IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 10C: BACK TO THE LABYRINTHS

November 3rd, 2007
The 30th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

THE BLOODY ORRERY

The next morning, at breakfast, Cardalian came over to their table. She received a rather frosty reception from all of them as she introduced herself to “their new friend”, Tor. She invited them to attend the funeral of Devaral Unissa at the Cathedral of Athor on the 1^st of Kadal and then headed back to her own table.

They shrugged her off and headed back up towards the North Market and Greyson House.

There was still one mystery left in the outer area of the complex: The room with the orrery. Something in that room – or adjacent to that room – was inflicting them with the bloodsheen.

Ranthir had specifically prepared spells to get to the root of this mystery. Working his incantations he carefully circled through the room, trying to ignore the thin sheen of blood springing up across his body. “I am certain,” he said at last, “That one of bloodwights lies within the orrery. I think—“

At that moment, the glistening pink form of a fully regenerated bloodwight smashed its way through the wooden panels around the base of the orrery. Ranthir’s momentary outrage at seeing the ancient orrery damaged was quickly replaced by concern as he realized that the creature had effectively cut him off from the room’s exit… and the blood was pouring ever faster from his pores.

Tor and Agnarr rushed into the room, gladly braving the bloodsheen in order to come to their companion’s aid. Tee kept her distance, but drew her dragon pistol, carefully choosing her shots to blast hunks from the bloodwight’s undead flesh.

It was short and bloody work, but at last it was done. Agnarr grinned. “Well, I think that’s finally the last of them. So…”

Ranthir was lying unconscious in a pool of his own blood.

“Dominic!”

The priest came rushing in from the outer room. Fortunately, Ranthir – although faint from the shocking loss of blood – was not physically harmed. With the strength of Athor flowing into his flesh, the wizard and scholar was soon back on his feet.

His attention turned almost immediately to the orrery, which he had not previously been able to devote proper attention to. After years of neglect it was in very poor condition and utterly inoperable, but after careful study and the taking of many notes, Ranthir was able to reconstruct its basic principles.

He was intrigued to discover that the motions of the heavenly bodies it tracked were not accurate to a modern understanding – there were several minor inconsistencies reflective of a much older cosmological theory. But, even more fascinating, the orrery featured no less than seventeen heavenly bodies which were completely unknown to modern observation. What had the makers of the orrery been thinking? What did those bodies represent? Had they, in fact, existed at some point in the distant past?

Tee, meanwhile, was inspecting the orrery with a more practical eye. She confirmed that the bloodwight had, in fact, been resting within a secret compartment of sorts within the base of the orrery – it had probably once been used for maintenance. But she also discovered that the seventeen spheres representing the unknown heavenly bodies were not made of brass like the other spheres in the orrery, but were instead forged form pure silver and worth a small fortune (at least 425 gp).

Tee began looking for ways to break off these silver spheres, but then Ranthir raised the possibility that they might find a way of transporting the entire orrery to the surface and selling it intact. This seemed a daunting task – the orrery must have weighed at least 14,000 pounds – but Ranthir suspected it could be worth as much as 12,000 gp.

After much debate, it was decided that they would leave the orrery for now. Tee was skeptical that they could move it (even if they followed Ranthir’s suggestion of hiring workers to perform the necessary excavations) – there was, after all, the pit of chaos in the way. But there was also the possibility that Lord Zavere of Castle Shard would be interested in it – perhaps they could sell the mere knowledge of the orrery and allow the buyer to extract it for themselves.

With these thoughts in mind they moved through the deserted corridors that had been expurgated of the bloodwight plague and passed through the doors of bluesteel… (more…)

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 10B: Retreat to the Surface

Ranthir began marking their path back to the entrance with chalk marks. He also took out pen, ink, and parchment and began drawing an ornate, beautiful, and highly detailed map of their explorations.

Any character, regardless of medium, can be interpreted as a collection of specific traits: They’re brave. Tall. Conflicted. In love. Impatient. Educated. Handsome. Et cetera.

