Dark•Heritage session #1, part 2

It turns out that the crowd of approaching riders--about twenty in all--were not hostile. They were Untash, but they hailed the one guy who had unsuccessfully attempted to hide himself, whom they assumed was there alone. Ironically, perhaps, it was the ninja.

After talking for a bit, the rest of the group revealed themselves one or two at a time, not unlike the dwarves filing into Beorn's house in The Hobbit. These Untash confirmed that there was a band of really bad tribesmen (the Gitani) further ahead, hidden in the hills over there on the horizon. Very "bad medicine" and not of the Bon Jovi variety. They got some intel on the lay of the land over thataway, including the knowledge that there was a village in the thick woods that surrounded a river valley. On a tall promontory island in the river was the sacrifice stones where the prisoners would no doubt meet their end very shortly.

These more friendly Untash wouldn't follow the group on into the Gitani lands, seeing it as a suicide mission. But Grimace the sailor, who was feeling woefully unprepared for an adventure in what was basically the Old West managed to talk them into giving him a rifle. It was kind of the opposite of masterwork--apprenticework, maybe?--so on a roll of a natural 1, well... things could get interesting with it. Otherwise, it was a nice add-on to his equipment. The group was also able to talk the Untash into giving them some horses (I'm not quite sure how, but... eh) so they had a chance of getting there before tomorrow morning. I also rolled randomly and determined that it was a full moon, so off the guys went into the sunset. Well, technically, they were riding north, not west, but the sun was setting.

The hellspawn scout decided to, well, scout ahead when they got close. He checked out the village and the lay of the land, and it was much as described. He also had his scent picked up by a number of freakishly large and bizarre animals; some kind of daemonic dogs or something--four eyed, gaunt and twisted limbs, naked hides, with protruding gums and enormous teeth. They rushed him, and he fled (again) bringing a party of three demon dogs (no relation to Thundarr), two archers and a junior witch doctor on the party, who returned the favor by ambushing the group. The dogs turned out to be really nasty; in addition to being obviously lean, mean, toothy killing machines, they could vomit a plague of maggot-like little toothy parasites on their foes, which proceeded to attempt to bore into the flesh of anyone they attacked. The witch doctor struggled at first to get his nasty spells off the ground, but after he caused Grimace to go insane and then start suffering a heart attack, he got a little more respect. Rags went (again) into negative hit points, which possibly explains his reputation as the guy who runs away from every fight he gets in, but the medic that the party pressed into following along managed to keep him from being in any immediate danger of dying.

It was a toughish fight, but it was really just an appetizer, and they managed to handle the group relatively quickly.

And then we ended the session.

Dark•Heritage session #1, part 1

Last night five somewhat intrepidish characters hooked up on the Untash frontier, united by a contract they had with the Margrave Bartomeo Baltazar i Morales to capture a live saber-tooth that he could show off in his menagerie to his more cosmopolitan colleagues down south. The characters were Soren, a human ranger, Grimace a jann pirate (fighter/rogue), Drizgohl, a vucari fighter/barbarian, Jekunzo, the cursed human ninja and "Rags" (short for Ragshamion, or something like that) a hellspawn scout. All characters were level 2.

A pre-game character exercise established some shared background between the characters. Grimace believed that Soren was his best friend, for example (although Soren thought he was annoying nuisance that he somehow seemed unable to get rid of.) Grimace had also fleeced Jekunzo in a prior gambling game, leaving him impoverished and having to work for his passage on a ship. Drizgohl had twice witnessed Rags fleeing an engagement, and was convinced that he was a worthless coward, while simultaneously being a bit more impressed with the agile fighting style of Jekunzo. There was more, but I don't remember all the details. It didn't lead to any really amazing revelations, but there was a bit of in-game banter as a result of the background exercise.

While Drizgohl, Soren and Rags were all sorta "wilderness literate" it was really only Soren who was best suited to find a sabertooth (the only one with Track.) After getting caught in a bison stampede, the managed to corner two hunting cats--one of which they brought down with a few wounds and a sharp blow to the head with a sap, of all things. The more city-folk types of characters then went in after the other cat, and nearly got killed for their efforts. Happily for them, it was more interested in chasing them away from the bison it had just killed than in killing them, so when they retreated, it let them be.

They loaded the heavy cat into a cage on a wagon, after tying it up first. At that point they saw smoke on the horizon. After a discussion on what their "mandate" was, they decided to go check it out. It looked like a small caravan had been attacked; a wagon was burning and several others were left nearby ransacked. The ground was littered with bodies, most of them Terrasan, but one was an Untash brave. After hearing a groan, the found one fellow that was still alive. He claimed that he was part of a party that was an invited guest of the Margrave, but they had made a wrong turn and wandered too far into the lands that the Untash claimed. They were set upon, and many of the group were killed, but the lord and lady and their daughter were carried off captive... along with all the treasure they could grab. See, the lord was fleeing domestic trouble at home, and he ransacked as much of his manor as he could before running away.

