IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 13C: THE TALE OF ITAREK

December 16th, 2007
The 1st Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

The fire bathed him and cleansed him and brought the cairn-dark to his eyes. The bane-doom of his clan had come to rest upon his shoulders, too. The memories of the caves passed before him, and he traveled the Long Hall to the Mysteries of the Plain.

But as he journeyed down the Long Hall, he saw before him two figures. And one had the form of a man with golden skin. And the other was that of a great snake with silver scales and gossamer wings.

And the figures spoke to him thus, with voices of conjoined chorus: “Turn back, Itarek Clan-Warrior. This hall is no place for the quick.”

And Itarek answered thus: “But my place is upon the Green Fields of our Lost Fathers, for I am dead, my liege-lords.” And he fell to his knees and bowed his head, for they seemed to him now to be great chieftains.

At this the golden-skinned warrior laughed and the silver snake spoke again, this time its voice seeming no more than a whisper: “How can you be dead, Itarek Clan-Warrior? For you yet breathe.”

And at the words breath burst in Itarek’s chest and the blood beat through his veins. The figures seemed to step behind a veil, the Long Hall faded into shadow, and he opened his eyes once more upon the heart of the bane-doom.

The heroes of the world above had fallen. Their broken bodies lay scattered upon the floor. Only the Holy Man of the Forgotten Gods remained, and Itarek understood now that the strength had been restored to his limbs and the breath to his body only through the divine grace that flowed through the faith of this man. And Itarek felt that faith being born in his own blood. He felt it beating through his own heart.

Now, beyond the Holy Man he saw the bane-bearer Morbion and, at his side, a demon of corrupted flesh. He saw, too, that the Holy Man wavered upon the bloody brink of death. His fingers tightened upon his sword. His legs beat down upon the floor and he rose.

Itarek stepped forward and lowered his sword. “Morbion!” he cried. “I name you Kinslayer and Clanbane. I utter clan-curse upon you. And in the name of those you have killed and those you have corrupted, I give you the challenge of the clan.”

“Do you think me still bound by your mortal law?” Morbion said, and his voice was cold ash. With a flick of his wrist, the bane-bearer sent his demon forward – a mavering maw of muscular death.

Itarek thrust forth his sword, and impaled the demon upon it. “Bane you may be,” he said. “But in your chest still beats a goblin heart.”

And he wrenched free his blade. The demon fell dead at his feet, and in the eyes of Morbion the flickering flame of anger was kindled. Itarek saw it. He knew it. And it gave him hope, for now his vain words rang true in his own ears: Strange and blighted Morbion may have become, but he was not beyond the ken of blade or the bite of steel.

Morbion came forth and the tentacles of his corruption beat upon Itarek. But Itarek did not fear them. Behind him, the Holy Man remained upon his knees and Itarek could hear the murmur of his prayer and could feel the golden strength of it flowing into his limbs. It knit his wounds and soothed his pain.

“Bane you may be, but in your chest still beats a goblin heart!” he cried again. He raised his sword and brought it low. And at its passing, one of the corrupt tendrils fell free and flew from the back of Morbion.

Morbion cried in rage: “I have forsaken your ways!”

And Itarek answered with sword and word: “Forsworn you may be, but oaths there are that must be kept!”

And another tendril fell. And Itarek saw that, like his sword, his words had found their mark – for Morbion paid no mind to the priest or his prayers, and all his hate was bent upon Itarek alone.

And for this Itarek was glad, for he was sure that without the prayers of the priest he would be lost. Fast with blade he might be, but no speed could match the terrible might of Morbion.

Even then, as if to mock his thought, Morbion bore down upon him and drove him to the floor. His twin tendrils closed about Itarek’s throat and he laughed, “Did you think to stop me? Know that the Galchutt shall awaken! Know that all hope is lost!”

Through the red blackness that blurred his vision, Itarek looked up with bloodshot eyes. Through bruised and bloodied lips, he smiled. Through choked voice, he laid his sooth: “In darkness you may be lost, but the fires of our clan will light your way.”

And the prayers of the Holy Man beat upon him and spurred him. In that prayer he found his strength.

And now Morbion fell back before him and the anger in his eyes turned to fear.

“In the fires of our clan, your limbs shall burn, your blood shall boil, and your soul shall die!” And Itarek thrust his blade deep into the chest of Morbion.

The Bane-Bearer and Kinslayer and Clanbane fell. And his final breath was a warning and a curse: “The chaos comes. There is no hope…”

And Itarek turned his eyes from him and looked upon his fallen comrades and he wept.

