The Capture of Drezen: Pathfinder - The Crusade (Part 4)

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 5

With the help of the alchemists, the gunpowder users and the siege engineers, the walls of the demon-infested citadel Drezen were breached and the Brevic army surged through. Aaron, Keiran, Akaros, Evander, Alexei and I led the charge through the destroyed main gate, quickly dealing with the minor demons foolish enough to stand in our way. Mr Tiddles and Brutus stayed outside with the main army to ensure the demonic forces were thoroughly dealt with and then we progressed into the main building alone.

We came into a room filled with maps of previous battle plans – maybe not useful to prevent a new incursion, but with great historical value and may hopefully give insight into the enemy’s tactics. As we studied these, some minor demons (goat-like, I believe) led by a dwarf attacked: the demons were quickly dispatched. I managed to paralyse the dwarf using a spell I didn’t think would work* and we proceeded to tie him up. We’re just about to attempt to interrogate him, when several minotaurs led by another dwarf (in spanglier armour) charge in – one minotaur aiming straight for the incapacitated dwarf and goring him with sufficient force to end up wearing him as a hat. So much for our questions! We dispatched the minotaurs and the second dwarf: he died rather more easily than anticipated so Alexei did his ghost thing and stepped into the ethereal plane to try and get some answers from the dwarf’s spirit. It was not very helpful, and ultimately dismissed by a scythe-wielding entity far more powerful than Alexei.

Around the neck of the dwarf’s body was a skeleton key that opened, as well as the doors, a chest at the foot of a bed in an adjacent chamber. Amongst the loot therein was the dwarf’s journal, revealing him to be Staunton Vhane (the other dwarf, the one turned into a fashion accessory by a minotaur, was his brother). He was the one who had taken down the Sword of Valour, enabling the demons to capture Drezen all those years ago. He seemed to have been well-rewarded, Lord of the citadel. The journal referred to a succubus who had been held as a heretic in the dungeons until an oubliette had been prepared for her in the Abyss: she had escaped. There was also talk of magic potions brought by a demon lord. Staunton had experimented on various underlings, recounted in morbid detail their grisly demises – the only survivor was the three-headed beast we fought on the bridge – before daring to drink himself. It made him more powerful (and was familiar in story to how my own mythic power awakened within me, albeit more brutal than sharing a drink with Erastil).

The journal also mentioned a forge that enabled the two dwarven brothers to corrupt weapons and armour – one had wanted to use it on the Sword of Valour but the other had refused, so at least we knew the banner was safe. The journal also revealed it to be guarded by a shadow demon in the depths of the citadel. Onwards and downwards, then.

The dungeons below were largely empty but the place felt dark and creepy and magic aligned to good or law seemed sluggish, reluctant to be present within these unhallowed walls that seemed to whisper just beyond the edge of hearing. A group of vampire-lings melted away at our onslaught, although Alexei warned they may have survived and be licking their wounds elsewhere.

One of the cells appeared to be that in which the heretic succubus had been kept: the walls were covered in scratched drawings of butterflies and a prayer to Desna begged for release and freedom, not just from the cell but in life beyond that. Something in the prayer sang to me: I hope the succubus – Aurashalé – is safe and we have a chance to meet her.

But onwards. A brutal torture chamber with a stench of blood so strong it was like bathing in it. Dispatched the demons quickly, and Kieran walked into the side room to see and slay a half-orc… who crumbled to dust. Presumably the sire of the smaller vampires we’d fought earlier. A sealed door behind his seat led to his coffin, which we carefully made uninhabitable to him lest he had survived and tried to return there to recover. The door was well-hidden, so we began to trawl the dungeons once more to seek out others.

Another hidden route led to a forge that Alexei realised was where the dwarven brothers had undertaken their experiments in corruption. He neutralised its effects: relief washed over us as the whisperings faded and our magics returned to normal. In a room beyond, we found the Sword of Valour on a wall in an iron frame. The walls were covered in art work of a demon-god slaying the gods of Golarion in cruel and horrific ways. We approached cautiously, expecting the shadow demon to reveal itself at any moment. Alexei and Akaros reached to remove the banner from the wall: it crumbled to dust and in the same instant Evander was hit by a black flash, falling unconscious such that Alexei could not wake him – he reminded me of how I had felt after being dragged back to life, but this did seem to be different: I had been awake.

