Today's Session (June 29th)

We'll be doing our session at the usual time - 6PM Pacific/8 PM Central start. I need at LEAST a physical description of Jordan's character Gwenn and Traver's character Aludiana. Backstories would be even better!

Session #5: "Erik & Iados", The Lost Pilot Episode

This week's session had the party finding a false wall in the trapped hallway. Progressing into the next hallway they found a number of skeletons guarding what appeared to be another dead end. After defeating the skeletons, they discovered another two false walls - one on each side. The party chose to head down the east passage, and found themselves in Sir Cairnstone's burial chamber, along with his personal guard - a number of infernal armor animuses.

This battle did not end well for the party - in the end, Sir Cairnstone decapitated Mika and Adrie, leaving Iados and Erik to bleed out as a mysterious robed man invited him to join "his ranks". This defeat came about for two reasons - one, the animuses, which healed Cairnstone for a significant amount upon being killed, were meant to be ignored in this encounter. Two, the party could have made the encounter easier on themselves by taking the other path first - down that path they would've found a skeletal captain whose insignia they could've placed into the basin of a shrine to Pelor (also hidden behind a false wall), which would have hampered Cairnstone's ability to summon animuses. Fortunately, Iados and Erik were rescued by Halpern and his men.

Erik and Iados spent a week recovering, each having a nasty new scar to show off - afterward they went to speak to Mayor Lundgrave, and discovered that the town was being blackmailed by a hobgoblin warlord acting on behalf of the people of Beleth. Lundgrave asked for the Blacksword Band's help against the hobgoblin's tribe; they agreed, and began to head out. On the way out, they were given a letter from Smolkin, who gave them a new job and told them he was on his way up to the town after having heard what was going on up there. The new job, from a mysterious person in the Misty Morning Inn named "I", asked them to check the windmill granary outside of town and interrogate Vilner, a former town guard, about possible corruption in the guards' ranks. Iados' paranoia has continued to grow in this session - the letter from Smolkin, delivered by the runner, and the letters "I" gave them his instructions on were both subject to arcana checks. Maybe someday he'll find some explosive runes on one of them - but don't count on it.

We will have two new characters next week - and that means two new backstories! Keep an eye out for the new backstories, guys!

Iados's Backstory

Height: 5'10"

Weight: 180 lbs.

Age: 23

Eye Color: Black

Hair Color: Black

Skin Color: Red

Body Build: Athletic

Distinguishing Feature(s): Left horn is broken, scar across the right cheek, wears his mother’s cloak, and keeps his father’s dagger sheathed in his wrist armor.

I was born in the slums of Vulkannen to a Morthos and Lerissa. It was tough growing up as we didn’t have much, although my father tried his best to provide what he could. He referred to himself as a merchant, but as I grew older, I knew better. I’d come to learn that he was little more than a common thief, and did deals in back alleys for the local crime lords. My father never belonged to any specific crime circle, he was freelance, but he did have a small crew of his own. I never let on that I knew what he actually did so that he could maintain his pride, but even though I knew, I never thought any less of him. The world was cruel, especially to our race, and my father always taught me as such.

When I was 15, my father got the “deal of the century”, as he put it. He said the job would turn our lives around. Well, the night of the operation would be his last. I’d come to find out that it was a bank job. I was originally told that my father was killed by a guard as the job went bad, but later I found out there was a double cross. The crime lord, Amnon, who’d hired my father for the job, decided that he wanted a bigger cut and had my father and his crew killed.

Even for all of my father’s trust issues, precautions, and teachings, they still got him in the end, but not without a fight from what I hear.

            With our household being in a weak position now, Amnon took it upon himself to “help” us get back on our feet, as if we had a choice. Amnon made my mother work in one of his many whore houses, but before she had even serviced her first customer, she too was killed, albeit brought on by her own hand. My mother didn’t like the idea of being a whore very much, and when her first customer came onto her, she killed him with a broken broom handle. In turn, Amnon then killed my mother as she was of no use to him. As I was alone now, and I guess as a sick joke to my parent’s memory, Amnon took me under his wing and brought me up as part of his crew of thieves.

