The Heirs of Ruin: Broken Bonds Adventure

The compiled and organized notes for the first adventure from my home campaign, The Heirs of Ruin, can be found here.

The belgoi commands it.

The Heirs of Ruin, Play Report 7

After burying the dead, the caravan continued on its way to South Ledopolos. Rather than “Indiana Jones” the trip, I asked them what their characters would be doing for the day. Beth (aka Maximus) decided to strike up some conversation with the caravan leader, a man named Canth. I played Canth as a similar personality to Maximus; serious and disciplined from living a life of danger running trade goods between cities. She learned some rumors about the Giant’s Rib Mountains, as well as the giants from the Silt Sea.

John (aka Branor) did something a bit different, asking if there were any dwarves on the team. I figured, they are going to South Ledopolos, so hell yes. He then asked if they knew his character, to which I decided to give him a chance to improvise, asking, “Do they?” He figured that seeing as his character is a prince of his clan that they should, and I rolled with it, having them be somewhat nervous and offering him some of the “good stuff” that they were packing with them. While he did not learn anything, he got to play his character’s social side a bit.

Randy’s character is trying to figure out magic as part of her background and goals, so when he asked if she nabbed some of the dray’s notes I had him make an Intelligence check because Randy never said he did and I did not think to ask. With a nat 20, I told him that she grabbed a lot of stuff and that she could study it along the way. I had him make a few Arcana checks, and the results indicated that she had determined that the dray was using ritual magic to bind ghosts in order to question them (which Baranus mentioned back in the sewers). Now, I tried to have a nosy half-elf woman badger Sardis about what she was reading, but she rebuffed her, because, well Sardis is not the most social person (or at all).

Just goes to show you that not every NPC is going to get the screen time you had hoped. Maybe I will try a more aggressive approach next time?

Speaking of aggression, Liz really did not have any ideas about what she would be doing, so a botched Insight roll revealed that a small group of men seemed to be ogling her. This made her understandably uncomfortable, so she stuck around Maximus, “just in case”. 

With that bit of socialization out of the way a sandstorm picked up, locking them in place for several hours. They made some skill checks to help round up the animals and erect some hasty shelters, so after it blew over everyone was safe and everything was accounted for. With another hour of digging everything out they were able to cover some more ground before they had to make camp for the night. With the possible threat of some of the caravan members going after Jiga, they kept close to each other and decided to keep their own watch. Fortunately, nothing assaulted them except for an adult silk wyrm with a bunch of young in tow.

The young were really just there behind the scenes in order to occupy the rest of the caravan guards and Canth, giving the characters a chance to show how badass they were and level up because I wanted them at 3rd level before they got into South Ledopolos. Plus, I wanted them to actually finish it off given that they got to see one at action in the first session. Once they killed it the surviving young fled, giving the caravan a hefty boost to the food department. Since they killed it so fast none of the guards died (I rolled a save each round), making Canth very pleased (and affecting the bonus he would give them at the end of the trip).

The next day, Liz (aka Jiga) actually asked if the men that were staring at her yesterday were around–probably hoping that they had died–but found out that they had left sometime during the night and were nowhere to be found. Did they get eaten or desert? Eh, time and drama will tell.

The third day they ran into another hitch in the form of a gith raider ambush; they came out of the mountains, raining javelins because the only stat block I had on hand was for the level 4 artillery ones. Had I brought my laptop I would have had access to other stat blocks, or…shit, I should have remembered the pdf on my tablet. Oh well, I will remember next time if I forget to format all the stat blocks. Anyway, the battle was over pretty quickly despite immobilizing javelins. A lot of the guards were wounded, and some were kidnapped by the surviving raiders, so if they act quickly they might be able to save them.

We’ll see what happens next week.

The Heirs of Ruin Play Report 6

With all the guards and jhakaars slain, the characters were now free to scope out Hakaar’s house. It was night so they could clearly see that there were no lights on, and they could not hear anything from outside, so they concluded that either Hakaar was either a heavy sleeper or that no one was home. A win in either case. The front door was locked briefly before Jiga got her picks on it. Inside they found some alright furnishings, but a fine layer of dust coated almost everything, indicated that the place saw little use, if any. I handled the investigation like a skill challenge, allowing them to use their skills to locate the prisoner (or at the least his prison); it was a pretty easy feat to narrow down the areas of the house that actually saw activity, and locate a hidden passage soon after.