I was disappointed that we’d come so far only for the banner to be destroyed so carelessly, until Akaros reminded me that only Iomedae herself could destroy the banner, and then only if certain conditions were met. This, then, was not the true Sword of Valour. Evander was carefully secured to a levitated ladder and we continued on our way.

Following another passageway, we found a giant statue of a serpentine woman with 4 arms wielding viscious-looking weapons. A narrow ledge led passed it, but it struck Aaron as being obviously trapped so he attempted to fly over the pit from which the statue rose – and vanished, pushed down to beneath the apparent floor of the pit as he left the ledge. The actual floor was many feet lower and covered with a grim, green slime that coated him, weakened him. I spotted a switch on the ledge behind the statue and skipped over to it: the gravity field that held him down lifted and we were able to pull him out before the slime sucked the last of the life from him.

There was another door here, so we went through and down a corridor to another small room. Pitch black inside, Alexei alone could see the banner lying rumpled on a ledge. He dispelled the mystical darkness to reveal the hidden shadow demon stood between us and it – an ominous black and grey form, ranging from highlights the colour of shade by trees in spring to the blackest depths so dark the eye could not comprehend what it was seeing.

It vanished. Evander’s limp form fell to the floor and Kieran was struck by a powerful spell that nearly felled him – Aaron shifted into his large Red Mantis form in preparation for a tough fight and started behaving in strange ways that I recognised from the ‘confusion’ spell, babbling incoherently before attacking himself. And I… a splitting headache as half-formed thoughts and unrelated memories muddled at the surface of my mind – the prickle of hay as I practiced kissing with Piotr; a refrain from a song my father taught me when he visited that I thought I’d forgotten; the overwhelming shock I felt when I first met Noleski (and the love and pride when we married); rosemary and fresh bread; my mother kissing a skinned knee better; the suppressed fear when Devin didn’t show up at the coach like we’d agreed – like a fishing net cast wide and pulling up whatever it tangled**. The feeling lasted less than a second; left me in pain and tasting blood. It was time to get out of there. I tried to grab Alexei as I ran, but it was all I could do to manage the out-of-control Aaron. Keiran and Akaros ran, carrying Evander.

We made it outside the room, back down the corridor to the ledge behind the statue. I tried to run from Aaron before his madness shifted and made me his target, but I was too late – pulling him from the room had set me in his sights and it was only Akaros stepping between us that prevented him from killing me. We had to beat him to unconsciousness, when he shrunk back down to his normal tiefling size. About this point, Evander sprang to his feet, going so fast from prone to standing that it seemed he didn’t move but merely was stood. He whipped at Alexei with his flail and the image dissipated. He ran back towards the room in which the shadow demon possessed Alexei’s bird form.

The others ran back to the room with Evander as I attempted to loosely tie Aaron – enough that he would not be able to hurt himself or others whilst under the influence of his madness, but not so much he couldn’t free himself when it passed. The door sealed shut behind them, so I could only hope when it opened again shortly after that it was truly they who stood there before me. Akaros lifted the banner and I knew we were ok. They explained that Evander had spotted and struck the small bird Alexei had shifted into, forcing the demon out for them to battle. The two paladins flanked the demon as Alexei crashed to the floor, bloodied from the strain of housing and releasing the demon. Evander, Akaros and Kieran managed to defeat the creature and we returned triumphant to place the banner in the main hall.

From Kenabres had come 3 representatives with knowledge of the area to help rebuild the citadel and return it to its glory. Irabeth and her wife Aenevia, who had experienced some of the worst days in Kenabres, would oversee the forces stationed here. Between them, they have good knowledge not only of the region but also the demons who occupy it: Irabeth, a fierce paladin half-orc, was the one person who saw through Staunton Vhane before he betrayed Drezen and removed the banner, as evidenced in his journal whilst Aenevia survived the demon-occupation of Kenabres and is an accomplished scout. On the other hand, the person sent to finance the project grated on my nerves. He seemed aggrieved to have been told to help (but couldn’t refuse Queen Galfrey) and spends most of his time boasting about his wealth. A tedious, odious person; very good with money and evidently trusted by the queen of Mendev but not someone I would choose to spend time with.

We will need a few days to lick wounds and clean the place up before moving on to the next challenge – which will hopefully include tracking down the heretic succubus, Aurashalé.

*‘Hold Person’ was one of the first 2^nd level spells I took but I’ve never managed to pull it off before, so that was exciting.