I had a feeling that I too wouldn’t live very long under Amnon. So, in desperation and revenge I turned to the same place that my ancestors had long ago, the devil pacts. At home there was a book of Tiefling history that touched on the basis of the rituals that were performed. I scoured the book for hours and learned the secrets of the past. I performed the summoning ritual that was laid out in the book, and a cold wind blew through the room even though the windows and doors were closed. The flames of the candles were blown out and the room went dark, but then the markings on the floor began to shimmer and glow a florescent green. There was a loud cackling that echoed through the room as a strange entity appeared, standing on top of the markings. The devil looked somewhat similar to myself – tail, horns, red skin. He identified himself as Agreas, High Vizier Devil of Bel, Master of Avernus, and demanded to know why I had summoned him. I pleaded with him to grant me power so that I may claim my vengeance on Amnon. Agreas seemed to ponder this for a second before he finally reached toward me. He grabbed my left horn on my head and snapped it off like a twig. The devil gripped the horn in his hand and closed his eyes. The horn began to flatten and elongate. When the transformation was done, my horn now resembled a sword. Agreas thrust the hilt of the blade at me, and I cautiously gripped the blade. As I did so, the edges of the blade became surrounded in a swirling, shadowy purple light, and I heard whispers in a strange tongue inside my head. As I held the blade, I felt infused with power and I felt like I could take on the world. By this time, Agreas had disappeared, leaving me alone in a dark room. I now had the power for my revenge, and all I needed now was the chance to extract it.

A couple of hard months passed before I finally saw my chance to kill Amnon. It was a night after I had just helped rob a merchant of his gold and wares while he was distracted with packing up. A part that involved the death of the merchant by one of Amnon’s goons after I sucker punched him. I’ve had to do many terrible, despicable things these past few months to blend into Amnon’s crowd. I’m not proud of the things I’ve done, but they were essential to my survival.

I went to present the night’s take to Amnon, strangely there was only one guard in the room. I handed the bag of gold to Amnon, and as he turned to put it in the vault, I hastily cast an Eldritch Bolt at the guard, hitting him in the face. Before Amnon could turn around again, I had already drawn my demonic blade and was charging him, but with quick reflexes, Amnon managed to draw his sword and match blades as the two swords clashed together. As both of us tried to strong arm the other, Amnon spoke through gritted teeth, “I should have known that you would try to kill me one day.” My strength began to give and Amnon’s sword inched closer to my face, and I grimaced as I turned my head, Amnon’s sword slicing across my right cheek. As blood trickled down my face, I shouted, “This is for my parents!”, and I kicked Amnon in his crotch. Amnon dropped his sword and fell to his knees as all of the strength ran out of his body.

I drew back my sword and swung it in an arc, the blade glowing with dark purple light at it sliced through Amnon’s neck like butter. His head flew across the room and hit the wall as his body fell to the floor with a low thud. I stood over Amnon’s lifeless body for a moment, breathing heavily, watching his blood drip from the tip of my demonic blade, mesmerized by it.

            The moment was stolen as the door to the room opened behind me, it was the other guard. He hesitated for a moment, taking in the sight, trying to put together the pieces as I stood over the bodies. Not letting the guard have the upper hand, I quickly blasted him with an Eldritch Bolt and dashed through the door, making a break for it.

            I ran back home to grab what food I could. I had to leave town, surely one of Amnon’s goons would want retribution, and I wasn’t going to stick around to let them have that. As I gathered my things, my mind was filled with whispers again, only this time I could understand them. I recognized the voice as Agreas, the devil who had given me power, “You have done well and taken your revenge. Now you must pay back your debt, but not this moment. I will let you relish in victory now. However, in ten years’ time, on your twenty-fifth birthday, you will be in my service.”

            Now I have a new purpose, to find a way out of this pact. I travel from town to town; looking for any information I can find to help me. I also help those that I can so that I can atone for the horrible things I did in Amnon’s service. When I die, my deeds may not matter, but as I still breathe, every little bit helps me sleep better at night. I live on in memory of my parents, carrying a part of them with me in my travels. I will make my life, and theirs count for something.

Tomorrow's Session

Usual time for tomorrow's session (6 PM Pac/8 PM Cent start). See you guys there!

PIXIE WHERE IS YOUR BACKSTORY

Session Recap #4: Death Coffins

Short session - had to start nearly an hour late, and stop at the halfway point of our usual time. Not much to cover but I'll go over it.

The group fought the boneshard skeleton without Iados present, as he was late. The combination of the boneshard's hard hits and the constant damage from the poison gas proved to push the party to the brink, but they managed to defeat the boneshard and emerge victorious from the encounter. Claiming their loot from the sarcophagi, they advanced further into the catacombs.

At this point we had lost Erik, so the party of Iados, Mika and Adrie advanced forward. In the next hall, Mika was grabbed by an iron maiden-like coffin trap which kept her trapped for the duration of the encounter. Iados and Adrie had to deal with the darts being launched through the hallway and the decrepit skeletons. In the end, Mika was freed just in time from the coffin trap before its iron spikes led to her demise.

Mika technically died in the 2nd encounter, but due to the nature of the coffin being a Strength-based skill check to escape, and the sole party member versed in Strength skills being absent, this was changed.