They followed a short passage underground, which terminated at a stone door with a ring of red runes. Branor deduced that red, glowing runes are often a bad thing, while Sardis’s experience with magic more accurately concluded that it was some form of fire based trap. A very low Arcana check confirmed her assessment to the tune of 20 points of fire damage and being knocked on her ass. As if being bloodied was not bad enough, it also alerted Hakaar to their presence.

They sucked it up and opened the door, finding Hakaar standing before a blazing brazier and an unconscious man chained up in the corner; the very picture of villainy. They exchanged some words and threats, but Hakaar’s patience quickly wore out and he summoned a pair of magma beasts in the shape of Large scorpions that flanked the door. This did not stop many of the party from trying to get in, provoking an assload of opportunity attacks, but with the silver lining that Branor got to give his defender’s aura a strenuous workout early on.

Hakaar proved to be a pretty potent pyromancer, tossing around scorching bursts, a burning hands, and even having a few abilities–Elite kickers that felt niftier than another double attack–that let him turn up the heat when characters took fire damage when it was not his turn (which was most of the time, since almost every attack that the enemies had dealt fire damage). In fact, despite having a full suite of party members he actually managed to kill Maximus. Well…I hand-waived it at first, but after Beth’s persistence I finally relented that yes, Maximus did die (by only a few points), but would be raised by the Veiled Alliance anyway so it was all kind of a moot point.

I guess it worked out for the best in the long run, because after Maximus came back to life he retained faint memories of wandering a cold city composed entirely of black glass, which is foreshadowing if I’ve ever used it. Which I did.

So with the prisoner and loot in hand–including a fire elemental that Sardis bound to herself, gaining a gift of fire–the party made it back to Wavir’s enclave, and with nothing better to do was packaged up in crates and shipped out of Balic’s city limits. Once safely out of sight, they were let out of the crates with the understanding that Girias had instructed the caravan to at least escort them to South Ledopolos, which was nice because that will be their launching point to a rumored lost city that they’d heard so much about. We wrapped up the night with a nice attack comprised of sunwarped hyenas and a couple flocks of kestrekels, whereupon I learned that the dwarf knight is really fucking hard to chew through, and the psion is really good at obliterating swarms.

The Heirs of Ruin Play Report 5

After looting the necromancer’s lair they returned to Barunus’s ghost, gathered up his bones, and made their way to the surface. Almost immediately there were spotted by a patrol, which could have easily overwhelmed them had a pair of newfound friends not shown up; a dwarf named Braynor Stoneblood that knew Maximus from awhile back on one of his tours, and a bizarre crystalline entity that could manipulate objects whose named escapes me. After defeating the guards and stealing their uniforms, they decided that the best way to safely get out of Balic would be to get in touch with House Wavir due to Jiga’s connections.

Unfortunately, they had to cross the Market Precinct to get there.

I ran the same skill challenge as before, asking the group to tell me how their characters would try to get there, and got some different–but still impressive–results; Maximus wanted to try the backstreets, Jiga and Braynor tried to mingle with the crowd, and Sardis, well…he got spotted pretty damned quickly by guards on the lookout for “anyone with a mysterious halo”. He legged it, I prompted him for an Endurance check, and he managed to get some distance between them. They split up, trying to surround him, and so he made an Athletics to get on the roof. Maximus tripped one of them, but a botched Athletics roll caused both the guard and him to fall. The guard recognized him pretty quickly, but was silenced by a dagger in the throat (though Maximus lost a healing surge during the scuffle). With Sardis on the roof, Braynor and Jiga rallied the mob against the guards by tricking them into thinking that they’d killed their baby while chasing Sardis. As Sardis moved from rooftop to rooftop, Braynor managed to take the handful left out with a well thrown rock while they were scaling a wall after him.

Again, things flowed really well and seemed much more cinematic. The players didn’t just spam whatever skill had the best bonus, and they seemed to enjoy it a lot more than usual.

