[Tome] Murderhobos in the land of the Immobile Sun.
Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 7:49 am
Episode 01: Goblintown Blues
The Reaches are considered to be an Infinite Material Plane, like many others, but unlike many others this one is not a planet and star configuration. Instead, the sun holds a fixed point in the sky, casting a 500 mile radius circle in bright sunlight, followed by diminishing light as you travel out beyond that, until there's no sunlight at all beyond 1,500 miles from the center. As life is wont to do, the people of this land have adapted to this strange situation.
In the middle, known as the Sunwell, are three great city-states: Threll, Othron, and Valeer. They issue their own currency, plot against each other, and everything else you'd expect a major city-state to do.
The shadowy portions beyond the Sunwell are known as the Twilight. Here be many villages that attempt to scrape out a living. Between the villages are monsters and other dangers, keeping travel to a minimum. Anyone who goes from place to place is automatically known as an "Adventurer", because anyone not fit for the title would quickly get eaten if they tried to travel.
Adventurers are viewed with a natural mix of both fear and desire by the folk of the Twilight, because they bring with them either the power to protect the village or the power to destroy the village. There's almost always some money to be made in a village, because they almost always want some nearby source of danger eliminated as quickly as possible.
This brings us to our cast of characters:
Tibellus: I talk to him.
GM: Okay, what do you say?
Tibellus: You should, uh, let us in because... we have come here to... seek business in your village.
GM: He eyes you up and down, notes your many eyes and your very peculiar outfit and your blue glowyness.
Guardsman: Ehh... who are you agian?
Tibellus: I Charm Person! DC 16 Will save.
GM: Heh, okay. Uh, *rolls*, you wave your hands, and say a couple words, the guard blinks a few times, attempts to shake it off.
Guard: Hey! Hey there! Hey! Watchu tryin?
Tibellus: What am I trying? I don't know. What's going on?
GM: Bluff check, would you?
Tibellus: 24
GM: Huh, oh.
Guard: That was really weird. Was that some sort of greeting ritual?
Tibellus: That was really weird, wasn't it? I'm from the sunwell, we do crazy things there.
So we sign the guestbook, go on in, and talk to the leader of the village (Cassandra). We find out that the village discovered a nearby iron mine, but that once they started digging there were a bunch of goblins that came up from the mine and attacked the miners and their guards. So we agree to win back the mine in exchange for as much iron as we can carry off at the end. Then Cassandra goes off to handle other business.
Authentic interaction with the NPC locals (so villager. wow.)
We're tired at the moment though, so we stay in the town's guest house for a few hours to rest. There we meet Biggunegi, and he joined our war party. A while later Cassandra's clerk delivers us a map to the mine, and off we go. About 20 miles or so.
On the way we get attacked by a swarm of Stirges. Classic! Sugita get some of his blood drained (3 con damage), and everyone else was fine.
Once we get to the mine we rest in a shack outside the mine for a bit. Tibellus goes on watch between the shack and the mine entrance. Meanwhile, Biggunegi gets woken up from his sleep by the sounds of an approaching giant spider (well, like cat sized, which is giant for a spider I guess). Everyone is about to get into a big fight with the spiders until Tibellus runs back into the shack (called by Biggunegi's wild and unstoppable screaming), does a Wild Empathy check to convince the spiders to be cool, and then shoos all the spiders to make them walk away. Normally Wild Empathy wouldn't work on vermin, but since Tibellus's feytouched aspect is being part-spider, then it was fine.
After all that we finally go into the mine. There's a room with a bunch of human blood on the wall that says "humans stay out!" and also the bodies of the humans that died when the goblins attacked the miners are all over the floor. We quickly search the bodies for anything we might want (nothing but wooden armor), and then decide that, since we're not human, the warning doesn't apply to us. Onward!
As we march forward, Sugita at the far front so as to not be within the light from the soulmelds, everyone else just in a group, there's a pressure plate that doesn't get spotted. Sugita gets chopped into with an axe for 7. When factoring in the con damage from before, Sugita has only 11 hp, so he's down to 4. "Fuck this cave, I'm out". He goes back to the surface and waits in the shack. The rest of the group presses on. Urist goes first this time, searching for traps as they go. There's a left/right split, so they go left of course. A trip-wire gets spotted, and they carefully step over it. Did I say stepped over it? That'd be the normal thing to do! No no, instead they all step back, and then Tibellus whips at the trip wire with a rope from 15ft away. Once triggered, the trap collapses the entire corridor, leaving that path inaccessible. So instead they take three more lefts, going down the other branch.