It’s also not particularly revelatory that, in a roleplaying game, the traits of a character will often by mechanically defined: It’s not just that a character is “smart”, that intelligence is given a number and the effects of that intelligence will manifest through the mechanics of the game.

(Of course not all of the traits of an RPG character will be mechanically defined. And even those that are will often – or should often – manifest themselves in non-mechanical ways: Being “smart”, for example, should have impacts on many actions that are not resolved through mechanics.)

It’s perhaps most typical for a character’s mechanical traits to be designed: The player wants Ranthir to be smart, so they assign a high score to Ranthir’s intelligence. They want Ranthir to be trained in the arcane arts, so they assign skill points to his Spellcraft skill.

By contrast, what I often find interesting are the traits which unexpectedly emerge from the mechanics.

For example, Ranthir’s player thought it would be appropriate for the character to be skilled in calligraphy, so he put some points into Craft (calligraphy). When Ranthir began mapping a dungeon during play and the player decided to make a Craft (calligraphy) check to see how attractive the resulting map was, what was unanticipated was the high die roll would cause the other characters to remark on the map. And, more importantly, that high check resulted in Ranthir’s beautiful maps (and his peculiar obsession with the accuracy of those maps) becoming a recurring theme of the campaign and a memorable trait of the character.

Dominic, meanwhile, was wandering the city and trying to get his bearings. (But, for some reason, he kept finding himself back at Delver’s Square…)

Of course, success is not the only way such traits can emerge. Dominic’s poor sense of direction, for example, was not something that was specifically designed. In terms of mechanical definition, in fact, the character wasn’t particularly stupid or anything. But a pattern of poor rolls on very specific types of checks (across multiple skills, actually) caused this element of the character to emerge, at which point the player (and the rest of the group) took it and ran with it.

This would notably lead, at one point, to a skill check where Dominic succeeded and knew which way they needed to go… except none of the other characters believed him, because of his notoriously poor sense of direction.

Obviously any trait can be improvised into existence as one explores their character through play. But I think these emergent traits – aspects of the character which would not exist without the mechanical impulse – are a particularly fascinating part of what happens at the table during a roleplaying game. They’re a great example of the sense of discovery which is one of the primary attractions of the medium for me. They’re also exemplary of the fact that the division that some see between the mechanical component of an RPG and the creative component of an RPG doesn’t really exist: When used correctly, mechanics are an improv seed. They’re the equivalent of an audience member yelling out a random word and pushing you in directions you could never have anticipated or prepared for.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 10B: RETREAT TO THE SURFACE

November 3rd, 2007
The 28th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

With Tee in such a state, they really had no choice: They had to return to the city and seek the healing they had foregone before.

They carefully bound Tee’s arms and legs – partly to stop her from injuring herself; partly to stop her from injuring them – and Agnarr gently lifted her and carried her back down the corridors they had already explored.

It took them the better part of an hour, but they finally emerged – bedraggled and soaked with blood and ichor – into Greyson House.

They headed down Upper God Way to the Street of a Million Gods and the Temple of Asche, attracting many stares. The priests there explained that Father Mand Scheben was not present in the church that day, but he had left instructions that they were to be offered healing at the lowest of possible costs. This was good news for the party, who still had to dip deep into their funds to afford the several hundred gold pieces required for the necessary components and divine casting.

When the clouds of madness cleared from Tee’s eyes, she was left with two sentences burning in her mind: “The lance is being built. The runebearers will not come in time.” She wasn’t sure what to make of it.

The priests allowed them to use their baths to clean up, and then they headed back towards the Ghostly Minstrel. On their way back, a flying ship passed overhead. This startled most of the group, but Tee described it as a common sight in Ptolus – the aeroship of House Shever.

When they reached the Ghostly Minstrel, Tee pulled Ranthir to one side and told him the phrase she had emerged with from her madness. He wasn’t sure what it meant either, but he promised to research it the next time he went to the Delver’s Guild Library.