At the Wavir estate, they made a deal to help retrieve a prisoner from a minor noble in exchange for safe passage out of the city. Supplied with fresh clothes and an actually balanced party, they staked out the estate for a good while–during which Sardis detected a steady pulse of evocation magic underground–before just storming the walls, which was still pretty effective. It was a fairly lengthy melee briefly made worse when someone got knocked onto the ground and a pair of jhakaars showed up, but ultimately no one got hurt that a few healing surges couldn’t fix. We had to wrap things up there, but next session will be actually getting into the house and figuring out what is going on.

The Heirs of Ruin Play Report 4

After the party destroyed all the undead, the ghost of a dwarf appeared and asked them to avenge his death (as well as the deaths of all the other victims in the pile of bones). He explained that a dragonborn defiler had killed him, bound his soul, and questioned him about a lost city. After it was clear that he had no worthwhile information, the dragonborn discarded his remains. The party agreed, and shortly after setting out to find the dragonborn’s lair hit a hurdle in the form of an insanely complex tile puzzle.

I am generally not a huge fan of puzzles, especially riddles, because I find that they tend to grind the game to a halt as the players spend too long before finally resigning themselves to a score of Intelligence/History checks, or DM mercy. The tile puzzle was 7 x 7 squares and required that a magical circuit pass through four elemental tiles in a specific order before a door would open. Taking a page from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, I allowed them to make Intelligence checks to “solve” one or more tiles, as well as allowing them to bypass the puzzle entirely by foregoing all XP. This would allow them to work at it for the reward, or just say fuck all and keep the adventure going.

After about half an hour, they solve it they did, to the tune of 300 well-deserved XP.

Inside they found what I described as the poor-pharaoh’s tomb; a sarcophagus surrounded by a treasure trove with more similarities to a yard-sale than treasure; wooden masks, primitive weapons, clay jars and tablets, tattered rugs, etc. Sardis’s nigh-30 Arcana check allowed him to notice an enchanted bone dagger with a scorpion spirit bound to it (+1 poisoned dagger). Once Maximus picked it up however, a skeleton composed of numerous different creatures (bone golem) animated and attacked them, along with a sand golem hidden in the sarcophagus that Jiga easily spotted (and denying me a surprise attack, boo).

After a fairly quick fight, they found a hidden passage behind the sarcophagus. Taking the right passage first, they discovering a cluttered bed chamber with a glass shard that contained a faint glimmer of intelligence, but at least had the capacity to store magic (obsidian spellshard). The final tunnel lead to one-part arcane lab and one-part operating room, complete with the dead body of a dragonborn. Once they approached it, the dragonborn’s ghost appeared and started hurling shadowy bolts. They beat it down easily enough (especially considering that the obsidian spellshard granted necrotic resistance), causing it to take refuge in its corpse which animated as a zombie until they destroyed it, forcing the ghost to reappear for a final showdown.

I gotta say that I am so glad that I read Ghost Story before running this fight, as Jim Butcher provided some great description on ghosts becoming damaged and destroyed. Anyway, once the ghost was destroyed they relived its final memories, in which the dragonborn informed a genasi with festering green markings of the location of something in the Giant’s Rib Mountains, before promptly being murdered. Unfortunately we stopped here, but at least the characters are now privvy to something larger afoot. Hopefully all this talk of a lost city will usher them in the right direction once they get their asses out of Balic.

The Heirs of Ruin: Method Mapping

I really dislike drawing maps, so often I try to play out the events of the adventure in my head to get a feel for what might happen (as opposed to what I would like to happen), usually resigning myself to the task of mapping a day or two before game night.

The campaign started out with the players going through a few arena battles before having an ideal chance of escape when a silk wyrm starts wreaking havoc on the place. The intent is that after escaping that they go through a door leading to the mess hall, beat up the guards in there, head into the kitchen, and then use a waste disposal pit to get to the sewers.

When I was writing up the adventure, I figured that not all the guards would get eaten by the silk wyrm, instead fleeing and locking the door behind them, giving the characters extra incentive into taking the other door. The problem is that that whole thing is contingent on the characters not interfering with the guards, and not being slaughtered by a level 3 solo.