NEXT CAMPAIGN JOURNAL

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 13B: THE TRAGEDY AT THE DOOR

December 16th, 2007
The 1st Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

A sudden hush filled the long hall – the violence ending almost as quickly as it had began. But even in this unexpected lull, the threat of danger still hung thickly over them. The door may have been shut upon Ursaal, but the warcaster was still an eminent threat.

They rallied quickly, reviving the injured goblins and falling into a defensive formation that quickly moved down the hall. Agnarr, with his flaming sword, hacked through the webs that Ursaal had left behind him. Once a path had been cleared to the stairs, he and Tee climbed up to the double doors of iron.

Tee quickly inspected the doors and found that no traps had been laid upon them. She fell back into the middle of the defensive formation at the base of the stairs, leaving Agnarr alone to place his hand upon the latch and swing one of the doors open.

Beyond the doors lay a spacious hexagonal chamber illuminated by seven strangely illuminated braziers arranged in a ten-foot-diameter circle in the center of the room. The sickly green stone of the braziers was carved into the shape of writhing, amorphous tendrils reaching up to support corroded iron bowls in which sputtered foul-smelling flames.

These braziers surrounded a strange idol carved in amorphous, undulating waves. Thick sheets of dripping algae and slime coated the walls, and dark-green tentacles of the stuff dangled down from the ceiling like thick, half-congealed ropes. All of this stuff slithered and writhed – sliding about the place almost as if it were possessed of life.

Vision into the room was utterly obscured by the constantly wavering layers of gelatinous growths, but shadows could clearly be seen moving within.

As Tee and Agnarr had worked, Elestra had whispered to her python viper – instructing it to follow the scent of Ursaal. So, as Agnarr opened the door, the massive snake slid between his legs.

Agnarr moved to follow, but as his arms touched the dangling tendrils he felt waves of horrible nausea sweep through his skin and overwhelm his senses. The floor beneath him, too, seemed to reel at his tread. He lurched backwards, but the tendrils reached out as if to follow him. With a disgusted sweep of his greatsword he sliced them away.

Agnarr stepped forward again, this time planning to cut a path through the seething chaos of slime and fungus. But as he did so, the unmistakable chants of an arcanist echoed through the smoky chamber. Acting on sheer instinct, Agnarr leaped back and slammed the door shut.

A moment passed as all of them looked at each other. But then Elestra, realizing that her beloved pet was now trapped within the room, gave a sharp cry and leapt forward, shoving the door open again and crying out for the snake to return to her side. (more…)

Sun Tzu said:

As for deploying the army and fathoming the enemy: (…) After crossing rivers you must distance yourself from them. If the enemy is forging a river to advance, do not confront them in the water. When half their forces have crossed, it will be advantageous to strike them. If you want to engage the enemy in battle, do not array your forces near the river to confront the invader but look for tenable ground and occupy the heights.

Having some basic tactical acumen is a skill which I think is simultaneously overvalued and undervalued for Game Masters.

Undervalued in part because there’s a prominent segment of the hobby that snootily holds its nose in the air and tries to draw a line between “roleplaying” and combat. (Which is weird, because mortal danger is a thing which artists have used to explore character since the dawn of narrative, and it feels more likely that you just aren’t very good at using combat in your roleplaying games than it is that roleplaying games are this special snowflake in which heightened stakes don’t have the same effect they do everywhere else.) And also because some gamers don’t feel that tactical knowledge is useful unless you’re playing a game with lots of “tactical rules”. (Whereas, in my experience, the less mechanical support you have for tactics, the more important it is for the GM to be familiar with them.)

Overvalued because there’s another segment of the hobby which places tactics on kind of a holy altar above all other concerns. (And there’s a chunk of this group which is not really interested in actual tactics at all, but rather in a very specific flavor of mechanical manipulation. A surprising number of these don’t actually spend much or any time playing at all, but do enjoy spinning spherical cows whenever they get the chance.) I’ve even met would-be GMs who don’t take the plunge because they believe they need to be able to match tactical wits with their players and feel as if they won’t be up to the task.

The thing about tactics in an RPG when you’re the GM is that there are four simple truths which make your relative tactical mastery (compared to the players) almost irrelevant:

1. Just keep throwing more bad guys at the problem until you reach a tactical equilibrium. Maybe some other GM could challenge your players with five bad guys and you need nine of them. It doesn’t matter because (a) that other GM isn’t here and (b) you’re successfully challenging them.
2. If your players create some tactical conundrum that you can’t figure out how to overcome, simply have your NPCs do whatever it is that they’re doing. Your players will show you how to beat their own best tactics.
3. Encounters are cheap and your failure is the group’s success. You don’t want every encounter to be a pushover, but if you avoid the My Precious Encounter™ method of prep (and you should anyway, right?) then nothing of real value is “lost” if you throw up the occasional tactical dud, particularly since your players will be cheering their victory as they move on to the next encounter.
4. You’ll get better with practice.