They come upon a group of goblins hiding behind a little spike wall thing. There's like 6 goblins. One gets hit with a net from Tibellus, five of them throw javelins at Tibellus.
GM: Two of them hit you.
Tibellus: ...for how much damage?
GM: Let me figure that out... uh, a total of 7 damage.
Tibellus: I have one hp left.
So some more battle happens (about 3 rounds total combat length), and then two goblins get killed, and then the party gets out of there.
After 12 hours of rest or so (2hp healed, and also 2 con damage healed on Sugita), a goblin pops up from out of the mine and sees Sugita (who is a hobgoblin, as you'll recall). After an argument which revealed the goblin to be really dumb, Sugita went with the goblin to meet their leader, "Chief Gruel". Turns out that Chief Gruel is also a hobgoblin. After a discussion about future plans, proper timing of attacks, the value of goblin life compared to "a real person's" life, and so on, Sugita accepts an offer from Chief Gruel to work for them against the village. Not that our heroes would side against the village, they've got far more power than the goblins, and you should usually side with the winning team, but the party was able to rest up to full health in the shack without being bothered by the goblins in the mine. Then it's decided for sure that the goblins are goin down.
GM: So you go into the goblin village, and the goblins are like
Goblins: yay! yay! it's the big goblin! yay! yay!
Tibellus: This is so sad.
Goblins: It's happy time!
GM: Uh, and you folks can get a surprise round if you like.
Tibellus: I dunno, I'm too sad.
Biggunegi: I immediately--
Sugita: Wait wait wait wait wait; can I gather all the goblins together in front of me?
GM: uhm, sure.
Sugita: Can I be like, "hey goblins, everyone come here"?
Tibellus: Oh, god.
GM: yay! big goblin! yay!
Tibellus: This is horrifying!
GM: So they all come out and crowd around you a bit. Even the hobgoblin.
Chief Gruel: What? What are you doing?
Sugita: Well, we have an important announcement to make.
Tibellus: God...
GM: He eyes you.
Chief Gruel: Go onnnn...
Sugita: And then I breathe fire and I hit three goblins at once... wait, four.
Tibellus: Oh, god.
GM: DC 16? One saves, the rest of them roast.
Dwarf explodes a goblin, Tibellus moves into position, Chief Gruel throws a javelin.
GM: Biggunegi, he hits you for 8 damage.
Biggunegi: Do I get any kind of save on that?
GM: No, he rolled an attack roll to hit you.
Biggunegi: Oh, alright. How much bonus health do I get for having a +1 Constitution Modifier?
Sugita: 1
Biggunegi: Okay, then I have 1 health.
Again with the 1 hp left thing. Well, there's more fighting, more breath weapons, goblins run away screaming, nets thrown at Chief Gruel, other goblin gets charged, Chief drinks an invis potion, breath weapons, ash rat totem is activated, people running around, more breath weapon attacks, eventually Chief Gruel goes down because of the ash rat cloud, more dead goblins. Victory.
We collect all the stuff, which is to say we don't collect too much at all. From the hobgoblin we get a mysterious black granite case, a (masterwork) longsword, some jewelry. From the goblin citizens we get some crappy metal armor from the goblins, some shortswords. Upon opening, the granite case seems to have slots for 9 daggers, but only 4 daggers are to be found. Naturally we don't touch them because they're obviously cursed. We grab as much of the goblin food as we can carry and head back to the human village.
Telling our tale to the locals, they take us out for dinner. We tell the tale to the mayor lady and she approves of our work. We trade some of the goblin goods (all the scale mail and 3 of 6 short swords) for a horse and cart. The only catch is that there's no iron or iron ore available at the exact moment, so we stick around for a week or two and join in with the villagers on the mining tasks until we get enough iron in our cart to make our way to the next town.
~~So Ends This Episode~~
[*]Bonus House-rule Used: all the PCs get some extra skill points at the end of each session, in addition to their normal skill points per level. Because that way you can keep your maxed out skills from your class, and then also get small bonuses you can throw around into things that can be more trivial. Several skills are duplicated with just 1st level spells anyway, so whatever.
