn the Thief were both absent, so we began to explore Quarrytown on our own. I went looking for lodging, finding a hostelry with a talkative hostess and a pretty reasonable price per evening (nine copper per evening, which is pretty reasonable when you've got seven people and get two beds and a meal for each of them out of it). Fredykia told stories in the marketplace (Oratory, Monster Lore, and Ancient History), and we picked up some rumors, including the theft of a bronze statue from the Lynx Gate, and that the Pallisade stockyards had been suffering some depredations. We opted to put off the trek to the nearby tower (where a rumor said an evil totem had been found), and instead investigate the Pallisade.

I (Mark) worked REALLY hard to not metagame, since I know the normal adventure involves a pack of leech-men. But scouting around, we found a set of human-sized tracks leading straight up to the wall, and all the dead animals have two puncture wounds in the neck. We decided to stake out the place, sleeping through the day at our hostel and constructing a blind in the field for the evening. We waited a number of nights for it, and then we saw a lone person stumbling drunkenly along the same track we'd followed before.

I was all for confronting him outside, but Fredi and Ava decided to see what would happen. He walked to the wall and smoothly climbed up it, so Ava tried to tangle him with a spell; he broke free without seeming to notice it. He then ensorcelled the guard, and as we fired our weapons, turned into a giant spider and disappeared into the Pallisade.

We, as brave fools, gave chase. I boosted everyone up the relatively short wall (only 10'; really easy), then scrambled up myself. A horse was down, and we gave chase through the Pallisade; the spider disappeared and was replaced by a rat, which ran to the smithy; a bird then exited the roof of the smithy and flew away... getting a massively overpumped Magical Projectile slammed into it, which it shrugged off as it flew away.

Before that, we were kind of hoping that we were dealing with something else. However, after some discussion (and a lot of cursing), we decided we were gonna start buying a metric fudge-ton of garlic.

Talky Talky, Walky, Walky. Lizard?

Oh, boy, it's been a long time since we played, and some developments in my life have curtailed a few of my other gaming pursuits. However, we got together on Saturday to play a bit of Hackmaster.

When last we played, we'd just freed a young woman from her pirate captors. Cutting her gag and bonds, we find that she's the daughter of the mayor/innkeeper/store owner back in Salt Haven/View/Flat/whatever (we sort of lost track of what town it actually was). She wasn't so much "kidnapped" as "ran away from home with her now-dead pirate boyfriend". Deciding that it's impractical to boat down to town, we trek back through the dungeon to bring her home to her father. As we're leaving the dungeon, we're stopped by at least a dozen goblins who, in pigin Merchant (and, eventually, some dwarven, which is close to goblin), they demand we leave their home and never come back. We bring girly back to dad, and they promptly throw a screaming hissy fit at each other, which we somewhat manage to cool, or at least get them on shouting terms. Grimwulf offers her hire as his cook, if she doesn't want to stay with dad.

Then begins a very long discussion about bringing tribute to the goblins that I never quite got the reason for. We felt unable to fight the lot of them, I get that, but someone wanted to negotiate with them for some damn fool reason, and decided to give them a chunk of our treasure. The goblins, however, decided that they didn't want our treasure, they just wanted us to leave them alone. Fair enough. Deciding that there wasn't much we could do there, we headed towards the county seat, known as Frandor's Keep, after purchasing a mule from our friendly innkeeper.

Long trip; many days. We mostly walked, encountering pilgrims who told us how horrible the goblin problem was, and encountering nothing ourselves save a derelict gate to nothing, some anomalous tracks of a giant lizard coming from the river (in what amounts to Idaho in March), and miles and miles of miles and miles. We stopped at Kar Mandri, failing to marry off the tag-along village girl to any of the innkeeper's sons, and then headed towards the keep. We were denied entrance, however, as someone had tried to kill the Count, and they were requiring papers to enter the keep proper. We spent some time talking with folks outside the stockade, and adjourned for the evening, our eyes turned towards Quarrytown. described by the guards as "A den of thieves, if you ask me."

Skeletons, Spiders, Pirates and Rescue!