When I ran it, the wyrm eventually ran away on its own and the guards followed it, making sure to lock up the prison from the outside. The players armed themselves with loot from the dead guards, and then proceeded as planned when I had a squad of guards show up in the mess hall looking for escapees.

Ultimately it felt like that there was too much that could go wrong, and in the interest of helping things run more smoothly the next time I run (or put it online) I decided to make some hefty cuts to the previous map, making it a bit more straightforward in its purpose. I put the waste disposal in the same room, figuring that it made sense because those cells are not going to clean themselves and it gives the guards a place to go. I also put the whole structure underground, making a lift necessary to access the place. Makes sense, as slaves–as well as dangerous monsters–will now have a very hard time getting out this way.

The Heirs of Ruin Play Report 2

Characters

• Randy’s character, a genasi swordmage/warlock hybrid who is named something like Sars I think
• Maximus, human warlord (Beth)
• Jiga, elf rogue (Liz)
• Kevek, goliath shaman (Kamon)

On day three of their less then luxurious stay at the Criterion, the characters were able to escape after a silk wyrm escaped from its cage while being transported and busted open the cell holding Sars and Maximus. While the guards were busy trying to get it off the handler, Sars managed to sneak out of his cell and use his psionic talent to lift the keys off of one of them. Maximus tried to get a weapon from one, promising to help fight, but they told him to stay put as they knew his reputation as a former general.

The silk wyrm tore off the handlers arm before turning on the guards prodding it with trikals. It briefly transformed into sand, flowing around them to avoid being surrounded, and continued tearing them with its jaws. The guards had gotten lucky with mighty strike, which the wyrm remedied by drinking the blood from one and healing itself. Sars was able to free several other prisoners, incuding Jiga and Kevek. As the guards started to fall, the wyrm eventually fled. The last one standing, faced with a bunch of freed slaves, ran into the hall and sealed the door.

The characters took some time to loot the guards, who of course didn’t happen to have just the weapons they needed, and had to make do with no armor, trikals, and dejadas. Another door lead to the mess hall, which contained a handful of guards and jhakars who were heading over to investigate all the noise. Since the characters were armed and supported by a mob of slaves following Maximus’s lead, they didn’t stand a chance (especially considering that with two leaders, even if I dropped Sars he’d just get back up with more than half his hit points anyway).

The found more weapons and armor that they didn’t like and decided to actually arm the other slaves, allowing them to make attack rolls with an actual bonus. In a storeroom I decided to make things easier on them and let them make checks to find gear suitable for their characters (plus they had character sheets with the “normal” stats and all). A squad of guards, including some more jhakar trackers and a “wielder of the Way” showed up looking for escapees soon after, which they handled by jumping into a waste disposal pit because whatever lives in the sewers probably makes for a more level-appropriate encounter.

Fortunately the managed to snag a single torch, and almost immediately had to fight off a pair of gray oozes that generally enjoyed pre-killed snacks. Kevek’s wild talent let them know which way was north, which made it easy for them to pick the general direction of Balic’s slums before moving on (I gave them a small bonus). After wandering through the sewers for an hour they were ambushed by rats of both usual and unusual sizes due to failing part one of the skill challenge, after which a pair of slaves were dead and Maximus was diseased (he got better, due to a meager DC of 12). Exhausted, they settled down for the day, munching freshly killed rats.

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A major goal of this session was to try and usher them into the waste pit so that they could wander through Balic’s sewers until they found a mini-dungeon with some plot-centric stuff. I was worried that they would try to fight their way through the main hall, but I didn’t want to invalidate that option by making it obviously impossible. While drawing up the map of the barracks, I figured that if a guard could escape he could lock the door from the other side. A character could break it down, but it would take awhile, and included another unlocked door that would point them in the right direction. They went for it, found the storeroom, and leapt into the pit of their own accord instead of facing a very difficult–but still doable–challenge.

The Heirs of Ruin Play Report 1

I’ve been rather slow and/or late updating over the past few weeks due to planning out an adventure path for Dark Sun, titled The Heirs of Ruin. My group has been clamoring for it since the books were released last year, and I’ve finally got a chance to put them to use.