The Reaches are considered to be an Infinite Material Plane, like many others, but unlike many others this one is not a planet and star configuration. Instead, the sun holds a fixed point in the sky, casting a 500 mile radius circle in bright sunlight, followed by diminishing light as you travel out beyond that, until there's no sunlight at all beyond 1,500 miles from the center. As life is wont to do, the people of this land have adapted to this strange situation.
In the middle, known as the Sunwell, are three great city-states: Threll, Othron, and Valeer. They issue their own currency, plot against each other, and everything else you'd expect a major city-state to do.
The shadowy portions beyond the Sunwell are known as the Twilight. Here be many villages that attempt to scrape out a living. Between the villages are monsters and other dangers, keeping travel to a minimum. Anyone who goes from place to place is automatically known as an "Adventurer", because anyone not fit for the title would quickly get eaten if they tried to travel.
Adventurers are viewed with a natural mix of both fear and desire by the folk of the Twilight, because they bring with them either the power to protect the village or the power to destroy the village. There's almost always some money to be made in a village, because they almost always want some nearby source of danger eliminated as quickly as possible.
This brings us to our cast of characters:
- Tibellus: The Spider Lady (sheet). (TL Note: a Tibellus is a type of spider) Feytouched Totemist with weird non-functional spider eyes and stuff. Wears cord armor, uses a cord shield, throws a net, and is just generally set for any situation that requires a rope. Plus of course all the glowing blue soulmelds. She's really crazy, always in a good mood and overly confident. Her dream is to some day topple kingdoms and then pick up all the pieces and rule over everything.
- Biggunegi, the [foolish] Samurai Warrior (sheet). (TL Note: Negi is japanese for "green onion", so his name is literally a bad translation of "big green onion") An Orc, he uses the natural ancestral weapon of Orcs: a Greataxe. His town was recently destroyed, as happens to many towns out in the Twilight, and he has come to wandering.
- Sugita Hotaru, Hobgoblin Dragonfire Adept (sheet). Grew up in a monastery of some sort on the dark edge of the Twilight, but instead of learning the art of punching things, he learned the art of breathing fire at things. Now he does the whole "walk the earth" thing.
- Urist McFuck, Dwarven Knight (sheet). Has a warpony and lance and all that, but also a greatsword for when you gotta go into a cave. No family, on account of being an asshole.
Tibellus: I talk to him.
GM: Okay, what do you say?
Tibellus: You should, uh, let us in because... we have come here to... seek business in your village.
GM: He eyes you up and down, notes your many eyes and your very peculiar outfit and your blue glowyness.
Guardsman: Ehh... who are you agian?
Tibellus: I Charm Person! DC 16 Will save.
GM: Heh, okay. Uh, *rolls*, you wave your hands, and say a couple words, the guard blinks a few times, attempts to shake it off.
Guard: Hey! Hey there! Hey! Watchu tryin?
Tibellus: What am I trying? I don't know. What's going on?
GM: Bluff check, would you?
Tibellus: 24
GM: Huh, oh.
Guard: That was really weird. Was that some sort of greeting ritual?
Tibellus: That was really weird, wasn't it? I'm from the sunwell, we do crazy things there.
So we sign the guestbook, go on in, and talk to the leader of the village (Cassandra). We find out that the village discovered a nearby iron mine, but that once they started digging there were a bunch of goblins that came up from the mine and attacked the miners and their guards. So we agree to win back the mine in exchange for as much iron as we can carry off at the end. Then Cassandra goes off to handle other business.
Authentic interaction with the NPC locals (so villager. wow.)
GM: So, there you are, standing in the middle of town, people gawking at you.
Sugita: Hey, we look totally normal except for Tibellus.
GM: A little kid comes up to you and starts tugging on one of your ropes.
Tibellus: True... so, there's something tugging on one of my ropes?
GM: Yeah, a little kid.
Tibellus: I... I, uhm...
Sugita: You can't Charm him.
Tibellus: Uh, what do you need, child?
Child: Ah! You're all covered in ropes!
Tibellus: I am indeed.
Child: Why are you covered in ropes?
Sugita: She's a crazy rope lady.
