World of Prime: Campaign Journal #44

The Celebration of the Red Moon, part I

The party adopts a new disguise for this expedition– a traveling apothecary. They buy a pair of mules and a clap-board wagon, paint it in festive colors, and stock it with empty potion bottles. The Barbarian is security, the Druid is the drayer, the Bard is advertising, the Cleric pretends to make potions, and the Ranger is their wilderness guide. Although they are still obviously adventurers, they look like a low-level merchant party instead of the near-royalty they actually are.

After ambling across the familiar plains between Edersarr and Varsoulou their first stop is Count Wraythus’ town. They find the place much changed; the population is halved, and worse, all signs of authority have been replaced by red leather-clad goons that stroll the streets, abusing the townspeople with petty harassment.

These are not the strapping musclemen of a legitimate ruler, or even the hardened mercenary thugs of a bandit chieftain. Instead, they are the dregs of society, the crude, cruel, simple-minded failures that would normally be found sweeping the streets or breaking rocks. The source of their authority seems to be their bronze daggers and flashy leathers. When the party asks a pair of them for directions to the castle, the goons don’t even have the good sense to realize the danger they are in.

“Who wants to know?” one sneers, while the other leaves off berating a tradesman who takes the redirection of attention as an excuse to vamoose.

Needless to say, the party does not take well to this insolence. Still, the Bard puts on a charming response. The goon, thinking he’s clever, tells the Bard about the upcoming Celebration of the Red Moon, a huge midnight festival to which only 1,024 special individuals will be invited.

“If you can get ten other people invited, they’ll make you one of us,” the goon promises. The Bard can easily tell he’s lying about that, but not about the celebration or its very peculiar constraint on the guest list.

“What’s in the wagon?” the other one asks. The Barbarian, whose tolerance for insolence is exceedingly low, invites the fellow around back to see for himself. We can assume the goon did not expect the answer to be “a hungry dire bear,” but as soon as the door is opened, that’s what he finds. The second goon starts to balk, gets pummelled into unconsciousness by the Barbarian, and tossed in anyway. The only clue to their fate are the crunching sounds and the blood leaking through the wagon’s floorboards.

The Ranger decides to drive on to the castle. This seems to be counter-productive, in that the Count is likely to be one of the few people in Varsoulou that can identify them by sight; but when they arrive at the castle gates they realize this might not matter anymore. The gates are open and unguarded, a clear marker of anarchy. The party disembarks and enters, leading the Druid-bear on a chain like a pet (despite the fact that normally, pet bears are not almost as large as wagons).

Inside they find a half-dozen red suits arguing over a meal, and the Count sitting silently on his throne. The Count greets them with some familiarity, but when they assert their identity as mere merchants, he shrugs and plays along. The red suits attempt to exert authority, but pretty much everyone ignores them.

The Bard can tell there is something wrong with Wraythfus: he favors his left shoulder, and he seems preoccupied. They have a discussion that is not entirely informative, although the Bard does find out that the Queen is dead and Wraythus claims to be King. And that he’s not invited to the Celebration of the Dawn of the Red Moon, which seems quite suspicious.

The Ranger suggests that the party has a barrel of wine in their wagon and offers to donate it to the ongoing party. Wraythus objects to this quite strenuously, suggesting instead that they should find some rooms in the castle for the night. The red suits line up, clearly expecting something to happen. And then the Ranger is flayed from behind, a pair of demons appearing out of the shadows and raking him with their claws (and their sweet, sweet sneak attack damage).

The bear is also flanked and flayed, and then the fight is in earnest. The Barbarian charges Wraythfus, assuming the Count will be a suitable foe for his blade. The Count laughably misses his first attack, almost as if he didn’t even want to fight. The Ranger is dismayed to discover that his weapons are almost useless against the demons, while the Druid is pleased to note that his claws cut right through their protection. The Bard attacks the flunkies, and the Cleric heals the Ranger.

The red suits respond with rays of weakness, reducing the Barbarian to merely mortal instead of superhuman. However, they are only first rank, and when the Ranger abandons the demons to fight against the humans, their line collapses. The Bard makes use of his Pipes of Panic and sends the survivors fleeing deeper into the castle.