**Alexei’s ‘Brain Drain’ Oracle tapestry power has only worked once before, when he accidentally murdered a child…

DICE!

I’ve been inspired by Crystal’s recent blog post and Husbit’s boasting to write my own post on dice.

Husbit's collection - I don’t have as many blocking dice as him

Like a lot of geeks, I have a lot of dice and a lot of love for my dice. I’m going to assume that my readers are at least mostly geeks (even if not necessarily playing the same games as me) so will be familiar with abbreviations such as D6 for a 6-sided dice (and also used to the fact that dice come in shapes and sizes other than that standard cube).

I’m starting with my Blood Bowl dice, because these are a little different to standard.

If you’re familiar with Blood Bowl, these dice need little explanation. If you aren’t, the symbols probably look a little odd. Basically, when you hit someone in Blood Bowl (‘throw a block’) these are the dice that determine the outcome of that action. You roll between 1 and 3, determined by the ‘strength’ of your player vs the opponent: same strength = 1 die. If you’re stronger, 2 dice and you get to pick – if you’re weaker, 2 dice and they get to pick. If you’re more than twice as strong (or weak), then it’s 3 dice (for instance, a strength 5 mummy from the Undead team hitting a strength 2 halfling from the, well, Halfling team)!

There are 4 possible outcomes, demonstrated by 5 different symbols. The jagged star-like symbol (usually known as a ‘pow’) means the defender falls over – the ‘pow’ with an exclamation mark means they fall over unless they can use the dodge skill (this is why there are 5 symbols for 4 outcomes). The arrow means the defender is ‘pushed back’; the skull means the attacker falls over and the skull/pow means both the attacker and defender fall over. Besides dodge, there are a few other skills that affect this, but I’m talking dice not Blood Bowl so that’s not important!

The various different colours of the standard blocking dice have been produced by the NAF and were given out in different years to those who signed up to the organisation. They have, in the last couple of years, moved away from blocking dice.

Most of the time in Blood Bowl you need D6’s, and a lot of leagues and tournaments produce their own as giveaways. In the photo above, you can see my little collection that I’m rather proud of. L-R: Exiles League (white and black); Lutece (purple and black, inc D8 - black from World Cup 2011); Chelmsford Bunker (blue); Team America (red/blue from World Cup 2011); "Hawk'd" (cream - awarded for being thrashed by Hawk I forget when. Exiles 2013?); ARBBL (black); Chaos (purple - from Glowworm at the World Cup 2011); Halfling dice (caramel - given by Chance of 3 Die Block after a bad night at NAFC); Fling dice (black/purple - because I took Halflings to NAFC2014); NAF (black - for membership 2013. Came with a D8 that I lost and a D16 I forgot to photo); NAF (white - for membership 2014).

The last D6 - the one with a little death symbol - is for determining what happens to a player killed on a block. Usually more important for league play than tournaments – players can be out for the rest of the game (‘badly hurt’), out for this and the next game, ‘seriously injured’ (and this is when the orangey D8 comes in as well, to see what sort of injury – less armour, less movement, etc) or DEAD. You can use a normal D6 and D8, but this set is kinda fun.

D8’s are for scattering the ball (or a thrown player).

The bag was a birthday present from one of my lovely uni housemates, Penny

Most of my dice are for roleplay. I like systems where I get to roll lots of dice in one go – like ShadowRun and World of Darkness (Pathfinder is forgiven for being D20 based purely because it’s awesome) – but even systems which only use one die at a time – like Savage Worlds or Call of Cthulu – necessitate me owning more than one of that die type because should my dice misbehave (ie, roll me too many failures with too few redeeming successes) then I need to switch them out for others.

One of the nice things about being female is that I’m allowed to admit I like things just cos they’re pretty.

Ah yes, dice punishments! A good traditional one for misbehaving dice is to stick them in a sweaty trainer. Take them out after a while and see if their behaviour has improved: if not, into the other trainer they go and that’s it for the rest of that session. One friend would place the miscreants into a plastic tub with chances for reprieve: those who remained in the tub at the end of the session would be banished to the fridge until the next game. Several people will launch dice across rooms or out of windows (I know many stories of dice being thrown out of windows to be discovered in car parks or streets with top successes showing). I even knew someone who would melt particularly badly behaved dice as a lesson to the others. That’s the most extreme punishment I know; anyone got anything worse?