Tibellus: Well, uh, some people wear clothes, and I do not.
Child: *tilts head* So, you've never worn pants?
Tibellus: Never once.
Child: Mom tells me I always have to wear pants.
Tibellus: You should always wear pants, but I should never wear pants
Child: You mean I shouldn't wear ropes?
Tibellus: That would.. uh... that would be up to your mother.
Child: Would I glow if I wore ropes?
Tibellus: Oh, I wish, but I'm afraid not everyone can glow.
GM: His face sortof falls, like "awh"
Tibellus: It's okay child, maybe one day you will gain the power to glow.
Child: Do you think so? Really!?
Tibellus: Anyone can if they try hard enough. You have to believe that you can glow.
Sugita: I dunno. GM, does the kid look tough?
GM: Not really.
Tibellus: ...were you gonna mentorship him?
Sugita: I mean, if the kid looks tough then he could learn how to glow, but if he's not tough then he won't make it.
Tibellus: I'm just gonna lie to him then.
GM: Well done.
Tibellus: Move on scamp, move on.
Sugita: Hey, we look totally normal except for Tibellus.
GM: A little kid comes up to you and starts tugging on one of your ropes.
Tibellus: True... so, there's something tugging on one of my ropes?
GM: Yeah, a little kid.
Tibellus: I... I, uhm...
Sugita: You can't Charm him.
Tibellus: Uh, what do you need, child?
Child: Ah! You're all covered in ropes!
Tibellus: I am indeed.
Child: Why are you covered in ropes?
Sugita: She's a crazy rope lady.
Tibellus: Well, uh, some people wear clothes, and I do not.
Child: *tilts head* So, you've never worn pants?
Tibellus: Never once.
Child: Mom tells me I always have to wear pants.
Tibellus: You should always wear pants, but I should never wear pants
Child: You mean I shouldn't wear ropes?
Tibellus: That would.. uh... that would be up to your mother.
Child: Would I glow if I wore ropes?
Tibellus: Oh, I wish, but I'm afraid not everyone can glow.
GM: His face sortof falls, like "awh"
Tibellus: It's okay child, maybe one day you will gain the power to glow.
Child: Do you think so? Really!?
Tibellus: Anyone can if they try hard enough. You have to believe that you can glow.
Sugita: I dunno. GM, does the kid look tough?
GM: Not really.
Tibellus: ...were you gonna mentorship him?
Sugita: I mean, if the kid looks tough then he could learn how to glow, but if he's not tough then he won't make it.
Tibellus: I'm just gonna lie to him then.
GM: Well done.
Tibellus: Move on scamp, move on.
On the way we get attacked by a swarm of Stirges. Classic! Sugita get some of his blood drained (3 con damage), and everyone else was fine.
Once we get to the mine we rest in a shack outside the mine for a bit. Tibellus goes on watch between the shack and the mine entrance. Meanwhile, Biggunegi gets woken up from his sleep by the sounds of an approaching giant spider (well, like cat sized, which is giant for a spider I guess). Everyone is about to get into a big fight with the spiders until Tibellus runs back into the shack (called by Biggunegi's wild and unstoppable screaming), does a Wild Empathy check to convince the spiders to be cool, and then shoos all the spiders to make them walk away. Normally Wild Empathy wouldn't work on vermin, but since Tibellus's feytouched aspect is being part-spider, then it was fine.
After all that we finally go into the mine. There's a room with a bunch of human blood on the wall that says "humans stay out!" and also the bodies of the humans that died when the goblins attacked the miners are all over the floor. We quickly search the bodies for anything we might want (nothing but wooden armor), and then decide that, since we're not human, the warning doesn't apply to us. Onward!
As we march forward, Sugita at the far front so as to not be within the light from the soulmelds, everyone else just in a group, there's a pressure plate that doesn't get spotted. Sugita gets chopped into with an axe for 7. When factoring in the con damage from before, Sugita has only 11 hp, so he's down to 4. "Fuck this cave, I'm out". He goes back to the surface and waits in the shack. The rest of the group presses on. Urist goes first this time, searching for traps as they go. There's a left/right split, so they go left of course. A trip-wire gets spotted, and they carefully step over it. Did I say stepped over it? That'd be the normal thing to do! No no, instead they all step back, and then Tibellus whips at the trip wire with a rope from 15ft away. Once triggered, the trap collapses the entire corridor, leaving that path inaccessible. So instead they take three more lefts, going down the other branch.