So, we pushed on tonight in Hackmaster. Due to a Florida vacation, Fredikya's player wasn't with us, but we soldiered on. We began in the room of the sarcophagi, where we'd encountered the flying dagger, before. We explored the next, and a skeleton arose, trashing our remaining mage while the rest of the party gathered around and beat it with sticks (except the thief, who kept trying to kill it with a short sword... not so effective, though she hit more often than we did with our staves and maces). The mage was so banged up that we retreated to town, curing him of his wounds and taking a break.

Returning to the sarcophagi, we discovered more skeletons, but with no animation, just treasure. A well-made broadsword (which no one can use, but I intend to use as a rich gift), and a suit of chainmail that fit our fighter. He felt a lot more confident in the better armor. We also found a necklace (which the priest of the Bear refused to test for choking properties on her pet rat), two rings, and a coronet (which we determined was a crown, not a small trumpet). Now well swimming in rich stuff, we pressed on. We fought a massive spider, and my priest of the Traveler got his first initiative under 10! But the fighter took a single point of damage early in the fight, and managed to pull off two strikes in short order, both of which massively penetrated, dropping the brute to the ground. Searching the spider, we found a nice dagger (that I'll probably learn how to use, just because).

We soldiered on, finding the equipment of our mage (who had been kidnapped and tied up sessions ago), then an underground river (that we declined to cross) and a way back to the room whose doors are controlled by a statue. Exploring further, we found our way to a grotto where four pirates argued. A daring plan had Elwyn and Sevlen lead the pirates back to our fighter, shooting slings and arrows (literally) to draw them back. Three of the four were game; the fourth tried to get away, but was TOPped by a shot from Elwyn. I swam out towards the boat... but got caught by the octopus of the grotto. As he pulled me closer, I managed to cast a Safe Haven and wriggle free, swimming back to the pirate's boat.

In the boat was a TOPd pirate and a tied-up girl, so I rowed back to the shore, where we found some of the pirate's booty, including a scad of silver and copper, some gems and jewelry, and a few bits of sundry treasure. We will start the next adventure sans Elwyn and Ted, but with Fredikya back, freeing a fair maiden and planning our return with loot.

(Sorry for the poor story-telling; I am getting this on screen before I collapse. SO TIRED)

Love Songs about Dwarves

So, one of the on-going arguments in fantasy gaming is "Do dwarven women have beards?" To which the answer is, of course, "The pretty ones do." I like for dwarven women to have beards because I think it emphasizes that they're an alien species, with a different conception of beauty than is common in human society. Elves are the little waif-fu human fantasies... dwarves are something else entirely, eschewing human notions of beauty for their own.

As the song says... Hairy face makes for Dwarven Beauty.

A few years ago (thinking about it, the first goes back more than a decade, to when I was in school), I did a number of filks based around fantasy gaming, including some songs about dwarven women. Here they are, for the modern reader:

Scary Spider, Levels, Flying Dagger

So, we reconvened on Saturday to play a bit more Hackmaster. When last we left our heroes, there were a group of goblins that we were failing to sneak up on, and we'd just rolled some initiatives (in my case, truly horrible initiatives). I was bit annoyed at my GM, because I figured she'd screwed me on the initative die... but that's before the spider exploded into the room and started trying to eat me. Grimwulf charged forward to distract the spider, taking a slight wound in the process, but we then retreated, leaving the goblins (who came out to attack the spider) to play with our new friend.

At this point, we concede that most of us are out of spells, lowish on HP, and kinda tired of the dark, so we head back to Salt Haven to spend a couple weeks licking our wounds and learning a few things (all except Ted, who didn't quite have the XP). While there, Fredykai acquired a crossbow, and we got a request from the mayor/innkeeper/sheriff to deal with the river pirates once the days warmed up and they started preying again. This is right in line with the Traveler's ethos, so I'm certainly looking forward to it.

