Pathfinder - The Crusade part 9: Enter The Abyss

We left Drezen accompanied by Queen Galfrey and headed to the Midnight Fane – the temple where the rift to the Midnight Isles was located. We were greeted by a group of incubi, advising we are expecting and offering to take us to their mistress. In an uncharacteristic show of restraint, Kieran managed not to run the demons through with his sword but instead we let them lead the way to a chamber filled with an acrid purple smoke bubbling from a cauldron fed by (or feeding into) various tubes. A cambian demon pottered around, tending alchemical machinations.

A woman entered, recognised as Yanielle. She’s a paladin of Iomedae famous for losing her faith and regaining it following a journey to the Worldwound. She has recently been missing, following a second excursion. It looked as though we’ve found her, and it didn’t look good (although we clung to the hope that she’d been possessed). When she tried to convert us to Baphomet’s cause, it was too much for our shiny paladin and, with a cry of “How dare you defile Iomedae’s symbol!”, he charged her. The rest of us watched and waited for him to get it out of his system.

She collapsed to the floor, ragged and emaciated, her armour gone. Alexei and Kieran recognised her as a husk – a body that has been emptied so it can be filled by demonic possession. As they set about de-cursing and healing Yanielle, we realised the other demons had departed. Never mind.

Recovered, she agreed to join us on our journey into the rift on the grounds it would seem Iomedae has sent us – this reinforced to her when it transpires some of the kit we recently found and have kept hold of included her sword and armour.

We made our way down to the rift itself – a vast hall, one wall of which glowed and writhed in red and black. Taking a deep breath, we stepped through into a cave studded with purple crystals.

To close the rift, a page containing particular magic needed to be held into the rift from both sides. Queen Galfrey took this responsibility back in Golarion and gave me the copy to hold from the Midnight Isles. After a minute or so, the portal turned black and lightning arced from it. Alexei, Evander and Yanielle were smart enough to get out of the way, but Kieran stayed close to help with the next step and Aaron stayed nearby to take over if I fell. The lightning hurt less than I feared but more than I’d admit – Kieran seemed unaffected, drawing his sword and commanding a dispel from it. The other side of the rift, Queen Galfrey must have done similarly, because the writhing wall fell away (with just enough warning for me to dodge away) to leave a bare cavern wall. I shivered slightly at the thought of being cut off from Golarion and all I have there.

An oddity: beside Alexei stood a man identical in most ways, but clean shaven and smartly dressed. Alexei introduced him as Ivan, his dead twin. No longer connected to the Ethereal Plane but still tied to each other, Ivan had been manifested as we entered the demonic realm.

But onwards. We found our way out of the cavern – fighting a few minor monsters on the way – and into a dense jungle. It was night, but it’s always night in the Midnight Isles. The moon being out made it as close to day as this place gets – rather than ‘day’ and ‘night’, I’ve been thinking of ‘moonlight’ and ‘true night’.

Aaron and I spotted a strange grey stone mass creating a clearing in the dense jungle. With no better plan and grave concerns about how we would reach Nocticula’s capital, we approached to find a ruined temple. Aaron, having swapped his ring of sustenance, was by this point hungry and tired so settled to sleep whilst we considered what was in front of us: four statues of Nocticula in different poses, each with its own epigraph. A strong feeling of teleportation came from this device, but even once I’d worked out how to trigger each statue we had no idea which order to do this in, and with 33 options it didn’t seem sensible to try experimenting. When Aaron awoke, he knew which order we needed but couldn’t explain how. It was the best lead we had, and it paid off: we materialised in the centre of a busy square in what could be identified as the city we were aiming for.

So the next step was to gain attention. Kieran arranged rooms in one of the ‘nicer’ (or least brothel’y) establishments whilst I tried to make some connections. Through the grapevine, I learnt of an arena fighter making waves – a four-armed incubus by the name of Gelderfang. Defeat him, the suggestion went, and that would give some notoriety. To me, it sounded like a job for a paladin, but Aaron also expressed an interest and whilst we were discussing the best way to proceed, Alexei sought out the master of the arena and arranged the fight for himself. It may have been best this way: Alexei’s reputation has found its way even here and this way he could skip any warm-up fights against lesser opponents and go straight up against Gelderfang.

Kieran gave a dramatic introduction, but it was with a degree of trepidation we watched Alexei enter the arena, covered in his shadows. The fight lasted a while, but Alexei won through magic and trickery and, to the delight of the crowd, slit the incubus’s throat.

Next part here.

RPGaDay Days 30 and 31

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Day Thirty – Rarest RPG Owned

It’s not rare per se, but I don’t know anyone else who owns Abney Park’s Airship Pirates. It looks so shiny and pretty and I really want to play!

Day Thirty One – Favourite RPG of All Time

Ooooh, this is a hard one. Let’s face it, I am loving the Pathfinder campaign I’m in, but it’s the campaign rather than the game. And that’s true of many games – the game, the GM, the players are more important in making something enjoyable than the system.

That said, I think the old World of Darkness Werewolf is probably my favourite. There are certain people I wouldn’t play it with because I think their style would distress me because it’s not how I picture the game, but the game I played at uni was amazing.