And as you get better with practice, you will find that some basic tactical acumen is valuable to have tucked away in your GM’s toolkit. When applied properly, it creates more interesting and varied encounters. Tactical thinking is, ultimately, creative thinking. And by presenting a variety of tactics, you will provoke creativity in your players.

The good news is that, in my experience, a little bit goes a long way here. Whole libraries full of books have been written about tactics, but in practice you only need a handful of basic techniques. (This is particularly true because you can dial difficulty with the number of opponents in addition to your own tactical genius.)

HALF ACROSS THE RIVER

As Tee was working to release Dominic from his harness, however, Tor suddenly gave a cry and drew his sword: The troughs of ooze were beginning to undulate. Tee whirled and drew her dragon pistol, blasting at the surface of the trough to her left. As she did so, the motions of the ooze became great waves which sickeningly shuddered their way from one end of the troughs to the other.

Here’s one such tactical technique: Engage the PCs when half of them have crossed the river.

This doesn’t have to be an actual river, of course. In the current session the “river” is the rope the PCs are using to climb down into the sinkhole: Tee and Tor climb down the rope and then, just after Dominic has been lowered but before he’s released from the harness, the oozes attack. Tee and Tor have crossed the river; Dominic is in the water; and the rest of the party (plus their goblin allies!) are still on the far side of the river.

There was a similar dilemma – also featuring height – back in Session 11 (when the PCs needed to climb down into the ruined fungal garden).

This tactical technique creates a great deal of complication at the very beginning of the fight. It can prevent PCs from achieving their ideal or “clean” engagement (whether that’s something they’ve carefully planned out or just the routine which has become habitual for them). It also forces the PCs to deal with whatever the “river” is dynamically while under the intense time constraints which are naturally part of the combat system.

A couple of things to keep in mind when using this technique:

First, don’t attack too soon. If you attack as soon as the first PC crosses the river, it can be too easy for them to pull back. Let several of the PCs commit themselves across the transition and then attack (from hiding, from the next room, from the Ethereal Plane, whatever). Roughly half the party is a good rule of thumb, but won’t necessarily apply in all circumstances.

Second, remember that the attack can also target the characters who haven’t made the transition yet. You can even occasionally have bad guys hit both sides of the “river” simultaneously. (This can create a tougher fight, but can, paradoxically, actually result in less tactical complexity, as the PCs will usually just settle into two largely separate fights on each side of the “river”.)

Third, make sure that the bad guys take advantage of the “river” to best effect. (If it’s a literal river, for example, maybe they push the PCs into it when they charge.) This works particularly well if the bad guys have special abilities that are enhanced by the “river”, take advantage of the “river”, or allow them to ignore the “river”. (This often happens naturally in fantasy settings because bad guys are often themed to their environment; oozes in a cavern of ooze, for example.)

SETUP

There was trepidation among those standing at the edge of the sinkhole and surrounded by rotting fungus, sickly slime, and malformed corpses. Tee, in particular, harbored deep misgivings. To her the sinkhole was filled with a horrible foreboding and a sense of nameless doom.

Unless the bad guys are proactively pursuing the PCs, I tend to spend little or no time prepping tactics for them ahead of time. I find it leads to a lot of wasted prep and I think it’s simply far more interesting to tactically react in real time to what the PCs are doing. That’s one of the reasons this sort of Swiss Army knife of tactical techniques is so useful: You just spin out whatever’s appropriate while actively playing the NPCs.

This particular technique is great because it often doesn’t require any setup at all. The PCs will usually do it to themselves. You can see that with the rope in the current session. If you think back to the near TPK in Session 7, that was due to the players allowing themselves to become sufficiently separated in featureless water that they had effectively “crossed the river” and could only reach each other with time-consuming difficulty.

Later in the campaign, the group got their hands on a ring of teleport. I was initially concerned that easy, unlimited access to teleport magic might be too powerful for where the campaign was at. But since the entire party can’t teleport in a single use of the ring, it turns out the more aggressive they get with using the ring tactically, the more likely they are to “cross the river” as the characters in the initial teleport desperately try to maintain a beachhead during the long rounds it takes for the wearer of the ring to cycle back and forth. (Or, conversely, hold out during the teleport-enabled retreat.)

So all you need to do is keep your eyes open: When the PCs have stretched themselves out and effectively separated themselves across a barrier requiring time, effort, or both to cross, that’s your “river”. And that’s when the bad guys should attack!