Rested and leveled, we returned to the Tower Basement. This time, however, we chose not to tread well-worn paths, and continued into the other parts of the basement. We came to realize that the ruins were far older than the tower had been (bolstering our observation from last session about the age of the astrological charts), and stumbled across a room of sarcophagi. Being cheery tomb robbers (see my article Corpses and Caches to understand the theological underpinnings of "It's ok to loot dead people if no one knows their name"), we levered one of the sarcophagi open, with Grimwulf standing ready to smash the skeleton inside if it objected to our stealing the pretty dagger on its chest. Instead, the dagger objected, chasing us around the room for a moment. We smacked it down, and it got back up in a moment. We bound it in a sheath, it popped out and started chasing us again. Finally, we sealed it back in the sarcophagus, and had to call it a night. Five sarcophagi and many rooms await us, with a need to smash pirates ahead.

EDIT: A bit about the post name. Over on the KenzerCo Forums, Jolly started a "Describe your last session in five words". It's a little bit silly, but it does help to summarize what happened.

Adventures in Trapfinding: Continuing with Hackmaster

Sevlen and (insert elf wizard name here) were travelling west along the river when they reached Salt Haven, a tiny town at the confluence of two rivers. Not quite the last navigable point, but certainly working on it. We arrived just in time for the funeral of a dwarf, and spent some time in the local tavern, the Green Gizzard, learning that the dwarf had been killed in the ruins* of a wizard's tower (actually, the ancient basement beneath the tower). Choosing to confront the evil and maybe find some useful gadgets, Sevlen and (Iewnh) joined with the adventurers to explore the basement complex.

Meanwhile, Ted the wizard woke up in a dark cell, stripped of most of his possessions, with no idea how long he had been there. With ghouls approaching his cell, he used magic to break out, then ran lost for several days through a maze of twisty passages, all alike.

After some rest and healing, the party returned to the complex. They explored the rooms from before, aided by Sevlen's ability to map and keep his sense of direction. They searched the room where Flint died, finding an expensive ornamental dagger, then continued on. Unsatisfied with their cautious speed, (Iewnh) decided we could leave off searching for traps. He promptly fell into a 15' pit trap, pulling Grimwulf down on top of him, injuring himself severely. Sevlen climbed down, and nursed the worst of their wounds, and they were briefly sealed in while Elwyn sought a way to open the trap. Soon after she did, Ted burst into the corridor. A brief and tense standoff was interrupted by the ghouls that had chased Ted, but our Elwyn had learned how to work the pit trap... the ghouls were dropped, roasted, then smashed with Sevlen's sling stones (my argument being "Arrows cost money. I'm throwing rocks."), while the rest of the party fought some largish spiders sneaking up from behind. Examination proved that one of the ghouls was the elf thief's brother, lost 20 years ago. Further examination proved that the spiders were edible, and so we had a bit of a spider-meal at a driftwood campfire near the entrance.

Fortified with cooked spider, we advanced, disturbing some giant rats, who also fell to the pit trap and ranged weapons (with most of the rats being sealed inside the pit trap; with two dead ghouls and their own injured to feed on, they had time.) Our priest of the bear, Ava Cado, opted to befriend one of the remaining rats, and we turned up a few silver in copper in the trash they'd abandoned.

Continuing on, we found astrological calculations that predate the tower on the floor of a long-abandoned bedroom, Ted's old cell (which seemed to be converted storage), and a room with a statue that controlled the doors. Heading out from the statue room, we found a ginormous storage room. Cooking smells wafted across the room, so the thief and Sevlen (who picked up a little stealth) snuck forward. Sevlen had some terrible misfortune, and failed to avoid detection (I rolled 01 more than is statistically probable last night) and the goblins are closing in...

Grimwulf, our fighter, didn't have much to do last night, as most of our combat involved "Let them fall into the pit and kill them from afar." However, with two people exposed and goblins advancing... and pretty much EVERYONE out of spells ((Iewnh) has enough for 1, he said)... Grimwulf is soon going to find himself very valuable.

*RIP Flint Goldheart, of whom Elwyn, our elven thief, said "His smell wasn't that bad and his sense of humor was acceptable." A fitting eulogy.

EDIT: The player of (Iewnh) informs me that the character is named Fredikya.