Most of my dice are fairly generic, but here are some special ones:

These haematite dice were a present from Husbit when he went to a gaming convention at the Tank Museum without me as an apology for his crazy assumption I wouldn’t want to go. Very rarely used but I love these.

From my brother because they’re pretty. Again, not used often because they’re smaller than most of my dice (other D20 for scale), but if I eventually get enough little dice they will be.

I need to paint in the pips again. Originally bought for ShadowRun, these dice worked well for me in the homebrew Final Fantasy Noir, where some events were determined by rolling a number of D6 and then straights/pairs/etc would determine outcomes. I don’t remember the exact details but we played with various different methods of using dice to insert randomness into the game and that was one of the more unusual and entertaining ones. These days, these dice are used for Svetlana’s sneak attack damage (hence the need to make them more readable again).

Yeah… I have a few D10’s. What can I say? – I love World of Darkness! Most of these were originally purchased for the wonderful Werewolf/Vampire/Hunter campaign I played at uni. I’m now playing in an Aberrant campaign (run by my Pathfinder GM) in which we are deliberately (super-mega-hyper-)overpowered so I figured I needed more dice* and that’s where the rest of the bunch come in. I don’t have 10 in any ability, attribute or mega-attributes yet, but want to be ready! The red are for mega-attributes because that made sense to me; purple are attributes and blue abilities. The turquoise are for specialties – you don’t need to separate specialties from skills but I like to differentiate where successes originated because I’m sad like that. (There will be tales from Aberrant in the future – we’re doing an extended character gen prologue that I want to complete before I start writing up.)

I love dice. If anyone ever wants to make me happy, send me random pretty dice and I’ll be smiling for a week!

*As a quick aside, I was very impressed with the communication from Tritex Games when I bought those extra D10’s: I wanted gem dice to match what I had, but they didn’t have enough so agreed to send as many gem and pearl as they could, and carefully selected the most legible marble ones where necessary so I had enough. And they arrived the next day, just in time for my game!

Essays!

Having accidentally written a near-5,000 draft essay for a future blogpost, I remembered how much I enjoyed essay writing and so think I'm going to do this properly: fiddle around with what I've written to turn it into a proper essay on how Deus Ex Machina comes into roleplay games.

Yes, you read that right. When I was at uni, I really enjoyed essay writing. I was that annoying mare who would not only turn their essay in 2 weeks early, but also get a very high mark for it. Considering I always got very average marks for late essays I would hand in at school, I have to say it's amazing what a difference an interest in your topic can make.

Since uni, though, I haven't written in an essay style but looking at the word count I'd reached for the blogpost stirred those memories and reminded me how much I enjoyed it. I'm going to give it a go again - take the draft post, research it properly, tidy it up, sort the language out (it's far too chatty and goes off at tangents I'll need to switch to footnotes).

I'm looking forward to it. It's giving me a reason to once more face my fear of librarians to indulge in my love of learning and writing. I'm not when I can get to the library - although I definitely want to do some book-based research rather than relying exclusively on the internet - which makes it harder to give myself a deadline so I'm hoping that mentioning it now will give me the incentive I need to actually finish this.

'Sgonna be fun!

Pathfinder: The Crusade part 3

Check out Crusade Part 1, Part 2, Part 4

It took 4 or 5 days and several minor skirmishes for the group to reach the outskirts of Drezen. Our elite units – the Dawnriders paladin unit led by Akaros and the archers Alexei recently equipped with horicaclum bows – are with us and the rest of the Brevic army is about a week behind. I, still in the palanquin where the party placed me with only Mr Tiddles trying to comfort me, take a break from my prayers to Erastil to speak to my husband. Noleski offers words of comfort, support and courage as I weep to him my sorrows and fears. He will, I hope, plant a pot of rosemary in my rooms. I feel better for talking to him and hope I haven’t left him too concerned for me.

Whilst waiting for Howlan Garress and the Brevic army proper to reach us, we harry some of the demonic troops stationed outside Drezen and manage to capture a few key locations. A graveyard (some mercenaries we freed advised that the crypt housed the remains of the first Crusaders); a bridge into the main parts; 6 watchtowers (Aaron getting to show off his awesome assassin skills). These reinforced with our own troops.