After a moment of thought, the group agreed that the wounded man could join the porters and the wagon and head back to the margrave's villa, while they went in pursuit of the Untash tribesmen, along with the field medic that had been provided for them. The trail was easy to follow, although on foot they had little hope of catching the mounted warriors quickly. They headed off anyway... and before long wandered across the path of a hunting short-faced bear. The Untash savannas are not to be traveled lightly.

Short-faced bears are monstrous hairy creatures, nearly six feet tall at the shoulder, and capable of standing nearly twenty feet tall on their hind limbs, with paws that can rip a person to shreds almost casually. Our group was cautious and tried to hide from the creature, but the ranger, of all people, made a clumsy move and gave them all away.

Rags was pretty thoroughly mauled, although not killed, and the rest of the group took a beating as well, but after Grimace threw some alchemists fire on the bear and Drizgohl mauled it back in return with his razor-sharp claws (he's not the brightest warrior in the bunch; going against a giant bear in claw-to-claw combat) the bear had had enough and retreated. While the medic was patching the crew up again and giving Rags CPR, they spotted another hazard on the horizon... the dust cloud of a mounted group of warriors heading their way...

Early character signs

Well, since we didn't end up playing, a few of the guys are starting to rethink their character options. They've got two weeks to figure it all out, after all. Although this is pretty preliminary, it looks like I'm getting a mix of swashbucklers and outdoorsmen. The reports I have so far of intended characters include a jann fighter/rogue, another roguish type of some kind, a human ranger, a hellspawn scout, and a vucari barbarian. Nobody has access to magic--yet--but I anticipate that they will have the opportunity to learn some incantations and possibly some other, nastier things in the near future (certainly at the end of the first "module" when, assuming that they're successful, they'll end up with a copy of The Book of the Black Prince.)

One thing that I'm considering, since I now have the time to do so, is coming up with a soundtrack specifically for this campaign. I've spent the better part of the last few years collecting movie score soundtracks, in part because I think that they're great to play in the background while gaming (but also while reading, while writing, and while doing all kinds of other things, and I even move movie scores out of the background and listen to them for their own sake as good music.) I don't worry too much about matching particular tracks to particular sequences in the game; rather, I prefer to simply look for songs that have the appropriate mood and feel for the campaign as a whole.

With that, I'm trying to decide exactly which soundtracks best approximate the DARK•HERITAGE tone, and heavily use those, editing out a few tracks that don't really fit, perhaps, and filling in with a bunch of other songs from other soundtracks that might possibly add to the mix, even if the rest of the soundtrack they come from isn't really what I'm looking for. That said, I think a dark, almost horror-like feel is definately where I want to start. I described the campaign to my players as kind of "fantasy X-files", and while that's kinda sorta true, that's an oversimplification too. Right now, and actually for a quite a while, my favorite pseudo-horror soundtracks include Danny Elfman's The Wolfman soundtrack, and the collaborative soundtracks by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard for the two most recent Batman movies. Mixing in a fair number of tracks--if not most of the entire CDs--from the three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, a few of the Harry Potter soundtrack tracks, some songs from The Mummy and maybe even Raiders of the Lost Ark, Sherlock Holmes and Prince of Persia and/or the new Clash of the Titans gives me just a bit of an exotic, Arabian Nights-esque action adventure vibe to mix in with the horror and dark fantasy--about perfect, right? We'll see.

We'll see how much room I have, actually--ideally, I'd create a "mix" CD (of mp3 files, so I can get a lot of tracks on it) that I can use as my portable soundtrack for the campaign. That'll be about 9-10 CDs worth of music. So, for all of the soundtracks, I'll have to make sure that I edit it to just the exact tracks I want; I won't have room to pad it out with too much repetitition, or tracks that bring in a different mood.

Scheduling woes

Well, at the last minute I'm not going to be running DARK•HERITAGE tonight after all. One guy was already going to be unavailable as of a couple days ago. Suddenly another one had an unexpected commitment pop into his lap that he can't get out of, and another guy is sick! With three players down that would leave me with... two players. A bit on the light side. A bit too much on the light side (I actually prefer 3-4 players ideally, but scheduling games with adults with careers and families means that we can at least 50% of the time count on being one player down--having a pool of five works out great.) Next weekend I'm not available, so that has us looking at the weekend two weeks from now; probably Saturday the 16th. Blegh.

To at least find the silver lining here; I can polish off my plans a bit, and I can polish off the material that I've given the players so far too; make it a little bit more coherent and organized, and give them a bit more of it while I'm at it. And heck; maybe I can bust my hump to get my big poster map finished and painted before then so I can show them where they are while I'm at it. I can actually stat out some of my villains, make better plans for the various encounters, maybe photocopy the pages from the monster books that I need (so I don't have to actually take the books with me--even if it's just coming downstairs at my own house) and otherwise be a bit better prepared than I am now. It also gives me the opportunity to print off some images that will make the session more evocative.

All in all, I'm going to force myself to see this as a positive and come up with an even better session than I otherwise would have when we get together next!