So, can I explain why I love it? For a start, it’s a game where I get to role handfuls of dice at a time, which is always nice. It’s a game in which you are very powerful – again, something I enjoy. I need that escapism sometimes (it’s why I’m loving Aberrant – to be so powerful. It’s fun and freeing).

I think maybe because it’s a game that encourages teamwork. A werewolf pack has to work together, to defend each other’s weaknesses and support each other’s strengths. I don’t know many other games where that feels as important. And I’m not saying I need it in a game, either – sometimes a bit of inter-party conflict or mistrust can be fun (I love Vampire, too).

A lot of my love for it is down to the amazing game I was in at uni, with my lovely Starlight. Playing a character you can really get into helps. It was a wonderful story, very intense. That helps too. The other characters were fun and interesting and complimentary. We worked well together.

The background and fluff also catches my imagination – I’d love to play with the other changeling breeds. I want all the supplements and books and a few weeks to just curl up with the Puss and enjoy them.

So that’s it then. 10 days late, but I’ve finished. I’ve really enjoyed the challenge and having some structure to write to. Look forward to taking part on time next year.

With thanks to Autocratik. 

RPGaDay Day 29 - Most Memorable Encounter

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Day Twenty Nine – Most Memorable Encounter

I’m giving this a whole post to myself because it amuses me. Husbit is less amused.

This is the other time Husbit ran WFRP’s for us – I mentioned one under Day 13 (most memorable character death) in which he achieved a TPK. Something about him running WFRP’s it seems…

We were playing a group of people from the same village, strictly human and strictly pastoral-style careers. I started as a goatherd with the intention of becoming a druid; I forget what the others were. Husbit wanted us to appreciate that we were from a rural backwater in the Empire – somewhere clinging to an older, more druidic faith, very anti-unnatural things like machinery and the undead and stuff.

Something happened to cause us to have to team up and leave our village (it probably burned down), and off into the big, wide Warhammer world we went.

The scenario Husbit really wanted to run was one he’d adapted from Ravenloft, his favourite setting. It was a murder mystery, maybe film noir-esque scenario – one I would love to revisit and actually solve. One day. When I’ve won the lottery and never have to worry about money again so can spend my days reading, writing and roleplaying…

Anyway, in passing during a session not all players had made it to, Husbit stated that we shouldn’t be alone. My memory is that this was told to us by an NPC, although it may have been GM speech and I think that’s Husbit’s recollection. It turned out to be rather important, so we were rather cross that it wasn’t reiterated to us in or out of character at any point, such as the start of the next session or when it was clear we hadn’t remembered/noticed and all split up.

Once every character had had a moment of being alone, we all awoke in a dark chamber, somewhere deep underground. It was quickly explained that, in that moment we’d been alone, we’d been killed and some form of doppelganger put in our place in the town outside so the other players didn’t notice. The wizened man before us had then resurrected us…

And this is where it all fell down and Husbit learnt a valuable lesson in ensuring players have the right information: in the Warhammer world, there is no resurrection. Returning from death makes you undead. Husbit had made quite a point of this, and we were playing rural, old faith characters who hated the undead.

So when the man we’d never met before tried to convince us we really were alive again, we weren’t having any of it: if we’d been dead, we were now undead. The guy explained we needed to solve the murders before the worm thing he’d put into us ate into our hearts and killed us again – destroyed us. We refused.

I wanted to go to the surface, to die finally with the sun on my face, but my companions pointed out that abominations such as we’d become we didn’t deserve sunlight and so we sat there, in the dark, until the worm things killed us.

With thanks again to Autocratik.

RPGaDay - Days 27 and 28

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Day Twenty Seven – Game you’d like to see a new/improved version of

I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking and still don’t have an answer. I’m going to borrow Husbit’s answer and go with Cyberpunk because it is clunky and heavy, but I like some of the detail gone into helping build a character background. It feels a bit of a cheat because there is a new version coming and because I prefer ShadowRun and you can run a straight cyberpunk-style game using that.

Day Twenty Eight – Scariest game

Husbit’s rendition of the Coffin Rock scenario in Deadlands, which I’ve mentioned previously, certainly had moments that freaked me out, and there were scenes in the Final Fantasy based Homebrew that gave me more shivers than anticipated, but for scariest game I’m torn between two.

The first is the Renraku Arcology Shutdown campaign in ShadowRun, which our GM was very keen to run and which some of the players regretted letting him do (although I enjoyed it immensely). The scene that particularly springs to mind is when my character, Kamaya, had managed to get herself separated from the rest of the group and fell into a toy shop – at which point, all the dolls’ heads turned to look at her and spoke to her by name. With the music he’d chosen and the expression on his face, it was one of those chilling moments that sticks with you.

The second has come up on my blog before. “A Town Called Crossfire” (first section of link), being run by my friend Pete.

We spent the first part of the game goofing around and roleplaying as students on summer break having fun and basically avoiding the plot hooks and hammers until he railroaded us into the game he wanted to run, which involved entering an abandoned mine labelled as “dangerous” and “no entry” (we were being all obedient and listening to the signs). The mine lead to another city, one eerily akin to the one above, but shadowy and darker. I don’t remember much about the game except I think the idea was to seek out the ruler of this city and the overwhelming level of creepy eeriness that Pete managed to create.

It seems to me the trick to a good creepy game is all down to the GM’s ability to act.

With thanks again to Autocratik.