The demons, however, prove more durable. After the Barbarian quickly dispatches the hapless Count, he and the Druid-bear struggle to put down the monsters. The Bard attempts to intimidate them by summoning an image of what they fear the most: a Vrock (the demon the party fought in Edersarr). But instead of being frightened by the image, the demons seem heartened and fight harder – at least until they are destroyed.

Sounds from the hallway harken the return of the cultists. The Druid, out of hit points, resumes human form and spike-traps the hallway, eliciting screams of agony. And then a large figure swoops out of the hallway and lands on the throne. This is a real Vrock, and through telepathic communication it informs the party of a pressing truth:

“That doesn’t look anything like me.”

And then it summons its own images, and now there are four Vrocks to contend against. Its stunning shriek leaves the Barbarian and Cleric helpless while its thorny spores once again infect the Barbarian.

The Ranger dispatches all of the images with arrows, the Barbarian recovers and hacks into the demon, and bear returns and joins the fight. In short order the demon is reduced to ashes, less of a threat apparently than its minions.

The party cleans up the mess – who are we kidding, they drain the heads and move on. Entering the capital a few days later they debate where to go next. Noting that the cathedral has been overtaken by red-suited thugs, they decide that Golden Library might still contain elements of resistance.

This hope is dashed when a red-suited thug greets them at the door. Nonetheless, they play along, pretending to merely be library patrons. The thug invites them upstairs, where they are ambushed by a squad of reds, which they demolish in such exuberant fashion – at one point the Bard terrifes several men into leaping to their deaths - that the Vrock and its lone Babau immediately retreat.

While looting the library they discover that the books appear to be all blank. This could be a fraud perpetuated by the reds, or some kind of magical protection on the library. The Druid convinces the party to deny the enemy a base of operations and sets fire to the building. Although the tower is stone, the interior floors are made of wood, and the building is filled with paper (some percentage of which have Explosive Runes cast on them). The building goes up like a torch, illuminating the night far brighter than its illusionary runes ever did.

This is an act of global significance: the destruction of the only known magical library on the entire Western coast. One wonders if it will have repercussions.

His arsonic lust still not satisfied, the Druid performs a drive-by fire-bombing of the cathedral, rattling his wagon down the cobblestone streets as the Barbarian hurtles pints of Greek Fire. A mass of reds come out of the building to fight the fire, only to find themselves fighting the party. Again the party makes such short work of them that the resident demon flees.

The party heads towards its old inn of respite for a few hours of rest before dawn. The innkeeper is too traumatized and too desperate for coin to ask questions. Now the party seems out of options: the next battle will likely be at the Celebration of the Red Moon.

World of Prime: Campaign Journal #43

Vampire Neighbors, part V

By daylight the keep is rendered sad and neglected, rather than haunted and spooky. The party wiles away the hours, waiting for darkness. Attacking vampires at night is dangerous, but also the only way to find their true lair. Also, this delay gives their Wizard time to wander into the city and join them, having finally been pulled away from Theodoric’s library by the call of duty (the Wizard’s player was able to make this session).

At sunset they head for the royal castle. As nobles known to the realm they easily talk their way through the gates. Just outside the throne room they pause to prepare spells and drink potions, knowing that on the other side of the wall Ragnar is surely making his own preparations. Then the Barbarian bravely opens the door and marches inside, where he is greeted by… a little old lady offering him a tray of teacups.

“No thanks,” he says, and continues into the room. The rest of the party follows, save for the Druid, who stays in the hall and continues casting predatory spells, and the Ranger, who elbows the little old lady in the face as he walks by. Ragnar and his retinue wait at the other end of the hall, at the end of a gauntlet of a half-dozen servants bearing trays of sweetmeats, pastries, and candies. The friendly image is only slightly disturbed by the hulking man-bull zombie hybrid abominations lurking at the edges of the room.

But the pleasantries are immediately discarded when Ragnar’s opening statement is a Dispel spell. He strips a few minor protections from some of the party while his servants turn out the lights, plunging the room into total darkness. The Bard rushes to a pillar and turns it into a giant neon tube of light, but this leaves him facing one of the zombie monsters and several servants. The Barbarian charges across the room to engage the second zombie; the Cleric blasts Ragnar in the face with a beam of light before the Wizard casts Wall of Fire and splits the room in half, trapping the third zombie on the other side. This turns out to be crucial, as it delays Ragnar’s retinue for two rounds and consumes two precious spells before the vampire king can bring down the wall.