…which turned out to be immediately after dinner. Ranthir and Elestra both headed to the library. While Ranthir researched the things Tee had asked him to look into, Elestra read up on Ghul the Skull-King. What she found confirmed their suspicion that the complex they were exploring was connected with him: There was, in fact, an expansive construction beneath Ptolus referred to collectively as “Ghul’s Labyrinth”. The Delver’s Guild believed that these were the breeding chambers, barracks, and laboratories of Ghul during his dark reign. Much of the treasure drawn up from the depths came from chambers within the Labyrinth. Many delvers were even reporting the discovery of chambers protected with ancient preservation magicks – their contents untouched through the eons. (When Elestra briefed the rest of the group on what she’d found, Dominc grimaced: “Preserved corpses… No… Well, I hope not…”) To find an unexplored section of the Labyrinth, as they had done, promised many rewards.

Tee, meanwhile, bought a newssheet for a copper piece and browsed through it while she taught Dominic the rules of dragonscales. She discovered that earlier that day an older, well-known, and well-liked City Watch guard named Devaral Unissa had been found killed with the shape of a raven carved into his chest. This was the sign of a gang-killing by Kevris Killraven’s men.

Agnarr, boozing it up, was hearing the same thing from others in the Ghostly Minstrel’s bar. Tee was surprised to hear that the Killravens were now considered to rival the Balacazars as the premiere criminal gang in the town. When she had left Ptolus a little more than a year before, the Killravens had only just arrived in town. It was rumored that many of Kevris’ top lieutenants had come with her from out of town.

After talking it over, Tee and Dominic decided to head over to the Cloud Theater and try to talk to the “Dullin boy”. Tee was convinced that this boy’s life was in danger, and she wanted to warn him.

(more…)

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 10A: The Labyrinths of Ghul

Tee and Elestra both recognized the statues as depicting the legendary figure of Ghul the Skull-King…

Towards the beginning of the campaign journal for Session 10, there are a couple large blocks of text – one for Ghul the Skull-King and another for shadowveined rock — which were originally written up as handouts for the players: If/when their characters succeeded on the requisite Knowledge checks, I’d be able to hand them these one page summaries.

The alternative to this, obviously, would be for the GM to simply read or summarize this information out loud. So why go to the extra effort to write up a handout?

First, you’ll note that there’s a lot of information being conveyed in these handouts. I’ve tried to keep the presentation of that information efficient, but that’s just resulted in the information being quite dense. Presenting this amount of information in written form (particularly if accompanied by visual references or enhancements) can aid comprehension.

Second, it highlights the information as being of particular importance, helping to make sure that the players pay attention to it. Of course, this only works if you don’t overuse the technique. (These two handouts weren’t explicitly designed to be delivered in such rapid succession, but the group had failed their earlier Knowledge checks to recognize Ghul’s Labyrinth by ways of its unique architectural features, and it was only the more explicit examination of the statues of Ghul himself which provoked their memory.)

Third, such handouts can serve as rewards. This is particularly effective with certain groups (the ones who light up and start clapping their hands with glee when the GM dips his hand into the Big Box of Handouts), but even with players are less inherently excited by this sort of thing

For example, the original version of the Shadowveined Rock handout included a number of mechanics, as you can see in this PDF version of the same:

I didn’t include these mechanical details in the campaign journal, eschewing them for a purely narrative approach, but the original handout included all kinds of information that would allow the PCs to leverage their discovery of the shadowveined rock to maximum effect (including unique items that they could either commission or have Ranthir create, for example).

Fourth, on a similar note, such handouts serve as reference material, allowing the players to easily review what they know about a particular topic (without having to freshly quiz the GM about it). This is particularly important because these handouts — like any exposition dump — should only exist for a purpose. The GM shouldn’t just start waxing rhapsodic about obscure details of their campaign world in the middle of the session without any rhyme or reason.

In the case of the shadowveined rock handout, the primary purpose was to serve as a rules reference when the players needed it later. (I do this a lot, actually: Packaging up snippets of non-core mechanical material into handouts and effectively drip-feeding the content into the campaign. In the case of shadowveined rock, it was something I had created. But this is also a really effective technique for incorporating material from supplements.)