By popular demand the group began as prisoners or slaves to Balic’s arena. I pitched a variety of character hooks, but Beth was dead set on playing Maximus from Gladiator. I don’t mean that she wanted to play a general that was betrayed, forced to participate in the arena until he got a chance for revenge; no, she is literally playing Maximus were he transplanted to Athas. The rest of the cast involves an elven politician (Artful dodger rogue) that was lobbying for abolishing slavery, a swordmage/warlock hybrid sunsoul genasi captured by slavers while searching for something (ie, lost magic to free primordials), and a goliath shaman that escaped from Balic before being shortly re-captured by a legion lead by Maximus.

Due to technical difficulties it took an hour to get the game rolling, so we only got through a pair of encounters involving a band of silt runners and an id fiend. I have to say, that poster map out of Bloodsand Arena was super-fucking handy. There wasn’t much in the way of social role-playing, though I’d hoped to spark something by letting Kamon know that Beth’s character was responsible for the murder and capture of his escaped slave tribe (something that none of the players knew beforehand). Ah well, maybe Beth’s brooding will incite something.

This session could have gotten a lot smoother, as I’d forgotten to implement a few things due to lack of sleep and trouble getting character sheets printed. First, I’d hoped to get a system going where the audience could affect the outcome of the battles by cheering/booing/throwing stuff. Second, I’d totally spaced handing out glory boons for characters that took the most damage and did the coolest shit. I’ll need to remember that at the start of the next game (where the players will have the chance to escape). I’d also liked to work in some notoriety, which will bite them in the ass once they’re outside, as being easily recognized is a bad thing when you are an escaped prisoner trying to lay low.

That was basically it for the first session. Hopefully next session goes smoother and runs longer, so if nothing else I can write something a bit more interesting (and take pics).

Updated At the Mines of Madness Adventure

For some reason, blogger kept timing out after my last post, so I had to delete it. Again, you can download the pdf and associated stat blocks for At the Mines of Madness here. It’s been reformatted and updated from the original. I couldn’t get it to properly format with the monster stat blocks and maps in the document file, so just put them in folders to make them a bit easier to manage. Lemme know what you like about it, what you hate about it, and if the idea of an aberrant-centric adventure path holds any appeal.

The Shadows Over Greyshore, Part 1

The party decided that their best course of action would be to head towards Greyshore. Though they all knew it to be an impoverished fishing village, they figured that they could at least get a boat and get back to Zarash’ak that much quicker. On the way they were ambushed by more bullywugs (consistency!) and got stuck in the middle of an ankheg hunting ground. While the bullywugs were a random encounter, the ankhegs were planned and I’d drawn up a sloping depression with a pool in the center, surrounded by numerous man-sized tunnels. The idea was that the ankhegs could use the tunnels to drag people into, making it difficult to be attack unless a character went into another tunnel to try and find it.

That didn’t happen, as Josh’s seeker immobilized one and allowed everyone to destroy one before going after the other. I didn’t even get to grab anyone or re-enter a tunnel to surprise them later. Oh well, at least I got to use acid spray a few times before going down.

Once they got the tumbler removed from the water, they met Obed, purportedly a high priest of the Devourer who was heading to Shardpit from Greyshore. The party was understandably paranoid, asking him all manner of questions to try and ascertain his intents. They found out that he was going there to purchase some relics discovered in a mine, something that Randy realized couldn’t be true because of the time it takes to walk to Shardpit and the fact that everything was dug up only a few days ago. Even still, Liz wanted to see the guys stash of ancient valuables and they tagged along.

Once they got to Greyshore, Obed said that he would look into getting them a boat, and that they could stay at the inn for free. Once at the inn, they immediately set out to search every room for traps, secret doors, or latent magical effects. They realized after examining every room that the furnishings were far too expensive for “an impoverished fishing village”, which got their paranometers off the charts. They figured that they should just leave,  which triggered a combat encounter with the handful of patrons and barkeep. Using restraint they incapacitated them for questioning, discovering that everyone in the place worships Dagon, with the usual monologue that they wouldn’t make it out alive.