Something I would like for everyone to read - with a party of this size, we can have a more personal, in-depth sort of game, which is a lot of fun and tends to allow for a lot more character growth and role-playing. However, when people are severely late, don't pay attention, or take extended breaks, it really drags the game down, because every player in a party of four is vital to the success of the group as a whole. Please keep this in mind for future sessions; thanks for reading, and I'll see you all next Wednesday!

Today's Session (June 15th)

Today's session is on for the usual time - 6 PM Pacific/8 PM Central. See you guys there!

Update on Tomorrow's Session

Baril has told me he will have company tomorrow during the session, and I haven't heard opinions from anyone else, so I'm going to cancel tomorrow's session. We'll get back at it next week!

Tomorrow's Session

For tomorrow's session there are three options available to us:

- Skip the session, wait for next Wednesday when we can have everyone present.
- Fade Iados into the background temporarily; pretend he's not there essentially.
- Either myself or someone else NPCs Iados.

Let me know what option you prefer, guys. If we do the session it will be the usual time - 6 PM Pacific/8 PM Central start, going until we decide to stop.

Session Recap #3: They're SPIDERS, Not Kids!

Time for another session recap. Lots of combat in this one - 4 encounters in 4 1/2 hours, and a 5th one introduced. I'll summarize as best I can - let's get to it.

The party started as they'd ended the previous session, having just jumped down into the catacombs. A quick journey to the north showed the staircase which had been sealed off - the way down into the catacombs from the monastery. Heading south, the party found their first encounter of the night in the next corridor - a horde of decrepit skeletons and a skeleton archer at each end of the corridor. This encounter wasn't too hard, as Mika's area effects cleaned up the decrepit skeletons quickly and from there it was just a matter of chasing down the archers. Most of the party hit level 2 after this encounter, and we took a break to allow everyone to level up.

Once the break was over the party continued on their way, finding a side passage that led into what appeared to be a tomb for children. A dire rat awaited the party, and they rushed forth - only to be attacked by a pair of child skeletons known as bonewretch skeletons. These proved particularly disturbing as one carried a teddy bear, and the other had rotted strings of hair with bows and a broken teacup in hand. Adrie was quite disturbed by these skeletons and the childlike screaming they did as they were attacked; Erik took a different route, and convinced himself he was fighting spiders, not the skeletons of children. The bonewretches proved to be somewhat effective and kept Iados and Erik slowed for much of the encounter - the dire rat, on the other hand, proved utterly useless, failing to hit even once and failing to dodge even a single attack. Stupid rat.

Inside the tomb the party found some treasure, including some new armor for Mika. Pressing on, they encountered a skeletal patrol - three warriors and a pair of archers. This encounter proved quite taxing on the party, as the warriors held them off while the archers peppered them from a distance. Drained as this left the party, it could've been a lot worse - the DM's dice went cold for the archers and they missed at least half of their attacks through the whole encounter. The archers led the party into another tomb chamber, this one for Cairnstone's wives. Before they could explore it further, however, the party decided to take an extended rest.

Yet again, they found themselves attacked by skeletons, as a group ambushed the party during their rest. This group proved easy to deal with, however, and though the archer made an attempt to kite, he was caught and killed just as the other two were. The party finished their extended rest and set about exploring the tomb.

The chamber had eight sarcophagi in it, and an altar bearing four urns in the middle. An inscription on the altar told them that they would have to awaken the wives together using their "ashen attendants"; these turned out to be the urns, filled with the cremated ashes of said attendants. Four of the wives Cairnstone hated, and four he loved - through history checks the party discerned that Cairnstone loved his 3rd and 8th wives, and hated his 1st wife. They debated for a long while on whether they had all the necessary information to solve this puzzle, but discovered upon trying to return an urn placed by the 8th sarcophagus to the altar that they had to solve it. This was my intention - if the party had rolled well enough on their history checks they would've figured out which wives (and thereby which sarcophagi) to place urns by, though they would still have had the task of figuring out which were which. Admittedly I should've placed numbers on the sarcophagi, but I suppose I was rather married to the thought of them guessing as to which urns to put where.

The party ending up getting 2 out of 4 right; they found an amber in one sarcophagus and a pair of magic gauntlets (a rare item!) in the other. As for the other two, one contained a jar which has begun releasing a poison gas into the room, and the other contained a boneshard skeleton - an "old friend" of the players who has caused many a death with his nasty explosion ability. We stopped here for the night.

Next week's session may be in jeopardy as Sal's character Iados will not be present; I am unsure yet whether I will be going ahead with three people (which I could do) or not. I'll provide notice to you all as soon as I can. Until then, maybe I'll have a certain backstory to post to tide you all over...we'll see (right Sal? ;D)!