In the case of the Ghulwar handout, the knowledge of Ghul provided context that helped them to navigate the dungeon they were standing in. So being able to refer back to these key facts regarding his life and exploits was continually useful for them (particularly as their expeditions extended between sessions and, later, years of out-of-game time).

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 10A: THE LABYRINTHS OF GHUL

November 3rd, 2007
The 28th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

The group briefly considered the possibility of returning to the city above to obtain healing services for the poison that was weakening Agnarr’s body. But Dominic testified that the poison would not prove mortal – that it had, in fact, already run the worst of its course – and the tempting enigma of whatever lay beyond the door of blue steel was too tantalizing to resist.

Tee pushed the door open, revealing a long hallway made from the same cream-colored stone. About sixty feet away her elven eyes could dimly make out that the hallway opened out into a larger chamber of some sort.

The sunrod in Agnarr’s hand was sputtering, so he threw it aside and cracked a new one. With his light behind her, Tee headed down the corridor. The shadows flicked and leaped around her as she made her way towards the larger chamber.

Emerging into it, she found the ceiling vaulting more than forty feet above her. In each corner of the room, upon ten-foot high daises, stood immense statues more than twenty-feet high. Each statue was identical, carved from a dark gray rock that stood in sharp contrast to the pale stone and depicting a broad-shouldered figure wearing a skull-faced mask who looked down upon the center of the chamber with his arms crossed proudly upon his chest.

Tee and Elestra both recognized the statues as depicting the legendary figure of Ghul the Skull-King.

THE GHULWAR

The Ghulwar was a legendary conflict which took place in the area around Ptolus sometime during the misty aeons of prehistory. It had long been discounted by serious historians and scholars as a mere fancy entertained only by the gullible and credulous. But recent discoveries in the subterranean labyrinths beneath the city would seem to lend credence to at least some of the ancient tales. The tales vary in their character, but the general outlines are such:

Ghul – the Skull-King, the Half God, the Sorcerer’s Get – built a great fortress called Goth Gugamel upon the Spire of Ptolus. He claimed to be descended from the Banelord (a still older, malevolent figure whose tale has been lost entirely to the modern world). Within his black fortress, Ghul worked dark arts upon the orcs, raising up a mighty army of them. This army poured forth from Goth Gugamel and laid waste to the all the lands from coast to mountain.

This was the First Campaign of the Ghulwar, and it only came to an end when an Army of Sorcerers stood up to Ghul and stopped his rapacious armies. His goals of conquest thwarted, Ghul then called forth the Utterdark – a magical darkness which blanketed all the lands which he had conquered. Thus began the Cold Quiet, during which Ghul labored within the halls of Goth Gugamel.

The Cold Quiet ended as the Second Campaign of the Ghulwar began: Ogres and trolls and creatures of even worse countenance had joined the army of the Skull-King. The tales of this Second Campaign are even wilder than the first: Armies of dragon-mounted elves. A conflagration which burnt all the lands beyond the Mountains of the West to ash. In the end, the Utterdark was banished and Ghul fled from the Forces of Light which had been arrayed against him. It is said that the Avatars themselves hunted down Ghul and slayed him.

After making sure that the chamber was safe, Tee waved the rest of the group forward. As the light drew closer she was able to look down the corridors leading away from the room. Down the far corridor she saw double-doors of gray stone, but looking down the other two corridors she found halls lined with niches in which stood life-size statues of orcish warriors.

The group ultimately decided to follow one of the statue-lined halls. Tee again took the lead, drifting on the edge of shadow with her keen elven eyes plumbing the shadowy course ahead of her.

She came to another large room – nearly the same size as the last. As she drew near to it, however, she found the air growing suddenly cold. Her breath steamed. She came to a stop and waited for the others to catch up to her.

Looking into the room, she could see that nearly the entire floor was covered with a raised bas relief of black stone that depicted a skull-like sigil:

(more…)