The Bard finds himself in over his head as the zombie tears into his images; meanwhile, the Barbarian discovers his hit points are not unlimited as a zombie hacks at him with a massive axe. The Cleric and Wizard are left to fight off the vampire spawn, which they do poorly. The Ranger is still dealing with the old lady, and the Druid is still out of the room preparing.

Once the wall is down, Ragnar’s people join the fight. The third zombie charges in while Palek the sorcerer throws around scorching rays without hitting anything. Yeron the Skald provides musical accompaniment for his side, making the zombies even more painful. The Marichoness disappears into hiding, looking for a chance to backstab. Lady Night stands by, preparing to counter-spell the party. Ragnar starts throwing out Spiritual Hammers, because he has a lot of them.

The Cleric is casting his own hammers, while the Bard is renewing his images and getting seriously concerned for his health. The Barbarian is winning against the zombies but at considerable cost. Eventually the Druid-bear enters the battle, eviscerating one zombie, only to be ambushed by wraiths in the doorway. In the general melee that follows, the Barbarian is knocked unconscious three times, the Druid-bear once, the Wizard almost dies while fireballing Ragnar and others, the Cleric loses several levels, gets them back with a Remove Curse potion, loses some more, and gets those back with another potion. The Ranger is the only one who manages to avoid life-threatening injuries.

When Yeron and Palek finally wade into the melee, the Skald proves to be formidable, slapping levels off of the party left and right, and even the Druid begins to look weak after a surprise wraith attack. Eventually, however, all of Ragnar’s retinue are beaten down, leaving only himself and Lady Night. Tired of waiting for the party to charge his throne and trigger all the traps he has laid, he strides forward confidently to face the party mano-a-undead-cleric-o. He is layered in protections the party cannot even guess at and unconcerned about the death of his retinue, since after all they will return the next night; and the party is vastly weakened, low on spells, vitality, and even potions. Surely he can finish the fight on his own terms.

But no. The Druid-bear tears Lady Night apart in a single round while the Bard and Wizard riddle Ragnar with Magic Missiles, thus bypassing his fantastic armor. The Druid-bear even lands a claw attack, weakening the vampire king further; Ragnar responds by dominating the Druid (having earlier dispelled his Protection from Evil) and ordering it to kill the Barbarian. Out of spells and options, the Bard solves the problem with brute force: Magic Missiles reduce the Druid-bear to unconsciousness without quite killing him. And then the Cleric ends it all as it began: with a beam of light to the face.

(Note: Ragnar had various defences and traps against all the tactics they had employed in previous battles, none of which they used in this one.)

The vampiric smoke flees the room, once again chased by the Bard in gaseous form. And again he is foiled by the system of tubes running under the castle. The party splits up and searches far and wide for the vampire’s coffins: the Wizard searches for secret lairs beneath the castle dungeon, the Cleric searches the attics and towers, the Ranger searches the sewers in and out of the castle, the Barbarian returns to the Order’s keep, and the Bard roots through the Castle cemetery looking for fresh graves. All of these turn up empty and the party fears it might have to wait until the next night and do it all again, until the Druid recruits rats and sends them down the various tubes. One rat does not return; when the next two sent down the same tube also do not return, the party assumes there is a vampire on the other end (and not, say, a cat or rat-trap).

In an act of astonishing bravery, the Bard turns them all gaseous and they blindly enter the tube, to see where it will lead.

At the other end they find themselves in a small tunnel. This leads to a locked grate, which the Barbarian tries to force, only to suffer a crippling curse; after several rounds of unnecessary caution the party manages to make it through the gate and up the stairs into the crypt of Count Kird, their old friend and the kingdom’s most beloved hero.

Here they are flummoxed. Could the vampires have passed through Kird’s crypt and into the Church cemetery or the Church itself? Or does the answer lie closer to hand? The Bard convinces the handful of townspeople visiting the graves of their loved ones to leave, and the party steels itself to the unpleasant task of disrupting Count Kird’s mortal remains. But as they go to haul the first coffin out into the sunlight to inspect it, King Ragnar steps out of it and attacks, joined by the rest of his retinue stepping out of their coffins.