Our army arrived; we were updating Lord Garess and our other generals etc when a battered knight on an exhausted horse arrived at the tent. Through beaten breaths, the knight explained the bridge was under attack. Apologising to the generals, we quickly mounted Keiran’s griffon Brutus (cannot remember if it’s been mentioned before that Mr Tiddles had enlarged the beast until he was large enough to carry all of us if necessary) and requested the Dawnriders follow to helps us re-secure the bridge.

The enormous beast on the bridge had 3 heads – a snow leopard, a goat and an unfamiliar white, serpentine head – and wings. It was happily eating any of our embedded troops who tried to move. We landed behind it – I dismounted but the others stayed on as Brutus flew back towards the beast: I used shadowstep to move forward near Alexei and Evander, who’d jumped off a little earlier to be out of immediate threat range.

It took 3 rounds – 18 seconds of combat – to finish the beast off. Brutus was nearly destroyed in that time and the strange lizard-head* kept breathing ice on the rest of us, trying to hide out of range. Much mythic power needed, but ultimately it was the celestial T Rex summoned by Alexei that did the last few points of damage needed to wipe the thing out. Alexei will later return to the bridge to ensure a frieze of the battle is displayed along the side wall.

Another army in the Crusade is due to be joining us in about another week, so we begin preparing the siege to retake Drezen. Akaros, Lord Garess and the other more experienced military minds suggest we enter when a breach in the walls is made, so that we can recover the Sword of Valour and mount it once more on the wall. Akaros, as paladin of Iomedae, will accompany us.

Somewhere in the sorrow and excitement, I have missed my 20^th birthday.

After about 5 days of laying siege (and still before the other army has arrived), our bombarding troops (with assistance from alchemist Ezekiel and Roland the gunslinger and his companions) manage to create holes in the east and west walls and take down the main front gatehouse: this is the path we take into the citadel.

*There are no dragons on Golarion, not even dragon myths. We joke about sky lizards from time to time, but definitely no dragons. So we wouldn’t recognise that head as belonging to a white dragon.

Days of Death (Pathfinder)

This is the Hunting Ground, home to Erastil’s chosen. It is peaceful and friendly – a great sense of community pervades; more family than friends. Here, I have returned to my roots as a brewer and work with my neighbours to assist in their harvests. Life is simple but infinitely pleasurable.

Lazy days spent fishing and hunting and roaming the hills. Late night parties around the bonfire. The air is fresh and clear.

My house smells gently of rosemary. It is absolutely my space, but my neighbours visit often and I, in turn, visit them.

I feel, sometimes, like there is something I have forgotten. Or not forgotten, so much as no longer need to think of to the point that I might as well have forgotten.

The headaches begin a couple or 3 months after Erastil led me here – a niggling at the back of my mind. They get worse – a feeling like a fishhook, pulling at me. As time passes, a voice accompanies them, calling my name, calling to me. Dizziness and feelings of disorientation. It seems very out of place in this idyll.

I am baking in my kitchen but the comfort of the rosemary smell is not enough to ward off the pain or confusion. The voice is shouting to me and I collapse to the floor – collapse through the floor, through myself, through the world as I know it into…

The stench of sulphur fills my nostrils – brimstone and methane and acrid, acid smoke. It is cold here; cold in a way that initially makes no sense. And the pain, worse than the worst of the headaches, spreading, shredding across my torso. I feel like I was ripped into pieces. And as I open my eyes, I see looming over me the demon who did it and I remember everything. Aaron’s twin blades slice through it, but that offers little comfort for one stripped from heaven into hell. I close my eyes again – try to bring Erastil’s face to mind, try to call him back to collect me once more. But it doesn’t work. The ground is hard – cold and sharp and cruel. Like everything here.

It was Alexei’s voice I’d heard pulling me back. Like a fish hook. Like a wire through my mind.

They finish killing the demons and see me. Alexei at least manages to soothe the worst of the pain – my body feels less torn and used. They light a fire. They make tea. Tea! Of all things – of all places. I don’t want to eat or drink or do anything but lie here and go home.

Mr Tiddles lies on me and the weight of someone caring here is too much and I weep long, silent tears.

Starlight Moonbeam "Plays in Shadows" Acorn Rainbow

When I started uni, I was lucky enough to be invited to join a long-running World of Darkness campaign. The group (Mel, Sith, Boyd, Gog and GM Ed) had been playing through bloodlines in both Vampire and Werewolf – Vampire from sire or grandsire to childe or grand-childe, and in werewolf using normal ancestry. They started back in Roman times and were running through to Apocalypse (at which point, a larger group also played the Hunter experience). At the time I joined, Werewolf (the more popular of the two games) had reached modern age and Vampire was in Dark Ages – but running through the second time as Sabbat.