They come upon a group of goblins hiding behind a little spike wall thing. There's like 6 goblins. One gets hit with a net from Tibellus, five of them throw javelins at Tibellus.
GM: Two of them hit you.
Tibellus: ...for how much damage?
GM: Let me figure that out... uh, a total of 7 damage.
Tibellus: I have one hp left.
So some more battle happens (about 3 rounds total combat length), and then two goblins get killed, and then the party gets out of there.
After 12 hours of rest or so (2hp healed, and also 2 con damage healed on Sugita), a goblin pops up from out of the mine and sees Sugita (who is a hobgoblin, as you'll recall). After an argument which revealed the goblin to be really dumb, Sugita went with the goblin to meet their leader, "Chief Gruel". Turns out that Chief Gruel is also a hobgoblin. After a discussion about future plans, proper timing of attacks, the value of goblin life compared to "a real person's" life, and so on, Sugita accepts an offer from Chief Gruel to work for them against the village. Not that our heroes would side against the village, they've got far more power than the goblins, and you should usually side with the winning team, but the party was able to rest up to full health in the shack without being bothered by the goblins in the mine. Then it's decided for sure that the goblins are goin down.
GM: So you go into the goblin village, and the goblins are like
Goblins: yay! yay! it's the big goblin! yay! yay!
Tibellus: This is so sad.
Goblins: It's happy time!
GM: Uh, and you folks can get a surprise round if you like.
Tibellus: I dunno, I'm too sad.
Biggunegi: I immediately--
Sugita: Wait wait wait wait wait; can I gather all the goblins together in front of me?
GM: uhm, sure.
Sugita: Can I be like, "hey goblins, everyone come here"?
Tibellus: Oh, god.
GM: yay! big goblin! yay!
Tibellus: This is horrifying!
GM: So they all come out and crowd around you a bit. Even the hobgoblin.
Chief Gruel: What? What are you doing?
Sugita: Well, we have an important announcement to make.
Tibellus: God...
GM: He eyes you.
Chief Gruel: Go onnnn...
Sugita: And then I breathe fire and I hit three goblins at once... wait, four.
Tibellus: Oh, god.
GM: DC 16? One saves, the rest of them roast.
Dwarf explodes a goblin, Tibellus moves into position, Chief Gruel throws a javelin.
GM: Biggunegi, he hits you for 8 damage.
Biggunegi: Do I get any kind of save on that?
GM: No, he rolled an attack roll to hit you.
Biggunegi: Oh, alright. How much bonus health do I get for having a +1 Constitution Modifier?
Sugita: 1
Biggunegi: Okay, then I have 1 health.
Again with the 1 hp left thing. Well, there's more fighting, more breath weapons, goblins run away screaming, nets thrown at Chief Gruel, other goblin gets charged, Chief drinks an invis potion, breath weapons, ash rat totem is activated, people running around, more breath weapon attacks, eventually Chief Gruel goes down because of the ash rat cloud, more dead goblins. Victory.
We collect all the stuff, which is to say we don't collect too much at all. From the hobgoblin we get a mysterious black granite case, a (masterwork) longsword, some jewelry. From the goblin citizens we get some crappy metal armor from the goblins, some shortswords. Upon opening, the granite case seems to have slots for 9 daggers, but only 4 daggers are to be found. Naturally we don't touch them because they're obviously cursed. We grab as much of the goblin food as we can carry and head back to the human village.
Telling our tale to the locals, they take us out for dinner. We tell the tale to the mayor lady and she approves of our work. We trade some of the goblin goods (all the scale mail and 3 of 6 short swords) for a horse and cart. The only catch is that there's no iron or iron ore available at the exact moment, so we stick around for a week or two and join in with the villagers on the mining tasks until we get enough iron in our cart to make our way to the next town.
~~So Ends This Episode~~
[*]Bonus House-rule Used: all the PCs get some extra skill points at the end of each session, in addition to their normal skill points per level. Because that way you can keep your maxed out skills from your class, and then also get small bonuses you can throw around into things that can be more trivial. Several skills are duplicated with just 1st level spells anyway, so whatever.