Everyone is all jammed together in a small stone crypt, which is made more claustrophobic by the fact that one of them is a giant dire bear. This should be a fight that favors the vampires and their close melee attacks, but what actually happens is the bear tears a hole in roof of the crypt, climbs on top, and jumps up and down until the entire roof caves in, crushing everyone underneath and exposing the interior to direct sunlight.

Of course our mighty heroes are barely discomfited by having a stone crypt collapse on them, while the vampires are almost instantly reduced to ash by the sun. The fight is well and truly done. The party returns to the castle, where a spirited discussion ends in a vote to liberate the entire royal treasury by 4 to 2. Having sequestered the cash, magic items, and tael, the party is happy to welcome the paladin Theodric and his armies a few days later and turn the crown over to him.

They have all the responsibility they want with their own county, and besides, someone needs to go straighten out Varsoulou before this demon thing gets out of hand.

World of Prime: Campaign Journal #42

Vampire Neighbors, part IV

The party returns to the capital in the dead of night, avoiding the innocent soldiers and townsmen. Their only target is the ruling class.

They return to the Order of the Edge's private keep at midnight. The gates open at their touch; the keep appears deserted, or at least lifeless. Cautiously they creep onto the grounds and begin to search for monsters, prisoners, or just clues. They have prepared by drinking Hide from Undead potions, but in the end this turns out not to really matter, as the vampires generally see through it for the rest of the battle.

After a few minutes of investigating a barn door that is mysteriously barred from within, the Barbarian loses patience. Going to the next building, he pushes open the door, unwraps his light stone, and has a look around. The armory seems to have been used recently, implying that someone in the keep still cares about weapons and armor. Meanwhile the Ranger has climbed into the barn through a 2nd story window (it's only combat rolls he can't make) and discovered the barn is dusty with disuse and neglect. While he's opening the barn door for the rest of the party, the Barbarian comes out of the armory and makes a discovery.

Specifically, he discovers a critical strike from a lance wielded by a vampire on a nightmare. Two more make a pass with the lance, their mounts traveling on clouds of smoke five feet above the ground, and one of them hits. The Barbarian is now bleeding real blood, reduced to merely mortal flesh, and for once in his soon-to-be-brief life, chooses the better part of valor. He runs back into the armory to hide. The rest of the party, caught in the open and watching the three vampire knights wheel around for another charge, rush to join him, leaving the Ranger alone in an empty barn.

The knights land in front of the armory, issuing taunts and laughter. One has his horse knock down the door with a powerful lash of hooves. The others send in swarms of bats, but the Druid foils this with a simple spell while the Cleric and Bard put the Barbarian back into fighting shape. The Cleric then chants, driving two of the nightmares away; the knights, secure in their confidence, dismount to carry out the battle on foot.

A halting melee occurs at the door, with the Barbarian lunging out to attack the nightmare while dodging sword thrusts and hooves. The Ranger is sniping from the barn door, his arrows contributing damage but not revealing his location to the knights, who it must be said were not the sharpest fangs in the drawer. Eventually the nightmare is slain, enraging the knights; one walks around to the side of the building and begins smashing a hole in the shutters. Since the windows are barred with iron, the party wonders what he is doing. When they see him turn into mist so he can float through the hole and flank the doorway, the Druid sends his gaseous form packing with a Gust of Wind. Meanwhile, the party is winning the fight at the doorway; the Barbarian destroys one and the Bard drops another with Magic Missiles. They turn to mist and the Bard immediately follows.

The third knight solidifies on the other side of the courtyard, where the wind sent him, but finally realizes the fight is against him. He flees through a gate, locking it behind him.

The gaseous vampires float into the main building on the second floor, with the Bard following. Rather than deal with the gate and then the main hall door, the rest of the party decides to climb up to the second floor. This is easy for the Cleric, who Air Walks; the Ranger, who can climb; and the Druid, who cheats and uses a Spider Climb potion; but it is comically difficult for the Barbarian who fails his first attempt and falls to the ground. His second attempt is more successful, and he smashes open the window the Ranger was attempting to unlock.