The Werewolf party consisted of Mel’s homid Black Fury theurge, Boyd’s lupus Get of Fenris ragabash, Sith’s metis Silent Strider ahroun, Gog’s homid Fianna galliard and Ed’s GMPC* lupus Red Talon philodox. For those who don’t know, homid means ‘human-born’, lupus means ‘wolf-born’ and metis means ‘dirty freak of nature offspring of 2 Garou’ (most Garou breed with either humans or wolves, as metis are sterile and deformed). Theurges are spiritual/shamanic; ragabash ‘tricksters’; for galliards, think bardic; philodox are leaders and ahroun are the fighters – all Garou can fight, but the ahrouns excel at it.

No one was surprised when I elected to be a Child of Gaia (although Boyd did roll his eyes). Because I’d never played World of Darkness before, I was playing something of an audience surrogate so I could make mistakes without it being out of character - I took the 'no common sense' flaw for the same reason. We set it up that my mother was a bit of a ‘free love’ hippy and I’d never known my father, which was a good justification for having no idea about werewolves and kinfolk and the rest of it. I was raised on a commune that I had no real attachment too (abandoning it completely and kinda heartlessly after becoming a werewolf) – possibly because my name was “Starlight Moonbeam Acorn Rainbow”.

My game began, then, with my first change and the existent packs’ discovery and subsequent rescue of me. The moon was a crescent that night, so the Black Fury was pleased to have a young theurge to take under her wing. It seems to have been a very thin crescent, though – there’s a distinct flash of ragabash to my character, manifesting in a very playful and cheerful nature. Her excitement at discovering her Garou nature – and particularly her delight in entering the Umbra – left her playing chase through shadows and earned her the Garou name “Plays-in-Shadows” (I’m cross with myself that I cannot recall the names of the rest of the pack).

Plays’ (as she was most often known) biggest vice was cannabis, due to her hippy upbringing, but it’s possible the laid-backness that results from this was part of why she dealt so well with the massive changes on learning she was Garou. She loved spending time in the Umbra, particularly with pack totem Bear, and the novelty of being able to assume the shape of a wolf at will never wore off.

The pack tended to fight all in hispo (dire wolf) form; a well-practiced technique with each wolf taking turns to attack from alternate flanks when facing down a large opponent. Initially, Plays was reluctant to fight, particularly in training, but soon realised the necessity of it for her role in the coming Apocalypse.

The caern from which the pack operate is one that had been set up by the other players in an earlier stage of the game, so it was fun to hear the tales being told and, I think, nice for them to tell them to a new audience. Various tales of past heroes were also told, and again I enjoyed guessing which player was responsible – a nice side effect of entering a game such as this late.

Most of the time, we hung around the caern or in the Umbra, but sometimes we had to venture into the human realm. This wasn’t too bad for Plays or the Black Fury, but much more of a pain for the guys; particularly the metis and the ragabash (who really objected to puny human form and especially to wearing clothes and being flirted with by the Black Fury’s sister). We would all bundle into the awakened yellow mini named ‘Delilah’ that belonged to the Black Fury and would only start if you sang the Tom Jones song to it. We didn’t fit very well.

As mentioned above, the pack totem was Bear. This meant the pack had to work harder to earn honour, but Bear was an amazing totem. When the game ended, the Child of Gaia tribe totem (Unicorn) had been killed and Plays was one of very few, possibly the only, Child of Gaia to survive (being in another place entirely when it happened): her trust in Bear elevated him to status as the new totem for the tribe.

The game ended with only the Black Fury and Plays having survived from the pack – as theurges, they had been involved in an important ritual whilst the others fought the forces of the Weaver and Wyrm to enable the ritual to complete and died dramatically in the course of this. The final tableau was of a normal human woman and a wolf, side by side – it seemed fitting, somehow, that Plays was born human but would die a wolf. The Garou part of their nature had ended.

It was a very epic game and one of the players made a set of mix-CD's for the soundtracks to both Werewolf and Vampire but unfortunately I can't remember what was on them! I also painted up a bunch of dire wolves as keepsakes for the party but can't find Plays to share a photo.

*I know some people have real attitude when it comes to GMPC’s, but in this game it was useful because other players would sometimes run games and it helped to have a regular character/pack member for the normal GM to play in these circumstances. He mostly stayed quiet when Ed was GM’ing

'Aenghus'

Svetlana’s mother has appeared at various points in the campaign so far, but you may have noticed a certain silence about her father. If you’ve read the character background I shared a while ago, you will know why, but here’s some more detail into the man himself. (Svetlana only knows him by the name ‘Aenghus’ so that is how I will refer to him, although it’s probably not his real name.) 

Aenghus was born a long, long time ago to an isolated elven tribe in a particularly wild part of the world. I have to admit to a lack of knowledge on the geography of Golarion, but I picture somewhere mountainous (or at least craggy and hilly) and coastal (or criss-crossed with lakes and streams). Definitely heavily wooded. Fey blood ran strong within the tribe so it is no surprise he is a powerful sorcerer, but his interest in magic and the fey ran even deeper than most of his fellows. He has been accepted into the ranks of the fey, their power filling him and enabling him to have lived far beyond what is normal even for an elf. His own capabilities and control over magic have granted him the position of a Lord and have extended his life far beyond what is normal for an elf (I imagine him being hundreds of years old, possibly well into 4 digits).

After a time (I’m thinking 200 or 300 years), Aenghus decided he wanted an heir. Being good-looking and having magic to enhance his natural charm, it didn’t take him long to seduce a string of elven women but so far he has only managed to produce daughters and not the son he craves. Although most of his lovers have been elven, Svetlana may not be his only half-breed daughter.

When Natasha Chekhov caught his attention, she was in her mid-teens; happy and lively, with long ash-blonde hair and bright blue eyes. He used his control over dreams to seduce her, coming to her in her sleep on 3 consecutive nights. As was his wont, he waited until his offspring was turning 7 before coming to the village so until her 7^th birthday all Svetlana had of her father was her pointy ears, some barely-controlled magic and the middle name ‘Liann’, which her mother had learnt was elven for beer*.

Svetlana loved her birthday. The sun shone brightly and everyone clubbed together to make it feel special for her. Around lunchtime, a hunched man arrived in the village – a wandering tinker with a laden donkey. He gave his name as Finlay and quickly won over the villagers… with the exception of Svetlana. Perhaps it was her awareness of magic or perhaps it was their shared blood, but she knew this ‘wondering tinker’ was no such thing.

She confronted him that evening by the bonfire. The villagers, under his charismatic spell, rose in horror to defend him; he waved them back and agreed to speak with her in private. He then explained he was her father and this is when he told her his name was Aenghus (although she doesn’t believe him).

He stayed in the village a total of 3 days and in that time taught her simple tricks to help control and develop her wild magic, but refused to reveal himself to anyone else; when she tried to tell her family who he was, he made them forget again as easily as breathing. This made her feel helpless, which she did not like. After he left, she tried again but his human disguise was convincing enough that everyone dismissed it as foolish wishful thinking.

Svetlana hasn’t sought her father since**, having found the whole encounter too frustrating. She was particularly upset with the way he treated her mother because Natasha had, in their 3 dream-nights together, fallen strangely in love with Aenghus such that she never married: not only was Natasha hurt, but Svetlana would like to have had siblings. It doesn’t occur to her how many she may have on the other side of her family. She doesn’t think of her father often; tries not to think of him at all.

If Aenghus was impressed with his (presumably) youngest daughter’s skill or potential, he didn’t show it. Whether he keeps an eye on her progress or not is also unknown. Why does he have this pressing need for an heir he cannot produce – fulfilment of prophecy? some kind of curse? a need to have someone to hand things to before finally seeking death? boredom? mere whim? Only the GM can tell.

I like to give my GM things to play with.

*Growing up, my little sister had a friend called Liann whose parents ran the pub at the end of our road. They’d called her Liann because it’s Scottish for beer. Or so the story went, anyway. I’ve had trouble finding corroboration on the internet but possibly because I was spelling it Leanne initially.

**but there is a moment when she may have seen him. When Svetlana earned her mythic powers, Erastil pulled her out of normal time and space and with him was another person; as I recall it, a powerful-seeming elf unknown to Svetlana. Svetlana hasn’t dwelt much on this, but out-of-character I wonder if it was her father. After all, she doesn’t know what he looks like (beyond him being an elf and presumably having dark honey-blonde hair and storm-grey eyes; these being the features that distinguish her from her mother), so she wouldn’t necessarily know.