The party climbs through onto a balcony over a perfectly dark room. The Barbarian throws his light stone into the darkness, only to reveal an empty hall.

"Try that again," comes a voice from the end of the hall. The Ranger does, hurtling his light stone in the direction of the voice.

This reveals a line of seven vampire knights waiting for them, along with their old foe Palek the sorcerer. The Cleric rebukes four of the lesser knights, driving them into the corner. Another one picks up the lightstone and puts it into his pocket while one summons a wolf and the others begin crawling up the support pillars to attack.

The Bard takes solid form, leaving him on the far side of the room from the party. He casts Sunlight on the nearest support pillar, thus solving the party's vision problems, but winds up in a fist-fight with a vampire. Somehow he manages to avoid losing any levels while still getting beaten unconscious over the next few rounds.

Palek the fire-sorcerer is blasting away at anything and everyone, and missing. Several vampires are on the balcony slogging it out with the Barbarian, Ranger and Cleric (who has successfully paralyzed one with Hold Person), when a wraith comes through the wall and strikes the Cleric. This is CON drain, not damage; another hit like that will suck the life-force out of the Cleric and leave him a rotting husk!

The Barbarian demonstrates his tactical wisdom by grabbing the cleric in one hand and throwing him off of the balcony. Sure, he takes damage from the fall, and sure, he lands sprawled at the feet of the vampire sorcerer; but neither of those is going to immediately kill him like the wraith might.

The Druid is equally concerned about the wraith, but has a different solution. He turns into a giant bear with the constitution of, well, a giant bear. Having previously cast Magic Fang on himself, he easily shreds the wraith (and the wall it is partially occupying). The Barbarian does the same for a second wraith that lunged out of the wall but fortunately missed.

The vampires realize they are not winning. Their leader crawls to the middle of the room, clinging to the ceiling like a bat and summons another wolf. However, the wolf is limited in its targets; only the Ranger is open to its attacks (the others are still protected by the Hide from Animals cast by the Druid back in the armory). Instead, the wolf grabs the paralyzed vampire and throws it off the balcony, thus damaging it and breaking the Hold Person spell. The Druid leaps from the balcony (which trembles but does not collapse) to a pillar near the leader (which also quivers but holds) and claws him into bits, using that Spider Climb potion to good effect.

But the Cleric is in trouble; he's on the ground, surrounded by vampires, and Palek finally manages to scorch him with a ray. The Druid-bear drops to the ground, where Palek futilely blasts it before being eviscerated by a flurry of claws.

Just as it looks like the heros are winning, the main door flies open and two nightmares charge into the room! Then the Barbarian obliterates them in two rounds with Whirlwind attacks, incidentally taking out a poor vampire who happened to get caught in the carnage.

At this point an invisible rogue stabs the Druid-bear in the back twice, but even her advanced Level Drain has no hope of affecting the bear. Still, her daggers do real damage, and he has to turn his attention to her, leaving the Cleric open to a level-draining sucker-punch from vampire that already beat the Bard unconscious. This turns out to matter because the other vampires that had been previously turned are now rejoining the fight, and the Cleric's new turn attempt is rendered totally ineffective. Perhaps you can't intimidate vampires when you are on the ground, bleeding, smoking around the edges, and pathetically low level - who knew?

The Druid-bear finally finishes off the rogue, whom by deduction must be the Marichoness, and by observation is clearly a vampire rather than a prisoner, and the Ranger has brought the Bard around with a healing potion, so the remaining low-level vampire knights have no real chance. The Barbarian and Druid-bear crush them in short order.

The mist forms of the Marichoness and Palek float up and out a window, while the others float down to the floor. The party discovers ten graves crudely concealed beneath the flooring, and stake the Order of the Edge's vampiric inhabitants while they are still reforming. The Bard, for once, does not go chasing after wisps of smoke, because he knows where they are going (the royal castle) and he fears following them in his depleted state.

Next comes the assault on the throne, as the evidence for Ragnar's corruption is no longer questionable. The party debates waiting for Theodoric's arrival and his allied armies, but is swayed to immediate action by two concerns. First, that Theodoric's civil war will kill hundreds of innocent soldiers on both sides; and second, that waiting for Theodoric's help means splitting the loot.